Day 4: Ilya — The Corrupted Grail

Ilyasviel von Einzbern walked through the forest, savoring each moment. It was important to enjoy the sensation while she could, because tonight was probably the last night that she would be free to act so carefree. Just a short time ago, Sella and Leysritt had told her that they'd confirmed with the Overseer that the final Servant had been summoned. That meant that the Fifth Heaven's Feel had now officially begun. By Jubstacheit's orders, she was now to spend each night ruthlessly hunting down and eliminating the opposition, ensuring that this latest Holy Grail War would also be the last and winning the miracle that the Einzberns had sought for so long.

To be honest, Ilya found it a little boring. Her victory was already certain; the few skirmishes she'd had in the days leading up to the War had convinced her that there was no Servant capable of standing up to her Berserker. Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster... all of them forced to flee before the might of Heracles. Assassin, that worthless shade of a nameless killer who could only skulk in shadows and try to pick off unsuspecting Masters, wasn't even worth considering. The seeming existence of more than one of some classes of Servant meant that Berserker might run through a few more of his lives than she'd originally anticipated, but there was no way her enemies would manage to take all twelve — not when they were also fighting each other. So she might take a little pleasure in crushing certain individual enemies — she was looking forwards to getting even with that woman and her Lancer who had managed to kill Heracles three entire times before having to retreat — but it was hard to get excited about the conflict as a whole when the outcome was already guaranteed. Neither did the prospect of the Einzberns finally completing their dream of obtaining the Third True Magic; that was Jubstacheit's wish, not her own.

No, the only thing that truly intrigued her about this War was Shirou Emiya. Jubstacheit had been clear that he was to be her first target for elimination, that he was a foe to be destroyed without mercy, but she was curious and wanted to learn more. The boy seemed to be composed of contradictions. Heir to the despicable Emiya family name, but not of the true Emiya bloodline. A worthless third-rate magus without even a Magic Crest, yet Master of the exalted Servant Saber. Someone foolish enough to have thrown himself in front of Berserker's axe-sword to protect his Servant, yet lucky enough to have somehow survived. How could she not be fascinated by such an enigma? And so, she couldn't bring herself to just kill him outright like Jubstacheit wished.

It was a strange feeling — both being willing to disobey Jubstacheit, who was the absolute authority in the Einzbern family, and harbor something other than the purest hatred for someone with the family name Emiya. She'd been taught for so long to despise that man as a heartless traitor, a scheming coward, an irredeemably malevolent monster of a human being. Could such a man really have raised such a hopelessly naive and well-intentioned son? In those early days after the Einzberns' loss of the Fourth War, Jubstacheit had rage-filled rants about Kiritsugu Emiya as though he alone were responsible for all evils of this world—

...all evils of this world...

Ilya felt the most peculiar sensation. It was a sort of indescribable wrongness in her body, an ache in a location she couldn't quite pinpoint. It took a moment for her to realize that the sensation wasn't coming from her human body, but the other part of her — the part crafted to take in the souls of Servants and become the key which would unlock the Great Grail. She was for the first time feeling the holy vessel within her, the emanations of the Cup of Heaven. Had some Servant already been eliminated? Was this what it felt like to receive the soul of an epic spirit? It was different than she'd expected. Rather than something coming into her body from the outside, it felt like something inside her body was trying to push its way out...

...there is no evil but me, no imperfection but me...

Then the pain began. A terrible burning sensation blossomed in her chest, as though her insides were being eaten away by something corrosive. The caustic sensation spread through her Magic Circuits, until it felt like her whole body was aflame. The agony caused Ilya to fall to her knees.

...I am the only one who should be hated, the only one who should be abhorred...

Darkness erupted out of her body, a black oil pouring from her like oil from a ruptured vessel. It spilled from her mouth and nose, dripped in rivulets from her eyes, even seemed to seep from her very pores. It kept pouring out of her, more and more of it, more than the volume of her small body could possibly contain. The shadowy liquid didn't soak into her clothes like a normal fluid, seeming insubstantial as smoke as it pooled around her.

...I am the one who bears responsibility for all evils of this world...

At last, the pain within her faded, and the darkness ceased to flow. Ilya was able to pull herself to her feet and stagger backwards, away from the sinister black pool that had formed on the ground around her. As she moved away, the shadow began to pull itself off the ground and take shape. A solid form appeared within the churning penumbra: a male humanoid figure, wearing no clothes save for a red loincloth, a red cloth knotted around his head, and leather wrappings on his wrists and feet. Its face, chest, arms, and legs were all covered with a massive, intricate tattoo done in black and red ink. As the last of the black aura around it faded, it regarded her with shifty, menacing eyes.

