Oh, I'd been meaning to read more since... whenever I was reading it some in 2019. Grabbing the PDF!!! I think this is a good idea and helpful.
Oh, I'd been meaning to read more since... whenever I was reading it some in 2019. Grabbing the PDF!!! I think this is a good idea and helpful.
Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t.
Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die.
Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.
Blog of Fiction for You to Consume
Other Links
Spoiler:
I was unprepared for the choice memes among the angst in Nupta Contagioso.
Thursday, February 5thSera Miller 9:00 am
Hey @TeamTolosa,
Attached is the memo mentioned in last night’s meeting. Let’s crush it before the next milestone!
02.06_Operations_Update 1.1.pdf
7 replies___________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________
Shawn Young 9:15 am
Catering tonight?
Ranbir Singh 9:17
Thank you for the share @Sera
Sera Miller 9:19 am
Yes @Shawn, please read the memo in full.
Daniela Hernandez 9:25 am
Not sure if seeing this correctly, @Sera, but February 4th, Night is missing entries?
Shawn Young 9:27 am
@Daniela @Sera Yes.
Sera Miller 9:30 am
@TeamTolosa, my bad. Re-uploaded as 1.1.
Daniela Hernandez 9:31 am
@Sera thank you for the re-upload.
*****
MEMORANDUM
DATE: February 6th
TO: All Operatives Supervising HGW-726-TOLO
FROM: Sera Miller, Internal Operations Liaison and Head Intelligence Analyst
SUBJECT: Operations Update 1.0
In accordance with Thorn's current “hands-off” policy in the HGW-726-TOLO, operatives are currently on standby and awaiting confirmation from Veritas. Thorn currently lacks the jurisdiction to surveil the area; however, Veritas has flagged the following persons as ‘of interest.’ Assignments are as follows:
Daniela Hernandez and Zoe Clark:
Dilo — Celebrated bishop of the Catholic Church who exposed the Tolosa Holy Grail Ritual to the Church. The Vatican has released a statement claiming he died February 1st of natural causes. Considering the bishop initiated negotiations between the Holy Church and Thorn and ensured Thorn’s official involvement in the ritual in exchange for the Church’s legitimacy in claiming the Tolosa Holy Grail and the rights to perform the ritual in the United States, this timely death is suspicious.
Sakura Matou, Master of Saber — Magus. Former Master of HGW-726-FUYU-5. Pupil of Bishop Dilo and consultant to help the Holy Church oversee the HGW-726-TOLO. Unclear why she summoned a Servant. Internal Holy Church Schism? Her Saber Class Servant is an armored warrior woman with a fiery gold sword. Lives up to the name most excellent Class.
Chris Frampton — Executor-in-training. Orphaned at ten years of age, Frampton was adopted into the Holy Church by Bishop Dilo. Unknown why a high school student would be involved in overseeing a Holy Grail War.
Joseph Kelsey — Pastor. Leads the Tolosa Mission congregation. Has ties to the Holy Church. Previously knew Bishop Dilo and was active in Aylesbury.
Sancraid Phahn, Overseer and Master of Rider — Current overseer for HGW-726-TOLO. Mediator for the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament. Specializes in relic acquisitions from private collectors. Claims to have summoned a Servant in response to Sakura Matou summoning Saber. Surprisingly little information was found about him. Rider is an armored knight, perhaps from the Middle Ages?
Ranbir Singh:
Fillia von Einzbern, Master of Archer — Homunculus. Former Holy Grail Vessel of HGW-726-SNOW. Known to be deceased. Unsure how she is still operational. Travels with her Tuner by the name of ‘Rich,’ a well known music theory scholar. Her Archer Servant is a hulking giant who is likely the strongest Servant in the war.
Byron Valualeta Iselma, Master of Caster — Magus. Disgraced nobleman from the Iselma Family. Real life inspiration for a character in the apocryphal 'Dangerous Beauty: Vanishing at the Towers of the Twin Faces’ which is part of the ‘Velvet Canon’ webnovels. Affiliated with the Clock Tower Faculty of Creation. A stereotypical magus by all accounts. Brought his daughter, Estella Valualeta Iselma, also known as the Princess of Silver. Byron has ties with the Grand who killed Thorn’s former consultant ‘Francesca’ multiple times, Touko Aozaki. His Caster Servant has not shown her abilities. Veritas believes she is related to the Iselma goal of creating the ultimate beauty.
Shawn Young:
Dead Apostle? — A vampire Veritas’s Servant encountered. There are rumors that a vampire had been residing in the Men’s Colony north of Tolosa.
