Day 6: Shirou — Unholy Grail
Shirou's leg healed much more quickly than Rin had expected. When Shirou had recovered from the injuries inflicted by Berserker Heracles, Rin had theorized that his botched summoning of Saber was causing him to siphon her healing ability. Now, seeing him make another speedy recovery even though Saber wasn't present and he was using prana from one of Rin's jewels, she'd come up with a new theory: that his structural grasp magecraft gave him a natural affinity for healing because he was constantly subconsciously Tracing and Reinforcing his own body. Shirou couldn't really follow the more technical parts of her theorizing; only that she thought someone as "stupidly reckless and injury-prone" as him could only have survived this long by some natural healing magic. All that Shirou cared about was that he was once more able to walk on the leg Rider had injured.
Rin made a few token efforts at using her magecraft to repair some of the damage that the battle had done to the school, but soon admitted that this incident was too big for her to cover up herself. If nothing else, getting the mass unconsciousness that everyone in the building had suffered as another "gas leak" would require the deft intervention of the Overseer. Rin was most definitely not enthusiastic about the prospect of asking for his help the second time in one day, having only hours before called upon his help dealing with the destruction of a police car outside her house. Shirou, however, was successful in persuading her that an incident of this magnitude required the Overseer's attention; on top of which, Servant Avenger had strongly hinted that Kotomine could provide them much-needed information about the reason for the abnormalities of this Grail War. They snuck out of the school as the first ambulances began to arrive; summoned, most probably, by Avenger's Master. Despite the Servant proudly declaring himself to be a devil, his Master had acted in defense of the lives threatened by Rider's Noble Phantasm. Thus, Shirou did not yet consider that woman, whoever she might be, an enemy.
Because the church was neutral ground, they weren't supposed to bring Servants into it. After having been ambushed at school, however, Rin was adamant that they not travel anywhere unprotected. Thus, Crow and Black Archer remained by their sides, albeit in spiritual form, as they entered the church. Kotomine, if he noticed the Servants' presence, did not raise any objection. He listened patiently while Rin described Rider's attack on the school in violation of the Grail War's rules and the resulting damage, but only showed real interest when Rin spoke of the appearance of the Servant calling himself Avenger.
"So Angra Mainyu has been born once more." he said. "Though, from your description, he has yet to achieve full apotheosis."
"So Avenger was telling the truth – you do know things about him that you haven't been telling us." Rin said accusatorially. "I think it's time you leveled with us. Otherwise, I think I'll go have a talk with your supervisors at the Holy Church – from what Avenger said, they're having pretty serious doubts about your fitness for the role."
"You need not concern yourselves with internal Church politics." Kotomine said, slightly disapprovingly. "I will explain all you need to know about the abnormal Servant called Avenger.
"Most magi, even those with a fair degree of familiarity with the Holy Grail War, assume that the Servants are always summoned into the same seven Classes: Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. However, this is not entirely true. The ritual was established to summon Servants of those seven particular Classes, but other potential Classes do exist. A Master willing to interfere in the summoning process could call a Servant from one of the 'forbidden classes', as they are sometimes called: Ruler, Savior, Launcher, Shielder, Temptress... and, of course, Avenger.
"In the Third Holy Grail War, the Einzbern family decided that, because their Masters had no combat ability, their only hope of winning would be to summon a Servant with greater strength than any of their adversaries. To achieve that, they turned to the forbidden class of Avenger: a vessel for spirits who were anti-heroic or outright villainous. The spirit they chose to summon was Angra Mainyu, a Zoroastrian deity embodying evil – loosely equivalent to the Satan whose works the Church eternally strives against."
"Just a moment." Rin said. "The Servants summoned by the Grail must be human, or at the very most demigods with at least partial humanity. A God cannot qualify as a Heroic Spirit; it is a Divine Spirit, and thus incapable of being made a Servant by the Grail. To say that the Grail can summon Angra Mainyu as a Servant is like saying it could summon your God to serve you. Does the Church believe that Jehovah might be called as a Servant in a Holy Grail War?"
"There is no need for such blasphemy, my child." Kotomine said reprovingly. "Do not forget that Servants can be summoned from varying points in their life. To summon the Greek God Heracles, Gatekeeper of Olympus, would of course be absolutely impossible; but to summon the Greek hero Heracles, from a time when he was still a mere demigod and had yet to apotheosize into a true Divine Spirit – well, having encountered Ilyasviel von Einzbern and her Servant, you have first-hand knowledge that such a thing is indeed possible.