...Angra Mainyu...

It was a Servant, there could be no doubt about that. Ilya's status as a Master allowed her to see its parameters. But that couldn't be right; they looked absolutely pathetic, worse even than the feeblest of Casters or lowliest of Assassins. And the class appeared to be... Avenger. Impossible. Avenger was not one of the seven standard Servant classes summoned by the Grail; it was a forbidden class which forced the Grail to summon not a noble and heroic spirit but rather some wicked and twisted soul which had been elevated to the Throne of Heroes through infamy rather than valor. Seventy years ago, the Einzberns had twisted the rules of the Grail War to summon an Avenger in the hope that a malevolent spirit of boundless cruelty and limitless passion for slaughter would make up for their Master's lack of combat ability; but that War had ended up being their most humiliating defeat of all — they were the first to be eliminated, after only four days — and they had decided never to summon an Avenger again. So how could this Servant be here now?

"Well, this is unexpected." the Servant said, flexing his hands. "My old shell from the third War, is it? And I feel remarkably clear-headed. It seems most of the curse is still trapped within the Grail. Say, young lady, this is a beautiful forest you have here. Do you think you might be able to let me know what's going on? As thanks, I'll let you choose whether I rape then kill you, or kill then rape you."

His casual expression twisted into a predatory leer, and Ilya screamed for her Servant.

"Berserker!"

No more than a second passed before Heracles was at her side, sheltering her with his massive body. Ilya felt an immediate sense of relief; no enemy could possibly harm her while she was under Berserker's protection.

"That Servant, that Avenger — destroy it!" Ilya shouted.

Heracles let out a mighty roar and lunged forwards, swinging his mighty stone axe-sword. It tore through the ground with little resistance, gouging a massive trench in the forest floor and toppling nearby trees through the mere pressure of the swing. However, the attack failed to so much as graze Avenger. The anomalous Servant had leapt into the branches of a nearby tree with monkey-like agility at the first sign of Berserker's attack; and though the tree had trembled when the ground quaked beneath the force of Berserker's blow, it had not been one of the ones to fall. The Avenger's expression was no longer as terrifyingly aggressive as it had been a moment ago; he instead smiled smugly while casually waving his index finger back and forth in a mocking manner.

Something was wrong. Given this Servant's abysmal parameters, there was no way it should have been able to dodge a full-power swing from Berserker. Ilya looked over at her Servant and gasped. Berserker was blind; his eyes were smoking craters, and burning black tar flowed down his face like tears. Large pieces of skin had also peeled off of his arms and legs, and the flesh beneath burned with withering black fire. He was healing, but unusually slowly; the curse afflicting him was powerful enough to put up some resistance even in the face of the overwhelming regenerative power of God Hand.

That searing blackness which had overflowed from the Grail vessel within Ilya... it had also flowed down the prana channel provided by her Command Spells, burning Berserker from within. No, more than that — Berserker had deliberately absorbed as much of the curse as he could, shielding Ilya's own soul from the full force of the corrosive darkness. He was enduring unspeakable agony to protect her from the corruption, and still he did not hesitate to enter battle in her defense.

"Berserker..." Ilya whispered, touched by her Servant's devotion.

But while injured by this curse, Berserker couldn't fight at full strength. Which meant that she was in very real danger from this Servant.

"A Berserker, is it?" Avenger said. "Definitely the Holy Grail War, then. And since you're one of those titillating meat-puppets they call a homonculus, you must be the Einzbern Master. I do hope you know that this is ultimately all your family's fault. Screwing with the Grail system to summon an utterly villainous bastard like me — was there any way that wasn't going to backfire? I should rip off your head, stuff it up your ass, and send it to Jubstacheit so he can see just how much a shit-brained idea that was."

Berserker might have been temporarily blinded, but he wasn't deaf. As Avenger spoke, Berserker used the sound of his voice to judge his position and struck in that direction. However, the enemy Servant quickly dodged to the side once he saw the attack coming, and blind Berserker wasn't able to redirect the swing of his axe-sword in the appropriate direction. The tree which Avenger had been standing in was split in two straight down the center, but the Servant had leapt monkey-like to another nearby tree.