Nadine Craig, Master of Assassin — Local high school student who stumbled into a Servant battle. Veritas is adamant about separating her from her Servant. Craig’s Assassin calls herself Mary and is clothed in the style of a domestic servant. Veritas's Berserker, Florence Nightingale finds this False Assassin dangerous.
Master of Lancer — Unknown. Veritas notes her almost fatal encounter with Lancer and that he has been active planting trees around leyline foci that qualify as Holy Grail summoning locations. Those who touch these trees have visions from the Classical period.
File Complete
Krast Lenny Wegner, Master of Assassin — Magus. Former Scaldio Family officer. Neutralized by Veritas. Servant neutralized by Archer.
With Veritas and information from local support teams, this is a summary of our best reproduction of the timeline for the first three days HGW-726-TOLO.
February 2nd:
Night —
- Overseer duty of HGW-726-TOLO officially shifts from Chris Frampton to Sancraid Phahn.
- Conflagration on Cerro Huerta. Considering the location and fire present, likely due to Saber and Lancer fighting. This is the first known fight of HGW-726-TOLO.
- A bounded field is erected over Tolosa High School. Archer and Rider are found fighting within it.
- Veritas neutralizes Krast Lenny Wegner. Archer defeats Wegner’s Assassin.
- Nadine Craig summons ‘False’ Assassin with the corpse of ‘True’ Assassin.
- The Servants all disperse and Rider takes Craig to Phahn’s church.
February 3rd:
Day —
- Rumors of ‘vampire’ attacks on the Men’s Colony appear on r/TOLO and other social media.
- Craig, Assassin, and Archer found outside Rite-Aid on Johnson Ave, next to the Tolosa Creek.
- Frampton and Phahn seen near Wegner’s destroyed safehouse.
Night —
- Frampton spotted in multiple locations throughout the evening including near the Men’s Colony.
- Veritas attempts to neutralize Assassin and extract Craig. Berserker encounters the Dead Apostle and forces it to flee.
- More trees appear on leyline foci and are burned.
February 4th:
Day —
- Caster and the Princess of Silver are seen picking up party decorations.
- Craig is seen on Tolosa Polytechnic campus. Meeting Rich?
Night —
- The Iselma gather the Masters and Servants. According to Veritas, the only Masters who do not attend are Matou and Lancer’s Master. Matou is seen in downtown Tolosa.
- Phahn announces dual status as Master and overseer and proceeds to denounce ‘a rogue Master from Dilo’s faction,’ Matou.
- Veritas is ambushed by Frampton outside the Iselma mansion before she is able to neutralize any Masters. They are chased by the Iselma security automata and encounter Lancer who severely wounds Frampton.
- Saber materializes and fends off Lancer.
Our priority is gathering detailed up-to-date information to better inform Veritas's on-the-ground response and the organization’s policy on the Holy Church moving forward. However, the gaps in the timeline will eventually need to be filled if HGW-726-TOLO is to be safely administered.
Extra hours are to be expected. As per Thorn policy, sick leave is cancelled for the duration of HGW-726-TOLO except for medical or personal emergencies. In exchange, all working hours for information analysts will be considered overtime and catering provided for dinner alone. Our intern, Sam, has agreed to handle the catering so please let him know your dietary restrictions and preferences.
Thank you for your hard work.
Last edited by You; March 12th, 2021 at 03:49 AM.
Originally Posted by FSF 5, Chapter 14: Gold and Lions I
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
18/Just Peachy
43 - Peach Cream Ice (Crème de Péches)
She was born in a country that plunged headfirst into a long depression while still feeling the hunger pangs of one of the largest famines in history.
— Cut 12 peaches in halves, crack the stones and take out the kernels.
The men drank, the women wept, and the children got sick. Each of them dreamed of sailing to a New World for a chance at a better life.
In this age of egalitarian scarcity, a girl was born.
She was like any other girl. Another hungry mouth to feed, another dirty body to clothe, another useless girl who needed a groom. Her parents never wanted her, but they were Catholic, you see. They didn’t call it being pro-life back then. They were just. . . poor, like most people in the ‘old country.’ So they gave the girl to her grandmother.
— Put them to cook with half a pint of water and 4 ounces of sugar.
The girl loved the Nana who raised her.
The girl loved the people she’d meet going into town.
The girl loved the shopkeepers who would give her a little extra, knowing she only had her Nana.
The girl loved her hometown. . . so she was painfully aware.
— When tender mix a little liquid saffron or apricot yellow (p. 63) with the fruit and a few drops of vanilla, Pass through the tammy cloth or hair sieve.
In the fields.
In the houses.
And for those especially unlucky, in the cribs.
