[IC] Sunshards: Chaos Sequence

[Thanqol]

Diaofei witnesses with horror.

The Spirit World, the mantras said, reflected and magnified. Give it peace and it will become a place of peace; give it rage and it will shake and roar. Stillness was required of a guardian; stillness that she had, to her shame, lost in the name of love. The walls had broken down and a demon had emerged - but it had been a softer demon, one made of yearning and compassion.

She had fed it rage. This, then, the demon had reflected and magnified. Now she saw its consequence writ large upon the world. The oldest wisdom that the Daily Affirmation of the Way <3 always came back to was 'You are not punished for your anger; you are punished by your anger', and she had not truly understood it until now.

Before when she had sent this creature against Actia she had been deluded; she had thought herself disciplined and in control, had thought herself making the rational choice to bring down a wicked spirit, cloaked in righteousness and justified in her duty as guardian. That had been a mistake, an emotional mistake. Her true duty was clear: to kill this manifestation of her rage, and in so doing expunge her shame and set the world right.

This situation was completely different.

She drank the healing potion Caster had given her, distilled from the oil of serpents. It tasted of grease and paraffin. Wiping her lips, she headed for the castle, not a single doubt in her mind.

*

A storm of crashing stones and bolts fall upon the ruined castles, smashing their agony into dust and mana. A divine silence rises over the battlefield.

Bohemond is next.

The Crusader of Antioch, released from Assassin's poison - though with his Master safely under Actia's stiletto heel - stands before the terrible castle. He is an Archangel besieging the gates of Hell, and there is no better champion for this battle. His great engines heave and pull, endless ranks of clanking machinery drawing back and releasing boulders and sharpened trees, the landscape around him torn up and made to fly.

This is a distraction.

It was not siege engines which had captured the great fortress - it had been treachery. All his beatific glory was bestowed upon him by others after the fact - Bohemond understood the powers of coin and cunning. So it is that as the storm of rock and wood rains down, Bohemond's true magic presses against the legions of the empty servants, seeping into some and filling them with rot and decay. These wretched creatures then, together and in secret, open the gates to the rush of Assassin's black-robed killers.

Once again, Actia seeks to strike the heart.

[Phoe]

Avenger was born from the pain of betrayal. Naturally she now lived every moment expecting more of it. This invincible body of hers was constructed knowing that anything and everything might break from her at any minute. It did not matter one bit. So long as her own promises were held to, the castle would not fall from the sky. And as its keeper, the Avenger would never know defeat.

But even so. When the gates open, her scream tears the skies asunder. Amplified by receptors on the towers of the castle, the waves of sound pour down like lances upon the siege works of Boehmond. They tear the earth until it is unwalkable; mangled wreckage of stone and forest covered in unseemly tilled earth. Within the floating palace, hot tears pour down from underneath Avenger's mask.

"Tarry alone but a moment, my Queen," her voice is a chorus of sorrowful song and barely restrained fury, every note of which is another dagger that falls to the earth beneath them, "I shall see to the guests."

All at once, the power in the wondrous machines lighting this place and filling it with the sounds of their labor shuts down. Avenger's castle morphs into a place of silence and darkness, broken only by the gleaming of her own weapon and armor, and the quiet sound of her hissing breath. She glides rather than walks, so even the sound of her footfalls is denied to the hallways and launchpads that will eventually carry out her grand assault.

Later. Now there are wrongs to be righted. A blood price to be extracted. She vanishes into the castle in search of her prey. Not the pawns of Assassin, but her own corrupted soldiers. These she will butcher with her own hands. When the task is done it will hardly matter what poisons and cretins have attempted to seep into her being. If this opening had been left for Lancer and her dismantling logic the wound might have meant something, but any creature that owed loyalty to Actia was powerless before her. So much the more if they should attempt to betray the great betrayer themselves. So far as she was concerned, the hired knives were nothing more than bits of undigested mana to be ground down into more soldiers and ammunition inside her gears.

The first traitor, a Saber Class Shell, gurgles in its empty casing when the great laser sword rends its chest open. Black sludge bubbles out of the armor as it shudders hideously, staining the pristine walkway beneath it with the foul mud of disloyalty. She tears the head off of a Caster and uses its staff to impale the faceplate of an Archer. The darkness fills with clattering, empty armor and the slosh of disgusting sludge dripping everywhere.

Avenger does not spare a single shell. Not a thought is given to the wasted resources. It does not occur to her that she could simply capture and reprogram them again and cleanse the sin of her palace without losing a single unit. She does not care. It is time the world ceased underestimating her. This is not a campaign that can be brought down by scheming. This is not the campaign of a king. This is a Promise, this is vengeance, this is wrath that can burn entire cities past recognition and then dump the loot in a river for the wolves to pick at. This is anger that could forge an entire nation within the quivering chest of a civilization that had come before it.

Her sword sings. Her voice chokes with painful sobbing and something beneath it, something bordering on ecstasy. The tears pour down her face heavier than the rain outside. Her cloak of demons howls and snatches bodies out of the air, crunching them into powder beneath a snapping of the idea of jaws and teeth. Her castle is filled with violence, and in some way or another most all of it is directed at herself. There's probably a metaphor for the monks and mystics in that, somewhere.

"Those of you who hear my voice and obey, descend now. Yours is to test my so-called descendant. Make him prove himself before the ancient ways, as I have done before him. Whomever among you manages the deathblow, I shall grant a soul. Those who opt to remain, I shall paint this place in your filth."

She melts away toward her throne room, where the Assassin's blow would fall. She would weather it there, and watch. And if her entire army should fail? Nothing changes. She remains.

[Thanqol]

"Ah," said Assassin with a smile. "I did not expect things to be this easy."

They stand on the castle rampart together, each holding a glass of wine. Assassin had dressed for the occasion; no longer in indistinct blacks, he wore his cardinal's red. Redder than the flare of the dying castle.

"An individual with a sword," he touched his breast, just below his crucifix, "I would have had difficulty with, despite what Dumas did to me. But the fool conjured a castle and an army, and that was checkmate. It takes a truly naive view of human nature to imagine that a holy army, united in purpose, is a coherent or sustainable thing. Even Bohemond knew that it wasn't, and he was far before my time and my sophistication."
Actia leaned forwards on the balcony. The fur on her black ears rippled in the breeze. Her eyes were locked onto the battle, blue technomantic lights playing across her eyes and face.
Assassin appreciated her quiet. He did not have many opportunities to give sermons, what with his responsibilities.
"For you see, while I am most commonly," his lip sneered as he touched the basket hilt of his rapier, "remembered for rolling in the gutter dueling mere musketeers, my true work was the destruction of a continent. The Holy Roman Empire is remembered as a joke; I was the one that made it so. In my day, it was unsurpassable; a monolith of blood and faith and gold, a pan-national array of wealth and splendor. The oceans ran silver with the wealth that poured in from the Americas and the Bishop of Rome would humble himself by placing a crown atop the head of the Emperor. All the world existed within the Hapsberg palm, and against it, mere France."
The Cardinal extended his closed fist and opened it. Sand ran through his fingers, blowing away in the breeze. "But all of this was built on the hearts of men," he declared, "and the Lord our God teaches us above all that men are but dust and ashes. It was not I that lit the fire of heresy, but it was I who fed and fanned it. I did not possess the treasure of Spain, but what little I had was enough to procure swords. Put a sword in the hands of a slave and she is a slave no more, and no amount of gold can buy back her servitude."

He spread his hands as his speech reached its crescendo, and from behind him poured an endless flock of doves. Unlike the Messenger of God, these did not bear olive branches - they carried with them letters, sharper than thousands of daggers.

"Behold, the weapon that ended the Empire," said Cardinal Richelieu. "My Noble Phantasm: The Thirty Years War!"

*

The Army of Vengeance falls.

A vast, bloody conflict has erupted within their ranks - loyalists verses traitors. It is not a clean break or a unified treason, but it is not meant to be; it is a quagmire. The loyalists gain an advantage and Assassin's dark magic strengthens the traitors. More mana has to be poured in to support them, and it works, grinding back against the tide, solidifying Avenger's position. But just as victory seems to come closer another regiment defects and the castle falls into bloody violence again.

