Chapter XXXVII: Joyeuse Garde

Connla led us further inland along the coastline, walking with the carefree ease of a kid coming home from school — a comparison that probably would have made more sense, when I gave it some thought, if it had come from someone who hadn't had as strange an experience with standardized education as I did. I didn't have much of a better one, though, because his youth made it seem all the more fitting.

The box containing our special e-bikes had been folded up and was being carried by Ritsuka, and each of us four who weren't Servants had chosen a bike and secured it to our backs with the special harnesses Da Vinci had provided. It wasn't all that comfortable, but this was one set of supplies we couldn't afford to leave behind.

"Are you planning on carrying those pieces of that spear back with you the entire way?" Emiya asked sardonically.

"Bad enough it got broken. Mom's gonna tan my hide for that already," Connla replied casually. "But she'd be even more pissed off if I showed up without it at all."

Emiya chuckled.

"She sounds strict," Arash commented in a friendly tone.

I arched an eyebrow at him. Really? He was going to make friends with the kid who'd been so itching for a fight that he'd basically ignored everything we tried to do to avoid one?

Arash just smiled back, because apparently, the answer was yes.

Well. Not like I hadn't gone and made allies of old enemies when things were too serious to be picky.

"Mom is Mom," was Connla's unhelpful answer. "She doesn't take excuses, she doesn't take prisoners, and she doesn't take a day off."

For some reason, everyone but Connla all glanced at me. I scowled back at them.

"So who is this Aífe lady, anyway?" Rika asked.

"A very scary person," Emiya answered dryly. Arash snorted.

"She's part of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology," I explained simply. "Same family of myths as Cúchulainn."

"Cú did say something about a woman named Aífe back in Fuyuki," Ritsuka mused.

Rika made a noise of understanding. "So if Cú is Connla's dad and this Aífe lady is his mom… Does that mean they were actually married?"

Up ahead, Connla snorted and burst out laughing, head tossed back as he cackled.

"What?" said Rika. "What's funny about that?"

"During his training with his mentor, Scáthach, Cúchulainn fought and defeated a formidable woman warrior named Aífe," Mash told the twins. "As part of the agreement for sparing her life, she had to bear him a son, and that son was to seek Cúchulainn out once he grew enough to wear the thumb ring Cúchulainn left behind."

"Mom'll be really upset if you mention that one," Connla warned us. "She's still sore about it. Says it doesn't count because Dad cheated."

I bit my tongue against what I wanted to say. Winning was winning. At the end of the day, when everything was on the line, how you won didn't matter as much as actually winning. In life or death battles, there was no such thing as "cheating."

But there were still lines that probably shouldn't be crossed. That was Cauldron's mistake. My mistake, too, after a fashion, but in the face of extinction, I'd grasped for whatever I could get, and I'd still regretted its necessity. That was probably where we'd wound up differing. Cauldron had eventually stopped caring about how ugly they were and simply resigned themselves to suffering whatever consequences came after it was all over, and I had never forgotten it.

"…He raped her," Ritsuka said quietly.

A chill descended over the group.

"Onii-chan?" Rika asked.

"What Cú did to Aífe," Ritsuka clarified, still just as quiet. "You said he forced her to bear him a son in exchange for sparing her life. He raped her."

Emiya sighed. An oppressive silence fell, blanketing all of us. None of the Servants tried to deny it, not Emiya, not Arash, and not Connla, and even Mash's mouth remained firmly shut as she refused to meet either of the twins' eyes.

"But… He was so cool," Rika mumbled.

"I hate to tell you this, you two," I said, "but you're not going to find too many Heroic Spirits without something like that in their closet. It's just the way things were for a lot of them."

Not that it was a good answer either.

"Just the way things were, huh…" Ritsuka breathed.

"Gender equality as a concept is only about a hundred years old," I told them. "Back in the time of heroes like Cúchulainn and Herakles, women were closer to property than people, and great female warriors were rare challenges to be conquered, not equals to be celebrated. It's not as rare as you might think for the big names to have gone out on some other quest, defeated a woman in combat, and then spent a week ravishing her, whether the story says she was willing or not. This wasn't just something that Cúchulainn did. Remind me later to tell you about Hippolyta and Penthesilea. Or Chryseis and Briseis."

