"Fletching"
An Evangel Notes sidestory - Third Place Entry of the Type-MOON Fanfiction Contest.
Disclaimer: In this particular universe, I do not own or in any way shape or form hold a claim to any elements of the Nasuverse, or any other modern works that I may reference in this story. I will note that this story was also written in 24 hours, so if it seems like it was written in a short amount of time...it was. ^^ Without further ado, enjoy the work.
Comments and feedback would be appreciated, either here or on <a href='http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6630929/1/Fletching' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>its home on Fanfiction.net</a>
-----------------------------------------------------
~àSpirit and technique, flawless and firmà~
-----------------------------------------------------
'Trace on.'
For most of his life, Shirou Emiya had been a man who had done the impossible, usually because he didn't know he couldn't, because he didn't have the limitations and hesitations common to every human being. Self-preservation, survival, reasonùthese things were utterly foreign to him, for he did not place any importance in himself. After all, he was simply a blade to be wielded in the defense of others; one who, ever since being saved from the ravaging fires of his forging, had willingly subjected himself to a tempering process almost too rigorous for the vagaries of mortal flesh.
Each night he had sat in his shed, taking his first fumbling steps towards becoming a user of magecraft, painstakingly building fragile circuits to connect the world of his imagination to the world without, where he practiced the simple technique called strengthening.
Each night, magical energy had flowed from his core like molten steel, seeping out of his body through the channels of his nerves in an attempt to "strengthen" the items in his hands, to bring them closer to his vision of their ideal stateùor sometimes to create something new altogether, imposing illusion upon reality with his will.
Yet most of his conscious efforts to project the images from his mind into reality had ended in failure, producing at most the surface seeming of an object, hollow shells without any true substance backing them. Time and time again, he had repeated these exercises, and yet, unless he truly needed to tap into what little talent he had, whether for his own defense or for the aid of others, he labored in futility, as might be expected of one whose affinity was to the sword.
Swords, after all, had a certain sense of immediacy to their use. They were implements forged for the chaos of a melee, for the moment where one came into contact with the enemy and premade plans had to be adjusted or discarded. Convoluted strategies, devious plans, extra preparation? None of these mattered in the heat of battle, merely the ability to act on one's instincts and training, to survive the onslaught of the enemy and strike with the strength of one's convictions.
Without an enemy, the blade that was Shirou Emiya had never truly been drawn, his convictions never tested, and so he did not discover his true talent until he was thrust into the Holy Grail War, a struggle between seven magi and their Heroic Spirit partners for possession of the Cup of Heaven, a powerful artifact with the power to grant any wish.
"Rejoice Shirou Emiya û your wish will finally come trueà"
àIncluding what was simultaneously his greatest wish and darkest desire, for in desiring to save others from disaster, a part of him had to wish for something to endanger them so that he could act.
"You should know. Your wish will not come true unless there is a clear evil. Even if it is not something you approve of, every hero requires a villain..."
In his brash youth, he hadn't wanted to admit at the time that his ideal was flawed, that the only way he could be a hero was for others to be in danger, and thus he had thrown himself into the war with the zeal and fervor of one fighting for his convictions, abandoning any thought of self-preservation as he strove to end the war, to end what the priest had called the fulfillment of his wish.
His allies had told him time and time again that no human could match the warriors summoned by the Holy Grail as partners to the seven magi, that Heroic Spirits, human in form, but in reality the ultimate ideal created by the dreams of man, souls elevated to near divinity due to worship and the glory of their deeds, were as far beyond magi as magi were beyond mundanes.
But Shirou Emiya had not cared about these dictates of fate, and none had dissuaded him from his path, suicidal though it might have seemed. Swords could not act from a distance, and even arrows, which could, once loosed could not change their course. In that war, his soul had been unsheathed, the forging completed and the final product quenched in bloodùmostly his own, but also that of the impossible enemies that he nevertheless had managed to surmount, simply by being who he was.
Heracles, the greatest hero of legend, rendered even more powerful by divine insanity; Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, whose arsenal of weapons was unparalleled; Medusa, the Gorgon whose very gaze alone could petrify; Medea, the vile witch whose treachery and power was remembered thousands of years after her death; Angra Mainyu, the materialized wish for a source of all the evils of the world.
These and more he had faced, standing against them in single combat. Against these he had stood his ground unflinchingly, shrugging off their blows with strength of will and lack of self-regard to rise again and again from injuries that should well have been mortal.
Stomach split nearly in half by a single swing of Berserker's axe-sword, his entrails scattered across the broken pavement as the giant loomed overhead.
But he had survived, living to fight another day, when he returned the favor, ending Berserker's existence at last.
Back sliced open to the bone by Caster's Noble Phantasm û the cold edge of the jagged dagger ripping through skin, muscles, and nerves as it sought to end his life.
But he had endured it, surviving Caster's onslaught, his reinforced bokken smashing apart her dragontooth skeleton familiars.
Body skewered, impaled, cleaved apart by an arsenal of peerless blades, each and every one belonging to the Golden King, as Gilgamesh struck him down for having the temerity to oppose the world's oldest hero with a copy of his blade.
But, his body of swords creaking all the while, he had risen once more, and Gilgamesh's next attack had rebounded upon the golden king, forcing him to retreat in anger.
Melting melting melting torn to pieces ripped asunder as one unworthyàthe starting penalty is five. Hell imprinted on the brain, the darkness of all the evils of the world eating at his body and stealing every bit of warmth or joy in the world, crushing him mind body and soul as it seeped in through all five senses. He could not look at it directly, could not acknowledge it, yet could not runàfor it was a curse made of every crime humanity was guilty of, whispering with hate, fear, and anger to drive him insane and break him utterly, whispering of guilt, whispering of inevitability, whispering for him to atone for every violence every crime every victim, to atone atone atone with DEATH!
àbut he had not. With every nerve in his body screaming at him, with every instinct, every thought warning of the impending end, Shirou Emiya had not accepted deathùno, he rejected it with all his might. His body still moved, his arm was upraised to grab somethingàand in an instant, he had recreated the sheath of Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory, defeating the nightmares of mankind with the artifact forged of all of mankind's dreams, creating an illusion so close to the original, that it was nigh identical.
These trials and more he had overcome, forcing himself forward through travail upon travail, breaking through obstacles with burning blood and a body of steel. In the end, he had won the war, but in doing so, had learned of what had given him his talent and saved his life time and againùthe sheath Avalon, the hallowed scabbard of Excalibur, containing the hopes and dreams of all mankind.
Illusionary things, transient things, which by their very nature could never fully be realized, an ever-distant utopia that drew away as one drew near. His wish for a better world was no exception, and yet, Shirou Emiya had never acknowledged the limits of the possible.
How else could he have done the things he did? Confrontingùand defeatingù the reanimated spirits of heroes long dead, reproducing lost weapons and items from memory alone, shrugging off the collective curses of all the evils of the world, attaining the Grailàand choosing to let it pass from him. Great and terrible things, these, befitting one who wished so fervently to be a hero, to save everyone in his sightàa man whose journey was doomed from the start.
If in his actions, Shirou Emiya was like a sword, acting on instinct, his path he took towards his successes was best described by an arrow's flight: aimed away from the goal, but striking it regardless.
That was the so-called "Archer's Paradox", that in order to strike a target, one could not aim directly at it, as arrows did not fly straight. It could not, for the bowstring did not snap straight, nor did the arrow stay straight when nocked against the bow. It bent, oscillating back and forth, flexing out of the way of the bow and then back to the "correct" path as it left.
Different bows required arrows with different degrees of stiffness, for an arrow with too much or too little stiffness would fail to strike the target. Too much "spine" would force the arrow away from the goal as easily as too little, or cause the arrow to break into pieces in flight, unable to withstand the pressures of launch.
As a practitioner of archery himself, Shirou Emiya knew this, for he had never aimed when practicing with the bow, simply picturing the target in his mind, his body acting as if by instinct to have the arrow strike the target. There was no conscious thought, only the certainty that he would succeed.
And yet he did not apply this to his life, where he "aimed" too much in thought as well as deed, not noticing how every time he strove for a certain goal in his life, he fell short. That was true of when he had tried to jump a high-jump bar in his freshman year, of the one shot he had missed in archeryàand of truly saving anyone.
As sword and bowman he worked best by instinct, without a planùit was when he ceased to do so that he failed. So he had learned when later that year, his "wish" was granted once more, and the illusion of a peaceful reality became a mere delusion when the world died and civilization turned to chaos, with war breaking out upon the face of the earth.
Now, five years after the great Cataclysm, Shirou Emiya walked alone, his duster and other garments tattered and stained from the abuse of the elements, his face worn with worries and cares, his body changing as the world gasped its last.
Deceptively light footsteps crunched upon debris as a sole wanderer gingerly stepped over half-buried wreckage and gravelly, rust-colored sand towards the colossal wreck of a city in the distance, whose abandoned spires rose like vast and trunkless legs above the horizon. It was the first sign of civilization that Shirou Emiya had seen in days, and he cherished no great hopes that he would find the colony of survivors he had heard rumors about.
'I hope to be spared the sight of yet another ghost townà' the magus thought grimly as he approached, taking in the sight before him with reinforced eyes. His vision was keen enough to pick out the individual steel beams and shattered panes of glass of derelict hulks of the modern age, rendered uninhabitable without electricity, a national infrastructure that allowed for deliveries of food, and of course an ample supply of running water, piped in from hundreds of miles away. 'Perhaps some have chosen to make their home deeper in the wreck, using it for shelter from the mercy of the elements.'
The lone wanderer's mouth tightened as he made out scorch marks, pock marks, craters and other scars of the fierce and bloody conflict that had broken out in most major cities after the disaster that had brought civilization to its knees seven years ago, reminding him of that first day of autumn in the new millennium when everything had gone wrong.
'95% of the world population died in the years following the Cataclysm. Crops will not grow in this blighted land of steel, massive earthquakes are regular occurrences as the continents rip themselves apart through tectonic strain, animal life has become all but extinct, and the very air is filled with toxins.'
The sky and sea were blue no longer, but a dirty red, as if all the bloodshed and chaos in these terrible days had forever stained the dying world in its own color. It seemed a distinct possibility sometimes, as the greatest of cities had become abandoned dwellings of the dead, icons of culture and progress relegated to gravestones in the necropolises where the hopes and dreams of mankind were laid to rest, along with the authority of most national and regional governmentsàor religions.
After all, who could spare the effort to be loyal to an entity that was not there for them in their time of need? Taxes, offerings, prayers, entreaties û what purpose did they serve when the powers to which tribute was paid did not extend protection in return? Equivalent exchange was the fundamental rules on which human society was built, and when the social contract governing relationships between the powerful and the powerless was broken, anarchy was the result.
