After Tokiomi, only one Master remained: Rider's.

Ugh, this whole thing was painful from beginning to end. The whole war, I mean. Well, of course it was. Hell, my whole life was. Sure, there were some good bits. Aoi, Sakura, Rin... but like everything else good in my life, it was robbed from me by them. It's like those Mages can't stand to see me happy; whenever it seems like my luck'll turn around, they step in. This time was really the worst of it, though. They didn't even do anything, not directly, anyway. It was as if they had ruined me so much that no matter what happened, I could never be happy. I would ruin it all for myself.

Well, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here.

I had just liquidated Tokiomi, and now it was time to finish this war, get the Grail, and cleanse the world. There was one Master still alive, but fortunately his and Tokiomi's Servants had fought, and Tokiomi's won, of course. Apparently the Servant let him live, though? Smug bastard, probably didn't even consider him a threat. I couldn't risk him getting new Command Seals and screwing everything up for me, so I had to make sure that wouldn't happen.

The kid was a real amateur though; even I could find him pretty quickly. He was staying in a house with an old couple, maybe relatives of his? They didn't look like Mages, though, so I left them alone. I came when it was dark, middle of the night, and crept into the house. Nice, small house. Yeah, these definitely weren't Mages. Their house seemed too warm and happy. I don't know if they had kids, but if they did, they must've been raised with love. The pictures on the walls showed a happy, smiling family. Some baby pictures. Scuff marks on the walls where kids would have run into them, playing.

I can imagine Sakura and Rin growing up in a house like this. Nothing in their life but bliss of playing together, late nights talking to each other, dinner and breakfast with their family. With Aoi... and me. God, I wish. That can never happen now. Not after what I did. Even Aoi would probably never accept me, after what I did to Tokiomi. Well, that's fine. As long as she can be happy now, live with her daughters now, I'm happy. Even if she never speaks to me or sees me again, even if she never lets me see the girls again, I'll be happy. Just knowing that they're happy because of me, is enough to make me happy. And who knows? Maybe, one day, Rin or Sakura, when they're grown up and on their own, will decide to see me. Maybe they'll even take Aoi with them. When that happens, I'll be ready to accept them. I will love them, enough to make up for all the time we will have spent apart until then. Aoi will cry, and apologize to me for keeping them away from me for so long, and apologize to herself for not being with me. I'll hold her, tell her it's okay. We're together now, and we never need to be apart again.

I continued my search of the rooms. I wanted to check the whole ground floor before going upstairs, just in case someone was sleeping downstairs. Some more personal effects littered around, but after a while it became too much for me to bear. I had to separate myself from this life of happiness that i always wanted, lest I become too weak in the knees, my heart aching too much to go on with my task.

I headed upstairs, taking pains not to look at the pictures hanging on the walls, and saw a door before me. It was wooden, fairly nondescript, but it was only one of three doors on this floor. One other door had a towel hanging on the outside, so it was presumably a restroom. The third door was off to the side, and so I decided that the wooden door directly in front and the third door would likely be the only ones I'd need to check. I wanted to be methodical about this, and not give Rider's Master any time to escape if he noticed my presence, so I went to the first wooden door ahead.

I slowly opened it, taking pains not to make any noise. I was glad I had Berserker dematerialized by my side; in case the boy had his own Servant there, I'd be able to fight back. As I crept in, I saw him lying on his back in the bed, limbs sprawled out, and snoring lightly. It was almost a hilarious sight, and I thought for a brief second that maybe he was just an innocent kid, and not involved in this horrible ritual at all. Then I heard him muttering in his sleep. "Rider, Rider..." and I knew. I knew there was no chance at all that this boy was anything else but the Master of the Servant Rider, my rival - and enemy - in the Holy Grail War. I grabbed the knife from my pocket, and walked towards him, still careful not to arouse him.