"Such was the case when the Einzberns twisted the summoning ritual of the Third War to summon Avenger in place of Berserker. They had hoped to call the deity Angra Mainyu: Ahriman, the Great Adversary, the Destroyer. Instead, they received a Servant who embodied the nameless man who would become Angra Mainyu, but prior to his apotheosis. As it turns out, the nameless man was only a random scapegoat chosen to be cursed with responsibility for 'All Evils of This World'. He was completely ordinary with no special skill whatsoever; and even when granted a Servant body and a Noble Phantasm based on his legend, he was by far the weakest competitor in the Third War – indeed, the weakest Servant to be summoned in any War. Naturally, he was the first Servant to be defeated. But that it where things took a turn for the worse.
"The souls of defeated Servants are absorbed by the Great Grail, their prana used to complete the True Magic of Heaven's Feel and to grant a wish to the winning Master and Servant team. But the Third War ended without a clear victor, as had the two before it. The Grail had been created to fulfill a single purpose: the granting of a wish. Now, after over a century of fighting, it had more than enough prana for that purpose: but it had yet to receive a wish. The nameless Avenger, however, carried a wish carved into his very soul: the source of his apotheosis, the wish of those who scapegoated him – for him to be the physical embodiment of 'All Evils of This World'. The Great Grail received that wish, and began to grant it. The nameless man transformed into the true incarnation of Angra Mainyu, which could never normally be summoned; and the Great Grail became the womb which would birth him.
"At that time, no one yet suspected that the ritual had been corrupted. Signs only began to appear during the Fourth War, ten years ago: indications that the purity of the Grail had been tainted, such as Villainous Spirits like Caster Bluebeard being summoned when the Grail should only have called virtuous heroes. Had that War reached a conclusion, the wish made by the winning team would have freed Angra Mainyu to be born into the world. But once again, there was no victor; and furthermore, the Grail Vessel shattered and spilled its contents for all to see: not the pure Swirl of the Root which the magi desired, but a burning mud born of Angra Mainyu's malign influence.
"Of course, even seeing what Angra Mainyu had wrought did not make the magi wish to abandon the Holy Grail War. Most did not realize that the corruption had come from within the Grail itself, believing the fire to be a consequence of a cataclysmic battle between the two final Servants which resulted in their mutual demise and left the War once more without a winner. Those who did learn the truth of the Grail's corruption, sought not to stop the War but rather to find a means of attaining what they desired in spite of this new obstacle. And that, I believe, is the reason for the appearance of the irregular Servants in this War. Someone found a way to summon a second Grail from a parallel world, intending to win the War and then to make their wish upon the new and pure Grail rather than the old and poisoned one.
"Unfortunately, I doubt that their plan is going to work. For based on what you've said to me about Rider's attack on your school, I can only conclude that the second Grail has also been polluted by its own alternate-world version of Avenger."
"What makes you think that?" Rin asked.
"There are three relevant points of information." Kotomine said. "First, you have seen True Avenger in physically incarnate form as a Servant outside of the Grail. In this irregular War, there have been two of every Servant; thus, it is reasonable to assume that there is also a False Avenger. That in itself isn't enough to be certain that the alternate Grail is corrupted in the same manner as ours; the False Avenger is after all certain to be a different Heroic Spirit, and not necessarily an apotheosized embodiment of evil like Angra Mainyu. For the second point, however, you stated that Rider's new Master was providing her with an immense amount of prana, far more than any ordinary magus should be capable of. The chain embedded in Rider's heart which was feeding her power sounds like a Noble Phantasm, suggesting that the False Avenger is now her Master – but where would False Avenger get such power? Even if False Avenger found a talented magus as Master – an unlikely proposition to begin with, since the surplus of Servants in this War means that every even remotely capable magus in Fuyuki has already entered a contract – that still would not account for Rider receiving such exceptional power. The Master would effectively be supporting two Servants, since his prana would both have to sustain False Avenger and further be passed on to Rider; and that is not reasonable. More likely, the False Avenger has a direct connection to the unlimited magical energy of the Grail. And if the Avenger is able to tap that power, that argues for a close connection between False Avenger and the Grail – and the probability of a scenario such as occurred with Angra Mainyu corrupting our Grail becomes far greater for the alternate Grail."
"But our Avenger – Angra Mainyu, I mean to say – made reference to a Master." Shirou said. "That suggests that, while he may have slept within the Grail between Wars, he is no longer connected to it now that he has incarnated as a Servant – that he can't get prana from it, and so needs to get prana from a Master instead. Why would the False Avenger be able to draw power from its respective Grail when True Avenger cannot?"