Much of the world had devolved into knots of sprawling chaos, pockets of depravity and lawlessness that self-destructed in the end, turning upon another with the viciousness of starving predators who had not tasted meat in far too long. By tooth and claw, by knife and gun, by slings and arrow and thermonuclear weapons, society tore itself to shreds, joining Gaia in its final agonized throes.
Yet against the backdrop of the great dying, a portion of humanity had survived, clinging to life by sheer tenacity in the new age of chaos. Of a certainty, they were not quite as populous as before, not as arrogant or complacent, their efforts and struggles tinged with a desperation that heretofore had only been seen in war-torn countries where each day was a struggle to survive. But whatever else, humanity retained its fiendish creativity and aversion to death, using their technological inventiveness to keep them alive one day at a time. First one, then another, then another, forcing themselves to rise again and again in an attempt to stave off the inevitable end, lighting fires against the encroachment of the dark, as their ancestors had done millennia ago.
So, in places where stronger vestiges of order and government remained, sanctuary cities had arisen, places where medicines and supplements were available to help people to cope with the dying world, where air and water were filtered to remove toxic chemicals and radioactive fallout, where crops were painstakingly grown in environmentally controlled geofronts hidden under the surface of the earth. In some cases like New Angel, Ronto or the Needle, they were converted from the shells of old pre-existing settlementsùin some, such as the third iteration of Tokyo being built near Lake Ashinoko, they were completely new developments.
Each city had its own peculiarities, defensive structures, emergency features û the new Tokyo had buildings that could retract into the ground for safety and a large portion of the city actually underground; the structures of the Needle were largely kept off the ground, save for elevators that ran to its subterranean caverns, with elevated walkways connecting spire to spire, and only a very fewùvery heavily fortifiedùentrances from ground level; New Angel was largely underground, having neither the funds nor other resources to rebuild after a devastating series of earthquakes leveled the surface city; and others as well; and there were a handful more as well û perhaps four or five per continent, the last bastions of humanity.
Still, even these cities could house only a fraction of the survivors, and those not fortunate enough to dwell in one of these found other ways to eke out a living.
Some were part of tribes which built ramshackle structures to ward themselves against enemies they knew would be out there, centered around stocks of seed grain and other foods that had never been meant for consumption. Some sought out vital necessities like non-perishable food and drink from the broken-down stores and houses in abandoned cities, spending their lives searching for stashes hidden here and there, enough to keep a few people alive for a very long time. Some made a living of scavenging the burnt-out husks of abandoned cities for remaining non-perishables and luxury items for those in the sanctuaries, where there was actually still a market for such things.
Antiques. Artwork. Books. Jewelry and precious metals. Clothing left on the racks of great department stores, wrought in quality and quantity that mankind could no longer afford, as the bulk of what was available was directed towards self-preservation, not creature comforts.
In the past, these actions might have been called theft or looting, but in the absence of any owner, who were they really stealing from?
Of course, for who could fight, wielding blade, bow, or firearm, there was always some work to be found as mercenaries, and with his abilities and build, Shirou Emiya would have been more than welcome in any of the Sanctuary Cities (where he might live in relative comfort while the rest of the world crumbled around him), as a escort to any of the scavenging parties to beat off any brigands seeking to waylay them, or anywhere else he might have chosen.
But tempting as these options were (and they could truly be tempting at times!), he chose none of these. Surrounded by death as he was, he simply couldn't allow himself to live in luxury when so many suffered. Such would be anathema for someone with no sense of self as it was. And so, instead of seeking personal gain, the would-be hero did tough work for little reward: wandering the wastes searching for the scattered remnants of mankind which had not been fortunate enough to be near one of the burgeoning new cities, trying to see if there was anyone who could be saved.
He scavenged, to be sure, but it was for medical supplies and equipment to deliver to what survivors he found. He fought, but only to save people from natural disasters or human folly, to try and head off territorial wars. He spent some time in the Sanctuaries, but only for information and rumors of dangerous artifacts, which he would retrieve or destroy before they could fall into the wrong hands.
And so he struggled, searching futilely as he passed through cities of the dead (and the Dead), through ghost towns and abandoned farmland, lifeless save for ghouls and corpses û meeting no one who knew his cause or could help in any way. And year after year, reality weighed heavily upon him, reminding him that that he dealt in illusions, and while he could sustain an illusion of safety or strength for some time, eventually the world would crush it, leaving only the grim sneer of a world where there was no hope.
'Are there any here at all?'
Which is why he found himself in the middle of North America, away from any of the great oases of life on the continent, staring at the ruins of what had once been the city of Phoenix, with a heavy pack strapped to his body filled with medical supplies, dried rations, and letters of safe passage from communities closer to the sanctuary citiesùespecially the ones that could take in refugees and give them a better shot at continued survival.
Now, Shirou Emiya was no doctor, (being more of a tinker, tailor, or soldier) but his talents and training let him understand the structure of thingsàincluding that of people. He could analyze how bad an injury was, and either dole out what he could, or try to "fix" things with projection, as necessary. In a way, humans were but biological machines, and he had always been a decent handyman when push came to shove.
He had saved a few lives over the years, though many a time he tasted instead the bitter tang of failure, reminded once and again of how futile it was to try and save everyone. And yet he could not help but try, because that was his purpose, impossible as it might be.
Now, out of all the rumors of isolated communities he had heard from travelers, this location seemed the most promising, as the Salt River and the Gila River were not too far away, allowing for any inhabitants to have a source of fresh water. And in a city such as this, it was possible that a few yet remained, if they had not been felled by disease, starvation, oràother, more terrible threats that he didn't want to think about.
Slowly, he drew closer, until he came upon the city itself, his eyes picking out a hastily thrown up palisade of steel wires and posts, a good sign that someone had been here recently. He approached it with caution, noting as he did that there was some sign of movement in his surroundings, the shuffling of feet in the distance.
'Peopleàthere are survivors hereà'
Or so he thought until shuffling gave way to heavier footsteps and cries of "Hyuu! Hyuu!", the distinctive rattling of the Dead in motion as dozens of living corpses lit out for the wanderer, his bounty of magical energy drawing them to him like moths to a flame.
'Trace on!'
In a fraction of a second, the solid familiarity of his bow was in his left hand, gripped and held before him as the horde charged across rubble-strewn streets toward his location. While he was proficient in the use of firearms as well, ammunition for those weapons was limited in the lands in which he operated, and it was much more cost effective for him to simply use projection, since stockpiles or caches of ammo were not common. Prana could be regenerated, even if there was little to no mana in the atmosphere left to draw upon, the Greater Source having fizzled out at the time of the great disaster.
The grim warrior settled into his stance, pulling back the bowstring till it went taughtùand loosing it, nine times in total, as flashes of silver rent the air with feral sounding hisses.
Nine Black Keys modified as arrows, piercing nine ghouls and evoking agonized cries of pain from their throats at they were reduced to the dust from which they came.
Nine and no more, for the horde was upon him and the bow long dismissed. In its place are matched swords, mirror images of one another.
Fsh!
A rasp of metal on bone as two corpses rushing his position were immediately bisected by a sweep of his ebon blade, their blood splattering across his duster as he whirled to confront the ten ghouls immediately following the two, the twenty behind the ten.
"Hyu! Hyu!" came the fierce snarl of rage as the Dead came closer, closer closer, their twisted and decaying forms reaching for him as if to rip out his throat, to crush his skull, to pierce his chest and devour his entrails, changing him into one of them.
'I refuse.'
Brutal efficiency. Any creature that came within a meter of Shirou Emiya was cut down by his paired blades as he stood against them, an immovable object before a tide of death. Peerless blades sang through the air, slashing, slicing, carving enemies to pieces as the knight's weapons created a killing zone with thrust, parry, riposte, remise, where anything entering would be obliterated.
Fshùthud!
A spray of blood erupted like a fountain erupted from a severed neck, followed by a sound of a dried up head falling to the ground. Again and again his blades swept out, plunged through the chests of someàshearing through muscle, skin, and bone before punching out their spines, dropping the enemies where they stood, his face an expressionless mask as he stood his ground lopping off limbs and heads, blades flashing as his undead foes sought to break him, to rip him apart and consume him as a meal for their master.
"Guh!"
A brutal force slammed into him from behind, a bony claw plunging through his pack and knocking him off balance, almost stabbing into his kidneys before he hacked it off at the elbow joint, turning his momentum into a forward combat roll as he surged into forward motion at last.
Slice! Thud!
A thump, as a limb was severed, then two more as a body was torn in two, the individual halves falling to the groundùbut not before another was skewered, a third decapitated, and a fourth disemboweled by the Faker, a cold rage filling him as he inexorably advanced, the mangled blood and viscera of his defeated foes crumbling to ashes in his wake.
More assailed him in each moment, as the undead creatures he stood against instinctively realized the danger he posed, stepping up their efforts to kill from the routine merely hunting dangerous prey to bringing him down at all costs, redoubling strength, speed, dexterity as they moved with unified purpose.
Shirou's body tightened as a dried up skull appeared before his eyes, screeching out "Hyuu! Hyuu!" with the throat like a bag of bones, vibrating in accord with the ghastly voice, its needlelike fingers plunging into his chest and ripping out his heart.
àor it would have, had the combat magus not reinforced his garments ahead of time as lightweight but effective combat armor, stunning it for just long enough for a brutal stoke of one of his twin blades to literally disarm the monster while the other lopped off its head.
He ducked forward to evade two more foes attacking him, his blades drinking in the violence of the scene to sustain itself as they carved through the undead monsters from head to torso in one smooth slashùbefore whirling to literally rip apart a foe hiding behind the first, spitting it on the edge of his terrible swift swords.
Eviscerate, disembowel, severing the limbs one by one, decapitatingùhe moved, a sword himself, eliminating his enemies as was his purpose, until after several frenetic minutes, the explosion of violence was over, leaving the clearing in which the battle had taken place packed near to overflowing with pieces of corpses dissolving into ash.
Yet there was no sense of triumph in the warrior as his swords as well disappeared, dismissed to the inner world from which he had called them, only a crushing sense of guilt and failure. Once again, he had been too late to save anyone, to bring even a shred of happiness to even one person in this wasteland of apocalyptic proportions.
It was a certain truth that there were more who desired happiness than there would those who could reach it, a truth he understood, no matter how bitterly it rankled, but thisàfor no one to be saved? It was a nightmare that he lived out, as the man who only wanted to see people smile, was instead confronted by the sight of suffering without end, forced to kill and kill, and kill, until at last he stood alone, head bowed, surrounded by death.
-----------------------------------------------------
'Empty Mirage'
Life in the post-Cataclysm world was a harsh, uncertain thing, fraught with stresses and pains, as each day one tried their best simply to endure for whatever length of time one could, trapped in an existence like that of a powerless corpses pretending to be alive, without the ability to truly live. Those who had the privilege of living in the sanctuary cities had things slightly easier, with most of what they needed to survive available from supplies, to drugs, to sex. And some of those who could did simply lose themselves in pleasure, trying their best to escape the ludicrous world that they found themselves bound in while conscious.