I wondered where his Servant could possibly have been, and then I saw a receipt from a clothing store out of the corner of my eye. Don't tell me; this boy was so confident in the barrier he had placed around the house that he actually slept undefended, sending his Servant on minor errands? God, that sickened me. That arrogance - to think that no other Magus could possibly subvert his defenses. Honestly, even for me, it wasn't hard; the boy was clearly an amateur. I don't know how it happened that he joined the Grail War, but it was probably some combination of hubris and dumb luck that had kept him alive this long. Or maybe his Servant was strong, too; but that wouldn't be a problem here.

I removed the knife from my pocket. It had various runes on it, designed to allow it to pierce magical armour. The boy was unarmed, unconscious; I didn't need it. I didn't even need a weapon at all, let alone a Servant; I could have killed him with my bare hands. He rolled over in his sleep, and his Command Seals became evident to me. I knew I wanted them. I felt a hunger I hadn't felt in a while; there must be some way to cut off his arm and extract the Seals. What would I do with them, though?

There's no such thing as being too careful.

I drew the knife up, and brought it quickly down on the boy's exposed throat. Piercing the carotid artery and jugular vein, the blood spurted out of the wound, covering my face, hair, and clothing. Some of it got in my eye; momentarily blinded, I wiped it off with the sleeve of my free hand, and could then see what I had done. There was a massive, gaping hole in the boy's throat, his face contorted in a silent scream for help. His eyes ran with saltwater, and his mouth bubbled over with aerated saliva and blood. His head seemed as if it were only connected to his body by a bare string of tissue; one quick jerk and it'd roll right off.

I looked at his crushed visage, contemplating what had gone on inside that brain before it was starved of oxygen by my steel. The synapses firing, the thoughts flowing and sparking in his mind, all brought to a swift end at my hand. It filled me with a sense of power, even though it was just a kid. Still, this represented the final act in my journey to freedom and victory, and all that remained was to take my rightful spoils of war. I pulled the knife from his throat, causing an additional spurt of red blood of life to pop out at me.

I then turned from the head to the arm, my knife in my left hand, and holding his limp hand in my right. I traced my thumb over the red patterns of his Command Seals, and knew that I must make them mine; that I must take all the evil power of the Mages and use it for good, to redeem myself and the whole world with me. I lifted his hand up, and using my knife I cut it off at the wrist. the flow of blood further soiled my clothing, and left my hands sordid messes. I would wash them later, but first, I had to bring the Seals back to the Matou - the name still irks me, but what can I do? - manor, to take them into myself.

That Matou blood will follow me forever, dooming me to the grave. There is nothing I can do about it. The curses within it fill my body, and reduce me to a withered husk; it is all I can do merely to resist that tide pushing me down, and perhaps accomplish something good before I am destroyed. My body came from the worms, and in the end I know that it will return to them. This ever-present knowledge of death hovers over me like the Sword of Damocles, and renders me unwilling and unfit to properly live; I wish to sacrifice my life so that at least my end will have meaning. This meaning, is the salvation of the world from the hands of Magecraft.

So I got up to leave the house where I found Rider's Master, but on my way out I heard a terrible noise. It was like the clanging of dulled swords, their sharpness worn away by the blood and bone of men fallen underneath them. It shook my heart, and a chill crawled up my spine.

I instinctively called for Berserker to materialize, but there was no answer. In my mind I sensed a powerful hatred; surely that of my Servant, but where is he? Why isn't he appearing to defend his Master? Has he no regard for his own safety? He must know that if I die, his own mana source will dry up; even a Servant blinded by madness cannot help but have that inborn knowledge conferred by the Grail.

"Berserker!" I call out. "Appear, and sate your lusty anger with this new enemy!"

