Prologue: I Am
— o.0.O.O.0.o —

Emiya Shirou was not stupid.

He wasn't as smart or as clever as Tousaka Rin, no, and compared to her, he was a naive simpleton, but that just meant that he might need to be told something two or three times before it really stuck. It also meant that what Tousaka had told him about Servants was never really forgotten, even if he didn't think of it every second of every day, because she had drilled it into his head enough for it to stick.

So Shirou wasn't surprised, as the sun rose and the bright light of the dawn became almost blinding, that when he blinked and his eyes adjusted to the sunrise, Saber was gone. Even though he had almost come to hope that she might stay, even though she had been so warm and so real that he had almost forgotten that she was a Servant, a miracle that appeared and disappeared like lightning, he was not surprised to find she had vanished. At the touch of a stiff breeze, even the grass that had bent beneath her feet straightened and removed the last physical sign of her presence.

She had returned to that hill — was, even now, telling Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the lake.

A bittersweet smile curled on Shirou's lips.

"That's just like you."

She was gone, and it felt almost like his heart had been carved from his chest — but that was okay. She might have taken everything of him with her, but she had left everything of herself with him, and he would carry that for the rest of his life.

But she was gone. There was nothing else he could do for her, now. He needed to stop moping and take care of those still left — of Ilya and Tousaka.

"Right," Shirou told himself with a nod. "No more messing around."

He turned on his heel towards Ilya, but couldn't stop himself from pausing and glancing back one last time to the spot where Saber had been standing. Only the gold light of the dawn shone back at him, and he forced himself to look away, to focus on the little girl who lay, naked, on the ground — no more distractions.

"I need to go back."

Shirou took one step, then two, but on the third, the ground beneath him shook suddenly, and he stumbled.

"What?"

The destroyed mountain rumbled like a volcano about to blow, and the trees quivered, leaves shimmering in the sunlight. Every tremble vibrated up through Shirou's shoes and into his legs, and it was so violent that he nearly tumbled sideways and into the dirt. It felt as though the world itself were being shorn apart.

"What the —"

And then, then, it came. The putrid air, like the breath of a waking giant, that had been swept away by Excalibur radiated upwards like heat from a bonfire. The sticky, mana-filled aura pressed down and in from all sides, pushing against him, and as his mind raced and tried to understand what was happening, that was when it finally appeared.

Seething up through the ground, bubbling and boiling through the cracks in the earth, there was a black tar. Low pops, barely audible, crackled and snapped all around him, and the foul stench of decay invaded his nose sharply.

Shirou's heart skipped a beat.

No. It wasn't possible. Saber had just —

The black sludge seeped like oil through the dirt, and everything it touched caught ablaze. The green grass withered and shriveled and turned to ash, and the trees with their shimmering leaves splintered and wilted as the life was drained away — no, as their existence was denied, rejected —

Cursed.

Shirou took a reflexive step back. A bead of sweat curled down his face, and he grimaced, a nasty feeling coiling in his belly.

"Ilya!" he called, looking around, but Ilya didn't answer him, and the heat from the flames distorted everything into vague blobs of black-brown-green. That first bead of sweat had become a torrent, and the fire sucked away all the oxygen in the air, making it hard to breathe. The sweltering warmth was oppressive and overwhelming — and it was familiar.

Rape.

Murder.

Fratricide.

Patricide.

Genocide.

The starting penalty is five.

He knew this feeling, the cloying breath of darkness. He knew this fire. The flames around him were old friends — old enemies — and he welcomed them — he rejected them.

This was the blaze that had forged Emiya Shirou.

If it spread, if it made its way into the city...

Everyone would die. Everyone.

He couldn't allow that. Emiya Shirou could not accept that future.

But no matter what he thought of, nothing seemed adequate. In the first place, if even Excalibur wasn't enough to destroy it, then what hope was there for any of the other weapons he could think of? What use were the treasures he had seen used by Gilgamesh? What use was Gae Bolg or the Married Blades?

Shirou took another step back. In front of him, where the concentration of mud was thickest, a vaguely humanoid shape, like a silhouette without arms or legs, began to take shape. First one eye, then a second, then two more, formed, and the disgusting parody of a human being split beneath the eyes into an unnaturally broad grin, complete with jagged, shark-like teeth.

Angra Mainyu. All the World's Evils. The tainted Holy Grail.

...He had no choice, then. As Emiya Shirou, there was nothing else for him to do.

"Sorry, Ilya," he said to the girl who had been lost among the flames. She was likely already gone.

"Sorry, Tousaka," he said to the girl who lay, half-dead, on his living room floor, half the city away, "but it looks like I won't be coming back."

He started up the process.

In the back of his head, the hammer of a pistol cocked back and fired, and the magic circuits turned on, flooding with Prana.

"Trace, on."

He had known, somewhere in the back of his head, that he couldn't do this. He had known, somewhere in the back of his head, where he never acknowledged it consciously, that this one projection was beyond his abilities. With the same certainty that ordinary men knew being struck by lightning would mean death, Shirou knew that this projection was not something that could be done.

It would destroy him.

If he completed it, then it would burn him away, too, and there would be nothing left of him afterwards.

To begin with, something so divine was not something that could be forged or reforged by human hands.

Emiya Shirou was only human.

But even knowing that it would kill him as well, he started it up anyway. He reached into himself and imagined that golden radiance, the greatest of holy swords, and constructed the blueprint as much as he could. There were pieces missing, whole sections that he had to adlib because he didn't know the proper structure, and if he compared it to the original, it could only have appeared as what it was — a poor imitation, a superficial semblance.

