Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.

Ayame/Zero…NOT

Part III

Ayame landed outside the Einzbern Forest, and leaving her broom – and on it her sleeping sisters – floating a few feet off the ground, approached on foot. "Let's see," she thought, reaching out with a hand and causing a glowing green mandala to come to life in the air in front of her. "Will it work?"

For a few moments, Ayame stood with a hand on the mandala, commands and knowledge passing from her mind to the Einzbern bounded fields at the speed of thought, and then the Black and White Magician sighed. "Even Einzbern…?" she muttered, looking up at the sky.

The rain fell from the darkened sky in loud and heavy sheets, hammering into the grassy fields and stone memorials all around. A white-haired woman dressed in formal, black-colored clothes stood in front of one memorial, the umbrella raised protectively over her head shuddering from the rain.

Approching footsteps had blue eyes narrowing. For several moments, two white-haired women stood in silence, but where one was dressed in black, the other was in white. Finally, Ayame Emiya turned.

"Sella." She said.

The homunculus bowed, and then straightened. "Mistress Ayame." She said, and Ayame's eyes narrowed again.

"Why suddenly so deferent?" she asked.

"Einzbern is destroyed."

Ayame blinked, and then narrowed her eyes again. "What?" she asked.

"The Einzbern family was originally forged to continue the work our makers could not, or had lost the spirit to continue." Sella said. "That was our reason for existence, more so than for most magi. And now that it cannot denied any longer, that our quest, our reason for existing has both failed and is null and void…there is no further reason for Einzbern to continue to exist."

Ayame was silent, her blue eyes staring into Sella's red ones. "I could and would provide details." The latter said. "But they are best said in private, and at your leisure, Mistress Ayame."

"You say Einzbern is destroyed," Ayame said. "And yet here you are. You also haven't answered why you're suddenly addressing me as your mistress."

"Einzbern is destroyed." Sella repeated. "But in Einzbern's eyes, I, and my sister, Leysritt, were failures, meant only to be discarded and the resources gone into our making to be recycled. But thanks to Mistress Illya's mercy and magnanimity, for which no words exist to truly describe, our lives were spared, and given meaning."

Sella paused, and tilted her head forwards. "We are hers." She said softly, before closing her eyes in what was only grief. "I was hers. And you are her sister. If not in blood, then by law and name, and by her own decree and recognition. The only one left of her in this world."

Opening her eyes, Sella sank to one knee. "I offer you my allegiance, my loyalty, my service, and my life." She said, extending a hand on which glowed a single point of blinding bright light. "In token of this, I offer this gift, the key to the knowledge of a thousand years and more, all to repay what must be repaid, the debt I, and my sister, owed to Mistress Illya. Please, I beg of you, accept, and allow what is owed to be repaid, Mistress Ayame Emiya."

"Sella," Ayame thought with a sigh, taking off her hat to scratch at her head. "I need to get back home before she gets too worried. And more to the point…magi. If the codes which I gained over…what, twenty or so years from now, work here and now…really, what lax security. Well, I guess I shouldn't complain, but still…"

Sighing again, Ayame replaced her hat before opening the bounded fields of the Einzbern Forest, and attuned them to herself and to her sisters. Then returning to her broom, Ayame mounted it once more, and flying back into the sky, swept over the evergreen treetops to Einzbern Castle…or its annex at least, such that existed in Japan, far from their German homeland.

"Now then," Ayame muttered as she landed in the atrium. "Shall we get to work?"

The trapdoor opened on the roof of Castle Einzbern, Ayame clambering out and after a brief moment of scrambling for footing on the tiles, planted her hands on her hips while looking out over the fog-shrouded expanse of the Einzbern Forest. Having tucked her sisters into a clean bed in one of the castle's many bedrooms, Ayame had then proceeded to scrounge through the castle's even more numerous storerooms to find children's clothes for them. Old-fashioned ones to be sure, not that Ayame was one to talk, considering she went around dressed like a witch.

Green mandalas came to life around the Black and White Magician, one in front and one each to either side. Ayame largely just glanced over the inner details, as those needed no adjusting, at least for the most part. Several upside-down glyphs were turned the right side up, and several circles turned to align their glyphs and inscriptions with those on the outside.

With every adjustment, the bounded fields around and over the Einzbern Forest shuddered and shifted, growing stronger and gaining new properties as they were set from peacetime protection, to full-on wartime defense mode. And they would grow stronger still, as Ayame erased portions of the outer and inner mandalas, replaced them, and then drew new lines to reconstruct the conceptual network.

"Let's see you break through these wards, magi." Ayame said with a vicious smirk.

