Around me, Avalon falls apart. The endless fields of flowers disappear into grey dust ; the crystal-clear rivers dry up ; the white towers come crashing down.

Bit by bit, the power of this tiny slice of Paradise is drained to fuel my spells. Though I know its beauty will return in time, my heart bleeds to see my home, my prison, wounded so.

I strain to hold back the tide of darkness, knowing the Lord of Gears is ready to unleash the final contingency should I falter. He believes that the spread of infection can be stopped by burning the island and all upon it, but his calculations were wrong. Should it come to this, the fire will only buy us time, and save those it burns from a far worse fate. The other Pillars, too, make their preparations, for whether this World's future remains unwritten or burns in unholy fire will be decided now.

As I use all of my lore to maintain the Veil, my jailer reaches out to seize the essence of defeated Neverborn. They cannot be allowed to return to their masters, lest our grand deception be revealed, and so she catches them at the moment of their false-death, capturing them with the dark thaumaturgy she built upon the foundations of what I once taught her. I see them pass through the sky of my prison as shrieking comets before they disappear into the maw of Tartarus, where they shall remain for all time under the mourning-veiled eyes of the Dreaded Queen. Their absence will be noticed, of course, but this is not the first time we have played this trick on the Four. They will blame each other for the loss of their pawns, like always.

Unless, of course, it is too much. From the moment the truth was revealed to me, I knew it couldn't last forever. That the knowledge didn't drive me mad was only thanks to my own inhuman nature.

Still, I wonder. Can you see me, Dark Ones ? Despite my best efforts to patch up the tapestry woven by the Ultimate Ones, does your baleful gaze pierce the Gaian Veil through the hole torn by your puppet ? Or are you too busy by your internecine conflicts, by your endless struggle against He whom you name Anathema ?

I pray that you do not. I pray that there is still time, that this will all end up being one more trial, one more battle in our endless struggle to protect Gaia from those who would bring it to Ruin. Surely, if it were otherwise, I would have sensed it by now.

But if you can hear me, then know this.

I am Merlin Ambrosius, the Mage of Flowers. Mentor of Artoria and Court Wizard of King Arthur. Beloved child of the Moon and Speaker of the Spheres. And you will not find this World easy prey.

And then, I see the Sundered Monarch whispering guidance into the ears of the tarnished knight, showing him the tenuous path to salvation he couldn't see for all the pain in his soul. There is so much pain in him, and yet he still cares more about others than himself – no more human than I, this one, but perhaps that is what my king needs to find the happiness that was denied her so long ago.

The tide is dammed, its source plugged. The doom of the World is averted, for now. I mentally breathe a sigh of relief, though my hands never cease their work and my voice never stops chanting.

But the battle is not done yet. If knight and king cannot triumph over the heretic priest, everyone will pay the price.


November 27th, 2004 ADFuyuki City

Souichirou Kuzuki ran down the mountain as fast as he could, ignoring the fading pain of his injuries.

Whatever that strange and beautiful scabbard Emiya had conjured out of thin air was, he couldn't deny its proximity was healing his wounds. He was well-versed in human anatomy, after all, and while the damage he had suffered under Belial's thrall hadn't been lethal, he had expected to be crippled for the rest of his life. While inconvenient, it was still better than he had expected when he had been captured by those monsters which had attacked the temple, and it wasn't as if his current job required much in terms of physical exertion from him anyway.

But instead, by the time he reached the base of the mountain and the scabbard dissipated into golden motes, he only felt about as bad as after one of his most intensive training sessions. He could ignore that level of discomfort easily. Besides, there was plenty to distract him from the constant low-level pain.

Although Emiya hadn't explained what was going on, the former assassin wasn't an idiot, and could make some guesses. For one thing, it was obvious that the supernatural actually existed, and that Fuyuki City was under threat from it. He and the other temple residents had been captured to be used as possession vessels, but Emiya had been able to exorcise him and the others with that sword of his.

He briefly considered the possibility that Emiya and Watson were responsible for the current events, then discarded it. While the transfer student's arrival had coincided with the strange happenings in Fuyuki, but while she and Emiya had both been rather sinister-looking when they had fought against his possessed body, it was nothing compared to what his captor had done. Kuzuki hadn't really believed in evil before, but the sight of that demented wizard's rituals had convinced him of its existence. Despite Emiya's words, he still wasn't certain where exactly he fell on the axis of morality, but he knew at at the very least, he was closer to good than Belial and its summoner.

He started to move south, toward Homurahara Academy. On a night like this, people were unlikely to open their homes to a stranger, but he knew the school like the back of his hand, as well as were a set of back-up keys was hidden in case of emergencies. He could hide in the teacher's room and wait out the night in relative comfort.

However, the closer he got to the school, the louder and clearer the noises of battle became. His footsteps slowed down, then he remembered that the rest of Emiya's group had taken the other liberated captives out of the cave and to safety, and the pieces immediately clicked into his mind. There weren't any other buildings in the area that could house so many people, after all.

