"Wha? But I? Y'know, Actia told me Servants aren't even supposed to [i]need[/i] food! And yet! What'm I supposed to do? We just had soup, I've gone through all my favorite cereals, every pastry in Cy's secret snack cabine- uh, please don't tell on me, that's confidential, I told her we had a rabbit infestation. Anyway I'm not normally the one who does the cooking! It's hard!"

Katherine grabbed Berserker by the wrist and ran with her. It was her turn to be the one who dragged somebody along, or to die trying.

"I did!" she shouts with pure-hearted sniffly defiance, "My besht!"

She'd slow down once she remembered Caster probably couldn't keep up with her. But in the meantime embarrassment told her to run.

And speaking of running! Oh man oh man, here comes a lil' narrative flourish! I think this is called a segue? Hehehe, nice. Check it out: 

Yeah so speaking of running, Saber sprinted like her life depended on it. That wasn't true, strictly speaking? In fact you could make a pretty strong case that her life depended on her taking it easy and not burning through her last reserves of magical energy for no reason. And you could make another, different but equally strong case that her life didn't depend on anything at all since she was already the ghost of a long dead warrior only running along the surface of the earth on a very temporary contract. But if you were inclined to make either of those arguments, you couldn't say anything to the fact that she really ran because her promises depended on it.

She also ran because all of her plans were on fire, so to speak. 

As soon as she'd gone a ways down the tunnel it became rapidly apparent to Saber that there was no way to steal the sunshard without having the kind of tools that would make doing so unnecessary in the first place. Besides, as a spirit all by her lonesome, having it did nothing for her. She needed somebody it could attune to, ideally even the Princess it belonged to in the first place, and she had no idea who that was. Without a Fluffybiscuits she was helpless. Berserker of course was the opposite of helpful: she was English. 

That left her in the awkward position of needing to pick a different moment to accomplish a different objective. At first she thought to ambush and kill Caster (trivial, even in her condition) but then even just basic glances around at what things were like underground told her that Rider had gone and managed to get herself killed in the meanwhile, which meant that killing Caster as well put the ritual dangerously close to completion. An impatient hand might even detonate the ritual it was prepared for early and count on whatever world-ending power it was meant to unleash being strong enough as is to be worth doing. No, everyone had to stay alive now. 

So the [i]next[/i] hope was that Kat would manage what she'd already done with Saber herself and squeak and stab her way through a Servant's defenses to make an ally out of an enemy. But though she'd squeaked, she hadn't stabbed. In fact she'd done a whole lot worse than just not stabbing and managed to lose an argument all by herself. Why hadn't she?

Saber felt the sword sitting on her hip. She stared at it in the near-dark and sighed. Well. These were the dangers in assuming you were the smartest one in a gathering. All clever minds betrayed themselves eventually, wasn't that how you wound up with foxgirls? So yeah. Kat was skipping off in a promising direction but it would take her a long time to sweetie her way through danger. Time that nobody had right now.

Because Rider was dead. Da-, uh, no sorry I'm not comfortable doing this voice. Dang her. Sorry. Sorry! All right move it along we're still trying not to get caught her remember?

So now it fell to Saber to be the one to buy time. Had she still been an Avenger in the peak of that particular transformation she would not have feared Lancer's power whatsoever, but that was all behind her now. Truth be told she was still half an Avenger, just stuck in this awkward space in between spirit origins without full access to any of the skills or powers derived from her legend that might've been helpful. If she had her king's sword, for example, that'd be real helpful. But no. If she fought she'd lose, and yet she was the only one who could do the fighting anymore. 

Luckily, Ivar still had a single edge. Nobody in all the sunshard war was better at running away than her. And now, that doesn't sound like much? But she was actually very proud of that. From her point of view, living meant winning. Being on the next battlefield was a chance to wrap herself in glory that she'd be denied if she went down like a punk too soon. So she'd always had a keen sense for when to cut and run, and it was a skill she'd honed practically all the way to the level of a secret sword. 

But even so, it was going to be hard. She needed weapons. Things of this material earth that Lancer couldn't just deny, and powerful ones at that. Something strong and sharp enough that it wouldn't just shatter when she threw it at Lancer's head, and yet light enough that when she cut and run she'd be able to lead her ally turned hated rival turned hopefully eventually ally again maybe who knows this was complicated.

Anyway, weapons. Weapons with stories. That's what had her running. Luckily for Saber, she was in a world full of stories. Just begging to be told. <3