Resonance of Possession Experience
Sion ran as fast as she could. The effects of the Blood Lair had somehow ceased almost immediately after appearing and she needed to know what had happened. She should have known what happened, should have been able to see it, predict it, but—
The city of Mifune was in no different shape than it had been before. It was still run down in parts, bustling in others, pretty near the center where the main business district and park was located. The people she passed were looking around as if disoriented, blinking rapidly or staring up into the sky as if in a trance. Even vehicles on the street had stopped as drivers idled in confusion. They were not bloodless bodies scattered throughout the city as would be expected from the manifestation of Wallachia.
The alchemist followed her Etherlite strand toward the center of the community. There was no data stream from the other end. There was no thought process fed to her through it. Though she understood what that meant as a logical conclusion, the part of her that had become tainted by the connection was desperate to believe in the contrary.
She ran past the cluster of buildings they were separated at. She cut through alleyways and back streets, across a parking lot and through an underground mall. People in her wake slowly came to as she crossed their vision and shook them from their stupor. She ignored them and ran.
Her monofilament cable ended at the street that roughly bisected the city in two, pointing her toward the park kitty-corner to the tallest building in the area.
The tallest building where the Blood Lair had gathered its data. The park at which she and Shirou Emiya had agreed to meet.
“The circumstances of my…parent Apostle makes my transformation unique, so my human qualities have not degraded as of current. However, suppressing the urges decreases my physical abilities greatly, while over time the percentage chance of a full transformation increase by a fraction of a percent every month. In thirteen years, four months, seventeen days, nine hours, thirty-three minutes, and fifty seconds the transformation will be inevitable.”
Shirou appeared as if he was attempting to put some sort of visualization to her description and was making himself dizzy in the process. “I’m lost.”
It could have been the map, however. They had decided to move on together—Sion because it was a logical concept to have another set of eyes, Shirou because he was intrigued by the notion that Sion’s quest was supposedly tied to the end of the world—and so they were deciding on a destination. Sion was insistent that in two months her target would manifest and the likelihood that it would be in Mifune was some high percentage to the thousandth decimal point Shirou could not remember.
“Why there?”
“Cities with malignant data processed in the forms of rumors, superstitions, urban legends—they accumulate the greatest possibility of manifestation. Mifune has stories of mass suicides and inexplicably gruesome murders stemming from over ten years ago. The data has since gathered that if it were measured in volume, it would be greater than many other locations.”
Shirou’s eyes could not help but be drawn to another city shown on the map. “I see.”
“Fuyuki does have such data as well,” Sion admitted, “though the control over information exerted by the Association and Church has curbed its accumulation. Since all things are generally explained under one broad category like gas exposure, the variance of rumors and lore are limited. It is probable that Wallachia will not appear there for another two decades.”
“Two decades, huh?” He sighed, though he still kept a smile up. “I wonder if I have that long.”
The alchemist folded the map back up and stuffed it into the bag of camping gear they had acquired. They would not be venturing into the wilderness for a while—first it would be a bus ride to a rural town about a third of the way between their current location and Mifune—but Sion was always for reviewing her information and Shirou seemed to like his preparations as well. “I do not understand. Are you sick?”
Shirou opened his mouth, seemed to think better, closed it, and chuckled to himself. “Jury is still out on that one. It’s a long story.”
“You have many long stories.”
“Hmm, they’re really not that long compared to yours, I guess. How about I go with ‘it’s complicated.’ No, wait, still not as much as yours.” He shrugged. “Well, the bus isn’t here for another twenty minutes. I could probably get it all said by then.”
“I will time you.”
“Uh…maybe a bit more than twenty minutes…”
The onsen was just as empty as the inn they were staying at, so privacy was not an issue. Even though the baths were divided by gender, there was nobody around to question it when Sion made her way into the men’s side. It also made for a strange feeling of liberation, as the social taboo of being in a place she should not was present in her mind, yet she candidly strode up toward the spring with only a flimsy towel shielding her.
