Chapter 14: The Prisoner, the Saint, and the Pragmatist
The dungeon of the Fortress of Millennia was as cold and damp as you'd expect. Moisture beaded on the rough-hewn stone walls. The air smelled of mildew, rust, and something faintly metallic. Jeanne moved silently, her footsteps the only sound besides the distant drip of water.
Then she saw him.
Astolfo was pinned to the wall like a macabre piece of art. Thick, black iron spikes, forged more for utility than cruelty, had been driven clean through the palms of his hands and the tops of his feet, embedding deep into the stone behind him. Blood, dark and already beginning to crust, traced slow paths down his pale skin, dripping with a soft plink… plink… onto the straw-strewn floor. His head was bowed, his usually vibrant pink hair matted with grime and sweat.
Jeanne stopped. The sight stole her breath, not with horror at the violence—she had seen worse on the battlefield—but with a cold, sinking feeling at its purpose. This wasn't punishment; it was a statement. A crude, physical reminder of his place.
"Mmh… this feeling…" Astolfo's voice was rough but strangely clear. He slowly lifted his head. A bruise was forming on his cheek, but his mismatched eyes held their usual, unsettling clarity. "Ah. It's you, Ruler."
"Did you…" Jeanne began, her voice barely above a whisper. "Did you not consider you might end up like this?"
"Consequences?" Astolfo tilted his head as much as the spikes allowed. A bright, painful-looking smile spread across his face. "Are you supposed to slap away the hands of people begging you to save them just because there might be consequences? That kid… he asked me for help. He reached out. So I reached back. That's all."
His expression faltered, the smile crumbling into something genuine and devastated. "I'm just… too weak. I couldn't even keep that one promise. Couldn't even let one kid live."
"This isn't your failure," Jeanne said, shaking her head. "The circumstances—"
"Hey… Ruler?" Astolfo cut her off, his voice dropping to a serious, pleading tone she hadn't heard from him before. "Can I ask you for a favor? Please… save him. That kid. He was just born. The first thing he learned after being born was that he was going to die. That's too cruel, don't you think? He doesn't even know who he is yet. So… please."
"I…" Jeanne's mouth felt dry. "I cannot interfere with the internal affairs of the Black Faction."
"But that kid isn't 'the Black Faction'!" Astolfo strained against the spikes, fresh blood welling around the wounds as he pulled. "He's got a soul! I saw it in his eyes! He's a person, not a tool!"
Jeanne stared at the blood dripping faster onto the straw. She thought of the homunculus's whispered plea. Help me. She thought of the clinical way Avicebron had carried him off. She thought of her own duty, a rigid set of rules handed down by a faceless system.
She took a slow, deep breath. Then she nodded, once, firmly. "I understand. If that child possesses his own will, then he exists outside the strict purview of the war's participants. I will see what can be done."
"Really? That's… that's great…" Astolfo sagged against his restraints, a genuine relief washing over his pained features. "He's probably in Caster's workshop. It's deeper in, smells like oil and ozone."
"I will find him." With another nod, Jeanne turned and left the dungeon, her resolve hardening with each step down the torch-lit corridor.
---
Am I doing the right thing?
The question hammered in Jeanne's skull as she stood before the heavy, riveted door to Avicebron's workshop. Her hand was raised, frozen inches from the cold metal. The scent of hot metal, alchemical solvents, and something oddly organic wafted from the seams.
She was the Ruler. She was summoned for one reason: to ensure the Holy Grail War proceeded according to its established, albeit brutal, framework. Everything else was noise. But the memory of those brown eyes, wide with terror and a will to live, wouldn't fade. Combined with Astolfo's bleeding, earnest plea, it had cracked the foundation of her detached professionalism.
She was wavering.
"Are you really going to do that?"
The voice, calm and familiar, made Jeanne jump nearly a foot in the air. She whirled around, a flush of embarrassment heating her cheeks.
"Cyd! You're supposed to be…" she stammered, gesturing vaguely down the hall.
"Having a heartwarming reunion with my old teacher?" Cyd finished, leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed. A faint, knowing smile played on his lips. "Seems less pressing than this. Let's see… you talk to the chained-up idealist, then come straight to the craftsman's door. What's the plan, Saint? Liberation?"
"I want to save that child," Jeanne stated, lifting her chin to meet his gaze. Her blue eyes were clear, unwavering, and utterly transparent. "He is a non-combatant. An innocent."
"Even though he was created here? By them?" Cyd tilted his head. "His origin is this war."
