"Let me confer with my associate," said Fluffybiscuits. She did a crunch, pulling herself up forehead to forehead with Berserker, legs still locked behind Berserker's neck - she was very flexible. Then she started hurriedly muttering in what might have been a negotiation or might have been her buying a few seconds to think by making panicky fox noises at a wall of metal and anger.

"If it were up to me, I'd take your deal," said Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. "But Berserker here has a condition. She's worried about her ability to beat you in a fair fight -"

Berserker snarled and tried to shake Kat off. The foxgirl shrieked and clung to her arm with all four limbs. She did her best to continue with her super cool negotiation speech despite the position. "- s-so! She says that it has to be okay if her favour is to make you lose a fight! And also that I can use her favour -" she is shaken even more heavily. "eeeee! On her behalf! Because she doesn't really talk muuuuuuuuch!"

Katherine is doing her best. She's in deeply over her head but she knows enough to know that she'll get Yelled At if she lets Mrs. Saber walk away. Being able to argue that she's worked things out so that they could deal with the problem whenever they needed to - no foxgirl could argue with that, not even Actia. She might be new to girling but she had enough fox experience to know how to stack a deck, at least a little.

"Oho!"

Saber vaults back up the wall in contrast to all useful advice for a person who would like to live beyond the next thirty-five seconds. She rises up to her full height and steps within a whisper of the struggling foxgirl/servant combo. She'll be safe from Berserker's attacks like this, but only for as long as Kat stays willing to fight her little tails off to keep her that way. They did not have tiger baiting in Saber's day, but she's a natural at it anyway.

"Your knight is wise to fear me. And you are as wise as you are kind to consider her feelings. When a Master and a Servant can trust one another completely... mm. It is a shame you did not manage to call to me. Very well! Since it is you, little fox, I will allow this boon. I shall lose a single fight at your behest, and only yours. Attempt to pass this off to someone else and I will ignore it completely."

She stoops low to the ground, putting her sharp angled but still regal face nose-to-nose with Kat's and smiles so the wriggling fox can see with her own eyes how many rows of teeth are sitting inside her (slightly bloody) mouth. She presses one finger to the Fluffybiscuit's nose and then leaps out of range of a sudden crushing hammer blow by the screaming Berserker.

Diaofei is in her arm once more, and she briefly take's Kat's hand in her own for long enough to shake it. Up and down three times and then she's got her sword drawn to parry a whirlwind of furious blows from an Englishman who would clearly rather die than give the quarter her Master is offering.

"You will! Ha! Of course! Grant me one indulgence in exchange for such a heavy boon. Allow me a warrior's courtesy to choose the manner of my own defeat. You would not deny me honor as well as victory, would you kind fox, sweet fox, wise fox? Where I am from your kind are honored legends so I know that I can trust you. One fight lost on your knight's behalf, howsoever feels best to me when you ask it. One fight won on your behalf by my sword whenever you have need of it. These together buy my freedom today to go and heal my Master. I thank you, child. Though I do not know your name, I honor your above all other Masters called to war on this new green earth."

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits has received compliments before - but not like this! Most of her compliments were things like 'good girl!' and 'Oh! Big yawn!" and that kind of thing. And she *was* a good girl, and she did have big yawns while she was sleepy, but she'd never been complimented on her wisdom before. Saber had even called her wise twice - oh! Was she wise? She'd kind of thought she was flailing wildly, but maybe she'd been filled with Fox Wisdom all along, maybe like that big mountaintop fox shrine that Yue had to spend a whole day hiking to get up to. People probably didn't build shrines like that to silly foxes.

Kat visualized herself as having a shrine like that all of her own. Sitting comfortably with a mountain view while people hiked all the way up to bring her treats and ask to listen to her wisdom. Now that was a life for a fox! She puffed up her chest with pride and excitement.

"Of course it's a deal!" she said sagely, in a tone she thought a wise sage fox might use. A foxy instinct twitched - was she really? - no, Saber had explained that too. Where she came from the foxes were honoured - maybe they all had mountain shrines? So she was trading on their reputation, which was a meaningfully cunning fox move to begin with. "My name is Katherine Isabella Fluffy -" she caught herself just in time. She was impersonating a mountain sage fox! She liked Fluffybiscuits but it wasn't wise. "- mountains. Fluffymountains. That's my name. Fluffymountains the fifth. M.D."

She shrieked as a wave of Berserker's arm almost hurled her off the side of the castle.

Saber's fighting style, once it came down to a one on one fight, can best be described as lazy. Not that there's a lot for her to do just now with Kat struggling so valiantly to keep there from being a fight, but even so. A Berserker cannot be denied forever. With one hand gripping her sword, Saber turns her body to present a narrower profile and never seems to do much beyond a vague turning of her wrist or, at most, her forearm. She puts the blade where the threat is and jams it. No fancy tricks, no obvious exertion, just deny, deny, deny.

