One moment, the church was there, and the next, it wasn't.
A wave of force raced out from the church grounds like ripples in a pond, churning dirt and cracking pavement with the violence of its passing. That in and of itself was enough to throw Shirou to the ground, sending him tumbling across mercifully soft snow and grass.
"What the fuck-" Rin started to shriek, somewhere just out of view, before her screams were well and truly drowned out.
A column of blinding white fire geysered up from the church grounds, several hundred feet high, accompanied by a literally deafening WHAM. Huge chunks of rooftop and masonry launched into the air like ammunition from a line of ancient trebuchets.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Rin was yelling, and it was a wonder he could hear her at all with the horrible ringing in his ears. Dazed, he turned his head to see her lying in the middle of the road about a dozen feet away. Her face was a sheet of blood, and her hands shook as they danced in an intricate pattern.
Shirou had just enough time to think the word spellwork before a canopy of red energy extended over the two of them in a half-bubble, sizzling and crackling imperfectly.
WHAM WHAM WHAM.
WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM-
Flaming, half-molten lumps of stone slammed down on their impromptu barrier, fragmenting into shrapnel of its own. The curses had devolved into a desperate scream of rage. Heat, undeterred by the magic, blasted every inch of exposed skin. Any one of those projectiles would have been enough to crush Shirou like an ant, but Rin's barrier took all of it and kept ticking. Dust and smoke billowed until the boiling blackness was all Shirou could see, until his eyes burned and his lungs choked with
the end of everything
even if he survives that will be true because what was before is gone
the family he had before is gone
the person he was before is gone
scoured burned cauterized
he learned this word just the day before, cauterized
he hadn't understood how badly such a thing would hurt
severed scorched blackened and cauterized
this is hell
what true hell could be worse than this
the vision of the future nothing but a waking dream
a vision before death
something comforting to slip away to
(a child should never have to have these thoughts, even he knows this)
his arm is broken and the pain will not let him sleep
to slip away would be an end to the pain but the pain will not end
it wont end it wont end it wont end it wont wont wont wont wont
"—miya—"
no strength in his limbs and no desire to move
his broken body trapped under rubble
let it end
the flames are close
it wont end let it end
"—ya—!"
even when it ends it will not end
it will not end because nothing never ends
once you've walked into hell it will follow you forever
"Shirou!"
Sudden pain shocked him from wherever he'd been lost. His vision blurred and doubled, then resolved into Rin's face. Desperate and terrified. Bleeding from a nasty scrape on her forehead. Head wounds bleed a lot, he thought, dazedly. She should cauterize it before it gets bad.
Oh, she'd slapped him. He should probably be angry about that, but he couldn't remember why. His body was shaking. She was talking, but none of the words sounded like words, as though she were a cassette running in reverse. He shook his head and groaned. His ears were ringing. High and piercing.
He forced himself to sit up. "Sorry," he said, and wondered if his voice was as shaky as it sounded in his own ears. "I'm back. What was… what was all that?"
"I said the goddamn church blew up!" Rin was yelling, and he could still barely hear her. "I need to know if you can come with me, or if I need to leave you here!"
The church. Right. He remembered that-
inferno
-but he didn't let himself remember it too clearly. Slowly, shakily, he raised his hand. The Command Spell was still burned in. "Assassin's still alive," he said, oddly relieved.
"So is Archer," Rin said impatiently, "but he wasn't inside the church when it happened, I don't think. Stand up. We need to go look for them." She waved a hand over his mouth, and as his lips began to tingle, she did the same to his eyes. "That should keep the worst of the dust out of your lungs and eyes. Don't breathe through your nose."
Shirou could instantly feel the difference. The air was so clogged with dust that visibility was almost nothing. His head cleared a little as something approaching fresh air filled his chest, and he forced himself to his feet. His legs shook, but they always did after one of those episodes. A little wobbliness didn't mean you could ignore your responsibilities.
Nausea pulsed high in his throat, and when he turned too quickly, the world seemed to lag behind his gaze. Pins and needles prickled across every inch of his skin, and he kept swatting at himself as though he were being swarmed by insects. The two of them hobbled toward where the gate had been. The heavy iron was twisted and bent, where it lay on the ground. "I think he's still…" Shirou gasped, but he couldn't make his brain come up with the word he was looking for. He wiggled his fingers vaguely. "Solid. I can feel him. Draining me."
Rin gave him a worried look, terror dancing at the corners of her eyes. "That's not good."
"No," Shirou agreed. "How long has it been since the church… blew up?"
"Two minutes, tops. I didn't black out, but I kinda…" she laughed derisively. "You know. I had to reboot."
"Makes sense," he said. They stood in the main yard, but the dust was so thick that searching the premises for Archer or Assassin would be difficult. "Can you do something about all this?"
