Cursed Sword

by Kneenaw

Irisviel could not accept her own end, even corrupted she wishes to return to save her beloved. And so, as Shirou sits waiting to die, he is reborn as the host of a dark miracle, creating cascading effects that would alter the world. This fic spans from the end of the 4th HGW to the 5th. Currently it is starting the direct lead up to the 5th war.

34. Act Three: Chaos

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I don't own anything related to Fate/stay night; this is a work of parody.

Act Three: Chaos

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Nostalgia (Music) /ogYXP_nY6Cs

A cool breeze drives over the park and rustles the newly blooming trees of soring.

A soft smoky smell enters my senses, but it has grown weak to what it once was. My brain is panicking at seeing peace, as it expects war. My throat constricts.

A scene of a burning field juxtaposes the reality I find here.

I would be stuck if not for her next to me, interrupting this scene with her golden figure.

"Is this it, Shirou? The park that you were talking about. It is more than big enough... containing a vampire can be a difficult task, however." It was a very large park; you could get lost in here.

"Yeah... This is it."

Passing into the park, we walk into its boundary. As soon as we do, she stops as if struck by lightning.

She grimaces and puts her hands down into the soil. "There is a dark sense to this place. The earth here is... very weak. Full of vexation, and it is... empty, the same way that..." She trails off, looking up at me.

"..." I'm too busy looking out with reinforced eyes across the entire park to give her my attention. "Hah...?" If she looks down at the earth, then I look out for the humans who inhabit it. What I see is...

"...What happened here? ...Shirou?"

I feel dismissive, not because of her interest, but because of all the people. Why do so many come here?

It is not the same. It is not the same. It is not the park I knew.

Neither the one that burned, nor the one that I met Irisviel at, nor the one of the far distant past. This was a place that had moved on.

"Hah... It doesn't matter. ...Not anymore." I sigh.

Things change. It used to be that this place was haunted, that no one would ever come to this large park in the middle of the city. But now?

A boy walking a dog, two kids playing in the grass, A mother and her baby sitting on a bench, a young couple holding hands. They look happy. They can smile. Even in the afternoon as it is, people are still here to celebrate the blooming Spring. This place, while still like a weak hospital patient is no longer completely dead.

There is a tiny spark of life that gives people the ability to accept being here. No one remembers.

The curses of those who died have no bearing on those who choose to forget.

The ones who would remember are all below my feet...

It is odd, that I have never met another survivor since Kiritsugu saved me.

Where did they all go? And why am I left?

Why me?

Save me! Please don't leave!

I have always had a horrible feeling about it, one that makes me sick. I stop breathing.

I... wish I could...

To grant a wish is a demon's purpose. Yet it only pertains to the living. If one could understand the wishes of the dead, then they would be a nightmare in their own right.

Someone is poking me. "Shirou? Hello? Are you there? ...You really do this a lot, you know!?"

"Ah, sorry." My breath returns. "What is it? Is there a problem?"

"That face of yours is the problem. ...You get a serious look and go silent, but it is obvious you are thinking of something. Then I am left to wonder what he is thinking about? I do not understand why you don't just say what is on your mind."

"Sorry... It's just that... There are too many people here, is all... We need a better place." I can't be so absent-minded. There are high stakes to this. "It seems that it is not as deserted as I thought."

The park that I envision and the one that the people of Fuyuki have come to see have become two different things. They have moved on, leaving me behind.

"What are you talking about? You are a magus, right? So set up a bounded field to keep people out."

"Eh? ...I mean... Uh... Don't you have that power?"

"Me? I am not a magus. Why would I have any power that is targeted at humans? My defence is only for the world itself, it won't do anything non-vampires."

So if she put up a field of her own, it would only serve to potentially scare the vampire off. That is unacceptable... every moment that he exists is one in which people are not safe.

"...Then I can do it." I have been taught by Mom, Tohsaka and El-Melloi how Bounded Fields work. It's just that... I have never actually succeeded in making one quite like this. It is rather pathetic, I am a third rate magus, after all... The best I can do is a single room given a lot of time to prepare. "It doesn't need to cover the whole park, just the area where we will need to contain the fight. ...So... follow me."

It will require me to succeed at what I have only failed at before now. A much more expansive field than just the room at the Clock Tower, with El-Melloi II there giving me tips. Even at that time, I only barely could pull it off after so many failures that it felt pathetic even when I did get one win. The way that Mom taught me how to do it was not at all what El-Melloi tried to teach me at the Clock Tower. This led to all sorts of grief for Waver when I tried to explain magic to him as I knew it.

Waver gave up at some point and just stopped asking about what I thought for his own mental health. I think I may have made him cry, but this was three years ago, or so, I don't remember. He taught me all the fundamentals that Irisviel didn't. Mom... taught only the parts she liked. The only magecraft I know she was willing to explain in detail was anything relating to love or healing. The rest was full of holes, leaving it like a mystery for you to turn into working magic. Though, if you succeed in figuring out what she is trying to tell you, then I doubt there was a better teacher ever. But that's my bias, I don't know.

What Mom gave me was a puzzle I needed to solve on my own, but she provided few tools.

So in doing this magic now, I am trying to reconcile the fundamentals that El-Melloi has taught me and the insight of Tohsaka to form a those missing pieces and do as I think is right. This is the outcome of being taught oddly from the start. I start at the result and move back towards the origin.

A Bounded Field is a topographic type of Magecraft that consists in knitting a network of magical energy and spreading it on a base area, such as a piece of land or a building, to create a mystic boundary line that separates the inside from the outside. It is a similar basis to projection, but unlike creating a blade made out of steel, it is more like weaving a tapestry.

I start walking in a big circle and begin creating sigils on the trees, each taking me ten to fifteen minutes to complete. With 16, that leaves four hours. As it is nearly six now, I have to do it fast.

"Trace on."

I am simultaneously trying to thread a needle while also having to find that needle in a haystack with no time to think about it. It is immediate hopelessness that fills my heart once more.

It just doesn't sync with what I see as magic. It is like if someone suddenly told you to solve a math problem but in an entirely new system of numbers and concepts that they just made up for you. If I try to do it the right way Tohsaka and Waver try to teach me, then I'm just not skilled enough. If I try to do it as Mom taught, then I'm hitting a dead end where I do not know the right steps. Trying to combine the two just leads to a contradiction, with it unravelling in my hands.

...This sucks.

"Is something wrong?"

"Err... well... I don't know if I can do it."

"I see..." Putting her hand on the bark of the tree I was going to place the sigil on, she closes her eyes for a moment, and then when they open back up, she seems happy. "It should be much easier now!"

"Huh...? Okay..." I try threading the needle, and it works perfectly. There is no resistance as I cast the first sigil into existence. It is as if you are casting a spell without any of the normal rules. It wouldn't matter to someone who can do it right, but for me, who messes up, it means I can complete the sigil even without the proper steps. "W-what did you do?"

"Huh? Oh, me? I made it so the world would tolerate the magecraft for a little while. Since you are my partner, that means we are allied Until we are done here, the world will recognise you as someone who doesn't need to be stopped."

Magecraft can not stay permanently on the world due to the natural decay of it by the world reasserting itself over unnaturalness. If something were to be permanent, then it would become natural but that would also mean that it would no longer be considered magic anyways.

Did she... just turn that off?

"It is only for a time, don't think that the world would accept you doing anything at all..."

"That is crazy... You are amazing, Arcueid..." If Tohsaka saw this, she would faint and/or die. I was just amazed and impressed.

Her cheeks turn pink for some reason. "W-what are you talking about? I'm so much more limited than I should be... but ever since you hit me with that curse, it is like I am sick, but I don't even know the symptoms. Ah, even that makes me feel light-headed... I'll rest now... wake me up when the vampire attacks, I need to reform..." She mumbled something about rebuilding herself, but I didn't get it.

"Wait..." Too late. She already slumped down onto the bench and started to sleep. She was exhausted by every measure.

I project a blanket and pull it over her. It might seem odd to any who walk by, but I'm not letting her go cold.

...She is fighting something, and it isn't stopping. She said something earlier... Inversion Impulse, was it?

I don't know what it is completely, but a part of me does. A part of me understands entirely.

To give in to the impulse that would turn you into..., not you.

Yet she is so pure. Her face is so pristine, so beautiful that it blends into nature seamlessly as if to belong to a part of it rather than dominate the image. I can't look away, but I know that I should. Because I understand why...

Kill her!

My hand seethes abruptly as the sigil breaks and burns my hand. Idiot! I am so stupid. "Damn..." I let her face take my focus off so much that I messed up. I will have to start this one over again.

I do every sigil calmly after that, with Arcueid supporting me, it is mostly a guaranteed success. Still, it takes me time to set it up, even with it being almost impossible to mess up. My only solace is that Tohsaka is not here, as she would execute me for such a poor performance.

Each sigil comes with an ever-darkening sky. By the last one, it is about ten. The stress in thinking a vampire might come and kill me is small compared to the concentration of completing the chain.

I am covered in darkness, and my skin seems to take it on as if to disappear. It is in the night, where people fear the shadows the most. There is no sun that will defeat any that would hide in the shadows. Conversely, she seems to begin to glow more and more in the moonlight. She has rested up the best that she could, and now we will have to make due. The hour is late.

There are no more people left. Perhaps even without the Bounded Field, there would have not been anyone around, but that is lazy thinking. Assumptions like that never end well.

This shoddy field took the same energy of 10 projections. The mana here is so thin, it is useless. My od is my main source here. "Agh..." The strain of conducting magic, no matter if it is low energy, is like a muscle spasm across my nervous system. I did it, that is all that matters.

"Shirou?" I jump.

Arcueid's voice surprises me as she approaches without me hearing any footsteps. I was on edge now.

"Ah, you are awake."

"Yes. I felt a magical field form and got right up. Ahhhh." She yawns as a human would.

"Well... It's done. The last tree is covered. When a human comes close to this line, they will feel a sudden impulse not to come in. Whatever happens inside of here will not be seen by prying eyes."

"I can feel it. It is very obvious that it is there. Anyone with a magical sense would be able to sense this if they endeavoured to."

"Oh... crap."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, you may be an idiot, but it is better this way. This will attract him even more. Vampires are drawn to areas of high magical energy like moths to a flame. The fact that it is easy to detect will be even more bait to bring him right to us."

"Thanks." I will just have to accept it. At this point, the idiot moniker is here to stay; Tohsaka has corrupted her.

"Is it always that long? I would commend Magi on their patience if I didn't know better."

"Hmm? Tohsaka could probably set each one up given ten seconds."

"Ten seconds? So with 16 trees and the time to walk between each one... that is about three minutes." Her jaw opens wide, looking confounded at me.

"...Yeah. That is the difference between her and me. It's not even close. She is the greatest magus I have ever met." I admire her because I could never do what she does. She is too good at everything she does.

Arcueid laughs. "Funny, she said the same about you."

"Huh? Why would she... Oh. She must have been kidding. She can make some cruel jokes sometimes. She enjoys to tease, don't take her too seriously."

"No, Shirou. She was serious. She was right. From your view, she is unreachable, but you are the same to her. Because If I were to guess, she would not be able to do as you just did. Do you believe that she would be able to persist through four hours of work with only a small reward?"

"I mean..." That is just not a fair comparison. A genius would never waste time on something third rate like what I just did. She would go back and study up on the issue so that she could do it in ten seconds with much greater quality. "...No. But that is because she is just better than me."

"That is how you see it. But to be a genius is a curse all on its own. She knows full well her own limits and is confined to what she considers 'possible', no matter how amazing that is, it is still limited. But you, Shirou... no matter how bad you are at something, you have no conception of a ceiling for yourself, do you? You don't sort goals by if they are possible or not, you pursue them all with equal enthusiasm."

Boundless, unlimited... All that means is that there is no excuses left when the time comes.

"..." That is... one way to see it. I am not used to being analysed like this.

The last starlight is dying, and with it comes a sudden last burst of light onto the park.

I look up and realize where I am. I was so focused that my brain lost track of self and direction. The information that crashes into my mind to locate myself is odd. It's all very familiar. That's strange... A sudden sense of derealisation hits me, and I am not myself anymore. Extreme deja vu, a life that I once lived, is calling back at me.

