Chapter One

The Beast

"Congratulations, Kotomine. I am sure that if your father were alive, he would be very proud of you. As you should be, for receiving this honor."

Kirei Kotomine laid a hand over his heart in a display of gratitude. "I am enormously humbled, and by your generosity too." Unseen by the others in the chamber leading off the church's sanctuary, he flexed the fingers he had had hidden behind him, as if testing that they were still limber enough to effectively strangle a person. Otherwise, he kept his expression deceptively deadpan, yet with the contentedness of a scheming feline.

The other priests—those members of the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament enlisted to formally call upon the man before them with their summons to this isolated church in Torino, Italy—all inclined their heads, and the head offered his hand for Kirei to shake. "We have faith that you will do your father's memory honor as the overseer for this coming war for the Grail."

"But of course. You can depend on that." Kirei accepted the hand offered him and shook it, satisfied that the gesture was enough to lull the man into further complacency with Kirei's supposed character. Which made it all the more enjoyable for Kirei on the inside as he let his mind touch briefly on the memory of finding his father dead in Fuyuki Church in the midst of the previous Grail War.

"I must say though, it is a curious thing," the head priest went on conversationally when the two of them broke away, "the shortness of this latest cycle. Normally the War takes place every sixty years as per the nature of the magic involved in performing the ritual that is the War itself. Yet this time it is come again only after ten have passed."

"Perhaps it is impatient to complete some unfinished business," Kirei threw out rather casually, though in truth he was being quite serious in his theorizing. He had withdrawn the hand with which he had shaken that of the head priest's, and now had both clasped behind his back, assuming a rather militaristic stance, like that of an officer awaiting orders.

"What do you mean, 'it', Kotomine?" one of the other priests asked, the rest murmuring and full of intrigue.

Kirei titled his head to one side, pretending to be thinking about it with no real idea of what he meant. "Hm. The Grail, perhaps?"

Another priest chuckled dismissively. "Are you suggesting the Grail would have a will of its own?"

Kirei shrugged. "Ah, why not? There have been enough Einzbern homunculi fed into it."

"Yes, but as we understand from the Einzberns themselves—who have given us irrefutable evidence as to the fact of this new War coming upon us fifty years ahead of schedule—their homunculi have never possessed their own wills. How would feeding them to the Grail possibly result in the Grail achieving its own?"

"Please, sir, I'm not being serious," said Kirei. "I really have no idea."

Except that there was one homunculus who had indeed had a will of her own. He had confirmed that himself moments before killing her in the last War, as she had defended the human man she had called her husband unto her dying breath. More than that, but she had fought tooth and nail to prove him wrong about everything he had supposed about that man, saying he didn't know the first thing about him.

And she had sounded so much like Claudia when she'd spoken. Indeed, he hoped—still hoped—that in some way Claudia had been able to see or sense from the beyond the way he had choked that infuriatingly pure and naïve woman.

But at the same time, it had given him another reason to find himself actually envying the man she had called her husband—that man they'd called Kiritsugu Emiya—when he himself had somehow born witness to all that had gone on when that man had confronted the secret and dark reality of the Grail. In rejecting the Grail, Emiya had been forced to murder the image of his wife that the Will of the Grail had worn as a shell as a means to coerce him into giving it the power to carry out its own desire for destruction. This Emiya who could actually love his wife, and still, he had done such a thing to her image, strangling her with tears in his eyes?

Why, why, why, oh why couldn't he have had that pleasure? What he wouldn't have given to kill Claudia that way, to watch her weak, placid eyes fill with hate for him as the life drained away?

But no.

He'd been cheated of that.

Instead she had died with a smile on her face, and by her own hand.

And the reason he had cried over it had not been the same as why Kiritsugu Emiya had cried for the homunculus woman he had called his wife.

Claudia had done the deed right in front of him, and believing with her last gasp that he had been a man who had truly felt for her.

"You see? You do love me…."

"Kotomine?"

Kirei shook his head, momentarily and uncharacteristically ruffled. But he regained his cool composure quickly, as was his forte. He even smiled. "Oh, my apologies. I was merely lost in thought."

The head priest inclined his head. "Of course. I understand."

