As for Sola-Ui's whereabouts, it had come about by a kind of coincidence. Francesca, bold as she was, would not dare abduct someone off the street in broad daylight in a coastal city as large and crowded as Fuyuki. Keeping the magical world's existence a secret was, after all, one of its most fundamental laws.
Fuyuki was nothing like Snowfield. Here, she had no old friends to help clean up the mess.
As the saying goes, a visiting dragon cannot overpower the local snake. Before she could confirm that both Matou Zouken and the Tohsaka family, who managed the leylines of Fuyuki, were fully neutralized, Miss Francesca had been exercising considerable restraint across the board. Openly flaunting magic on the street might look flashy and impressive today, but tomorrow the Mage's Association or the Church's Burial Agency could very well be knocking on her door.
Even Emiya Kiritsugu didn't dare engage in open combat during daylight. All the more reason for a seasoned old operator of the magical world like her to hold back. At her core, she simply understood the weight of both the Holy Church and the Mage's Association far better than Kiritsugu did.
If not for finding the Holy Grail War genuinely entertaining and wanting to catch up with her old friend Gilles de Rais, she would never have come to disturb a magical ritual on someone else's turf in the first place.
And so, what appeared to be an abduction was, in reality, nothing more than a layered illusion barrier she had placed around the area, leaving Sola-Ui temporarily lost somewhere in the city. Not a kidnapping so much as a restraint, something to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Kayneth.
From her perspective, aside from Kayneth and the Caster Master that neither the Church nor anyone else could identify, everyone else was already dead. No need to waste time on a real abduction. Besides, actually showing herself in person came with hidden risks. Who could guarantee that someone like Sola-Ui, fiancée of a Clock Tower Lord, had no special means of breaking free, or might even kill herself on the spot to give Kayneth an anger buff, throwing all caution to the wind and calling in the full weight of the Archibald family and the Clock Tower to level Fuyuki City? That was a latent risk not worth taking.
Besides, Emiya Kiritsugu's status in her files was listed as missing.
In America, in Miss Francesca's experience, "missing" generally just meant the body hadn't been located yet.
After tidying up the known information and piecing it together, Miss Francesca had disguised herself as Emiya Kiritsugu, intending to deceive Kayneth out of his Heroic Spirit Servant.
The plan had been to leave Kayneth completely powerless after the deception, then shred Sola-Ui to pieces in front of him as the finale. Savor the look on the Clock Tower Lord's face as hope crumbled after being made a fool of. Film it. Kill him with his own Servant, or use Sola-Ui's remains to make him choke on his own grief. Entertainment, in essence. Fun.
And when the Archibald family came seeking revenge, they would only go after Emiya Kiritsugu. A piece of discarded self-coercion certificate pointing toward a man who was already long dead. All in all, she would have walked away with the entertainment, walked away with a Servant, and walked away with zero responsibility. Three wins in one.
A pity, then, that a certain magic sword born of divine craft and its fate-manipulating effects seemed to still be very much at work.
Kayneth's certain death. Francesca's seemingly perfect hand. And yet somehow, inexplicably, impossibly, it had been overturned and dragged back to life once more.
"My, my. A causality-type skill, is it? Can it be that the great sword of divine make truly behaves as the historical legends describe, granting Diarmuid victory the moment it is drawn?"
This was not the first time Kayneth had escaped from a certain death. She had no knowledge of the specifics at Einzbern Castle, but the fact that Kayneth was the only confirmed survivor spoke volumes on its own. The luck was downright eerie.
She confirmed there were no magical energy responses within several hundred meters. Then the rubble of the collapsed building shifted.
A small, bloodied figure crawled free from the broken stone with great difficulty.
Kayneth and Diarmuid had already left, having abandoned the position for reasons unknown.
And our Miss Francesca had once again survived by playing dead, or more precisely, by using an illusion that briefly suppressed all signs of life, and once again deceived a Heroic Spirit Servant's detection.
Thereby avoiding the frankly absurd but entirely plausible reality of "dying once to a single grenade."
She was, admittedly, a very difficult existence to kill. Not even the Jewel Magus, Lord Marshal of the magical world, could easily and permanently erase her. But dying once to a grenade was the sort of thing that, even for her, would have been deeply embarrassing.
"In the historical legends, the recorded effect is victory in the first battle. Certain victory in the opening engagement."
"In the battle at Einzbern Castle, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne should already have used that effect. And yet now, his first-victory effect appears to somehow still be active. Not quite the absolute certainty of that initial victory, but something that seems to be continuously nudging his circumstances in the direction of winning."
"Well, now. Interesting. A Heroic Spirit Servant is born from legend, and should not possess Noble Phantasms that deviate significantly from that legend's description. Furthermore, Diarmuid's class in this war is Lancer. By the Holy Grail War's own records, he should not be able to wield the magic sword at all."
