Fate/ Distortion Interlude
From the moment that he was born, it was said that he had been a rather quiet and unusal child, and that he hardly ever moved when he didn't have to.
As his parents and siblings would later learn, it was not because he was simple. It was just beacuse he had felt that he did not have much to say, and instead chose to observe. He laos chose not to speak much, or, indeed, do anything that would casue anyone or anthing any amount of suffering.
Still, his demeanor unnerved them enough that he was soon sent off to a temple, to be a monk, and be far from the sight of his family.
He had simply accepted it.
Among the monks, and their contemplations of the teachings of the ascended one, he found a sort of peace. Among them, his quiet nature was not looked upon as an oddity.
Some even compared his demeanour to that of the Enlightened one, though he paid those whisperings no mind.
When he had fully grown, he had chosen the path of a wandering monk. Though it had it's hardships, he still considered it to be a bright, if brief, period in his existence.
Like all bright things, though, it was soon consumed by darkness.
He had entered into a province, where two of its lords had been on the brink of war. Having accumulated a bit of a reputation as a man known for his honest wisdom and sage advice, the two lords had sought him out as a mediator for their dispute.
He had listened to their grievances and accusations, deliberated, and had then given advice that he thought would be able to satisfy their quarrel with eacother, without resorting to blood shed and suffering.
To his sorrow, as he would later discover, they had not listened to him…..
He strode through a field, and it was filled with naught but endless death and suffering.
On the ground, there seemed an endless of supply of dead and dying, blood and viscera.
The crows and ravens, and scavengers were eating well, this day.
He then came upon a soldier who had lost an arm, and had three arrows sticking out of his back.
The man, though he was really more of a boy, was silently weeping, while her groaned in agony. "H-help me."
The monk looked down upon him. "I can't. You've lost too much blood. By the time we find a healer, you will already be long dead."
"I-i-it hurts…"
"I know. But, all I can promise is that you will not suffer any more. Please, tell me your name."
"K-kakashi."
The monk's hands slowly encircled the boy's neck. "I promise that I will remember you, Kakashi. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath."
Snap.
On and on he strode through the quiet battlefield, performing these darkly merciful deeds.
Some begged for mercy, some cursed him, their selves, or everything.
But they all wept, just the same.
He still continued on, and freed them.
It seemed like days went by, but he continued.
He had even come across the bodies of the feuding lords, and they had died upon the other's blade.
He buried them, side by side.
Finally, when he came across the body of a small child, riddled with arrows, after feeling like he had traversed the entire length of the batleifeld twice over, he just collapsed to his knees in front of the corps, staring at it in disbelief.
At that moment, it had simply become too much.
What had been the point of all of this? What had been the point of this battle, of this war, of all of this suffering?
Land?
Honor?
Vengance?
Did anyone on either side even really know? Had the two feuding lords even really known?
In a few years, no one would even care, and the cycle would just repeat all over again.
It was all just… so pointless.
So much suffering, and all for such trivial and unknowable reasons.
Would it never end, the pain, the suffering?
Did anyone even want the cycle to end?
Did anyone even care enough to want to try?
He did not know how long he had remained there, kneeling in the mud, and staring at the small corpse. Though his stomach cried, and his throat grew dry, he did not move.
What was the point?
Then, there came a voice."Such a sad sight. It's amazing how these little creatures are always eager to kill one another, and over such trivial things. Wouldn't you agree?"
He looked up. Before him was a strange sight. It was a young girl, with skin a radiant as a full moon, and dressed in a kimono that was all at once simple, and yet elegant and flowing.
Behind her was what could only be described as a mountain of white fur, fangs, and pure hatred. To look upon it was to know hatred at it's unknowable apex.
The girl looked at him with eyes of pure blood, and a fanged smile that just looked wrong. "It's never going to stop, you know," she continued, as she kept smiling. "They are going to keep doing this to themselves, over, and over, and over, until the very end."
"I know," he rasped, his first spoken words in days.
She then looked at him, as if she had just discovered a particularily interesting insect beneath her foot, and was not yet ready to crush it. "You seem much different then most humans that I have come across. I wonder… if I gave you the chance to affect change, to oppose this endless cycle in some manner, what would you do, Souren Araya?"
