Chapter Eight

Lamb of the Night

Ilyasviel was trapped between sleeping and waking in the wee hours of the morning when it was still dark, emerging from a haze of dreams that were waking up old and sleeping wounds. She had been revisited by the nightmare of the seven gigantic lumps coming into her body and tearing her apart from within, and her father amidst a sea of flames weeping as though everything inside him had been broken. And like always he refused to look her way when she cried out for him, when she demanded that he swallow his tears and quit wallowing in self-pity, to see for just a moment, how much his daughter was suffering because of him.

And Shirou Emiya, standing there as he was when she watched him on the road from the trees, turning to look at her, with those wide, simple eyes of gold.

You! This is all your fault! You stole him from me!

She tasted bitterness in her mouth with the garish silver light of the moon streaming through her window drawing her fully out of such a troubled sleep. She frowned at the ceiling and sat up abruptly, throwing the blankets off her and swinging her small legs over the edge of her bed. She marched over to the little table in the room she had chosen, filled with vases of iris flowers and violets as she'd requested, and took the sheet off the remote-viewing crystal ball. When she sat before it, she worked her hands over it, reaching for its mana and willing it to pull back the curtains to let her see what she wished to see.

She needed to take stock of her enemies with the new day approaching, a day that brought her one step towards her destiny, the War on the cusp of truly beginning as all the players (mostly) were assembled within the city—even if poking into the lives of the other Masters was nowhere near as fun as poking into Shirou Emiya's. Just the same, it had to be done.

First, she sought out Rin Tohsaka, daughter of the late Tokiomi. Although she did have to claw her way to get a good look at the girl, given the magical barriers around the Tohsaka manor house. From what she could see, the heiress of the Tohsakas had summoned the Servant Archer, and she was able to glean this not only from what she could see with her own two eyes, but also in part due to her currently tenable connection to the Grail: something that was like very tiny shimmering threads that would progressively twist and thicken as Servants fell one by one. And as far as this manifestation of the Archer Class Servant was concerned, he was a particularly strong draw of the cards, second perhaps only to Saber, though of course they would all be sorely aggrieved to find that their own Servants were insubstantial compared to the might of Hercules—or Heracles, if you preferred.

Something about this Archer did give her pause however, even with Ilya's incapacity to feel surprise much anymore. It pulled at the tiny grotesque heart that beat in her chest, but she couldn't put her finger on what the nature of this pull could be, or what it could be a result of. Just looking at him as he stood at the top of the stairs addressing his Master…comforted her somehow.

Then there was Shinji Matou, son of Byakuya, deep in the bowels of the Matou house, gasping and quivering after a shaky summoning of his own Rider Class Servant…and his grandfather, the elder Zouken, berating him harshly, poking him with his crooked cane. Ilya stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, already calculating that Matou would be a weak thing, easy to crush. Not worth much more thought than a cockroach. Her grandfather often muttered what a shame it was that the Matous, blood-thinned descendants of the Makiris of the Three First Families, had fallen so far. Ilya didn't concern herself with such things though, and she had nothing like pity in her heart regardless.

The cloud of dark magic that swathed Ryuudou Temple on Mount Enzo took some work to pierce through, and once she did, Ilya sensed a whisper of the Caster. Servant She thought she felt the Assassin too, but that Servant's mana signature was fainter, as though it was wrapped up in more magic than the Caster was, which was something of an anomaly considering.

Then there was…the Lancer.

There he was, silent and quick, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, scouting the layout of Fuyuki City. She couldn't seem to divine who its Servant was though, as the Lancer didn't appear to be acting as though he had one and was doing all of this of his own accord. That couldn't be, obviously, but still. He didn't report to anyone, not even once, and remained quite solitary in his patrol.

So, all that left was the Saber, who didn't seem to have been summoned as of yet.

But Ilya wasn't overly worried about that either. If she was correct in her theory, she could guess who would get the Saber in due time.

Then of course, in addition to the other Servants and Masters, there was the overseer of this whole War to consider.

Kirei Kotomine.

She didn't know why, but when revealed in the remote viewing crystal ball, past all the barriers set up around the Fuyuki Church, she got a shiver up her spine out of nowhere. There was something about him that set her on edge, something innate in her that prompted her to make a mental note to be wary of him.

