136Chapter One: Imitations of Reality
"Please, my child-"
A woman lay on the ground, but maybe it wasn't. A wrapped bundle lay cradled within her arms, just as the collapsing wooden beams cradled her in a crushing embrace. There wasn't much left of her face or body, most of it having been seared into an unrecognizable mask of blackened flesh. The bundle in her arms was worse, looking like an onyx statue than the infant it was. Whatever she wanted to say, he could not hear it.
The malevolent flames consumed her the instant he passed by, leaving not even ash behind. It was the physical manifestation of the ultimate curse, the ultimate evil. It cursed life to cease, to cursed steel to melt, it cursed and cursed and cursed.
What is a curse? Is it a hex? A spell? An Enchantment? Or is it mere words spoken with deadly intent?
No. A Curse is a malignant thing, but there is fortunately very few who have the power to actually bring an actual curse into existence, and even that is at a great price.
Now, imagine if that 'Curse' was not simply some words empowered by a bit of magic, but a sentient being able manipulate its namesake freely at any magnitude and quality.
As a being that was birthed by all the Evils of the World known to man, logically said being fed on these same Evils in order to exist. The greater the evil, the more it can thrive. The more it can thrive, the greater its power to curse.
Evils can come in many forms: Direct or Indirect, Intentional or Unintentional, Necessary or Unnecessary, Natural or Artificial, Physical or Metaphysical. Naturally, Evils that are born from the Metaphysical Soul are the most immense of all evils. Curses are the manifestations of evil.
Naturally, this can be easily produced by eroding away any thing that was not evil, hence the usage of curses to amplify evil.
Have a family that loves and cares for each other?
Hear them slowly die, screaming in immense pain as the fire takes its sweet time roasting them alive then feel complete rage and misery for your own powerlessness.
The Appetizer.
Have no regrets on your death bed and just about to give your last will to the people in front of you, who have maybe decades left to live out their lives in bliss?
Watch them all die like insects caught in a flame, their lives burned away before yours even begins to fade, then curse at the heavens, curse everything you can think of for not being able to die before your loved ones.
The Main Course.
As the body begins to erode away at the flames, the soul begins to detach. The soul, containing all the Evils and Good the person has committed it life, and having burned away the hopes and dreams of their life with curses after curses, it becomes a delectable meal of pure maliciousness.
The stronger the light, the stronger the shadow, and that applies to good and evil as well. The more good deeds the person has done in life, the more immense their evils become once that good side is burned away. Like eating a simple loaf of bread becomes much tastier after days of starvation. Like seasoning on meagre pieces of meat, or a reward after a challenge making it all the sweeter.
All humans have hopes and dreams, it all serves as food in its own way. Like a bitter seasoning to balance out the sweet meal. There can be no shadow without light, but the reverse…is simply not true. Once evil has set in, it does not need light to sustain it, only to intensify.
Thousands of regular people that were caught within the entity had their hopes set up, before being ripped out to serve as nutrition to the flames that served as its physical manifestation. Joy intensified the Despair that would soon follow, climbing the tallest tower, only to fall from it. It fed and fed and fed without end. It fed without discrimination as no human soul was completely evil or good, even a little bit was enough grow and to feed on. It fed until there was but one left, one measly human child that was somehow attempting to escape. The last meal it could latch on before disappearing entirely from this world until the next War.
It decided to enjoy this last meal.
The entity had no eyes, but it could see it the souls as it devoured them whole. It had no ears, but it could hear both the blissful cursing and the screaming of the consumed souls. It had no tongue, but it could taste the energy that filled the air as the physical body was burnt of its OD.
It tracked the young child, simply delighted as he prepared himself to be eaten! Throwing away his emotions to survive, burning his memories as fuel to keep moving beyond his limit. The entity savored everything the child threw away to try to escape. It was futile however, it controlled its form, keeping its Curses in the guise of Flames away from the boy.
Everything was thrown to the ground as if a burden to the boy, from the first moments of seeing his parents face, to learning to love tea, to the first birthday party with his neighbor. It watched with interest as the boy discarded them just to keep moving… aimlessly.
Then, something strange happened.
The boy had simply run out of good memories and emotions to discard, now only darkness remained. There was nothing good now to temper that dark passion to simply survive. Things were beginning to turn worrisome for the Manifestation of Evil.
Fear: It stopped the boy from moving across the wall of flames that blocked his path. His courage having already been spent.
Hate: It made him glance around the fire, making him pause to curse the loss of his loved ones.
Anger: Frustrations began to build up, clouding his judgment as chaos spread, thinning his chances of survival.
Sadness: It pulled him into recalling faces of people he once knew, causing hallucinations of his love ones to appear, even though they were long dead.
All of these negative emotions and memories were slowing down his escape, just like his good natures.
So it was with horrified metaphysical eyes, that the being that fed on these dark natures saw its food used as the boy's fuel to keep moving. Fear gave him pause, so he discarded it. Hate wasted his breath, so he burned it. Anger clouded his mind, so he banished it. And sadness broke his heart… so he tore it apart.
