Chapter Eleven

Homesick Lamb

Sella was visibly doing her best not to act fretful, and for that, Ilya decided to be kinder to her than usual as she took her morning tea and discussed what had happened last night. Especially since it seemed that the weight of Frau's death weighed on her on top of everything else.

"I apologize for having sent her out as I did," Sella hastened to say with a curtsy of utmost supplication while Leysritt poured a measure of green tea into a china cup for their lady. "Please understand that it wasn't that I lost faith in you. You are the Einzbern Princess and Master, after all. It was more that…I felt perhaps you might benefit from extra assistance. In the end though…it was all for naught. The most I can say is that she provided us with an answer as to what happens when this lurking shadow that has appeared touches you with one of its limbs."

Ilya waved a hand. "What's done is done, Sella. And I have been, as you say, 'reckless'." She set her cup in its saucer. "The best we can do is use what we know now because of all this to our advantage. That, and we must contend now with what I understand to be Lancer's demise at the hands of True Assassin."

An ache opened inside her, different from the kind that usually did. It was more like that old nightmare instead. But somehow, she was too tired, and the morning was too bright, for her to worry overmuch about it. She already knew to expect it, and now things were being set into motion different from what she was sure anyone would have expected in the Grail War.

With Caster and Lancer both dead for sure, the gradual shutdown of her own insides had begun to creep upon her to the point that she was physically becoming concretely aware of it, not just intuiting it. More it was strange that she hadn't already been feeling this way. Rider was no longer at the side of Shinji Matou, it seemed, and yet, it didn't feel like Rider was gone either. Not only that, but even with the certain deaths of Caster and Lancer, and even though she could feel them as expected, the aches she was feeling felt…muted compared to what she had been expecting.

Almost as if…she weren't entirely feeling them like she was supposed to. Because their spirits weren't entirely where they were supposed to be. Was she sharing their burden? Or was it something more ambiguous than that?

She thought of how the shadow made her feel, that shudder, that sense of like to like. The way it had consumed those Servants. Like a kindred she found unappealing, and yet innately understood.

"My lady, you should rest for now," Sella was insisting. "At least until this afternoon." She cast a knowing look. "Before going out on another daylight excursion."

Leysritt blinked between the two of them, looking as mildly bewildered as ever, cradling the tea pot in her hands.

"Fine," Ilya relented, finishing off her cup and then holding it out to Leysritt for more. As she took a sip of a fresh cup, she did feel life reinvigorate her, aware that the tea itself was a blend of leaves from different vitalizing varieties that Sella had specially made, knowing her lady would be needing it right about now. As she contemplated her own shivering, shadowy reflection in the hot liquid, her thoughts fell to cups of tea shared between her parents.

Distant memories all jumbled together, unable to be placed on any specific point in time and yet felt very warm and real to her.

Her old habit of missing her parents grew more acute than it had in a very long time. If she wasn't careful, she'd give into her weaknesses before she could accomplish what she had personally come here to do. Really, she might as well already have done, considering how badly she wanted to remedy these longings in seeing Shirou again.


Ilya spent most of the day strategizing until midafternoon. Or tried to. Something about Frau dying kept distracting her, to the point where she huffed and tried to remind herself that this was part of why it was easier not to care, because then mental blocks like this kept popping up in her brain. She even knocked over a stack of her books in a fit of frustration, even as her eyes stung against her will.

Unable to think further, she gave in and went out to meet Shirou.

She was frustrated all the more when she got to the park, wrapped up in her purple coat, hat, boots, and scarf, and he was nowhere to be found. Stomping off, her breath coming out in smoky puffs for how cold it had gotten, she found him a little further down the road, passing a strip of restaurants, including one that advertised a special on their plate of mapo tofu.

She found him spacing out at a street corner, clenching and unclenching his hands, thinking hard it seemed, even though his eyes seemed so empty.

She called out to him.

No answer.

Huffing, Ilya ran over and jumped up in front of him and he stumbled back, yelping and waving his arms.

"Hey! Why are you spaced out, Shirou?!" she demanded, throwing up her own arms.

"I-Ilya?" Shirou held his hands up now as though in surrender. Or to protect himself, if feebly. Or both. "W-Why did you do that? You surprised me…!"

