The mire of everyday sloughs off.
A war between magi.
The wheel of fate turns.
Weak one, temper your sword,
And defend the value of your life.
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1st week- The First Selection
Combatants Remaining-128
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The sky burns.
Houses collapse into ruin.
People fall to the ground.
Roads come to an end.
The conflict started here.
With this, the world that is will be restored.
It is here that "I" alone had survived.
Don't remember/ Never forget.
Oblivion is salvation and sin.
"I" was born from perdition.
This must be a nightmare.
This had to be somewhere;
This could be anywhere,
these events that occured in the true memories of childhood.
A torrent of blood flows, a voice resonating with bitter resentment can be heard.
Lives fade away without a thought. Friends, family, strangers: All gone.
Soldiers with guns, families trying to hold together, a grotesque struggle to the end, until a gentle peace descends as death comes to claim them.
I could not accept all I have seen. The question of "why?" never left me.
Even with the divide between conflict and catastrophe, why did such a tragedy occur?
No, more importantly- Why has this world been turned a hell on Earth?
...A gentle rain begins to fall. All things once living fade away, leaving only one behind.
Amidst the helplessness and despair, their soul's last feelings are of rage and regret.
The rain wets their cheeks as their eyes close one last time, dying forgotten and alone.
Seeing this, I struggle to rise from the depths of death. I will not accept what I have been shown.
If I can live again, I will definitely-
But there are no second chances. And before long, the rain has cleansed the scorched Earth.
Never forget.
"I" was born from perdition.
What that means-
Somehow, please don't forget it.
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The girl awakes, her eyes seized with a field of orange sparks lighting the night sky. She looks up weakly, black smoke curling its way to the horizon above, blocking her view of the stars.
She coughs, struggling to breathe as her lungs were practically begging for oxygen. She felt so tired, her body heavy and numb.
In an attempt to get up, a scream erupts from her throat as she felt a burning sensation tear through her left leg. It hurts, it hurts so much. Never in the years she loved had she felt such pain. She grits her teeth, tears lacing the edge of her eyelids.
Looking down, she sees a large piece of concrete on top of her leg. Pressing her hands on it, she tries to push it away. Her hands rub raw against the rough object, scratching her palms and fingers. Nonetheless, with much effort, the concrete eventually begins moving away from her leg to the side.
Examining her bleeding, wounded leg, she can definitely tell that it had seen better days. Tearing her sleeve off, she wraps the cloth around the injured area to somewhat stop the bleeding.
Standing up, she looks around her. All she could see were destroyed buildings amongst mountains of rubble, with blood painted the landscape. Covering her nose, she tries not to inhale the smoke around her as begins walking.
Slowly stumbling across the debris, she clumsily attempts to maneuver her way across despite the pain she was constantly feeling in her leg. The earth beneath her feet was blazing hot to a point where walking with shoes on didn't feel any different than going barefoot.
All around her she heard voices, voices of anguish and sorrow, voices that were beginning to fall silent. Stopping, her eyes widened at the countless bodies littering the vicinity. Her eyes are fixed on a middle-aged woman on the ground in a pool of blood, holding on to what appeared to be her child in her arms, both of them unmoving.
Gasping, she covers her mouth in horror and turns away, feeling a disgusting, tangy taste begin to well up in her mouth from her throat. One thing was clear; she had to get away from this place as soon as she could.
With fear and anxiety slowly building up inside of her, she begins to trudge ahead, trying her best to ignore the many corpses she came across as she covered her ears to block out the cries and pleas she heard, biting down on her lower lip in guilt.
At last, the woman's legs give out, wobbling beneath her as she trips over a broken wooden plank, falling on her knees as they painfully scrapped against the ground. She suppresses the urge to scream once again, mustering the strength to try and get up again. Alas, her body was against her will, and her vision begins to blur.
Falling to the ground, she no longer has the power to carry on. With the tears now streaming freely down her cheeks, the girl stretches a hand out and begins to whimper and sob helplessly, crying out for help.
After several minutes, her cries die down, the girl realizing that her efforts were in vain. She lies there, hopeless and in utter despair.
Tired, she felt so tired. Her consciousness was slipping away fast, and soon enough, she closed her eyes, giving in to the exhaustion.
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The girl's eyes gently flutter open, awakening to the sound of birds chirping amd leaves rustling. Her pupils come in contact with a familiar looking ceiling above her, and she blinks, mildly confused. Exhaling, she takes a moment to relax her tensed shoulders. It seems as though she saw some kind of twisted, distorted dream.
The girl continues to lie in bed, the comfortable mattress tempting her to fall back alseep. Staring blankly at the ceiling, she slowly looks around, her eyes scanning the area and finally settling on the window to her left which was slightly ajar.
