I managed to get this first chapter to a decent stopping point, so I decided to post it up while I have the time.

If you're not familiar with Fate/Stay Night and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the Nasuverse, you might have a little difficulty understanding at first. If you plan to look it up later, I suggest you do so, because this story will have a lot of spoilers. I'll answer any questions about the setting, and I fully plan to have a few long explanations in a chapter or two, but quite a bit of this story will include spoilers. I'll do what I can to avoid spoiling the plot, but at the very least, Saber's identity will be exposed next chapter (for those who don't already know it).

Okay, I'll go into the backstory a bit. There'll be a flashback chapter later, but I'll explain a bit now. There are only a few changes to most of the story. Lily stole Avalon from the Department of Mysteries and implanted into Harry to save him from Voldemort. Harry was sent to the Dursleys, and, up until about age 5, everything went as it did in canon, though I decided to make the abuse a bit more pronounced. He accidentally summoned a Servant while wishing for a friend. I'm going into more detail next chapter, which should be up within the next week and a half, or so.

On the FSN side, everything went as it did in canon up until the third War. After Angra Mainyu was absorbed into the Grail, the Holy Grail War was discontinued, but the Grail was never destroyed. It continued to function, gathering more and more energy as time went on. Now, it seeks to begin a Grail War on its own, trying to have the opportunity to unleash its full power.

Please send a review or message if you don't understand. If I get too many of those, I'll rewrite the whole thing. I have another, more description-heavy version that, with a bit of editing and rewriting, could probably be posted, so it wouldn't take long.

I hope you enjoy!

The noble smirked as he walked down the street. He wasn't worried about being attacked, despite his expensive clothing. Even with his magic, he wouldn't have dared walk down these less reputable streets this late at night. However, he now had his new bodyguard. He'd been toying with his rare trinkets, wishing for a competent servant, when one had appeared.

He smirked as he glanced down at the two strange glowing marks on his hand. He'd used one of his three to enforce obedience on the man. Suddenly, he felt someone grab him and pull him back. He instinctively knew it was his Servant. A stroke of emerald lightning passed through the place he had been standing.

He drew his wand out, biding his servant to attack the young man. The armored man materialized, holding his spear. He thrust his spear forward, a second spear shooting out of the tip and flying towards a cloaked figure. The figure's hand crackled with emerald lightning, before a bolt lanced out, striking the spear from the air. His cloak snapped out, managing to snap a second spear out of the air, revealing a black haired young man. He raced forward, moving incredibly quickly. He began to panic.

"Lancer! Kill him! Do your job, Servant!"

The spear-wielding man drew back his lance, light glowing at the tip. A volley of spears shot from the lance tip as he thrust it forward, two dozen racing towards the boy. Then, the young man said something that sent a shiver of fear racing through him.

"Saber!" He called, proving that this was more than just some random magus. A hammer of wind fell from above, splintering the spears.

He stared at the boy's eyes, which he caught sight of as the boy called his Servant. They were a crackling emerald, a hint of light radiating from them. The man felt an inexplicable fear as he stared into the boy's eyes. There was something unnatural, something inhuman, about the boy.

Harry smirked as he charged towards the man. He raised his wand and fired off a trio of spells, slower than most of his previous wand using enemies. Harry didn't even slow down, lightning arcing from his body to intercept and absorb each spell. It would take more than a few simple spells to pierce his defense.

He saw the man gathering light at his wand tip, and struck. Emerald lightning erupted from each of Harry's fingertips, five bolts exploding towards the other wizard. The man threw up a shield, only to gasp as Harry's lightning consumed his charm. He barely managed to escape the attack.

Harry didn't let up. First, he fired off another barrage of lightning, staggering the shots to make them harder to avoid. The man used some spell to accelerate his movement, to try and get closer to end the fight. It was a good idea, as Harry's attacks had a longer range than most spells, but those spells were very hard on the body. The younger man formed a blade of lightning in his right hand. With barely any effort, he intercepted the man's return spell, a black wrapped red jet he quickly recognized as a blood-burning curse.

"My heart was born… in light!" Harry murmured, the first line of the aria that defined his soul resonating through his very being. With that sentence still omnipresent within him, he deployed his Reality Marble. With all of the circuits that he'd lost summoning Saber all those years ago, actually attempting to bring his perceived reality into the world would be next to impossible. Instead, he deployed it within his own body.