It wasn't an easy pill to swallow, but one of the things my mother had taught me about literature was that several parts of a story might only make sense once you understood the context of when and where it was written. That was…a little bit stranger to apply to myths and legends when the people in them turned out to have been real, though. Harder to square some of the ugliness when it wasn't just fiction.

"The thing you have to remember, Rika," Emiya cut in, "is that most of the Heroic Spirits you meet will be mellowed out and moderated by how perspectives changed over the years in addition to the adjustments made during the summoning process to avoid culture shock. A lot of the Servants you meet will feel a lot more like modern people as a result, even if they were ancient kings from two thousand years ago."

"If it makes you feel any better, Mom's angrier about the losing than the rest of it," Connla piped up, turning around to face us as he walked backwards. "She's super pissed that history wound up remembering her more for the worst moment of her life than anything else she ever did."

A grimace twisted my mouth. That much, I could relate to. I think I'd have been pretty angry, too, if the only thing anyone ever wound up remembering me for was the Locker.

Or maybe that moment on my knees, in the dirt, barely able to keep my brain from literally leaking out of my ears as I waited for the final blow I knew was coming. I wasn't sure I could have said which one was my worst moment, if I was forced to choose between them. Which was lower? The moment that marked the start of my journey, covered in blood and shit and vomit, or the end, when I tasted the ash of a victory I couldn't enjoy?

Could I even call it a small mercy that at least Contessa was the only one who ever realized exactly how far I'd fallen?

"But he…!" Rika began, but the words lodged in her throat, like she couldn't quite get them out. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.

"The value system of the ancient Celts was far different than the modern day," said Emiya. "Life and death were far more closely intertwined. I'm not going to excuse what happened. But it should tell you something that Queen Medb was far more aggrieved that Cúchulainn didn't take her to his bed after he captured her in battle than she would have been if he had."

"That's just the way things were," Connla agreed. "We respected strength in battle. We submitted only to those who beat us utterly and completely. And we never held hard feelings when we lost, because the guy you were fighting with five minutes ago might be drinking with you after the battle."

He turned back around and kept walking. "That's why Mom's so sore about Dad winning. In raw strength and skill, Mom crushed him like a bug, but because he managed to trick her into lowering her guard, he beat her without actually beating her."

Emiya chuckled at a joke only he got. "So much for pride and honor."

My lips pursed by I kept myself from commenting on it. Not in front of three Heroic Spirits who probably wouldn't take too kindly to it.

"If it makes you feel better," I said instead, "then you can yell at him properly the next time we see him."

Slowly, a nasty grin pulled at the corners of Rika's mouth. I could only imagine what sort of punishments she was coming up with in her head.

The trail we were walking along the edge of the shoreline eventually turned into the forest, where a roughly hewn pathway cut through the trees and towards the northeast. Connla turned here and we followed, slimming our formation down so that we could fit along the tighter quarters. Mash and Emiya took the front behind Connla, then Rika and Ritsuka, me, and Arash brought up the rear.

It was only a short minute or two later that we came out the other side and into a clearing and a more proper dirt road, and when we turned onto it —

"Whoa," Ritsuka breathed.

"Now, that's a castle!" said Rika.

There up ahead sat a castle, a sprawling fortress that stretched up and out.

It looked like something out of a fantasy film, or maybe a medieval period piece. It wasn't as grand as the ones in the Aleph The Lord of the Rings movies, but it was closer to Helm's Deep than not, constructed out of hewn stone with rounded towers and heavy oaken doors. Crude iron fittings and hinges formed the frames and the mesh gates, and the keep loomed high above us with empty windows that overlooked the courtyard.

The ramparts were empty of defenses and no one manned the walls, but the wall that encircled the entirety of it was sturdy and strong looking. I wasn't sure Siegfried would have been able to punch through it, not without serious effort.

As we reached the front gate, an iron grate blocked the way in, and Connla stepped right in front of it and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"HOY!"

There was a moment of pregnant pause, and then with a rumble and the clank of iron chains, the grate lifted up from the entryway. As though nothing was wrong at all, Connla strode through and into the courtyard.

