[Hereafter] Chapter CCLXIV: Premature Ending (Patreon)

Chapter CCLXIV: Premature Ending

“Yes way, as I believe the saying goes,” said the man, the Servant, who claimed to be Sherlock Holmes. Being entirely fair, he had the look pretty down pat. He smiled a little and gestured to each of us in turn with his pipe. “And you,” beginning with Ritsuka, “would be Fujimaru Ritsuka, his twin sister, Fujimaru Rika, their senior Master, Taylor Hebert, and of course, we can’t forget about Miss Kyrielight.”

The end of his pipe tapped the air, and his lips pursed. “I must admit, however, that I was not expecting you to bring so many Servants with you,” he said. “Sanzang Xuanzang, of course, and Tawara Touta. Jack the Ripper was an unwelcome but obvious addition — but I suppose, despite her distasteful nature, she is still a Servant loyal to Chaldea, so there is little point complaining. The Counter Guardian was another obvious addition, and I made space in my expectations for one other Chaldean Servant, not three, and certainly not for the Japanese blacksmith or an ancient Mesopotamian goddess.”

How the fuck did he know all of that? Sherlock Holmes or not, it sounded like he was pulling all of this out of thin air.

“The Knight of the Round Table was not entirely unexpected,” he finished. “Greetings, by the way, Sir Bedivere, wonderful to meet you. I dare say it may be a bit presumptuous of me to assume any kinship with you on account of our shared homeland, separated as we are by nearly fourteen centuries.”

“How…” Ritsuka managed to strangle out. “How did you know all of our names?”

It came to me all of a sudden.

“How?” said Holmes, smiling again. “Why, it’s elementary, my dear friends!”

Mash gasped. “He said it! He said his catchphrase! Is this really the real Mister Holmes?”

He was like Lisa. No, of course, she had always compared herself to him with the way her powers worked, so it only made sense that the Servant version, empowered as he was by history’s perception of his cleverness and his ability to pick seemingly random details out of nothing, was like some idealized version of her own powers.

“We have already worked together before,” said Holmes.

“We have?” Rika asked. “Buddy, I’ve never seen you before in my life!”

“Not directly,” Holmes corrected. “It’s true, this is our first time meeting face to face, but not the first time we have worked the same case together. If you recall London, the Mage’s Association?”

My eyebrows rose behind my mask. “That was you?”

We’d never come up with a satisfactory answer about who our mysterious benefactor was. By the time we had to chase down Maleficent and Angrboða, the question had fallen by the wayside in the face of more important issues.

“Indeed, it was,” said Holmes. “I gathered the information and arranged it in such a way as to lead your team to it as a way of leaving behind a hint for you to follow. A clue you might use to understand the nature of your ultimate enemy a bit more clearly — though, of course, I did not expect him to confront you so directly so swiftly afterwards.”

“We never did find out who actually did that,” Mash said softly. She might as well have admitted that she believed him right then and there.

“Anderson did say it had all been conveniently arranged,” Ritsuka agreed.

Holmes nodded and took another puff of his pipe. “I had to be somewhat indirect, of course, or else I would have risked Zolgen discovering the effort and thwarting me, and that would not do. No, no, you all needed to understand the nature and purpose of Grand Servants in order to solve this murder case.”

Murder case?

“Murder case?” the twins echoed. They glanced at each other. 

“Yes, a murder case, of a particularly mythological bent,” said Holmes. “The complete murder of the primates by way of the Incineration of Humanity — it’s only natural that I would appear to solve it! It is, as they say, right up my alley.” 

“Forgive me for interrupting,” said Bedivere, a rasp still in his voice, “but… Lady Mash, Lord Ritsuka, Lady Taylor… Who is this man, this Holmes? To the best of my knowledge, there was never any knight by that name in Camelot.”

“Um, because he wasn’t a knight in Camelot,” said Mash. “He’s… He’s the greatest detective in the world. The most famous detective. Um, he wasn’t a knight at all, a-at least, there was never any record of it if he was…”

Holmes shook his head. “Alas, I was not. I never received that particular honor. The man who recorded my deeds, however, he did indeed receive a knighthood. Wonderful man. Clever. Witty. Certainly capable of retelling my adventures with Watson in a fashion that entertained the reader.”

At this point, I wasn’t even surprised anymore.

Mash gasped again. “Then… Then those novels were real events! They were the collected memoirs of Doctor Watson, published by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Doctor Roman would be delighted if he could see this right now!”

“I think you’re delighted enough for everyone,” said Ishtar, amused.

Mash’s cheeks flushed. “O-oh, yes, I suppose I am, aren’t I? But this is just…!”

“Cinnabon is fangirling,” Rika said dryly. 

“I’m quite flattered,” said Holmes, and he sounded it. “If our adventures were enough to give a young girl such joy, then I have no complaints for how they are remembered, regardless of whether or not they were sensationalized a little.”

If he was an enemy, then he was an excellent actor. All of his words and his reactions seemed completely genuine and not at all like they were a front he was putting on, and while that didn’t automatically mean he was someone we could trust, because Lev had proven that for us quite spectacularly, I could give him a little bit of leeway. For now, at least.

“You said we’re working the same case now,” I said. “Does that mean you’re planning on joining us? Temporarily or permanently?”

Holmes’ lips pursed. “To an extent,” he allowed. “I’m afraid I cannot pledge myself to your employ, just yet, for I’m already working another case, you see. Until that is concluded, I cannot join your organization in an official capacity, either on a temporary or more permanent basis.”

Mash deflated a little. “You can’t?”

“My apologies,” Holmes said regretfully.

“What kind of case is more important than the Incineration of Humanity?” Emiya asked.