Most, of course, did not have easy access to such things, and so relied on sleep as their escape, hoping to see memories of a time before the suffering began, or of some paradise far away from the cold truths of reality, where there was enough food, where it was safe to walk in the open air, where grass and trees still grewùwhere death did not lurk around every corner, an infinitely patient, infinitely cunning predator simply waiting for its prey to lower its guard.
But for the woman who called herself Yumi Shierumiko, there was no escape from the hell that was living, as whether in dreams or in the waking world, she was surrounded by death, always alone, as she had been ever since she had first died. True, the True Ancestor whose moment of weakness nearly a millennium ago had been the ultimate cause of her suffering was dead, having sacrificed herself in a failed attempt to permanently end the threat of the Spider, but the one who had possessed her, using her to destroy everything she cared about, was not.
True to his name, the Infinite Reincarnator still lived, and as long as he was not ended, she who bore his taint could never age, never die, no matter how much she might wish it. While living in the world of humans, she lived unlike any other, under a different providence, a different time, a different life, condemned to a life of solitude by her very nature. No one truly knew how old she was, for like the Dead Apostles she hunted, she was immortalùthough her immortality was a sight different than theirs, and unlike they who wished only to live, she wished to die that she might atone for every mortal sin that weighed upon her soulàbut not before destroying the one who had destroyed her life.
Indeed, destroying him was a prerequisite to her own death, and her urge to crush him blazed white-hot in her soul, even as the rest of the world began to darken and crumble. She was a strange one, after all, a contradiction in terms û young and yet untimely old, kind yet merciless to those she wished to destroy, living on that in the end she might be slain.
It made her unusual amidst a group who had fled the maw of death with all their might, and perhaps had even let her cling to sanity, remaining aloof and clear-eyed, when the rest had turned to warring amongst themselves in earnest, cold tensions flaring hot at the end of the world. She did not much care for their politics or struggles, nor for the loss of life these caused û merely seeking out her eternal enemy, relentless, without pause, in an endless chase that had taken her around the world multiple times, through burned out towns and cities of the dead, desolate wastelands and long-abandoned citadels, places sometimes hidden from the view of man, and sometimes in all too plain sight.
She followed any rumors of the activities of Dead Apostles with an obsessive zeal that bordered on fanaticism, knowing that eventually, one of her leads would allow her to track down her quarry, would grant her freedom from this eternal nightmare, where even in her dreams, she retraced his steps, haunted by what he had done to her so many years ago.
This time, Yumi saw a memory of a rustic mountain village, her black robes fluttering in the breeze as she walked along cobbled streets, flakes of snow eddying about her playfully as if dodging out of her way in a game of tag. A peaceful place, with the watery light of the low-hanging moon hiding with its gentle touch the flaws and imperfections revealed by the harshness of daylight, soothing her, almost as if telling her to turn from her course, to let down her guard and enjoy this reprieve from her exertions.
But she could not, for habit made a harsh taskmistress, and she kept from succumbing to the sense of false tranquility simply by force of will, her form tensing like a drawn bow as she continued on, crunching fallen snow underfoot, something nagging at her mind, insisting more urgently with each moment she remained that her mind would not have shown her a simple dream, not after every other night had filled with visions of blood and fire.
'Waitàno. That'sà'
She stretched out a finger, allowing an errant snowflake to land upon it, smearing it against her robes, where they soiled it likeàash.
'Noàplease noà'
And as if that was the key to solving the riddle of her dream, formerly overlooked details bombarded her mind all at once: the acrid tang of smoke and ozone lingering in the air, a chill that came not from temperature, but at the recognition of a powerful murderous will, and the violation as her Circuits thrummed in time with the manifestation of a reality marble, a forbidden ritual inscribed upon her soul, the ultimate proof that she was too much like her enemy to be allowed to live.
No..noànonoNONONONONONOONNONONONONO!
In an instant, calmness and subtlety were discarded as the figure of Yumi Shierumiko flickered, her face contorting in rage as she broke into a sprint, Circuits flaring as prana roiled and churned within her, pushing her far past mortal limitsànot that it would make a difference in the end. She had had this dream before, seen this particular memory, and knew that no matter what she did, it would not be enough. Still, hope, that worst of all evils that prolonged the sufferings of mankind, burned fiercely in her breast, and as she moved, covering immense amounts of ground in leaps and bounds, she prayed that maybe this time, she would succeed.
Fzt!
But as she neared the village's town hall, where the core of this disaster lurked, her progress was impeded by the bounded field marking the edge of the Reality Marble, a ghastly thing laced with cracking coils of lightning, flashing hither and fro like serpents guarding their master's lair. Which in a sense they were, as their master was the Serpent of Akasha himself.
The serpents hissed as they met her, encircling her in a convergence of sheer oppressive heat that roiled, toiled, boiled over, overwhelming û scorching eyes, choking lungs, searing flesh with fiery tongues that ripped the nerves from under skin, a cutting torch melting bones, sinew, and sanity as they violated her, probing her soulàand then let her pass, recognizing her as one of their own, something which was more chilling to her than if they had killed her, forcing her to revive once again, for it meant that even his magecraft could see no difference between them.
With a sickening squelch like pushing through the stomach of some vast being, Yumi Shierumikostepped through the boundary fieldàand entered the hell once again.
It was the same thing each time.
A putrid stench, pungent and with the sickly-sweet odor of decay.
Human bodies, torn to pieces, unrecognizable after an orgy of destruction, with entrails, organs, blood splattered all o'er the walls like a coat of fresh paint.
A pile of heads like discarded cabbages watching her with accusing eyes, eyes that condemned, eyes that cursed her, eyes that screamed for her to DIE, for it was her hands that had killed them all, stained with blood so thick that even were the green not already one red, washing her hands in the multitudinous seas would have surely turned it so.
Guilty guilty guilty you are guilty you cannot escape your past your present your sin, for that is all you are, the Serpent in another guise, one who can only harm, can only kill, can only betray and must atone atone atone in DEATH.
Limbs, half-dissolved to ash, flailing about weakly, as melted lumps of flesh twitched in vain, poking like macabre islands out of a sea of blood and garbage.
But most frightening of all was the figure on the dias, perched upon the throne of corpsesùthe nude figure of her nightmare self, drinking from the skull of a child as she laughed, wearing a look of dark satisfaction on her face and naught besides as she gazed upon the form of her mirror.
"Hello, me," Dark Elesia smirked, her voice like a gentle caress like a violation as murderous intent brushed against her, threatening to make her vomit with the intensity of it. "Enjoying yourself? I certainly enjoyed being youà"
Six Black Keys appeared in Yumi's hands, tossed whirr whirr whirr one after another at the figure on the throne, but a net of lightning deflected these projectiles with contemptuous ease, the rapier-like weapons embedding themselves in the wall of the town hall up to the hilt.
"My, such aggressionà.how predictable, Elesiaà" her dark doppelganger purred as she advanced, loosing a bolt of lightning that the intended victim only dodged by seeing the assailant's hands in motion. "And such a nice body too. Tell me, me, why do you want to kill me? Is it the knowledge that however far you run, whatever you try to do, you will never escape me? After all, deep inside you are the same as meàLady Roa."
"Never!" the hunter snarled, drawing more of the thin rapier-like blades from seemingly thin air. But this time, instead of throwing them, she slung each one forward with electromagnetic force, as if each was a projectile in a railgun.
Ozone hissed in the air, as each one streaked unerringly for the target, only for her opponent to loose a surge of lightning of her own, halting the weapons and sending them streaking back at her, impaling her limbs, her torso, her chest where they erupted into bursts of flame, consuming her flesh and killing her as Elesia shrieked.
"Never you say?" the dark doppelganger intoned, savoring her victim's suffering, the porcine scent in the air rather reminiscent of roast pork. "But don't you see it is far too late for that? You draw on the magecraft I gave you, use the weapons I helped design, joined the organization I created. You would be nothing without me, and to hunt you, you have to become me. For you, there was never any hope from the start, my dear Elesia."
Everything went dark for a moment as her consciousness died and was reborn, but in that moment, everything changed. Two figures stood on the dais, not one, and the nude figure of her nightmare self was now suspended in the air by cold metallic chains, a look of shock on her face as an arm was plunged thrust though her chest, a clawed hand ripping her still-beating heart from her body.
"YouàAràcuà"
But her dark doppelganger never had a chance to finish, as a monster far beyond even Roa crushed Dark Elesia's heart, the crimson droplets of fresh blood splattering over the white and gold of the killer's dress almost as if to baptize her. Yumi could only watch helplessly as the killed turned from the corpse of her enemy to look upon her with flashing golden eyes.
"Will you never die àRoa?" the White Princess of the True Ancestors inquired softly, her words laced with bitter venom as the air congealed, thickened, tensed andù
Crack!
ùripped apart, with the atmosphere warping into roiling waves that engulfed all that remained of the slaughtered town, tearing apart everything like a shredder with tens, hundreds, thousands, no, an infinite number of blades.
In a single instant, the mediator's body disappeared, distorted, sliced, compressed, and diced apartùas the woman who had alternately been called, Elesia, Ciel, or Yumi, was torn violently from her sleep, nearly screaming as she was forced back to consciousness.
'That dream againà
The mediator's body contorted as she was ripped back into consciousness, spasms and paroxysms of half-illusory pains wracking her body, searing through her nerves as she suffered in silence, save for the harsh panting of her breath as she fought to calm her body. The agonies of dying, without the comforting embrace of deathùshe was no stranger to these things, having been tortured many a time in her too-long life, and yet these dreams, these tortures not devised by others' hands but her own mind, were something she had never been able to cope withùpossibly because the pain was not physical but mental, a wound upon her mind, so even her nigh-perfect immortality was no protection.
The ageless blunette composed herself, rising from a salvageable mattress tucked away in one of the more structurally-sound buildings of a now abandoned London, which she had been scouring for hints of the Serpent's presence or plans. There was no doubt that when the Mage's Association had fallen to the combined might of the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors, just after the destruction of the Holy Church, Michael Roa Valdamjong would have been nearby. Padding over to the empty window, she could imagine it now:
Swarms of ghouls running rampant through London as they had through Rome, baying with bloodlust as they ripped any who stood in their way to shreds.
Lorelei Barthomeloi's handpicked battalion of magi mercilessly hunted by Dead Apostles fresh from glutting the vaults of the Church and the Conceptual Weapons stored within, the vampires taking a savage glee in killing them slowly, corrupting them into undead servants who joined in the destruction of the Tower that had stood for far too long.
And when the Dead Apostle Ancestors and their dread Reality Marbles joined the fray, with puppet castles, endless parades of one's most bitter enemies, black beasts swarming the streets all at once, all hope was lost. The Association, like the Church before it, succumbed to the press of numbers, their trump cards, so useful in one-on-one combat, proving less useful against seemingly endless armies of undead, each armed with some conceptual weapon or other.
