You don't want this.
You hate this. The basement, Grandfather the man, Grandfather the worms, and yourself. The Matou Magecraft, and the world that would allow such a thing to exist.
But what can you do?
You could flee. Not physically, no. But there is alwasy a way to retreat, to run away from a reality you cannot bring yourself to accept.
You could fight. You could die fighting. The worms are countless, innumerable. And for now, while they corrupt you, they do not do so out of malice.
They are too simple, and too complex, to hate. There is no enmity in their sting, or hatred in their fangs, any more than there is a sense of welcome or camraderie as you sink below the surface of the writhing pit.
It simply is.
And you are, and you will become.
If you fight, there will still be no malice or anger, but like a kicked cat would sink claws into an unwary ankle, the worms will be unable to do anything other than fight back.
If you're lucky, you'll die.
You can't put much stock in luck. If Grandfather wanted to waste his time taking you from Tohsaka, only to kill you, then he would not have been so elaborate about it.
He'll intervene, at the very least, controlling the worms just enough that you won't die, no matter how much you struggle.
If you thought you could just die quietly, then it might almost be worth it.
But no. There is no other option.
This is the magecraft passed down through the Matou and further back, the Makiri line. It may be that your father wasn't aware of everything it entailed. But there isn't anything else you can do but accept it.
The worms burrow into your flesh, into your veins, into your bones and into your soul.
And you seep back out into them in turn.
They bite deeply into you, and you swallow them whole.
Everything burns. Twisting and searing, itching and straining.
Itchy.
... foul.
Itchy.
... tainted.
Itchy.
... Tasty.
You can feel hundreds of the worms making their way inside of you, even as your blood pours outward, marking a trail forward for more.
And the pit spits you out, crumpling to a naked, grime-coated and bloody heap in front of Grandfather Zouken.
His gaze is as cold and harsh and alien as ever, and you feel like a brightly colored insect pinned to a card before it.
"... Curious." He finally, states. "Not outside of the boundaries of my predictions. Yet hardly the expected result. Interesting."
He grasps you by the throat with one deceptively powerful hand, wrinkled fingers of the other prodding at a freshly chewed apart entry between your ribs. They force their way within, and you would scream from the pain if only you could breathe as they catch hold of the trailing tip of your, yours, yours, it is yours and how dare he rip it away from y-!
He drops you callously back to the ground, focus seeming fully on the worm dangling, streaked in your blood, from his fingertips.
He brings it to his mouth, and you can feel it cut short with a sudden start as he bites down, and slowly chews.
"Yes. Interesting indeed." he decides, as he swallows your drone, callously, with thoughtless entitlement. "If I were to have placed odds for a wager... I would not have marked it as even one in a hundred. Not even one in twenty by number, and yet...?"
His gaze is appraising, the spider circling in its web around some strange, new thing which has come to be tangled in its strands.
"There are some purposes for which you may have just become entirely useless." He reflects. "And yet, so many other options have just become available."
You gasp for breath.
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