He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
Devoutly kneeling on one knee beneath the theater of the Fuyuki City Civic Hall, Kirei Kotomine recited in silence the Twenty-Third Psalm of the Old Testament.
At the spiral center of the theater, modeled after a Roman amphitheater in structure, the white-clad girl lay still at the heart of the magic circle. She was drawing in the leylines' magical energy at tremendous speed, calling for the Greater Grail's descent, fulfilling the destiny of the final vessel.
After severing the tendons in Tokiomi's hands and feet, snapping his spine and cutting his vocal cords, and reducing that nobleman of elegance into a half-living wreck capable of nothing but seeing and hearing.
Kirei had told Tokiomi many things. That the man had been kept in the dark from beginning to end, for instance. That the so-called Age of Gods mage Medea had in truth been Kirei's own Heroic Spirit Servant, whose real class was Assassin and not Caster. That there had never been any illegal eighth-class Servant. That Gilles de Rais had been the true Caster of this Holy Grail War, even if the man appeared to know nothing beyond his summoning technique. And so on with various other "truths."
Each time Kirei delivered one of these revelations, the shock and regret and struggle that flickered through Tokiomi's eyes became a form of pleasure for him. No wonder the great villains in films always liked to let their enemies die with full understanding of what had happened. After going to all this trouble, letting someone die in ignorance was genuinely stifling.
The matter of Illyasviel's class in particular -- especially when Kirei mentioned she had been under his command -- prompted the most intense reactions from Tokiomi, as though he were trying to argue that there was absolutely nothing about this woman that resembled an Assassin in any way.
Fighting evenly against all three Knight classes simultaneously without falling behind. Killing Gilles de Rais while unleashing the equivalent of the Gate of Babylon in a magical bombardment. Commanding an army of hundreds and thousands of familiars at will. In the early stages, there had even been a curse that made others forget her true identity. Her Age of Gods spirit-summoning technique was so refined that even the Lord of the Clock Tower could not find fault with it. With all those glaring characteristics, how was she an Assassin?
An Assassin who failed to kill Tokiomi on the first attempt, failed again on Kiritsugu, yet could hold her own against any Servant in direct melee? An Assassin?
Unfortunately, Tokiomi could no longer speak. Otherwise he would have had more than a few words for his disciple about whatever on earth this so-called Assassin was supposed to be, and what her true name could possibly be.
Even racking his brain, he could not think of a single Assassin in history or legend who was this comprehensively capable, with no meaningful weakness outside of height and assassination technique. The Holy Grail War operated under the default assumption that divine beings could not be summoned.
For that mysterious Assassin's demonstrated ability to be legitimate, she would have to be at minimum a demigod. Her overall combat capability placed her just below peak-condition Diarmuid and peak-condition Gilgamesh, and those two were by any measure the most overpowered existences in this entire Holy Grail War. Just what pantheon did this Assassin girl belong to, that she could descend in the Assassin class as either a demigod or a being that had not yet ascended to divinity?
Tokiomi did not know, and could not figure it out. Because even at the end, he could not distinguish which was true. He simply could not tell whether what Kirei had said was real, or what the Age of Gods mage Medea had said was real.
"Heh heh. How does it feel to betray the trust of someone who believed in you? You rotten maggot, corrupt inside and out."
From a shadowed corner of the hall, Matou Zouken's figure emerged. He had largely taken over the setup Tokiomi had put in place earlier, and whatever one might say about Tokiomi being young and a junior by Zouken's centuries-old standards, he was not unworthy of his status as head of the family that managed Fuyuki's leylines.
In the span of a single day, borrowing the leylines' power, he had constructed a "Flame Array" sufficient to blanket the entire venue. The array's anchor points were built from six magical gemstones. Every magical circuit had been drawn with precision, and it was set to trigger autonomously. If the situation turned unfavorable, activating it with the gemstones would be enough to drag most mages down with him.
It would not guarantee a win against Clock Tower Lord Kayneth. But it gave one or two odds of success.
As long as that Clock Tower Lord was unaware another participant was still in the game, and grew complacent -- this leyline trap might very well catch him completely off guard.
"You should not be here, Matou Zouken. Our agreement was that you handle the outer area of the civic hall and impede Kayneth's Servant."
"Don't be nervous. This old man has not entered the inner area. I'm still standing in the outer zone speaking with you."
He tapped his cane on the floor, indicating he was standing at the threshold connecting the outer and inner areas.
The bent, decrepit old man gave his peculiar laugh. As a great mage who had already suffered once from a self-coercion certificate, he had no desire to risk his soul's bondage by violating the contract he and Kirei had just recently amended and signed.