“More important is not perhaps the most correct term,” Holmes hedged. “Mister Babbage asked me a favor back in London during one of his moments of rare lucidity, near to the end. I mean to honor my commitment to him and close the case he asked me to investigate before fully committing myself to another.” He smiled again. “That does not mean I won’t assist you here, of course. After all, you came to this Institute in search of knowledge as well, did you not?”

“You know about that?” asked Mash, amazed, and it would have been a lot more impressive if it wasn’t also one of the most obvious reasons to come to a place like this.

Holmes nodded. “The Old Man of the Mountain bid you come here to discover the secrets of the Lion King, did he not? I imagine he talked about the necessity of acquiring that sort of knowledge so that you might understand exactly what sort of foes the Holy City and its knights are.”

That, on the other hand, was something he shouldn’t have known anything about. Or was I just underestimating exactly how bullshit his powers of deduction were?

“He said we needed to learn the nature of the Lion King, the folly of the Sun King, and the truth behind the Incineration,” Ritsuka said slowly. “Do you know how we can do that in here?”

“Of course,” said Holmes. “We have similar objectives, in fact, or at least immensely compatible ones. The answers to your questions and the answers to mine can be found only in the central area of the Institute, which is located about half a mile further underground. Unfortunately, the path is a twisted and indirect one that loops back around on itself, and my companions did not do me the courtesy of leaving the traps dismantled when they left me behind here.”

Companions? “You’re not alone?”

“I am not,” Holmes said. “There are two others here also, waiting in the central room for our arrival. They temporarily disabled the traps and defenses left behind by the denizens of the Institute on their way through while I waited here for your own arrival, and by now, those traps would have been reactivated. I’m afraid you will have to fight through them to reach our destination.”

Of course we did.

“You aren’t going to lend a hand?” asked Emiya. 

“Mm-mm! It should seem to me that you ought to contribute as well, if you also have things you wish to learn here!” Nero agreed.

“To the extent that I am able, I will,” said Holmes. “I am not a frontline combatant, however, merely a detective, so my martial contributions, though not nonexistent, shall be, shall we say, limited in scope.”

Wasn’t he supposed to be some kind of expert in hand-to-hand? The last time I read any of the Sherlock Holmes novels was ages ago, but I distinctly remembered something about that and the assertion that he had adapted it from some form of Chinese martial arts.

Holmes continued, “I intend to more than make up for my combat deficiencies, however, by leading you along the correct path to our goal. I dare say that makes for a fair arrangement, wouldn’t you?”

The twins shared a look and then looked to me for the final say. I gave them a short, jerky nod. There were a lot of questions I had, chief among them how he had gotten from London to here on his own, but if I asked them now, while his guard was up, his response would probably be something he had prepared beforehand. If he really was as suspicious a figure as he seemed at first blush, then getting a truthful answer out of him would require actually surprising him in a moment when he wasn’t expecting it.

Ritsuka turned back to Holmes. “Okay,” he said. “We can work with that. Are there any…poison traps or anything like that, or can we take off these masks for now?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect poison,” said Holmes with a shake of his head. “I think the magi who lived here, for all of their talents and intellect, will have left behind defenses that are rather more straightforward.”

Straightforward? Magi? I wasn’t sure those two words belonged in the same sentence like that.

“Straightforward how?” I asked.

“Trapped grimoires,” said Holmes, “sentries, autonomous familiars, golems, that sort of thing. As long as we don’t venture into personal workshops or private offices, the only kinds of things we need concern ourselves with are direct threats like that. More esoteric defenses are the domain of individuals protecting their own work, not the collective.”

“I…hope you’re right about that,” said Ritsuka, and he slowly pulled off his mask and goggles. Then, he began shaking off the excess sand that had found its way into the folds of his clothes. Rika, taking a hint from him, started doing the same.

“I hate sand,” she mumbled.

“Get some new material, or at least wait more than a day to use that one again,” her brother told her.

I pulled my mask down and let it rest around my neck like a scarf. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to pull it on again before we left this place.

Holmes upended his pipe and tapped the bottom with a finger to shake out the spent remains of whatever he’d been smoking — I could smell it now, and I wasn’t at all sure it was actually tobacco — and then he smiled at us. “Shall we go? Time, as they say, is awasting.” 

“Lead on, Macduff,” said Rika.

“Macbeth,” Sherlock said, shaking his head as he turned around. “Perhaps not the most auspicious reference to make before an adventure such as this one.”

“That’s where that’s from?” said Rika. “Huh. Go figure.”

Ritsuka could only shake his own head.

Holmes seemed to pick one of the pathways that led out of the rotunda at random, but he was also confident about it, so our group followed behind him at a short distance. Mash, Touta, and Sanzang stuck next to us Masters, and Altera, Shirou, and Okita took point, closer to Holmes himself, so that they could leap into action the instant a threat presented itself. Jackie had all but glued herself to my side, of course, and Ishtar hovered just far enough off the ground to literally see over my shoulder, leaving Emiya and Nero to bring up the rear.

I tried to reach out for any bugs that might have made this place home, but despite how dark and dank this place seemed, it was starkly barren. I wasn’t sure there was anything living down here at all, because at least the desert had a few things crawling around in it, even if they were hiding away from the sandstorms and useless for doing anything inside of it. Here, there didn’t seem to be anything at all.

Bedivere, who was lagging a little bit behind, came up closer to us so that he could murmur, “Are you certain we should trust him, Lord Ritsuka, Lady Taylor? I confess, I know little of his character, but in some ways, he reminds me of Lord Merlin.”

“A ringing endorsement if ever there was one,” Emiya said lowly.

