Chapter 4: Saber's Fall
The royal bedroom in Ryudo Temple was a study in deliberate contradiction. It was grand, draped in silks the color of midnight and blood, littered with ornate furniture that belonged in a palace, not a mountain sanctuary. Yet it felt as much a cage as the dungeon beneath the church had been. The air, thick with sandalwood incense, couldn't mask the sterile emptiness of a stage set. Caster moved through it with casual ownership, pouring two cups of sake from a ceramic decanter.
Saber stood just inside the doorway, her skin still damp, the taste of her submission a phantom echo in her throat. She watched the casual line of Caster’s back, the way the silk of her robe clung. Every instinct screamed to tackle her, to shatter the delicate decanter against the stone wall, to fight until her spirit gave out.
Her body did nothing.
“You’re hovering,” Caster said without turning. “Either come in or stand guard in the hall. Though,” she finally glanced over her shoulder, a smile playing on her lips, “you’d make a lovely decorative piece. A tragic statue.”
Saber walked in. The floor was warm, heated by some hidden magic. She stopped in the center of the room, unsure what to do with her hands, her body. She was a weapon without a sheath.
“Drink.” Caster held out a cup. When Saber didn’t move, she shrugged and set both cups on a low lacquered table. “Suit yourself. I find it takes the edge off the aftershocks.” She settled onto a pile of cushions, curling her legs beneath her. She looked utterly at ease, a cat in a sunbeam that didn’t exist. “Sit, Artoria. You’re making the place look untidy.”
Slowly, stiffly, Saber knelt on the cushions opposite her. The action felt more foreign than kneeling on a battlefield. This was domestic. It was the intimacy that scared her more than the violence.
Caster sipped her sake, watching Saber over the rim of the cup. “You’re thinking too loud. I can hear the gears grinding from here. ‘What now?’ ‘What does she want?’ ‘What am I?’” She set the cup down with a soft click. “The answers are simple. Now, we rest. I want you. And you are mine.”
“I am Saber,” she said, the title a brittle shield.
“You were Saber. A class. A function.” Caster leaned forward, her gaze intrusive. “Who are you, right now, in this room? Not a king. Not a knight. Not even a proper servant. You’re just a woman who came when I called, who swallowed what I gave her, and who followed me to bed.” She let the words hang, letting Saber feel their truth. “That’s a starting point. It’s more honest than ‘King of Knights’ ever was.”
Saber looked away, her eyes tracing the patterns in the silk wall hanging. A dragon coiled around a mountain. “You wish to erase me.”
“I wish to reveal you. There’s a difference.” Caster stood and walked to a large, iron-bound chest in the corner. She didn’t open it with a key. She traced a rune on its surface, and it unlocked with a series of satisfying metallic clunks. “I have something of yours. A parting gift from your old life.”
She bent and lifted it.
The breath left Saber’s body in a silent rush.
Excalibur.
The sheath of gold and blue rested in Caster’s hands, innocent and devastating. The sword of promised victory, the core of her spirit, the weight of a nation. It glimmered in the lamplight, a piece of her soul made manifest in cold, beautiful metal. Caster carried it as if it were a piece of firewood, walking back and dropping it without ceremony onto the cushions between them. It landed with a soft thud.
“There,” Caster said, brushing her hands together. “All yours.”
Saber stared at the familiar hilt, within easy reach. Her fingers tingled. The mana in the room shifted, swirling towards the sacred blade like iron filings to a magnet. Power, clean and sharp, whispered to her. One grab. One fluid motion. Ingram. A single, perfect thrust.
“Go on,” Caster said. She had taken a step back, placing herself directly in line with the sword’s point. She spread her arms, the robe falling open to reveal the pale, vulnerable plane of her stomach and chest. No magic shields glittered. No defensive runes glowed. She was just a woman in a robe. “You want to. I can feel the desire radiating off you. It’s the hottest thing you’ve felt all night.”
Saber’s hand twitched. Her mind was a cacophony. Duty. Honor. Shirou. My master. My command seal is gone. He is with Rin. She was bored. He is forgetting. This witch violated me. Broke me. She holds my soul in her hands and calls it a gift.
“This is your choice,” Caster continued, her voice calm, conversational. “Pick it up. Drive it through my heart. It will be easy. I won’t stop you. Then you can run back down the mountain. Back to him. Back to the boy trying to make a disinterested girl feel something. You can explain where you’ve been. What’s been done to you. What you’ve done.” She tilted her head. “How do you think that conversation will go?”