Which meant... this was Kayneth's doing. And Diarmuid had even surpassed his own myth in the process.
One arm hanging broken and useless, her clothing in tatters, half her face blasted to raw meat, Miss Francesca wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth as her mind turned at speed.
She was not naive enough to believe Emiya Kiritsugu's arrival here had been a coincidence.
Because the timing had been far too perfect. Emiya Kiritsugu was alive, though visibly worn and exhausted. There were many places he could have gone. Even if he had truly wanted to keep fighting, yes, coming to find Kayneth was one option, but that did not explain why he had shown up within less than an hour of her arriving at Kayneth's location. Not a moment sooner, not a moment later.
She was an ancient creature, older even than Matou Zouken, well-versed in the legends of heroes and warriors throughout history. She even knew the color of the underwear worn by France's holy maiden, Jeanne d'Arc, and the burning of the girl had been her own handiwork.
Naturally, she also knew the epic of that Radiant Knight of Celtic mythology, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne.
"Fate, is it. Does fate truly exist in this world?"
She murmured to herself.
"The Great Fury brings certain victory, but at most it was the certainty of a single duel or small-scale engagement. For the effect to be subtly operating after that first battle, still guiding things toward victory... could Diarmuid truly be counting the entire Holy Grail War as his first battle?"
No.
Impossible. That would make Diarmuid completely unsolvable. A conceptual god, practically speaking.
Besides, throughout history, countless heroes and warriors had carried legends touched by fate. The most famous were the three Norns of Norse mythology, who wove fate itself, and even they had ultimately been wiped out when the age of mystery receded.
So Diarmuid's magic sword could not possibly reach that level of absurdity. It had simply transcended the legend's original scope of "certain first-victory," gaining instead an ongoing effect that continuously edged its wielder toward victory. And that effect would diminish with each desperate situation it resolved.
"The magic sword undying, the master undying? To kill Kayneth, you must first kill Diarmuid?"
"Or is it that within this Holy Grail War, Kayneth has been granted something like... an immunity to death?"
Miss Francesca curled what remained of her lips into something resembling a smile. This Holy Grail War really was endlessly fascinating. To think that Kayneth's fortune could run this deep.
That he had even managed to summon a Heroic Spirit who had surpassed his own legend, and that Servant was genuinely devoted to serving him.
She suspected that in the banquet battle that no one else had spoken of, the other Servants had all been indirectly wiped out under this subtly operating fate manipulation.
Without a sufficiently high Luck attribute to counter it, one's fighting ability would probably be whittled down by a string of "coincidences" before the battle even began, until Diarmuid's side inevitably drifted toward victory.
"It seems I'll have to lay low for now. Kayneth's side carries fate manipulation pushing toward victory. If I keep pressing my luck, that ancient worm from Kiev might actually come crawling out of the woodwork next..."
Can't touch them. Absolutely cannot touch them.
Both Diarmuid and Kayneth looked like they were running on fumes, and yet as long as that magic sword remained unbroken, no one could seemingly take that master-and-servant pair down.
And pushing the inference a little further, it was entirely possible that Kayneth had been certain to die in the banquet battle.
But Diarmuid, at the cost of grave injury and near-death, had somehow fed that outcome back and dragged Kayneth from certain death back into survival.
Having reached this rather bold conclusion, Miss Francesca did exactly what she had done when she had encountered Matou Zouken not long ago: she listened to her gut. Even if she was confident no one could permanently kill her, the fact that a situation as airtight as "Kayneth's certain death" could be reversed by an Emiya Kiritsugu turning it from death into survival... who could say whether, if she kept pushing, the fate born from that magic sword might not somehow transform the Grail itself into a genuine all-purpose wish-granting machine capable of killing her.
Going even further, if she killed Kayneth and Diarmuid and went to make a wish, and that sword's fate effect was still active... she genuinely could not guarantee the Grail would not become her own guillotine.
The probability of any of this was low, of course. But she had come here for entertainment, not for death.
Unless absolutely forced, she had no desire to gamble on luck against an opponent she could not read.
Though perhaps even this line of thinking was the fate manipulation at work, steering her thoughts away, reducing one more formidable enemy standing in Kayneth and Diarmuid's path.
But if even her own judgment could be guided, that was all the more reason to leave those two completely alone.
And so, regardless of the exact mechanics, she would most likely spend the rest of this Holy Grail War as a bystander picking up the scraps others left behind, making sure she hadn't traveled all this way for nothing.
The church doors closed behind him with a quiet click.
Kirei Kotomine set down his luggage and stared at the sunset over the distant skyline, his expression unreadable.