He did not ask how she knew his name, and instead simply answered her. "I would find a way to not just oppose it. I would end the cycle of suffering, end it in such a way that it could never again begin anew."
The Moonlit being looked at him again for a long moment, and then… she began to laugh, the peals ringing out amidst the quiet battlefield. "End the cycle? How very interesting, Souren Araya! How very interesting indeed!"
Her eyes then began to glow. "I find you so intriguing that I shall help you. I will grant you the power, and knowledge, that you nned to complete your goal, and, in return, after, perhaps, a thousand years, I will return to you, and you can tell me if you have succeeded.
She chuckled again. "I had originally planned to give this offer and power to some pathetic little alchemist in far off Europe who seemed midly entertaining, but, to be quite honest, I find you to be infintly more intriguing. Plus, I think that whatever you would do with this power would be vastly more entertaining. Just thinking about the depths that you will no doubt go to… it makes me feel all warm inside."
Overhead, the full moon was the color of blood.
"Do we have a bargain, still and sorrowful man?"
He looked once more upon the body of the small child. He looked once more upon the endless corpses, and the carion birds and landbound scavengers.
He then looked at her.
It may have been his imagination, but it seemed like she had flinched, momentarily, at his gaze.
"We do, moonlit being."
Looking back, and from an outsider's perspective, one would have been hard pressed to discern who was the proverbial devil in the bargain.
After that deal, a new world had opened up for him. A strange, terrifying, and secretive world, hidden away, under the fading and soft moonlight.
There were moments where he wondered if he regretted making that bargain with the girl who skin had shone like moonlight, if he regretted being trasnfomred intow what he was now.
At times, he wondered if he even cared.
When their bargain had been struck, she had had him drink of her blood and essenence. Under a Crimson Moon, she made him like her, and yet a unique and strange existence.
Immortal, she had now called him, along with another title.
Ancestor, and the Thirteenth.
It did not feel like immortality, more like persistence.
She had made him both like her, and yet, not like her. He both existed, and yeyt not. He had a body, and yet, like suffering, he had to change, to steal bodies, so that he could persist in his immortality. It was not his body she made changed, but his essenece, and his soul. In time, he would wear out the bodies he stole. All the while, as he did so, he planned, and prepared, for she had also given him a terrible gift, the night of his transformation, and his first death.
A view of the future. Once glimpse was all that he had needed, and he had then known what he would need to do….
Over the centuries, and at intermittent times, he came across others who bore the same title as he. They rarely garnered his interest, and he bore no desire to invest himself into any of their plans. In turn, they left him alone as well, for the most part.
He kept track of several particular human bloodlines whose abilities he knew he would require in the future, sometimes either nudging them in a particular direction, or pruning them as he saw fit...
When he could, he simply meditated, and pondered. He was all too aware that he had fallen far from many of the teachings that he had once held so close and dear to his heart.
He just could not find it within himself to care anymore…
"Why are you doing this?" demanded the russian magus, as he bled freely from over half a dozen wounds. "Why have you attacked me!?"
"For reasons that you could never comprehend," the Ancestor replied.
Soon enough though, he decided to retreat. He had done what was required.
Now, all he could do was just wait….
Fuyuki City, 1996
He managed to intersect the suffering man as soon as he left the house of the Worm Magus.
It had been almost pathetically easy.
"Wh-who are you?", the suffering man had asked as he lay on the ground, after the Ancestor had severed his arm clean off.
The Ancestor looked up from where he was etching the circle into the ground with his bare finger and his own blood. "Someone who wishes to freee you of your suffering, Kariya Matou."
To mollify the man, the Ancestor had asked if he had any last request. The suffering man had told him of his wicked and monstrous father, and of the young girl, who suffered everyday.
The Ancestor had not been shocked by what he heard. Still, he promised that he would free the girl.
The suffering man could sense the truth in his words, and he now seemed ready to die, as the Ancestor reached for him.
When the Ancestor was finished, the man known as Kariya Matou was dead.
The one armed man would leave the city, with new memories inside his head, and a new name.
The Ancestor glanced down upon the seals he had pilfered, which now lay upon the back of his own hand.