He stopped when he reached the school gates and took in the situation. In front of the gymnasium, a woman who reminded him of Watson was fighting against a throng of monsters with an enormous scythe – which turned into a spear as he watched, then again into a rapier, then back into a scythe. Flying fiends circled above the building, fighting against someone else he couldn't see from this angle.

"What do we have here ?"

The voice was a chorus where every singer held a different tune, and it felt like someone was driving nails through Kuzuki's ears. He turned to face it, and saw another monster some distance behind him. He silently chastised himself – he'd been too focused on the scene of the fight to pay proper attention to his surroundings, and this … thing definitely wasn't something he wanted to sneak up on him. If it hadn't committed the cardinal sin of speaking instead of attacking him, he would've been caught completely unaware.

It had three faces grotesquely fused together atop a torso with too many ribs visible under its scar-covered skin, and scurried on a multitude of human limbs, some of which held blades that glimmered in the light of the lamp-posts. Cerulean flames burned within its empty eye sockets, but it was far from blind.

Kuzuki's knowledge of biology was, admittedly, very limited outside of the best ways to kill other people. But he was fairly certain that this creature shouldn't be alive according to the laws of nature. If this monster was kin to Belial, then his chances of survival now that he had its attention were slight. Nevertheless, if he had to die, then he would die defiant to the end.

"Aren't you going to say anything, sweetling ? Or are you too awed by my beauty ?"

"Hardly," he replied. "I was just trying to stop myself from puking."

All three of its faces contorted at his words, somehow becoming even uglier. It shrieked, causing nearby windows to shatter, and leapt at him. Despite the revulsion he felt at the unnatural sight of its motion, Kuzuki's body reacted on instinct. The creature's blows sought to cripple him, and he managed to dodge them by the skin of his teeth before delivering a punch with all the strength he could muster. The punch would have cracked the ribs of a normal man, but he didn't expect it to do much to such a monster. Yet to his surprise, it recoiled from the impact, which left a burning imprint on its flesh.

Not willing to let that chance pass, Kuzuki followed up with a flurry of blows, each one inflicting the same burning effect on the monster. Soon, it stopped trying to fight back and merely crawled away from him, before too many of its limbs were disabled by Kuzuki's strikes and it fell to the ground like a spider with half its legs pulled apart.

"What is wrong with this world ?!" It shrieked as it twisted impotently on the road. "Freaks, every single one of you ! Mortals are not meant to fight ba-"

Kuzuki broke the creature skull with a kick, silencing its awful voice once and for all. The feeling of its pulped brain matter on his bare foot nearly made him puke, and he couldn't stop himself from spending the next few seconds scraping it near raw on the pavement, until the most of the morbid fluid had been removed.

By that point, the pack attacking the gymnasium's doors had been dispatched. But he could still hear inhuman screams in the distance, drawing closer : there were more coming. Slowly, with his hands held above his head in the universal sign of peaceful attention, he made his way toward the gymnasium.

"Hello," he called out loudly. The woman immediately pointed her weapon at him. "Apologies for my state of dress. I am Souichirou Kuzuki. You wouldn't happen to be related to Miranda Watson, would you ?"

"How do you know her ?" she asked, still on her guard.

"I am a teacher at this school," he replied. "And you look a lot like her."

"She is my sister," the woman replied. "I am Amelia Watson, though you should call me Lancer. What are you doing here ?"

After a brief pause, Kuzuki decided honesty was probably the best policy in this case :

"Emiya-kun and your sister freed me from demonic possession and told me to leave the mountain. I noticed something was going on here, so I came to investigate. Is this where you moved the rest of the temple's inhabitants ?"

Lancer paused for a few seconds, as if listening to a voice he couldn't hear, then nodded. "Yes. They are all inside, apart from young Issei. He is safe at the Emiya residence. The one responsible for all of this didn't use him like the others, but instead sent him to us as a message."

"Yes, Emiya told me. May I go in, please ?" he asked. "I would like to check on my acquaintances."

"That's -"

The blonde woman's words were interrupted by a sudden shift in the air, and the two of them instinctively turned to look north at Mount Enzou. From atop the mountain, a pillar of something that his soul knew was not light despite his eyes stubbornly registering it as such erupted skyward. It hit the storm vortex before splitting up into hundreds of tendrils of un-light that spread across the clouds in all directions.

Homurahara Academy was one of the closest buildings to Mount Enzou, and within a few heartbeats the sky-borne corruption reached the space above it. Later, Kuzuki would struggle to remember what exactly happened in the next few seconds, his brain suppressing the memories out of self-preservation. In that moment, however, there was no avoiding the horror –

he feels the touch of fire that burns reason, and the bite of ice that freezes all joy. He hears the screams of dying stars and the laughter of cannibal deities. He sees the numberless hosts of the deathless damned, enthralled for all eternity to the whims of cruel gods. He tastes blood and fire and rot and flesh as teeth and claws rip his existence apart until all that is left is a single scream of agony stretched out across all eternity –

And then, it stopped. When Kuzuki's awareness returned, he was on all four, voiding a stomach that should have already been empty. His heart was pummelling in his chest, and despite having run all the way from the mountain without issue his body was now covered in cold sweat.

