Olga first noticed she was losing time the morning after they met Jeanne. Possibly a few mornings after. She stepped back to let Ereshkigal talk to the girl and—

—Suddenly the Chaldeans were at a fortress, meeting rogue Servants and getting a lay of the land.

It was disorienting. Strange. She wanted to speak to Ereshkigal, maybe even see if she would let her talk to Fujimaru or Mash. But not when they were playing politics with a queen- it could wait. It was hard to catch Ereshkigal's attention recently, but it had been a busy period of time so it was fine.

She was fine.

She was… alive? Dead? Stuck on Earth haunting a necklace? Was Earth even a thing anymore?

It was confusing. She was confused, and the constant brain fog wasn't helping. Why couldn't she haunt a puppet or something? She was an Animusphere! She deserved…

This.

She was an Animusphere, but in a way that barely mattered. It was Father, his protégé, and then you'd meet Olga a few months later and say, "Oh, you're an Animusphere? I didn't know Marisbury had a daughter."

Only her colleagues knew her, and she had to be loud about that. Everyone knew she was an heiress in title only, so she had to make up for it in loudness.

She could speak up. Say 'I am your Champion and you should listen to me!"

But it didn't matter. She was tired. Ereshkigal was busy. Olga didn't have anything to offer in the current situation, anyway.

She needed to get out of this funk. Existing felt so gray, and she was falling into old thought spirals.

Happy thoughts! She wasn't being ripped apart by CHALDEAS! She… might have another chance to live better? Hopefully there was something more than this necklace in her future.

No! She shook her mind, but the cobwebs stuck firm. It was annoyingly familiar.

Something to do. She needed something to do, to focus on.

Olga 'materialized' as well as she could. Only Ereshkigal could see her, and she could only go so far, but here she was. Marie kept talking about the state of France. Fujimaru nodded like he understood what she was saying. Mash nodded because she did understand, because she had been created for this, trained, taught… experimented on.

Olga looked away.

There were two empty chairs at the table, so she took the one next to Ereshkigal and the queen.

Marie Antoinette, Servant. Porcelain and dressed in black. Older than her dialect would indicate. At the same time, her calculating nature was obvious. She had already noted Fujimaru as inexperienced and spent most of her focus on Jeanne- the one that would still be able to help should Fujimaru die.

Smart. Jeanne knew the most about France in this time period, after all.

Olga felt good, seated at the table. Her own person. She would be asking many more (and much better) questions if she had the means to voice them.

"Who's the Dragon Witch?" she asked no one. There must be more information than just a title. Anything to get all of the details about the situation they could- Fujimaru was just letting information dangle, incomplete.

God, if she could just-

The clash of lances. Ereshkigal and a dragon girl. Marie calling for calm. Two Jeannes? Maybe the other one had the missing command seals. She would clutch her head, but it wasn't even materialized- she was back in the necklace, with no memory of how she got there.

The dragon girl growled something, and Olga felt the pressure in the room change. Loss. Death. Clouded judgment. A tension, broken by Marie's firm rebuttal.

Marie offered an alliance. If her side could have access to Chaldea's mana, they would have a better chance. Chaldea, in turn, gained their support.

Olga's vision warped like she was underwater. She couldn't quite track their muffled voices.

Wait, did Fujimaru just ask if they could set up the summoning circle here? No, they needed somewhere that Chaldea could lock down, not someone else's fortress. She needed to say something, to stop him—

The clanking of silverware and hum of conversation brought Olga back into herself.

This was… a restaurant her father frequented, eloquent and expensive. Bathed in golden light, red curtains hanging from the walls. A huge domed skylight let visions of the stars through, further enchanted to reduce the light pollution of London. An astromancer's wet dream. For her, a split- there was power and comfort in the night sky, yet at the same time it felt so, so heavy.

She felt sick. When was the last time she had felt this spacey? It hadn't been since…

Her eyes darted to her arm out of habit. She knew it was fine, she wouldn't have taken her coat off otherwise. Sometimes she could see the damage to her circuits even when no one else could.

Olga was alone at her table, a single empty seat across from her. So she wasn't here with her father- he had no reason to go to dinner with her alone. A waiter passed by, a flicker of a pitying glance. Brown hair and blue eyes… familiar. Was he in her necromancy course?

Her head hurt.

Why was she here?

Her head hurt.

How long had she been here?