One by one, the boy threw the delectable dark natures of humanity away to keep moving-
-until there was absolutely nothing left to give.
Writhing in shock and frustration at having its last meal simply evaporate, the dark entity urged itself to correct such a mistake. The boy was but a husk now, physically alive, but spiritually blank, blander than even the air itself. Like a new born babe…
No, even his soul was blank, the memories of his previous life having been burnt or discarded away as well. This left something much better it realized.
A Pure Soul.
They were rare, with origins that almost predated the Root. The first humans were pure, in a sense, as they were the first and unstained by memories of a previous life. But as humanity as a whole progressed, there was little need to produce new Souls, if simply reincarnating them would do the job. This caused the soul to retain the memories of its past life, adding an unpleasant after taste.
But a Pure Soul would not.
A One-Of-A-Kind in this modern era, a pure soul would taste exactly as it had lived its life. No odd flavoring or anything, just that…delectable…pure…taste…!
With metaphysical drool pouring out of its mouth, the entity set to work in preparing the Pure Soul into a magnificent dish. It wanted darkness, but that needed light to exist.
The entity wanted to weep, and indeed black tears began to fall from the sky, as the entity worked. It cursed Light into the boy, its distaste was only set off by the thought of having such a wonderful meal in the very near future.
While most humans were like poorly made weapons, their souls like iron forged into a specific shape through the course of their life, before being melted down upon death and reformed upon reincarnation. This boy's soul was like an ingot of Pure Iron, having no contamination of its previous incarnations. With such wondrous material, it could be forged into a peerless weapon of unwatched beauty, only further enhanced by the blood of trillions that would that must soak its blade. Any craftsman would give their arm for a chance to work with such material.
Just as the entity was temporarily reversing its nature to work the Pure Soul into a Peerless Sword, rather that melting and consuming it like it usually would. It cursed away the brief exposure to the world it had, purifying it once more. It cursed the ingot into shape: The Pommel, The Hilt, The Guard, and The Blade. It cursed away any imperfections in its work, any evils that might have gotten it, to ensure perfection. It cursed and cursed and cursed, and it wept with every curse, like a craftsman forced to mutilate himself for every hour spent working on his master piece.
It cursed away Weakness.
It cursed away Imperfection.
It cursed away Impotence.
It cursed away Man's Sinful Nature.
It cursed away Stagnation.
It cursed away Vulnerability.
It Curse away Death.
It Cursed away …Evil.
It wept as it cursed against its very nature, but soon it would be over. Soon, it would feed upon a feast incomparable to those in the past.
It noticed an oddity in the boy's physical shell at that moment, but the body was of little consequence to it.
Then, just as it rejoiced at its finished work, rejoiced upon the completion of a job well done and a feast incomparable to any other one…
…A burning light not dissimilar to the one it had just cursed into the boy seared it from existence.
Chapter One: Imitations of Reality
"Please… don't die, you are my only hope…"
It stirred, a voice among the thousands dead in the area. All the biomass lying around…but it was useless. Flesh that was burnt to ash could no longer be used for sustenance, a cooling body would do, even a rotted one! Any form of Biomass would do, but there was none. The abnormal fires in the area had invaded the area it called home and destroyed any and every source of nutrition within miles, targeting every living creature as if it were… sentient.
A few months back, it had gained sentience as well. Simply finding itself in its current, formless mass of biomass one day without a clue. It had knowledge, but not memories. It knew what it was and what it could do to its full potential. But it also knew that it was little more than a nuisance or gunk underfoot with its current level of biomass at the time.
No one would think a pinking goop weighing less than ten grams would ever be a threat, much less one that looked like chewed out bubble gum. As it had found from experience, being stepped on was not a pleasant experience, nor was repairing its damaged body. This however had triggered its sentience, so it was one thing to be thankful for.
Seconds after sentience, came hunger. It was something undeniably primal, it was a need, a necessity for warm, living biomass. It needed to feed, It understood the fragility of its current state and knew that feeding would sustain if not let it thrive.
A meandering fly.
A cooling body splattered with freshly spilt blood.
A rotted rodent swarmed with maggots.
A scrap of raw animal meat thrown out with the trash.
All these things were consumed as food. It latched onto the cell that were in somewhat good condition to replicate and thrive itself if the chromosomes were well intact, those that were in worse condition served as nutrition to survive. That was why it was very important to feed on living flesh, to be able to thrive and grow.
Now, months later, its efforts had allowed it to grow into a much more significant size, more than enough to restrain and latch onto smaller living organisms.
But the chance to finally feed and quench its tortuous hunger was blown away, burnt to ashes by the abnormal fire that hunted its potential meals to ash. It could not consume that which was not flesh, and the nearest group of food was far away, much too great a distance for it to simply drag itself too. With the additional hazard of this abnormal flame that burned biomass to ashes it could not even move had it wished. A slow death by starvation or a quick one by disintegration. A Catch Twenty Two.
