I
He waited silently atop a hill of blades. A solitary existence in an infinite field of swords. The unforgiving world, his world, filled with the acrid smoke and smog of a forge, laid before his eyes. Red sand, no doubt spilled with blood of the countless innocents he'd killed, seemed to reflect the heat of the furnace. The horizon shimmered in the distance, infinite and unending. Enormous gears rotated overhead, silent and ominous save for the periodic clanking as they ceaselessly turned against one another, like a clock endlessly ticking away. The world he had worked so hard to create. His greatest triumph. His personal hell.
Emiya Shirou surveyed his creation. He was the lord of this realm, master of this world, wielder and maker of the numerous blades scattered around him. Seated atop a rock slab, a laughable throne, he was a brooding figure. Rightly so, for he was surrounded by death. The swords impaled in the earth as far as the eye could see were certainly tombstones, each representing the death of thousands. Wielded once by legendary hands, serving great Heroic Spirits, and then later by a fool striving after his ideal of justice, they were now turned against humanity itself. The entire world, and its ruler, now existed for one purpose: to serve Alaya.
The Counter-Force. Mystical and powerful, it worked only to protect humanity. And so it did, by weeding out those it deemed dangerous to mankind. Situations deemed beyond repair or moments capable of catastrophic destruction, they all had to be addressed. So it sent its warriors, tools like Emiya Shirou, to do its bidding. Bound for eternity, these Counter Guardians saved humanity over and over again.
For him though, it came at a terrible cost. His dream, to create a world where no one would cry… he had believed contracting with Alaya would give him the power to achieve that dream. And for a time, it had. He had been able to live as a hero of justice. Even his death, filled with as much betrayal and pain as it had been, was able to save lives. A small comfort. But after… Only afterwards did he begin to understand the eternal hell he had sentenced himself to.
Killing the few to save the many. It was undoubtedly the correct course of action. Any hero would agree. But to him, it was terrible. Repeatedly summoned across time and worlds only to kill. Never were his hands allowed to save, or his eyes allowed to gaze upon those spared thanks to his terrible actions. Every summoning, without fail, he was only allowed to kill. Death filled his life, clogged his nostrils with its fetid scent, burned his eyes with its gruesome image, and sank into his bones until he began to wear it like a cloak and recognize it like an old friend.
When summoned, he held so much power. Such terrible power. Fueled by the entire will of humanity, he could easily destroy entire nations. For one who had been so weak in life, it was terrifying. The power he had sought after to chase his dream of a peaceful world, now shaped only for war. It made him want to weep. So much potential, so much strength, but never once was he allowed to use it to save others. Only to kill.
And when the slaughter ended, and every summoning neared its completion, Emiya Shirou would survey his work. It was rare when he was able to count the number of the dead. At the beginning, he would try to remember their faces, if he could still recognize them after he'd carved through them. But there were too many. Too much blood on his hands, too many tombstones in the form of blades filling his world, and he soon gave up. He would stand alone, in a field of death, until he vanished and reappeared in his own. And then he would wait.
It was what he was doing now. In a way, the waiting was sometimes worse than the actual summonings. In the beginning, in between cycles, he had taken this time to sob and cry over his deeds, to beg forgiveness from the innocents he'd killed. Many of his victims were truly dangerous, with blood on their own hands, but all too often the Counter Force was indiscriminate in its orders, and he was forced to eliminate bystanders as well. He mourned them still. After a while his sadness turned to rage, and he began to use that time to scream at his fate, his hoarse cries echoing throughout his empty world. And finally, he simply became numb. This was a timeless place. He didn't know how long it took him to reach that simple acceptance that he was doomed to this fate. It could have been one year or a thousand. But he resigned himself to his hell, losing his spark and growing bitter. Now, in between summonings, he merely waited. And when he waited, he was haunted by his thoughts.
His memories hadn't yet faded, but had certainly begun to blur. But they still managed to torment him, whispered thoughts wondering what would have happened if he had done this instead of that, if he had never been in that fire, if he had never agreed to this fate. Other whispers filled his head as well, contemplating where he would be summoned next, who he would have to kill, and how many. It was enough to drive a man mad. This endless cycle, the waiting and the killing. It was his life now, his entire purpose. Doomed to repeat for all of eternity.
Which was why he was so surprised when something changed.
He noticed it immediately. He'd felt the sensation many times before, the warping and twisting, that feeling that meant he was about to be directed by the Counter Force. It was similar, but something was undeniably different. He stood suddenly, confusion defining his facial features. He began to wonder what was happening, when he suddenly experienced splitting pain. Gasping, he clutched his head and fell to his knees. It wasn't unusual for Alaya to fill his head with information necessary to complete his role, and while similar, this was much cruder. If the Counter Force presented him with a book and time to read, this was akin to someone pounding a flash drive into his skull with a hammer and hoping the information somehow made its way to him. He began to hear a distant chanting as the pain increased in his head, thousands of images flashing through his mind. The female voice, familiar somehow, rose in tone as the chant continued, but he couldn't focus, overwhelmed by the information he was receiving. History, science, inventions, people… so much to process. But then one image flashed through his mind and he began to understand. The Holy Grail.
The image burned itself into his mind, attempting to fill him with desire. He wanted it, it said. It was all that mattered. It could make his greatest wish come true. But others would try to take it away from him. He would have to fight for it with everything he had. The Grail whispered its promises in his ear, and had he not known it to be a fake, he certainly would have been seduced. But he knew. So he attempted to ignore it, to make sense of what was happening. He tried to, he really did.
