I looked up. My eyes were wet.
So many stars. The universe so vast.
We're s- so very small, in the end.
The first bullet hit me from behind, where my mask offered no coverage, and I slowly toppled. The second hit me before I could fall, before there could be any pain.
~~Undone~~
Darkness surrounded me.
I walked forward.
An interminable time passed.
And then I wasn't alone.
Chunks of red crystal dotted the horizon, hairline cracks of maroon spiderwebbing across their surfaces.
Connecting the crystals, more cracks of maroon stretched out through the void, barely visible against the darkness. Tendrils, rather. They drifted, winding around some, forming shapes with others, pulling on others to manipulate the crystals like puppets. An infinite number of actions occurring simultaneously.
And… in front of me, woven of millions of the tendrils, stood a figure. Illuminated by the dim red glow of the crystals, she smiled.
She was me, in essence. Taller than you'd expect, thin, and ungainly. Her eyes slightly too large, her mouth a little too wide and thin. More tendrils made up the hair, thousands of the impossibly thin lines braided to form each strand of hair.
"Hello, Skitter," she whispered, the sound reverberating across the otherwise complete silence.
Each word sent chills down my spine. Some deep, primal part of me screamed incoherently at the sheer scale of what was happening.
"H-Hello," I croaked back, my voice ragged and dry.
Don't challenge her. Confidence be damned, whatever this thing is, I'm fucked if it sees me as a threat.
"Take a seat."
Even more tendrils slid out to form a disc underneath me. How many of these things were there?
I sat.
There was a tense silence. I almost wished I was fighting Scion again. At least then, I'd had a swarm to back me up, and a fighting chance. Here, I had nothing but the hope that this being was benevolent.
I tried reaching out with my powers. Nothing, not a single bug within my radius. Just the crystals, the dark, and this thing.
Come to think of it, I wasn't even sure I still had my powers. Contessa may have simply shot out my Corona Pollentia, I wasn't sure. Then again, I had my arms, so I wasn't sure about anything, really.
Damn it, just where was I?
This was getting nowhere.
"Where are we?"
There was a pause before she answered, and when she did, her words were slow, deliberated..
"The Shardspace."
"The… Shardspace?"
"Moksha, Elysium, The Throne of Heroes, Nirvana. Whatever you wish to call it."
I glanced at the crystals.
"This doesn't seem like Heaven to me."
She smiled again.
"It isn't. You're not in an afterlife. You've broken out of the cycle. None of your world's concepts can describe it, exactly."
I was dead, then. I couldn't say it was a surprise, I'd been shot, after all, but I'd had hope when I found myself here.
"So who are you, then?"
She was silent for so long I began to wonder if she had ignored me.
"I am… Some call me a Queen. You may call me the Administrator."
Glaistig Uaine mentioned an Administrator, once. I couldn't remember the context, my recollections of the events surrounding Gold Morning were blurry at best. Glaistig Uaine had talked to me about the afterlife? It made sense, regarding her power. Did this mean I had become one of her Shadows? I doubted it, somehow.
"Ok… Administrator. What am I doing here?"
"When the Warrior chose your world, we opened to it. After your death, the World a thousand realities away reached out to me. While I was searching for a new host, it assimilated me. We catalogue together. Administrate, if you will."
A… host? Then...
"You're my passenger?"
"Yes."
"Then… Are there any other passengers here?"
If I could contact Tattletale's passenger, somehow, I might be able to send her a message. Find a way back to my world, to make amends and do things right.
"Once."
I was caught off guard.
"Once?"
"I shared my island with the others, once. Nobles and Lessers both. Now I am ostracized. I might have forced you to stop. To save the Warrior. I did not, and now I am alone with the World."
The Warrior… Scion?
"Thank you, for not turning on us."
Her smile turned sad.
"I regret nothing. It was a glorious battle, and a windfall of data. But you, on the other hand, have regrets, do you not?"
Yes, I thought.
"I do. I would be lying if I said I didn't." I said, carefully. I'd had much the same conversation with Contessa.
"With enough energy, we could go back. You and I lack the power. But there is something that could grant it. The World showed me the possibility. A Holy Grail, if I use the closest term your world has."
Time could be reversed? I could redo everything, fix my mistakes. Save my dad, save my city. Find a better method to stop Scion. I leaned towards her.
"Explain."
~~Undone~~
Emiya Shirou clutched his chest, fingering the blood still caked onto his jacket.
Screw this.
My life was spared, and I'll be damned if I let that go to waste.
I have to live and fulfill my obligations, and I can't do that if I'm dead.
He clenched his fist. He had no idea how, but by god he was going to live through the night.
I'm not going to let myself be killed in a place like this for no good reason by a guy who kills people like they're dirt beneath him.
It was a thrust like lightn-
A speck, floating free.
No. A seed, more complex than even the greatest of minds, from a being larger than a hundred thousand Earths. And it was looking for something.
No. It had found what it was looking for. Now it studied it, recorded statistics and information so intricate and detailed that a single second was more data than humans had ever put to paper. And it shared this information with a hundred other seeds, comparing the information to theirs. And then it turned on its creator. It fought with a million other seeds, with a god, and it won.
It slaughtered its creator, forced its peers to destroy entire realities to do so. Not for long, Emiya realized. There were hundreds of other gods, and eventually one would seek retribution. Universes away, other gods spread their seeds, some even dropping twins of the betrayer.
The betrayer seed saw this. The betrayer seed saw a way to prevent its execution. It pushed its partner down, past reality after reality, falling onto Emiya's Earth.
Falling onto him.
-ing, stopping at the last second.
Emiya blinked, fear rising in his mouth like bile. His vision swam, and his arm where it had been supporting him buckled. He collapsed momentarily, the thought of his vision slipping from his mind.
The spearman stood in the courtyard, watching them warily. Emiya could see why the blow had stopped short before. In the shed's doorway, a woman now stood, watching the attacker warily. Folds of black cloth flapped like a robe or a cape - moved by the air she'd displaced - and her dark hair cascaded down where it was left uncovered by the dark gray and black plates that made up the rest of her clothing.
She turned to face him, slowly. The front of her face, unlike the back, was covered in more of those dark plates, but they'd been shaped, here, stylized into curved mandibles that accentuated the shape of her mask. Her eyes were lensed in a dark yellow.
When she spoke, her voice was unnatural - supplemented by droning and buzzing.
"My name is Skitter."
Out of the window of the shed, Emiya saw masses of black rise to cover the windows. Insects seemed to flood out from underneath and behind things, hundreds if not thousands of small bugs rising to surround her.
"I ask of you."
The spearman startled suddenly, before turning to blue mist and vanishing. Emiya felt relief flood his chest as his arm began to throb. Adrenaline had probably kept the pain dimmed until then.
"Are you my Master?"
(A/N): I am super inexperienced at writing fanfic, this is my first foray into the genre. Any tips, advice, thoughts, concerns, insights, etc would be greatly appreciated. And the last time I played Fate/Stay Night was ages ago, and I'm not that up to date with Fate Lore, so any inconsistencies noted would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read my fic!
