Chapter X: Monolith

“No, stop, please!”

Her body was carried inexorably across space. I didn’t even think about whether it was a good idea, I just broke into a sprint, chasing after her, the instant I realized what Lev Lainur intended.

“That’s right, Olga!” he laughed. “Come, touch it! Lay your hands on your Chaldeas! Reach out and grasp the treasure you’ve coveted for so long!”

“Director!” I shouted after her. “Hang on!”

“No!” the Director screamed desperately. “No, no! Someone, help me! Help! I-I don’t want to die here! I can’t die here!”

Lev continued to cackle. “Yes! It’ll be like falling into a black hole! A moment suspended in time, stretched out into eternity! An infinite, living death!”

I ran. My legs pumped. My muscles burned. My lungs took in gasps of air and let them out again. I wasn’t sure how much distance I must have crossed, but the Director never seemed to get any closer.

“No one’s ever praised me! No one’s ever cared about me! Everyone hated me, from the very beginning!”

“Director!”

“Haha…hahaha…haha!”

The sound of Lev’s laughter echoed in my ears. The Director’s screams and begging drilled into my head.

I kept running. I ran and ran and ran as fast as my legs would carry me. Faster. Faster than I’d ever run before. But no matter how fast I was, I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t reach her.

“No! Stop! No, no, no! Let me go! I haven’t done anything, yet! I haven’t accomplished anything, yet! No one’s accepted me, no one’s loved me! I can’t die, yet!”

“Director!”

She crossed the threshold of the portal, through the event horizon of the breach that connected the cavern with the Rayshift chamber where Chaldeas spun, glowing.

She was already past the point of saving.

“Please, don’t let me die!”

“Director!”

She turned to me at the last second, reaching out with her hand as though to grasp mine. The terror on her face twisted something in my gut.

“Taylor!” she shouted back. “Save me! Save me! You have to save me!”

“MARIE!”

There was too much distance between us. I could never have made it. I was only human, and I couldn’t teleport or fly or run faster than a car.

But my prosthetic didn’t have those limits. When I reached out with my right arm, my grasp extended, and I felt the ghostly touch of her fingers on mine —

Right as she slipped beneath Chaldeas’ glowing surface, and her screams fell silent.

And with a gasp, I jerked up, heart racing, forehead drenched in cold sweat, lungs seizing as I gulped down oxygen. My right arm reached out into empty air.

I wasn’t in the cavern.

What?

“Finally up, huh?” a familiar, lilting soprano asked me fondly. “And so the hero of the story awakens at last… or something like that, yes?”

I blinked. The sleek, white-paneled walls of Chaldea’s medical wing, a place with which I was very familiar, finally registered in my brain, and my arm fell slowly back to my side as I turned to the person sitting next to my bed and met a perfect, smiling face.

“Da Vinci.”

Calling it perfect wasn’t an exaggeration. Everyone had their tastes and their preferences, but the woman looking back at me with that secretive little smile was perfect from every angle and in every conceivable sense, from the smooth, unblemished skin to the exactly balanced ratio between her eyes, nose, and lips and the little, carefully chosen imperfections that kept her from stretching into the uncanny.

I’d come to terms with my own appearance a long time ago, or more like, I’d just stopped caring about whether or not I was all that pretty, but even so, I couldn’t help feeling a little jealous every time I looked at her.

“Good morning, Taylor,” Da Vinci said warmly. “You pushed yourself a little farther than usual, during that Singularity, so you’re the last one to wake up. The others have already gone to see Romani.”

Others? My stomach squirmed.

“The Director?”

Here, Da Vinci’s smile finally fell, and she sighed. “Yes, I should have expected that would be your first concern, wouldn’t it? Ritsuka and Rika asked shortly after they woke up, too. I’m afraid I told them the same thing I’m going to tell you: it’s complicated, and I want to wait to explain until I can explain it to everyone at once.”

I scowled. “Da Vinci —”

“You can glare at me with that scary face all you want,” she told me plainly, “but I’m afraid I won’t budge on this one. I’d prefer if I only had to give the details about it once.”

Damn it.

It wasn’t like there was any way for me to threaten her, either. No Command Spells would work on her, if I had any to begin with — I checked, and wasn’t surprised to see the ones I’d gained upon contracting Cúchulainn had vanished — and I wouldn’t be surprised if she had some method of circumventing them anyway. Nobody knew who or what her Master was, if she even had one, so there was no way of leveraging that, either.

