Day 4: Zouken — Birth Of A Shadow
Zouken looked on the back of one of his withered hands with satisfaction. The Holy Grail had acknowledged him as a Master and granted him three Command Spells with which to control False Assassin. He might have been able to make do merely with the Crest Worms, which he had designed along the same principles as the Command Spells, but infesting his Servant with them would have hampered its combat effectiveness. A mere worm-riddled puppet couldn't match the ability of a fully independent Heroic Spirit.
The downside of the Command Spells, though, was that they were tied to this particular shell of flesh which had received them. Were this body to be destroyed, his safely concealed soul would survive, but the precious Spells would be lost. For that reason, Zouken had taken on a fresh new body before contracting with False Assassin. Provided he didn't take any damage or overexert himself, it would last him through the remainder of the War.
Still... best to err on the side of caution. Zouken gave a mental command to the Crest Worms that had intertwined themselves with the muscle, tendon, and bone of that hand. In the event that he was forced to switch his consciousness to a different body, the worms in that hand would consume his Command Spells. They would then seek out his new body and allow Zouken to forge them into a second Book of the False Attendant. He hoped it wouldn't become necessary — the Command Spells being carried in a book rather than directly connected to his Magic Circuits would weaken his ability to provide prana to False Assassin — but it would be better than losing his contract with False Assassin altogether.
Using a Book of the False Attendant would also allow him to command False Assassin any number of times beyond the original three, the book also being a tool which could forge Crest Worms into suitable imitations of Command Spells, but Zouken saw no advantage in that ability. Only a spineless fool like that worthless grandchild of his, Shinji, needed to give every one of his orders the added weight of a Command Spell in order to get his Servant to obey. Obtaining obedience through coercion eliminated any possibility of earning obedience through loyalty. And a loyal obedient Servant, unlike a coerced obedient Servant, is unlikely to despise its Master and to view each new order as an opportunity to find some loophole which will allow it to betray and subvert the one controlling it. If Zouken tried playing things that way with False Assassin, it was bound to end in disaster. He would hope that he would keep his three original Command Spells; and if all went well, never even have to use them to maintain False Assassin's allegiance.
Currently, he and False Assassin were in the basement under his house, standing at the edge of the Worm Pit, looking down at what was occurring below. The great mass of Crest Worms that normally grouped in the pit in a writhing, undulating mass had scattered, sliding away through cracks and gaps in the stone to dark and secret spaces deep beneath the city. They would return, if Zouken commanded it; but for the moment, their primitive self-preservation instinct was driving them to escape the darkness beginning to radiate from the writhing figure in the center of the pit.
The bottom of the pit was usually covered by a carpet of wretched victims, kept alive against their will as the Crest Worms fed upon their flesh and laid eggs in their bones, living batteries for Zouken to draw prana from; but in preparation for this night, Zouken had relocated them to more private cubbyholes where worms could continue feeding on them without being disturbed. Aside from the bare stone floor, the pit now contained only the crumbled bones of those who had died in its depths and one living human: a naked girl, twisting in agony, radiating darkness. With each scream, the darkness seemed to increase in volume, like her body was leaking liquid shadow. Unsightly bulging and rippling marred her pale flesh as the Crest Worms within her body burrowed shallowly beneath her skin, attempting to escape the horrifying darkness that they could feel spilling out from deep within her; only Zouken's direct order that they not leave Sakura's body preventing them from bursting out from any soft spot they could find and fleeing. He still had future plans which would require the worms within Sakura; and since the darkness was using her as a conduit, using her to spilling directly out into the world without liquefying her internal organs in the process, the worms would have no difficulty surviving so long as they remained inside of her.
Zouken felt no pity whatsoever as he observed Sakura's suffering. The only reason he had allowed her to be adopted into the Matou family had been so that she might serve according to his purposes. Originally, the purpose he had intended for her was to birth a child of Matou blood who would inherit her strong magic circuits and be trained to compete for the Holy Grail War. The fact that this fifth Heaven's Feel was now occurring a mere ten years after the fourth would've been problematic if he'd persisted in following that course, but his discovery of the Grail's corruption during the Fourth War had made him revise his plans. The purpose which Sakura was now fulfilling was to serve as one of two vessels for the Holy Grail — the Black Vessel, it would appear.
"Hmm." Zouken said lightly. "So Sakura is the vessel for the tainted Grail, and it is the vessel prepared by the Einzberns that holds the pure Grail. A bit of an inconvenience, but hardly unexpected. I crafted the vessel within Sakura using fragments of the polluted Grail from the last War, so it is no surprise that she would be the one to attune to the corrupted version."
False Assassin frowned slightly in confusion.
"Version...?" She repeated. "I don't understand. Even if two vessels were prepared, there should still only be a single Grail to fill them. And yet, you speak as though there were two Grails, one for each of the vessels..."
