Interlude R(F) I: Shelob's Lair

Life for Fujimaru Rika had gone sideways somewhere.

Another girl might have said some cliché thing about not knowing where things had gone so wrong, but Rika knew the exact decision that had flung her life so far off course: the very instant she decided to let her brother sign the two of them up for an internship at the "Chaldea Security Organization." Everything that had happened since could squarely be traced back to the moment she relented and signed her name on the form he'd brought back for her.

Nowhere in that brochure or on any of the waivers they'd signed was there anything listed about "Rayshifts" or "Heroic Spirits" or "Singularities," and under possible workplace hazards, there was no mention of bombs blowing up a solid eighty-percent of your coworkers, risking life and limb in the distant past, or famous Italian artists suddenly deciding to come back to life for the sole purpose of getting a sex change.

Most importantly, no one told her that she was going to be working under a more senior employee who was the hardest of the hardcore and maybe also just a little, tiny, teensy-weensy bit insane.

Speaking of, wow, what had Senpai been through that made her such a badass? Rika couldn't even imagine it. All through Orléans, Senpai walked on like the whole world around her couldn't touch even a single hair on her head, even while people died and wyverns burned half the country down and a genocidal madwoman cackled atop the head of the biggest fuckoff dragon Rika had ever seen, let alone conjured in her mind.

The only reason Rika hadn't broken down gibbering was by not thinking too hard about it. The instant she stopped and actually thought through what was happening, she probably would have curled into a ball and cried for a week straight. She and Onii-chan had to sleep next to each other just to get any rest at all.

And Senpai walked through everything, all of the chaos and the carnage, cool as a cucumber and twice as prickly.

Senpai must've been through some seriously fucked up shit if she didn't even bat an eye at the end of the whole goddamn world. It was all Rika could do to climb out of bed, some days.

Sometimes, Rika wondered if she was the only sane person left in Chaldea. Onii-chan was adapting to the insanity pretty well, she thought. He took the whole Servants, Rayshifts, magicians stuff with aplomb she was frankly jealous of, and when Doctor Roman or Da Vinci explained the newest and craziest bit of bullshit, he just nodded along like it made more sense than the sky being blue or grass being green. Onii-chan was a serious person like that.

Senpai wasn't any help there, she was in on it, and so were the Doc and Da Vinci-chan. The only voice of reason Rika seemed to have was her own, and she was sure it was only a matter of time until the insanity infected her, too.

"All your base are belong to us," Rika mumbled.

"Rika?" Onii-chan asked, brow furrowed.

She shook her head. "It's nothing, Onii-chan. Just thinking out loud, that's all."

He looked at her weirdly, but let it go without comment. There's such a thing as being too trusting, Onii-chan.

But that was why he was the bestest brother in the whole wide world, and Rika wouldn't trade him for anyone. Not even the cute, adorable Mash, who was just a cinnamon roll.

"Where do you think she's going to choose as a hideout?" Onii-chan asked instead.

"She has half the city to choose from, Onii-chan," Rika pointed out wryly. "I'll bet there's loads of good places for her to park her keister and weave her wicked web."

Onii-chan sighed. "Do you have to put it that way?"

Rika just grinned.

He shook his head and adopted a stereotypical thinking pose, like the complete dork he was, surveying the city around them with furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. The cogs in his head turned, but whatever he was coming up with, he didn't feel the need to share.

Speaking of the city, that was creepy. Sure, plenty of lights were on, throwing a soft, artificial glow out onto the streets, and the burnt yellow of the streetlights turned the normally grey asphalt a dull gold, but the entire place was a ghost town, completely empty. It felt like everyone who was supposed to be living there had just suddenly evaporated, leaving stoves on, cars running, and food half eaten, abandoned.

Rika didn't know if all of those things were set up, but Senpai seemed like the kind of stickler for details who went the extra mile, so she wouldn't have been surprised if they tried to look inside one of the buildings and found signs that somebody had been there. It would definitely upgrade the creepiness factor from "pictures of Chernobyl" to "professional horror movie."

On the subject of Senpai and creepiness, that costume. Like, whoa, where did she come up with that? The black bodysuit, the tattered skirt, the gold lenses that seemed to glow in the dark, Rika would run screaming in the opposite direction if she ever met someone like that in an alleyway at night.