But even as a fraction, a fragment, a fragment of a fragment, it was still the most powerful weapon he had ever seen. Even the treasures in the Gate of Babylon had paled in comparison.

Shirou's magic circuits strained, and the magical energy surging through them ran wild and ravaged him as he poured as much as he could into constructing the blueprint he'd imagined. His body turned hot, as hot as the flames around him, and his brain began to sizzle in his head as he did the first thing Rin had taught him not to do: he performed magecraft beyond his capabilities.

In his hand, the frame that would form his projection began to take shape.

With the sword he was about to create, he would destroy the Grail, the tainted mud that was boiling around him. There would be nothing left — not even Emiya Shirou.

But the mouth was not perturbed. Angra Mainyu did not flinch or shy away. Instead, the wide grin only grew wider, and with his brain burning under the stress of creating something he was not able to create, he could not understand why.

He was about to destroy it.

He was about to deal the finishing blow, save the city, save humanity, at the cost of his own life. But Angra Mainyu was not at all threatened.

Why was that?

The mouth opened wide, dribbling black ooze past its teeth and down its lipless face.

"Your wish," the mouth said in a high-pitched, gurgling voice, "shall be granted."

The mud surged. Tendrils of black ichor lashed out at him from all sides. Shirou dodged, throwing himself out of the way as he held desperately to the image he was trying to force into the world, but when he landed, it was in the malevolent tar. The instant his foot touched back down, splashing in the oozing darkness, the mud leapt up and wound tight about his foot and leg.

He was caught.

"Guh —"

More tendrils came, and more, and more, wrapping around his legs and arms and binding him in place as the bubbling, frothing curses climbed with deceptive quickness up his body. There was no escape — in moments, it had reached his chest, and then his head, and every place it touched was seared through like the touch of a cattle prod. His clothing evaporated like water in the desert, and then it was just his skin. He could hear it sizzling.

It burned.

It burned.

It burned.

Wherever the mud touched, his skin burned and blistered and was boiled down to the bone. His very marrow was set alight, and with every blob of mud that fell onto his skin, a thousand curses were placed upon him.

Die, they all said.

Die, die, die.

Die, Die, Die.

DieDieDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE —

He was going to die.

Shirou screamed as everything that was Emiya Shirou began to burn. An endless stream of curses was laid upon him, and his brain couldn't process anything other than the agony of every part of him, body and soul, being set alight and left to shrivel in the blaze.

In his hand, the image of Excalibur had already vanished, shattered into motes of light — but he was beyond noticing, beyond caring. His brain couldn't focus on something so unimportant when he was burning, when —

He was going to die.

The blackness of the mud that covered every part of him started to give way to the blackness of unconsciousness. The wires in his brain started to short circuit under the stress of the agony his body was in.

It was only natural. The mind could only take so much before the lights turned off. There was a limit, a threshold that triggered an automatic shutdown when passed.

He was going to die.

Emiya Shirou was being burned out. Everything that made Emiya Shirou was being burned away. Emiya Shirou's body was being burned. Emiya Shirou's mind was being burned. Emiya Shirou's soul was being burned. In the end, there would be nothing left of Emiya Shirou.

As he had been in that fire, in that —

Hell.

Shirou's eyes snapped open, even though they had been burned away in the mud.

That's right. Emiya Shirou had been forged in that fire. Emiya Shirou had been forged in the flames of that catastrophe. On that day, Emiya Shirou was born. On that day, Emiya Shirou was created. From that day forward, Emiya Shirou was —

Emiya Shirou was —

Shirou lifted his right arm, held to his body by bone, half-burned sinew, and nearly-gone muscle. He reached out, screaming with lungs filled with blood and black mud, screaming with a throat that had already been burned raw, screaming a wordless cry that didn't even make it past his lips. He reached for that distant star, the star that he had been chasing since that night Kiritsugu died.

The sound of gnashing blades filled his ears.

Emiya Shirou was —

— tHe BoNE oF mY SWoRd.

His fist closed around that star, around the distant dream that existed in his heart.

Emiya Shirou was —

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

To be continued

Disclaimer: I don't own Fate/Stay Night.

Hello, again.

So, this should look at least somewhat familiar to some of you. For those who are new to this entire thing, welcome. Either way, I'll start us off by clarifying this: yes, this is a rehash of Fate/Revenant Sword.

To begin with, I started writing Fate/Revenant Sword back when I first got into the Nasuverse. I was as green as a leaf in Spring, and my understanding of the mechanics was very, very limited. In other words, I didn't really have much idea what I was doing, and I've matured both as a writer and in my understanding of Nasuverse since then.

That brings us to this story. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things I loved about Revenant Sword, and there will be several spots that are either very similar or bear some resemblance to parts in the original; a few things, especially early on, will be recycled. On the other hand, I'm determined to somehow mesh important aspects of all three routes into this story, and do it much better than I did the first time. We'll see if I succeed.

To give you an idea, we'll be working through a very skewed version of Heaven's Feel route, with a Fate route romance. That's gonna be hard to manage, but if I do it right, incredibly awesome.

However, there were also things I hated about Revenant Sword, the biggest of which is that sword I gave Shirou; by inches, it became necessary, and though Revenant Shirou is probably the most powerful Shirou ever imagined (next to A Different Path Shirou, who is a Type, and thereby literally invincible), I've really come to despise that monstrosity I created for him. So I plotted out this and invented another monstrosity of a much weaker type.

As always, read, review, and enjoy.