The fate of London and all that had been within at the time, had been sealed, just as the population of Rome had been slaughtered to the last manùwell, except for the woman who had once been called Ciel, as she had never been very good at staying dead.
Thus, she thought of herself not as a human but as a machine whose reason for existence was the extermination of her ancient enemy, one who otherwise was dark and empty as the sky, for whom the future was but a mirage. Codenamed "Yumi", she was the Seventh of the late Burial Agency, a merciless killer of the inhuman who whatever it took to accomplish her goalàso that one way or another, the arrow would find its rest and her hell would be at an end.
-----------------------------------------------------
~à strength cleaving the mountains...~
-----------------------------------------------------
After a series of unsuccessful searches for survivors, Shirou Emiya found that people had begun to grow uneasy about the strange man went about his quixotic quest to save people without asking for anything in return. It was inevitable, really, as people in that world looked out for themselves before anyone else, so the notion of a powerful magus who didn't care about gain or loss, letting the things he picked up sift through his hands was antithetical to their worldview. If one had power, one used it as a bargaining chip to satisfy simple reasons: greed, pride, selfishness, lust, vengeance, or devotion. One did not simply wish for the people in one's sight to be happy, no matter who they were, sacrificing his own comfort to allow others he didn't even know to have an easier life than he.
But Shirou did, which was why others either thought of him as a saint or some kind of agent provocateur who worked for one power or another, analyzing the structure and defenses of the sanctuary cities for an assault that would no doubt be coming. Or perhaps the people he 'rescued' were in fact infiltrators under his employ, tasked with finding out any secrets the sanctuary cities and surrounding areas held to find the best ways of subverting them to his own grand designs.
Why else would one ask for nothing at all, save that he was already being given all he needed by one sponsor or another?
Oh to be sure, none of them had managed to uncover any scrap of evidence that this might be the case, but as opposed to reassuring them that Shirou Emiya was not in fact involved in some insidious plot or other, this only unsettled them further, as to them, this simply meant that he was very good at covering his tracks.
With no possible way to dissuade them from this point of viewùand with no attempt, either, as he had not moved in those circles, he had instead had left North America to protect the few he had managed to save, travelling to Europe, the land worst wracked by the civil war of the Dead Apostle Ancestors, something that he had only heard rumors of, rumors that he had thought exaggerated, as they had claimed that both the Church and the Association had fallen.
'So the Clock Tower truly has been toppledà'
He had taken the time to walk the streets of London, or rather what remained of it, taking stock of the utter devastation that had been wroughtùincluding the immense crater where the British Museum (which had housed the workshops and main facilities of the Association) had once been located. He found himself hoping Rin was ok, that she had not been caught in London when destruction descended upon it like a cursed wave. After the Holy Grail War, the Tohsaka heiress had gone to the Clock Tower to seek her fortune, seeing as that was the pre-determined path for a magus of the Association, and despite the discrimination, he had heard she was doing well, as one of their rising stars. But a year or two past the Cataclysm, he had fallen out of touch with her, as keeping in contact with friends had taken a low priority on his agenda, compared to the need to protect those in his sight from the many ravages of the dying days, where starvation, war, and terror ran rampant among the few survivors, when the air itself grew poisonous to breath, the ground quaked and shook and buckled, destroying countless homes, disease spread as infrastructure failed.
When things had stabilized, he had considered staying in Fuyuki, but the deaths of Illyasviel von Einzbern and Matou Sakura put a stop to that, as the city held too many unhappy memories for him. Thus he had begun travelling extensively, doing what he could to ease the pain of others, which is how he had eventually found himself London, a long-dead city like most of those he had been to. Not one other soul was to be seen wandering through the rubble, and what bodies there were had decomposed to bone and tattered remains of clothing.
'These being the few who did not rise again as Deadà'
He buried what few corpses he found before moving onto Dusseldorf, one of the few European sanctuary cities in existence, where he had heard rumors of the labyrinth of Caubac Alcatraz, the "Dead Apostle of the Millennium Lock," having been revealed in the modern world. In the course of his investigations, Shirou found himself seated in a coffee shop called Ahnenerbe (German for "heritage), waiting for one of his contacts, who was referred to simply as the "Lady Archer", a secretive but effective information broker of good repute among those who needed sensitive pieces of information before anyone else.
'An interesting place for a meeting, one respected as neutral territory by all. Few customers. Open tables and bar, but also a set of private booths in case business needs to be conducted. Somber lighting, and decorated with genuine antiques, lending an air of secrecy. And by the freshness of the food, either the proprietor is well off or has the quiet backing of the city authorities.'
His suspicions were only heightened by the sight of his serverùa young girl wearing a heavy black coat over a charcoal grey dress, with a great black bow in her blue hair, peering at him with curious red eyes as she delivered his order: a well made risotto alla Milaneseùa rice dish cooked with beef stock, marrow, lard and cheese to a creamy consistency, flavored and colored with saffronùserved alongside ossobuco alla milanese (cross-cut veal shanks braised with vegetables, white wine and broth).
In most cities, instant foods, artificial rations, and either canned or dried foods would be standard fare for most people, with fresh produce a luxury only available to those who either had a certain degree of wealth or connections. Not much of a surprise, given that even with the advanced genetic engineering being done to crops to help them grow in post-Cataclysm Earth, as well as the vat-grown meat, supply still fell short of demand, given the lack of areas in which they could be raised.
As well, his server (who he recognized as a familiar of some kind, suggesting the owner was a magus) delivered a bottle of Blue Frankish to go along with his meal, a spicy red wine that was quite well known among wine connoisseurs as the "Pinot Noir of the East." Shirou tried to wave it off, since he wasn't good with alcohol (and besides, true wines and not the synthetic stuff were expensive), but the young girl had just looked at him until he asked if the person he was meeting had ordered it, at which point he received a nod.
He was still wondering who the "Lady Archer" was supposed to be when a snatch of spoken Japanese caught his attentionùa language he had not heard in a long time.
"Huh. Well well, what have we here?" an all too familiar voice spoke, a hint of surprise evident as a woman he knew he should recognize slid into the seat across from him, her amber eyes looking over his form. "Long time no see, Emiya."
She was dressed in an ensemble not too different from his, though instead of blacks and charcoal greys, her outfit consisted of black slacks and blouse with a beige trenchcoat draped over the ensemble. A professional, serviceable outfit, with her long brown hair plaited in a French braid, pulled behind her shouldersàthough there was something peeking out from the sleeve of her coat that seemed like a bracer.
"Mitsuzuri?" Shirou said, blinking in surprise as his mind produced the name of the person in question a beat later. "What are you doing here?" Then his eyes narrowed as his memories conjured up the image of the Archery Club Captain he had once known, and he made the connection. "Don't tell meà"
"Heh, you're as cold as always, Emiya," Mitsuzuri returned, a trace of a smile on her lips. "Even if you do look different from how I remember you, I see some things stay the same. You know, you never did come see my archery skills, even after I asked so nicely."
"Things came up, and you disappeared with Tohsaka," the Faker said simply, looking on with curiosity as the familiar came by with another dish of the risotto for Ayako, along with two wine glasses. "And what of you, aren't you still the type everyone counts on? Even if you are an information broker instead of a captain and you use a sealed artifact instead of a yumi."
Ayako stiffened fractionally as Shirou mentioned her weapon off-hand, but recomposed herself, arching a slender eyebrow.
"Thank you, Ren, that will be all," she said, nodding to the familiar that had brought her dinner for the night. When the blue-haired girl left, the 'Lady Archer' shot her old acquaintance a glare of equal parts curiosity, irritation and exasperation. "So that's why so many are unsettled by you. Let me ask you something û just between you and me, what is your interest in the treasure in Alcatraz' labyrinth that you are willing to risk the dangers in getting to its center?"
"People are suffering," Shirou Emiya replied simply and sincerely. "If whatever the treasure is can help them, no sacrifice would be too great."
Ayako was silent for a minute as she considered his reply, sighing after a moment.
"It's been so long that I forgot you really are like that," the information broker said, smiling slyly as she looked at the man she had once known, sizing him up. "I suppose you're still fixing everyone else's problems, thenà"
"àI don't want to ask this, but you're not thinking badly of me, are you?" Shirou probed, wondering exactly what his old acquaintance was thinking.
"No, I wouldn't dream of it," she answered with a perfectly straight face. "I was just thinking objectively about the truth. It's up to you if you want to feel angry about it."
Despite himself, the man who was sometimes called the Dark Evangel, felt a wry smile tugging at the edges of his lips. It had been far too long since he'd actually sat down and talked with anyone who truly knew him for who he was, instead of knowing of him as the odd 'ally of justice' who inspired so much distrust and suspicion.
"Cheàyou're just like always," he noted, shaking his head, though his sharp grey-gold eyes betrayed a hint of warmth. "You haven't changed either."
"I've changed more than you think, Emiya, largely due to a little something called the Holy Grail War."
On one level, it amazed Shirou how easily Ayako could drop a verbal nuke like that so casuallyùyet as he looked closer, he realized that she wasn't being casual at all, that every line of her body radiated a certain sharpness it had lacked before, making him wonder exactly how good she was with her sealed bow. On the other handà
"Whaà?" he started, her frank words catching him off guard, as the Holy Grail War was not something very well known, except in certain circles of magi.
A cold smile.
"You remember that I was attacked, right?" Ayako asked, leaning towards the Faker from across the table. "Well, after I awoke in the hospital, I began to senseàoddities in the world. Flows, fields, differences in what I later found out was prana. And when the Cataclysm hità" She trailed off, shrugging. "I felt it, the sheer wrongness of it echoing in the gaps left in my soul by whatever fed on me that night." She looked at him speculatively, eyes narrowing. "But you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? After all, you're the one who won the waràand destroyed the prize."
It was all Shirou Emiya could do not to fall over in shock.
"How do youù"
"Let's just say that my employer is veryàwell informed," the information broker said, deliberately hesitating over the last two words. "Even so, I wasn't completely convinced until I saw how you reacted."
"And why did you need to know?" Shirou asked softly, a slight edge to his voice.
"Because of the information you want," Ayako returned soberly. "Caubac Alcatraz, the Dead Apostle of the Millennium Lock, built the labyrinth to protect the Holy Scripture Triten, his most valued artifact, sealing himself within it to reinforce the protections. Given the power the artifact holds, my employer has a vested interest in making sure what the labyrinth is protecting doesn't fall into the wrong hands."
"Ah."
"I'll give you what you seekùbut only because I think you're reliable, Emiya," she said at last, her eyes boring into his. "Just remember, if it proves necessaryà"
"àI'll destroy it," he intoned, nodding his head in weary acknowledgement.
"Then we have a deal."