"You're the one who didn't notice me when I was calling out to you!" Hands on hips, Ilya stuck out her tongue at him.

"What? Oh."

"'Oh' is right."

Shirou lowered his hands. "Have you been following me since the shopping district?"

"You were wearing a rather difficult expression." Ilya's face puffed in anger, but she found this easier to deal with than that distracting sense of loss earlier that had yanked at her heart beating in her chest. "I didn't find you at the park, and then I found you all the way here. I called out to you, but you just ignored me."

"Sorry. I was just…thinking."

"Thinking so much you forgot about our meeting?"

"I—No. Or…I didn't mean to I just…lost track of time. I'm sorry."

"Hmph. Don't think I'll forgive you just like that. I'm really upset with you right now."

"Ilya is displeased." Shirou was almost teasing her, it felt. Yet it didn't barb her as much as it might have once before, as he folded his arms and considered her. "Here. You showed me your house, right? Well, I'll show you mine. Though I'm afraid it won't be in the same…style…as how you did. But that means we can have tea. Come on, it'll warm you up after waiting in the cold."

Ilya stared. "I mean. I suppose that's fair but…."

"Don't worry, there's no one home," Shirou was quick to assure her, and with earnest sincerity no less. "Other than Saber. But I won't let her attack you, obviously. I think drinking tea at home is good, once in a while."

And it suddenly occurred to Ilya that the idea of following Shirou to the home he had shared with Kiritsugu, the home they had shared without her, when she'd come all this way for the hope and the chance to kill them both…how could she?

"Can I really go to your house?" she asked, more to herself than to Shirou. "I came to kill you and Kiritsugu, if you remember."

Shirou considered her for what felt like a very long time. Considered her as he would any other person whose feelings he took seriously. For some reason, it made the ache in Ilya's chest break and twist and morph into something else. Something like that old longing she'd cling to in those days when she'd still been so sure that her father was on his way, that any moment, he'd come back to Einzbern Castle and sweep her up into his arms and hold her close.

And then Shirou smiled at her. "Yeah. This Master business doesn't matter right now. I just want you to come over."

Ilya gasped at that pain of something warm breaking free from the ice aching so much in her chest. But it made her smile, and it was all she could do not to cry outright. A strange thing, this happy pain, yet she felt she knew it. Or perhaps, she'd been waiting for it.

"Okay! Thanks…onii-chan!" And she leapt forward and threw her arms around Shirou's middle, hugging him tight, pressing into his warmth.

The expanding, warm pain breaking free burst like a bubble, and she let out the next breath she'd held onto, as though for the first time in a long time she could actually breathe. Like she'd forgotten how temporarily, and now she'd just managed to remember.

Ilya just had to wait outside the gates while Shirou went in and convinced Saber to allow her inside. He certainly was a strange one for a Master. But Ilya well knew that by now.


The gates were magnificent enough, wood and stone, and the blue-tiled roof that rose over the top of an equally impressive wall, also of wood and stone. Not unlike those pictures of Japanese mansions that she and her mother liked to look at together, that her mother herself had more than once mentioned she'd like to see one day.

Ilya briefly wondered if her mother had gotten the chance to at least see this house.

If so, was this where she had been abandoned?

Was that really…what had even happened?

Looking about, she suddenly felt as cold and empty as this street. She stood in the middle of a neighborhood of other houses, but because the wall that surrounded the house that was just beyond it was so long, and the trees in the surrounding area were so thick, it felt like she had come to the end of the world. Or the end of a story where a weary traveler could rest themselves until they took their last blessed breath.

The gate opened and Shirou stepped out. "Come on in. It took some doing, but I convinced Saber you're good to go." He gave her the thumbs up and grinned.

Ilya managed another grin herself, if one where she was fighting bestirred melancholy underneath. And now that she was on the threshold of the house her father had lived in without her, for five years, up until he died, her nerves gripped her all of a sudden. So she entered with a bit more timidity than she would have thought herself capable of.

It was like she was a child all over again.

The house opened through a front door made of beautiful wood and paper that slid open to a nicely furnished, blue-tiled foyer where Shirou politely asked Ilya to remove her boots.