Not that the Einzberns had ever had a stellar relationship with the Church on the whole—it was the Tohsakas who were on the best terms with them—but just the same, this was more than just a dislike based on a principle passed down through the generations of her family.

No, this was something else.

She traced circles on top of the crystal ball, right over Kotomine's head, resolved that if she ever came face to face with him alone…. Well, it was more than just that she refused to let him get the best of her: it was that she had to make sure she put him down, overseer or not.

He radiated darkness and danger and death in a way that unsettled even her.

"Hm." Ilya bit her thumb, thinking on this resolve as dawn crept upon her at her back, until finally she pushed back her chair and stood with her hands on her hips. "Right. Better use today to get in some last-minute practice before night falls."


After she dressed and managed to eat a little (her appetite had lessened since she'd landed in Japan), she took out a measure of the pent-up violence inside of her on stone statues she had lined up in the garden courtyard using her hair alchemy, fine-tuning how effortlessly she'd grown into a wielder of the skill, effortlessly changing her little familiars into different shapes with fluid grace. Over the time she'd spent working this type of alchemy, she'd even managed to give specific modifications that gave some of the shapes nearly lives of their own, ones she could call upon to slay her enemies with ease.

Beyond her starlings, there was Zelle, the ibis that shot "bullets" of mana, and Degen, named for its being a massive blade. With Degen she sliced one of the statues in half by crashing its raw power through the stone, bisecting it. And with Zelle, she fired shot after shot after shot at the other statues as easily as a trained soldier shooting those guns they called "automatics".

There was something particularly satisfying in firing off Zelle, and she smirked when she blew up the last statue in a burst of stone powder.

"Are you finished then, Miss?" Sella had appeared, carrying a white terrycloth towel so Ilya could mop off the sweat that had beaded on her brow despite the chill of winter.

"I am, yes." Her breath coming out in puffs of mist, Ilya took the towel and buried her face in it.

For a moment she felt at peace in the darkness of her own eyelids, helped by the lavender scent of the soap used to wash the towel, and how soft and fuzzy it was. It gave her that same fleeting sense of comfort, reminded her of all those baths she and her mother had taken, how her mother would playfully wrap her up in a towel, making Ilya giggle.

"I've got you, Ilya, and now I'm going to eat you!" And then Irisiviel pretended to chop into the side of Ilya's neck and devour her and her mirthful cuteness.

Those giggles and that laughter all echoed away as Ilya heaved a sigh and lifted her head, now hugging the towel to her small chest.

Tonight.

Tonight she would see him again.

She would find him…and play with him.

Play with him until she grew bored.

And then she would drag him away, drag him kicking and screaming into the dark to get the answers she wanted out of him before doing him a mercy and ending his life.

She felt Berseker nearby, felt him reach out to her in that non-physical way she wondered if kindred spirits did as well.

"It'll be over soon, Berserker," she reassured him. "Are you ready?"

She felt rather heard him give a snort that she knew to mean, "Ready as ever, little Ilya."

She chuckled under her breath, feeling the ripple of her Servant's strength echoing within her, satisfied with the magnitude of it. It would be all too easy to crush not only Shirou Emiya, but all of her foes in this fight. This War was all but won by her with Berserker at her side.

"'Kay." Ilya turned to Sella. "I will spend the afternoon finalizing my plans for my first taste of Fuyuki's blood."

Sella nodded. "Very good, Miss."

So saying, Ilya handed her back the towel and marched back inside the castle. Her thoughts touched briefly on that one chess game she and her father had played, and in some ways she saw the board before her overlay her view of the city of Fuyuki through the remote viewing crystal ball as she peered into it once more, her insides quivering with anticipation that only her training in the ways of being a well-mannered lady like her mother helped her to keep in check.

In truth, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so giddy for something. Perhaps those days she'd spent waiting for her father to come home, when she'd still believed that he would, that he still loved her.

She pushed that out of her mind. The only thought she wanted in her mind associated with her father was the anguish she would bring his son Shirou. That was what was most important at this juncture, and she reveled in this.

In some twisted parody of a divine being, Ilya's hungry gaze swept over the expanse of the cityscape as evening descended upon it once more, went over in her head the route that Shirou Emiya had taken on his way back home. All while wearing an unabashed and feral grin on her face, her red eyes flicking from here and there as she surveyed everything.

