Chapter CLIX: Station of the Grand

Simple wasn’t the same thing as easy. Against a different kind of enemy, the original plan — wearing her down and taking the killing shot the instant she was too slow to react — would have gone off without a hitch anyway, but King Arthur continued to draw in power from the fog. She was replenishing her magical energy as quickly as she expended it, and as long as Angrboða still worked, she had functionally infinite power to throw around. Wearing her down in any reasonable timeframe was literally impossible.

But now that we knew she could draw on the fog for energy, we just had to make sure she never got enough space to charge up her Noble Phantasm again. A tall order, maybe, but we had three Servants keeping her occupied in melee, one resting to recover his own energy, and two Archers who had a clear enough line of sight to take aim the instant she tried anything — there was no way Emiya, now that he’d seen her do it himself, would let her have the chance again.

For all of the advantages we had now, though, she was still King Arthur, and between her raw power, her ability to ignore most hits by blunting them with her ridiculous stores of energy, and her skill as a warrior, she was holding up better than she had any right to. Maybe it had something to do with having been summoned in Britain, in London, even, where her mythology was at its strongest and so much of the culture accepted her as being the greatest in all of history.

Either way, it was uncomfortably similar to watching Behemoth fight. The way she shrugged off whatever hit her, the way attacks would just glance off of her without doing anything at all, the way she was just a bottomless well of energy. Not completely the same, not even really close, but any comparison to an Endbringer wasn’t a good thing.

King Arthur did, however, focus much more on combating Mordred than on anyone else. It was almost like the fact that Mordred had been healed and came back to rejoin the battle none the worse for wear insulted her, and to some degree, it seemed to make her more reckless. She wasn’t dodging as many attacks from Jeanne Alter as she had been, instead taking them on her armor and letting them dissipate against the wall of mana that was exuding from her skin, all so that she could pay more attention to her…whatever Mordred was to her.

The legends said son, but although Mordred would probably get pissed at being called her daughter, she didn’t have any trouble with female pronouns, so…

Not important. I could think about that later.

The problem was, even though she was focusing more on Mordred, King Arthur still wasn’t really leaving any openings. Her letting Jeanne Alter or Berserker’s attacks hit her was always calculated, a slight shift so that the blow would strike at the best spot on her armor to take it, and any attack that would hit someplace more vulnerable was actually dodged or parried instead.

There was, however, one attack that would definitely leave her open, and with her focusing more on Mordred now, maybe it would be possible to pull off.

I tugged on my connection to Mordred: Be ready to disengage. Make sure you don’t get caught in Jeanne Alter’s Noble Phantasm.

It was impossible to see Mordred’s expression from this angle, and things were too intense for her to take the time to glance back at me over her shoulder, but the tense response I got was, Got it. Hope you know what you’re doing.

Next, I connected to Jeanne Alter and asked, Do you have enough energy left for your Noble Phantasm?

What are you even asking? she replied immediately. Of course I do!

Then back up and hit King Arthur with it, I told her. We need to create an opening to get her with something that’ll stick.

She didn’t scoff, but her response was an abrasive, Like my Noble Phantasm won’t do that!

But she didn’t say no, and a moment later, she broke off from the fighting and put some space between her and the battle. At the back of the ruined mess of what was once a park, she lifted her sword, and a ring of flame burst to life around her feet.

“This is the howl of a soul consumed by hatred!” she cried.

“Hey, Golden Guy!” Mordred called. “Hem her in!”

“You got it!” Berserker agreed, which was surprisingly coherent of him. Then again, his Madness Enhancement was only Rank E, so whether it even did anything at all was a good question.

Mordred went in low, aiming a powerful swing not for Arthur herself, but for the horse’s legs, too low for Arthur to block or deflect the blow (a swift and smart “Momentary Reinforcement!” from Ritsuka gave weight and strength to her attack). The horse leapt backwards with more of its impossible grace, and Berserker followed it back, one of the segments of his ax glowing and sparking as he hefted it up over his shoulder.

