Author's Note: Initially, I wasn't going to show Archer's battle with Berserker, but I soon realized that this chapter would be too short without it. So if any of you wanted to see Girl!Archer in action (plus some angsty/bitter introspection), you've got your wish. :)

Chapter 14: Escaping From Einzbern Castle

It took a few minutes, but Shira was able to free her hands from the ropes binding her. She rubbed her wrists to get her blood circulation back, then quickly untied the ropes from her feet. Once that was done, she got up from her chair and strode to the door, opening it a crack and thanking God that Ilya hadn't thought to lock her in the room.

Shira peered into the hallway, quickly shutting the door once she heard footsteps. Great, she thought. Ilya was dumb enough not to lock me in just in case I did manage to get out of the ropes, but smart enough to have a guard keep watch. She took a step backward and grabbed a poker from the fireplace, then turned around with her back against the door, readying her makeshift weapon.

Just then, the door burst open.

"Don't move!"

And the person standing in the doorframe—blond hair, blue-green eyes, and clad in white and blue—was none other than Saber.

"Shira?" His hostile expression gave way to confusion when he saw the girl holding a poker over her head.

"Saber! What are you doing here?" Shira lowered the poker, taking a moment to look over her Servant. His face was lightly flushed and a bit sweaty, but he seemed okay, all things considered.

"I could ask you the same thing," Saber replied.

"So," Rin spoke as she walked up to Shira and Saber, Archer following behind her, "you look to be in good shape. I guess you didn't need our help after all."

"That's what I said from the beginning," Archer said before Shira could formulate a response. "We were better off just leaving you to your fate."

"And just why are you here?" Shira questioned a little testily, shooting a small glare at the older woman.

"I asked for Rin and Archer's assistance," Saber explained. "I realized that Ilyasviel must have abducted you when I could not sense your presence at the estate."

"We don't have time for explanations," Rin butted in impatiently. "Let's just get out of here before Ilyasviel gets back."

And with that, the two Master-Servant pairs proceeded to run down the long hallway. Various paintings were hung on the walls, but Shira didn't stop for a closer inspection; Rin was right—the sooner they escaped Ilya's hideout, the better.

Gotta escape, gotta escape, gotta escape, Shira chanted in her head; it was the only thing that kept her from listening too much to Saber's worryingly labored breathing, which sounded further and further away the more she ran—

Shira came to a halt just as she, Rin, and Archer made it around a corner, turning to see Saber several feet behind, having sunk to his knees and currently wheezing.

At once, Shira hurried over to him, calling his name.

"It's fine...I'm fine..." Saber mumbled weakly.

"No, you're not," Shira contradicted. "You came all this way without being fully recovered?"

"A Servant's duty is to protect their Master." Saber looked up; to Shira's alarm, his face was redder than it had been only minutes ago. "I admit that my strength leaves something to be desired, but I can still provide adequate cover for you."

"Saber, you can't even run a quarter of a mile without having to stop," Shira protested, bending down and offering her hand to him. "Lean on me for now."

Saber dropped his gaze to the floor. "That will not be necessary."

"Just do it, Saber!" the redhead snapped, not in the mood for his stubbornness.

"Leave him be," Archer's voice cut in.

Shira straightened up to face her. "I'm not abandoning him!"

"There's nothing you can do for him." Archer's gray eyes were trained on Saber. "Whatever you do—whatever you say—you cannot save him."

"That's not true!" Shira insisted.

Archer didn't respond, still looking at Saber. Although her mouth was set into a grim line, Shira saw that her eyes seemed to be telling a different story. They weren't filled with malice, disdain, or even annoyance. Was that...sadness Shira was seeing?

And what does she mean, "whatever I say"? Somehow, it didn't sound like Archer was talking about Saber's current condition at all.

But Archer's eyes hardened the instant her gaze flickered to Shira; whatever emotion that had been there before disappeared. The woman turned around and hurried to catch up with Rin just as Saber managed to get back on his feet. In no time at all, the foursome had reached a long staircase leading to an elegant lobby—and a set of double doors.

"There's our exit," Rin announced. "It looks like we made it just in time."

Shira frowned skeptically. "This seems too easy. If this is the main entrance, wouldn't it be the first place they'd expect us to escape from?"

"Ilyasviel isn't here," Rin pointed out, "so our best option is to take the shortest route out of this place. So let's go already!"

She began to run down the stairs, and Archer, Saber, and Shira (the latter of whom unable to come up with any other argument) followed suit. They made it downstairs and about halfway through the lobby, the doors getting closer and closer with every step, when a young, silvery voice stopped them in their tracks.

"Oh? All of you are leaving so soon?"

Shira felt her body tense as she turned to where the voice was coming from. Sure enough, Ilya was standing at the top of the stairs.