Which was probably the point, she reasoned. Senpai was going all in on this one. She might not be pulling out all of the stops, but Rika was more than willing to bet that Senpai was full of more and cleverer tricks than just "drop a biblical plague on the target," although Rika had to admit that dropping a biblical plague was probably more than enough to handle things against normal people. Just that Servants didn't seem all that impressed by it, because Servants were anything but normal people.

"Any ideas, Rika?" Onii-chan finally asked.

"Nope," she said cheerfully.

"You're being a great help," he mumbled.

She shrugged.

"Dunno if you've noticed, Onii-chan, but Senpai's way ahead of us. Like, boatloads of more experience. She's at the peak of Mount Everest and we're still near the bottom. If she doesn't want to be found, she won't be found, no matter who or what she's pretending to be."

"Pretending…" Onii-chan trailed off thoughtfully. "She said she's going to roleplay as a Caster, right?"

"Yeah? You saw the spooky costume, right? Guess Senpai's a fan of method acting."

"So what Senpai calls a proper Caster…is like a mage," Onii-chan went on slowly. "And mages are like Servants. They need energy to power their spells and stuff. So if a proper Caster is both a Servant and a mage, she's going to need lots and lots of energy, right?"

"I mean, I'm pretty sure you can't run a car off of double-As, Onii-chan."

Although the mental image of a car hooked up to a thousand double-A batteries and still sputtering as it failed to even start was kind of funny, Rika had to admit. She was going to have to note that down as something to look up after this whole shitshow was over and the internet was back up and running right.

Onii-chan nodded. "Then if you need a lot of energy, you'd go to places where you can find lots of it. Like, um… What did Director Marie call it? The places where ley lines meet up and loads of magical energy can be tapped into?"

Rika's eyebrows rose.

"You mean those nexus points? Um, Ley Line Terminals? Like the ones we went looking for back in Fuyuki?"

"And the ones Doctor Roman had us looking for in France," Onii-chan agreed. "Because they gave us a more stable connection to Chaldea… I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, though."

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Whatever explanation Doctor Roman had tried to give them had gone straight in one ear and out the other, because it was all way over Rika's head.

Onii-chan shook his head. "Anyway. If Senpai's pretending to be a proper Caster, she would probably choose one of those as her base, wouldn't she?"

"I guess?" Honestly, the whole Servants thing still twisted Rika's head around sometimes. She was still getting used to the idea of how it all worked. "There's just one problem, Onii-chan."

He blinked at her.

"Yeah?"

"Neither of us knows how to find those Ley Line Terminals. We've been relying on Senpai and Mash to figure it out."

Onii-chan grimaced and wiped a hand down the front of his face.

"That is a bit of a problem," he admitted. "But… We've been in Fuyuki before, haven't we? Would they be in the same place as before?"

What, like she had any idea?

"I dunno. Do Ley Lines change over time?" Rika didn't actually know. Maybe something to ask Da Vinci about later. "Senpai did say this place is based on the version of Fuyuki from proper history, though, right? So they're probably the same."

"If they do change, it's probably on a geological timescale." Rika snorted. Nerd, she didn't say. Onii-chan went on, "So they probably are in the same place. Which means…"

He lifted a hand and swung his arm around, index finger extended. The first target he landed on was the mountain in the distance, barely visible against the inky black horizon.

"The mountain where the Grail is supposed to be."

"Except that's on the whole other side of the city, and Senpai is staying here, in this half," Rika pointed out.

Onii-chan ignored her and moved his finger down, towards the residential district, and then he frowned when he realized that he didn't actually know exactly where that swanky mansion they had stayed in was located. He wound up settling for making a vague, circular gesture with his finger, encompassing the general direction.

"The… What did Mash call it? The…Second Owner's house."

"You know, I've been wondering," said Rika. "If the lady who owns that house is the city's Second Owner, then who's the First? The mayor?"

"I don't know," Onii-chan said impatiently. "Ask Doctor Roman later. If he doesn't know, Da Vinci does."

Square bet. Da Vinci knew everything. If she didn't when you first asked, she would three days later.

Servants were bullshit. Grade A, one-hundred percent.

"Still in the wrong half of the city, Onii-chan."