And I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I was trying to be better than that person.

I took a deep breath.

“Just — tell me: is she alive?”

“She’s not dead,” Da Vinci answered cryptically.

She gave my thigh a pat.

“Come on. You should be rested enough that you don’t need to worry about any weakness, so there’s no reason for you to stay in that bed. The sooner you get out of it, the sooner we can go and see the others, and that means I can explain the Director’s predicament for everyone.”

My lips pulled into a grimace, and I flung the thin sheet covering my legs off as I swung them around and planted my feet on the floor. A shiver went down my spine; the floor was cold.

Duh, right? We were sitting in the middle of Antarctica. No matter how thorough the heating systems were in Chaldea, the floor was always going to be chilly when it was made of metal paneling.

“Your shoes are right there,” Da Vinci said mildly before I could even ask.

Sure enough, they sat next to my bed, like they were waiting for me. I tugged them on quickly, did the bare minimum needed to lace them up and tie them off, and then stood, looking at Da Vinci expectantly. She sighed and shook her head.

“So impatient! Sometimes, you know, it’s better to do things thoroughly instead of doing them fast.”

I wasn’t in the mood.

“Da Vinci…”

“Alright, alright. Come, come, let’s go.”

She pushed herself to her feet, and as it always did, there was a sense of complete incongruence with the fact that this larger than life figure, this legend so famous that everyone in the modern era knew her name, barely came up to my chin.

“They should be waiting for us in the Command Room,” she explained.

I didn’t wait for her to elaborate. The instant she told me where they were, I turned to the door of the infirmary and left, ignoring her indignant huff as I strode with quick, clipped steps down the hallways. She joined me a moment later.

True to her word, Rika, Ritsuka, Mash, and Romani were all waiting together in the Command Room, chatting about something amongst themselves, with Fou perched on Mash’s shoulder. The instant the doors opened to admit me, they all looked up, and their faces brightened.

“Senpai!” the twins said together. Rika gave me an energetic wave.

“Miss Taylor!” Mash echoed them.

“Taylor,” said Romani, “it’s good to see you awake.”

“Romani,” I returned the greeting. “Ritsuka, Rika, Mash. It looks like everyone made it out okay. Right?”

Romani’s smile faltered. “Ah, well… About that…”

“We asked, too,” Ritsuka informed me with an air of exasperation, “and, well…”

Rika crossed her arms and huffed. She side-eyed Romani with a narrowed glare. “Doctor Roman won’t explain anything, either.”

“Fou, fou!”

“It’s not that I don’t want to!” Romani hurried to explain, holding up his hands as though to ward them off. “It’s just that this is really something Da Vinci understands better than I do!”

“The three of us are okay, Miss Taylor,” said Mash, “and it looks like you’re doing well, too.”

“The Director?” I asked pointedly.

The other three immediately turned to Romani, who coughed awkwardly into one fist. “Yes, well… Now that Da Vinci is here, too, maybe she’d like to explain everything?”

We all turned expectantly to Da Vinci, who sighed.

“Good grief,” she said, shaking her head. “Well, if my audience really wants to hear it, I guess I have to indulge, don’t I? Very well. Do you remember what was happening at the last moment, as the Singularity was beginning to unravel and Lev Lainur appeared?”

Of course. Did she think I could forget that? That any of us could? That was the sort of thing that left scars.

Rika made a weird gesture with one hand. “Professor Lev used Force Pull!”

Ritsuka groaned.

Da Vinci’s smile twitched, while Romani’s took on a fond edge.

“Yes, of course,” Da Vinci continued smoothly. “Lev was using a form of telekinesis — although, strictly speaking, actual telekinesis is a different thing entirely from a mystery of remote locomotive manipulation like he was using — to draw Director Animusphere into Chaldeas itself. An unpleasant ending, let me assure you, and one she’ll thank you to have avoided. Heroically, although perhaps somewhat foolishly, the rest of you attempted to stop the Director from being sucked in, and through your efforts, managed to stall the process long enough for Romani to begin the retrieval process.”

I crossed my arms impatiently, frowning.

“The point, please.”

Da Vinci shook her head. “So impatient! Very well. Do you remember me pushing Romani to the side, when he was trying to tell you that the Director wouldn’t survive the return trip?”

