The Fairy who Could Chapter 5, a Fate/stay night + Fairy Tail Crossover fanfic

Writer Comments:

Phew! This particular piece took a while longer than I expected. I must admit, my Beta is doing an excellent job with this story. It helps to have someone to spot the loopholes and correct my (rather frequent, admittedly). Eldest Tempest, you have my deepest thanks!

Anyways, if you're reading this, thanks for following this story so closely. It's been a joy to write. I'll only be continuing this in January, though. It seems that my life has finally caught up to my dilettante habits. Still, there's a word of things that Shirou (and I) haven't explored yet, and a fight that I really, really want to write, but it'll take time to get to it. So here's a teaser: the only two OCs in the entire story, joining us for this (and maybe the next) chapter, because I couldn't find a match that could go up against (USW) Shirou and Erza at the same time. They're visiting thanks to certain someone's boredom.

To all the of the Shirou supremacists out there, take this: the first, proper glance of USW Shirou's awesomeness! Hah! To everyone else out there, after you enjoy the story, please review! Your honest feedback means a lot to me~

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Except maybe the OCs. But not their magic.

"So now we're on the same team, huh."

Shirou smiled amiably at his companion. "I figured I'd get to quest with some of Fairy Tail's more powerful mages sometime," he continued, "but now I'm travelling with you, Erza Scarlet… things happen pretty quickly here, don't they?"

Erza waved her hand dismissively. "You're a Requip mage, and I'm a Requip mage. It was bound to happen eventually." She raised her teacup and took a short sip. "Besides, you slayed Lullaby by yourself. It's only natural that I'd want to see your magic up close."

That premonition she'd gotten told her that the flame-haired mage before her had far more to him beneath the surface. Shirou was a dangerous person. Erza needed to know as much about him as she could if he went rogue.

You cannot hide everything from me, Shirou Emiya.

Of course, if he ever got out of control, Erza could stop him easily.

Or could she?

Mirajane's words lingered in her ear. "Strongest team", she'd claimed then. Mirajane could be very impulsive sometimes, but her judgement on mages was rarely amiss. What did she mean? Was it, perhaps, that his magic was just more compatible with Erza Scarlet than anyone else in the guild? Or did Mirajane know something about Emiya Shirou that she did not?

Dangerous territory, Erza thought, turning her attention to her luggage. Shirou did slay Lullaby with his own hands. It was still quite the achievement, even if it did give him a skyhigh fever.

Shirou sighed.

He didn't know anything about Fairy Tail's strongest female mage, but for a moment she looked like she was about to stop him on his quest. Still, him and Erza going together on a quest was nothing for old Makarov to knock out over. it wasn't like they were out to destroy a city, and he doubted that Erza's magic could do as much.

Unless that, too, was his own wishful thinking.

The station announcement snapped them both out of their thoughts.

"Oshibana Town!"

"It's time to meet our contact." Shirou stood up.

"Let's go," Erza agreed. "Just wait for me to get the luggage off the back…"

Right. The luggage.

Shirou fought off an urge to facepalm.

***The Fairy who Could***

"… right."

Their contact, a short, old man in a tuxedo and bowler hat, felt his jaw drop as he glanced at Erza Scarlet. He'd heard rumours about the Queen of Fairies's huge luggage load, but did she have to bring her entire house out!?

He looked askance at her companion, a flame-haired young boy with equally intense orange eyes. Dressed in a black-and-white jacket and a pair of forgettable jeans, the boy didn't look like much, but the village governor knew better than to take him at face value.

Erza glanced expectantly at Shirou, who scratched his head and coughed awkwardly. "Well, my partner has a large wardrobe." He gestured at Erza's veritable caravan of suitcases. Shirou had to travel from place to place to help as many people as possible, which meant travelling light.

Unfortunately, his attempt to convince Erza to do the same ended with them nearly drawing swords on each other.

He'd heard enough from Lucy and Natsu not to do something so stupid again.

"We'll definitely need somewhere to put our luggage before we continue," he added. "I hope you have a room ready."

"Well… about that…We don't have inns anymore. Those bandits have been robbing our caravans since two years ago, and we're lucky to even have a shop open." The governor took off his hat. "There should be enough space for another two beds in my office. I'll be glad to host you."

The caravan robberies explained the mayor's meager quest reward. His confidence felt false, imposed, and it made Shirou feel sorry for the poor old man.

Shirou couldn't bring himself to trouble him any longer.

"It's fine," he answered with a smile.

Or was about to answer, before Erza Scarlet cut him off.

"That'll be very helpful," she agreed eagerly. "I thank you for offering, Governor Bowler. While we travel, you can tell us about the situation." Her gaze focused on the governor. "The part about the dark guild intrigues me."

She remembered almost all of the guild's members being arrested in Oshibana station, but it seemed that Erigor still had pawns running loose in the region.

As they walked toward Bougainvillea village, the governor began explaining. "Bandits have been kidnapping our villagers for three years now. Men, woman or child… they don't seem to care who they took, and they just left after they nabbed them." A tear rolled down his cheek. "Just a week ago, they took my daughter… I don't even know if you're alive, Sera…"

Erza grit her teeth. "The Rune Knights haven't been doing their job, huh."

"The cities have been withdrawing them," the governor wept. "There's been a surge of dark guild activity recently, so they've been tightening security in the city and pulling back their rune knights from the outskirts. We've tried getting magical guilds to help us defend our village, but we can't afford them, not with our caravans being robbed all over the place." He turned to Shirou and Erza. "Please help us, noble mages!"

***The Fairy who Could***

Bougainvillea Village had definitely seen better days.

The town was packed with houses of all shapes and sizes, from simple shophouses that lined the main street, to the terraces and log cabins that circled its outskirts, and the mansions that stood near the center. And yet, wherever they went, Erza and Shirou only saw torn clothes, closed shops, boarded windows and forlorn faces.

"It is to be expected," Erza sighed. "Three years of their caravans being robbed… it's amazing that the town's even survived this long. Still, the Magic Council didn't want to do anything about this?"

"It's more likely that word didn't get out." Shirou studied the road they came through. Shrouded by canyons and mountain ranges, the only entrance to the village was just all too easy to watch and ambush. "The bandits likely have the road watched." He shook his head. "The governor was taking a huge risk, going to Oshibana Town to fetch us like that."

The faces before him wore only ugly expressions. Loss, shock, depression coloured the landscape wherever he went, as the destitute folks wandered through the town and scraped whatever waste could be found, their eyes blank and lips their bloodless lips pulled thin. The village had lost their protectors, and this was what happened. This was why he'd become a hero- so that people didn't have to be like… this. And as long as they suffered, he would keep their suffering in mind, so that he could stop it when it next came.

He burned the scene into his memory, next to the Great Fire of his childhood, and kept walking.

Erza strode behind him, studying the mage as he walked. His intense orange eyes seemed to have lost their focus, staring past the village, past the villagers. She watched as Shirou stopped to pat a disraught child, as he smiled and handed her a wrapped sweet.

She had seen the smile before. She hadn't noticed then, but the smile felt... fake. There was no happiness, not even pity, gratitude, or wistfulness in those slightly curled lips. It was the smile of an empty husk.

That blankness troubled her.

What was going on in his head? Was he planning something?

Or had he seen all this before?

She shrugged and kept walking. She would find out, eventually.

***The Fairy who Could***

"So this is the encampment, huh."

Shirou's hand scraped against the sandstone beneath him as he crawled slowly to the cliff edge. He scanned the region beneath him with his prana-reinforced eyes, picking out each bandit and tent with an almost sniper-like accuracy- an ability that he'd gained in his days in the Archery Club, and secretly the reason for his incredible marksmanship then. He'd quit the club eventually because he considered it quite underhanded.

He was saving people now. Any means was fair game.

Four outlook towers spanned the tiny bandit town. Near the north, a bunch of ragtag tents were arranged before a tiny square, where one of the bandits stirred away at a pot of gruel. Judging from its disgusting colour, the food was likely for the prisoners. The bandits themselves enjoyed their pit roast nearer to the gate, which their many Manamobiles had been parked haphazardly, and a three-storey mud barracks overlooked the makeshift parking lot. The bandits themselves sat straight and stared blankly into the pit roast, hands and lips barely twitching in their strange reverie.

He watched, calmly, waited for them to say something. If he applied just enough magic to his senses, his eyes would be sharp enough to lip- read them, and he could gain some valuable information by doing so. For one, he could find out where the captured villagers were.

Bandits were human. They were criminals, who built their lives off of the blood and sweat of others. They also did normal things. They talked. They laughed. They played banjos, practiced their swordplay, and talked smack when food loosened their lips.

These guys didn't even twitch.

He felt a chill down his spine.

An armoured glove closed on his shoulders. "See something?"

"Not really," Shirou replied, relaxing. "I can see thirty bandits in the entire camp. They have a single barracks, several Manamobiles, a cave that looks like it's for mining, four manned watchtowers. If we attack from the main path, there's nowhere to hide. They'll notice us way before we reach the gate."

"We'll take the fast route down, then." A buster sword materialized in Erza's hand. "I can take all of them without much of a problem."

Shirou met her eyes and shook his head. "I don't think that will work."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm missing something." Shirou gestured to the winking fire below the cliff. "I don't know what's wrong, but their camp looks suspicious. They don't have quarters for the prisoners, not even raised mounds where people have been buried recently." He focused on the bandits again. "On top of that, the bandits aren't moving."

"Aren't moving?" Erza's eyes narrowed. "You mean, they aren't talking to each other or doing anything?"

"I mean there's not a single twitch out of them," Shirou replied evenly. "It's possible that they're just on high alert. We could have been spotted entering the village, but that is unlikely." A dark memory flitted through Shirou's eyes. "These guys are sitting stock still. They don't even look like they're breathing."

"These are no simple bandits," Erza agreed. "There's some sort of magic being used. From what you've described, it could be some sort of mind control." Her sword reappeared in her outstretched hand. "We still don't have enough information, though. Unless we go down there and investigate the mine, we won't know what's going on." Without a second word, the red-haired mage leapt off the cliff and skidded down the mountainside.