The genius of this skill is in its manipulation of hope. Every time victory's jaws snap shut over empty air they got a taste. It was so close, only one more obstacle, only one more crisis and then everything would be perfect. The recognition that there will be no clean end to this is to be delayed until after it has taken far too much in the struggle.

*

"Wait," said Actia, ears focusing. "Stop."
"Stop?" scoffed Richelieu.
"Diaofei just went in there - the idiot," hissed Actia. "She has no chance. Stop your spell."
"My child, I could no more stop this than I could stop the moon," he said.
Actia turned to him, command seal burning bright. Assassin kept his composure. The two stared bloody daggers at each other.
"Fine," said Actia. "Whatever. Keep it going. But we're going to get her out."
"Why?" said Richelieu. "We are quite safe here. We are gathering power while our enemies tear each other to pieces. It's everything you wanted."
Actia was quiet, ears focused, jaw set.
"And besides, what is she to you?" said Assassin. "A stone you stepped on in passing. One who is responsible for this very horror with which we confront ourselves. A distant death in a distant land."
"I didn't know she..." said Actia. "We're going. We're going. It's not because I owe her anything, but she deserves better than this."

[Phoe]

All she needs time. All she needs is patience. This is a simple matter of waiting for the trap to swing closed and her forces to reassert control over the situation. Hers is an army she has collected on behalf of the gods for the sake of a a righteous cause. It is perfect and it is functionally infinite, at least in terms of the scale she intends to work at. If some of her heroic shells became corrupted by the evil magics of her enemies then all she needed to do was release more and she would always have the advantage of numbers, no matter how effective the technique being used against her.

Even now. Even now they scheme. They plot. They plan and they sneer, she can hear them all the way from here. Contemptuous louts, disgusting fools. They continued to see her war as just another bit of political maneuvering. They thought of her as possessing mortal thinking, and a mortal tolerance for bloodshed. They thought that since their plans were in place so long before she could concoct their own it made her an inferior creature that did not need to be respected. They thought this was could be won with information

If they thought that, they were blind. Imagine spending so much time tracking her movements and winding up here without knowing anything about her personally. Though then again, perhaps they knew very well. Did they understand the nature of a Valkyrie?

Call it meaningless. Call it unhelpful. Her castle smokes and bursts apart in places. Her siege weapons and laser arrays are crumbling off of the outer walls. Parapets are shearing off and tumbling to the battlefield below. The main building is dropping from the perpetual stormclouds and falling down to meet them. For all of this the throne room is pristine and glittering. Utterly untouched by the chaos and terror ripping apart the rest of the castle; a quiet place for Angelesia to rest. Jezara prowls about in frenzied restlessness, but all Avenger does is stand behind the throne and allows the tears to run underneath her mask and splatter on the floor.

How can she not despair? How can she not howl? She had done her duty. She had summoned warriors, worthy heroes to rally to her cause. And not only warriors, but the most pure ones imaginable. They had no ideals to clash with hers, they had no histories or tragic pasts that would betray or unmake them at the critical moment. They were swords, spears, and skills summoned by the command seals painted across her body. And despite that, they had betrayed her. She put her faith in them and they repaid that by turning to the side of the most hateful creature that has ever walked the earth. Her vision blurs with the pain of it. Her shoulders tremble, and the shudder is felt throughout the structure. The final layer of weapons on the outer walls all fire as they are destroyed, reducing more of the land to blighted ruin.

"...Ah," the tears stop in an instant as she looks toward a mirror and sees Hope again, "She comes."

Avenger steps forward, and places a tender, loving hand on Jezara's neck. She strokes the Princess as she would a lover, leaning her weight against the griffon woman and sighing in ecstasy.

"She has been drawn in! She will arrive, and all we need do is prepare! If it is so, then my warriors have acquitted themselves! If it is so, then!!!"

Shark teeth glint in the light of the throne room. The baleful red of her Command Seals gleams with sudden power.

"My loyal warriors. My detested traitors. I sing for you both. I love you all. You have done well. I have only one more thing to say."

Avenger sighs, shuddering with the relief of climax. Her hideous chorus of mismatched voices all scream out in decadent pleasure.

"By these Command Seals, I order you: Die."

Her castle falls to the ground. All the while, screaming. And then finally, silence.

[Thanqol]

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits was holding down the fort.

An important position! She was keeping the dragon Opalis a prisoner and guarding the mana core of the sunken giant, the two critical assets that would ensure foxgirl supremacy no matter how dark things turned out. She wasn't sidelined uselessly in the center of an impenetrable fortress because Actia didn't believe in her, she was doing critical work. Berserker knew it. She was sitting, legs folded, palms in her lap, eyes closed with the perfect stillness of someone who had nothing more to add to the situation. Kat was trying to imitate her.

She was so pretty. Kat wished she could talk. Why had she gotten stuck with Berserker? She didn't have a berserk bone in her body. She didn't even have an Assassin bone in her body - she was here with the means to seize the war for herself, she was very aware, but she hadn't even been able to properly steal her second tail. She'd just been given it as a punishment for someone else. She was a terrible foxgirl, she knew, and even having Actia and Cyanis kindly setting examples for her all the time they'd both known she was so hopeless that they could leave her in charge of the hencoop because she was more like a dog. It was so embarrassing!

The thought hurt so much that it messed up her sorry excuse for a meditation. She stood up, stuffed her hands in her pockets, walked to the pondshore, and threw a rock. It skipped across the water and impacted on the metal leg of the Shrine Giant.

The glowing metal leg of the Shrine Giant.

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits was terrible at being a fox. She didn't weave an illusion or throw a curse or conjure a thunderbolt or defensively marry anyone at all. She just dived to tackle Berserker out of the way of the energy beam, like a big dumb sucker. It'd serve her right if it burned off one of her tails in the process and she went back to being a shoulder fox.

But it didn't. The beam slashed through the ground, immolated Actia's shrine and cut through Berserker's castle walls from the inside. Glowing blue, wrenching itself free from the cables that bound it, earth and root sloughing off as the ancient metal giant tore itself from centuries of mud and sediment. A terrible machine of the ancient world awakened before her and it raised its mud-filled cannon to seek out the captured dragon.

She'd been wrong. She hadn't been benched somewhere useless. It was much worse than that. Now she had to save the day.

*

"I will not," said the angel Bohemond, touching lightly down in the throne room, "linger on your failure here, ancestor, because doing so will reflect poorly on myself. But I will suggest that for all the softness you may imagine lives in the hearts of Christians, they did know how to hold an empire together far longer than the Old Gods ever did."

His feathers have faded from radiant gold to a powder-yellow; his armour is no longer alight in all-consuming divine radiance. He is whole and hale, full of power - but only full of power. The tether that empowered him with a flood of energy has been severed and so it no longer burns out of him as it did moments ago. Even as he took your castle, someone has taken this opportunity to steal his from him.

But. He is too deep to escape now.

He conjures his longbow and holds it ready.

"Come, then," said Archer. "Let me consign you once again to the past."

[Phoe]

"My failure?"

Avenger cannot contain herself. Her grand sword trembles in her hands as she falls helplessly into a fit of horrible, breathy laughter. Giddy, ecstatic, sardonic, incredulous, uncertain, the only form of laughter her strange chorus of non-voices echo here is a full bodied one. Certainly as she cackles she throws her entire being into it, curling her spine uncomfortably far backwards and staring at the ceiling through her mask and the hand she's clamped over top of it. She convulses with the sheer strength of her amusement and anger, but none of it manages to reach the sounds coming out of her. Her mismatched giggles, chortles, and guffaws bounce around the room until they lap onto one another and wrap into a sound a bit like a burst of feedback from an overtuned amplifier, but not even this ear splitting noise carries a note of real, human depth.

Of course it doesn't. This creature has completely lost her connection the human world she once loved so.

Avenger stumbles, only stopped from ragdolling across her own throne room by the sudden emergence of two twisted paws from her cloak of demons. She glances down at the holy arrow embedded up to the fletching in her stomach. She clutches the offending missile in one armored hand and tears it straight back out of her to a sudden rush of messy, red blood.

"My failure?" she asks again as her armor plates reweave themselves and seal the hole in her suit closed over the wound.

She takes flight, flipping upside down as she does to hang from an overhead platform as though gravity had suddenly inverted for her. Her iron ring braid swings heavily underneath her head. She is just beginning some sort of gesture with her sword when two more arrows pin her to the ceiling by the knee and the shoulder.

