Clock Tower, London, England
Three months after the Great Holy Grail War
My dearest sister, he wrote. How are you?
I realise that you’re not likely to ever read these wordsunlessuntil you come back, but I thought I’d write to you, anyway; it’s a nice way to organise my thoughts. And who knows? Maybe there’s some secret magical or technological method that will transport this letter to you, regardless—we certainly saw stranger things surrounding your travelling party.
I’m settling into the Clock Tower fairly well, which I’m sure will be a relief to you. I’m enrolled in Lord El-Melloi II’s class, so while I’ve been the object of some attention (mostly Lady Archisorte’s, unfortunately), I’m not nearly as interesting to the populace at large as some of my pee—
As a sudden cry of pain rang out, Caules’ attempt at writing abruptly devolved into an illegible scrawl. Scowling, he looked up to see more or less what he’d come to expect: Flat Escardos and Svin Glascheit in mid-argument again, interrupted by the iron grip of their professor on their skulls.
Sighing, he put the letter into a used section of his notebook, and paid attention to the oncoming lecture (the class’s, not Flat and Svin’s), adding to it irregularly during gaps in the lesson.
My peers are real characters, Sister; maybe not on the order some of the ones we met back home, but they’re just as quirky as some of our extended family, at least.
Flat Escardos, for example, reminds me a bit of you, but more of our “little brother”: he’s prodigiously talented, but more than a little spacy when it comes to dealing with anything that doesn’t interest him—which seems to be most of what magi consider important (along with common sense, half the time). He’s a decent enough guy, I suppose—but some of the things that come out of his mouth make you wonder how his brain functions well enough to allow him to breathe . . .
Svin Glascheit, on the other hand, is almost Flat’s polar opposite: level-headed, reasonable, almost completely hopeless with technology. Get him excited about something, though, and you’ll see there’s not as much difference between the two of them as you might think. Maybe that’s what makes them friends.Either that, or Flat is too dense to figure out that theyaren’t.
. . . On second thought, forget that last part, would you, Sis?
The important part is that they’ve been very friendly to me, with no apparent ulterior motive about it. I wish I could say the same about everybody I’ve met here—honestly,Lady Archisortescares mesome people have no sense of shame . . . I’m referring, of course, to Yvette H. Lehrman, who makes no secret of the fact that she aspires to be Lord El-Melloi II’s mistress.
(You read that right: not “wife,” she’s deliberately aiming for “mistress.” And I wish I could say that was the only strange thing about her . . .)
Still, as crazy as all of them are, they seem remarkably friendly for magi. Part of that, I think, is that Lord El-Melloi II has both a low tolerance for the usual politics—certainly not enough of one to tolerate it in HIS classroom—and a knack for “polishing jewels out of dross,” as Lady Archisorte put it once. The students here are the ones most magi don’t want to deal with, being seen as “too troublesome,” and Lord El-Melloi II takes an especial interest in such cases. The students here are intelligent enough to know that this is the only place where they’re actually wanted, I think, and are loathe to ruin the first place in the Clock Tower that feels like a home . . . Which is not to say that Flat doesn’t risk blowing us up on a bi-monthly basis, it seems like.
(And why, you ask, does Lord El-Melloi II tolerate Flat’s antics? The same reason, I suspect, that he tolerates everyone else’s foibles: he takes an almost perverse pleasure in turning the Clock Tower’s “problem children” into magi to be reckoned with—and I believe that with every hare-brained stunt, our teacher’s imagining of watching the nobles bow and scrape to Flat keeps him going. He’s going to make Flat Escardos his greatest achievement, I believe—out of sheer spite, if nothing else—assuming that Flat doesn’t manage to somehow kill us all, first.)
Sadly, I’m afraid I have less to say about the other subject I’m sure you’re interested in. Oh, don’t worry; he hasn’t been entirely absent, but since for some reason Lady Archisorte is even more interested in him than she is in me, he doesn’t show up in person more often than he can help it.
. . . Which, now that I’m thinking about it as I put it to paper, seems to frequently coincide with whenever I mention that Lady Archisorte has been particularly insistent. Sis, have I mentioned lately just how much I approve of your engagement? Honestly, if there’s anything I can do to help speed up the wedding, let me know, O—
“Hey, Colin!” Flat’s call interrupted in him mid-stroke of the pen, and Caules cursed, even as he turned at the sound of his alias.
(Was it a clever one? Not in the slightest—but it was close enough not to confuse him when it came to answering it; it was also so close to his original name that most magi would convince themselves nobody could be that stupid . . .)
“Yes, Flat?” Caules said warily. The other youth was excited, and Svin, a step or two behind him, looked exasperated. Neither of these, even in his admittedly limited experience, was a good sign—and less so when they were together.
“You are coming to game night, aren’t you?” Flat exclaimed. “Please say ‘yes’—the more people we have for this, the better!”
Caules blinked at the unexpected request. “You’re finally done with whatever the project was that was holding you up?”
