Day 8: Zouken — Despair
Centuries ago, Zouken Matou had come to the great cavern beneath Mr. Enzou. There, working alongside mages of the Tohsaka and Einzbern families and under the supervision of Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg, he had helped lay down the foundations of the summoning formula for the Holy Grail ritual, Heaven's Feel. Still whole and hale in those days, not yet a man of worms, Zouken had vowed to win the War and obtain his wish for immortality. He hadn't imagined at the time how many hundreds of years his quest would last. Now, through the constant pain of his decaying soul and the many accumulated years of memory, Zouken could hardly even recall the reason for that desire. He only knew he must continue to walk the path he had set himself upon: to fight, to win, and to claim the Holy Grail.
A few weeks ago, Zouken had returned to the cavern. Though he'd learned the Holy Grail ritual had been corrupted by All Evils Of This World, he'd been determined not let such a small obstacle stop him. Using blueprints stolen from his one-time mentor, he'd constructed a powerful magical artifact: Gem Sword Zelretch. With this Mystic Code, he had tapped the Second True Magic, Kaleidoscope, and used it to pervert the summoning ritual by connecting it to alternate worlds. The Gem Sword had since been lost from his possession – stolen by an impetuous False Caster – but his work had been successful: tied to a myriad of alternate parallel worlds, the ritual had brought forth a second, uncorrupted Grail for him to make his wish upon.
And now, he had returned to the cavern for a third time: to keep an eye on Avenger, the aborted incarnation of the curse leaking from the patchwork Grail Vessel within Sakura, in this final and most critical phase of the War. Normally, of course, it would be quite dangerous to venture into such close proximity to such a large number of Servants; but Zouken had some special advantages in that regard. Avenger's Master, Sakura, was completely inept as a magus, incapable of placing the bounded fields that any competent Master would rely upon to detect intruders. Some of the Servants enslaved by Avenger, such as Rider Medusa, had supernaturally acute senses; but Zouken's nature as a worm-filled husk meant he would not register as a living presence. The cavern was vast, so filled with dark crevices, that the chances of anyone detecting Zouken by sight were minimal, so long as he was willing to lie perfectly still with his body wedged in a tight crack of stone without food or water for hours upon hours on end. And, of course, he was – any pain, any degradation, was worthwhile in pursuit of his goal. And, in truth, it was hardly a change from his normal habits: being more corpse than man, he no longer had any need of conventional sustenance, and spent most of his time lying still on a stone slab in his basement to conserve energy and slow his body's inevitable decay.
His Servant False Assassin was, naturally, undetectable by the enemy due to her Presence Concealment ability.
From where Zouken's body was positioned, his human eyes were useless; but he had spread a number of his insect familiars around the vast cavern. Looking through their eyes, he had a perfect view of the Avenger returning to its lair with its newest acquisitions: True Berserker Heracles, and Ilyasviel von Einzbern. The giant Servant was studded with innumerable chains, its flesh a mass of shadow and corruption. Ilya's body had not yet been directly pierced by a chain, but cursed energy was flowing into her body through her connection to her Servant: Zouken could see the lines of the massive, intricate Command Spells which covered her body burning black as they succumbed to the Avenger's dark power.
"It is time." Zouken whispered to False Assassin. "Avenger has thus far been a useful tool in keeping the other Masters diverted, but we cannot allow such a wretched, tainted thing to lay claim to the pure Grail within the Einzbern doll. Eliminate it."
The Avenger had no less than four other Servants it could call upon to protect it, but Zouken gave the order with casual contempt; nothing in the world could stop his perfect Assassin. He had carefully observed the corrupted Servants, and knew their weaknesses: the curse which consumed them enhanced their strength, but having their psyches submerged within that terrible darkness dulled their senses and their reflexes. Nor did he fear any retribution from the Servants after Avenger had been slain. Though he could be quite certain what the effects of the enslaving Avenger would be, the Dark Servants seemed mere husks now held together only by the cursed energy binding them to their master; it was quite probably that Avenger's death would result in all of them expiring as well. Even if they did not all instantly perish, Avenger was acting as their Masters and providing them with the prana to remain anchored in the World; deprived of that power, they would quickly vanish. And even if they survived the withdrawal of the curse, even if they retained enough strength and sanity to fight, even if they chose to use their last small allotment of time to launch an attack instead of desperately running off in search of new Masters... what could they do?