"My failure..." she muses, wrenching her body free and falling like a stone.

She shudders with fresh laughter as she drags herself shakily to her feet. Even when a bolt pierces her neck, she doesn't stop. It would be fair, if one were inclined, to wonder exactly what was making these sounds on her behalf. Certainly it could not be her body, or if it was then she must be some sort of machine at this point to be able to continue functioning. She bleeds, at least. And she laughs. Those things can be said to be true.

"For the sake the heroes' blood that flows through you I have done my best to understand your words. But I cannot. Yours is the prattling of a child who either will not or cannot view the world through any lens but his own pretensions. Were he still alive I would be doing the Allfather a disservice by reaping your soul."

Now they clash as Servants, for the first time since the war began. Arrows are struck down, blows are matched and dodged and countered faster than the blurry eyes of an only-just conscious Angelesia can follow, if indeed she can manage to rouse herself from such concussed sleep. Simply sit on your throne and rest, innocent one. Avenger and Archer clash from wall to wall and ceiling to floor, tearing at each other and the structures all around them, which scramble to repair themselves in the aftermath in much the same fashion as Avenger's miraculous armor.

It is several long minutes of struggle for position and the breaking and reestablishment of distance before Avenger, now so soaked through with blood that it is the only thing visible through the crystal etchings of her armor, manages to corner her opponent. Her fighting style had switched from lazy efficiency to vicious overextension, but for all her talk of power she had shown little in the way of supernatural might. No bright beams of mystic light or electroshielding or powers of teleportation. Her sword had become a thing of energy, but she still wielded it as she had ever swung a blade. It seemed almost pathetic compared to the angelic glory of her opponent.

Right until she buried the giant blade in the base of his left wing. Now she grips the back of his neck with one hand as she saws and burns painfully through the false symbol of Bohemond's glory. With a final wrenching tear she plants her foot on his back and kicks him to the ground, clutching the feathered appendage and throwing it behind her for her cloak to devour.

"You have bound yourself in service to a demon, and allowed your warrior's soul to rot. Disgusting, I feel ill just looking at you. No more. Show me. Show me the relics of your hollow god one last time, if you can even wield them in your sorry state. I will shatter them as I shatter you. Perhaps then you will understand the meaning of the word 'failure'."

She spits foamy blood on the floor at his feet. It is comical how quick the throne room is to clean and absorb it. Even after all their fighting, this place remains pristine.

[Thanqol]

"I shall have to have a painting commissioned of this moment," came the voice of Assassin from a blood-soaked shadow. "The devil pagan standing monstrous and bloody above the martyred angel. The madness of the past arising to consume a Christian present, a mother devouring her son - haha -" there was a moment of reluctance, a moment of struggle, but in the end a failure to prevent a wicked laugh from burbling out.

Cardinal Richelieu stepped from the shadows. Luxurious in his Cardinal's bloody red, surrounded by a cordon of crimson-tabarded traitors and killers.

"Oh, it really has been remarkable to watch this little war play out," said the Cardinal. "A true battle of the one-eyed men. Bohemond saw the power in the Church, but thought it lay in relics. Julian saw through the power of the relics and thought it meant that the Church itself was false. The pagan saw the power of fear and terror, imagined it to be a mere sword."

The Cardinal ascended the stairs towards the throne, shielded by his men, and reached out to caress the shivering face of Aeglesia. He couldn't quite keep the smirk off his face, despite another struggle.

"Fear and hope," he said, "are both merely half of the equation. Alone, useless. But together," he turned, rubbing his fingers, "together -! Fear panics the masses, and hope tells them where to run! You have built this terror of a castle, but -"

He slouch-fell into the throne and gripped the sides with both hands. Immediately as he did so the castle shook. The ground heaved, windows shattered and great gusts of smoke erupted into the air. The scorching, burning focus of intense red laser energy ripped through its outer battlements, obliterating entire spires and ramparts.

*

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits stared up at the Shrine Giant. Its lights burned red against the blue, boiling together like sirens. Its arm had been heaved up, away from the dragon Opalis and towards the distant castle, tearing a rent through the landscape as it cut. Its other arm reached up, trying to pull the cannon back down, but it resisted - the mecha caught in a struggle between two masters.

*

"- all you have done is drive everyone else into my arms," said the Cardinal, putting his feet up on the throne's arm rests. "One of the great laws of balance, the same as did for Spain. The more terrifying you are the greater the coalition that forms against you."

[Phoe]

"...Disappointing."

Why must everything and everyone deny her? All she'd even demanded this time was that her opponent fight her with his mightiest weapons. Instead a... clown? A clown was making some sort of speech calling her an idiot. Just like every other Servant she'd come across.

"Disappointing, disappointing, disappointing."

She lets him speak. Every shake of her head is punctuated with another thrust of her sword into the body of Bohemond, until he is more stabs than man. It is not rage that drives this pointless violence. Her core is hollow, she cannot in this moment manage even a flicker of anger. There is simply nothing else for her to do just now, with her castle a smoking wreck and her army had been wiped off of the earth, more than half by her own hand.

"I would blame this on your Christianity," she says after a long while of stabbing, "Except that Lancer fell victim to it too. I do not understand what it is about you children that makes you all so certain you are the lone arbiters of truth and strategic insight."

Lift, stab. Lift, stab. Lift, stab. Lift...

Bohemond lies dead. But despite the fact that he is a Servant, his body does not disappear. Rather, his magical energy does not return to the Sunshard that spawned him. He does not power the ritual. Rather, he is absorbed into the throne room and is made to power the gleaming machinery inside. Avenger cranes her neck to watch the ceiling, and sighs.

Lift. Hold. Stab. The laser sword thrusts into one of the many slots carved into the landscape in here. Ghost-green lights flash along the length of the floor up to the throne, which rapidly unfolds into its component materials under the weight of the usurper suddenly sitting there. Assassin is more than quick enough to keep his feet, but shivering, feverish Angelesia is dumped onto the ground and left to tumble gracelessly down several stairs before she is caught by a quivering mass of cables.

Twist. Stomp. The nest pulls Angelesia tight and drags her down through the floor. She emerges wet and moaning at Avenger's feet, where a new seat has begun to assemble from blocks of raw material. It is not a throne this time. Cushions to absorb the shock of sudden g-forces, with joysticks at the end of both armrests stuck tight to her hands, belt after belt after belt snakes around Angelesia and straps her in inescapably tight. Her feet come to rest on a pair of pedals. The girl lurches violently, as though to throw up. Instead her head merely lolls as sweat drips from every pore in her body.

Avenger lifts her sword again and steps in front of the girl in the pilot's chair. She thrusts it deep into the walkway one more time and leans on it the way a knight might in some other bygone age and land if they were inviting challenges for the crossing of a bridge, a world she had never known but had knowledge of anyway thanks to the magics of her summoning.

"Let me ask you now, lambs-son. Puppet of Actia. Do you feel clever now? Do you believe you are in charge here? Do you even understand what it is I want?

The castle is dead. In the blinding glow of warning lights the last crumbling towers and walls all fall to dust. Only the core remains. The Keep, if you must be accurate. Only... not. From the dust, a massive clawed hand rises. It pulls a sword free from the rubble, blade crackling with dangerous energy in an outside replica of Avenger's own. A head like a helmet with a shining blue visor, black body of sleek armor plates and dangerous energy vents that extend like spikes from the joints, a coiled heat whip on its waist, and in its spare hand...

A great chunk of the primary weapon's tower lifts out from the ground with a plume of dust. A tower shield.

What had been a grand and empty throne room is now the much more cramped core of a second mecha standing against the Shrine Giant. Though it would be wrong to call it a cockpit. Between the sheer size of the monster and the general lack of need for real mechanical parts there proved to be an excess of empty (if reconfigured) space. More than enough for an army, and a painting, and a chimera. And of course, if it came to that, a battle.

"When you are hunting foxes," she growl-sighs, "It is first necessary to restrict their movements. Terror is more than a sword, did you say? Perhaps you are wiser than I gave you credit for."

Avenger leans backwards to plant a kiss on Angelesia's clammy lips. The hideous red cursemark, the fully gestated seed planted within her, burns bright against her chest.