The rest of us from Chaldea hesitated a moment, and the twins exchanged nervous glances with Mash. I'd said before that there was almost no way that we would find the Grail this quickly and easily, but while I didn't think it likely, that didn't mean the chances were absolutely zero.

And if Aífe did have the Grail, there was almost no way this wouldn't come down to fighting her for it.

I glanced at Arash. Don't drop your guard for an instant, I ordered him.

Arash's mouth drew into a tight line as his fingers curled into fists. Yes, Master.

"What are you waiting for?" Connla called back to us impatiently. "Come on!"

"Be ready," I muttered to everyone. They all gave me small, short nods in response.

Mash and Emiya stepped forward first, and the three of us Masters followed behind them. Once again, Arash brought up the rear.

I half expected the grate to come screeching back down the instant we were all inside the courtyard, but it didn't even squeak.

The door to the keep suddenly swung open, and a hurricane compressed into the shape of a woman stormed out. Cool eyes the color of amethyst had attention only for the boy ahead of us, and the spear in her hand was far more menacing than the one Connla had broken, the red of freshly spilt blood and decorated with a pattern of vines with an aura that radiated malice. Her clothes were roughly spun and coarse compared to the uniforms Chaldea had provided the twins and me, but for the time period they came from, they must have been incredibly high quality, and like Connla's mantle, they were maroon trimmed in gold.

Strawberry blonde hair flashed in the sun as she walked, and Connla's vivid auburn suddenly made sense, because it was some strange combination of his mother's pale red and his father's deep, blackish blue.

"Connla," she said, and her tone was regal and frigid as she addressed her son. "You broke it."

Connla kicked the ground sheepishly. "Sorry?"

In the time it took me to blink, she was standing in front of him, and one gloved fist drove itself into his cheek with the force of a detonating bomb. Connla dropped to the ground like a stone.

The twins drew in a pair of gasps.

"She punched him!" Rika squeaked.

The woman, who could only be Aífe, let out an exasperated sigh. "You have your father's knack for finding trouble."

"Holy…" Ritsuka whispered.

"A different value system, huh…" I muttered.

"You're the one who sent me out to scout out the disturbance, Ma," Connla said as he pulled himself to his feet. He rubbed at his cheek, but didn't seem any the worse for wear. "Ya do remember the geasa I'm under, right?"

Aífe's hand lashed out again, and she grabbed him by the ear and used that to pull him closer to her. Connla squawked.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow! Leggo, leggo! Mom!"

"I raised you," she told him flatly. "You can't use that excuse with me. I know you too well."

"You're gonna tear it off, you're gonna tear it off!"

She didn't even seem to hear him.

"I brought you into this world, I can damn well take you out of it," Rika said in a low whisper, like she was quoting someone. Against my will, my lips twitched with the threat of a smile.

Aífe's eyes flickered to Rika for a moment, and Rika squeaked again as she realized she'd been heard, but Aífe didn't offer any other acknowledgement of what Rika said.

"We'll talk more about this later," Aífe promised Connla. "For now, it looks like you brought guests."

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She let go of his ear, and he stumbled a few steps back, rubbing at the lobe and scowling petulantly at her. She raised a single unimpressed eyebrow and nodded her head at us.

"Fine," said Connla. "Mom, these people were the disturbance you noticed earlier. Disturbances, this is my mom."

I grimaced at the description he offered, but Arash and Emiya both seemed to think it was funny, because one huffed a chuckle and the other snorted.

"Does that make Senpai the Disturbance in Chief?" Rika asked. Her brother sighed.

Mash took a step forward and gave a short bow. "Please excuse us for intruding, Miss Aífe. When we arrived, we were thrown off course unexpectedly, and we need to use a Ley Line Terminal to establish a connection with our allies at home. We don't mean to trouble you."

Aífe regarded her with sharp eyes for a moment, looking Mash up and down critically, and then she looked back over towards us and inspected the rest of our group the same way. For the long, awkward moment of her inspection, she said nothing, and I surreptitiously began to gather a swarm from the nearby forest, just in case this devolved into a fight.