“That was you?” Ritsuka asked.

“Yes,” I said shortly. I’d been too focused on the Director to make the connection, at the time, but it was obvious in hindsight.

“You recall I said I had an idea, yes?” Da Vinci asked impishly. “Well, earlier, Romani confessed to me his concerns about the Director, so I had something of an inkling about the situation. I’d had a few hours to consider the problem, by the time we were faced with confronting the issue. The solution I came up with was a bit rushed, I’ll admit, but also very much inspired, if you ask me! Why, some might even call it genius!”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reminded myself that Lisa could get like this, too, and that only made me miss her in that moment all the more.

“Is she alive or not, Da Vinci?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” Da Vinci answered cryptically. “You see, without a body to return to, the Director’s consciousness would disperse, once it was Rayshifted back to Chaldea. Her soul would depart the material world and return to the cycle of reincarnation. Fortunately, Chaldea is equipped with a system that is designed for the sole purpose of capturing the pattern of a Spirit Origin and recording it for future use. That is to say, the FATE system that we use to summon Heroic Spirits from the Throne.”

I blinked once, twice, as the implication started to dawn on me. “Wait, you can’t mean —”

Da Vinci grinned and spread her arms wide. “Esatto! Yes, you’re thinking correctly! I used the FATE system to record Director Olga Marie Animusphere to an Unregistered Spirit Origin!”

“H-hold on a second!” Romani spluttered. “The Director’s a normal human being! Something like that shouldn’t be possible, should it?”

“Hehe!” Da Vinci grinned smugly. “The human soul really isn’t that different from a Heroic Spirit’s Saint Graph. It’s just a matter of magnitude and data volume. When you look at it that way, it was a trivial problem to overcome!”

“The Director’s saved!” Rika cheered as she threw her arms around her brother’s shoulders.

“We can get her back!” Ritsuka agreed, smiling.

Da Vinci’s grin faltered. “Ah… Well…”

The beginnings of the smile tugging at my lips faded. “You can get her back, can’t you?”

“O-of course!” Da Vinci said, but it didn’t sound reassuring. “Naturally, I can recorporate the Director, once I have the necessary materials to build her a replacement body! H-however…”

“Oh,” Mash said quietly. “With the state Chaldea is in, you don’t have the materials you need.”

And there, as the Bard would tell it, lied the rub.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Da Vinci sighed and gave her a sad smile. “And there you’ve arrived at the problem, Mash. W-well, it’ll also take a little work to figure out how to move her soul out of the FATE system, but the larger problem lies in the fact that I’d have to construct her a new body from scratch, and I don’t have the supplies for it, right now.” She coughed, and under her breath, added, “And forgetting the fact it isn’t designed for her, I don’t think the Director would appreciate having to use the one we actually do have.”

I swallowed around the thick disappointment in my mouth.

“How long?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Da Vinci admitted. “We might be able to gather supplies from the Singularities themselves as we go, and to begin with, this isn’t something I’d like to attempt until we can fix a few more of Chaldea’s systems more completely. Even without those concerns… It will be a minimum of three months, I’m afraid.”

Three months. The Director was going to lose at least three months of her life.

It was better, I supposed, than dying, or worse, being sucked into Chaldeas like Lev had been trying to do to her. But I’d been in the position of waking up to find out weeks or months had passed and the world had kept on spinning without you. It wasn’t an easy pill to swallow.

“Do we have to worry about degradation?” Romani asked.

Da Vinci’s hair rippled as she shook her head. “There’s no way to be certain, but I don’t think so. FATE recorded her perfectly at the time of the Rayshift, and it’s designed to hold patterns for resummoning as a sort of data backup. However, what I did is already stretching the purposes of the system, so there’s no way to be absolutely certain until we bring her back.”

“Degradation?” Ritsuka asked curiously.

Da Vinci turned to him. “Everything degrades with time, Ritsuka,” she said patiently. “Unfortunately, this includes the human soul. Think of it sort of like the aging process — the longer you live, the more your soul is weathered. It’s not something you’d normally notice on the scale of a human lifespan. In the Director’s case, without a body to age, it would normally be a much bigger concern, but this entire situation is abnormal, no matter how you slice it.”

Rika gasped. “Is the Director going to be an old woman next time we see her?”

