CHAPTER 10:
THE FACE OF EVIL
It took a few Apparitions and Point Me spells, but Harry had finally managed to track down Rin, or at least was getting closer. And it was getting dark. He cursed Rin mentally, though to be fair to her, he'd done the whole 'tracking down a murderous magical psychopath' when he was young. Not as young as Rin, who was seven (while he had been eleven), but even so, what was that saying about people in glass houses?
What was more, there was a tickling at the back of his mind. Verses of a half-remembered poem kept scratching at his soul. It was maddening, but he had more important things to worry about.
By the time he caught up with Rin, she was ducking into a bar down some stairs an alley, holding a glowing device that Harry recognised as a mana detector. In fact, he recognised it as one Tokiomi gave her as a gift shortly before she was sent to another town. She had been busy showing it off to Sakura and him the last time she visited the Black Library. It was like a compass cum homing beacon.
And she had used it to track down Ryuunosuke Uryu. Or had tried to.
"Ophis," Harry said quietly. "Get ready to storm the place."
"Understood."
They heard Rin's panicking voice. It sounded like she recognised someone. And then, they heard a lazy drawl of a young man. Harry dashed in, followed soon by Ophis, and barged through the door.
The darkened bar was littered with the bodies of children. Harry was relieved to note that they were still alive for the moment, just showing a form of hypnotic catatonia. Rin was staring at him and Medusa in surprise, as was a tall young man wearing a hooded jacket. The hood was up, so he couldn't see the features properly, but he was holding in his hands the hands of two children. "Oh, do we have an uninvited guest?" the young man said.
"Ryuunosuke Uryu, I presume," Harry said.
"Well, it's Matou now, according to Gramps," Ryuunosuke said cheerfully. "Who're you?"
"Your death," Harry said. "The Overseer has called for your death, Ryuunosuke, and I intend to oblige."
"If the old man wanted me dead, why didn't he come do it himself?" Ryuunosuke sneered.
"I have to do the dirty work."
"Harry? Are you here to deal with this murder-pervert?" Rin demanded. "He's got that freaky bracelet thing, I think he uses it to control the others!"
Harry noted the gently glowing bracelet on Ryuunosuke's right wrist. "ACCIO!" he yelled, flinging out a hand. The bracelet jerked, but didn't otherwise move.
"Wow, great magic there, Merlin," Ryuunosuke sneered. "But the Big Guy, he's better at it than you."
"Harry, fighting in here with all these children may cause them to get killed," Medusa said quietly in Parseltongue. "My eyes may kill them. We need to target that bracelet. That may reverse the spell on them."
Ryuunosuke, however, dashed for Rin, unleashing a blizzard of massive insects at Harry and Medusa as he did so. Kariya had warned Harry that the Crest Worms could be shaped into deadly insects as familiars, so he quickly used an Incendio to deal with them. But by this point, Ryuunosuke had managed to reach Rin, who had clambered onto a nearby shelf, and was trying to keep him at bay, until she grabbed at the bracelet. "Let's see if this can overload!" she yelled, her mana purling around her like a blue flame.
Harry realised what she was doing straight away, but a vile, purple magic began to infect her aura, and her expression went blank. "Oh, so you want to help me after all?" Ryuunosuke said with a jeering laugh.
As Rin shook herself out of it, Harry went over and grabbed the bracelet with her, pumping his own magic into it. The pull of the bracelet reminded him so much of the Imperius…but he fought back. Rin and he fought back together, pumping their magic into the bracelet. A part of him realised that Rin had even more magic power than he thought: she could have destroyed the bracelet alone if she wanted to. But together, they could do it even faster. An aura of blue, red, green and gold magic flared around them, Rin's mana detector floating into the air, the needle spinning at ridiculous speed, before the bracelet exploded. Ryuunosuke staggered back, his hood falling from his head.
The children around them seemed to rouse themselves from their hypnotic state with the destruction of the amulet. "Ophis!" Harry yelled. "Get these kids out of here, to the nearest police station! Tell them about this place, and tell them 'Code: Hecate(1)'!"
"Are you sure?" Medusa asked. Unspoken were the words, You'll be left without my protection.
"Yes!" Harry shouted. If he needed to, he'd use Apparition to get the hell out of dodge if things went sour. But if Ryuunosuke sent anything after the kids, or if Caster intervened, Medusa might need to use her abilities.
"I'm staying with you!" Rin snapped, hopping down next to Harry as the children began streaming out, hurried out by Medusa.