"That, I believe, comes down to the nature of the spirit's Noble Phantasm." Kotomine said. "Angra Mainyu as a mortal, I'm sure you saw, was burdened with a completely useless primal curse. The False Avenger's Noble Phantasm, however, appeared to be a chain capable of turning into spiritual form and serving as a conduit for prana. It is impossible to be certain without knowing the actual conceptual basis for the chain, but I am willing to hypothesize that, while within the Great Grail, the False Avenger anchored one end of a chain there; and, upon being summoned, embedded the other end within itself. It can thus freely draw arbitrarily large quantities of prana from the Grail, and further redistribute that energy to any Servants of its own through additional chains such as the one you saw binding Rider. And I do believe it is important for you to understand that when I say 'Servants', I am not merely talking about managing to contract two Servants at the cost of moderately reducing their parameters, as you and Tohsaka have done. The overflowing Grail can easily provide enough prana for False Avenger to become Master of every Servant summoned in this War; and enough of it to each that their parameters would be boosted rather than degraded."
"That's two reasons." Rin said. "The third?"
"The corruption of Rider's body which you described." Kotomine said. "It matches an affliction called 'blackening', which was observed in the aftermath of last Grail War. The majority of the casualties died in the great fire, but there were a smaller number of people who had direct contact with the tainted mud which poured from the broken Grail. That mud was nothing less than the six billion curses carried by Angra Mainyu, given physical form by the Grail's magic. Everyone afflicted with blackening died, without exception: their bodies rotted and their souls corrupted by the malice of All Evils of This World. If my recollection does not fail me, there was one man afflicted with the blackening who managed to live longer than all the others. That man had been exposed to All Evils of This World because he was one of the final surviving Masters in the War, the one who saw that the Cup of Heaven was corrupted and thought breaking it would end the curse. And so, when he commanded his Servant to smash the sacred vessel, he was among the first to be drenched in the sin that spilled forth. His name, as I'm sure you have by now realized, was Kiritsugu Emiya."
"My father." Shirou said.
He remembered the final days of Kiritsugu's life. How his father's limbs had atrophied, his sight had faded, and he became incapable of even the feeble level of magecraft Shirou could manage. The sickly-sweet smell of decay that had emanated from his body as though he were already a corpse. And finally, that night beneath the beautiful moon, when Shirou had sworn he would become a hero of justice in his father's place – and Kiritsugu had closed his eyes for the last time, never to open them again.
"Though, we should not assume that the blackening caused by False Avenger is the same as that caused by Angra Mainyu." Kotomine said, interrupting Shirou's recollection. "They are different spirits, and so likely to impart different curses. At the very least, Rider seems to still be alive despite heavy corruption; this may be due to her nature as a Servant, or it may be that even a human would be able to survive contact with tainted mud from the alternate Grail. But there is little room to doubt that the alternate Grail is indeed tainted and overflowing with cursed mud, just as this world's Grail is. As things stand, with both chalices brimming with poison, this Holy Grail War is meaningless. What point is there in fighting for Grails which cannot grant wishes, but merely pour filthy curses? As Overseer, given the current situation, I would be well within my rights to declare this War ruined and call it off."
He paused, and cast his gaze on Rin and Shirou.
"What do you think, Rin Tohsaka, Shirou Emiya?" he asked. "Are you prepared to surrender your ambitions and your wishes, to dissolve your contracts with your Servants and abandon this fight?"
Shirou wanted to say yes. He had no wish for the Holy Grail, had never even wanted the thing in the first place. The only reason he'd joined the War was to ensure than no unsuitable person got their hands on its power and made a calamitous wish. Just to shut the whole ritual down and let things return to normalcy in Fuyuki would probably be the best outcome. And yet... now that he had contracted with the two Sabers, Arturia Pendragon and Kiyomasa Senji, he felt a certain responsibility towards them. This was in many ways more their War than his. He remembered Arturia telling him how Kiritsugu had betrayed her at the end of the last War, using a Command Spell to force her to destroy the Grail just when it had been within her grasp. Was he now to betray her just as his father had, crushing her wish for the second time? And what if Arturia did not wish to abide by Shirou's decision – if she demanded that the War be allowed to continue, and was even willing to seek a different Master who would permit her to keep fighting it? Would Shirou – could Shirou – use a Command Spell to order Arturia, the chivalrous King of Knights who had sworn to be his blade – to turn her own sword against herself?
No. Absolutely not. The idea was unthinkable. It went against everything Shirou believed, everything Shirou was – the hero of justice, who would save everyone. He had come too far to take the easy way out. Now that the Grail War was begun, he was bound to see it through to its conclusion. With that conviction in mind, he turned to Rin to see what decision she had reached.
"Abandon the fight?" Rin asked incredulously. "There's no way I'd abandon the honor of the Tohsaka family so lightly. Before you go doing anything drastic like declaring the Fifth War a no-contest, I want to confirm a few things with you regarding the Holy Grail. The corruption is a result of exposure to the inherent evil of Angra Mainyu, embodiment of all evils in the world?"
"Correct." Kotomine said. "In the Grail of this world, of course; I cannot be certain about the specifics of the alternate-world Grail, other than that it appears to have its own form of corruption caused by its own Avenger-class Servant."