Not that there was any point in this overblown command; he would do nothing. I decided to use a Command Seal, and ordered him to appear. By this point I had realized that Rider must have been somewhere nearby, or else had sensed his Master's demise and come to avenge him before his own expiration. He would take me down on his way back to the Throne of Heroes, and I was essentially defenseless. Then Berserker appeared, but not in his customary armour. He had even taken off his helm, so his cruel face, twisted in anger was perfectly visible. Rider appeared, shouted some nonsense phrase about glory, and lifted his short sword to pierce me. I looked to Berserker for aid, but he merely watched with a sadistic grin curling his lips. I made a last effort to use another Command Seal to force the Servant to save me, but I looked at my hand, and saw there was none remaining. I had spent my last Seal on nothing? How typical... how exactly typical of me.

The short sword fell upon me, Rider shouting a battlecry, and I was prepared to accept it. I had been wrong to consider myself ascended at all above my former status; I was still exactly who I always was, and that was something that would never change. I would never be anything more than a crawling worm, doomed to die, crushed under the feet of those more powerful. If might was right, then I was certainly the most wrong person alive.

Suddenly, my entire world was bathed in a simultaneous dance of light and dark. Then the dancing stabilized into a scene. It was the cellar of the Matou manor, and I was in it. The worms were also in it, and my face was on all of the worms. They each had my features, each one disfigured differently. They seethed in a mass, and I felt that I was all of them at once. I felt the all-consuming hunger forcing me to go on, as a small maggot in a mass of millions of others, crawling over each other's bodies, continually deprived of the food we sought.

Then I saw Sakura, standing on the stairs leading down to the mass. The 'me' who was human, at the top of the staircase, called to her. Told her to come up to me, that I would protect her from them, and reunite her with her family. But she only laughed. I could only see her from behind at first, but then she turned around and looked at me. Her face was not her own; rather, it was Zouken's. And Zouken-Sakura laughed at me, and said, "Kariya, even to the very end you still harbor these delusions. Your suffering has brought me endless pleasure, and I suppose I should thank you for it. I would gladly trade any sort of immortality just to see your body convulsing for one more moment. Sadly, this joy of mine is at an end." He-She-? turned back to the writhing mass of worms, and jumped. I wanted to run to catch her, but I was immobile. I looked down at my feet, urging them to move, but only saw two thick trunks of Crest Worms. I looked down at my whole body, and saw that it was transforming into worms, and itself falling into the pit. I was then also the worms in the pit, and I saw a small purple form fall in. Eagerly, I jumped at it, and bit through its thighs to the source of life between them. The flesh tasted so good, and my worm-body was inundated with fresh fluids. I was bathed in life, but still I kept burrowing in, reaching the genitals and not stopping there, sensing the purest form of life beyond. I tunneled through, and in her womb I found it and rejoiced with the sensation of victory and power, afforded by the virginal essence I had consumed and become.

I opened my eyes to find myself naked in a church. I saw Tokiomi's corpse sitting in the pews, and rejoiced at his downfall. I saw myself enter the room, and again I could not move. I could only watch as the other 'me' taunted Tokiomi, apparently unaware of his death. Then I saw Aoi enter, and she ran to the other 'me' - no wait, she ran to Tokiomi! - and held him, and cried. She then screamed, and I was on top of her. I was strangling her, as her skirt lifted above her legs and I so desperately wanted to deny what she was saying, her accusations that I had no love. Of course I had love. I wanted to prove my love to her, force her to acknowledge it even though she didn't want to. I held her down with one hand, and with the other I tore her underclothes. I then inserted myself inside, tunneling through, finding true joy in her pulsating innards as her limp body did nothing. I reached in and burrowed through, content in my love.

I opened my eyes, and I was in my old childhood room. Aoi was standing in front of me, and asked me if I was satisfied with what I had done. This could not be, I thought. I had just been elsewhere, inside of her... I realized then what had happened. Having killed the final Master, I must have won the Holy Grail War, if only by a technicality. As Rider moved to kill me, the Grail must have appeared, and drawn me to these visions. But, why would it show me these things? For what purpose?

I spoke to what appeared to be Aoi. "Why do you don this false mask?"

