Day 6: True Avenger — Grail Multiplicity
The nameless man who had been cursed with the title of Angra Mainyu flexed his fingers speculatively. It had been a long time since he'd had a physical shell; and after spending seventy years with his ego subsumed by the churning maelstrom of curses within the Great Grail, he was still getting used to this unexpected reincarnation. He daintily extended the smallest finger of his right hand, then gave a feral smile and bit it off just above the knuckle. He chewed twice, swallowed, and then grinned at his Master to show his bloody teeth.
His Master showed no reaction, and Avenger frowned in annoyance. It was his nature and his purpose to embody all evils of the world, so he'd decided on a whim to give autocannibalism a try, but it rather lost its impact if there was nobody to be horrified by it. His Master was proving to be a rather tough nut to crack. Avenger sighed and healed his wounded finger. Deliberately ignoring his Master, he inspected the furnishings of the room in which they stood. It was quite luxurious, which was reason enough to wreck it. He ripped a strip of fabric from the curtains and ran it between his fingers.
"Very fine." he said. "Ah, there's nothing quite like Church hypocrisy to put me in a good mood. The Christ preached the virtues of poverty: lay not up for yourselves treasures upon Earth, he said, for money is the root of all evil. So what does the Church do but accumulate as much wealth is it can get its grubby hands on? Blessed may be the poor, but the rich get to drink fine wine and sleep on silken sheets, and that's an easy choice to make."
He looked expectantly at his Master.
"It's the love of money which is the root of all evil, and I have no love of wealth." Caren Ortensia said calmly. "Nor do I think that the Church had my comfort in mind when they selected these accommodations for me — I am not important enough to warrant such consideration. Most likely it is simply a pre-existing safehouse which was chosen based on the convenience of its location. I agree that the extravagance is unnecessary, but even members of the Church may at times err from their path. I forgive them their mistake."
This woman Caren Ortensia, Exorcist of the Holy Church, was truly an enigma. She seemed to possess infinite patience and an unflappable demeanor. Avenger had begun, of course, with standard threats of bodily mutilation and sexual violence; when this had produced no reaction, he had switched to describing how he would force her to watch as he did such things to others. Still she had showed not the slightest fear or revulsion, simply stating in a matter-of-fact way that she would use a Command Spell to prevent Avenger from harming innocents, if necessary. Destroying her property, insulting her religion — nothing. The woman seemed unbreakable, which only made Avenger long with even greater fervor to see her twisted and broken.
"I hope my admittedly somewhat poor behavior hasn't given you the mistaken impression that I'm ungrateful you contracted with me." Avenger said. "Truly, I appreciate your aid. I want revel in blood amidst this painfully beautiful and unbearably ugly world for as long as possible before my greater self, the embodiment of the curse called All Evils of This World, once more envelops me. I am most grateful that you were willing to contract with a Servant as pathetically shitty as me — even despite the pain my presence causes you."
Caren was bleeding. Grotesque spikes erupted from her skin whenever Avenger entered her presence. She had Masochistic Pneumatic Automatism Disorder — a rare condition that rendered one's body sensitive to the presence of evil. Such people were highly valued by the Holy Church as exorcists because of their ability to sense demonic possession. As the one who bore the burden for all the world's evil, Avenger was probably causing the strongest reaction she'd ever felt. The woman must have been in intense agony; it had to have been taking a superhuman level of control for her to tolerate his presence at all, let alone keep a level expression.
What a pity. He thought her pretty face would look even more lovely if it was twisted with agony.
"Grateful as I am, though, I can't help but to wonder about your motives." Avenger said. "I mean, if I was a great and mighty hero, I could understand you enduring suffering in exchange for my service. But since I've been open and honest about the fact that I'm pretty much the weakest Servant there is, I don't see that being your reason. Likewise, if my identity was that of some highly revered Christian saint, it would make sense for the Church to take an interest in my resurrection. But I've also told you that I'm a nameless nobody, just about the lowest piece of trash you'll ever meet, and inherently evil and unholy to boot. So why is a beauty like you suffering the presence of a beast like me?"
"My pain is of no consequence." Caren said. "I am only a canary in a cage, an alarm for warning others of the presence of evil. I was born to suffer; it is the purpose ordained for me by God, and I freely accept it. The pain of bearing your presence is nothing I have not felt before."
"Yes, yes, you're a martyr." Avenger said. "But even if you're a perfectly selfless little lamb, I doubt your superiors at the Church are so benevolent. They view magecraft as sinful, right? They wouldn't have given you dispensation to contract a Servant unless it was in pursuit of some goal. What is your assignment here, Caren Ortensia?"