"Ilyasviel..." Rin's voice shook.

The little girl smiled wickedly down at her. "This saves me the trouble of finding you, Rin. Thank you."

No one said anything. Shira didn't know about anyone else, but she was too busy wondering how they could escape now without being forced to deal with Berserker (if his Master was here, then he was doubtlessly not too far behind) to come up with any witty retort for Ilya.

"Something wrong?" The silence seemed to amuse Ilya. "Come on, guys; I'm giving you a lot of time to come up with some last words here. It's more fun for me if I at least hear you say something before I kill you."

"Fine then." A haughty smirk crossed Rin's face. "Let me ask you this."

"Tohsaka—" Shira began.

But Rin continued before she could get any further. "Ilyasviel, why couldn't I sense your return? Was it because you were hiding here the whole time?"

"That's right." Ilya's smirk matched Rin's in superiority. "I didn't actually go anywhere; I was just having fun watching you run around the place like a bunch of idiots."

"So the person you sent out your front door was a fake," Rin concluded.

"Yep. After all, I'm the mistress of the house. It's my job to attend to my guests' needs—and to keep them entertained."

As if on cue, Berserker suddenly appeared, dropping to the floor with a growl and sending dust flying. He straightened up and fixed his enemies with a glare, snarling lowly all the while.

"Anyone else have something they want to say?" Ilya asked mockingly.

Again, no one answered.

"Okay, then; let's get started." Ilya raised her hand. "You have my word: I won't let anyone escape."

Shira gritted her teeth. If we don't come up with a plan in the next three seconds, we're screwed.

"Shira, I want you out of here; I can handle this." Saber's authoritative air was ruined by the sharp exhale that followed.

"I'm not leaving you to be killed," Shira informed him, eyeing the beads of sweat on his face.

"But you will be killed as well if you stay."

"Listen, Archer," Rin spoke, turning to address her Servant. "It doesn't have to be for long, but I want you to slow him down a bit."

"What?" Shira exclaimed, tearing her gaze away from Saber to look at Rin in shock. Is she ordering her to die?

"Rin, what are you suggesting?" Saber questioned. "Archer cannot defeat Berserker by herself!"

Rin ignored them both. "Just keep him busy and we'll escape."

Shira stared at Archer, wondering how the white-haired Servant would react to what Rin was telling her to do.

"That is the wisest course of action." Archer's voice was calm. "If you can escape first, Rin, then I should be able to follow." She smirked slightly. "After all, independent operations like this happen to be a specialty of my class."

Archer stepped forward towards Berserker, who remained motionless.

Ilya giggled from the top of the staircase. "I don't believe it. You expect that no-name Servant to stand a chance against my Hercules? You're so much funnier than I thought, Rin!"

"Oh, by the way, Rin," Archer said, still impassive, "if all you want is for me to buy you time, I can do that. However..." she paused, turning her head slightly toward her Master, "would you mind very much if I destroyed the brute while I was at it?"

Rin stared at the older woman incomprehensively. Frankly, Shira couldn't blame her. Even just fighting Berserker to give them time to escape would surely end in Archer's death; did the woman mean to say that she was going to take her opponent with her?

"Fine," Rin said at last. "Go ahead, Archer. If you think you can take him, take him."

Archer turned her gaze back to Berserker. "Excellent."

Ilya scoffed. "Tear her limb from limb, Berserker! I want that stuck-up woman dead!"

Berserker roared in response, his body glowing with mana.

"Now's our chance!" Rin turned and took off running. Saber followed after her, and Shira was about to do the same when Archer's voice stopped her.

"Shira Emiya. You're not a person who fights; you're a person who creates." Archer had her back towards the redhead, staring unflinchingly at Berserker. "Clear everything else from your mind. You only have one skill, so it is imperative that you master it."

Before Shira's very eyes, two broadswords—one black, one white; the same swords she had seen during Archer's fights with Lancer and Saber—materialized in the red-clad Servant's hands.

Archer lifted the swords above her head in a crisscross motion. "Never forget that you should always be visualizing yourself at your most powerful. You don't need any external enemies—the only enemy you have to defeat is your own self-image."

She threw the white sword up, and the blade stuck into the ceiling, causing part of it to crack and break apart.

"Come on, Shira!" Rin yelled over the noise of falling debris.

And without another thought, Shira ran away, following after Rin and Saber and leaving Archer to fight Berserker.

Archer was not an optimistic woman.

It was no surprise; countless years of being a Counter Guardian, of being sent to the physical world only to slaughter people before they could slaughter more people, destroyed the optimism and idealism she'd had during her human life. That being the case, she knew perfectly well fighting Berserker was suicide long, long before the situation had presented itself.