"Darling Angelesia, my Queen-and-Pilot. I say to you once more: do not forget your gifts~"

[Thanqol]

"Do I feel like I am in charge?" said the Cardinal mildly. "Do I feel clever? Do I understand what it is that you want?"

Something gold glinted on Aeglesia's finger.

"I hardly think that your opinion is relevant in any of those questions," said the Cardinal. "No, no, no. All I need from you is to witness. By the power invested in me, I declare myself and Aeglesia husband and wife, speak now or forever hold your peace..."

*

The Shrine Giant lurched from the swamp.

It was at its heart an instrument of control. Long dormant adhesive launcher pods burst all over its body, individually targeted to all the joints on Avenger's machine. It wrenches at and pulls off its own faceplate; where a cockpit or pilot might have sat instead is a single, strange, technicolour eye, pulsing hypnotic swirls. This mad eye does not just confuse and disorient the mind, it confuses and disorients space and time; everything is off. Movements take too long or happen too quickly, a shift to throw off finely honed instincts and make its opponents feel drunk and clumsy. And against an opponent labouring under the weight of paralysis and confusion, the Shrine Giant attacks with its primary weapon - a long and barbed trident. It pushes forwards like an ancient gladiator, beating back against the weight of the tower shield with the immortal strength of its fusion heart.

*

Diaofei entered the control chamber. Her hands glowed orange, wisps of smoke surrounding them. She was eighty-five steps through the Daemon-Banishing Kata; soon she would hit the first break point and then she'd truly be able to fight even these wicked ghosts as peers.

She saw the King in Crimson, holding the hand of his unconscious and bound bride. She knew in her bones this was Actia's servant - and she knew that she'd been wrong. Wrong to doubt herself, wrong to trust - all of this horror had been set in motion by the damn fox. Here at the heart of the corruption her influence was here, just like it had been in her own heart.

"Guard," said Assassin to Avenger. "It seems we have an intruder. I am forbidden by Command Seal from doing anything about it, so I leave this one to your imagination."

Diaofei took the eighty-sixth stance. Filter out the words. The lies. Only the pure way was left to her.

[Phoe]

Avenger can only cock her head. What is he... doing? Some obscure branch of magecraft clearly, but what was it meant to accomplish? Assassins' absurd behavior made it clear he put great stock into its power, so much that he had dropped the pretense of being enemies and picked up the pretense of being in charge without so much as pausing to breathe, but so far as she could tell he hadn't actually done anything.

She follows a quiet routine of checks on her systems and subroutines. Her flow of magical energy remained uninterrupted, her parameters all remained at or above the standards her extra class set for her and even if that particular information had been scrambled she could feel the energy and strength coursing through her body plainer than the dawn. Her grand battle machine was currently stumbling, but that was because it was locked in a fight against an ancient wonder of the world from the coming of the Twilight; her control of it was everything she expected given the circumstances.

There was a possibility, she supposed, that his magic had altered some part of her mind. And if it had she would have no great way to detect it. But it seemed unlikely as she sat there hating him as obviously and openly as she could beneath her opaque mask. Her plans felt like they continued forward to his death and past it, and the only reason she hadn't already gutted him the way she would a fish was because--

...Aha. Because she had called Angelesia 'queen'. The magic of marriage, was it? The binding of these two great houses, a political tradition older than politics itself. It followed that if Angelesia was the queen of this dark palace, then by making himself her husband he would become its king. But then, well... that worked out fine enough for her. There was still a certain order her work needed to be completed in, and none of -- whatever this is -- conflicted with that.

Nevertheless, she does not bow to him. Neither does she acknowledge Assassin with her voice. All Avenger does is sigh, a lilting musical shudder with her pale echoing voice as she turns her head to look at the spot she knew her Master was hiding. Little fool.

**

Avenger's robot shudders against the might of the Shrine Giant. As restricted as its movement had become there was nothing it could do to avoid the clash, and neither could its sleek and (for its height) slender body contend with the raw power of this miracle that had surely one day long ago stood against the wrath of Surtr. Stood and fallen, certainly, but intact enough to one day stand again. That was a testament to its unrivaled power. Joints groan and sparks fly as the shield arm bends to support the blockade with as much weight as it could manage.

Knees that are already bound must bend, or buckle if they cannot. One arm is not enough, it must drop its mighty sword to reinforce defense. The machine's reflexes are slow and sluggish to the point that even when it engages the thrusters hidden in its calves and back to compensate for the lack of mechanical strength it cannot push back against this simple thrust.

Until suddenly the restraint binding its elbow snaps under the pressure of being crushed between two opposing directions of force. Now it is able to lift the shield higher and tuck its faceless head beneath it, hiding the majority of its own bulk behind the solid wall so it can focus all of its thrust on a single point and push back against the spear. And this might have been doomed to failure too, if it had been a pilot other than Angelesia that guided the methodology of this terrible machine. She understood just as Avenger did that the purpose of a shield was not simply blunting a blow you could not otherwise afford to take.

Its true purpose was to steal your opponent's weapon. With a snap and a great clamoring of machinery the tower shield begins to disassemble in much the same manner the inner components of the throne room itself kept doing. From the center of the shield a huge hole opens up and swallows the trident, allowing its wielder to be skewered at the knee (and another restraint) in exchange for being able to envelope the offending weapon in a tight metal mesh that swallowed the Shrine Giant up to the shoulder.

Now the heat whip sings: snatched from the hip and drunkenly lashed against the plating of that hideous pulsing eye. It wraps around the horrible weapon as Avenger's mecha pulls it taut, the thick and heavy links that comprised the weapon growing red and then white hot as it poured more heat and more power and still more heat along the length of it. Steam rises between the pair of them, soon enough to begin to obscure the specifics of the action from all but the most determined observers. All while thunder screams above them.

**

"Oh Master," Avenger sighs, "My dearest, darling Master. Whatever do you think it is you're doing?"

Avenger's grip is a vice around Diaofei's mouth. She lifts the little monk up off the ground, but not to the full extension of her arm, and crucially not away from her, either. One hand remains on the hilt of her sword, now buried in a new slot nearer to where her Master had been hiding, and together they hang sideways along the middle of a wall in the grand chamber. Not far from the Saber Gate, not that it counts for much now.

"You poor confused and silly thing," one voice laughs while another one weeps, and still a third whisper merely admonishes, "It is too soon to give up on your dreams. I promise you, your lover will be here soon. And you shall have everything from her that you begged me to deliver. Your very deepest wish is about to come true. But I must ask you, for just a few moments longer..."

Shark's teeth bite into a monk's hand. Through flesh and through bone, and through Command Seals. Avenger is not gentle; her jaw twists but does not chew. She does not even bite all the way through, nothing that would reduce the agony or leave Daiofei a moment to become used to or master this intense and wracking pain destroying her hand.

Avenger grins through a mouthful of blood and mana. Her sigh is sweet, and louder than the echo of the storm outside.

"Endure."

[Thanqol]

The Shrine Giant is not wise. It does not know that it should release an entangled weapon to save itself. It is a creature of greed and grasping and it is well aware of the value of its trident. There is a path where it might grip onto its doomed weapon even as it dooms itself.

The Shrine Giant is, however, cunning. It knows that it can purchase a replacement.

Technomantic impulses burn out of it and drive into the depths. The sky may belong to Avenger's thunder, the earth belongs to the terrible machinery that spat out this monster in ages past. The giant releases its weapon and extends its palm just in time to snatch the exact duplicate of its trident as it erupts from the stagnant water of its pond; within a moment it has resumed its brutal, hammering assault. As it drives back Avenger's armour, more replacement components begin to emerge; armour paneling and ammunition reloads, delivered by metal drones to repair and refit the Shrine Giant in real time.

*

She looks at her bloody hand, and does not hesitate.

"Those are the weapons of the spirit world," she said, slamming her undamaged fist into Avenger's gut. Shining, pure energy shatters through her strike, sending out a great cloud of mana that gleams as it vanishes. "I do not need them. I do not want them."

She strikes again, this time with her bloody hand. Each hit is a negation, the annihilation of magic, the denial of reality and the self in the same impact. "You are a creature of the spirit world. I do not need you. I do not want you."

Her pistoning strikes accelerate, becoming a flurry. The air itself burns cold and dead as her perfect focus drives away desire and all that goes with it. "You are nothing but my second mistake. I should not have conjured you. Now I will banish you."

