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

Death and Rebirth

Chapter 8

The great wooden doors of Kotomine Church creaked ominously as they were pushed open, allowing Caster entry into the space beyond. They creaked again as they closed behind him, and then the Servant of the Spell was walking down the central aisle to the altar. He walked slowly, unhurriedly, respectfully, even, well aware of where he was, and how the faith the church had been built in the name of was an offshoot if not the evolution of what he once followed in life.

Coming to a halt before the altar, the one-time King of Israel wondered at how his Lord had changed in the millennia since. Once, He had allowed only one temple to ever be built in His name, and the Holy of Holies had been shrouded from the eyes of all save the high priest. Now, though, many such temples - churches - had been built around the world, their sacred spaces open to all.

There was no longer even one chosen people, now, all who would profess their faith in Him, regardless of origin, would count among His people.

All thanks to His son, whose icon even now hung on the wall behind the altar, the Son of God crucified as the final, greatest sacrifice to redeem all of Humanity.

The King of Mages bowed low.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise." Risei Kotomine said, walking out of the shadows to the side, hands folded behind his back and meeting Caster's eyes as the Servant rose and turned in his direction. "I did not expect a Servant, and that of the Spell, no less, to show such…respect, to the Lord."

"It is only right and just." Caster said, and causing Risei to raise an eyebrow. "Although, should it truly come as a surprise? Surely, there are plenty of Heroic Spirits who walked in the light of the Lord in times past."

"This is true." Risei admitted. "Perhaps it should not be a surprise at all."

"Indeed it should not." Caster said with a smile, and sighing while briefly closing his eyes. "You know why I am here."

"Do I, now?" Risei asked, slightly tensing.

"...shall we go someplace else?" Caster offered after a moment. "I would prefer to not engage in hostilities before the Lord's altar."

Risei just harrumphed at that, but consented with a nod, before leading them further into Kotomine Church. Emerging into the atrium, the priest sighed before glancing at Caster, who calmly walked out into the open space in the middle of the room.

"Is this truly necessary?" Risei asked. "You know what I represent."

"Yes…the Holy Church…" Caster replied with a nod. "...I can also infer your motives. That is, to prevent the misuse of the Holy Grail's power to alter the very fabric of reality, you would align yourself with a Master who either has an acceptable goal, or as close to it as possible, and influence them to come to your way of thinking. Although, I imagine that the official reason of wanting to restrain the Masters from being too aggressive isn't a complete facade either. Innocent lives are worth protecting, are they not?"

"So they are." Risei agreed. "If so, why?"

"You are my enemy." Caster said with an apologetic look on his face. "You know quite well a Heroic Spirit cannot be summoned if they have no desires that the Grail cannot grant. And so, here I am?"

"And?" Risei pressed. "What is your wish, Servant?"

"I wish to see the world once more." Caster honestly replied. "To see how far Humanity's wisdom has grown, how the world has changed and become both better and worse in the millennia since I last walked this world."

"...a modest wish…" Risei reluctantly admitted. "...certainly more modest than what I would expect from Servants in general."

Caster chuckled. "True!" he agreed with a smile. "But, in life, I was a king, with power over millions. It was…a heavy responsibility, which required many sacrifices and compromises. I still regret many of those. Thus, I know better than to seek it out again."

Pausing, Caster shook his head before smiling at Risei again. "Put another way," he concluded. "I simply wish to live a new life as a simple man…or as simple as one with my power and knowledge can have, at least."

Chuckling again, Caster looked away, a wistful look on his face, one hand rubbing at a single ring on his other hand. "...you are wise, Caster." Risei said after a long moment. "I would very much like to take you at your word. And certainly, your wish is more modest and worthy than others, including that of our own ally. But alas, your Master's wish is unlikely to be the same, and I cannot gamble on that point. You have my apologies. By my authority as Overseer of the Holy Grail War, and the command spells I bear, I command you, Caster, to…!"

Caster gestured, and with a cry of pain, Risei recoiled, the command spells on his arm shattered like glass, tearing the cloth of his habit from the inside and revealed skin covered with angry burns. Then he gestured again, the quartet of Assassins leaping at him from the shadows simply coming apart. Not into flesh and blood, but streams of prana that quickly faded back into their surroundings, Caster having literally undone their containers and disassociating the metaphysical essence within.

