55Prologue: Fever Dream
There exists no impossibility for modern Magecraft within the rules of the world and limits of human intellect; there are limitations, however, where it only appears that something is possible.
But where lies that line?
What draws the line between reality and fantasy? Between dreams and the waking world?
Perhaps it's God. Perhaps it's the World. Perhaps it's some random omnipotent being outside the stars.
Crawl, little worm…
I shivered, exhaling a cloud of mist. The cold coiled around me like a grasping hand, tendrils of cold piercing my skin without the slightest bit of mercy. The page of the book turned.
Such questions have danced across the mind of humanity since time immemorial. What is 'real'? What defines 'real'? Who decides it? Did God create man, or did man come into existence the moment a monkey looked itself in in its reflected gaze and realize that it was alive? When it realized its time on this earth is finite and there's nothing that can halt the inevitable march of death?
If we're nothing but the sum of our parts, then what defines a 'thing'? Why is a person a person, why is a corpse a corpse? What separates one rock from another? One broom from another?
Say your broom's handle snapped, so you replace it with another broom's handle. Then, later, the broom's bristles wear down and fall apart, so you replace those as well.
Is it still the original broom? Or is it the second broom that you've just reconstructed over time?
Following that. Let's say you capture a human being, let's call him Sam for now, and tie him a lab table. You capture another human, let's name him Kyle, and kill him so you can freely use him as an unwilling donor. With Sam alive and Kyle awaiting harvest, you then methodically remove and replace their bones, their flesh, their organs, their brain, while keeping Sam alive and conscious the entire time… would the person that resides on that table still be Sam at the end? Or would he be Kyle? Would that being have Sam's memories, or Kyle's?
If a soul is given another being's memories rather than their own, are they the same soul?
If that same soul is placed in the body that the memories are a part of, are they still another being they once were?
Set the stage.
Shinji Matou, in a war fifty years in the future. A cruel man, twisted by hatred. Hatred for himself. Hatred for the War that had wiped away the only human who had ever gifted him unconditional love. The same human he'd proved himself worthless before. The same human who had meant to live when he, a worthless worm, should have perished.
In a tale of heroes and gods, wonderful loving people are supposed to live happily ever after, far from the blackened tar of humanity. So why?
Why did the tale close with a worm wriggling from beneath a pile of corpses? Why did it end with the heroes dead and the evils spreading their hatred until naught remained but fire?
So… more than anything else… Shinji Matou hated the World.
Shinji Matou. A witness of the corruption of the Holy Grail. The only survivor of the Fifth Holy Grail War.
…Well.
That was what what the world thought. No one knew the truth.
No one stood witness as the other screamed and writhed, pleading pleading pleading pleading—
No one but Shinji.
And of course… the greatest worm to ever exist. The parasite upon the World, thriving on the putrid remains left behind, beneath the gaze of humanity. Shinji might not have inherited his family's Magical Circuits, but he had come by his worst traits honestly. A worm is spawned by a worm, after all.
He'd been trained by the best.
If this were a game, the end screen would have long since flashed. Bad End. But this was reality, and in reality, life goes on long past when it should have stopped.
With Sakura dead, another needed to take her place. To such a parasite, tragedy presented opportunity. Zouken was nearly dead, but Shinji truly had been trained by the best. A twisted irony that the first compliment ever given to him by his grandfather was the very one that made him want to end his life.
His grandfather kept heart-worms in a jar, buried deep within the family manor. He had known, known and done nothing. When the work in Sakura's chest died, Zouken was meant to die with it. The heart-worms were unable to live on their own, and none of the other works comprising Zouken's body survived his exorcism to set the heart-worms free.
Shinji Matou dug them up.
Stared at the pulsating things. Hated himself for the choice before him. Hated the world for placing it before him.
He could, should, cast the tether to this monster's soul into the fire. A lifetime of torture, neglect, manipulation, it could have ended right there. But in the end, a worm would not devour another worm when on the brink of extinction.
He opened that jar for the same reason his grandfather had once spared him, on a frozen night as he watched his mother being eaten alive. He needed him.
Because Shinji Matou had a plan. And no matter how repulsive the worm, he could ignore his disgust if the worm could get him what he wanted.
He fed the heart-worms on his own blood as he searched the library for the secrets he needed. As the echoes of Sakura's crazed laughter claimed Fuyuki in bloodied mists, Shinji stepped into the basement with a tattered book in his arms.