[Phoe]

Against most assaults, Avenger saw no need to defend herself. Against this one however, Avenger could not defend herself. Diaofei's mystic fists tear holes in her armor as if it wasn't there to begin with. The flesh underneath fares no better. Avenger's stomach crumbles like clay, her left shoulder tears off completely and the arm falls to the ground in a bloody heap. Even her own essence is not immune to the routines of the throne room; the shattered pieces of her body are quickly swept up into the floors and absorbed into the main power supplies of the mecha itself. The beast eating its own master in the name of a vengeance that nobody seemed to actually want.

Not needed. Not wanted. Her proud form and her long accumulated wisdom had all been discarded as worthless trash. In desperation she'd twisted herself into a warrior of shadows, a beast from the waning age of the gods that could twist herself into the kind of knife that certain trembling hands would actually want to hold. Not needed. Not wanted. Just another mistake. The words crush her as heavily as the punches. There is no magic in the Eighty-Sixth Stance of the Daemon Banishing Kata. Not truly. This was an act of unmaking, and whether Avenger wanted to or not, whether she tried or not, her body could not do anything but weather this rejection and the fury that was rapidly shattering her down to her spirit core.

Diaofei lifts her bloodied fist to deliver the final blow. She pauses to utter a prayer before she swings, and in that instant a paw the size of her torso knocks her across the room. Princess Jezara snarls and takes to the air. Her monstrous frame pins the monk to the scaffolding around the Archer Gate. For a moment there is only the sounds of breathing: of Diaofei's desperate grunts as she struggles to finish her work, to free herself, to channel for one more second the righteous fury that drove her here. Of Jezara's heavy panting as she presses more weight and more on this idiot interloper that couldn't even see what needed to be done anymore, so heavy was the aura of pain around her soul. Of Avenger, who wheezed in eight different voices and writhed on the floor with what was left of her long and lanky body.

Not needed. Not wanted. Just the second mistake.

Avenger's scream splits the heavens apart.

Outside, the storm unleashes its fury all at once. Lightning crashes down from three dozen different cloud fronts and converges all around Avenger's mecha, which bears the true name of The Fylgja. White hot power sears the air and boils rain water in an instant. It splits stone and melts earth, carving a scar into the planet a full kilometer across that ten thousand years of geology and all the wealth of the technomantic world could not heal again if it poured itself into the effort a million times over.

The heat is enough to make many a mortal faint even miles away. The light is so blinding it seems as if the world might have turned to pure, featureless white all on its own. The sound is so deafening, but more than that so agonizing and so saddening to hear that it could drive lesser souls mad just to witness it. The wise would do well to clamp hands over their fluffy foxy ears and whimper until it stops.

The air is thick with mana, as dense as it was even in days before the will of mankind controlled destiny and the world was its own master. Dense enough to activate the Primordial Runes written across the sleek, now melting body of the Fylgja. They gleam blue-white against the black sludge of its armor, and with a ripple of metal it grows strong once again. It lifts its grand blade and moves to pierce the Shrine Giant through the stomach.

Freed from their fury, the storm clouds pour gentle, pure rain on the world...

**

Avenger swallows mana in huge and greedy gulps. Every breath she takes is stronger than the one before it as her body reweaves itself out of fresh spirit particles. First the bone and then the flesh until finally her armor knits itself anew. She takes her feet as if nothing had happened to her in the first place. No, not nothing. Diaofei's former command seals now burn brightly against her own hand. She stretches her fingers experimentally.

"Blood..." she giggles. Snarls. Seethes. Commands.

Her blade buries itself to the hilt in Diaofei's back.

"Eagle."

A sword as large as this one should have skewered Diaofei so completely that there were no organs left inside her. Her spine should be melted and her body rendered an unintelligible mess. Certainly she experiences these sensations, but sadly for her they are not the end of her. The blade is buried deep, impossibly deep, and yet it does not pierce through her other side. Her body is whole and will continue to live for many long years when all of this is over unless someone steps in to change that.

"I will not. Allow it. Not from you. You called to me! You reached through time and grasped my hand, don't you dare dismiss me as some lowly fraction of your work! Spirit? Hardly. I am a proud warrior! I held the mantle of Valkyrie and lead my brothers to battle and victory even beyond my death! They crowned me king, and when they buried me I refused to rot! You never bothered to ask my name, not even to reduce yourself to address me by my title! Did you even notice I altered my legend for your sake. No you worthless woman, I am human just as you are. I am Ivar! And you will remember my name!!"

The power of Avenger's Noble Phantasm is not in destruction, though it can accomplish that much easily. This is a blade of grudges. It is the manifestation of her Oblivion Correction: the skill that renders every hurt against her into fuel for her continuing quest for vengeance. Many of Avenger's enemies to this point had tried to destroy her body, and the vengeance that the Blood Eagle inflicted doubled that in kind. Ruination and terror until no one could stand the sight of it. But Diaofei had dared to attack Avenger's soul. She had even used her privilege as a Master to strike at the weakness of a heart that had been rejected countless times across history. Now she is made to feel that pain, in every way a human being can.

"...And yet for all your faults, I love you still. So no, you foolish monk. I will not disappear into your memories. I cannot be banished by your arts, nor any others. I. Remain. And I will do the work that you require, even if you are so weak and wretched that you can't bear to recognize it anymore. So lie there. Writhe for me! I will have you remember that desperation that summoned me in the first place. I will have you scream for me. Lift your voice so high that your missing heart cannot fail to hear you. I need her here. I cannot give you what you want without her."

Phantom blood oozes from Diaofei's back, writhing chains of greasy, hot, and slippery muck that squeeze her into new and terrible positions before oozing back inside the origin point of the wound only to pour back out and bind her all over again. Even Princess Jezara turns her eyes away from the sight.

[Thanqol]

"By my Command Seal, I order: Enough,"

The sound of a gunshot echoes throughout the hall. A single bullet fired from Assassin's wheel lock, taking Avenger through the heart.

"Once again," said Assassin. The gun was tucked back into his coat as though it had never been there. "That was uncalled for. I am, as ever, your obedient servant."
Actia looked at him in passing. An impasse, once again. Nothing more they could say to each other.

The four-tailed foxgirl steps at last into the open. She looks down at Diaofei. Nothing more they could say to each other either. All this blood and madness had been the shape of their battle, and here it was ended as it had begun: with Actia tall and poised, and Diaofei bloody and defeated.

Still, Diaofei tried. Through pain and blooded lips she struggled with the shape of the words. Couldn't get them how she wanted. Actia looked at her for a long moment, and then stepped past her to walk towards the Sunshard. Diaofei bent her head against the ground.

"I do envy you humans," she said, reaching out to brush her fingers against the divine relic. "In the end, you had the freedom to do... all of this. To rage. To weep. To break the world. You don't know how lucky you are..."

[Phoe]

Avenger's body twitches on the ground where it had fallen. The arms and legs lift and fall slack in a slow and steady rhythm like the beating of a sleeping heart. The spine curls back at an unnatural angle, and on the tenth shudder this motion lifts the fallen Servant's body to her feet as though plucked there by puppet strings.

She folds forward on her first step, blood spilling from a still smoking hole in her chest. Another step and she snaps straight except for her head, which lolls to one side on a neck that seems like it's broken. Her fingers curl around the hilt of her sword as it rises out of the ground next to her, and her head lifts until it's tilted back to show her the ceiling instead of the world at an odd angle.

Angelesia convulses in her chair, sweating with such a high fever that she can no longer control her body. All her violent shudders reach for the direction Actia is traveling. Avenger watches her and sighs, a chorus compressed into a single voice. And then she leans forward and spits out a bullet.

"I would be willing to overlook that pointless display as the actions of a maiden too overwhelmed by love to comprehend her own foolishness."

Her boots fall heavy on the walkway, each step bouncing across the throne room in triplicate before its echo settles down beneath the waves of the chorus. Her sword thrums with power and sings a song of sparks as she drags it along the ground with careless laziness behind her. By the time she reaches Diaofei her armor has woven shut again.

"I would be willing to overlook the pain your alliance has inflicted on me as a sign of respect for my power. I would overlook the damage you have done to my former master's soul, though it is the reason I am standing here in this form. You are after all not a warrior. I would be very happy to kidnap you as a prize rather than butcher you as a foe, even if three full Command Seals had been burned demanding that I hack you to pieces."