Shirou suppressed a smile. They were literally worlds apart, but Shirou could still see a bit of Saber in her. Like Saber, Erza didn't hesitate. She leapt straight to the objective once her aim was clear. He watched the bandits as Erza slid down the cliff and rolled into the camp. The night covered her approach well, and when she ducked behind the bandits' mud barracks not a single bandit guard turned.

It wasn't as good an idea as Shirou had thought. After nearly a million bumps on his buttocks, the redhead found himself tossed unceremoniously against the barracks. It was only thanks to Kanshou and Bakuya that he hadn't plummeted to his death. The sharp blades made for excellent brakes on his rocky journey.

"Looks like we're unnoticed," Erza noted, gesturing past the barracks. Firelight danced beyond the corner, where Shirou, guessed, the bandits were oblivious in their dinner.

His instincts told him otherwise.

After the Grail War, Shirou travelled far and wide, saving as many people as he could with his magic and his two hands. Many of these missions were tips from his friend, Rin, who sent him to fight mages with sealing designations. Some of them he defeated, amputating their crest to return it to the clock tower. Most of them, he only escaped with Saber's help.

Fighting them on their home territory was stupid at its best, and suicidal at its worst.

Mages were resesarchers, scholars who explored their field of study by pushing the complex faucets of their magic. They guarded their secrets jealously from intruders, spies and invaders, and conducted espionage and warfare with equal enthusiasm against others of their own kind. Whether it was knowing where their enemies were, or what mysteries they intended to use, no mage worth his salt would give up the tactical advantage of warding their territory.

Now that his senses had recovered, he could smell something strange in the air. The foul stench of rotten meat wafted in his nose, accompanied by a tang he couldn't quite place. Right now, the tangy smell was spread across the camp like a miasma, emanating toward him from all directions.

Whoever it was, their enemy knew that they were here. So why hadn't they swarmed him?

The answer struck him as he looked up.

"Erza!" he yelled. "Above you!"

Even before all the words left his mouth, a dark figure fell from the barracks roof and streaked toward Erza, its hands wrapped around a materializing sword. Erza's own hand burst to light, and the bandit's weapon sparked as it skidded down the length of her Requipped bastard sword. With a brutal swing, Erza sent the bandit careening back into the barracks.

"Thanks for the save, Shirou," Erza replied. Shirou was about to reply when he noticed two more shadows descending upon him.

Their rotten odour flooded Shirou's nostrils as he sidestepped them. They crashed into the ground before him. In the few seconds before they recovered, Archer's black-and-white blades materialized in his hands. The first assailant, a grizzly Caucasian, shoved his face in Shirou's and gave him a full dose of its rotten breath. Shirou only slapped Kanshou across Grizzly's angry face and sent him into the wall. The second, a shaggy- bearded man squeezed past his groaning comrade and tried to attack with his hatchet, but a swing from Byakuya knocked him into the mountainside. The force of the blow cracked the rock and peppered his body with a pile of falling stones. And yet, both of them were already scrambling to their feet, groaning as they hauled themselves onto their feet and prepared to come at him again.

Shirou raised an eyebrow. "I don't think they're normal bandits," he warned.

His blows should've knocked both of them out almost instantly, unless they were mages or had reinforced skin. At the very least, the damage he'd done to them would've kept either one on the ground for quite a while before they could get back to their feet. A quick glance at them only confirmed his suspicions. There were severe bruises below their jaw, where he'd nailed them with his twin swords, and yet neither blow slowed them down.

And then, Shirou caught sight of their eyes.

He felt a chill down his spine.

Both bandits had black eyes, and it wasn't just their pupils. Where the pupils should've ended and the whites should've showed, he could only see a thick obsidian void. The very tangible blackness bled past their eyelids and dripped slowly across their cheeks as both bandits let out animalistic growls and charged at him.

Now he knew why they hadn't been moving. These people were-

"dead already," he could hear Erza saying shakily behind him. "Their bodies are moving, but there's no emotion, no soul in them. It's like someone brought them back from the grave, and filled them with his own… magic…"

"We should put them out of their misery," Shirou answered. He deflected an angry slice with Byakuya and sliced Grizzly's head off, and the marauder's body crumbled into ashes. "It's the least we could do for them." A devastating crosscut later, Shaggy joined his grizzled companion in the dustpile. A third bandit crashed into the ground before him, but Shirou easily evaded his clumsy thrust and cut him from shoulder to waist.

"I guess," he heard Erza sigh. "It's too cruel for them, being puppeted like this."

A faint shadow descended upon him, and he dashed out of the way with reinforced speed. As he deflected the surprise slash with Archer's sword, he heard a deafening cacophony of ringing steel from Erza's end.

"Need help there, Erza?" he asked, plunging Kanshou into the bandit. The figure dropped its sword and vanished before his sword. He instinctively swung Byakuya up, and the black sword split apart the figure behind him before he even noticed its falling form.

An interesting side-effect of his projection, Shirou guessed. Archer's instincts were rubbing off on him faster than he'd expected. He would look into it sometime, when he wasn't busy being cut up by a maniacal bunch of undead bandits.

Now, to see how Erza was doing…

WHAM!

The wheel of swords that surged around Erza was almost too fast to follow. Erza charged into a group of bandits, and the swords blew away each bandit while her two broadswords sliced through the plate armour of their ringleader. When the dust cleared, Erza stood over the pile of disintegrating corpses.

Shirou gaped at her outfit. The scandalously topped armour could only be described as a skirt of swords, interlocking blades forming the plate, wings and greaves. Each blade glimmered eagerly in the sunlight and gave the Fairy Tail mage the look of an angel.

"And there I thought only I could use blades like that," he noted wryly.

"If you have so much time to talk, Shirou, you can spend it on these bandits," she reminded him. "There are more heading behind you."

Shirou turned back to his opponents.

He could tell from their eyes that they were already long gone. They weren't like Dead Apostles, who retained their soul and character after they were infected. Their souls had been robbed and destroyed, replaced with a mindless will to kill. They were dead. He was there to ensure that nobody joined them.

Still, Shirou disliked this work.

These bandits may have been cruel, even evil, to the people around them. They may have brought tears of sorrow and anger to those around. But they would be alive then. If they were alive, he could change their ways. He could save them.

Now, Shirou could only meet their hate-filled eyes with his merciless blade.

Each deadly blow that Kanshou and Byakuya struck, each bandit that disappeared off the world, was one less person who could be threatened by his sword. But if these bandits had been alive, each blow he now dealt would be one more person he couldn't save.

The thought jarred him. In his distraction, a menacing halberd thrust out from the bandit horde. He brought Kanshou up at the last second, deflecting the giant weapon from his vulnerable shoulder. Byakuya raced down its length, neatly decapitating the wielder. Shirou whirled into the resultant ash cloud and cut up the next two bandits. Just as he charged forward, five lances sprung out at once to meet him. He leapt out of their way with a reinforced jump. IN his retreat, one spear charged forward with surprising force and nicked his shin.

Shirou landed. One glance at the wound told him that it was superficial. Nevertheless, it had somehow broken his reinforced skin.

There were at least thirty of these goons. He could beat them without too much effort, but he was still in the territory of another mage. He didn't know what other magicks were at play. One wrong move and his Reinforcement might not save him from a prompt death.

He examined the group before him and noted ruefully that Kanshou and Byakuya were somewhat too short to engage them effectively. As he hesitated, the bandits lurched forward slowly behind their phalanx of spears, driving him steadily into Erza. They ground to a halt as two disks of black and white crashed into them. Kanshou and Byakuya buried themselves in the foremost bandit, and the second freed his spear just in time for Shirou to snap it between two newly traced copies.

Before he could slash the rest into pieces, three winged swords shot past him, impaling each bandit in the ground.

"That's quite the sword style," Erza noted in a curious tone. The winged armour vanished from her body and was replaced by her original Heart Kreuz plate. "I've never seen someone fight in such a suicidal manner before, though your mastery over dual wielding makes up for it."

"I fight to save people." Kanshou and Byakuya burst into motes of light, vanishing before the wind like the ashen remains of Shirou's dead opponents. "Whether I come out alive doesn't matter to me."

Shirou stepped out of the barracks and began walking through the camp. "We have to find the prisoners somehow," he noted. "I thought they'd at least get straw beds, but I'm not seeing even a single mote of life here."

He stopped before the mine shaft and examined the rail cart. The tracks were well-worn, marks of use uncovered by rust. "The carts have been used recently," he noted aloud.

"It seems the bandits were the only ones out here," Erza added, stepping out of the barracks. "But I can clearly feel a spread of magical energy teeming around the camp. The bandits were definitely not acting alone." She stared into the unlit maw of the mine shaft. "The perpetuators must be in this cave."

"And if their workshop is there," Shirou added, "the villagers must be there too." That they were probably being experimented on, and most likely dead, he did not mention. He'd stumbled on that all too often in his time under the Clock Tower.

He wanted to save them. He had to be optimistic, for their sake.

"Trace, on."

They walked into the cavern. Shirou led the way. The flaming sword in his hands cast flickering shadows over the mining tunnel, ghastly silhouettes of terrifying beasts moving around them. The stench of rotting meat, infused with shedded dead skin, fungus and excrement flooded their nostrils like a miasma. Despite the overwhelming smell, he found Erza walking forward, not a hint of hesitation in the clink of her greaves.

Perhaps it was just his sensitivity with magic. Rin had called him a bloodhound before, after all.

"That's an impressive sword," Erza noted.

Shirou nodded vaguely. "It's a famous one."

"That was some good swordplay, too," she continued icily. "Better than what I've seen over the years. Few can down a demon of Zeref with their swords alone."

He nodded listlessly.

"Come to think of it, you never mentioned where you came from, did you?" Erza's footsteps came to a halt. "I've travelled all across Fiore and met many mages across the guilds, but I've never heard of anyone named Shirou Emiya." When Shirou turned, found himself looking at the point of Erza's winged blade. "It isn't every day that a powerful Requip mage I've never even heard of appears out of nowhere, armed with legendary blades, and decides that he wants join Fairy Tail. Just who are you, and what are you up to?"

"Do you really want to bring this up now, Erza?" Shirou shot back lackadaisically.