To be honest, he very much wanted to simply seize the Grail for himself. But Fuyuki's Holy Grail War ritual was different from the simplified rules of a Subspecies Holy Grail War. It was not merely about who could survive to the end. There was also an implicit filtering mechanism requiring one to be an official participant.
It was not simply "whoever holds the Grail gets to make a wish." Only the victor of the Holy Grail War was entitled to wish upon it.
If not for this, he would have had no reason to negotiate with Kirei Kotomine at all, and would have simply killed him and claimed the wishing machine for himself.
"This old man is merely a bit curious. Leaving a living head of a prestigious magical family alive is hardly a wise move. You aren't worried that Tokiomi might one day recover and come after you like a vengeful ghost?"
Zouken had known from the beginning that Tokiomi had been kept alive by Kirei, because the contract certificate between them had been partially revised, closing a number of potential backstabbing loopholes. Among the most significant revisions was this: Kirei reserved the right to determine whether or not to kill Tokiomi, and Zouken reserved the right to determine whether to truly and permanently kill Francesca Prelati.
This was an exchange of difficulty. Kirei had proactively offered to backstab Tokiomi while stopping short of killing him.
Naturally, Zouken was dissatisfied. In his view, Tokiomi alive was a liability. The experience of having his workshop blown to rubble and being left in a wretched state was not something he was inclined to swallow quietly, even if he didn't go so far as genuine hatred.
So he had added a supplementary condition: in the event that someone in the next Holy Grail War summoned the Age of Gods mage Medea before the Matou family did, Kirei would unconditionally do everything in his power to seize control of Medea and deliver her to the Matou family.
Only with this condition in place did the self-coercion certificate between the two of them become formally binding.
"His spine is already broken. All four limbs have been severed. He is nothing more than a vegetable who can eat, drink, and observe the outside world, and nothing else."
"Besides, did you not say so yourself? That Matou Kariya's anguished struggling gave you endless entertainment. For me, the disabled Tokiomi's anguished struggling is exactly the same. I'm quite looking forward to educating his daughter and charming his wife right in front of him."
Kirei stood, turned, and wiped the Black Keys without looking back. He understood clearly that Zouken had no good intentions. The man was simply afraid that Tokiomi, left alive, would become a future liability, and was using these dire warnings to push him into finishing off the source of pleasure he had worked so hard to secure after Illyasviel's departure.
"Heh heh. The Church's dogs always underestimate mages."
Zouken shook his head and let out a cold snort.
"For a mage, or rather for a mature head of a magical family, what does physical damage amount to? You only succeeded in taking him down by ambush, catching him when he was already depleted from spending enormous effort and magical energy drawing up his magical arrays. You don't actually think you can handle him freely at will, do you? Allow this old man to offer you one word of advice, young man. Don't be so hot-headed."
He did have his own personal reasons for not wanting Tokiomi to continue living.
But more than that, it was caution and wariness. Because Tokiomi's performance in this Holy Grail War, aside from his failure to properly gauge his own disciple Kirei Kotomine, was something that even Zouken, having now heard everything Tokiomi had done, could find no fault with.
He was not a gentle, devoted dog loyal to its master. He was a mad-dog mage who would stop at nothing to pursue the mystery of the Root, the obsession at the core of his lifelong ideals.
A mad dog like that was only safe once it was completely dead.
The moment you allowed him even a single breath, even paralyzed with every limb severed, there was a chance he would suddenly lunge and take a chunk out of you.
"I know my limits."
"This old man simply didn't want you suddenly dropping dead before you've found me the Age of Gods mage Medea's relic."
"Everything will proceed as stipulated in the contract certificate."
Even if I die, the next Holy Grail War will have that relic for you.
After all, Tokiomi is a source of entertainment. And you, this centipede that refuses to die, are entertainment too.
Kirei's eyes flickered, almost imperceptibly. When it came down to it, Zouken did not see him as a person. He did not see Zouken as a person either.
Since he could no longer toy with Illyasviel -- that Heroic Spirit Servant of special circumstances -- and Holy Grail Wars were separated by sixty-year intervals, he needed to find himself some measure of amusement in between.
"But I am equally curious. What exactly gives you the confidence to face both a Heroic Spirit Servant and a great mage in hiding? This is not your Matou workshop. Even having taken over the location in such a short time, you can only make basic modifications."