"Oh? I underestimated you, Kariya," she said. "I expected you to run towards me and embrace me, as the living essence of all your desires. You do know that I am your beloved, the true desire of your heart?"

I spat at her. "I know what you are. I studied the Grail deeply in my youth, and its true nature is plain before me. Or should I say, your true nature, Angra Mainyu? I have no wish to embrace All the World's Evil just yet."

She chuckled. "I see. Well then, that expedites matters. I have shown you visions, sights that lay bare before you everything you truly want, in the depths of your body and soul. Shall I then-"

"Liar!" I shouted. "Perhaps this is just another one of your tricks, designed to make me wish for as much destruction as possible, but there is no way that I could ever want to hurt Sakura or Aoi. These are no wishes of mine; they are vile perversions you yourself created. I shall use you only for my real wish, and nothing else. Your evil will not be allowed to spread unchecked."

She tilted her head. "What do you mean, Kariya? You should know perfectly well that I have no such ability to fabricate. To be sure, I can twist ever so slightly a man's desire, but that is all. Only a little nudge in the right direction. You have only yourself to thank if you see visions of sadism, of raping and killing the women you claim to love-"

I was furious. There was no way I would allow this monster to speak of me like that, or of my love for Sakura and Aoi. It had to pay for what it forced me to go through, seeing such horrible nightmares. I would kill it. Even if it meant sacrificing everything that I had wished for, even if it meant my whole journey was worthless, I would erase this being from existence.

I ran towards the false Aoi, and grabbed her throat. I lifted her off the ground, and spat in her face. As she convulsed, and her mouth began to froth, she said, "It won't be so easy this time, you know. Not like when you did this to the real Aoi." I tighten my grip, her eyes begin to bulge out of their sockets. "You could do whatever you wanted to her; after all, she was nothing but a weak woman, who needed you to save her. Or am I wrong?" Her smug look never vanished from her face, and she continued to taunt me. "If you really were honest with yourself, you would know that I am not lying at all. I know you better than you know yourself, and I can tell that what I say disturbs you fundamentally. It could only do so to such an extent if it were true."

She coughed, and continued. "You may claim now that you wish to save Sakura, and that that is why you are doing this. That is why you have given up your dreams of happiness and normalcy, and gone back to the Matou manor. If so, now that you finally have what you have desired, why do you forsake it? Why do you want to kill me, the only one who can make your dreams real? Unfortunately for your sadistic impulses, Sakura is still alive! She still needs you, does she not? Don't tell me you're simply too selfish and weak-willed, an empty egotist too spineless to take a few sharp words? Or perhaps that's what you truly desire, Kariya? Perhaps you don't want to save Sakura at all; perhaps you never did."

I threw her down on the floor, and took the knife from my pocket. I began stabbing her, wishing only to quiet her lies. She still went on speaking, even as her limbs were severed. "Perhaps all this only reveals something latent in you, that you knew nothing of. Rather, you knew it, but you would never admit it to yourself. Perhaps what you really wanted all along was just revealed in your visions. I thought at first that the acts of violence against Sakura and Aoi were simply reflecting your true desire, and indeed I still believe it to be so, but it's becoming more likely that even that was just a smokescreen. A blindfold, to distract you from what you considered truly abhorrent. Ah, but what, you must be asking yourself, could possibly be worse?" At this point her limbs had all been severed from her body, and her torso sliced to ribbons. Her head was barely attached; I severed even that. As the blood flowed from the infinite wounds, as still-living organs strewn across the floor pulsated, sending blood and nutrients to nowhere, she continued to speak. What could I possibly have done to silence her? She is immortal; a monster.