The requip mage nodded with unforgiving eyes.

Well, he did see this coming.

Shirou hadn't shared his history with anyone, not even Lucy, Natsu or Makarov. He had the bearings of someone who'd seen much tragedy over the years and magic techniques that didn't belong in Fiore. It didn't take a fool to know that he was a dangerous person, perhaps even more dangerous than the trap of the mage they were about to walk into.

"Alright, Erza," he finally said. "Where do you want me to start?"

"How about where you came from?"

"Alright." He stared into the void before him. "Let's talk while we move." Somewhere, in one of the caverns, the captured villagers were being held in the mercy of a vicious necromancer. He wouldn't let this story get in the way of saving them.

Erza nodded, but she took neither her sword nor her eyes off him.

"I came from Fuyuki City."

Erza raised her eyebrow. "That's a city I've never heard of before. You really are from another world, then?"

"Yes."

So she did notice, huh. Shirou had expected as much. A legendary figure like Erza Scarlet, who aced all of her quests no matter teir difficulty, would've been sharp enough to pick up on him. "I came from a planet called Earth. It's probably in a parallel universe, far, far away from here."

"What's it like, being on Earth?"

"Certainly not like Fiore," Shirou said thoughtfully. "Earth has a population of about seven billion people. It has mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and seas, just like Fiore, but it's very different." He wondered at how he could best describe the difference. "The technology there is much more advanced," he decided at length. "There, people build glass towers hundreds of stories high, fly in metal contraptions called planes, and use powerful handheld devices that can do anything from giving you directions to surfing the net."

"…wow," Erza muttered. It sounded like an amazing world, certainly not the war-torn battlefield she had been expecting. "How about magic, then? If you use magic, surely there are other mages on Earth, right?"

"That's a completely different story, too," he continued. "Magic on Earth isn't exactly like magic in Fiore, You see," he motioned vaguely around him, "Yes, it's true that only some people on Earth can use magic. These people have magic circuits, which allow them to process the ambient energy around them and convert it into prana, which then gives the owner the ability to cast magic."

ERza nodded intently and Shirou continued.

"There's one main difference, though: Magic in Fiore is everywhere in society, but on Earth, it's a secret kept on pain of death. There's a Mage Association that directs research in magic and keeps it a secret from the rest of the world. Specially trained mages called 'Enforcers' wipe out any witnesses of magecraft to keep the word from spreading."

"That's cruel!" Erza said distastefully. "Are human lives so cheap to them?"

"Regretfully so," Shirou agreed with equal animosity. "Mages in my world run on a diminishing supply of magecraft, called 'mysteries'. It isn't infinite, unlike spells in Fiore," he countered Erza's unspoken question. "For example, if I had a mystery of fireballs and I taught it to someone else, my fireballs would halve in strength."

"It doesn't excuse their cruelty," Erza insisted. "They're just as bad as the dark guilds!"

"Worse."

Shirou scowled.

"You know what's the best part? Most mages are researchers, scholars trying to advance their individual branches of Magecraft toward Akasha, the root of all knowledge." He laughed, a hollow chuckle. "They're monsters who would do anything, use anyone as a test subject, just to get to that goal. Most of them wouldn't even bat an eye at dissecting a human alive for their organs."

"…and your Mage's Association," Erza continued hesitantly. Her voice was returning to its usual coldness, but Shirou could still hear the conflict of emotion in it. "they don't do anything to keep their mages in line?"

"Them!" Shirou snorted. "Why would they? They only care about keeping magic secret. Their goal is research, too, and if a mage discovers a discreet way to reach Akasha by harvesting live humans, the Mages' Association would probably encourage it with everything they've got." He clenched his fist.

"I'm not going to let that happen here," he insisted, half to himself. "If the kidnapped villagers are still alive, I'll bring them back to Bougainvillea village. I won't let them die like this."

"… I see."

Awkward silence permeated the air. Shirou walked on uncomfortably, Erza trodding behind him with a gait that spoke volumes.

He was glad that Erza had finished talking. So glad that he felt a little guilty for it, but couldn't find it in himself to feel genuine remorse about Erza's apparent discomfort.

The conversation reminded him of all the mages he'd seen. He'd been to the Clock Tower before. The Mage's Association was his secondary source of information on monsters, demons and other threats to humanity, the main being the Holy Church. Most mages he saw there were mere scholars and students like Rin, people who studied magic intensely but avoided harming other human beings of their own free will. And yet, there were students studying shoulder to shoulder with them, professors discussing Thaumaturgy with them, to whom human lives meant nothing. People who kidnapped, murdered, experimented on human beings just to further their research.

People whose lives were taken away right in front of him. Who cried to him for help, when he, the man who promised to uphold Saber's ideal and become a hero, could not even raise a finger to help them. The protection of the Mages' Association, the powerful mysteries of these mages and his own lack of strength made these human lives a forgone conclusion, just like the bandits he'd killed earlier- no, worse, because those people were innocent, and they had been alive.

He had a wish, a promise to himself that he had to keep. It didn't mean that he had to like Erza for reminding him.

"There's a chamber ahead," Shirou noted. The tunnel's jet black void gave way to an eerie blue glow, emanating from an enlarged chamber toward their left. On their right, a second chamber glowed, filled with an otherworldly hue that formed a spooky gradient in the confined mine shaft. "Scratch that, two chambers. Neither look very friendly."

He inched closer to the purple wall and peered in.

White-Hilt, the flaming sword in his hands, clattered noisily onto the ground. Shirou stumbled back, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

"Shirou." Erza's worried voice barely registered in his distraught mind. "What did you see?"

"Bodies…" his voice trembled. "So… many… bodies…"

He'd glimpsed a large cavern, its ceiling so high that the eerie purple glow couldn't reach its ceiling. But that wasn't what Shirou had focused on. He was looking for villagers, and in that room alone he had seen more villagers than he had ever wanted to.

Shrivelled male corpses lay strewn against the cavern walls. Some of their faces were barely recognizable from the missing posters around Bougainvillea village. Ghoulish bodies of women and children littered the cavern floor, some so dry he could clearly see the emaciated outline of their ribs. And worst of all…

Bodies piled up before him, a mountain of live flesh and bone heaving, shifting and groaning, their incessant shifting powerless before the amethyst magic circle that bound them, siphoning all their power into a purple gem on a pedestal. Beneath the hideous mountain of unclothed sheath, a single girl with unkempt blonde hair and blue eyes reached out to him with her one free hand, blankly echoing the helplessness of all bodies caught within the spell.

"Oni… chan…" her voice was but a lifeless whisper. "... … Save … me…"

"What… is this…" Erza stepped back slowly, a single hand brought to her face. "... This, this spell…"

"Ah, you're finally here."

The cold voice woke Shirou from his reverie. In his reverie, he'd barely noticed the pedestal in the middle of the room or the hooded guy in a black cloak standing upon it. The mysterious figure threw back his hood, revealing a bald old man with eyes as dark as his skin was white, and a well-trimmed beard that blended well with his unnatural pallor.

So he was the one behind all this!

Shirou felt his fingernails bite into his palm. He recognized the magic. A branch of the mystery of Necromancy, that focused on siphoning and manipulating life forces to create familiars, animate corpses and boost one's magic reserves. Its efficiency arose from its cruel methodology, because its use always involved a live human in one way or another. It belonged to his world, not Fiore. Nothing he'd seen in here, not even the leader of Eisenwald, was nearly as bad as this.

"Who are you?" Shirou demanded, his voice dangerously soft.

"Who am I?" the mage before him chortled. "I'd normally say that it's for me to know and you to find out, but as you can see," he waved to the glowing crystal before continuing, "I'm slightly busy at the moment." He grinned, a mysterious and sadistic grin. "Ethan Blackburn, at your service." He gestured grandly at the pile of bodies and offered Shirou a knowing smile.

"I'm just like you, Shirou. I'm harvesting human souls to save the people I love."

"Like me?" Shirou fumed. The image of a gun hammer sprung unbidden into his mind and fired. In seconds, all of his twenty-seven circuits sprung to life. He could feel his arms trembling ever so lightly from the pumping adrenaline and fury within them, blueprint after blueprint charging each of his fingers as he clenched them ever tighter. "You dare to treat these villagers as fodder, and you think you're like me!?"

"He wants you to attack him! Don't fall for it!" Erza shouted, but it was too late. The teenager charged into the room before she could even lay a hand on his shoulder. She tensed, ready to leap after him, but in the last second a tendril of shadow struck at her and she was forced to block it with her sword. The blow forced her onto her knees, and she looked up with narrowed eyes at her new assailant.

"As if the all-capable Morgana would let you hurt Master Blackburn!" the black-haired woman grinned, a crazed, sultry grin as black as the obsidian magic circle bursting forth from her hand. Tendril after shadow tendril struck at Erza, puncturing the ground mere milliseconds after she leapt away from each of them. "I am your opponent… Erza Scarlet!"

Erza tensed. She split another tendril spike with a brutal swing from her claymore, but a second and third swung toward her from behind, barely missing her legs as she leapt up. The shadow tendrils continued their attack, forcing Erza behind her claymore as she attempted to block each of them. The flailing tendrils that missed fractured the mining shaft with crushing force, and the blows that did hit her sword nearly tore it out of her grasp.

"Yet another powerful mage that escaped my attention?" Erza muttered under her breath. "Just how out of touch am I?"

The mage before her only cackled and sent more tendrils from all directions, each one impaling the narrow mining shaft and sealing off from the crazy shadow mage. She cursed as a tendril severed half a strand of her hair.

Damn if this shadow mage wasn't powerful.

She was at a disadvantage, facing this woman in a narrow mining shaft. Where her opponent had power and versatility, Erza would have to compensate with her own agility. For that, she needed space.

With the insane dexterity that only a master gymnast possessed, Erza flipped over and under the shadow stalagmites as they roared past her body and barely made it into the turquoise-lit chamber. She nearly gasped as she saw it.

The turquoise cavern looked exactly like its violet counterpart, complete even with a single pedestal and a glowing turquoise gem upon it. Magic circles plastered the entire cave, each magic glyph and symbol more beautiful and illegible than the last. Where bodies would've lain in heaps, intricate glyphs covered the floor instead, glowing in a strangely harmonious mix of turquoise and blue. The contrast of the purple magic circles against the glowing turquoise gem only made the entire chamber look more bizarre.