Up in the sky, through the clouds of fog that still settled over the city like a pall, thunder rumbled, and when Berserker swung his ax down in a heavy blow that would have been more than enough to cleave the horse’s head clean off — “Golden Spark!” — a bolt of bright yellow lightning leapt down from the sky and struck the head of the ax right as it slammed home.

Arthur obviously knew better than to let herself get hit by a Noble Phantasm like that, and she and her horse were just fractions of a second too quick to get hit by Berserker’s ax and the lightning bolt that it called down.

But Berserker had aimed to miss intentionally, and Arthur’s horse landed —

“La Grondement du Haine!”

— right in the path of Jeanne Alter’s flame.

There was no time for them to escape, not that they didn’t try. The trail of fire had already surged forth, already found its target, and by the time Arthur realized what she had just landed in, it was too late. Right as her horse was leaving the ground again, gouts of flame leapt up into the air around her like prison bars, caging her in, and while that might not have been enough on its own, the stakes that erupted out of the ground and stabbed straight through the horse’s chest and legs like fish hooks were.

The horse that had remained mostly silent this entire battle let out a distressed whinny, but as the pillars of fire blazed higher and hotter and closed in, more stakes surged up and stabbed into its body as red blood spurted from its wounds. Both horse and rider disappeared behind a curtain of flame, and seconds later, as the roar grew to a fever pitch, the horse’s cries fell silent.

But before the flames could bank and die, King Arthur appeared from within them like a dragon from Hell, flying out of the twister of fire as embers licked impotently at her armor. Her horse was gone, and magical energy so dense it was visible clung to her armor as she sped towards Jeanne Alter so quickly she was little more than a blur.

“Shit!”

Rhongomyniad stabbed for Jeanne Alter’s gut the same way it had Mordred’s, and Jeanne Alter had to scramble out of the way —

“Emergency Evasion!” Rika shouted.

The spell carried Jeanne Alter to safety, and instead of goring her, Arthur’s spear went through empty air. Arthur, however, didn’t let up, and she followed Jeanne Alter with more attacks, more frenzied and more furious than anything we’d yet seen from her.

“You really fucking pissed her off with that!” Mordred called as she gave chase. “She loved that horse like it was family!”

“It wasn’t my fucking idea!” Jeanne Alter shot back. She had to dodge another jab, this one aimed at her throat. “Shit!”

“Alice,” Tohsaka said, “send the Jabberwocky. Give them a hand.”

“Okay, Papa,” Alice agreed. “Jabberwocky, go play!”

And just like that, the Jabberwocky leapt into the fray, too, bearing down on Arthur like a grizzly bear. Arthur treated it contemptuously at first, planting Rhongomyniad in its chest right where its heart was supposed to be, but Jabberwocky, as expected, completely ignored the damage and swung one of its massive fists at her head. She was forced to dodge back and away, and I could only imagine she didn’t try and take it head on because she was smart enough not to take a hit from something whose strength she didn’t know anything about.

Mordred and Berserker pressed the advantage, and without her horse, she was much easier to corral and had a much harder time keeping ahead of everyone. She was still avoiding taking any strong hits and could still let weaker ones fizzle against her armor, but Mordred, Jeanne Alter, Berserker, and now the Jabberwocky could get in closer, where her lance struggled because it wasn’t meant for combat at that range.

When a bad dodge saw her land awkwardly on the lip of the crater Rhongomyniad and Tesla’s Noble Phantasm had created, I knew there was going to be no better opportunity.

Jackie, now!

And as Arthur made a desperate, broad swipe to cover her moment of vulnerability, a small shape appeared from behind her, radiating a dark and malevolent aura, more like a curse than anything else. A shiver went down my spine — it felt familiar, even though I’d never seen it before in my life.

“Maria,” Jackie whispered, but her voice carried anyway, “the Ripper.”

Arthur tried to turn and defend herself, but Jackie ducked low beneath the lance and stabbed one of her knives deep — not into Arthur’s armored belly or chest, but underneath the armored skirt and into a vulnerable thigh, where the sturdy plates didn’t cover.

On a living person, it would have been a dangerous blow, especially if it severed the femoral artery. On a Servant, however, something like that would have been brushed off without too much trouble, little more than an annoyance.