She turned and reached for her bag, digging through for her emergency ibuprofen.

Fuck. Nothing. Did she not bring her wallet, either? Dammit. Did she even have access to Father's funds anymore?

Nothing useful.

'... and yet, you've done nothing useful in regards to the Chaldea project.'

She shook away her father's voice.

"Excuse me… is this seat taken?"

A new voice. A woman's voice—- soft, yet Olga thought that she would be able to hear it from anywhere in the room. It was intense, as in carrying intent, and that intent would reach the one it was for. More than that, it was a voice Olga wanted to listen to.

"I suppose not. You may join… me…"

And then she looked at her, and her heart stopped.

She felt the weight of the divine beauty crush her. The woman's ruby eyes made her feel like a stammering maiden, the regal smile made her chest tighten. She carried herself with the confidence of both an athlete and a queen.

Olga felt safe looking at her. Like a moth to a light. Like… this woman represented home.

A small, sober voice breathed a word into her ear. 'Death.'

Her home was death. The afterlife.

Olga blinked, and there were empty plates and half-finished glasses of wine between them.

She was losing time. Again.

But they were laughing. It must have been fun, she felt like she had fun.

What was this person's name?

Names, names…

Olga. Marisbury.

Wodime.

'Wodime will be coming with me to oversee the progress on Chaldea's construction.'

The unspoken 'instead' confirmed again what she already knew. Again and again and again.

"This had been fun-" she started saying, but no one was there. No one was listening.

The goddess who saved her only heard her sometimes.

She was a ghost in this world, a silent spectator. And what ghost wouldn't be drawn towards the queen of the underworld? Spirits knew where they belonged, after all.

Olga tried to hold on. It was in this middle point, where she was just self-aware enough to know what was a dream, that she could feel her focus slipping.

If she could just avoid slipping.

Hold onto the restaurant. Hold onto something good, because if she spiraled into…

Her crest burned.

She could make it better. More compatible with Chaldea's systems. There had to be a way.

'No, stop!'

Let this be enough. Please let this be enough.

She fell back into nothingness.

Olga couldn't say when exactly she came up with the idea.

The body manipulation of necromancy sparked it. Some necromancers made… grotesque enhancements to their own self. A magus toying with their own flesh was unsightly, but not unheard of.

The extra research into magic circuits came later. High level papers, treatises on circuit efficiency, whatever 'forbidden' texts she could get her hand on.

She even called in a favor from a particularly notable necromancer family. She had tutored their son and, well, needed to consult a dead magus about some of her notes.

She was riding high on the adrenaline of it all. The thrill. The thought that she might finally be able to be what Father wanted in an heiress. The ignorant confidence before she knew enough to know she didn't know anything.

'Your circuits aren't compatible with the Rayshift technology. You have no potential as a Master.'

'Yet.'

One word. Potential. Arrogance. Foolishness.

Desperation.

No one understood. Edelfelt, El-Melloi, the other heirs and heiresses all had family support. How else would they strut around with such confidence? Her insecure blustering just cemented her inferiority. They could see through it, she knew it.

She was a failure of a magus and everyone knew it.

The peerless Animuspheres, second in the Clock Tower only to the Barthomelois, unparalleled geniuses in astromancy, and she was the heiress.

What a disgrace.

The days leading up to her experiment are a foggy patch in her memory. She wasn't sleeping enough or eating enough. She was watching her own life through a peephole, dark and disconnected and exhausted. If she stopped planning, stopped working through her notes, then she would lose momentum and burn out. She couldn't rest. Not now.

It happened the night before her Father made one of his infrequent visits home. She usually wouldn't trust his schedule, but a package had arrived for him and he would have to retrieve it in person, or so the note said.

Olga didn't realize why she waited until a day before Father came home until much later. She was desperate, yes, and while that desperation distracted her from the fear of what she was attempting, it did not stop her subconscious from taking precautions.

She was terrified.

Or maybe she just wanted to see him worry about her.

Olga gasped, blinded by the sunlight as she came out of the nightmare. She was next to Ereshkigal- that was the name she forgot, Ereshkigal.

She filed the dream of going on a dinner date with a goddess who carried her soul around on a necklace away as 'revisit if the current circumstances change'.

Did… did her existence as a spirit innately draw her to the goddess of death? Could she not even trust her feelings anymore? Did the goddess know this? Was she using it to manipulate her, to make her okay with this less-than half-life?

