Fate/Bölvaður Kaleikur

You're falling. Or, at least, that's how it feels; your body is heavier than lead, bound with chains and dragged down deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit by the anchor of gravity. You fall like Lewis Carroll's Alice, deeper and deeper into a hole without margins, a whimper stuck at the back of your throat, pressing painfully into the back of your tongue. You want to scream. The unfamiliar blackness around you is tangible, wet and lanky, crawling around you like a blanket of filth and covering the distant light shining weakly way above, and you want to scream. With every inch of territory the darkness wins you feel the fear coiling in your guts grow until it's an ugly monster ready to tear you apart from inside out, ready to push up past your gritted teeth and bust out from the prison of your body, and it makes you feel disgusted with your own skin, leaves you not knowing what to do with yourself, how to get rid of this feeling, what to cling on to crawl out of here. Heavens, you want to scream. “This is what awaits you if you choose to walk the path of a man questing for the Grail,” a voice speaks, and it feels as if its' vocal chords are wrapped around your brain, every vibration pulsating wildly against your temples. “And yet, your heart still yarns for that damned chalice...” The words come hushed, hummed like the buzzing of a bee. The faint light above is gone for good, swallowed in a river of black, and the darkness wraps around you until all you can feel is the stank wetness of it. It's in that instant that you realize the thing coiling around you was blood all along, and if you weren't too busy being terrified down to the marrow, you'd consider vomiting. “Very well,” the same voice says, its' quiet tone sinister like a hidden blade in the night — And then your eyes are rolling in the back of your head, the scream you've been unwillingly holding back finally pulled loose from in-between your teeth. —————— You awake with a startle, whimpering. Your entire body aches: your head throbs, and a searing sort of pain is wired throughout your entire body. Your breathing comes out labored, in small huffs, and your body's feverishly hot beneath the soft sheets of the unfamiliar bed you're laid on. The room you're in is bathed by moonlight, the walls a rich green that seems darker at night, and you can make out the contour of undoubtedly expensive, yet tastefully simple furniture through the tears and scum welled up in your eyes. You don't have much time to ponder on just where the hell you are, though, because you feel bile rising up in your throat. It makes you shoot up haphazardly, looking around frantically for something to empty the contents of your stomach into. Conveniently enough, there's a bucket placed by the nightstand next to your bed, and so you lean over the edge of the mattress and heave. It feels like you've been vomiting for an eternity by the time you're done. You wipe your mouth on your sleeve, and that's when you take notice of the red tattoos freshly inked on the back of your hand and further up your arm. Upon closer inspection, you realize those are not tattoos and the red they're painted with is not ink. Command Seals. The red markings you've been branded with are Command Seals. It all comes crashing, then. You remember the rumors about a New Grail, about the Holy War finally being replicated long after Lord El-Melloi II and Rin Tohsaka dismantled the Fuyuki one; you remember investigating those rumors, you remember them leading you to the French Alps to the small town of Finocchi. You remember a voice calling to you, whispering sweet nothings about dreams of splendor and conquest and the victory of impossible feats accomplished through a miracle. But most of all, you remember your resolve to be the holder of the Grail after all has gone up in flames. You find it hasn't wavered since the first time you felt it, and so you rise on wobbly legs, and make for the door. The same thing that called to you when you arrived in town is calling you again, telling you to walk without stopping to question your actions. And so, you do.