Raven laughed to himself as he tried not to lose focus on the sight in front of him. Dangling him from a rope was an assassin that had been sent to kill him.
Obviously since they couldn't attack Lorelei, directly or indirectly, they went after him. In thought it's a great idea, go after the weak protigae and land a blow against The Queen of The Clocktower.
In practice though? Not so good a idea. Obviously since he had let them try and poison him, he had switched it out with water, and drank it, pretending the poisons effects were kicking in. Though he was pretty sure he could resist the poison.
Really, he should get an award for his acting. He played the part of an egomaniac magus who only seeks to live and further his research. Saying he'd do anything to live.
He idly laid there waiting for their cliche evil villian monologue to finish up. Quite boring honestly. They didn't even try to restrict his ability to cast, though perhaps that's what the poison was for?
"That's why you should just give up." Raven brought himself back into focus as he stared at the assassin.
"What a failure of an assassin. Couldn't kill me and it's been thirty minutes." Raven said out loud pretending he meant to think it instead. "Oops, did I say that out loud?"
"Die!" Raven watched the dagger come flying towards his chest and he didn't feel like cleaning himself up, so with a casual swing of his body he threw himself forward to smack the failure of an assassin with his head, but before he could the door was kicked open as a flying sword cut the rope suspending him from the ceiling and another pierced the shoulder of the assassin.
"Shirou Emiya?" Raven asked as he laid there on the floor blinking as he saw the young man come into the room wielding a pair of Chinese short swords.
"Are you ok Inanis-san?" Raven blinked before realizing the man was using Japanese honorifics.
"Oh yes, I was just about to break out, truly, a terrible assassin, spent thirty minutes monologuing." Raven said as he snapped his hands and legs apart with force as the ropes ripped and fell off his body.
"Oh."
"Thanks for the thought though. Let me deal with this failure, then let's have a conversation Emiya." Raven said with a smile before he tossed the bleeding and unconscious, what a whimp passing out from a sword to the shoulder, assassin over his shoulder.
"Alright, where do you want to meet to talk then?" The man asked calmly as his swords vanished in the normal way peoples did when using gradation air.
"Do you like pizza?"
"Yes."
"Ok, meet me at the main entrance of the clocktower and I'll take you to a nice pizza place in about an hour." Raven chuckled as he walked out with the unconscious assassin.
•~~~~•
Raven stretched as he cleaned his fingers of the blood on them. A fat old man lay beside the assassin on a metal table, both strapped to it and unconscious and injured in various places. He'd have to come back to finish his experiments on them, he had a pizza date.
•~~~~•
"Emiya, glad you made it." Raven said as he arrived and waved at the older man.
"Inanis-san." Shirou greeted as he stood there dressed casually, though Raven could tell that his choice of clothing wouldn't impact him in anyway at all if a fight broke out. Truly a practical man.
"Call me Raven, everyone does." Raven said as he started guiding Shirou to a nearby pizza place.
"Feel free to call me Shirou then." Shirou said with a smile and small bow.
"Alright then Shirou. I welcome you to Tony's Pizzaria. One of the best pizza places on this side of the world." Raven said and led the older man in.
Orders were placed and they sat at a table waiting, Raven idly casting a privacy barrier up.
"Tell me Shirou, why is an eastern magus such as yourself doing at the clocktower. I know your fellow magus can be… unkind towards your race." Raven said curious, and he actually was. The red haired man with a white streak in front of him interested him.
"I'm here with my girlfriend and our friend. She's taking lessons and learning. Our friend is her main bodyguard. I'm hired as a janitor and occasional enforcer." Shirou said and Raven smiled.
"Impressive. You must be a decently strong magus, as Lorelei only lets the best on her squads." Raven mused out loud as Shirou rubbed the back of his head.
"I'm only a third rate magus." He said and Raven laughed.
"That you are not Shirou. Your skill with gradation air is phenomenal, at least from what I saw in a moment." Raven complimented. He did mean that, the created swords were of great quality and seemed to be only slightly inferior to what it should be. A great achievement.