Finally, she said, "You're human." She regarded Arash and Emiya next. "And you two are Servants." To Mash, she added, "And you're some hybrid between them. A human with a Servant inhabiting your body, almost like possession."

"I-I'm what's called a Demi-Servant, yes," Mash answered. "Um, that is, I'm a human who was merged with a Servant in the hopes of stabilizing the summoning process."

Aífe regarded us again for a moment, and then nodded to herself, like she'd come to a decision. "You're not with the United Empire."

United Empire?

"No," I said. "We're with the Chaldea Security Organization."

"They say they're here to fix whatever went screwy with this place, Ma," Connla added.

Aífe nodded again, like that was sufficient answer by itself. "Which would make the United Empire your enemy."

"I thought it was the Roman Empire," Rika said to her brother.

"Maybe that's what got screwed up and made this place a Singularity?" Ritsuka suggested.

"It's not quite that simple," Aífe told them, because they weren't being as quiet as they thought they were. "Unfortunately, this courtyard isn't a good place to be talking about the circumstances of this era, and I am not technically the owner of this castle, so I have no authority to invite you to make use of the Ley Line Terminal."

"Aw," Connla whined. "You're not gonna fight them, Mom?"

"No," she said in a way that might as well have screamed, not right now. I was beginning to think that Connla's insistence on fighting us earlier was something he inherited as much from his mother as his father. "There are more important matters to take care of, right now." Over her shoulder, she shouted, "You going to come out, or are you hiding inside for the rest of their stay?"

There was a moment of silence, and then another figure stepped out of the keep, sighing.

"You seemed to have matters well in hand," he told her. "It was my intention not to involve myself unnecessarily."

A knight in shining armor. That was the first thought I had upon seeing him in full. Trimmed in gold, his white armor fit the stereotype so completely that I almost wanted to laugh, and I couldn't help thinking that his handsome face and deep, blue eyes would send any girl swooning, no matter her orientation.

"Oh my god, he's a dreamboat," Rika breathed.

"I'd say this is necessary," said Aífe. "This is your castle, isn't it? They need your permission to access the ley line."

"Even though it was you who laid claim over this land, I suppose they do," he agreed reluctantly, and then he turned to address our group. "Forgive me, please allow me to introduce myself. I — ah."

He stopped, staring at Mash, and Mash, too, was frozen, staring straight back at him, like a pair of ex-lovers who were meeting again years after a bad breakup and didn't know what to do or what they should say.

"It can't be," the knight in shining armor finally said. "That armor, that shield, that presence… Could you possibly be —"

Faster than I could see, Mash's shield went flying, and it slammed into his gut with a thunderous, reverberating gong.

"Urk!"

He tumbled over backwards, rolled twice, and came to a stop on his back, propped up on his elbows and grimacing as he looked back at Mash. The shield landed flat next to him.

"Shitty old man!" Mash shouted at him, fists clenched and stomping one foot angrily. "Shut up! You'll ruin it!"

My eyebrows rose towards my hairline, because I'd spent two years training with her and gone through two Singularities fighting beside her, and I had never, not once, heard her talk like that. Or stomp her foot like an angry child, for that matter.

Off to the side, Connla laughed.

"Whoa," said Emiya.

"M-Mash?" Ritsuka asked uncertainly.

And just as suddenly, the anger evaporated and Mash recoiled with a gasp, her hands flying to her mouth.

"I-I'm so sorry!" she said, horrified. "I-I don't know what just came over me, it was like…like…!"

The knight in shining armor sighed as he climbed back to his feet, apparently unharmed.

"It's all right," he told her patiently. "Forgive me, I made some assumptions I shouldn't have, and it seems the Heroic Spirit inside of you saw fit to correct me for it. Please, allow me to apologize and introduce myself properly."

He pressed one arm against his chest and bent over, bowing.

"I am Lancelot, a knight of King Arthur's court. I welcome you to my home, the Joyous Guard."

Immediately, I straightened, looking at our…host, I guess was the proper term, in a new light. This was Sir Lancelot? The Sir Lancelot? King Arthur's greatest knight and one of the major catalysts behind Camelot's downfall?