It was the second time in his entire life he had actually felt terror, the first having been when he had been trapped in the cavern with that madman smiling down at him as he explained what he was going to do to him and the other captives.

He forced himself to look up, fighting through the primal instinct that told me not to look, do not look at it, it might still be there, it might still see you. The pillar of unlight had disappeared before its influence could spread any further and reach Fuyuki western districts, where thousands of people huddled in their homes to wait out the storm and what they had been told was a terrorist threat. Whatever it had been something had happened that was blocking it, though he knew, without knowing how, that it was still there, trying to get through whatever it was that was protecting the city.

In front of him, Lancer looked as shaken as he felt, though she at least had stayed on her feet. Without a word, she offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet, before ushering him into the gymnasium.

As he greeted the rest of the building's defenders, Kuzuki felt certain that, somehow, this reprieve was Emiya's doing. He had never been a religious man, despite spending many, many hours reading sacred texts in his quest for understanding and meaning. But right now, he prayed to whoever might be listening to help his student succeed.

Of course, praying would not stop him from helping defend the gym from the infernal hordes that were even now regrouping for another attack. After all, there was no question that defending unconscious monks from a horde of hellspawns was the morally correct course of action.


Shirou's Reality Marble was breathtaking.

Despite the danger, despite the fact that she had been on the verge of a panic attack due to being dragged all alone into the darkness once more, this was Saber's first thought as she beheld her Master's inner world made manifest.

The hellscape of the Greater Grail's cavern had disappeared. Instead, a field of thin black ash spread out as far as the eye could see, the monochrome expanse broken by sprouts of greenery piercing through the ash – but those were the least of the field's ornaments.

All around, stabbed into the earth like grave markers, were hundreds of weapons. Some were of recognizable shapes : swords, axes and spears, albeit all of the same exaggerated scale as Shirou's greatsword, and made using technology far beyond that of the World's greatest blacksmiths. Others were of more exotic designs, but Saber still identified them all as bladed weapons : there wasn't a single ranged weapon in sight.

At the horizon, the black soil met a golden sky, illuminated by the radiance pouring from the giant sphere hanging in the heavens' firmament. The sphere was a planet, and must have been beautiful once, but now was clearly on the verge of destruction. Continental landmasses were fractured, with magma glowing through the cracks, and the whole thing looked like a grenade frozen mid-detonation. Yet despite that, it still gave off a calming and mournful feeling.

The illumination given off by the sphere came from a point on its surface, where it shone with an almost blinding intensity. As Saber's eyes briefly swept over it, she blinked and looked down, glancing at the sword in her hands. She gasped : the darkness clinging to her blade was disappearing, burned away by the touch of the Reality Marble's light. The weapon that was revealed was not quite like the pure, golden sword she remembered wielding during the Fourth Grail War : like herself, it too had changed beyond even this realm's ability to repair. It was still black, but the red lines that had run over its surface were now glowing with a familiar golden color.

Looking at her armor, she noticed that the same thing had happened to it. Her heavy plate still looked suitably intimidating, but some of its sinister edge had been taken off. It also felt lighter : though its physical weight was unchanged, its spiritual one had been notably reduced. She hadn't even noticed it before, since the set she'd worn during the Fourth War had been lighter in design, but now that the added hindrance was gone, she couldn't miss it.

She was dragged from her contemplation by an awful, inhuman scream. Her gaze snapped toward its source, and there she saw Kor Phaeron, screeching incoherently as the light seemed to cause his infernal body to melt like cheap plastic, creating an even more horrific appearance. He still clutched the Chaos Grail in his left hand, and raised it between him and the radiance's source. A black miasma poured out of the tainted cup, blocking out the light and causing the nearby greenery and weapons to wither and rust.

"I suppose it would have been too easy if he had died like this," said her Master's voice right next to her. She almost jumped : she hadn't noticed his presence at all, or rather, because his presence was all around her, she hadn't realized his body was so close.

His hair had gone white as fresh snow, and his eyes were blazing with a bright golden light that echoed but didn't fully mimic the one from above. His armor and shadowy wings were gone, and the lines that ran across his body weren't the straight edges of his Reinforcement but instead resembled cracks that were now filled with gold flowing from Avalon, which flared within his chest in time with his calm and steady heartbeat.

"Shirou," she asked, pointing up. "What is that ?"


Now, Shirou thought, isn't that a complicated question.

"That is Caliban," he replied, "frozen in the final moment before its end."

He didn't need their link to tell him that wasn't enough to answer her question, so he continued :

"After their assets in the Ghoul Stars were destroyed by the Night Lords, the Dark Angels returned to their homeworld, thinking to find reinforcements for the attack on Terra. Instead, they found that the Legionaries stationed there had remained loyal to the Emperor, and the planet was destroyed in the ensuing battle."