As she complied, she noticed a vase of lovely white flowers, and she felt a pang in her chest for her mother. But it was a different pang from what she'd felt since coming to painful grips with losing her. It was pure, without any of the twistedly growing anger beneath it, and she wondered if it was because she was experiencing it within the walls of this house. Because of the choice of white flowers, how that might very well have been an aesthetic established by her father before he'd died, the implication that he too might have panged similarly for her mother and that's why he'd chosen them.

"Are you all right?" Shirou asked as he took Ilya's coat, hat, and scarf and hung them up.

"Oh. Um. Yes, I'm fine," Ilya lied, brushing at imaginary creases in her purple skirt.

Shirou scrutinized her a moment. "All right. Well, let's have some tea first. I'll show you the living room, so follow me."

"Okay. Oh, this hallway has a wooden floor," Ilya pointed out rather obviously as she touched her stocking feet to it. "Your house is Japanese, just like I heard." Barring everything else she had been forced to hear by way of her grandfather grumbling in the rudest terms about anything and anyone Japanese.

Shirou chuckled softly ahead of her, shaking his head, as though amused at the obviousness of her statement, as he led her down the hallway.

They rounded a corner and then he slid open another door of lovely paper and wood that led into a room that was also nicely furnished with a low table of beautifully polished wood surrounded by sitting cushions. A small kitchen stood the left, and there were flowers in a vase here too, these ones a sunny yellow.

Ilya took a seat on one of the cushions at the low table, folding her legs primly beneath her just as a kettle of water on the little lit wood stove started to whistle. Shirou took the kettle to the kitchen and poured the hot water over the tea in the pot. Then he brought over a tray from the kitchen with the lovely clay teapot and two empty teacups: stout small ones with no handle as opposed to the bone china ones she was used to.

Sitting across from her at the table, he poured her a cup of tea and handed it to her. "Here you go. I thought about making English tea, but that's boring and I'm sure you have better ones at your place. I made some Japanese tea, so tell me if it's too bitter and I'll water it down for you."

"Oh. Okay. Thank you." Ilya took a careful sip of the hot liquid.

It was bitter.

"Ech…."

She'd swallowed it, but it was like swallowing hot, watery chalk.

Shirou smiled, but he also furrowed his brow in sincere contrition. "I'm sorry. I guess milk tea would've been better. I'll go make another one, so you don't have to drink it."

As he was getting up though, Ilya hastily told him, "No, no, it was very delicious. Thank you." And she inclined her head in a show of respect and gratitude for her host. Then downed another sip.

It helped though that Shirou had some snacks out too, which tasted pleasantly sweet in contrast to the bitter tea. Eager as she was though, in present company, she maintained her ladylike poise and ate them in small nibbles.

This felt a bit familiar somehow, sitting at a low table like this.

She remembered doing so with her mother.

And with….

"Did you really mean what you said?" Shirou asked, rather suddenly. He was resting his cheek against his hand, elbow propped up on the table.

"What I said about what?" Ilya asked in between nibbles.

"About your personal mission. To kill Kiritsugu and me."

"Oh. That. Well, yes. But."

Ilya's throat grew tight without warning, and she quickly gulped a mouthful of tea, even relishing in its bitterness as it went down. She'd had a flurrying thought—an imagining—of her father sitting where she was sitting now, sitting here while he'd still been alive, laughing and talking with Shirou the same way he used to laugh and talk with her and her mother.

While sitting at another low table in their winter castle, the three of them together and hidden from the world.

What, indeed, did she really have left without her revenge? Her reason for…maybe not living, but…enduring all of the years of pain and suffering?

"But?" Shirou prodded, though gently.

Ilya huffed impatiently. "Well, I very well can't now, can I? Obviously. So what's the point in asking me if I really ever meant what I said? Besides, we're Masters in the Holy Grail War. Of course I'll have to kill you. But only once night falls. In daylight, I abide by the rules."

"Right. Of course you do."

It sounded again like he was teasing her, and she was tempted into cracking a smile against her better judgment.

"Would you be able to show me around the house?" she asked politely instead, finishing one more sweet rice cracker with the rest of her tea.

Shirou sat up straighter and blinked with that confused expression he was so good at making. "I'm fine with that, but there's nothing interesting."