"I posit this to you: perhaps what you really wanted was your own suffering? Anyone who looked at you could tell you were rotten; and not just bodily, after the implantation of Crest Worms. There was always something about you that was filled with the stench of rotting meat, something in your soul. Your origin is '[decay]', and your life has always been an expression of that. Why else would you have never taken the opportunity, though it had been present for years, to confess your love to Aoi? She always desired you, and you would have been a most acceptable match for her. Her family would have been overjoyed that one of the three great magical dynasties, who created the Third Magic, would take their daughter under their wing. You may have formed excuses for yourself since then, blaming Tokiomi for stealing her away from you, but how could that be? Aoi knew you and loved you for years before she met Tohsaka. You knew this, of course you did. But that fundamental nature, that guiding principle of yours forced you to choose the path of suffering and decay. Your wish died, your love died. And in its place, born from its rotten corpse, was the seed of hatred. On the surface, it only manifested as a hatred for Tokiomi, and a desire for Aoi; and later her children as well. A love. But inside, you were angry. You were angry at Aoi, for wanting you and making you suffer the pains of love, and for humiliating you when she decided to marry another after you declined her unspoken offers of matrimony. You were actually not angry at Tokiomi at all; in fact, you were grateful to him. He took away that burden of choice from you, that glowing opportunity in front of you that beckoned you with its shimmering light. If you had married Aoi you might have been happy, you might have loved her, you might have fathered her children; you might have lived. And that decaying nature of yours could not abide that."

At this point, I had thoroughly exhausted myself with the work of cutting her up into minuscule pieces. I sat down on the ground, and laid on my back, waiting for the blood loss to shut her up for good.

Still she wouldn't shut up; it seemed I would have to wait a while. I merely hoped she was suffering as much as I had been.

"Not only that, but you hated yourself too. The essence of [decay] now filling you had finally received a breeding ground in that small germ of hate you created for Aoi. It then grew, until it could not be satisfied with simply hating another. It desired fulfillment of its Will. It wanted to fully expand and create decay, but due to its intrinsic nature, it was housed in a weak body. Or rather, it was the weak body. Yours, specifically. So it saw no better target than itself, and to that end it generated something like the following in your mind: 'I hate myself for being weak, and unable to pursue Aoi while I had the chance. And I hate myself for desiring her, for wanting to live with her. I deserve to be punished for being weak, and so I will punish myself. I will make sure that I suffer, and I will relish the pain.' And so you did. You made sure to continue to spend time with Aoi and her daughters, instead of moving on, just so that you could always be confronted with the reminder of what you could have had, but didn't. You then took on this mission of selflessness, not to save Sakura, or anything like that. That's what you told yourself and everyone else, but it's not the real reason. What you really wanted was to set a goal for yourself that you knew would not come to pass. You knew that your Father would never keep his end of the deal, and release her. You wanted to suffer pursuing an unachievable goal, bringing yourself back to the powerless state you used to be in, under your Father's thumb. Because back then, you didn't need to make any decisions. You didn't need to live. You only had to suffer and be obedient to him, because you craved pain and hated life. This made you happy, then; your origin was satisfied in your endless self-flagellation."

I looked at the mouth speaking these words, and to my horror I saw that the disparate parts of its body, every fragment of skin and bone, were coming back together. The droplets of blood were sucked back into the reforming corpse, and as the joints popped into place, and the eyes filled their sockets, it began to stand. It slowly walked towards me on legs covered in patches of dermis and exposed blood vessels. As it approached me, those patches were covered with epidermis, and it finally reached me. Aoi - it had returned to her form - looked down at my helpless body from above, and with a look of scorn on her face, continued speaking. I could not do anything; I was simply too weak. Far too weak.

"So here I offer you what you always wanted. Not revenge on the Mages. You loved their oppression; you were their willing lapdog. Not Sakura's salvation. You hated her for not being yours, for calling another man 'Father.' No, I offer you something nearer to your own heart. I offer you pain on a scale heretofore undreamed by men. I offer you the opportunity to be the vessel of All the World's Evil, to accept every curse within yourself. Your screams of agony will send your outer mind to insanity, while your origin delights in their music."