Could I count this as good luck, if it turned out he really was an ally? First, we found Siegfried in Orléans, and now another famous knight in Septem? Not only that, but the knight in shining armor on whom the stereotype was based. It seemed to me like an incredible stroke of good fortune, and I wasn't all that familiar with the feeling of getting those.

Emiya, on the other hand, stiffened and started looking around at the walls, head swiveling. "This is the Joyous Guard?"

"Ah — it one day will be," Lancelot admitted. "At the moment, however, it is nothing more than a well-built castle. It will be some centuries yet before the Copper Knight comes to take residence here, and therefore the curse that plagued this place does not yet exist."

Something clicked in my head, and as stealthily as I was able, I sent small bits of my swarm to probe the rest of the castle's interior.

The name hadn't resonated with me, at first, but the mention of the Copper Knight connected the dots. That particular story was part of Lancelot's backstory, how he had gone as a nameless knight on a quest to lift the curse of the Dolorous Guard, a castle whose inhabitants suffered under the tyranny of the cruel Copper Knight. The way it went, the name of the knight who would free them was written under a slab inside the castle, only able to be lifted itself by that selfsame knight.

The nameless white knight faced a gauntlet of twenty powerful knights, defeating them one after the other without rest, and at the end, the Copper Knight fled in fear. Lifting the slab that broke the curse, that nameless knight discovered his name, "Lancelot," written under the slab, and renamed the castle "Joyous Guard" after claiming it as his own.

If this was that same castle, then it stood to reason that those twenty knights might already be bound to it, and the last thing I wanted was to be ambushed by them the moment we let our guard down.

Emiya, on the other hand, relaxed once he heard Lancelot's explanation. He'd been thinking the same thing I was now, I realized, that a squad of Servant-level knights would appear on the walls to fight us, except Lancelot's words seemed to have put him at ease.

For good reason, apparently, because I wasn't finding any sign of those knights myself. That might not wind up meaning anything, since Servants were spiritual existences in the first place and didn't have to stay physical, but for the moment, it seemed we didn't have to worry.

"You're all stray Servants, then?" Arash asked.

"Stray Servants?" Lancelot parroted with a confused wrinkle of his brow.

"It's one of the terms we've been using for Servants in these Singularities who aren't summoned by the Grail and don't have a proper Master," I clarified.

"Like Siegfried, Georgios, Marie, and Mozart in France," Ritsuka added, as though that would mean anything at all to our hosts.

"Meaning the World itself summoned you," Emiya drawled. "You were brought here by the Counter Force, and the Counter Force is the thing keeping you manifested."

"Ah." Lancelot nodded. "Yes, it seems so. At the very least, I have no memory of being summoned by a Master into this era."

"Neither Connla nor I have a Master, either," Aífe confirmed. "We simply appeared here a few weeks ago for no apparent reason."

"Just like Jeanne said back in the Orléans Singularity," Mash muttered.

With largely the same circumstances, even. Well, I doubted any of them was of the Ruler class — a quick check showed Aífe was a Rider, Lancelot a Saber, and Connla an Assassin, of all things — and there didn't seem to be any degradation in their skills or performance at first glance. Connla especially, because I didn't want to think that he had only been half as strong as he was supposed to be when he nearly skewered Emiya.

Otherwise, though, it seemed as though they had been summoned spontaneously just the same as Jeanne and all of the other strays we'd met in Orléans.

"In any case," said Lancelot, "you said that you needed to access the ley line in order to contact your allies, did you not?"

"Yes," Mash answered with a nod. "Doctor Roman and Miss Da Vinci must be worried. We didn't land where we were meant to."

Lancelot nodded himself. "Then allow me to lead you there so that you might put your comrades at ease."

He turned back around and started walking towards the large, wooden doors he and Aífe had first appeared from, and after a moment, our group lined back up into the formation we'd been using and followed. Aífe and Connla fell into step next to me and Arash.

We stepped past the threshold and into the entrance hall, and immediately, I felt like I was stepping into Hogwarts. Lit torches sat in braziers to light up the room, and they cast the white brick of the walls and the floor in a warm, orange glow. Directly across from us as we entered was a set of stairs set into the opposite wall, and about six feet off of the floor, they stopped at a landing and split into two staircases that led up to the next floor. On the landing was another set of heavy doors leading further into the building.