Even on offense there is nothing special to what she does. The glittering sword is all that speaks to her being a figure of legend or a terrifying ancient spirit brought back to life by a dread ritual: her form is... perfunctory. She simply rises up on her legs to gain height and swings her weapon down on Berserker's head. It's not a heavy looking blow; her arm barely seems to move.

But it drops Berserker to her knees anyway. It requires two hands to block and causes both Masters to scream as if someone had just pinched them from behind in a dark room. And when she grins, none of that laziness matters at all.

"Very well then, Lady Fluffymountains!" she even manages to say it with a voice full of respect, "I thank you for your kindness and generosity. Until we meet again! All I ask is that you do not allow yourself to be defeated. Not by..."

But who she means to warn again is lost in Berserker's loud cry and counterattack. The true purpose of Saber's strike is revealed instead of the nature of her warning, if it is indeed a warning in the first place. This is a launch pad. When she is thrown into the air she twists her spine seemingly in half and arcs over the edge of the rampart, which she runs down the side of in only five strides.

On the ground again, she is water. She is lightning. She is shameless in retreat, laughing and loping and seeking shadows or the river without delay. Whatever makes her more dangerous to follow. But the second she is out of sight and easy following distance, she collapses to her knees. Her gigantic body trembles up and down it's entire length. She cranes her neck to look to the stars, unfamiliar all.

"Master," she grunts, "We need to hide ourselves. Somewhere safe to recover and plan. Your palace is not an option, where else do you know that we can go? Be our guide, if not our legs."

Current appearances to the contrary, Daiofei is a very good monk. She has unbelievably precise control over her mind and body.

This is not a good thing when it comes to conditions of heartbreak. To understand why, one must consider the harm a drunk might do while lying on the floor of their living room carpet as opposed to the harm they might do while driving a main battle tank - which is actually not a huge distance from the material reality of the situation she has lead Saber into.

The AutoTemples are an innovation of the modern world. You see, some people get tired of their same set of local temples and shrines but don't have the desire or capability to leave on long pilgrimages. But, the monks reasoned, we live in a socialist utopia, so why not have temple visit you? And so they started converting old vehicles into mobile temple complexes. These range from decrepit little buggies with a Buddha statue crammed into the passenger seat, unmarked white vans filled with illicit foxgirl prayer strips, and even grander constructions like this: Kun Temple, an entire shrine building complete with koi fish lake, rock garden and carefully cultivated cherry blossom tree built into the back of an 18-wheeler barrelling down the highway at one-twenty kilometers an hour. The monks responsible for driving the top-heavy monstrosity are protected by the powerful blessings of their shrine and they drive like it. Here they run a red light, causing a motorbike to swerve into a river where the driver is then rescued by a beautiful swan maiden. There they scorch through a roundabout, nine wheels leaving the ground as they do, an offering bowl of sherbet candies flying off the altar and directly through the sunroof of a parked vehicle. Now a monk leans out over the side to snatch the hat off a pedestrian and shout something in Nepalese as the truck blitzes past, which was a blessing because it did not go with that outfit at all.

Daiofei has asked to drive. The monks - either because she holds some powerful rank, or because they're just chill like that - have let her. She is now steering the Kun Temple with intent and with the aid of an automap on her phone that she regularly minimizes to watch an instructional video on how to build a molotov cocktail. As the truck cuts across a sunflower field, engine roaring mightily against mud and vegetation, she will finally answer the question as to where they're going and it's not exactly towards recovery - "Actia has a shrine where she lives. I'm going to burn it to the ground."

"And Actia is? Hrm. I see."

Saber's head lolls against the window as she watches a field of mighty golden flowers get sliced and crushed for the crime of not getting out of the way of a plastered monk's revenge. Seeds spray everywhere, which will in time rise up and become fields of beautiful golden petals in their own right and whisper the story of the Death Temple to one another in the wind and in the song of plants. Perhaps they will plot their own revenge one day. One supposes this too is war.

And this is indeed war, for Diaofei is a warrior. There is very little else she could be called, honestly. She slept through the mysterious Servant's offer to have her killed of course, but every moment thereafter had not phased her in the slightest. Even after being carried through a bombardment and thrown up (and back down) a wall and through several tense minutes of combat and negotiation in which her own body was used as collateral, she asks zero questions. Shows no curiosity or concern. The only possible conclusion was that warfare at this level was commonplace for someone like her. Did it really mean so little to her that she'd slipped right past it back to her original promised vengeance? Perhaps this world and its verdant abundance was actually built off the back of endless, unceasing battle and bloodshed.

That both did and didn't track with the information filtering through her mind as she considered the place around her. Saber shrugs and yawns. Oh well. For her at least this was its own kind of rest.

"Wake me up when we get there, ok? I'm not supposed to need sleep, but in terms of maintaining my own existence you're about as useful to me as a tomato. Speaking of which..."

There's still a little left of the feast she'd prepared back at the fire and the offerings from the shrines she'd looted. It had been intended for her Master, but desperate times and all that. Saber pops the bright red fruit in her mouth whole, and swallows without chewing. The severed stalk of another proud sunflower goes spinning past her window as her eyes drift lazily shut.