"But Angra Mainyu – indeed, both Avengers – are now outside of the Grails, incarnate in the form of Servants." Rin said. "Not only that, but an unusually weak Servant in Angra Mainyu's case, since Divine Spirits cannot become Servants and he is therefore trapped in his pre-apotheosis form of a random human sacrifice with no exceptional abilities."
"Also correct, so far as I am aware" Kotomine said.
"What would happen, then, if I destroyed Angra Mainyu while he was outside the Grail?" Rin asked. "Would the Grail be cleansed, returned to its pure state as a wish-granting device?"
"That, I cannot say with certainty." Kotomine said. "I am unsure why Avenger manifested outside the Grail as a Servant rather than remaining within it as he did in the Fourth War; nor do I know what consequences slaying him might have. Under normal circumstances, the souls of slain Servants are absorbed by the Lesser Grail to serve as the key for opening the Great Grail – but one could hardly call these circumstances normal. Angra Mainyu was not technically summoned during this War, but rather two Wars ago; will the current Lesser Grail recognize him as a Servant to be absorbed? And there are two Great Grails now, and thus presumably two Lesser Grails as well – which would the soul of Angra Mainyu be drawn to? Since there has never been a War like this before, it is impossible to predict with certainty what might happen."
"Then I won't give up." Rin said. "It's too soon to abandon the ambition that the Tohsaka family has been working for generations to fulfill. If upon obtaining the Grail I discover that it truly has been corrupted, and that there is no available means to cleanse or purify it, then of course I will destroy it for the sake of the world. But up until I'm certain that's the case, I will continue my fight – to win the Grail, and eliminate Angra Mainyu's curse."
"Very well." Kotomine said. "Then, as Overseer, I declare: despite the War's irregularities thus far, the Fifth Heaven's Feel will continue. I shall observe your future battles with great interest, you can be assured, Rin Tohsaka,... and Shirou Emiya."
Without responding, Rin turned on her heel and began walking towards the church's exit. Shirou moved to follow her, only for Kotomine to call to him at the last moment.
"One final thing, Shirou Emiya." Kotomine said. "You stated that the Dark Rider now under the corruption and control of False Avenger was formerly the Servant of Shinji Matou. Do you know how she happened to change Masters? Did Shinji tell you anything about his Servant abandoning him, or being stolen, or being given up as part of deal of some kind?"
"No." Shirou said. "I haven't seen Shinji in a while now; he wasn't at school today."
"Hmm." Kotomine said. "Despite having apparently lost his Servant, he hasn't shown up at my church seeking sanctuary. That probably means... oh, but I'm sure I don't need to tell you the worst-case scenario."
"You mean you think False Avenger killed Shinji in order to steal his Servant?" Shirou said through gritted teeth.
"That is traditionally the way things are done." Kotomine said. "Why, I personally witnessed just such an assassination and theft in the previous War. Though it is not necessarily the only possibility – after all, we don't know whether the False Avenger's Noble Phantasm of enslaving chains works exclusively on Servants, or whether it can dominate humans as well. In which case, the former Master may very well now be a servant of False Avenger."
Though Shirou had once considered Shinji Matou to be a friend, it was now clear to him that their friendship had been entirely one-sided. Rider may have been under False Avenger's control when she finally activated Bloodfort Andromeda, but she had still been Shinji's Servant when the barrier first appeared over the school. Shinji would have been willing to kill everyone in the school, including Shirou himself, to further his greedy pursuit of the Holy Grail. As a hero of justice, Shirou could not allow such a person to do as he wished. Shinji was an evil that needed to be removed from the Grail War.
But even so... Shirou did not have it in his heart to simply abandon Shinji to whatever cruel fate False Avenger might have in store for him. As a true hero of justice, he had an obligation to save not merely the people he liked, but everyone. Shirou had to at least try to save Shinji. If somehow he managed to succeed, he'd drag Shinji back to Kotomine Church so the Overseer could punish him appropriately for breaking the rules with his Bloodfort Andromeda. They'd then place him in "protective custody", in the sense that it would both protect him from other Masters determined to finish him off and protect everyone else from the possibility of a free Servant making a pact with Shinji.
"We will investigate what's happened to Shinji Matou." Shirou said. "If he's still alive, we'll bring him back to this church. If not... we'll destroy the Servant responsible before it has a chance to kill again."
"As you wish." Kotomine said with a wry smile. "Best of luck, Shirou Emiya; I shall be following your progress in this War with the greatest of interest. You as well, Rin Tohsaka; may your future battles be blessed."
"Yeah, right!" Rin spat. "I'd take an enemy's curse over a blessing from you, you shitty fake priest!"
Kotomine only smiled at the insult, and Rin quickly stormed out of the Church. Shirou glanced at Kotomine one more time, then turned and followed her.