Off to either side were arched thresholds that opened up to more corridors, and up above was a vaulted ceiling and high windows that let in streams of sunlight. Suits of armor carved from stone stood vigil in small alcoves set into the walls, silent sentinels watching over the castle.

One, two, three, four… My bugs explored further in and found more sequestered in other parts of the keep, all set along the inside of the outer wall. Five, ten, fifteen… Twenty total. A chill swept down my spine. Were these the twenty knights Lancelot was said to have overcome in the legend?

The man himself made no mention of them. He just kept going, climbing the stairs and stepping through the next set of double doors.

The next room was no less spectacular than the previous, a gothic tapestry of architecture and sculpture that looked like something out of a fantasy movie's wet dream, as though to impress whoever stepped foot inside of it. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would have thought they were in heaven, and Peter Jackson would have been beside himself with envy.

But it all paled to the final room he took us to, a sprawling hall with a single stone table at its center, really more of an altar than anything else. It was barren and bare when we got there, decorated only with the grand arches and vaulted ceilings that seemed the castle's trademarks, but I could imagine the finely woven banners and tapestries that would be hanging from the walls in Lancelot's proper era, all of them bearing his heraldry and all of them made from shimmering satin.

And along the back wall, high up and inaccessible to an ordinary human, there was an enormous pattern carved into relief in the wall. Geometric and made of swooping lines racing from the center of a circle to its edges, I couldn't have said what it was, only that it was easily the grandest part of the entire room, looming over the rest of it like the eye of God.

It was…impressive, I had to admit.

Lancelot turned back to face us, and up close, he was just as handsome, but there was something almost…sad in his expression. As though a grimace was the way his face was naturally set, so that he always looked on the verge of tears.

"It's here," he declared. "If you would like to use the ley line —"

"Yes, I can feel it now," Mash declared.

She hesitated for a moment, but Ritsuka seemed to catch this even before I did, because he said, in a strong voice, "We need to contact Doctor Roman."

"O-ho, yeah," Rika added with an ominous grin. "We have some words for the good doctor!"

Mash nodded. "Right!"

She stepped forward and toward the altar, then swung her shield around and laid it down so that the front faced upwards.

"Establishing magical circle. We should have connection with Chaldea —"

Beep-beep!

"— at any moment," Mash finished lamely.

"Thank goodness, you're all okay!" Romani said as his image appeared over the top of Mash's shield.

"No thanks to you," Rika said venomously, still smiling that deranged grin.

Romani blinked. "Eh?"

"Romani," I addressed him, dragging his attention my way, "what happened? Our insertion point was supposed to be right next to the Roman capital, wasn't it?"

Romani sighed and slumped back into his chair, running a hand through his hair. "I wish I knew. Da Vinci is going over the data right now, but whatever happened during the Rayshift threw you guys way off course, and I don't actually have an answer why."

Rika laughed a laugh so fake even I wanted to cringe away from it. "You don't say, Doctor Roman! Gee, that's a convenient answer, isn't it!"

"Listen, I can't give you anything more concrete right now," said Romani. "You should have landed right near Rome itself. That's where our coordinates were set to drop you in at. Obviously, that didn't happen, and somehow, you guys wound up on the other end of the continent!"

"Interesting," Aífe interjected, walking closer so that she could lean over and inspect Romani's hologram. "Instantaneous remote communication… I assume you're using some form of magecraft?"

She poked Romani's image. Her finger went right through his forehead, because of course, he wasn't actually there.

"Um, yes?" Romani answered awkwardly. "I…can't say I know the specifics of how this works. But we use magical energy to form a connection with the team so we can talk like this."

Aífe nodded. "I'm assuming the connection drops or loses fidelity when in areas of high concentrations of magical energy…and also in areas of exceptionally low magical energy."

Romani blinked.

"Um, yes, actually."

He looked at me, like I had an answer for why she was asking him questions about how our comms worked.

Aífe made a noise in her throat. "A pity, really. If we'd thought of something like this ourselves, my sister and I could have remained in contact quite easily."