Berserker Heracles might remain anchored by Ilya, if her Command Spells had not burned out; but the sad, pathetic creature which had once been Heracles was clearly no longer a threat. All the multiple lives granted to it by God Hand had been burned through by the curse: it was no longer healing, no longer regenerating, was practically being held up like a marionette by the numerous chains that pierced it, and its empty eye sockets testified to its blindness. If the withered husk of a Servant didn't fall apart on its own the moment the chains were removed, his Assassin would have no difficulty at all in finishing it off.
The other Berserker, the False Berserker, had survived without a Master for some time by devouring souls; perhaps it also might linger a little longer. But Zouken had judged the mad serial-killing Servant to be one of the weakest in the War; it was an adversary he was certain his Assassin could take even in a straight fight, without requiring a surprise attack.
True Rider, Medusa, could also be dismissed. It had been an inferior Servant from the start; and now that its Pegasus had been slain, denying it the use of its most powerful Noble Phantasm, it was nothing.
As for the False Lancer, which had served Luvia... there was an adversary he might have had to concern himself with. Fortuitously, however, the Servant had lost its only weapon – the soul-piercing Noble Phantasm sent hurtling away into the heavens by some spell from the False Caster. Now, the only Noble Phantasm it retained was the ability to raise defensive barriers... and no defense could work against False Assassin's blade.
And finally, there was Sakura. As a human with a living body, she was far more likely than any of the Servants to survive Avenger's demise; but this suited Zouken just fine. If she were to die, the Grail Vessel within her body might prematurely rupture and spill forth as burning mud, as had happened at the end of the previous War. He wanted to move Ilya's body away to a safe distance before that happened, to protect the precious treasure within him. Once he had his own previous wish from the White Grail, of course, the cursed contents of the Black Grail could set Fuyuki ablaze for a second time for all he cared.
Watching through numerous insectoid eyes, Zouken awaited his Servant to carry out his order and deliver him his victory in this Heaven's Feel.
==Interlude: False Assassin==
Obedient to her Master's command, False Assassin charged Avenger. She shot from the shadowy recesses of the cavern like a cannonball, a missile aimed at her target. The moment she focused her killing intent on Avenger, her Presence Concealment could no longer hide her from her enemies' perception; but they were slow to react. The curse which ravaged their bodies and minds dulled their senses under a haze of pain and darkness; and having been reduced to puppets on chains, they could not react of their own will, but had to wait for an order from the dark Servant serving as their Master. The only one capable of responding to the sudden attack was the False Lancer, Rei, who raised the brilliant orange barrier of her AT Field between False Assassin and her target.
The flickering wall of light which blocked her path was the inviolable barrier of Rei's soul, a Conceptual Weapon embodying a boundary which could never be crossed regardless of the amount of force brought to bear. And yet, to False Assassin, it was more fragile than the thinnest pane of glass. For that was the gift and curse of her Mystic Eyes: to see the mortality of all things. Under the terrible weight of her sight, nothing was truly solid, nothing was truly certain: even the vault of the Heavens might fall in at any moment, even the foundations of the Earth might crumble away at any instant. The supposedly impenetrable AT Field was no more impediment than an old cobweb, easily swept aside with the most casual of gestures.
False Assassin raised her knife before her, aiming the point for one of the manifold flaws her shimmering eyes could pick out within the pane of light; then she exploded through it, shattered fragments falling like a comet tail in her wake.
The Avenger's chains were moving now, rising from the shadows around False Assassin to thrust their barbed heads at her. She spun like a dancer, swinging her knife in a graceful arc which cut through the cursed chains as though they were insubstantial as smoke. Another leap then brought her directly before Avenger, within range to strike.
Without a moment's pause or hesitation, False Assassin swung her knife towards the enemy Servant's sternum. If the blow was aimed to pierce the Avenger's heart, that was only incidental, for her true target was one that only she could see: the Point of Death, the conceptual embodiment of the end of a being's existence. It didn't matter what type of magical defenses nor regenerative ability the enemy might possess; to stab that point would instantly manifest the Servant's death.
As the knife closed in, though, the enemy unexpectedly spoke.
"My curse is God's curse." the Avenger said. "God is infinite and eternal; the concept of death does not exist for God."
The malignant energy coursing through the chains held by the Avenger suddenly reversed direction, flowing back into his body. As the foul power filled him, the Point of Death that False Assassin had focused on suddenly blurred and disappeared.
False Assassin hesitated, her knife wavering uncertainly as she tried in vain to find the Servant's death. She had always boasted that she could kill even a god; yet now she stood before an adversary that seemed beyond death's reach. Was her opponent truly immortal?
