Chapter 13: Appraisal
[Prepare for appraisal…]
Shirou's consciousness was adrift in a void of endless darkness and twinkling stars. Countless motes of light shone out against a backdrop of pure blackness, and each one was tethered to others by strands of silver light.
The burning flecks of light threaded and wove together and through one another in a vast incomprehensibly complex network that seemed to pulse and flicker as Shirou's bodiless sight lingered on it. His memories were fragmented still but the sight above and around him looked so very much like a gargantuan neural network humming and pulsing away in the emptiness.
The scale and weight of the lights around him should have been awe inspiring and completely dominated his vision. After all, whatever sight he was seeing them with wasn't limited by distance and laid the cosmic scale of it all out clear to see.
Yet instead of feeling awe at the sight of the great woven web of starflame, the sight of the creeping black emptiness surrounding it all that stood out most.
The space around Shirou was not the normal emptiness one expects from space movies, sci-fi shows, or astronomy documentaries. The darkness serving as backdrop to this place had an expansiveness to it, a hunger to it that was only barely repelled by the shining lights. Even as it was pushed away there was a feeling of hunger to the black nothingness.
Even without a body to look at and feel, Shirou's mind felt a coldness begin to seep in as he drifted, the weight of the dark beginning to grow heavy.
[꒐ꃔꋖꌅꌈꀷ꒐ꃔꁅ Shirou Emiya, Your trial is over…]
After waiting and floating for an indeterminate time, words rang out into Shirou's mind from every corner of the emptiness he floated through.
The lights around seemed to flicker and pulse alongside the words as they rang out into his mind.
Their origin aside, and the strange first word notwithstanding, Shirou could absolutely confirm what they had said. Somehow, someway he'd… succeeded. His nightmare had ended and now he was being evaluated. Despite all his failure and the fact that he let everyone get killed, he had come out the other side alive.
The thought of that burned. The idea of those he had met in the nightmare all dying because of him lodged itself into his mind like an anvil of lead, dragging his thoughts down into a spiral.
The spell's announcement cared nothing for his turmoil though and instead continued to monotonously ring out into the empty ether.
[A soldier fated to die defied all sense and vanquished his foes. Through an act of callous mercy he sowed the seeds for the destruction of his people. The soldier fought beasts and men far beyond his station with valor, courage, and strength, yet in the end it all proved for naught. He led Death to a people fated to survive, and through their deaths a path was laid bare for a blazing Empire to slaughter millions.]
[You have defeated forty five Dormant Beasts, Juvenile Guardian Wolf]
[You have defeated an Awakened Demon, Adolescent Guardian Wolf]
[You have defeated one hundred and seven Dormant Beasts, Juvenile Sand crawler]
[You have defeated one hundred and ninety Dormant Humans, names unknown]
[You have defeated thirty seven Awakened Humans, names unknown]
[You have defeated an Ascended Human, Titus: Honorguard of the Sundom]
[Your actions overturned the fate of a world and cleared the path to set fire to a billion souls.]
[Final Appraisal: Vile... You are truly destined to destroy all you touch…]
Shirou felt his heart crumbling to pieces with every word that pounded into his mind. He wanted to call up some rebuttal, some refusal to challenge the words he was hearing. But his mind did not have the firmness to defend him. His mind too weighed down with guilt to do anything other than echo out the words being poured onto him.
He drifted in the nothingness between the stars as the words continued, droning on with a cold monotony as they read out deeds and tragedy that had been reduced down to a programmatic summary.
[ꌈꃔꅐꁲꃔꋖꑀꀷ Shirou Emiya, receive your boon…]
Despite their content, and the clear disdain towards him, the spell's words still spoke of the rewards for his trial. True to the words that Shirou faintly recalled from the waking world, it seemed that there was no wrong answer in a nightmare so long as you made it to the other side alive.
Even if he had caused the deaths of every remotely kind person he had met, it seemed that counted as "ending the conflict".
In a cruel way of looking at things a numb part of Shirou's mind could understand it. From the detached perspective of a god or automated system, things like morals and ethics may well render down to nothingness in the grand scheme of things.
[A true name has been imprinted onto you: The Question Asked]
Shirou couldn't make out the meaning of such a name.
He recalled learning with Rin that gaining a true name was a mark of prestige among Awakened, something that most would not receive. The scant few papers and articles they had read didn't provide any information on the criteria that governed gaining one or not but it was consistent about gaining a [True Name] being something important.