"Sister?" Romani shook his head. "Ah, before I put my foot in my mouth… Can I assume you're a Servant?"

"You can."

"I'm detecting…three unregistered Spirit Origins in close proximity, including you." His face set and his mouth drew into a hard line. "Can I take your presence here to mean you intend my colleagues no harm?"

Aífe huffed and one corner of her lips drew up into a smirk. "You may, for now."

Rika snorted. "Her son, on the other hand…"

Romani blinked again, nonplussed. "Her son? But Servants can't have children!"

"From when she was alive," I clarified for him. "They're both Servants, now."

"Both…" Romani frowned thoughtfully. "That…actually doesn't narrow down her identity as much as it really should."

"Don't consider it too strongly." Aífe waved it off dismissively. "I am Aífe. My son is Connla."

That did it.

"From the Ulster Cycle!" Romani burst out. "Oh, that makes sense, then! But… Um, don't take this the wrong way, why are you here? I mean here-in-this-Singularity here," he rushed to add. "I don't remember either of you having any major connection to the Roman Empire in your legends."

"Neither did I," Lancelot chimed in, taking a step towards Romani's image.

"I'm…sorry. You are?"

"I am Sir Lancelot of the Round Table." With a strangely bitter twist, he added, "King Arthur's right hand."

Romani's mouth fell open, and it flapped silently for several moments as he tried and failed to find the words he wanted. Eventually, he settled on a strangled, "What?"

"We're contacting you from the Joyous Guard, Romani," I told him. "He's the one currently in charge of the castle."

"But…aren't you technically an enemy of Rome?" Romani asked, bewildered. "G-granted, I don't remember you ever being part of the conflict, but Lucius Tiberius was the emperor in your time period, and he was one of King Arthur's most powerful enemies!"

"If my king were here and commanded me to strike down the Roman Empire, then I would not hesitate," Lancelot confirmed. "However, here and now, I am but a Servant in the service of mankind. The kingdom to which I swore my oaths has not yet formed and my king has not appeared, and so I have no cause to quarrel with Emperor Nero."

"You don't have a reason to ally with him, either," Emiya pointed out.

"He's right," Romani agreed. "Having said that, though, can I take it that you're all stray Servants? That is, you were summoned without a Master or a contract?"

Lancelot nodded.

"That would be correct."

"Connla and I, as well," Aífe confirmed.

"A little too stray," Rika muttered with an acidic glare in Connla's direction. Connla just grinned, unbothered.

Romani nodded. "Then it would be safe to assume that you've been summoned here for the purposes of correcting the Singularity. One way or another, the Counter Force decided that your skills or Noble Phantasms were well-suited for this situation. I-I mean, that's what I'm assuming, anyway," he backpedaled, and I grimaced. "It's what makes sense since Siegfried was summoned to fight Fafnir in the last Singularity."

A little more spine, Romani.

But he was trying, and I could at least give him credit for that.

"Can you tell us more about the situation we've dropped into?" I asked him, driving the conversation forward.

Romani shook his head. "I'm sorry, but things are still limited. Ironically, it might be for the best that you landed where you did, because we can detect a lot of activity going on in France, we just…can't really tell you what that activity is."

"I can," said Aífe, folding her arms over her chest. She looked over to me. "Do you recall I mentioned the United Empire earlier?"

"Yes, actually," I answered. "Something about how being here to fix what went wrong with history made us their enemy."

Aífe nodded and turned back to Romani. "Some time ago, before any of us here was summoned, there was a schism caused by the appearance of a competing empire to Roman rule. How they appeared or why, no one seems to have any idea, but their appearance split the Roman Empire in two. What you might call the proper Roman Empire retains the seat of its power in Rome under Emperor Nero. The opposing United Empire has taken just about everything to the southwest of where we currently are. Gaul — that is, what you would know as France — is split nearly down the middle. It's contested territory."

Meaning a warfront. A shiver went down my spine. And if we had tried to go straight to Rome while all of that was happening, we probably would have gotten dragged into the fighting, wouldn't we? With no idea which side we should be supporting.

"Hence the elevated activity," Romani concluded. "What we're detecting is the fighting going on in the middle of the country."