"He has a soul," Jeanne insisted, her voice gaining strength. "That makes him more than his origin."
WHAM!
Cyd's right hand shot out and slammed into the wall just beside Jeanne's head, the impact echoing dully in the stone corridor. He didn't touch her, but the sudden violence of the motion made her flinch. "A soul?" he asked, his voice dropping, losing its casual edge. "Okay. Can you just take his soul, then? Extract it? Carry it out of here in a little jar?"
Jeanne's eyes widened in horror. "Just his… that would be…" That would be killing him!
"Jeanne," Cyd said, his face now inches from hers. His eyes, usually so light and easygoing, were deep and unreadable. "You and I are Rulers. We gave up the right to 'save' individuals the moment we were stamped with this class. Our purpose is the integrity of the contest. If you want to break the rules and interfere with the Black faction's property…"
He leaned closer. His voice was a low, serious hum. "Then give me all your Command Spells. Every last one. A referee who can't maintain impartiality has no business holding the whistle."
Jeanne stiffened, her back pressed against the cold door. She met his intense stare, her own expression hardening with defiance and confusion.
"Ahem."
A cough sounded from behind Cyd. Gordolf Musik stood there, holding a leather-bound toolkit, his expression caught between annoyance and profound awkwardness.
"Is this… how Rulers normally communicate?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because it's blocking the hallway."
"Ah! N-no, we were just—" Jeanne's face turned scarlet. She tried to sidestep away from Cyd and the door, but Cyd's left hand moved faster. It shot out, grabbed her right wrist, and pinned it firmly against the wall next to her head, effectively caging her in.
"Answer the question," Cyd said to Jeanne, not taking his eyes off hers. His tone left no room for evasion.
"Now is not the time for this!" Jeanne hissed, trying to shrink away.
"Actually, it's the perfect time." Cyd threw an apologetic glance over his shoulder at Gordolf. "One moment, please. Critical arbitration in progress." He turned his full attention back to Jeanne, his face so close she could see the faint, ancient scars around his eyes. "Choose. Your duty. Or that homunculus's life."
"How can you ask me to choose something like that?!" Jeanne's voice broke. The pressure was immense—the physical confinement, the moral dilemma, Cyd's relentless logic.
"You can't," Cyd sighed, the tension seeming to leave his shoulders all at once. He finally released her wrist and stepped back, running a hand through his white hair. He looked at her not with anger, but with a weary kind of pity.
The girl before him was like a clear spring in a poisoned forest. Beautiful, pure, and utterly unsuited to this environment. The Holy Grail War was the muddiest, most selfish pit the world of magic could produce. Every noble wish was backed by a mountain of corpses and moral compromise.
Jeanne was too rigid. She clung to a baseline humanity that didn't exist here. There were no true "rules" in a Grail War beyond the Concealment of Mystery. Murder, sacrifice, betrayal—all were permissible tools. Magi had a different moral compass, one twisted by generations of seeking power at any cost.
An anomaly? In a Grail War, everything was an anomaly. That was the point.
"You shouldn't have been summoned for this," Cyd said, his voice flat and final. The words hit Jeanne like a physical blow. "You aren't cut out for the Ruler class. You can't deliver the kind of 'fairness' this ugly game demands—the cold, impartial fairness that lets monsters fight on equal footing."
The brutal, unvarnished denial shattered something in Jeanne. Her legs gave out, and she slid down the door to sit hard on the cold stone floor, her flag clattering beside her.
"Uh…" Gordolf pointed at the workshop door, his patience visibly thinning.
"Right. Sorry," Cyd muttered. He reached down, grabbed the back of Jeanne's armored collar, and unceremoniously hauled her a few feet down the corridor, depositing her like a sack of potatoes.
"Er… thanks," Gordolf said, his lip twitching. He shoved the heavy door open and strode into the workshop, the smell of chemicals and hot metal pouring out.
Siegfried, who had been standing like a silent statue a few paces away, offered Cyd and the dazed Jeanne a brief, polite nod before following his Master inside. The door swung shut with a resonant thud.
"Look…" Cyd knelt in front of Jeanne, his expression softening from its earlier severity. He reached out and patted her head, a strangely gentle gesture. "I'm not saying your desire to save him is wrong. It's the most human thing in this whole damned castle. But you and Astolfo are different."
"But… the child…" Jeanne whispered, staring at the floor.
