AN: Yeah, for those that didn't know, the thing in the FSN anime with a dragon and whatnot inside Saber, and Saber standing amidst what looks like an island of swirling magical circuits, that isn't something DEEN pulled out of their ass and is in fact a canonical depiction of Saber's magical reservoir. They describe it in Realta Nua as well.

Fate/Far Side: Origami Blades

Chapter 6

Blue Morning Glory

I shoved Hisui as far as possible to one side, trying to get her clear of the new doorway I had just made. Twisting around, I tried to face whatever it was shooting at me—

It felt like those early days before the war, training every night. It felt like steel, red-hot and harsh jamming through my skin and into my spine. The heat pierced my left shoulder and for a moment I felt the sensation of pulling, like it could rip everything inside my body out the tiny hole it made.

The words barely made it out of my mouth. "Trace…on!"

They swept down from the ceiling like a portcullis on a Western castle, huge two-handed swords arrayed like a wall. I shoved them down to cover the gap in the wall, and the burning sensation in my shoulder withdrew like a snake rearing back from a missed strike.

Despite the feeling of heat, when I reached up to touch my shoulder, I found it to be cold to the touch. Growling, I stumbled up and motioned to Hisui. "Get to your sister."

As the maid darted for the foyer and stairway, I ran through my mental workshop and thought of what the hell I was supposed to do here. This power from Tohno-san seemed not entirely under her control, and what's more—

The wall I had slammed through shuddered once, twice, then another portion collapsed as if struck by a sledgehammer. I could feel the air go hot once more and knew my time was up.

"Finishing resonance of possessed experience."

Wood and insulation turned to dust as the area next to my sword-wall evaporated. Whatever it was that chased me into the room made right for me, but I was too busy to even think of avoiding their strike.

Once more, searing heat impaled me, this time right into my belly, hard and fast enough to make me gag. Before I could even respond, another pierced my right leg, and then I was flung up into the air and sent flying across the room until I hit the opposite wall.

I hardly managed to continue the aria. "Processes compl…eted! P-Projections standby."

Just beyond the hole in the wall, I could see Tohno-san had completely overturned the dining table and was looming where I had been standing. Her hair had turned red, and whatever that meant, I couldn't imagine it was good.

"Removing stops!" I barked. "Full Trace release!"

Many blades formed around me, but unlike Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon, they all belonged to one source. Tiny red cruciform hilts and long thin blades flew through the air and into the hole this invisible-something had made, as well as the hole I had shot through after dismissing the blades that had blocked it. Without a clear view of where everything stood on the other side, I just scatter-shot the blades in every direction except where Tohno-san stood, hoping to hit her shadow. The whipping sound of the blades flying through the air subsided and was replaced by growling from the girl, and I knew I had caught her.

Even as Tohno-san screamed and struggled to free herself, another strike of jabbing heat hit me right at the base of my neck, digging into my collarbone like it could rip my shoulders right out of my body. It dug so deep that I was certain that, upon retching, everything in my stomach just evaporated the moment it tried to leave my body. I could feel the warm sensation deep in me fight it off, fight this intrusion off, but evoking Avalon itself was not going to get me out of this one, not if she just turned this on Kohaku and Hisui.

I howled, brought Excalibur to mind. The blade formed and I tried cutting these tendrils from my body, but the moment I had done so, the stinging and burning sensation reared right back into me, this time into my ankle, my sternum, and my left elbow. The pain shot up my spine like being hit with a cattle prod and almost lost my grip on the sword.

Cracking my eyes open—I hadn't even realized I'd shut them—I could see Tohno-san staring me down like a predator, like a tiger waiting to pounce from the long grass. She wasn't moving, still pinned multiple places by Black Keys, but it seemed like whatever force she was attacking me with, it could still move when she was immobile and glaring—

Then, if I could get her unconscious…

Swords were not really the tool for that, but…

I could barely shift my left arm around, but I brought to mind Kusanagi, the sword that the storm god Susanoo supposedly found…

"Trigger off! Projection process complete—"

I didn't have Invisible Air like Saber did, and it wasn't something I could copy. I did know of a sword that could command wind, though, and with Saber's instincts guiding my hand…

Slamming the flat of Kusanagi to Excalibur, the winds picked up, swirled around the blade, and—

"Barrier of the Storm God: Strike Air!"