Tokiomi Tohsaka had asked him to book tickets out of Fuyuki City and to settle several matters before leaving. There was little doubt as to the meaning of this. Tokiomi was preparing for the possibility of defeat and asking Kirei to handle the aftermath.
This Holy Grail War was drawing to a close. Tonight would be the Grail's descent.
He did not know where Tokiomi found the composure to still desire the Grail after losing his Servant, but it was clear the man had mentally prepared for death. The calm certainty of victory he had carried at the war's beginning was long gone.
Leave?
Or stay?
In all honesty, he had not decided. Because without a Servant, remaining here was roughly equivalent to being a gambler like Tokiomi: likely to die for no reason. Rationally speaking, he should have fled. Waited for the next Holy Grail War sixty years from now, returned to Fuyuki as its overseer, and summoned Illyasviel once more for his own amusement.
But emotionally, he found he did not particularly want to leave. If Tokiomi or someone else simply died here without ever learning the terrifying truth, that the real Master behind Illyasviel had been Kirei all along, he had a feeling he would find it deeply unrewarding.
It was the same logic as why deranged criminal suspects so often returned to the scene to admire their own work. A masterpiece that no one understood was genuinely torturous.
"Alright. There's no one around me now. I don't know who you are, but it's time to show yourself."
After a few minutes of thought, once the last pedestrian on the distant street had disappeared, Kirei set down his luggage and spoke into the air, perfectly composed, as though to himself.
"Heh heh heh hahahaha. So you noticed?"
An old, rasping voice drifted from a shadowed corner nearby.
"A seasoned agent of the Holy Church indeed. Though it may also simply be that this old body of mine has fallen into disrepair lately. Can't even fool a young junior anymore."
"...Matou Zouken. You're still alive."
A few insects slipped into the darkened corner.
Watching the bent, cane-supported silhouette emerge from the darkness, Kirei couldn't help but furrow his brow slightly.
He had known the man was still alive, and had even been planning something of a surprise for Tokiomi in due course, but that Zouken had come to seek him out was something he had genuinely not anticipated.
By his estimation, Zouken had been severely wounded, and even if Illyasviel's intervention had partially restored him, it should not have been enough for him to go looking for trouble.
"Correct. I can see you're surprised. Surprised that the young Tokiomi failed to finish the job, are you?"
Matou Zouken let out a strange laugh and stepped from the shadow into the silhouette cast by the trees, and he looked, surprisingly, in reasonable condition.
Even with Kirei's years of experience, he could feel a distinct sense of threat emanating from the old man.
"What do you want from me, Matou Zouken? Are you here to demand answers for the death of your son, Matou Kariya?"
"Heh heh. No need for pretense, agent of the Holy Church. The secret alliance between you and Tokiomi Tohsaka is hardly a secret anymore. If the others weren't already so worn out, you'd be receiving more than just my old self at your door today."
"...I don't know what you're talking about. My father, Risei Kotomine, is no longer with us. I would ask you not to make groundless accusations in front of me on the basis of speculation without evidence."
"Hahaha. Groundless accusations. No evidence. If I didn't know exactly how he died, I might even start wondering if you people had silenced a witness."
"?"
Matou Zouken laughed his strange laugh again. Kariya had always been nothing more than a disposable piece sent to the Holy Grail War to suffer and die, and the sight of that boy's anguished struggling had never grown old for Zouken. He had absolutely no intention of coming to the Church over a piece of disposable entertainment.
His real focus right now had only two points.
First: dealing with Tokiomi Tohsaka, who had become a liability.
Second: laying the groundwork for the Fifth Holy Grail War, ensuring a stable path to victory in the future.
"You know how my father died?"
Kirei's interest sharpened.
"Of course. Not merely the method. I can give you the name of the killer as well."
Matou Zouken did not draw it out. As a monster of a magus who had endured five hundred years, his information channels were extensive. Though Tokiomi's surprise attack had very nearly killed him and forced him to withdraw all the insects he had planted throughout Fuyuki to repair his body, that did not mean he had been rendered blind and deaf.
At the very least, regarding the cause of Risei Kotomine's death, which had been ruled a suicide, he knew a little more than most.
"Heh heh. Forcing a priest to take his own life so he cannot enter heaven. That sort of perversely tasteful method of killing belongs to a very specific kind of magus. And as far as this old man knows, there is only one such magus currently in Fuyuki City, an uninvited outsider who came here empty-handed."
"Who?"
"Francesca Prelati. An illusionist. A pure and uncomplicated villain who enjoys causing harm for its own sake. Rather like you, with that odor of rotting flesh that attracts festering maggots, you rotten thing."
"..."
As for the motive, there were several possibilities. The Holy Church had been quietly investigating Francesca at Tokiomi's request for some time. So Francesca having a short temper and deciding to strike at the Church was well within the realm of reason.