“Even in the worst case scenario, nothing that extreme,” Da Vinci answered with a slight smile. She turned back to Romani. “In any case, Romani, there’s nothing we can do about it, either way. At this point, we just have to hope for the best.”

“You can’t use the body we already have?” I asked.

Da Vinci’s expression froze. “Ah… You heard that, did you?”

“Can’t you?” I pressed.

Da Vinci refused to meet my eyes. “Ah, well… No, the thing is…” She gave me an awkward smile. “The replacement body we currently have is… not so much a replacement body so much as it is…” She coughed into her hand, and then quietly admitted: “I’m using it as my Master.”

None of us quite knew how to take that. Romani blurted, “You can do that?”

“Of course I can!” Da Vinci said with exaggerated brightness. “After all, I’m a genius!”

“So?” I said shortly. “Stick Marie inside it, make her your Master. I don’t understand the problem with that.”

Da Vinci sighed. “It’s not that simple, I’m afraid. Ignoring the fact that the body itself is already a poor fit for the Director, I designed it for maximum compatibility with… Well…”

She gestured down at herself.

“Still not seeing the problem.”

“Do you think the Director would appreciate being stuck looking like a twelve-year-old version of me?” Da Vinci asked smartly.

No, she wouldn’t. But better that than losing three months of her life, especially if the body could be tuned before or after putting her into it. Being twelve years old again would suck, but it would be better than losing all that time.

“There’s also the matter of rejection to consider,” Romani put in. “A ‘blank’ body made by someone like Da Vinci or Touko Aozaki is one thing. Even if the ‘fit’ isn’t perfect, things will eventually adjust. A specially constructed body, however, would be like receiving a badly matched donor organ. The body and soul will reject each other.”

“I didn’t realize you knew so much about puppetry in magecraft, Doctor Roman,” Mash commented with a hint of awe.

“Ah, well…” Romani ducked his head. “I don’t really know all that much, but you can’t go anywhere near the Clock Tower without hearing about that particular woman. There’s a reason she was Sealed.”

“Even if a miracle occurred, the Director can’t be a Master, it’s a part of her karma,” Da Vinci added on. “So not only would she probably die in agonizing pain, but you’d lose my magnificent self, too! Wouldn’t that just be awful?”

And then, with a false cheer that was entirely at odds with the grimness of her words, she said, “On the other hand, if we leave her alone, she might start to degrade as her soul withers, and the person we see once we get her settled is a shell of her former self!”

Dead silence met this statement.

I think all of us were each imagining not only how bad off things would get if we lost both of them, but also our own version of the worst case scenario, of what it would mean if the Director’s soul withered away while she was waiting for a replacement body to be readied. Was she even conscious in the FATE system? I didn’t think so, but the thought itself was troubling.

People had gone mad from solitary confinement lasting just a week. How horrible would it be to suffer that for three months, or even longer? The person who came out of that would be entirely different from the Director Olga Marie Animusphere who had gone in.

That thought troubled me the most. All the more so because I couldn’t do anything about it.

“What now?” I asked, changing the subject.

The entire group turned to me. Romani grimaced. “Now, we get Chaldea back on its feet,” he said.

I shook my head. “I meant about the Singularities. Singularity. Now that we fixed it, have things gone back to normal?”

“Hey, yeah!” Rika said brightly. “That place being so weird was the problem, right? So everything should be better again, right?”

Romani and Da Vinci shared a dark, complicated look, and Romani beckoned us over to what must have been the terminal he’d been using to contact us during our Rayshift to Fuyuki. The rest of the Command Room was so busy that no one even bothered to look up at us.

“I think you four need to see this.”

Rika turned to Ritsuka, who shrugged, and I pretended I didn’t see them when they turned to me instead, like I had any better an idea of what he meant. Together, we crowded around him, looking at the screen as he opened what could only have been a recorded video file. An instant later —

“That’s…!” Rika gasped.

“Professor Lev,” Mash murmured.

“Are you still watching, Romani Archaman?” the man on screen asked, grinning at the ‘camera.’ Static clung to the edges, like the connection was wavering even as he spoke. “Of course you are. I helped to build some of the systems that you are even now using to observe this altered spacetime. I must commend you, you and that ridiculous Servant you have with you. You managed to retrieve that whole pathetic lot before they could be killed. Then, as one who happened to be a colleague of yours, allow me to reintroduce myself.”