"Right." I was getting to that, she heard, even if he didn't say the words. "So that leaves the two places on this side of the city. One of those should be around where Mash rescued Director Marie, and the other one was the church on the hill."

Rika grimaced. "You want to try looking there?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Onii-chan said defensively. "It's remote, it's kind of small, with cramped corners and plenty of places to set traps. There was even a basement that we couldn't look through because the entrance was collapsed by the time we got there."

"It's also an hour away from here by foot," Rika pointed out. "It's gonna take Senpai just that long to get there. You think half an hour is enough time for her to set up traps there if it's gonna take her that long just to make the trip?"

Onii-chan's brow furrowed thoughtfully as he considered what she said, but a moment later, his eyes went wide. "Maybe… Maybe that's exactly why she didn't tell us where she was going," he began, so quick it was like he was chasing the words out of his mouth. "The church is the perfect place, right? So maybe Senpai wanted us to go there. If we wasted an hour or two checking out the church on the hill, then she'd have a lot more time to set up at the other place, wouldn't she?"

Rika felt her mouth stretch into a grin. "You know, Onii-chan, you're really not as dumb as people say you are."

He scowled at her, all broody and offended, but didn't let her drag him into an argument about it. Fair enough, she should probably take this whole thing a bit more seriously, too. It was just hard to be doom and gloom, all dour and grim, when she gave any real thought to exactly how ridiculous this whole situation was.

"So let's assume you're right," she said, surrendering. "Senpai decided it was too sacrilegious to bring a biblical plague into a church, and hey, if the Big Guy really does exist, the end of the world seems like a really bad time to get on his bad side, not judging. That means Senpai is hiding out in the civic center."

"At the very least, it would be a better idea to check there first, since it should be closer," Onii-chan agreed. "We won't lose as much time as we would doing it the other way around."

"Fair enough." Rika nodded. "But…I mean, it was half destroyed at the time, but you do remember how big it was, don't you?"

He grimaced. "It… Well, I mean, at least it's not as big as the high school, right? That place would be hell to have to find her in."

"You couldn't get me back in high school even if you bribed me," Rika said dryly.

Onii-chan's cheek jumped, but maybe because he had grown up with her, he managed to fight back the smile that threatened to spread across his face. He at least did her the courtesy of not mentioning the brief stint during that first trip to Fuyuki where they had to hide out in the school to work out a more solid plan for fighting Saber Alter. It would have ruined the joke.

"So that's the plan," he said instead. "We'll check the civic center first, and if she isn't there, we'll go to the church on the hill."

Wow, that was barebones.

"Great plan. What do we do when we get there?"

Onii-chan opened his mouth to say something, stopped, and then closed it again as his brow furrowed. "I don't know," he admitted. "I'm not sure what to expect Senpai to have set up when we get there. The only thing she promised not to do was swarm us with her bugs. That should make it at least a little easier, shouldn't it?"

Rika's eyebrows rose. "You didn't just say that. Tell me you didn't just say that, Onii-chan."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Rika, you can't tell me you actually believe that."

"Look at where we are and how we got here!" she insisted. "The world ended, we 'accidentally' got shunted off through time and space, and now we're the only ones left who can fix all the things going wrong with history! Murphy is our patron saint, Onii-chan!"

"I don't have any better ideas," he snapped. "Do you?"

She scowled at him.

"Yeah. That's what I thought."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"You're the ideas guy anyway, Ritsu," she mumbled petulantly. "That's why you were born first."

He heaved a heavy sigh. "That's not how it works, Rika. We're twins."

And one of us definitely got all the brains, she wanted to say but didn't. It was an old hurt, an old grudge, and Onii-chan didn't deserve that particular ugliness, not from her. They were in this together, even when they fought like this, and there was no room for petty jealousies and insecurities, so she didn't give them space in her heart. The acid on her tongue was swallowed so that it couldn't hurt anyone but her.

"Well," she said instead wryly, "I guess we're winging it."

Her brother sighed. She almost didn't hear him say, "This is going to be painful."

At that moment, their communicators beeped shrilly, announcing the end of the allotted half hour. Rika and Ritsuka both reached down and turned the timer off, and then they turned to each other, shared identical grimaces, and squared their shoulders, as though to say, "Well, here we go."