Raven idly wondered if the man's element and origin had a bigger effect on it then other people. However an idea came to him as he remembered a task Lori left for him to do sometime this summer.
It gave him a great opportunity to see the skills of Shirou.
"Shirou, how would you feel about exploring a old temple of unknown supernatural origin?" Raven asked as he leaned forward staring the red head in the eyes. Blue on gold.
"Like as an archaeologist?"
"Exactly like that. A team had explored an area with strong magic readings, and they don't have the strength to explore it. So they want some stronger magus to go in and explore it. I was designated the task, but I've been putting it off, so do you want to go explore an old temple Shirou Emiya? Explore ancient ruins, see history, learn of weapons used by olden times and more?" Raven asked his grin huge, he knew he had the man hooked at weapons.
"When do we leave?"
"Two days from now, I have a… issue to finish before we can go. Just meet me at the airport closest to here at noon. I'll have everything ready by then." Raven said before starting to dig into the pizza before him.
•~~~~•
Two days passed by swiftly and Raven hummed as he finished checking his packed items. It was just emergency money and some mana filled stones. Shit happens.
He could create his clothes, if how he avoids going clothes shopping, that and people forcing clothes onto him, at least those who did had style.
Shaking his head, he headed out to meet Shirou at the airport, a small twist of his body had him apperating into the air of an alleyway near the airport. A wave of his hand memory wiping a homeless dude who was staring at him wide eye while reaching for a knife. He idly dropped a couple hundred bucks in a pocket of the man's clothes.
•~~~~•
"Now, I supposed I can tell you what the researchers have figured out from excavating around a bit of the temple." Raven said as he opened a folder placed on the table by the flight crew for him.
"The temple of Abba. That was the name we could translate after several days." Raven slid over the folder as Shirou picked it up curiously and looked at the images of the temple.
It looked basic, something he learnt that gods and goddesses were not. Personal experience proved that.
"The interesting thing though is these runes carved on the entrance here." Raven gestured to a few sets of runes on what looked like an entrance to the temple.
"Through several collaborations, myself included, we came up with a few translations of them." Raven said as he gestured a bit below to some sentences.
The Prisoner of Abba
The Earth Shaker of Abba
The Devourer of Abba
The Constipation of Abba
"Yeah… that last one made no sense. I fired that person. I translated it to, The Third Prisoner of Abba. The third of what though, and what could it imprison? Also note the name used, Abba. Research shows the name belonging to that of Yahweh, also known as God. The father of creation. If he imprisoned someone, what kind of being could they be? An the third one at that?" Raven said excitedly and Shirou smiled slightly.
He could feel some excitement building up. Kiritsugu never let him go explore a temple while still alive, and the one time he has gone… well he doesn't want to talk about it.
"Isn't some form of beast mentioned several times in the Bible?" Shirou asked and Raven grinned as he nodded in agreement.
"Yes! I had that thought. Some research showed several beast in Bible, the word mentioned 180 times in the Bible. It has several forms of interpretation in the Bible, however three actual beast are mentioned. The Beast of The Sea, also known as the Antichrist. The seven headed beast, known as demonic and powerful, authority of the state. Then the one I believe it references most likely, the beast of the earth, the false prophet. To cause people to worship the beast and the dragon, sometimes referred to as Satan!" Raven excitedly mentioned, of course two straight days of no sleep, studying, torturing and experimenting can make him hyper, especially non stop with no interruptions.
"The beast of the earth. Why is it called the beast of the earth?" Shirou asked, his knowledge on divine beings was mostly Shinto ones, and a bit he scraped together during the grail war.
"It's said that it crawls out from the earth. However that would also make it a creation of Abba. He was said to have made the earth, so it's part of his creation then. However with the mentions of multiple mythology, and them all being real, the creation of the planet can be credited to multiple beings. Gaia/Alyla, Abba, Pachamama, Geb, Ki and Ninhursag. There is so many earth based divine beings. Some credited with creation of the planet, some not. It's so confusing." Raven said with a happy smile. He loved research and theories.