But Maria the Ripper wasn’t a physical attack, it was a curse. It didn’t really matter where the knife struck, only that it did strike.

And Arthur staggered. Red blood surged out of her mouth, and her entire body trembled as she struggled to stay standing. Another cough saw more blood spill past her lips, and she covered it with one hand as though that would be enough to keep it all in. How much damage Jackie had done with that, I could only begin to imagine, because I knew if that had hit me or Rika, regardless of where, we would have been dead instantly.

At nighttime, in the mist, against a female target? That was as strong as Jackie’s Noble Phantasm could be.

My gut squirmed. I’d been counting on it being an instant kill, in fact, but Arthur wasn’t dead. For that matter, she wasn’t even fading. I knew that she was made of sterner stuff than me or Rika just as a matter of her being a Servant and a Heroic Spirit from a magic-heavy legend. Was her Magic Resistance really so incredible that she could survive that, however badly it had injured her?

It didn’t wind up mattering. Mordred, seeing her chance, leapt in, sword crackling with bolts of red lightning as light surged up the blade. As Jackie leapt out of the way, Mordred came down —

“Clarent Blood Arthur!”

— and unleashed the full might of her Noble Phantasm directly into Arthur’s face.

For a moment, a brilliant flash lit up the ruined park, casting a glow on the fog as the blast blew it back and created a pocket of clear air. The thunderous boom of Mordred’s Noble Phantasm detonating against the already destroyed ground echoed and shook the remains of the street where us Masters were standing, and I squinted against the glare that was too bright even for my mask to completely dampen.

When it was over, Mordred stood alone in a divot carved into the ground, one much smaller than I would have expected, given how destructive her Noble Phantasm had proven to be in the past. Crackles of red electricity danced around the dirt and over her arms and shoulders, fading completely a few seconds later. Of King Arthur and her incredible lance, there was no sign. She had been erased — even her powerful Mana Burst skill wasn’t enough to completely deflect a blast from a weapon whose use against her was so intrinsic to its function that its claim to fame was the fact it had killed her.

“S-Servant response dissipating,” Mash said into the quiet that followed. “King Arthur has been confirmed defeated, Master.”

Ritsuka breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. That’s the second time we’ve had to kill her.”

“That so?” Mordred hefted her sword up and let it drop weightily against her shoulder to a metallic clink. “Ha! Guess that makes us even, don’t it? I mean, I probably had to kill Father in a Grail War or something at some point, but far as I know, this is the second time for me, too!”

“Do we get a free knighthood if we have to do it a third time?” Rika asked.

Mordred turned back to us and grinned. “Far as I’m concerned, you lot’ve already got one!”

“I thought you had to be a squire for ten years first or whatever,” Jeanne Alter said.

“If I’m the one making the rules, who gives a fuck?” was Mordred’s simple response.

“Golden!” said Berserker. “That lady was tough, but you guys came up with a really smart plan to put her down!”

“It was mostly Senpai’s idea,” Ritsuka demurred, “but you were a big help, ah…Berserker?”

“Ah, right, we haven’t done the introduction stuff yet! My bad! That’s not golden!” Berserker grinned and slung his ax against his shoulder much the same as Mordred had her sword. He jabbed one thumb at his chest, specifically towards the gap between the undone upper buttons that showed off his pecs. “Name’s Kintoki, Sakata Kintoki! But you can just call me Mister Golden, if you want!”

The name meant nothing to me, but it very obviously did to Ritsuka and Rika, who gaped at him.

“Kintoki?” Rika squeaked. “Of Minamoto no Raikou’s Four Heavenly Kings?”

The so-named Kintoki just grinned broader. “That’s me!”

“But you’re…!” Rika gestured helplessly at him, up and down his body. “I mean, that’s…!”

“You’re dressed like Yakuza,” Ritsuka said bluntly, and now that he said it, I could see it, too.

“Ah, that…” Kintoki’s head turned to the side, although where he was looking was impossible to tell with those dark sunglasses. And were those…? Was he…blushing? “Well, it might be way, way, way after the time I was alive, but modern clothes are really golden, you know? I coulda shown up in my old getup, but I like this getup better. Plus, they’re way more comfortable, too!”