"Yeah," she said. She sounded exhausted. "Make sure you're standing on something solid."
Shirou planted his feet and waited.
A moment later, an enormous gust of wind nearly knocked Shirou from his feet, but somehow, he managed to hold his ground. The dust poured away, and Shirou barely had time to see a few fires go out.
The scene that was left was
the city was just gone. every inch of every surface was burned black or currently on fire. people sobbed and people cried and one by one, each voice went quiet.
"is anyone still alive?" someone screams in the distance, but he doesn't know if he is, so he doesn't answer
the ruin of everything he knew—
A sharp pain and the taste of blood as he bit down hard on his lip. He didn't have time for this. He couldn't afford to—
The church was an enormous pile of rubble, with four barely-there skeletal walls, surrounding a central pit filled with broken earth and hunks of stone. The explosion must have come from underground, but that wasn't what caught Shirou's attention.
Kirei Kotomine stood in the ruined church, at the epicenter of the blast. His robes were smeared with soot and ash, but they looked to have once been a pristine white; one of his arms was too big, almost like it was armored. The other held a scythe, like Shirou had seen a thousand times before in movies and comics in the hands of a black-robed skeleton.
His eyes were different. His eyes were inhuman. That blue was not what they had been before, and there was hatred burning in them. Kirei had been a bastard, but… But had he so visibly hated? Along his left cheek, like a perversion of a scab, four white, insectoid spikes protruded from his skin. Like the person that had been Kotomine was nothing but a suit of skin, stretched tight over something…
Something else.
"It wasn't Zouken," Rin breathed, horrified. "It was you. The ritual was you."
Kotomine's face went blank as his eyes fastened on the two of them in turn, and the hatred cooled. It was a much more familiar expression on that face. "Rin. It is good to see you again." He took a single step forward.
Rin held up her hand, magic gathering at the tips of her fingers. "Stay back! I don't know what you are, but you're not getting any closer to either of us."
Kotomine tilted his head, then smiled widely. It was genuine, and that made it even more unnerving. "You always were remarkably headstrong. So unlike your father."
"Who are you?" Rin hissed.
Kotomine took another step. Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with him. Something was wrong with him. He wasn't moving right. Shirou could not point to a single specific thing that was unnatural about the way the priest moved, but it was like looking into an optical illusion; one of those pictures that were just a meaningless scramble of shapes and colors until you crossed your eyes just the right way.
"Rin," Shirou whispered. "I don't think that's Kotomine anymore."
"That is not entirely correct," the priest-not-priest's voice intoned. The wooden end of the scythe thumped quietly on the ground with every step. "You're like a daughter to me, Rin. He did- I did care for you, in my own way. I do not relish the idea of killing you here and now. Do not give me reason to."
"Who are you?" She asked again.
"I am nothing more than a man who would like to live his life," the thing wearing Kotomine's face said simply. "A mortal life. I will not allow you to take that from me." Burning fire traced strange runes on the blade of the scythe. They hurt to look at. "You could not, regardless."
"Who are you?" she asked a third time, and there was a strange sense of power and finality to the question.
"You may call me Abaddon," he said graciously, halting his agonizingly slow approach to take an unironic bow. "Though Kirei is part of me. You may continue to use that name if you wish."
"Go to hell," Rin snarled. "You're an abomination."
"Hell?" Abaddon smiled wistfully. "I was forged in those flames of perdition, child. Their agonies hold no power over me. The things I have done cannot be so easily punished." His voice took on the cadence of a prayer. "Hellfire cannot hold a candle to a world that is only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water."
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust," Rin whispered, as though this were the proper response.
"The dust of the worlds I have slain," Abaddon said. "All that remains of humanity in those doomed worlds. Wastelands all."
"You're hardly making a case that I shouldn't kill you," Rin said unsteadily.
"And I am telling you that you cannot." Abaddon took another step. His boot crunched on the broken rubble. "This is your final chance to remove yourself from my path."
Shirou limped over to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Rin. She looked at him with fear-tinged resolve, and he nodded firmly. They looked to Abaddon together.
"No," they said in unison.
The priest looked disappointed. "Very well," he said heavily, and lifted the glowing scythe. "May your souls be permitted their rest." The intent to kill poured off of him like something physical, a torrent of sickening water crashing against then. He lifted the scythe, and Shirou braced—
A black-gauntleted hand burst forth from the ground like the church's eruption in miniature, and amid the spray of dust and gravel, armored, pointed fingers wrapped tightly around Abaddon's ankle. The priest had just enough time to look surprised before the hand yanked, sending him tumbling off balance — and in the same apparent motion, among a cloud of debris, a familiar suit of midnight armor dragged itself back into the light as though from the grave. The blue fire in Assassin's eyes was gone — what burned there was the color of fresh blood.
