The garden fell silent for a few seconds.
Iskandar held his golden cup, but did not drink again.
He looked at the King of Knights across from him. Some of his hearty drinking cheer faded, and his expression grew serious.
"You mean-"
The King of Conquerors set his golden cup on the paving stone beside his knee.
His movement was much slower than before.
"You want to deny everything you carved into history?"
Artoria did not avert her gaze.
"That's right. That is what I intend to do."
Her voice remained steady.
This was not the first time Artoria had heard such doubts.
On the Throne of Heroes, in the memories left behind by her past summonings, she had answered much the same question many times.
"It is a king's duty to give their life for their country."
The statement was short and unyielding.
Kid Gil leaned to one side with his golden cup in hand, narrowing his crimson eyes as he watched Artoria.
There was no particular mockery on the boy's face. He looked more like someone watching a person whose ending he already knew.
"Miss King of Knights."
His tone was very light, as though he were making casual conversation.
"Perhaps you really aren't suited to being a king. Being an ordinary girl would suit you better."
Coming from a boy who looked twelve or thirteen, those words did not sound quite so light.
There was no insult or provocation. He had simply stated what he saw.
Artoria did not answer Kid Gil.
But her hand on her knee tightened slightly.
Iskandar spoke.
"No."
The King of Conquerors lowered his voice, making it all the weightier.
He was no longer treating this banquet as a casual chat.
"A king should not sacrifice himself."
So he said.
"It is the country and its subjects who should sacrifice themselves for their king."
"You have it completely backward."
A look of dissent entered Artoria's eyes.
"King of Conquerors. That is the rule of a tyrant."
"Yes."
Iskandar answered without hesitation.
"It was precisely because I was a tyrant that I became a hero."
He raised his golden cup, drank a mouthful of divine wine, and set it back on the paving stone with a loud sound.
"But if, like you, I regretted my reign and its outcome..."
He looked at Artoria.
"That would mean you were merely a foolish ruler. Worse than a tyrant."
A foolish ruler.
As those words fell, the garden grew quieter still.
To Iskandar, a tyrant at least would not look back and deny his own path.
But someone who wanted to overturn every choice they had made after ascending the throne could not even hold steady upon it.
Artoria pressed her lips together.
She quickly struck back.
"King of Conquerors. Your descendants were slaughtered to the last, and the empire you built with your own hands was split into three."
Her voice was as cold as a blade.
"Do you truly have no regrets?"
The division of the Macedonian Empire after Alexander's death, the Wars of the Successors, and the extinction of his descendants-these were all inescapable endings that followed the King of Conquerors' achievements.
After hearing those words, Iskandar's expression changed.
Only briefly.
Then he suppressed that slight change.
"None."
The word was quiet, but everyone present heard it clearly.
"If things turned out this way because of my choices, and this was the outcome brought about by the choices my subjects made after my death..."
He spoke more slowly, every word clear.
"Then if it was destroyed, there was nothing to be done."
"My heart would ache. I would shed tears."
"But I would never feel the slightest regret."
By the end, his voice had risen.
"Much less speak of overturning it!"
He pressed the golden cup down against the paving stone with a sharp clink.
A few drops of wine spilled over the rim onto the gray-white stone.
"Such folly would insult everyone who created that era alongside me!"
When Iskandar finished, the atmosphere in the garden suddenly grew tense.
In a distant corner, Waver hunched his shoulders and even softened his breathing.
Irisviel stood beneath the archway, her long silver-white hair stirring in the night breeze, her wine-red eyes watching the two kings beneath the moonlight.
Artoria did not back down.
"Only warriors praise a glorious death."
Her voice was much lower than the King of Conquerors', but it had not softened.
"If you cannot protect your subjects, what meaning does any of that have?"
She looked at Iskandar.
"Proper administration. Proper rule. Those are a king's cherished aspirations."
Iskandar looked back at her.
"Are you saying-"
His voice suddenly grew quieter, seeming rather incongruous with his towering frame.
"That as a king, you are a slave to what is right?"
A slave.
The word sounded harsh, but Iskandar had not meant to humiliate her when he said it.
He genuinely could not understand. How could a king willingly treat herself as a tool?
Artoria's expression barely changed.
"I do not care."
She spoke calmly.
"To lay down one's life for an ideal is what a king should do."
Iskandar narrowed his eyes.
"That is no way for a human being to live."
Artoria closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again.
"After becoming a king and ruling a country-"
At last, a trace of weariness entered her voice. It was faint, but everyone present could hear it.
"I no longer hoped to live as a human being."
The moonlight in the garden grew cold.
Iskandar stood up.
The King of Conquerors rose from the paving stones, his body over two meters tall stretching his "Daisenryaku" T-shirt taut.
He stood beneath the moonlight, looking down at Artoria, who remained seated. He could no longer suppress the anger in his eyes.
"A king without desires is worth less than an ornament!"
The roar was loud.
Several night birds near the castle took flight in alarm.
Waver jumped in his corner, and Irisviel took half a step back.
Even Mayuri, who had been sitting in the distance drinking cola all along, had the stemmed glass in her hand wobble.
Iskandar was truly angry.
He was not putting on airs.
He was angry for the girl before him, who had lived her life as a sword.
But he did not keep shouting.
After a while, he lowered his voice again.
His tone, however, remained forceful.
"Saber. You just spoke of 'laying down one's life for an ideal,' didn't you?"
He crouched down, bringing his eyes level with Artoria's.
"If you could say such words, you must have been a just and incorruptible saint in those days."
"No doubt you were noble and inviolable then, too."
"But."
Iskandar stared at her.
"Who would ever yearn for this thorny path called martyrdom?"
"Who would be enthralled by it?"
Iskandar clenched his right hand into a fist, as though trying to force back the words in his chest, but in the end, he could not hold them in.
"A king must be greedier than anyone else in the world!"
His voice rose again.
"Laugh more joyfully!"
"Rage more fiercely!"
"In purity or corruption alike, he must reach the very pinnacle!"
"Only then will his subjects envy their king and be captivated by him."
"And in the hearts of all the people, kindle that light of longing called 'I, too, wish to be king'!"