Chapter Seven

Shadow of the Lamb

Maybe it was because it was in her blood, but learning the Japanese language as a non-native was not as difficult as texts Ilya had read on the subject would have her believe. Certainly there was the added matter of learning the different alphabets on top of the grammatical structure-kanji, katakana, and hiragana—but Ilya had a knack for committing things well to memory.

Even pronunciation wasn't all that difficult, as she worked it around her German mouth and tongue.

As she read certain words aloud to herself, she somehow felt like she could hear her father's soft voice whisper them in her ear, and recalled bits and pieces of moments when he would speak the language to her mother, usually in a gentle, loving tone.

It made her angry to think that speaking to Irisviel in his native language like that might have made her feel special when in truth he had been using such things as tactics for deceit. But her anger was purely cold now, and somehow it served to rise to the challenge of learning Japanese to the point of fluency, the words and phrases rolling easily off her tongue.

"Konbanwa," she read, the hiragana written before her in her book. "That means 'good evening' in German," she added to Berserker. That phrase was actually kind of fun to say, and a very faint chuckle escaped Ilya's lips.

Berserker lifted his head up from where he'd been looking out of her bedroom window, strangely lost in thought. Ilya always speculated what kind of memories he was losing himself in, preferring to leave it up to her imagination and what she knew about him as the heroic spirit of Heracles, rather than asking him. Things like how the goddess Hera, Zeus' wife, had tried and failed to kill him off as another one of Zeus' offspring born from another woman, or how in his childhood he had savagely beat his harp teacher to death over a small matter. She figured if he ever wanted to share with her, he'd share with her in time, in his own way. For herself, pondering such things made her think of things like those horrible nightmares and visions she'd had of her father blowing her head off with a gun, or the day she came up behind Elke and stabbed her to death. In any case, it seemed that Berserker's biggest concern was the sum of all of her concerns, and the spoiled part of Ilya couldn't help but enjoy and relish in that.

Outside it was snowing, but peacefully, coming down in big, fat, quiet flakes.

Ilya, laying out on her stomach on her bedroom floor with the book on learning Japanese open in front of her, swinging her legs aimlessly behind her and propping herself up on her elbows, her chin cupped in her hands, smiled affectionately at Berserker. It felt so nice, so warm, to be able to feel something like that again. And only she could tell by the way that Berserker was looking at her now that he was in fact smiling fondly back at her. Anyone else looking would've just seen a scowl.

"I like it when it snows like this," she told him. "You know, the Japanese actually have two words for snowflake. One is really plain and straight, just 'seppen'. Or there's 'sunofureku', but I think that's something called 'Hepburn'….. I dunno, it has to do with Japanese-sounding English words, or something. But then…there's also, 'hana no yuki', which literally means, 'snow flower'. I mean…snowflakes do look like flowers up close…."

A memory drifted in, one where her father himself had told her this, claiming he had also told her mother this when he had been teaching her Japanese before Ilya had been born.

Kiritsugu held out the finger of one black-gloved hand, balancing the fragile snowflake that was already melting. "See, Ilya? Quick, before it's gone. Doesn't it look like a flower?"

Ilya examined the snowflake and her red eyes widened in such pure wonder. "Ah, it does! That's so pretty, Daddy!"

Kiritsugu laughed, and then the flake melted into the leather of his glove and disappeared, nothing more than a water droplet now. "And you know, Ilya, they say that no two snowflakes are alike."

"Oh?" Ilya thought about that. "That must make them really precious then, since they're so pretty."

"Indeed, it does." And Kiritsugu reached up and gently brushed his knuckles against her soft cheek, as he looked at her with that expression of affection he would sometimes give her that would appear so earnest, like it was one of those things where he was so happy he might start crying.

But of course, he never did actually cry.

He might look sad sometimes when he didn't know Ilya was watching him, but he had never shed a single tear in front of her….

Ilya shook her head vigorously, curling her small hands into fists. "Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it."

Berserker made a low growl deep in his throat, one Ilya recognized as one of an expression of concern for her. It was his way of asking her if something was wrong with her.