"Well." Zouken whispered, skull forming bit by bit. "Perhaps you do have some use after all…"
A plan. The extent wasn't shared with Zouken, but even the little he spoke made the old worm cackle with glee. Perhaps that should have given him pause, more than anything else so far.
"No." Shinji agreed. "I'm not. I just lacked… resources." He lifted the book. "I learned more than Sakura ever did, all these years… all I need, are the resources."
A source of prana. A source of power. That which Shinji was born without.
A readily-available source, if one knew where to look.
She lasted little under two days before she broke. Zouken laughed. Shinji was silent.
It didn't matter. Not now. None of it would matter in the end.
Within two months, she was gone. Personality broken away, mind reduced to a blank slate. She lay within the pit, unaware of the worms swimming in and out of her flesh. Nothing was left.
If you kill the mind and leave the body behind… is it still the same person?
No. No it was not.
She had no spark, no flicker of emotion or thought. All had been burned away.
In a way… Shinji envied her. To live without even recalling your own name, unable to feel the pain of the past…
But no.
No.
Death wasn't for him, not yet.
He was a worm, putrid and unsalvageable. Not a single redeeming quality remained. No spark of good, no hope of redemption. He didn't deserve love, didn't expect it. But he wasn't his grandfather.
He would fix his mess before shuffling off this mortal coil.
The girl was pronounced dead, her family's meager assets taken to fund research. New research. His research.
Shinji Matou, the last to remember the corruption of the Grail. No… the last to care. His warnings fell on deaf ears, the Einzbern unable to believe themselves or their creations imperfect and his grandfather unwilling to care for the world's fate so long as he got his wish.
But Shinji Matou had fifty years. And he was trained by the best worm in existence. With the aid of the living doll he'd helped to break, he began his work.
Shinji Matou had no Magical Circuits. But he had time, and he had infinite corpses. His puppet was quite skilled with memory manipulation, and it's simple to make half a city vanish if you take them one at a time.
The moment the old worm outlived his usefulness, he was used as a sacrifice to draw out the corruption. He laughed as he died, burning in the outpouring of filth that scorched the city black. Once the parasite was cut free by its host being forcibly shut down, Shinji began the long work of studying its workings. The Einzbern tried to step in his way, but he didn't care for their lives. Sacrifices were needed to restart the Grail anyway.
Some corruption remained. He hadn't the time or patience to spend years repairing everything the Avenger had twisted. It didn't have to be perfect. It just had to grant his wish.
Thirty years remained when he hit a wall in his studies. When the Grail gave no new secrets. When he realized the plague of the Einzbern wouldn't leave him be.
Twenty-five when he finished his solution to the problem.
A proposal. Simple yet devious.
A curse that Jubstacheit would have no knowledge of… since Shinji had invented it himself.
A modification to the Grail's inner workings.
"Oh?" The Einzbern Clan Head raised an eyebrow. "Five slots?"
Shinji smirked, eyeing the Homunculus Maid appreciatively. "I've had enough of lesser Magi interfering in our war." He proclaimed, arrogant and self-assured despite sitting in the heart of his enemies' territory. "I've had control over the Grail for, what, close to forty years now? We both know I could've turned this into a profit, sold tickets to the show to the highest bidder. But this must end how it began. The Einzbern have drawn the short straw for the past few wars, and now that my grandfather has finally ceased his meddling, I see a chance to finally end this farce."
The old Homunculus studied me, gaze flicking to the empty shell beside me. "Indeed, even with the ability to guarantee more than one slot per Clan, the Einzbern are the only ones capable of generating so many Masters so quickly… but I find it difficult to believe you would hand us such an advantage."
Shinji scoffed. "Oh, we're hardly so helpless… and even if we lose, you can hardly gain True Magic twice. Next War, it will be down to two competitors rather than three. A much better challenge, yes?"
"And the Tohsaka Head?" Acht asked, studying the shell at my side.
"The Tohsaka support this decision." The shell stated emptily.
His gaze flicked between us. I could see the gears in his head turning.
If the Matou and the Tohsaka merged into one family, or one of us stabbed the other in the back, then the next War would be our guaranteed victory.
Logically, one would assume we were handing him victory in this War in exchange for victory in the next.
As a Homunculus, he would think such logical thoughts.
"Very well." The man nodded once. "Five Einzbern Masters will participate in the next War."