Beneath the waterfall stands a metal giant.

Once it was a thing of corporate war. Each of its components was designed to come apart and be replaced from oceans of identical replacements. Replace every plank in Theseus' ship and the warp and weft of the wood would be different to those who knew and loved it; replace every screw and fitting in the giant and not a molecule would be out of place. Once it had stood on the surface under ten suns and done battle with its kind.

Now it stands beneath a cliff, water cascading onto its head. Centuries of collected dirt and sediment have built on its boxy chassis, choking networks of reeds and mosses. It has sunk up to its knees in the muddy soil and its white paint has oxidized in spectacular blooms of orange and brown. Trees have grown up around it, their leaves landing on its shoulders and mulching into soil in which new saplings are starting to grow. And finally, its guts have been ripped open, revealing the still screaming and still glowing reactor at its core, casting a baleful orange light over the evening lake.

And up to this giant has been hooked a mad web of electrical cables. Hundreds of them, extending out from the giant in a mad cobweb, spilling into the water and out the side of the pool to where they connect to strings of electrical bulbs. Each cable is connected to endless cascades of lights that run up and down the cliff, up and down the trees, under and over the water, and then splintering out and running over rolling fields to distant houses and communities that draw their electrical power from the sleeping giant's ever pounding heart.

At the base of the giant's legs, by the waterside, is Actia's shrine. It's an ominous collection of buildings, constructed with the same kind of madcap energy that resulted in the mad spaghetti of cables, none rising higher than the half-sunk mecha's hip. Technomancer masks are visible on the outside, crackling satellite dishes pointed down at the water even though it could not be more than a meter deep at its lowest. The atmosphere is half idyllic and half crazed - similar to the Kun Shrine but without the edge of positive wholesomeness.

Diaofei tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, looking at the scene as it was lit up by the Kun Shrine's headlights. She had her finished molotov cocktail on the counter but it almost seemed to be slipped from her mind now. "It didn't look like this the last time I was here," she said. "It looked... wholesome."

"There could not have been a Ragnarok without giants to fight a war. I see. What a fascinating world."

It takes Saber a very long time to pry her eyes from the colossus meditating under the waterfall and behold the shrine it guards with its massive, overgrown body. There is a kind of elven beauty to the construct that makes her mouth fall open. Which forges in the secret places of the world had been involved in its creation? Were they many in number or scant few? Whom had they fought for and how? No small wonder that the side that built these things had believed it possible to triumph over Twilight.

And in the end...

Her fingers caress her sword as she might a lover's neck. A sigh of longing and lament draws out her breath. If only. If only she'd been allowed to fight against this creature. In contest or in war, it didn't make a difference. To have been outmatched so utterly and still been given leave to test her sword and her mind against it. Hers had truly been a failed kingship. Odin would never have cursed her to wait this long in any other case.

She shrugs and lets it all go. Sleeping ruins hold little interest for long against the present realities of her renewed war with the English and the tangled nest of cables and the spiteful glow of her new Master's wife's home. She tilts her head with curiosity, all previous fatigue forgotten. At long last, she grins.

"Is that so? Then let me ask you this, Master: what does that make you want to do?"

Saber takes one long, rough finger and presses it against Diaofei's wrist. Slowly, with just enough pressure to tease and scrape, she pulls it up her arm and to her shoulder, before wrapping her entire arm around the monk's neck and pulling her closer across the cab of the shrine-truck. She chuckles at the familiar sound of a soft face creasing her chain shirt, but makes no other comment on the matter.

"Does this change your drive? You could still destroy it. Or you could clean it and return it to the state you found it in when you were in love. Perhaps this shrine reflects your wife's heart? She might return to you if she is healed. Or perhaps we should steal it for ourselves, huh? There is an energy about this place that is truly wicked, plucked from whatever dark depths that burned the world to ash before it grew anew.

"But still. There is power here, as well. Enough to fix our problems if we but understand how to use it. I find this very intriguing. Do you, my little treasure? I will ask again. What does seeing this place make you want to do? Depending on your answer, I might even change my mind about helping you do it."

Daiofei was once again caught in a trilemmna. The Body helpfully informed her that there was no breaking the grip on her wrist - and then quickly added that there was no way to escape from Saber's embrace so she might as well not even try. The Soul was once again coming apart; it had been freed from monastic repression just enough to be able to imagine exactly what the shapes she is pressed against imply.

But the Mind remained focused on the singular concept that held it together. She twisted in Saber's grip so that she faced outwards and would be able to speak without a mouth full of chainmail, though she doesn't struggle more than that. "If this place is twisted it's because she twisted it," said Daiofei. "It needs to be purified -" her mouth formed a tight line. That was the priestess talking and she'd broken those vows. "It doesn't matter. She made it like this for a reason. She's getting something out of it being like this. If I destroy it then she'll come and then we can confront her."

"You know what I think?"