We who are about to die salute you, Rika thought. If she knew what angle the Servants outside were watching from, she would have turned that direction and snapped off a mocking salute.

They began their funeral march to the civic center in silence and without fanfare. The burnt husk of Fuyuki from the first Singularity was oppressive and choking, thick with smoke and heat as it was, but the atmosphere of the intact, empty city they were in now was equally as terrible, if for entirely different reasons. Fuyuki on fire felt like a tragedy, a mass grave that they were walking through, and Rika had dealt with that discomfort with her trademark humor. Empty Fuyuki felt wrong, unnatural, because there was something that was supposed to be there and wasn't, and Rika couldn't shake the chill of that loneliness, even with Onii-chan right next to her.

"This place is seriously freaking me out," she muttered. Their footsteps echoed up and down the street, completely deserted except for the two of them.

"We're the only ones here, Rika," Onii-chan said, although there was a slight nervous thread in his voice. "Us and Senpai, and Senpai is hiding."

"That's not as reassuring as you think it is…"

But Senpai didn't jump out at them. Nothing and nobody jumped out at them. Their entire walk to the civic center was unbothered, just them alone and the looming giants of the abandoned city around them. Their only companions were the sound of their footsteps and their own breathing.

When they finally arrived at the civic center, it was to find a completely normal building. It was four stories tall with a slightly curved facade, a thing of myriad windows like a thousand eyes that were framed with steel and concrete. Rounded pillars held up a sloped awning over the front doors like a gap-toothed smile. Further back, wings jutted out on either side, solid and opaque, far more mundane than the showy front.

There was no sign of Senpai. The building looked untouched and unmodified.

"Did she go to the church after all?" Rika wondered.

"Maybe…" Onii-chan hedged. "We should still take a look inside, just to be sure."

Rika glanced at him and then gestured for the glass front doors. "After you."

He grimaced and muttered, "How brave."

He hesitated for a moment, hands clenching and unclenching, and then he took a deep, bracing breath and strode forward. Rika fell into step behind him, far enough that he was definitely in the lead.

The front doors slid open automatically as they got close, and they hesitated again, waiting for an attack that didn't come. Only after several long, tense, uneventful seconds did they step across the threshold and into the building. The automatic door slid closed behind them a few moments later with a soft, hydraulic whine.

The atrium of the civic center was dark and shrouded in shadow, but the distant lights from the surrounding buildings outside cast a dim glow on the polished marble floor. Pillars jutted up like massive arms to support the high ceiling that loomed four stories above their heads, and off to either side was a jagged staircase that led to the second floor, framed with steel railings and panels of clear glass. Across the room from the front doors was a large, curved wooden desk that would reach up to about Rika's ribs, what she assumed to be some kind of customer service or check in center, and in either far corner were hallways that went further into the building, although these too were dark and uninviting.

And, of course, behind the front desk was a set of double doors, closed tight. The only lights that were on came from the far end of the corridor behind them, and their light peaked through the cracks ominously, haloing the doors.

It gave off major horror movie vibes. This would have been the part where the intrepid heroes clustered together and ventured further in, only for the monster to jump out at them from his hiding place and send them all scrambling in different directions.

"So, that's definitely the way she wants us to go, right?" Rika whispered to her brother.

"Almost certainly," he replied with a nod.

"Which means that the worst idea in the world is actually going that way, right?"

"For sure."

She considered the rest of the room, but none of the other options looked any more appealing than the first and most obvious. Of course, everything looked creepy in the dark, didn't it? That robe hanging on the back of your door became the grim reaper, the flickering shadow of a tree branch on the wall became a malevolent ghost, and your table lamp became a burglar lying in wait.

"Maybe the reason she wants us to go that way is because she didn't have time to trap the rest of the civic center," Rika suggested hopefully.

"Yeah," her brother agreed, although he didn't sound fully convinced. "Yeah, maybe."

Well, it wasn't like he had any better ideas, was it?

"Left or right, Onii-chan?"

His head swiveled as he looked back and forth between them. "I guess…"

A sudden hum filled the room with the low buzz of a thousand wasps, and the vibration seemed to shake the very air around them. Slowly, it resolved into syllables, and then into words, and a shiver swept down Rika's spine.

"WELCOME, MASTERS OF CHALDEA, TO MY HUMBLE ABODE."