"Luther, the foster father of the Lion, was there, leading the defenders. That light is from his sword, which wounded the Daemon Primarch to the point he barely won that duel. It was the energies unleashed during their confrontation that broke the planet apart."

That light was also part of the reason why the First Legion was so obsessed with hunting down the Fallen, Luther's loyalists who had been scattered across time and space by Caliban's destruction. After all, a mere mortal like Luther (though there had been nothing 'mere' about him) had been able to fight a Daemon Primarch on equal ground thanks to its power. And though he'd lost the duel in the end, the wound he'd dealt Lion El'Jonson still persisted ten thousand years later, even if the Dark Angels were unable to acknowledge its existence.

"Corswain was on the planet itself during most of the fighting, but at the end, he returned to the Invincible Reason in orbit to deal with a disturbance. He was too late, but got a first-row view of the destruction as it happened."

What exactly that disturbance had been … well, that was a story for another time. The tale of Cypher, Lord of the Fallen, was an epic in its own right, and even Corswain had only known a heavily-edited fraction of its full truth.

"I remember it clearly now," he concluded, moving his gaze from the frozen planet to the intruder in his inner world. "The Deceiver suppressed Corswain's memories of Caliban's Fall, along with so much else, but these blocks seem to have been removed. And if Lion El'Jonson himself could be hurt by that light, then what chance do you have, Kor Phaeron ?"

"This is blasphemy," hissed Pretender. "You speak only deluded lies, Emiya. No mortal may stand against the champion of the Gods. Luther was a fool, who tapped into powers he did not comprehend without Their blessings, and wrought only the ruin of his home."

Kor Phaeron laughed, the sound ugly and cruel. "In that way, the two of you are quite similar. Struggle all you want, your usurped power will turn on you, and you will behold the destruction of all you hold dear before perishing, a failure to the very end."

"Is that so ? And yet, Kor Phaeron, if that is true … Then why are you afraid ?"

"Afraid ? Afraid ?!" howled Pretender. "Why should I be afraid of your petty tricks ?! I am fear itself made manifest ! I am the Voice of the Ruinstorm, the Black Cardinal of Colchis and Armatura ! By my will, more souls have been sent to the Dark Gods than have ever lived on this miserable mud ball !"

"You were only ever a tool of the First and Thirteenth Legions," retorted Shirou. "It was Guilliman who made the sacrifice and reaped the benefits; you were just the knife he used for some of the bloodletting."

"You … YOU !"

With thunderous footsteps, Kor Phaeron charged toward Shirou, eyes burning with hate. He couldn't use his transformation here, and he didn't have any weapon in his hands. But that was fine; he didn't need either. Here, in the Unlimited Blade Works, the entire world was his weapon, and he had a whole arsenal at his disposal.

Most of the blades in the Reality Marble had been wielded by a different loyalist Astartes who had died during the Roboutian Heresy and whose demise Corswain had witnessed. There were thousands of them, for Corswain had been Seneschal of the First Legion, and had fought at the Drop Site Massacre and the Siege of Terra both, where transhuman blood had flowed in rivers to drown the hope of a better future into.

There were other weapons of heroes in here too, which had entered Shirou's soul more recently. Harpe, Gungnir, Rhongomyniad were all there, even though the effort of Tracing the latter two outside his Reality Marble would almost certainly kill him. And that wasn't all he had gained from the Grail War, far from it : the battle against Gilgamesh had let him witness scores of weapons from all across History, each having been wielded by someone who had risen to become a Heroic Spirit.

The newest addition was a copy of Saber's Excalibur : now that the sword had been cleansed of its Chaotic corruption, his Reality Marble had accepted it. He could feel it manifest, just like he could feel everything – for this was his inner world given form.

Unfortunately, 'everything' included Kor Phaeron and the Chaos Grail he held.

Like Chaos itself, their presence was a blight, a vile cancer on the face of existence itself. Having them here, in his inner world, was making him sick : it was only thanks to Caliban's radiance that he could keep his calm.

"Stay back, Saber," he commanded when she started to move toward Pretender. "I've got this."

Taking inspiration from the fight against Gilgamesh at the temple, Shirou motioned with his hand, and a rain of blades fell upon Kor Phaeron. Unlike the corrupted King of Heroes, Shirou didn't need to bring the weapons into existence first – they were all already here in his Reality Marble, waiting for his call.

Pretender faced the onslaught head-on, battering some projectiles aside with his staff and blocking others with brief bursts of energy from the Chaos Grail. The attacks that made it through his defenses carved into his infernal body, but Pretender's pseudo-daemonhood let him draw power from the Grail to regenerate his wounds almost as soon as they appeared. Judging by the uninterrupted string of curses he was spouting, he still felt the pain of every blow, but Shirou wasn't about to underestimate his willpower. It would take more than a few cuts to stop someone who had been subjected to the Dark Gods' punishment.

Still, the rain of steel was slowing Kor Phaeron down, which was what Shirou needed. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and shifted his footing, taking a posture he'd assumed thousands of time over the years.