At this, Ilya stopped and heaved a sigh before she forced a smile for him. "It's fine, Berserker. I just felt weak for a moment." But then she lowered her eyes to her book and said, more to herself, "It's like his ghost is trying to torment me. Even when he's dead, he makes Ilya suffer." She bit her lip hard, willing herself not to let her splintered heart crumble.

However, in the end, the only way she was really able to recover was to do what she always did when things like this came up. Slamming the textbook shut, she leapt to her feet and rushed to Berserker's side, hopping up onto his lap the way she would hop up onto her mother's and beg her for a story.

"I think that's enough Japanese lessons for today," Ilya proclaimed, in the brightest, sunniest voice she could muster as she swung her legs again. "Let's play a different game. Okay?"

Berserker looked at her patiently and then nodded, setting her on her feet before rising to his own.

Then Ilya led him by the fist and the two of them left her bedroom, seeking Leysritt or Sella to see about getting her coat, hat, scarf, and boots so the two of them could go outside.


The last two months had gone on this way for Ilya, filling her days with study and bonding ever closer with Berserker. She was not so abandoned in her heart that she could not appreciate these days spent as they were for the gifts that they were before she would have to go and meet her fate. There were still moments though where it surprised her that her heart was not so abandoned as she'd thought, left behind as she was by everyone she had loved before Berserker.

Actually, even Leysritt and Sella had their moments.

In some ways, Ilya favored Leysritt over Sella, but only slightly. The edge Leysritt had was that her continued difficulty with speaking gave her this innocent naivety that Ilya was drawn to, as if she had found someone who was just as broken as she was, if not more so. Sella on the other hand did come off as a know-it-all sometimes, but Ilya still would choose her a thousand times over that damned Elke. Because for all of the things about Sella that would get under Ilya's skin, it became clear to Ilya that Sella—like Leysritt—sincerely cared for her well-being, in the end, when she realized that rather than fight her on everything, they did their best to embrace her personality as it was, even at its most troublesome and mischievous.

For Ilya managed to find another kind of small and precious joy in the way she'd play tricks on them, like swapping their buckets of mop water with the second pot of tea she would ask for at breakfast just for that reason, or even getting Leysritt to turn the flowers upside down in their vases, only for Sella to demand why they were like that and for Leysritt to act like she had no idea, while Ilya giggled in the shadows.

It had been so long since she had done anything like play.

At night, when she fell deep into thought, her mind would circle back to her father and mother against her will, and the hazy memories she had of the games they would play. It helped to nurture and maintain her bitterness towards Kiritsugu though when she made herself remember also how often he would cheat at their special walnut game. Thinking on that, she almost felt like she should have known better in more ways than one what kind of person he had really been all along, and so her mother should have too.

But nothing could change what was already in the past.

Then she'd start musing about Shirou Emiya, and strangely she would wonder about what kind of games he might like to play, and her ideas would flicker back and forth between visions of innocent play and excruciating torture. Really, it was quite fitting, as the Holy Grail War was very much a war, rife with blood and pain, but it was also a game…the last game that Ilya would play.

She would have to make the most of it, when she took her revenge at last on the son for whom her father had abandoned her.


At some point, time had seemed to suddenly pick up its pace as the day to leave for Japan drew nearer and nearer. But that didn't stop Ilya from acting on her impulses when she had the opportunity, and one day she found herself eager to take her mother's old car, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL, out for a spin.

Even though she'd inherited it upon her mother's death, she'd been far too small then to attempt driving it. Now that she'd grown taller, she could at least see out over the dashboard, and as far as having legs long enough to reach the pedals, well, she'd had extensions installed on them as soon as she was able. Unlike her mother though, she'd had no one to actually teach her the fundamentals of driving. The most she could lay claim to was that apparently her parents would sometimes take her with them in the car when they'd drive around together, but that had been when she'd been very little, and she'd never done anything like touch the steering wheel or the shift, she'd just been sat in either her mother's or her father's lap in the front passenger seat.

But she did extensive reading on the practice beforehand. Needless to say, the Einzberns had had to spend much on repairs for the Mercedes-Benz 300SL in those early days of her teaching herself the practicals of driving. Nowadays though, she could manage making crooked zigzags around the same courtyard her mother herself would zoom around in whenever she'd wanted to drive on her own. And according to Irisviel, this had been her most treasured toy that Kiritsugu had given to her.