I know this view. Even if it has been changed, I recognise it. The houses may have gone, but the tall buildings in the distance remain. You never forget the view of a place like this, from this perfect angle...

There was a home here.

I open the door.

A hallway and a study, a living room without much but a TV and a mat. Back to the door, you would look out and see little houses lined up side by side. Down the road was the playground. The playground was nothing more than some sand and a seesaw, but it was a kingdom to the kids that entered there.

There is a girl looking up at me with eyes that hold nothing at all. She was just a little kid. Black haired and with a sorta puffy yet thin face that was cute in the same way a puppy is. She called me brother.

Ah... She was just a little girl. She wandered there by accident, seemingly lost for the first time. It was just a coincidence. It wasn't something that could be called fate because it was so fickle. It was my decision to go to her, she seemed lost, and I wanted to help. I always wanted to be the older brother. A little girl who seemed lost and amazed by simply looking at me, it was a coincidence until the point I smiled at her and introduced myself.

That was the moment that coincidence became destiny, and escape was impossible.

Suddenly my vision is disrupted and torn back into reality. A blonde woman looks at me unamused. "Shirou...? You are doing it again. That face of yours when you lose yourself like that... it is so mindless."

"Hah... Sorry."

"Well, I will forgive you... but only if you say what is on your mind."

What is on my mind...?

The End of Reminiscence (Music) /YJhC70dPN2Y

"Alright... Did you know it was once that an era in which the mortality rate of infants was high, immature children were closer to death than adults — In other words, there was an approach to which they were beings of extraordinary uniqueness, a mystery unto itself. There have been legends since ancient times in which gods and equal rebellious beings appeared under the form of a child. The belief of the God Child is an instance of such thoughts. A legend in which children, until they reach the age of seven, are not seen as humans but as beings closer to a god or a spirit."

"I have... heard of such a thing, yes. But perhaps it is not what you are thinking of? Where did this come from, Shirou?"

"It is only a thought. What if there was such a child? Like every legend, there is the magic behind it. If there is belief, then there is no limit to it. THat a child who held no concept of limitation would thus have no limitations, if someone was never allowed to think or understand the world around them from birth, then the first thing they would connect to would seem like magic, right? Who's to say that a child really would have such power at that moment?"

"What you propose would be a human blessed with the true power of God to wish anything into existence simply by thinking it should be so. That is not anything I am familiar to. If it is something that has ever existed, then I do not know. But Shirou... No child should be given such power. They won't know how to wield it, and won't know when they make a mistake they can't take back. If they would grant the wishes of those next to them... they would not know what is right, or how to make that wish manifest the right way."

Her eyes are sullen, and her face is not cheerful at all.

"Yeah... All children lose their innocence in the act of cruelty or sin. But as children, they inherently hold little power. If one were to grant that naive child infinite power... then that act of losing innocent could be devastating." I sigh.

"Could... Could you forgive such a person...?"

"Haha... Hah... A sin is a sin, whatever the reason. They will never escape that fact." Her face falls; she must think I condemn this idea. "But I forgive them. No matter how bad their crime, I forgive them for it. If the past can not be made right... then I would show them that the future can still be saved. I would tell them that pretending that it doesn't exist is no different than pretending that a wound will be fine if you ignore it. If I could say it to them... if I could see them again... I would only wish for their own salvation.

"..." Silence takes over and we are left in the lonely park. Minutes pass until her words finally come. "You are a good person, Shirou..."

"..." No... I'm the worst.

Time moves on. The lights they installed after someone died in the park turn on.

It is about eleven now. Time flies in the twilight as she and I wait. The vampire may come any time now. Strangely, I am more nervous of her than any enemy. She clearly wants to say something but is holding back for some reason. It is not like her.

"Is the enemy coming? Are you sure he will..."

"Soon enough, but that is secondary to this conversation. My mission is to understand you, killing a nuisance is just extra."

"If this will be my last minutes, then I will answer any question you have."

"Really? Hmm ...Now tell me, what truly happened here eight years ago?"

My heart stops for a beat. Eight years... ago?

Hahaha. She is a good investigator, despite her odd character. She only needed a day to get that far.

For the umpteenth time this night, I sigh. The nausea on this topic never ceases.

"A wish... can you imagine that? A wished for the world to burn."

"A wish... but it can't be that... a child...?"

"No. As you said, such a child can never exist in reality. As soon as they wake up, they would become normal a normal person. This was all centred on an object known as the Holy Grail."

"The Holy Grail...? Yes. I have heard of it before... The Church dispatches a special agent to authenticate if it is a real one or not. Of course, it existed before their organisation did, so they are trying to take control of something that didn't even start with them." She pretty much knows more than I do.

"This town is the home to one such Holy Grail. Magi created it in order to achieve a certain wish, but in the process of it, they lost themselves. Instead of cooperating in order to achieve one wish they could agree on, they decided to fight for their own selfish wishes. Thus it was a war among magi, using Heroic Spirits as familiars to achieve dominance."

"Heroic Spirits? They would listen to the call of a simple magus? How could that be... it would rip the human apart to try such a thing."

"The Holy Grail does the hard work. Using a special form of magecraft known as binding, even Heroic Spirits can be made into Servants bound to human magi. That is how it went for hundreds of years. The first war was 188 years ago, there have been four in total, every sixty years since, all ending in failure. Eight years ago... was the last, it ended with a great fire that destroyed a large portion of the residential area of the city. The next war shouldn't happen for another 52 years, at least as far as I can tell... There are no more Servants left- Oh..."

My mind freezes. There is quiet laughter inside my brain. 'Remember, have you?' I froze.

She continues on, and I have to just move on from that problem. There is nothing that can be done about that... With luck, there is some time for me to resolve all this without him noticing.

"That is a bit of a relief, but also a disappointment. " She asks, almost annoyed. "These Servants of Alaya... I have never met one myself, but their very existence is odd. Annoying is one way to put it. I just wish there didn't need to be a difference, you know? Why do humans obsess about being separated from nature? I would beat up those servants without breaking a sweat. You agree, right Shirou?"

"...Yes, yes... I'm sure you would win." She was self-assured of herself, at the very least. My fight with her was only an indication that she is unstoppable, but that goes for him as well... Any point at which I was able to hold some resistance is because they are not serious.

"Good. You know where things stand." She may not hold a grudge against normal humans, but I guess Servants are fair gain. "But that does raise the question of where this destroyed part of town is? Are they still rebuilding it?"

"No... you are standing on it."

"Waah..." She has put the pieces together for another mystery of this town. "...How did it happen? A Holy Grail... it's supposed to be an object of goodness, isn't it? Or have humans come to accept that even this is acceptable."

"It wasn't like that, more of the opposite. It happened because it was the ultimate unacceptable thing. You see, the Holy Grail is an object of great power. It can do nearly anything, even summon human spirits of the highest calibre. At its core, it is a giant battery of magical energy, connecting reality to the other side, designed in such a way that it will grant the wishes of the user. The issue was that system came to be corrupted by a wish that melded into it like a disease. The Grail summons the servants, remember? But in a bout of desperation, a certain family that had set up the system in the first place broke their own rules and attempted to summon something that was unlike the normal sort of Heroic Spirit you would expect. They had thought that he would be a force of unstoppable power. But they came to find that he held nobody, no personality, nor any power at all; thus, he was promptly killed in the first days of the third war. A boy who could only be known as Angra Mainyu, because that was what everyone wished for him to be. But you know, Even the real Angra Mainyu never was a god... he never had any earthly form."

Angra Mainyu simply means 'destructive spirit', for he was never anything but something that existed in a spiritual form outside of reality. Even to those who blamed him for all the evils in the world, they did not think he was a part of the world. It was just that one thoughtless village, who began to believe that it would be convenient if he did.

"They tried to summon a divine spirit... and found nothing instead. Foolish... So foolish..." She shakes her head. It only be with a sense of pity that she ill look on them, but she will never truly understand it. "..." She listens closely, looking out at the waxing gibbous moon cross over the sky. There are still two more days until the moon hits its peak.

"Yeah... Not a Divine Spirit, not even close. You see, what they had summoned was a person curse with all the world's evil inscribed onto his soul. That had no effect originally, as a curse means nothing without energy in order to make it real. It was just a soul that had been ground down into such a form and then ascended to the rank of hero aligned to what everyone wanted him to be. That alignment being Angra Mainyu: All the World's Evil. It would have been fine if not for the way that the Holy Grail is set up to take the Servant's souls back into itself meant placing 'All the World's Evil' into a wish-granting machine. Not a very good situation, is it? Hahaha." I laugh at it.

"No, Shirou. Not at all." As my personality become less serious, hers goes in the opposing direction. Talking about this makes me have a hothead.

A latent personality that is gone, but it can't be said to be dead, can it? If you have memories of someone else's life, to what degree can it be said that you are that person?

It took many years for my mind to reconcile it. It was a pain that was worse than anything, but it doesn't hurt so much anymore. Even the sickness of the mind fades with time. I know who I am.

I take a few deep breaths and the heat goes away. I am Emiya Shirou, falling into the trap of thinking I am not is the ultimate cowardice. She gives me time as if in sympathy.

"Hah... Inside that wish-granting system, the benign curse of all the 'Evils of the World' finally had a place to be realized. The materialization of Angra Mainyu brought forth by truly opening the Holy Grail is an ichor that will consume every human being, with 6 billion curses flowing out from the gate to hell. It is a reaper that will strike down all humans equally, endless darkness that is born from humans and them. By that time, it seemed that the Magi had finally solved all the issues that needed to be fixed in order to finally complete the ritual without ruining it prematurely. Yet still, it was only a partial success. The ritual failed once more, and the Grail was only open for the smallest of moments. But it was enough to bring out the curse that had been waiting for the door to open."

"That is..." The feeling struck her so suddenly. The realisation of what it was. "...The curse... of humanity? All of it..." The idea wraps around her mind.

"Yes. All of it." The Dead Apostles are curses all onto themselves, being aberrations on the earth only by existing. But that was the combination of humanity and the disease of vampirism. Vampires are just a system as well, did they think that humanity alone couldn't make one of their own? Something they outlines as their ultimate evil. "Yes. I do not disagree. The folly of mankind in reaching out to something that is beyond them. Ah, well... That is how we are, we are never content with where we are when there is someplace better that could be. For mankind, this is our nature. No different from how a plant takes in the sun, or a vampire drinks blood."

"Mankind is truly thoughtless... So very foolish. Where is this Holy Grail? It must be destroyed."

"You don't have to worry. None of what I have said pertains to now. The Holy Grail is inert, and the corruption is... no longer a threat. You don't have to stress about seeing that calamity ever again. It's just an old story now, all something in the past."

"..." She was sullen. "You were there, weren't you? To know all this..."

"...Yes." But I know this knowledge because I was told it, not because I learned anything that night. In truth, I am the only one who could know. Those others are dead.

"Ah... Then... that was the moment then when everything changed? That you changed. You were seven years old...?"

"...It wasn't change. It was the end of one thing and the start of another." Change would be that they can still be said to be the same thing. That boy... he and I are cut off by a great chasm. The life he could have had without that event is one that could not be mine.

"If you say so... Why didn't you tell me about this before. This could be important information in my mission! I mean, isn't this what you have been hiding all this time?"

"I apologise... It may not be the same for you, but us humans are not good about talking about the past." If I had to guess then, it is the same for her. "If you want to know everything about me, that that is something won't fight you on..." But still... there is nothing good in it.

Her hand is over her chest, she always holds it as if to gather strength in her core. "...I forgive you, Shirou. If it was dubious like the Holy Grail that made you odd, then I can't hate you. Even if..."

It doesn't need to be said. Even if I am like this, she will forgive me for it.

Her words are some of the kindest I have ever heard. "Thank you, Arcueid..." But we shall see how she feels when this is all over. "But all this talk can be done after the fight. I think that we need to talk about what is about to happen. Who exactly are we fighting here? Chaos... or something...?"

The change in conversation is needed, or else we were stuck in a conversation that leads nowhere.

