Author's Notes

Hello, everyone.

Well, this is it. I would like to thank you all for reading. I've had so much fun with writing this story, and I hope that you liked it too.

I've edited all the previous chapters, so you don't have to worry as much about typos and text being clunky if you decide to get back to it some time.

Fonts used:

"Onii-san, let's go to the zoo and hug fluffy tigers." Speech

"Es ist gross, es ist klein." Mysteries.

"Cthulhu Tentacle Piledriver!" Overpowered Mysteries.

I still don't own Nasuverse, and I'm not making any money off this story. I'd like to thank Kinoko Nasu one last time for creating this awesome dark, hilarious, and hearteningly sincere universe for us all to enjoy and play with.

On to the epilogue.

Epilogue

Shirou sat quietly on the roof, breathing in and out, adding vapor to the mist that surrounded the land. In front of him lay a coal-black bow almost as tall as he was, and Shirou Emiya was a tall man. His eyes were closed, and soft light emanated from his ears.

He didn't take many jobs, even if the Association and the Church sent him wobbling heaps of offers. He mainly stuck to teaching students about underappreciated areas of Magecraft. This task, however, was something he couldn't ignore. The tiny Chinese village had little communication with the outside world, and it was only because a dozen villagers feinted an escape that he even heard of their plight. A twelve-year-old snuck out at the same time as two families were getting eviscerated on the outskirts. The village mined rare gems for the Edelfelt family, and he owed a debt to Luvia for all the help she had given back when they were working on dismantling the Grail and creating alternate energy feeds for the existing Servants. He hadn't slept in two days, so he Reinforced his nose to jolt himself awake. The air smelled like rot and blood and fear.

His earpiece crackled. "I see her," said Luvia. "Engaging."

Explosions started thomping in the distance, but Shirou couldn't see anything through the cloying mist. He stood up, held the bow in his left hand and reached out with his right.

"Trace On."

There was a familiar buildup of Od inside him, swelling behind his brain and exploding in a flare of energy right through his head and between his eyes. The familiar form of Gae Bolg, the demonic spear, appeared in his hand. It wasn't a weapon created to be comfortable for its wielder: thick artery-like metal strings melded with the crimson shaft, and the spear pulsed with primordial hunger.

"Alter."

This took more out of him, but he pushed through. Luvia didn't have much time, if the reports on the Dead Apostle were right. This one didn't enjoy playing with his food much. The spear quivered in his hands and what had been a thrown weapon flowed shorter and thinner, turning into an arrow. The veins on it became even more prominent, and the arrow vibrated with excitement in his hand.

"Soon," said Shirou and transferred the arrow to his left hand, holding it along with the bow.

"Shirou, I could use some help here," said Luvia into his ear.

Shirou called Firebrand. It was a sword that he was especially proud of. He made it himself, using the modern process for Damascus steel forging: starting by preparing a special mix of iron and carbon and then forging them together at several carefully controlled temperatures. He inlaid rubies along one side of the blade and drew a serpentine line of Runes for fire on the other side. He then gave the blade to Dietrich. His adopted father made the enchantment that would explode the blade when fed energy, charged it and showed it to Shirou before they fled the magically reinforced room they had used. They had lost both the room and the blade, but he now had a blade on the cusp of exploding at his beck and call. There was a lot you could do with blades, and even seven years after the War he felt he was only scraping the more obvious possibilities.

The sword appeared above his head, and Shirou shot it in the vague direction of their enemy. "Get behind cover," he said to Luvia. He heard the high-pitched whirling sound of one of the plasma tunneling gems they had developed with Tohsaka, and he went flat on the roof.

The explosion was a wave of orange arcane energy and bone-cracking heat that blackened the building he was hiding on, but, more importantly, it burned the Mystical smoke the village was covered in. The One Who Sleeps they called this Dead Apostle. She would go into small settlements and cover them in her mist, blinding everyone except herself. She would slowly devour the parents and then watch as they turned to mindless undead, chase down, and tear into the still living bodies of their own children. She would do this house by house, feeding on the terror and knowing that no one would be able to escape the mist. Both the Church and the Association had been chasing her for years, but it was only because someone escaped that they finally got a chance to destroy the monster that once had been a Magus. The Dead Apostle's son had died in a Mystical accident she had caused as a mortal, warping her mind into a deep hatred for all children that Shirou didn't care about. She was hurting kids—someone not able to protect themselves through no fault of their own. She needed to die.