He slung one arm across his abdomen and one arm over the small of his back and bent at the waist. A bow.

“My name is Lev Lainur Flauros. I was the one charged with the year 2015 and disposing of you humans. There is no path forward available to you, now. Both Chaldea and mankind are finished. Yes — the moment of the human race’s destruction is now at hand.”

He smirked, staring menacingly at us as though he could see us through the screen.

“This is the end. Your future has already been incinerated. That is the meaning behind why Chaldeas has turned red. It is not that you have lost communication with the outside world. It is that the outside world no longer exists. Chaldea, protected by Chaldeas and its magnetic field, is truly humanity’s last bastion, and even you will disappear in due time. The instant the year reaches 2017, you will be erased, just like everyone and everything else.”

He spread his arms, and his smirk widened into a manic grin.

“You have already lost, Romani Archaman! Mankind was destroyed neither by its own hubris nor by its own inability to advance! You did not die to infighting or to ceaseless war! You were obliterated because you lost the grace of our King! You were killed by incompetence and your own foolishness! And like the worthless trash you are, you will all be burned away!”

And then, with a flash of light, he vanished. The screen flashed “CONNECTION LOST” a second later, and an unsettled silence stretched on for a few seconds after the video ended.

“Professor Lev,” Mash muttered sadly, “all this time…”

Fou licked at her cheek as though to cheer her up. I leaned over Romani’s shoulder, watching the screen more closely.

“Play it again,” I told him.

Romani looked at me, and then to what I had to imagine was Da Vinci, but played the video again.

“…name is Lev Lainur Flauros. I was the one charged with the year 2015…”

“Stop. Go back a few seconds.”

Romani rewound the video, just like I’d asked.

“…Lev Lainur Flauros…”

Flauros. That stuck out to me. The primers and crash courses I’d been given over the last two years had covered a lot of topics, but of the high level Heroic Spirits that had featured, there were a few in particular who had gotten a lot of attention.

Flauros. If that was who I was thinking it was…

“Keep going.”

The video played on, going through the whole speech, until —

“You were obliterated because you lost the grace of our King!”

“Stop.”

The video stopped, right as the words “CONNECTION LOST” were about to flash across the screen again. I frowned down at it thoughtfully.

“Senpai?” Ritsuka asked.

“Did you notice something?” Romani asked.

“What does the name Flauros mean to you?” I said pointedly.

Romani’s eyes went wide, and I thought I could hear Da Vinci let out a smug huff under her breath.

“It’s the name of one of the seventy-two demons King Solomon was said to command with his rings,” Mash answered. “It was said to be a duke of Hell whose name was recorded as part of the Ars Goetia.”

“Wait,” said Romani, “you don’t think that has some kind of connection to this, do you?”

“Maybe not,” I allowed, “but you don’t think it’s strange that Lev spent so much time and such a large part of his life helping to build Chaldea, only to tear it down, in the end? I mean, I’m not an expert, but a shift that huge only has a few explanations I can think of.”

On Earth Bet, we’d have been talking about Master-Stranger protocols and drawing up a list of the different capes who could cause that dramatic a change or exert that level of control. But this wasn’t Earth Bet, and instead of Masters in the sense of parahumans capable of twisting people’s minds, here it was —

“Demonic possession, you think?” Da Vinci said approvingly. “Yes, that was one of the conclusions I had drawn, as well. I don’t think the usage of the name Flauros was an accident, and there aren’t many who are desperate enough for the power of a connection like that to invite the attention of a high level demon by using it without a basis.”

I nodded. “Which means the king he’s talking about has to be —”

“King Solomon,” Romani concluded.

Well, I was actually thinking “Satan” or “Lucifer,” but that was the other possibility, wasn’t it? Giving it another thought, he’d said we had “lost the grace” of his king, hadn’t he? Which would mean we’d had it, at some point, and the Biblical stories always told of the Devil as hating mankind essentially from the get-go. Hard to have the grace of a nigh-omnipotent being that hated your entire species and didn’t have to worry about the trappings of mortal politics.

“The guy from the Bible?” Rika asked.

Romani grimaced. “Well, yes, but also no. It’s said that King Solomon is the one responsible for the existence of magecraft as we understand it today. His one, true miracle was to separate magic from the gods, giving it to the common man. That’s why he’s called the King of Magecraft.”