Information on the mechanics of the War filled his head as he struggled to his feet, knowledge on the seven Servant classes appearing. More followed before the flow suddenly stopped, like a string severed by one of the flawless blades surrounding him. He had a single moment to reel from confusion and the absence of splitting pain, before that chant that had been continuing from the start finished with a single, resounding cry.
"…Arrive from the ring of deterrence, O keeper of the balance!"
And then his world vanished. The steel, the smog, the death, all gone. It still remained within his heart of course, ready to materialize in this world should he invoke it. He was used to the sudden shift, well experienced after his repeated summonings by Alaya. What he was not used to however, was being summoned into thin air hundreds of feet above the ground.
To his credit, he didn't scream as he began to fall from the sky. Perhaps it was simply due to the shock and his confusion, but he'd like to think he was simply unflappable in ridiculous situations such as these. Unfortunately however, this same shock and confusion that preserved his dignity also prevented him from responding in any way as he plummeted toward the earth. He found himself frozen, in no way attempting to prevent himself from becoming unrecognizable from an egg hurled against the ground. As he tumbled through the air, he became acutely aware of three things. It was night, which was fortunate. He'd rather not have an audience for what was about to happen. Secondly, he was rapidly approaching the roof of a rather sizable mansion. Which meant he was probably about to commit some property damage, although judging by the size of the grounds, the owners were far from broke and certainly would be able to pay it off. And finally and perhaps most important, that house looked awfully familiar.
So it was with a disgruntled expression and dangerous feeling in his stomach that Shirou tore through the roof in a cascade of wood and tile. He landed painfully atop a cabinet of some kind, which sparked a domino effect that sent numerous pieces of furniture and glass falling against each other in a tremendous collapse. He groaned as crawled forward from the wreckage, coming to rest on his knees. Despite receiving a spiritual body in all his summonings, he still experienced pain. And that landing had certainly been unpleasant, not to mention unexpected. He tilted his head back in a long sigh as he looked up at the hole in the ceiling from which he had arrived, gazing beyond it to the moon shining above. His entire body was sore, although there didn't seem to be any physical damage. And perhaps most importantly, he began to realize he had control over his own form.
His connection to Alaya certainly remained, but in this summoning, he was no simple puppet. He felt no driving need to kill, no directive to follow. He wasn't as powerful as he usually was, backed by the Counter Force. No, instead power flowed from some other source, something else. He frowned, pondering his situation. Until repeated banging and cursing drew his attention across the room. The wooden door there shuddered as someone tried to force themselves against it, the small cabinet blocking its entrance slightly budging to the side with each push. With a final curse and shove, the door broke free, and its assailant stumbled into the room. And that was when he froze in shock.
The entire situation had been strange. The summoning, appearing in this place, being filled with information about the Grail… it made no sense. He was a Counter Guardian, a beast of Alaya. He had no purpose here. But somehow, here he was. And he held no doubt who was responsible. Red sweater with a deceptively short skirt and tights, midnight black hair arranged into twintails… he knew those sharp eyes staring at him, and knew the sharp tongue she held even better. There was no doubt it was her. The beauty standing before him, first-class mage and devil he'd once believed had been sent to personally torment him with her scorn. There was no mistaking her for anyone in the world, or all the worlds he'd burned and razed. He could be nowhere else but here, in Fuyuki during the Fifth Holy Grail War. So great was his shock that the familiar words escaped his lips in a whisper before he could hold them back.
"Tohsaka?"
A/N: So yes, I'm back, and it's not with Golden Prayers. Don't worry though, I'm not dropping it or anything. But more on that later. Anyway, this is a story idea I've been thinking about for a while. It will chronicle Archer's first summoning as a Servant, and the challenges he'll face. While he has a lifetime of combat experience from being a hero of justice, and even more from serving as a Counter Guardian, this Holy Grail War will mark the first time he has to face Servants, some of which are physically stronger than him. He has knowledge of the future, like the identities of some Servants in the War, but this isn't just another timeline. He's been summoned into another world, which may or may not have some major differences compared to the one he lived through. As a Counter Guardian he's seen parallel worlds, but he's only ever experienced one Holy Grail War. It'll be difficult for him to face people he knew in life, like Rin, Sakura, Illya, and most importantly, himself. All that's left is to see how he reacts.
Moving on to Golden Prayers, no it's not dropped. It's not even on hiatus. It's just taking a really long time to write. I'm hoping to get the next chapter out sometime this week before I have to leave on a trip. Summer is still busy for me, but not nearly as much as before, so it should be possible to knock out the next chapter before too long. It's already half-way done too.
Hopefully these two won't have to compete too much for updates, but I got in the mood for this one, so I decided to write while the iron's hot so to speak. This is a much more personal story compared to Golden Prayer's ensemble cast, largely focusing on Archer and how he transforms into the cynical and broken man we see in F/SN. He's already jaded from his experiences as a Counter-Guardian, and I'm hoping this story will be able to explain why he becomes willing to go to such lengths as killing his past self to escape his fate, all the while being as canon-compliant as possible.
Sorry for the overly long A/N and short chapter (relative to GP), and I hoped you guys enjoyed the prologue. Please drop a review to let me know what you think.