"Isn't multiple divine beings mentioned in other myths?" Shirou asked as he tried to word his thoughts properly.
"Yes! Several mentions. Aphrodite and Isis. Zeus and Ra. Odin and Shiva. Jupiter and Dagda. Those are some of the more prominate ones mentioned. Shirou, are you implying that instead of just one being creating the world, multiple beings created it?" Raven asked giddy.
"Yes?" Shirou asked slightly uncomfortable, he knew that expression, whenever Rin got it, he and Saber were in for a long research rant.
"Hm, now that's a curious thought. Perhaps creation myths all happened at the same time. A hierarchy for sure. There's multiple deities attributed to creation itself. God, Chaos, Tiamat, Abzu, Ginnungagap and Hundun are some of them. A good thought Shirou. Now I have something to research." Raven said happily as he started planning several books and people to reach out to. His knowledge must be gathered.
"Your parents must be proud of your skills." Shirou said and Raven grimaced. Shirou realized he stepped on a land mine…
"Ugh, maybe? No idea who my pops is. My mom is only a picture in my memories as a baby. Was kidnapped. Then some shit happened and I got trauma and watched all the memories of baby me. Not fun, especially when some abomination of a creature causes it. Fun times." Raven ranted and Shirou sighed. This was his luck wasn't it. Worse then lancer luck.
"Sorry, I supposed both of us have bad luck with memories of family. I lost my family in a fire and all my memories before my dad, adopted, found and rescued me. I chose to go with him when he revealed himself as a magus." Shirou said and Raven sighed and took a deep breath.
"It's fine. Though I do agree. Though the name Emiya is familiar from old files… Emiya… Emiya… Kiritsugu Emiya, The Magus Killer! He was your adopted father?" Raven asked with a tone of excitement and curiosity.
"Yes."
"Did he leave you his techniques?" Raven knew he was breaching magus policy, but he didn't care, he was above the rules, he was the rules!
"No, they died with him. The clocktower won't give me his crest though since I'm not his son biologically. I have no right they said." Shirou said with no problems. He really had none, it didn't really bother him much. Plus, he believed it all belonged to Illya, Kiritsugus real child.
"I see. Well then, since we'll be working together and in case anything comes up, we should know some abilities of each other. I'll go first since I suggested it. I prefer using my techniques over brute force, but I'm also adept in hand to hand and weapon combat." Raven said as he let a ball of dawn energy form over his hand.
One of the few techniques he created this summer revolved around the ball of energy.
"I see. I use my own form of gradation air I call projection magecraft. A seven step process to recreate objects I've analyzed and memorized, usually swords." Shirou said while trying not to reveal too much information.
"I see. So you are a close range fighter?" Raven asked for clarification.
"Mostly. I sometimes use alteration to modify a sword into an arrow like projectile and shoot it." Shirou didn't see the harm in revealing that.
"Alteration with a sword into an arrow eh? I've done something similar with a project of mine. You sound competent, that's good." Raven nodded his head as Shirou rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Now, I believe the pilot wants to say something." Raven said as he saw one of the two pilots come towards them from the cockpit.
"We'll be arriving within an hour sir." The man said and Raven nodded his head in thanks. The pilot then went back to the front.
"Well, looks like the fun begins soon Shirou. To fun temple exploration." Raven raised a glass of water towards Shirou who clinked it with his own glass of water.
"To fun temple exploration." Shirou said as they both went over some last minute plans for when they land and their hotel rooms.
•~~~~•
Raven and Shirou arrived at the temple site, after they got through all the crap that was getting through customs, but money makes the world move, and he had plenty of it, aka he had a credit card from Lori.
His sugar mommy… does that also make her his mommy? What is he up to now? Too many. He doesn't want to count them all. Seriously, can he find some anti adoption bait magic?
