Day 2: Kotomine — King Of Heroes
As Shirou Emiya left the church, Kirie Kotomine closed the doors behind him. No sooner had they slammed shut than a voice spoke behind him.
"What do you think, Kirie?"
Kotomine calmly turned around. A man had seemingly stepped from thin air to take a seat on one of the benches. He draped himself across it with a casual arrogance, as though intentionally disrespecting the sanctity of the church. He was strikingly handsome, with boyish good looks and golden hair, but his eyes were disturbingly inhuman. Red in color and with pupils slitted like a snake's, they tracked Kotomine as he walked back down the aisle.
"This is a truly pleasing turn of events." Kotomine said. "A boy raised by Kiritsugu Emiya, who has summoned a Servant of the Saber class, and who wishes to become a hero... I have not the slightest doubt that he will make it to the end of the war and oppose me just as his father did. And perhaps... he will finally fulfill my desire, of finding another soul as empty as mine."
"I was actually talking about the situation with the irregular Servants." the man said lazily. "Though it pleases me to know that your passion has not diminished after the disappointment with Kiritsugu ten years ago."
"My apologies, Gilgamesh." Kotomine said. "It seems I allowed my fascination with the Emiya boy to sidetrack me. You are correct; figuring the reason behind the Grail's irregularity should be our most pressing concern."
Kotomine had not lied to Emiya or Tohsaka; lying was something for witless fools too dumb to deceive using the truth. He had indeed summoned the Assassin-class Servant Hassan-i-Sabbah in the previous War; said Servant had indeed been the first to be eliminated; and he had indeed taken sanctuary at the Church. That the sanctuary had been under false pretenses, that he had retained his Command Spells, that he had forged a new contract with the Archer-class Servant Gilgamesh, that he had maintained said contract following the War's end... these were things that he had simply seen fit not to mention. Not that he intended to keep them secret forever, but the timing of the revelation was crucial. A good betrayal was like a good wine: the longer it was allowed to age, the more exquisite the reward when it was finally drunk.
Not that Kotomine actually enjoyed wine. While he had the skill and taste to single out the most refined vintages, drinking it did not give him any joy. Betrayal, on the other hand, was something he could truly savor. He was still considering the best way to tell young Rin the truth about her father's death.
"According to Tohsaka, she has summoned two Servants of the Archer class and Emiya has summoned two of the Saber class." Kotomine said. "I have only her word for this, as she did not directly show them to me; it seems that, while not certain I am an enemy, she is at least intelligent enough to hold me in healthy suspicion. However, given the anomaly we observed at Lancer's summoning, it seems likely to assume that there are two of every Servant."
Lancer's Master was a trusted associate of Kotomine's. It had originally been his plan to kill her the moment she summoned her Servant and take Lancer into his own service. However, he'd decided to forego the pleasure of that betrayal when Gilgamesh had reported an irregular second Servant of the Lancer class appearing nearby when the summoning took place. Kotomine instead kept Lancer and his Master distracted while Gilgamesh covertly observed the abnormal Servant. It had eventually come into contact with Luviagelita Edelfelt, a magus on assignment from the London Clock Tower. Though she appeared to not initially understand what was going on, upon realizing that she had encountered a Servant with no Master, she had attempted to form a contract with it. The effort appeared to succeed, and the Grail bestowed upon her the three Command Spells that denoted Master status.
"I can confirm the existence of a second Rider." Gilgamesh said. "Last night, when the Caster at Ryuudou Temple began dispatching familiars to harvest prana, a group of them seem to have come across Rider and had a confrontation with it. The Rider resorted to its Noble Phantasm to escape: the two-tailed giant white wolf which you no doubt have heard about on the news. The Servant is clearly of spectacularly low quality if it was forced to use a Noble Phantasm against mere constructs; but from the fact that its Noble Phantasm was not familiar to me, I can state with confidence that the mongrel was one of the irregular Servants."