Underneath his very flesh, lightning replaced blood. Bone and muscle were engulfed and consumed by the crackling energies that made up his internal world. Time seemed to slow as his perceptions were accelerated. He shot forward, his body so much faster than his opponent that it was as if the older man were barely moving at all. Harry's hand ripped through his chest, piercing his heart. At his touch, lightning burst forth, burning at everything around his hand. The man's entire midsection was almost black with burns.

Harry's left hand closed around the man's right hand, incinerating the wand he held. He released his Marble. He would need all of the power at his disposal for this. Without the ability to perform more normal magic, he was incapable of performing the normal form of psychic surgery that was needed for this process. Instead, he was forced to rely on one of the aspects of his Marble, forcing the effect he wanted through power. Emerald energies poured forth from Harry's hand, still clasped around that of the man. His death scream grew even louder as the power tore into his own, ripping at the connection between him and his Command Seals. Harry's own circuits burned as he powered through all of the man's magic, in order to tear away the holy marks. Finally, he felt the burning energy sear through the magic that connected the man to his command seals.

A moment later, it was all over. His Sigils were now burned into Harry's own hand, having sought out a new home when they'd been severed from their old master. He sighed as he glanced down at the man, before he checked his marks. Eight now. The man had used one already? He'd only had his Servant one day! Harry supposed that testing it might have been plausible, but still! Wasting one of three holy marks on the first day? Harry shook his head. He didn't have time to worry about it right now.

He looked over at Saber, who was still in combat with the Lancer. Servants always took a minute or two to vanish after their Master was killed. More, sometimes, depending on their rank of Independent Action. Lancers usually had D's or C's. It was very rare for a non-Archer to have a B or higher. They could last hours, up to a day, with a C. Far too much time to risk.

Saber was easily the better fighter, her invisible weapon easily outmaneuvering the Lancer's replicating weapon. It was an interesting Phantasm, but not one that had any chance at matching Saber. Not unless he had something else up his sleeve. Harry refused to take that risk. A stream of emerald light erupted from Harry fingertips, slashing into the man's back, before stretching out to form a solid dome of emerald light. The man cursed as he felt his prana evaporate. Harry watched as Saber shattered the spear that the man was holding. He lunged for one of the unbroken lances that was buried in the ground, just within the dome.

The holy sword, wreathed in wind, plunged into the man's back, impaling him to the ground. She looked down at him, with a note of slight apology in her eyes, before she crushed the pity. She couldn't afford it. Neither of them could.

Neither of the two liked having to seek out and destroy any Masters or Servants that they could find, but they had no choice. The Grail would be the death of millions, or even billions of people. They had proof that it was corrupted beyond repair, possessed by a spirit of an entity that embodied the sins of humanity. There was no wish that could be made that would not be twisted until it would kill as many people as possible. With all the power that had been built up over the years, the effects would engulf the entire planet.

Harry looked at Saber and frowned. He only had access to half of his circuits, but the other half still burned with power. He had been born with seventy three of them, more magical circuits than most families ever had. His screwed up summoning had split his circuits between him and Saber. He felt the connection stretching further apart.

There was a reason he salvaged the Command seals from other Masters. He looked at Saber, who frowned as she looked down at herself. The connection between the Grail and the world was strongest at the point where a Servant was slain. The Grail reabsorbed what power it could, though, without having summoned a full complement of seven Servants, it couldn't use the fallen souls to charge its true purpose.

However, whenever it reached out to reclaim the Heroic Spirit's energies, it reached for Saber as well. Somehow, it seemed that the sentience of the entity possessing the Grail had spread to the artifact itself, and it recognized that Harry and his Saber were resisting it, so it tried to consume her.

Harry raised his hand, one of the eight marks burning brightly. Saber smiled at him, before kneeling, like a knight before her king. "Saber," He whispered her true name, knowing that the declaration of it would provide a small enhancement to the power of the Command Seal. "Stay with me. Remain as my Servant." He ordered, the mark fading to a dull gray as it was expended.

"Always, Master." She smiled.

Not even two days after the two of them made it back to the hotel they were staying in, Harry felt a pulse in the back of his mind. He sighed and extended a hand. He reached into the small pouch at his side. It was enchanted to be bottomless, allowing him access to the things he needed to carry. The pouch was actually a relic of incredible value, one he'd managed to take from one of their earliest enemies. It was slightly out of phase from reality, following its owner wherever they went. It was completely untouchable, until the user wanted to access it. Thankfully, that included even his Reality Marble, although he probably could bypass that property and destroy it if he needed to.