Trace, On.

Every single one of his Circuits was open, drawing power to sustain the Unlimited Blade Works. He could feel the drain on his reserves : the Reality Marble was more costly than any other spell he had ever cast, but he estimated he could still keep it up half an hour or so in his current state. And for the first time ever, drawing from the well of power he'd inherited from Corswain didn't break his body almost faster than Avalon could repair it : under the light of Caliban's end, it flowed smoothly and painlessly, brought into harmony with the rest of him.

Judging the concept of creation.

He remembered three lights, all of which the darkness had feared. One had belonged to the Emperor, and been infused within His sword, to the point any daemon it cut down wasn't merely banished by destroyed completely and forever. The second had been wielded by Luther, and had accomplished something miraculous even before the First Legion had returned to Caliban. And the third, he remembered least of all, for it had been the radiance of Excalibur as it broke the Grail ten years ago, and those memories had been consumed by fire along with the child he had once been – yet here and now, he could at least faintly recall that brilliance.

Hypothesizing the basic structure.

Recreating the swords of the Emperor or Luther was beyond him : even if he could have done so without them killing him due to his inheritance of Corswain's power, the Archduke hadn't seen either in action up close. And while even the memory of their light was dangerous (the Projection of Corswain's sword infused with the radiance of Luther's blade had proven enough to destroy deathless creatures such as Zouken or the shikome), with the Chaos Grail in Kor Phaeron's hands, the Black Cardinal wouldn't be so easily dispatched. Now that he had seen Saber's purified blade, he could feasibly recreate Excalibur well enough to defeat Kor Phaeron, but something about that had felt wrong when he had considered it before. Then it had hit him :

Corswain had been a swordsman, and so Shirou had fought as a swordsman since he had started to manifest the Archduke's power. But as the Reflection of Zelretch had reminded him, he was more than Corswain. Shirou Emiya had his own skills, ones that Corswain had never learned.

If an imitation sword wouldn't do, then an arrow would. And for that, he needed a bow first.

Duplicating the composition material.

The traditional Japanese archery he had practiced for years used very different bows from the ones Corswain had seen in his youth, before he had joined the Order, which had used more advanced crossbows along with rarer guns. However, the material of ordinary bows obviously wouldn't be suited for this. In his mind's eye, Shirou assembled a great bow made of rare Imperial compounds, and inscribed with sigils of seraphic power, before Tracing it into existence directly in his waiting hands. It was huge, larger than his own body, and looked like it belonged on the set of some high fantasy movie – yet at the same time, it was hard enough Shirou would have trusted it to block a blow from Lancer's or Rider's spears.

Imitating the skill of its making.

Now that he had a bow, it was time for the arrow. Three streams of remembered light came into existence around him, reacting to his thoughts as he alloyed them together and forged them into the shape of a great arrow so large it more resembled a spear, and blazing so bright it was akin to a captive bolt of lightning. From the Emperor, Wisdom ; from Luther, Hope ; from Excalibur, Victory. Or perhaps it was Power, Wisdom, and Courage, or Love, Faith, and Hope : even now, even here, Shirou could barely grasp the concepts behind those memories of light enough to perform his forgery.

Sympathizing with the experience of its growth.

Both the light of Luther's sword and Excalibur had been wielded by mortals, albeit extraordinary ones. As for the light of the Emperor, it had been refined after His enthronement, passed down to His knights. At the Mortis Gate, Corswain had faced these warriors clad in silver and holy fire, and been defeated. He looked back at those memories, saw how superhuman power had been distilled into something mere transhumans could wield, and used that knowledge into the forging of his own weapon.

Reproducing the accumulated years.

Battle after battle after battle, ever fought against desperate odds. Yet still the defenders of Humanity fought on. Corswain had sneered at them from his tower, had thought them blind fools, deceived by the lies of the Imperium's lords, never realizing the terrible irony of the thought. The First Archduke of Cysgorog had been unable to understand the value of Sacrifice, but Shirou, who had re-learned right and wrong from Kiritsugu Emiya, understood it all too well.

He just rejected its false dichotomy, not its valor. And though Kor Phaeron had offered countless lives to the Ruinous Powers, he had never truly sacrificed anything, because the only thing he valued was himself.

Excelling every manufacturing process.

In the years before the Heresy had been openly declared, it had been Corswain who had led the ritual that had dragged Kor Phaeron's spirit from the depths of Hell and set him loose upon the Five Hundred Worlds. And though Shirou wasn't Corswain and never would be, he realized now that this still gave him a conceptual advantage against Pretender. For, by the rules of the fell sorcery which had consumed the First Legion, a spirit's summoner could banish it far more easily than anyone else.

And besides, it wasn't as if the Dark Angels had trusted the Black Cardinal. There had been certain insurance clauses hidden within the summoning ritual, and Shirou now made use of those along with his inherited authority to refine his attack even further, turning it from a general anti-daemon weapon to one targeting Pretender specifically.

Finally, it was done. By now, Kor Phaeron was almost on him, screaming and howling like a wounded, enraged beast.