She devised several scenarios of how the pieces would move, and as she did, against her will she could almost hear either Kiritsugu's approving or disapproving little "Hm," but nevertheless, with each one she developed each solution formulated for the purpose of a counter. Most of these were quite bloody to say the least.

She had no intention of showing anyone any mercy. It wasn't just Shirou Emiya she wished to torment into defeat—although he would still be getting the most exquisite brunt of her cold wrath.

And then the pieces started to move in earnest as the sun sank beneath the mountains, and given how things began, with Lancer stepping out first and catching Rin Tohsaka and Archer by surprise on the roof of the very same school that Shirou Emiya attended, she traced her finger over the smooth round surface of the crystal like earlier.

"Lancer and Archer battle there…and Caster's remaining stationary at Ryuudou Temple, with Assassin's faint presence linked to it…at the gate," she muttered aloud as she observed. "Saber has yet to appear…and Rider…."

Rider appeared to be at the side of its Master Shinji Matou, who was skulking about in the back alleys of the city. She couldn't fathom what someone like Matou was trying to accomplish in doing this, but she'd considered the possibility that at least one of the Master-Servant pairs would act rather like a satellite to the main proceedings. And in all honesty, given how little actual power the Matous possessed, Ilya could guess that he was probably taking a shortcut in terms of powering up his Servant by employing its soul-eating abilities.

In which case Ilya would not outright ignore Rider and its Master in this situation, just keep them in the back of her mind that they might cross paths if they continued to bandy about so aimlessly.

As for poor unsuspecting Shirou Emiya, he didn't appear to be following his usual route home at the usual time, and Ilya quick discovered that he was still in fact at the school, in close proximity to the fierce duel unfolding between Archer and Lancer.

Only to get caught as an outsider witness, whereupon Lancer immediately gave chase to strike him down per the Grail War's no-witness policy.

"Oh no you don't," Ilya growled, clenching her fists. "He's mine!"

She was about to make a dash out of the castle, prepared to run in blind before Lancer could carry out the deed of killing Shirou off before she had a chance to get her hands on him—

But thankfully she was almost immediately saved the trouble when right after she experienced the heart-stopping shock of Shirou getting run through by Lancer, Rin Tohsaka, rather unpredictably, swept in and revived him using her father's jewel magic passed down to her.

Well, as she was grateful to Tohsaka only in a logical capacity, she certainly had no intention of repaying the favor should it come up. Besides, she had more pressing things to worry about, like the fact that it wasn't a secret for long to Lancer that his quarry was still alive and kicking right after he was sure he'd killed him.

Again, Ilya made ready to make a run for it should Lancer succeed again and this time there was no one around like Tohsaka to pull him back from the brink of death—

Only for her to receive another, admittedly genuine surprise as the mark of Saber surged up from the darkness, as the seventh and final Servant was summoned. And from there Saber fended off Lancer, started to get into it with Archer until Shirou stopped her, and Tohsaka, rather courteously, took the novice Shirou with her to the Fuyuki Church, presumably to explain to him what was going on.

Time was short though. She couldn't be sure how long they would stay within the neutral territory of the Church, but they'd have to come out sometime.

And she wanted to be there waiting for them when they stepped back out, vulnerable as chipmunks stepping out into a meadow lorded over by a cruel owl. Even though fortune had favored her twice now in seeing to it that Shirou Emiya was not cut down before she could get to him, she might not be so lucky a third time.

At the door, Sella and Leysritt met her to see her off, Sella handing her coat, hat, and scarf after she'd stepped into her boots. After she tied her scarf on and slid on her coat and buttoned it up, she took her hat in both of her hands.

"Sella? Leysritt?" Ilya asked as she slid that beloved fuzzy purple hat of hers gently on her silver head. "I know neither of you ever actually knew my mother, I mean…not…personally…anyway…but…do you suppose…just going by what you do know…that…I mean…do you supposed that I've grown into a lady that she would be proud of?"

Sella glanced at Leysritt, but Leysritt rolled her eyes up at the ceiling as she thought and was in fact the first to speak when she dropped her eyes back to Ilya's.