"So you do not yet understand?" Zouken asked. "I would have thought it obvious by this point. The Holy Grail War is a battle in which seven Servants compete for the Holy Grail. Yet, this time, two Servants of each class have been summoned. Not seven, but fourteen. Just where did you think you came from, False Assassin?"
"Then..." False Assassin's eyes, so often blank, blinked once in surprise.
"Yes." Zouken said. "This is a War fought not for one Grail, but for two!"
"How is such a thing possible?" False Assassin asked.
"Through no small effort of my own." Zouken said. "Allow me to explain. The system known as the Holy Grail War consists of two parts: the Lesser Grail and the Great Grail. The Great Grail is the gateway to the source of all things — Akasha, the Root."
False Assassin's lips moved, but no sound came from them. She seemed to be mouthing a word, but Zouken was unable to tell what it was. He ignored her and continued speaking.
"The Lesser Grail is the vessel which receives the souls of the Heroic Spirits summoned for the war. When it has been filled, their energy is used to activate the Great Grail. Of course, any number of Lesser Grails may be prepared; however, a single one must ultimately be used as the key for the Great Grail."
Zouken broke off and chuckled.
"Well, I say 'any number' as if they could be mass-produced, but in truth crafting a vessel is no small task." he said. "Only the Einzbern family has the necessary knowledge and skill to create a Lesser Grail, and of course they only produce one for each War. I was only able to produce a second Lesser Grail by salvaging the broken fragments of the one used ten years ago in the Fourth War; and, as you can plainly see, it is of quite poor quality."
In the darkened pit, Sakura arched her back and screamed again. Ever-larger waves of darkness seemed to pour off of her body. Zouken waited for her lingering scream to fade before he began speaking again.
"But difficult as creating a Lesser Grail is, the creation of the Great Grail was infinitely more complex." Zouken said. "The Einzberns could create the vessel, but they could not create the contents. Producing the Great Grail ultimately required collaboration between three great families — Einzbern, Tohsaka, and Makiri — as well as the supervision of the legendary Sorcerer Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, possessor of the Second True Magic. To create another would be utterly impossible — or so anyone else might think! But not I. Before I became known as Zouken Matou, my name was Zolgen Makiri. I was one of the three magi present at the construction of the Great Grail. And while I could certainly never construct an entirely new Great Grail from scratch, I had an idea as to how the existing Great Grail could be duplicated. It was admittedly an extremely drastic measure to take, but the end of the Fourth War had left me with the conclusion that it was necessary. Do you know of the events of the Fourth War, False Assassin?"
"I do not." The False Servant said.
"I first noticed irregularities in the Servants which were summoned." Zouken said. "Excepting Assassin, the Grail was intended to summon only pure and virtuous Heroic Spirits as Servants. The spirit summoned as Caster, however, was Gilles de Rais, an utterly depraved and twisted monster."
"A quality which you are no doubt eminently qualified to judge." False Assassin said, looking down at Sakura as she convulsed in the pit.
"Don't act sanctimonious, Assassin; a homicidal maniac like you has no right to render moral judgement on anyone else." Zouken said.
False Assassin gave no verbal response, but Zouken could tell that she was chastened. Still troubled by her actions at the temple, was she? It was such a bother when one's tools had pretensions of morality. But her spectacular skill at killing other Servants was valuable enough that Zouken was willing to put up with a certain amount of navel-gazing and hand-wringing from this particular knife, so long as it served its purpose in the end. And he had little doubt that False Assassin would, ultimately, serve. He had a keen instinct for detecting those with defective souls who hungered for slaughter, however much they might try to deceive themselves.
"Caster was not the only example, though he was the most extreme." Zouken said. "From the dark and twisted nature of some of the Masters the Grail chose and the Servants it called, I hypothesized that it had somehow been contaminated, polluted by an evil influence. And this assumption of mine was proven correct, at the end, when the vessel of the Grail began to overflow not with the pure light of the Swirl of the Root but rather a filthy mud born of manifested curses. The contents of the Grail had been soiled, and it would birth no miracles; only ruin. Certainly nothing worth fighting over."
"Then how did that Grail War end?" False Assassin asked.
"One of the Masters realized that the Grail was corrupted and ended the ritual by destroying the Lesser Grail." Zouken said. "However, after it was broken, a large amount of curses spilled from the Great Grail and devastated the city. With that, my worst fears were confirmed. If the flaw had merely been in the vessel, then I would only have had to wait until the next War for a new vessel to be prepared and I could have continued the pursuit of my wish. However, if the Great Grail itself was contaminated, then the ritual was ruined forever: no matter how many further vessels might be prepared for future Wars, they would end up being filled only with poison."
"But if the ritual was ruined as you say, then why is this Fifth War even taking place?" False Assassin asked.