Aífe nodded. "One would assume."

"Are they Servants?" I asked. "The leaders of the United Empire, I mean."

They would almost have to be, because I couldn't remember any direct challengers for Nero's rule in my research — none with the pull and the support to split the empire in half, anyway.

"Almost certainly," said Aífe. "The generals at the head of the armies are all former Roman emperors, with Romulus himself leading the Empire."

"It is much like my king's Round Table," Lancelot added. "A coalition of equals, with the greatest of them as first among them."

My eyebrows rose. The man said to have founded Rome, supported by former emperors, almost all of whom would have been famous for some great deed or another? No wonder the Empire had split right down the middle. Whatever the people thought of Nero, the past glories of those former emperors would be more than enough to sway large portions of the populace.

"Then…Romulus would be the one with the Holy Grail!" said Mash.

"That would make sense," Romani agreed. "He'd have to be a Servant, considering the Roman Empire is already centuries old at that point."

Aífe shrugged. "I couldn't tell you for sure. I haven't heard anything about a Holy Grail."

"Would Emperor Nero know?" I asked.

Aífe shrugged again.

Great. We knew more than we had before coming here, a lot more for that matter, and far more than I might have expected us to learn so quickly, but some of the most important details were still unclear. It looked like there was still a lot more investigating to do before we could pin down the location and owner of the Holy Grail.

Gilles had proven that the one whose wish had formed the Singularity wasn't necessarily the one holding the Grail itself. It might be another case of Jeanne Alter, but as much as I hoped it was, there was no way to be sure that Romulus would have the Grail himself until we fought him.

"For now, it seems like you guys still need to get to Rome," said Romani. Rika let out a long, tortured groan, and Romani smiled wryly. "Well, you're going to have to be extra careful about getting there. Listen, I don't want you guys taking any unnecessary risks for this, okay? If you have to take a more roundabout route to avoid getting dragged into the fighting, then that's what you should do."

"Great," said Rika bitterly, "so you want us to take twice as long to get there."

"Getting there safely is more important than getting there fast," Romani said firmly.

"Would you feel better about it if we brought in Siegfried?" I asked pointedly.

At the mention of his name, Aífe perked up, perhaps with the thought of facing such a challenging opponent. Romani didn't seem to notice and shook his head.

"My reasoning from before still stands," said Romani. "We're not going to start sending in our reserves just so you can take the quickest route to Rome. It's better if you make allies inside the Singularity first, and you guys have barely been there an hour. There's no way Aífe, Lancelot, and Connla are the only stray Servants in the entire Singularity."

He turned to look at Aífe. "Speaking of which, can I ask where you three stand on this? Um, I'm assuming you're on the side of proper history, so you're Rome's allies — I mean, Emperor Nero's — but you're all the way out here on the coast of France. It…doesn't seem like a particularly relevant post."

"It's not," Aífe said sardonically. "My position here is for the purpose of keeping Britain and Éire out of this squabble. Emperor Nero decided not to press the issue and leaves us alone. In exchange, I keep an eye on things in this area and send any of the United Empire's cronies who wander a little too close packing."

"Usually in pieces," Connla added with a savage grin.

Rika grimaced and looked a little nauseous as she realized what that meant. A second later, Mash connected the dots, too, and gasped.

"You mean you kill them," Ritsuka accused her.

"If they don't take the hint," Aífe confirmed shamelessly. "There's no fun or honor in killing hapless babes. But if they insist on a warrior's death, then I oblige."

"Different values, Ritsuka," Arash reminded him quietly.

Ritsuka, who looked like he'd been about to protest, shut his mouth and scowled.

"So you're a kind of forward outpost close to the frontlines," Romani mused. He sighed. "Which means you'd probably prefer to stay put, huh? In that case, have you seen any other stray Servants around? The more help we can get, the better."

Aífe arched an eyebrow. "Actually, I think I can do you one better." She turned to her son. "Connla, I've got a job for you."

Connla let out the put upon sigh of someone who knew he was about to be asked to do something he didn't want to do. "Yeah, Ma?"

"Head towards the Gallian front," she ordered him. "Find Queen Boudica. I have a favor to ask of her."