"Anathema's Arrow," Shirou declared as he drew the string of his bow : "Trinity of Wrath."

He fired the arrow of light, and didn't miss, just as he had known he wouldn't. It pierced right through Kor Phaeron's hastily conjured dark shield and struck him in the chest with enough strength to pin him to the ground. Then it ignited, and Pretender began to burn.


This, thought Kor Phaeron, was definitely his most painful death yet.

When that bastard Lorgar had killed him on Varadesh and Armatura, he had made it quick. Not out of mercy, though Kor Phaeron knew that was a weakness the Golden One was afflicted with, but simply because after fighting him for years, he knew not to give the Black Cardinal time to pull off one last trick.

Emiya's attack would have killed him instantly if not for his Avatar of Ruin Skill, but even the regeneration he had gained from drawing on the Chaos Grail's energy was only delaying the inevitable.

He realized bitterly that the only reason he wasn't going to be completely annihilated was precisely because he hadn't been granted true apotheosis by his masters. His still-mortal soul was already badly damaged, and it would undoubtedly get worse before his corporeal form dissolved fully, but he would still escape true oblivion.

He had failed. Again. The thought burned him with an intensity no lesser than that accursed arrow's, and he drew strength from it, turning pain and fear into spite. His body was falling apart, but it hadn't completely lost its integrity, not yet. He still had a few seconds to act, to claim his revenge before the end of this incarnation.

Through sheer hate-fuelled willpower, Kor Phaeron clung to his existence, and reached out to the Chaos Grail he still held in his rapidly-dissolving left hand. Although he hadn't made use of it, the main aspect of the Primordial Annihilator which had claimed the Greater Grail specialized in curses, and what curse was stronger than a dying one ? If he could use his final breath in this life to curse Emiya with all the Grail's power, that heretic wouldn't survive for long, and his every remaining moment would be filled with agony.

In his mind, he assembled the terms of his curse, forging his final spell through the pain that consumed him. Then, once it was complete, he sent the instruction through his transfigured body toward the Black Grail he held in his left hand.

Of the ten rings he had usurped when stealing Solomon's Spirit Origin to manifest, only the one on his left index remained. It was the same ring that foolish mage had used as a catalyst : where the others had been conjurations of the Grail, that one was completely real, which was why it had endured when the others hadn't.

Without warning, that ring's energies turned against him, engulfing his hand in a flash of witch-fire that didn't do anything to the Grail but obliterated his weakened flesh in an instant. The injury, coupled with the backlash of his curse spell being interrupted, was finally too much, and his body broke apart, banishing his spirit back into the Sea of Souls.

How ?! How had that happened ? Was it the curse that had done it ? No, that couldn't be it. He had done far worse using his hands, and the ring hadn't reacted like this. A remnant of its maker, then ? A pitiful shade, clinging to the artefact after Kor Phaeron had expunged the rest of its identity to make place for his own under the wretched laws of this hateful planet, waiting for the moment to strike ?

In the end, it didn't really matter. As Kor Phaeron fell into darkness, he braced himself for what he knew would come. The Dark Gods would not look kindly upon his failure. Surely, the torments that awaited him in the Realms of Chaos would be unspeakable, but he would endure them, just as he had before, until the Powers saw it fit to give him another chance. He knew they would : was he not their most faithful servant ? And besides, even though he had failed to deliver them that world, he still had learned much during his time there.

Even if he couldn't do it himself, Emiya would still pay for his defiance.

+Oh no you don't,+ said a cool feminine voice. +You have already caused far too much trouble, wretched old man.+

Before he could react (not that he could have done anything in his current state), a spear of will and power pierced through his spirit, sending cold agony throughout his entire being, and ripped him out of Aether like a fish from water. Such was the pain, his consciousness briefly ceased.

Awareness resumed a moment later, when the spear pulled out of his essence, causing a spike of fresh agony. He was bound, chained within a circle of fire. All around him were more such cells, filled with hundreds, thousands of infernal spirits, some of which he recognized as the ones he had summoned under the guise of the Demon Pillars. They glared at him with hate-filled eyes, and he briefly felt thankful that they couldn't move anymore than he could. Then, after the spear had fully withdrawn, the chains tightened around his essence, and he screamed.

+Welcome to Tartarus,+ sneered the voice again. +Enjoy your stay.+


Saber watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Pretender's body dissolved, not into the golden motes that marked a Servant's defeat, but into black sparks that twisted in the air before consuming themselves into oblivion.

But even though Kor Phaeron was dead, the Chaos Grail remained. It hovered in the air, a torrent of black miasma rising from it.

"Careful," warned Shirou. "There is something …"

He went silent as the miasma cleared, revealing a window above the Chaos Grail. On the other side of that window was a platform opened to impossible skies, full of roiling energy storms and unholy visions. At the center of that platform was a throne of warped metal, bone and wood, upon which sat a giant of shadows and cold fire, his face shrouded by roiling darkness safe for a pair of blazing eyes that looked straight at the two of them. Even through the portal, Saber could feel the giant's power, which dwarfed anything she had encountered since being summoned by Kiritsugu. Even Gilgamesh, even the Grail itself, paled in comparison.