"That's right. I guess that's going to be our last topic, considering us. He could show up any time now, and You know this already but he is also a vampire. We call him Nrvnqsr, and he is quite an exception. ...To tell the truth, he isn't someone you could talk to so casually like this."

"..."

"So, this Nrvnqsr... What kind of guy is he? Have you met him?"

"Of course not. I don't have any vampire acquaintances. Knowing them means I'm going to kill them the next instant. I have never met a vampire who I have not killed. But isn't it natural to know the name of vampires with unusual power and a long history? Among those, Nrvnqsr stands out even more. Despite being one of the oldest vampires, he has neither a castle nor territory and is an eccentric wanderer. The Church has given him a second name: Chaos."

"... Chaos? What's that?"

"Literally squirming, squelching chaos. Like various things mixed together in primordial earth with no one knowing what will come out."

Hah. It is not different from back then, is it? Another form of mud that will have to be scoured from existence.

"Not knowing what will come out...?"

"Geez. We spoke of it earlier but aged vampires cannot easily regenerate damage to their bodies. To restore the body after centuries of existence, the weak life of a human isn't enough. So using the simply more superior life forms, wild animals and magic beasts, as raw material, they compose their body. As one of the oldest vampires, Nrvnqsr probably is in a league of his own regarding the sheer amount of beasts he has caught and used for his body."

"Things like those black dogs are a part of his body then?"

"Yes. But there is a limit to a human's capacity. Probably only about thirty beasts can be controlled at once. Having more than one illusionary beast, such as a magical or phantom beast, would overload one's capacity. Putting that into consideration, all of Nrvnqsr's familiars are probably real animals. Yeah, that may be fortunate."

"Black dogs weren't the only things, though. Fuju-nee saw a leopard, and I believe her, and didn't you fight one...?"

"Right. Bringing together thirty animals of the same type is one thing, but for Nrvnqsr to have different beasts in his body truly places the strength of his willpower apart from others. Well, it does seem odd that if he has that sort of power, he would only use wild animals. I would have thought he would employ more magical beasts with his sort of willpower. Hmmm..." Arcueid descends deep into thought. "Whatever. Anyway, we at least know his weapons are twenty or thirty familiars. ... So now we can understand why he's called Chaos."

"So his name really isn't Chaos?"

"Yeah, most long-lived Dead Apostles don't use their names from their human lives. But they don't make up a new name themselves, the Church assigns them one. They add on names as they and new, special characteristics of the vampire, so some of them have names as long as spells. Do not blame me for it."

"I guess the Church must really have hated him to name him Chaos. It would have been enough for one scout type beast to find me, right? But he let loose all of his beasts to feed, meaning he seems to enjoy such excesses."

"..." People may have already been killed, and no one would even be able to tell. If he arrived last night, or before... then-

No, I can't think about that. I will lose focus.

"-I can't believe it. He's a complete monster."

"Yes. He really is the worst opponent I could have at the moment. He's one of those you never want to meet. But what's worse is that such a guy knows where we are. Even now, I'm sure his familiars are watching us."

"Wha-"

"Isn't it obvious? He has been watching us ever since he discovered us below the bridge. He is waiting for the peak of midnight to come on out. How much time is left?"

"Not even ten minutes or so. Time really does fly... Hey, didn't you say he would come at ten?" We had talked about what had happened at this park for so long that this vampire business had seemed like an afterthought. Perhaps I was willing to try and forget that this was going to happen...

"I lied so you would work faster." Aw, so that is what she was lying about back then. Funny, even though I know when she lies sometimes I go along with it without thinking. The mark of a convincing person.

"If that our time then... I should wait somewhere away from you."

No more words are needed. This isn't the time for talk, even if there remains so much left unsaid.

The plan itself is unbelievably simple. She will fight ahead of me, and I will support her from behind with as much fire support that she needs in order to focus on Chaos. If any beasts come after me... then I will deal with it as it comes.

The park is empty. It's five minutes before midnight.

Arcueid has her head tilted up, watching the blue moon above her.

"..."

I grip my bow tightly.

Arcueid said that Nrvnqsr would definitely arrive.

"Haaahh." I try taking a deep breath.

My body is creaking along with the leaves of the trees. No enemy can overcome me here.

"Hah..." Maybe I'm nervous that I'll have to confront a monster; that I can't run away from the supernatural this time. This time it is my town at stake. But I will not be the one taking him on directly. It is easy to hold a mind of steel when I will stay back. But what of her?

"Arcueid... aren't you scared?" I stare at the white girl vacantly, looking up at the moon. She doesn't look uneasy at all. Her face looking up at the moon comes down.

She looks back at me casually, as if this is just how her existence always is. She does not have an everyday life. Her history is a string of battles that never end, leading to futility.

Her mouth nearly comes to answer, as if it would hold some wisdom I would never forget, but it does not come to pass.

At the same time, the world had turned stiff. "It seems I have kept you waiting, Princess of the True Ancestors." A heavy voice, like rusted iron.

"...!" That's why Arcueid looked down, not at me, but at the thing in front of us. Right on time like clockwork, he arrives.

More than five meters away from her, and more than ten meters away from me, a man in a black coat appears like a ghost.

"Yes. I've been waiting for quite some time, Nrvnqsr Chaos. Or would you prefer I call you Fabro Rowan? Sounds classier."

Arcueid's voice reaches me through the wind. He pays me no mind as I hold my bow tight.

"Impressive. I would never have dreamed anyone would call me by the name I went by while I was still a human. Just what one would expect of our Executioner. I suppose you have long found out all there is to know about the current Twenty-Seven Ancestors of the Dead Apostles."

I can hear Nrvnqsr's reply clearly as well.

Beast. Black. Chaos.

This was not a man. My eyes were confused. The headache was immediate, but unlike with Mom and Gilgamesh, I was not struck blind.

The level of humanity within a vampire is stronger than a normal human, yet also weak... thinned out, and fleeting. They must constantly feed to regain their shedding power.

Still... this vampire is different...

It was like seeing hundreds of living beings at once.

I focus on her illuminated body, which is like a soothing fabric over my vision.

"Hahh." My breathing grows louder.

I focus on the image forming inside my mind. A blade that will fit between my fingertips and pierce the air at a moment's notice. Curtana, I will call on you again. It is the only sword that caught my eye at the Tower of London. Although it had become a degraded imitation of what it once was thousands of years ago, it still held a flicker of its original mystery. It is a blade that will never kill one who does not deserve it, as it will shatter on impact.

It did not kill Arcueid, but he is not innocent. He is guilty.

Arcueid is drawing Nrvnqsr's attention.

"Don't get it wrong, Nrvnqsr. The Dead Apostles are not a group of twenty-seven, but of twenty-eight. You do not recognize 'The Serpent' as one of your own?"

"Of course. His ideals differ from ours. He is a vampire, but he does not hold to the meaning of being a vampire. Consequently, we do not accept him as one of us. But, we are old friends. I believe I understand him more than the other Dead Apostles."

"... I see. Come to think of it, you are like 'The Serpent' as well, as you are unlike the other vampires too. Since you are both heretics, you must share common interests."

"Wrong. Heresy is isolated therefore it is heresy. Just because we both are separated from the flock doesn't mean we comprehend one another."

"Really? Coming as far as this country to pursue me, I think you guys are similar."

"Do not be ridiculous. You are the one capricious one. Your purpose is to execute Dead Apostles, so why do you persistently pursue the Serpent of Akasha? The 'Serpent's' poison is not something the Princess of the True Ancestors should be persistent about."

... Nrvnqsr's voice gets slightly louder.

They are talking about things that I have no clue about, but all that is on my mind are swords.

Arcueid's taunting must be working. Nrvnqsr is looking only at his enemy Arcueid.

Unseen by all, the bowstring begins to go taut. No one can see what lies in the shadows. I am unnoticed because I am made out of shadows.

All his senses are directed toward Arcueid.

I can do it. I feel it. The plan is unnecessary.

Without a doubt, I can kill him. A single strike that will disable him entirely. There's no mistake; he does not sense me. He pays my existence no mind.

"...Trace on." The steps fire inside my head and a sword shine to life in my hands. His defenceless head. Hold your breath for three seconds. One more degree. Then it's all over. "Curtana!" The sword of mercy, it kills those things considered evil while blunting against those considered good.

The sword that shatters the air rides the winds towards him. But right before it can hit-

Nrvnqsr's body rises up like a balloon.

Pop.

Falling out of him is a creature easily four times his size. 'That is a rhino...' Bigger than any rhino in a zoo or in the wild, this one is the size of a large car! "Wha-!?" The rhino shoots forth like a missile against the sword.

"-!"

They hit each other in the air, and both explode and break. The rhino is cut in half as the sword veers off and fails to the ground. The two forces are so great that it bursts in a flash of light.

But even cut in two, the rhino is coming at me. Even without life, it holds no care that it has lost itself.

"...!" I need to get back.

But I find a white back in front of me as it charges without a body. Arcuied was in the middle of it and as it crushed a tree in its path she didn't move. "Arcueid! Look out!" She was under attack from multiple directions. A rhino in front and then there were no black dogs jumping from multiple directions.

It was too late. I throw the spinning Zarich and Tawrich but they can't help her in time.

It hit her with the force of a battering ram onto a gate. The loudness hurt my ears as it was like concrete crashing on metal.

Then I see it.

The Rhino was crushed in half and was obliterated. "Whoa..." She looks back at me almost disappointed.

"Did you seriously really think I was going to fall to a single familiar?"

"It was 10x your size, of course, I will be worried!"

"Idiot! Don't you know about something called density? Size doesn't mean anything!"

"Why are you so mad? I can handle this, so you don't have to prove anything! You showed your strength, so let me handle it from here. You don't have to prove anything."

"You? Handle anything? I wouldn't trust you to do anything but cook and clean. If there is something you can do, then stop lying to yourself and do it!"

Our argument is such that even the beasts and Chaos cannot comprehend it. The language we spoke to one another was one that even the two millennium-old vampire has no conception of.

It truly stunned Chaos for a time when we were busy fighting one another, and the beasts were frozen as if terrified to be noticed. A dog is there in front of me. Instead of attacking me as it did earlier with rabid intent, it is... cowering. It refuses to fight me. As if to sense weakness, it is devoured by its fellow mutts in a display of evil."Ahh! You pieces of trash. If you can't even take care of a scrap of meat, you're unworthy to be a part of my body."

The man voices his displeasure as he raises his hand. His coat lifts like a mantle. Broken. With a splash, the black dog's remains to liquefy and disappear into the man's cot.

"Ah-" Evil is to destroy something considered 'weak' and blame it for all the problems. At that moment, this being in front of me exposed itself as being a system that is evil. That was more impactful than he would ever know.

Then...

I see inside the coat, and the expanse beyond it.

I see into that expanse. The darkness underneath his coat... is nothing. Pure darkness, without even the traces of an outline. All that exists there is mud-like darkness.

I see. So you think that you can be like this without repercussions?

Do you think you can appear as you do here, of all places? Do you truly think the Church is the only thing you have to worry about? You are exactly the disgusting nuisance that I must eradicate.

Killing this thing in front of me is why I exist.

My bloodlust is clear.

"An-" Yet... my feet won't move.

Do not approach. Wait. Wait!

My head, even boiling, held enough focus to tell me to stop.

My instincts sound the alarm wildly in my head, and I can't even lift a finger. My mind tells me not to go. Not now. Not yet.

If I go now, then I will die. Think!

But I have no time to do so...

The man in the black coat approaches me. "Feed." He raises one of his arms towards me.

Below it lies chaotic darkness. From there, something huge appears.

Whomp. The sound of the wind.

That which has appeared from below the man's coat is a crocodile's mouth.

Clomp.

Razors fill my view as the mouth comes at me so fast that I can not move.

"Wha!?"

I.. can't believe it. Instead of me, the jaws of the crocodile clamp onto the stomach of Arcueid, who just pulled me out of the way.

"Ssstt!"

Arcueid's face contorts in agony. She draws back before she is completely devoured by the crocodile's maw.

"..." The man silently watches Arcueid.

Arcueid glares back at him with a pained expression, her mid-section stained in red.