Despite the fact that he had seen her fully unclothed before, Shirou’s face immediately flushed a bright red upon seeing her. The obvious nature in which she was visiting also certainly contributed. He sat up with his ankles remaining in the water at her gesture, and she descended into the hot water in his place until she was tasting him once more.
“You’re going to kill me,” Shirou moaned, though his tone was not complaining. His entire body went stiff with pleasure as she moved over him like she could lick up every stray droplet of water hanging from his skin.
“Only if you ask me to,” Sion said, flicking the tip of her tongue against him. She was thankful for the little banter, the fact that this was not just some strange chore for either of them. As far as intimacy went, it was a strange arrangement, but even beyond the urges her body demanded, she reveled in the closeness it gave.
As an alchemist it was the perfect solution. Equivalent exchange. She gained the DNA consumption that her body craved—albeit in small doses—while he would be shown the affection that was no longer a part of his life. Sion knew he did not perceive it as such and that the affection issue was not something he consciously received, though it was a theory she had after glimpsing his memories.
It was intrusive, though Sion always used what she could. She bobbed her head almost at the same rate she could feel his blood pumping, then twisted her tongue back and forth around the crown until she heard his breath hitch. It was not that she was so in tune with him as to tell what he liked—but she already knew what he found pleasurable. He had clear memories of times with a dark haired witch doing exactly this, and Sion knew exactly how much he could take.
It was not just that she could mimic what Rin Tohsaka did to make him feel good. It was that she comprehended, at a fundamental level, what Rin Tohsaka wished to do for him. It was that she understood, ultimately, what an existence like Shirou Emiya meant to her. She and Tohsaka were alike in that, Sion believed.
The park was empty—it was after dark—but even with her Etherlite connection severed, Sion could tell that Shirou was here. She could detect the signatures of a boundary field within the park, though nothing physically happened when she stepped into the theoretical realm. Instead, the alchemist was overcome with a strange emotion, something disharmonious to nature that led to unease and disorientation. A normal person would potentially describe it like a feeling of superstitious dread, like stepping into a cemetery rumored to be haunted. Sion wanted to describe it like returning to that day, years ago, as Wallachia loomed over her while the bodies of the Church warriors lay strewn around her.
Short of utilizing the Black Barrel replica, she did not have the resources necessary to break through a boundary field short of a long and complicated process. Instead, she sought to carefully map out the dimensions until it collapsed on its own. She set about to surround the area with Etherlite and form her own boundary trap.
If Wallachia was beyond this field, she would be ready.
She rocked her hips at a maddening pace, desperate to feel him deeper within.
It was almost like having a separate personality. The urge was always at odds with her thought process, a disharmony of purpose that was in conflict with her constant calculations. When she had expressed her frustration with the sensation, Shirou had said that it was “like you’re a supercomputer, and some idiot is using your memory to look up pornography.”
Sion thought he said it with a sense of self-awareness, that he was the “idiot” that was only using her. A part of her wanted to tell him that was not so, but their situation was complicated.
Out in the wilderness away from the draw of people, all of them evoking a small degree of bloodlust from the alchemist, it was easier to withdraw back to the person she was comfortable with. But every other night, still, she would come into the tent he had brought, nearly shaking in desire.
At midway through the week, the loneliness crept in for the both of them, and instead of the almost professionally-distant intimacy, they had instead embraced like real lovers. Since then, it was not merely some strange act of survival, though Sion did not have the perspective to be able to give it a specific term. It was what it was.
She arched her back as his hands came up to her breasts, tugging at the tips until she could no longer stand it, her body instinctively moving toward the pleasurable sensation. She leaned her head back into his shoulder as she did, unable to control her own motions as climax overcame her. Her legs curled around his awkwardly and she gasped out a noise that could only be compared to the squeal of an animal.