Kirei knew what they were all thinking as he politely took his leave of them and exited the hall outside of the church's sanctuary: Lost in thought, is he? Yes, of course. He must be thinking of his poor father. Or his poor wife. Poor Claudia.

Poor Claudia indeed.

But he was content to let them think what they wished, to let them believe that the reason he'd deposited his daughter Caren with his wife's family was because seeing her painfully reminded him too much of poor, poor Claudia. In truth, as a father he could do nothing for her. He felt no love for her, same as he'd felt none for Claudia. Actually, choosing to put her in the hands of people more likely to sincerely care for her well-being was probably the closest he would come to doing anything fatherly for her sake, by the mere fact that he knew he'd only destroy her the same way he'd destroyed her mother if he'd made any arrangement to care for her himself.

Actually, this was the first time he'd thought of her in years.

"Careful now, you're forgetting yourself."

As he stepped out of the church, he relished for a moment in the freedom he had regained from the prying eyes of those old decrepit members of the Eighth Sacrament Assembly. He made his way down the same little rocky path down which he'd wandered, lost in perplexed thought, ten years ago when he'd first been drafted into the Fourth Holy Grail War. Just like he had done then, he subconsciously reached up and massaged the back of his right hand, where there had once been a triad of Command Seals. This time however, his hand moved up along his arm, where a plethora of new Command Seals rested from when he'd taken them without hesitation from the body of his dead father. The Seals felt even more a part of his skin now that it was official that he would oversee this imminent Fifth War. Indeed, it was like Fate was guiding him this way.

Deep in his stomach, he felt that same stirring excitement as when he had been moments away from sticking a large Azoth dagger in the back of the very man who had given it to him, his mentor who had taught him the ways of basic magecraft, Tokiomi Tohsaka. He had been pleased to make that feeling resurface when he had gifted that very dagger to Tohsaka's daughter and heir, Rin. He had been scarcely able, for one fleeting moment, to hold back a howl of laughter as he'd watched her finally succumb to tears as she'd cradled that dagger in her hands, simply because it was delightful to him that he knew that that was the weapon he had used to murder her father, and she hadn't a clue.

Which made her natural contempt for him all the more enjoyable.

Some men found joy in the tasting of a variety of wines, or foods, or women, or forms of art or sport, or reading books, or providing charity. Kirei Kotomine found it in the pain of other people, particularly when he was the one causing that pain, whether the sufferer knew it or not. It had taken the words of one Heroic Spirit to help him see and accept that, to no longer fight his true self, to embrace the irony of the name his father had given him, a name which meant "beautiful" in his native Japanese tongue. For in truth, he was an ugly, vicious beast of darkness, and he loved it.

More so that it gave him no fear of Hell. Really, it was only the pure and innocent who feared Hell, after all…what innocent could handle such horrors, when those who delighted in horror would therefore find nothing to fear of such things? To him, Hell was in fact the Paradise he had been searching for, and another chance to reobtain the Holy Grail—the Sum of all Evil—would give him that satisfaction, that means to find again that answer he'd been looking for.

In the meantime though, between now and the long flight he would have to endure back to Japan, he would have to satisfy his hunger by turning his thoughts to the imagined suffering of that man called Kiritsugu Emiya. In this moment he took ambling down this path that was bright in the Tuscan sun, with his hands behind his back, he closed his eyes briefly and drank in a lungful of fresh air, as visions of that man twisting in agony as the curse of the Grail tore him apart from the inside.

His mouth spread into a wide, contented smile, and it was enough that such things could serve as a balm against the pain of living in this otherwise mundane world.

Not long after that, Kirei arrived in his private office at the Fuyuki Church with the morning paper, only to find someone had snuck in the middle of the night, and that that someone had raided his wine cabinet. Again.

"Gilgamesh."

The gentleman in question was in fact lounging on the sofa, swilling a glass of red wine in his hand, dangling one leg off the edge. Since his rebirth from the dark, sinful mud of the Lesser Grail, he had had to find new threads apart from the glittering snake pants and white shirt with the golden necklace adorning his neck that he'd worn when he hadn't been clad in armor during the last War, but he had come to quite like his black jacket and cargo pants, giving him this personal fantasy of his being an intelligent street-tough who ruled the shadows of the city, paying little heed to the laws of daylight.