That was simply how a disturbed mind worked, and mages were nothing if not obsessive researchers. The "you glanced at me so I'll kill your entire family" type of incident was hardly uncommon.
The most likely explanation, of course, was simply that Francesca had taken an interest in Fuyuki's Holy Grail War ritual and had come to the Church to fish for information. Risei Kotomine had discovered her, and she had killed him swiftly and brutally. A priest carried no small degree of natural resistance against illusions, so long-term hypnosis or wiping his memory would have been nearly impossible. A quick forced-illusion kill was simply the most efficient method.
"Tokiomi really is blind. He extends unconditional trust to a priest who hasn't shed a single tear over the death of his own flesh and blood."
Another ripple of gleeful, mocking laughter from the old voice. He could not see a single shred of light in Kirei Kotomine that spoke of a genuine clergyman.
Only the same stench of decay he recognized from himself and from Miss Francesca.
In a magus, that kind of rot was unremarkable. In a man of the cloth, it was deeply strange. It could only mean that everything Kirei Kotomine had ever projected had been performance and deception.
"No. I am grieving."
"Grieving that you killed your own father with your own hands?"
Thwick!
Three Black Keys launched in an instant. Zouken's head was split cleanly in two in the same breath.
Just as Illyasviel had once observed: there was no camaraderie between villains the way there might be between decent people. There was only the desire to eliminate the other party and keep the enjoyment all for oneself. Two villains left together could only end with one of them standing, and if two remained, it was because they were using each other, or because neither had the capacity to kill the other.
"Oh my, how frightening. Still young, but a seasoned dog of the Holy Church all the same. Carelessly provoking you does carry a certain mortal risk."
The half-severed Zouken showed not the slightest alarm, the wound closing and regenerating as insects flooded back to fill the gap.
His lips curled with unhurried interest.
He had not been able to beat Tokiomi's Gilgamesh. But his worth as a great magus was still very much intact. There was no way a mere agent was going to solo-kill him. Kirei had not even reached the level of the Burial Agency.
"Stop playing games and tell me what you want, Matou Zouken. I don't believe for a moment you came here just to say hello."
Kirei showed no fear. With a hand full of Command Seals, he was confident he could hold his own against even a third-rate Servant for at least a few exchanges.
Matou Zouken posed no real threat to him. After all, as the saying went: most mages, modern or ancient, without the shelter of a workshop, were nothing but soft targets. Even an Age of Gods magus could be strung up and beaten by the Church's Burial Agency.
"Two conditions. And in return, this old man will deal with Francesca Prelati for you."
"And assist you in obtaining a spot in the next Holy Grail War."
"And occupy Lancer, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, long enough to give you a window to reach the all-purpose wish-granting machine."
"All you need do is agree to two conditions and sign this self-coercion certificate."
The moment Francesca entered Fuyuki City to stir up trouble, Matou Zouken had already taken notice.
He had simply lacked the power to stop her at the time, and had been waiting to use her as an opportunity, a stepping stone for the Fifth Holy Grail War.
When all was said and done, Francesca was a commodity, a bargaining chip. No one in Fuyuki but him could deal with her, and when he stepped forward in this moment, he could name his price.
Without the crisis, he was nothing but a decrepit old magus waiting to die.
With the crisis, he was the high-value guardian of Fuyuki City, head of the Matou family.
"She's just an outside magus who wandered in. I can--"
"She is an illusionist. She has survived encounters with the Jewel Magus himself, Lord Marshal of the magical world, and with Aoko Aozaki, the Red of the Three Colors. Only this old man can drive her out of the Far East."
Matou Zouken narrowed his eyes without a hint of shame, inflating Miss Francesca's worth as high as he could.
Some of it was rumor and legend, but the higher her value, the higher his own.
No one else in Fuyuki had the same breadth of information to know that Francesca's various alleged kills and battles amounted to never being completely finished off, rather than truly invincible victories. That was a gap in knowledge only experience could bridge.
"I will verify your claims before I give an answer."
Kirei neither accepted nor rejected it outright. At the very least, even if that outsider magus was not the impossible figure Zouken described, her real worth was probably formidable enough.
As for why he didn't simply take the old man at his word: the Jewel Magus was simply too renowned.
There had been a rumor circulating in the magical world at some point that the man had single-handedly killed a certain King of the Moon, Brunestud of the Crimson Moon.
It was only an unverified rumor of unknown origin, but it served as a measure of the sheer weight of the Jewel Magus's reputation.
If even the Jewel Magus had not been able to kill this magus, what basis did Matou Zouken have for claiming he could handle her?
"Go ahead and speak your two conditions."
"First: kill Tokiomi Tohsaka."
"You--"
"Second: hand over the holy relic of the Age of Gods mage Medea, the Caster, to this old man."