The show must go on.
Shinji Matou truly was a hideous worm. The logical mind is incapable of planning for the depths of depravity that the human mind can conjure.
The shell rode Shinji in a mindless desperation, hips slamming down in a familiar rhythm. The Lust Worms within her demanded his seed, a chore he undertook to keep her tied to him. A pleasurable chore, to be sure, but a chore nonetheless.
He enjoyed her tight folds while he still could. This would be the last time he entertained his pet.
A call came soon after his pet had passed into unconsciousness. Another of his pets, broken and reformed. Care-something. A cute nun who had quite the masochistic streak.
It mattered not.
"The last Servant has been summoned."
He smiled.
Einzbern had almost certainly summoned all manner of obscenely powerful Servants. Prepared themselves for a battle of the ages. It didn't matter. Not even the Servants of him or his pet mattered.
Though, in the end, perhaps it was a twist of fate that summoned him a Servant with the same wish as he.
It mattered not.
Not when he had fifty years to prepare this city for their arrival.
His Servant was sent out as bait. His pet's was sent as a shepherd dog to herd in the Masters. When they were all within range, his pet stepped forward.
The principle of all ritual is sacrifice. One small sacrifice can spark a second, larger sacrifice. The Grail worked on such a principle, after all. A bit of mana sacrificed to summon Servants, Servants sacrificed to enact a larger spell. A chain.
His puppet knew her purpose.
Her blade plunged into her chest, a spark into a powder keg. One to kill ten. Ten to kill a hundred. A hundred to kill a thousand. A thousand to kill ten thousand. Ten thousand lives ended, drained by a twisted re-enactment of Blood Fort Andromeda. Energy marshaled for a curse so massive it encapsulated all of Fuyuki.
Death to cause more death. The way of the world.
A war ended in a single night.
Nothing was immune, not even Shinji. He didn't mind. Far below the earth, deep in a protected chamber, a heart-worm wiggled into a pit of shrieking thralls. With no Circuits, with no solid connection, his life was certain to be short… but that, too, mattered little.
Before him, seven lanterns glowed. A Lesser Grail, awaiting his long-awaited wish. Nothing could take this from him. Nothing. Nothing.
Hissing whispers took the place of a human voice. "Holy Grail… grant my wish." He whispered.
All this pain, all this suffering…
I wish… I had never been born.
All this worthless struggle…
I wish it could change.
It didn't matter to him that his wish was twisted by the last remnants of corruption. As life faded away, he released a final breath.
The Grail could not create new souls. But such things could still be bypassed.
Another soul, blank and free-floating, could be snatched to fill a need.
Perhaps Shinji Matou got what he wanted.
But is a soul with Shinji's body and Shinji's memories still another person? Or is it just Shinji Matou with another soul's life experience?
Is this blue-haired child crawling in the dusty library still a floating soul from another world, or is has he become Shinji Matou, for all the horror that entails?
Perhaps such a being is both Shinji Matou and Johnathan Watts. Perhaps he's neither.
Such is the nature of the paradox.
In the end, philosophy won't make these nightmares go away. It won't make this world feel less paradoxically real and fake. A world of anime watched by a world of reality, or a world of reality dressed as an anime?
Thinking won't help me sleep at night. Not when there's still so much.
So much I need to do.
A/N:
New story, new take on writing. Fair warning, this story will be dark, but hey, you expected that when you realized it was about Shinji. It will also include, gasp, philosophy. Don't worry, I'll explain it all as we go along. I've got about 2 chapters already written for this story and the rest can be done as we go.
A lot of shit happened IRL over the past few years, don't really want to talk about it. Things are finally calming down. I've done a lot of writing in my off time, and I have a great deal to share with you all if I get the motivation. I have about 20mb of Word documents with stories in various stages of completion, many of which I ended up scrapping for one reason or another.
For now, let's cut to the meat and gravy of the matter. I set up a patron account, the url is simply Patrⱸon܂com, and my username on there is MisterGrin, all one word. Consider it a tip or the like if you prefer. Looking at the numbers, if everyone following my main stories donated a buck, enough to buy a morning cup of coffee, I would be able to quit my full-time job. I know that not everyone is able to, and for those people these stories will always remain free. Those incomplete stories I mentioned are available for a tier reward for those interested.
I'll also be posting this story on Archive of Our Own to see what happens. I've been putting all this off for long enough.