Was She Going to Die?

Ishtar and Luviagelita fell too.

Neither of them had ever dreamed that beneath the temple lay a vast emptiness.

As they plummeted, both braced themselves for a fall into the endless void.

But a thin membrane enveloped them, and they began to rise slowly.

Once they reached the ground, the membrane vanished. Both women gasped for breath, shaken by how close they had come.

Luviagelita asked, "Rin Tohsaka, what happened? What was that void?"

Rin Tohsaka replied, "I don't know either. But if we'd fallen into it, we definitely wouldn't have come back."

The other students from the El-Melloi Classroom rushed over to help. Now that the temple was destroyed, had the Trinity's invincibility finally been broken?

Everyone looked up. The temple was gone, but Ishtar was still fighting that Assassin in the sky, showing no sign that anything had changed.

Rin Tohsaka said, "How is that possible? Why hasn't it affected her at all? Unless—damn it, we've been played."

Luviagelita asked, "What do you mean?"

Rin Tohsaka said, "The Trinity really is a trinity, but the temple's place in it was changed. It must have been replaced by that Berserker."

"So after all that effort, we went after the wrong target."

Luviagelita asked, "That priestess must be the Berserker's Master. Could we assassinate her now?"

"It wouldn't help," Rin Tohsaka said. "Control of the Berserker would automatically pass to the goddess. No matter what we do, we can't break the Trinity that way."

"The goddess, the Berserker, and the Bull of Heaven. We have to defeat one of those three to end this."

Everyone hung their heads. They were back where they had started: they had to defeat the goddess.

Watching Ishtar fight with such ease, it was hard to believe anyone in this era could beat her.

Ishtar