"I just want to see." Ilya put a little extra sweetness into her smile. "I knew this place had low magical value when I came in here, so all you have to do is show me around."

Shirou scrunched up his face, frowning as though what she'd said had soured him. But then he shook his head as though dismissing it and then stood.

Ilya did the same.

She felt like a small spirit as she trailed behind Shirou over the wooded floors of the corridors and the tatami mat ones of the rooms throughout the rest of the house.

She felt…spectral.

A ghost with no one to haunt, because the person she wanted to believe might have been haunted by her for years in this house was dead himself. If she could only know for sure that he'd been haunted by thoughts of her until his dying breath. Maybe that would garner her some satisfaction in recompense for the vengeance that was now lost to her.

That and poking fun at nearly every room Shirou showed her in between complaining about inadequacies that may or may not have actually been there.

"Hmm. This place is smaller than I thought. One side of the corridor is glass. It'll be troublesome when you get attacked here," she said.

"It already has been," he grumbled back.

"This is Shirou's room?! No way, a person can't live here!" she proclaimed.

He shrugged. "It works fine for me."

"This is your yard? Japanese magi must have it tough. You can't grow anything in such a small garden."

"What else would we need to grow but flowers? There're the hydrangeas. And some…lilies? And Kiritsugu kept a small patch of irises when he was alive."

"I see…."

He took her out to a separate building within the compound.

"I know this. This is called a 'dojo', right? My grandfather told me you people are savages that slash at each other barefooted," she said smugly with her hands behind her back.

"Sounds like a real nice guy, this grandfather of yours," Shirou replied with admirably the driest sarcasm she'd ever heard him use in his voice.

He offered to show her the storage house, but—

"No! I don't want to see inside your storage room!" she flat-out refused. "You have servants to take care of that!"

Shirou scratched at his cheek, considering her with a measure of awkwardness. "That wasn't really the point…." And then he gave an equally awkward smile that Ilya could make no sense of whatsoever.

And yet, as she turned away from him, she couldn't help a burst of excitement that made her bound across the garden back to the main house.

Only for her to lose her breath once inside, her spirits suddenly low. She laid a hand over her chest, felt her heart beating in there, and considered with a sad flicker that she was pushing herself more than she should in a day. She thought miserably of those terrible tortures spent under the knife in her grandfather's alchemy workshop, the laboratory, crying for her father to come save her, screaming in vain when every time, he never came for her. Not once even trying.

Which kept her silent throughout the rest of the tour until they returned to the main room.

"That's all," Shirou was saying. "Well, there's also the outbuilding, but you'll have to excuse me for not showing it to you. Saber is sleeping there right now."

Ilya put a hand to her head, a slight feverishness coming over her. She prayed for it to pass, at least until she had the opportunity to take her leave. "I see. So…this is all?"

Shirou frowned. "Ilya? What's wrong? Are you tired?"

"Yeah, I'm a bit tired." Ilya sighed heavily and lowered her hand, let it drop to her side. "There's nobody here, after all." She looked all around, and realized then that she was the one being haunted. "I came to take revenge. But it's sad the person to take revenge on isn't here anymore." Her eyes stung and welled up, her throat tightening again, but this time she didn't have any tea handy to gulp everything down, and the tears spilled and trickled softly down her cheeks before she knew what was happening. "Huh? That's strange. I think I'm crying." Hastily, she scrubbed the tears away with the insides of her wrists, even as she sniffled. "That makes no sense. There was nothing sad or scary."

But it did make sense.

There were plenty of things here that were sad. Maybe even scary things too.

Kiritsugu had asked her to wait for him at their castle. But he never came back for her, even though he told her to wait.

That was what made no sense.

Shirou's hand dropped gently on top of her silver head.

Ilya looked up at him, the last of her tears gone.

"It's okay," he told her simply.

And suddenly the idea of killing this boy, this adoptive brother of hers, turned over painfully inside her.

"The sun's going to set soon," she said, gently prying herself away from the kind warmth of Shirou's hand. "I should go. We'll have to fight unless I leave this place before nightfall." She even managed another smile.

Shirou's brow was still furrowed, in that worried way, Ilya now understood. But then he nodded. "Yeah. You're right. Then I'll see you off to the park."