"Fawkes!" Harry yelled. Fawkes appeared in a flash of flame. "Take Rin back to the Black Library now!" Rin was taken away by Fawkes mid-protest, while Medusa left with the last of the children.
Ryuunosuke had managed to recover from the shock of his bracelet being destroyed. He shot an annoyed look at Harry. Harry, meanwhile, stared at his face. It was similar to the one he had seen the picture of, but his hair was now blue, with white streaks, and part of his face had vein-like markings. His left eye was milky white.
"You know," Ryuunosuke said, almost casually, "that was a present from the Big Guy. I liked that bracelet."
"I'm sure you did, given that it helped you murder kids," Harry growled.
"Oh, you're one of those types, the type that doesn't know what God is really like." Insects began to swarm through the air behind Ryuunosuke. "Here's a secret, whoever you are: God loves to see all sorts of things happening, good and bad. I just like to make a spectacle."
Harry nodded, humouring the madman, before he then yelled, "Now, Ophis!"
A cheap trick, and one of the oldest in the metaphorical book of cheap tricks, but it worked. Medusa was busy escorting the kids, but Ryuunosuke's attention wavered just long enough for Harry to lunge forward and smash him across the face with his fist. He could have used a spell, but Magi tended to see spells coming, as did wizards and witches. Hand to hand was another matter, he reflected, as he kicked the reeling Ryuunosuke, sending an Incendio at the insects, which caused their blackened bodies to drop to the ground.
Ryuunosuke staggered against the wall, and laughed. Harry stared at him. Was he some sort of masochist?
"This…this is great!" Ryuunosuke laughed. "You've put up a better fight than any of the others! But I'm just getting started!"
Harry readied his wand. As much as he didn't like to kill, he needed to put this mad dog masquerading as a human down now. A Reducto through the heart should do it. He wasn't going to gloat or anything. He was just going to do it quickly.
But then, something screeched and wrapped around his arm, just as he fired the spell. The creature attacking him, plus Ryuunosuke's leaping to the side, ensured that the madman survived the attack…but he howled as his left arm was blasted off. Sadly, it wasn't the one with the Command Spells.
Harry recognised the tentacled creature as the same sort of thing that attacked the others down at the docks. More of them were swarming him.
"Wow…" Ryuunosuke said, touching the bloody stump where his arm ended. "Is this…mine? Wow…so pretty…"
You have GOT to be fucking kidding me, Harry thought. Is he delirious from blood loss, or is he that much of a masochist?
Then, the creatures trying to eat him, as well as trying to insert tentacles into some VERY intimate places, got back through to him. If he didn't think of something soon, he was going to be eaten, raped, and/or squeezed to death by a bunch of evil monster squids. The problem is, he wasn't able to concentrate enough to Apparate, and he didn't want to bring these things with him. One of the horrors was choking him, a tentacle wrapped around his neck. He couldn't call Fawkes now, even if that could do any good. He felt his arm dislocate, pulled out of his shoulder socket, sending a jolt of pain through his body. He couldn't even scream now. His ribs began to crack.
Then, his mind filled with words. The words that had been tickling at his mind as he started looking for Rin. As if on automatic, he began speaking. Not with his lips and mouth, but somehow, it seemed to echo around the room.
"Death is before me today," he intoned. "Like the recovery of a sick man, like going forth into a garden after sickness."
The horrors trying to eat and rape him to death paused, even quivered. Ryuunosuke, as if realising something was wrong, quickly snatched up his arm and fled. Harry barely noticed him go, consciously anyway. All that mattered was the words.
"Death is before me today: Like the odour of myrrh, like sitting under a sail in a good wind. Death is before me today: Like the course of a stream, like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house."
The bar seemed to grow darker. The horrors released him. He shouldn't have been able to stand, some small part of him realised distantly. But he was. He felt his ribs healing, his arm relocating, felt something sprouting from his back. Out loud, he spoke, in a quiet voice, little more than a whisper, but it was like a proclamation of fact.
"Death is before me today: Like the home that a man longs to see, after years spent as a captive(2)."
A wave of darkness seemed to fill the bar, changing all in its wake…
…And they were standing on the bleak shores of a river in a dreary twilight, a landscape that seemed to have all the colours leached from it. The horrors began screeching, only to start decaying and dying, melting into puddles of blood-coloured goo. Harry just stood there, calmly, calmer than he had any right to feel.
Standing across from him, on the other side of the shore, was him. Except he had raven black wings, and was dressed in Grecian clothes. And he didn't have the scar or glasses. He stood proud and tall, like the supreme lord of all he surveyed.