— Put the pint of cream in a pan over the fire and let it come to the boil, and then pour it onto the sugar yolks (a quarter of a pound of castor sugar, and 8 yolks of eggs) in a basin and mix well.
In her era, disease was an inevitable postscript to daily life. .
No one knew exactly where it came from.
“To filth!” the men would shout over the first round.
“The miasma!” the men would sometimes cry after the eighth.
“Water. . . please. . .” the men would groan the morning after.
— Return it to the pan and keep it stirred over the fire till it thickens and clings well to the spoon, but do not let it boil.
But there was one iron-clad rule they all lived by — the strong did not get sick.
The girl was strong.
— Pass it through a tammy, or hair sieve, or strainer.
Only the strong survived the voyage from the old country to the New World.
Penniless potential immigrants huddled in the bowels of an overcrowded ship. With haunted eyes, they watched each other fall toand expire only to be dumped into the cold black sea.sicknessweakness
— Add this purée to 1.5 pints of custard. Let it cool.
Even in this hell, everything was the same.
Surrounded by disease. Surrounded by filth. Surrounded by death. As always, the girl was alone.
— Take Patent Freezer and lift the pan from the tub. Put pounded ice in the tub with a depth of about 1 to 1.5 inch, according to the quantity of cream, etc, to be frozen, and throw the pounded ice half its weight of freeze or rough salt and mix it with the pounded ice. Replace pan on the pivot in the tub.
She had no doubt that she would survive the two-week voyage.
She was strong, you see.
Born into poverty and abandoned by her parents at fourteen years of age, she held no romantic illusions about the world. All she wanted was the opportunity to be given just compensation for her work.
— Pour your cream, etc, into the pan through the little door in the lit and turn the hand.
What she didn’t understand was that everyone else on that ship was just as strong as she was.
What she didn’t understand was that everyone else on that ship wanted exactly the same thing as she did.
What she didn’t understand was —
— Observe, there is no need to pack ice and salt around the pan, but merely to put it on the bottom of the tube under the pan.
Even in the New World, the poor got sick. That’s just what happened to the poor.
The newborn down the street.
The couple in their building.
The elderly man down the hall.
And by the Grace of God, they would either recover or be taken to the next world.
It was a mundane, everyday occurrence that almost began to mean nothing to the girl as she became a woman, for disease did not touch the wealthy middle-class whom she cooked for.
— After turning the handle for 2 or 3 minutes, examine the progress of the freezing by looking through the door in the link.
“It’s Sunday, Mary. I’ve been good all week. You’re going to make it aren’t you — peach ice-cream?”
“Ya disturbing my work, dearie. Mr. Warren’s going to be ragin’ if he finds you in here.”
“Please let me stay and learn, Mary. I want to be one of those ‘new women’ Mummy always talks about and make my own living like you do!”
— When partly frozen, half a pint of whipped cream slightly sweetened may be added to each pint of custard.
Disease was a natural disaster, like a hurricane or a flood. Blood paid for due to the inadequacies in governmental response, public health systems, or cultural practices. Mary’s world was covered in disease. If the visitor was truly a Doctor as he claims, he should know that, so —
“Madam. . . Ummm. . . what I would like to say is. . .” he cleared his throat to regurgitate some more courage. “Please be so kind as to submit your fluids for examination.”
Why ask Mary? She had never been sick.
— When the cream is sufficiently frozen, hold the pan with one hand and unscrew the handle and lift off the crossbar and lid.
An older Mary sits on a chair looking over a large river as the sun sets. Wrapped in a crocheted blanket, her dirty, paunchy face and glazed eyes reflect the waning sunlight. There’s none of the fire that she brings to each expression or gesture, just a sad acceptance that she will never reach that distant sprawling metropolis making its first attempts at conquering the skyline.
This must be where she left her.soulpride
She left a country of disease in a boat filled with disease, only to arrive in a port city plagued with the same diseases, and somehow made something of herself.
Mary was strong. She didn’t get sick.
I think. . . that was her pride.
That’s why her employers trusted her to cook the decadent dishes the nouveau riche used as cultural currency in their attempts to become accepted into the upper echelons of late 19th century New York society.
So, I can’t help but wonder how. . . how did this proud and fussy Irish immigrant who made peach ice cream that was to die for become trapped on this island for sick people?
— Serve cold and enjoy.
No, it doesn’t matter.
*****
I don’t usually shower in the morning, but I got home so late that I went to sleep without taking off my makeup. Big mistake. I don’t need my skin looking blotchier than it already does, so I roll out of bed, putting the finishing crumples on last night’s dress.