An Evangel Notes sidestory - Third Place Entry of the Type-MOON Fanfiction Contest.
Disclaimer: In this particular universe, I do not own or in any way shape or form hold a claim to any elements of the Nasuverse, or any other modern works that I may reference in this story. I will note that this story was also written in 24 hours, so if it seems like it was written in a short amount of time...it was. ^^ Without further ado, enjoy the work.
Comments and feedback would be appreciated, either here or on <a href='http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6630929/1/Fletching' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>its home on Fanfiction.net</a>
-----------------------------------------------------
~àSpirit and technique, flawless and firmà~
-----------------------------------------------------
'Trace on.'
For most of his life, Shirou Emiya had been a man who had done the impossible, usually because he didn't know he couldn't, because he didn't have the limitations and hesitations common to every human being. Self-preservation, survival, reasonùthese things were utterly foreign to him, for he did not place any importance in himself. After all, he was simply a blade to be wielded in the defense of others; one who, ever since being saved from the ravaging fires of his forging, had willingly subjected himself to a tempering process almost too rigorous for the vagaries of mortal flesh.
Each night he had sat in his shed, taking his first fumbling steps towards becoming a user of magecraft, painstakingly building fragile circuits to connect the world of his imagination to the world without, where he practiced the simple technique called strengthening.
Each night, magical energy had flowed from his core like molten steel, seeping out of his body through the channels of his nerves in an attempt to "strengthen" the items in his hands, to bring them closer to his vision of their ideal stateùor sometimes to create something new altogether, imposing illusion upon reality with his will.
Yet most of his conscious efforts to project the images from his mind into reality had ended in failure, producing at most the surface seeming of an object, hollow shells without any true substance backing them. Time and time again, he had repeated these exercises, and yet, unless he truly needed to tap into what little talent he had, whether for his own defense or for the aid of others, he labored in futility, as might be expected of one whose affinity was to the sword.
Swords, after all, had a certain sense of immediacy to their use. They were implements forged for the chaos of a melee, for the moment where one came into contact with the enemy and premade plans had to be adjusted or discarded. Convoluted strategies, devious plans, extra preparation? None of these mattered in the heat of battle, merely the ability to act on one's instincts and training, to survive the onslaught of the enemy and strike with the strength of one's convictions.
Without an enemy, the blade that was Shirou Emiya had never truly been drawn, his convictions never tested, and so he did not discover his true talent until he was thrust into the Holy Grail War, a struggle between seven magi and their Heroic Spirit partners for possession of the Cup of Heaven, a powerful artifact with the power to grant any wish.
"Rejoice Shirou Emiya û your wish will finally come trueà"
àIncluding what was simultaneously his greatest wish and darkest desire, for in desiring to save others from disaster, a part of him had to wish for something to endanger them so that he could act.
"You should know. Your wish will not come true unless there is a clear evil. Even if it is not something you approve of, every hero requires a villain..."
In his brash youth, he hadn't wanted to admit at the time that his ideal was flawed, that the only way he could be a hero was for others to be in danger, and thus he had thrown himself into the war with the zeal and fervor of one fighting for his convictions, abandoning any thought of self-preservation as he strove to end the war, to end what the priest had called the fulfillment of his wish.
His allies had told him time and time again that no human could match the warriors summoned by the Holy Grail as partners to the seven magi, that Heroic Spirits, human in form, but in reality the ultimate ideal created by the dreams of man, souls elevated to near divinity due to worship and the glory of their deeds, were as far beyond magi as magi were beyond mundanes.
But Shirou Emiya had not cared about these dictates of fate, and none had dissuaded him from his path, suicidal though it might have seemed. Swords could not act from a distance, and even arrows, which could, once loosed could not change their course. In that war, his soul had been unsheathed, the forging completed and the final product quenched in bloodùmostly his own, but also that of the impossible enemies that he nevertheless had managed to surmount, simply by being who he was.
Heracles, the greatest hero of legend, rendered even more powerful by divine insanity; Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, whose arsenal of weapons was unparalleled; Medusa, the Gorgon whose very gaze alone could petrify; Medea, the vile witch whose treachery and power was remembered thousands of years after her death; Angra Mainyu, the materialized wish for a source of all the evils of the world.
These and more he had faced, standing against them in single combat. Against these he had stood his ground unflinchingly, shrugging off their blows with strength of will and lack of self-regard to rise again and again from injuries that should well have been mortal.
Stomach split nearly in half by a single swing of Berserker's axe-sword, his entrails scattered across the broken pavement as the giant loomed overhead.
But he had survived, living to fight another day, when he returned the favor, ending Berserker's existence at last.
Back sliced open to the bone by Caster's Noble Phantasm û the cold edge of the jagged dagger ripping through skin, muscles, and nerves as it sought to end his life.
But he had endured it, surviving Caster's onslaught, his reinforced bokken smashing apart her dragontooth skeleton familiars.
Body skewered, impaled, cleaved apart by an arsenal of peerless blades, each and every one belonging to the Golden King, as Gilgamesh struck him down for having the temerity to oppose the world's oldest hero with a copy of his blade.
But, his body of swords creaking all the while, he had risen once more, and Gilgamesh's next attack had rebounded upon the golden king, forcing him to retreat in anger.
Melting melting melting torn to pieces ripped asunder as one unworthyàthe starting penalty is five. Hell imprinted on the brain, the darkness of all the evils of the world eating at his body and stealing every bit of warmth or joy in the world, crushing him mind body and soul as it seeped in through all five senses. He could not look at it directly, could not acknowledge it, yet could not runàfor it was a curse made of every crime humanity was guilty of, whispering with hate, fear, and anger to drive him insane and break him utterly, whispering of guilt, whispering of inevitability, whispering for him to atone for every violence every crime every victim, to atone atone atone with DEATH!
àbut he had not. With every nerve in his body screaming at him, with every instinct, every thought warning of the impending end, Shirou Emiya had not accepted deathùno, he rejected it with all his might. His body still moved, his arm was upraised to grab somethingàand in an instant, he had recreated the sheath of Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory, defeating the nightmares of mankind with the artifact forged of all of mankind's dreams, creating an illusion so close to the original, that it was nigh identical.
These trials and more he had overcome, forcing himself forward through travail upon travail, breaking through obstacles with burning blood and a body of steel. In the end, he had won the war, but in doing so, had learned of what had given him his talent and saved his life time and againùthe sheath Avalon, the hallowed scabbard of Excalibur, containing the hopes and dreams of all mankind.
Illusionary things, transient things, which by their very nature could never fully be realized, an ever-distant utopia that drew away as one drew near. His wish for a better world was no exception, and yet, Shirou Emiya had never acknowledged the limits of the possible.
How else could he have done the things he did? Confrontingùand defeatingù the reanimated spirits of heroes long dead, reproducing lost weapons and items from memory alone, shrugging off the collective curses of all the evils of the world, attaining the Grailàand choosing to let it pass from him. Great and terrible things, these, befitting one who wished so fervently to be a hero, to save everyone in his sightàa man whose journey was doomed from the start.
If in his actions, Shirou Emiya was like a sword, acting on instinct, his path he took towards his successes was best described by an arrow's flight: aimed away from the goal, but striking it regardless.
That was the so-called "Archer's Paradox", that in order to strike a target, one could not aim directly at it, as arrows did not fly straight. It could not, for the bowstring did not snap straight, nor did the arrow stay straight when nocked against the bow. It bent, oscillating back and forth, flexing out of the way of the bow and then back to the "correct" path as it left.
Different bows required arrows with different degrees of stiffness, for an arrow with too much or too little stiffness would fail to strike the target. Too much "spine" would force the arrow away from the goal as easily as too little, or cause the arrow to break into pieces in flight, unable to withstand the pressures of launch.
As a practitioner of archery himself, Shirou Emiya knew this, for he had never aimed when practicing with the bow, simply picturing the target in his mind, his body acting as if by instinct to have the arrow strike the target. There was no conscious thought, only the certainty that he would succeed.
And yet he did not apply this to his life, where he "aimed" too much in thought as well as deed, not noticing how every time he strove for a certain goal in his life, he fell short. That was true of when he had tried to jump a high-jump bar in his freshman year, of the one shot he had missed in archeryàand of truly saving anyone.
As sword and bowman he worked best by instinct, without a planùit was when he ceased to do so that he failed. So he had learned when later that year, his "wish" was granted once more, and the illusion of a peaceful reality became a mere delusion when the world died and civilization turned to chaos, with war breaking out upon the face of the earth.
Now, five years after the great Cataclysm, Shirou Emiya walked alone, his duster and other garments tattered and stained from the abuse of the elements, his face worn with worries and cares, his body changing as the world gasped its last.
Deceptively light footsteps crunched upon debris as a sole wanderer gingerly stepped over half-buried wreckage and gravelly, rust-colored sand towards the colossal wreck of a city in the distance, whose abandoned spires rose like vast and trunkless legs above the horizon. It was the first sign of civilization that Shirou Emiya had seen in days, and he cherished no great hopes that he would find the colony of survivors he had heard rumors about.
'I hope to be spared the sight of yet another ghost townà' the magus thought grimly as he approached, taking in the sight before him with reinforced eyes. His vision was keen enough to pick out the individual steel beams and shattered panes of glass of derelict hulks of the modern age, rendered uninhabitable without electricity, a national infrastructure that allowed for deliveries of food, and of course an ample supply of running water, piped in from hundreds of miles away. 'Perhaps some have chosen to make their home deeper in the wreck, using it for shelter from the mercy of the elements.'
The lone wanderer's mouth tightened as he made out scorch marks, pock marks, craters and other scars of the fierce and bloody conflict that had broken out in most major cities after the disaster that had brought civilization to its knees seven years ago, reminding him of that first day of autumn in the new millennium when everything had gone wrong.
'95% of the world population died in the years following the Cataclysm. Crops will not grow in this blighted land of steel, massive earthquakes are regular occurrences as the continents rip themselves apart through tectonic strain, animal life has become all but extinct, and the very air is filled with toxins.'
The sky and sea were blue no longer, but a dirty red, as if all the bloodshed and chaos in these terrible days had forever stained the dying world in its own color. It seemed a distinct possibility sometimes, as the greatest of cities had become abandoned dwellings of the dead, icons of culture and progress relegated to gravestones in the necropolises where the hopes and dreams of mankind were laid to rest, along with the authority of most national and regional governmentsàor religions.
After all, who could spare the effort to be loyal to an entity that was not there for them in their time of need? Taxes, offerings, prayers, entreaties û what purpose did they serve when the powers to which tribute was paid did not extend protection in return? Equivalent exchange was the fundamental rules on which human society was built, and when the social contract governing relationships between the powerful and the powerless was broken, anarchy was the result.