So it was that Ilya decided to take the car out for another little drive around.

"I still think you risk far too much in this foolishness." Sella, as usual, gave her sour and confrontational opinion.

And that was to be expected. Like mages, homunculi too it seemed were instilled with a natural abhorrence to electronics and "modern contraptions". Except for Irisviel, who had learned to embrace them because of her husband igniting a curiosity about them within her, and Ilya, who was her parents' daughter.

But Ilya, with her usual proclivity towards rebelliousness, merely grinned and tapped the side of the car with her mittened fist. "It's my toy, I can do what I want with it," as if that were a satisfactory enough reason. And then, for good measure, she did something she hadn't done in years and stuck her tongue out at Sella.

Leysritt, standing quiet as usual behind Sella, made a sound like a snicker, expressing a rare moment of genuine amusement, breaking from her usual tone of unpracticed human habits.

Feeling she had won (she usually did anyway), Ilya pulled open the driver's door and hopped into the car. Sella handed her the keys with a defeated sigh. When Ilya started up the engine, Sella and Leysritt stepped aside to allow her to back out of the little stable converted into a garage and into the courtyard.

Taking the wheel, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, Ilya made her usual wide sweeps, something inside her giving way to a reckless abandon. Like a caged bird finally allowed to fly around outside.

Maybe that was why her mother had liked driving so much….

Spinning in the Mercedes-Benz as she was, she created a sort of automobile dance out of all of it, like the car were doing pirouettes in the snow. She even enjoyed the sprays of snow powder she caught sight of in the mirrors, and fantasized for a moment that she was like one of those action heroes on the covers of one of those old movies Kiritsugu had had for Irisviel to watch. It instilled her with a rare moment of feeling more grown-up, and less like a child, being able to drive around as she pleased this way. Here, she was briefly able to take her life by the reins and steer it how she wanted. And at the same time, she felt power in how fluidly she was able to shift gears and turn the wheel to maneuver the vehicle without hitting a thing. She had honed her skills of hand-eye coordination, and could act in mere moments in order to avoid accidents that she used to get into quite often when she'd first been learning to drive. The fact that she had taught this herself made her feel even more accomplished.

When at last she halted the Mercedes-Benz and twisted around in the seat to survey her handiwork of tire track patterns in the snow, she gave a kind of nod of self-approval and self-satisfaction. This, more than anything, gave her the sense that she was truly ready for what lay ahead of her.

And with that, she faced forward again and put the car in reverse to turn it around and return it to the garage.


When Ilya descended into the Alchemy Chamber for the very last time her grandfather would cut her open and examine the branching clusters of Magic Circuits that spread throughout her body, she didn't quite know what to feel. Logically she should be glad that she would no longer have to endure this after this last session, but on the other hand, this only served as the last marker before she took the final stretch of her journey towards her destiny. It gave her a very lonely and empty feeling, to say the least, and it was only by contemplating her prospects of revenge that kept her going, kept her putting one foot in front of the other.

No longer giving into screaming and kicking, Ilya lay quiet on the examination table as Acht made his incision inside her left arm, except to wince under her breath.

"The mad cat has tamed himself, has she?" Acht observed musingly.

"There's nothing I can do to change things, Grandfather, so there's no point in fighting," said Ilya calmly. "I've learned that."

"Indeed you have, and already you have far exceeded my expectations, even before the battle has begun." Jubstacheit proceeded to widen the incision in her arm with clamps to get a good look at the Magic Circuits pulsing within. "Yes, I have faith at last…that you will surpass your mother and at last achieve our long-held dream of reaching the Third Magic."

Ilya looked away. It was also pointless to point out how little she cared about the wish of the Einzberns. Equally she cared very little for whatever pride in her Acht seemed to feel as her being just another one of his "creations".

Once again, she had that sense of her father's specter hanging darkly over her, judging her…weighing her worth…and yet…this time…she actually sensed somehow that he was inclining his head in approval. As though the reason all along that he had betrayed her was to see that she became what she was now: a cold, calculating, ruthless slaughterer, a wicked demon in a child's skin. For she knew deep within that killing was as natural to her as breathing, even having only done it twice.

