FATE\Deus Decipit

Epilogue: For Every Ending, a Beginning

9:30am, Four days after the Ichor Chalice was claimed, Heping's hotel room

Steam filled the bathroom floor-to-ceiling. Heping had never taken a hot shower before the war began. Cold showers were all she had ever known: first because it was all she had, and then continuing the practice out of habit even as other options became available. It was Pigsy, in all his hedonism, who had introduced her to the concept. At first, she hadn't exactly seen the appeal, but as injuries piled on injuries, all made worse by the stiffness and weakness of being bedridden, the feeling of the hot water massaging her aching muscles and bones had become a source of great comfort. It had almost become her new normal. She worried that she might not be able to go back.

'Go back'? That turn of phrase struck a certain cord with her. No, she couldn't go back. There was no undoing what had been done.

Shenghuo, her brother and the Master of Archer, was dead. Monika, the young woman who had been tending to her over the last few days, had confirmed as much. Apparently, she had investigated the aftermath of the battle that night and found his body. Circumstantial evidence suggested that Saber had been responsible, but, weighing what was known, and with the two young women both acting as character witnesses, it became clear that he had been murdered by his own Servant. The deduction was easy enough. Despite the evil her brother had done to her and others, despite the aching in her scars whenever she remembered that night, the fact that he had died in such a way still managed to inspire a stab of pity in her heart. Whatever the case may have been, he was still her brother. She wasn't so heartless that she could ignore that, even if he had been.

Aaron Sylphus, the Master of Rider, was dead. His death was one of the pieces of evidence that indicted Archer, as he had died in much the same way Shenghuo had: a clean cut to the neck, though, for Aaron, this merited a full separation of skull and spine. The memories were vague now, but she knew, and Monika's testimony affirmed, that he had helped in rescuing her that fateful night. Whatever had happened in the final battle, he had certainly gone down fighting. Apparently, also according to Monika, who had been assisting in the Clocktower Mage's Association's investigation of the Grail War, he had no living relatives or next of kin. As a result, all his belongings would be assumed by the Clocktower. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. He was a contradictory man, and the memory of him brought about conflicting feelings in her. For her own sanity, she chose to ignore them. If any emotion prevailed over the rest, it was pity. He had no one to inherit him; nobody at all. She wondered if he was ever lonely. She knew that she had been lonely even when others were around; it must have been impossibly worse when there was genuinely and truly no one at all.

Yanni Iole, the Master of Berserker, was technically missing, but was presumed dead. He apparently wasn't a mage; he simply possessed connections to some mages. He was, it would seem, an unremarkable man. The investigation into him and his life ended soon after it began. There just wasn't anything worth mentioning. Even his greatest achievement, summoning a Divine Spirit capable of conquering the whole Earth, had evaporated into nothing, with no real sign that it had ever occurred. His life, his death, had truly been a waste.

The Master of Assassin had disappeared without a trace. In fact, no one seemed to have any memory of meeting her. It was as if she were a ghost, and maybe she was. The investigation into her had to be abandoned because there was simply nothing to investigate. She left no trace of her existence.

Then there was the Master of Caster, Aisha Alghul, who had been one of the war's architects. Her end seemed the most deserved, and yet also the most troubling. Her body had been found, broken and bent, in her own basement, surrounded by innumerable others, all dead or in a vegetative state. Her face, Monika had told her with much trepidation, was locked into an inhuman smile, so wide that it seemed like her mouth was nearly being torn apart. She, too, had undoubtedly been betrayed by her Servant, and, given her Servant's penchant for trickery, there was a chance that she was actually the first one to die. She could have been deceased for the whole war, and no one would have known. Her death seemed both prolonged and painful, which was perhaps fitting for a necromancer. Apparently her body, after being examined by a coroner, had been sold, bought out by some other big-wig in the art of the undead. God only knew what sort of horrors she would be subjected to. For Aisha, the shame and dishonor of her demise would last long after her own death. Then again, she wondered how a necromancer would feel at the thought of her own end. Was the mark of a necromancer an apathy towards death, and a disrespect for the dead? Or was it the fear of death? The desire to remove death's sting at all cost? Perhaps the thing a necromancer feared most was becoming subject to another mage's spell.