But try as she may, her heart was not entirely made of stone. As cynical, dismissive, and bitter as she was, there still remained a tiny spark of the Shira Emiya Archer used to be. And Shira Emiya would have been completely willing to give up her life for total strangers, let alone her loved ones, if it meant they could escape an enemy unharmed.

Archer was not able to kill her past self, so she would have to make do with fulfilling Rin's final order.

She just barely managed to jump away as Berserker swung his sword in her direction. Berserker lumbered forward to strike again and again, but Archer dodged the blows and jumped in the air, black Kanshou and white Bayuka poised to attack. With a roar, Berserker met Archer head-on, striking her and knocking both swords from her grasp.

The white-haired woman landed on her feet, ignoring the sharp pain of the shoulder wound inflicted on her.

"That's it, Berserker!" Ilya called. "Hurry up and finish her!"

Wordlessly, Archer turned to face her opponent, another copy of Kanshou and Bayuka materializing in her hands within seconds. Berserker's sword swung at her, and she dodged every strike, the ferocity of the giant's attacks forcing her back. He lunged towards her, and she raised her weapons in time to block the sword intending to rip her in two, gritting her teeth with the effort. It wasn't long before the force of Berserker's blow sent her flying and she was embedded into the wall with a great crash, Kanshou and Bayuka breaking and fading away in the process.

"Those things are weak; they broke as soon as you called them," Ilya taunted as a groaning Archer slumped out of the wall. "Did you really think a Noble Phantasm like that could beat Berserker?"

If Archer had been the type, she might have laughed; as it was, her lips were quivering upward despite herself. I had forgotten exactly how tough this monster was. Very well; I suppose I need to use something more...appropriate.

She lifted her head and jumped up and backward to stand on the railing of the second floor. Snarling, Berserker prepared to jump after her.

"I am the flesh and bone of my own sword." A spiral-bladed sword—Caladbolg, originally wielded by Fergus mac Róich—appeared in Archer's hand, shortly followed by a bow in the other. Caladbolg glowed and changed into an arrow; Archer nocked the still glowing arrow and aimed it at Berserker, who was leaping towards her.

She fired, and the arrow hit its target in a burst of light. Berserker fell back to the ground with a pained roar, the light shooting upward to rip a hole in the ceiling.

When the light faded, Berserker was bent forward and breathing heavily, but still very much alive.

Archer was not surprised. I was only able to take one—perhaps two—of his lives. She leapt from one floor to the next, distantly hearing Ilya shriek at Berserker. In seconds, she had made it outside and stood on the balcony's railing. Archer sensed Berserker's presence behind her before she heard his growl, and she jumped away as he tried to slice her up. With a nimbleness one could never have expected from such a hulking man, Berserker swung himself over the railing and charged forward, striking downward.

But Archer jumped backward again, and Berserker only succeeded in getting himself caught in the now larger hole.

She crossed her arms in front of her. "Steel flows through my body, and fire is what courses through my blood." Kanshou and Bayuka materialized in her hands and she threw them into the air like boomerangs.

"I have created over a thousand blades." A second copy of Kanshou and Bayuka appeared, and Archer threw those, too. The four broadswords spun in the air and burst into flame the instant they surrounded Berserker, causing him to roar.

Archer ran towards her opponent. "Unknown to death." Again, Kanshou and Bayuka materialized, and she held them behind her back, giving herself the appearance of a winged human. "Nor known to life." The swords glowed, the blades becoming larger, and Archer leapt up above Berserker. With a battle cry, she came back down, both swords vertically slashing at the giant.

She quickly jumped out of the way as a small explosion occurred exactly where she had attacked Berserker. He was roaring, clearly wounded, still surrounded by fire, and bits of his skin were smoking...but Berserker still drew breath.

A slight smirk played on Archer's lips. "Tell me, Berserker, just how many more times must I kill you before you die?"

Berserker's response was to charge forward out of the flames, swinging his sword at Archer with an angry snarl. The force of his blow sent Archer crashing into the brick wall. She got up, still smirking, and the next downward strike Berserker dealt was enough for Archer to fall through the balcony towards the lobby below.

For some unknown reason, a memory surfaced in Archer's mind.

She stared at Rin with a condescendingly amused air. "Just my luck. I've been drawn forth by a peculiar little Master."

Rin proceeded to use a Command Seal to force her to clean up the mess that had resulted from the summoning, but Archer decided that her little payback had been worth it.

Archer landed bodily on the lobby's floor, beaten and battered.

"So, do you still think it was wise to take on this fight?" Ilya's voice grew closer as she stepped over to the older woman's prone form.

There was no answer as Archer found herself in another flashback.

She could have sworn her heart stopped.

It...it was Saber. He was charging forward, his invisible sword was raised to attack her, and he was supposed to be her enemy...but all she did was lift Kanshou and Bayuka purely on instinct, unable—or perhaps unwilling—to do more.