He drew out a rolled up sheet of parchment. It was bound with a ribbon that seemed to be a perfect circle, with a single gemstone. He twisted the gem, causing the ribbon to vanish, and unfurled it. The board was something he'd managed to steal from the old Fuyuki City church in Japan. Considering the fact that the official Holy Grail War had been cancelled over a hundred years earlier, it hadn't really been missed. It had taken a rather sizable amount of money for him to get a friend of his to alter the scale of the enchantments on it.

Where once the map had been used by the officiator of the War to monitor the city, it was now his tool to locate any Servants that popped up. It was a rather unique piece, made custom by the Church to monitor the Holy Grail War. It was extremely useful, both as a normal map, since it updated itself whenever it was opened, and as a tracking system. Much like the mundane Global Positioning System, the map could lock in on a Servant's location, tracking them. Unfortunately, Masters were much harder to track.

The gemstone was a new addition. It linked the map to him, sending a small ringing through his mind whenever a new addition appeared on the map. He took careful note of where he saw where the map was detecting Servant activity. It was a small island, in the middle of nowhere. With the inherent ability of a Master to discern the Class and abilities of even opposing Servants, he knew that it was an Assassin class.

Assassins were the second or third most annoying class to fight. Casters were the worst, since they always had some annoying ability that made killing them a pain. Berserkers just tended to be hard to get rid of. But Assassins earned a special place in his heart, since they were not only the hardest to find, but they were summoned the most often. Considering the qualities of the entity called Hassan-i Sabbah, the servant that was almost always called forth as an Assassin, there were hundreds of objects that might be a catalyst for their summoning.

Hassan was a title, given to the greatest Assassins throughout time, making it rather obvious why they were always summoned. Due to that very nature, Hassan often had the ability to split him or herself into numerous bodies, each with its own skill set and specializations. Obviously, the need to eradicate all of them made it quite difficult. Even if the summoned servant didn't have the ability to divide into multiple bodies, it was still rather irritating. Of course, Hassan was only the most likely option. There were dozens of Assassins throughout history that were skilled enough to earn a spot in the Throne of Heroes.

The Grail sought out Masters wherever it could. Nowadays, since the details of the summoning ritual were basically lost, the Grail tried to lock onto artifacts. Usually, a true Noble Phantasm would be found maybe twice a year, resulting in the instantaneous summoning of a Servant, once the most compatible potential Master got close enough. Of course, simple objects owned, or even touched, by a Heroic Spirit in life were often enough. Those happened at least once every two months, sometimes as many as four per month. The Grail did anything it could to summon as many Servants as possible.

Two summonings in three days was absolutely absurd. However, the Grail seemed to grow stronger the closer it got to Halloween, one of the most magically potent days of the year. Since it was just one month until the anniversary of his parents' deaths, the Grail was just reaching its peak.

He rolled the map up, before pressing the gem to it. The ribbon reformed around it, sealing it, before he returned it to the pouch.

He sighed, before going and notifying Saber. She'd be pleased, if only because it meant that she got to fly that small plane he'd bought her.

Well, there's the first chapter. A bit shorter than my usual length, but its more of a prologue than anything else. I hope it made sense to everyone. If not, PLEASE let me know, and I'll go back through it.

It was very Harry centric, though future chapters will focus on both of them.

I think I remember reading about a map or something that the observer used to monitor the war, but I couldn't remember what it was called, and I couldn't find anything about it on the wiki.

I tried to make it clear enough to understand at least most of what's going on, even if you know nothing about the FSN world. It should be a lot easier to understand as more is released.

If anyone has any Servant suggestions, please let me know. I have a list of actual canon Servants picked out, but if anyone comes up with something better, I might change it. For reference, I'm really looking for a better Berserker. At the moment, I'm using Spartacus (from the Fate/Apocrypha wiki page). If you pick a hero, I want skills and at least one Noble Phantasm as well. I can come up with the stats, but I need a written description. I'm not really happy with Spartacus' Noble Phantasm, so if someone comes up with a better Berserker, let me know. I'm not super pleased with my choice of Caster either, so if someone comes up with a better one, I might change my plans.

Anyway, even if you don't have any questions, please let me know what you think. The more reviews I get for this, the faster I'll update it. I try to update everything, but I tend to favor stories with more reader input.