Saber does not release Diaofei. She doesn't even suggest the possibility. Her arm squeezes, and this is possession. Her fingers caress the top of the monk's head to feel the fine hairs that rise up in defiance of her vows, and this is adoration. Her free hand plucks the molotov off the dashboard and seemingly moves to drink it before simply turning it in the light instead, and this is tenderness.

She leans closer, and her heavy straw-and-iron braid falls carelessly down Diaofei's shoulder and into her lap.

"I think that you are a blade. That you have been sharpened, and sharpened, and sharpened until it has made you too brittle for use even as a kitchen utensil. I think you feel this in your soul, and you quiver because of it. You must plunge into something, else why should you have endured all that painful scraping and grinding? But you know that it will be your unmaking and you cannot find it in yourself to endure that final thrust and snap."

Saber's arm slinks around her Master some more. She takes Diaofei's chin in her hand and tilts her head up, up, up. Away from the shrine, away from the mad nest of cables and toward the steel colossus that shades and powers it. Above even that to the skies that stretch over everything, and the stars that twinkle beyond the scope of what is possible to grasp. Even in the sick glow of the shrine and the fierce headlights of the Kun Temple, they twinkle on.

Those fingers tilt Diaofei's head down again, gripping her cheeks firmly but without pain, to gaze upon another giant instead. Saber herself. She leans close, close enough for their breath to mingle. For their noses to touch. She smiles her shark's smile, but makes no motion to close the final gap and consummate the gesture. Perhaps that is beneath the dignity of a king? Or perhaps she simply refuses to be the board that snaps the knife in two.

"I suppose you believe this is fate. Destiny or, whatever. That is why you ignore me when I talk about making you well again. You do not believe it can happen. Pathetic. Unacceptable. Why accept it? You called to me! Your heart is filled with desires! What point in dreaming if you do not reach with your own hand to seize what is owed you? If you want destruction, have the courage to say so! If you want her back, say that too! If you want her dead..."

The closeness ends all at once. Saber kicks open the cab door behind her and slides outside. In the same, lazy motion she grabs for the top of the door and vaults up and over to the other side. Her feet touch the ground before she's seen to finish clearing it, and when she opens the driver's side door to stare at Diofei again, she drops smoothly to one knee, holding the molotov in a parody of one of the English knight's little sword ceremonies. But there is no smile on her face, only steel in her eyes.

"I will ask of you one last time: are you my Master? And what do you desire, Diaofei the brittle knife?"

"... Spirit."

Daiofei's voice was flat. She didn't make eye contact, staring ahead at the shrine. It was a voice of resolve and command, possible only because she was not allowing herself any alternative.

"I told you before that I summoned you for one reason only. I will repeat it in words you cannot ignore: I seek vengeance on the kitsune Actia, and by my command seal, I would have you seek vengeance on her too. Let my pain be your pain, let my injury be your injury, let my justice be your justice. We will not rest until our task is done. Do you understand of what I speak?"

More quietly, almost to herself: "I have learned not to trust in desire. I have learned I am not fit for duty. All that is left for me is to undo my mistakes."

"For this?! For this you would--"

Red light glows against her skin. Tattoos burn their way through her armor, patterns of jagged compass markings suddenly making themselves known through the glow as Saber grits her teeth in obvious pain. The look in her eyes is absolute betrayal. A moment later, they grow dull.

Baleful light fades away, turning to smoke that rises from her body and sinks into her hair. Slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity as it travels from the roots, her braid fades in color from striking straw to a dull, featureless gray. Not as a mark of age or veneration, but the kind of bland dust that all things turn to when their passion and vitality is forcibly pulled out of them and pointed somewhere it doesn't belong.

The molotov bottle falls from her fingers and rolls along the ground until it rests under the front wheel of the Kun shrine. A shadow falls across her face as she rises once more to her full, towering height. It does not clear, even when she turns to behold the shrine again, knuckles gripped so tight around the hilt of her sword that they begin to whiten.

"...Destroying this will bring her here?" she asks.

Her back is turned to Diaofei. A cloak of shadows unfurls across her back, disguising the motion of her drawn weapon. Something halfway between a chuckle and a snarl escapes her throat that doesn't even resemble the voice of the king from just minutes ago and more closely calls to mind a wounded animal.

Pain. Pain. Twisted pain and betrayal stacked high enough to climb the path between worlds.

"Then it burns."

She leaps into the air, leaving her Master behind to watch. No discussion, no planning, no strategy; her blade flashes like a torch against the queer lighting of Actia's hideout and then she falls as lightning, through the nest of cables, through the masks, and through the floor. Power crackles where she passes, sparks to start a fire. Her promise catches soon after, rising from the crater as she does.

Tiny, licking flames to start with. They'll build into an inferno before long, hot enough to melt even the outer plating of the steel giant watching over them. Saber stands and waits in the middle of it all, wrapped in gentle shadows that do not suffer a single wisp to touch her.

Assassin was writing a letter.

