Eat Your Potatoes (Quiet Mix): Age of Mythology Collector's Edition OST
“Time Alter: Triple Accel”
This is perhaps the greatest wonder in the world to Kiritsugu. He's proud of what he's created from the fragments of his family's crest, but the real wonder is simply in using it. In the way the world acts when his perception is accelerated and nature cannot keep up. He doesn't need to move, doesn't want to move, just to watch the world go by. Watch the dust motes twirling slowly, slowly in the sunbeam pouring into his room.
Listen to the birdsong outside. Slowly, slowly, the notes play through the otherwise eerie quiet that this spell imparts, sounds twisted by the Bounded Field established in his body. Like waves crashing on the shore, a sound painfully familiar to him. He still remembers those earlier days.
Eventually (though he knows the sparrow can only have given a quick trill), the song dies away. It leaves two other sounds in its place: his breath, coming hard with the exercise of his magic, and the heartbeat which roars still in his ears. He knows that it is beating at three times the rate it should, but its pounding barely seems faster than its normal pace, as if he were on a light run, not pulling his body beyond its limits.
And limits there are. It's already been too long, and Kiritsugu releases his spell, gritting his teeth at the screaming pain as blood vessels struggle to cope with the corrections. He hates returning to normal speed, without the time to stare at all the little elements that make up the world, make up life itself. Sometimes he wishes he could just shut himself away and accelerate his perception forever, letting the world slowly, slowly pass him by in dancing motes of dust.
But there is work to do.
Glad To Be Gay – Tom Robinson (Live from the Secret Policeman's Ball)
It's too much.
It was difficult to accept that I was gay. But after I'd spent one too many nights thinking over a casual touch from Mitsuzuri, or Saegusa's sweet little crush, I'd come to terms with it. I don't think it's something my father would have approved of, but I remember his love for me above everything else, so I like to think he'd have come around.
Then not only did I find myself at the Clock Tower with the ancestral rival of the Tōsaka, but I started thinking about her in that way. Again, I went into denial for a time. I told myself it was just because I was spending too much time around her. I obviously had to beat the “stuck-up Finnish princess”, and that meant she was going to be on my mind a lot. Luvia was the one to shatter that little delusion by bluntly asking me if my “poorly-concealed blushing and stuttering” was reserved for her, or if I did it for all the girls. Whilst I stood there (probably blushing and stuttering), she stole a kiss. A quick one, but it stayed in my mind for the rest of the day.
Eventually, after various … miscommunications, which were not financial healthy for me and can't have been brilliant for her, we came to an understanding. We went on a date. And then another, and another and another. We kissed, we had sex and we made love. And for a short time, so short a time, we were blissfully happy.
But bliss is something that only comes from ignorance. And when that first rush had spent itself, that first wild whirlwind of love and desire, things became apparent to me. There were sneers in the hallways. Muttered little taunts as I went from one lecture to the next. People whom I'd thought were friends drew away, either because they were pressured into it or because they wanted to, because they thought I was somehow now disgusting. About half of the tutors were suddenly giving me lower marks for no good reason, or denying me lab time and equipment. If I went to ask them directly, their doors would be closed. A month ago, Luvia had to pull me away from the door of one of the Eulyphis staff, lest I smash it down with an unleashed topaz gem.
She's dealt with it quite well. Even if she dropped her absurd noblewoman act back in the time of our rivalry, when it had stopped aggravating me, she still holds all the poise of one born to a title. If her friends have abandoned her, that was their loss. If the teachers are unfair to her, it must be because they were jealous or inferior. The backwards morals of this place don't seem to affect her as she holds herself above it all.
I hate it. It seethes and bubbles below the surface, this constant, omnipresent, dislike. Nothing – quite – enough that I can take to some higher authority (and would they be any better?) I've tried to imitate her, tried to ignore it. Certainly, I think I managed to fool the rest. Perhaps I've even fooled Luvia for a while, but I don't think that can go on much longer.
So I'm giving up. I, Tōsaka Rin, who killed Herakles himself and stared him in the eye as his head grew back, cannot take this any more. At school I did my best to be the best, because I wanted to excel. In battle, I've always been able to do something, to call on Archer's power or strike out with the years of magical energy stockpiled in my gems. But this, this makes me feel more helpless than any of the heroes that the Grail brought forth, more even than the false priest, my treacherous teacher who gutted me.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to Luvia and tell her that it's a mistake. She won't take it easily. I think it's more likely that she'll keep coming after me. I'll have to say harsh things, hurtful things, deny that I've ever felt what I felt, deny that I've ever been who I've been. And then I can get on with it, fulfil my potential as a mage. It's what I've wanted ever since I could talk, and I can't give it up now. I can't. Even if – for just a while, just a short while! – it means becoming part of that hateful crowd, cracking the anti-gay 'jokes'.