"Wha...?" She saved me. Why? This was not the Arcueid I fought. Her actions are sluggish compared to then. We are both weak, and he is strong...

But I do not underestimate her.

She was not indomitable and was fighting on the defence rather than on the offence. Something was wrong. "I can't believe a vampire named Chaos would play such trivial games. It's like a poorly-scripted nightmare, Nrvnqsr Chaos."

"I feel the same way. To catch one of the surviving True Ancestors... I never dreamed I would be a part of such a foolish festival. This is a nightmare for me, too." The man called Nrvnqsr quietly lowers his arm. The coat returns to its former position, and the crocodile's mouth disappears underneath. The man looks only at Arcueid.

It's as if he's no longer concerned at all about me, standing behind her with a bow. "But what is going on? I have heard that the previous executor could not even scratch you. What kind of a mistake is this? Right now, your presence is quite impotent."

"..." Arcueid says nothing. The man fixes his emotionless stare on her.

"... I don't understand. There are only a limited number of conceptual weapons capable of harming you. The only people in possession of those are the Church's assassins, and I don't think the Burial Agency would dispatch anyone this far east. To think you would use a familiar, you have fallen quite low." The man narrows his eyes slightly as he turns around. "Either way, this is most fortunate for me. I shall not ask why you have been weakened. All I am going to do is claim your head while I have a chance of winning."

"Tss...!" Arcueid holds her side, but there is something off to her. She is lying. I don't know what about it, but she is being a total liar. "If you would challenge me, then I will answer even you with the respect of granting it."

"-Interesting. You are so weak you cannot even use your Marble Phantasm, yet you still challenge me?"

"There's no need. It can't be helped, even if I am fighting a Dead Apostle. For someone like you, these claws will be enough, Nrvnqsr Chaos." A short laugh comes up.

"Fool. Realize your folly, Arcueid Brunestud-!" Nrvnqsr raises an arm. His coat rues like a cape, and countless animals fly forth.

Grrrrrrrrr. With a thunderous roar, three beasts run towards Arcueid like bullets. Not anything like black dogs, but three giant leopards larger than Nrvnqsr himself, like large demonic silhouettes.

"..."

Arcueid can't move. She is in front of me, and if she moves I will be trampled. Why is it... that I can only watch? It is as if watching is more important than my own life at that moment when the moon was now the sole light of the world.

Three leopards run, cracking the bricks under them just by running.

They're faster than anything from before.

The three beasts pounce towards Arcueid. It's over quickly. In an instant, the three leopards' bodies are cut in half and fall to the ground.

"-What?" Nrvnqsr's voice booms.

Arcueid is silent.

From there, she moves to attack him. She switches into the perfection that she was holding back. "...!" Her movements are as a predator, holding no excess energy. She is perfection. She is the perfect weapon. The perfect... sword. This was the enchantment that was missing.

Beasts emerge from Nrvnqsr's body. The instant it emerges, the lion's head is grabbed and torn apart from its body. The leopard is killed the instant it attacks Arcueid by getting pierced by her punch through its head. The tiger is torn apart like clay. Everything following them suers the same fate. The same with the agile eagle and the giant grizzly bear. The same with the shark swimming in the ground. The same with the ridiculously large elephant. In the end, they can't even stop her and turn back into black, sticky mud.

"-Wha.." Nrvnqsr tries to escape. Arcueid swings her claws.

After the sound of ripping flesh, Nrvnqsr's body is split in two from the neck down.

There was never any doubt. In single combat, there is none who can best her. She simply can not be contended with. There is nothing to cry about, it is a simple fact.

Emiya Shirou, Nrvnqsr Chaos, or any being for that matter, can not match against her in a fight.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!" Roaring in pain, Nrvnqsr leaps away from Arcueid. Split from the neck to the waist, he's lost over half his body.

Splat.

The rest of his body falls at Arcueid's feet. "..." The beasts Nrvnqsr let out weren't weak. Those lions and tigers, just one of them, can tear a car into scraps. And that grizzly bear could have torn a tank apart with its uncontrolled violence. But such beasts were torn apart by Arcueid, and Nrvnqsr himself is half dead. "Ha," It almost seems like a joke. It was easy, if not for the pulsing reminder in my head.

I could finish him off, yet still, my mind's eye says wait.

I still need to wait. There is something more to come.

"GA... AH, aaaaa...!" Nrvnqsr keeps retreating as if to escape.

The man... no, the monster spoke slowly. It was a voice like scraping sandpaper and said nothing good. "It is quite unbelievable. Weakened as you are, you still have that much power. As expected from the reaper prepared by the True Ancestors. ... 'Do not face the white princess.' It seems the warnings of others were correct."

The man looks only at Arcueid. It's as if he's not concerned at all about me, standing behind her. "-Enough boasting. You can't kill me with any amount of such familiars, and I have cut off half your body. No matter what, you have no chance of winning."

"Haha. My familiars have all been killed? but you seem to be mistaken."

"...?"

"I do not carry familiars, nor do I use them. All those things you fought were truly me. ... It is quite unpleasant to be considered similar to the other mongrels who capture other living things to repair their damaged flesh. Look into me with those eyes of yours, see the beasts that will be your end."

Splash.

Something moves quickly at the edge of my vision. "A-" Behind Arcueid. The half of Nrvnqsr's body which Arcueid cut off, is shaking. It rises up in a large clot and shoots toward Arcueid-. "Arcueid, behind you-!" I run. My body, which had been frozen so tight before, explodes as I sense the threat to her.

"Shirou-?"

I try to block it with my body, but I can't make it in time. I reach out and only make it, so we are both doomed.

Arcueid turns around. But she doesn't make it. The half of Nrvnqsr's body lying on the ground becomes countless large serpents that attack Arcueid from behind and pushes her into me as we both fall.

"Cr-" The large serpents wrap around us and return to a black mud.

In a last sudden bout of strength, she pushes me off of her, but that only puts me next to her in a smaller pit of mud nearby. Arcueid is pinned to the ground like me, but the pressure is millions of times worse for her. "Wh, what-no way...!?" As she is pushed down, Arcueid tries to escape.

"It is useless. You should understand what that is, Princess of the True Ancestors."

"...!"

Arcueid's face lights up in pain and surprise.

The remaining half of Nrvnqsr raises its voice almost as if howling.

"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. Haha, are you pleased with the chaos within my body, Arcueid Brunestud?"

"Are you sane...!? A human body.. having more than three hundred factors compressed in something as small and closed-in as a human shape, this is just like-"

"Indeed, no different from the Primordial Sea. I am not making my body up with other animals. I merely use the factors called 'animals' as my body, mixing them like mud. I have no such things as familiars. What exists are 666 beasts-and lives equal to that number. Ripping my body in half or crushing my head is meaningless. I am one and 666. If you wish to destroy me, you need to destroy 666 lives at once."

"... This can't be... this is what Chaos means...!?"

"My alter selves have no concrete existence. When released from this body which is my territory, they will take form as some kind of 'species' for the first time. They have no form of their own from the beginning. You can kill them outside of me, but once they return, they regenerate as a part of my chaos. ... Though, even I cannot predict what they will become once they emerge. Understanding and controlling this disordered dendrogram is my eternal thesis." The vampire with only half a body gives a boasting, laugh.

"That's impossible...! To take in souls... If you encapsulate uncoloured conceptualized existences, you yourself will disappear...!"

He sounds arrogant enough to be a magus. But it is funny. What he is talking about is something I understand completely. It just kinda makes sense to me.

He was sad. An incredibly tragic existence. There was no more soul for me to read but the echo of something that has long become mud. All that remains are the final thoughts of what once was a man. I listen calmly. I feel an odd sensation.

"Indeed. That is why this is not a single person here. The personality of Nrvnqsr already does not exist. We are not a single body, but closer to a limitless collective. ...Certainly, there is no meaning of existence in such a life. There are already life forms in the deep ocean that can form eternal systems. This body will lose its intelligence and become a mere 'specimen' just like them someday. But, do you not find it magnificent? There are things that swirl inside me, and you do not know what form they will take. This small world is like that of our world in its primal stages. A chaotic space where what will be born is unpredictable. The darkness of chaos is just like this planet's hierarchy, while still having the possibility of dramatic change. I wish to know what lies at its culmination before I disappear."

Her hands are kept tight, and there is a moment that she starts to sink. "You...!" I can't catch what she is saying.

"This is why the Church gave me this name: Nrvnqsr Chaos. Equipped with 666 beasts, no longer a vampire but a space that has become chaos, a heretic who broke the taboo."

"...!" Arcueid's voice is quieted.

The black mud squirms all around her. Even Arcueid's face is already half-covered. Her struggle leads to nought. "... That's all. Under such a prison, even you cannot escape. It is a union of five hundred of my parts, the 'Soil of Genesis'. Even were you to be at full strength, you could not hope to destroy it. It is equivalent to destroying a whole continent."

She pushed me out of that, because I would have been crushed instantly.

What is holding me? One? Two? Five? It can't possibly be more than 30. If that is so, then this is pathetic. Am I seriously sitting here watching someone who needs help doing nothing?

...Why have I simply assumed that it is impossible? That... his strength is greater ...I stop trying to resist and think. There is a nagging feeling, one inappropriate for this situation yet it is coming whether I like it or not. Calm down, Shirou and think!

I'm left to listen, as I search for the solution to a problem that has been in my head as soon as I saw him. My brain just needs to read what my eyes are trying to tell it!

Nrvnqsr's remaining half approaches Arcueid slowly. He gloats.

"Many of our brethren have been killed by you. Many have sought to destroy you, only to be destroyed in turn. But, that is all over. I, Nrvnqsr Chaos, will accomplish a great achievement none could perform until now. Nrvnqsr. This Reality Marble, who... Well, It should be easy to tell. Your nemesis 'The Serpent' came to me to teach me. From the second generation back. Before you killed him, he bequeathed upon me the method of making this 'cage'."

"..." I can't hear Arcueid's voice anymore. Looking, her mouth is covered in the black mud.

This thing in the shape of a man is eating her, and me too.

"But 'The Serpent' is also a tragedy. What was once a priest of the Church can't live on just because a Goddess of Death like yourself is chasing after him? If he had lived, he may have devised a means to control the chaos in my body. ...It certainly must have been regretful not being able to fully utilize such a clear heresy before getting destroyed." He talks too much. "I was a sworn friend of 'The Serpent'. Why you persistently pursue him without tiring, I am very curious: but, it seems you can no longer speak."

"..."

The black mud starts to pin down Arcueid's body. By now, it is no longer Arcueid's collapsed feminine figure, but only a formless mud.

"I will make you a part of me, Arcueid Brunestud. Absorbing your amount of will may require great effort, but it will make me the highest rank of vampire. A little pain is like a celebration for the new creation. When that happens, even the professional killers of the detestable Burial Agency will be nothing to fear. I will eradicate all members of that mouldy Church. Then even the other Ancestors will be nothing but nuisances to me." Arcueid's face sinks completely with a sucking sound.

I can't see the moon reflecting off her anymore. "...!" My mind panics at the fear that such a shining thing would be forever lost. At this rate, if I leave Arcueid alone, she'll be absorbed into the black mud.

Mud? MUD!? Assimilation? This is too much. A certain feeling is taking over inside me. A ringing in my ears. I can't see anything but myself in a fire. I was once engrossed in mud while everyone burned around me. They all burned while screaming for help I could not give.

Crackkkk

The panic hits a breaking point in which it all just bursts.

In this mud, I am calm.

I start to feel a tension loosen, and now it is not any different from floating lazily in the summer waves.

There is no hatred in this. This mud is like a predator, it consumes to gain strength, not because it hates you.

He doesn't want to start another fire to see the world burn, he wants to burn down the world so that he could replace it.

He simply wishes to see the end result for the sake of it.

It is a potent will with a single flaw.

He does not truly understand what he wants to become. If he did, then he would have turned back long ago.

I am the keeper of that fire. If one has come to do it again, it is my responsibility as the one who lived to put an end to it.

I will have to shed who I am for a minute or so, but that is fine. Being a hero means knowing when to put your life on the line for the best result, even if that means the end of yourself.