The rarity of it aside though, the content of the name was so strange that Shirou was at a loss reading it. The words themselves weren't odd, nothing like the strange characters or question marks that the spell had thrown his way before, yet that didn't mean it made sense.
What does a name like "The Question Asked" even mean? Was it some ironic joke born from his own confusion and distress? Did the system driving the Spell even have the capacity for humor?
Was there meant to be some kind of deeper meaning to it that he couldn't grasp at yet and would come to know in the future?
[The core of your soul has been analyzed. Your Aspect has been extracted and integrated.]
[Aspect Name: Archive of ?????]
[Aspect Rank: ꊿꌈꋖꑀꌅ]
[Aspect Description: Your soul exists as a monument to human endeavors and a temple of heroes past. It serves as a resting place, armory, forge, and foundation for what will come.]
Shirou's musing on his true name didn't last once the next portion of the spells words echoed out in his thoughts and he took in the next round of strangeness before him.
He recalled enough about aspects to know that they were the central most core part of an Awakened person and served to shape all the other abilities they would gain as they delved further up the ranks of awakening. Hard line for line examples were hard to find, outside of some cases of vain idiots or altruistic types willingly publishing everything about themselves.
Using what few examples he had as a baseline to compare against though left Shirou at a loss. First nightmare aspects may have been the most documented and all tended to be rather simple, even those aspects people shared were only marginally more detailed. Oftentimes they would still be worded rather simply and have a moderate rank associated with them, usually [Awakened] or [Ascended].
They were nothing at all like the cryptic and esoteric runes that floated in front of Shirou now, holding a rank he couldn't read and a name that was completely obscured.
Shirou's Aspect Name provided nothing meaningful, simply Archive of something that he couldn't see. The space left behind was filled with very literal question marks which made it impossible to even attempt to figure out what it said. He couldn't make any sense of it yet the fact that question marks were used again made it seem related to his strange [Attributes].
The Aspect Rank was just as inscrutable as the descriptions the spell had been laying on him thus far. A strange set of characters that he felt frustrated he couldn't understand and whose meaning was lost on him. This particular arrangement of them was at least different from those that marked his own current rank, but whether that meant his aspect was at a higher rank than him, or lower, or maybe entirely unrelated was a complete mystery to him.
The rest of the words in his actual aspect description were at least fully legible but their content didn't make them any easier to understand. The description sounded decidedly grand and impressive but didn't provide any real explanation of what it all meant.
[Innate Ability: Unlimited Bladeworks]
[Ability Description: As the armory of your soul grows, the potency of its forge grows as well. With time its contents may become the chronicle of an entire world.]
No further time was afforded for Shirou to contemplate his aspect as the spell began to describe an innate ability his aspect would grant him.
According to what he had learned his aspect would shape all of the abilities he would ever gain but the first such ability was supposed to be an aspect ability, not something called an Innate ability. There wasn't any mention of something like that in any of the records he and Rin had found and the description said ability provided didn't make things any clearer.
All that really stood out to him was the repeated mention of armories and forges which at least hinted to something. The apparent task that this ability put before him to arm his soul and gather or forge more weapons for it was also not something Shirou was against. In fact the more he allowed his mind to linger on the image of using a hammer and anvil to create something, the more he felt a sense of warmth well up inside his heart.
There was something about that concept that felt like home to him.
Shirou's musing on the spell's words ended at that though, as the space he found himself in began to change.
The world of creeping darkness and flickering lights he bodilessly floated through began to fall away as sensation returned to him.
Rather than simply a mind adrift, Shirou became aware of the edges of his fingers and toes once again. Then his arms and legs took form again and soon he was fully aware of himself as he drifted.
The gravity defying sensation of floating and flailing his limbs around didn't last long before he felt his feet gently land on something solid. Turning his sight down Shirou saw that he was no longer in the body of Ozen and instead back to his familiar red headed self.
Or at least he was mostly back to his old self. He had gained some surprising new markings along his arms and legs which looked like bizarrely thin black scars. Each one looked like a precise blowtorch had been taken along his skin and left behind a trail of char, yet other than discoloration there didn't appear to be any other damage. In fact it not for the slightly different texture of his skin Shirou would have thought that the lines were tattoos rather than wounds.
They were thankfully not fragile or bleeding and did not yield when Shirou poked them though they did seem particularly sensitive. Even touching one of the scars sent a small spike of pain through Shirou's arm.