Her cloak thrashes wildly in a hundred horrible shapes and beasts. Convulsing, twitching, fighting against the motions of Avenger's own body until she grabs the insubstantial nothing of its form with her hand and tears it off. In a grand whipping motion she fashions it into something solid and huge. A pair of pitch black wings that curl unnaturally upward with jagged rune-carved blades where bones or feathers might have been, and the barrel of some unwholesome gun pressed against her shoulder.

She stands in front of Actia and puts her hand on the four-tailed fox's head.

"...But."

Her fingers squeeze that obnoxious, vainglourious skull. Tight enough to crush her fluffy ears. Enough to hear skin and bone protest under the pressure. She hears the first gasp and she grins, lifting the foxgirl off the ground entirely. And for all of this she is holding back, neither crushing Actia into pulp nor inflicting the kind of damage that would cause her to pass out. If she's worth anything at all, it isn't even enough to prevent a counterattack, or to keep her from speaking.

Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain. The only point of any of it, the only point there ever would be, is pain.

"To come here? To come here and speak of FREEDOM? To lament your status as a prisoner of fate and circumstance where I could hear you? You are truly every bit the villain I was told you are. There is no amount of suffering I can inflict that would ever be enough. But I will try."

[Thanqol]

It clearly hurt her. Her legs bent, her fingers flexed, reflexive tears formed in the corners of her eyes. But all she reached for was her necktie, which she straightened, and then with trembling fingers, her sunglasses, which she wore.

"Yes," she said. "Go ahead, Ivar. Rage. Weep. Break the world. Break me. Like I said, that is your privilege." She folded her empty hands across her chest, fingers digging into her arms. "Punish the villainess as she deserves to be punished. That too is your right. I'll make it easy for you. You and your master were inconsequential stepping stones to my true objective, which was the destruction of this world and the ruination of all. Your vicious flailing would seem but the wrath of a child compared to the vast, systematic and total destruction that will occur when my plan comes to fruition - and it will. I could not have risked myself here if anything that happened here had even the slightest chance of influencing the outcome that I have already set in motion."

She bit her lip to stop it trembling. "Go ahead. Make me regret my actions. Make me regret my words. Make me regret thinking that a giant, an angel and a bullet through the heart would be enough. Show me again that there is no despair I could leave you in that will stop you coming after me."

[Phoe]

Her arm trembles with rage. Her teeth clench together tight enough to draw blood. She spits it in Actia's face but there is no flinch visible underneath those sunglasses. The girl trembles in Avenger's grip and gasps in obvious pain, but for all that she cannot control her body nothing breaks her composure. She faces her death as a warrior should, with the kind of poise that should compel a valkyrie to scoop up her broken body and carry it with her into the sky after the end comes.

Truly there is no pleasure in revenge. But it is work that cannot be set aside.

Ivar lifts her prey higher into the air. It creates better leverage for the pivot, when she turns and slams the fox into the ground hard enough to buckle the walkway. Actia bounces off the metal, gasping and spitting as all the air is driven from her body at once. She moans in spite of everything when a large boot plants itself on her chest and squishes down hard enough to snap a rib.

"Silence, witch! I do not accept your pity. I will not allow your wretched charity. There is nothing you can say to me that will forestall your death. But I will not have you drifting off into oblivion with first tasting your own poisons."

Ivar bends an arm behind her and grasps hold of one of the "feathers" jutting from her bizarre shadow wings. With gritted teeth she wrenches it free to a crunch and a spurt of blood even though it was not visibly connected to anything. She strokes this long dagger lovingly before kneeling down and slamming it deep into Actia's shoulder.

The blade itself is slick and warm. There is a pervasive, unwholesome wrongness to it that grows more potent the longer it sits inside a body. It is like venom and it is like a bone. The arm and the dagger take turns as to which one feels like it is melting, until with an inelegant twist, Avenger wrenches it inside the wound and it blossoms into a cluster of steel roots that extend the length of Actia's arm and bury themselves into muscle, nerves, and bone at a thousand twisted angles. Setting her on fire would have been a kindness by comparison.

The tears that leak from under her glasses are involuntary. In between small gasps that force her lips apart, Actia carefully sets them again in a practiced, neutral expression. The degree to which she has to fight for her composure is immaterial to a creature like the Avenger-class Servant. When a second and a third branch-dagger take over the opposite leg from the knee down and one of those stupid thrashing tails, it does nothing to help. There is no satisfaction in the work, no sense of victory.

Ivar is not a stupid creature. She knows that somehow she is losing. Her howl shakes the throne room down to the last bolt.

At last she grips her shining blade, and holds the tip steady overtop of Actia's heart. The gnawing hunger tears at her still. If this will not move her prisoner, if every last triumph and proof of her power is not worth a sniff to this poisonous witch of a fox, then there is only a single avenue left for her revenge to flow. At last. At last, the smile takes over her face. Her spine curls in laughter that briefly lifts her sword away from its target.

"If there were any words left in your disgusting little throat, you would be using them to tell me I have proven nothing. And I must say I quite agree. You speak of such blasphemous villainy in front of me as though I were a child, helpless in your grip. I will not tolerate it."

With surprising deftness, Avenger flicks her sword across Actia's body and splits her blood slicked suit down the middle. She bends her body to stroke the soft flesh underneath, pushing the scraps of fabric to either side to expose her body further. And then once more she stands and holds her killing blow at the ready.

"Before I kill you, I will swear this oath to you and on the corpses of the gods who gave their lives to build the world you wish to ruin. I will unmake you, Actia. There are no plans you could have laid that I will not cut through. There is no doom that you could weave that will be safe from me. Your every last ambition will be as dust, even should my body burn and my spirit core shatter beyond repair. Deny me all mana, seal my every last ability, undo the workings of my Noble Phantasm and none of it shall matter. I will persist. I will remain. And I will tear down your schemes even if I have to devour time to do so."

With a gesture, she tears her daggers free and lets them snap back onto her wings. At last, a twitch! A true recognition of the horror that faces her! It is the smallest measure of vengeance, but it is enough food to sustain her for the work that is still to follow. For the final time, she lifts the blade. When it descends again, death will be instant.

But, she has decided, she will leave the body beautiful. The ruination of her plans, the true source of her pride and boastful nature, is enough to satisfy after all.

[Thanqol]

The blade descends.

Through whistling air it falls. Through rock and stone it falls. Through brick and mortar it... falls? Finally it carves through the last of the solid stone wall where it cuts the eyebrow of a trembling, frozen Actia who looks at the drop of blood running down her face to her hand, decides she's been brave enough for one day, and faints.

"Stop!" said Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. "I - oh I'm sorry, I know you're supposed to yell stop first, but you're so scary fast I couldn't take chances -"

Berserker crashes into place defensively in front of her, black-red battledress flaring. A line runs along through the chamber floor up to Actia's body, where a miniature castle wall has erupted from the ground to intercept Avenger's falling blade. Berserker snarls, and all the moreso when Katherine tries to get in front of her again.

"Stop it Berserker -- and stop it Saber!" she cries. "This isn't like you! All of this... blood and mess and scariness, and not even in a good way! I know we only met for less than a minute, and Cyanis always says I'm a terrible judge of character, but this isn't like you! Because - because the vibes suck! The vibes are awful and terrible and wrong, and I don't know how else to put it, but they've been wrong for ages and they were wrong with Actia before and now they're super double wrong with you, and everyone's being such an edgelord and nobody at all is thinking about all those poor people who lost electricity because the Shrine Giant decided to shoot lasers everywhere! Did you think about that!? Huh!?!"

She's really getting into the flow of this now, stomping her feet and slamming her fist into her open palm, and generally making a really good case for being Berserker's master.