If the two chambers were identical, why have two of them in the first place? Why were the rooms so alike, down even to the gem pedestals and the precious stones upon them? More importantly, what purpose did these gems serve?

Just what was going on here?

"Where do you think you're going?"

Her train of thought derailed as a leg with a full-length black stocking crashed into her sword. Erza grit her teeth behind the surprised attack, nearly losing her footing on the crumbling stones beneath. The black-clothed woman's body appeared from the shadows, her stunning features scrunched in wild glee.

"I'm your opponent, remember?"

She forced Erza back with mind numbing ease. Erza swung, but the woman danced away easily from her swings with a catlike grace that made even her skilful blows look clumsy. Erza huffed and swapped in her claymore for a spear. The long shaft allowed her to bat aside the frequent shadow pillars and close the vast distance between her and Morgana.

"I've got you now!"

She shot forward, her impressive strength borne in the tip of her spear…

CRASH!

Bone flakes scattered around Shirou's widening eyes as Kanshou and Byakuya bit into a wall of interlocking bones.

"My dear amateur," the old man sneered. "We were having a civil conversation just now, were we not? Did you have to resort to violence?" At his command, several shards of bone materialized in the air and shot toward him. "And here I thought we could resolve matters peacefully."

"As if you and I have anything to talk about!"

Magic surged into Shirou's legs and propelled him well into the air. Most of the bone shards plunged past the space he'd been in earlier; those that got near the redhead were dispatched handily with a whirl of his black-and-white blades. A brief moment of surprise hit him, soon to be replaced by his overwhelming anger. "Using humans as experiments…."

His anger surged, more and more of Archer's skills bleeding into his two-sword style as he slapped the flying bone swords aside. His Structural Analysis told him exactly where these bones came from, and the hideous information made him sick and angry. As the bone wall disassembled and shot its pieces toward him, he charged forward, reinforced legs carrying him past the limits of human speed.

"…desecrating the bodies of the departed!"

As he dived headlong into the storm of bones, Kanshou and Byakuya flashed around him in a relentless dance. The instincts that Archer gained painstakingly over the years burned themselves into his mind, singling out the projectiles that would hit him from those which would not. The shards raced toward him with insane momentum, and with equally insane speed and fury he batted them aside and kept charging.

"Oh?" the mage mused innocently. "Are you talking about all these men and women you couldn't save?"

Creature after creature burst from the ground. Ghouls and dead bodies moved into his way, their bone weapons raised to stop his angry advance. The sight only filled Shirou with more horror, and he could feel his anger searing through his roaring circuits, burning more and more of Archer's incredible ability into his arms.

"Wanton killing!"

The mage stared back with annoying, self-righteous eyes, and every fibre of Shirou's being screamed at him to cut the ruthless monster down. He would kill this monster, here and now. He would stop this senseless loss of lives at the hands of this crazy mage, whose cruel actions could only bring harm and death to the world of Fiore!

"You MONSTER!"

He would save them from this evil!

Zombie after zombie raced toward him, weapons at the ready, but their bone swords were no match for the tornado that was Kanshou and Byakuya. Shirou's arms whirled in a beautiful and deadly dance, spilling black blood and ash with every step he took toward the cruel mage. Amid the storm of clawing hands, smoking flesh, ashy remains and raining black blood, the evil man's devilish figure drew closer and closer, until Kanshou and Byakuya swung toward the black mage's exposed neck…

"…Onii-Chan?"

His body swung on his hips, his blades continued their deadly path, but Shirou's anger vanished in a sudden whiff of surprise. Right in front of him, between the neck of the smirking bastard and the sharp edges of his twin swords, the glassy-eyed girl with messy blonde hair and emaciated limbs stared right back at him.

And yet part of his mind, the nerves upon which Archer's incredible skill and utilitarian mindset had been inscribed, actually willed him to go forward.

Just this one death, it urged.

It would be fine if the girl died with this monster. As long as the mastermind was dead, the rest of the village would be saved from their untimely demise. No one would ever have to die at the hands of this evil bastard. If the masses could be saved, one life was a worthy sacrifice…

…right?

Iamtheboneofmysword

WHAM!

It wasn't every day that Erza got beaten at her own game.

Erza prided herself on her skill with Requip. She was among the fastest Requippers, the few who could swap weapons at the blink of an eye and in the middle of combat no less. That versatility in combat, coupled with her incredible skills at practically every weapon in her armoury, easily allowed her to reach the combat potential of an S-class mage and curbstomp practically any mage, or group of mages, that stood in her way.

Unlike Erza Scarlet, Morgana had only one branch of magic at her disposal. The problem was Morgana's ridiculous power over that one branch of magic. Where Erza had to swing, thrust and rely on her general martial prowess to attack, Morgana's shadow magic materialized earth-shattering blasts almost instantaneously.

On top of all that powerful magic, she had to have teleportation, too.

The very moment her spear touched- no, Erza corrected bitterly, should have touched Morgana, the sultry mage disappeared in a waft of black smoke and a pillar of sheer obisidian CRASHED down on her. The column stopped its descent as Erza brought a spear up against it, but the sheer weight of Morgana's attack left her pinned below the pillar and unable to move.

"Is this all the Fairy Queen has to offer?" Morgana pouted. She shot out her fingers, and five tendrils burst forth from the cavern's shadows toward the trapped Erza. "Even my pinkie's stronger than you, you know."

Just as quickly, Erza notched her spear between the ground and the falling meat grinder. She danced around her weapon, avoiding the tendrils that would have knocked her out. Those that tried to close her escape routes were treated to a brutal cut from her broadsword. As Erza avoided the last tendril, she dashed beneath the pillar and snatched her punished spear from under it, and the shadow pillar fractured the cavern ground for miles apart.

"That nearly broke my spear." Erza's lips curled. "You'll pay for that." The spear vanished, replaced by her traditional winged sword.

"You think you can beat me?" A sly smile appeared on Morgana's lips. "You dodged my killing blow, but that 's just the tip of the iceberg, my dear." Her eyes narrowed on Erza. "Now, let's see if you can deflect THIS!" The last word barely left her mouth when eight shadow tentacles burst out of the ground, arcing toward each of Erza's limbs. They followed Erza in her hasty retreat, refusing to succumb to the mage's brutal counterattacks as they hurtled toward her.

Erza grit her teeth. Morgana was no mage to trifle with. Her default Heart Kreuz armour simply did not cut it against this veritable shadow archon, whose powerful and limitless attacks never ceased. She needed something more flexible, more versatile than a mere weapon. As the eight extraordinarily tough tendrils closed upon Erza, she closed her eyes and focused on her most versatile aspect.

It was time for her to stop holding back.

The tendrils struck home. For a brief moment, Erza's armoured form was obscured by the cloud of dust and rock. Morgana watched the scene lazily from the side, the shadow tendrils lying in wait behind her.

"You're a skilled mage, Morgana." Morgana's eyebrow twitched as Erza stepped out of the dust cloud.

Erza had changed her armour. Gone was the imposing plate cuirass that adorned her opponent. In its place were silver wings, silver plates and a silver top, formed of blades so sharp that merely looking at it made her skin tingle uncomfortably. In each hand was a magnificent sword, a flawless blade complemented by its winged crossguards.

"That's a flashy outfit, Erza." Morgana folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at the Fairy Queen. "Was your armour holding you back?" she teased. "Or did you think, perhaps, that your horrible fashion sense would throw my aim off?" The tendrils behind her struck at Erza, each blow fracturing the wall behind her as she dodged them.

She closed the distance easily, and in seconds her two swords swung toward Morgana, inches away from her neck...

WHAM!

Shirou stared into the burning world before him. A wall of flames tore through the grass shoots upon his ground, papered the gleaming, polished colours of his swords with rust and decay, painted the clouds above him with the crimson colours of rotating gears. It was a graveyard of swords, the very same graveyard he had seen in the first night. A graveyard that he could not bear to lay eyes upon.

And in the middle of it all, he could hear Saber's cold voice in his ear…

Is this what you want, Shirou?

Kanshou and Byakuya evaporated. Their glowing remnants blew past the traumatized kid, and Shirou's hands closed around her tender waist- or rather, they tried to, before a great white chunk of bone burst from the ground and snagged him right below the chin.

Shirou's feet left the ground. His throbbing head floated through its weightless experience, and he crashed onto the floor with equally dizzying force.

"Still a child, I see," the unknown mage gloated beneath his cowl. "You couldn't even sacrifice one life for the safety of the many." He shrugged, turning back to the pedestal. "And here I thought we had something in common." He threw the young girl against the ground.

"What the heck was that!?"

Shirou charged forward. If he got to the girl before the mage could…

Skeletons appeared in the dozens, drawing their claymores, katanas and spears as they put themselves between him and the girl. "You can't stop me with that!" he yelled, trying to breach the wall of skeleton warriors with Kanshou and Byakuya, but the undead soldiers evaded his reinforced swings and nearly impaled him as he tried to burst through.

Shirou cursed. He could still swing his sword, he could still move his legs. There was no way he'd give up just like this!

He threw his weapons at the wall of soldiers. Kanshou and Byakuya shot forth, two bladed discs that tore a swath through the wall. He dived through the opening, freshly traced swords hurtling toward the skeleton in his way…

CRASH!

Erza's blades bit into the rock wall, buried up to their hilt. The shock and sudden realization of her predicament was still fresh on her face as she noticed Morgana's shadow tendrils shooting toward her trapped form. Morgana smirked. She was the crafty one, here. Not even the Fairy Queen could fight her and the shadows at the same time-

Erza pressed the assault. At the same time, Morgana felt as if one-no, five- freight trains had slammed into her gut. The heavy blow forced the breath out of her lungs and threw stars in her eyes. She strained down to see five swords in her stomach.