Much of the world had devolved into knots of sprawling chaos, pockets of depravity and lawlessness that self-destructed in the end, turning upon another with the viciousness of starving predators who had not tasted meat in far too long. By tooth and claw, by knife and gun, by slings and arrow and thermonuclear weapons, society tore itself to shreds, joining Gaia in its final agonized throes.
Yet against the backdrop of the great dying, a portion of humanity had survived, clinging to life by sheer tenacity in the new age of chaos. Of a certainty, they were not quite as populous as before, not as arrogant or complacent, their efforts and struggles tinged with a desperation that heretofore had only been seen in war-torn countries where each day was a struggle to survive. But whatever else, humanity retained its fiendish creativity and aversion to death, using their technological inventiveness to keep them alive one day at a time. First one, then another, then another, forcing themselves to rise again and again in an attempt to stave off the inevitable end, lighting fires against the encroachment of the dark, as their ancestors had done millennia ago.
So, in places where stronger vestiges of order and government remained, sanctuary cities had arisen, places where medicines and supplements were available to help people to cope with the dying world, where air and water were filtered to remove toxic chemicals and radioactive fallout, where crops were painstakingly grown in environmentally controlled geofronts hidden under the surface of the earth. In some cases like New Angel, Ronto or the Needle, they were converted from the shells of old pre-existing settlementsùin some, such as the third iteration of Tokyo being built near Lake Ashinoko, they were completely new developments.
Each city had its own peculiarities, defensive structures, emergency features û the new Tokyo had buildings that could retract into the ground for safety and a large portion of the city actually underground; the structures of the Needle were largely kept off the ground, save for elevators that ran to its subterranean caverns, with elevated walkways connecting spire to spire, and only a very fewùvery heavily fortifiedùentrances from ground level; New Angel was largely underground, having neither the funds nor other resources to rebuild after a devastating series of earthquakes leveled the surface city; and others as well; and there were a handful more as well û perhaps four or five per continent, the last bastions of humanity.
Still, even these cities could house only a fraction of the survivors, and those not fortunate enough to dwell in one of these found other ways to eke out a living.
Some were part of tribes which built ramshackle structures to ward themselves against enemies they knew would be out there, centered around stocks of seed grain and other foods that had never been meant for consumption. Some sought out vital necessities like non-perishable food and drink from the broken-down stores and houses in abandoned cities, spending their lives searching for stashes hidden here and there, enough to keep a few people alive for a very long time. Some made a living of scavenging the burnt-out husks of abandoned cities for remaining non-perishables and luxury items for those in the sanctuaries, where there was actually still a market for such things.
Antiques. Artwork. Books. Jewelry and precious metals. Clothing left on the racks of great department stores, wrought in quality and quantity that mankind could no longer afford, as the bulk of what was available was directed towards self-preservation, not creature comforts.
In the past, these actions might have been called theft or looting, but in the absence of any owner, who were they really stealing from?
Of course, for who could fight, wielding blade, bow, or firearm, there was always some work to be found as mercenaries, and with his abilities and build, Shirou Emiya would have been more than welcome in any of the Sanctuary Cities (where he might live in relative comfort while the rest of the world crumbled around him), as a escort to any of the scavenging parties to beat off any brigands seeking to waylay them, or anywhere else he might have chosen.
But tempting as these options were (and they could truly be tempting at times!), he chose none of these. Surrounded by death as he was, he simply couldn't allow himself to live in luxury when so many suffered. Such would be anathema for someone with no sense of self as it was. And so, instead of seeking personal gain, the would-be hero did tough work for little reward: wandering the wastes searching for the scattered remnants of mankind which had not been fortunate enough to be near one of the burgeoning new cities, trying to see if there was anyone who could be saved.
He scavenged, to be sure, but it was for medical supplies and equipment to deliver to what survivors he found. He fought, but only to save people from natural disasters or human folly, to try and head off territorial wars. He spent some time in the Sanctuaries, but only for information and rumors of dangerous artifacts, which he would retrieve or destroy before they could fall into the wrong hands.
And so he struggled, searching futilely as he passed through cities of the dead (and the Dead), through ghost towns and abandoned farmland, lifeless save for ghouls and corpses û meeting no one who knew his cause or could help in any way. And year after year, reality weighed heavily upon him, reminding him that that he dealt in illusions, and while he could sustain an illusion of safety or strength for some time, eventually the world would crush it, leaving only the grim sneer of a world where there was no hope.
'Are there any here at all?'
Which is why he found himself in the middle of North America, away from any of the great oases of life on the continent, staring at the ruins of what had once been the city of Phoenix, with a heavy pack strapped to his body filled with medical supplies, dried rations, and letters of safe passage from communities closer to the sanctuary citiesùespecially the ones that could take in refugees and give them a better shot at continued survival.
Now, Shirou Emiya was no doctor, (being more of a tinker, tailor, or soldier) but his talents and training let him understand the structure of thingsàincluding that of people. He could analyze how bad an injury was, and either dole out what he could, or try to "fix" things with projection, as necessary. In a way, humans were but biological machines, and he had always been a decent handyman when push came to shove.
He had saved a few lives over the years, though many a time he tasted instead the bitter tang of failure, reminded once and again of how futile it was to try and save everyone. And yet he could not help but try, because that was his purpose, impossible as it might be.
Now, out of all the rumors of isolated communities he had heard from travelers, this location seemed the most promising, as the Salt River and the Gila River were not too far away, allowing for any inhabitants to have a source of fresh water. And in a city such as this, it was possible that a few yet remained, if they had not been felled by disease, starvation, oràother, more terrible threats that he didn't want to think about.
Slowly, he drew closer, until he came upon the city itself, his eyes picking out a hastily thrown up palisade of steel wires and posts, a good sign that someone had been here recently. He approached it with caution, noting as he did that there was some sign of movement in his surroundings, the shuffling of feet in the distance.
'Peopleàthere are survivors hereà'
Or so he thought until shuffling gave way to heavier footsteps and cries of "Hyuu! Hyuu!", the distinctive rattling of the Dead in motion as dozens of living corpses lit out for the wanderer, his bounty of magical energy drawing them to him like moths to a flame.
'Trace on!'
In a fraction of a second, the solid familiarity of his bow was in his left hand, gripped and held before him as the horde charged across rubble-strewn streets toward his location. While he was proficient in the use of firearms as well, ammunition for those weapons was limited in the lands in which he operated, and it was much more cost effective for him to simply use projection, since stockpiles or caches of ammo were not common. Prana could be regenerated, even if there was little to no mana in the atmosphere left to draw upon, the Greater Source having fizzled out at the time of the great disaster.
The grim warrior settled into his stance, pulling back the bowstring till it went taughtùand loosing it, nine times in total, as flashes of silver rent the air with feral sounding hisses.
Nine Black Keys modified as arrows, piercing nine ghouls and evoking agonized cries of pain from their throats at they were reduced to the dust from which they came.
Nine and no more, for the horde was upon him and the bow long dismissed. In its place are matched swords, mirror images of one another.
Fsh!
A rasp of metal on bone as two corpses rushing his position were immediately bisected by a sweep of his ebon blade, their blood splattering across his duster as he whirled to confront the ten ghouls immediately following the two, the twenty behind the ten.
"Hyu! Hyu!" came the fierce snarl of rage as the Dead came closer, closer closer, their twisted and decaying forms reaching for him as if to rip out his throat, to crush his skull, to pierce his chest and devour his entrails, changing him into one of them.
'I refuse.'
Brutal efficiency. Any creature that came within a meter of Shirou Emiya was cut down by his paired blades as he stood against them, an immovable object before a tide of death. Peerless blades sang through the air, slashing, slicing, carving enemies to pieces as the knight's weapons created a killing zone with thrust, parry, riposte, remise, where anything entering would be obliterated.
Fshùthud!
A spray of blood erupted like a fountain erupted from a severed neck, followed by a sound of a dried up head falling to the ground. Again and again his blades swept out, plunged through the chests of someàshearing through muscle, skin, and bone before punching out their spines, dropping the enemies where they stood, his face an expressionless mask as he stood his ground lopping off limbs and heads, blades flashing as his undead foes sought to break him, to rip him apart and consume him as a meal for their master.
"Guh!"
A brutal force slammed into him from behind, a bony claw plunging through his pack and knocking him off balance, almost stabbing into his kidneys before he hacked it off at the elbow joint, turning his momentum into a forward combat roll as he surged into forward motion at last.
Slice! Thud!
A thump, as a limb was severed, then two more as a body was torn in two, the individual halves falling to the groundùbut not before another was skewered, a third decapitated, and a fourth disemboweled by the Faker, a cold rage filling him as he inexorably advanced, the mangled blood and viscera of his defeated foes crumbling to ashes in his wake.
More assailed him in each moment, as the undead creatures he stood against instinctively realized the danger he posed, stepping up their efforts to kill from the routine merely hunting dangerous prey to bringing him down at all costs, redoubling strength, speed, dexterity as they moved with unified purpose.
Shirou's body tightened as a dried up skull appeared before his eyes, screeching out "Hyuu! Hyuu!" with the throat like a bag of bones, vibrating in accord with the ghastly voice, its needlelike fingers plunging into his chest and ripping out his heart.
àor it would have, had the combat magus not reinforced his garments ahead of time as lightweight but effective combat armor, stunning it for just long enough for a brutal stoke of one of his twin blades to literally disarm the monster while the other lopped off its head.
He ducked forward to evade two more foes attacking him, his blades drinking in the violence of the scene to sustain itself as they carved through the undead monsters from head to torso in one smooth slashùbefore whirling to literally rip apart a foe hiding behind the first, spitting it on the edge of his terrible swift swords.
Eviscerate, disembowel, severing the limbs one by one, decapitatingùhe moved, a sword himself, eliminating his enemies as was his purpose, until after several frenetic minutes, the explosion of violence was over, leaving the clearing in which the battle had taken place packed near to overflowing with pieces of corpses dissolving into ash.
Yet there was no sense of triumph in the warrior as his swords as well disappeared, dismissed to the inner world from which he had called them, only a crushing sense of guilt and failure. Once again, he had been too late to save anyone, to bring even a shred of happiness to even one person in this wasteland of apocalyptic proportions.
It was a certain truth that there were more who desired happiness than there would those who could reach it, a truth he understood, no matter how bitterly it rankled, but thisàfor no one to be saved? It was a nightmare that he lived out, as the man who only wanted to see people smile, was instead confronted by the sight of suffering without end, forced to kill and kill, and kill, until at last he stood alone, head bowed, surrounded by death.
-----------------------------------------------------
'Empty Mirage'
Life in the post-Cataclysm world was a harsh, uncertain thing, fraught with stresses and pains, as each day one tried their best simply to endure for whatever length of time one could, trapped in an existence like that of a powerless corpses pretending to be alive, without the ability to truly live. Those who had the privilege of living in the sanctuary cities had things slightly easier, with most of what they needed to survive available from supplies, to drugs, to sex. And some of those who could did simply lose themselves in pleasure, trying their best to escape the ludicrous world that they found themselves bound in while conscious.