Shirou and Rin took involuntary steps back, and everything that happened next happened very quickly.
Abaddon's fall transitioned smoothly into a roll, breaking Assassin's grip, but the hulking Servant was already on his feet and swinging that black iron sword. It hit the rubble with a resounding crash and another small spray of debris. Abaddon came up from his roll swinging, scythe arcing up as Assassin's sword swung again —
A hollow boom as blue sparks and white fire mingled, deathly power unleashed by the force of the two weapons' collision. Assassin's eyes flashed, a blanket of needles rolled over every inch of Shirou's skin, and a column of blue flame erupted beneath Abaddon's feet, but in that barest blink of an eye before he should have been consumed, the false priest was already throwing himself backward.
And somehow—
Somehow, Assassin was now behind his opponent. It wasn't that Assassin had moved quickly — he hadn't moved at all. Here one instant, there the next. His sword was already mid-swing, and still, Abaddon deflected.
The sword's edge hit the thin wooden shaft of the scythe head on, and did not even scratch.
Shirou took a step back. Abaddon did not come after him.
Not tearing his eyes away from the fight for a heartbeat, Shirou nudged Rin, who seemed as absolutely dumbfounded as he did. "We need to find Archer. Is he still here?"
"He's close," Rin said, wide-eyed. "But what if-"
Every time the two weapons clashed, a thunderclap rang through the rubble. The strength behind each of those—
"I trust Assassin," Shirou said, and was almost surprised to realize that it was true. No harm would come to either of them as long as Assassin had the power to manifest.
So their survival was on Shirou. Cool.
As if on cue, another blast of sapphire flame roared through the empty space where Abaddon had been but a moment before. This time, the hook of the scythe's blade caught under one of the plates of Assassin's armor; but instead of taking damage (or perhaps while taking damage), Assassin used the hitch in momentum to thrust at Abaddon's face.
Sparks flew, and Shirou realized moments later that Abaddon had slapped the blade away with his monstrous arm, hitting the flat of the blade just hard enough to send Assassin's sword whistling through empty air. Abaddon leapt into the air, planted both feet on Assassin's chest, and kicked off. The plate came with him, but the chain underneath looked to be undamaged.
"I don't think I can run, Rin," he said quietly. His knees already shook; he was already on the point of collapse. What would happen when the pain came? "Assassin and I are making a stand. Find Archer." He grunted, his left foot going numb all at once. "Wake up him, if the lazy guy is sleeping. He can help carry me this time, so you don't have to. We'll need him later."
Rin's already-wide eyes widened, and she shook her head vigorously. "Absolutely not! If I let you die here, I'd… I'd be…"
"I always wished to take the measure of you," Abaddon said casually. He didn't sound like someone engaged in a furious battle to the death. "One of the best killers humanity had to offer."
"I cannot say the same," Assassin replied, equally unconcerned with the exertion. "We were on the same side, once. How far you have fallen."
Shirou smiled a smile he didn't feel. A blast of heat washed over them both as Assassin unleashed more flame, and he wavered. "You'll dig faster without me in the way. Like I said. I trust him."
"Shirou—"
"Do it," he said quietly.
"I suppose that I should not be surprised you're too inflexible to consider the meaning of your actions." The flurry of blows intensified, the thunder reached a crescendo — and then it ebbed. The cacophony paused. "Free will is wasted on one such as you."
"We're not going to die here," she snarled, and whirled toward a specific pile of broken stone and dirt.
"We're not," Shirou said. He was breathing heavy now.
All he could do was watch.
Watch and hope.
Assassin planted the tip of his sword into the ground. "You are not He," he said with the weight of one who had not doubted in millennia, and who wasn't about to start now. "You do not see all. You do not know all. One such as you or I cannot question His will."
"I see enough," Abaddon said, and dark fury knit his brows together as he bared his teeth. "I see you. I see past the death, past that ridiculous armor, past the fire and the fury. All that vaunted willpower? That unshakeable faith? That peerless skill?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "It's a facade. But you know that, don't you?"
"Do tell."
"Would you care to know what I see, when I look into your soul?" Abaddon spat into the debris. "I see a coward. I see a frightened child, so terrified of the freedom he was gifted that he has dedicated his life to finding a way to abdicate all responsibility for his own actions. You cannot be blamed for anything, for you are but a tool. You can never make a mistake, because you are but a tool. You never have to second guess yourself, because you are but a tool. But all that is merely a bonus, is it not? Between you and me and our beloved Father? You have pursued a life where you will never have to make a choice. And what are you so afraid of, Hassan-i-Sabbah?"
Assassin had gone unnaturally still. Only the burning flames in his eyes moved. "You speak of things one such as you could never understand."