He tossed his thick locks of gold, shorn hair and flashed Kirei his usual grin that he believed made up for everything despicable he relished in doing, from slaughtering pitiable souls to pilfering other people's wine (though, in his mind, he wasn't pilfering really, since everything in the universe effective belonged to him).

"Good morning, my dear Kirei." The once fabled King of Heroes raised his glass to him. "Care for a nip?"

"Not so early in the day," said Kirei with pinched disapproval. "Some of us have work to do." He crossed over to his desk and sank down into the chair behind it, snapping open his newspaper pointedly.

Gilgamesh only laughed. "Come on, it's not the wine you're mad about. You still hate the idea of someone finding me secreted away in your private little kingdom of God."

"It's nothing to me if you're caught," said Kirei. "On the other hand, I'd prefer it if all those missing children weren't traced back here. I'm more content letting the public think that it's the same maniac that was kidnapping children in the Fourth War."

"Ah yes," said Gilgamesh, reminiscing fondly, twisting the stem of the glass in his hands. "Caster's Master. A rare breed that. The sort of human who's so psychotic he seems to be of a separate species. Though…." He considered his long-time companion and greatest source of personal amusement over his wine glass. "I suppose you are rather similar, in your own way."

"Don't insult me," Kirei said curtly from behind his paper.

"But I thoroughly enjoy insulting you, my friend," said Gilgamesh with a laugh. "For you are the only one unafraid to insult me right back, and I enjoy your insults too much to punish you for it. They are far too gloriously despicable and vulgar for me not to enjoy." He took an elegant sip of the wine and smacked his lips.

"Lucky for you, there are those I'd much rather see dead than you," Kirei said, and in his way he was actually teasing his companion with this.

Gilgamesh laughed again. "Ha! Now, where would you be without me? Is that any way to talk to your greatest inspiration for your work, insolent swine?" Then he turned onto his side, setting his wine glass on the table. "But just out of curiosity, who are these others you speak of? I certainly don't know any."

"What, you, with all of your brilliance, hadn't yet figured out that I mean to see to see to it that the elder child of Tokiomi Tohsaka suffers the same fate as her father? More than that, but I would love to see to it that she became the Vessel of the Grail in the next War and take her beating heart out of her chest." Kirei nearly purred on these words as he spoke them aloud.

Gilgamesh didn't miss this. "Ah…of course. How silly of me to miss that. Of course that girl leaves you with unfinished business where Tokiomi is concerned. What a thought, to have that idiot spin his grave over such a thing?"

"And then of course, there is the fact that that man is still alive and living in this very same city, wasting his days away in retirement, leaving himself wide open for a kill." Kirei's hands tightened around the edges of the paper, and he forgot to see the kanji printed in front of him, as only the image of Kiritsugu Emiya, wandering in that burning hell of the Fuyuki Fire, flashed in his mind again.

"So why don't you go and finish him off, if you know where he is?" Gilgamesh asked, somehow sounding both bored and intrigued at the exact same time.

"Why don't I indeed?"

Kirei returned to himself and flicked a page in the newspaper. Just over the top of it though, he saw his companion raise his golden eyebrows and took pleasure in smiling wickedly to himself, knowing that even though Gilgamesh couldn't see it, he knew the god-king knew he was doing it.

"Ha. Well, you see…my dear Gilgamesh…in truth, I'm actually already finishing him off as we speak."

"Oh?" And then: "Oh…. I see. The Grail. Correct?"

Kirei flicked another page. "Correct. In fact, I'm taking more satisfaction out of imagining what kind of pain it's causing him as it slowly kills him from the inside."

Gilgamesh let out a long, impressed whistle. "My, my. I'm pleased to see you're honing your skills with this. Broadening, and at the same time, fine-tuning your palate where your taste for causing pain is concerned. Bravo, as always, Kotomine." He sat up and poured more wine into his glass before he raised it in a kind of toast before taking a fresh sip.

Kirei gave a low chuckle. "And I am equally pleased to see I can still offer you entertainment, King of Heroes." And then he relished, as always, in the irony that interplayed with that epithet.