No, impossible. Even if he was the avatar of some god, he was still incarnated in the physical form of a Servant, and anything that had form could be broken. He was deceiving her eyes, using the nature of his curse to mask the point of his death. It was very, very difficult to alter one's own conception of death to the point where her eyes could not immediately identify it, but it was possible. She had known that someone like an enlightened saint or a Buddha who had glimpsed Nirvana might be able to arrive at an advanced conception of death beyond her current understanding; apparently this curse allowed the Avenger to do the same.
She would have to physically destroy the enemy's body, then. Even if she couldn't directly actualize the enemy's death, she could still indirectly bring it about by mundane means. If she used her knife to sever the Servant's head—
But she had hesitated too long.
Dozens of chains unfurled from the darkness around the Avenger, wrapping False Assassin's limbs and binding them so that she could not move, could not bring her knife to bear. Then the hooked head of one of the chains drove itself through skin and bone to lodge in the flesh of her heart. And through that connection, curses began to flood her body.
The first probing tendrils of corrupt energy felt like an invasion: something foul and debased pouring itself into her body and mind and spirit. False Assassin struggled in vain to resist, twisting futilely in the tight grasp of the chains. As the dark wave flowed over her soul, however, it reached a point of hollowness: the terrible emptiness which had filled her with an overwhelming sense of wrongness since the moment of her summoning, the source of the dark thoughts urging her to destroy anything and everything. As the power and will of the Avenger filled that awful gap, the invading energy suddenly came to feel natural. Yes, she was supposed to have a second soul within her; that unknown lack had been gnawing with her, but now all was right and proper. She ceased her struggles and embraced the curse filling her, embraced Avenger's domination.
She felt, at long last, like she was whole.
"Such incredible power." the Avenger... no, the God said. "In life, not even All Evils of the World would have been able to overcome the strength of your Origin. Ah, but how ironic, it seems it was that very power which has caused your downfall: so mighty was the strength of your soul that the Grail was incapable of properly summoning you. You arrived in this world with only half a soul, empty and incomplete, a bereft and broken thing. But fear not: your time of directionless wandering is over. Share in my curse, let your incomplete soul be bound in rhythm to mine, and the void within you shall be filled."
A scream echoed through the cavern. As the curse poured into False Assassin, it also flowed through the bond she shared to her Master. The Command Spells on the back of Zouken's hand had blackened and began to burn like acid at the surrounding flesh. Already a shriveled and half-rotten corpse, Zouken's body could not withstand the touch of such power. His hand broke off at the wrist, melting into a churning mass of putrefying tissue and dying worms.
"So we have an uninvited guest." God's voice boomed in False Assassin's mind. "But this is private place, for my chosen family alone; no outsider has the right to intrude upon our bond. You have joined me in eternal companionship, so sever all your prior bonds. Kill that loathsome worm who was your former Master."
The chains which had been holding False Assassin fell away, and leapt into motion. She was filled with clarity of purpose; her will and God's will were one. Sprinting back to the crevice where her erstwhile Master had concealed himself, she drove the point of her knife through the rotten flesh of his body to pierce the writhing worm which held his soul.
==Interlude Out==
Zouken felt the knife enter his soul.
Agony ripped through him; not the familiar and pervasive pain of his body slowly rotting away, but a sharp new pain that radiated from the center of his being to fill every extremity. The countless worms which composed his true form convulsed in pain, and his human shell broke apart. The decaying flesh melted away, leaving only a pile of worms squirming around a rotted skeleton.
Zouken was dying. He could feel fragments of himself breaking off and disappearing into the void, chilly absences opening in his five hundred years of memories as his mind began to crumble. But the sensation of dying was nothing new to Zouken; he had been dying for hundreds of years. Zouken had cheated death many times before, and could do so again.
He had concealed a backup worm capable of containing his soul inside of Sakura's heart, so that in the event that her vessel connected to the uncorrupted Grail he would be able to take control of her body — and therefore the Grail Vessel — as soon as the ritual was complete. However, he'd also known that there was the possibility that things might go wrong: that it was possible that the Black Grail of Makiri might attune to the tainted Great Grail of this world and the White Grail of Einzbern to the pure Greater Grail he had assembled from mirror worlds with Kaleidoscope. It was even possible that the vessel might come to harm: the Fourth War had ended with the vessel broken and the surrounding city consumed by fire. Therefore, he had prepared a second backp worm with the capacity to hold his soul, and placed it within a worm-filled corpse concealed in a secret and well-secured location well outside the limits of Fuyuki City, far beyond any area that might be touched with collateral damage from even a vicious and unrestrained War with twice the number of Servants as any previous War. Now, Zouken flung himself across space, transferring his soul to this second worm.