"Most of the Masters involved in the Fourth War died." Zouken said. "Of the survivors, they either did not realize the truth as I had or else kept it a secret for their own reasons. And so, the preparation for the next Heaven's Feel continued in ignorance. But as for me, I was not prepared to give up on my wish so easily. I would find a way to attain the miracle, by any means, at any cost. If the tainted Grail could not grant my wish, then I required a pure one. And with no means to purify the existing Grail, I would need a new one. To create a new Great Grail from nothing was beyond my ability — probably beyond the ability of any in this world, now that the lineages of the students of Zelretch have splintered. But though I knew I could not create a new Grail, I knew how I might obtain one — an alternate Grail, from a parallel world in which it had never been corrupted in the first place."
"A Grail from an alternate world?" False Assassin asked. "But no magecraft can cross the boundary between worlds. That is the realm of True Magic — of Sorcery."
"Yes, a difficult conundrum indeed, but one to which Zelretch had unknowingly long-ago provided me the answer." Zouken said. "As one of the old Sorcerer's students, I knew that he had drawn up the plans for a Mystic Code capable of performing the Second True Magic, Kaleidoscope — interaction between parallel dimensions. The plans for that Mystic Code, the Gem Sword, had been given to his student Nagato Tohsaka. Of course, that bumbler Nagato lacked the talent to actually create it, and so the designs have been passed down the Tohsaka line for hundreds of years since. Given the youth and inexperience of the current family head, little Rin, stealing the plans was a relatively simple matter. Arranging for the Mystic Code to be fabricated was more difficult — I could have managed it myself back when I was in my prime, but my Magic Circuits have decayed since then, so I had to employ an outside contractor skillful enough to manufacture the item and discrete enough to keep it secret. Then the Mystic Code had to be modified with my own magecraft — Zelretch had designed it to allow only the passage of mana between worlds, not material or spiritual objects. It took years of work; and with the new Heaven's Feel starting so soon after the last one, I was worried for a time that I wouldn't be prepared in time."
"But you succeeded." False Assassin said, something approaching awe in her voice. "You summoned to this world a second Grail, a reflection of the first, assembled from pieces of the Grails of many other different worlds. That's why there are strange and unrecognizable Servants — they have been drawn here from other dimensions, and so there is no data on them in this world's Akashic Records."
"Yes, precisely!" Zouken said. "This is a war for not one, but two Grails! On one side, the pure Grail: Heaven's Feel, the Cup of Heaven! And on the other, the tainted Grail: Heaven's Fall, the Reverse Moon! They have attuned to their vessels now: the corrupted Great Grail to the tainted Lesser Grail I placed within Sakura, and the pure Great Grail to the fresh new Lesser Grail prepared by the Einzberns in the form of the homunculus Ilyasviel."
Sakura gave another scream, louder than before, and the darkness around her seemed to almost solidify. Shapes that might have been ropes or tentacles whipped through the air around her, leaving smoldering black scars where they brushed the stone floor.
"This location is becoming unsafe." Zouken observed. "That Shadow is composed of the Grail's corrupted contents, leaking from the imperfectly salvaged vessel within Sakura; even with my Crest Worms within her body, I will not be able to control it. In any case, I no longer have any need for Sakura, as the Black Grail of the Makiri will birth only curses. Let us leave her here and set up in a new, more secure position."
"I see." False Assassin said, staring at Sakura, who was now almost completely obscured by churning the shadow. "If you have no further use for her... then does that mean you are going to kill her now?"
"No, not yet." Zouken said. "Currently, the souls of any Servants who die are drawn to their respective vessel. If I were to destroy the Lesser Grail in Sakura now, however, there is the possibility that the Lesser Grail in the Einzbern would claim the souls of all Servants to subsequently die. If any of the Servants called by the tainted Grail have been corrupted by its influence, they might spread that contamination to the vessel of the pure Grail. That cannot be allowed to happen. What's the hurry, Assassin? Do you want to put that pitiful girl out of her misery? Or are you just eager for the opportunity to kill again?"
"I am merely concerned about the curse leaking from the Grail." False Assassin said. "It is rare for me to encounter something that is beyond my power, but... while I can see the death of the girl, and even the death of the vessel within her, I cannot see the death of this shadow. As though its existence is beyond the very concept of death."
"Hmph." Zouken said, unconvinced. "The Black Grail will eventually have to be destroyed, of course, to prevent it from unleashing the full curse it bears; but only after I have had my wish granted by the other Grail. The White Grail of the Einzbern must remain pure and uncorrupted to the end, so that my long-sought dream can finally be given form. If that means the Shadow spilling from the Black Grail is free to wreak havoc and devastation upon the world in the meantime, then so be it. This whole city may burn again when that corrupted vessel is broken and the contents allowed to spill again, and I will consider it a small price to pay."