After all, it was said that the Mage Killer himself had had a knack for being able to kill without hesitation from a very young age, and as she was daily reminded, even as she forbade anyone from speaking of it, she carried such genes in her own blood. Really, it seemed inevitable that it would turn out this way. It was almost a twisted warping and corruption of the bond she and her father had once shared, one that had once seemed to be of love, and was now of the spilling of blood and the taking of life.

Ilya didn't know what to think of this as this revelation came to her, so she pushed it out of her mind, committed to her bitterness.

Acht went on making his incisions, and Ilya ground her teeth against the pain, but nothing more, straight through to when he finished. Such was her strength now.

When she sat up at his command, he took her by the chin a moment and met her crimson gaze, and she could tell by the way his icy one looked back at her that hers was impressively steely.

"You will be magnificent, a beacon of light in your purity," he proclaimed, almost in awe. "When the time comes to don the Dress of Heaven, all will bow before your feet, for you will be more than the Einzbern princess. You, Ilyasviel, will be a queen."

Fleetingly, Ilya's mind flashed to the story her father used to tell her about Queen Ilyasviel and her trusty steed Kerry fighting to make a world without sadness.

She curled her tiny hands into fists until the nails dug painfully into her palm. What a stupid dream, even in a fairy tale.


On the morning of their departure for Japan, Ilya took a rare moment to indulge sentiment and wandered between all of the rooms that had been contained in the very small world of her childhood.

The library.

Her father's office.

Her bedroom.

Her parents' room.

The lake where she'd learned from her father and mother how to ice-skate.

The forest full of walnut trees where she and her father had played their walnut game.

So much of her early life was built here, and though many of her memories had grown fuzzy, some part of her deep inside had remained attached to the lasting feelings those memories had left her with. Moreover, that fact all the more hardened her resolve to exact her vengeance on her father vicariously through his adopted son, for invalidating those feelings with his treachery against her heart.

Ilya paused in her wandering for a moment as she fell into contemplation over how everything she had been working towards since the day she learned of Kiritsugu Emiya's betrayal against her was about to come to fruition. There would be no room for hesitation, but Ilya felt sure that the cold hatred she harbored would do nothing to stop her from carrying out her personal goals. The only thing she really had to worry about was balancing this with what she had to do to in the name of the will of the Einzberns. She'd have to stick to those rules if she wanted to be able to play her own game.

Even so, there was a sense of anticipation inside of her too, that for the first time in her life, not only would she be leaving Einzbern Castle, but she would also be visiting the country of her father's birth. More than that, but—even if it was really an illusion when it came down to it—there would be a kind of freedom in her embarking on this journey. After all, it would just be her, Berserker, Sella, and Leysritt, and a fairly new homunculus, Frauke, strictly created for the purpose of chauffeuring Ilya (a creation Acht had been quite irked to make given its rather dull purpose, and had merely done so out of necessity—it wouldn't do to have the Einzbern princess do her own driving). And she would be in command. Sella would barb her with her usual advice if she happened to disagree with the decisions Ilya might make in the course of the War (and that was highly likely), but it would be Ilya who would always have the final word.

To have that kind of power, even with such artificiality attached to it, would be something Ilya would make the most of. She was, after all, a Master.

As she thought about this, she felt Berserker appear beside her in the snow beneath those ancient walnut trees. This drew her out of her thoughts and she looked up at him, and couldn't help a small smile at the way he looked at her, looked at her with the assurance that he would follow her anywhere, even into Hell itself, and be her shield for as long as he could.

Then she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, and was close enough to the castle that she could just make out the faces of Auntie Greta and the rest of the human members of the Einzbern family, perhaps even more sealed away than its homunculi kin. The moment Greta saw her looking, she drew the curtains closed, and that pretty much summed up their relations with her since the day she'd been born. Though Ilya supposed that the human Einzberns might have at first regarded her with fawning curiosity at her birth given her hybrid nature, but clearly that had worn off in time, if that was indeed the case to begin with.

Ilya almost laughed and shook her head, little bothered by such displays of ostracism. It didn't concern her.

"Miss Ilyasviel!"

Ilya and Berserker turned to where they found Sella approaching them over the crest of a snowy hill.

"It's time, madam," she called out. "The car's waiting."