Gesturing, Ayame merged the mandalas into one, glowing white composite, its three components revolving opposing to each other. Holding out her hands, Ayame reached out into the Reverse Side of the World, and spoke the familiar words.

"Glitter, Fairy Lights."

Fairy flew out of the golden light between her hands, and flying into the mandala performed their own modifications, turning the lights from white into gold, and then flying out, headed out over the forest. Bounded fields shimmered and shifted yet again, briefly gaining a golden tint before fading into invisibility.

But Ayame wasn't done. Not even close. As fairies took their places in the grand tapestry of magic around the Einzbern Forest, its fabric of mystery already being woven anew and dyed with different colors, Ayame wove the last spell needed to bring change, and breathe freshness to something which by its very nature could not be fresh, vibrant, and alive.

I am the one whose voice echoes in the shadows of the world.

I am the one who calls to those beyond the looking glass.

For what do I call, to those of legend and myth?

The hearts of men are shrouded in shadows woven of their own making,

Lies and delusion clouding the reflections in the water.

I would shine a light into the darkness.

I would cast away the shroud of falsity.

I would have men learn wisdom by opening the eyes to see.

And so I ask, to those beyond the looking glass,

Bring forth the Phantasmagoria.

The mandala flashed blinding gold, and in distant Germany, the Einzbern family, already panicking at their recent detection of the Greater Grail's destruction, panicked anew as they sensed their distant outpost be disconnected from their network. And indeed, according to the last, fading perturbations of failing detection mysteries, their outpost's mysteries, concepts, and accumulated history, changed.

The Einzbern family went back for over a thousand years. Granted, the outpost barely went back for a tenth of that time, but still, for something which had been dyed with Einzbern's colors to be changed…

…it spoke of great power, of conceptual profundity exceeding at least five hundred years…

…who? Who among the great names of the moonlit world would dare? What could they hope to gain?

As the Einzbern pondered such questions and adjusted their planned response accordingly, in Japan Ayame smiled, and turning disappeared back through the trapdoor.

The forges of Einzbern echoed with the sounds of industry, as Ayame machined parts using tools and materials found within the forge. Steel, lead, and pure gold were fashioned into a harness and manifold that would link it to the foundry, though molds and other tools were to be found aplenty, needing no need to machine and thus saving on time.

As the harness was completed, Ayame linked it to the foundry, before placing the raw materials for what she needed into the foundry. Copper and zinc for the most part, but also nickel, lead, and iron, five base elements which when passed together through a combined smelting and transmutation process, would produce an alloy that while not much stronger than brass physically, possessed wonderful magical properties: orichalcum.

Normally difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to produce, by incorporating the Mini Elemental Furnace as the source of the heat to melt down orichalcum's base components, and cycling the prana for the transmutation process through that same Mini Elemental Furnace, several steps that would normally have to be done to produce orichalcum could be skipped in their entirety, and greatly bringing down the failure rate, time, and cost needed to produce the alloy. Of course just the alloy wasn't enough, but the forge's stores also – thankfully – had an amount of what else she needed as well. Lapis lazuli, to engrave fairy letters with.

Making one last check of the foundry to be sure what was needed was there – ingots of copper, lead, and iron, and blocks of zinc and nickel – Ayame then approached the harness. Words poured from her lips, smoky glyphs floating through the air around her for mere moments before vanishing, spells being woven over and around the harness and manifold to ensure their functionality. And then taking the Mini Elemental Furnace, Ayame placed it in the harness.

The harness immediately came to life. Gauges and other instrumentation across the foundry and the forge in general spun up, wildly fluctuating for several moments as the engravings on the Mini Elemental Furnace flickered, and then finally, they steadied, the engravings of the Mini Elemental Furnace glowing a bright blue as the manifold hummed and shimmered with heat, the foundry beginning to warm and the raw materials within beginning to soften and finally melt.

"Forged by fire," Ayame muttered. "Not the first time I've used them, but in hindsight, 'crown of freedom' never was so fitting as…"

Blinking and breaking at an alarm from a bounded field, Ayame gestured, a green rectangle appearing in the air before flickering to show an image of two children, staring out from a balcony. "So they've woken up." Ayame muttered, narrowing her eyes as her sisters ran across the room, and creeping out, ran as they saw no one guarding the hallway outside.

Ayame stayed silent, watching as her sisters made their way through the mansion, and into the outside. "Running away…?" she said softly, and briefly closing her eyes. "Well, they're still just kids, not even old enough to go to school. In short, innocents, for whom the Phantasmagoria will hold no terror, and only wonder."