“Y-you don’t think we can trust him?” Mash asked, hushed. “But it’s Sherlock Holmes!”

“I think we can trust that we’re heading the same direction, for now,” Ritsuka said carefully. “But whether that means he’s our ally for good, well…”

He glanced at me.

“Are you thinking about it, too?” I asked him.

His lips pursed, and he nodded. “He said he was in London, which means that’s probably where and when he was summoned. So how did he get from there to here without Rayshifting?”

Mash looked stricken, like the very idea that Holmes could be deceiving us for some nefarious purpose made her physically ill, but Rika sucked down a breath.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “Oh yeah, that’s a super important point, huh?”

“Oh no,” said Mash, looking absolutely crushed. “So he…might actually be…”

One of Solomon’s pawns, playing host to a Demon God or something else that let him slip between Singularities without outside help.

“Yeah.”

“It might not mean anything,” Ritsuka said, perhaps as an attempt to reassure Mash. “We don’t know if there’s some other way for him to go from Singularity to Singularity, like a Noble Phantasm or something. But that doesn’t mean that there is one either. So for now…”

“Trust, but verify,” Rika said grimly. He nodded.

“Smart,” Emiya complimented.

“If he tries anything funny, I’ll blast him into next century,” Ishtar said flatly.

Mash suddenly stiffened and hefted her shield in front of her. “Master, I’m detecting a magical energy response! Something is coming!”

Ahead of us, Holmes abruptly took several steps back and behind Okita, Altera, and Shirou, and a moment later, from no discernible place I could see, several floating grimoires similar to the ones we’d cut down at the Mage’s Association in London poured out, pages fluttering as they bobbed. Those weren’t a problem, we’d dealt with that sort of thing in larger numbers before. The problem was the thing that followed after them, a weird creature made entirely of limbs constructed from square blocks of some kind. Patterns akin to circuitry branched out along the blocks, connecting the limbs even where the blocks themselves didn’t.

“As I expected!” Holmes said. “I’m afraid my presence inside this Singularity is tenuous, so I would be very much obliged if you would handle them with all due haste!”

Ishtar scoffed. “What, scared of a few books?”

She surged past me without waiting and started shooting, and the first book went down, a hole blown straight through its spine, as the others scattered. Magical energy built up inside of them, and they shot bursts of retaliatory fire that everyone handled quite easily. Unlike the veritable storm that had flown out of the Mage’s Association, it was only a few books. Ritsuka, Rika, and I could probably have handled them on our own.

Then, the blocky thing curled its limbs around the central point where they all connected, the glowing circuitry glowed brighter, and a much larger surge of energy built up at that central point. The beam it shot was brighter, faster, and more intense by an order of magnitude than what the books could do, and Ishtar squeaked as she ducked beneath it, hands on her head, and the beam carved a scorched, burning line into the stonework of the tunnel above us.

“It’s an autonomous sentry!” Holmes reported. “Its offensive capabilities are far more fully developed than a few animated grimoires!”

Ishtar fired back with a furious snarl, knocking one of the limbs off and sending the blocks that composed it scattering along the floor, and Shirou and Altera both swept in with their swords and did the same to two more of its limbs. The sentry retreated back out of range of their weapons, and before our eyes, the severed limbs crackled with energy and reattached themselves as though magnetized.

“It can repair itself?” Mash yelped.

“It is designed to remain effective without proper maintenance indefinitely!” Holmes said. “Therefore, in order to disable it, it must either be destroyed outright by overwhelming force — a dangerous task in an area such as this, where we need worry about structural damage to the facility —”

The sentry curled in on itself again, swiftly charged another shot, and fired it in a sweeping line that forced Mash to step in front of us to block it. Shirou and Altera both ducked beneath it in different ways, avoiding the path of the beam.

“Or?” Rika demanded loudly.

“Deal critical damage to the main command unit!” said Holmes. “In this case, it would be —”

“Aim for the middle where the limbs meet!” I ordered.

“Ha!” Ishtar barked confidently. “Leave it to…me!”

Ma’anna manifested suddenly in the cramped space of the tunnel, and she fired off a series of sizzling shots like a machine gun. Each one landed with unerring accuracy, and each one knocked off another of the sentry’s block, whittling away at the limbs one block at a time. The sentry, curled up around its central block, was blasted apart slowly but surely and could do nothing to stop her until the center block that held the entire thing together was exposed and open.

“There you are!” Ishtar crowed.

A larger bolt of energy formed along the axis of Ma’anna, then compressed down into a thinner, smaller bolt. It leapt across the gap like a bolt of lightning and smashed into the sentry with a low BOOM and the muffled whump of displaced air, and when the light faded, there was nothing left of the sentry or the books except some scattered scraps of paper and a handful of dull, inert blocks lying motionless on the floor.

Smug, Ishtar folded her arms and said, “There you go, problem solved.”

“Very good,” said Holmes. He brushed off some dust that only he could see from the shoulders of his coat. “Shall we continue on?”

We got back into the same formation as before and kept going, following Holmes again, and as we went, he decided to educate all of us on the Institute we were walking through.

“Are you familiar with the Atlas Institute, Mister and Miss Fujimaru?” 

The twins shared a look. “Not really,” said Ritsuka.

“Hot Pops said some stuff about it, but he didn’t really explain what they are or what they do here,” Rika added.

Holmes hummed thoughtfully. “I see. And you, Miss Hebert?”

The twins glanced back at me.

“Some,” I answered vaguely. “The Director mentioned something about seven superweapons that can destroy the world.”

Rika and Ritsuka’s eyebrows shot up towards their hairlines.