Then she noticed something else : there was a wound on the giant's chest, burning with the same light that shone down from Caliban's image. In that moment, she knew the giant's identity, and Shirou's strangled words confirmed it an instant later :

"Lion El'Jonson," her Master breathed out, pale-faced and trembling. She could feel his fear, bordering on terror : even Kor Phaeron's revelation spell at the docks hadn't shaken him so badly. "That's Cysgorog, the First Legion's daemonic homeworld. But … no. No. No no no … It can't be all true. It can't. It can't …"

On his throne, the Daemon Primarch of the Dark Angels began to stir. He spoke, and his voice was a crack of malevolent thunder that shook Saber's very bones, despite sounding like it came from an impossible distance :

"I SEE YOU, CORSWAIN."

The words broke Shirou from his shock, and he turned to Saber with a level of urgency that bordered on panic in his gaze :

"Destroy the Grail ! NOW !"

The power of a Command Seal surged through Saber's body, and she raised her blade, gathering her full might to unleash her Noble Phantasm, just as she had done ten years ago at Kiritsugu's command.

However, cleansed by the remembered light of Caliban's end though her sword might be, it still wasn't the Sword of Promised Victory, just like she wasn't the King of Knights who had been called down from the Throne of Heroes by the Magus Killer. The aria she remembered chanting twice in the Fourth Grail War – once against Caster's monster, and another against the last manifestation of the Grail – no longer fitted her Noble Phantasm, and neither did its old name. She could feel the truth of it in her very soul.

Saber thought back to the Arthurian legends she had read in Shirou's home when they had looked for a name she could use in public, and smiled with predatory joy. Yes, this would do nicely.

"From shame and shadow recast,

In black and gold reborn.

Fear me and despair,

EXCALIBUR MORGAN !"

A beam of interlaced black and gold energy erupted from the sword. In the instant before her view was blocked by her own attack, Saber could swear she saw the Lion, who had started to reach out toward the window with one clawed hand, flinch at the sight of her Noble Phantasm. The attack struck the Chaos Grail, already rendered unstable by Pretender's demise and its constant exposure to the Unlimited Blade Works.

The unholy cup screamed as cracks spread across its surface, then it detonated. With a gesture, Shirou conjured a shield of interlocked blades around the two of them, protecting them from the worst of the blast, but even that wasn't enough to completely block it, and Saber's vision was soon engulfed with light.

When the light faded, there was no trace of either the Chaos Grail or the window into Cysgorog it had opened. Shirou's Reality Marble was gone too, her Master's projection of his inner world unable to withstand her Noble Phantasm's unleashed might. Instead of the impossible space that Pretender's ritual had created, however, the two of them were left standing in a vast empty cavern. Vast thaumaturgical formations had been engraved on the floor, walls and ceiling, but all of them looked burned out, and Saber could only wonder what damage to the leylines their actions might have caused.

Then the ground shook, and small pieces of stone began to fall down. The shaking did not stop, but instead grew stronger and stronger. Alarmed, Saber realized that with the destruction of the Greater Grail, the whole cavern was about to fall apart. She turned toward her Master, but he was lying on the ground, unconscious from the exhaustion of using his Reality Marble to its fullest potential for the first time.

Without wasting any time, she picked up her Master in her arms and ran toward the exit, dispelling her armor so that she could move even faster. Even with all her speed, she barely made it out ahead of the collapse as it buried the last remnants of the complicated system built by three Magus families generations ago in the hope of recreating a lost True Magic, erasing their mistakes alongside their greatest work.

It was only later, when the two of them were outside the collapsing cavern and under the clearing skies, with Rin's mental voice shouting worried questions into her head, that Saber noticed a familiar ring on her Master's left index finger.


Skill Upgrade : Saber's Intuition (A) Skill is upgraded to Twilight Star (A) thanks to her exposure to the Remembered Light of Shirou's Reality Marble.


Omake : What if the Second Magic worked in ABR like it does in canon (and most of the fandom)

After informing Jurgen that I wouldn't need his services for the rest of the day and that I wasn't to be disturbed except in the gravest of emergencies, I finally collapsed on my favorite armchair with a glass of amasec in hand and started having a quiet mental breakdown.

It had been far, far too close. I knew something was wrong the moment Krystabel had barged into my office looking more scared than I'd ever seen her : after all, there was a reason she was the leader of Emeli's Handmaidens, and the greatest mortal authority among all Slaaneshi cults on Slawkenberg. She had told me that Emeli had come to her in her dreams, warning her of some great peril that had arrived to Slawkenberg from the Warp that, despite all her power as a Daemon Princess, she hadn't seen coming in time to stop.