Ereshkigal's eyes briefly flickered to her, raising an eyebrow in concern. Olga dismissed it with a wave and forced smile. The goddess nodded slightly, and returned to her conversation with Jeanne and… the dragon girl?

Queen Marie was there too, over by Fujimaru and Mash and… some other Servant. Long blonde hair and flowing robes. They talked and sipped tea from cups made of crystal.

It was serene. They were on a grassy hilltop, just outside of a bustling village. A lunch break mid journey, then.

Memories of pleasant meals in the Clock Tower courtyard came back to her. Classmates, enjoying each other's company in a brief interlude between the family politics and magus posturing. The study groups where everyone could laugh because no one knew what was going on, or where two of the more prideful students would each draw out their own ideas out on a chalkboard and yell about whose was better.

The past Queen of France and the newly-minted Last Master of Chaldea, breaking bread and sipping tea. A moment of respite as history burns around them.

Would her Father see this as success? She could never quite figure out what his goal was, but then again, she never knew what he wanted from her or anyone else.

She closed her eyes, basking in the sun and chatter, wishing she could be a part of it.

She felt herself slipping again.

It didn't work.

Her father returned to find her curled up, rocking on the floor and clutching her bleeding left arm. All of her runes, her notes, her plans, all gone.

The magic circuits in her arm, mangled beyond repair.

He didn't care about that, of course. He had already written her off. The most he gave her sorry sight was a slight widening of the eyes and asking a maid to 'take care of it.'

Olga took a brief sabbatical from her studies at the Clock Tower. It wasn't uncommon, maguses often had other things to attend to and would come in and out as they needed. No one questioned it when she came back, a bit disheveled, but otherwise the same noble daughter of a noble house. The whispers of her title as heir possibly being passed to Wodime had started long before this incident, so she could at least take comfort that it wasn't a new possibility.

If anyone noticed that she wouldn't use her left hand to cast spells, they didn't mention it. Nor her new penchant for long sleeves.

Father visited home even less after that. Maybe Chaldea construction was ramping up, maybe he didn't want to look at her any more. She had put in so much effort into trying to be someone he wanted, someone he was proud to call his daughter…

'Fine. Screw him, then. He can drop dead for all I care.'

And then he did drop dead, and Olga did care, much, much more than she would ever say out loud. It was common, if unspoken, knowledge that magi made poor parents- you would rarely hear an heir or heiress talk about their parents in a positive light. The pride was reserved for the family name as a whole, and while no one would talk ill of their parents (because the family name mattered more than anything else), talking kindly about them was a damningly uncommon event.

But the other students, they held it together. They were stronger than Olga. They had their own pride, separate from the praise of others. If she cried to them, mourned beyond what was respectable, then they would lose respect for her. And now, she was the only one carrying on the Animusphere name.

Before he died, the idea of Wodime taking control of her father's projects filled her with dread. It would be the final nail in her metaphorical coffin- public confirmation that she was not deemed capable enough to finish what he started. Now, though… How would she ever pull this off? Half of a mage taking over something she barely knew anything about. If she could pawn this responsibility off to Wodime, she would.

But she wouldn't. She didn't want to be the Director of Chaldea, but now that she was, she would make it work. She had to.

She woke up shortly before they found Marshal de Rais. Queen Marie had suggested they take a route that would intercept his army, so they would have reinforcements in the coming battles.

Instead, they found the marshal alone, injured, and defeated. His armor was burnt and warped in places, his eyes wavering and blank. He looked like he had walked out of a massacre.

But when he saw Jeanne, it was as if all of that were forgotten. He smiled and laughed and trudged towards them, and they greeted each other with a warm hug.

Olga watched them embrace and fall into familiarity, finding comfort where they could in this disastrous, chaotic mess of a singularity. She watched the dread build in Marie's face as her dreams for support were dashed against a wall.

She watched as the marshal explained the trap. The great dragon, the hellspawned saint, the monsters rising from beneath the dirt to devour the army before it had a chance to do anything.

She watched Fujimaru take this in, horrified. Of course he would be- he didn't have to think about the slaughter of the denizens of Fuyuki, because it had already been over before they arrived. Now, he got to hear about it happening in real-time. She wondered if anything in his background even remotely prepared him for this- no matter what she tried, she couldn't remember a thing about his file.

