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Chapter 18: Rin

Rin sighed as her students took notes on the PowerPoint she had displayed. It was a hot summer day and even in her air conditioned classroom in the clock tower, it felt stifling. Pencils scribbled and scratched at paper and some students muttered to themselves, mulling over the knowledge the magus had just given them.

It had been nearly a month since she had come face to face with the diviner in the white robes, and even after his warning, she had continued to search for a way to find Blake.

Though it had taken a few days to build up the desire, Ben had convinced her to continue, in spite of Charlotte Ryan's death due to her investigation.

1 month earlier

"Rin," Ben's voice came from the hallway and into the living room where she was lounged. "Don't get the wrong idea, because my house will always be open to my friends, but what are you doing? It's been nearly a week since San Francisco, and all you've been doing is sleeping and staring off blankly."

"I'm just thinking," Rin said emptily. "Is it wrong to think?"

Ben sighed and looked at her with worry. She hated that look. He was looking at her like she was broken. Anger began to rise up in her chest. A brief relief from the emptiness that had begun to cloud her consciousness. An emptiness that only sleep seemed to relieve.

"People usually don't think for a week straight," Ben shook his head.

Rin felt her anger rising. She just needed time. She needed time to think over what the diviner had said. She needed time to think of what she needed to do next. She needed time to breath. She felt as if someone had locked her in a box and thrown away the key. Yet, he was judging her. Looking at her with that look. That look of utter pity.

"Blake is still out there, and we owe it to Charlotte to-"

"No!" Rin snapped, her emotions raging forward. "No! What we owed Charlotte was not to get her killed! And what did I do? What did I do, Ben?!"

"Rin-" Ben tried.

"That's right!" Rin continued, not hearing him. "I got her killed! And then we owed it to her to avenge her and get answers from her killer! But what did I do?! I almost got you killed and lost, not one, but two leads! And what did one of those leads tell me?! To stop searching! That Blake would be back! And if he comes back on his own? All of this would have been for nothing! Charlotte's death would have been for nothing! It would all be meaningless! All of our time and grief would have been wasted!"

Ben just stood silently and took her outburst now. She wanted him to argue. She wanted him to yell back. She wanted him to blame her for Charlotte's death. She wanted to be punished, because she deserved it. She deserved that emptiness she felt in her core. She deserved the ache in her heart. She deserved it! Yet, no one blamed her and she hated it.

"So I'm sorry Ben! I'm so sorry that all I've been doing is sitting around and sleeping! I'm so sorry that I let a woman die and that I feel sad about it! I'm so sorry that you think that I should be doing something about this when I just don't know what to do anymore! I am sorry! Now will you kindly leave me alone?"

Her eyes stung with tears and her pulse was pounding in her ears. She shouldn't have snapped, but everything that she had been holding in for the past week had just burst forward without a filter.

She deserved to be punished. That thought was the only thing that crashed around in her head these days.

"Rin," Ben said once again, completely unfazed and still looking worried. Not angry, not even hurt. But worried. Worried for her. "It's not your fault. What happened with Charlotte, you couldn't have predicted that. What happened with the monster, we both got caught off guard. And who's to say if we can eve trust the word of the guy in robes? Maybe he was the one behind everything and wanted to throw you off of the trail."

That was the thing though. Rin believed the hooded man. For some reason, she felt like he was telling her the truth. For some reason, when she was near him, the loneliness in her heart had eased to a point that it was nonexistent. Yet, what Ben said made sense. It would be a smart strategic move, but Rin couldn't shake the feeling that she was missing something.

"I get that you're sad over Charlotte Ryan's death," Ben continued. "But I feel guilty about it too. I know exactly how you feel. I'm the one who brought her into this mix. But playing the blame game isn't going to find us Blake. And even if you had tried to stop the diviner at the pier, you were out of mana. There's nothing you could have done."

"I know," Rin mumbled, her anger extinguished by the void. "I just feel so useless. I felt like we were so close this time and it was all for nothing."

"Maybe not," Ben stroked his beard in thought. "You said he walked through a gate, right?"

"Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?" Rin asked.

"Was there a symbol on the gate?"

Rin nodded. What was he getting at?

"What did the symbol look like?" Ben asked.

"It was the symbol of infinity," Rin answered. "The symbol that designates the higher arcana in the tarot world."

"So he didn't teleport?" Ben asked specifically, a look of realization sprawling across his face. "It was a gate?"

"Yes," Rin looked at Ben in confusion. "What are you getting at?"

"He entered a different realm," Ben clapped his hand together.

"Ok, and?" Rin still wasn't catching on.

"Well the hooded guy definitely knows where Blake is," Ben continued. "So if we find him, then we find Blake."

"How are we going to find him though?" Rin asked. "He just sort of pops up."

"I'll recreate the gate he went through," Ben smiled. "Then you'll go in and with a little bit of luck, find the hooded man, or maybe even Blake."

"How are you even going to recreate the gate?" Rin asked with doubt. "I'm pretty sure it's a diviner thing."

"I've been studying the realms for a bit now," Ben answered. "It was a bit of a side project while we were searching for clues on Blake. I should be able to recreate a gate to one."

"But aren't there only three?" Rin asked.

"Nope," Ben grinned. "Seven. And those are just the known realms."

"Seven?!" Rin exclaimed.

"Yes," Ben nodded. "There's the two main realms, life and death. Then there are the five smaller ones; the magical realm, purgatory, the mirror realm, the Necro realm, and finally the diviner realm."

"I only knew about life, death, and purgatory," Rin muttered, more to herself than to Ben.

"Nope!" Ben smiled more. "As you probably know, life and death are separated by a veil, but within that veil is the entire realm of purgatory."

"Right," Rin nodded. "But what about the other four you mentioned?"

"Well, the Magical Realm is the closest to ours," Ben explained. "It's what feeds mana into our world and allows us to use mage-craft. It's the easiest to access, even compared to Purgatory and the Realm of Death. The Mirror realm is the next closest, it's basically our realm, but mirrored and maintains identical copies of all of us. There have been folk tales of people getting trapped in the mirror realm. The Necro Realm is the next one. That realm is similar to the Mirror Realm in the way that there copies of us, but there, our copies are the versions of us that live out our deepest, darkest, desires. They are our opposites. It's a realm of pure evil. And the Diviner Realm is the furthest one. The spirit I talked to about that realm said that he was able to see it, but he couldn't enter it. There was some sort of force blocking his entrance. It appeared to be a wall inscribed with the symbol of infinity.

If the symbol on the gate was what you said it was, then he went to the diviner realm, which would make sense."

"Why didn't you mention any of this earlier?" Rin asked.

"Because before, I had no clue how one would even get there," Ben sighed. "So I deemed it a dead end."

"You still haven't told me how you're going to recreate the gate," Rin sighed.

"You just leave that to me," Ben was beaming now and Rin just wanted to kick him in the face. "Go back to London, and do some more research to see if you can make yourself remember, I'll contact you when I'm finished. It may take a long time."

Rin was irritated, but they had a lead again.

Present

So she had gone back and taken up a class to teach so that she could keep herself occupied. She had searched for more information on memory magic, but had had no new breakthroughs. And what made it worse was the fact that Ben was not keeping her updated on his progress. Whenever she called, he didn't pick up.

"Professor Tohsaka," a girl, not much younger than Rin herself, called out from the front row. "Could you move to the next slide? I think we're all done with that one."

"Oh! Sure!" Rin laughed in embarrassment. But before she could change slides, the tower rang out. "Actually, that will be all. Have a wonderful day everyone, and I'll see you all tomorrow."

As Rin was collecting her papers and turning off the projector, a finger tapped her on the shoulder.

When the magus turned, she came face to face with a girl with purple hair and violet eyes.

"Hey, big sis!" Sakura Emiya smiled.

A/N: And we're back with the new chapter. It's gonna be slow for the next couple of chapters, but I promise you that it is going to build up into something good. But, for now, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Please leave a review and let me know what you think. Have an awesome day everyone and thank you for reading.

-B