"...impossible…impossible…" Risei breathed. "...w-w-who are you?"

Caster hummed at that, thoughtfully stroking his chin. "I suppose I could give you a simple and straightforward answer," he began. "But you would be most skeptical. So, allow me to give a roundabout answer. As I understand it, in this day and age, to be called a 'master', you must first learn the basics from another master, as an apprentice. Then, once the basics have been learned, you must demonstrate your ability to multiple masters over time, earning their respect and recognition, before crafting a 'masterwork' to decisively demonstrate your own talents and the right to the title of 'master'. Or am I wrong?"

"No, you are correct." Risei said, and clutching his injured arm. "Such is the tradition inherited from medieval Europe, when it comes to learning and mastering crafts and trades, be it blacksmithing, traditional weaving, and of course, magecraft, among others."

Caster frowned. "I am…uncertain, I would agree with such an evolutionary development," he said. "Seeing as it seems that other so-called masters would describe my actions just now as 'impossible', when it only proves their blindness to their own ignorance."

"What do you mean?" Risei demanded, and Caster sighed.

"Thousands of years ago," he said. "When I trained the first generation of what would in this day and age be called 'magi', I granted them the title of 'master' once they had fully learned the basics. So it was their apprentices, and their apprentices, by the time of my death."

Risei's eyes widened in disbelief, and then in growing horror, as he realized who it was that now stood before them. "My reasoning was that they only ever truly needed to master the basics, the fundamentals, the foundations of mystery to earn that title." Caster explained. "Anything else is built atop those basics after all. If you cannot truly master them, then you are no master. It would be like a house built on foundations of salt. A true master would simply shatter your foundation and everything you have would crumble to the ground."

Caster paused, and gesturing, healed Risei's arm. "Your command spells?" he asked. "Their foundation is Barbatos. I disconnected them, and look what happened. The 'containers' called 'Servants' which allow Heroic Spirits to once again walk this world? Much more complicated, rooted as they are in various foundations…but again, I simply undid their connection to those foundations, and look what happened."

Caster paused again, and shook his head. "Again," he concluded. "A true master should have mastered the basics. I…am disappointed, that the descendants of my disciples have forgotten this lesson. Perhaps…I will have to make a trip to London, and ask one of my wayward disciples why he allowed them to fall so low, perhaps even chase down…Kischur, I believe he calls himself these days."

"...y-you are…you are…" Risei breathed.

Caster gave a gracious bow. "I am who I am." he said with a wry smile, at taking the Lord's words for his own. "Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. And in the records of the Throne of Heroes, the King of Mages. A pleasure to meet you."

"...why?"

"Ah…" Caster's face turned sad. "...as I said before, you are my enemy. I will not kill you, when I have defeated you so thoroughly already. But alas, I cannot speak for my Master, when she faces your son, or perhaps even your ally. I…I am sorry."

Risei gasped in horrified realization. "This was a trap all along." he thought. "I was merely the bait,to lure Kirei, and even Tokiomi out into the open, for von Fernhügel to destroy."

Schneeweißchen held out her hands before her, the mystic code Caster had given her floating between them in the air. It was a simple thing, just a simple cube of green fluorite, which the King of Mages had turned into a seed for a barrier. Just pour her prana into it, he had told her, and her Sorcery Trait, Wish Granting, would do the rest.

And so she did. Prana poured into the gem like a deluge, easily up to ten times that of magi in the same class as Lord El-Melloi, and still not even causing Schneeweißchen to break a sweat. Meanwhile, the gem glowed blinding bright, vibrating into frequencies too high for even homunculi earst to catch, and vibrating even stronger, began warping space itself around the gem and Schneeweißchen alike.

Planes of green metaphysics, rectangular, rhomboid, spherical, obloid, and so on and so forth, expanded and shrank seemingly at random before her, even as she continued to pour prana into the gem. Then with a blinding flash of light and loud crack of thunder, a beam of green and white lanced up into the sky, and expanding outward, formed a dome that encompassed everything within a kilometer in every direction.