"Can I drive?" Ilya asked, in a rare moment of childlikeness.

Sella made a face like she'd just tasted something unpleasant. "I think it that would be unwise, madam. Let Frauke do it, it is her sole task after all. In any case, you need to prepare your mind for your mission ahead."

"Fine, fine." Ilya waved a dismissive hand, in no mood to argue, or admit that Sella was probably right. "Come on, Berserker."

Berserker nodded and dissipated into Spirit Form. Of course, Ilya still felt his presence beside her as they made their way through the snow towards the Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

The branches of the frozen trees glittered with silver ice overhead. Ilya looked up at them one last time, and as she did so, something in her mind echoed to her of another departure in this same grove of walnut trees in the Einzbern Forest, words she had not thought of in years:

"Can you wait for me, Ilya? Even if you're lonely, can you last until Daddy comes home?"

"Mm-hm!"

"Good. Then I promise you: Daddy won't make you wait. He'll be home…before you know it."

She suffered a momentary pang at such an echo of tenderness in her mind, looking back on how she had not even thought to grieve at that goodbye back then. No, the grief had not come until later, when she had come to realize the finality that had lain in wait underneath those words. As gentle as it had been, it had still all been nothing but a lie.

Now it was her turn to leave this place forever. But she would pay Kiritsugu back for all he had done to her, and offer it as one last tribute to her mother.

She who would become the Einzbern's White Holy Grail.


In spite of everything, as Ilya watched the country of Japan open up beneath her and grow bigger and closer as they made their descent on the private jet, she couldn't help a youthful eagerness. And when they took the Mercedes-Benz 300SL through the countryside all the way to the outskirts of Fuyuki, where the Einzberns' castle there lay dormant, she peered out of the window at all the passing scenery along the way, unable to help herself being enchanted.

Even though it was winter here, there was no snow! To think that there were places that could be cold but be without snow. True, it was regrettable that she would not live to see this place change its seasons into spring and summer—seasons she had only seen pictures of in books and footage of in movies and documentaries—she could still cling to this new experience of a world without snow, a world that still held some green even as the dead leaves of autumn lingered into the winter months.

And sunlight in a clear blue sky! Warmer even here than in Germany.

She even caught a glimpse here and there of what might have been those "Japanese mansions" her mother had always talked so animatedly about. But the glimpses were so fleeting, and she would only, at most, catch sight of a roof corner, or a porch where the house's sliding paper doors opened up to a garden. Even so, her imagination raced and pulsed.

But then they arrived at Einzbern Castle, and Ilya, for a brief time, forgot how awestruck she was to be in a foreign country for the first time, and instead felt awestruck to have arrived at a dwelling once inhabited by her mother in the mere days before her death. It made her step across the threshold—Sella, Leysritt, and Frauke carrying her things—with a kind of reverence, and she sought to inspect the entirety of the place from top to bottom, removing her coat, hat, and mittens and laying them aside in the huge foyer.

She wandered through long, gold-gilt hallways, her fingers passing over little touches in the plaster that told her that there had been repairs done in certain places. She surmised that in previous Wars, there had likely been duels fought here as much as anywhere on the battleground of Fuyuki City, duels which had wrecked the beautiful and ornate interiors of this castle.

She also came across many different bedrooms, and in one she felt a strange shiver that gave her this certainty that this was the one her mother might have chosen to sleep in whenever she'd gotten the chance to rest during the last War. It was a small room, with a canopy bed and a cozy fireplace and a little writing table. It was the homiest of all of the bedrooms. It felt right. So she chose this one for her own, just so she could crawl into the same bed as her mother had, the way she used to crawl into her parents' old bed in Germany. She made a mental note to have her personal items brought up to this room when she had the opportunity.

She also came across a large room with a long table in it, and here she found more indications of the walls being repaired, and even an indentation in the carpet that made a perfect circle in the floor, as though the floor had been carved open.

Finally she made her way to where battlements opened up to the central courtyard garden, which had been planted with fresh flowers.

Flowers.

She remembered how much her mother had talked about being able to see flowers for herself, more than the one rose she and her father had found growing in the Einzbern snow once. She remembered how sometimes her father would express the kind of fervor he would only express in front of his wife and daughter, telling how much he wanted to show her those flowers.