The droning voice was deep and resonant, and it seemed to carry something inhuman and monstrous underneath it, like some terrible abomination clawing its way from the bottom of the abyss. It came not from any one place, but all around them, as though the building itself was alive and watching them.

"Okay, that's creepy," Onii-chan said.

"I HAD DEVISED COUNTLESS METHODS OF TRAPPING YOU, ALONE AND FRIENDLESS, TO BE CUT DOWN BEFORE YOU COULD THREATEN MY PLANS. NEVER IN A THOUSAND YEARS DID I IMAGINE YOU WOULD DELIVER YOURSELVES TO ME HERE, IN MY PLACE OF STRENGTH, WITHOUT EVEN YOUR SERVANTS TO PROTECT YOU."

The click was almost like thunder, it was so sudden and so stark against the backdrop of the humming, and with a high, ominous creak, the pair of shut doors slowly swung open.

"WON'T YOU COME CLOSER? I WOULD QUITE LIKE TO MEET YOU. I'M SURE THERE IS MUCH I COULD LEARN FROM THE THINGS IN YOUR HEADS."

And then, as suddenly as it started, the buzzing stopped.

"Okay, she definitely wants us to go that way," Rika said. "I vote we go any other direction. Like, that one should be off the table completely."

"Agreed," Ritsuka said immediately. "But I think we should at least look and see where that leads."

She looked at him incredulously, then back at the hallway, and what came out of her mouth was, "You're going first."

He grimaced but didn't argue. Marshalling his courage, he stepped down into the atrium proper and strode across it, his shoes clicking against the polished marble. Rika glanced around, looking for traps, and then followed.

They approached the open doors together cautiously, swerving around the customer service kiosk, and the closer they got, the more ordinary the hallway beyond looked. Another pair of open doors sat at the far end, and two more hallways split off in either direction, curving around the massive room that contained…a music hall? A theater, maybe. It was hard to see much from their limited angle, but row upon row of seats covered in wine red upholstery stretched in every direction, and in the distance, there was a stage with wooden floors that looked gold in the soft, yellow lighting that illuminated the whole room. In the far back, there were yet more seats above the stage set into the back wall.

"A theater?" Rika wondered.

The intercom at the front desk crackled, and a voice whispered over it, "Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

Rika squeaked and spun, magical energy surging through her circuits, and the black ball of her spell leapt from her fingers almost before she had any time to properly aim. "Gandr!"

The intercom at the front desk exploded in a spray of plastic shards.

"Really, Rika?" Onii-chan asked, but his own voice was shaky.

"I," she began vehemently, "hate horror movies!"

He glanced back down the hallway through the open doors. "Right. Let's not go that way."

"Seconded," she agreed breathlessly. "Motion passed."

She sucked down a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. "Left or right, Onii-chan?"

He considered his options for a moment, frowning, and then eventually said, "Left. Let's go left first."

She nodded. "Left it is."

Their direction chosen, they skirted around the open doors and the front desk and made their way down the shadowy left hallway. What little light they had from the outside swiftly disappeared, and only about ten feet down the corridor, it became all but impossible to see where they were or where they were going.

"Hang on a second," Ritsuka mumbled as he fiddled with his comms device. "It's basically the same principle as using your smartphone, right? So I should be able to…"

There was a click, and then the wristband lit up, casting a surprisingly intense light outwards. The twins had to hiss and shut their eyes, it was so sudden and stark a difference.

"Geez," Rika mumbled, squinting against the light. "Da Vinci-chan really pulled out all the stops with these things, didn't she?"

"They're really versatile," Ritsuka agreed.

He held up his arm and faced his wrist away, and the flashlight function lit up the next fifteen feet or so brightly enough to see clearly, but further out than that, things started to blur and darken back into obscurity.

Rika fiddled with her own communicator. "Here, let me…"

"You just have to —"

"I got it, I got it —"

With a little bit of work and some trial and error, Rika got her own flashlight mode turned on. It didn't make it that much easier to see ahead of them, but it gave Rika the ability to look around without relying on her brother.

Rika panned her light around the hallway, revealing single doors interspersed along either wall stretching down into the dark. Meeting rooms, she thought. Conference rooms for groups and dignitaries to meet in and discuss whatever business they had together. Who would be coming to a comparatively small city like Fuyuki to talk about matters of state? She had no idea. What else would they be, though?