"Shirou do you speak Italian?" Raven asked as he saw the crew standing nearby.
"Not much. I understand and speak the very basics." Shirou said as he remembered briefly leaning it for a trip to Italy once.
"Ok, these people speak mostly Italian, if you get lost, let me know, I'll translate, or make them speak English." Raven said with a dangerous smile as Shirou sweat dropped. From his few interactions with the teen, he knew they were a special kind of person.
At least he knew it wasn't baseless arrogance. Even he knew that as the student of Lorelei Bartemolei, Raven would be a very powerful person. He was sure that Raven was much stronger then he was during the holy grail war and even possibly stronger then himself now. He's curious of what his max potential will be.
"Don't be too forceful." Shirou asked and Raven grinned with fangs at him and he sighed. He knew it wouldn't happen his way.
"Lord Inanis, we welcome you and your companion." A balding older man said as he walked forward, and despite his appearance, Raven knew the the man was a competent person, a terrible magus, but competent person.
"Enzo. Still balding I see." Raven responded in kind. Enzo only laughed joyfully.
"Indeed I am my lord! Now, shall I show you and your guest to our base camp?" He asked and Raven nodded as Shirou sweat dropped.
"It's nothing much, but we've been able to get some more readings and translation since we last sent out findings to you." Enzo said seriously and Raven stopped looking around lazily and focused on the man.
"With some advance sensors provided by one of my team members, we were able to record a sample of energy of a piece of the temple that didn't have runic writing on it. The sensors read as holy energy my lord." Enzo said seriously.
Raven snapped to attention. Enzo was part of his own personal research team, and the man knew if any jokes about holy energy were made… let's just say the man's body pieces would still be found a hundred years in the future when he was done with him.
"Let me see it." Raven said as he followed Enzo to a tent and Raven went inside and grabbed a tablet surrounded by people. Grabbing it, he could feel the holy energy inside of it, so pure and strong, but yet so weak, a mere sliver of the beings power remaining as an echo of its original power.
This temple could really belong to Abba.
"Shirou, we're going into that temple now. Enzo, start packing things up, I have a gut feeling something is going to happen." Raven said as Enzo nodded and started barking out orders to everyone who started swiftly cleaning up.
"Enzo, we'll meet up at the hotel." Raven ordered and the man nodded with a small bow and headed off. What good employee. This is why he offered benefits and vacation time. Paid time off.
With a grin, Raven led Shirou into the temple, of course twenty seconds after walking in, both were limbo standing under a ton of glowing metal spikes trying to impale them.
"I feel like this is going to happen a lot here." Raven said with a sweat drop, and Shirou agreed. The two now started tossing rocks forward, which they went back out to grab a good amount of, to activate any traps early. Both their eyes trained to see the minor things when focused.
Of course it only got crazier from there, if not also comical. First a pair of statues came to life, they grew a giant pair of white wings each and attacked with light energy spears. Raven had grabbed it and used it against one of them and stabbed it through the throat. Shirou had used his dual Chinese blades to cut it apart.
Then the classical giant boulder.
Then more spear traps, except these were light spears instead. He had to absorb the energy to remove them, they're positions while he did was like playing twister… don't ask…
Then there was the flamethrowers… he was amused by that, apparently possible Abba had a great humor in the Geneva suggestions.
Followed by poison gas.
Then some kind of biological hazard thing.
Trying to drop a tactical magic nuke on them, Raven was actually surprised by this one, of course a good old shield and a counteractive blast of flames held the nuke off countering it. Thankfully they didn't have to worry about radiation since it was a magical nuke.
"You know, I'm starting to think whoever made this temple had true clairvoyance and decided to use the Geneva Conventions as Geneva Suggestions. I'm so proud of them." Raven said laughing as he and Shirou finally arrived at a room with a ton of stair ways going down.
"Ok, this is so much more funner then traps." Raven said as Shirou nodded in agreement. The mystery made it a lot funner, plus all the ancient sword he saw on the walls as they walked through made this journey so much more worth it.