Holmes chuckled. “Yes, those. Oh, you needn’t worry we might stumble across them accidentally, my friends. Even Atlas, as obsessed and prone to lunacy as they are, knew better than to leave them about where any might stumble upon them. They were sealed away for the safety of everyone — a prudent decision when talking about weapons capable of destroying the world, yes?”

“Still not gonna press any big red buttons we find,” said Rika. 

“Quite,” said Holmes. “In any case, the Atlas Institute is one of the branches of the Mage’s Association, as I imagine this ‘Hot Pops’ of yours explained, and they are masters of alchemy. Not, as you might assume, the modern alchemy practiced by the West and the magi of the Clock Tower, but an older form originating in Egyptian metallurgy. Their focus is not on the transformation of base matter of the sort you must have seen practiced by Mister Flamel and Mister Paracelsus, but on the transformation of the immaterial — that is, on events, fate itself, and even the soul. The alchemy of Atlas treats all of these things as malleable structures to be manipulated, as sources of energy or information which might be extracted. It is this unique focus that produced such things as homunculi like Miss Flamel and the Philosopher’s Stone that is hidden inside of her body.”

Instantly, the tension inside of the group skyrocketed. The twins shared a panicked look, and I did my best to keep my alarm off of my face. How had he — of course. He was in London. He had observed us long enough to know our names. Of course he had figured out Flamel and Renée, too.

“W-we don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rika tried.

Holmes just glanced back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Come now. You already knew that I was observing your group in London and had deduced the reason for your presence there and the nature of your ultimate enemy, and yet you think Mister Flamel’s transparent ruse was enough to stump me? Please don’t insult me, Miss Fujimaru.”

I wasn’t ready to just give it away, though. If he was fishing, then I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of getting the truth from me.

“You said Flamel’s alchemy is the western style used by the Association,” I said. “If Atlas uses an entirely different kind of alchemy, then how is it related to the Philosopher’s Stone?”

“Because Mister Flamel’s work on the Philosopher’s Stone was based upon a treatise that likely originated in the Atlas Institute itself,” Holmes answered. “In any case, you didn’t think that such a miraculous device as the Philosopher’s Stone — the true, original Philosopher’s Stone that Nicolas Flamel created — provided nothing more than an elixir to prolong life and a means of transmuting gold, did you? Alchemists and magi across the world have had methods of doing both that would not require a device so incredible.”

The silence that greeted him was deafening.

“You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?” Emiya asked carefully.

“There is a phrase which I believe at least one of you will find familiar,” said Holmes. “The First changed everything. Next, the Second recognized many. In answer, the Third revealed the future. The tethering Fourth concealed itself. The final Fifth had long since lost its significance. Someone once said, ‘if it had only ended with the Third.’”

No way.

“W-wait a minute,” Mash stammered. “That’s…”

“That’s not possible,” Shirou said immediately. “What you’re talking about, that’s —”

“Isn’t it?” said Holmes. “Mister Emiya, you yourself should already be familiar with the existence of a device which serves a similar function. Your erstwhile companion, Miss Tohsaka, will have inherited its blueprints from her ancestor, who received them from the original owner. The Einzberns were possessed of the Dress of Heaven that allowed the limited manipulation of the soul. Did you think that there were no other mystic codes designed to enact a specific form of their miracle? Whyever do you think Mister Flamel destroyed his Philosopher’s Stone the instant he realized what he had created?”

Emiya suddenly broke out into helpless laughter, hunched over and holding the wall for support. We all stopped to look back at him, at the wild, mirthless grin that stretched across his face. “Oh man,” he said through his teeth. “You’re telling me that guy had the dream of the Einzberns sitting in his lap, and he decided the best thing he could do was get rid of it?”

Shirou’s hands curled into fists. “Then Illya…”

“You’re thinking too small, Emiya Shirou,” said Emiya. “If the Einzberns had a method of using the Heaven’s Feel that easily… If they’d known that all they needed was that stone… The Holy Grail War would never have existed. Not just the tragedy of the Fourth, not just our own existence, but Fuyuki itself would never have been touched by the horrors of that ritual.”

“Hang on a second, what are you guys talking about?” Rika asked, confused. “First? Third? What’s all of this got to do with the Holy Grail War?”

“Don’t you remember, Master?” said Emiya. “The Holy Grail War in Fuyuki was originally a ritual for reaching the Root. The goal of the Einzberns, the Tohsaka, and the Matou was to forge a path outside reality itself and acquire the Third Magic, the Heaven’s Feel. It’s just convenient for men like Marisbury Animusphere that a device capable of doing that has enough power to grant wishes, too.”

Holmes added, “The Third Magic is the materialization of the soul. I told you, Miss Fujimaru. The alchemy of Atlas deals with the immaterial, such as souls. The Philosopher’s Stone which Mister Flamel constructed based upon the principles of the very same alchemy practiced by Atlas is a device which allows a human being to leave his body behind and become an immortal, materialized soul. Untouchable, incorruptible, indestructible.”

A power that everyone the world over would want the instant they heard about it. A power that now put an innocent young woman in very real danger the moment anyone realized exactly what she was hiding inside of her.

“We don’t tell anyone,” I said.

Every eye in that tunnel turned to me, so I elaborated, “That Stone is inside Renée, and Da Vinci isn’t confident she can take it out and put it back without killing her. If the Association finds out, they won’t care about whether she survives, they’ll just take it.”

Understanding crossed the faces of the twins and Mash, and then their expressions hardened with determination.

“Right,” said Rika. “Our lips have to be Fort Knox.”

“The sensors can’t hear us right now, so it won’t be in the records,” said Ritsuka. “They’re not finding out from us.”

“For Miss Renée’s sake,” Mash added.