Everything else about Shirou's body seemed to be in order though, which was enough to turn Shirou's attention to the place he was now standing.
His feet were planted on a small patch of land amidst the emptiness that was expanding with every passing second. More and more the empty astral space Shirou had been standing in was broken down and gave way to more of the same landscape he now stood on. An seemingly endless expanse of grey ash took form around Shirou and as it did a sky took shape above him as well.
In place of the endless black was an expanding skyline held in a perpetual sunset. The light from some distant unseen sun painted the sky a faint purple only broken up by pockets of dense black clouds. As the newly formed sky took shape and banished the last of the astral plane Shirou had been in, he felt a wind begin to pick up around him, scattering the ashes around him into a storm.
The winds picked up and kept rising yet before they could knock Shirou off his feet their strength plateaued and stabilized. It was hardly a reprieve though and forced Shirou to cover his eyes and brace his body against the stinging ash.
He had read about the concept of a soul sea among Awakened individuals, a metaphysical representation of their own souls that served to hold their [Soul Core] along with their [Memories] and [Echos]. Given all the spell already did, the idea of something like that wasn't too hard to grasp and what few descriptions existed were all varied enough that Shirou wouldn't have normally worried.
Except for the fact that all the accounts were universal regarding the presence of water in the soul sea.
It was a universal enough feature that it inspired the very name for it and yet Shirou found himself somewhere that seemed as far from the idea of water as a person could get.
It was as he was trawling his mind for any other possible answer for what this place could be that Shirou felt the faintest glimmer of warmth bearing down on him, and turned his shielded eyes upward. In the eye of the raging storm that swallowed this world, above him at a distance that he couldn't properly grasp, was a burning sphere.
The size of the thing was hard to make out, as it was either a massive object hundreds of meters in the air, or a planetary object thousands of meters in the sky. Differentiating the two options by sight left Shirou's eyes throbbing and trying to rely on visual queues from the ash storm did nothing either. It sat unmoving above him in the sky despite squinting and trying to shift his eyes, Shirou couldn't tell if it was miles above him or hundreds of meters. When he tried to run across the ashes away from it and looked back up again he found the sphere, and the storm around it, still perfectly centered above him.
Without a gauge for size or distance ,the only thing he could reliably use to judge it was what percent of his field of view that it dominated when he stared up at it. If he was forced to guess what it was now then it seemed to block as much of his sight as a basketball held at arms length from his eyes. A small thing if it was close, and yet truly massive if it was actually far off.Even without the ability to truly determine its size and position though Shirou could judge its appearance.
Its surface was wreathed in the kind of heat haze seen on a highway in the summer, and yet the intensity of it was magnitudes greater. It was hard to compare the sight to any heats Shirou recalled seeing, as all those of enough intensity would also be wrapped in dancing flames. A wildfire or bonfire no doubt distorts more air but the shifting flames would do even more.
The sphere above was not wreathed in fire though, no dancing flames or tongues of fire rose up and instead all that escaped its surface was heat.
The surface itself was a bizarre sight as well. Molten magma churned and roiled beneath a writhing and spinning network of blindingly fast golden chains. The golden streamers snaked and arced their way across the sphere, shifting in patterns Shirou couldn't perceive as they worked to hold the core down tight.
Shirou stared up at what he was increasingly certain was his soul core, feeling his mind simply breath in the sight before him until the words of the spell echoed out once more.
[Lifting First Restriction…]
The runes lit up before his eyes yet still Shirou didn't tear his gaze away from what was above him.
Up in the sky something happened as the spell spoke. The tight and responsive network of gilded chains holding tight to the great sphere shuddered, before a portion of them crumbled away into golden sparks.
The sphere did not sit idle with the chains lost and rumbled before expanding, straining against the remaining threads that struggled to keep it down. Its size grew in the sky and began to dominate even more of Shirou's view, growing from the scale of a basketball to a beachball high above.
As it grew the remaining chains twisted and writhed to hold it back yet across the expanding orb gouts of flame rose free, and flows of magma escaped.
Just as it seemed that the sphere was gaining momentum and about to explode free, the force of the chains around it seemingly multiplied, as though some threshold was crossed and no more expansion could be permitted.
Every golden thread across its surface doubled then doubled once more and soon the ocean of flame was once again smothered by a sea of gold.
Yet before it was once more fully enclosed a great mound of liquid fire formed on the underside of the sphere. It bulged up forming a great hill even as the chains tightened down on it further and further. As it looked like the gold would press it all back down into shape, something moved from within the sphere and shot out of its surface.