“Hahaha!” Tesla laughed suddenly. “Even ancient Heroic Spirits from the time of Phantasmals have to acknowledge the superiority of modern man! Exquisite! Extraordinary! Sakata Kintoki, I, Nikola Tesla, approve of you as a fellow hero!”

Kintoki just grinned again. “Golden, lightning man!”

Were they…becoming friends?

Romani interjected before I could really decide whether or not that would be a good thing. “Good job, everyone! King Arthur has been defeated, the mastermind behind Project Demonic Fog and this entire Singularity, Makiri Zolgen, is, uh…a-also defeated, and the fog itself is starting to dissipate! That’s another Singularity resolved!”

“All that’s left is to recover the Grail,” Mash said.

I wasn’t the only one who grimaced, because apparently, the twins had also forgotten about that part, too. We’d been in such a rush to follow after Arthur that we hadn’t had the time to try and disconnect the Grail from Angrboða, and in hindsight, maybe we should have had someone stay behind and do that, because it could very easily have summoned another Servant for us to fight, couldn’t it?

“Ugh,” said Jeanne Alter.

“I can take care of it,” Arash offered as he and Emiya returned from where they’d been perched.

“You sure about that?” asked Emiya. “You’re not exactly an engineer, are you?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Arash didn’t fight back. “Hey, if you think you can do the job better, I’ll gladly leave it to you. You’re right, I don’t know the first thing about the bits and bobs in a machine like that, but as long as we just need to get the Grail out, I didn’t think it would matter whether or not Angrboða breaks in the process.”

“It shouldn’t,” Flamel chimed in. “As the Grail is the main source of its power, removing the Grail itself should solve the problem and disable the machine without issue.”

“What are you guys talking about?” asked Romani. “You already have the Grail, don’t you? It’s right there with you.”

A stunned silence followed, and something uncomfortable squirmed in my gut. Everyone, including the Servants, looked just as surprised as I felt.

“U-um, don’t you?” Romani said awkwardly.

The twins turned to me. “Senpai?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t grabbed it, the twins hadn’t grabbed it, and none of the Servants had grabbed it — not that they’d told me, at least, and the only one who I thought might have been tempted to sneak off with it was Jeanne Alter — because, again, we’d been in a rush.

“Don’t look at me,” the woman in question said, canting her hip to the side. Her lips curled. “You think I’d still be standing here if I had one of those things on me? This place is a shithole, and the fog only made it worse.”

“Abraham’s focus was solely on Renée throughout the entirety of this predicament,” said Jekyll. “There was not a one single moment where he might have taken such liberty as to procure the Grail for himself — indeed, neither he nor I have much use for such a thing.”

“Hey, hey, I can’t say I get all the stuff that’s going on,” said Kintoki, “but it ain’t golden to go pointing fingers at all your friends, you know!”

“The way he said it was weird, but this guy has a point,” Mordred agreed. “We really gonna start fingering each other now that everything else is all said and done?”

“Phrasing,” Ritsuka groaned. “Phrasing, please, Sir Mordred.”

In fact, the only person who didn’t look at all surprised by this turn —

“Tohsaka?”

— was our own temporary Master.

He took a step back, mouth drawn into a tight line and brow furrowed, but all it did was draw everyone’s attention to him. Next to him, Nursery Rhyme’s face was set in stone, and the Bandersnatch hovering behind her suddenly seemed a whole lot more like a threat than a last line of defense.

“Well, fuck,” said Mordred. “Even I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Nagato Tohsaka,” Marie’s voice came across the communicator, cold and authoritative. “As a provisional Master of Chaldea —”

“As a magus, I would’ve thought you would understand best, Director Animusphere,” Tohsaka interrupted her. “The dream of all magi isn’t something that can be achieved with half-hearted efforts. You have to be prepared to sacrifice whatever it takes to reach it.”

“You…!”

“Tohsaka-san,” said Ritsuka, “are you really going to do this, knowing everything at stake?”

