When you finally reach your mansion once more and find that Touko has yet to arrive, with your teacher not yet back in Fuyuki you allow yourself to begin to put into play your plans for the rest of the afternoon. First up however, your connection to Caster and Assassin. You could strengthen Illya's bond to Avenger, and doing so for your own Servants may just allow them to realize that you aren't going to give up on them. You begin to draw on your magical energy and focus on the connection you have with Caster as well as Assassin. While the link doesn't seem to be under any sort of threat of being broken like Avenger's own was, you still feel satisfied with your work in reinforcing the invisible bonds connecting you and your Servants. For just a moment, you think you can even hear Medea calling out "Master" and a great sadness wells up in you. You don't know if that was the real thing or just some auditory hallucination being brought about through your stress.

---

You gently take hold of Sakura's arm and find yourself unable to even start the process of reinforcing her connection to Rider! Could this be a result of imposing a concept onto Sakura's inner world? Is she incapable of being affected even by beneficial magic she wants to be affected by?! As incredible as this development is, it's something of an issue. Strangely though, her command spells haven't been touched as a result of the change to the nature of her magic... You briefly wonder if it might be possible to send the concept of nullification through a command spell in order to not only free Rider from her imprisonment, but also get her back! Though for that to be possible, Sakura is going to need to keep practicing with her newfound abilities, until she at least gets the ability to disable her passive immunity to all things magical, you're not confident in something like that being safe for Rider's continued... existence.

Part 14