"And now you've got all these people who need medical attention and I'm going to have to tell Cyanis that the big evil castle ate her artillery angel and I don't know how to do that without telling her she deserves it for not going in alongside him, so she's going to sulk - and that's another thing I have to deal with!" said Kat. "Because if she's sulking she's not going to help me save the world! And I didn't even get a cool swordfighting dress or a wolfgirl girlfriend to help me! All I've got is all these old people acting like they know everything! So TELL you WHAT grandma!!" Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits drew her sword with the vicious lack of care of someone who had never been trained in a sword. Being within arms reach of her, as Avenger is at this point, is a legitimately terrifying thing because there is absolutely zero control there. She could stab herself. She could stab her servant. She could stab Avenger, through every block and guard, with the chaotic talent of a pissed-off novice. "FIX your FLUFFING VIBES! Get your ACT together!" Berserker actually needed to shoulder-check her to keep her away from pulling off the rare double decapitation maneuver. "I DO NOT FEEL SAFE AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY CONSENSUAL ABOUT THE DIRECTION THIS PRINCESS FIGHT IS TAKING!" screams Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits.

[Phoe]

"Fluffymountains."

Hearing her own name makes the two-tailed fox turn bright red for some mysterious reason, but the power of her anger is such that it doesn't break her war face or her concentration. For all that she might have bobbled the moment in a happier time, today she maintains her grip on her sword enough to continue dangerously gesticulating with it in a manner indistinguishable from attempted murder.

Avenger responds by turning away from her quarry and hefting her sword in the direction of all this flustered killing intent. The laser sword seems invincible matched against the flimsy curving blade pointing back at her, and is easily more than twice the size of Kat in and of itself. In any other scene this sight would be comical. Here it is merely strange.

It would be a very simple thing to ignore this little squeaking doll. For all that her fury made her dangerous she was nothing compared to the wounds Ivar had already endured, and with her Noble Phantasm still active even if Fluffymountains had been supported by her Saber self it would not make a difference. All she had to do is take the blow in exchange for the opportunity to kill Actia. But she does not make the move. Her posture is entirely that of someone who is taking this threat of a fight with full seriousness.

"I have lost the ability to call myself Saber. You may address me as Avenger. Or Ivar," she smirks, "The Boneless."

She brings her weapon down in a perfect overhead strike. Her speed is beyond human comprehension. Her form is without flaw. But her sword hisses and sparks as it clashes with not one but two others and halts before the deathstroke can complete. Berserker snarls and hurls her away. Avenger offers a small nod in response.

"Nevertheless I do acknowledge I am the same being you made a pact with. You gave me my life when I asked for it. Though my former Master very thoroughly squandered the opportunity I meant to buy, I agree you have the right to kill me now if that is your will."

"Wh--" sputters Kat, "Why would? No, what, no! No!! NO! Who wants that? Who wants to go and kill anyone? That's exactly the icky nonsense I was talkin' abou-- oh there I go again with the accent thanks a LOT! It takes forever to start talkin' normal after I slip, y'know?!"

"...Very well then. You may correct my 'vibes' if you prefer, but either way do so with that sword in your hands. I will not honor our accord if you do not."

It is an intense battle that follows, though lacking in artistry. Katherine is far too nervous to follow through with any of her slashes and far too angry to invest in vigor, and so what unfolds is a somewhat jittery dance of maximum aggression. She is too close and too wild for Ivar to meaningfully block her, and too short for the majority of the enormous warrior's natural strikes. In short order Avenger's armor is marred with dozens of tiny cuts, while she is limited to only vertical slices.

There is no purpose for defense in Kat's case. Any one of these strikes would shatter her arms and legs all at once if she blocked them full on. But the predictable patterns are simplicity itself for a warrior of Berserker's caliber, who manages to hip check her Master out of the way or with a howl make her flinch in the exact perfect moment, or in one case lift young Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits up on a tiny rampart so that her sword manages to meet Avenger's blow before it can build any real power. And there are openings for her to make her own counteroffensives, but she accepts none of them. Her armor rattles from the concerted effort of holding herself back, but alone among Servants in the Sunshard War, Berserker has a legitimately positive relationship with her Master. And for the sake of that Master, she keeps herself as out of this duel as she can get away with.

Like this! Then like this! Finishing like this! Again! The Again is the important bit as it turns out, as the completion of these sloppy, petrified forms do very little to finish off an opponent as inevitable as Avenger. But it turns out that Yue got one thing wrong, for all the help she had. The duel is not always about the duel. This duel is about dignity. About humanity. About saving the world. It is also about a single strike and all the heart and determination that a person can pour into it.

It comes at last when Ivar changes tactics. She slips past Berserker by letting her giant sword fall out of her hands, and lunges with her flexible arm and powerful fingers instead. And with a palm the size of her head suddenly shooting straight at her, Kat reacts with the perfect poise to be expected from her long years of training:

She screams. She ducks and covers her head. She feels something pulling on her sword arm and reflexively jerks it out of that grip as though being trapped by anything was the scariest thing in the entire world. Somehow this translates into a flat thrust. She feels the sword sink deep into Avenger's chest, and immediately falls to her knees.

"I, I, aish! I, oh no, oh goshies, oh Miss Saber no I'm so sorry! Oh no oh no don't die don't die you're not supposed ta get swords there I'm pretty sure oh shoot shoot shoot heck hold on I'll pull it out! No wait is that worse? I'll leave it in! Oh no but that must hurt so much I didn't know it was gonna! Oh!!"

"Child."

"Y-y-yes?" sniffled Kat, now trying not to break into a full on sob now that adrenaline had well and truly got the best of her.

"It is," Ivar grunted. It was difficult to talk with a sword jutting out of her lung, "Your intention to save the world?"

"It, I, uh, um! I mean yeah! Yes! Uhuh! Y-you're not dead right? You're gonna help right? You got some kinda magic spell for this?"

"I do not, Fluffymountains."

"...Biscuits."

"What?"

"M'name's..." Kat buried her face in her chest and her eyes in the crook of her elbow, "Fluffybiscuits."

"...What?" said Ivar again, plucking the sword out of her body.

"K-KATHERINE ISABELLA FLUFFYBISCUITS!"

Ivar stood speechless. For a moment she seemed to be contemplating stabbing herself again. With legendary effort, she tossed it on the ground instead.

"Yes, well. I have felt your resolve and I accept it. By our terms I owed you one defeat. This debt is repaid. But I also owe you a victory. Will you expend that on my assistance with your quest to save the world?"

"D-d'you," sniffle-snorted Kat, "Really mean that?"

"It is Actia's scheme that the world needs saving from. I will not turn away from my revenge. But for the sake of an alliance I am willing to focus it on this."

"You... promise? You r-really, super promise to knock off all the creepy murder death stuff and just help?"

"I have never once allowed my oaths to go unfulfilled."

Kat's knees shook horribly. Her throat felt like it had gotten a stick caught in it somehow. She wanted to say something smart, but everything that had held her together was unraveling with a speed that made her yearn to scamper home and bury herself in Yue's sock drawer. Not that she still fit in there, mind, but it's where her brain went. And neverminding she had too much work in front of her to get away with that even if she did, no matter if she was about to get a helper who could actually speak in words or no. It had just... been a lot for her. This whole thing was a lot to ask of a house fox.

She screwed up her courage one more time inside the creepy death castle, and nodded.

Avenger stood in silence, with blood still oozing out of the promise-wound. She turned her head around the room to look at Diaofei, and at Angelesia, and finally at Actia. All three of these girls lay sprawled and miserable in her power. Angelesia in particular looked about to die under the illness of the grudge she'd been forced to bear.

Ivar removed her mask. Underneath was the face of a young woman with hollow amber eyes. She plucked her sword up off the ground and walked away along the corridor to plant it in the slot she needed. The Fylgja rose at her command, and with legs at the end of its power reserves stepped foot by enormous foot over to the ruins of the shrine where the Giant had once rested. Ivar lifted her sword again, and the mecha took a knee in place.

She took a deep breath.

"By my Command Seal, I order... myself," she held the gleaming brand aloft in defiance of the woman who had decried their uselessness only after crushing her dreams with one, "Survive this."

It burned away and disappeared.

"Angelesia. My pilot. My queen. Your war is over. I release you from your duties; you may rest."

The throne she had been buckled into quickly unfolded around her and slipped into the strange mechanics of this place, dumping Angelesia on the floor. Almost immediately she began to wretch with horrible, violent lunges until with a horrible noise and an even worse smell she coughed up a seed, which withered to dust absent the mana source that was sustaining it. With a final quiet shudder, Lancer's Master fell asleep and lay still.

All at once a thousand wounds erupted violently across Avenger's body. She dropped almost to one knee, but clinging to her sword kept her feet. She stared through pain at Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits. And as she promised, she remained.