And then, the pain, the shocking, mind-numbing pain that shot through her back as it slammed against the cavern wall… she craned her neck down painfully to look at Erza How… the heck… had she…

Morgana watched with wide eyes as eight more swords appeared out of nowhere. Each of them flew at her shadows with mind numbing speed, impaling each of them against the other walls of the cavern. Her eyes narrowed as they looked back at Erza, only this time it was the Fairy Tail mage that was smirking and Morgana who was scowling.

"You haven't even touched the tip of this iceberg," was what Erza's smirk seemed to imply. Morgana could feel the blood boiling in her chest as she frothed murderously at the Fairy Tail mage. With a grimace, her body vanished from beneat the impaling swords and rose out of a shadow behind the Fairy Queen.

Erza turned. "So much for a surprise attack," she said, unimpressed.

"I'll kill you!" Morgana yelled.

With a face twisted in fury, the black mage charged forward. The ground behind her tore apart as dozens of shadow tendrils burst forth. She shot towards Erza, a gout of black flame burning in both hands.

Erza stared her down. Behind her, the air rippled, and a hundred swords rolled out.

WHUP!

The cowled mage didn't seem to care. He simply flicked his wrist. At his command, a wall of bone spines burst forth from the ground. The final bone spear decked Shirou before his red-tinged eyes could notice and sent him crumbling back where he'd came.

"Good try, Shirou Emiya, but you can't beat me with that." The mage sneered, grabbed a motionless lump from the ground. "The moment you tried to save this, I knew you couldn't win against me."

"There. Sera, the Mayor's daughter."

The little girl landed on his chest with a soft thump.

"Die with the knowledge of your failure."

Against the dark purple glow, he could make out her traumatized gaze as she stared back at him, the fear that lingered in her blue irises peering out from the wild strands of golden hair across her face.

Shirou knew it all too well. He knew it well because it was a face he'd grown used to seeing so often.

It was the face of every single failure he'd met before. It was the face of the terrified man saddled with an explosive vest, the face of the terrified woman before Mephisto's spear impaled her, the face of the child who'd heard the click of a land mine under his foot.

It was the face of a person about to die.

That face only reminded him of the persons he could not save, no matter how hard he'd tried.

He swore he would never see them again. He would become powerful enough to save everyone, so that no one would have to look at him with that face again, ever. He would do everything he could, so that people would not fight, and the people who cared about them would never have to bear that face.

And for all his efforts, Shirou had failed to prevent this mysterious mage from inflicting that face on this girl.

Shirou hated him.

The way he flippantly tossed the girl, a living, breathing human girl at Shirou like he didn't even care about her life, only made Shirou hate him even more.

But all that hate couldn't change his grudging approval.

The cruel, dastardly, diabolical mage was right.

Had he chosen to eliminate her along with the evil mage, the villagers would have been saved, immediately. Shirou certainly wouldn't be lying half-dead on the ground like this.

Did he even have the power to save the girl anyway?

When he was young, his father had said the same. Every life that was saved came with a price, a decision not to save someone else instead. The power to save was a limited resource. To use it for everyone who suffered was to stretch it past its limits, where it threatened to fail and get everyone killed instead. Indeed, while Archer did kill some to save others, he did not do it out of his own bloodlust. He only took a life because he could see no other way to keep those he protected alive.

It was his willingness to kill that which threatened lives that had allowed Archer to save so many.

And yet…

His wanton killing was something that Shirou couldn't do.

He'd sworn to save everyone.

Shirou had his limits. He wasn't everywhere at once. There were opponents he couldn't beat and lives he couldn't save without killing. He couldn't save the victims of the Clock Tower's research efforts from its diabolical experiments, certainly not without killing a lot of Enforcers and angry mages along the way. He couldn't reach out beyond the grave and bring back the possessed bandits he'd fought earlier.

But he'd sworn to save everyone. He'd sworn to save Sera.

The fact that he'd sworn to save everyone, the fact that he'd promised Kiritsugu he'd do it, meant something important to him. He was risking his life and removing threats from the world because he didn't want people to die before him. If he was there, able to lift a finger and swing a sword, he couldn't let anyone die before him.

And that included Sera.

It was naïve.

It was immature to expect a sword to remain bloodless, not if he was willing to use it and swing it.

Still, as impossible as it was…

…the dream to save everyone must be beautiful.

Only that dream could save the little girl in his hands.

It was enough. She was enough.

That her little chest rose and fell, that her eyes fluttered slowly to life on him. It was his dream that would keep her breathing, that would wipe that saddening expression plastered on her face.

And if she could be saved…

… even if it made him a uselessly juvenile boy…

… even if he wasn't strong enough to save everyone before him yet…

… the dream to save everyone could not be a mistake!

He would save this girl, no matter the cost!

"Stay behind me, okay?" he flashed a comforting smile at the young girl in his hands. She opened her eyes and nodded uncertainly. He set her on the stone floor and glanced at the comatose men and women lying in their miserable heap.

There was no time to waste. These men and women were likely so drained that they could not effectively defend themselves. Therefore, if he was to save all of them, he needed to defeat this mage and stop his evil ritual.

Shirou stood up.

"I've wasted enough time on you, boy." the mage groaned. With a wave of his hand, thirty skeletons clawed their way onto ground level. "Tell that kid what it means to grow up, will you?" he snarked. "Oh, and once he's done… kill him, but try not to destroy the head. I want to study his brain once it's over." He returned to the pedestal; the purple mass of groaning bodies continued through its nauseating dance.

Shirou ignored him.

"Trace, on!"

Pointless banter would not allow him to beat this mage. Neither would pointless aggression. In order to overcome this opponent, in order to save the little girl behind him, he had to understand what he was up against. He had to overcome the intelligent skeleton soldiers that barred his way and avoid the mage's formidable bone attacks.

It wasn't enough just to wipe out the skeleton soldiers. Shirou had to decimate them. He had to prove, convincingly, that if the mage didn't focus exclusively on putting him out of the fight, he would ruin the mage's plans all too easily. He had to prove that skeleton soldiers weren't enough to handle him and threaten the lives of his victims at the same time.

He had to force Blackburn's attention on himself.

As long as the mage was thoroughly focused on him, he couldn't carry out the ritual. He couldn't drain the souls of the trapped men and women in the circle.

He could not let Archer's mindset carry him away. Shirou was here to save people, never mind the human shields. If he wanted to save everyone, he could not sacrifice any one to save the many. For that reason, he could not use Kanshou and Byakuya here.

Monoshizao was made for one-on-one combat. While Sasaki Kojiro's skills could definitely fend off multiple opponents with the ideal, unbreakable weapon, the Fishing Pole would not be durable enough for this fight. On top of that, Sasaki Kojiro's experience catered mostly to other sword wielders. The legendary swordsman may have been able to beat off the other weapon wielders with his peerless skill, but Shirou's imitation could not.

"Trigger, off!"

What he needed was a knight.

A knight who devoted all of his formidable prowess toward his ideal, toward those under his protection. A knight whose skill with the sword was only matched by his versatility in every weapon, who would not make a single mistake in the battlefield. A knight who went undefeated upon the battlefield, even when he was faced with the King of Heroes, Gilgamesh!

The aria rolled easily off his tongue. In his mind, the firing hammer struck down. Od charged through his arm, filling out his circuits one by one, and the prana that now surged out of them rushed into his projection.

Judge the concept of creation.

Hypothesise the basic structure.

Duplicate the composition material.

Imitate the skill of its construction.

Sympathise with the experience of its growth.

Reproduce the accumulated years.

Supersede every step of the process!

The beautiful sword that materialized in Shirou's hand was not the bejewelled Caliburn of his beloved Saber, not the Spartan black and white of the intertwined Kanshou and Byakuya, not the deceptively thin Monoshizao with its sure-kill technique. There was only one sword that could be so firm, so upright, so persistent before the armies that broke around its blade.

The weapon gleamed eagerly in his hand. He could already feel its history seeping into his limbs, the familiar touch of Lancelot's expertise filling his mind as he mapped and judged the enemies before him. As the closest soldier clattered toward him with its spear, Shirou evaded its deadly thrust and slapped the knight's sword across its face. He stepped forward, neatly evading the swing meant for his back, and the righteous claymore in his hand shattered its ribcage in one explosive stab.

"ARONDIGHT!"

As he swung, Shirou could just barely make out the little girl's cowering form in his vision… and the bony sword coming down on her head.

"HAH!"

The little girl's hair billowed before his second wind. Above her head, Lancelot's indomitable sword split another two skeleton warriors in half. As the other skeleton warriors closed in around him, Shirou swerved around the girl, destroying each approaching skeleton warrior with a precise blow from his sword.

As he cleaved each skeleton apart, Lancelot's knowledge flooded into his limbs, separating his opponents into those who could threaten him and those who could not, mapping the attack angles that each skeleton had on him.

And yet, he wasn't fast enough. With another snap of Blackburn's finger, ten more skeleton warriors clawed their way to the surface. Two of them started drawing arrows and aiming at him, while the other eight reinforced the neat ring of skeleton warriors closing on him. With each five he destroyed, ten more rose to take their place.

He had to be faster.

He had to be more aggressive, to engage more than one opponent at the same time. He had to counter these skeletons' attacks while he took them apart. And to do all of that, he needed more of Lancelot's skill.

As he moved, his five prana-charged circuits surged, fervently mimicking the ancient knight's skill with the sword.

Faster.

Circuits six, seven, eight came to life, bleeding prana as they wrote more of Lancelot into the young boy. As the next skeleton approached him, Arondight crashed neatly into its cranium, At the same time, Shirou's hand slipped around its falling sword and plunged it deep into another's ribcage.

Faster.

The thought surged through his neurons. His circuits responded, drawing forth more and more of Lancelot's skills from his traced memories and filling in his own gaps. Three more warriors surged forward. At the same time, Shirou's hands closed around a fallen warrior's spear. He whirled it around in a devastating swing, and the blunt shaft sent the new opponents flying.

Circuits nine, ten and eleven whirred into action.

As he swept aside his next wave of opponents, Shirou's eyes met the empty sockets of more skeletons. A second wave appeared,

If that didn't cut it, then he had to be-

Faster!