"Ilya…is a very lovely…lady," she said, the corner of her mouth twitching in her close and still-stumbling approximation of a smile. Crooked still, even after so long, but a sincere one nonetheless.

Ilya nodded her approval, then glanced at Sella.

Sella seemed a bit more hesitant, but then Ilya realized by the shine in her eyes that it was because…was Sella…actually crying? Just a little?

"Yes," she whispered, her voice strained with pure emotion. "You are a very lovely lady indeed, Miss Ilyasviel."

Ilya pursed her lips, her throat tight. Eyes pricking, she turned away, blinking away the threat of shedding tears of her own as she regarded herself in the foyer mirror again, dressed in her fur hat and scarf and her lovely purple coat and her boots, much more mature versions of the little coat, scarf, hat, and boots she'd had when she'd been smaller, traipsing in the snow with her mother and father.

Just for a moment, she recognized something in her face that wasn't herself. It wasn't even Kiritsugu.

No, it was very much her mother.

She smiled, and for once, warmth touched it, as it hadn't in such a long time.

"Very well. Then I, Ilyasviel von Einzbern, daughter of Irisviel von Einzbern, commence my battle for the Holy Grail. And the greatest fight of my life."

Berserker's continued presence in Spirit Form was as warm and gentle as ever.

"Shall we, Berserker?" she asked as she threw open the great oaken doors of Einzbern Castle.

His grunt of assent was all she needed.

"Allrightee then!" Ilya threw out her arms and made a little game of hopping like a rabbit down the front stone steps. (Sella chuckled behind a demure hand, as if thinking, "So much for acting like a proper lady," but just the same, she was genuinely amused by her charge.) "Off we go!"

With the way she bounced along, no one who didn't know her would simply assume that she was just a happy young girl on her way to meet with a friend.


Though Ilya hadn't given much thought to it previously, since she'd been so preoccupied with hunting Shirou Emiya, now as she skipped along the darkened streets with Berserker in Spirit Form at her side, it occurred to her that there was something…living…about Fuyuki City.

Not surprising, seeing as how its leylines were what drew the Grail to summon Heroic Spirits here in the first place, but just the same, this was the first time Ilya honestly contemplated the very magic that vibrated in the air, unbeknownst to so many who lived here who weren't skilled enough in any form of magecraft to sense it. The most that anyone normal probably could would be the occasional crawling static up the back when one found themselves alone and vulnerable at night, beyond the usual "stranger danger" alert, or even perhaps those who paid attention getting this sense of something darker and deeper writhing beneath the surface of the mundane, especially around now, with so many deaths and disappearances inexplicable to all except those who knew that it was because of the Holy Grail War.

For Ilya's part, she was understandably aware of far more, even beyond the most skilled of mages. There was a charge that danced in the air, but quietly so: fertile ground for fantastic and wondrous and, more often than not, terrible things to bloom. A garden of beauty and horror.

Indeed, on some level, it might have even had an unintentional effect on those who weren't mages in more than just the sense of people mysteriously vanishing as corpses hauled away in the night and the like, but compelling those of weaker hearts to commit such atrocities themselves, if not on as grotesque a level as those who lived and breathed the breathtaking yet brutal world of mages.

For instance, despite her efforts to avoid streets with more people about and stick to ones that were mostly deserted if not completely so, and also keeping in mind that Shinji Matou and Rider were prowling the same territory, there was still the occasional pair or pack of three or four on the hunt, knowing nothing of magic, but no less sinister, no less driven by the very supernatural foundations of which they were ignorant, to torment smaller, more innocent beings.

Well, Ilya might have been small, but she was by no means innocent. Or rather, not in the sense that they'd be familiar with, as Grandfather had impressed upon her numerous times that regardless of the blood she had already spilled in her life, her being of the homunculi gave her an innate purity above humans. He'd also liked to add, her mother more so, since she had been full homunculus, while Ilya was only half, but that was neither here nor there, and Ilya didn't really let it bother her in the end.

So when a couple of unfortunate and stupid teenage dropouts in fitted caps and threadbare jackets whose breath smelled of that thing that was probably what they called "beer" (which made people even stupider, apparently), their eyes wild and off no doubt because of some mind-altering substance, swaggered over, Ilya, already baying for blood in her heart, was all too eager to lull them into a false sense of security, seeing as how they were the only ones around.

