Empty Uroboros
(Published: 03.11.2013 - Original Concept: Heliosion)
The blade fell, clattering upon the ground. The knight in blue groaned and faded from existence, her dreams and hopes vanishing with along with her. Only the Golden King remained standing barely sparing a glance for the spot where the woman who caught its attention had failed to meet his expectation.
"A pity," he said, turning to face his possession that was floating behind him, spilling its blackened contents upon the unknowing world. It seemed that the Grail that everyone wanted to obtain so much wasn't as Holy as they thought it to be. Nevertheless, it belonged to the King and the King would take it.
… Even though someone wasn't too keen on allowing him to do that.
Too late, Emiya Kiritsugu realized. Saber was gone as proven by the lack of Command Seals on his hands. Only Gilgamesh was left now and the Grail had already materialized. He couldn't allow that accursed thing to reach full power, not now that he knew what sort of malignant will it secretly had.
Saber was gone and using her Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasm was no longer an option. Still, the vessel of the Grail -Irisviel- was nothing but a carefully crafted Magic Circuit therefore… his Mystic Code should be able to affect it to some degree, or at least he hoped so.
He run into the room just in time to see Gilgamesh reaching for the cup. There wasn't time to think about possibilities, no opportunity to dwell on what ifs and consequences. All he knew was that things could hardly go worse than that and with that knowledge he aimed his Thompson and shoot, one, two, three times.
The cup flew away from the King's grasp, who immediately turned his angry red eyes upon the mongrel who dared to strike his possession. The air behind him turned gold and a single blade came out from the Gate of Babylon, its tip pointed to strike to death the insignificant men.
But nothing like that happened. As it flew away, the Grail cracked under the effect of Kiritsugu's dual Origin of Sever and Bind. Unable to properly process the power that coursed through it any longer, it exploded violently, bathing the presents in mud and cursed flames. Flames that immediately spread through the building and to the town outside, seeking with its malice every living being, consuming everything in its path until every single human being had died painfully.
The King stood admits the fire, completely unscathed by the power of the explosion and watched at the destruction its possession was bringing forth. It annoyed him a little that the spirit that resided within the Grail was killing his subjects, but then again he was the first who thought that this ugly world needed to be cleansed from the pests that sullied it.
At a distance he saw Saber's Master standing on his feet and observe the spectacle he contributed in creating. For a moment the King of Heroes entertained the thought of killing him, but a more careful glance told him that he was already condemned to die slowly and painfully, not to speak of the desperation he could see reflected in his eyes at the results of his actions. Exactly what he deserved for the arrogance of damaging the King's possession.
Kiritsugu's heart clenched in despair. He had failed. Destroying the vessel only served to spill the contents faster. The curse of the Grail – Angra Mainyu – was spreading through the city like an untamable fire of pain and death, a fire that would not cool until it had burned every single life within is reach.
And yet… that was not what scared Kiritsugu the most. What terrified him was the knowledge that humanity would not go down without a fight, that its will to survive would reject this curse with all of its power with the chance of making even more victims than the Grail could by itself. That will to survive at all costs known to the Magi with the name of Alaya.
Differently from what most people thought, Alaya did not wait for the last possible moment to deploy its resources. When a threat of great enough power to annihilate humanity was detected into the world with no one both capable and willing to stop before it could escalate too much it took steps to insure humanity's continued existence picking the most appropriate tool from its ranks.
Therefore, when Angra Mainyu manifested into the world as a power that affected an widespread area, Alaya picked a soul with an appropriate set of skill to contain and eliminate the threat. And so it reached for the Throne, where a soul condemned to eternal servitude was waiting for the moment he was needed again.
Perhaps because he was dreading it, Kiritsugu was the first to notice its presence and turned to look behind his shoulder. The King followed shortly, wondering what could have distracted the insignificant man's attention from its own damnation.
The human's eyes widened in terror, while the King's narrowed in loathing. The third person paid them no attention instead, muttering something under his breath that neither of them could hear, until he reached the last line of his Aria.