"Wait, these letters…" Raven said in excitement as he finally noticed a pattern in the runic writing on the walls and crouched down as he grabbed his pouch of holding and started digging through it.
However as he was doing so, the heavy steps of dozens of stone angel warriors started appearing in their ears. Looking around, they saw them coming out the stairways.
"Shirou, can you hold them off for a while? I think I know what language this all is finally. I just need a moment to translate it." Raven said as he pulled out a thick book and a notebook.
Raven start writing already, Shirou sighed, he blamed his future self for this, for not warning him of this future. Oh well, least he can get some training in.
"Oh." Shirou said in realization as he saw the stone statues, each one had three sets of white wings and much brighter light spears in hand. "Not good." Shirou said as he summoned Kanshou and Bakuya. He knew this would be a task, especially if he had to also protect his companion, but this was nothing new for him.
Taking a deep breath, Shirou prepared himself.
•~~~~•
Raven was in his own world as he already knew Shirou could handle the stronger angelic statues. Their power was greater, but they were still statues and not real, so Shirou didn't need to hold back, and if he couldn't handle something like this, Raven wouldn't want him as a temple exploring companion.
However as he compared his notes on the subject, he felt his thoughts confirmed.
These letters were written in the old languages. Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic and Koine Greek. He didn't realize it immediately due to how the patterns were written.
Normally it wouldn't make sense, when you take each one as an individual word and try to use it to form a sentence or meaning, it wouldn't work since each language has a slightly different meaning for each word.
However, when you use it as individual meaning per each, and then stitched it together like a picture book, it became easier to understand.
Abba, meaning "Father" in Aramaic.
Shael, meaning "of" roughly in Hebrew.
Δημιουργία, translating into "creation" in Kione Greek.
Thrown together meaning, Father of Creation.
Futthur translating the runes, and tossing a sword in Shirou's blind spot to block a light spear aimed for his back, he quickly threw together several sentences that told a story.
Father of Creation.
Seven days.
Seven nights.
Lights birth.
Green and Blue birth.
Creature of the earth.
Goliath of power and wisdom.
Only control of one.
Paired with one.
The final will of Abba.
The goal of redemption.
The power of soul.
Raven took a moment to think on that before nodding to himself. He had a picture, it would be wrong, but he would go with it.
God, or Abba as he called himself in this tale, create earth in seven days and seven nights. He let his light spread into creation. Earth was born. Abba gave creation to another creature. Goliath, or as referenced in the Bible as a giant being, Behemoth, to show his superiority of power and knowledge. Realizing his mistake, Abba couldn't bring himself to kill his creation when it rampaged, so he sealed it away in an act of final will and redemption for his ego. To hope its soul may eternally rest in a seal.
"This doesn't make sense, but it also does. Abba couldn't kill his own son, so why would he kill his creation? That means if this legend is true, the creature known as Behemoth is sealed inside this temple, and these angel statues and traps are a defense, and the holy energy of this temple would cause any non holy being to immediately leave it alone. Humans are neutral to the holy energy, and so he and Shirou got by.
He assumed his own holy energy enhanced by the angel let him slip by without being harmed by the holy energy.
"We submit to the will of Abba and his act of redemption!" Raven shouted out loud as suddenly as he came to the realization as he took a full good look at the statues.
The statues all suddenly stopped moving, Shirou did the same as he moved back towards Raven.
"What happened?" Shirou asked panting slightly.
"It was a test. To keep it short, Abba, known as God, sealed away a great beast here, he couldn't bring himself to slay it, so as an act of redemption and hope, he sealed away the creature and hoped it could rest in peace eternally in the seal and let its soul rest. I couldn't pierce everything together till I looked at the stone soliders." Raven said as he grabbed the broken pieces of one dead stone statue.
"Look at this, I first thought it was a symbol of reference to Abba, but instead it was a collation of several meanings instead." Raven said as he slowly ran his finger over the symbol on the chest of the stone angels.