One of them whistled. "Lookee what we have here: aren't you a little young to be out this late, missy?" he teased. "It's way past your bedtime!"

"You sure are cute though!" the other one crowed. "She's like a doll!"

"Oh? Maybe she'd like to play then? Would you like that?"

Ilya smiled up at them, all the more thrilled by the fact that they had no clue that the smile she gave them was completely predatory. "Oh, I'm so glad I bumped into you! I'm lost, can you help me?"

The second one laughed while the first stroked the stubble on his chin, leering.

"Why sure, little lady, we'll help you out. Won't we, Ryo?"

"Of course," the other agreed, wiping at his eyes. "You like sugar?" he added to Ilya, one hand sliding down to the button on his jeans.

Ilya's grin widened as she canted her head to one side. "Berserker."

The two delinquents barely had to time to register their confusion before where their heads once were were now nothing more than bloody, spurting stumps. Ilya took one graceful step aside as they fell, and not even a single drop of that foul claret that ran through their bodies managed to touch her as they hit the ground and splattered everywhere while their heads rolled a little further down the walk, leaving behind smears of red.

And as quickly as he'd appeared with his clublike blade, Berserker disappeared back into Spirit Form.

"Well, done, Berserker," she praised gleefully. "That was fun."

So saying, she started to hum as she resumed skipping down the road, leaving the two decapitated corpses in her wake.


When they reached the Fuyuki Church, the timing there was perfect too, as her quarry was just then stepping out of the gates and beyond the sacred grounds' protective barrier.

There was Rin Tohsaka in her a long red winter coat with her long dark hair tied in twin tails with black ribbon, and the woman in the yellow rain poncho was obviously the Servant Saber given that it was from there that Ilya sensed the raw energy signature, which left the redheaded Shirou in a black and white zip-up jacket and jeans.

Fortuitously for Ilya, she'd done more with her alchemy than just make cute little puppets, as unbeknownst to all but her, she plucked a few silver hairs from her head and cast them outward like fishing line, slithering them in between the unsuspecting three before her and ensnaring the bars of the open church gates behind them—but did not yet giving the final tug.

It was then, as Shirou was in the middle of saying something to Tohsaka that Saber, no doubt detecting the brush of magic that whipped past her, floss-faint, spotted Ilya standing there across the street, illumined by the moon and the nearby lamppost. Visibly the Servant stiffened and stopped dead, throwing out an arm to stop Shirou and Rin, and Ilya relished the shock on their faces when they got a good look at Berserker materialized just behind her, snorting like a bull about to charge, massive jagged sword raised at the ready.

Even in this situation, Ilya was courteous enough to observe decorum and curtsied, even as she kept a light-as-breath hold on the hairs she'd cast out. "Good evening." To Shirou, she added with a smirk, "It's good to see you again…onii-chan."

Rin and Saber glanced around uncertainly at Shirou, but Shirou just stared at Ilya.

"It's…you…" he breathed, remembering her from the night before.

Ilya straightened back up with a bounce on her heels. Leaning her head to one side she smiled with saccharine sweetness at the three of them. And then more light was cast upon Saber's face, glinting off a pair of green eyes that echoed a distant memory…of being in her mother's arms…and a woman in blue with eyes like jade, bowing in greeting even though she was a woman and wore a dress….

"This is Saber, can you say hello?" Irisviel prompted gently.

"Hello, Saber, it's very nice to meet you," said Ilya, happy to be meeting someone new, and a friend of her mother's at that.

"It's very nice to meet you too," said the woman called Saber, the smile she returned gentle and kind, filled with a warmth that Ilya imagined must be what springtime felt like.

When her mother set her on her feet, she eagerly did a curtsy, hoping to impress the very elegant Saber.

"You have a very lovely curtsy, miss," Saber complimented.

Ilya beamed as she thanked her….

It couldn't possibly be the same Saber…could it? The one who was supposed to have helped her father protect her mother in the last Grail War? Surely a Servant couldn't just appear twice in succession?

Then again…that might further explain how someone as insignificant in magic as Shirou Emiya drew her card. He might not have even properly summoned her, and she'd just…appeared, as sometimes Servants did given the right conditions.