Most, of course, did not have easy access to such things, and so relied on sleep as their escape, hoping to see memories of a time before the suffering began, or of some paradise far away from the cold truths of reality, where there was enough food, where it was safe to walk in the open air, where grass and trees still grewùwhere death did not lurk around every corner, an infinitely patient, infinitely cunning predator simply waiting for its prey to lower its guard.
But for the woman who called herself Yumi Shierumiko, there was no escape from the hell that was living, as whether in dreams or in the waking world, she was surrounded by death, always alone, as she had been ever since she had first died. True, the True Ancestor whose moment of weakness nearly a millennium ago had been the ultimate cause of her suffering was dead, having sacrificed herself in a failed attempt to permanently end the threat of the Spider, but the one who had possessed her, using her to destroy everything she cared about, was not.
True to his name, the Infinite Reincarnator still lived, and as long as he was not ended, she who bore his taint could never age, never die, no matter how much she might wish it. While living in the world of humans, she lived unlike any other, under a different providence, a different time, a different life, condemned to a life of solitude by her very nature. No one truly knew how old she was, for like the Dead Apostles she hunted, she was immortalùthough her immortality was a sight different than theirs, and unlike they who wished only to live, she wished to die that she might atone for every mortal sin that weighed upon her soulàbut not before destroying the one who had destroyed her life.
Indeed, destroying him was a prerequisite to her own death, and her urge to crush him blazed white-hot in her soul, even as the rest of the world began to darken and crumble. She was a strange one, after all, a contradiction in terms û young and yet untimely old, kind yet merciless to those she wished to destroy, living on that in the end she might be slain.
It made her unusual amidst a group who had fled the maw of death with all their might, and perhaps had even let her cling to sanity, remaining aloof and clear-eyed, when the rest had turned to warring amongst themselves in earnest, cold tensions flaring hot at the end of the world. She did not much care for their politics or struggles, nor for the loss of life these caused û merely seeking out her eternal enemy, relentless, without pause, in an endless chase that had taken her around the world multiple times, through burned out towns and cities of the dead, desolate wastelands and long-abandoned citadels, places sometimes hidden from the view of man, and sometimes in all too plain sight.
She followed any rumors of the activities of Dead Apostles with an obsessive zeal that bordered on fanaticism, knowing that eventually, one of her leads would allow her to track down her quarry, would grant her freedom from this eternal nightmare, where even in her dreams, she retraced his steps, haunted by what he had done to her so many years ago.
This time, Yumi saw a memory of a rustic mountain village, her black robes fluttering in the breeze as she walked along cobbled streets, flakes of snow eddying about her playfully as if dodging out of her way in a game of tag. A peaceful place, with the watery light of the low-hanging moon hiding with its gentle touch the flaws and imperfections revealed by the harshness of daylight, soothing her, almost as if telling her to turn from her course, to let down her guard and enjoy this reprieve from her exertions.
But she could not, for habit made a harsh taskmistress, and she kept from succumbing to the sense of false tranquility simply by force of will, her form tensing like a drawn bow as she continued on, crunching fallen snow underfoot, something nagging at her mind, insisting more urgently with each moment she remained that her mind would not have shown her a simple dream, not after every other night had filled with visions of blood and fire.
'Waitàno. That'sà'
She stretched out a finger, allowing an errant snowflake to land upon it, smearing it against her robes, where they soiled it likeàash.
'Noàplease noà'
And as if that was the key to solving the riddle of her dream, formerly overlooked details bombarded her mind all at once: the acrid tang of smoke and ozone lingering in the air, a chill that came not from temperature, but at the recognition of a powerful murderous will, and the violation as her Circuits thrummed in time with the manifestation of a reality marble, a forbidden ritual inscribed upon her soul, the ultimate proof that she was too much like her enemy to be allowed to live.
No..noànonoNONONONONONOONNONONONONO!
In an instant, calmness and subtlety were discarded as the figure of Yumi Shierumiko flickered, her face contorting in rage as she broke into a sprint, Circuits flaring as prana roiled and churned within her, pushing her far past mortal limitsànot that it would make a difference in the end. She had had this dream before, seen this particular memory, and knew that no matter what she did, it would not be enough. Still, hope, that worst of all evils that prolonged the sufferings of mankind, burned fiercely in her breast, and as she moved, covering immense amounts of ground in leaps and bounds, she prayed that maybe this time, she would succeed.
Fzt!
But as she neared the village's town hall, where the core of this disaster lurked, her progress was impeded by the bounded field marking the edge of the Reality Marble, a ghastly thing laced with cracking coils of lightning, flashing hither and fro like serpents guarding their master's lair. Which in a sense they were, as their master was the Serpent of Akasha himself.
The serpents hissed as they met her, encircling her in a convergence of sheer oppressive heat that roiled, toiled, boiled over, overwhelming û scorching eyes, choking lungs, searing flesh with fiery tongues that ripped the nerves from under skin, a cutting torch melting bones, sinew, and sanity as they violated her, probing her soulàand then let her pass, recognizing her as one of their own, something which was more chilling to her than if they had killed her, forcing her to revive once again, for it meant that even his magecraft could see no difference between them.
With a sickening squelch like pushing through the stomach of some vast being, Yumi Shierumikostepped through the boundary fieldàand entered the hell once again.
It was the same thing each time.
A putrid stench, pungent and with the sickly-sweet odor of decay.
Human bodies, torn to pieces, unrecognizable after an orgy of destruction, with entrails, organs, blood splattered all o'er the walls like a coat of fresh paint.
A pile of heads like discarded cabbages watching her with accusing eyes, eyes that condemned, eyes that cursed her, eyes that screamed for her to DIE, for it was her hands that had killed them all, stained with blood so thick that even were the green not already one red, washing her hands in the multitudinous seas would have surely turned it so.
Guilty guilty guilty you are guilty you cannot escape your past your present your sin, for that is all you are, the Serpent in another guise, one who can only harm, can only kill, can only betray and must atone atone atone in DEATH.
Limbs, half-dissolved to ash, flailing about weakly, as melted lumps of flesh twitched in vain, poking like macabre islands out of a sea of blood and garbage.
But most frightening of all was the figure on the dias, perched upon the throne of corpsesùthe nude figure of her nightmare self, drinking from the skull of a child as she laughed, wearing a look of dark satisfaction on her face and naught besides as she gazed upon the form of her mirror.
"Hello, me," Dark Elesia smirked, her voice like a gentle caress like a violation as murderous intent brushed against her, threatening to make her vomit with the intensity of it. "Enjoying yourself? I certainly enjoyed being youà"
Six Black Keys appeared in Yumi's hands, tossed whirr whirr whirr one after another at the figure on the throne, but a net of lightning deflected these projectiles with contemptuous ease, the rapier-like weapons embedding themselves in the wall of the town hall up to the hilt.
"My, such aggressionà.how predictable, Elesiaà" her dark doppelganger purred as she advanced, loosing a bolt of lightning that the intended victim only dodged by seeing the assailant's hands in motion. "And such a nice body too. Tell me, me, why do you want to kill me? Is it the knowledge that however far you run, whatever you try to do, you will never escape me? After all, deep inside you are the same as meàLady Roa."
"Never!" the hunter snarled, drawing more of the thin rapier-like blades from seemingly thin air. But this time, instead of throwing them, she slung each one forward with electromagnetic force, as if each was a projectile in a railgun.
Ozone hissed in the air, as each one streaked unerringly for the target, only for her opponent to loose a surge of lightning of her own, halting the weapons and sending them streaking back at her, impaling her limbs, her torso, her chest where they erupted into bursts of flame, consuming her flesh and killing her as Elesia shrieked.
"Never you say?" the dark doppelganger intoned, savoring her victim's suffering, the porcine scent in the air rather reminiscent of roast pork. "But don't you see it is far too late for that? You draw on the magecraft I gave you, use the weapons I helped design, joined the organization I created. You would be nothing without me, and to hunt you, you have to become me. For you, there was never any hope from the start, my dear Elesia."
Everything went dark for a moment as her consciousness died and was reborn, but in that moment, everything changed. Two figures stood on the dais, not one, and the nude figure of her nightmare self was now suspended in the air by cold metallic chains, a look of shock on her face as an arm was plunged thrust though her chest, a clawed hand ripping her still-beating heart from her body.
"YouàAràcuà"
But her dark doppelganger never had a chance to finish, as a monster far beyond even Roa crushed Dark Elesia's heart, the crimson droplets of fresh blood splattering over the white and gold of the killer's dress almost as if to baptize her. Yumi could only watch helplessly as the killed turned from the corpse of her enemy to look upon her with flashing golden eyes.
"Will you never die àRoa?" the White Princess of the True Ancestors inquired softly, her words laced with bitter venom as the air congealed, thickened, tensed andù
Crack!
ùripped apart, with the atmosphere warping into roiling waves that engulfed all that remained of the slaughtered town, tearing apart everything like a shredder with tens, hundreds, thousands, no, an infinite number of blades.
In a single instant, the mediator's body disappeared, distorted, sliced, compressed, and diced apartùas the woman who had alternately been called, Elesia, Ciel, or Yumi, was torn violently from her sleep, nearly screaming as she was forced back to consciousness.
'That dream againà
The mediator's body contorted as she was ripped back into consciousness, spasms and paroxysms of half-illusory pains wracking her body, searing through her nerves as she suffered in silence, save for the harsh panting of her breath as she fought to calm her body. The agonies of dying, without the comforting embrace of deathùshe was no stranger to these things, having been tortured many a time in her too-long life, and yet these dreams, these tortures not devised by others' hands but her own mind, were something she had never been able to cope withùpossibly because the pain was not physical but mental, a wound upon her mind, so even her nigh-perfect immortality was no protection.
The ageless blunette composed herself, rising from a salvageable mattress tucked away in one of the more structurally-sound buildings of a now abandoned London, which she had been scouring for hints of the Serpent's presence or plans. There was no doubt that when the Mage's Association had fallen to the combined might of the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors, just after the destruction of the Holy Church, Michael Roa Valdamjong would have been nearby. Padding over to the empty window, she could imagine it now:
Swarms of ghouls running rampant through London as they had through Rome, baying with bloodlust as they ripped any who stood in their way to shreds.
Lorelei Barthomeloi's handpicked battalion of magi mercilessly hunted by Dead Apostles fresh from glutting the vaults of the Church and the Conceptual Weapons stored within, the vampires taking a savage glee in killing them slowly, corrupting them into undead servants who joined in the destruction of the Tower that had stood for far too long.
And when the Dead Apostle Ancestors and their dread Reality Marbles joined the fray, with puppet castles, endless parades of one's most bitter enemies, black beasts swarming the streets all at once, all hope was lost. The Association, like the Church before it, succumbed to the press of numbers, their trump cards, so useful in one-on-one combat, proving less useful against seemingly endless armies of undead, each armed with some conceptual weapon or other.