Then his eyes came across a name in the paper the seemed to leap out at him from the depths of his past, from that dark, ruined basement floor beneath the former Fuyuki Citizen's building, and the voice that belonged to that name spoke to him for the first time before putting a bullet in his back.

"What's this...Emiya...?"

The name soughed in the room like a dusty spectre. Which was appropriate, given that though nothing about it was said in the paper (such things rarely were), it somehow became suddenly apparent as a fact in his head…the like the Grail were speaking to him through the kanji printed before him.

After a mere five years since the previous Grail War's end, the man, the Magus Killer, called Kiritsugu Emiya, had died.

Kirei made an involuntary sound, as he choked briefly on his own breathing.

Gilgamesh's keen ears pricked up, not missing this. "Kotomine?"

Kirei covered his mouth with his hand, feeling if he didn't, he might vomit all over his desk. But it only took him a moment to master himself, and he returned his cool and dispassionate demeanor, much like a cat doing so well at acting as if it hadn't succumbed to coughing up a hairball.

Yet in his darkened heart, he felt something wrench, just a little, at learning of the death of Kiritsugu Emiya. While he was joyful, and while it was far from unexpected and very much what he had intended to happen, in his usual way, it was a sad joy. As if he had lost a brother he had hated with every fiber of his being. Which was mostly true, in the end.

In the black depths of his own mind, he saw the executioner they had called the Mage Killer, who had disappointed him, turn his back on him and disappear forever. And yet this man had helped him to find the greatest and most truthful part of himself, and even if he had been a cracked mirror, he had been a mirror nonetheless, to Kirei's own darkness. He would never stop believing that, any more than he would stop replaying in his head the throes of agony he imagined Kiritsugu must have suffered at the hands of Angra Mainyu's curse writhing inside of him all this time.

After all, it was all he had left, after the man had had the audacity to deny him a proper second duel.

The grin came so easily it was a wonder he didn't indulge himself for a change and burst into giddy giggles that would have no doubt escalated into euphoric cackles, like on the night of the Fuyuki Fire, when he had screamed with laughter at the dark, smoke-filled, hellish skies.

He snapped the newspaper shut and tossed it onto his desk, swiftly rising to his feet.

Gilgamesh, who had been watching him closely, merely raised his golden eyebrows to watch his partner's actions unfold enigmatically and yet so crystal clearly in this way. "You appear to have been put into good spirits by some excellent news."

"Indeed I have, Gilgamesh," said Kirei, still grinning. "I think I'll resubmit my reply to your offer of wine."

Gilgamesh shared his grin, seeming to literally illuminate with gold at the priest warming to his offer at last. "Excellent." He poured the man a glass, and handed it to him across the coffee table as he joined him. Then he toasted him. "What are we celebrating?"

"The death of a fool. A disappointing, pathetic, loveable fool." Kirei toasted his glass in kind, and the two of them drank, the office thick and heavy with the shadows of two demons who took immense pleasure in surrounding themselves in the shadows of conspiracy and dark musings.

"Well now, I see you took your time savoring this last meal I left for you," Kirei observed, dispassionately observing the mess of blood that painted the underground chapel in which Gilgamesh kept himself as a lion lying in wait. He had just returned from Torino, Italy again, to meet again with the high-ranking priests of the Eight Sacrament Assembly, as before when he'd had the honor of receiving the positon of Grail War overseer.

Though a few years had passed since his learning of the death of Kiritsugu Emiya, Kirei felt as though it had been much longer, as the weary days had dragged on, like a shackled prisoner on death row walking to its doom.

One sniff in the chapel below the earth filled Kirei's nostrils with the stench of flesh starting to turn and rot, yet he did nothing like plug up his nose to block it out. Deftly, he stepped over the bodies of the mutilated and bled out children he himself had lured here, more children orphaned by the Fuyuki Fire he had found wandering as beggars on the streets. When he reached the other side, he took a seat beside the King of Heroes himself, who lounged on a pew while delicately cleaning between his perfect, diamond-white teeth with a toothpick.

"Yes, sorry about the mess," said Gilgamesh smoothly with a rather wolfish grin.