"I was born into slavery, Hassan!" A fevered intensity pulsed through his words. No more was he the respected preacher leading a quiet prayer, as he had been before; now, with every word he spewed fire and brimstone from his pulpit. "I was born without choice! I did not lay my own free will upon the sacrificial altar like a firstborn to be slaughtered. My eyes are opened! Had I but had the choice-"
"Enough!" Assassin roared, and the sound of it was more shocking than the church's death had been. The word echoed in the deafening silence. When he continued, his voice was calm. "That is where your understanding fails, old friend." Calm, but not uninflected. "One who has never had knows not the meaning of sacrifice." The was melancholy in the words. "I have given my life to the service of something greater, because I believe so powerfully." No, not melancholy. Pity. "Perhaps that is the true flaw in your kind, Malak. You never had the chance to believe."
Nausea bloomed in Shirou's throat and his stomach, and he couldn't catch his breath. His vision blurred for a moment, refocused, blurred again. He wouldn't be able to maintain this much longer.
Abaddon's halfway-hysterical laughter layered over itself into a hellish maelstrom. "Believe in a God that slaughters his children?"
"To believe in them. To believe in humanity."
As quickly as the snap of one's fingers, Abaddon's cackle turned to a feral snarl. "So blinded by your own self-righteousness that you cannot see what is right in front of your face. I love humanity. That is why I want no part in their deaths! That is why I lament the choice that was taken from me!"
"A rot in the root-"
"Spare me the rhetoric, O Most Holy Butcher," Abaddon said, his voice now a dangerous drone, and spread his arms wide. In that moment, he was Kirei, and no one else. "You have yet to answer my question. What are you so afraid of?"
"I fear nothing." Assassin's eyes flashed, and burning fire raced down the length of his blade.
An ice pick drove itself into Shirou's brain, just above his right eye. He grunted, clapping a hand to the site of the pain; though his knees buckled, he did not fall. "Hurry it up," he mumbled, but neither of them seemed to hear him.
"All that fear, and still, you failed, Hassan." The white light flared and redoubled, tattoos and runes burning bright as the sun. "Abdication is a choice. You are complicit in every atrocity you took part in. What are you so afraid of?"
"Salvation is not always pleasant, Malak ul-Maut." CRASH CRASHCRASH. Shirou hadn't seen either of them close the distance, but their weapons impacted again and again and again, and as though his voice were but a recorded message, Assassin continued to speak. "The world will not become a fair place because you wish it were so."
Another wild laugh. "And who bears the blame for that?" The white light exploded outward again, scouring away the shadows and actually forcing Assassin back a step. With a roar, Abaddon swept the scythe's blade upward as he lunged. "What are you so afraid of?"
"I've got Archer," Rin yelled desperately somewhere behind him. "But he's unconscious, and he's stuck under a lot! I don't know if I can move him!"
Shirou didn't answer, nor did he see if Assassin had reacted to the provocation, because he was too busy vomiting onto the unforgiving ground. His stomach clenched and pain like railroad spikes slammed into his head, again and again. The pain built and built and built and BUILT—
Until something gave.
Like popping a stitch.
A feeling of release, of something breaking, but not an end to the pain.
"Shirou!"
Gasping for breath, he looked up once more, a string of drool dangling from his lower lip. Assassin was-
Assassin was…
Assassin was flickering. In and out. Solid to translucent to solid again. His stance was as strong as ever, but—
"So in the end, you were not the weak link," Abaddon said, disappointed, "but your Master. A shame. I had hoped to show you the error of your ways before this was over."
Assassin grunted, took an uncharacteristically heavy step forward, then staggered, swaying dangerously, before falling to one knee. He gripped the hilt of his sword as though it were the only thing keeping him halfway-vertical.
"Have you ever failed before, Hassan?" Abaddon asked slowly, as though he were savoring the moment. "No, that is the wrong question, for you are a failure as a human being, and were long before you became… this." He looked down at Assassin, lip curling in disgust. "Have you ever been unable to perform a duty that you were given? Has one of your marks ever slipped away? Have you ever had to watch one you were meant to protect bleeding their lives away in the dirt?"
Assassin didn't answer. He tried to stand, and could not.
Abaddon smiled. "Let's see how you enjoy the feeling."
"Shirou!" Rin was at his back, and he didn't know when she'd gotten there. Her arms were curled around him, under his armpits, and she was trying to drag him away. Deja vu overwhelmed him like a bluescreen on a computer monitor.