"Quite a feisty one you have, there." Avenger observed. "Definitely beyond the abilities of this pitiful excuse for a mortal shell that I've been saddled with — even with it too blind to fight properly, I'd probably die of exhaustion before managing to do it any significant harm. And if this body were to be slain or vanish from lack of prana, well, I'd just go straight back to stewing in my own filthy curses within the Grail. I suppose that's inevitable in any case, but I'd like to enjoy this rapturously beautiful world a bit longer before the cursed flames burn it all away. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to stretch my legs and commit a few murders, and there must be lots of people out there without their own pet demigod to protect them. I was really starting to get excited about the prospect of violating you, but it's not worth the risk of getting sent back to my greater self within the Grail so soon. Well, since I'm not killing you at just this moment, I suppose I might as well give you a warning instead. Something pulled me out of the Grail before the time of opening at the ritual's end. To have the strength to reconstitute me back into this shell after having spent so much time dissolved within the cursed mud, it must be equal in strength to All Evils of This World. And if it thought giving me a body was a good idea, then either its judgement is just as bad as that old fart Acht's or else it really doesn't have this world's best interests in mind. So, be seeing you later, Einzbern doll; and next time we cross paths, I'm going to stab a dozen extra orifices into your gut and ram my meat-rod into each and every one of them."

The Servant gave a jaunty wave completely at odds with his vile words, then turned to depart. Ilya, at last breaking free of the fear and paralysis that his shocking and painful appearance had induced in her, erupted with the questions that had been building in her mind.

"Why are you here? Where did you come from? What are you?"

The strange Servant half-turned and gave her a feral grin.

"I am the beast slouching towards Bethlehem, the hour at long last having come for me to be born and unleash the blood-dimmed tide of anarchy." he said. "Enjoy your final days in this impossibly beautiful and irredeemably wicked world; for by this War's end, everything will burn."

Avenger then vanished into spiritual form, and Ilya gritted her teeth in frustration. There were too many unanswered questions about this strange Servant. How could there be an Avenger, when none had been summoned? Why had he seemed to pour out from the vessel within her rather than appearing in a summoning circle like normal? What did he mean when he said that the greater portion of himself was still within the Grail? And what was with his warning of another powerful evil which had forced his birth?

It could no longer be denied that something was very wrong with this War. The summoning of multiple Servants of the same type was not without precedent, and could be dismissed as a mere quirk of circumstance; but that horrible caustic darkness which had birthed Avenger was without a doubt something which should not be. And that darkness had come from her vessel — from the Holy Grail itself. Something must have gone terribly wrong with the Grail ritual. Could it be that it had been wrong since as far back as the Fourth War, when Kiritsugu had ruined the Einzberns' victory by destroying the Grail? Perhaps there actually was a good reason for that unforgivable treason...

No. She must not think that way. She must hold only hatred in her heart for the man to whom the Einzberns entrusted their dream only for him to betray them in the final moments of that War. That man's betrayal should not be forgiven; or rather, could not be forgiven; no, it must not be forgiven. It was not just a sin against the Einzbern family, but a sin against her, personally. And yet... despite how strongly the dogma of Kiritsugu's wickedness had been drilled into her by Jubstacheit over the years, Ilya knew in her heart that these recent events had the potential to change everything. It had seemed that Kiritsugu had only feigned loyalty to the family to get into a position where he could betray them and destroy the Grail; but if he truly had been loyal up until the War, and had destroyed the vessel because he'd seen something like this same black curse flow from it, that would mean... not everything he'd said during his time with the family was a lie. Perhaps the words he had spoken to her were genuine. Ilya could not help but cling to that ever-so-slender thread of hope.

The first thing Ilya would have to do would be to report what had happened to the War's Overseer, Kirie Kotomine. That was not a task she relished; there was quite a bit of bad blood between Kotomine and the Einzbern family due to his past work as an Executioner. However, it was an act which would doubtless be met with approval from Jubstacheit. Seeking guidance from the Overseer was just what a properly obedient Master was supposed to do in an extremely unusual situation like this. And so she would placate Jubstacheit with this gesture, before proceeding to defy his orders and seek out Shirou Emiya.

Shirou needed to be warned about this new danger. It would not be proper for him to be defeated by anyone but her. Which fate awaited him in the end, be it execution as Jubstacheit had demanded or ensorcelled servitude as she had begun whimsically contemplating, only Ilyasviel von Einzbern had the right to deliver him to it. The legacy of Kiritsugu Emiya demanded no less.