A quiet rustling brushed against the ceiling. Rika's heart jumped, and her light immediately turned upwards, but there was nothing there.

She and her brother shared another nervous look.

"You first?" she suggested.

He grimaced at her and shook his head, but he took point without complaint. Once more, the entire building was silent, and the only things Rika could hear aside from the pounding of her heart were the clack of their footsteps on the marble floor and the rasp of their breathing. If Senpai was anywhere nearby, she was being so quiet that neither of the twins could hear her.

Onii-chan walked right past the first door, but Rika took a short detour and twisted the knob until it clicked, peeking her head through the crack. She cast her light around the room inside, a large, spacious meeting room, just like she thought, with sleek, modern white tables and steel-framed chairs upholstered with maroon fabric. Her pulse thudded in her ears, and she swallowed against the butterflies in her belly, but although the shadows cast by her flashlight were spooky and stark, the entire place was empty.

She closed the door until it clicked shut. Onii-chan looked at her curiously, and she shook her head. "Just checking," she told him.

They continued on, stopping every dozen paces or so to open the next door and check the room inside. Every time, though, they found nothing, only empty, abandoned meeting rooms with the chairs neatly pushed in under tidily arranged tables. The layout wasn't always exactly the same — sometimes, it was like a classroom, designed obviously for a presentation, and sometimes, they were pushed together into shapes, like squares or long rectangles — but the size of the rooms themselves stayed generally consistent with all of the rest.

The further and further down the hall they went, the more and more Rika was becoming convinced that she was right and Senpai simply hadn't had time to boobytrap anything but the very obvious pathway she'd set up for them to follow. That meant also that Senpai probably wasn't in any of the rooms in this direction, maybe not even on this floor, because you'd think if she was, she would have set more tricks and traps up to deter them.

"I think Senpai isn't in any of these rooms," Rika said aloud.

"I think you're right," Onii-chan agreed.

"Should we turn back? Maybe we should go the other way and see if we can find anything over there."

"Maybe we should try the second floor," Onii-chan suggested instead.

A crash suddenly echoed from further down the hallway, and Rika and Ritsuka took off to investigate. Their feet carried them past the remaining doors until they reached the end of the hall, where one final door on the left side was slightly ajar. It was still completely dark.

They shared another look, and Ritsuka reached out with his free hand to push the door open as Rika prepped her Gandr, just in case. The hinges creaked ominously.

"Senpai?" Rika tried, asking through the gap.

There was no answer.

She hesitated only for a moment, and then, as her brother pushed the door further open, Rika peeked inside, flashlight held up with one hand and the other formed into a finger gun.

"Senpai, are you there?"

She cast her light into the darkness and slowly swept it down the length of the room — and gasped, nearly stumbling back, as she realized it wasn't as empty as she thought.

"Senpai, is that you?"

A tall, willowy figure slowly stood straight, and in the background, an unnerving hum buzzed, just on the lower end of audible. A long, black cloak fell about the figure's body, hood drawn over the head, and with deliberate slowness, it turned around, face shrouded in shadow, even with Rika's light shining directly on her. Something under the hood caught on the flashlight and glimmered, glittering brightly.

"Senpai?"

And then from inside the hood appeared one long, thin, hairy leg, easily twice the size of Rika's index finger, followed by another, and another, and the black body of an absolutely massive spider pulled itself out from under the cloth.

"Eek!"

Rika squeaked and stumbled backwards, but Onii-chan was faster and cooler on the draw, because his hand had already risen.

"Gandr!"

The ball of black energy leapt from his fingertip, and it hit the cloaked figure square in what should have been its chest, but like a sheet of tissue, the body folded around the spell, the fabric billowing out as hundreds upon hundreds of bugs surged from underneath it, a writhing mass of chitin and too many legs. They fell upon the floor in a carpet of tiny, chittering bodies, spreading out across the marble in a wave too smooth to be natural.

"Shit!"

"Rika!"

The two of them scrambled back out the door, and Rika slammed it shut with an echoing bang that was probably heard throughout the entire building.

It didn't stop the bugs. They squeezed and pressed their bodies out in the tiny gap between the door and the floor, flowing out into the hallway. The size of the space prevented them from all coming at once, but it was only a matter of time before they all came through.