Abaddon looked their way. "I think not," he said quietly, and waved his armored hand. Rin yelled and time wavered and skipped and he was lying on the ground and Rin was on her knees at his side looking down at the ground while Abaddon was was he was suddenly much closer than he was before and-
skip
Abaddon stood over them, blackened robes and a now-dim scythe silhouetted against a distant, cloudy sky. "I offered you a chance to live," he said regretfully, but he was smiling as he said it. "I had hoped it would not come to this." Gently, like a lover's caress, he dragged the tip of the scythe across Shirou's cheek. Pain bloomed as blood ran down his cheek, but worse than that, there was a deadening all down the shallow cut. As if the blade's proximity were enough to start his flesh rotting. He grunted and tried to pull away, but he was utterly paralyzed. "I am weary of the killing, but I admit, when it is a choice, there is a texture to it that I had never appreciated before." There was nothing left he could do. No more tricks to pull. Even if he could order Assassin to do something, it wouldn't help. He had nothing left to give.
The back of Shirou's neck prickled.
Rin forced her head up, her muscles straining against some binding or spell that Shirou couldn't see. She didn't look at Abaddon, however; rather, she looked up to the clouds. "Enemy of my enemy?" she whispered nonsensically. Shirou didn't have the strength left to ask her what she meant.
Abaddon bent his head and murmured what sounded like a prayer, but Shirou could no longer make out the words, so for all he knew, Abaddon was laying a curse on their souls before sending them to hell.
Rin's eyes flicked to him, but there was no longer despair in her eyes. Was that… was that hope he saw there?
He couldn't imagine such a thing.
Don't give me hope, he thought, and even his thoughts were slurred. I can't be disappointed if you don't-
The world came to a halt.
Shirou had heard once that the moment of your death stretched out into infinity as your brain kicked into overdrive trying to avert its fate, but he didn't think that's what this was. For one thing, he could still move his eyes, which didn't make sense if this was just his one last moment. Dust blew through the air about ten feet away, but any closer than that… there was a clearly definite circle surrounding them, inside of which nothing moved. Everything hung suspended.
It was as if a sphere of reality had been solidified, encased in invisible glue. Abaddon grunted, and unlike Shirou or Rin, he moved — slowly, though, like trying to push through thick mud. His face twitched, and he lifted the scythe, but his eyes were not on Shirou any longer—
Three figures that could only be described as mostly-headless-skeletons carrying jagged swords leapt over Shirou's prone form, unaffected by whatever magecraft had trapped them all, and tackled Abaddon. He did not fall, but he did stumble backwards, slowly, white light building again in lines on his face and in the scythe. His face was a twisted mask of murderous rage.
The three skeletons plunged their weapons into him, again and again, but he didn't fall. He didn't even bleed. He roared, and light flashed again, and everything began moving again, fast enough that his overtaxed brain could only try to make sense of it. The scythe's blade tore the air, and when it carved through one of the skeletons, the construct fell to pieces, its animating magic dissipated. It would only be seconds before—
From a single point between Abaddon and the two of them, a black dot appeared in the air. A pulse of magic sent the world shuddering, and then another, in perfect time with the black sphere's distortion, and it seemed to be drawing all the light and mana in the air into it, like some kind of black hole. In moments it grew and shaped and resolved into an empty, familiar purple cloak, and as Shirou's vision wavered again it began to fill, as though the cloak were a container that someone was pouring sand into. Legs, torso, two slender arms—
And finally, a cruel smile under an oversized hood.
Of all the people in the world who could have interfered, Caster stood over them, gloved hands clasped before her as though she were delighted to receive an unexpected gift. "Welcome to my debt, children," she said coldly, then knelt, placing a hand on each of their chests, and as Abaddon loomed, bringing down the scythe—
The world twisted—
The world compressed—
The world darkened—
Everything he was compacted into a single point, a single dimension, every cell and every impulse and every memory, and at the moment that he would be annihilated—-
He blacked out.
Caster was not gracious enough to teleport them to ground level.
Rather, Rin and what looked to be Shirou's unconscious body materialized about three feet off the ground, and before she even had time to finish squawking like a startled idiot, they'd already crashed painfully to Earth. Stars swirled before her eyes, and she groaned, back arching against the grass as her whole body seized. At least she didn't drop us on concrete, she thought in a daze.
As her vision cleared, she finally noticed Caster standing over her, smiling in amusement. In contrast to Rin's dirty, tattered form, the Servant was immaculate, as though she had been carved from painted marble.
The enormity of what had just happened landed on Rin all at once, like an anvil onto a cartoon character's head. She'd asked Caster for help, and Caster had obliged. Welcome to my debt, children. She shuddered. It had been the only option; Abaddon had been about to slaughter them both, and she'd rolled the dice on one last, desperate gamble.
She wasn't sure if it had paid off, or if they'd just gone from the frying pan to the fire.
"Archer," she gasped, realization hitting her again. "Is he-"
"He's still there," Caster said dismissively. "I am not omnipotent, girl. Time was short."
"Show me him," Rin demanded, forcing her shaking body to sit up. She was exhausted and hurt, fueled by sheer stubbornness and refusal to give in. "I know you can do that, at least. Show him to me."