Her body tensed, tightened, and her desperate gasps for air were stifled by the warmth from the springs. The touch of Shirou’s hands sliding along her breasts grounded her, though, and she wiggled her body just enough to feel him once more swirl around inside her. She somehow managed to turn around to see his flushed expression and her hand came up to his cheek to guide his lips to hers.
Sion rested her forehead on his shoulder, panting, the sensation overwhelming. She knew what the possession of a Reality Marble meant, what the data would be comprised of, and her calculations had included every possible outcome to prepare her for the processing challenge it would present her with.
Her calculations had not included what had brought about this data stream, what mental state she would have to perceive to gather the information that created his world.
His body was made of swords. He viewed himself as merely a weapon, a tool, something to be used for battle—his entire existence nothing more than a sad echo of humans at their worst. He had iron in his blood, certainly, but his heart was glass: fragile, transparent, empty.
His body was made of swords. He was born wreathed in fire.
Even her own memories of that night, the death of the knights around her, the selfless and ultimately pointless sacrifice of one she had befriended, the moment she cried out as the world went dark and he consumed her—it was not something she forgot, but it was not something that completely remade her. She refused to let it remake her. She refused to even think about it regularly, because the horrific feeling that welled up in her stomach was enough to make her wretch every time.
But when she had breached the topic of his memories, he had simply shrugged.
“Go ahead.”
She had blinked at his easy statement. “Perhaps I misunderstood—”
He then shrugged again. “No, go ahead. Plug me in, or whatever. If it helps.”
There was something there that had baffled every process her mind was capable of. When he had explained some of the events of the Holy Grail War and his experience with a future existence he may someday embody, the concept of learning about it all was something her scientific mind could not turn away from. Especially with regards to Counter Guardians—beings that were in many ways parallel as existences to the purpose of Atlas.
When he had described his power, the very power that had chased him out of London, her curiosity had turned to a morbid fascination. Reality Marbles were abilities alien to the average human mind and even most alchemists and magi only understood them in theory. They were, however, a much more common occurrence to the Apostle Ancestors, the twenty-seven that included her target.
She wanted the data. She wanted to see it, understand it. She wanted it because it brought her both closer to her enemy without destroying her like her own transformation would. Ultimately, it might even provide her with information regarding her own transformation, since the body reflected the soul—so if she could replicate the processes behind a Reality Marble, she may have the in-road to a hypothetical cure for her own plight.
Sion Eltnam Atlasia, heir director of Atlas, master alchemist, prodigy—she could not have predicted his simple reply.
“It is your own magic,” she sought to explain, like he did not already know such things. “Though I feel I must understand this, the secrets of another magi—”
“Eh. A secret people in London already know. And I know you’re not exactly going to go off and sell the data or something, so, yeah. If it can help you, and the look on your face says it can…well, then go ahead.”
She did not understand that the data was wrapped up in such memories. Of death and destruction, of pain and suffering—something he seemed to understand and empathize with so intrinsically that he could shrug off any sympathy shown to him. She understood now—and yet, paradoxically, became less aware of—his ability to ignore such sympathy. It was not something anyone else, any “other” could begin to conceptualize. He did not accept it because it was not something they could understandably give to him. If they understood, they would not give him any.
Yet she understood now, and did not—and both wanted to sympathize, yet did not.
The barrier of his soul. Something she realized, even before this, had become a part of her.
The barrier faded and reality resumed.
Sion had steeled herself for what she expected to exist beyond the boundary field, but could not help but drop at the sight, her legs giving out underneath her.
The man was on his knees, still and silent, though somehow yet upright. However, like a nightmare she had glimpsed within his memories, he was—
Blades skewered him from all sides. He did not stay upright because he had died standing. One arm was extended and held up by a spear that had impaled it and then dug into the ground. His chin rested on the flat of a broadsword through his neck. A leg had been pierced twice over in his kneeling position. The white shirt he had been wearing was no longer white at all.
He was upright because his body was locked into place, the weapons jutting from him acting like the most bloody kick-stop imaginable.