Then, like Kiritsugu had feared, Alaya showed him that it was more than willing to fight fire with fire, as both him and the King both where engulfed by flames once more.
The landscape of the city had been turned into a raging hell where life could not be sustained. People and building turned to ashes under a power that no human mind could truly understand. Yet, in this raging inferno, a single boy kept walking, lost in a daze of hopelessness and despair. With heavy steps he only delayed the inevitable, for not even a miracle could save his life.
He finally fell on his back, too exhausted to continued his struggle. He laid there on the blackened ground, waiting for the fire he could already see advancing to finish what it started.
But this flames didn't touch him. moving past him and engulfing everything in sight with their blinding whiteness. When the boy opened his eyes again he was in a different place. A barren land void of everything expect for countless swords, planted in the ground like makeshift tombstone of unnamed souls. It was so much like a graveyard that the boy thought that each blade was in memory of the people who died around him. However his attention lingered only briefly on the expanse of blades, shifting immediately to the only other living person within his sight.
Clad in red with white hair, he stood with his back turned to the boy, holding himself tall and strong, uncaring from the heat emanating from the swirl of darkness in the distance. He stepped forward his hand reaching for a beautiful sword that seemed to inch toward him as if wanting to be grasped. His hand wrapped around the hilt and he dislodged it from the ground holding it beside him.
In his hands the blade shone with holy light, so brightly that the boy could not stare directly at it without pain. The man in red lifted the blade over his head and with a shout -Excalibur! – he swung it at the darkness in front of him. Light erupted from the blade, rushing at the mass of malice that swelled without end and engulfed it with its brilliance.
When the deafening roar quieted down there was no longer trace of the shadow. The only things that remained where the warrior clad in red, the never-ending expanse of swords and a rusty sky filled with humongous gears.
Then and only then the warrior turned around and looked at the boy behind him. Grey met Gold and the boy knew – just knew – what this person before him was, what he represented and the burden he carried. A life following an ideal, living, breathing, fighting and bleeding for it, only to be betrayed by that dream at the very end. It was tremendous and painful, but even though the boy knew what awaited at the end of that path he couldn't help but find that ideal incredibly beautiful.
The man in red seemed to understand the boy's thoughts and regarded him with a look of pity and he would have done something to dissuaded him from his foolish idea if the leash that bind him wasn't so short. Instead he could only shake his head and sigh, disappearing into thin air with the hill of swords as soon as the boy fell unconscious.
The boy's mind was too traumatized to memorize everything that had happened removing many and many things that could not be recorded at once. Still, he slept peacefully dreaming of swords and of a man dressed in red. A man he needed to surpass in order to reach the seemingly ever-distant utopia.
The King of Heroes faded into a shower of golden motes. His life was cut short, ironically, by a shower of swords so similar to the one he enjoyed to employ to dispose of his enemy. Kiritsugu didn't know who the man in red was and why he had all those weapons to begin with. While he could understand Gilgamesh ownership of all the treasures in the world he could not fathom why a Counter Guardian possessed a similar stock, nor why he could wield the blade that belonged exclusively to the King of Knights, though he imagined it had something to do with the power he manifested: a Reality Marble.
He didn't know his identity and he didn't care. All that mattered was that the Grail had been finally stopped and that the Counter Guardian had done so without claiming another life but that of Gilgamesh who saw fit to put himself in the way of a greater power. All that was left to do now was to provide help for the unconscious boy who would soon die from his burns if he didn't do something to prevent it.
Without a second thought he removed Avalon from within his body and implanted it into the boy's, hoping that the residual Prana from his deceased Servant would be enough to save his life. He couldn't do anything else, but even if it was just one life he would make sure to save it, no matter what.
Empty Uroboros - Chapter 1 (END)
AN: Yeah, the scheduled "No Fate" has been replaced by this little piece conceived by Heliosion. He's planning to write a full story out of this concept but he's currently playing through the VN as I suggested. The animation from FSN, with the exception of Fate/Zero, doesn't make a good base for writing a decent fic about this universe.
That's it for now. See ya next with "No Fate".
