VI.

Ali had spent the past several minutes in a stupor, somewhere between awareness and unconsciousness. As his faculties had finally started to return to him he opened his eyes and perceived that, rather than having fully recovered themselves, his senses had been helped along by an external source. Louise was crouched over him and applying a basic healing spell, more meant to stabilize someone than actually heal them. She was pouring her mana into fixing his wounds even as blood poured from her own untended injuries.

"Your hand..." Ali said unsteadily as he tried to raise his head. The smile he produced was meant to be suave and debonair, but due to his condition just ended up looking more drunk and careless.

"It's fine." Louise replied hastily, trying to focus solely on healing Ali. "I think she did far more of a number on you than she did me."

"Where is she? What happened?" Ali, though happy to see he and Louise were both safe, was unsure how the young woman could have dispatched a Servant.

"Rider, perhaps a bit late, arrived and helped me drive her off." Louise gave a slight nod to indicate the broken window, the site of Rider's appearance.

"Rider is here?" Ali looked around curiously, noting that the Servant wasn't visible anywhere in the room.

"He went out into the main hall to assist your Servant." Louise replied.

"I see." Ali let out a sigh of relief as he let himself fall back into the rubble. The pair sat in near silence for several seconds, the only sound between them being the low hum generated by Louise's magic. As Ali considered the features of his fellow Master, he recalled words that he had dreamed he heard spoken as he lay nearly comatose in the ruined furniture.

"So... is it true?" Ali asked Louise, the question seeming to her from out of nowhere.

"Is what true?" Louise replied, a curious look in her eye.

"I thought you had said it before, but I now dreamed I had heard it again, that you are the daughter of Saint-Hermine." Ali's words were still quiet and listless due to his injuries, but there was also a notable tone of apprehension to them. The desire to hear that he was wrong was evident in the way he turned his gaze away from Louise as he spoke, driven by a fear that just seeing her reaction to the statement would acknowledge a truth he dreaded.

"I am, I said as much after you saved me before." Louise responded, confusion coloring her voice. She was not sure how her heritage could have such an effect on Ali, but at the back of her mind there was a part of her that knew why. "Though not by blood, I was raised since my earliest childhood as a member of the family."

Ali elicited a muted chuckle in response to Louise's confirmation. "What are the odds?" He said, shaking his head back and forth.

"What do you mean?" Louise asked, more confused than anything else by the cryptic nature of Ali's speech. Afraid he was still delirious from his injuries she poured slightly more mana into the magic she was casting on him.

"Nothing, nothing." He said as he waved his hand dismissively. "Only that, I also dreamt that someone had told you of your Father's many past crimes."

"Several people have now mentioned it, yes." Louise's features hardened as she replied. Though she was getting oddly used to people having only negative things to say about the family head, she had not yet gotten to the point where she could bear the slight without experiencing some ire.

"The rest..." Ali heaved a massive sigh. "...some other time, yeah? I am quite exhausted, and you are injured. Let's just say that I have my own, if not personal at least second-hand, experience with the actions of Monsieur Saint-Hermine. And like the other people you mentioned, I'm not a huge fan." Ali slumped further into the destroyed furniture, though more from exhaustion than damage at this point. Louise could tell from his increasingly lax tone that he was quite tired and it would likely prove fruitless to pry for further info.

Rider had charged into the main room in time to see Lord Wilmore cleave several dozen bullets out of the air in what seemed like a single instant. He whistled in approval and admiration at the other Servant's impressive swordplay. The show of his esteem only earned him a scornful look from the ostentatious swordsman.

Mordaunt, on his side, was not happy to see Rider entering the fray alongside his current enigmatic opponent, most of all because it implied failure on Assassin's part. "Useless creature," he mumbled to himself. Now was the time, the mercenary thought to himself, to cut his losses and make his escape. It was a gamble, but he knew his only real option for escape was going to involve removing one of his key advantages, that is, the darkness magic he had placed on the windows. Up until now the only thing that had prevented Saber from killing him immediately was that he had constructed a situation where he was basically impossible to perceive, and the blacked out windows had been key to that. The lobby and elevator were not an option though, as the moment the door out was opened he would be trapped in a bottleneck waiting for the elevator to arrive.

Saber and Rider were of course unaware of any of the myriad plans Mordaunt was mentally constructing, and were quite occupied in defending themselves from his autonomous floating weaponry. Rider, having chosen to put his back to that of his fellow Servant, so as to limit the arcs of any potential attacks, turned to his more dour companion.

"So you've just been settling for sitting here, swatting bullets out of the air? Where's the flair in that? Where's all that superiority?" He asked Wilmore, fully implying the barb as a taunt.

Wilmore, in response, made an annoyed look that would have thoroughly entertained Rider had he been able to see it. "He has already claimed the grounds as his. It is impossible to tell where he is, and I'm sure that if I venture out into the dark carelessly there would be any number of surprises waiting for me. But if you feel compelled to make such a foolhardy attempt, by all means indulge him."

Rider laughed in response to Wilmore's own verbal jab. "Bahaha! That's what I like to hear! Nothing livens up a good life or death struggle like some good old-fashioned camaraderie. I may not look it, but I'm in a rather foul mood right now, so I can promise you I'll be taking the first opportunity to do this fellow in the moment he makes himself visible." Rider punctuated the threat by slicing several more shots out of the air and ducking beneath another one he had almost missed accounting for.

Mordaunt had selected the moments the Servants spent talking as the best time for his retreat, having counted on the chattiness he had seen exhibited by Rider in the past as his chance. Using his magic to muffle his footsteps to near silence he charged for the massive windows that opened onto the patio. If he could make it off the edge of the patio and into the populated daylight, the Servants would be incredibly unlikely to pursue him.

Now only a few feet from the window he directed the shadow magic to disperse, and fired several shots into the suddenly clear glass, finally shattering the damaged barrier with his own weight as he threw himself against it. Glass rained down around him like lethal snow as he rolled onto the outdoor seating area, but despite the numerous cuts he was acquiring the assassin dared not slow down.

"There!" Rider shouted as the darkness suddenly dissipated and the window shattered in tandem.

"Obviously." Wilmore replied under his breath. The haughty Servant moved to pursue his enemy, but Rider was already ahead of him.

Mordaunt had already crossed more than half of the vast patio, cursing the manner in which the rich insisted on everything being comically spacious as he neared his objective and supposed safety. As he placed his hand on a second weapon under his coat a shot rang out across the space of the balcony and the mercenary felt white hot pain shoot through his leg as a musket ball ripped clean through his thigh. Mordaunt tumbled to the ground for a moment before, amazingly, righting himself and continuing his advance, dragging the mangled leg along behind him on the power of the one that was still good.

Rider had slowed his quarry, which was all the shot was meant to do, and quickly closed the gap, coming upon Mordaunt just as he had reached the ledge of the balcony. "Oh no you don't!" He called out, raising his sword up to thrust it into the enemy Master. The blade struck out like a flash of lightning and struck deep into the flesh of Mordaunt's already injured leg.

The mercenary had assumed what Rider was going to do as he caught up to him and further sacrificed his right leg in favor of his life. "Oh yes. Yes I do." He said sarcastically as he leveled a small, single shot grenade launcher at Rider. He pulled the trigger and the projectile exploded into Rider's chest, the pedestrian attack only stunning him, but the detonation being enough to finish propelling Mordaunt over the edge.

Rider who had been forced back by the attack took a moment to recenter himself. He waved the last of the smoke away and rushed to the ledge. Looking over and into the street below, he could see no evidence of Mordaunt's passing. He was gone.