She was only half aware of the wound he had given her. As she sank to her knees and gasped for air, she let herself steal a few seconds to behold Saber after so long. His blue-green eyes were stoic, his pale face was hard, and his silver armor gleamed coldly in the moonlight.

In those few seconds, she was not EMIYA, a Counter Guardian and a Servant of the Archer class; she was just Shira Emiya, back inside that storage shed, where an impossibly handsome knight had left her spellbound.

"Heh." The small smile on Archer's face was bittersweet as she opened her eyes. Look what you do to me, Saber, even after all this time. You make me sentimental.

"She's alive? There's no way—!" Ilya's voice rose. "Berserker! Stop playing around with her! There's something funny about this woman! I want you to kill her before she kills you! Be done with her already!"

Berserker growled in response, jumping back down into the lobby.

Archer struggled to her feet. "You never did have any mercy, did you, Ilya?" Another person I couldn't save...

"'Ilya'?" the girl repeated in confusion.

The smile became a smirk as Archer lifted her head to her opponent, ignoring Ilya. "My defeat may be inevitable, but you'll still have to work for it, Berserker. Go easy on me if you wish, but in the meantime..." Kanshou appeared in her hand, "I'm going to take two more of your lives!"

With that declaration, Archer threw Kanshou in the air; a few seconds later, the sound of glass shattering pierced the air. Aside from the moon shining from the hole in the ceiling, the room was plunged into darkness.

"Many times I have withstood enormous pain to create thousands of weapons," Archer intoned, her eyes shut.

"Stop her, Berserker!" Ilya cried.

But Archer continued, even as Berserker advanced towards her.

"And yet those hands that have braved so much will never hold anything."

Berserker brandished his sword.

"So, as I pray now, I call forth Unlimited Blade Works."

Archer's eyes snapped open, and a ring of fire suddenly surrounded her and engulfed both Berserker and Ilya.

When the fire burned out, the world had changed. Instead of the dark blue of nighttime, the fog-filled sky was a dark, rusty red, huge black gears gyrating in the distance. In the lobby's place was a flat, rocky plain, and on that plain...

...Was a countless supply of swords, blades, and various other weapons.

"A...Reality Marble?!" Ilya squeaked out.

Kanshou, Bayuka, Caladbolg, Durandal, Hrunting, Rho Aias, Gae Bolg, Gram...all of these and more, whether Noble Phantasms or nameless tools for battle, were weapons Archer had seen and magically stored in Unlimited Blade Works—the physical manifestation of her soul, her Noble Phantasm of sorts—during her life. Now that her Reality Marble was activated, she had every weapon she could ever need at her disposal.

Berserker glared down at Archer, who smirked as she picked up the nearest blade.

"Welcome to my world, the Pinnacle of Weaponry." She took a battle stance. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

A loud roar was her answer as Berserker charged forward, his sword raised. Archer ran towards him for what would prove to be their final clash.

The cries of a large flock of crows disrupted the quiet of the forest.

Shira had little idea about how long she, Saber, and Rin had been running; it must have been at least ten minutes since they'd left Archer behind, but she couldn't be sure. Every now and then, loud crashes and explosions could be heard, but none of them dared to go back, the need to put as much distance between themselves and Ilya and Berserker their top priority.

At present, though, Rin abruptly stopped running with a slight gasp. Saber and Shira also stopped, the latter letting the former take his arm off from around her shoulders (she had been supporting him to make sure he didn't fall behind).

"Tohsaka?" Shira asked hesitantly as she stepped closer to Rin. "Is Archer...?"

Rin stayed silent, looking at her left hand. In less than a second, the last Command Seal had faded, which could only mean one thing.

Archer was dead.

Shira gazed at Rin; the older girl's back was turned and she seemed to have gone rigid. When she spoke, her voice was blank, but quite steady.

"We've got to hurry."

She's shutting herself down, Shira realized. It's like when we were talking about her father; she doesn't want to show that her Servant's death has any affect on her.

"Tohsaka, look—"

"I said hurry!" Rin snapped, her fist clenching. "If you go and get yourself killed by those two, I'll bring you back to life just to kill you a second time!"

Shira paused, not knowing what to say, or even if she should say anything. But after a few seconds, the sound of a thud caught her attention. She turned around to see that Saber had collapsed into a heap on the forest path.

"Saber!"

Just like that, all thoughts of how to console Rin were forgotten as Shira hurried over to her own Servant.

Author's Note: ...And I was even able to indulge in my Archer/Saber fetish in this chapter. ;)

In summary, Archer has her Day in the Limelight, both Archer and Rin prove they have at least a sliver of a heart each (like Servant, like Master, eh?), and Saber REALLY needs mana.