But something was wrong. The pain hadn't decreased. His soul was still crumbling away. He could feel oblivion tearing at him with jagged teeth, ripping out chunks of thought and memory and leaving only pits of cold emptiness in his tattered soul.
He couldn't die. He mustn't die. No matter the pain, no matter the cost, he must never, ever die. He had lived century after century in crippling agony, rotting from without and within, barely clinging to life with all his remaining strength, because he knew that he must not die. He no longer remembered why; that memory had long ago faded into the fog of time and pain. All he was left with was the desperate need not to die. No matter how unbearable the pain he suffered grew, no matter how much of an abomination he had to become, it was still preferable to death.
Zouken flung himself across space once more, into a third worm capable of housing his soul. This worm was burrowed deep within the body of Dark Rider. Zouken had considered a number of scenarios in which it might be useful to be able to take over a Servant's body, and had thus included this specialized worm among the standard Crest Worms which had infested Rider in order to grant her the prana that Shinji, with his uselessly deficient Magic Circuits, could not. After Shinji's death, Rider had purged most of the Crest Worms from her body — but had overlooked this one worm, which had been focused on concealing itself rather than providing prana. It was still pressed against the Servant's spine, undetected and unharmed. Zouken slid himself into this new vessel, this container which would shield him from the all-consuming void that tugged on his soul...
And still the pain did not lessen.
"Still trying to evade the inevitable?" Avenger asked. "You cannot hide from me, miserable wretch; Medusa's body is mine, now, every fiber of being dyed with my power. I can feel you twisting inside her, trying to steal her from. But nobody steals what is mine! Nobody can break my bond with my chosen! Now perish!"
A great flood of curses poured through the chain into Rider's body, and a tide of caustic energy began eating away at the worm housing Zouken. Dying, he was dying, he could feel himself dying – his fragile human spirit burning in the furnace of the epic spirit's power like a twig upon a bonfire...
No! He would never give up, never permit himself to die. He flung himself from the dying worm within Medusa's body to a soul worm within Sakura. But it was no good, no good; as soon as that worm awakened to receive him, a flood of False Avenger's cursed energy began pouring into that body as well. He was being crushed again, burned again, dying, dying... No! With an incoherent scream, he tore himself right back out of that dying worm and flung his consciousness towards the nearest receptacle capable of holding him – the mass of worms writhing within the ruptured husk of the body that False Assassin had stabbed. However, these were only ordinary Crest Worms, not the specialized worms designed to house his soul. Forcing himself into them was like leaping face-first into a wall of knives: he could feel himself being shredded, flayed into pieces small enough to be housed within individual worms. He was a kaleidoscope, a thousand tiny pieces all whirling about in chaos and confusion. Each part of himself, and the whole of himself, alone and in unbearable pain...
But he would not give up. Endure. Endure. Endure. No matter the pain, he would endure. There was always a way to survive. He had lived on for so many centuries while uncountable others, even some who accounted themselves great magi, had died due to his understanding of one fundamental truth: people died not because they were unable to continue living, but because they were unwilling to do what was necessary. There was always a way, if you were willing. Become a serial killer, murdering humans in order to devour their prana and use it to extend your own life beyond its natural limit. And when that is no longer enough, become a vampire, draining the life from humans to fuel undeath in the place of life. And when even that can no longer be sustained, become a worm within a festering corpse, a grotesque mockery of the man you once were. There is always a way – he need only abase and degrade himself yet further, delve into even deeper acts abomination and atrocity, in order to find it.
One of the many churning fragments composing his existence felt the touch of Avenger's burning darkness and recoiled. Zouken's scattered consciousness focused on that point. The worm had touched the remains of his severed hand, which had melted into foul ooze due to the curses flowing through the connection between False Assassin and his Command Spells...
His Command Spells! Every splintered shard of Zouken's mind was united by the same thought. Avenger had corrupted them, but the spells were still his to use. They were doubtless pure poison by now, so thoroughly tainted that touching them would be no different than suffering Avenger's curse, "All Evils of This World". But even so, a potential avenue of survival, if he was willing to accept and suffer each and every one of the world's six billion sins in compensation. Each of Zouken's countless fragments asked itself it was ready to give up and accept death with whatever grace remained; or if it would continue clinging to life even if it meant embracing every one of the world's atrocities. And each fragment immediately came to the same answer. Better to live in pain than to die. Better to live in horror than die. Better to live in unspeakable atrocity than to die. Anything is better than to die!