Kiritsugu said that to fight a battle without the intention of death is to disrespect it. I will try to ride this coming storm, but I will hold no wish to live. Only to win.

No one deserves it, yet they wish it upon others. If it can be used... to eliminate this one thing, and not overflow...

If killing one will save ten, then when the time comes, you don't hesitate.

This is it.

Emiya (Music) /cUs8FEsDUZ4

"Penalty on. Trigger set."

The starting penalty is five. Life penalty, body penalty, freedom penalty, fame penalty, fortune penalty. Give the penalty that extends so much punishment, mud, darkness, and malice. Mud that will steal your warmth and turn it into a new penalty that will seek out its next victim.

I don't have to aim for this curse of destruction. I will curse the things that I hate the most.

This isn't magecraft; there is no thought in it. I'm not pulling out a single curse from the river, rather I am going to let the whole river flow out.

A river that will flow until the entire world was covered.

As my head starts pulsing and my eyes feel like they will boil, my head inverts and the boiling heat becomes a freezing chill.

A feeling of bemusement finally explodes.

"Hahahahahahahaha!" The laughter is easy on my lips. This is too ironic.

Death... I am looking at my own death. A solution that leads into oblivion.

If I'm going to the abyss, then I can at least take someone with me.

Chaos' power was so focused on absorbing Arcueid that he overlooked the pest in front of him. My voice was turning into a mighty wind. "You think that 666 beasts can match up to 6 billion humans? Then let us see!" My hand reaches out and I am holding two swords in my hands.

He turns to me.

"Ah...The familiar!? Was this your plan all along, White Princess? Watch what will happen to your knight!"

"Shut up! We never had a plan in the first place!"

My hand reaches out, and my eyes close to imagining it. It is a black gate. "Trigger off." The bullet splatters Emiya Shirou's brains instantly, he is killed.

From then on out there is no more me, just the magic that needs to occur. The brain and the circuits and the nervous system meld together, and the body of Emiya Shirou becomes a single rotating machine.

The beasts that jump at him are impaled by weapons appearing from thin air. Stabbed into the ground by Black Keys that force reality onto a vampire.

With that small opportunity, a chant rose like a tornado. The foreign words echo out, bringing out a gateway. "...Unknown to Death, nor known to Life." Who can say when those words were imagined, but they would never lose their power.

Something that could not die, yet never be born.

Thus... the gate opens.

A door at the bottom of an endless river would form a whirlpool draining that endless sea out of it.

There is a final thought at that moment, 'I am going to open the gate, sorry Sakura...' This action would reflect onto her, as opening that gate meant taking and taking in order not to fall apart. There was a thread that moved between him to her and then to...

So even if the blackness ever began to reform, or would simply flow out. A small trickle, manageable enough in that it would drain her slowly and give him marginal levels of energy. But with the gate emptying on one side, the other will poor through... And in the middle, she will drown in it.

So it is something that he can only regret.

Above Chaos, the door opens to a world of madness. A small trickle of the full ocean that is there flows down on his half-destroyed body.

Control the tides of it so it won't spill out into the world. For this to work, it all needs to fall into his coat.

The world is on fire. An invisible black fire that swallows light instead of exuding it.

An afterimage of a place outside of time. His eyes burn first, and all that remains is the dark void. Such ugliness can only burn out the vision that observes the truth of things. The truth about chaos itself is simply too much for a human to comprehend.

It was aimed into the darkness of Chaos itself.

A planet can't be destroyed by weapons alone. 666 swords wouldn't have been enough, and such an act would have destroyed my body before anything else. Sometimes the only thing you can do is bring out the tools all that you have, and figure out the consequences after.

Let us be born! Let us out!

A crack in the world.

A swirl that bends all reality.

The mud began to pour out, like a small facet being turned on at first, onto him. It made the mud of Chaos seem flimsy and immature. It was gentle in comparison to the absolute terror that was the mud of Angra Mainyu.

Darker, and full of extreme malice built out of all the evils of man. This was the Primordial Sea of curses that man had wished for.

Chaos was a power beyond the limit of human comprehension, built up by the merging of 666 creatures, some holding the foundations of the millennium by themselves. He was an apostate to humanity.

Unlucky. Had it just been the Chaos and Arcueid, then it was altogether possible he would have had his victory. But I hold no sympathy for this thing. It is not human, not anymore. It is a womb trying to birth its new world... Unfair. Unfair!

The condemnation of a miscarriage screams inside me. Why can you be born and yet we never can!

It is simple Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wroth, Envy, Pride.

Covered in the mud, the curses will paint an inescapable world of painted woe. The longer one's life, and the fuller of regrets, the worse it will be. The man who had devolved into Chaos was full of regret, ripe with hatred and crimes.

He began to melt into something that could only destroy. Even the mud of Chaos is destroyed. Anything that is 'human', will be mercilessly killed.

If the beasts inside of him were actually animals then they would be immune. By admitting that they were parts of himself, he was declaring his own defeat.

He had created an evil system. The curses incinerate that evil first. They strike at the very truth of the being known as Chaos, rather than the beasts. They break down the humanity that remains as the lifeforce holding it together.

It was the Authority over the destruction of evil. Angra Mainyu's entire purpose, his origin and his reason for birth: to confirm and destroy all the evils of the world. A power that was beyond reason. There wasn't any logic behind it, no training or skill. This was an ability that existed simply because Humanity had created Angra Mainyu to act like that, so everyone simply agreed that he would have that power to complete the task wished of him.

Retribution for sin. The greater one's sin, the worse the penalty. Beasts are beings of instinct; no matter what, they will heed to pain.

Its nature is a curse so strong that it is visible, so it can be called magical energy specialized for destroying people. It stains anybody it touches with a strong curse and melts them as if they were being digested. Each beast is eaten, then the pain and fear it felt before death remains as magical energy and becomes the next curse to seek out another one.

The beast can regenerate, only to be consumed again. And so the engine that will not stop begins.

Thus the contradiction. The mud of Angra Mainyu will not stop until all of its possible victims are used up as fuel. The Beasts of Chaos will not stop regenerating unless they are all to die together and at the same time. It is only

Thus they experience eternal hell, in which they will return to life only to be murdered in the most painful way once more.

It was just poor compatibility

"Gaahh! AGHHHH!" The vampire grasped desperately at itself. No. All of the beasts were exterminating themselves from the pure fear of death now coursing through them. They were all new beings, strong, a collective consciousness. The fear they would feel as absolute unavoidable death came for all of them at once reverberated and like a feedback loop sent them into madness. "You-! Yoooouuu!"

The concept of pain is inscribed onto Chaos for the first time. The fear of death had become such that it only made the body tastier for the curse to eat.

The boy had held the gate open so long, that blood poured from his eyes. Cracked skin shows only metal underneath.

"Shi-rou?" Arcueid's eyes seem to say, as they push out of the mud holding her to look out before the jaws close on him.

Her eyes would not see what she was looking for. She would see someone who does not appear as the boy she knows. His body was covered in black serpents and a transparent shadow. His entire existence is something that should not exist in the world, nearly translucent in the light of the moon. Its existence is that it will burn by simply existing. The boy is already done for.

He opened a lock which he promised he wouldn't... It is a bomb that will explode killing his enemy along with himself. So it wasn't to be feared now.

A huge almost formless beast comes out of the Chaos, its jaws aimed at the still statue of a boy. Even though the interference of it being ingested by the mud of humanity, it will kill him in the time it takes for it to lose itself.

So he doesn't even try to stop it anymore. Not that he could move, with his bones have already been expended and converted into steel.

The jaws close.

Ripppp

She watches him die. He dies. His body is destroyed, teeth cut through the flesh and kill the source of their pain. Cut through the torso, his head disappears and body parts fall across the grass.

When the body is destroyed, the soul too is left without a place to exist. It will then flow out and be resorted in the great wheel.

That is how it should be...

The beasts do what they always do. They may understand that not everything is worth eating, but it was already too late. Chaos exists for the purpose of consuming prey, so once it is in the mouth then there is no understanding of spitting it out. They eat the boy in full. To steal his soul and make him join the collective. An error with immediate repercussions.

The second after consuming the boy, there was regret. Evolution is built on the failure of those who did not have good traits, but evolution fails when struck with a disaster so massive that no being can counter it.

The pain had only become worse. The time that it took for each beast to disintegrate was decreasing with every second. Down from ten seconds to four then to two and now one. Eternal death. The violent corrosive mud started flooding directly into the world within. Of course, he had invited it into him by swallowing him.

Chaos was forced to experience the sensation of being burned alive without the ability to die. The sounds of it would scar any who had the ability to listen.

The world itself was pulling Arcuied out of the weakening mud now as the beasts holding her were being disintegrated back into Chaos.

Then it happens. When the energy of an object starts to hit a limit, something has to give.

Two worlds slam into another.

Creeeeeek

The world begins to bend and break and shatter like twisted metal. A huge creaking sound reverberates across all of Fuyuki as if a tall building began to buckle. Two marbles hit each other, then bounce off, then came again even harder like throwing two planets at the other.

Crash

A bomb detonated, yet there was no destruction anywhere to be seen. The sound was coming from with the Chaos.

Crash

Crash

Crash

Crash

Each time the sound grew, and the time between them decreased and an earthquake began to reverberate across Japan localized in Fuyuki.

But that was only the afterimage of what was truly happening when they came into contact. Chaos tried to consume Emiya Shirou and suddenly found that there was a wall. An unbreakable wall that suddenly pushed onto the entire world that the king of Beast had built. "Ahhh...!" How could he not scream when he realized it?

It was like eating a sword. What would you expect to happen except be punctured from the inside?

The pain of the curse had fried whatever intelligence was left, and now there was nothing but the crashing of two Reality Marbles in conflict.

It had been the only path to victory, for the boy did not know how to use it. He didn't know the words or how to make it work. He just imagined that maybe it could. He didn't plan on dying or being eaten alive. He just followed the necessary path, regardless of what it entailed. He did not fear what was asked of him, not when the stakes were what they were.

So it was left to the natural collision and manifestation of that place which was left of him. Even if the body would die, it would still remain. It was impossible to peirce, after all.

When two Reality Marbles are deployed in the same space, the one with higher output would be deployed. In the end, there was no contest to it. The King of beasts was without comparison in foundation and energy holding 666 beasts, some holding a Millennium-class foundation. The magical energy could be considered to be easily up towards the millions built even out of magical beasts that walked in the Age of the Gods.

In other words, he held a power that any foe would fear.

...In other words, he was painfully outmatched.

The energy he was up against wasn't on the same scale as a creature or group, it was a species.

The energy that was suddenly coursing through the world of Chaos was close to one trillion, equivalent to that of a Counter Guardian empowered fully by the world. It was not the energy of the boy himself, but rather something that was being kept inside never to be used. He was the keeper of it, and now it was flowing out.

He was the barrier holding back a reservoir of evil incarnate that could sweep over the whole world.

Everything is overwritten. Like taking a great pen and deleting the parts he did not like.

Thus there is no fight, nor difficult battle past that. The penalty has been set and all of those who are to receive can not escape its grasp.

A brutal miscarriage. No form of life can live through it. Nothing. "You had been too arrogant of yourself, Chaos. Once you are born human, no matter how you degrade yourself, you will never be able to escape it." The voice resounded out from with the Chaos itself, or perhaps that is wrong. In that Chaos, there was now something worse than any beast or animal, a sort of entropy that will destroy any order of existence. It expanded exponentially as the world of chaos became a place of unlimited potential. Unlimted energy fired and grew and grew and grew and grew.

The mud could kill even non-human things, yes. But it wasn't anything different than normal burning tar. Yet to something that is considered a 'person', there were only two forces that outmatched it in speed and none that exceeded in quality. It breaks it all down until it too becomes a part of the river of mud.

It all happens fast.

The time that the whirlpool existed was such that one second was a billion of its lifetimes. When the density passes the Schwarzschild radius, all time and space crack apart. Unlimited evil. Unlimited blades. An unlimited density that reaches the level of ultimate power drawing from infinity.

The infinite potential of humanity for goodness and evil. To be human is to have the capacity for both.