No… something was amiss, it could feel the shift in its surroundings. No more was it surrounded by the aberrant flames from all sides, there was now something else that lay slumped beside it. It was small, barely alive, and exhausted. It was food-
-but not now. Now, this body would serve as an escape vessel, feeding would come after escaping these flames. It knew that such short term planning would doom it, so it would wait, however long it took to escape. Surely such a course of action was not incorrect?
Slithering an ebony tentacle from its dark mass, the creature that lived to feed on flesh indiscriminately reached out to the boy. It felt contact with flesh, but the small flesh did not react as all its previous sources of nutrition did, it neither flinched away nor gave any sign on acknowledgment. Strange.
The tentacle divided into, one slid to the neck and felt for a pulse, the other positioned itself just over the mouth and felt for the rate of breath typical of consciousness. Both signs came back positive, the human was alive and conscious, if barely.
With metaphorical excitement, the slithering mass of biomass coagulated around the child, latching into every cell. It infiltrated every crevice the body had, every hole and cavity, and lay inside, dormant. Naturally the body should have rejected it, but just a little bit of tweaking, the child's body accepted it as just another organelle, like an extra mitochondria.
It knew the child would be soon be out of the terrible flames and into safety, soon it would feed…
…and felt a warmth it had never felt before wrap around it as it began to relax. It was so alien, thee feeling of warmth, of acceptance, of…something. The feeling was alien, but it was also wonderful as it spread throughout its body-
-wait, body? How could it feel anything right now? It should be dormant, yet it felt completely satisfied.
"Thank you…"
With eyes it knew belonged to its host, it opened. It was greeted with a human male in his prime, with dark, eyes, hair and garments, but with light skin and an aged face.
He also had his mouth pulled to the sided, revealing his teeth. The expression brought up a feeling form it that it had only once experienced before. It felt warm, just like that feeling when it entered its host's body and prepared to lay dormant. Seeing such an indecipherable expression, it wondered its very first thoughts…
'This feeling, this warmth…I never want to let this feeling go'
Chapter One: Imitations of Reality
"Please, just save this child!"
Emiya Kiritsugu, a man known as the Magus-Killer, one of the greatest assassins in both the realms of the Magi and Mundane, known to be the best cold-hearted mercenaries for hire and Winner of the Current Holy Grail War. Magi seal their doors with their greatest Mysteries at the mere mention of his name, politicians hire dozens of counter assassins at weak sightings of him. There is no one who has not heard the name Emiya Kiritsugu.
Now, this same man lay within a sea of blackened debris, kneeling over a child he barely knows, with little time left to live. All around him was destruction and death.
All of it were marks of his failure.
He was ready to break down and cry, but then he saw a figure. Most would have seen an injured child that needed medical attention. Some would see the vacant eyes and listless motions of the body. Few would notice the air of wrongness wrapping around the boy like a second skin. Even less would notice an unnatural splotch of black slipping into the child's clothes like a snake. However, Kiritsugu saw none of these things.
The man who was about to see his Ideals shattered…he saw salvation.
"I may not be innocent… but this child is! So please…"
He dragged his body towards the boy, uncaring for his own injuries sustained during his own battles. It was like pulling a ragdoll across uneven ground, heavy and difficult. It was also undignified and hurt like hell, but he did not care for anything at the moment.
Finally he reached the boy and kneeled beside him on broken limbs. His hands bloodied, so used to ending lives with but a twitch, felt the child's neck for something.
A Pulse, but it was weak.
Relieved, but knowing that he was not quite done yet. The man called forth the one thing he knew would save the dying child without hesitation.
It was also the only thing keeping him together.
"Save him!"
Avalon was the sheathe of the legendary figure, King Arthur. It was said to grant its bearer immortality from time, wounds and magic, so long as it stayed with its bearer. Its namesake was also The Ever Distant Utopia, always out of reach, yet always just a hairsbreadth away.
It granted the Magus-Killer a great healing factor, one that let him reach to the point he was now.
It would also no doubt cripple him should he use it to save the child, seeing as he would have to implant it into the dying child to have even chance of saving him. It would be akin to giving up both his kidneys while poisoned with heavy metals.
He tore the ancient artifact keeping him alive out of his body, like it was an infection rather than a healing ointment that it was. The artifact that once housed the Sword of Promised Victory within it glowed as it was exposed to the air.
The Sheath glowed brightly as it sensed the Noble spirit of its wielder channeling a pure wish into it. A wish to save the innocent in front of him no matter what the cost. A selfless wish.
A Wish it was all too eager to grant.
With a soft glow, the Sheath found a new place to call home. It wrapped the strangely pure soul in a warm embrace.
It was strange, the soul was clean, not a whisk of thought, flowing through it. Something else lay within however, something much more familiar. It was weak, lonely, tired and hungry. It was innocent,
Avalon brought them both together, in its presence, all were equally innocent. All were lost children that needed a parent's warm embrace. One was white, a pure soul that has never seen anything yet. The other was dark, having seen too much for too long. They both longed for comfort.
Avalon gave them the comfort they needed.
Avalon gave them each other.
That was how, the Ever Distant Utopia let its doors open up for the first time to The Peerless Blade, The Twisted Child.