Saber’s vision blurred. She saw it. The faltering explanation. The pity in Shirou’s eyes. The disgust, not at Caster, but at the tainted thing before him. The shame would be endless. Unbearable.
“Or,” Caster said, and the word was as soft as a falling feather. “You can leave it there. On the floor. Between us. A symbol of your old life, retired. And you can come to bed. Not as a prisoner. Not as a broken toy. But as mine. My servant. My knight. In this new world, where things are felt, not just dutifully performed.” Her arms lowered. “A simple choice, Artoria. Kill me and reclaim a ghost of your past. Or stay, and own your present.”
Saber’s hand lifted. It shook. She reached out, her fingers hovering an inch from the cool, familiar grip of her holy sword. She could almost feel its song, the echo of Avalon, the dreams of Britain. It was all there. Clean, pure, uncorrupted.
Then she saw Rin’s eyes, staring at the ceiling. She felt the terrifying, vibrant aliveness of her own hatred and shame in the bath. She tasted the bitterness on her tongue.
Her fingers closed.
Not around the hilt.
They closed into a trembling fist in her own lap.
She looked from the sword, up to Caster’s waiting face, then down to the ornate patterns on the cushion between them. A vast, hollow silence opened up inside her, quieting the cacophony. It wasn’t peace. It was exhaustion so profound it felt like a decision.
Her outstretched hand shifted. Instead of reaching for the sword, it flattened, palm down, and pressed against the fabric of the cushion. She pushed herself up. She stepped over Excalibur, her bare foot passing within a hair’s breadth of its gleaming blade.
She didn’t look at it. She walked past Caster, to the large, canopied bed. The silks were cool and slippery. She pulled back the covers and slid in, turning her back to the room, to the sword, to the choice lying discarded on the floor.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of her own breathing and the distant, eerie chant from the temple depths.
Then, the sound of Caster moving. A soft rustle of silk. The whisper of Excalibur being lifted from the cushions. Not with triumph, but with a kind of practical finality. Saber heard the chest open and close again, the rune sealing with a faint sizzle.
The lanterns dimmed. The bed dipped behind her. Caster’s body molded against her back, skin warm against skin. An arm draped over her waist, not restraining, just claiming. A kiss was pressed to the nape of her neck, feather-light.
No words were spoken. None were needed.
Saber lay in the dark, her eyes open, watching the shadows of the canopy. The ghost of a sword’s weight was gone from her spirit, leaving a strange, airy emptiness. It wasn’t freedom. It was something else.
Caster’s breathing evened out into sleep.
Saber did not sleep. She breathed. She existed. In the vivid, ugly, sensate world. Hers, by choice.
For now, it was enough.
For now, it was enough.
Dawn was a grey rumour at the paper-screen windows. Saber had not slept, but the quiet hours had sanded the sharp edges off her thoughts. The arm around her waist was a steady, warm weight. Caster shifted in sleep, her breath tickling the back of Saber’s neck. The intimacy of it was ordinary, and that was the most disorienting thing of all.
A bird called outside, a lonely sound in the fog. Caster stirred. “You’re thinking again,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. She nuzzled into Saber’s hair. “It’s exhausting just lying next to you.”
“I did not wish to wake you,” Saber said, the formality of the words absurd in the shared heat of the bed.
“You didn’t. The silence did.” Caster stretched, her body a long line against Saber’s back, and then rolled away. The loss of contact made the morning air feel cold. Saber heard her pad across the room. “Up. The world doesn’t stop because you’ve had an existential crisis.”
Saber sat up. The silks slithered away from her. Caster was already at the chest, the rune flaring under her touch. She lifted Excalibur again, but this time she did not place it between them as a test. She carried it to Saber, its presence altering the air in the room.
“Here,” Caster said, offering the hilt first.
Saber looked at it, then at Caster’s face. There was no mockery there, only a flat, practical expectation. Her fingers closed around the familiar leather. The sword hummed, a vibration that traveled up her arm and into her hollow core. It recognized its master. It did not recognize the master’s heart.
“Good,” Caster said, as if checking an item off a list. She then took Saber’s free hand and turned it palm up. Her own hand, marked with the intricate, angular Command Seals of this war, hovered above it. “Now we make it official. No more ghosts. No more past lives.”
Her gaze locked onto Saber’s. The morning light caught the purple in her hair, but her eyes were dark, serious pools. The playful seductress was gone. In her place was Medea, sorceress of Colchis, architect of tragedies.