"Hahaha. Don't look down on this old man, junior. Against second-rate and first-rate Heroic Spirit Servants, and against great mages who use elemental magic, this old man has no real confidence. But against a third-rate Heroic Spirit Servant on its last legs and an out-of-town illusionist begging for scraps, this old man has some modest faith in himself."
"...An attribute counter? Otherwise I genuinely struggle to believe that a great mage who survived the Jewel Magus would be unable to run rampant in a small place like the Far East. That is the Second Magic user, the Jewel Magus, we are speaking of."
"This old man's insects are unaffected by illusions, and she cannot distort my perception."
Counter advantage above all else. A specific weakness exploit beats even gods.
In the magical world, that was not just a saying. Tokiomi's fire magic countered Zouken's insect magic, yet Tokiomi was completely unable to deal with Francesca. Sometimes a battle between mages was exactly like rock-paper-scissors. The ability to defeat one mage said nothing about whether you could defeat someone that mage had previously lost to.
Unlike conventional physical combat where raw power stacked in layers, mages were more like nature itself, with inherent compatibility and counters built in.
To use another example: assume a certain saint of a particular faith had an extremely high divine rank, one that could even suppress divine beings. But if there appeared someone with a maxed-out advantage specifically against a certain group -- then that combat, in all probability, would favor the latter party.
That was not a question of overall power. It was purely a matter of specific counters taken to the absolute extreme.
Miss Illya could demolish a great many Heroic Spirit Servants. But if she encountered a Servant with the "Guardian" attribute, no matter what form she used, she would be fully suppressed, because she had a built-in mechanism making her specifically vulnerable to the Counter Force's Guardians.
Against a Guardian-type Servant, even a second-rate Heroic Spirit might be able to solo kill her.
"It seems, then, that I came out on the losing end of this deal."
As a member of the Holy Church, Kirei had little interest in much of the knowledge from the mages' side. Or rather, Tokiomi had always withheld things while teaching him, careful never to teach his disciple so much that it left the teacher without purpose. So in Kirei's mental model, a mage's strength should be as clearly defined as the Holy Church's, with organizations like the Burial Agency serving as the ceiling.
"Heh heh. In two or three hours it will be fully dark. Then you'll see whether you came out ahead. After all, the young always think too highly of themselves."
Zouken snorted dismissively, shook his head again, and disappeared. He did not look down on Kirei because Kirei was weak. Within the Holy Church there were countless things capable of killing him, the most common being the Baptism Aria, a technique accessible only to the most elite agents and clergy, and one that a man of Kirei's age had no chance of having mastered yet. That Kirei's father, Risei Kotomine, had reached the level of using Baptism Aria was already extraordinary.
So born from age-based contempt, and from the perception of Kirei as nothing more than someone who was simply not a good person, Zouken naturally harbored the attitude of someone looking at an arrogant, ignorant young brat who didn't understand the size of the world.
Of course, that contempt aside, the areas where he needed to guard against Kirei, he was still guarding.
After all, their contract certificate included a clause prohibiting direct attacks on the signing parties, and Kirei had even made him write every ancestral name of the Matou family going back eighteen generations into the contract.
But "cannot directly attack the other party" said nothing about being required to lend aid when the other party was in danger. Nor did it prohibit indirectly leaking something to the enemy or redirecting trouble elsewhere.
"Your contract certificate is even more one-sided than Francesca's."
A thousand meters from the Fuyuki City Civic Hall, at the top of a building, Kayneth sat in his wheelchair and spoke with cold distaste. Not far from him stood Diarmuid -- whose expression was complicated after freshly re-signing a new master-servant contract -- and the expressionless mage-killer.
"You truly cannot stand to lose, can you. Resorting to something as sordid as kidnapping another man's fiancée. You and that great mage are exactly the same kind of filthy rat."
"At the very least, you get to survive to the end, Kayneth."
"And I'm supposed to thank you for that great generosity? Laughable. To me, you and the last rat are not much different. Just a pack of thieving rats."
The cold wind swept across the rooftop. One hand tucked into a coat pocket, Kiritsugu lit himself a cigarette without changing expression.
In a certain sense, the self-coercion certificate terms he had drafted were considerably more humane than Francesca Prelati's. He had not backed Kayneth into a corner with no room to move, and had left space for both parties to maneuver.
First: Kayneth would transfer control rights over Lancer to Kiritsugu, having the Servant form a master-servant contract with Kiritsugu. But Kiritsugu was not to interfere with Kayneth's direction of Lancer. Only the contract rights were transferred. Kiritsugu's sole remaining Command Seal was also not to be used, directly or indirectly, for any purpose that would cause Lancer to harm Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald or Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri.