She wanted to ask Dr. Romani if he had that somewhere, but would probably have to watch Ereshkigal ask him, instead. If she listened to her.

She shook herself. Keep watching. If she got distracted by her internal thoughts, she'd be dragged down again. Focus on the now.

Watch, and watch, and watch. Just keep watching, silent spectator.

Olga continued to watch, to listen as the marshal continued on. He and a few others had managed to escape but got separated. And yet, he'd found the Chaldeans anyway.

'Ereshkigal, this doesn't make any sense,' she started saying, but as she looked at the goddess, she slipped.

Music. Olga could already feel herself moving, a familiar song leading her in a practiced ballroom dance. She wasn't a dancer, but she wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes at any of the Clock Tower formals. Her mother… her mother made sure that she would be able to fend for herself in any situation.

Right. She was at a Clock Tower gala. Her vision came into focus on the bland brown-haired boy that she danced with, and her memory finally caught up with her. She had been late- she had planned to be fashionably late so as to avoid the awkward, extensive chatter that always somehow made its way back to family.

She noted the song as one of Mozart's menuettes, so she wouldn't look completely daft if someone tried to talk to her about the music. This boy didn't seem the music type- he was even later than her, possibly the last person to arrive. A stroke of luck for her- if someone approached her and asked why she had come in and gone straight to the champagne, that would be terrible for her image. He even had the nerve to approach her to ask for a dance, which was a nice little ego boost, even if it were from a barely middling magus-

She broke off that train of thought. She didn't need that hypocrisy right now. Something in her held a begrudging respect for the blue-eyed boy. Olga tried to remember if she had a class with him or something to no avail.

The heiress blinked, and she was in a small room with a clipboard in front of her. The boy sat across from her, overdressed in a clean suit.

"Your skill at magecraft is lacking," she heard herself say. "What else do you bring to the table?" she asked, knowing that she would hire him anyway because they needed the people.

She blinked again as the music shifted to a slower piece. Vertigo followed her back into the ballroom and she wavered, taking a deep breath and cursing her wandering mind. The boy took the lead in matching the new tempo, bringing them into a slight swaying to give her a chance to recover. He waited patiently for her to recover, without judgment.

That pure, unadulterated kindness felt so wrong in the room of was he even here? He could have gone anywhere else, somewhere less cutthroat. Now he had to deal with all of this. A wave of nausea punctuated her guilt. He was just supposed to be an extra face around the institute, not… not the hero.

But he seemed happy. He guided her off the dance floor and sat her down, then went and got her a glass of water. The boy sat, and they talked about nothing. She never would have guessed how useful his sociability would end up being.

When she saw the pink-haired girl enter, she let the conversation come to a close. Surely enough, he quickly excused himself and went to her side. 'Good,' she thought, 'she deserves it. She deserves a genuine friend.'

She didn't deserve what had happened before.

Olga could have stopped it.

She took a sip of her tasteless drink, because of course the dead couldn't taste. She had a responsibility to the people of Chaldea, to lead them-

[As if they would look to you for leadership. They all know about your breakdown in Fuyuki.]

To lead them through the coming trials. Seven more singularities, including the one they were in. To make sure that they restored history and preserved the future of humanity. Instead, she was in this cage of dreams and undeath.

[Safe in the cage. You never wanted anything to do with Chaldea, anyways.]

Olga could just let the burdens fall off her shoulders onto the others.

[This is your chance. Free yourself from their expectations.]

Chaldea wasn't her project to begin with.

[Dream up a new life while they play the heroes.]

Just… drift.

[Like a goddess's pet fish, with nothing else to do than look pretty in a glass box.]

Trapped in a cycle of nightmares and memories.

[Existing as a leech.]

Formless, purposeless, useless.

[Useless.]

.

.

.

"I need a body."

Author's Notes: So, took a bit of a detour here. There's been very little Olga the past few chapters by design, so now we get to see how unlife in the cage necklace is working out for her. This chapter was a long time coming, and I was constantly tweaking it to make sure the dissociation of it all worked. I also just needed some character moments, since we've been so deep in the whole 'Orleans has plot happening' thing and that's not what Afterlife is about. It's about two characters with massive self-image issues and complexes.

Huge shout-out to Tungstencat for their help editing this chapter.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one in particular, so if you want to, please review away! Either way, see you next time!

Best,

Endy