A gleaming spike of steel pierced out from the bottom of the sphere punching through the golden threads and clearing a path to the molten light beneath.
A stream of golden magma surged out from the hole and flowed over the blade, even as the chain threads fought to wrap it all back inside the sphere. The threads were quick to pull the blade back inside and weave a patch over the hole in their containment, but not before a veritable waterfall of molten flame had escaped and flowed down to the ashes below.
Right on top of Shirou.
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He expected pain.
That would be the normal reaction from having a torrent of flaming plasma fall over someone and set them on fire. Instead of pain though, all Shirou felt was a warmth seeping through his body and soaking itself into him.
He lifted his arms to stare at his hands and saw the way the mass of golden magma clung to him, which on closer inspection actually seemed to be a mass of flame so dense it was more like a liquid.
The sight of the liquid fire was like nothing that came to shirou's mind. It would have seemed so much like magma or lava if it weren't for the fact that the color beneath was a gleaming golden rather than a dull red. Comparing it to magma also didn't capture how it flowed and moved, raining down from above not like the flaming tar of a conflagration but instead like blood, thicker than water but still free flowing.
Even blood didn't seem like the right way to describe the essence of the flaming fluid soaking itself into Shirou's body, the thought of referring to it as such plucking a sour note in Shirou's mind. Even as the golden flames it fueled continued to grow and burn, Shirou's mind felt compelled to try and capture the essence of what was bathing him, as though there was some truth he could find if he just looked at it properly.
The introspection on the flame did not last though. Up above the gap that had been formed was quickly closed, golden threads surging back up from within the sphere and wrapping around the blade to drag it back within. The hole shut and the waterfall of fire cut off, leaving what had fallen below to burn.
With the flow cut off the flames across his body began to simmer and burn more dimly, their otherworldly fuel supply severed. Despite that the fires were still burning, and as they did Shirou felt the heat and the light forcing itself into him, seeping into his body and into his mind.
As the fire wrapped around him Shirou let his eyes drift closed and felt the sensation of the fire on him. It seemed to lick across his body and press itself inside, moving along the same channels that would burn and ache when he drew on his [Reinforcement]. He could feel the fire moving through his body when he focussed, acting exactly like the energy he moved through himself when he fought, though carrying an infinitely more soothing feeling with it.
As the fire circulated through him Shirou not only was spared any of the pain he had begun growing used to in his nightmare, he had to actively fight to stay awake and standing from just how wonderful and pleasant the energy felt.
Across his body every aspect of himself was growing more, it was hard to name one single aspect that was changed since every part was improved. His hair gained a luster, and his skin imperceptively smoothed. His senses grew sharper even as his muscles and bones became that much more durable.
All of it, this refinement of the self occurred as Shirou stood wrapped by the fire, simply allowing it to burn.
Yet that calm changed when the flames licked his mind, and memories poured in.
Memories consumed Shirou's sight, memories he knew to be his own despite how little sense they made.
A memory of a city drowned in a sea of flame. Bodies on the ground writhed in pain as vile mud and black flames clung to them, twisting and violating them as equally as burning them. Warped voices cried out in agony, begging for someone to save them or put them out of their misery as the black mud held them down and dragged them into the ground.
Through it all a red headed child stumbled forward even as the mud and fire clung to him, burning away at all that he was. His eyes were empty of every thought, memory, or emotion all of it offered up to the flame as tinder and kindling to buy another few moment of existence. Even as the pain and weight dragging his small body down must have been unbearable the shield continued walking, held up by a desire to simply continue existing.
Even that desire was burned away by the flames eventually though, and the body collapsed face down in the rubble.
A memory of a man, crying tears of joy as the child opened his eyes, that man so happy that he had been able to save even one single life. He carried the child with him and soon adopted the empty vessel as his own.
He took the child in and raised him, trying to use his life to do something good to atone for past sins. Despite his desires the child learned of his past and clumsily sought to emulate him. After many attempts to curtail it, the man relented and taught the boy what little magecraft he knew.
The man sat under the moon, watching it drift through the sky as his son sat beside him. He passed on a fragile dream of heroism and breathed his final breath.
A memory of the boy walking through the halls of an elementary school. Ahead of him walked a black haired girl, popular among their class and surrounded by peers. The smile on her face seemed warm and approachable but also held a brittleness to it.