It was remarkable how information gathering had gone full circle. In his day he had to make do with an army of spies and informers, street urchins and busybodies, evesdroppers and opportunists. The information he received had to be judged based on the source's reputation and placed in the context of every other report. It was a long and painstaking process to sift truth from fact.

Technology had changed that. Originally the interception of a letter was a singular coup. Then people had figured out how to intercept every letter ever sent. Intelligence agencies had drowned in an unending flood of raw data. They had come up with techniques to manage it; filters to sort the signal from the noise, and perhaps that might have worked. But then they'd gotten greedy. They stopped being satisfied with just reading everyone's mail but decided it wouldn't be enough until they knew everything there was to be known. They wanted to track people by their faces, by their gaits, by their body language. They applied mathematical models, then machine intelligence, then artificial intelligence, then daemonic intelligence. Eventually they decided to cut out the middlemen and just summon demons from hell and ask them questions directly.

Assassin kissed his crucifix. "And we all know where that leads," he murmured to himself. Back to a world where nobody knows anything. Back to a world where sending letters to the people you trusted was the best way to find out what was happening.

Speaking of people he trusted...

The door slammed open. "She's burning my shrine!" said Actia.
Assassin folded the letter smoothly. "Who do you think is burning your shrine?" he asked.
"Diaofei!" Actia stormed into the room. "I can't believe her! What happened to universal peace and guardianship between the worlds!"
"I presume it was you that happened," Assassin said mildly, dripping wax onto the fold of paper.
"That wasn't my fault," said Actia, folding her arms and looking away. "She knew I was a fox when she married me."
"I see," said Assassin.
"What do you mean by that!?" snapped Actia.
"I was just wondering if you knew she was a scorpion when you married her?" Assassin, pressing his seal - three ascending chevrons - into the wax.
Actia clenched her fists, surging with crackling power. Her eyes glowed, cold electricity crackled along her tails. "Easy," said Assassin. "Without your shrine you won't have mana to spare."
Actia clenched her jaw and the electrical energy dissipated, though the air still held a menacing charge. "So you are aware of the situation?"
"I am," said Assassin, starting on his next letter.
"And you're aware that shrine was our trump card?" said Actia. The angrier she got the more cold and corporate her tone became. "It will come down to me, Berserker and Archer and I'm the only one of us who took the time to secure a mana supply in advance!"
"And you imagine we should..." Assassin asked.
"Send Berserker and Archer again!" said Actia. "I will talk to their masters and make absolutely sure they understand the situation -"
"That would be remarkable, given how little you seem to," sighed Assassin. "Berserker did not fail. She betrayed you."
"She -" electrical power crackled around Actia again. Assassin continued to write.
"Archer knows too, of course. Not party to the deal himself, but the man has a nose for betrayal as good as mine. And just like that your little alliance is compromised. Even the Romans knew that a Triumvirate could never last." Assassin scattered dust across his letter to help the ink dry, and then gently blew on it.
"Those little kits," snarled Actia with a mouth full of fangs.
"Did you not know they were foxes when you allied with them?" Assassin asked.
He looked up. He hadn't needed to do that during the entire conversation, but this was the dangerous stage. She was looking at him, looking at her command seals, wondering if she could trust him. He certainly didn't trust her to come to the correct decision by herself. So it was time for a display of contrition and competence. Kings always appreciated those.
He stood up and walked around his desk, letting his fingers trail over the fine oak affectionately. He reached the window and looked out over the lake, sidelong body language, no longer immovable and confrontational. Let us look together out at this treacherous world, the posture said, and she could not help but follow it.
"You are wondering why I did not intervene," said Assassin. "Why I am not intervening now at the destruction of your shrine. That is because to intervene is to become entangled, exposed and vulnerable. It is to become a part of their legend. When I destroyed the greatest empire of my age the history books recorded it as a senseless tragedy, the careless movement of great historical forces, a polemic against cousin marriage. And that is how the world will remember this war too. A natural disaster, a tragedy as inevitable as a scorpion riding a frog. Nobody will ask who flooded the river."

*

A dragon descends from the skies.

This world has always had dragons, just as it has always had magic. The two are inextricable. Leave magic to its own devices for long enough and it will take the shape of a dragon; this is a law as timeless as carcinisation. Even in this distant future the principle holds.

There are some quirks though. The dragon is - small is a strange word for something larger than a horse. It is a strange word for dragons in general. There is no proper size for a dragon; a dragon might be small enough to curl up inside a coffee cup and people would accept that as a true and proper shape for a dragon, just as they would accept a dragon the size of mountain range who causes earthquakes with each shake of her tail. So small is perhaps the wrong word, but not entirely - perhaps we want slender. That is not an aspect of size but of dress; of the tight fitting clothing, sleek utility bandoleer, and sleek catlike silhouette. She traces over the fire, head tilting as she scans the inferno, before diving into its hottest part. She vanishes into the flames.

Minutes later she emerges from the conflagration clutching a clay jar close to her chest. She pours it out onto the grass and two dozen frogs frantically hop away.