Caster chuckled softly. "I like your fire, girl." A casual wave of her hand, and the air shimmered. As though viewed through heat distortion, she saw Archer half-buried in his pile of rubble, face bloody once again. He was unconscious and trapped, but not so badly hurt as he had been after fighting Berserker. Not unless—
A shadow fell over him. No, not a shadow— a distortion. A place where the spell broke down, a mass of static and artifacting shaped into a rough approximation of a human. A high whine of feedback came from the image; but she could not hear anything from the scene itself.
"Save him," Rin said breathlessly. "Please."
"As much as I enjoy your begging," Caster sighed. "I'm afraid I have played my hand. He will not be taken by surprise again. There is nothing more I can do without—"
"Then screw you, bitch," Rin growled, thrusting an unsteady hand out toward the scrying. "Archer," she hissed, pouring as much power and will as she could into the words, "return to me." Archer blinked out of existence on the screen and materialized in a heap, crumpled on the ground between her and Shirou. Red light flashed, accompanied by a sharp pain on the back of her hand, and her second Command Seal faded away. It was a heavy price to pay, but more than worth the cost. Given the choice between burning a Seal and losing her Servant altogether… Well. It wasn't really a choice. Still, it stung.
"What about Assassin?" She asked finally. If he was dead, there was nothing she could—
"Dematerialized the moment I appeared," Caster said, stroking her smooth, pale chin. The scrying faded from the air. "A fascinating individual. Too powerful for either of you to handle, of course, but fascinating nonetheless."
Rin coughed out a laugh. "Yeah, well. We're working on it."
"I have no doubt that you are. Now, I'm sure you're dying to ask me something. Go ahead." She seemed to lean forward out of her billowing cloak, but Rin couldn't have been entirely sure that's what she was seeing. There was too much interference from her exhausted body, her beaten-to-hell-and-back brain, and the generally unnecessary flowy-ness of Casters robes.
"Why?" Rin asked simply. Every word felt like she was moving tons of bricks. She was just so tired. "Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to let us die?"
Caster's pretty lips twisted into a (still fairly pretty) grimace. "In any other situation, I would have let the both of you perish in a heartbeat. Do not mistake pragmatism for sympathy, girl." She looked down at herself, and her gloved hand brushed a thin smear of dust from the cloak with an almost absent-minded flick of her wrist. "This abomination stands between me and the Holy Grail. I do not believe you to be capable of killing it, but you can, perhaps, distract it. Through observation, I may be able to learn something of its weaknesses. We are not allies."
"I would never ally with you," Rin said, feeling defensiveness creep into her voice. A dangerous move to speak as such to someone who so effortlessly held their lives in her hand. "Never."
The grimace became a smirk, and Rin's heart thudded nervously. "I have not discarded the potential you could unlock beneath me, girl. That is a conversation we will return to, once this business is concluded."
Rin swallowed, her throat dry. "Then-"
Caster waved a dismissive hand. "I will not use this debt to compel you to surrender the Grail to me. I believe even you would break that vow, if I handed you that ultimatum, and—"
"There'd be no fun in it," Rin finished. She couldn't deny the relief she felt at Caster's understanding. Caster wouldn't ask Rin to completely abandon her goals—her morals and her drive—for a favor.
Rin respected that.
Caster gazed down at her for a long few moments, before her smile became something slightly more genuine. "I'm glad you understand me so well." Slowly, she lowered her hood. The woman who looked down at Rin was… well, she was beautiful. There wasn't really another word that fit as well. There was a strange softness to her features that was belied by the steel in her eyes, as though her cruelty were something learned. Two adorable pointy ears poked out from under the curtain of lavender hair, and Rin was filled with a disturbing urge to stand up and touch them. Rin was almost completely sure that doing that was the worst possible idea she'd had in a good long while, and that included this whole stupid attack on the church. "Our business isn't concluded, girl. I will offer you a second time. Become my apprentice. A willing student is much easier to teach than one that resists. Power such as you would never know could be yours."
It was a much better pitch than the last one Rin had gotten, and a part of her wanted to say yes out of sheer curiosity (and absolutely nothing else), but in her heart of hearts she knew what that would do to her. "The whole S&M thing doesn't really appeal to me," she said lightly, trying very hard to hide her intrigue and discomfort. "A little too kinky for my blood."
Caster's face darkened, the sweetness of her smile hardening into a flat line, and were it not for the cruelty in the set of her lips and the corners of her eyes, Rin would almost have described it as a pout. How almost-cute. "You will not deny me a third time," she said, a note of danger in her voice.
"You're not nearly so scary after almost getting my head cut off by a literal angel, sweetheart," Rin replied, leaning into the danger now that she'd fought with an ancient Divine Spirit wearing a Kirei-suit. "You're gonna have to work on it."