He stood up and saw the thing. A beautiful woman with pale skin and long dark hair glistening in the moonlight like a sheet of dark steel. Leaning over Luvia lying on the ground, as if she was going to cradle the girl to her bosom.

"Gae Bolg," said Shirou and pumped half of his energy into the spear through all twenty-seven of his circuits.

He felt the Mystic Code ring on his right index finger shatter from the amount of power he had channeled, and the woman turned her heard backwards to look at him with a sickening crunch. Her body started to turn, seemingly without her legs moving under the billowing robes she wore. Her beautiful red lips parted into a bestial snarl, and she lowered her head as if to lunge at him, before he saw recognition pulse in those yellow eyes. Shirou released the arrow.

It streaked with the fury of a demon army, and the vampire tried to dodge, blurring like many Dead Apostle's did, but the Broken Phantasm didn't care for such things. Shirou wasn't the Irish Hound, and the target had a chance to get away from his fake weapon, but not with that kind of speed. Before the crimson light reached her, Shirou was notching another sword.

"Caliburn. Alter," he said just as the zigzag of red lightning reached the chest of the vampire, blowing a hole through it and pinning her to a wall behind her. He charged the golden arrow until it hummed in his hand, and loosed it at the momentarily immobile Dead Apostle. At the same time, Luvia got up from the ground, and groggily tossed a few stones for good measure. The resulting explosion knocked her back down.

When they were finished, the half of the village the monster had depopulated was in ruins, but the vampire was nothing but a pile of ash.

###

"We are lucky they are paying you full price with this kind of property damage," said Tohsaka.

They were sitting in the office of their manor. Sakura curled up against Shirou on a sofa, and he was absent-mindedly stroking her long violet hair while she slept. She thought the two of them never looked more peaceful.

"I'm glad she grew that back," he said. "I like it this way."

"I think she also has a new conditioner." Tohsaka wrote the total payment in her ledger and checked against their funds. She said, "You know, we could probably buy in. That gem mine the Edelfelts have over there, think they might let us in on it if we ask nicely?"

Shirou looked like he was going to shrug, but then looked at the sleeping Sakura leaning against his side. He said, "Depends on how big the pile of money we bring is. Their family isn't the kind you can just flatter and have them drop the price twenty percent."

"Mercenaries."

He smiled and said, "Aren't we the same?"

She got back to work, figuring how much they could spend. The mansion included dorms for students now, and they needed money to continue holding lessons. Salaries for staff, materials, utilities…

"I don't think we can afford it. Shame," she said.

"You know, I'm lucky to have you, Tohsaka," said Shirou. "I remember thinking you were kind of stuck up back when we met, but now I see I couldn't have asked for a better person to lead us."

She felt her cheeks redden and glanced up to look at him. Rin could see his expression soften in the warm light streaming from the chandelier above. She said, "Of course you are lucky, idiot. If you were my husband, I'd say you married well above your station, but, you know..." She shrugged. "You are still damn lucky."

He tilted his head and said, "Does it bother you? The life we have?"

This time she laughed, doing her best to muffle the sound not to wake her sister, and it came in undignified snorts that made her go even redder. She stopped eventually and said, "Shirou, before the Holy Grail War started all I wanted was to restore my family to being the best in Japan. I don't know if you noticed, doofus, but we are like royalty now. When we go to London with Saber and Rider, I can see Lords practically pee their pants in fear, and I'm not even twenty-five. We are rich, we are respected, we are powerful. We even have the Blue living in our house a lot of the time, which is just insane."

He looked far too serious, so she added, "And I have you and Sakura, and neither of us is complaining. Don't be an idiot. By the way, Lancer called. He wants you to go on a fishing trip with him and Koujirou next Wednesday."