The Command Seals are clearly visible on her neck, running along the silver-white scales like rubies. A Master - distracted and vulnerable, and for all her strength completely at the mercy of an ambush. It seems too good to be true - but perhaps this world truly is that naive.

That naive? This world created Diaofei. This world hurt her. This world had thrown a trickster at her wearing the guise of the Allfather within minutes of setting foot outside, and then proceeded to rain stones upon her head endlessly while fencing her in with castle walls and English knights. And this world still had magic enough for dragons. Whatever softness might reign in the world of rebirth, it is most certainly not naive. What a stupid thought. She should strike her own head from her shoulders for the audacity of even pondering that question.

Not that it matters. The question of trap or ambush is utterly irrelevant next to the only question that matters: is this her? Is this Actia? All she knows about her prey is that she should come when the shrine burns. The shrine is burning. She has come. Is this her?!

It is the pursuit of that truth that pulls Saber out of the flames. She is on the dragon in a second. A boot to the head rather than her blade through that command seal painted throat. Even a smaller dragon such as this one would be unlikely to die straight away from a single wound, and its materialized servant would have more than ample time to strike a counterblow while she was committed. It would simply take too long to wrench the blade free, and without a spare weapon that was an unacceptable loss.

Bait out the ambush, and then crush it. In the meantime a warrior of her stature would be laughed out of her own halls for fearing a dragon she could plausibly mount and ride under better circumstances. Let it roar, let it fight! And while it struggles against the iron of her knee pinning its shoulder against the ground, let it also answer!

"Give me your name, little wyrm. This war is not yours to win."

She presses her weight down harder into the ground, rotating her shoulder up as she sinks to get a better angle on the arc that would crush the inevitable counterattack. Shadows seep into the floor where they fleck off of her dark cloak. In the icy depths of her eyes, motes of molten gold begin to pool and glitter, as if they'd melted off her treasures and seeped into her soul.

"Wait! Don't hurt me!" cried the dragon in pain, lying flat and nonresisting. "My name is Opalis! I'm not a warrior! I'm a Tantric Economist! My Servant isn't even here yet!"
"A what?" said Diaofei, stepping up behind.
"A - a Tantric Economist!" said Opalis, smiling frantically. "I'd offer you my card but - look, so, society is peaceful because people have got a handle on greed and ambition, right? But that's a delicate order maintained by cultural values and spiritual development. Outliers and remnants of the old world exist that are still dominated by material desires, so our order's duty is to hoard technomantic wealth and power so we can find people who might otherwise be tempted by greed and offer them its absolute fruits until they burn out on it and realize that it's meaningless."
Diaofei nodded. "So in other words, it's a group of dragons collectivizing their hoarding instinct and concealing it behind a flimsy spiritual justification."
"That's -" Opalis looked like she was about to argue, then her eyes glanced back at Saber's knee on her neck. "- yeah sure. Point is I can help you - I am authorized to economize against my order's holdings and -"
Diaofei ignored her. She had produced a compasslike magical instrument of platinum and gold, layers of rings wrapping each other. She walked around, twisting the rings into new configurations, taking in the ley of energy. "A half truth," she said. "Her Servant isn't here - but she's watching. I cannot tell from where. Why? Waiting for the right moment? Or maybe a dragon is even worse a Master than I? All that mana and it's bound up in her physical body..."
"She sends me letters," Opalis said, making a face. "Said there was a font of mana here. Look, just tell me what you want - I promise we can make a deal."

"Worthless," Saber spits, digging her knee deeper into the dragon's neck out of spite, "Not her."

With a final twist, she rises to her feet again. It's not mercy that stays her blade; it's just a pointless waste of resources. Spilling the dragon's blood won't bring her prey here if the total destruction of her mana source hadn't shifted the needle. Even the appearance of a very convenient dragon shaped juice box hadn't drawn out a whisper of threat in the air.

She makes no effort to conceal her height now, compared with before. The bestial aspects that colored her movement have all been replaced by a restless energy that needs to position her above the ground for maximum leverage, reach, and destructive potential at all moments. No longer sure of when she'll need it, she simply looms over everything with her face half cloaked in shadows that drip down her shoulders and over her back.

She slams her sword back into its scabbard with a huff. Restless boredom settles across her features. A job well started, if Master could be believed that this obscene, haphazard edifice was of any importance to Actia, then destroying it served its own purpose beyond simply drawing her out. It was to be expected that the Trickster would be better prepared to play the long game than the victim. Vermin always retreat to their nest; the English to their castles. It worked out the same in the end. Burn enough, and they'd come out.

With a sudden surge of motion, Saber bends down and plucks Opalis off the ground, slinging her over her shoulders like a heavy sack in spite of the size of the dragon. No majestic figure, this. The true shape of a dragon was a piece of luggage. A battery, more like.