Ritsuka glanced her way, and I could see a sudden epiphany strike him, the realization that I had already come to: the Stone could probably save Mash. No, definitely, it could save Mash. But doing that would require risking Renée’s life, and I saw the instant he decided that risk wasn’t worth it. Mash would never forgive him for it, even if it saved her life.

“My apologies, I’ve allowed us to drift a little off topic,” said Holmes ruefully. “Regardless, you begin to understand the scale of the sorts of weapons developed by the alchemists here in the Atlas Institute. Mister Flamel’s Philosopher’s Stone, although somewhat unique in the scope of its purpose, would not have been considered unusual here in terms of its power and effectiveness. The alchemists of Atlas may not have been the most impressive in terms of the quality and quantity of the magic circuits and their magical attributes, but they were brilliant and mad in equal measure, and they created many devices worthy of acknowledgment.” With a wry smile, he finished with, “Perhaps too many, in point of fact.”

“You speak of them in such storied terms, Mister Holmes,” said Bedivere, “and yet, I cannot help but notice that we have yet to encounter any of them. Are there no students here? No staff? Did some manner of tragedy occur here which destroyed them?”

Holmes smiled grimly. “A difficult question, Sir Bedivere. I have a theory, however… No, no, it would be better not to speak of it before I have more substantial evidence. Once we have reached our destination at the center of this facility, I believe the answer will be clear.”

The conversation all but died after that, and not long after, we encountered another group of defenses, more of those animated grimoires and several of those sentries, and these ones were dispatched much faster and easier than the prior ones were. We knew the sentries’ weakness now, and that made them a lot easier to deal with. Once it was over with, we resumed walking, and Holmes decided to make another attempt at conversation:

“Forgive me for the abruptness of the question, Mister and Miss Fujimaru, Miss Hebert, Miss Kyrielight, but could you describe for me your encounter with King Solomon at the closing of the London Singularity?”

Alarm went through the group. My heart couldn’t have been the only one to skip a beat. “Shh!” Rika hissed. “You said his name!”

“His name?” said Holmes, bemused, and then he nodded. “Ah. Saying his name aloud was enough to call him down upon you then, wasn’t it? I understand. In any case, the protections around this place are robust enough that you needn’t worry on that front. I would be comfortable wagering that the same could be said of Chaldea itself, in fact, although I might refrain from it for other reasons.”

Other reasons? Was he talking about something Lev might have left behind, or was there something else? I wasn’t sure I was willing to trust him about the protections either, because absolutely nothing was absolute, but if he just invited Solomon back into this place, then there was nothing we could do about it now except be ready.

Then again…the only time Solomon had shown up before was when his name was used in front of one of his Demon Gods. Otherwise, we’d said his name a number of times, and nothing bad had happened until London. Deliberate choice, or was the audience actually relevant?

“The Count of Monte Cristo said I shouldn’t say his name at all,” Ritsuka said grimly.

“Truly?” asked Holmes. “If it bothers you so, then I shall endeavor to keep the name from my lips in the future and use an…alternative appellation. Unless you have one already designated for him?”

As silly as it still sounded to me… “We call him Solly.”

“Solly.” Holmes smiled, amused. “Then, if you would, my friends, regale me with the story of your encounter with this Solly.”

The four of us, the twins, me, and Mash, all shared a look, and then Ritsuka gave a brief recollection of that harrowing encounter right as everything seemed resolved at the end of the London Singularity. Holmes listened with rapt attention, humming thoughtfully and stroking his chin.

When Ritsuka was done, Holmes said, “I see. Was there anything that seemed unusual about him? I understand you have never met the original Solly, so it isn’t possible for you to compare him to the figure you met in London, but if there was something that seemed strange or incongruent with him…”

Something incongruent or strange. 

“He was…mercurial.”

“Mercurial?” Holmes echoed.

“I…wouldn’t call them mood swings,” I hedged, “but he killed and spared us based entirely on whims, it seemed. We were all equally unable to do anything to him, but he killed some of the Servants with us and only injured some of the others.”

Ritsuka made a sound of understanding in his throat. “Come to think of it, aside from Jackie and Andersen, the only Servants he killed were those who tried to kill him. Like he was meeting intent for intent or something.”

“Holding a mirror up to the person across from him,” Mash murmured.

“A mirror?” Holmes probed.

Mash blinked and shook her head. “Oh! No, it’s just… The way he talked, it seemed to change somehow based upon who was speaking to him, so…”

Holmes hummed. “An apt comparison, if not perhaps completely accurate. The question I find far more frightening is why it is he decided to spare any of you at all. You said that he claimed there was no need for him to intervene directly until you have acquired the Holy Grails located inside the last two Singularities, correct? And yet, he could have assured that was something which could not occur merely by lifting a finger and destroying all of you right then and there, so why would he not?”

“Because he’s too prideful,” said Emiya. “I’ve met someone like that before.”

Shirou snorted, so it was obviously someone they had both met, probably under the same circumstances. I wondered, for a moment, who it was.

“Perhaps,” Holmes allowed. “I think the more likely answer, however, is that the Incineration of Humanity is a project already completed. He considers the matter closed and sees no need to reopen it until you force his hand — why? Elementary, my good sir. He has already started his next project.”

This statement landed with all the weight of a bomb. The very obvious question that came to me immediately was what the next project could be, if the Incineration was the scope and scale of the last one. Or was the Incineration just the first step in a larger plan?

The idea that the Incineration was just the beginning was terrifying. What could he be after that he needed to wipe out mankind as a species and set up all of these Singularities first?

“You’re saying,” Ritsuka began, “he has something else planned? Something other than the Incineration?”