He then began to chant.
Let stone and earth be the essence.
Let clay and the archduke of contracts be the foundation
Let the End be what I pay tribute to
Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall
Let the four cardinal gates close.
Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate.
I hereby declare.
Your body shall serve alongside me.
My fate shall be your sword,
Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail
If you will submit to this will and this reason…Then answer!
An oath shall be sworn here!
I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven.
I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!
Yet, thou serves with thine eyes clouded in chaos
Thou, bound in the cage of madness.
I am he who command these chaos
From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three greet words of power,
Come forth from the ring of restraints,
Protector of the Holy Balance!
"Or, perhaps I had arrived just in time."
For a long time, he had ben tracking down a particular bloodline, and now, after so long, he had found it, and just as the famed Magus Killer breathed his last.
The bloodline of the Demoninc blacksmith.
The Deniers of Nothingness.
The holders of the First.
The boy did not weep at the passing of his adopted father, and instead just looked at the Ancestor, and the Ancestor looked at the boy.
There was no fear, or indeed, much sadness, in those amber orbs. He was just… blank.
Fascinating.
The Ancestor knew what was to come next, and knew that it had to happen.
The next day, the boy, and all trace and memory of him, vanished.
He hated it, the pain that he had to inflict upon the boy. But, the Ancestor knew that it was necessary.
Soon, though, the pain would end, and his plans would be enacted.
After nine years, he had assimilated into the boy all the sacrifices required for his final evolution. The bloodlines were all finished, and all assimilated into the boy.
He was becoming stronger from all the sacrifices, and training. He was becoming…. Something else. In time, he began to accept the sacrifices without resistance.
All save one, until now.
It helped the Ancestor, slightly, to think of it as the boy's revenge upon him, despite him still being the primary mind.
The tendrils encircled him, mind and stolen body.
Then, for a brief moment, there was nothing.
Then… he, no… then it opened its eyes.
As the Ancestor was asmmilated, and the tendrils receded, it was finally born, and it opened its eyes of many and shifting colors.
It knew what it was, and what it was comprised of.
At the moment of its birth, however, a hero had been sent to kill it in it's infancy.
It had not succeeded.
"Damn you!" the Counter Guardian had screamed, as he clutched the stump of his left shoulder.
"I'm afraid that it is far to late for that, Shirou," it replied, before the hero too, was assimilated.
As the War drew closer, it crafted for itself the bodies through which it could continue the preparations throughout the city, it's other body.
Copies of the personalities and abilities of the assimilated were placed into the bodies, so as to enact the final will of It.
Finally, it crafted one more puppet, one that resembled the boy it had once been.
It would be the lure, the dagger in the shadow.
Soon, the final stages would begin.
Soon, they would all be freed.
It then etched into the floor a circle, anointed in blood, and began to chant…
Let suffering and salvation be the essence.
Let clay and the Enlightened One be the foundation
Let the End be what I pay tribute to
Let rise a wall against the cycle that shall end
Let the four cardinal gates be destroyed.
Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom be unmade.
I hereby declare.
Your body shall serve alongside me.
My fate shall be your sword,
Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail
If you will submit to this will and this reason…Then answer!
An oath shall be sworn here!
I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven.
I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!
I shall free the souls of all!
From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three greet words of power,
Come forth from the ring of restraints,
Savior of all!
Now
The Nameless thing opened its eyes.
It was time.
With but a thought, it reformed itself on top of the Complex. Overhead, Saver's Chakravatin glowed in the night sky, ready to be unleashed.
It nodded at the Enlightened one. No words were needed.
As golden rays descended from the sky to envelope the citizens of Fuyuki city, It then formed two more bodies.
In unison, the bodies etched circles into the ground, ingoring the screams of the masses below.
The three bodies then began to chant.
Two chanted the same thing, but the third? The third chanted the words to make worlds…
I am the reflection of nothingness and creation….
Name: Souren Araya/ SORROW
Rank: 13th of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors
A/N: A short interlude before the rest of this route. SORROW is basically this timeline's version of TATARI, as you can see, though, in my opinion, much more terrifying and dangerous.
So, read, review, and enjoy.