"Okay. You sure know how to treat a lady," Ilya couldn't help teasing as she stepped off the wood flooring and pulled on her boots, coat, hat, scarf, and gloves.

"Well, I learned from the best. At least, that's what I like to think."

"Ha-ha."

They said their farewells at the park, Shirou making his promise to see her again tomorrow. Not in the mood for Sella's lectures or Leysritt's strange comments when she returned to Einzbern Castle, she slipped in over the garden wall with the help of Berserker appearing to her there and carrying her over. And then through those doors and up the stairs to her own room.

After peeling off her coat, hat, gloves, and scarf and stepping out of her boots, she collapsed onto the bed in her blouse, skirt, and stocking feet, feeling as though she could sink into the blankets forever and never stop sinking. She was aware of Berserker there with her, watching her. And then fading into Spirit Form as she fell deeper into sleep, into confused, fitful dreams that were full of memories of her father's love as well as the emptiness that came when that love was no longer there. When she was told it had all been hollow.

When she'd been told.

In between these, she was vaguely aware of Sella opening her bedroom door, finding her there, and withdrawing with annoyed muttering. But this got confused with a memory of her father checking on her while she'd been sleeping in her old room, her body burning with a feverish spell that cooled off by morning. There was a moment even where she thought it was her father who laid a damp cloth on her forehead to bring down her temperature…or was that Sella in real life? She couldn't really be sure, but either way it was gone when the fever finally was.

She blinked open her tired eyes then to the darkness lit by the crackling fire in the fireplace, and with an effort, pushed herself up into a sitting position. Feeling as crumpled as her clothes did. She had slept through half the night already, had absented herself from whatever might have happened in the War during so far. There was no point in going out to join it now.

"What am I even fighting for, anymore, Berserker?" she asked dully, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her shins. "I'm back to square one, asking myself what even the point is." She buried her face in her knees. "All this to get here, and all I'm left with in the end is my death." She drew in a shuddering breath. Reached for that part of herself that came so naturally to her, visualizing her heart as no more than a stone that beat coldly in her chest.

Beat and beat, a clock ticking away each second until her inevitable end.


Ilya slept through the entire night, deciding to focus on defense for now. But really she just wanted an excuse to remain in her shell.

Save for when she slipped off again the next day, back to the park.

Only…Shirou never showed up.

She waited and waited, sitting on the bench and swinging her legs, hands gripping the lip of the seat. She watched other passersby rather dully, though not without some mild curiosity with the added benefit that she could use the magic of her aura to make sure their attention slid off of and away from her the moment they noticed her. And at the same time, would always make a point, if unconsciously, at least to their view, to avoid sitting on the bench she currently occupied.

On the one hand, one could argue she was wasting precious time just sitting here watching people going about their ordinary lives. If her father were in her position, as he had been ten years ago, he'd be using every second to his advantage, Ilya was sure of it.

In addition to how hard he had always worked, at the same time, he had always prioritized efficiency alongside quality. Not that that was ever made explicitly clear to her, she just sensed that that was how he'd always done things and would have always done things. From as far back as she could remember, piecing together snippets of conversations between him and her mother, her telling him things like, "Don't push yourself too hard, my love." Yet, despite that, he'd always made more than enough time in the day to play with her and spend time with her, or her mother, or both of them. That and other little things he'd throw out there, like, "If we do this first, we'll have more time for this," or, "Let me do this first, and then there'll be time for this," or "If we do it this way, we can get it done faster and have more time for this."

Conclusion: Kiritsugu Emiya, if nothing else, had mastered the art of time management, possibly to perfection.

And here she was, indulging in her growing sadness and weakness, just sitting on a bench and waiting for a little brother she was losing the will to kill with every precious second that passed.

Then again, Kiritsugu had also always impressed upon her the equal if not greater importance of thinking things through, and thoroughly, accounting for every possibility. That had played quite the role in their many rounds of chess, from the moment he first taught her, never once going even slightly easy on her, even in the beginning. For that, she had learned to be less hasty in her decisions, less impatient to progress the game through the greedy snatching up of another one of her father's pieces.