Holmes nodded. “Indeed, for he has already won, as far as he is concerned. The Incineration of Humanity occurred before anyone could intervene to avert it. It was the perfect crime. However, a single, tiny miracle introduced a flaw, and that miracle is Chaldea. Without you, there is no one to disrupt Solly’s plan.” He turned an intense stare at each of us in turn. “The King of Mages did not believe that it was possible for you to do so, and that is why you will have the chance to prove him wrong.”

Abruptly, he turned back around and announced, “We’re nearly at our destination. Soon enough, you will all have the answers you seek to the questions that have lingered since the beginning of this tragedy.” He slowed to a stop, and we slowed along with him. “Before that, however, I have something I want to say. A warning is perhaps too strong a word — too much weight to give to a mere suspicion.”

And yet, I got the impression that we were meant to take it as a warning anyway. A suspicion from a man like Sherlock Holmes wasn’t guaranteed to be correct or even accurate, but the mere fact that he felt the need to say something was itself a reason to give his words weight.

“You realize how that comes across, don’t you?” asked Emiya, giving word to my own thoughts. “A suspicion from a man like you is already enough reason to take it seriously.”

“I’m aware,” Holmes said crisply. “That is why I do not ordinarily voice even the barest of my suspicions until I am confident in their truth. I feel that I would be remiss to avoid the topic, however, when discussing it is the very reason I waited as long as I did to make contact with you. It is why, in point of fact, I waited until we were here, in Atlas, shielded from the prying eyes of your superiors, to even broach the subject.”

“This is something you don’t want in the records?” I asked.

“This is something I do not want to reach certain ears within your organization,” he clarified.

“Someone in Chaldea?” Mash asked, bewildered. The twins shared an uneasy look.

“You’re not saying…” Rika began.

Her brother finished with, “There’s another guy like Flauros at Chaldea?”

Holmes shook his head. “Truthfully, I do not know. I do not know if there is anything to my suspicion or if I am merely jumping at shadows, as they say. It is impossible for me to confidently say that the secrets of which I am suspicious are malevolent or benign. The only thing I can tell you with any certainty at all is this: I do not trust Romani Archaman.”

What?

“The Doc?” Rika said at the same time as both Mash and Ritsuka said, “Doctor Roman?”

The person Holmes was suspicious of was Romani, of all people? Sure, the guy was a bit of a flake and not the most reliable man to have in such an important position, but he’d gotten a lot better over the last year and he was nothing if not earnest. And if he was really some secret mole like Lev and Flauros, he’d had plenty of opportunity to fuck us over in ways none of us could have come back from. He could have destroyed us with a single Grail from the very beginning, and there was nothing we could have done to stop him.

An insidious voice in the back of my head pointed out, But he seemed so certain that King Solomon couldn’t be the one responsible for all of this, didn’t he? Why is he so stubborn about that part?

“You sure your head’s screwed on right?” said Rika. “You think the Doc is the suspicious one?”

“Mm-mm, I, too, find your suspicions suspect,” Nero agreed. “Doctor Roman has his flaws, but he has been nothing if not a loyal and dedicated member of Chaldea!”

“He’s a good man,” Altera said softly.

“Do you have a reason for that?” Shirou asked, and if even he, who had never spoken to Romani directly, found reason to doubt Holmes, that was saying something.

“I will explain in due time,” Holmes promised. “For now, I would ask only that you keep it in mind. If you still believe me wrong once you have heard the causes of my suspicions, then that is your prerogative. For now, let us continue, shall we? The others await us ahead.”

It was unsatisfying to leave things there, but it wasn’t like we had any methods of forcing it out of him, so the only thing we could do was trade disbelieving looks as though silently asking each other whether we believed him and follow as he led on. If he never bothered to explain himself, then we could just write it off as nonsense.

But even if you do, it’ll still be here, nagging at you, that same voice whispered. Because it wasn’t wrong.

“The Doc?” Rika muttered, and she shook her head. “Crazy. Loony. He’s spent way too much time cooped up in here, it must’ve gone to his head. We’re gonna find a conspiracy board somewhere up ahead, I guarantee it.”

“I can’t believe it either,” Mash whispered.

Ritsuka shook his head, too. Quietly, he said, “Then don’t. Until he gives us a good reason, don’t trust it.”

Smart. If only it was as easy as saying it.

“Listen to Ritsuka,” I said lowly. “Even if Holmes is right that something’s wrong with Romani, that doesn’t mean Romani’s an enemy. There could be more going on than even Holmes knows about — he’s not omniscient. He just has a different angle on things than we do.”

That seemed to settle them, and whatever doubts had begun creeping up in their heads, they were carefully set aside. Not ignored, because I hadn’t said to ignore them, but tempered. Because whatever Holmes thought he knew and whatever he thought was suspicious about Romani, making judgments on that alone was stupid.

True to Holmes’ word, it was only another minute or so of walking before the tunnel ahead of us opened out, and then we left the tunnel entirely and came out —

“Whoa,” said Rika, awed. “Holy cow, what is this place?”

“The center of the Atlas Institute,” Mash said, “and yet — look, Senpai! Look!” She pointed up at the ceiling. “The sky! I can see the sky! And the ring of light, it isn’t there! That’s the real, true sky, even though we’re deep underground!”

“I see it, Mash,” Ritsuka replied faintly, following the direction of her finger.

— into a massive complex big enough to put Chaldea’s Rayshift Chamber to shame. In fact, probably the eeriest thing about it was how much it actually did resemble the Rayshift Chamber, the way the walls were all made up of those stepped, ribbed structures that seemed to jut inwards towards the center at random intervals for no apparent reason, all in that same cold, blue color, too. That was where the resemblance ended, however, because the ceiling opened up like a lens to reveal a clear, blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds floating aimlessly by, and the floor at the bottom was not cool tile hiding Klein Coffins, but pure, white sand cast in the blue of the sky and the walls.