The maximum crushing of matter by gravity, in which a singularity, or a region of infinite density, is produced after the matter is compressed to greater than nuclear densities. When mass crunches down itself, there is no stopping what comes next.

Chaos found himself in a world of terror that made no sense. The sky was green and more beautiful than anything that could ever exist in reality. The land was full of sakura blossoms, and the sounds were of a distant comfortable place. But in the middle of it all...

A great mountain with a river of black pulling everything in towards a great spiral.

The boy was there, watching without mercy on a hill impaled with steel. He resembled nothing less than a corpse held together only by the blades that were impaling everything that had been eaten by the crocodile. A human effigy sacrificed for a little power, acting as little more than a spark to start this foundry.

Thus Chaos fell down the whirlpool and down into the end of everything. Raging forces, nuclear, entropic, electromagnetic, and gravitational aligned to form something inescapable. At the end of that Whirlpool lay something that nothing could escape, it was a direct hole to nothing.

The many beasts are known as Chaos scrape as if they are a ship that has suddenly been punctured, sinking to the bottom of a pool of magma. They fight valiantly to stem the coming tides, but in the end, all together they drown and fall away into the endpoint of reality where all things disperse into nothingness.

The force of sixteen nuclear bombs detonated inside of the chaos. Nuclear fission and fusion rip apart atoms, then bring them back. The being known as Nrvnqsr Chaos was incinerated to such a fundamental level that it could be said even the memory of it would forever disappear. Even contained by the world that was Chaos, it threatened to radiate out and wipe out the entire city. It was a power that was unusable, for it would destroy indiscriminately and be uncontained in the world it manifests in.

The downfall of Chaos was that he had such a world all to himself, thus allowing that mud to flow without restraint and consume it. If Chaos had been a single will in the end, then he could have overcome it. But such was the risk when he had split his soul into so many pieces. Against an enemy that attacks everything at once, a being like him who was many small things put together could not contend. It really was simply a bad coincidence.

Atoms ripped apart as gravitational power ripped everything to the point of oblivion. All 666 beasts, in a moment that can only be regarded as close to zero as possible, disappeared into nothing. All turned into a formless mud, then ripped apart again over and over. Thus they were subsumed into a new landscape. Never to reach out into reality ever again.

Chaos achieved what he desired. He became true chaos, thus losing form completely. That was the end of his self-concept. The glue that held the beasts together melted, and finally it all simply flickered away in an anti-climatic way. Dead Apostles strive for true immortality, but no human can ever reach it. To become immortal is to stop living.

So Chaos became immortal, another curse that would flow down the river for all eternity.

(Music Stop)

Finally, the last portion of continental pressure pushing the blonde woman spun out and fired the woman out of the mud; she jumped up to find a scene of the disaster. The beast that had held her had either melted with Chaos, broken away into independence, or faded away into death.

The last scene she saw was Chaos sucked into a black hole, and out of existence entirely. If she is a white and pure thing, then all that he could be seen as was blackness so deep it went on forever.

All that remained of the boy was a lost life. He was gone from the world.

Yet the hole remained, a vacuum on the world. As it is a form of denial of the planet, it is her natural enemy. It was a gate to somewhere else, a black sea.

"What...?" It was something that should not be able to exist. If Arcuied had not been there to see it, then she wouldn't have noticed until it was too late. A hole out of existence, it wasn't something that was detected at all. As if it had nothing to do with the world, yet also... somehow was accepted in its place.

As if, in some vicious contradiction, this hole was both a terrible aberration on the world but also somehow a natural part of it.

A curse is an attempt to force change on the reality of the world, so for her, it was as simple as creating a wall of resistance that would force the world back onto it. The resistance is such it strains her entire being, not just the simple body that she appears as. The density is immense, and containing it only makes it worse.

Pulling the strength of nature with her shoulders, she formed a wall and condensed the black hole. The earthquakes that had seemed to shake the world, however, slowly calm down and dissipate as it folds into her hands. The swirling gate shrinks and weakens to the point that it is but a point of darkness held in her hands like a flicker of fairy dust.

Looking at it, it is almost as if it was an eyeball.

Then she realises it. Looking deeply into that which lays beyond, she sees the edge of the shore. Looking down at the black hole in her hands, she sees the true nature of the boy for the first time. He died on her, and she was left unsatisfied. "Idiot... How could someone be so stupid?" Frustrations she has never known before. The regret she once had for something she did not understand fills her, but she can not say why.

But it was never him, was it?

No one who thought about it for a moment would believe that evil is truly separate from goodness.

She knew that he wasn't like that.

So it wasn't ever his choice. He was chosen by coincidence and took on the terrible responsibility that was forced on him.

Even if she knew that he was something that shouldn't exist, for the sake of humanity and even for the Earth, even if she knew that this would be the end to her mission in the neatest way possible, even if she going beyond this simple explanation would be extra...

She didn't crush it. Because she did not yet understand.

The world began to swirl once again, but this time it was a gentle wind centred on herself.

There was still a little power that could be used. The chaotic order that True Ancestors were imbued with, and given authority over. The bug that was her impulse to know more about him flipped her switch at that moment, and she acted against what she had lived by for 800 years.

Thus, in an action she could not fully explain, she saved him. It was extra. The mission was over, in many ways, she understood him. But not enough...

Marble Phantasm. She hadn't been able to use it against Chaos, but in the aftermath of it all, she felt free of some sense of resistance in her heart that was chaining her. She just didn't really care anymore, echoing what she saw in him as he willingly died for her.

Now it was an even odder sentiment she had no idea about, but it made her toes tinkle and her head boil. To allow it to end there was just unacceptable. Something so potent that it threatened to bring tears to eyes that had never known them before. She wasn't going to let him die. "Don't think you can just leave... Only I am allowed to kill you."

So she becomes a weaver, threading back his life with all the parts she can gather. Condensing it all together in her hands, she sculpts a life as the gods of old could. Strangely enough, the soul stayed behind as if in wait for this. The parts were all there, simply needed someone to mould them back together again.

---

Determination (Music) /vrmxjo-U6J0

The last thing I remember was looking down, and seeing half of my body gone. It wasn't surprising, but it is funny.

Swords are lazily floating down the river of curses.

Down and down the river and the more that I flow the more that the body is remade, the hard parts are remade with steel and the soft parts with mud. Cracking back into place, the soul is given form once again.

The memory of the soul is an odd thing. It holds both the vision of the body, all the memories and the powers of the being it is. If one were to reach the point of full mastery over it...

But that isn't me. I am only a sword. I can't do anything on my own without someone to wield it for me.

When my vision unfolds, I am looking up at red eyes.

A familiar scene. One that forever replayed in my mind.

The boy who was saved and the man who had come to save him at the last second. She was above me in the same manner, yet she did not cry as he did.

"Haha..." The imagery was not lost to me. She even held my hand the same that he did back then.

"Shirou?" Her voice echoed in my head. My hearing was muffled by the roaring river. How can she talk over that sound?

The river fades, and I find myself in a world not made out of swords. "Am I alive...?"

"You were broken in pieces, but somehow you were alive long enough for me to put you back together. You are... resilient. I didn't think a human would be able to handle it."

"..." She says she put me back together as if that was a normal thing. She contained the meltdown that was me.

She rubs something on me. I feel a part of my vitality returns to me. "Here you go, you're lucky there was so much material left to combine into you."

"What...? What is that?"

"A crocodile that needs a new form. It was quite willing to merge into a new form. A vampire has incredible regeneration compared to human standards. Without this mud binding you together, then I don't know what would have happened..." She seems sullen, thinking about the idea of mortality.

"...If you applied yourself, you could recreate a part of Chaos's power through Maagecraft."

"No... I don't think I will do that. That is best... left gone." Chaos is gone. It is best that he stays that way. A fear enters me. The same fear one would feel when they think they have contracted a horrible disease. "...Am I going to become a vampire?"

"No. Chaos was not like a normal vampire, so it unlikely you would be infected... Considering you were not whole, you should be fine. Besides, I do not know if you even could become one..." She mutters.

"Good..." One positive of being cut apart.

"Still, even if you will not become a vampire, you have inherited his idea blood now. You could be considered Apostle Ancestor number ten, taking his spot."

"I don't care... I don't want any more titles or powers or anything... All I wanted was to make it go away." She helps me up to a bench. I have not a single strand of strength left. My whole being is lost in this numbness. "Ugh. I feel dead... and so sleepy."

"You should be grateful you even can feel at all! You were swallowed alive, and I thought I might really get eaten back there! You really got killed, you know that!" She was incensed at me, but I felt content. I was glad she wasn't consumed. I was just glad she didn't have to suffer in front of me. "...I mean... why did you do that?"

Why is she mad? I just saved you. "Why? ...You were in trouble. What else would there be to do?" I slur my words. I did perish. I gave up my life so quickly for her own. I don't regret it, even if the pain of being stitched back together is unbearable.

"..." She is silent. I am covered in blood still, but she is as clean and radiant as ever. "You... did it for me? You don't desire power more than what is needed to do what is right, do you...? You would sacrifice your life even for a vampire. That's why I like you, Shirou... or shall I call you... Angra Mainyu?"

"..." I stare at her smiling face sternly, but she is never intimidated. "Do you think I am Angra Mainyu?" Is that how appear now? I am just tainted to be that, even now?

"It makes sense. An incarnated demon is a being that would perhaps be able to even take on a Dead Apostle Ancestor. They are not so different. Though I would never have thought that a demon built from humanity alone would be able to contend with a vampire." Her words hurt. From a human's mouth, they would never hurt; but from her's? They are painful. "The Church says that a human can not survive it. A demon will kill its host before they can become one."

"You are wrong. I am not Angra Mainyu... "

"You are... not?"

"You are right that I was once possessed. But that is in the past like I said. Long story short, it is now gone away." I don't know. "Angra Mainyu may have incarnated into me, but he was a special case. Among demons, Angra Mainyu is the weakest one. The normal idea of a demon is that it has an overwhelming will that dominates the one it possesses, but Angra Mainyu was different. The host is given complete control, and eventually, me and him simply came to a mutual understanding. You can say that he has passed onto a different world now."

"Yes. A separate world. A Reality Marble. All along, you had such a thing inside of you... Of course, why didn't I see it? I only had a glimpse of it. A principle. One that grew out of humanity rather than from vampires. An alternative path to immortality..."

"Principle?"

"The sort of curse that manifests as a unique power distinct from the normal properties of a vampire. Chaos was just such an example... I had never thought that a human could exist with the same level of cursed density as a vampire. Among all the curses I have ever seen, it is by far the ugliest. But far from the strongest, it seems to be one as wide as an ocean but as deep as a pond. Every existence is given an origin at creation, but a principle is made in the process of becoming something... other. I did not think that this was possible outside of Dead Apostles. It would require the same level of manifestation, no one would expect that a new system would be able to form. You can say it is the vampiric version of a Noble Phantasm, but the system are not at all the same."

"System?"

"Yes. System, or law. Every disease, or species for that matter, is just a set of laws put together and given reality. As you are not abiding by either human or vampiric rules, it can be said you don't belong in either group. You spoke of the laws of the Holy Grail changing earlier, but that goes for you too. The rules of being a Heroic Spirit, human, or vampire are all different."

"I am human, Arcueid... Even the Dead Apostles still retain some humanity. We all have to follow the rules..." I drink water and live off of food. I don't need to eat people, thankfully...

If that was necessary, then I would kill myself.

"I didn't say you were not human, just that you don't fit in their group. It is less of how you feel, or even how people feel. It's a matter of the general collective will of all humanity. To that cruel swarm, you are no longer considered to be the same as them. That gives you... a sort of separate authority." I don't know if that sounds worse or better. Am I an exceptionally good thing? or exceptionally even worse than a vampire? "You are supposed to be the evil they don't want to be a part of. I mean... why would they make something that is pure evil... Why not create something for pure goodness too?"

"It is a sad thing, isn't it? They have the idea of pure goodness, but no one ever suddenly declared that a random person was pure good. The capacity for goodness is equal in man to the capacity for evil, yet the path to evil is easy and can be fallen into even with good intentions. So the best I can do is take this hate that was created and try my best to form love. Perhaps then I could prove that even out of what humanity considers pure evil, goodness can be born." No one would ever care... but it was the implication of it. Jesus was given the designation of pure goodness, but he too was sacrificed to eliminate human sins. People can't tolerate pure evil or pure good, as it is simply too much for a person to handle.