The Projected claymore in his hand began to glow and fracture, but Shirou took no notice. His body spun, his sword arm swung, his free arm snatched the weapons of his newly felled foes and plunged them straight into his next opponents. With speed and precision that only Arondight's previous wielder could muster, his mind noticed and deconstructed each incoming attack, and his body moved to take advantage of it.

The prana in his fourteen active magic circuits burned as they wrote Lancelot's every skill and instinct into his mind. Bit by bit, weapon by weapon, day by day, Lancelot's training at the Lake appeared in his memory and materialized in his actions.

FASTER!

Light bled out of the deepening cracks on Arondight , glowing dust swirling along its fracturing blade and wrapping around his body. His arms ached from the effort, and yet his sword tore through Shirou's enemies with a skill he shouldn't have had, his fingers closing around weapons that should've been beyond his reach. The cloud of bone dust rapidly forming around him continued to thicken with each pulverizing strike he hammered home.

Bone spines shot through the closing Skeleton horde, hurtling toward his body with blinding speed and accuracy. Before any of them could hit him, however, Arondight's fractured form stopped them dead in their tracks. He didn't even see the gauntlets that flashed on his arms as he brought each bone spine against his breaking sword.

"A Knight does not die with empty hands."

"OVERWRITE!"

The words leapt unbidden to his lips. The sound of breaking glass struck his ears. The punished, abused weapon in his hand let out one death cry and shattered, and the storm of glowing particles crashed into his skin. As each glowing cloud made contact, he could feel the familiar pain of his circuit creation, the burn of a white-hot steel rod being shoved down his spine.

But I'm not done yet!

His circuits flared up one by one. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty fully active circuits burning as painfully as the Great Fuyuki Fire itself.

He didn't stop moving, didn't stop swinging. His fingers closed on one abandoned weapon after another and swung it at his countless opponents. His purpose, his will to fight had been built with more than just the legendary sword in his hands, hands that tore his next set of weapons from his fallen foes and buried them into the enemies before him.

The Shirou that ripped through his circling opponents' mass with a borrowed sword in each hand could only be described as a "tornado".

By this blade, I live, and I save.

"BLUMENBATT!"

"SHADOW BLITZ!"

Erza's winged swords swung down, dual flashes of white inflicting a cruel crosscut upon their victim. At the same time, Morgana's hands transformed into cruel black spikes, blocking both swords in their devastating swings. Their blow met with such force that the very air blasted away from where they stood, and the ground shook as Morgana's shadow tendrils met Erza's converging swords in midair.

"This is checkmate, Erza," Morgana sneered. Her eyes began to glow purple as she stared at their next victim.

What? She has laser vision too?

"I'll-"

Her mouth froze as she glimpsed Erza's smirk. A split second later, fifty swords slammed into her body and pinned it into the ground.

"Looks like you don't have enough shadows, Morgana," Erza glided smoothly to the pinned woman, both swords lowered in victory. "Your defeat was certain from the moment you- ARGH!"

At that very moment, a shadow tendril slammed into Erza and smashed her against the cavern's other wall. As her effigy wafted away from Erza's pinning swords, Morgana stared down her opponent with a crazed grin.

"How rude of you to interrupt me, Erza Scarlet." As her hand morphed into a black spike, she dove toward the pinned Erza, her numberless shadow blazing behind her charging form. "I'll always beat you. Don't you dare forget about it!"

Time seemed to slow. Erza's eyes widened as the tendrils grew larger and larger, as they closed in on her vulnerable body, their barbed tips poised to impale her through the heart.

CRACK!

With almost mind-numbing accuracy, the decaying spear in Shirou's left hand smashed its way into the Roman Legionnaire's skull. As the undead soldier crumbled, his right swiped the gladius from the skeleton's belt and plunged it into the eye socket of a Samurai thrall. Before their bodies could even touch the ground, the decaying Samurai's katana had found its way into a deceased Viking warrior's ribcage, the wazikashi on his other side impaled on a Greek Spartan's skull.

"You think you can kill me like this?" the mage guffawed from halfway across the cavern. "I must say, your fighting is quite inspirational. You've turned the most benign form of Magecraft into something that even a graduated mage would have trouble with. But…" At the snap of his finger, ten more soldiers crawled out of the ground and joined the ranks of his enemies. "You'll never get me like this. Certainly not without leaving the girl behind."

That was his weakness.

Shirou Emiya (or rather, this Shirou Emiya) was not Archer. He was flawless with a bow, but his magecraft didn't take kindly to it.

The base of their magic was quite similar: a Reality Marble, founded upon affiliated Elements, broken ideals, and a set of spells that most mages didn't deign to practice. They both forged Noble Phantasms, swords that embodied the ideals of Humanity. And yet, a single difference in their respective Origins had changed everything.

Archer's Origin was Sword. Aligned with his element, it made for an unexpectedly low prana cost in Projecting Noble Phantasms, Altering Noble Phantasms, and forging new swords. While his Projections were so faithful to the original that they allowed him to use their original wielders' skills, the ultimate purpose of his projections had been to make swords. It was something that he did in every fight, forging sword after sword and plunging them into his enemies.

His Projection was centered around Gradation Air: the invoking of his swords upon reality.

But Shirou was different.

His alternate lives had incarnate origins.

Therein lay the fundamental difference between them and him.

His Origin was Hero.

The concept of an extraordinary person, who lived, existed solely to save everyone, had been so deeply ingrained upon him that the evolution of his origin had changed. As Avalon gradually nudged his element toward Sword, it had written its identity, the unending pursuit for a distant Utopia, into Shirou's very being.

His Projection was different in nature. Gone was the absurdly low prana cost for tracing swords. In its place, the ceaseless drive to emulate- no, to become a protector manifested. Throwing legendary swords at his opponent became a luxury. Using an altered Sword as an arrow was impossible. In exchange, he could wield each blade in his world with a skill that his alternate selves could only dream of.

He could engage Blackburn in ranged combat, but he had no illusions about who would win.

The only way to beat the mage was up close.

But going up close meant leaving behind the little girl.

The thoughts surged through his mind in quick succession, cost him a precious half-second that would've plunged his plundered Zweihander into a Swiss Pike's shoulder instead of its accompanying footman.

"So here's my proposal." The mage flashed a knowing grin, ugly words rolling off his tongue like sickly sweet Grail sludge. "Leave the girl behind, and cut me down. We both know that you can cover the distance easily." He gestured toward the pile of comatose human bodies in his magic circle. "That way, you'll be able to save these lives."

Shirou snatched the broadsword from the falling footman and split the Pike from shoulder to hip.

That the Sera would inevitably die, hacked apart by merciless grinning skeletons, was left unsaid.

He snatched the lance from the falling spearman and whirled upon his next target, a machete wielder.

It was a very brutal means, but it would satisfy his dream- Archer's dream.

Pike met skull, and skull gave way.

But it was a pointless question.

The machete spun in his hand, a familiar weight that reminded him of Kanshou and Byakuya.

From the very moment that Shirou's eyes had seen Sera suffering, his decision had been made.

It left his hand as abruptly as it had come, buried in another swordsman's pelvis, replaced by a hand-and-a-half sword it had so fervently tried to emulate.

He would save everyone.

The sword took off one undead warrior's head, then another.

He would bring redemption to those who suffered. If they needed his help, then he would personally grant them salvation.

The weapon, exceedingly familiar to Shirou's hand, found itself fending one polearm after another.

Sera needed him.

It slapped aside the blades and speartips, glinting edges that should've bitten Sera half a second ago.

He could not leave her behind.

The sword moved tirelessly, edging itself into the tiniest gaps among its opponents.

Even if the chance of saving her and everyone else was miniscule, he would not give up his hope, nor his pursuit.

It struck true at every turn, relieving the dead of their unearthly duty.

He would to save everyone, no matter the cost.

His circuits burned as his Projection stripped away their prana. His reinforced limbs burned as he stretched them beyond their physical limit. His nerve cortex burned as it analysed, decided, reacted to each attack with almost flawless accuracy. But while all of them weighed heavily on his tolerance for pain, none of them could force him away from the enshrined ideal in his mind.

"If that's how you want it..." Blackburn sighed. With a huge rumble, a giant bone wall erupted from the floor and split the cavern into half, obscuring him from Shirou's view.

They could not compare to the Great Fuyuki Fire, where he had been forced to watch hundreds of people die before his eyes.

Soldier after undead soldier raised their swords against him. Platoon after undead platoon crumbled upon the floor, their weapons stuck upright upon their bodies like so many grave markers. Dozens after dozens of undead blades joined them, glinting from the bodies of the newly risen like so many blades upon an undead plain.

They could not match his trials in the Grail War, where he struggled through Bloodfort Andromeda and put a stop to Shinji's nefarious plans.

It was the opening he had been hoping for. This was the best way to catch the Blackburn's attention. If the black mage thought the wall was unbreakable, Shirou would prove him wrong. His circuits flared easily, replicated the Phantasm in his mind and invoked it upon reality with such flourish that it burnt out four of them at once.

They could not compare to his fight against Gilgamesh.

A rose-tipped spear of the Fae, wielded by the First of the Knights of Prianna. Not blood-red like the cruel and Barbed Spear of Piercing Death, nor Spartan like the unadorned killing machine that was Rhongmyiad. A spear that Lancelot should never have wielded or held before in his hands, but yet felt right at home in Lancelot's hands thanks to his his all-encompassing skill with arms.

"GAE!"

His other arm drew back, warding off the encroaching soldiers. His hip swung with all his bodily strength, his reinforced arm surged forward with every bit of energy left in him. He would bank all of his energy-

"DEARG!"

-on this one shot!

CRACK!

The rough cavern walls shattered easily against Erza's metal wings. The sudden movement caught her off guard as her arms lost their anchor. The obsidian tendril surged against her weakening strength, stopping abruptly above her exposed belly. A second shadow tendril impaled the space where her head had been, burying its spiked tip well into the cavern rock. Her arms gave way, and the shadow tendril buried itself deep into her soft flesh.

Or would have, Erza corrected in her mind, if she hadn't twisted out of its way and let its momentum carry it into the rock. She swung acrobatically onto the tendril and charged toward its owner, dozens of swords materializing behind her back. As Erza headed for what undoubtedly was her real target, two Morgana clones flanked her from each side, magic circles bursting forth from their hands.