And, of course, the central piece, too. That wasn’t CHALDEAS sitting at the center of the room. That was something else, a mismatched quintet of pillars etched with symbols that meant nothing to me, some stretching up nearly to the ceiling and some squatting lower to the sand.

“Incredible,” Bedivere breathed. “It is…absolutely enormous. And it even has an artificial sky!”

“Hm,” said Nero skeptically. “I am reminded of Chaldea. This room, it is very similar to the Rayshift Chamber!”

“I’m not surprised,” Holmes said. “Those obelisks in the center, those are Tri-Hermes, the Pseudo Spiritron Calculation Engine upon which Chaldea’s Trismegistus was based. What you see before you is a grand mystic code, a Photonic Crystal, or as the alchemists of Atlas know it, a Philosopher’s Stone.” As an aside, he clarified, “A different object from the one created by Mister Flamel, meant to serve a different purpose. Don’t let the name fool you. It shares none of the same functions.” 

“Done giving your tour, Holmes?”

My heart stopped. Nearby, almost everyone had jerked out of their reverie and their focus sharpened. Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash’s eyes all widened, everyone else turned to the new voice, and Okita let out a soft gasp.

Holmes, too, turned to the voice I couldn’t bring myself to look towards. A small, exasperated smile pulled at the edges of his lips. “Yes, I dare say that I am. Do forgive me for leaving you so long, but I believed it of paramount importance to greet the Chaldeans personally and guide them here myself. It saved everyone a great deal of time.”

“And it let you indulge your flair for melodrama,” the voice said.

“Master?” Okita said in a small, quiet voice.

Footsteps in the sand. The swish of fabric brushing against itself, something soft and coarse rather than elastic and stretched. 

“You,” Rika said, and she sounded like she couldn’t decide between shocked and angry. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The voice laughed. “Funny story, that. Last thing I remember was this really weird dream, and then there was this voice speaking to me, talking about a debt I owed and karma I needed to pay off — well, I told him where to shove it, since I didn’t do any of the things he said I owed him for. Guy like that, though, he doesn’t take no for an answer, apparently, so the next thing I knew, here I was, looking at Sherlock’s ugly mug, with a hitchhiker in the back of my head.”

It’s you, I thought. It’s really you, isn’t it?

My eyes burned. My throat felt tight. The footsteps came closer, then came to a stop.

“Well?” the voice said. “Are you planning on staring at that obelisk all day, or are you actually going to look me in the face after three damn years?”

I turned to face her. Somehow, the name made it out of my throat.

“Lisa.”

And there she was, familiar smile in place, twirling a bowler hat on one outstretched finger. In place of her costume, she was dressed like a Victorian era gentleman, with a white shirt, slacks and vest the color of charcoal, a red cravat tied around her neck, and a tan coat over top of it all. The only part of the whole ensemble that fit her was the purple scarf draped over her shoulders that dangled down to her hips.

“Hey, there,” she said cheekily. “Miss me?”

Every day. But I’d known, by the end, that there was no going back for me. The bullets, I’d expected. The mercy, Chaldea, survival, I had not. Either way, by the time I had enough of my mind back in order to understand what had happened to me and where I was, I’d known that I would never be able to see my friends again. The people who might have made what I’d lost worth it were forever beyond my reach.

Except they weren’t. I’d seen Aisha again. I’d seen them all again, if only as twisted, funhouse mirror versions. And now, after I’d already come to terms with the idea that those funhouse mirror versions were the only ones I would ever see again, here she was, not quite as I remembered her, but still the Lisa I’d left behind. The Lisa who had saved me back when I didn’t even realize how badly I needed saving.

And the only thing I could tell her now was, “I’m sorry.”

Her smile faded. What hid behind it was something hard and hot and ugly, a weight she must have been carrying around for the last three years.

“You’re sorry,” she said, voice trembling with barely contained fury. “After everything you — you’re sorry. You think that’s good enough? You think that makes up for it?”

I met her eyes. “No. But it’s all I have.”

Because at the end of the day, I couldn’t say I regretted it. I did what I had to, and the world — every world — was still here because of it.

“We thought you were dead,” she said, and it was all the more terrible for how flat and cold it came out. “We all thought — there was no fixing what you did to yourself. You saved the whole goddamn world and everyone in it, and the reward we thought you earned was a quiet death somewhere we couldn’t even bury you. Because you did the thing you always do, decided on your own what path to take, and went ahead and did it without giving anyone the chance to talk you out of it. I know I said I had your back then, but you really don’t get how much that hurt, do you?”

“I know.” Because I’d had little choice for two years except to think about it and wonder and worry. To miss the things and the people that I had left behind.

But I might as well have called her an idiot. Her eyes flashed, and whatever had been bubbling beneath, whatever she had been carrying since Gold Morning, came pouring out like venom.

“You don’t have the first goddamn clue,” she told me. “God — I didn’t even know how much of you was left, by the end, that’s the fucked up part. You went off, and I had to watch you lose more of yourself every minute, and the only fucking thing I could do was follow your lead, because at least it seemed to be working. And then you disappeared off to nobody knew where, and the last memory I had of you was that blank stare, because you didn’t even remember me at the end.”

A single pair of tears rolled down her cheeks; she didn’t seem to notice. “You probably wouldn’t have even recognized your own dad —”

The blow hit me like a hammer to the chest, and then Rika’s fist hit Lisa’s cheek with the same kind of force and Lisa went down as her hat went flying. She landed hard on the sand, legs twisting beneath her, although she managed to keep herself from going all the way down on her face.