"Hm." Kirei waved a hand and then folded his arms. "Never mind. It'll have to be cleaned up today though, one of my altar boys pointed out the smell starting to waft up into the sanctuary."

"Or I could just eat your altar boy," Gilgamesh offered.

"No, that won't do." Kirei frowned. "Must you be such a glutton?"

"Yes, but I pull off the sin of gluttony so elegantly." Gilgamesh wagged a finger gracefully. "That's no small feat, you know."

Kirei chuckled sardonically. "What a comedian you are, Gilgamesh."

Gilgamesh finished picking his teeth and flicked the toothpick away, and then he folded his hands behind his head, leaning back and stretching out his legs, closing his eyes contentedly.

Then he opened his eyes, giving Kirei a sidelong look. "So, what next? How do you plan to utilize your having inherited your father's position as overseer of the Grail War? After all, it's against the rules for the overseer to actually play the game."

Kirei's grin widened in the gloom, a curious light emerging in his eyes that to anyone else would have been disturbing, but to Gilgamesh it was merely entertaining and intriguing as usual.

"Oh, King of Heroes, are you really giving me so little credit after everything we've been through? Just because I don't understand the traditional values of forming human bonds, doesn't mean I don't find ways to make use of those platitudes in other ways." Kirei reached into an inside pocket of his frock and withdrew a photograph that he passed to Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh raised a golden eyebrow as he took the picture and then looked at it. Then he raised both his eyebrows. "A woman?"

"I worked with and crossed paths with her on numerous occasions during my time and work as an Inquisitor," Kirei explained, leaning back and opening his arms up on either side of him, like a lazier version of the crucifix or something. "True, at the time, I let our relationship turn into one of camaraderie and fighting comrades out of formality, but I'm quite pleased that I have thought of a use for her, knowing what I'll do about her in order to obtain a playing Servant of my own without relinquishing my position as overseer. I've already sent her a formal letter of invitation to join the Grail War. She accepted with much enthusiasm."

"You two do indeed look unusually chummy." Gilgamesh turned over the photo. "'Bazett Fraga McRemitz'," he read. He looked up at Kirei. "How sentimental of you."

"Indeed." Kirei took back the photo and tucked it back into the inside pocket of his frock. "I'm meeting her tonight, actually. We have it arranged. She tells me she plans on summoning the hero Cú Chulainn, using his earrings as a Catalyst."

Gilgamesh clucked his tongue. "My, she is trusting of you."

"Hm." Kirei more than agreed, but he felt again that brilliant anticipation stirring in his stomach, and he could hardly contain it. At this moment it took everything he had to remain poised and collected. He ran his tongue over his teeth, like a beast licking its chops before making a kill. "Yes…far too trusting."

Bazett Fraga McRemitz arrived shortly after evening mass in a sleek car outfitted by the Mage's Association, part of the backing she was receiving from them to participate in the Fifth Holy Grail war. When she stepped out of the car, dressed to the nines in her black suit and tie, snapping on her snazzy set of leather gloves, she was just as Kirei remembered her from last when they met. More than that, but the elegance of her confident stride made him think pleasantly of Tokiomi Tohsaka, which created more crackling excitement in his blood for what he had in mind for her.

It was just far too good.

"It's good to see you, Kotomine, my friend." Bazett held out a hand and Kirei took it genially and shook it. Then she took a step back, withdrawing her hand and faltering. "I'm sorry. Forgive me. I forget, here it is more customary for two people who meet to bow rather than shake."

But Kirei waved a dismissive hand. "It's fine. The Church and the Mage's Association seem to favor many Western traditions. Being who you are and who I am, this feels more natural than anything else. Please, won't you come in?" He swept out a hand towards the entrance to the Fuyuki Church, inviting her inside.

"Thank you," said Bazett gratefully, stepping inside.

Kirei noticed her rub at one hand with her other, and wondered if she was using those gloves to hide her Command Seals. Such precautions she was taking, and yet against the wrong sort of people. It took every ounce of self-control he had not to laugh outright at this.

"We'll use my private office. I've took the liberty of making us some tea."

"That sounds lovely, thank you."

In his private office, Kirei served them both tea on the coffee table, letting Bazett sit on the sofa while he took his usual seat in his armchair.