"C'mon, Jeanne. You died," Cyd said, his voice quiet but firm. "The Maiden of Orléans burned to ashes on a pyre of betrayal. What's here is a Servant, a ghost with a job. If you want to play the saint again, you have to understand that sometimes—"
KABOOM!
The reinforced workshop door didn't just open. It exploded inward, shredded into a cloud of splinters and twisted metal. A robed figure—Avicebron—shot out of the opening like a cannonball, smashing into the far wall of the corridor with a sickening crunch of stone and what might have been ceramic. He slid to the floor in a heap, his featureless mask cracked.
"Teacher!" A shrill cry followed. Roche, Avicebron's young Master, scrambled out of the smoke-filled doorway, rushing to the fallen Caster's side. He then whirled toward the opening, his face contorted with rage. "What is the meaning of this?!"
The smoke was cleaved in two by a single, vertical slash.
Siegfried stood in the doorway, the majestic blade Balmung held low at his side. His expression was impassive, but his blue eyes were cold. Behind him, inside the workshop, Gordolf could be seen leaning over a workbench, casually poking at the limp form of the silver-haired homunculus.
"Meaning?" Gordolf called out without looking up. He let the homunculus's lifeless arm drop back onto the table with a dull thump. "You asked me to come 'debug' him, didn't you? Well, I'm debugging. The diagnosis is terminal. He's dead."
"He was alive! He had but a spark left!" Avicebron pushed himself up, his hollow voice distorted and furious through the cracked mask. A deep, obsessive passion vibrated in it now. "I called you because you know homunculi! You understand their construction! I thought you could stabilize the core!"
"Yeah, well. Too late. He's gone." Gordolf straightened up and shrugged, a callous gesture. "Tragic."
"You… wretch!" Avicebron hissed. He raised a trembling hand. From within the smoky workshop, the shapes of half-constructed golems, their clay bodies still soft, lurched to life and shambled toward the doorway with hostile intent.
"Stand down," Siegfried said. He didn't even use Balmung's power. He simply stepped forward and swung the massive sword in a wide, horizontal arc. The golems, barely formed, offered no resistance. They were shattered into chunks of wet clay and mystic cords, splattering against the walls.
"Caster's having a tantrum, Saber. Calm him down," Gordolf ordered, yawning theatrically.
"Understood." In a blur of motion, Siegfried was past the debris. Before Avicebron could react, the dragon-slayer's hand was on his robed shoulder, driving him down with irresistible force. The Caster's body cratered the stone floor, pinning him there.
"Get off my teacher, you brute!" Roche screamed, launching himself at Siegfried with fists clenched.
He met the same fate, pressed into the floor next to his groaning Servant.
"Don't get so upset," Gordolf said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. He hoisted the homunculus's body over his shoulder like a sack of grain. "He's dead, but the hardware's mostly intact. I'll take him back to my lab, see if I can reverse-engineer the interesting bits. You're welcome to complain to the King. I didn't touch him until he was already a corpse. Your shoddy craftsmanship killed him, not me."
"Damn you…!" Avicebron's voice was a raw scrape of hatred and despair. His life's work, his Noble Phantasm, his very purpose—the perfect golem, the Adam—had just seen its potential vessel destroyed before his eyes.
"Ha! You want a core so badly?" Gordolf sneered, walking past the pinned duo. "Why don't you volunteer to be the furnace yourself?"
He strode out of the wrecked doorway into the corridor. And stopped. His smug façade faltered as he found himself face-to-face with Cyd and Jeanne, who had both witnessed the entire exchange. Two pairs of eyes—one stormy blue, one pale grey—stared at him with unnerving intensity.
He flushed. "Cough! What are you looking at?!"
With a final, unconvincing bluster, Gordolf tightened his grip on the homunculus and hurried down the corridor, disappearing around a corner with the haste of a guilty man.
A moment later, Siegfried released Avicebron and Roche, gave Cyd another brief nod, and dissolved into spiritrons.
In the sudden quiet, broken only by Avicebron's ragged breathing and Roche's muffled sobs, Jeanne slowly got to her feet. She looked at the two devastated magi, then at Cyd, her expression a turmoil of grief and helplessness.
"Should we… help them?" she asked quietly, pulling on Cyd's sleeve.
"This is their internal strife. We can't interfere," Cyd said, his voice flat. He took her arm and began leading her firmly away from the scene. "Besides," he added, a note of grim irony returning to his tone, "I think we just saw exactly what 'helping' looks like in this place. Let's pretend we were never here."
But Cyd did spare a glance back to the body on the table and smiled a bit.