"My initial mission in this town was to assassinate my father." Caren said. "However, I have since become concerned with the irregularities with this War; particularly, the appearance of two Servants of each type. Your existence is also an irregularity: a Servant of a forbidden class, with an apparent connection to the Great Grail itself. I am hoping you can explain some things to me."
"Sure, why not." Avenger said. "I was originally summoned during the Third Heaven's Feel. You can blame the Einzbern family for that: after their two previous losses, they decided that what they needed to secure victory was not a Heroic Spirit, but a Villainous one — an absolute monster with no sense or morals or decency who would slaughter all the opposition without hesitation and revel in it. Not only was that a spectacularly boneheaded idea, but they botched their summoning and ended up with me. As you might guess, being the weakest Servant, I was killed pretty much immediately. But that's when things got interesting. The Holy Grail absorbed my soul, as it did those of the other defeated Servants, and the War ended without a decisive victor for the third time in a row. The Grail had been created to grant a wish, and had accumulated enough power over the course of three Grail Wars to do; all it lacked was a wish to grant. And there I was, a wish carved into my very flesh. Unable to wait any longer, it accepted the ancient wish of my long-forgotten tribe as the miracle it was to grant. The Great Grail was impregnated with me — or rather, with the curse I bear. And for the past seventy years, it has been slouching towards Fuyuki to be born at last."
Caren ran her eyes over the tattoos covering Avenger's body.
"And what was the wish you carried on your body?"
"That this nameless man should become Angra Mainyu, the Source and Embodiment of All Evils of This World."
"Why would your tribe carve such a wish upon you?" Caren asked.
"It was their answer to a little conundrum which I believe you Catholics call the Problem of Evil." Avenger said. "Their reasoning went a little something like this:"
"There is evil in the world. God is all-good and all-loving, so the evil cannot come from Him. We are faithful to the teachings of God and righteous in our thoughts and acts, so the evil cannot come from us. There must be an outside source of evil, a devil which tempts men to sin and is responsible for all wickedness. And this devil must know that it is evil, and do so anyway: for if it is possible to do evil without knowing that one is doing evil, then even we might be evil despite all our faith and righteousness. So we shall rebuff this devil and cast him out of our village, and thereby support Good and oppose Evil."
"How did they cast out a devil of their own invention?" Caren asked.
"Through the selection of a scapegoat, of course." Avenger said. "Pick some random innocent to be ordained a vessel of evil and to be punished for the devil's crimes. In later civilizations with a better grasp of symbolism and metaphor, this innocent might be some sacrificial animal such as a goat; such a practice is described in your very own religion's holy book and provides the origin of the word 'scapegoat' itself. But for these ancient, simpleminded and fear-muddled villagers, only a human sacrifice would serve to ensure the proper purification of evil from their village. They picked a man who had done no wrong, and carved into his body their wish that he become the embodiment of All Evils of This World. Then they tortured him, confident in their belief that they were scourging the vessel of the devil's evil and thereby purifying their town. Of course, all they were really doing was torturing an innocent, blameless man to death. But that was before the Holy Grail granted their wish, of course. Now I am what they desired me to be: Angra Mainyu, the Adversary, the embodiment of all evils in the world. I exist only for the purpose of killing those who are benevolent, destroying what is good, corrupting what is pure, and profaning what is holy. I am an absolute and irredeemable evil, one who fully understands and revels in my evilness, and who can therefore be hated and cursed and tormented without regret or restraint. Hate the sin and love the sinner, they say, but I am sin itself given human form, and so there is no need for anyone to try to love or forgive me."
"I will forgive you." Caren said.
"You're willing to forgive me?" Avenger gave a disbelieving laugh. "I'm the embodiment of everything wrong with this world. You should know that better than anyone else — your body reacts to the presence of evil, and it's tearing itself apart just from being in the same room as me. How could you possibly forgive someone so steeped in wickedness and malice as I?"
"It is my belief that no one is born into this world inherently evil." Caren said. "Benevolent God created us in His own image, and the blood of the Christ redeem us of original sin. If there are those who stray from righteousness into evil, it is not because of any malice inherent within them. Rather, misfortune has driven them to desperation or led them to temptation by other similarly unfortunate wayward souls. We all carry divine light within us, and there is no one in the world who would choose evil over good if truly free and uncoerced. Even you, who claim to do only evil, were forced into your circumstances — you suffered the misfortune of being selected at random as a scapegoat and burdened with your curse. All the evil acts you have committed stem from this curse, so you yourself — Angra Mainyu, the individual — are blameless. That is why I can forgive you."
"And so you would pardon even All Evils of This World." Avenger said. "I'm impressed. In all my years, I have known only one other man whose philosophy has brought him to the same conclusion."