"Plunder has no need to speak," she says as she clamps her arms down on Opalis' back, "And even less need to negotiate. You know Master, warriors who bathe in dragon's blood are said to be conferred with numerous blessings. It's by far the most convenient way to restore your mana and bring Actia to justice. Or do you take pleasure in doing things the hard way? I can respect that. We can simply use this as a hostage instead. With its servant as an informant we could move much more quickly toward our goals."

The blue has melted fully from her eyes now, which gleam like amber lanterns in the shadows that continue to bubble up and down around her neck and face. The rattle of her mail suggests it fits her less well than it had at the moment of her summoning. But all Saber does is stand there, waiting. Her serpent-like arms bind the dragon tight across her shoulders, while her posture is so bored she seems like she could fall asleep at any moment without anything to stimulate her.

"I have my preferences, of course. But I really don't care what we do so long as I get my hands on her in the end. That is all that matters. Thanks to you."

There is a flicker of hesitation. The faintest sign that Diaofei realizes this might have gone too far.

But a trained mind is a powerful thing. Techniques for emptying thoughts and clearing out distractions are just as effective when used against legitimate doubts. She still has two command seals and Saber's hostility is anything but indiscriminate; now she spoke of justice and not of war. This was simply what control of a barbarian warlord looked like.

"To fight a fox we do not need raw power," she said firmly. "We require information. It can't be a coincidence that the dragon arrived right as we revealed ourselves."
Opalis was held aloft on Saber's shoulders but Diaofei still held caution when approaching; despite the dragon's cowardly aspect she could still strike out with neck, wings or tail and it was best not to bait a serpent even from a position of power. "Your mysterious Servant - did she tell you we were here?"
"No," said Opalis. "She suggested I fly south, but I saw the fire and came myself to see if anyone was in trouble."
"I believe it," muttered Diaofei. "Do you? Believe in your Servant?"
"I, uh," said Opalis. "I certainly hope so?"
"Consider," said Diaofei. "One of the classes in this war is the Assassin, and I have no doubt in my heart that Actia would have drawn that card. What if she killed your Servant before you ever met her and has subsequently been puppeteering your actions?"
"Uh, well, I really don't mean to argue with you Mrs. Monk," said Opalis, "but there were probably easier ways to kill me than send me to fight the Saber."
"Hmm. You're right, but there's something I'm missing about this..." said Diaofei. "Still, given how close you have come to death it seems at minimum that your Servant does not value your life. Have you considered -"

A shadow passed over the moon.

Archer had once again gotten the range.

"Oh enough!"

The amount of information disparity in this war bordered on a joke. In her own day it was simple: you boarded a ship, sailed to a new coast, and attacked the nearest settlement from the sea. No one ever saw it coming. And if they did you simply circled around behind them on land and killed them then. It was possible, even easy, to run down huge swaths of a kingdom in a single raid despite whatever nation you were invading having far more soldiers than you ever could. All it took was a willingness to fight when others wouldn't, and even more than that a willingness to run until you were where they weren't.

But this? Absurd! Her own father would quiver at the prospect of this war. All of the great heroes that had been summoned were already in alignment against her before she'd even been allowed to show up! The strongest last, that was the rule of the ritual, but even still how could they have organized this much? Eyes everywhere, watching them. An utter impossibility. Her every move known before she even settles on making it. One trap closes around her and it launches a second and a third by triggering as if the whole thing were some overdesigned machine with no purpose other than the death of the Saber class Servant. Who had ever heard of such a hollow mockery of a war? Was that simply how things were done these days?

Her own 'allies' were either sniveling or naive beyond the point of uselessness. There was no more time to let them debate the particulars of how many among them were marked for death. Saber catches Diaofei under the butt with her boot and flips her up into the air, leaping just enough to catch her on top of the dragon she is already carrying. There is no time to drop either of them. She lands, and her legs bow under the combined weight. But she holds. She is strong enough to move, and quickly.

Her first step is toward the Kun shrine, but a tug from the shadows crawling across her body makes her flinch. In that instant the great vehicle is snapped in half under Archer's artillery barrage. She pivots, and sprints away from both shrines instead. Toward the unknown. Doubtless, toward the next part of the trap. Irrelevant. She cannot die until she kills Actia.

"If either of you lets go," she snarls, "I'll kill you on the spot. You will wish this rain fell on you instead."

Assassin stared out the window. In the distance, past the shadow of his face reflected in the dark glass, he could see a hellish crimson glow.

His Master was getting impatient. The fool. The demons of hell did not understand that Heaven killed with bureaucracy. Satan's great idiocy was that he applied the personal touch, corrupting souls one by one, tailoring temptation by instinct to the unique traits of each soul. She wanted to be out there, swords in their hands, smiling as the daggers rose. He had held hope that she might have been a peer, but it was clear that she was a mere king. She would need results and soon.