[Thanqol]

Caster stood atop the wreckage. The quadruped robot beside him shifted and whirred, sniper rifle flicking its lenses. It was time to put an end to all of this, once and for all.

"You appear to be stepping into my domain," said Assassin mildly, putting one steadying hand on the barrel. "And I do not think you have the talent for it."
"Cardinal," said Caster, bowing his head slightly. The machine whirred as it pushed against Assassin's hand, trying to re-acquire its target. "Is this a request for a ceasefire or a demand for payment?"
"It is funny you should ask," said Assassin. "Because it seems like my Master has done everything she could to rebel against yours. She intimated the shape of your plan, and then went ahead and placed her body next to the target - and close enough to one I am forbidden from allowing to be harmed."
"And how many Command Seals does she have left?" asked Caster.
"One," shrugged Assassin. "And is quick enough on the draw to have me turn my blade upon myself, should I turn on her. You see my conundrum."
Assassin then waited politely for Caster to consider if he could kill him. He didn't begrudge him; it would solve a lot of problems for the old man to kill him, kill Rider's master, and wipe out almost all of the remaining Servants with the fury of her arrival. It honestly hurt Assassin too, knowing that he was standing in the way of such an elegant resolution to everybody's problems.
"We shall have to do this the hard way," sighed Caster. "Very well. Actia wants a longer leash, let her have it. My Master will yank it short when the time is right."
"And I have until then to kill you and replace you at your Master's right hand," demurred Assassin.
"As you say," said the old man. "Though you might find the competition for that position growing increasingly fierce as time goes on."

[Phoe]

Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits was ladling soup. It should've been something nicer but someone went and blew up the fridge while she was busy saving the day and also she didn't really know how to cook anything fancy. But soup really just needed a big enough pot to throw a bunch of stuff into and enough salt that you could keep dumping it in until everything tasted ok. It wasn't a smart person's dish, but she didn't need it to be.

She did need food. If there's one thing she learned from a lifetime of perching on Yue's shoulder it was that after a bunch of fighting and shouting the most important thing you could do is have dinner. And as luck would have it all the rain from that big scary storm had attracted a school of very delicious looking skyfish so there was actually a pretty nice smell coming out of the bowls as she handed them out. But yeah, dinner. It's not like she asked for this but her Princess Adventures Party turned out to be more of a Loosely Strung Together Alliance of Convenience (which nobody in their right mind would think as being half as fun or worth getting into trouble for) and if she didn't do something to smooth all that "we were all just enemies until a couple hours ago" stuff real quick the whole rest of this adventure was just gonna be...

"Spirit." said Diaofei with a forced calm that nobody was buying.

Ivar turned her head to watch a fresh bowl of broth splash all over the table after an uneven chunk of fish fell into it mid-pour. She smiled.

"...Spirit."

"I did not ask for you to speak, little monk."

"You will tell me why I am in chains."

"To punish Actia, of course," said Ivar, "There are no tortures I can conceive of more horrible than being forced to endure your--"

Cyanis cut across the moment with a dramatic sigh that saw her splay her entire body across the table in an even more dramatic flop. For as petite and slender a figure as she cut, with those three tails all floofed to maximum floofness she could take up a surprising amount of space when she wanted to. She wore sunglasses over her eyes and another pair resting on her forehead. In the most dramatic move of all, she shoveled a spoonful of soup[1] into her mouth.

"Oh, I see how it is! How convenient that you figured out how to not kill people after YOU MURDERED MY POOR, BEAUTIFUL ARCHER! He was so sweet! So innocent! A perfect little angel and you killed him with your stupid jerk sword you jerk you jerk you stupid... jerk!"

She punctuated every fresh insult with a jab of her spoon, flicking little bits of soup[2] everywhere.

"If you lament the loss of your Servant that much you ought to have provided him with your support, child. You cannot possibly have thought that nobody would die in a war."

"Uh, yeah I thought someone would die?? YOU????? This is so- why am I even explaining myself to you? I won already! I outfoxed everyone, I did all the work and I won fair and square! I should have four, no, five tails already and handmaidens feeding me grapes and massaging my poor aching feet! Instead I'm the only one at the table whose lost her Servant! Cheaters! Cheaters, all of you! Mean to me!!"

Avenger stiffened, though she did not stir. Her eyes made the briefest of flickers across the room to where her sword lay against the wall, but she mastered herself before she could so much as twitch in that direction. Berserker snarled at her anyway from overtop her bowl of soup[3].

"...And I suppose if you stupidly put a piece on a board for no reason and I captured it, that would be cheating as well?"

Cyanis' mouth hung open. Her fingers let slack and her soup[4] spoon fell with a clatter and a splash.

"Wh-who," she asked in a trembling voice, "Taught you how to play Wolf Go?"

No one answered. Kat cleared her throat in preparation, but that it seemed had been the final straw. Cyanis gathered herself up with every ounce of dignity[5] she could muster (which was a lot, as she was a Cool Big Sister in spite of everything that had happened) and stormed off into the other room. Though not before grabbing herself a bowl of ice cream[6] for dessert.

...So yeah, disaster. Everyone hated everyone else, and if they didn't then they were so injured they still hadn't woken up even with all of the delicious smells wafting about them this whole entire time, like Actia and Angelesia, a name Kat only knew from context. Not for the last time, she wished she could call Yue and ask for help. But that was a terrible, awful, stupid wrong bad idea for dummies because if she told Yue what was happening, then Yue would know what was happening and really did she even have to unpack that thought any further to know she didn't wanna do it?

But ooooooooof, did it really feel like she bet on the wrong horse. Er, shark? Girl? Miss Saber (even now it didn't feel right calling her by those other names. 'Avenger' especially seemed like something she didn't want to be) was the principle cause of most of the infighting happening in her Loosely Strung Together Alliance of Convenience, not to mention the one who wrecked her Secret Base and destroyed her Apology Souvenirs so that Kat would have to get lucky enough to find replacements before she finished saving the world or else it was Cutie Fox Island for life she just knew it.

Erm, anyway. Miss Saber carried herself with a confidence like she thought she could take on Princess Qiu (and make you believe it too) but this new shape of her was... sad. Her wings had melted and sunk inside of her body, like she ate them or something to gain enough power to keep herself around even after burning an entire Command Seal (actually, how'd she get those? how does that... work, exactly?) to keep her promise. And even after all that, the place where Kat had, uh, um, uh u-uh-uh-uhhhhhhhh gotten through to her was still bleeding. It was a wound that refused to close and it was plainly bothering her, though she sat there hunched over trying very hard to maintain the illusion that it wasn't. Her braid had come undone when the bands holding it in place had all snapped, so instead of wings or a cloak she had this massive waterfall of almost colorless-white hair, like snow made out of glass tumbling every which way.

She looked sad, is the main thing. Not, like, defeated, but sad. Like she was carrying the weight of failure after failure after failure on her back and the only thing that kept her going was the idea that not walking it off was worse than laying down or something. All in all it made her wonder if maybe she should have just cut and run for it and tried her hand at things with just Berserker, who by the way was super duper strong and hadn't lost to anybody yet. But... no. She needed help. She needed someone who she could talk to, darn it, and who talked back and understood anything that was happening but also very crucially was not out to flip the tables on her and try to win a Fox Game. And Miss Saber, whatever her flaws might be, was the only one who owed Kat a favor. Also the only one who'd called her wise?

She didn't want to believe that was a lie.

Anyway, soup[7]. Getting it to everyone took a bit of doin', and getting everyone to actually start eating it took even more doin', but y'know a funny thing about a hot meal, especially when it turns out extra tasty and nice like this one did? It gets hard, real hard when you're full and warm to hate anything or everything quite so much. Even if you're an ancient warrior-ghost or a very, very, very sad monk or a bored dragon or really any other weird thing you could maybe name. They ate, and though they did not laugh or joke with one another, they at least stopped scowling quite so much, and looked up to the horizon together.

The sun, with her ever-perfect sense of timing, broke through the clouds with her first pale rays of dawn. In that light, the world looked pretty darn saveable. Y'know?

[1] melted ice cream
[2] still ice cream
[3] actually soup
[4] ice cream again
[5] ice cream
[6] hot, steamy soup
[7] I trust you this time