This gave Ilya an idea on the spur of the moment.

"Tell me," she said slowly, leveling her crimson gaze with Saber's verdant one, "does the name…Einzbern…ring any bells?"

Saber's eyes widened, like she'd been lanced through the heart.

Ilya smiled, soft and almost dreamy. "Ah…so it does."

Rin Tohsaka, quite naturally, clenched her fists at the sound of Ilya's surname spoken aloud. "Einzbern…."

"Yes, Rin Tohsaka: Einzbern." Ilya made a sort of grand aristocratic gesture with one hand, already reveling in the theatricality of it all. "And I am Ilyasviel. Ilyasviel von Einzbern. But, I'm afraid I don't have time to trade further pleasantries with any of you…though the night is young." She smirked again at their apprehension, before with her other hand she finally gave her hairs the yank that was needed to shut the church gates behind them with a loud clang.

No escaping, no dashing back into the safe neutral barrier of the Church.

When Shirou and Rin glanced back round at her, Rin got a rather vulpine yet mirthless grin on her own face.

"I see how it is," she muttered. "Wicked little brat."

Ilya relinquished her hold on the hairs that had shut the gates. Her eyes found Shirou's again. They were nervous for the moment, but soon, they'd be warped in anguish. And then perhaps they'd just be crushed bloodily into his skull beneath the pads of her thumbs.

"Okay Berserker," she called, voice mellifluous and honeyed, "you may kill them now. Kill them all!"

Berserker inhaled massively and then let out a bone-shattering roar at which Ilya didn't even flinch, but which made Shirou and Rin both cover their ears. Saber on the other hand—

—having casted off the yellow rain poncho, she was revealed in her full glory of her armor, and she was indeed the Saber from Ilya's memory. It was an extra thrill that Ilya hadn't expected but was no less pleased about, and as Saber leapt, and her blade met Berserker's, and the force of the blow sent her into a tumbling flip through the air, their eyes met again, and again Saber's eyes widened in clear astonishment.

Are you thinking of my mother, dear Saber? My, you look as though you've seen a ghost….

And then Saber landed back on her feet, agile as a cat, sliding and skidding to a halt across the cobbled pavement.

Berserker barreled after her, and it was only thanks to Saber being nimbler and smaller in size that she managed against the heavy blows from his clublike sword. Just so, she didn't shy away from the offensive either, and when she saw her first opening, she seized it with a bold swing of her own weapon, invisible, but most certainly a sword as befitting the Saber Class.

Despite her efforts at meeting Berserker blow for blow, it was clear that Berserker had the upper hand just in terms of raw brute strength, even if Saber held incredible power in her own right. Were she not Saber, Berserker would be wailing on her as a hammer pounds a nail into wood.

Thanks to her being able to hold her own though, much of the cobbled street and the roots of the trees of the nearby forest were torn and ripped up from the force of their exchanged blows and strikes against each other, the street rending as easily as fabric, the trees yanked from their precious hold upon the earth.

Saber leapt back, sword aloft, as Berserk swung at her again, striking one of the other lampposts and obliterating it with a metallic klaxon. But he was quick and came at her a second time before she could take another defensive stance. His sword collided with hers and sent her flying. This go around she barely managed to stay on her feet as easily as before.

"Saber!" cried Rin, both she and Shirou looking equally helpless.

Ilya was beside herself with elation. "That's right, Berserker! Crush her! Destroy her! Show her no mercy! She regenerates, so behead and violate to your heart's content!"

Appearing to heed this, Berserker switched things up and caught Saber off-guard when he came at her next with his fist instead of his sword, delivering a punch to her gut that would've shattered the ribs and spine of a normal person. Just so, Saber still choked and coughed up bile from the impact of the injury before she was thrown once more, this time, whirling through the air and crashing ungracefully to the ground. When she staggered back to her feet, it was easy to make out a slash of red trailing down and staining her shoulder, her clothes her, armor.

Still, she set her teeth and held her sword with one hand while with her other she tried her best to somewhat staunch her bleeding.

What Saber lacked in raw strength of her own she well made up for in what they called "grit". Ilya supposed that was the way with the best of underdogs.

Not that it mattered. Saber was about to lose this fight, her Grail War ending before it had even begun.