As her two swords crashed down on Morgana's own sword-arms, sixteen tendrils snapped toward her back, ready to crucify her upon the cavern wall-

"CIRCLE SWORD!"

-only to be knocked unceremoniously away as a spinning wreath of swords blasted out of Erza's body. Wide-eyed, Morgana swung both arms to deflect the claymores heading for her, leaving her chest wide open. Erza's swords mercilessly bisected her across the front, leaving the effigy to vanish in a puff of smoke. She leapt away as another sixteen tendrils fractured the ground beneath her, only for her own summoned swords to pin them all down.

With a snap of her finger, the sixteen tendrils disappeared, leaving sixteen of Erza's swords buried pointlessly in the rubble. Yet another copy materialized before Erza, her eyes narrowed in a deadly smile.

"Give up already," Erza demanded. "You are not my match."

"Oh?" The three Morganas smiled, the same deadly smile that drove chills up and down her spine. "What makes you think so?"

The first Morgana put her hands on her hips. "You don't hit harder than I do, but it wouldn't be a problem if you were faster. But you aren't either. On top of that," she gestured to her other two copies, "there are more of me than there are of you. I don't see any reason to believe you can win."

As if I'd let you know the reason, Erza noted to herself. If it were so easy, I 'd be dead on the ground already.

She tensed as a second copy spoke up. "I think I know what she's planning," Morgana #2 said with a chirpiness as false as a 2D figure. "She's hoping for her boyfriend to come save her!"

Tch.

"If that's the case, my dear Erza, I'm sorry to burst your little bubble," the third chipped in, mock sympathy dripping from her tongue. "No one goes up against Blackburn-sama and walks out alive."

As much as Erza disliked the shadow mage, she had to admit that Morgana had a point. Erza knew very clearly that Shirou had an upper limit to his power, one that was probably under Erza's own. If Shirou had been up against Morgana, Erza had no lingering doubts about who would've won.

Of course, he wasn't counting on Shirou to save her. She was the Queen of Fairies, and if she needed saving, then Shirou was clearly out of his depth. Morgana was no real match for the Queen of Fairies anyway!

Still, it was a troubling issue. Shirou was up against an opponent tougher than Morgana. Erza needed to end this fight as fast as possible and save her partner before this Blackburn killed him.

"He'll be turned into a walking corpse," Morgana continued, licking her lips at the thought. "A slave for eternity under Blackburn-sama's command! Meanwhile…" her black leather gloves squeaked as her fist closed mercilessly. "I'll squash you like a bug. Isn't that wonderful?"

"Not quite what I had in mind, Morgana. Still," Erza continued with a smirk on her face, "it's nice to know that you still believe in the illusion of victory."

"What are you saying?" Morgana demanded crossly. "I'll have your head in half a second and you know it."

"That's your ego talking. Did you think you were on the same level as me?"

"WHAT!?"

Morgana's furious scream rang in Erza's ears. All three copies charged toward the requip mage, eyes frozen in maniacal fury. Behind them, shadow tendrils rend the ground apart, surging furiously toward the red-headed knight.

And in that moment, Erza knew, Morgana's defeat had been decided.

No matter how powerful a magic double was, it was still another copy, not the original's own body. The owner of all three bodies still had to control them individually, and no matter how good they were at it, there would still be a miniscule time lag between the actions of the original and those of the copy.

Small as the reaction window was, it was a detail that Erza's sharp eyes never missed.

She tensed up as the storm of Shadow Magic approached, sword after sword rolling into existence behind her back. Her twin swords were drawn back, ready for this one opportunity. Against an opponent as slippery as Morgana, she had only one chance to settle this in a clean and simple manner, and she wasn't going to waste it.

Morgana closed in. The thirty paces between them shrunk down to twenty, and then to ten, the woman in the middle slightly faster than the rest. Erza focused on that one: it was her who had leapt at Erza first, her who was most likely the original Morgana.

The ground beneath her feet protested, and Erza sprung off, rocketing toward the copy heading down the middle.

"Trying the same thing again?" Morgana scoffed. "Just how stupid are you?" Her doubles surged forward from each side and swung around, tendrils and blasts circly around to hit Erza in the back. Just as quickly as they had turned, a torrent of swords buried themselves into each copy, pinning all of them mercilessly to the ground.

"Not good enough!" Morgana's crazy grin widened. The tendrils behind her reared up, striking at Erza as she closed like so many missiles arcing toward their prey. Erza ignored them and made a beeline for Morgana instead, swords raised for a devastating strike. As they approached, Erza mouthed a final phrase.

"PENTAGRAM SWORD!"

"You think that's enough?"

Morgana blocked the first slash and the second as Erza surged past her. For a brief moment, the shadow mage smiled, confident in her victory.

At that moment, her stomach erupted in agony. She stared, uncomprehending, as Erza brought her sword around grimly. "Did you think I'd settle for two slashes only, Morgana!?"

"… Five… slashes…!?"

She collapsed into a puff of black smoke.

"Requip!"

Turquoise gave way to bleaching white. For a brief moment, the shadows all over the cavern were replaced with light, the stunning brilliance of her new armour dismissing any and every shadow within the cavern. Morgana's shadow fragments vanished before the aggressive light. Morgana's Shadow Magic relied on the lingering presence of shadows, so if she wiped every single shadow from the cavern, Morgana could not win!

Erza looked around. As far as she could see in the blinding light of her own armour, there was no sight of a silhouette, no sign of the shadow mage in the cavern.

"… you've already failed to kill me, you know?" Morgana's voice echoed, an ominous afterthought in the brilliantly lit cavern.

"It was a good plan, better than what I had expected from you. But…" her voice dipped into a deadly whisper right behind Erza's ear. "It wasn't enough. Because I'm already here."

She shouldn't have missed it. Erza already knew that Morgana could teleport between shadows. The only reason she could replace her doubles almost instantly was that they, too, cast their own shadows. And when Erza Scarlet had put her glowing armour up, a single shadow had been cast.

Erza Scarlet's own shadow.

"Goodbye, Erza Scarlet," Morgana mocked.

"Ditto."

Whatever Morgana was about to do ground to a sparking halt when Erza turned around with impossible speed and slammed a giant club into her midsection. Erza hurtled through the air with Morgana at the business end of her weapon, and the shadow mage met the rocky cavern wall with a force that could only be described as concussive.

It was the straw on the camel's back.

Morgana and Erza's magicks had proven too much for even the tough rock surface, and it had finally decided to give way. Erza's most powerful strike blasted Morgana into the wall and kept going.

CRASH!

Blackburn's expression was priceless.

Whatever he'd been expecting Shirou to do at the other end, it certainly had not involved Shirou bursting through with a rose-coloured spear in one hand and a bone-dusted, but largely unharmed girl wrapped protectively in the other. It had also not involved said rose-tipped spear sailing smoothly into the floating amethyst on the pedestal and shattering it into so many fragments.

It was a sight that brought triumph to Shirou's face, though perhaps not quite as much as the sudden fading of the burdensome rotting smell that signified the end of the binding magic ritual, or the thumping of rolling bodies falling flat as the magic circle under them disappeared.

That triumph lasted for a second before it was overshadowed with fear. An intense fear. Specifically, a bone-chilling, nerve-wracking fear that urged him to run as fast as he could from Ethan Blackburn before the murderous rage coming over his face was manifested in his necromancy. But Shirou was a mage, and while Ethan Blackburn was good at his magic, he wasn't about to let the necromancer run loose against the villagers he'd sworn to protect.

But even he had not expected what would follow.

Pain.

Relentless, merciless pain, the agonizing sensation of a white-hot iron rod being inserted into his spine, spread across all of his circuits as they suffered the same fate. Mind-numbing pain that accompanied the disorienting vertigo as things that he should've known, things that he had become intimately familiar with vanished from his fracturing mind.

His eyes came back to focus, locked on the jagged purple dagger buried in his arm.

Rule Breaker.

"… Sera…?"

Betrayal crept onto his face, only to be washed away as Sera stared back at him through blank, unseeing eyes. Gone was the pitiful look that requested, no, begged him to save her from the dark mage's grasp. Shirou felt a slap across his hazy mind as the mayor's daughter plopped onto the ground and looked at him with a gaze not her own.

He felt his knees crumble under him as Lancelot's vitality and traced skill left him, tasted the gritty dirt upon the cavern floor as his circuits wound down.

"Hypnosis magic."

Blackburn gritted the words out from behind his clenched teeth. Shirou struggled to bring his head up and looked at the necromancer with a gaze of pure hate.

"Don't give me that look," the mage snapped. The anger on his face was definitely genuine, bearing none of the lighthearted amusement from his "friendly" tussle with Shirou. Shirou had wrecked the magic of a lifetime, and Blackburn knew it. "You deserved it. As a matter of fact," he spat, "betrayal is too kind for the likes of you."

"You don't even know you're a hypocrite," Shirou shot back, only for Blackburn to slap him across the face.

"THE HYPOCRITE IS YOU!" the mage roared. "Running around and fighting monsters with those two swords, saving sinful people from their well-deserved deaths… you can't even follow your own dream properly. Every villain you meet," he continued angrily, "is a villain saved from his justly deserved death!"

"As if your wanton killing is any better, Blackburn."

"Don't lump me in with the likes of you," Blackburn said dismissively. "I'm killing all of these people for a just purpose. You see," he continued snidely, "I have a mage under my wing. A bright, young shadow user, so talented in Shadow magic that few of this world could even match her at the art."

"But she suffered from a terrible fate."

Blackburn strode furiously across the hall. "Where other mages could freely use their shadow magic, her own circuits burned her from the inside. They ate at her circuits. They sucked her life force away like a black hole and left her far weaker. But that wasn't enough misfortune, was it?" His voice grew angrier and angrier, until his footsteps cracked the ground in his towering rage. "because she had an ARMY of BLACK MAGES seeking to kill her for her power!"

"And it's fine to kill all those bandits for that cause?" Shirou shot back. Whatever Rule Breaker had done, the effects were reverberating around his own Circuits, wreaking havoc like nothing else.