And I wonder ... how many of them are like me?
Another Place To Fall – KT Tunstall
“You know what you must do, Rin.” Archer's voice was emptier than she was used to, without its biting edge. If he had somehow been ready to criticise her still, if he had pushed her on again, to what a Master should do, she thought she would have hated him.
She hated him anyway. Hated him for changing like this on her, for pulling out another support from her world. (And how insane that he'd become such a support to her in barely a week). She'd hoped that Archer could do something, anything, to make this decision easier. If he'd niggled at her weakness, she could have struck back, falling into their routine. She might conceded to him, as she often had to, but there would have been comfort in it. (Oh, but if he had dared to say that wanting to spare Sakura was weak, how furious she would have been! Comfort and anger all at once!)
Instead, though, there was … acceptance … in him. That she knew the necessity of the choice, that she would act as she had to, that she would be a good mage for once. That this was one time where he might step aside and her own will would carry her through.
Couldn't he have kept it up? If he knew her enough to see that this was a line all her training as a mage demanded she not let Sakura cross, couldn't he see how much that training tore against her? Couldn't he give her just that little comfort of routine, that little familiarity, that little excuse?
But the silence wore on, and it didn't come. So Rin pushed herself up from the pew she'd been sitting at and stood. She turned her mind to crystal – cold, sharp, clear crystal – and turned just a little away from her Servant. (Her betrayer).
“I know.”
空と海の诗 (A Poem of Sea and Sky) – 5 Centimetres Per Second OST
The storm had passed, and it left beauty behind it.
The beauty was in proportion to the destruction it had wreaked along the way. Houses had been overturned, walls destroyed and trees uprooted.
Yet not one person had died. He had gained that power with a simple promise. Just once, everyone lived.
It was strange, and yet right. Emiya Shirō was a “sword”. He had seen his soul, seen it filled with weapons of death. He had drenched its parched ground with blood, and then found more swords to fill it up. The sky had darkened over time in there, and become choked with the smoke of a forge.
But this was a mission in which he had not been a “sword”, but a “superhero”. His soul had slumbered on within him. He didn't have to look at his perpetual hazy dusk or his forge-clouds over the desert hill.
And now, instead, he enjoyed the world which his soul so often abused. He tasted the salt in the air and smelled the seaweed on the beach. From a high cliff, he watched dawn creep over the horizon, its rosy fingers tinging the sky pink, and the still sea below blushing with the sun's rise.
And the grim warrior, wrought of iron, smiled.
Divine Intervention (No Choir) – Two Steps From Hell
We were afraid that day.
I don't think we had ever been afraid before. Arthur was blessed – everyone knew it – and he had the golden sword Caliburn whose touch no Saxon bastard survived. He was a warrior beyond compare and the Britons' greatest king since before Caesar had come.
But that day was the first battle after Caliburn had been shattered, and the new blade had a different look. It was plainer than Caliburn, its traceries of gold less elaborate, its hilt undecorated with Caliburn's shining red gems. Magical without a doubt; even if it was rare for chieftains and warlords to carry weapons of power any more, no king yet went into battle without them. But surely this one could not match up to the Golden Sword of Assured Victory?
So we stood there in our lines, facing the Saxon shield-wall across the valley and muttering to each other, and our fears growing by the minute. I think the sword was just something for us to focus on, looking back. We'd been waiting for two hours now, watching the sun creep over the sky. Neither side could afford to retreat and give up the land we were defending, but neither wanted to attack up a valley's slope. The stalemate dragged and dragged, far more than in any other battle I can remember. We'd had our fill of jeering and spitting at the invaders long ago, and now all that was left were the quiet mutters of nervous soldiers, wondering if Arthur could see us through this one.
Eventually, though, they'd had enough. The Saxons came on at us, dashing down their side of the valley and its floor. They were quick down there, too quick. Probably a spell of speed, something of the sort. There they reformed, pulling back into a steady formation that could stop the arrows and spears we were sure to be sending their way.
As it turned out, on that day their shields wouldn't have to face any such test. Instead, Arthur led his horse out in front of us, into the thirty yards or so which divided us from the slope's edge. He was small – he hadn't grown since Caliburn had left its stone sheath, and he seemed all the smaller when he dismounted.
But when he drew back that blade and let it shine, everyone there forgot about his size. He was holding a golden star in his hands, bright enough that it cast new shadows just as if the Sun had come down to that miserable valley.