After a while, she came to a conclusion that she was in the nurse's office, and that she must've collapsed and was brought here. Her eyebrows knit together in a frown. Did that mean...that world, the effigy that blocked her way, and that servant...was all just a dream?
Her thoughts briefly flash back towards the man that saved her life back then. It seemed too real to be a dream...then again, it might just be her overthinking things.
Sitting up, the girl takes a few seconds to adjust her body. Strangely enough, as soon as she got up, she could tell that something felt really off. She narrows her eyes, pressing a hand against her forehead in thought. No, this nurse's office was far different than the one she knew. It's similar in some ways, but off...somehow...
"Jeez, it took you long enough to wake up. You've been taking it pretty easy, I see." Before she could ponder on any longer, a voice shakes her out of her train of thought. Eyes widening, she turns her head just as a man materializes next to the side of her bed.
The girl lets out a tiny squeak of surprise, backing away slightly with her hands already balled into fists to defend herself. As soon as her eyes met his, she could feel her stiff body going slack. "Y-You're..."
He smirks, placing a hand on his hip while shaking his head. "What a way to react, especially after I've just saved your life. Or have you already forgotten?" His copper grey eyes pierce through hers, and the girl finds herself looking down at the floor in mild embarassment.
The man who appeared by the side of her bed, dressed in a crimson garb was none other than the one she met back inside the final room who left an indelible inpression...meaning that since he's standing here now, she was not dreaming.
"So, is everything ok with you? Tell me if you feel pain anywhere. As the Holy Grail War has begun, monitoring my master's condition is now a necessity," he asks, earning a few shakes of the head from her.
"I see. Before I go on, you did enter the Holy Grail War knowing what you were getting into, right? Because you've been staring at me like a deer in headlights." The girl's expression softens to a blank stare. "Holy...Grail War?" Sure, she had heard the voice mentioning it a couple of times, but she didn't exactly know what it was.
Now it was the guy's turn to look shocked. "Please tell me you're kidding. You entered the Holy Grail War without even knowing what it is?" Somehow, the girl felt kind of guilty and wanted to apologize for her cluelessness, but it wasn't like she had any excuse to say that she actually knew what this whole war was.
She remains silent, gripping the edges of the bed's sheets, giving a clear answer to his question. The man sighs, placing a hand to his forehead in irritation. "...Staying silent huh? Until now, the thought of a clueless master never occurred to me," he says slowly, his voice laced in annoyance.
The girl's eyebrows twitch for the brief second, wanting to retort back to him but choosing her freedom of staying quiet as to not anger both herself and him as well.
"...Oh well, as our contract is official, verbally abusing you isn't going to help matters anyway. All right, perhaps I should start at the beginning and explain what the Holy Grail War is?" Accepting his half-hearted apology with a pinch of salt, the girl raises a question of her own.
"The Holy Grail...you can't mean THAT Holy Grail, right? The basis of an entire body of Western religious history and is said to perform miracles?" The guy smirks as if to say 'Wow, so you at least know something about it' before he begins explaining.
"That's right. In addition, while the Holy Grail here is of dubious authenticity, it can grant wishes. Its form varies, being once a cup and a tree and even taking on the form of a human being. Cutting to the chase, in this place, anything that grants wishes is considered a Holy Grail." The girl is taken aback by the sudden information. Never in her life did she need to ponder on about something so unreal as the Holy Grail's existence.
"Many moons ago, magi from all over created a framework in which they fought for the Holy Grail. They called it the Holy Grail War. Its rules were, and still are very simple: Kill or be killed." The girl' body tenses once again at the mention of the word 'kill'. The whole war sounded like a merciless fight for survival.
Trying not to think too much about it, she draws her attention towards the other detail mentioned. If magi were the ones that fought for the Holy Grail, does that mean that she's considered as a magus as well?
The man nods before continuing. "Seven people fighting for one prize- considering what was at stake, violence was only natural. While there's no bloodier conflict, its structure has been aped many times. In fact, this world's Holy Grail War is just another copy. Although there ars some differences..." For a moment the man almost thought that he recalled a woman with blonde hair wielding a sword...and had a montrous appetite, but quickly brushed it off as he went on.
"For example, the rules. Servants and magi fight together and the loser forfeits their command seals." This prompts the girl to look down at her left hand, where she had been marked three strange symbols. If sge recalled, these were supposed to act as a sign of her pact between her and her servant.
"These duels go on until the last remaining master stands to receive the Holy Grail. Once you're in, the only way out is to win or die. Easy enough to understand, right?" The girl sweatdrops, doubting that it was that simple. While she had a million questions, at least she knew the basics now. Whether she wants to be here or not, she's now a participant of this Holy Grail War nonsense.