A swarm of worms, driven by the shards of Zouken's mind, poured forth from the shell of his abandoned body and set upon the pool of bubbling, oozing slime that Zouken's hand had melted into once the Command Spells he carried had become corrupted. At that time, his body had instinctively reacted to the toxic prana flowing through the Command Spells by severing the hand. Now, however, Zouken deliberately drove the mass of worms carrying his mind to eat that cursed and poisoned flesh. It was the foulest and most vile thing Zouken had ever tasted; he could feel it poisoning the worms carrying the shards of his consciousness even as he compelled them to continue eating: taking bite after bite of pure poison, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of All Evils of This World given physical substance. But better atrocity than death; always better, no matter the cost. And as the curse burned Zouken's worms from within, he found what he was looking for: his two unused Command Spells.
One of his worms swallowed the putrid flesh carrying the seal, then the part of Zouken within that worm felt the spell's power at his command.
"Let the connection between my Command Spells and False Assassin be severed!" that portion ofZouken wordlessly screamed. "I so Command it!"
The dark curses flowing from the second remaining Command Spell ceased, allowing a different worm carrying another fragment of Zouken to swallow it with ease.
"Transform this worm into a proper vessel for my soul!" the fragment howled in its mind.
The Command Spell obeyed, the surge of magic it released causing the worm to undergo an instant metamorphosis that transformed it from an ordinary Crest Worm into a soul worm. The scattered fragments of Zouken's mind immediately sensed its presence and cast themselves from their inferior vessels, every remaining piece of him pouring back together in the new vessel he had created to hold himself. Piece by piece, he felt himself coming back together, becoming whole once more. Once again, he had cheated death! Once again, he had proved that he would never die – for there was no act so utterly heinous, so unspeakably vile, to atrociously degrading, that he would not leap at the chance to perform it in exchange for even a single second more of life.
...Except, the pain had not stopped.
And finally, Zouken realized the truth: the problem lay not in his soul's container, but its contents. False Assassin had struck at the very root of him, erased the metaphysical foundation of his existence. His soul was disappearing, crumbling away into nonexistence, and nothing could stop it.
This was the end.
"I will... not die..." Zouken rasped. "I will... never die."
He railed desperately against the encroaching darkness. He would fight for just another minute of life, just another second of life, even just a single moment more of life. False Assassin's blade usually killed instantly, but Zouken had lived for so very long that his existence had accumulated a massive weight. He was breaking apart, falling into oblivion; but there was so very much of him, so many layered years and years of memory, that it was taking time for it all to unravel. Zouken was crumbling, but he was still holding on. There was no limit to what he was willing to sacrifice; he would discard pieces of himself into the void, shedding layers like an onion skin, to keep the very core of his being intact for as long as possible. If he could just delay long enough, just keep some piece of himself alive for long enough, then surely his wish...
"The Grail... will be mine." Zouken said. "Immortality... mine..."
"Have you still not realized, you pathetic creature?" Avenger asked, looking down on his writhing worms in disgust. "I cannot darken that girl who carries the other Grail in her body, for the vessel beneath her breast already overflows with poison of its own. Both chalices are equally corrupt, equally tainted by all the evils of their respective worlds. They can birth nothing but destruction, grant no wish but annihilation. You wanted immortality? Your wish was impossible from the very beginning."
Perhaps the Avenger said more, but Zouken could no longer hear. His body had crumbled to ash, even his worm familiars were shriveling up and dying, his world consisting of nothing but pain and darkness and the tightening jaws of death.
He remembered something, at the very end. A beautiful woman, dressed all in white. Hadn't he felt something for her, once? Hadn't it been for her sake, in the beginning? Before the pain, before the decay, before becoming worms, there had been a promise made to her... and then it had become lost in the depths of his memory, buried under the weight of so many years and so many atrocities. As all the painful years evaporated into nothingness, that memory rose once more to the surface of his mind. He beheld again after so long the face of his beloved Holy Maiden of Winter, and finally recalled her name:
"J-Justeaze! For your sake! I did it for you! All for you!"
The woman in his memory shook her head sadly, and turned away.
Then Zouken's agonized mind burst into a thousand fragments of pain, which one by one winked into darkness like dying embers.
Zouken Matou, born Zolgen Makiri, had at last returned to dust.