And then Shirou would be Ilya's to do with as she pleased, killing anyone foolish enough to try and stop her.

"Shirou!" Rin shouted, drawing Ilya's attention away from the battle before her, a little nonplussed to find that Shirou had completely disappeared from Rin's side.

Where did he…go…?

"SABER!" Shirou screamed, and leapt into the fray.

Leapt into it as a lamb leaping straight into the jaws of a lion.

He was weak.

He possessed scarcely a whisper of mana.

He had no weapon to speak of, no armor.

Yet here he was, dashing forward and throwing himself in front of the pinned Saber—

Berserker's blade struck, all but tearing Shirou in half as his flimsy body served as a means to shield Saber.

A Master who would shield his Servant.

It was the last thing any self-respecting mage would have done or expected. Certainly the last thing Ilya had expected of this boy for whom her father had betrayed and abandoned her.

Still, she couldn't help being a bit in awe, her mouth going dry, as she watched Shirou's torn body cast up into the air, splattering the pavement and Saber's shocked face with blood. When he hit the ground, he rolled over and over it like a doll tossed across a floor, finally coming to a stop at Ilya's feet, leaving behind not only thick splashes of blood but also a trailing rope of his lacerated intestine, as well as the twisted, gnarled cords of a few other entrails.

Ilya gaped down at him as he groaned and feebly gazed back up at her before he choked up more blood.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. There were things Ilya needed to ask him, questions she needed answers too. But even when fortune had favored her twice this night, it did not favor her a third, and the one she'd been so desperate to reach since she'd first learned of his very existence was dying right there on the ground at her feet.

"No…this isn't…." Ilya took a step back.

Shirou continued to stare up at her dimly, wheezing frailly, and it was then that she realized that there had in fact been something of a unique luster to his otherwise wide and simple eyes of gold, a luster that was now fading.

There was something to that, that even though his eyes were so weak, especially now, they were still…somehow…beautiful…in the way they seemed to accept the fact that he was mere moments from death. A death he seemed to have been little concerned about to begin with, as clearly Saber's life had meant more to him than his own.

Even though he couldn't have known her for more than a few hours at best.

Ilya's stomach clenched with anger and…some other emotion she couldn't quite name, but it made her want to cry like she hadn't cried in a very long time.

Which only served to piss her off more.

She clenched her small fists at her side. "You fool…. Why…?"

Shirou croaked out a noise that might've been an attempt to speak, but instead he just spit up blood again and then his eyes rolled back as he passed out. However, it was enough that Ilya became certain that Shirou was not the sort who would ever beg for his life.

Moreover she'd thought…just for a moment…that she'd seen her father staring up at her out of those eyes. And it wasn't with the exhilaration that she had envisioned in herself.

What is it you've allowed to happen, Ilya? What have you done?

"SHIROU!" shrieked Rin, running over, Saber not far behind.

Berserker stood off to the side, raising his sword again.

But Ilya shook her head. That's enough, Berserker. We're done here.

Berserker grunted in assent and vanished into Spirit Form.

Ilya turned away from the adopted son of the late Kiritsugu Emiya and ran, leaving him behind to die his pointless death. Rin shouted curses after her, but didn't give chase, probably in favor of seeing if she could save Shirou again.

It was doubtful that she could, though she was welcome to try.

Ilya's eyes stung in the winter cold, and her small lungs burned, forcing her to stop a few streets over and lean against a building in an alley to catch her breath. Berserker appeared at her side, grunting again, this time with measurable concern as she gulped for air.

He held out a massive hand.

"I'm fine…Berserker…" she panted.

But Berserker continued to hold out his hand, insistent.

"Oh fine," Ilya finally relented, and hopped up into his palm so he could lift her up and perch her on his shoulder.

As Berserker crashed through the midnight streets of Fuyuki back to Einzbern Castle, Ilya clung to his neck with both of her arms, lost in her heart as she couldn't shake the image of Shirou lying on the ground bleeding out and staring up at her so empty and wounded.

What do I do now? she asked herself hopelessly. He was the one thing I was truly living for….

She shook her head, the lengths of her silver hair whipping back and forth.

Kiritsugu…how did you raise a kid like that to be such an idiot?