Shirou looked at the ceiling, probably going through his itinerary. She said, "Don't bother, I checked. You are free."

"Just fishing rods?" asked Shirou. "Last time we went, Lancer caught two hundred pounds of fish by spearing them with a tree branch he picked off the ground, and Sasaki didn't want to be left behind, so he slashed the water. We had a river of sashimi by the end."

"They promised," she said. "But I wouldn't trust anything those two say."

"Do you want to go?" he asked.

"Sure. But tonight we sleep in."

The End

End of story notes

First of all, thank you for going on this ride. The feedback I got for Eye of the Sword has been amazing. Back when I started, I made a lot of mistakes, but this story always had heart, even when it was rife with typos and point-of-view errors. You have been excited by my writing and kind from the start, and it has made working on Eye of the Sword a great journey.

I considered a really long epilogue with blocks for every single character but then thought better. It would be boring to look at Sakura gloat over her comatose brother, and Saber visit England, and Lancer finally landing a girl, and Assassin doing a pilgrimage to Tibet, and… Well, you get the idea. So I decided I would rather do just two connected scenes and keep it close in spirit to the epilogues of the original novel which are short and impactful. Hope you liked it. I might do a one-shot with all that stuff separately when I get a bit of distance from Eye of the Sword. You can mention it in a review if you'd like me to do so.

Neil Gaiman says that a novel is a long piece of prose with something wrong with it. This is doubly true for fanfiction. There is a lot wrong with Eye of the Sword, but I'm satisfied with what it ended up growing into. From the start, I wanted to see how a broken Shirou would react to violence and warmth, and what kind of people would stick by him and why, in spite of his nature. It was never about fixing what was wrong with him—I don't believe in fixing the way people are. I've answered the questions I had when I started this for myself, and I hope I've answered them for you.

What's next (this is shameless self-plugging, scroll to the end if you don't want to read it).

Shameless self-plugging begins.

There are two new fics I'm working on. You can find the links in my profile. The fic that gets better feedback will be the one that gets regular updates after the first three chapters or so.

"Into the Maelstrom" is a Star Wars story. It's a crossover between the movie universe and Knights of the Old Republic. Revan and the Exile get stranded in the movie universe that runs parallel to their own, and they try to find their way back, while fixing or exacerbating the problems of the Republic. The prologue and the first chapter are up, and that should be enough for you to see whether you like the story or not. I highly recommend going through the first chapter though, because the prologue ended up a bit cracky for my taste (might do something about that later).

"The Broken Creed" is a Naruto story. It is an alternative universe where things are somewhat more realistic (without a drop in power level of the major players) and Naruto has abilities that make him a lot like an RPG character. It's not a Gamer crossover, and the mechanics are there mostly as a catalyst to play with the Naruto world and have some fun character interactions. First chapter is up.

I, of course, want to become a professional author (who here doesn't?). The original novel currently called Beware of Light is set in distant future where humanity has reached for the stars and found nothing there. Our race is now spread across thousands of planets, but technology has stagnated and people whittle away at their lifespan through art, pleasure, and modifying their bodies with cybernetics. We find ourselves on a planet on the cusp of civil war, where a city has rebelled against the rule of oppressive immortals to get back control over their lives. If that sounds like your cup of tea, check out my profile. There is a link to the novel there, and I love it when people check it out.

Shameless self-plugging ends.

has been amazing to me. We have our share of bashers and really aggressive people, but overall it's an awesome community. If you have an idea rolling around in your head and trying to find its way out, I urge you to seat down and start writing. If you find you really like it, there are always ways to improve your grammar and style.

Finally, if you come here from the Fate/Stay Night or Unlimited Bladeworks anime, you should check out the visual novel if you can get your hands on it. A lot was cut in the making of the anime, and the Heaven's Feel route still hasn't found its way to the screen. Kinoko Nasu is a genius writer and everybody else, including the anime screenplay writers, are just working off his material. The thirty-five hours I spent reading that visual novel were some of the best of my life.

If you have the time, leave a review on your way out so I know what you'd like me to focus on in the next story.

Stay shiny, and see you around.

Alex