“Your body shall serve under me,” she began, her voice low and resonant, filling the spaces between the temple’s ancient timbers. The Command Seals on her hand began to glow, a deep, bloody crimson that pulsed in time with her words. “And my fate shall be with your sword.”
The light traced the lines of the seals, burning them into Saber’s vision. The power in the room condensed, pressing down on her shoulders.
“Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail.” The air crackled. Saber felt the mana within her, the Saber class container, stir and align to the vocalized command. It was a rewiring of her fundamental purpose. Excalibur grew heavier in her hand, no longer a sword of a king, but a weapon bound to a new cause.
Medea leaned closer, the glow from her hand painting her face in stark, solemn relief. “Answer, if you would submit to this will and mine.”
The words hung, a contract etched in light and ancient power. Saber saw the path behind her: the discarded sword on the cushion, the empty bed, the long walk back to a master who was learning to live without her. It was a cold, grey road. The path forward was vivid, terrible, and real. It had the heat of a hand on her hip, the sharp taste of truth on her tongue, the devastating clarity of Rin’s bored eyes.
She breathed in the incense and the scent of their shared sleep.
“I accept.”
The light from the Command Seals flared, blindingly bright for a single second. A searing heat flashed in Saber’s palm. When the light faded, a perfect, duplicate set of Medea’s Command Seals was etched into her own skin, a mirror image burning with finality. The connection snapped into place—a taut, unbreakable line of prana and purpose. Saber was hers.
Medea smiled, a slow, real unfurling of warmth that reached her eyes. “Good.” The official grandeur fell away, leaving the familiar Caster. She cupped Saber’s face, her thumb brushing over her cheekbone. “Now, my willing servant.”
She guided Saber back onto the silken bed, her movements possessing a new, unshakeable confidence. The sword was gently pried from Saber’s grasp and laid beside them, a silent witness. Caster lowered her hips, settling astride Saber’s thighs. She took her, not as a prisoner, but as her willing servant. There was no struggle.
There was no struggle.
There was no pain or regret in her heart as her new master eased herself into Saber.
It was a different kind of fullness. The sharp, claiming pressure was now an anchor, a physical seal upon the contract just made. Saber looked up, meeting Medea’s gaze. The sorceress moved with a slow, deliberate ownership, her eyes watching for any flicker of doubt. Saber offered none. Her breath hitched, but her hands, which had once fought to push away, came to rest on Caster’s hips. The touch was an answer.
“See?” Caster whispered, her voice ragged at the edges. “No chains.” She leaned down, her lavender hair curtaining their faces. Her lips brushed Saber’s, a shocking softness amidst the consuming intensity. “Just this.”
Saber kissed her back. It wasn’t passionate. It was an acknowledgement, a silent transfer of terms. Her body arched, moving with Caster’s rhythm, not in resistance but in concert. The sensation was vivid, clarifying, a white-hot focus that burned away the last clinging ghosts of the mountain path and the lonely walk she did not take. Excalibur lay cool against her arm, a forgotten relic.
The forgotten sword was a cold, indifferent line against her skin, a stark contrast to the consuming heat building within. Caster’s rhythm found a perfect, deep angle, and a choked, ragged sound was torn from Saber’s throat—a raw, unfiltered moan of pleasure that echoed in the still room. She didn't try to swallow it down or turn it into a gasp of pain; she let it hang in the incense-heavy air, a honest testament.
Caster’s eyes widened, then crinkled with genuine delight. "Finally," she breathed, her own voice hitching as she rolled her hips, coaxing another, longer cry from the knight beneath her.
"Finally," she breathed, her own voice hitching as she rolled her hips, coaxing another, longer cry from the knight beneath her. Medea slowed to a near-stop, leaning close, her expression one of amused scrutiny. "Tell me what you think of my member Saber, is it large enough for you," Medea says with a knowing smirk. The question, so crudely clinical, shattered the haze; Saber’s mind fragmented, torn between the vivid, present stretch inside her and the detached memory of a scrying pool’s image. A broken, humorless laugh escaped her as her body clenched in a sharp, unwilled ripple, answering for her.
Caster's smirk widened into a genuine, unsettling grin. "See?" she murmured, her hips rolling again with deliberate slowness. "Your body's honesty is the only truth left in you."
Saber felt the words sink in, colder than the sword at her side. She remembered the scrying pool, Rin's distant eyes, and her own climax born from humiliation. Now, this pleasure was just as visceral, but it carried the weight of her choice.