Rin always seemed odd to the boy, somehow giving off a sense that there was something more to her beyond the surface, just behind the perfect test scores and choreographed behaviors. But she didn't ever seem like she needed help with anything, and so as always he walked past her.
A memory of the boy sitting in a shed. In one hand he held a blade, a simple kitchen knife of no note, and in the other was nothing, his open palm held up.
The boy breathed deep, then clenched his eyes shut in pain. An arc of agony surged through his back as electric blue lines danced across the kitchen knife. Information poured into the child's mind as he held the blade, all the while an ethereal image of that same knife took shape in his empty hand.
The concept of its creation took root in his mind, the very idea of the blade taking shape. Then came hypothesizing its basic structure, the blade and tang all wrapped in a wooden handle. The materials of its construction were duplicated next, wood taking shape out of thin air and wrapping around a blade of steel. The child imitated the skill of its creation, shaping the blade with every bit of heat, force, and sharpening that had first made it. He considered its existence, and sympathized with all the years the knife had existed and been used, all the foods and objects it had been used to cut. He painted the blade with every moment of history the original had endured, every nick and scratch, every ill applied sharpening and every chip from a bone cut. And lastly he refined and excelled at every process in its creation, performing them all on the blade to levels that were beyond the talents of any normal person.
Within the child's hands were two knives, indistinguishable from each other to the eyes of anyone who sought to determine the truth. The child smiled through half lidded eyes beneath sweat soaked hair and looked down at his creation, his first successful act of [Tracing].
Shirou's consciousness was ripped back from the sea of memories he had been swimming through. The flames that had been covering him had burned hot and now were gone, all the radiant gilded fire once more securely wrapped in the sphere high above.
Despite the memories being over Shirou was still reeling on his feet. Everything that he had just seen, those weren't random images of someone else. Each one of them were memories of his own, of his past.
He had lived in Japan in Fuyuki city specifically. Kiritsuga Emiya had saved him from a terrible fire and then adopted him as his own and given Shirou his last name. Shirou had watched Kiritsuga live a life of pain and sickness before he quietly passed, trusting Shirou to carry on his dream of being a Hero of Justice to save everyone.
Shirou had known Rin since he was a child, both of them having gone to the same school together when they were children, which made the fact they were both now living in the North Quadrant Siege Capital even harder to explain.
And Shirou had known how to do unexplainable things even as a child. He had been taught magecraft by his father, a lineage of techniques and field of study that dated back thousands of years. And as he rolled that word around in his mind Shirou found it filling in gaps that had seemingly been gouged into his memories. Sentences that he and Rin had spoken that were filled with static grew clear in his mind.
[Manifesting aspect ability…]
[Aspect Ability: Spark of Creation]
[Ability Description: Weapons and objects manifested from your soul bear an uncommon weight. They are not so easily eroded or dissolved.]
Shirou paid the spell's resumed words little mind.
A distant part of his mind recalled that one's aspect ability was of great importance, the shape it took defining your place in the society among other [Awakened]. Combative abilities would let you press to the front and stand tall among others. Support abilities would be at a disadvantage unless you could find a cohort to stand beside you. Utility abilities would see you relegated to the back of the world working as a craftsman to support others. He knew that the details of it were important to understand and yet he didn't care now.
Shirou didn't bother contemplating whether his aspect would be combative or supportive, strong or weak, or the fact that the shape it took would dictate the rest of his life. The portion of his memories that he had just regained were far more important. Not to mention even if his aspect ability was useless, what he had learned from his memories would be more than enough for him to become strong enough to help people!
Instead of dwelling on his spell granted ability Shirou was practically high from the fact that he had been force fed a piece of his past. Not only were his memories not gone, they were just above him, held tight in that great core of light and likely ready to reclaim once he continued on his journey through the spell.
Even better than that though was the fact that he now knew why he had the compulsion to save everyone. He knew just how important it was to follow through with that desire in order to carry on the legacy of the man who saved him.
Shirou felt a kernel of righteousness in his heart. A vindication that the path he felt drawn to was the correct one. It was enough to leave him standing taller within the strange place he stood, and filled with a renewed desire to leave this first nightmare and carry on his father's dream of being a proper Hero of Justice!
[All power has a price…]
[You have received a Flaw…]
[Your Flaw is: Ending of the Dream]
[Flaw Description: Yours is a life that cannot be given away flippantly. You are unable to risk your life to save another.]
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