There would be no escape. No retreat. No surrender.

Only the survivor of the battle to come would be able to leave. Victory or death.

No witnesses aside from those who stood on the battlefield, as it should be.

"Gewitter." Schneeweißchen murmured, and in another blinding flash of light marked by the roaring of thunder, called down lightning. For over ten seconds, the lightning raged, leveling everything for three hundred meters before her.

Had she and her men not previously cleared out the surrounding area with judicious use of mental interference, the civilian casualties would have been atrocious.

As it was, all that was left were empty buildings, razed to leave behind a scorched and smoking no man's land before her.

"Einsatzmanöver einleiten!" Schneeweißchen barked, and some two hundred homunculi brandished their halberds and began marching through the no man's land. Booted feet stamped on the ground in regularity for several minutes later, and then whistles began to blow.

"Kontakt!" the shouts went up. "Kontakt!"

With mechanical precision, the homunculi broke up into platoons, spreading out across the maze of streets and alleys to find and engage the Assassins. Like robots, they engaged with neither doubt nor fear, halberds flashing in the night.

A homunculus crushed an Assassin into the ground, another Assassin trying to stab him in the back while he was open instead getting another halberd stabbed into his head for his trouble.

Elsewhere other Assassins cut down several halberdiers, only to find themselves in the sights of several other homunculi, their hands held out before them. "Salvenfeuer!" they chorused, white-hot carving the Assassins to pieces. More Assassins pounced from the shadows, the homunculi barely having the time to adjust their aim. "Salvenfeuer!"

Beams lashed out again, cutting down several Assassins, but one of them jumped up and over the beams, before landing in the middle of the homunculi's formation. A moment later, and the formation was broken. A homunculus had his throat cut. Another found a thrown blade plunging into his head. A third was disemboweled. A fourth found a knife in her heart. The fifth and the last had his neck broken.

Looking around him for more targets, the Assassin moved to lope off…

…only to be vaporized by a beam of light from above.

Schneeweißchen flew over the battlefield, accompanied by ten other homunculi. Beams rained down in their wake, vaporizing Assassin after Assassin, disrupting their formations and leaving them open to the homunculi on the ground.

"Target acquired." Schneeweißchen softly said, before picking up speed and crossing the intervening distance in less than a minute. Quickly slowing, she floated down to the ground, surrounded by homunculi, and facing Kirei and a few of the remaining Assassins, led by a masked woman with long dark hair tied into a ponytail. "Greetings, Kirei Kotomine. You are defeated, and there is no escape. By now, you would have realized that even command spell-empowered teleportation cannot escape this barrier."

Schneeweißchen paused and tilted her head. "And no, Tokiomi Tohsaka," she said, speaking to the Master of Archer through his master-apprentice link with Kirei. "That is beyond my ability to do…Caster, though…"

Schneeweißchen paused and chuckled. "...Kirei Kotomine," she continued. "Will you not face death with dignity?"

Kirei was silent, but the last Assassins leaped forward with snarls of rage. The homunculi brandished their halberds, but Schneeweißchen was even faster. "Höllenfeuer." she softly said, and the last Assassins were engulfed in crimson flames.

"...hot…it's so hot…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!" they howled in agony, moments before being utterly consumed by crimson flames, which guttered out leaving only a molten pool in its wake.

"So much for…" Schneeweißchen began, but Kirei chose that moment to throw a Black Key in her direction. Konstanz intercepted with his halberd, only to gasp in disbelief as both Black Key and the halberd's head shattered against each other. "...exterminate him!"

The homunculi leaped forward, halberds flashing, with the exception of Konstanz, who hung back to protect his mistress. Discarding his ruined halberd, he instead pulled out a pair of hatchets, one in each hand.

Meanwhile, Kirei drew more Black Keys, and parrying a couple of strikes from a homunculus, parried a swing from a second before dodging a blow from behind by a third homunculus. Feinting low, he slipped past the homunculi before they could completely surround him. The homunculi pursued without prompting, Kirei throwing Black Keys in their direction.