After Kirei did the courtesy of adding milk and sugar at her request, Bazett sat back with her cup and blew on it delicately before taking a refined sip.

Kirei, who took his tea plain, drank not a drop, but instead observed her with his chin resting on tented fingers. "This is nice, isn't it, the two of us catching up for a moment. Though again, there's work involved at the same time."

"Yes, it would be nice if this were just a social call alone, and I was merely sightseeing here in Japan," said Bazett pleasantly, setting down her cup and saucer. "I've had nearly as much of a fascination with the East as I have with the ancient Celts."

"Ah yes, hence your choosing Cú Chulainn as your Servant," said Kirei. "I trust you have already summoned him?" As he spoke his eyes flicked, unnoticed by her, from one of her gloved hands to the other, trying to keep track of the one she was rubbing, making a inferential guess that that was his target hand.

"I have," Bazett told him straight off. So reckless. She ran a hand through her magenta hair, and even seemed to color a little in her cheeks to match. "He materialized as a rather fine specimen I must admit, speaking as a woman."

"Strong-looking, is he?" Kirei flexed his fingers, secretly checking the security of the blades of his Black Keys lying in wait.

Bazett, with her legs crossed, tapped one foot in midair, and she seemed to get a rather dreamy look. "Oh yes. I have no doubts that in this coming War, he will prove to be the victor no one counted on, given the Lancer Class's rather average reputation. Not without its power and dignity, but never one of any note amongst the three knight classes. Not like the Saber Class." Then she gave Kirei a conspiratorially mischievous look. "My wild card."

"Very good, I like it," said Kirei, and he was actually telling the truth, in his own way. He got up from his chair and crossed over to the sofa, taking a seat in the empty space beside her. "Well, rest assured, with your backing from the Mage's Association, and my friendship, you'll have far more than your wild card to rely on as far obtaining victory."

Bazett's eyes lit up. "Oh yes, that was my hope. I'm glad I can count on you, Kirei."

"Of course you can." Kirei held out a hand towards hers. "May I?"

"Certainly." Completely unawares, Bazett peeled off the glove of her left hand and showed him the pattern of Command Seals stamped on the back.

"Excellent," said Kirei, his fingers wavering over the release on his Black Keys. They even trembled a little. He looked up at the woman who called herself his friend. "Speaking as your long-time companion, I am quite proud of you, you know."

Bazett smiled, glowing with self-satisfaction. The look was shattered in raw shock and pain however as Kirei struck her underhandedly with the blades of one set of his Black Keys, rending clean through flesh, blood, muscle, and bone and slicing her arm asunder from her body in one quick and fluidly violent move. She gasped with an agonized, unbelieving cry, as the arm torn free from her flew up in the air and then flopped uselessly on the floor, smattering blood on the carpet. As she herself bled freely and profusely, wracked with the pain of losing a limb, she gaped up at the man she had believed to be nothing but one of her most trusted friends and stammered, "K-Kirei…what are you…?"

Kirei rose and loomed over her, grinning ferally, his blades dripping with her blood. "Try to call him now," he taunted.

Scarcely a breath had passed from the moment he'd chopped off her arm than the man himself appeared with a savage cry preceding the strike of his magically imbued lance. But Kirei, his adrenaline pumping and his instincts as fresh as ever, evaded the attacked easily, leaving Lancer, the man who was once Cú Chulainn, plunging his lance into the wall behind the sofa instead of into Kirei. With a wild growl and a mad fire in his eyes, the hero of ancient Irish legend yanked his lance out and faced he who had dared deal such a grievous wound to his Master.

Clad in skin-tight blue that showed off his physique, Lancer was indeed rippling with physical as well as magical strength. Kirei was glad he was actually impressed.

"How dare you?" Lancer gnarled, threatening Kirei with his lance. "I will make you pay for this, villain!"

"I'm afraid you've come too late, Lancer," said Kirei with that purr in his voice again. "But since you're so eager to fight, I suggest you take the only course left to you and leave your dying Master for me."

Lancer spun around, the sight of Bazett lying on the sofa gasping as she bled out clearly hitting him like a physical wound. He ground his teeth and rounded on Kirei with a vicious, vengeful glare. "Never," he spat.