I stabbed Excalibur toward Tohno-san like it could cover the distance between us. The wind back-blast was enough that it flattened me to the wall the moment the gale fled the weapon and the hole in the wall became three times the size it had been before. Tohno-san was struck dead-center, her body slamming back into the dining table and the table was even thrown legs-first into the dining room wall.

The searing left my body and I collapsed to the floor, flinching as my hand came up to touch the coin-sized holes burnt into the front of my shirt. Again, it felt more like my skin was cold to the touch, so cold that my fingertips registered like I was putting my hand into a bucket of ice. The warmth of Avalon started to overcome everything, though, and I struggled up to my feet and dismissed my weapons.

Unfortunately, the Tohnos would be doing some remodeling here in the future. The wall looked like a car had plowed through it—thankfully it wasn't a load-bearing feature of the house. Stumbling into the wreckage, I peered through the settling dust and found Tohno-san in a heap against the top of the table, the table itself now perched against the wall. She was breathing unsteadily and I made to check her pulse.

Unlike my expectations, it was running overtime, like Tohno-san had just spent the entire day running a marathon. Glancing to her hair—a burning red color even brighter than my own—my mind went through the various things I had come to learn about in the world and my knowledge was found lacking. This really didn't resemble anything Tohsaka had ever told me about, anything I had learned from some of her family's books.

This…just got really complicated.

I hovered outside Tohno-san's room, waiting for Kohaku to finish looking her over. Occasionally, Hisui would pass by, some tools in hand, clearly intent on fixing the damage I had caused, and though I wanted to help her, I felt like with Tohno-san this way I should be on the lookout. If she woke and attacked Kohaku while I was fixing the pluming, I think I'd just die.

It was many hours before Kohaku came out, still looking a little feverish herself, though she smiled carefully at me as she pulled the door closed behind her. "She's awake now, and cognizant, and not murderous, so you know."

That earned a blank stare. "Huh?"

Kohaku looked down. "This isn't a sudden occurrence, exactly. Akiha-sama has had to deal with many things in her life already."

I drew Kohaku away from the door so Tohno-san would not hear us talking right in front of her door. We walked over to the balcony overlooking the stairway, the faint sound of hammering coming from the dining room. "Maybe you should start from the beginning."

"Well, you see, when a man loves a woman, a stork ends up putting a baby on their front step…"

"Yeah, okay, maybe speed it up to slightly more recent events," I said, though I gave her a slight smirk.

Kohaku leaned back against the railing. "Akiha-sama is from a long line of half-breeds. She has demonic blood, and as a consequence, can do some very strange things."

Like burn your body and suck out all the head, yeah, I figured that part out the hard way.

"She normally keeps it under control…but there's been complications."

Yeah, complications. That's a nice word. "Is it me? It usually is," I said, snorting.

"No," Kohaku said, sighing. "For one, her brother, Shiki-sama, hasn't been around. There's…issues there, things that happened between them, and I think Akiha-sama gains strength when he's around. Maybe you can ask her about that sometime."

I nodded.

The hammering from the other room stopped, now replaced by a sort of creaking noise, like Hisui was pulling something flat or tightening something screwed down. Kohaku smiled at that, though the smile did not reach her eyes. "Akiha-sama has also been poisoned."

"What?"

She nodded. "Lye has been put in her food, which can cause various problems, including throat constriction and the chemical burning of the stomach's lining, among other things. A person can end up coughing terribly, even develop a fever to combat a non-existent infection. Since the damage is internal, they can even end up vomiting blood."

It did sound similar in symptoms to what Tohno-san was suffering at night and would explain her cough and occasional physical weakness, but—

That meant…

I met Kohaku's gaze, and the maid nodded again. "It was only a little, at first. I wanted her to feel physically weakened, sick. I thought she would call Shiki-sama here, make him return home to take care of her." She looked down at her feet. "It seems she's adamant about not involving him at all, though."