Ayame snorted and smiled while shaking her head. "It'll be fine then." She said, dismissing the screen and turning back to the forge. "I've got crowns to forge, to break the chains of slavery and lies with. Let the fairies entertain them in the meantime."

Rin and Sakura ran through the fog, the trees of the forest looming out of the ethereal wall of white like pillars of darkness. Dirt and rocks crunched beneath their feet as they ran, Rin leading and all but dragging her sister along behind her.

Sakura cried out again and again, the uneven ground painful against her feet even through her shoes, and it wasn't long before her undeveloped muscles began to protest painfully against the effort being asked of them. "N-n-nee-san…" Sakura gasped. "I can't…please…can we…rest…a while…"

Rin actually felt the same way, but she knew they couldn't. Sakura didn't understand, and Rin didn't blame her: Sakura wasn't the heiress after all, Rin was. Sakura didn't know what it meant being a magus, and wasn't supposed to know.

That they'd been kidnapped was obvious, from what they remembered of earlier. Why they'd been kidnapped, well, Sakura didn't know, and it was all Rin could do to keep Sakura from breaking down crying earlier (though if she were honest, Rin herself had been on the brink of breaking down at the same time at their situation), but even then Rin couldn't explain the why.

They were both brilliant magi, or had the makings of them. Sakura didn't know much less understand, but Rin knew and understood. That was the only reason they could have been kidnapped for.

And now that they had a chance to get away, to get back to their family, they had to take it. If they didn't…

…then who knew what might happen to them.

"N-n-n-nee-san…please…I can't…I can't…I…"

Rin abruptly came to a halt, breathing hard and pulling herself and Sakura against a tree. Trying to still their breathing as best they could, the two girls looked out from around the tree.

Up ahead there was a path, running across the direction they'd been running in. Men were marching down the path, dressed only in straw slippers and white socks under dark-colored trousers, their torsos bare and with paper bands tied around their foreheads. Gilded wood rested on their shoulders, a box big enough for a person to sit in comfortably resting on top of a litter, windows draped in red silk and gold thread.

Rin and Sakura watched with mixed awe and apprehension as the procession passed, but just a few steps down the path it stopped, and without a word the men put the litter down. A beautiful woman dressed in a three-layer kimono floated out of the litter, elegantly drifting through the air to come to a rest on a tree branch, and hiding her face behind a fan nodded once at the men.

The men lifted the empty litter, and leaping into the air vanished without a sound. Rin and Sakura gaped, while in the distance the woman sat on the tree, fanning herself silently for a few moments. And then turning her head, she looked right at Rin and Sakura.

Rin didn't waste any moment. "They found us!" she thought, grabbing Sakura by the hand and running back the way they came.

"N-n-nee-san…wait…I can't…ah!"

With a cry, Sakura stumbled on the ground, falling on her face and her hand slipping free of Rin's own. "SAKURA!" Rin shouted, doubling back to her sister.

Sakura got up on all fours, and with a wince rolled away, before looking down at a bloody knee. Face twisting up, the four-year-old girl began to cry loudly at the pain, despite Rin's attempts to shush her.

And then the woman from before was looming over them. "Get away from…!" Rin began, leaping up and holding out a hand. Light began to glow in her palm…

…and then to her horror, fizzled out.

"Now, now," the woman said with a motherly tone, and sinking down next to Sakura. "None of that. And you really shouldn't run around in the fog like this. It can get dangerous, you know."

Turning back to Sakura, the woman smiled comfortingly, and patting the girl on the head reached into her sleeve and pulled out a box. Opening it, it revealed a traditional medicine kit, with which the woman began to clean Sakura's wound.

All the while, Rin could only watch uneasily, while in the distance, Ayame wielded fire, magic, and molten metal to craft miracles into reality.

A/N

Well, there's the spell for the Phantasmagoria. In the main story, Rin never stood a chance. Even without factoring the fairies in, it's a bloody ten-count, i.e. a Lesser Ritual. Though, to be honest you can't really 'factor out' the fairies, since they're critical to the Phantasmagoria.

Spoiler for the ending of the main story here, though as I mentioned in a past chapter of the main story, it is inevitable for Illya to die just like her mother did. She is the Lesser Grail. As the Holy Grail War progresses and more and more energies of fallen Servants enters her, the less Human she will become, until she finally dies and all that is left is a shell, filled with energy for the Greater Grail.

And more to the point…yes, it's a nightmarish combination, isn't it? Fairy magic, plus a thousand and more years of knowledge, which may or may not be rooted in fairy magic as well. Because the foundation of the Einzbern family, or more likely their makers, was the Rhine Gold as told in the tale of the Ring of the Nibelung.