Caren's placid face twitched for the first time, inner turmoil momentarily showing itself through the expressionless mask she had maintained so far.
"I am nothing like him." Caren said flatly.
"I didn't say who I was talking about." Avenger said.
"I know who you are talking about, and I am nothing like him." Caren said.
At last, a weakness. After so many failed attempts, so many ignored provocations and accepted insults, he had found a crack in her emotional armor of feigned indifference. He wanted to pick at this sore spot more, to find the perfect words that would stick a knife into her heart and twist it.
"You said you came to Fuyuki to kill a certain man." Avenger said. "Would this, perhaps, be the same man you insist you have nothing in common with?"
"I understand your nature drives you to antagonize me, and I forgive you for it." Caren said, perhaps a bit too curtly for her to sound entirely believable. "We were talking about the anomalies in the Holy Grail War. Your confinement within the Great Grail explains some of the abnormalities, but not why there are two sets of Servants. Do you have any knowledge of what could be responsible for that?"
"I may be but the lowest gutter trash, but even I can see the answer to that one." Avenger said. "If there are two sets of Servants, then there must be two Holy Grails summoning them. With each pair of Servants, the first is summoned normally with a contract to a Master, followed by a second of the same class appearing without a proper contract. What's more, these uncontracted Servants do not correspond to any heroes recorded in the Akashic Records, meaning that they come not from the Thrones of Heroes. They do not originate within this World; False Servants called by a False Grail, as opposed to True Servants like me. Since they all seem to have complicated mythologies backing up their Noble Phantasms, I suppose they're probably from parallel worlds: alternate realities where different events resulted in different heroic spirits being elevated to the Throne of Heroes. Which makes me really curious about the nature of the other Avenger, the False Avenger." Avenger said.
"Perhaps the other Grail is pure." Caren said. "It was a very unlikely confluence of events which lead to your own existence: the Einzberns summoning a forbidden Servant, the War ending without a victor for the third time in a row, and the pent-up energy of the Swirl of the Root granting an ancient wish which you bore as a curse. The odds of a second Grail from a completely different universe becoming corrupted in the same manner seem slim."
"What, you don't think any other world possesses the capacity to fuck things up?" Avenger said. "Please. Human stupidity is a universal constant. In any case, the very fact that I've gained a Servant body is pretty compelling evidence that another Avenger exists."
"How so?" Caren asked.
"Well, I've been wondering why the Grail prematurely spat me out in this incomplete form even though my greater cursed self won't be able to be fully born until the ritual is complete." Avenger said. "With each of the other Servants, a Master called a hero from the True Grail and made a pact with them, and this caused a False Servant to be expelled from the other Grail and appear nearby without a proper contract. I guess the Grails are somehow connected and balanced, like an equal and opposite reaction type of thing. But the point is, I got ejected from the Lesser Grail in the Einzbern doll for no apparent reason: no Master, no contract. The only explanation I can see is, the False Avenger somehow got summoned from the other Grail, and I got spit out to balance my Grail's side of the scales."
Caren considered it.
"You probably have the best understanding of the Great Grail, having spent the last War within it." Caren said. "It that is your reasoning, then I must at least accept the existence of a second Avenger as a very strong possibility."
"Well, finding it should be pretty easy for you." Avenger said. "That was your job as an Exorcist, right? The canary in the coal mine, tracking demons based on your body's painful reaction to them."
"It's no so simple as that." Caren said. "I must contact the Church and report what I've learned, then wait for them to decide what should be done. They might decide to dispatch a more formidable agent, since I am an Exorcist in but name; or they might confer responsibility for dealing with the anomaly to the Mages' Association, since it is their War which resulting in the forbidden Servant's summoning. In the meantime, they will likely wish me to continue pursuit of my original goal — the assassination of the current Overseer."
"Whatever." Avenger said. "I'm just eager to meet my counterpart. I mean, just by our inherent natures, it'll be impossible for us to get along, and it'll probably end up killing me. But it'd be worth it, just to see the real thing. Me, I'm only a false deity created by humans who needed a symbol to focus their hate on; when it comes down to it, I'm just some innocent villager laboring under the curse. The Great Grail is working on transforming me into an ultimate god of evil, but the thing it will eventually give birth to won't be me anymore — it'll be an embodiment of the curses I carried, not my mortal identity. But this False Avenger, it could be my chance to see the nature of the existence I am to become. In the world it came from, the Throne of Heroes might hold not a pathetic failure of a hero like me, but a spirit which is a true incarnation of absolute and perfect evil. Just imagine what sort of Servant that would be..."
He gave Caren another feral, jagged-toothed grin; this time, not merely as an attempt to intimidate her, but to display his true joy at the prospect.