There was this sick feeling that rose up in my own stomach, as if I were the one that had been poisoned. "Why?"

"Because," Kohaku said, her eyes dull and unhappy. "Because. Too many reasons…or maybe too few. I don't really know, anymore."

My mind replayed conversations I had with Tohno-san, with Kohaku, and the sense that there were unspoken things between them that even Tohno-san kept to herself. Not even like they were suspicious things, just, something Tohno-san seemed to keep out of respect. It made me wonder if Tohno-san knew… "Why?" I asked again.

"Guilt, maybe. I don't know." That same smile kept to Kohaku's face, though it was so readily apparent how empty it was, now. She was not amused, not upset, not even malicious or hateful. It just seemed like she was defaulting upon that look in the same way Hisui was ready with a face of indifference.

And it made me angry, not even at Kohaku, but at the fact that such a thing even existed in the first place.

I turned to barge right in on Tohno-san again, to demand answers from her, but Kohaku grabbed the sleeve of my shirt. "Shirou, you can't save her. This…only expedited her condition. It was bound to happen, ultimately, no matter what. Her father was like this too, in the end, and he had more knowledge and resources at his disposal to handle it. They call it an Inversion Impulse. Apparently all kinds of half-breeds have them." There was an odd pleading tone to her words, though, even if they were just bits of information. "You can talk to her now, but, there is no telling when she may snap again. And eventually, it will be permanent."

"I can still save her," I said. "She can be healed."

Kohaku shook her head. "It isn't…it isn't a disease, Shirou, or even an illness. It is intrinsic to her very life, her existence."

Dammit.

Certainly, if I handed her the power of Avalon, I could save her from poisoning. Even normal magic would work, and I could probably get a hold of Tohsaka and ask her to come down here if it came to something that couldn't be reversed by mundane means. But this other thing, this demonic blood…

I spun back around, pulled away from Kohaku's touch. "Why are you even saying this? Explaining this? If you wanted to harm her, kill her…why tell me this now?"

"Because," Kohaku said again, her voice falling in strength. There was no regret in it, so much as sad acceptance. "It doesn't please me, watching her in pain like this, but there's nothing I can do about it either. It was all I could do to begin with. And now that she's like this…well, I suspect at some point, I'll pay for it with my life."

Honestly, those words made me just want to hit the girl upside the head. "This isn't…" I stumbled around for the words, ran my hands through my hair. "There isn't some sort of universal scale where you can put your crimes up and weigh them with your life. It sounds to me like you just don't actually want to hurt her, want to feel guilty over what you've done. But I'm not the person to go to for that kind of thing."

I felt around for the pendant, felt the pulse of warmth from the keychain. No, I really wasn't the one that would hear those sort of things.

I met Kohaku's gaze evenly, tried to get her to focus on me—that glazed over look she had really bothered me. "I'm going to go talk with her. We're going to figure out a way to keep her going. And when we're through with all of this, if you still want to hurt her or if you still want to be punished for your sins…we'll figure that out, too."

All of the noise from the dining room had died, like the house itself was now listening in on us, looming over us. Kohaku looked back out over the railing, to the entryway. "It's not like everything that I have can be erased, you know."

Shrugging, I made my way to Tohno-san's door. "There isn't some universal scale. There's just us. So everything you have, maybe you should try throwing it onto someone else's shoulders and see if they can carry the weight."

The image of a young girl with red hair and eyes like mine carrying grocery bags through the rain hit me, as if I was suddenly gifted with divine insight and a much better memory. The way that Kohaku's shoulders had dropped, her head bent faintly, her back arched…it was like that time, a long time ago. It was no longer such a blank question in my mind as to when I had met her, why I had not remembered: this was the Kohaku I could visualize in my mind's eye.

The Kohaku of now asked, "What if they can't carry it?"

I said, "Then you can at least get them to walk you home, give you company along the way."

"Then…" she swallowed, "save Akiha-sama. If you can."

I smiled. "I'll stake my life on it."

Origami Blades: Blue Morning Glory, End