"Why...?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you, of all people, so forgiving?" Stop looking at me like that... With eyes so sad, but not for your own sake.

"Who else would if not me? Who would be able to forgive people, if not the victim? That is just their nature. Humanity can never reach pure goodness, to do so would to stop being human. It is unreachable from this side. Some tried to make a hole to reach it, only to find themselves left behind by time. Others wished to bring it down to Earth, only to find that it would cause the destruction of what humanity considered goodness."

"And so 'Angra Mainyu', the devil that they wished for was brought down to the world. If that is so, then why is humanity fine? If it is true what you say, then mankind would have been hit with disaster."

"As I said, it was stopped before it went too far... But even so... there were other times it could have happened even after that." To explain it to her, I would have to ask a question. "...Tell me, have you fun the last few days?"

"F-fun? I... don't know what that entails. I was told that doing extra things was unnecessary. Fun, I guess, would be to fulfil my purpose. To do what I must."

"But don't you know, Arcueid? Fun is not duty. Everyone wants to have some reason to live, but purpose can change. Or you can say that it will change. For example, a sword is made in order to kill and nothing else, it may know no other purpose, but one day it will change. Wars end and the blades that were valued for their sharpness are now good for only the cutting of the harvest. Purposes can change."

"What are you saying..."

"Born out of hate... yet speaks of love. I love Sakura, I love Rin and Fuji-nee and all the people of Fuyuki and the world. ...I don't even hate Chaos for what he was, only that he gave up on himself by the end." I push and look up at her sitting next to me.

"Shirou?" I take her shoulder with my hand and look at her deeply.

"So don't give up on yourself, Arcuied. Whatever it is that you are struggling with, even if you have or will do bad things... as long as you never give up on yourself, there is salvation in that."

"Shirou..." Her mouth was near my neck. But I do not fear it. It's crazy but I don't, and that somehow makes her too confused to act on it. "Why? Why don't you fear it?"

"Because I believe. Without trial, we never have a chance to prove ourselves. So I prived that, all the while pushing people on to become better and not accept their own weakness." Even as an antagonist, you can still be good.

My clothing situation is a bit strange. My shirt is gone, and my pants are ripped. It seems that I am covered by some sort of fur cloth over my underparts, let's not think about what that is right now.

With my chest bare, my scars are clear for her to see. It seems that in recreating a body from a soul, it remembers all of its features.

"There is one thing... Ah, yeah... haha. I forgot to ask." Over my heart the initials that had been there for many years. The truth was there, waiting for someone to weave it out into a logical tale. Sword after sword, two initials were there from the beginning. "What is-" My words never make it.

The air turns into gold. My eyes are filled with so much light that they soon overheat and start to turn off.

We were both exhausted. There was no chance.

Shinggg

The sound of a sword flying through the air is all that it takes to break the peace again. This battle would not last as days as it could, it ended instantly.

Arcueid is impaled from a dozen swords in mid-air. In front of me, the girl whom I wished to see become better is cut apart worse than anything from before.

The mistake had been in the eyes, when our eyes met, the rest of the world seemed to have disappeared allowing this turn.

"Ar...cu..." It happened in such a moment she was completely off guard. Chose when she was looking at me expectingly.

I blocked as much as I could... out of the corner of my eye in a second I did it and cut 70% of the onslaught from the air.

Yet still, it is all destroyed with precision. Accurate enough not to kill me while making its way towards her.

Unrelenting devastation on the already forlorn battlefield. The park is taken by more devastation.

Gravity itself is inverted in the air, causing the blades to slow down. Yet still... it was not enough. Even the laws of the world, gravity and air resistance could not stop the treasures in the air piercing her.

For every 13 she could block all at once, there was one that crashed into her. And of those 150 that fired, 16 hit her. As she was immune to 70% of the conceptual weaponry in his arsenal,

4 blades pierced her body. One spear, two swords and a scythe that had activated itself and pierced into her shoulder.

Arcueid's body was immune to all the conceptual weaponry she had ever been subject to. But Noble Phantasms take up unique positions in that many of them are truly unique, they disappeared along with the legend they were attached to. So even if she had experienced 70% of all concepts in her existence, it meant little against the treasury holding all the weapons in the world. 30% was more than enough, and she fell to her knees.

This is unfair! You can't just come here right after we had a battle!

But there is little honour in this man. Not for those he held not a slight bit of respect for. "This is the agent of Earth they send here? Pathetic. You are a wretched fraud!" With bulging seriously angry eyes, he fired more and more weapons of mass destruction at her. He was seriously angry at her.

Worse than he had ever been at me, whom he only ever looked at in superiority.

This time the blades are shot out of the air before they can reach her. I will not allow it.

Even blind, I can do it like this. Vision is unnecessary. I can do this all by smell, taste and hearing. I can 'see' his weapons in my mind's eye.

The swords are all shot out of the air.

"Gilgamesh...!" Despair fills my already fatigued heart. "Stop it!" My voice is caught in my throat. My blindness flickered for a moment, and it was like the world turned back on with my passions... But passions last only so long. My soul is on fire, my body screams for sleep. I can feel swords being threaded into my nerves still, and yet still... "I will not let you hurt her!"

I will not move.

I stand and will not move.

I stand up in front of her, even though standing up on these shaky legs is torture.

"You dare? Stop? But I have only just arrived. I have surveyed this tired world to the fullest. 8 years of disappointment, in which no human stood out as one of any note. Now you dare to talk back to me, cur!"

The swords in the air are once again matched and prevented from moving.

"Don't do this, Gilgamesh..." I almost fall to my knees.

It's happening again. I'm killing myself.

Every blade I project is another stab into my body. I am projecting them inside my heart first, then bringing them out.

I can't... stand...

I will trade a lifetime for ten seconds. Kill myself again, this time I don't think that trick from earlier will work.

"To what power do you believe you hold that can counter me, Faker? Everything you are made up of is fake. You exist only by my design, lest I would hang you as all forgers were in my kingdom. Not a single part of you is real. Your whore mother is gone, and I have come to make use of you. Now kneel, and you shall fulfil your true role!"

There is no resistance left I can muster. The night was done for me before this bastard even arrived.

"...!" But he is is right. Be careful what you wish for. "There is no need for this... I... I... will go with you. Just leave Arcueid out of this. I surrender, I will do as you ask."

"Shirou... what...?" Even broken in pieces and threading herself back together, she squeaks that out.

"Quiet, Arcueid," I whisper. "Leave it all to me. It no longer pertains to you, right?"

After pausing and looking at me to discern my intention, he sees I am truly honest. I am not a liar by nature, and I know nothing would get by him. So I will simply tell the truth. "...Hahahaha! That is what I enjoy hearing. You have come to the same conclusion then? Then you have also realized the ugliness of mankind!? You shall be my treasure willing then. The world will be reverted to a proper nature. Where the strong are rewarded, and the weak punished."

"No. Humanity may be stuck in its ways, but the world you suggest would be no different. I will come so that no one has to be hurt anymore... If you wish to make use of all the evils of the world, then all I can do... is grant your wish."

I am done seeing people in pain in front of me. I don't want the fighting to go, so I will end it here. I will end it myself.

He is disappointed in me. "Pff. You never evolved then. How pathetic, you mongrel. You are given the authority of Angra Mainyu, yet refuse to use it. To sacrifice yourself at every opportunity? A foolish, contradictory, yet glistening ideal. Nevertheless, I recognize your will. ...If you were born a woman you would be a hideous imitation of that King of Knights, yet one worthy of being a concubine."

I block all sight of her, by placing her in my shadow. In that darkness, none can see the truth. It would appear like she is dead.

"..." I am glad to be a man then, I would hate to have the twisted affections of a man who does not understand love for anyone but himself.

Standing ahead of Arcuied, I refuse to move or look back. Even standing is torture, and being in his presence is an extra weight pushing my back down commanding me to kneel.

Still, I will stand. Even if I only stand by the fact that I can feel a sword replacing my legs.

There is blood stuck in my throat, and my blood vessels are being pushed to the limit. In seconds, the body that Arcuied put back together may unravel just after she fixed it.

The right thing...

An angels' voice is in my ear. "Son, to win a war can sometimes mean losing one battle. To refuse to ever concede means to die at the wrong time."

A hallucination... or perhaps? This was that place, wasn't it? She was always there is I needed to see her, but it wasn't right to do so. When the time comes to move on, then one can not grasp for that which lost without tumbling down the stairs of life.

And so... in order to move on, and not tumble... I will fall now.

I drop to my knees.

"Hmm, good. Now you shall come with me, and become my sword of judgment on the world." Losing my balance, I am pulled across the ground by my hands as soon as I lose my guard. Some sort of whip or chain pulled me from out of nowhere.

It doesn't matter anymore...

My single regret was not being able to stand there any longer...

"Shirou!? Don't go with him!" She yells finally.

"Arcuied..." I see her. In chains, I can only look past the Golden man who has taken me and see her covered in crimson.

It wasn't blood. It wasn't anything that could be seen in reality. It was the truth as it was on the other side, which only I could perceive.

It was her soul, now lost and full of desire. The contradiction finally hit the breaking point inside of her and broke the last barriers of mental resistance to it.

Drink his blood! Drink his blood! It would explain everything! It would fix everything!

I could hear the curse screaming in her head, that was how potent it was. It was something that made the issues of a human small in comparison. This was the influence of humanity on it.

Her eyes were no longer red, but gold. I am already done for, if not for seeing those eyes,

"Give him to me!" Her scream is one that shakes the world. Her golden eyes are that which melts men's hearts down into beasts. "...!"

I can't hear anything. I can only feel that fear, the same that one would have when faced with a hungry predator staring at you. Maybe I did fear her...

But more it was the fear for her, that she would become lost and I could do nothing.

Darkness clouds out the moonlight, and I finally pass on into a sleep-like trance that can only be achieved nearing the boundary of death.

---

I knew it would go bad. I knew it would end like this. Idiots do as you expect them to, they mess things up.

"Where are they...!?" I was mad. I was angry four hours ago, but now I was pissed off. "Where is that idiot. He said he would get home by seven. Don't tell me that they went off on their own!" They could have called me over if they found something, I was looking through Miyama all day! Now I'm being left out of the fight for my town. "It is late."

While I was comfortable at the Emiya house, he could be out looking good.

"Is he alright... Can we trust her...?

"He is alive, Sakura. If he died then I would resurrect and kill him, so don't worry about that." It is not possible that he is dead. That's just...

It's not something that I will recognise as possible. Sakura always overthinks everything. She thinks he died whenever he isn't around for more than a day.

"Tohsaka-senpai perhaps we could... go out?" Sakura asked.

"No. It's their responsibility. I'm not going to let go of this defensive position and place myself in danger for their sakes... I mean they will be fine, right? She is supposed to be a super vampire or something."

I had looked through Miyama city and found nothing out of the ordinary. Shirou and Arcueid were supposed to have gone to Shinto and have told me if anything was up. They never came home, and now it is late. Very late...

The city that night was so calm, there was no warning of anything out of the ordinary.

For those who hold no magical sense, that is...

Not long after figuring out that there was a bouned field set up somewhere in town, I felt the start of something horrible. Either someone made a field obvious on purpose or they were just that bad at it.

I put my coat on. "Damn it all..."

That was when I decided I had to go out. This could be my town at stake here, and the leylines were my responsibility.

"What do we do?"

"...I am going out, Sakura. I would recommend staying here or at your residence in the meantime." Here is safe. I am sick of being safe when he is...

"No! I'm coming too! I'm not going to be left behind..." She was suddenly very assertive.

Does she want to come with me? Is she looking for my permission? It's not mine to give, she will just have to keep up.

"Then come. I won't wait for you."

First I tracked the source to Shinto, but it was far too late for any bus and we own no car. "What about the bike?"

"Nee-san... you can't mean..."

"Either we are doing this or not. I'm going regardless."