“He wants to use the project for game night, apparently,” Svin said flatly, and Caules felt several of his body’s processes freeze at that statement. Apparently, the effect was visible, because Svin abruptly smirked, adding, “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”
“Oh come on, guys!” Flat whined. “You’ve gotta try this—it’s gonna be so awesome . . .”
“Is the professor joining us this time?” Caules asked carefully—surely, Lord El-Melloi II would forbid Flat the use of his project if he was going to end up as a test subject. Or, at the very least, would look it over thoroughly for hazards, first?
Flat slumped in almost palpable disappointment. “No—apparently, he’s got a case . . .”
At that, Caules opened his mouth to decline—
The other boy perked up suddenly. “But ‘The Dreaded Glittery Eyes of DOOM’ will!”
He sounded, Caules thought, like a child trying to convince his parents that there was an adequate substitute for a babysitter—and then what the other magus had actually said caught up with him.
“Didn’t he threaten to castrate you with a rusty bottle opener—and without anaesthetic—if you ever called him that again?” Svin asked.
It was their turn to watch Flat freeze up, this time. Caules had to admit that it was kind of obvious on sight, looking at it from this side of things.
“His real name is just so hard to pronounce, though!” Flat whined. “Besides, it’s not like I’m wrong . . .”
“You kind of are,” Caules corrected him. “He’s on a job overseas, as far as I know.”
Which was a shame, as while Godafrid probably wouldn’t understand whatever the heck Flat had done as well as Lord El-Melloi II could, his Glam Sight would probably spot any obvious failure points or safety hazards to it. Caules would feel a lot safer if his future brother-in-law could look the other magus’ project over . . . Not totally safe, since it was Flat, but safer.
“He said he was done when I asked,” the other magus said with a shrug, “so he’ll be teleconferencing in.”
Caules blinked. “He will?”
“Yeah, it’ll be great!” Flat said enthusiastically. “It’ll be a real test of exactly what this Mystic Code is designed for!”
“And that is . . .?” Caules said warily.
“You’ll just have to come if you want to find out, Colin,” Flat teased.
Caules sighed. At least, in theory, they’d have “adult supervision” in the form of Godafrid; if something went wrong with Flat’s Mystic Code, there was at least a reasonable chance of their getting out of the situation as long as that was the case. He might be just a spellcaster, but unlike Caules, he’d been at ground zero for the entirety of the Great Holy Grail War and survived.
At the very worst, I can at least count on him to avenge me if Flat gets us killed . . . And at least if he’s back in-country, I can ask what the heck this “problem I need to check on” was . . .
Hôtel Meurice
Calais, France
Six hours later
“All right, the Bounded Fields are up, and the decoys are either set off, or in place for the appropriate time—we should be able keep going undetected, and safe for the night. I am sorry for the roundabout route, but I want to make sure we’re hard to track. Regardless, we should be in London by tomorrow.
“How do you feel?” Frid asked the girl carefully. “Can I get you anything?”
Despite what her neighbours would claim, he hadn’t kidnapped her; he’d just offered to open the door of her gilded cage. That her private fears and insecurities had led her to walk through was her own choice (though he could hardly say he was unhappy that she’d chosen to align with his personal feelings on the matter).
“. . . I’m alright,” she said at last. Still uncertain, it seemed—though how much of that was just her natural reticence, he wasn’t sure . . .
Inwardly, Frid sighed—and fully aware of the irony that if what he’d read on TVTropes was correct, she was liable to be doing the same, and a fair amount of snarking, besides—he was making a mess of this . . . And who had asked him to interfere, this time? Nobody. It was his own bloody idiocy at fault here, plain and simple.
It probably would’ve been better not to interfere—if it weren’t for the fact that he might not survive some of the things that he’s liable to do otherwise . . . And, let’s be honest, it’s the simple fact that you’re a flat-out canonist; as much as you’d have liked, as a fanboy, to have her for yourself, you’d hate depriving her of what she so very obviously loves even more . . .
He tried his best to sound gentle (smiling, in his experience, never helped) as he said, “All right, but let me know if that changes, all right? I meant what I said: I want to help you, and for you to be happy.”
She gave him a long look, and in return, Frid studied her back.
While he’d had no trouble identifying her, ultimately, the truth was that she didn’t look like he’d expected her to—and it was more than just the differences that arose from mapping an anime character’s design to the features of a living human. Ultimately, the alterations in this world’s history affected more than just Fuyuki—and the realisation of that fact was why he’d gone looking for her in the first place—but in this specific case, though, her literal appearance was different. It made sense under the circumstances, he supposed, but the result was that she was close to what he’d expected, but not quite.
Which, he supposed, might actually make it worse for her, this time around, because the ghost of who she used to be was still hinted at, if you knew how to look . . .
“I’m going to set up to call back to London,” Frid said aloud. “I play games online with a few kids there who are liable to end up being future classmates of yours, if things turn out well—did you want to say hello?”
“. . . No,” the girl said, after a beat. “I think I’m going to go to bed, if that’s alright.”
“Of course,” he said, trying his best to sound reassuring. “I’ll try to keep the noise down.
“Sleep well, Gray.”
. . . And I can't disagree with any of that.