“Not cool,” Rika said, her own voice shaking. “So not cool, Tattlecoil. I thought you might have learned your lesson after last time, but that was a super low blow.”

“You two aren’t much better,” Lisa said lowly. Carefully, she picked herself up, uncaring about the hat, and wiped her mouth with the back of one hand. A speck of red smeared across her skin. “Here you are, risking life and limb, trying to save the world, and for what? So that the jackasses in charge of everything can hang you all out to dry when this is all over instead of taking accountability for their own incompetence?”

Rika’s face twisted, but it was Ritsuka who took a step forward as though to place himself between them and said, “That’s enough.”

“Miss Livsey, please comport yourself properly,” Holmes scolded.

Lisa jabbed a finger at him, “You, shut up! You’re just a —”

Her head jerked back abruptly, and when it came back down, a mustache of all things had sprouted from above her upper lip, a thick, neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache. The voice that came out of her throat was deeper and distinctly masculine with a posh British accent, “My apologies, Holmes. I’m afraid I allowed her a little more free reign than perhaps was warranted.”

He — and it must have been a he, with a voice like that — took a few steps over and bent down to take up the hat that had dropped. As he brushed the sand off of it and placed it back upon Lisa’s head, Holmes said, “Think nothing of it, Watson. Regrettable as her words may be, they are driven by genuine emotion and deeply buried trauma. If they must come out, then better they come out in a controlled environment where time is not of the essence.”

Watson. That confirmed it. Another Pseudo-Servant. As if there was any other way Lisa could be here right now.

“Indeed,” Watson said dryly. “Now, Miss Wilbourn, as per the nature of our arrangement, I shall return control of your body to you. I would ask that you consider the circumstances and mind your manners a bit better.”

Lisa’s head jerked again, and then the mustache was gone.

“Guh,” she gasped. “Sonnuva…!”

“Um, excuse me,” said Mash. “Miss, um, Miss Wilbourn, right?”

Lisa twitched, and then the smile came back, blatantly fake. “That’s me. What’s up, Mashie?”

Mash flinched a little, but still asked, “Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but… How are you here? In this Singularity? You’re…a Pseudo-Servant, right?”

“That’s right.” The smile got broader, and she jabbed a thumb over at Holmes. “I’m what you guys call a chain summon. This guy showed up, so who else was gonna show up to follow him around but good, old Watson? Only Watson needed a bag of bones to haunt, and I got picked for some reason.”

“But you weren’t in London,” Emiya pointed out.

Lisa shrugged. “Don’t ask me how it works. I just know I’m here to keep an eye on him, that’s all.”

Keep an eye on him? For who? Why? Was that just a turn of phrase, or did she mean something else by it?

“Miss Wilbourn,” Holmes began with a note of warning.

Lisa waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, message received. I’ll be a good girl for now.”

“That ‘for now’ is doing a lot of work,” Emiya said dryly.

Lisa’s smile just got sharper.

“Have you finished?” another new voice asked, and we all jumped. Another woman appeared, manifesting out of nothingness to stand nearby. Statuesque, beautiful in an ethereal, otherworldly sort of way, dressed in shades of blue and gold with long, blonde hair.

“There was still the matter of our research to see to,” said Holmes, “but I do believe the rest of it could be said to have finished, yes.”

“Then allow me to make this simple,” said the woman in her melodic voice. She turned to us, but she looked right past me, Mash, the twins, and everyone else. “There is no need for you to confront the Lion King. There is no need for further fighting. There is no need to trouble yourselves with the Knights of the Round Table, only with the Sun King to the south. Sir Bedivere…”

She held out her arms, palms up, as though to receive a gift.

“All you need do is fulfill the task given to you so long ago…and return Excalibur to my keeping.”

You have no idea how frustrated I was when someone on the SV thread actually guessed that this was my plan for Lisa, kinda sorta. I did my best to deflect and downplay it, but they hit the nail on the head, at least in regards to the Heroic Spirit she would be sharing headspace with, and I couldn't believe it.

This is another long one. Having to rewrite Lisa's tirade and the things that happened around it made it longer. The original one was more one-sided, angrier, and had a lot more shouting involved, and I just didn't like it, even if I knew it had to happen, so the editor and I reworked it into this.

By the way, that bit of lore about the Philosopher's Stone in Renée? You have no idea how long I've been holding onto that. I wasn't sure it would ever actually make it into the story, but Holmes provided me an excellent opportunity to sneak it in, so here we go.

Lapis Philosophorum [Noble Phantasm]
The Third Great Work

The Third revealed the future.

The Philosopher’s Stone is considered the greatest work of alchemy, the pinnacle of the art pursued by those who practice it. Many have sought out its mysteries, hoping to acquire the boundless wealth and the endless life promised by the Stone and its use. Whether through avarice or altruism, the desire to possess the immortality granted by the Elixir of Life made from the Stone has enchanted both magi and mundane alchemists throughout the centuries.

Paracelsus von Hohenheim was one such man. He became so practiced in the art that he even managed to reproduce the Philosopher’s Stone and reached the point where he could create multiple. However — yes, these were certainly lesser stones. The Third Great Work of alchemy could not be so limited as merely providing eternal life or infinite wealth.

Surely, the Philosopher’s Stone originally crafted by Nicolas Flamel, the magnum opus of his study in the art of alchemy, must be capable of more than that. It cannot be something able to be replicated infinitely, it must be unique, a mystic code of such power and potency that there is a “one and only.” Then, if not merely eternal life and endless wealth, what could a true Philosopher’s Stone bestow upon a man that even its creator deemed it too dangerous to exist?

The Third revealed the future.