"I'm with you. But you better

Sakura had a sudden sense of seriousness. She wasn't acting pathetic or pleading, it was almost like the personality of a magus... I didn't mind that.

We got on the tandem bike that Taiga had bought once and started pedalling across. Her athletics were not up to the same standards that Emiya and I had. Sakura was not the most athletic person in the world, nor did she know reinforcement magic. It would have been better if she had stayed behind, but this was the only bike here anyways...

When we reached the red bridge, Sakura was out of energy. We fell off the bike. Not because she gave up, but because the world started to shake.

"An earthquake? Now of all times?" no coincidence. It was not a large earthquake, but it was like the source of it was very near. If you are next to the source of it, then even a tiny earthquake will seem like armageddon.

Then came the shockwave that not everyone would feel. We both were hit with a fit of vertigo, I had to fall into the was to stop myself from creaking over. "Tohsaka-senpai...!? That was...!"

"I know." She can't fool me anymore. She is too tired now, so I can't be bothered to take her with me. This is my responsibility, no her own. "You should go back now."

"Nee... san..." I ignore it.

A magical wave. As magical energy swells up in the air, it can be displaced if there is a sudden explosion or implosion of it. It was a clear indication of serious thaumaturgy.

When Sakura or I do, it is possible to detect a trace from about a kilometre away. Sakura and have about the same output potential, if somehow we were to use it all in a single discharge it would be about 1000.

When Emiya-kun uses magecraft it is a very small distortion of the world, a magus would barely feel it. He is closer to being a normal person than a magus. Shirou could maybe do about 40 on his best day.

What I just felt was about 10000 at the minimum. Something beyond modern magecraft, power that starts to reach the level of calamity. Something closer to a natural disaster than a person. Who could have that strength? A spirit such as Arcueid...? Or...? The general destruction being caused was relatively small compared to the true level pure of energy. The earthquake was small, as it wasn't even originating from inside the earth. It was like being there was a nuclear bomb going off, yet somehow something was containing it.

"Senpai... no..." Sakura had a suddenly sad face, as if on the verge of tears. "He..." She had lost the will to continue. I didn't have any luxury to wait for her.

"I know..." If Sakura can only come this far then I can not bring her further. She is dead weight if she can't keep up.

"Nee-san...?"

"You don't have to worry anymore, I will take care of whatever it is." Whatever it takes or requires to clean up this mess I will do it.

"Nee-san..." Her eyes turn dark, and I know she is just confused. I need to be there. I need to leave her... "Ahhh...! Ahhhh... Senpai no...!" She started to scream behind me, but I had to move on. It's not my mission.

My responsibility is to the town, not to Sakura. I affirm that thought.

I left her, even in that state, because I know that there is a right decision here. I can't stop for her when I can stop the source of the problem. If she can not follow, then it is not my responsibility.

And I do. I leave her on the bridge, pushing ahead.

Whether that means taking out the possible vampire in the city or fighting Arcueid I will do it. Whatever threat there is to this town I will take it out.

It is a reinforced sprint like I have never done. All those physical training sessions pay off now. Shirou would run laps around the track for hours, never stopping even when he was on the edge of heatstroke. He never gives up, does he?

If the idiot can do that, then I can do this without breaking a sweat!

The tremors stop halfway through Shinto after one last aftershock. The damage is not the end of the world. Japanese buildings are made for much worse. Yet there is an odd sense of quiet.

The world seems dead, or tired. I may be disorientated, I don't know where I am going. A magical surge in the air can interfere with a magi's ability to sense at a long distance.

I can't make sense of this as a human. So I must remove the human part for now.

"Anfang." A knife stabs my heart. A sapphire is thrown into the air. "Der Wind führt mich zum Tor!" breaking into the and converting into magic energy, it is as if the wind itself becomes my guide pushing me fast in the direction of the origin of this disaster.

The park is covered in darkness. When I make it to a spot that is feeling the worst, as if the magic there had been ripped apart, I see it.

My magic ended as my forces broke. My eyes open wide, and I am frozen.

Anger and resolve break at visual contact. My wild breathing suddenly stops.

"Hah!?" From behind a bush, I can only watch. Emiya was either dead or unconscious. He looked strange as if he had more blood on him than wounds.

In the midst of Battle (Music) /NMd_4haIT40

The fight was already occurring when I got there, and there is no chance of intervention. This is so far beyond me...

A Golden man that I hate is standing in the middle of a ruined field. She charges but is always forced back and takes more damage each time. She stops, and suddenly her style of dress changes completely. "I had thought I would use it against Chaos, but Shirou was so distracting that I forgot..." She talks to herself.

She charged at infinite speed, but still was matched by blades in the air. This time, however...

She blocked only the ones that could hurt her a flurry of blows. The initial mistake had been that due to the sneak attack, she had no time to do anything but attempt to block them all. But that had been the mistake as it was simply impossible in that moment.

But now, she had rebuilt herself with a single purpose. Her body now could discern between the blades whose conceptual power she could resist and which were dangerous.

"You can't defeat me now, Golden man. Your sorry weapons will not pass through my guard."

The golden man had been bored the entire time I was there. He fired the weapons out of nowhere, each being incredible in their own right, yet he did not seem enthused.

"Is that so, mongrel of Gaia? You are a juvenile and have been disappointing. You have no experience witnessing the true power of a single prize in my treasury. To think that you were my replacement. A pale imitation of what the Gods and the world made in my time." He seemed to show off Shirou's limp form with a bemused look.

"Shirou... Baka..." Somehow this was his fault. ...But I had been dumb too. I should have been there... I claimed that this was the logical thing, to wait and see and them these two handle whatever problems arrived. It is clear now that it was just an emotional decision, and that without me there is no hope or intelligence.

They faced off eye to eye, but one of them was already the victor. For he had what he wanted under him, being held up like a trophy. The boy was now unconscious and Arcueid, for some reason, faltered when she saw him. She trembled in both anger and tiredness. It was easy for him to declare victory as such, as it seems that

Using that moment, blades overwhelmed her long enough not to be able to Gilgamesh from using a small cylinder on the ground beneath him that grew and grew. It concealed the Golden man and Shirou in smoke. In the time it took her to push through the defences, she found nothing on the other side of smoke.

Not long after was the anger and rage. The broken and shattered vessel of a body took only a few moments to fully rebuild, yet still, it was too slow... "Face me!" Moments too late. "Arggg!" Her form of unbridled power and rage reaches out and seeks out the one who damaged her. She is full of hate, and yet... there is no one there to take it.

It did not reach anyone. No different from the tantrum of a young child. One can have all the power of the world, but if there is nothing that can be done with it then they are no stronger than the

The park was quiet. "He left...? He's not allowed to leave!? Coward! Come back here!" Arcueid's yells reached no one. "Where are you, Shirou! Where did he go!" The victory hard-won that night was taken away by someone she immediately hated. Redness started covering her vision, and it wasn't stopping.

That hurt. Weapons beyond measure. 80% of conventional weapons will simply be deflected off of her, but that means nothing if it is 80 all at once. No hero would have so many weapons...

"Human."

"It seems that you have fallen. Hah... this town is doomed, and I have failed." She sighed and stated the fact. Not surrender, but just a statement of the current situation.

"Fallen...?" A sudden flow of water over her cools down the last vestige of sanity. "I have not fallen. My mind has never been so clear. Were you there all along, and you did nothing?"

"...It would have made no difference." I looked down in the form of shame. Not regretful that I did nothing, but that I was only human. I am limited to rational actions and thus could not act to save the boy when he needed it.

"I will find him. I will rip him apart. I don't need you, or anyone. Hihi, and when I find him, I will..." She wanted to see him.

"How will you find them? You don't know this town or where he would go. And from what I saw, without a plan, you will lose."

"...I will look. I will win." The bloody claws of Arcueid hadn't retracted. She still couldn't move on from it. The idea that she had lost made no sense to her, it was a foreign concept.

"I suggest an alliance."

"An alliance? Why should I trust you, human?"

"Desperate times make strange bedfellows. And just because I am human does not mean I am on his side. I hold a grudge against that man far greater than you could know." Do not assume that you know anything of feelings, only because you are feeling them for the first time.

Tapping her toes impatiently, Arcueid pouts and gives in. "Fine! I don't know where he is. You shall be my guide, human. Feel the blessing of the world." Arcueid's golden eyes shine and look into Tohsaka's microscopic essence.

Arcueid looks down on humans the same that man looks down at ants.

"Eh?" Tohsaka suddenly was given a surge of mana unlike she had ever felt. "What...?"

"If you are to be my ally, I can't have you being confined by meagre human standards. I can share a little backup for you, little missy."

A little!? This was more than any modern magus could draw on. It was like having a power plant plugged directly into her magical circuit. Without a magical crest to regulate it, it might have even caused a sudden shock to her nerves.

licking her lips, Tohsaka felt almost a sexual reaction to it. "Unlimited magical backup, eh?" It made her smile uncontrollably. This was the natural reaction of a magus to power like this, but it wasn't without its drawbacks.

"But what about Shirou? We need to save him!"

"Hah... Shirou is durable, he will just have to hold out long enough for me to get there and beat some sense into him. I'm not going to start a fight that we can't win."

"You need rest. "

"...Rest..." She really was tired. Not due to physical tiredness, no.. it was never that... "Three days. I need two days to set my head right..."

"We don't have three days. We're lucky if we have until tomorrow."

Back at the Emiya residence, it was only Arcuied and me now. A strange duo. "Hah. Sakura is gone... She must have gone back to her home." That is how it should be. She will be safe that way. She shouldn't have to involve herself. That makes me feel better. I won't need to hold back then.

"Hah... Where do we even start? Where would Gil- he, even be..." She stuttered as it seemed pain caught up to her, and she started to breathe huskily. "hah... haaa..."

"Tell me, what do you know of that man?"

"..."

A long story followed. One explaining all that I know of that man. His status as a servant, and seemingly the ability to use an endless list of Noble Phantasms. One of two beings in this world that I detest more than anyone.

She seemed to know already about things like the Holy Grail and servants.

I knew that every moment that we rest is one that Shirou is with Gilgamesh, it may be that he is already dead. It should freeze someone's heart with uncertainty.

But I have a cold heart. Inversely, it started to heat up.

With Shirou gone, there was no convenient barrier protecting me from reality. There is was... that excitement. This was what I am made for, not standing idly by watching others do things that I can do better.

"Listen, Arcuied. It was clear that you and Shirou did not have any plans, but that is not how it will be with me. You will follow my directions to the letter, understand?"

"Muh. Talk to me in the morning..." She fell asleep in the kitchen. "It's been... a long night..." The sun would be rising soon, but sleep was the last thing on my mind.

---

Author's Notes:

This is the 1-year anniversary chapter. Thank you to those who were there on day one or just reading. I started writing on a whim, and now about 400k words late,r it still feels strange. I was pretty proud of myself for writing 2k word on the first chapter, then it was 6k and then 10k and then 15 and then 20. Eventually that piles up and you have a lot of words!

I hope that in a year from now we can all look on this story with an even better view.

Arcueid's character sheet is now in the folder on my account.

As for this chapter...

Sadly Choas exists to make the protag look good. That is his fate, in the end. I will be doing something to resolve his story next chapter, however.

I don't know when this sorta just stopped being a fate fic and became a full-on Type moon fic, but it did happen. I'm just having fun doing any storyline I can make sense of here. My influences are pretty much everything written in this setting.

In order of how this should go it goes Fate/zero (this is done), Hollow Ataraxia (partially done) then Fate/stay night (Heaven's feel is mostly covered, fate route is sorta being done right now, UBW has not been covered yet), Prisma Ilya (just the serious parts), Tsukihime (just starting this arc. I am using Remake lore first), El-Melloi II (This makes up a large portion of the next arc), Apocrypha (Some characters might show up), Strange fake (Far future from now), Melty blood (Next Arc), lastly Grand Order (More lore is usable than you think.)

Fate strange fake 7 came out recently. I've never read it in full, and I have always been a bit cold on simply due to the degree of characters that it makes use of. Of course, I do the same thing with all these people I am writing but I at least focus on one at a time.

Reviews always needed for fuel.