"This one means Will, this one here means Submit, this one refers to another name of Abba, Elohim, literally meaning God. This one means Act, this one means redemption. When thrown together in a proper order, it translates to submitting to his will and act of redemption as I said. We state we don't intend to go against their purpose and work against Abba." Raven said as Shirou titled his head a little confused.
"Surrounded by them." Raven muttered before he pointed down.
"In short, by saying that, we state we don't intend to free the sealed creaturer from its seal. To interrupt Gods act and will of redemption." Raven said as Shirou nodded in understanding.
"Oh I see, so what do we do now though?" Shirou asked and Raven grinned as he not so gently slammed his foot onto the ground after he stored his stuff away again.
"Fall." Raven answered as the floor broke away and they fell into a giant room filled with stuff. Shiny stuff.
"Welcome to the treasury of Abba and the core of the seal for Behemoth." Raven said spreading his arms wide as Shirou looked around, his gaze instantly attracted to the beautiful looking swords.
"Anything you want to take you can, we just can't mess with the core in the middle, that is the seals which holds Behemoth from this world. Its rampage only controllable by Abba." Raven said seriously as Shirou nodded, instantly moving far away from the core.
Raven himself had already scanned the whole room, the only truly interesting things were the gold, which he shoved most of it into two bags, half into each, one of which he handed to Shirou. Fair was fair.
The second thing was was the golden key sitting on a pedestal, his sight couldn't n understand it properly, but he could understand it was a key to something important and needed in the future. So he stored it away inside his personal bag of goodies.
The final thing, was obviously the seal littered with runic languages in the hundreds. All connecting properly snd without issue, lasting even this far.
He was circling around it, writing down the seals for himself, however in a course of Emiya level luck, thankfully after he finished copying the runic patterns down, he moved to step back, but stepped back into Shirou, which resulted in them falling into the core.
Which started glowing white and gold.
"Well fuck." Raven said as everything started shaking.
"Crap." Shirou said in agreement.
Suddenly their world exploded in white and gold. Raven threw up a shield as strong as he could in an instant in multiple layers at that, hoping it would protect them from whatever it was long enough to get a grip for both of them.
"RAHERGGHRRRRR"
A terrifying roar of rage and anger reverberated around the world, across the many dimensions connected to the planet. If a being could hear, it heard the roar. If it couldn't, it felt the aura of the being elapse around the world and push down on them.
However, despite all, Raven could hear the wail of the creatures yell. He could understand it.
It wailed for its creator.
Why would it wail though? Raven didn't get a moment to think though as its two eyes focused on him and Shirou. He instinctively knew, this would be the most dangerous thing he would be doing in a long time.
•~~~~•~~~~•~~~~•
Hello everyone! Apologies for the long wait, shit happens and IRL sucks, but I'll be trying to post a chapter a day till Thursday, I want to finish this arc finally. I've got so many ideas I want to get done in the next school year arc and summer.
Also I wrote a much longer chapter out for you all to enjoy, a nice whopping 5k words almost for you to enjoy, which I hope you did.
Also I'm pretty sure I screwed up writing Shirou. In my perspective Shirou is a kind man, but he's willing to let people suffer if they dug themselves into it and deserved it. He wants to save those he can, especially those close to him. He wants to be a hero, but he doesn't want to become like the cynical future version of himself. Especially in a route like this one where he ended up with Rin, not Saber, though they are good friends still. No mana transfer though. He did mana transfer with Rin to give Saber energy though.
This chapter was a lot of lore dropping and research done, especially towards the last half. I wanted to be at least decently accurate with it. So I did my research as any self respecting author should do for a story unless they want to make an original story.
Now I've droned on to hit a 5k word mark and beyond for this chapter because I wanted to. So I hope you all enjoyed. Feel free to ask any questions, I may not answer due to spoilers.
Till next time!
-Voidy, The Insomniac
P.S. I'm-