“You remember what that thing’s for, right?” Rika added. “You know, how it’s the whole reason we’re here and everything?”

Tohsaka’s eyes narrowed on them. “You two, on the other hand, I wouldn’t expect to understand. You’re not proper magi, so you just don’t get how important this is. Even the oldest bloodlines have been waiting centuries for a chance like this to fall into their laps, and the Tohsaka are so new we don’t even have a proper Magic Crest yet. This isn’t something I can afford to pass up.”

“But this entire time, you’ve been helping us out,” Mash said. “The Director even made you a Master of Chaldea!”

“Temporarily,” Tohsaka emphasized. “And it wasn’t like I had much choice, did I? Investigate on my own and hope I got somewhere, stay in my borrowed apartment and wait for things to blow over — those aren’t great choices, are they? And then you said the enemy was using a Holy Grail to create this…Singularity, and you expect me to just let this chance slip away?”

“The Grand Order,” Marie began heatedly.

Tohsaka scoffed. “What do I care about your Grand Order? I’ve been a member of your organization less than a week, and everything I’ve done as part of it will be erased the instant I give up this Grail and let you leave. I know my own limits — this is the only chance I have at giving my family the prestige of accomplishing the ambition of every family in the Association, including yours, Lord Animusphere!”

“Even if it destroys the world?” I asked him calmly. He twitched.

“Will it?” was his response, but his cool tone couldn’t hide the uncertainty he’d just revealed to me. “The instigator behind this whole mess is dead. Whatever he might have been using the Grail for, my wish has nothing to do with this era or perpetuating his schemes to destroy it. I should be able to use it without worrying about the consequences, shouldn’t I?”

Maybe. I had to admit, it wasn’t impossible. If he made a wish and the wish took him out of the Singularity, then maybe it really would resolve everything neatly and still get him what he wanted. But…

“Are you willing to stake the future of mankind and all of history on that?”

He wavered, but it wasn’t quite enough. Too impersonal, I guess. Too large to feel immediate and real enough to convince him. So after a glance at Nursery Rhyme, I picked something that would hit closer and drove the point home without any mercy at all.

“Are you willing to stake your daughter’s future on that?”

The line of his mouth drew even tighter, and he stared at me, unblinking, like he could prove me wrong just by glaring through the lenses of my mask. For several long, tense seconds, the possibility hung in the air, and the question remained unanswered. Several of the Servants, including Emiya, Jeanne Alter, and even Tesla, slowly began to prepare themselves for another fight, eyeing the Jabberwocky and Bandersnatch for any sudden movements.

And then, Tohsaka heaved out a heavy sigh and reached into the huge, oversized sleeves of his overcoat.

“Papa?” asked Nursery Rhyme, looking at him with wide eyes. There was something fragile in her voice.

“Sorry, Alice,” he said without looking at her, like he couldn’t bear to meet her gaze. “At the end of the day, I guess I really can’t be that selfish.”

Somehow, from inside those sleeves, he produced a familiar-looking golden chalice, a Holy Grail much like all of the others we’d collected so far. Some of the tension in the air eased.

“W-wait!” Romani said suddenly. “M-magical energy reaction, but it’s not coming from the Grail! A Servant manifest — no, hold on, that’s not it at all! These readings, this is more like a Rayshift!”

“That’s not possible!” Marie barked at him. “Only Chaldea possesses that technology! No one else should have access to it!”

But someone did, didn’t they? No, in the first place, how else had these Demon Gods managed to insert themselves into these Singularities if they didn’t have some method of doing it that must have looked an awful lot like Rayshifting? How had Lev — Flauros — gotten to Fuyuki from Chaldea and from Fuyuki to Rome? Or Forneus in Okeanos?

“I-I don’t know how it’s happening, but it is!” Romani insisted.

And if these so-called Demon Gods could do it, then it stood to reason —

Mash gasped at the same time as a shiver shuddered down my spine. Something like instinct, some deep and ingrained thing that I couldn’t explain, made me whirl about towards the other end of the park. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

And there…

“Senpai,” Mash said, “s-something strange is…!”