She bent down, her beautiful green hair cascading in front of her face. She caressed my cheek, and whispered. "Kariya. Let me kill you, granting you the death of life and liberation by bondage. Let the decay consume you, reducing your mind to a shattered vessel of madness, and reach an apotheosis of fulfillment in decomposition. Then let it consume itself, and let it do so infinitely many times, losing a little substance each time, until there is nothing left but Void. Then your soul will be flung from one end of the Spiral to the other for all eternity, and the chaos of creation and decay will never end for you. If that is not the happiness you desire, feel free to reject me. Otherwise, open yourself to me, and swallow me. I think I know which you shall choose."

Her face was directly above mine. She opened her mouth, and I saw nothing but black inside. Like it was a portal to absolute nothingness. Then a sludge began to accumulate, and drip out of the opening. It fell upon my face, and it burned my skin. I felt like I was going to die.

I wanted more.

I opened my mouth, and Aoi smiled. The black sludge flowed into my throat, instead. I was suffocating under its weight, and my throat was burning with pain, but somehow remained intact. It flowed into my lungs, until every sac of air within them was breathing the sludge. I felt all the manifold curses of man inside me. I felt their hatreds, their grudges, their resentments. They mirrored my own, and magnified them. Like a curved mirror reflecting the light of the sun, focusing it on a single point with such ferocity that its target is set aflame, the curses of All the World's Evil magnified my own decay.

I felt my body begin to disintegrate, becoming absorbed by the sludge overflowing from my mouth. It formed an ever-growing puddle around me. There was no sign that it would ever stop pouring out of Aoi's mouth, and soon the entire room's surface was covered in it. It began rising, and as it threatened to cover me totally in its embrace, I felt my body dissolving. I was being swallowed by the sludge, and becoming it. I heard the voices screaming pain and rage, and I rejoiced in my fellow sufferers. They were coming inside of me, filling my essence.

My previous visions flashed before me, filling my mind's eye, as my physical eyes disintegrated. Yes, this is what I have always wanted. On the precarious balance between the joys of self-torture and its pain, I had delighted. But this new experience was unlike that. It was not only more intense, it was also different. Because now, no matter how much I suffered, I could not die and be forced to discontinue my joy. As a part of Angra Mainyu, I would live forever, cursing existence and humanity.

A voice (Aoi's, or my own?) then spoke.

"I hate you, Matou Kariya. I curse you eternally. May you never have rest from your suffering, and may your essence shrivel and die, and shrivel and die, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. May the pain drive you mad, and may the delusions of madness bring only more pain. May you long to swallow the world, but be held back by your own insignificance. May you long to lick the boots of those who curse you, and may you curse yourself above all others."

My last distinct thought was only a mental image. I was back in the cellar, and I was prostrating myself on the ground before Zouken-Sakura. There was a staff on my head, and it was drilling into me. A hole opened, and instead of blood, Crest Worms soaked in the black sludge of Angra Mainyu poured out. Then I was no longer myself; I was Zouken-Sakura.

And I laughed, and laughed.

Thanks for reading!

After a decently long hiatus, filled with writer's block, I finished this over the last 2 days or so. I've been reading Freud's "On the Interpretation of Dreams," and I think its influence shows in the dream/vision sequences, as well as some other areas.

Listened to a lot of Green Day, too. Perhaps the "emo" vibe of Jesus of Suburbia and Boulevard of Broken Dreams influenced this as well. I could see Kariya enjoying Boulevard; walking alone on that lonely road of his.

There is some Kara no Kyoukai influence as well, with the inner contradiction between decay and life, though I think this Kariya is quite distinct from that.

Those who have read my other works will probably know by now that I very much enjoy the whole "identification with the other" business, here demonstrated by Kariya's identifying with Zouken-Sakura. (As an aside, I wasn't really sure what name I should use to refer to Sakura with Zouken's face, but hopefully this one was good.)

Hope y'all liked it. I certainly enjoyed writing it, even if it was really exhausting to think of stuff as twisted as this. Takes a lot out of you, heh.