The homunculi dodged rather than blocked, having seen what Kirei was capable of, and then leaping forward cut him off. Grim-faced, Kirei parried blow after blow from a pair of homunculi at the same time, before narrowly dodging a two-handed blow from behind and above that cratered the ground he'd stood on just moments ago.

Again moving to open the ground, Kirei growled as a homunculus preempted him, parrying blow after blow before feinting and landing an elbow against the homunculus. Unfortunately, the blow was off, preventing a clean kill, and only knocking the homunculus back several steps. A moment to catch his breath later, and then he was on Kirei again.

Kirei blocked, his free hand doing likewise to another homunculus' halberd. Metal screamed as Black Keys and rhenium alloy alike shattered, the now disarmed homunculi jumping back as their fellows charged in.

Kirei dodged to the left and right, a glancing blow tearing the sleeve on his right arm. Again and again, the homunculi chopped at him, aiming to leave him in pieces, Kirei just barely avoiding such a fate, and leaving his habit in tatters from close calls. Then, slipping behind a homunculus, Kirei shadowed their movements back to back, using them to block the other homunculi, and then reinforcing his body even further, briefly grappled with the homunculus before relieving it of its halberd.

This briefly surprised the homunculi, as their halberds should have been too heavy for even reinforced magi to wield. And they'd be right, but with no Servant of his own left, Kirei had simply sacrificed his command spells to push his reinforcement beyond safe limits.

"If I'm lucky I'll be left with only compound fractures and shredded muscles by the time this is over." he darkly thought before taking advantage of his enemies' surprise and counterattacking. "But otherwise…I'll be in pieces on the ground!"

Rhenium alloy flashed, and a homunculus lost its head. A moment later, and a second homunculus met the same fate, Kirei's halberd's point punching through their skull.

Recovering from their lapse in focus, the homunculi now moved to act, but Kirei had built up too much momentum. Feinting high he struck low, chopping off the feet of two homunculi, both of whom fell screaming to the ground, prompting a pang from the priest.

With their white hair and feminine faces and voices, they reminded him just a little too much of Claudia. "Nonsense…I wanted to kill her didn't I…" he grimly reminded himself. "...and they want to kill me…there's no time for this…trouble, with my conscience…!"

Flooring another homunculus, Kirei finished them off by bashing their head in with his halberd, before parrying and dodging other homunculi's attacks while standing over the dead. Another feint and he stabbed the heart out of another homunculus, before riposting and disarming another homunculus and breaking their neck with a backhand.

Switching his halberd to a one-handed grip, Kirei summoned more Black Keys in his free hand, and fought off the remaining homunculi in a circle of flashing metal and spraying sparks. Then he feinted, the homunculi by now knowing better than to fall for it, briefly falling back and then leaping forward again, and forcing Kirei down on one knee while blocking.

"Friedensstifter." Schneeweißchen softly said, and a beam of light lanced down from above, vaporizing Kirei's entire torso.

As his head flew and his life ebbed away, Kirei caught sight of Schneeweißchen flying high above. "...she flew up while I was distracted…" he realized before struggling to speak. "...cheat…"

Metal clattered as Kirei's weapons fell to the ground, still clutching by hands and arms terminating in smoking stumps. Likewise, Kirei's head tumbled and rolled over the ground nearby, eyes empty and lifeless, mouth open in shock at his own death.

Up above, Schneeweißchen nodded at the sight.

"Victory."

A/N

If you think Caster Solomon's showing in this chapter is BS Hax, you should remember he's even more BS Hax in canon. And not from what we've seen, but what we haven't seen, that is he and Lord Marisbury Animusphere won their version of the Fifth Holy Grail in a single night.

Compared to that, Caster Solomon abusing his admin privileges over modern magecraft in this chapter is nothing…but still BS Hax. But of course, considering he invented modern magecraft. Of course he's BS Hax, like Gilgamesh. Just as the latter is the first (recorded) hero, Solomon is the first (modern) magus.

That aside, Kirei becomes the first Master to fall, and Assassin likewise the first Servant to fall. A victory, as Schneeweißchen said, and the first of several more to come.