—always alone—
Wallachia was gone. The orb that had formed the Blood Lair had ceased to be within the Reality Marble Shirou had created. But Sion knew that was nothing, that the murderous Apostle was still out there, still in existence. Nothing short of the Crimson Moon’s manifestation or a conceptual weapon of world-shattering capacity would actually bring about his total destruction. Still, without the presence of those he needed to feed upon, the origin of his phenomenon ceased and he would have disappeared until he could reconstitute back into the pattern Sion had predicted…
—intoxicated with victory—
Sion shuffled to his side so she could carefully remove the weapons from the man’s body. She drew each out far too easily, a sign of how razor-sharp each blade was and how fragile his flesh had been.
Wallachia was not gone, though, not truly and utterly destroyed. He would continue to terrorize others, and—
—his life had no meaning—
She would continue on, once more alone.
There were words she wanted to say, but did not have the capacity to vocalize.
In the Japanese language, it should have been simple. Easy. One did not state the words “I love you” like many other languages. The word for “love” was infrequent even in the most romantic of stories or examples. Instead, there was the word Shirou teased that she mispronounced, suki. Lovers might be pressed to say it; something that was more akin to “fondness” or “pleasure.” It was an approximate fit that worked well enough for her to accept as what she felt: she found his presence pleasurable, comforting. It was not “love” like she believed he felt toward Rin Tohsaka.
Yet that was the very thing that kept her from speaking the words. The conception within his culture of what she had to say was that of lovers, but she did not want to tread over anything he already had. The data Sion had accumulated from his memories held Tohsaka in such high regard that she felt terrible for being in the very position curled up at his side that he wanted Tohsaka to occupy.
“There’s a resort area on the way to Mifune that we can stop by on the way, get cleaned up and everything,” Shirou said. He looked at her with a faint tint of color in his face. “I mean, uh, not that I’m complaining. Just, you know, I probably smell. In fact, I’m not even sure how you can put up with it, stuck in a tent with me.”
Sion wanted to say because I like you. The words died in her mouth, though, as she processed how this exact topic had come up before—a time in which Rin Tohsaka had complained about him always smelling after work, so he had taken her to an onsen to placate her annoyance.
“I am capable of enduring much worse than a little sweat,” she said instead.
Days, and then weeks went by, and the paradox that she had seen could not be solved.
The compression of data, the manifestation of the Blood Lair and TATARI’s power meant that his death would have been that which he feared the most. It should have been nightmares, should have been the most hellish existence he could have conjured up.
His death was simply of his own image, the very thing that resided within him—without fear or regret, horror or even fascination.
She understood what he had done, logically. The Blood Lair siphoned the thoughts of all beings in a certain radius, powered the images taken from those thoughts, then those images tore apart the persons they originated from. Those that were destroyed then fed Wallachia until he was bloated. If Shirou had managed to manifest his Reality Marble around the Blood Lair, he could make it a world bereft of others and himself the only target. Without the compression of data, Wallachia would be forced to withdraw as if unsuccessful, and his manifestation would then return to its predetermined patterns.
Still, he was a Dead Apostle Ancestor, and certainly had time enough to kill the one responsible for thwarting his meal. Additionally, if Shirou were killed fast enough, the Reality Marble would fade and he could resume his actions afterward.
That had not happened. Shirou had somehow maintained his world even as death took him.
So he had died at the hands of his own nightmare. Yet it was not a nightmare as she understood it. It was not a nightmare as he understood it—the data she had taken from him explained as much. It was a fate he had seen, had accepted without so much as a shrug.
One like him, executed for crimes he had not committed. Now him in turn, dead for people who had not even known there was danger in the first place. Dead because he had been driven away from the place he had wanted to be for things he had no control over.
Sion wanted to scream at the inconsistency.
Sion wanted to scream at the unfairness.
Most of all, she wanted to scream at how little any of it mattered in the end.
To be continued.
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Originally Posted by Mcjon01