So…you managed to access your Reality Marble, a fragment of my power, the figure spoke. It was his voice, but it seemed to echo and warp strangely. Its name is the Stygian Terminus. It restores you and your allies, and your adversaries are sent to my demesne. But you cannot maintain it for long. To dance with death is to risk falling into its embrace for eternity, even if you were once part of me. Go back. And keep her happy for me. She deserved that much…
Suddenly, he was back in the bar, panting with exertion. While he wasn't exactly suffering from magical exhaustion, whatever he had just done had drained his magic significantly. He decided to go and follow Medusa after his attempt to track the escaped Ryuunosuke went nowhere. He was kicking himself for not putting tracking charms on the rogue Magus…
Luckily, by the time he managed to find Medusa at a local police station, the DMLE were already involved. Apparently one of its representatives was at the station when Medusa, along with the kids, entered. Harry had to stick around long enough to give a statement, as well as agree to have Rin Tohsaka make a statement at the Black Library. Tokiomi wouldn't like it, but Ryuunosuke and Caster were causing problems.
Thankfully, the DMLE took their statements quickly, especially Rin, whereupon she was berated for her carelessness. Harry had to agree, but Rin had at least tried to track down her friends that had been abducted by Ryuunosuke, and the Aurors at least commended her for that much at least.
Afterwards, while they were waiting for Aoi to come along to take her home, Harry, Sakura, and Medusa were with Rin in one of the studies, Kariya opting to wait to let Aoi in (while Stheno and Euryale waited elsewhere). "You were very lucky, Rin," Harry said. "Lucky I was able to find you, lucky that you managed to overload that damned bracelet of his…"
Rin nodded miserably. "I…I just wanted to help."
"I know. Take it from me, I'm not saying you were wrong in wanting to help those kids. But Ryuunosuke could have murdered you. Your parents would be devastated, and Kariya would have been too. And Sakura…she was frightened for you."
"I knew you would rescue her, Daddy," Sakura said, with the simple faith of the young.
Harry nodded. "Even so, we got lucky. We were lucky Caster wasn't there. We were lucky we managed to rescue those kids. Rin…don't get me wrong, you showed a lot of resourcefulness for your age. You remind me a bit of myself. But that's the thing. I know where that path leads you. If you're not careful, having an adventure might end with you dying. And remember what they say about magecraft: a Magus walks hand in hand with death. But it doesn't mean they have to walk blindly in, or else cause it in their research, no matter what some might think." Harry gently hugged the girl. "Just remember that. Between you, me, and Ophis, we managed to save some lives, Rin. When you get older, when you start magecraft in earnest, make it about helping others. Remember those kids who were snatched up by Caster and his Master, and think about what they must have felt. Never allow anything like that to happen to anyone with your magecraft."
"I won't!" Rin said, shaking her head vehemently. "I'll become a Magus to make my family proud! Mum and Dad, and Sakura!"
"Good."
Rin then looked up at Medusa. "Are…are you a Servant?"
"Heroic Spirit, technically, but not actually a Servant. Call me Ophis. I'm the guardian of the sanctuary area around the Black Library," Medusa said.
Shortly afterwards, Aoi made it to the Black Library. She had a tearful reunion with her daughter, and thanked Harry and Medusa profusely, before taking her back home, or at least to the home they were staying at, while Sakura was put to bed, as it was now past her bedtime. As if on cue, Fawkes disappeared, knowing the time had finally come for doing what he needed to do.
Kariya was toying with a glass of spirits. He normally didn't drink, but Rin's near-brush with death had shaken him. "Did you manage to get that bastard?" he asked.
"I managed to cut his arm off, though not the one with his Command Seals, unfortunately," Harry said. "Then again, he might be able to heal himself, enough to avoid dying of blood loss. He seemed to get off on it." After a moment, he said, "Kariya, what the hell is a Reality Marble?"
Kariya would have spat the drink he was drinking had he had any in his mouth at the time, but instead, he just looked sharply at Harry. "Why?"
"I told the Aurors that I used some sort of magic that I didn't know about to kill those creatures Ryuunosuke set on me. But…I was told by someone who looked like me, maybe Thanatos, that it was a Reality Marble. I felt exhausted as hell using it, even briefly."
Medusa, who was in the room with her sisters, said, "It is something we should keep quiet about."
Kariya nodded eagerly. "If word gets out that you have one, you'll be slapped with a Sealing Designation faster than you can say Clock Tower. A Reality Marble is…well, it's a mental world that can temporarily override reality. It uses a lot of magic because it displaces reality, and Gaia tries to remove it. It's the first time I've heard of a wizard having one, though. They're rare even amongst Heroic Spirits."