…there was a shadow in the mist, hovering in the air, and yet walking. It approached us, dragging the weight of an entire ocean around it, and as it did, the Servants all spun about, too, probably sensing the same thing I had.

“Wh-who…?” muttered Ritsuka.

“My name was uttered here, in this fetid place, and so I have come,” a deep, resonant voice said, coming from the shadow. “Come to investigate who would have spoken of me so casually, and yet I have found only the source of my recent disappointments. Fuyuki, Orléans, Rome, Okeanos — the failures of King Arthur, Gilles de Rais, Romulus, and Jason, thwarted as they were by some persistent pests. And now even Zolgen has failed to accomplish his assigned task.”

“What’s going on?” Marie demanded. “Romani! What happened to the visual feed?”

“I don’t know!” he answered. “SHEBA won’t stabilize! Can you hear me, everyone? Whatever is happening, we can’t offer you any support! We can listen, but that’s it!”

So we were on our own.

“It seems that guy wasn’t kidding around,” said Andersen. “The head honcho himself decided to come down off his throne to check on things, just because we happened to say his name.”

Mash gasped again. “Which means…!”

King Solomon.

“I see,” said the shadow, Solomon. “Then it’s to be expected that only your voice reaches them. Chaldea — a nuisance that doesn’t understand when its time is over. You scurry about, hidden in your hovel and protected even from my sight, a lone boat aimlessly sailing the void in the desperate hopes that you might prevent the inevitable. It is for that reason alone that you have managed to come as far as you have.”

The mist parted, and a man stepped out, walking on the air as though it was solid ground. Pitiless red eyes cast a contemptuous glance around our group. There was no mirth on his face, no hatred, simply callous indifference, like we weren’t even worth the time or the effort.

It shouldn’t have bothered me. I’d spent so much time having people look down on me that it shouldn’t have fazed me in the slightest, and I’d faced down Scion, spat in his face, and twisted a metaphorical knife in his heart until he lost all will to live. And yet…

Why couldn’t I stop shaking?

“A pathetic collection of misfits,” Solomon said, and although his face remained impassive, there was scorn in his voice. “Third rate Heroic Spirits commanded by mediocre Masters, somehow able to overcome the challenges placed in their way.”

“Who the fuck are you calling third rate?” Mordred snarled, taking a threatening step forward. Solomon paid her only a contemptuous glance.

“If you value the scant moments you will have to continue this farce of a second life, then you will know your place,” he told her. “Perhaps one such as you has no inkling of the difference in our magnitudes, but the ones holding your leash at least should understand — the gulf that exists between us cannot be bridged, no matter how many Command Spells you expend in the effort.”

“Someone’s big for his britches,” said Jeanne Alter mockingly. “Even if you are one of those Grands or whatever, you’re still a Servant, aren’t you? That means even someone like you has a guy holding your leash somewhere. Bark-bark, puppy.”

Solomon glanced at her, and instantly, she was thrown back by an explosion that went off right in her face. She landed hard on the ground, rolling, but was up again an instant later, glaring but spooked.

“I shall allow your impertinence only the once,” Solomon said in warning. “Do not mistake me for another of you again, you delusional fantasy. I am indeed a Heroic Spirit — but I had no need of something as pathetic as a Master to summon me. I revived myself within my own body. The man who stands before you is Solomon in the entirety of his glory, unfettered. An ordinary Servant like you is nothing more than an ant to me.”

“That’s possible?” Rika squeaked.

“So it’s true, then,” said Andersen. “You really are one of those Grand Servants. Grand Caster, am I right?”

“Indeed,” Solomon said matter-of-factly.

“What do you want?” I managed to get out.

“Want?” Those eyes turned on me, and I felt suddenly both naked and vulnerable, exposed. It occurred to me that he could probably kill me in an instant, before I even knew what was happening, with nothing more than a glare. “Should it not be obvious? On a whim, I came here to see for myself the disruption to my plans, and I found a few rats scurrying about. It seems there was no cause for me to concern myself. Although you have come this far, my Noble Phantasm is undisturbed. You have truly accomplished nothing.”