There were lilies and roses below, and irises too, and so much green.

Ilya surveyed them from above, having found a brick jutting out that she could stand on in order to see over the battlement. As she did, she had this incredibly sad feeling wash over her, and she couldn't think why. It was almost desperate, like a plea, a cry of defiance against cruel fate. And before she knew it, her throat grew tight and she had tears welling up in her eyes.

Why?

Mommy…Daddy….

Why did she feel like she could feel the both of them standing here? Why did it make her feel so sad and lost?

But then she suddenly felt Berserker's presence, as it had found its way to her side, and he materialized.

"Oh, Berserker. There you are." Ilya wiped away at her tears with the insides of her wrists.

Berserker made a small noise deep in his throat as he looked down at her, one that to Ilya clearly said, "You can't fool me into thinking you weren't crying. But it's okay. I won't tell anyone. Everything will be all right."

And Ilya had to crack a smile, if only so Berserker wouldn't be so worried about her. That and somehow he always managed to make her feel better when she got bad like this, falling into sadness and weakness. "You're right. I know it will." She looked out over the garden again, and then beyond, over the tops of the whole castle, where Fuyuki City lay waiting. Once again she found that eagerness inside her, but this time it was darkened by her desire to seek out the boy called Shirou Emiya.

She waggled her fingers on the battlements a moment, her mind starting to churn, her heart already hardened back into splintery, jagged ice.

The new battle for the Holy Grail would begin very soon. She felt it vibrate within her very veins, crackling in her Magic Circuits.

And Shirou Emiya was out there. Whether he was dragged into the battle or not, to Ilya he would be a sitting duck, the poor fool.

She licked her lips, pondering the nature of the relationship between her and this boy she had yet to meet, but couldn't wait to. They were both bound by Kiritsugu Emiya, what he had been to them, she knew that without having to read into it further.

And then she recalled one of the many Japanese terms one used to refer to one's brother.

This term suggested closeness, in terms of a sibling to his or her older brother, and though technically Ilya was older, Shirou had grown much taller than her, while she had remained so small in this body that would never properly grow.

Not that that mattered.

Then she also remembered the double-entendre of that term for one's brother, that it could mean that as well as it could mean a child simply calling someone older "mister". Shirou, a Japanese native, would be aware of this double-meaning, and no doubt draw a false conclusion if she were to refer to him as such upon their first meeting.

She could taste the word so deliciously on her tongue as she contemplated this.

"Onii-chan…."

Ilya felt her smile turn rather feral, her heart hammering harder in her chest.

"Come on. I'm in the mood for a game of seek-and-find. Shall we find out where our dear onii-chan spends his time?"

Berserker nodded, unquestioning.

"Good." Ilya hopped down from the battlements and withdrew into the castle, Berserker following her back in Spirit Form.


After having observed Shirou go through the motions of a typical weekday for him as a Japanese teenager through the remote-viewing crystal ball for weeks on end before even coming here, Ilya had constructed a very good map in her head of where she needed to go to intercept the young man. So the following day, while Sella and Leysritt were preoccupied with the fluffery of making her tea, Ilya donned her hat, coat, and boots and snuck out with Berserker into the woods that surrounded Einzbern Castle.

Together they picked their way into the city, making for a road into the area known as Miyama Town where Ilya knew Shirou had to pass along in order to get home from school every day. With it being winter, the days were getting dark at a much earlier hour. Still, Shirou Emiya seemed to feel warm enough just wearing a scarf with his school uniform, as he walked alone with his bag tucked under his arm and his hands in his trouser pockets.

Ilya spotted him like this from where she watched from a cluster of nearby trees. Her red eyes followed him so intently she was more than a little pleased with herself when it seemed he actually seemed to feel himself being watched, as he paused in the middle of that curving, upward road and looked over his shoulder, his brow furrowed in a confused frown.

Berserker, hidden in Spirit Form beside her, gave off a wave of the kind of anticipation felt before making a kill. Ilya had learned of that feeling the day she had killed Mieke, and then later when she'd slain Elke.

She held up a hand. "Wait. Not yet."