Second: both parties would remain in alliance until the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War, with no acts of betrayal between them, and both would do their utmost to protect the other's safety. Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald would be named the Holy Grail War's victor.
Third: Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald was to do his utmost to ensure the safety of Irisviel von Einzbern. If she was found to be deceased, then no matter what remained of her body, it must be delivered to Kiritsugu for him to handle.
These were the three core clauses. The other potential loopholes for betrayal had also been addressed.
Kiritsugu was not like Miss Francesca. He understood the bond between Diarmuid and Kayneth.
With Francesca's example as a cautionary tale, he had not pressed Kayneth into too tight a corner, and had only asked for holding rights over Lancer rather than command rights.
Beyond that, if not for still having one Command Seal to provide Diarmuid with some additional combat capability, he would not have even bothered requesting the holding rights. Because he understood perfectly well that no matter whose hands Diarmuid was technically in, the man would only ever listen to Kayneth. Using Command Seals to forcibly compel him might just get you killed in the fight as he worked with deliberate minimum effort.
"To correct one point. If I had not happened to encounter Sola-Ui on my way to the Holy Church -- wandering under an illusion trap -- your contract right now would be an entirely different and entirely false certificate."
It may have been coincidence. Or some curious thread of fate pulling things together.
Kayneth's certain death had once again been inexplicably averted, because Kiritsugu had just happened to find Sola-Ui wandering in loops near a hospital, trapped within Francesca's suggestive illusion. With that, Francesca's plan collapsed.
Everyone else fought with hard capability and tactics. After Diarmuid drew the magic sword in the banquet battle, Kayneth had been fighting purely on that eerily unnatural luck of his.
No matter how desperate things looked, that master-servant pair's ridiculous fortune always seemed to find a way to turn things around.
"Hm."
Kayneth gave a cold laugh but said nothing more on the subject.
After all, the terms of Kiritsugu's self-coercion certificate were, in a certain sense, genuinely reasonable.
It all came down to one sentence in the end: find my wife. Alive or dead, I need to know where she is.
All the various conditions above were built on the premise of finding Irisviel von Einzbern.
Honestly, in this one respect, they could almost be considered kindred spirits. Both of their wives had inexplicably gone missing on the same day, and neither of them had any choice but to use every means at their disposal to find them.
"The Tohsaka residence, the Ryuudou Temple hilltop, the Holy Church. You've already searched all of them. You're that certain your wife is currently at the Fuyuki City Civic Hall? Choosing the leyline points specifically, and making me run around all day without a single warm meal."
If you want someone's help, act like it. You have no idea how to conduct yourself.
A person like you, if you were at the Clock Tower, you'd be failing your exams with no one to pull strings for you.
"Irisviel is this Holy Grail War's vessel. If she goes missing, she will only appear at one of the four great leylines, where the Grail descent ritual is conducted."
"...?"
"You can understand it this way. She is the Grail. This is a secret only the three founding families of Fuyuki know."
Kiritsugu exhaled a stream of white smoke.
Kayneth first blinked, then went quiet in a rare show of restraint rather than anger.
He knew he had been deceived again. Kiritsugu wanting Irisviel was equivalent to wanting the all-purpose wish-granting machine. It was a concealment born from an information gap.
But he found he felt no irritation or disgust toward Kiritsugu. Instead, he was quiet for over ten seconds, looking at the man with something measured in his gaze.
"You should not have told me this, Kiritsugu. That is not the rat's style."
"It makes no difference. You would have found out eventually, with or without my telling you."
"No. With your level of caution, you would have prepared against me learning I was deceived and lashing out, not left yourself with no safeguards whatsoever, like a smug fool who says whatever he likes."
Kayneth set aside his mocking expression and revealed the considered suspicion of a Clock Tower Lord.
There was a difference between knowing sooner or later, and Kiritsugu daring to say it outright.
"What is it you actually want? The Grail? I doubt it. Right now you look less like someone seeking the Grail and more like someone hoping another person will come and stop you, to finally end this exhausting journey."
"...If you already knew you were going to lose, would you still have hope for your future?"
"Yes. Because in my eyes there is no certainty. I don't believe I will lose."
"I don't believe it either. So I still want an answer."
Kiritsugu crushed out the cigarette.
In those hollow, vacant eyes there was exhaustion, but also something like release. He looked out toward the distant civic hall.
"You have to do something. You have to give yourself an accounting. At the very least, let me see it with my own eyes."
"The answer to everything I have fought so long for... and just how laughable the ending will be."