"Let's get out of here!" shouted Onii-chan.

"You don't have to tell me twice!"

They turned around and sprinted back the way they came, the lights of their flashlights bouncing around all over the place. Rika chanced a look back only once and wished she hadn't, because a writhing swarm of darkness was crawling all over the floors and walls and slowly consuming the hallway behind them.

Later on, she remembered that Senpai had promised not to drown them beneath an ocean of her bugs, but at that moment, all that filled Rika's head was images of that swarm crawling over her, under her clothes, burrowing into her ears and mouth and nose as she screamed for them to stop.

The atrium opened up before them and they rushed back out into the dim light of the nearby buildings.

"The other way!" Ritsuka said.

But no sooner had they started towards the hallway on the right than did they spy yet more bugs in that direction, another carpet slowly consuming the walls, ceiling, and floor. The right side hallway was off limits, too.

"Shit!"

"Up the stairs!" Rika hollered at him.

"Right!"

The words had barely left her mouth before she saw the crisscrossing pattern of webs woven between the railings on the stairs. Dozens of poisonous yellow bodies with black-striped legs sat in wait upon them, as though daring the twins to trap themselves and make for easy prey.

The only way that was clear…

"Onii-chan!"

"I see it!" he shouted back at her.

It was a trap. They both knew it was a trap. But there weren't any other options, because every other path had been walled off by too many bugs to count. Senpai hadn't left them with any other choice.

Ritsuka and Rika ran for the double doors at the center, swerving around the front desk, and without hesitating, passed through them and raced towards the auditorium. The double doors closed behind them with a final, terrifying BANG.

They didn't stop, they kept going, thumping down the carpeted hallway. They didn't look back, didn't dare distract themselves, not until they'd made it into the auditorium and slammed the other set of double doors closed.

Only then did they turn around, panting from the exertion, backing up slowly with their eyes glued to the door, just in case the swarm started pouring through the gaps here, too. For the moment, however, nothing came through. It was as though those double doors were an impenetrable barrier that blocked the swarm out.

Just for an instant, Rika let herself believe they were safe — as safe as they could be, at any rate, which wasn't very safe at all, when they were trapped exactly where their enemy wanted them to be with no way out. At that moment, at least, they weren't in immediate danger, which was better than being set upon by a roiling mass of a fuckoff number of creepy crawlies.

The one thing Rika could definitely be thankful for was that Senpai didn't seem to have found any giant hornets. She and Onii-chan might really be in for it if she had.

And then the walls themselves seemed to vibrate, and any notion of safety that Rika might have had was instantly dispelled.

"SO NICE OF YOU TO JOIN ME," the voice from before buzzed. Again, it came from all around them, not a singular source but the building itself speaking to them. "YOU LOOK QUITE TIRED, MASTERS OF CHALDEA. WOULD YOU PERHAPS LIKE TO REST? MAYBE SOME FOOD TO TIDE YOU OVER? A NICE CUP OF TEA?"

"Come," said another voice, tinged with the same hum of flittering wings and chittering chitin, and it was behind them, further down, distant enough that the words had to carry. When Rika and her brother turned around, there upon the stage at the bottom of the room was a figure in black and white, a hooded shawl drawn up over her head and a ragged skirt hanging from her hips, but with a physique that was unmistakably human. "Let me show you my hospitality."

The words themselves were cool and polite, and there was little threatening about the way she spread her arms invitingly, but the effect was ruined by the bugs that crawled over her body, disappearing between the folds of her bodysuit and the gaps of her armor. A disgusted shiver swept down Rika's spine, repulsed.

Once again, Onii-chan was faster on the uptake, because his hand rose before Rika could even think about what she should be doing.

"Gandr!"

A ball of black energy flew from his fingertip. Senpai didn't move at all to do anything, neither to dodge nor to counter, and against all odds, Onii-chan's spell splashed uselessly against an invisible forcefield in the air and exploded.

"No need for that, now," Senpai said silkily. "I simply want to talk."

"Gandr!" Onii-chan called again, but just like before, his spell splashed against something invisible without getting within ten feet of Senpai. "Gandr! Gandr! Gandr!"