Mere moments later, a report had come in of a disturbance in the south, amidst the vast fields that once produced flowers for the nobility's perfumes but were now dedicated to more useful food crops. Since Krystabel had already informed me, I couldn't just pass it off to someone else, so I had gone with Jurgen and a platoon of the USA best troopers to investigate.

In the middle of a burned field, we had found a pair of teenagers, one boy and one girl. The young girl had been wearing what looked like a suit of armor from a feudal world, painted in black with gold undertones. The young boy had been clad in civilian clothing, but according to Jurgen, his presence in the Warp was even greater than the girl's.

Oh, yes. It had been at that moment I had learned that the two of them were powerful psykers, if not daemons in disguise. Jurgen had apparently known that for several minutes, but had thought I already knew and hadn't told me.

Even so, at first everything had seemed to go well. The two juvies had spoken Low Gothic with a weird accent, but we'd been able to communicate. Then the boy had asked if we were in the Imperium of Man.

With Jurgen at my side and a bunch of people watching, I had no choice but to tell them that no, they were on Slawkenberg, who had broken free of the Imperium's yoke and was now led into prosperity by the Liberation Council. Honestly, I had spouted most of that on reflex, and a part of me had been perversely relieved when they hadn't bought this nonsense.

The boy had immediately asked if we followed the Gods of Chaos, to which I had to answer that all were free to worship whatsoever they wanted on Slawkenberg, so long as they followed the law and didn't foment dissent. Why, we even still had a small following of the God-Emperor left (though after that mess with Inquisitor Karamazov their numbers had dwindled down to the handful reasonable enough to realize that the madman clearly had acted without His Divine Majesty's blessing).

They hadn't taken that well, the boy especially, but I was pretty sure that the situation could still have been resolved peacefully. Then one of the soldiers had loudly proclaimed that I, of course, was right, and that the followers of Khorne were growing in numbers among the Unified Slawkenberg Army.

The boy had clearly recognized the name of the Blood God, and things had escalated quickly after that. By the time the dust had settled, half the troopers were dead, the pair of juvies was nowhere to be seen, and everyone was convinced I had heroically cast the intruders back where they had come from. In truth, I was reasonably sure it had been Jurgen's use of psychic power that had ripped the hole in reality from which they had arrived back open, and I most certainly had not 'cast them back' : instead, they had jumped through the moment it had opened.

Well, at least Krystabel was relieved that threat was dealt with. I would make sure to give all the dead soldiers medals, commendations, and (far more importantly) an appropriate pension for their families. I would do all of that tomorrow, though : right now, I wanted to drink until my fingers stopped shaking from how close to death I had come. These two had been absolutely terrifying during the brief engagement; if not for Jurgen, I absolutely would have died instantly. To make matter worse, I was almost sure they had already been exhausted when they had arrived.

I emptied my cup, feeling the familiar warmth of high-grade alcohol burn through my throat, and refilled it immediately. Idly, I thought that at the rate I was going through my predecessor's cellar, I would have to start encouraging local production of amasec if I wanted to keep it up.


AN :

Saber : "EXCALIBUR MORGAN !"

Lion El'Jonson : *Caliban flashbacks* "OH MERCILESS TZEENTCH NOT THIS AGAIN"

And here we are, finally : the end of the Grail War Arc. The next chapter is an Interlude covering the aftermath of the Grail War. However, because it will also set things up for the next arc, I need to have an idea of how that is going to go before I can write it down. As part of my preparations for that, I have been doing a lot of research on the Fate universe. Let me tell you something : it doesn't make any bloody sense. I might just be an idiot, of course, but I am half-convinced the people who write it are making things up as they go along and are convincing everyone else that they had it all planned from the start. That they managed to create so many compelling stories regardless is a testament to their skill and the amount of work they put into it.

I already knew this when I started writing this story, of course, and I think I mentioned it in the intro explaining how this fic came to exist in the first place. But I have been reminded of it, especially with LB6 on FGO (great story, by the way, even if classical tragedies aren't usually my thing).

So a reminder to everyone that this story very much takes place in an Alternate Universe. Making the crossover between Fate and 40K (even my own alternate version of it) required some severe adjustments. I can only hope that the end result is self-coherent, and more important, entertaining.

Fun fact : in FGO, Servants belonging to the Pretender Class are weak to those of the Foreigner Class. I was not aware of this when I set up cthe ultimate Shirou/Kor Phaeron battle. Sometimes, as an author, you just have to accept coincidences like that.

For those who are confused, the Omake refers to my other story, Ciaphas Cain : Warmaster of Chaos. Check it out if you haven't already.

Now that I have kept my vow to the Gacha Gods (hallowed be Their name), I think it's time I return to writing the Roboutian Heresy itself, since it has been nine months since I last updated that story. I will still work on my two other stories at the same time, if only because both of them are a lot easier to write for some reason (but the Muse is not to be questioned by mere mortals such as ourselves).

I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter. We can only dream of the day Games Workshop deliver the same level of punishment to Kor Phaeron in canon (let alone Erebus). I mean, come on. Neither of them even has a mini, GW. You can absolutely do it !

Zahariel out.