Mary warned me, but I was too tired to listen. Now she’s reminding me she warned me as I wipe my mouth and check the shirt I’m wearing out today for any splatter. After rinsing my mouth, I brush my teeth. Luckily, the buzz of the electric toothbrush drowns out most of her scolding. She’s so persistent, continuing behind the door as I’m using the toilet.
“Dude, can I have some privacy?”
My nagging ghost replies, “Privacy’s for those capable of changing clothes before going to bed.”
Ever since the party last night with the Masters and their Servants, Mary’s been all sorts of pompous and really trying to hide her. . . Not accent; what’s the word she uses for it. . . Brogue. That’s it. Anyway, I guess rubbing shoulders with the cultured reminded her of her past. The same past I partly saw last night.
I sigh as I flush.
Life must have been pretty shitty back then, but I’m glad to see that Mary was able to live her American Dream. Even if she got sick towards the end, at least the government looked after her. According to most media outlets the American Dream is deader than a doornail, replaced with disenchanted active shooters. Good to know the system worked once upon a time. But then again, wasn’t Mary framed for murder?
I try to imagine how that went down as I dig through my packed bathroom drawer for that half empty bottle of witch-hazel cleanser and those cotton pads from the 99c store next to the Gross Out. Okay, make-up is all gone, so pause the video while I get that square of aloe face cleansing soap. Face all wet, now sud up, cheeks first, around the nose, and finally forehead. All cleansed so it’s time to pull out the big guns. Moroccan red clay facial scrub. Today’s exfoliation day. Once a week. You don’t want to exfoliate too much because it takes too much off. Scrub hard, scrub deep, and maybe one day these blackheads will all be gone. Press play again, skip, skip, skip. Don’t act like you aren’t sponsored. Can’t believe this video wasn’t demonetized. Let's finish this up with some Vitamin E oil. Hmmm, I don’t really want my face drying out so maybe some moisturizer too — time to switch to that moisturizer video Krista favorited for me. I do like how this girl dabs her face. Two on the chin, three on each cheek, one between the eyebrows, one on the middle of the forehead and two at the temples. Now rub in. And no, I don’t think I will like and subscribe. Why?
I look at the mirror.
Are all girls hopeless romantics for following a daily ritual of cleansers, masks, and creams or have we just been conditioned to believe these things make us more beautiful? But this is how we relate to each other, right? This is how we socially stratify ourselves, right? There has to be some sort of secret to this slavish devotion if this girl on my phone has a million people who thought her advice on morning skin routines was worth their attention because she happens to look better than they do.
I touch my cheek to make sure there’s no residue.
What’s the difference between this video and when Caster and the Silver Princess walked down the staircase? They’re both just as unattainable for us mere mortals. I think most women know that, yet we still continue our daily regiment through rain, hail, sleet, or snow because we can see the goal. Not in ourselves, that’s laughable, but in someone else. If you see the ideal, no matter how filtered or photoshopped it might be, you can reach it. So, day by day we plod, different combinations of products, different order of products, different ‘natural’ ingredients in the products. Yet always products, until that’s all we become to each other.
The beginning was a tube of acne cream Krista said her “dope-ass” cousin recommended because I wouldn’t go out of the house without a beanie to hide the giant zits on my forehead. As parents gave in and bought us phones, utilitarianism transformed to mockingly mimicking girls who would upload videos about what products they would die on a hill for in their poorly lit bathrooms. High school was when parody turned into foundation, cleansers, moisturizers filling all empty spaces in my vanity.
Because we felt like stealing all the free samples from unopened magazines in a CVS.
Because your favorite Youtuber made a video recommending it.
Because your mum took you shopping to try to prove to herself she could still be a good mother after her divorce.
And through you, I…
Honestly, a mystery, the things that you can get used to doing.
I open the bathroom door to find my ghost companion sitting on my bed with my iPad.
“Sure took your time in the privy.”
“Is that my grandma’s? Did you raid the attic last night?” She’s wearing a deep blue flowing dress. My maternal grandparents died when I was young, but mom goes into the attic and looks through clothes with a wistful expression on her face, sometimes tears, when she’s had a particularly bad date. Based on the pool of guys you can meet in your mid-forties, that blue dress has been taken out more than its fair share.
“Servants don’t need to sleep. And your grandmother had good taste, though I’m a little averse to wearing the dress of a woman who has already passed.”
“Why? You’re a ‘woman who has already passed.’ And like if you were so averse, why pick through my attic in the first place? Not that I care.” I start rummaging through my own clothes to find a clean shirt and catch a glimpse of the iPad screen. “Servants know how to use tablets?”
“The Grail tells us what computers are, but no, we don’t know how to use them. But come on dearie, if you can read and write it’s not that hard to operate a digital typewriter.” Also, your key combination is much too obvious, anyone could unlock your machine, she adds.