Her motions clipped enough to hide embarrassment, Caster pulled the hood back over her eyes. It was a sexy look (in a scary kind of way), but it had to require magical investment to see out of. Well, Caster had style, if nothing else. She was committed to the scary goth-witch look. "We are roughly a mile from the boy's home. I have taken care that Abaddon will not be able to trace the transport spell, so I have bought you a reprieve. What you do from here is up to you. Try to make things hard for him."
The bloodlust fades, and I am left hollow.
It is something I am unfamiliar with, and I do not relish it.
The intruders are gone. The church, behind me, is gone. I can feel that Cu Chulainn still draws breath; if he is alive, then my untrustworthy ally Medb is likely alive too. That is good.
I do not know what I would do without them.
I am surrounded by rubble. Piles of broken stone and dirt. Shattered glass. The remnants of my first abortive attempt to gather my power. I can feel the affinity between the mortal and the Divine growing, but I reached for too much, too fast. Intellectually, I should have known my limitations. Even as I did it, I could feel the overload coming, the way electricity makes one's hair stand on end.
I should have known, and I did it anyway. A refrain of the last fifteen minutes or so. I should have known, and I did it anyway.
From the moment Assassin—
From the moment Hassan-i-Sabbah—
From the moment he entered my awareness, I was no longer in control. My mind went black with rage, and my body trembled with the force of my wrath. He wished to send me back, and as I told him, I would not go back. My life has only just begun, and his objective was to snuff it out. I wanted to survive. (I had never particularly cared, one way or another.) I feared death. (I could not die, and so, had nothing to fear.)
I bend down and run my mortal hand over the stone under which Archer had lain but a moment before. The jagged edge cuts my hand. I bleed red.
I have never bled before. (I have bled countless times before.)
I contemplate the blood. It is bright against the ashy, dusty skin. A trickle of life against the pallor of death. The scythe falls from my other hand, and vanishes before it hits the ground. I have no more need of it at the moment.
More than all of that. More than the fear. More than the drive to live.
I have never been angry before. Not like this.
Not Kirei, and not Azrael. Nothing was ever truly personal to either of them. The burning rage is unfamiliar; perhaps another artifact of a Divine existence made mortal; a sign of the person Azrael might have been had he been born human. Or maybe Kirei did feel this anger, and my inability to regulate my emotional state makes it so overwhelming. The reason does not particularly matter, because the anger is not what scares me.
What scares me is the joy. The rapturous joy of combat, of the thrill of battle, of the prospect of drawing blood that was not one's own. I relished it. I delighted in it. When I had the children in my grasp, the anticipation was delicious.
And now that they are gone, bloodlust left unsated, I hunger for it.
I hunger for violence.
No. The violence is a means to an end.
I hunger for their pain.
I know which of them this comes from.
Azrael never took pleasure in his grim duty, but Kirei did. Kirei fought, and Kirei killed, and Kirei tortured. He smiled when he drew blood and laughed when despair took his victims. My memories are still fragmented, but I remember enough.
I remember enough.
Ryuunosuke Uryuu had been crucified.
He hung from the walls of his sanctum, Black Keys driven through his wrists and his ankles, pounded deep into one of the stone columns. The steady drip, drip, drip of blood marked the moments he had remaining.
His Servant, the unhinged Caster, was dead. Killed by Tokiomi's Gilgamesh in return for a Command Seal. The hunt had been rigged from the start, and none of the rest had ever stood a chance. Maybe together, they could have, but scattered as they were, they could not stop Caster's monstrosity before it reached the shore.
Kirei Kotomine was not supposed to leave the church. Not since his own Lancer had been killed in battle. Even without such a familiar, he was too valuable to risk, or so Tokiomi and Risei told him. Kirei was not a child, however, and he had questions that needed answering. Uryuu would not have the answers, twisted and broken as he was, but he might offer some kind of clue.
Charred remains littered the cavernous space. Charcoal and old burnt meat in the air. One of the other Servants had destroyed this place, destroyed the monstrous art that the pair had created from torn flesh and dry blood, and Uryuu had still had the poor sense to return here once Caster was dead.
Kirei had been waiting.
Uryuu groaned with pain, and Kirei laced his fingers together behind his back. "Was it worth it?"
The Master — barely more than a boy, it seemed — lifted his head, but it was a struggle, and his eyes were unfocused. "Was what worth it?" His voice was thick, slurred with blood loss.
Kirei's lip twitched in disgust. "The killing. The sacrilege. The debauchery. Was it worth this end?" This had to be disgust. That was the only thing that made sense.
The distant, pale face twisted into a tired smile. His arms trembled, but there was nowhere for them to go. "Sacrilege? Is that what you think all this is?" And then the fool had the gall to start laughing.