“Which would make him a Caster of the highest order, right?” I said.

Romani gave a grim nod. “He qualifies for the Grand station. Something as complicated as incinerating human history or throwing it off course by unpinning the staples that formed the most important turning points… Here, look at these.”

His fingers flew across the keyboard, and a moment later, another image appeared on screen, a flattened globe, like the surface of the Earth had been unwrapped and laid down. Seven spots glowed brightly: one in America on the northeast coast, one in England, one in France, one in Italy, one in the middle of the ocean, and then two more in the Middle East.

“After you resolved Singularity F, seven more appeared at various points throughout history, and they vastly outclass it in terms of distortion. SHEBA found them, once we got it up and running, again,” Romani explained. “We haven’t resolved the exact time and location for all of them, but the first two are already pinned down.”

Another couple keystrokes, and the one in France and the one in Italy were highlighted.

“They’re centered around Orleans and Rome,” he said. “The first is a relatively minor deviation from the year 1431 AD, near the tail end of the Hundred Years War. The second is a deviation from the year 60 AD, about halfway through the reign of Emperor Nero.”

“Seven more Singularities…” I muttered.

Because of course there were. It couldn’t have been as easy as just taking care of Fuyuki and everything being fixed, could it?

“Seven more?” Ritsuka asked tightly.

“This… This is a joke, right?” Rika asked, looking around with an uneasy smile. “Like, haha, let’s pull one over on the last Masters, it’ll be a gas? Because okay, you got us, joke’s over!”

No one jumped up and laughed. Romani’s face remained solemn and drawn. Rika’s smile slowly cracked and fell.

“We don’t have to try and handle them all at once,” Da Vinci began gently.

“In fact, we shouldn’t,” I added.

“But this is no joke, Rika,” Da Vinci went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “This is very real. The world is in very real danger, and the three of you are very much the only ones who can save it.”

“No.” Rika shook her head wildly back and forth, and slowly, she started backing away, like Da Vinci was a dangerous animal she was trying not to spook. “No, no, no, this is crazy! I-I’m just a kid! We’re just kids!”

“Rika,” her brother started, but he was pale and shaken, too.

“You see it, don’t you, Onii-chan?” she demanded. “This… This is insane! We already almost… We almost…”

“You almost died,” I said to her bluntly, and she turned to me, wide-eyed, like she was expecting me to lunge at her and try to tear out her throat. “I almost died. Mash almost died.” I paused a moment for effect. “But you didn’t. You’re here. Ritsuka’s here. Mash is here. I’m here. We’re all still alive and kicking. We made it through.”

I made a show of looking around the Command Room. The observation windows were still blown out, and several places were charred or stained brown with dried blood. I swept an arm around.

“They didn’t,” I said simply.

She glanced where I’d gestured, stricken.

I pointed out into the Rayshift chamber, where debris still cluttered up the floor. The coffins containing our fellow Master candidates had been removed, but I think what I was trying to convey still got across.

“They almost didn’t, either. In fact, a lot of them still might not. If what Lev, what Flauros said is true, then we might never get the help we need to save their lives. Do you know what the difference between them and you is, Rika?”

Slowly, she shook her head. I saw Ritsuka watching us out of the corner of my eye, his mouth falling open.

“It’s not talent,” I said. “Ophelia, Kirschtaria, Kadoc, they all outstripped you a dozen times over. It’s not pedigree — Wodime alone was more qualified than the rest of us, if that was what mattered. It’s not courage or wisdom or anything like that. You just happened to be at the right place at the right time to do the right thing.”

Just like I had, that first night against Lung. And afterwards? Afterwards…

“That’s what it means to save the world,” I went on. “The first time, it’s just luck. The second time? You have to choose it. You have to decide, I’m going to be there. I’m going to step up. I’m going to do the right thing, because if I don’t, then no one else will. I’m going to be the one to do it, and I’m not going to let anything stop me.”

The story of my entire career, from Lung to Bakuda to the Slaughterhouse Nine, all the way to Scion. Sometimes, the only thing that had kept me going was the sheer, bull-headed stubbornness to keep going, and the knowledge that, while my methods might have been somewhat questionable, my goals were just and righteous.

Rika shook her head, face drawn into a rictus of fear. “I’m not like you, Senpai. I’m just seventeen.”

I didn’t even need to think about it, because I already knew the only thing I could say to that.