“Noble Phantasm?” Romani’s voice came. “W-wait, hang on! That means…those bands of light in the sky!”

“That it took you this long to realize the truth shows your incompetence,” Solomon said scornfully. “How pathetic. Even your mages are third rate.”

A shadow suddenly loomed out of the remnants of the mist behind him, and a pair of knives aimed for his neck. Ritsuka and Rika both gasped as they realized what I did — but not what it would mean.

“Jackie, no!”

But I was too late. Solomon didn’t even look at her, he just lifted hand, snapped his fingers, and an explosion ripped through the air behind him. Jackie was sent flying off to the side in a trail of smoke, and despite how close she was when it happened, not a single hair on his head was disturbed.

I was moving before I could even think about what I was doing.

“Senpai!”

And Arash stopped me, wrapping his arms around me and holding me back. From doing what, I still wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like I had any hope of hurting Solomon. A guy who could cast spells like that wouldn’t even blink from my Gandr, and even if I had my swarm here and at the ready, he probably had something to handle that, too.

For the first time since he arrived, Solomon’s lips curled into a smirk.

“Oh?” he said. “How interesting. It seems even someone like you is capable of change, after all. Sentiment, guilt, and misplaced affection — you have become even more pathetic in these last two years, Taylor Hebert.”

He knew. The thought turned my insides to ice, but… No. Of course he knew. Solomon was said to have been given wisdom by God, and however that would be manifested as a Heroic Spirit, it was probably some sort of Clairvoyance ability. The idea that Flauros had attempted to target me specifically during the Sabotage said that he and his king must have known enough about my past to find some part of it worthy of notice, although what they thought I could have done that I wasn’t already doing, I had no idea.

Later. I could think about that later. First —

“First Aid!”

Jackie was still alive, I knew it just because my Command Spells hadn’t stopped aching yet, so I could still help her, even if it was only this much.

“First Aid! First Aid! First Aid!”

But that was all I could do. Even with the contracts split between the three of us, we’d just come off of back to back to back battles again, all of them intense, and I only had so much energy left to spare. All I could do as my breath misted in front of me was reach out along the bond that connected us and ask, Jackie?

We’ll be okay, Mommy, was her answer, weak but there. Something inside of me trembled, caught between worry and relief.

“It’s ironic that you called her pathetic — that glass house of yours must be sturdier than it looks,” Andersen said. “You talk a big game, Solomon, if that’s even who you really are, but you’re essentially just hijacking the same system used to summon us so-called lesser Servants, too, aren’t you? After all, Grand Servants are meant to fight the very kind of threat you represent to the future of mankind. They exist to protect humanity from the monsters that aim to destroy it, and that says something about you and why you chose to manifest the way you did. It takes a special kind of desperation to subvert that very system in order to prevent it from working against you.”

Solomon’s head snapped around, and he regarded Andersen with his full attention. “Those eyes of yours are troublesome, you insignificant worm. Allow me to reward your insight appropriately.”

He lifted one hand, finger outstretched and pointing at Andersen — and instantly, Andersen exploded into a fine red mist, gone before anyone even realized what was happening. Under the oppressive weight of Solomon’s presence, the surge of magical energy was so suffocated that I couldn’t even feel it.

“Mister Andersen!” Mash yelped.

“Bastard!” shouted Mordred.

But before she could do more than that, an electric whine rose to a sudden fever pitch, and Tesla lifted his own arm, aiming his bronze gauntlet directly at Solomon.

“I have heard enough!” Tesla barked. “Solomon, King of Mages, pinnacle of the Heroic Spirits of the Earth! On behalf of mankind, I reject you and your schemes! A dazzling future awaits, and I cannot allow you to destroy it!” A ball of plasma formed between his splayed fingers, connected to his fingertips by streams of lightning. “Now return to sleep! System Keraunos!”

The ball of plasma exploded into a beam, large enough and intense enough to consume Solomon in his entirety and wipe him off of the map.

“Futile.”

And the instant it came into contact with him, it fizzled and died, simply dissipating into the air with sparks of static that danced briefly before disappearing. Solomon’s finger swung about to point now at the stunned Tesla, who looked as surprised as I was that his EX Noble Phantasm hadn’t even left a goddamn scratch.