Gilgamesh was the eldest king in human history, who had ruled a quarter of the world; and he was the first epic hero, from whose tale all subsequent heroic epics had been derived. All the world's treasures could be traced back to Gilgamesh's vault, and all Noble Phantasms were mere derivatives of the original prototypes he possessed. The irregular Lancer which had appeared, however, wielded a giant two-pronged lance which Gilgamesh recognized neither from his own treasures nor from the knowledge granted him as a Servant by the Throne of Heroes. It was a bizarre aberration which should not exist in this world; and Gilgamesh was saying that the Rider he had observed last night had been the same way. As the properly summoned Lancer had been a proper hero — Cu Chulainn, the Hound of Ulster — this aberrant Rider had likely appeared in response to a proper Rider being summoned.
"Do you think these aberrations are a consequence of the corruption of the ritual by Angra Mainyu?" Gilgamesh asked.
Angra Mainyu! It was not so much a name as a curse. Accept and suffer all evils of this world! But to Kotomine, it was a name he held in greater reverence than God's. For, despite being God's very antithesis, it was the one existence that Kotomine felt true kinship with.
"...Unlikely." Kotomine said after some consideration. "Angra Mainyu is, of course, having some noticeable effects on the Heaven's Feel: the fact that the ritual has begun anew after only ten years rather than the usual sixty is probably due to its overflowing power and urgency to be born. However, if the additional Servants were called by Angra Mainyu, I would expect them to be degenerate and corrupt heroes like the Caster and Berserker of the previous War. But both Lancers seemed to be pure and unsullied heroes; untouched by its influence. The appearance of the irregular Servants likely has a different cause."
"It seems an improbable coincidence, though, for the Heaven's Feel to be warped in two such major and yet unrelated ways." Gilgamesh said.
"That is true enough." Kotomine said. "Perhaps it is not entirely unrelated. But in any case, it will be impossible to make any sort of observation of Angra Mainyu until the War progresses and the Grail begins to manifest. Thus, for the moment, I will focus on investigating other possibilities."
"What do you have in mind?" Gilgamesh asked.
"If the alteration to the ritual has come from without the Grail rather than from within, the only ones who have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the Great Grail to affect such a change are the three families who constructed it in the first place: Einzbern, Tohsaka, and Makiri; and the one who supervised them, Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. The old Sorcerer can be ruled out as a matter of course; he remains at the London Clock Tower. Furthermore, young Rin can also be ruled out; her youth and inexperience aside, she has been under my constant supervision for the past ten years. That leaves the primary candidates for any meddling as the Einzbern or the Makiri; specifically, their heads Jubstacheit and Zouken."
"You think one of them might be responsible?" Gilgamesh asked.
"It is what I am inclined to believe at the moment." Kotomine said. "The Einzbern have meddled in the functioning of the Grail before; it was some ill-advised tampering with the ritual on their part that led to the summoning of Angra Mainyu in the first place. And Zouken Makiri, he is the only living person other than myself who knows of Angra Mainyu's corruption of the Grail — and thus the one with the greatest incentive to attempt to alter the ritual, as he knows that it is in its current state incapable of granting his wish. I will investigate further and inform you of my findings."
"And what should I do, Kirie?" Gilgamesh asked. "I feel less inclined to continue lurking in the shadows like some common mongrel now that this abnormal War has caught my interest."
"This is a rather fortuitous turn of events for you, King of Heroes." Kotomine said. "With so many irregular Servants having appeared, your existence will not be considered so unusual if you are spotted. If you would like to gather information on the Masters and Servants, I would be much obliged. It seems that some Masters such as Rin Tohsaka have contracted two Servants, while some other Servants have brought new Masters like Luviagelita Edelfelt into the War. Knowing the total number of Masters and how many Servants each possesses would be most useful."
"Consider it done." Gilgamesh said. "Though such mongrels would normally be beneath my attention, it will be suitable entertainment until the Grail appears and the curtain rises on the true show."
With that, the presence of the golden King of Heroes vanished from the church, leaving Kotomine alone with his thoughts.
Soon now, the Cup of Heaven would spill its poisoned contents. The curse embodying All Evils of This World would be born into the world that was incapable of anything but despising and rejecting it. And from Angra Mainyu, Kotomine would learn the meaning of a meaningless life. The purpose of the life of one who was defective from birth, born inherently evil without possibility of redemption. What it meant to live, when one's existence brought only pain and sorrow to others. How to find joy, when one's only joy was to inflict suffering on those undeserving of it.
That was the Holy Grail which Kirie Kotomine yearned for from the depths of his dark and accursed heart.