“So was I.”

When it all fell apart, when everything started to crack, when all the holes finally started showing —

When the world ended and it seemed like I was the only one trying to save what was left of it.

“I didn’t let that stop me.”

Because no one and nothing that had come after me and tried to kill me had cared that I was only fifteen, that, by Gold Morning, I was barely shy of eighteen. Not Lung, not Bakuda, not Jack, not Coil, not Scion.

Rika looked down and refused to meet my eyes; her head fell, and her shoulders quivered as she hugged herself, as though to hold in whatever she could to keep herself from shattering into a thousand, broken pieces.

“I…”

She froze, and slowly, she extended her arm out, turning the palm downwards to stare at the stark, red marks of her Command Spells that were emblazoned so boldly on her skin. Her hand was trembling.

“It has to be us…doesn’t it?” she asked in a small, quiet voice. “Mash needs us, and you need Mash.”

To the other side, Ritsuka looked down at his, too, brow furrowing.

“I’m sorry,” Romani told her. “If the rest of Team A was awake and in good health… But you, your brother, and Taylor are the only Masters we currently have, and we can’t afford to say no to another able body, especially someone who’s already proven herself capable. Not when we’re already down so many people.”

“In the end, we’re basically forcing you,” Da Vinci said solemnly. “Romani and I are aware that we’re not giving you much of a choice. Even Taylor, here… This isn’t exactly what she signed up for.”

My lips twitched and I had to fight a wry smile. This was exactly what I’d signed up for: saving the world. Again. The circumstances might have been a bit different than I expected, but they weren’t unfamiliar, either.

“Even still, we have to ask this of you,” Romani went on. “Rika, Ritsuka, Taylor, can the three of you do it? Can you Rayshift to these seven Singularities, right the wrongs of history, and restore the proper course of mankind’s future? Can you three, together, shoulder this impossibly heavy burden?”

“Of course,” I said matter of factly.

There’d never been any other choice. Not for me.

Ritsuka looked back down at his Command Spells, and then clenched his hand into a fist. His mouth drew into a determined line.

“If it has to be me,” he said, “then yes.”

Rika didn’t answer immediately.

“I-I don’t know,” she admitted at length. She looked to her brother, at his fist, at his Command Spells, and then back down to hers. “But… I-I have to try, right?”

Romani let out a long sigh and combed a hand through his hair.

“I’m sorry to put this on you three,” he told us compassionately, “but hearing you say that… It makes me feel a bit better about this. For now… I think you’ve all earned some rest. We’re going to make sure a few more systems are repaired before we even think about sending you into any of these other Singularities, so you should have about two weeks to prepare yourselves in whatever way you need.”

Nobody said anything, and he blinked at us awkwardly for a few seconds, and then his face lit up with comprehension. “Oh, uh… Ahem. As Acting Director of Chaldea for the duration of Director Animusphere’s incapacitance, I’m dismissing you. Officially. I’ll see you later, okay?”

The group stood still a little uneasily, until Mash reached out and grabbed both twins by the hand and said, “Come on, Senpai. Let’s go get something to eat!”

Rika glanced back at me one last time, and then let herself be pulled away by Mash. A moment later, they’d left the Command Room.

“Well,” said Da Vinci, “there’s still much to do, and there’s no one more qualified to do it than me! I’ll see you later, Romani!”

She turned away and strode off. I gave Romani a quick nod and a short, “Director Archaman,” that did interesting things to his face, then took off after her and managed to catch up to her in the hall.

“Da Vinci, wait.”

She stopped and turned back to me curiously. “Yes?”

“Are you sure?” I asked her lowly. “That there’s nothing else you can do to help the Director? You couldn’t recalibrate that extra body you’re using? Tune it up for her?”

Da Vinci blinked at me, bewildered, and then her face broke out into a gentle smile as she chuckled to herself. “My, you and the Director were much closer than I thought, weren’t you?” she said ruefully. “I’m a bit surprised. She’s always been so prickly, and you always struck me as the loner type who didn’t make friends easily.”

“She didn’t give up on me,” I said by way of explanation. “I’m not giving up on her.”

Da Vinci’s smile grew, and she reached out to place a hand on my shoulder. My right one. I wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be a message in that.

“Don’t worry, Taylor. The Director is fine. Have faith, yes? She’ll be back before you know it, good as new.”