And that would have been fine if it was just kings that he had been dealing with. Driving three kings together promised the deaths of Saber, Rider and Archer in a violent cataclysm, the mess of which could have been easily mopped up by Caster. After that it would be a trivial matter of killing Beserker's master and the prize would have been rescued from the hands of evil. But somehow the barbarian warlord had failed to execute an ambush and shown mercy, Archer had begun his engagement directly, and if there was one hideous truth about warriors it was that they tended to talk endlessly while crossing blades. The more they talked the more of his web would come to light. That could not be allowed.

As much as he hated revealing his hand, perhaps it was time to deploy his field assets.

*

Archer soars in the sky on golden wings. He glows like an angel, a second moon in the sky, and his bellicose laughter rings out for miles as he directs the crash of airborne earth. Holding onto his back, arms around his neck, sipping boba tea out of a straw, is Cyanis. She is having a foxgirl great time.

She is especially stoked that she just uncovered an enormously powerful mana-generating shrine. She'd delayed the pursuit for long enough for Archer to do emergency repairs and draw some siegeworks around it and for her to do some attunement fraud, but now she was juiced. She could maintain Archer's noble phantasm indefinitely like this. It hadn't escaped either of their notice that the shrine had previously been attuned to Actia, meaning that Cyanis now had a huge head start on the coming foxgirl betrayal showdown. And after that, who was going to stop her?

Take out Saber, take out Rider, take out Assassin, and then sit back and have Fluffybiscuits mop up the stragglers. Easy peasy.

*

Diaofei and Opalis, amidst their unhelpful squeaking as boulders and ballista bolts fell around them, continued what was frustratingly becoming less of an interrogation and more of a conversation.

"So what's clear," said Diaofei, "is that our enemy knows where we are. They can manipulate our communications. They sent you to die by our hand, and if I had not... gotten Saber under control... when I did then we would have killed you."
"But then what? If they knew so much then they'd know my Servant would go unsummoned -"
"But what if that's the point?" said Diaofei. "You're a dragon. As Saber said, your mana is all bound up in your physical body. Your death would release it."
Opalis eyes went wide. "Oh no. Oh no no no no," she muttered, putting her claws over her muzzle. "I'm a bomb?"
"Saber, we need to -"

Thwip

The crossbow bolt pierces right through Diaofei's forearm where she raised it to block. The tip, dripping black venom, embeds halfway through the scale right above Opalis' heart.

"Saber!" shouts Diaofei, but it's not necessary. These shadowed creatures, corrupt shades of misfortune on the road - these are aspects of Assassin, your enemy.

Nobody is born a king. However short or straight their path to the crown there are always steps that must be walked first before they can wear it. It had been a king that Diaofei had called to, and it had been a king that she needed. But it was not a king that she wanted, and it was not a king that could mete vengeance the way the situation demanded.

The links on Saber's mail coat groan and snap from the inside out at the insistence of some unseen pressure. She walks her steps backwards now, to the time when her father had been murdered and she sailed with her brothers across the sea not to enrich themselves (not just that), but to choke the rivers of England with the blood of their damned. She did not don her armor until she wore the crown. She had no need of it when it pinched against her rough and spiny skin and got in the way of proper motion.

A king required armor because a king must fill her men's hearts with devotion and confidence. She had a duty to impress, and so she had. But before that, when there was no crown upon her head, her family had better uses for her misshapen body. It was the Great King's command that she wear no covering from her waist at any moment when a battle could be expected or a march was called for. It would have obstructed her true duty.

The armor crumbles from her body like a shed carapace. Underneath it was a wall of flesh, breasts mounted proudly atop iron, sinewy, stretched out muscle. Hard power and an unyielding body built long instead of wide, with every last centimeter of her flesh covered in intricate, jagged runes: crossing diamonds and instructions written in spirals in the language of her people. For in life, Saber was a living map. It had been allowed of her that she could join in the thrill of battle for herself, because any idiot could see that she was a match for any man alive. But her true duty had been the role of the Valkyrie for those not yet dead. The guide that led the armies of Ragnar Lodbrok to destiny and deeds worthy of admission to the halls beyond the gate of death.

Saber's smile is truly hideous. Her laughter is the insane barking of the aggrieved hunter finally confronted with the beast they've been chasing. Yapping Master and dragon still pinned atop her shoulders, she leaps toward the figures in shadow with speed and zeal that surpasses simple recklessness. The idea that she could fail in a scrap with mere assassins simply does not occur to her. If they shoot a bolt she will dodge it. If she cannot, she will survive it. If her Master dies she will simply find a way to continue existing without her. In this moment everything is about blood.

Her runes shine like beacons as she pounces, and the shadows still consuming her body leap off of her skin at their guidance. The vague shape of men, great brutish beasts of men both smaller than her and much more stockily built, constructed half of light and half of darkness take shape to either side of her, swinging grand swords shaped for cutting mountains about like they were toys.

"Our mighty father lies dead," she intones, "Brothers! We go now to war!"

This is the first of her noble phantasms. She invokes it without consideration of the cost. Together they descend like a pack of wolves, gnashing and tearing shadows to bloody bits without a thought toward decorum, safety, or self gain. All is vengeance. That was the privilege of the uncrowned.