"Then you have no other choice but to forfeit your place in this Grail War," said Kirei with a matter-of-fact shrug, gesturing in a rather devil-may-care attitude with his Black Keys. "Otherwise you'll simply...disappear."

Lancer raised his spear. "I should skewer your heart, you bastard!" he growled.

Kirei shook his head quite unconcernedly. "It doesn't matter. It's Bazett's consent I need first and foremost. And she has even less of a choice than you to hand over her Seals. What use are they to her, now that she's dying?"

"Ki…rei…." Bazett wheezed, struggling to breathe, having lost so much precious blood so quickly. Copious amounts of red soaked into the sofa, even as she uselessly tried to stem the flow with her other hand pressed to the wound. Even so, the glare she directed at Kirei was nothing short of killing. Pure ire for the man who had committed a transgression against her sense of honor by leading her to believe they were friends bound by loyalty and justice, only to spill her blood and betray her. "You…won't…get…."

"Oh?" Kirei raised an eyebrow. "You'd truly let precious Command Seals go to waste?"

"Master..." Lancer looked at her again, staring at her bleakly. "You can't…."

Bazett closed her eyes, in that way that many do before forcing themselves to commit to something loathsome to their very soul and being. Then she opened them again.

"Very well. I give you my Seals."

And then her mouth quirked up in a very bitter, almost devious smile—the kind of devious smile that only a person who had thus far lived a fair and just life only to have it cut short by treachery would give, like a wicked farewell for one who might as well be wicked at least in her final moments, if only to use that power to curse the traitor who had dealt her this fate.

"But I wish no victory for you—" Her eyes listed onto Lancer and softened "—only for Lancer…." And then she gave a sigh, falling back into a dead faint.

"Master!" Lancer gasped, dropping to one knee beside Bazett, still hefting his spear at the ready, even as he brushed a few violet bangs out of her eyes with his free hand.

Meanwhile, the three Command Seals on the hand of Bazett's severed arm disappeared, and Kirei felt them appear with the other Seals along the skin of his arm.

He chuckled low in his throat. "Now then, Lancer, time is of the essence. If you wish to honor your former Master and fulfill her final wish for you—how could you not, after you've demonstrated such passionate loyalty to her?—I suggest you consent to make the pact with me."

Lancer turned on him. "Like hell!" he snapped.

But Kirei channeled a little compulsion into his three new Command Seals, and gave a mental tug that pulled painfully on Lancer. Lancer lurched forward, giving a grunt of pain and nearly dropping his spear.

Just like pulling the strings of a puppet.

"You see? You're already nearly mine." Kirei's smile of triumph widened.

Lancer made a sound like he was choking on the very thought of swearing fealty to someone like Kirei. He turned his head like an agitated dog, his long, tied-back hair waving and his earrings gleaming in the light of the low lamps.

Then he snapped open his red eyes.

"Fine," he spat.

And with that, Kirei retracted his Black Keys and raised his arm, the three Command Seals added to the already long pattern along his arm tingling as he intonated the incantation that would forge a new pact between them as Master and Servant. Then Lancer made a declaration of loyalty on bended knee, and Kirei little cared that it was all formality and not a whit sincere.

"That will do," he said, holding up a hand. "Now, for your first task." He swept towards the door to his office with a flourish of his long priest's frock, and Lancer dissipated into Spirit Form and followed him.

For now, Lancer seethed with his hatred, even as he buried it deep within his heart out of the compulsion of his pact with his new Master. Kirei could feel such wrathful waves coming off him, and he relished in it. But something in his attitude would change, soften to mere grudging acquiescence as a result of shock and awe when they would later come back and discover Bazett's body somehow disappeared with no knowledge of how that could be…that for all his wickedness, he just might ensure Lancer a victory he so desperately sought in this coming Grail War.

And Kirei knew, with much satisfaction, that it was because he did not react with any kind of panic at Bazett's body having mysteriously vanished, but rather with palpable excitement, a wide and dark grin spreading across his face, and three words uttered almost affectionately—or the closest a man like him could come to such sentiment—under his breath at the sight of there being nothing but a thick blood stain on his sofa and carpet.

"Oh…clever girl."