The fate of London and all that had been within at the time, had been sealed, just as the population of Rome had been slaughtered to the last manùwell, except for the woman who had once been called Ciel, as she had never been very good at staying dead.
Thus, she thought of herself not as a human but as a machine whose reason for existence was the extermination of her ancient enemy, one who otherwise was dark and empty as the sky, for whom the future was but a mirage. Codenamed "Yumi", she was the Seventh of the late Burial Agency, a merciless killer of the inhuman who whatever it took to accomplish her goalàso that one way or another, the arrow would find its rest and her hell would be at an end.
-----------------------------------------------------
~à strength cleaving the mountains...~
-----------------------------------------------------
After a series of unsuccessful searches for survivors, Shirou Emiya found that people had begun to grow uneasy about the strange man went about his quixotic quest to save people without asking for anything in return. It was inevitable, really, as people in that world looked out for themselves before anyone else, so the notion of a powerful magus who didn't care about gain or loss, letting the things he picked up sift through his hands was antithetical to their worldview. If one had power, one used it as a bargaining chip to satisfy simple reasons: greed, pride, selfishness, lust, vengeance, or devotion. One did not simply wish for the people in one's sight to be happy, no matter who they were, sacrificing his own comfort to allow others he didn't even know to have an easier life than he.
But Shirou did, which was why others either thought of him as a saint or some kind of agent provocateur who worked for one power or another, analyzing the structure and defenses of the sanctuary cities for an assault that would no doubt be coming. Or perhaps the people he 'rescued' were in fact infiltrators under his employ, tasked with finding out any secrets the sanctuary cities and surrounding areas held to find the best ways of subverting them to his own grand designs.
Why else would one ask for nothing at all, save that he was already being given all he needed by one sponsor or another?
Oh to be sure, none of them had managed to uncover any scrap of evidence that this might be the case, but as opposed to reassuring them that Shirou Emiya was not in fact involved in some insidious plot or other, this only unsettled them further, as to them, this simply meant that he was very good at covering his tracks.
With no possible way to dissuade them from this point of viewùand with no attempt, either, as he had not moved in those circles, he had instead had left North America to protect the few he had managed to save, travelling to Europe, the land worst wracked by the civil war of the Dead Apostle Ancestors, something that he had only heard rumors of, rumors that he had thought exaggerated, as they had claimed that both the Church and the Association had fallen.
'So the Clock Tower truly has been toppledà'
He had taken the time to walk the streets of London, or rather what remained of it, taking stock of the utter devastation that had been wroughtùincluding the immense crater where the British Museum (which had housed the workshops and main facilities of the Association) had once been located. He found himself hoping Rin was ok, that she had not been caught in London when destruction descended upon it like a cursed wave. After the Holy Grail War, the Tohsaka heiress had gone to the Clock Tower to seek her fortune, seeing as that was the pre-determined path for a magus of the Association, and despite the discrimination, he had heard she was doing well, as one of their rising stars. But a year or two past the Cataclysm, he had fallen out of touch with her, as keeping in contact with friends had taken a low priority on his agenda, compared to the need to protect those in his sight from the many ravages of the dying days, where starvation, war, and terror ran rampant among the few survivors, when the air itself grew poisonous to breath, the ground quaked and shook and buckled, destroying countless homes, disease spread as infrastructure failed.
When things had stabilized, he had considered staying in Fuyuki, but the deaths of Illyasviel von Einzbern and Matou Sakura put a stop to that, as the city held too many unhappy memories for him. Thus he had begun travelling extensively, doing what he could to ease the pain of others, which is how he had eventually found himself London, a long-dead city like most of those he had been to. Not one other soul was to be seen wandering through the rubble, and what bodies there were had decomposed to bone and tattered remains of clothing.
'These being the few who did not rise again as Deadà'
He buried what few corpses he found before moving onto Dusseldorf, one of the few European sanctuary cities in existence, where he had heard rumors of the labyrinth of Caubac Alcatraz, the "Dead Apostle of the Millennium Lock," having been revealed in the modern world. In the course of his investigations, Shirou found himself seated in a coffee shop called Ahnenerbe (German for "heritage), waiting for one of his contacts, who was referred to simply as the "Lady Archer", a secretive but effective information broker of good repute among those who needed sensitive pieces of information before anyone else.
'An interesting place for a meeting, one respected as neutral territory by all. Few customers. Open tables and bar, but also a set of private booths in case business needs to be conducted. Somber lighting, and decorated with genuine antiques, lending an air of secrecy. And by the freshness of the food, either the proprietor is well off or has the quiet backing of the city authorities.'
His suspicions were only heightened by the sight of his serverùa young girl wearing a heavy black coat over a charcoal grey dress, with a great black bow in her blue hair, peering at him with curious red eyes as she delivered his order: a well made risotto alla Milaneseùa rice dish cooked with beef stock, marrow, lard and cheese to a creamy consistency, flavored and colored with saffronùserved alongside ossobuco alla milanese (cross-cut veal shanks braised with vegetables, white wine and broth).
In most cities, instant foods, artificial rations, and either canned or dried foods would be standard fare for most people, with fresh produce a luxury only available to those who either had a certain degree of wealth or connections. Not much of a surprise, given that even with the advanced genetic engineering being done to crops to help them grow in post-Cataclysm Earth, as well as the vat-grown meat, supply still fell short of demand, given the lack of areas in which they could be raised.
As well, his server (who he recognized as a familiar of some kind, suggesting the owner was a magus) delivered a bottle of Blue Frankish to go along with his meal, a spicy red wine that was quite well known among wine connoisseurs as the "Pinot Noir of the East." Shirou tried to wave it off, since he wasn't good with alcohol (and besides, true wines and not the synthetic stuff were expensive), but the young girl had just looked at him until he asked if the person he was meeting had ordered it, at which point he received a nod.
He was still wondering who the "Lady Archer" was supposed to be when a snatch of spoken Japanese caught his attentionùa language he had not heard in a long time.
"Huh. Well well, what have we here?" an all too familiar voice spoke, a hint of surprise evident as a woman he knew he should recognize slid into the seat across from him, her amber eyes looking over his form. "Long time no see, Emiya."
She was dressed in an ensemble not too different from his, though instead of blacks and charcoal greys, her outfit consisted of black slacks and blouse with a beige trenchcoat draped over the ensemble. A professional, serviceable outfit, with her long brown hair plaited in a French braid, pulled behind her shouldersàthough there was something peeking out from the sleeve of her coat that seemed like a bracer.
"Mitsuzuri?" Shirou said, blinking in surprise as his mind produced the name of the person in question a beat later. "What are you doing here?" Then his eyes narrowed as his memories conjured up the image of the Archery Club Captain he had once known, and he made the connection. "Don't tell meà"
"Heh, you're as cold as always, Emiya," Mitsuzuri returned, a trace of a smile on her lips. "Even if you do look different from how I remember you, I see some things stay the same. You know, you never did come see my archery skills, even after I asked so nicely."
"Things came up, and you disappeared with Tohsaka," the Faker said simply, looking on with curiosity as the familiar came by with another dish of the risotto for Ayako, along with two wine glasses. "And what of you, aren't you still the type everyone counts on? Even if you are an information broker instead of a captain and you use a sealed artifact instead of a yumi."
Ayako stiffened fractionally as Shirou mentioned her weapon off-hand, but recomposed herself, arching a slender eyebrow.
"Thank you, Ren, that will be all," she said, nodding to the familiar that had brought her dinner for the night. When the blue-haired girl left, the 'Lady Archer' shot her old acquaintance a glare of equal parts curiosity, irritation and exasperation. "So that's why so many are unsettled by you. Let me ask you something û just between you and me, what is your interest in the treasure in Alcatraz' labyrinth that you are willing to risk the dangers in getting to its center?"
"People are suffering," Shirou Emiya replied simply and sincerely. "If whatever the treasure is can help them, no sacrifice would be too great."
Ayako was silent for a minute as she considered his reply, sighing after a moment.
"It's been so long that I forgot you really are like that," the information broker said, smiling slyly as she looked at the man she had once known, sizing him up. "I suppose you're still fixing everyone else's problems, thenà"
"àI don't want to ask this, but you're not thinking badly of me, are you?" Shirou probed, wondering exactly what his old acquaintance was thinking.
"No, I wouldn't dream of it," she answered with a perfectly straight face. "I was just thinking objectively about the truth. It's up to you if you want to feel angry about it."
Despite himself, the man who was sometimes called the Dark Evangel, felt a wry smile tugging at the edges of his lips. It had been far too long since he'd actually sat down and talked with anyone who truly knew him for who he was, instead of knowing of him as the odd 'ally of justice' who inspired so much distrust and suspicion.
"Cheàyou're just like always," he noted, shaking his head, though his sharp grey-gold eyes betrayed a hint of warmth. "You haven't changed either."
"I've changed more than you think, Emiya, largely due to a little something called the Holy Grail War."
On one level, it amazed Shirou how easily Ayako could drop a verbal nuke like that so casuallyùyet as he looked closer, he realized that she wasn't being casual at all, that every line of her body radiated a certain sharpness it had lacked before, making him wonder exactly how good she was with her sealed bow. On the other handà
"Whaà?" he started, her frank words catching him off guard, as the Holy Grail War was not something very well known, except in certain circles of magi.
A cold smile.
"You remember that I was attacked, right?" Ayako asked, leaning towards the Faker from across the table. "Well, after I awoke in the hospital, I began to senseàoddities in the world. Flows, fields, differences in what I later found out was prana. And when the Cataclysm hità" She trailed off, shrugging. "I felt it, the sheer wrongness of it echoing in the gaps left in my soul by whatever fed on me that night." She looked at him speculatively, eyes narrowing. "But you'd know all about that, wouldn't you? After all, you're the one who won the waràand destroyed the prize."
It was all Shirou Emiya could do not to fall over in shock.
"How do youù"
"Let's just say that my employer is veryàwell informed," the information broker said, deliberately hesitating over the last two words. "Even so, I wasn't completely convinced until I saw how you reacted."
"And why did you need to know?" Shirou asked softly, a slight edge to his voice.
"Because of the information you want," Ayako returned soberly. "Caubac Alcatraz, the Dead Apostle of the Millennium Lock, built the labyrinth to protect the Holy Scripture Triten, his most valued artifact, sealing himself within it to reinforce the protections. Given the power the artifact holds, my employer has a vested interest in making sure what the labyrinth is protecting doesn't fall into the wrong hands."
"Ah."
"I'll give you what you seekùbut only because I think you're reliable, Emiya," she said at last, her eyes boring into his. "Just remember, if it proves necessaryà"
"àI'll destroy it," he intoned, nodding his head in weary acknowledgement.
"Then we have a deal."