"They're WORTHLESS!" Blackburn roared. "Of all the opportunistic bastards to hunt my beloved Morgana, they were the first! Their lives are FORFEIT!"

"All of these lives are meant to save her, Emiya Shirou," Blackburn continued. "With so many souls on my hands, I can graft enough circuits onto her. I can save her from her self-consuming magic. I can finally give her the life of a normal shadow mage, able to use her powers without suffering."

"But you, the saviour, stripped all of that away." Blackburn pointed an accusing finger. "You robbed my Morgana of her only chance at life!"

"And you think that her life is worth the lives of so many?" Shirou retorted. "That it's okay for her to live happily ever after, if millions of people have their dreams, their aspirations, their very existences erased for it?"

"What matters their aspirations?" Blackburn demanded. "It's a world where dogs eat each other, Shirou Emiya. The only lives that are worth saving are the ones closest to your heart."

It was a school of thought all too clear to Shirou.

He knew how reality pit his interests against the interests of the many. He knew how he almost forced Saber to consume other human souls, if only so that she could continue to help Shirou in his quest to halt the greater carnage of the Holy Grail War. He knew, from his understanding of Archer's memories, how another version of himself had thrown aside his own ideals so that he could save the one person closest to him, because there simply was no way he could protect them both.

Archer had even said it out loud once, to an alternate of himself that eventually embodied his ideals anyway.

"Saving the many, and saving the individual, are mutually exclusive acts. You can only save one or the other."

"Put him out, Sera," Blackburn commanded. "If these souls will not work, I'll just have to graft this mage's own on circuits onto Morgana."

And yet, Shirou thought, as he watched the jagged dagger in Sera's hand reach toward him, the dream to save everyone was one that he could not give up on. As naïve, as brazen, as ignorant as it was…

… he could not bring himself to believe that the world would not let all of its humans live happily together. No matter how cruel Gaia and Alaya were... no matter how insurmountable the odds were before him…

No matter how mutually exclusive a person's happiness seemed…

… it was human effort, his effort, that created the possibility of making all of them happy.

It was only by becoming stronger, by being more capable, by providing more, that more and more of the general public became happier. Even if happiness was mutually exclusive across many situations, it was an increase in ability that allowed the decision maker to save them both. The promise of power was not equal to the promise of an unconditional wish, but nonetheless, it extended to him the helping hand he needed to create a wonderful world.

A world where no one had to suffer.

Well, he thought helplessly as Sera's knife descended on him, I'll just have to strive for that world in my next life.

"Rejoice," Blackburn intoned mercilessly. "For today, your dream of saving another shall be fulfilled."

His mouth was still open, his tongue about to roll off the incantations he needed, but Blackburn's grand plan of grafting Shirou's circuits ground to a sparking halt.

Because at that exact moment, two things happened.

One of these two things happened first, but they hurried so quickly after each other that the difference in time didn't really matter at all. To Shirou, who lay semi-lifeless on the floor of the cavern with Rule Breaker raised above him, they could've occurred in reverse order as far as he cared and he would have felt no different.

The first was the louder. It involved the cavern wall above Blackburn's head exploding with such force that boulders, rocks and stone shards flew over his head as two gravel-trailing female figures crashed into his field of vision. They descended with such force that he could feel something- a pair of wings, was it?- almost clip his head before his eyes saw the black plated back of their owner, and he could hear the crack of the rock under the other person's leather-clad body as it shattered the pedestal.

Ethan Blackburn had seen many spectacular things in his life as a necromancer. Yet, nowhere among the varied experiences of rising Lich Dragons and Dead Cities could he recall an event as attention-grabbing as this one, not less because the falling rocks would have killed him if his instinctively summoned bone spears had not knocked them aside.

"What the heck is that!?" Blackburn demanded, eyes flickering in confusion.

It was that earthshaking moment that had set the stage for the second event.

Morgana lay on the floor, unmoving. Erza sat above her, battered, tired but clearly satisfied.

"Finally. That blow was strong enough to knock her out for a while, huh…" the redheaded woman muttered. "That makes everything easier."

"…you!" Ethan seethed. In his fury, he failed to see the blonde child approaching his arm with a vicious jagged dagger in hand. Before he knew it, he had found himself staring inexplicably at Rule Breaker as the jagged dagger broke his skin.

"But... I… hypnotized… you…" he managed. His legs wobbled once, and he fell to the ground too.

"You did," Sera replied, hate shooting out from her blue eyes. "You violated me." She continued, fury building in her voice. "You tried to take my soul away. You used my dad's present to hurt this," she pointed at Shirou, "this… no, my hero!"

Neon blue lines flashed across Sera's arms. Her tiny hands trembled as she edged the jagged dagger deeper and deeper into the necromancer's forearm. With each push, each dig, the woman under Erza Scarlett screamed, as if the dagger had been buried not in him but in the woman instead.

"No!" Blackburn's eyes widened. "Don't!" He turned to Shirou with pleading eyes. "Please, Shirou, if you want to save Morgana… please make it stop!"

"HOW COULD YOU!" Sera shouted above them all.

The amethyst glow in the cavern flickered. The woman fell flat on the ground, clearly spent. Sera continued to twist the dagger in Blackburn's arm with an iron grip that even Shirou, in his weakened state, could hardly pry open. "Sera," he tried, moving the tiny fingers off the purple dagger's hilt, but the girl's fingers clamped defiantly back onto the dagger.

"Sera!" He yelled. "Look at me!"

The girl snapped toward him, gratefulness glittering in her eyes.

It was surprising, Shirou mused to himself, just how fast children's emotions could change. But he wasn't here to deal with child psychology. He was here to save people. Now that the villagers were free, he couldn't let Sera harm Blackburn and his apprentice like this.

"Sera," Shirou continued slowly. One word out of line and the situation would be unsalvageable. "Blackburn has killed many people, but it's not right to do this to him." As Sera looked up to him with confused eyes, he asked, "Do you think that killing people is okay?"

"No, but…" Sera looked down. "This bad person has killed many people. If I kill him, he will stop!"

"First of all, you aren't killing anyone with that dagger," Shirou chided gently. "That is a magical dagger, Rule Breaker. It cuts magic contracts and not human flesh. Secondly," he continued, "even if someone has killed before, killing him is not justice. It won't bring anyone back from the dead, and those close to the killed person will only become angry, and they might kill you too and call it justice."

"I don't understand," Sera continued, unsure. "What do you mean?"

"It's quite simple," Shirou continued. "Two wrongs cannot make a right. If you truly care for these people," he continued, gesturing at the corpses over the floor, "then you must give these people a reason not to kill. A reason for everyone to be happy, for no one to have to suffer." He took a deep breath and gave Sera the widest smile he could. "That is what it means to be a hero," he concluded.

Sera nodded uncertainly, and Shirou felt a relieved sigh escape. He let Blackburn's hysterical curse float past his ears.

If he was a hypocrite, Shirou thought, then this must've been one of his greatest offences: saving people who had a history of harming others.

He, unlike Archer, had trouble killing people.

Even if they sinned, stole, killed, Shirou could not take away their one chance at making amends. He could not help but save the people whose situation had forced them into criminality and immorality. He could not bear to deny them salvation from their cruel circumstances. As a hero, he could not deny justice even to those who had strayed from its path.

It was a failing that Archer would no doubt have laughed at: A burden more heavy, perhaps, than even Archer's ideal of saving humanity at the cost of thousands of lives. An impossible naivety that twisted the causes and effects of crime and punishment, his ideal would come back to bite him one day, when he had been forced to kill to save.

But it was his ideal. It was his strength.

He would not stand by a suffering person, kill a suffering person.

A sword that refused to be stained by blood. No, a shining white knight, who refused to have his hands stained by the deaths of others, innocent or not.

"You make me sick," Blackburn chuckled, as he fell back onto the floor, spent. "You're a bigger hypocrite than I thought. I don't need your help."

"It's not your decision anymore, Blackburn," Shirou shot back. "From the moment I chose this path, I swore that I would save everyone."

For a moment, Erza looked him in the eye, her black irises searching for something. Shirou shrugged back, unsure of what to say. As far as he knew, Erza would probably laugh at his naivety and kill Blackburn in his stead, and he would find himself the biggest, most embarrassed hypocrite ever.

But what he saw was not what he had expected. Erza only looked back at him pensively, a brief expression of satisfaction, acceptance, crossing her face as their eyes met. Erza turned down, and shock briefly crossed her face.

"Morgana's hand… it's turning black."

"You mean, like a shadow?" Blackburn asked breathlessly. "Please tell me it's just her shadow magic."

"No," Erza examined Morgana's hand, clearly worried now. "It's different. Her hand is… shrivelling. As if some sort of… death magic… is claiming her life force." She turned vehemently to Blackburn. "Why didn't you even tell anyone about this!? We could have gotten her to heal!"

"No doctor can," Blackburn retorted. "So I tried to save Morgana myself."

"And this is what you came up with!?" Erza gestured angrily at the bodies sprawled throughout the cavern. "Shirou and Sera," she ordered, "Get all those villagers clothed and ready to return home." She glanced vehemently at Blackburn. "I'll take care of these two."

But Erza didn't have a way to save Morgana, did she? Shirou didn't either, not when his only useful ability involved tracing swords and hurting people. There were only two projections in his Reality Marble that were defensive, and among them…

A King's Dream for an Everdistant Utopia.

With this sheath by her side, King Arthur will never bleed.

Avalon. How had he missed it!?

"Wait."

"What is it?" Erza demanded angrily. "Can't you see we have a life in danger?"

" I can, perfectly well." Shirou scratched his head nervously. He knew he had Avalon somewhere, but he hadn't tried to Project it without Saber's help. The magic sheath was built to work for on King Arthur, and it was only when it had stayed for ten years in Shirou that he had become able to use it. He didn't even know if it would work on Morgana, and he didn't want to give anyone false hope.

"… I might have something. I think," Shirou continued uncertainly, "that I can save her."

"You!?" Blackburn guffawed with some effort. "You, a failed mage, save Morgana!?"

"… Yes."

But in the end, no matter the mistakes made in the attempt or the problems that arose in the process, he would not give up on saving everyone.

Even if it was just an impossible dream.