The enemy king was the objective, but there was a lot to go through before that, and the other side would have its own strategy to reach the same objective, only from their perspective. The queen, being the most powerful piece, Ilya had become fixed on it for the longest time, desperate to take that out of play as quickly as possible, because with the enemy's queen eliminated and one's own still on the board, the chances of one winning usually increased. It was always a significant disadvantage to lose the most dynamic piece. Yet, in her eagerness, she would often fall prey to one trap after another that her father would lay out for her. He'd overtake her, and reach checkmate before she even knew what had happened. But slowly she began to realize that there were other pieces she needed to consider to be just as valuable and that needed to be eliminated first before targeting the queen.

The knight, most prominently, if only for the fact that with its unique means of moving across the board, and the fact that it couldn't be blocked like the other pieces, giving it the ability to almost sneak up on a king whose defenses weren't prepared for its assault.

There were also sacrifices that had to be made.

But, more importantly, the right sacrifices. As in, ones that proved worthy with how instrumental they were to one's eventual victory. As opposed to meaningless ones, ones that did nothing to further one's goal and might as well have been thrown away like refuse.

For the longest time, she had viewed her father's abandonment of her mother as a throwaway sacrifice. Like that of a pawn. Or rather, like he'd sacrificed his own true life queen.

But then…Ilya recalled an afternoon so clearly, because it had been the first time she had successfully taken Kiritsugu's queen on the chess board. Only for Kiritsugu to take her own queen immediately after. She had been so fervent when, to her point of view, he had seemingly fallen for her trap, when in reality, he had already positioned his pieces such that if she took his queen then and there, she'd pay for it by losing her own queen.

Her happiness at taking his queen had been shattered in the very next moment as he'd swept in with his knight and knocked her own queen over. She'd failed to notice that in taking his queen, she'd placed hers right in the unblockable path of the knight's, and now they were both left queenless. And even then, he'd still outmatched in her skill that despite their both losing their queens, he beat her at the game.

More than that, he'd done so because he'd then formed a strategy to retake his queen by ensuring safe passage of one of his pawns to her side of the board, landing it on the square where her right rook used to be. Thus, he also simultaneously put her king in check.

Despite his ruthlessness, she'd felt no impulse to cry. She'd grumbled, of course, but she wasn't so upset as to throw a fit. No, she'd been taught better than that. Not to mention, no matter how devastating the loss, they always ended their games with him very patiently explaining to her where she had gone wrong, and where she could improve for next time.

The loving patience of a father who cared for his daughter, so much that he wanted to pass on to her everything she would need to make her own way in life.

That was how it was supposed to be, anyway.

Then again, when it had come to their walnut game, that was where he'd had the proclivity to just flat out cheat every so often. As if she'd forget the last time he tried every time he tried again, the last time being the very last time they'd played the game tougher.

But then, with something like chess, it was a little harder to cheat, she supposed. That and, perhaps he'd considered cheating at chess as "going too far".

"If you have to sacrifice a piece, Ilya, make sure it's one that's of the least value to you."

"Sooo…not the queen?"

Kiritsugu laughed, considering the white queen he'd picked up and turned in his fingers, a strange wistfulness clouding his dark eyes even as he'd smiled genuinely. "No. Certainly not the queen." Then he put the piece in with the others and closed and latched the chess set shut. "Your mother should be finished with Acht about now," he said as Ilya took the set and placed it on the shelf in the library. "Shall we go meet her?"

Ilya beamed and took the hand her father offered her. "Uh-huh."

Kiritsugu chuckled, and the two of them left the library together.

A father and daughter came to play at the park near the end of the day. Ilya wondered if she'd seen them before. Though, maybe that didn't really matter. In every parent and child, she saw herself with her own parents, and this was no exception. That simple longing for those days when Irisviel would wrap her up in her arms and then tickle her, when Kiritsugu would scoop her up and lift her onto his shoulders, laughing.

When did she get so pathetic?

The sun was starting to set, or close to. If she didn't leave now, she wouldn't make it back to Einzbern Castle in time and she'd have to confront the dangers of the Holy Grail War, which she didn't much care to tonight any more than she had last night.