And then he unleashed the light. It's not something I can really describe, because it wasn't something that came to your senses. There was a flash, to be sure, a column of light that cut through the hillside and then through the Saxons' front ranks. And I remember a roar, as if an ancient dragon approved of his strength and wanted to acknowledge it. But there was a feeling to it, beyond sight and sound, a feeling of power bursting out. It made even us tremble, and I'm sure any Saxon who survived would just about piss himself trying to talk about this.
Of course, they didn't survive. Arthur had cut the hillside in front of him for a reason. Even as their back ranks scrambled back, trampled over each other to reach the river and climb away, a landslide crashed over them, the hillside falling away to bury the whole lot. They screamed and they wept, but earth and stone have no mercy.
Ten thousand Saxons died that day, and no Briton but Arthur even had to raise a sword in anger. We bashed our shields in celebration, we cheered him, we sang his name to the high heavens. He sheathed his sword and mounted his horse again, and turned to us. He waved, acknowledging us, and the cheers doubled. But I could still see his face. It didn't change. Never changed from that stony expression he'd had when he'd gone out for the fight.
I wasn't the only one to see it that day. And in the days to come, more and more saw beyond our king and saw a man whose face and whose heart were made from stone.
幻 (Illusion) - いきものがかり
The flakes fell around the child as she knelt in the snow. Her face was innocent, her clothes cute; it seemed natural that at any minute she would dive into a pile and spray it all about, laughing and playing. Eventually she might feel the chill, but at home there would surely be a warm fire and hot drinks. A perfect day for any child lucky enough to experience it.
But her childish appearance was false, for this was Ilyasviel von Einzbern, one of the greatest works of the Einzbern crafters. And she was crying. Frozen crystals melted on her cheeks and mingled with the tears, until icy streams ran down her face.
“We saw this together once, didn't we Shirō? Didn't we?”
She was forgetting it all, memories falling apart like snow in the summer heat. Not just of her lover's single visit to the Einzbern home, but of everything they'd done together, all their time together, all their joy and laughter. Even the memories of their love itself were starting to feel like some far-off illusion, seen through the haze of a midday sun. An artificial creation, her life-force was weak, keeping her alive barely a year past the madness that had been the Fifth Holy Grail War. As her time ran out, her body was breaking down: her limbs were weakening, and her mind was failing. He hadn't cared, though, only given her yet more love and seen to everything she needed. She adored him even more for that, for not turning to someone else – anyone else! - who could have been a partner to him instead of a burden.
However, even if Shirō hadn't cared, the old man Acht did. A small army of homunculi been sent to retrieve the Grail vessel for study before it became utterly lost. Shirō had been ambushed a mile or two away from their little German cottage (hadn't he? Were those numbers hers or another illusion of her dying mind?) Fifty combat models had been lost to his blades, but their greatest failure was not that a single human could inflict such destruction on them before he died with the last unsealing of his grafted arm – it was that he had kept Ilya from their hands. A miracle of some artifact he had seen in a far-off time and place. (Not him, but him, a transferred memory, whispers falling through an unknowable bond, whispers of which she had only ever heard the slightest trace).
It had hurt, to be wrenched through space, dropped twenty miles away from their house. It had hurt to walk over the county from where she had landed to the Einzbern forest. Then it had hurt far more to crawl through the forest, barely evading the homunculus guards and the few wild wolves who had survived the last winter's slaughter, her legs no longer capable of supporting even her wasted frame. Even so … even so, she had some strength for this. If Acht wanted the Grail vessel, wanted to ready himself for another great War, she would show him the meaning of his wish.
And now the fire rose up in her circuits again, and the pain surged through her, and her body screamed and her mind shattered still more. But her voice had recovered from its earlier sorrow, and winter's chill echoed in it.
“ … Thou art Seven Heavens clad in the Three Great Words.
Emerge from the ring of control, guardian of balance! Come forth, Herakles!”
She had hoped. That hope had been so slim, so thread-bare, for her circle was made only in snow, and fresh flakes had already filled in parts; she had stumbled over the words and thought she might have missed a verse (forgotten, floating from her mind into the winter sky); and she had no artifact, nothing but his name and the bond they had shared for so short a time, that matter of months.
But that hope was fulfilled. The circle blazed and a giant form took shape in the middle of it.
“Servant Archer, I have ...” The demi-god quickly broke off his rumbled response to the ritual, dashing to Ilya's side as she lay in the snow, writhing with pain. “My old Master. Oh, child ...”
“No, Herakles,” she gasped out. “This is not something you can protect me from. Just one request … please.” Another pause, as she gathered more thoughts together and called on whatever reserves she had, whatever mana remained in the forest, whatever prana the shattered remains of the Grail system could grant, all so she could have her last wish fulfilled.
“Avenge us.”
Author's Notes will end up in another, later post, if only because I don't want to make this an even bigger text wall than it already is.
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Originally Posted by lantzblades