Again, again, and again, his spell exploded before it even got close. Rika didn't know how she was doing it. Since when did Senpai know any barrier spells?

"If you insist on being unreasonable," Senpai said with an ominous lilt, "then I'm going to have to be a bit…rough with you."

Ritsuka stared at her for a moment, silent, and then he snarled and took off for the stage, running down the aisle as fast as he safely could.

"Onii-chan!" Rika cried out, trying to… What? Warn him?

You just have to land one, good hit, she suddenly remembered.

Emboldened by the thought, she took off after him, because they just had to get up on that stage and land one punch and this would be over. That would be easier if there were two of them, wouldn't it?

Except Onii-chan made it all of maybe ten or fifteen feet before Senpai waved her hand and he tripped inexplicably.

"Onii-chan!"

Onii-chan didn't stay down. He was up again almost instantly, dashing towards the stage. "One good hit, Rika!" he called back at her.

Senpai tilted her head, and a sigh buzzed out of her mouth. "Good grief. You really have to make this difficult, don't you?"

The twins didn't respond, they just kept going. Ritsuka was the first to the stage, because he was just a faster runner than Rika was, and he climbed up over the lip, clambering and barely slowing down, and he made towards Senpai — only to stop, suddenly, caught by some invisible force.

"You didn't think I would leave myself unprotected, did you?"

Onii-chan struggled, pulling on his legs and his arms, and it took Rika a second or two to realize that he wasn't fighting the air, but thin, gossamer threads of spiderweb. They were so fine that they were almost invisible until they caught the light just right.

Rika could only stop and stare a few paces behind him, boggling at the cleverness of it and the sheer strength of the webbing to stymy her brother for that long. She remembered hearing somewhere that spider silk was as strong as steel, but every spiderweb she'd ever walked through on accident had all but fallen apart effortlessly, nothing more than a nuisance clinging to her face.

Eventually, however, Onii-chan pulled himself free, tearing the threads from their mounting and snapping those that refused to come off, and he didn't waste any time going after Senpai again. Rika started and followed, climbing up onto the stage just as her brother finally reached Senpai.

And just like before, Senpai didn't do anything. She didn't try to dodge, she didn't fight back, she didn't raise her fists to defend herself — she promised not to, Rika remembered. Right, the whole point of the exercise was to show them how a Caster fought, a proper one, and proper Casters didn't fight with hands or fists or weapons, they fought with magic and spells.

That was why they just had to land one, good hit. The only way for someone to beat a Caster who actually fought like a Caster was to take the fight to the place where they were weakest, meaning up close and personal.

Onii-chan gave a shout and thrust his fist forward, aiming not for Senpai's face, because he probably didn't want to actually hurt her, but for center mass, right in the middle of her armor. His knuckles landed with a solid crunch.

That meant they won. One good hit.

"We did it!" Rika cheered. "Great job, Onii-chan!"

But she was the only one celebrating. Onii-chan was silent but for his panting breaths, and Senpai didn't call a stop and offer them congratulations. In fact, for one, ominous moment, Senpai was silent as the grave.

And then she spoke, and Rika had the ominous feeling that something had gone very wrong somewhere.

"Didn't anyone ever warn you?" Senpai murmured. "You should never face a Caster in her workshop."

Onii-chan gasped and stumbled back as Senpai seemed to deflate, her costume sinking to the floor as bugs poured out of it. There was no body inside of it, no human limbs, no bones, no hair or skin, just a mass of bugs propping it up to make it look like a person.

It was a decoy from the beginning.

Rika barely had a moment to register the realization before something pricked the back of her neck, and she gasped as her limbs suddenly went numb and she lost all control of her body. The world tilted on its side and she collapsed to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, unable to do anything but watch as Onii-chan fell, too, crumpling like a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was no pain. Whatever had struck her had removed all sensation from her body.

A tremor of fear in her belly proved that she hadn't quite lost all feeling below her neck. Somehow, that was even more terrifying than if she had gone down in horrible agony.

And from up on the seats behind the stage, she finally appeared, walking leisurely down the aisle until she reached the bottom. Senpai, done up in her costume, leaned over the railing, propping herself up with her hands and looking down at them through those bright, yellow lenses, glowing all the more in the soft lighting that filled up the room.

"And now," she said, "I have the two of you entirely at my mercy."