That said, after receiving another tongue-lashing from Sella while Leysritt stood spacily nearby as usual, Irisviel waved them both away and took out her remote viewing crystal ball upon returning to her chambers. If nothing else, at the very least, she could conduct some observations of what the other Masters and Servants left in the war would be up to tonight.

It was starting to rain, which put her into a relaxed state of mind as she surveyed the city. Not much happened at first, until some activity stirred in an open square. From the looks of it, Shirou and his Saber, along with Rin Tohsaka and her Archer, were facing off together against…

…Zouken Matou.

And…Caster?

But no…it couldn't be…Caster had been taken out of play.

Hadn't she?

Something stirred in Ilya as she zeroed in on the unfolding battle. As a number of surrounding buildings suddenly lost power and the lights within them were shut off, cast into the darkness of the night, from that darkness, it was as if the sun itself sprung into being in that little square. The sheer light it cast gave Ilya a better look at Caster, and she realized with a rising bristle of anger within her that it wasn't so much that Caster wasn't dead, it was that she was dead, and Zouken was…using her corpse as a puppet so he could wield her power.

Ilya curled her hands into fists. "You fool," she growled under her breath, and the anger that she felt nearly possessed her, as though it was both hers and not hers, but that of…

…Lord Justica.

Yet, she didn't try to fight it. It felt right. She sensed the betrayal in Zouken's actions, and it gave her thoughts a sharp purposefulness that it had been missing for the past couple of days she'd spent dithering over her feelings for her father, for Shirou.

She stood, gritting her teeth. "Berserker."

Berserker appeared at her side, growling low as he echoed her anger.

Yet before she could make the change in her plans to stay inside that night and head out to confront Zouken herself, another entity joined the playing field.

The Shadow.

It gave Ilya pause, remembering what it had done to Frau.

Caster's mindless corpse launched the giant, sun-like fireball at the Shadow. And it wasn't so much that the Shadow deflected the extremely powerful magic, but more that it swept it out of existence the moment the fireball struck it. Save for its swallowing up and absorbing its power.

Then it spread itself out over the paved ground, like ink dropped in water. Saber and Archer retreated, but Caster's corpse, being a corpse, simply stood there. And even though it was a corpse, it was no less valuable to it as nourishment as it absorbed it too.

"NO!" Ilya leapt away, shoving the crystal ball off of the table.

Though it didn't break when it hit the floor, and the floor was carpeted, it still dropped with a heavy thud. Enough to break the link it was maintaining to give Ilya her view of the city.

Berserker turned to where she'd stumbled back and collapsed on the bed, giving a low grunt of concern.

"I'm fine, Berserker," Ilya reassured him, catching her breath, laying a hand over her rapidly beating heart, giving it time to slow down as she recomposed herself. Then, opening her eyes, she fixed Berserker with a serious look. "I'm sorry. It's just…I don't want you near that shadow, that thing." She furrowed her brow. "I'll lose you for sure if that were to happen," she said with a pang, finding herself back on the edge of tears. "I can't let that happen."

She swallowed the lump in her throat, sliding off of the bed and walking over to Berserker, whereupon he gathered her to him in one large hand and let her cry quietly into him as he had done so many times for her before.

"You have to stay with me, Berserker," she told him once she'd cried all she could, blinking up at him through the rest of her tears. "Until the end."

Berserker gave his softer growl, the one that said everything would be all right, that he would never leave her. That until she had done what had to be done for the summoning of the Grail, he would defend her unwaveringly. Or die trying.

Hopefully, not the latter.

The next day, Shirou failed to show again at the park, but after what happened last night, Ilya got a bad feeling and feared the worst rather than getting angry about it.

She couldn't think what to do about it, apprehensive of showing up on Shirou's doorstep to find out anything directly. So she returned to Einzbern Castle early and resumed her observation of the city via the crystal ball. Unfortunately, even into the night, things had gone quiet.

She briefly considered confronting Zouken over what he thought he was doing, using dead Servant corpses as one would if they'd gotten a pawn across the board, and, even though they still had their queen, somehow got another queen out of it.

Though, considering what the Shadow had done to it, that didn't much matter now.

And then she wondered if it wouldn't be better to wait for him to come to her. She felt certain that she'd do better making a stand on her own territory rather than invading that of the enemy.

No doubt, after all, he would come to her eventually.