Fate: Hammer Time

Chapter 13: Surprise From the Other Side

It was a beautiful day in Fuyuki-City. The sun was shining, the sky was clear, there was no wind to speak of, and the general mood of the city was excellent. There was nothing to prevent the citizens from enjoying the day to its fullest extent.

Not everyone liked to come outside though, even during a day as close to perfect as this one. Some people just preferred to stay inside, hiding away from the sun, hiding from other people, or hiding from enemies real and imagined, while guarding their house against thieves that could be out to steal their precious belongings and grandchildren from them.

A very good, and perhaps the only example of the latter category in the entire city was one Matou Zouken, patriarch of the Matou-family and someone who could definitely be described as a hermit, who hadn't left his house for decades, except for a few rare occasions, mostly during the infamous Grail Wars.

He was far too afraid of other Magi attacking him, or sneaking behind his back into his house, claiming his tomes, his research, or worse, the tool he had betted the entire future of his family on.

He was aware, in a deep, dark, logical corner of his mind that was long since buried under paranoia and madness, that the chance of such a thing happening was extremely low, especially during a peaceful time in-between Wars. The Bounded Fields and his other 'defences' would see to the safety of his house and belongings, while he himself was no slouch in combat either, despite his frail appearance.

But what did that rational knowledge matter when he had over two hundred years of experience and building paranoia to counteract that last vestige of reason and logic? No, he well and truly preferred staying inside, where he was at his strongest.

Zouken Matou was quite a pathetic existence. As a writhing mass of worms inhabiting a random corpse, he certainly wasn't anything pleasant to look at or be around, and his general behaviour wasn't much better.

His entire life revolved around his perverted and distorted dream of becoming immortal, a dream he relentlessly pursued both outside and during the Grail Wars, uncaring about who or what he had to sacrifice in order to reach it.

But his options had become limited over the years, one chance after the other slipping through his fingers, and by now, he had only one real possibility left, which was why he was here, the place where he pretty much spent all of his time these days, patiently waiting for his granddaughter to arrive.

The age-old Magus looked out over his wormpit with a thoughtful gaze in his eyes, aware of but barely noticing his familiars anymore, as they crawled around in there, with seemingly random patterns, as they waited for the girl that would join them in there nearly every day.

His granddaughter was set to arrive in about half-an-hour, as per his orders, as she had returned only a short while ago from what could almost be considered her second home by now. Being alone with his thoughts, Zouken's mind started to wander to the past few months.

He had lived in Fuyuki for most of his natural and unnatural life, and, short of during the Grail Wars, he had never had so many unexpected things happen around him as during the last few months.

The first, perhaps minor occurrence was the sudden thunderstorm of epic proportions from several weeks ago. Not only had it been one of the worst storms of his life, but it had also been the first event ever that had managed to temporarily cut his connection to his very own worms, nearly all of them, with only the ones making up his body remaining somewhat under his control.

It had been very unpleasant, but he could have handled it had it been a one-time occurrence. To his great consternation however, it had only been the first of an ever-increasing number of storms doing the same.