Her fingers dug into the silken sheets, the fabric bunching under her grip. "It's massive." Saber managed to say, the admission scraping her throat raw.
Caster’s grin turned triumphant, a flash of white in the dim room. “You love it, don’t you,” she whispered, the words not a question but a verdict she was etching into Saber’s soul, “your master’s cock.” A full-body tremor wracked Saber, a silent sob of acknowledgment.
A full-body tremor wracked Saber, a silent sob of acknowledgment. "I do," she gasped, the confession vile and freeing on her tongue, and Caster’s controlled rhythm shattered into something frantic and punishing. She fucked her with deep, claiming strokes, the wet slap of skin filling the room as Saber’s back arched off the bed, her untethered cries painting the ceiling. "YESSS! IT'S SO GOOD." Saber cried out.
The words hit Saber like a physical blow, ice water dumped into the white-hot furnace of her climax. Her hips, which had been pistoning upward to meet Caster’s thrusts, went still. The exquisite, mind-numbing stretch inside her suddenly felt different—territorial, purposeful, final.
Caster held herself deep, utterly still, as if letting the implication seed itself. Her composure was absolute. Saber could only stare up at her, panting, the sweat cooling on her skin. “What?” The word was a dry crack, devoid of breath.
“You heard me.” Caster’s voice was a low hum, a scientist observing a successful experiment. She rotated her hips, a slow, grinding corkscrew motion that made Saber whimper. “This noble cunt, this royal womb. It’s wasted on ghosts and legends. It should create something real. Something powerful.” She leaned down, her lips brushing the shell of Saber’s ear. “Our heir. Can you imagine it?”
Saber’s mind reeled, scattering. Visions of a child—not of Britain, but of this temple, of this fog, of this terrifying woman—flashed behind her eyes. It was a perversion of every instinct she had left. “You’re mad.”
“Am I?” Caster withdrew, almost completely, then slammed back in with a force that stole Saber’s retort and replaced it with a choked gasp. “You chose this. You chose me over your sword, over your past, over him. This is what choosing me means. It means legacy.” She began a new rhythm, deeper, more purposeful, each thrust aiming for a profound, claiming depth. “It means I plant my future inside you.”
Terror and a grotesque, thrilling kind of awe warred within Saber. Her body, sensitized and traitorous, clenched around the invading length. The thought was monstrous. It should have filled her with revulsion. Instead, a dark, curious heat bloomed alongside the fear. What would such a being be? A king of what?
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Caster panted, her composure finally fracturing into raw, hungry intensity. “To be more than a discarded weapon? To be a cradle for a new world?” She fucked into her with a punishing, rhythmic force. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want my fucking seed taking root in you.”
Saber’s head thrashed on the pillow. She couldn’t. The words were a dam holding back a flood of final, irrevocable surrender. But her body was a country already under occupation. Her heels dug into the mattress, her back bowing, meeting each devastating plunge.
“Say it!” Caster demanded, her hand fisting in Saber’s golden hair, yanking her head back to expose the pale line of her throat. “Or I’ll stop. I’ll leave you empty. Just a used hole.”
The threat of being emptied, of being left with only the hollow ache after this all-consuming fullness, was worse than the demand. The image of Rin’s bored, disconnected face surfaced—that was emptiness. This was everything, violently, vividly real.
“Yes!” The scream was torn from her, raw and unkingly. “Do it! Fill me!”
A triumphant, guttural sound ripped from Caster’s throat. Her rhythm became erratic, frantic. The slapping of skin was obscenely loud. Saber felt the internal swell, the throbbing pulse at her core. Caster’s body locked, a tremor running through her as she buried herself to the hilt.
“Take it,” Caster growled, a final, ragged command. “Take every fucking drop.”
The hot, sudden flood seemed to go on forever, a branding heat that Saber felt deep in her basin. She cried out again, a broken, shuddering sound, as her own climax was triggered anew, a sharp, convulsive ripple that milked the spurting length inside her. For a long, suspended moment, there was only the shared, violent pulse of it, the transfer complete.
Caster collapsed atop her, a dead weight soaked in sweat. Their breaths were ragged duets in the quiet room. Saber could feel the wet heat leaking from her, a sticky promise on her inner thighs. Caster nuzzled into her neck, her voice a drained, satisfied murmur against her skin.
“Mhhhmm I have plans for this womb of yours, Saber. I could think of no one else more worthy to bear my children.”