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The flakes fell around the child as she knelt in the snow. Her face was innocent, her clothes cute; it seemed natural that at any minute she would dive into a pile and spray it all about, laughing and playing. Eventually she might feel the chill, but at home there would surely be a warm fire and hot drinks. A perfect day for any girl lucky enough to experience it.
But her childish appearance was false, for this was Ilyasviel von Einzbern, one of the greatest works of the Einzbern crafters. And she was crying. Frozen crystals melted on her cheeks and mingled with the tears, until icy streams ran down her face.
“We saw this together once, didn't we Shirō? Didn't we?”
She was forgetting it all, memories falling apart like snow in the summer heat. Not just of her lover's single visit to the Einzbern home, but of everything they'd done together, all their time together, all their joy and laughter. Even the memories of their love itself were starting to feel like some far-off illusion, seen through the haze of a midday sun. An artificial creation, her life-force was weak, keeping her alive barely a year past the madness that had been the Fifth Holy Grail War. As her time ran out, her body was breaking down: her limbs were weakening, and her mind was failing. He hadn't cared, though, only given her yet more love and seen to everything she needed. She adored him even more for that, for not turning to someone else – anyone else! - who could have been a partner to him instead of a burden.
However, even if Shirō hadn't cared, the old man Acht did. A small army of homunculi been sent to retrieve the Grail vessel for study before it became utterly lost. Shirō had been ambushed a mile or two away from their little German cottage (hadn't he? Were those numbers hers or another illusion of her dying mind?) Fifty combat models had been lost to his blades, but their greatest failure was not that a single human could inflict such destruction on them before he died with the last unsealing of his grafted arm – it was that he had kept Ilya from their hands. A miracle of some artifact he had seen in a far-off time and place. (Not him, but him, a transferred memory, whispers falling through an unknowable bond, whispers of which she had only ever heard the slightest trace).
It had hurt, to be wrenched through space, dropped twenty miles away from their house. It had hurt to cross the kilometres of fields and tracks from where she had landed to the Einzbern forest. Then it had hurt far more to crawl through the forest, barely evading the homunculus guards and the few wild wolves who had survived the last winter's slaughter, her legs no longer capable of supporting even her wasted frame. Even so … even so, she had some strength for this. If Acht wanted the Grail vessel, wanted to ready himself for another great War, she would show him the meaning of his wish.
And now the fire rose up in her circuits again, and the pain surged through her, and her body screamed and her mind shattered still more. But her voice had recovered from its earlier sorrow, and winter's chill echoed in it.
“ … Thou art Seven Heavens clad in the Three Great Words.
Emerge from the ring of control, guardian of balance! Come forth, Herakles!”
She had hoped. That hope had been so slim, so thread-bare, for her circle was made only in snow, and fresh flakes had already filled in parts; she had stumbled over the words and thought she might have missed a verse (forgotten, floating from her mind into the winter sky); and she had no artifact, nothing but his name and the bond they had shared for so short a time, that matter of months.
But that hope was fulfilled. The circle blazed and a giant form took shape in the middle of it.
“Servant Archer, I have ...” The demi-god quickly broke off his rumbled response to the ritual, a single step bringing him to Ilya's side as she lay in the snow, writhing with pain. “My old Master. Oh, child ...”
“No, Herakles,” she gasped out. “This is not something you can protect me from. Just one request … please.” Another pause, as she gathered more thoughts together and called on whatever reserves she had, whatever mana remained in the forest, whatever prana the shattered remains of the Grail system could grant, all so she could have her last wish fulfilled.
“Avenge us.”