And then she sensed something else, something from Shirou Emiya, as the wind picked up and caught his red hair. Maybe it was in the way the light from the streetlamp refracted off his golden-brown eyes, but it was the faintest flicker of…mana. It filtered inside her as she examined it, and realized that at this very moment…

…the Grail itself had its sights set on this boy. Due in part to some lingering residual connection he appeared to have to a Servant, a Catalyst perhaps so powerful that he needn't even be conscious of its presence in order to summon it.

So…he would be…the Seventh Master.

All the others, she knew, had been chosen: Rin Tohsaka, representing the Tohsakas, naturally, had been the most recent entry. But then there was also that son of the failed Matou family, formerly the Makiri, Shinji. Even so, those two were practically givens, considering. The other three, she could indeed sense that the Servants had made their pacts with Masters in some form or another, which left Shirou as the Seventh and remaining.

But those others didn't matter to Ilya right now.

No, her mind was filled at the moment with how perfect this was that this boy would indeed be dragged into this battle-to-the-death. More than that, but it seemed he really had no clue as to what fate already had in store for him concerning this.

At last, after what felt like a long time, Shirou faced ahead again and continued making his way up the road into Miyama Town, and Ilya withdrew into the shadows, intent on returning the following evening.


"Where have you been Miss?!" Sella practically shrieked, her hands clenched into fists as Ilya very nonchalantly made her return to Einzbern Castle. "You can't just be sneaking off like that! What if something had happened?"

Ilya raised an eyebrow at her. "What, you think I can really be safe anywhere when there's a War going on already?"

Sella folded her arms, huffing. "There's no need for you to take unnecessary risks, for precisely that fact."

Ilya set her hands on her hips. "I am the Einzbern Princess, and the lady of this castle. I should at least be allowed to conduct myself how I please. Isn't it my role as a Master to devise strategies for the battle before me?"

Leysritt, standing patiently to the side, blinked in her naïve way at Sella when Sella failed to come up with a comeback, only able to give Ilya her usual scowl of disapproval.

"There's always going to be risks in War," Ilya said seriously. "You're an idiot to think that I have any chance of winning if I stay locked up in some ivory tower."

"Mistress!" Sella scolded, but unfortunately there was nothing else she could think to say.

"I see I've made my point." Ilya tossed back her silver hair rather haughtily as she pushed passed her maids. "I'm going to bed. I'll be going out again tomorrow. I'm being generous and warning you about it in advance. Leysritt, could you run a hot bath for me? I'd like a soak before turning in."

"Yes…of course…Miss…Ilyasviel," Leysritt said in her usual halting manner. It seemed she would never get the hang of human speech.

She followed Ilya up the stairs at a brisk pace though, leaving Sella fuming in the foyer.


The following evening found Ilya at the same spot as the one before, but this time, she stepped out onto the road at the crest of the hill as Shirou made his usual way home, wearing that same scarf and school uniform and carrying that same bag under his arm, hands in his trouser pockets again.

There was no holding back the smile that spread across her face as she spotted him coming her way, and she unassumingly stepped forward, catching him completely unawares as the two of them passed each other. Once he was within earshot, she spoke in a low, sing-song voice:

"You better summon yours soon, or you're gonna die…onii-chan."

His footsteps halted behind her as she felt him gasp in surprise and shock at being addressed so by a little girl he had never met in his life. Before he had the chance to turn around and get a good look at her though, she slid back into the trees along the road and melted into the shadows, peering back out at him with her red, red eyes. She savored that dumbstruck look on his young, wide-eyed face whose simplicity reminded her of Leysritt, as he looked around for the passing child that had spoken so strangely to him only to disappear as if she were a ghost.

Yet it wasn't without a little bit of fear underneath too.

Yes, Shirou. You should be afraid. You should be very afraid. Because I'm coming for you, and I will show you no mercy.

Now she would wait to run him down, like a wolf cornering a frightened rabbit, chipping away at his spirit, tormenting him until he knew nothing but pain and insanity, fighting for the answers she sought until she had squeezed everything she could out of him.

Only when she had him begging for death would she give him death, and when she did, she would look into his eyes and say, "Can you see me, Kiritsugu? Can you me killing him? I hope you can…and I hope that you feel every single cut I make into his flesh and bones."