“No way,” Rika breathed. “He just no-sold an EX NP!”

As though it was nothing more than a puff of air. Even Herakles wouldn’t have been able to do that.

“Now accept your reward for your defiance.”

At the last second, Tesla attempted to dodge, throwing himself out of the way — but midair, he exploded much the same as Andersen had, leaving behind no trace of his presence. He, too, had been killed just that quickly and easily.

Behind Solomon, Kintoki suddenly appeared, ax crackling with jolts of electricity as he brought it down, aiming to take Solomon’s head.

“Golden Spark!”

Solomon caught the segmented blade with one hand as though it was nothing more than a paperweight. He completely ignored the bolt of lightning that leapt down from the sky and struck the axehead — it didn’t even seem to do anything more than ruffle his long, white hair — and that same finger that had cast the spells that killed Andersen and Tesla was pressed gently against Kintoki’s chest.

“Damn,” Kintoki had time to say, “not gold —”

And then he was gone, too, killed just as simply and casually as the others. Just like that, three Servants, two of them strong enough to stand up to King Arthur in one way or another, had been destroyed.

“Shit,” said Mordred, foot sliding back a step. “This bastard wasn’t kidding. He really is on a completely different level.”

Solomon’s finger swung around again, and all of us recoiled, knowing now exactly how easily he could erase any of us if he decided upon it. Everyone looked terrified, even the Servants who knew they could just be summoned back — not for themselves, I realized, but because they might not be able to do anything at all if he decided to kill any of us Masters — and I couldn’t blame them.

I’d only faced an enemy like this twice before, and neither of them was a comfortable comparison. First, Behemoth in New Delhi, and the way he carved through the defenders with bolts of lightning and blasts of lethal radiation, absorbing whatever was thrown at him and turning it back around. And the second…

Second was Scion. Implacable, unflinching, completely unfazed by almost all attacks thrown his way. How he could obliterate you on a whim with a flick of his finger, and how he erased anything from a single man to the entire east coast of the US with the same contemptuous ease.

For a second, a flash of familiar despair, I remembered hovering in the aftermath of a battle and the terrible thought that maybe it would be better to just let my flight pack run out of fuel and plummet to my death instead of continuing when it felt like we had no hope of surviving, let alone winning.

The finger lowered, and Solomon let his arm drop. “There’s no point in wasting the time or energy to wipe you all out here. You believe you have accomplished something of worth, but the five Holy Grails you now have in your possession are nothing more than mere trinkets. As thanks for the favor you performed for me two years ago, Taylor Hebert, I shall allow you and your comrades to leave now with both those trinkets and your lives.”

My mind ground to a halt. Favor? “What?”

Was he actually saying…that killing Scion had actually helped him somehow?

“Senpai?” Ritsuka asked, confused. I couldn’t even look at him, because how did I answer that? How could I answer that? What could I possibly say that would explain the situation when I wasn’t even really sure what the answer was myself?

“You’re going to let us go, just like that?” Emiya asked, unnerved. His hands clenched tightly to his bow, so tightly that his knuckles were bone white.

“Just like that,” Solomon agreed. Some part of me was relieved, because it meant we would have time to plot and plan and find a way of actually beating him. “There is no need to concern myself with you rabble until you have stolen all of the Grails from all of the Singularities — an impossible feat, considering what awaits you in the next one. But — hmph. My gratitude only goes so far. If you manage the miracle of resolving all of the Singularities I have so meticulously prepared, then I will deal with you personally.”

His face split into a broad grin. “Even so, it will require a miracle! Truly, a miracle from God Himself! My final gift to you, Taylor Hebert, the final token of my gratitude — when you die in the next Singularity, you shall die comforted, for you will have finally returned home! Make your peace with your demons there and accept your end!”

And just as suddenly as he appeared, he was gone. Just a flash of light, and then the space he had occupied was empty.

“Ma…magical energy response dissipating,” Romani said into the silence. “King Solomon has…left the Singularity.”

But the weight of his words stayed behind.