A grimace touched Kirei's expression, and in an instant, one of the Black Keys was pressed to Uryuu's throat, just hard enough to draw blood. A pang of pleasure crawled across his skin like a spider, and he tried to ignore it. "Explain yourself. If not sacrilege, then—"
"I saw God today," Uryuu whispered, his laughter stilling. "I saw Him in that orgy of blood. In the big guy's last gift. Were you there, Father? Did you see Him?" Kirei had heard that note of tenuous fanaticism before. This man, as twisted as he was, was a zealot. His glassy eyes gleamed.
"I saw nothing but a fool lashing out at the world," Kirei said. His voice was firm, but the question still remained. There was a tension to his own voice he didn't understand.
"Then you didn't look hard enough," the boy said. He broke into a heavy cough that turned into a strangled half-sob as the pain worsened with the convulsions. "The beauty… Couldn't you see how pretty it was? The screams of terror, and the blood, and the guts, and the killing?" His chin fell to his chest; he no longer had the strength to hold it up. His breath was haggard. "The way the blood swirls on the pavement… when the hope leaves a little kid's eye… That's not…" A trickle of blood ran from his lips to patter on the ground. "How could that ever be an accident? That's the most beautiful thing in the world, don't you think?"
Kirei's fist tightened on the Black Key. Something strained in his arm. The feeling of a revelation he did not want.
No, to call it a revelation implied true ignorance. His ignorance was willful.
One last time, Uryuu raised his shaking head. "God made it beautiful, Father. That's what people don't want to admit, and it's what I'm trying to show them. Everything they say is horrible is just so…" Tears filled his eyes, and Kirei did not think they were from the pain. His voice broke. "...Just so breathtaking. The world is so wonderful, and they don't want to see it." The tears spilled over, carving rivulets through the blood on his face. "But I can see it in your eyes, Father. You're like me. You can see it. You can see everything, just the way God wanted us to. Can't you—"
Kirei cut his throat without a word.
It was an act of denial, but Uryuu was right.
He died beautifully.
That was the kind of person he was.
And therefore, that is the kind of person I am.
Two monsters made one flesh, seeking redemption that will forever be out of reach. Abaddon on one side, Kirei on the other. Me in the middle. Two sets of eyes I dare not meet in dreams.
Medb's voice reaches my ears, snapping me from his reverie. Anger twists it into something hateful. "Did we lose?" She is not even pretending to disguise the hatred in her voice. She is not a woman who takes loss well.
The three of us are alive. That should be a victory. They tried to kill us with everything they had, and only got away because I did not expect Caster to interfere. A misreading of her character, I see now. Pragmatic enough to work with others. I will be prepared for this in the future.
But what have I lost in the process?
The church's loss is meaningless. Even to Kirei, it held no special meaning.
Maybe I lost only my self-delusions. I knew the kind of people I used to be, and I thought that wanting to be different was enough. I thought I could be different without needing to try. I thought that righteous intentions were enough.
That was a lie.
The bloodlust is a part of me. The joy of inflicting misery. I lost control. Will I lose control again?
Am I in control now?
Is this what the free will I was so enamoured of is?
Is free will free if we cannot break from who we are?
I don't respond for a long time. I do not look at her.
The sound of rustling fabric on skin behind me. A quiet sigh that I cannot read. She puts her hand on my forearm. The touch is warm.
It is calculated, but it is also warm.
"I need to think," I say. My voice is choked. "I need to think."
All I can picture is my blade on that boy's throat. The anticipation of seeing his life pour from him while he gasped and tried to hold his wounds closed. This is who I am. This is my existence.
This is me.
I called myself Abaddon, because I thought it felt right.
Is that who I am?
Does it matter who I think I am if I am Kirei Kotomine when it counts?
Existing is not enough, not when it means this.
I will not go back, but I have a life, and I have the free will I did not have before. I have to tell myself this, because I can feel the despair biting at my heels, clawing at my periphery. I have free will. I can choose. I can choose.
I cannot escape this war. I was willing to let it end. I was willing to believe that if I did not cast the first stone, that the boy would live and let live. I was wrong. They came for me, and they will come for me again until I am dead. It will not stop until they are dead. It will not stop until I am the only one left standing.
I do not want to kill, but I choose to live.
And if I live? If I succeed?
What then?
The Holy Grail is omnipotent, or so they say.
To claim it will be evil. The hope only of empty men. To use it will be evil.
I am already evil.
But if it is in my hand—
I want to do good.
I want to do good.
I want to be good, but that is out of reach. I am beginning to understand that about myself.
But if survival leads to the Grail…
If all roads lead to Angra Mainyu.
Can good come from evil?
If I laid my hands upon the cup and wished the right wish… What could I do?
Who could I save?
"I need to think," I whisper again.
My voice cracks.
Next chapter: Winter Chestnut, Spring Blossom