Harry sighed, putting his face in his hands. "Yet another reason to say: fuck my life."
Medusa went over to Harry, and gently put a hand on his shoulder. "Harry," she said in Parseltongue. "It saved you. It is good to fear such things. I fear my own eyes. But it is still a part of you, and it can be used to help others."
Harry nodded, but he was still a little morose. Yet another reason for his life to get complicated. That's all he needed…
About ten minutes later, Fawkes reappeared in a flash of flame, a girlish shriek accompanying the Phoenix's song. A girl who had been holding onto him fell over onto the ground in surprise, and then began looking around and demanding things in German. "Do you speak English? Japanese?" Harry asked.
The girl nodded. "Daddy's been teaching me those languages," she said in English accented with German. She looked like a miniature version of Irisviel, what with the pale skin, white hair and crimson eyes, though the eyes had a slight epicanthic fold betraying some Asiatic ancestry. "Are you Harry Potter? Mummy wrote about you in that letter. She included some passphrases she taught me to trust you."
"Yeah, I'm Harry Potter. Are you Illyasviel?"
"Of course! I am Illyasviel von Einzbern! Will I get to see Mummy soon?"
"As soon as possible, yes…" Harry said.
CHAPTER 10 ANNOTATIONS:
So, Harry's going to be babysitting Illyasviel. Oh, and he's learned of his Reality Marble, Stygian Terminus. Sadly, Ryuunosuke has fled to live another day.
Incidentally, I wanted to make Ryuunosuke's Matou-fied appearance somewhere between the natural Matou look with blue or violet hair, and the rather grotesque appearance Kariya has post-Crest Worms. Ryuunosuke took to the Crest Worms better than Kariya did.
I'm surprised at how many views this story got with its debut, but then again, considering I posted the first nine chapters all at once, I shouldn't be.
Review-answering time! Mangahero18: Medusa may not be a Servant, but she has enough knowledge thanks to the Grail to be able to identify other Heroic Spirits, despite her unconventional summoning.
HolyKnight5: He may make Harry Rin's guardian (as long as Aoi dies, which she won't be at the end of this), but the Overseer is appointed by the Church.
StrawHatLuffy94: For this fic, Fate/Zero is set in about mid 2001 or thereabouts.
BlackWolf101: Hermione had enough innate magical resistance to resist it. There's some suggestion that Sola-Ui was strong enough to resist it, but allowed herself to succumb due to her distaste for Kayneth and her desire for Diarmuid.
Thunder Dragon: Please stop posting these long bloody reviews, especially those where you copy and paste wholesale from wikis. It's almost as annoying as you giving those challenges. Medusa is being portrayed the way she is because her summoner is different, and may be her lover from another era, so she is more open by consequence. And she has the powers of her Fate/Stay Night incarnation. Why? Because I said so. Nobody else seems to be complaining about how I characterise Medusa.
jedielfsorcerer: Ha! That is so happening! Illya, Sakura and Rin at Harry and Medusa's wedding…
tamagat: I think Hermione's been a good influence on Waver. They bonded over their love of knowledge and their annoyance at the hierarchy of Magi, and Hermione managed to make sure that Waver is less full of himself. We don't see this as much because the story is from Harry's POV. However, Hermione's definitely wearing the pants in the relationship.
muratira: That's a distinct possibility, Sakura getting a sibling. And yes, I realise that, I'm sorry. I'm not good at writing such parent-child relationships. There will be a little more of that in the next chapter, though.
Lancelot du Loc: Yes, they mean John the Baptist. But this was the name given to the library in Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire, so that's the name given here.
shadowace2400: Might not happen in this fic, but it's definitely going to happen sooner or later in my Fate/Zero/Thor crossover Light the Blue Touch Paper and Run Like Hell.
1. Code: Hecate is a fictional police code I made up for Henry Ashford and the Wrath of Marcus. It's basically a code to any Muggle law-enforcement agencies that a wizard or mage is involved, and that the local DMLE should be contacted.
2. I actually thought long and hard about what aria should be used to unleash the Stygian Terminus Reality Marble, in the way Unlimited Blade Works gets unleashed. I nearly used Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death. However, I decided to use a poem from Neil Gaiman's comic series The Sandman. In the instalment The Sound of Her Wings, as Dream follows his sister Death on her duties, he recites this poem to himself while contemplating how mortals usually fear her.