Impressed with yourself, much?
“It’s not worth anything, just something my mum says she got me because I got good grades.” She landed a big client that day too. Talk about an egotrip. You’re such a smart girl Nadine. You could be a scientist or lawyer; your father would be so proud of you. How about a reward for all your hard work? “Anyway, why are you watching Anthony Bourdain?”
Enraptured by a man with bushy eyebrows and curly white hair gracing the screen, she ignores me. Behind him is a red glowing neon sign of some bohemian New York eatery.
“You know he died. Suicide, I think.”
“Bless his heart,” she mumbles without taking her eyes off the screen. “Everything a cook should be, this one was.”
It makes sense that the first thing Mary, a famous cook, would be watching on Netflix are other famous cooks, but just how much did she end up binging last night if she’s already on the last episode?
“Ummm, My mom’s still downstairs. I’ll head down and let you know when she’s gone.”
“Grand,” she says without looking up.
*****
Tentatively, I take a bite out of my Eggo. Slightly burnt, but edible. Slather on enough Nutella and it's fine. What are Eggos but a vehicle for spread?
In a slightly too professional grey pants suit coupled with a black blouse that lets everyone know she’senough to flirt back even if her pants suit is too professional my mom comes into the kitchen jangling her car keys.fundesperate
“You’re up early.” She sounds surprised.
“Life of an indentured servant. You were the one who signed off on that Great Compromise.”
“In such a good mood, how rare.” She takes out a giant Odwalla superfood juice and pours herself a glass of what looks like algae mixed with mud. “How was last night? Quick, I’ve got to go soon.”
That reminds me. . .
“Hey mom, do we have any magic in our family?”
“Magic? I think your father used to do a bit in his college days back when David Copperfield was cool. Oh, but he didn’t like being called a magician, he was an ‘illusionist’, or when half the seats at an open mic were filled, a ‘prestidigitator’. It was cute.”
She finishes her juice, fills the glass with tap water and leaves it in the empty sink.
“No mom, like witches and wizards, the Harry Potter stuff. Wasn’t one of your grandmothers from Salem?”
“No, no, I don’t think so. . . I’ve got to go. We can talk more about this. . . oh! That’s right! Remember cousin Becky? Uncle Noah and Aunt Emma who helped us when we first moved here? God, I haven’t called since last Thanksgiving. Anyway, remember Becky? The one who chewed her split-ends and had that cute crush on your brother. Well, get this, she’s a witch now. Saw it on Facebook. She got into it after being accepted into Berkeley. Smart kid, not very bright.”
“No mom, Wiccans don’t count.” And most of my cousins had crushes on my brother.
“Then, I guess we don’t have magic in the family. Why are you asking?” She’s rummaging through her purse probably looking for the car keys that are right in front of me.
“Everyone at that party was like an aristocrat. They talked a lot about their ancestors. The host, Lord Byron, seemed to be from one of those old families mentioned in occult books? Apparently, he was related to the Valueta family and there was like a Waynez family mentioned.”
“Well Nadine, that’s just the Brits for you. But, Waynez. . . Waynez. . . now, where have I heard that name again. . . Oh, there are my keys. Nadine, why didn’t you tell me they were just. . .? Well, now I’m really going to be late if I don’t—” Struck by a bolt of divine inspiration, her eyes widen as she slams her hands onto the granite kitchen top. “You don’t mean the Waynez Department Store in London, do you?” she practically shrieks.
I gaze into the abyss of her ardent eyes and find it very difficult to see myself anymore, so I shrug.
“Nadine—” she starts, before being cut off by the buzz of her phone. “Oh shi— We’ll talk more about this when I get home, okay? Cute henna, are those supposed to be peacock feathers?”
Crap, I really need to figure out how to hide my Command Spell.
That’s my mom for you: didn’t even ask me what I was going to do today. I spent a sparse five minutes planning a lie too. What a waste.
When the car finishes pulling out of the driveway, I shout upstairs, “Hey, Mary, want breakfast!?”
She tromps down the stairs and eyes the juice container that my mom left on the counter with vehement disapproval.
“It doesn’t actually taste like what you’d think. They make it for people like my mom so that they think they’re getting enough servings of fruit and vegetables when it’s mostly sugar.”
“Wasn’t complaining about the slop, dearie. For a home this large, this kitchen is awful cold.”
“The thermostat is on the wall behind you.”
“Not like that. There’s a universal law that every kitchen is a sinking ship where the cook continuously bails out the seawater with a bucket and her own two hands. No matter how fastidiously a cook may clean and scrub, imperfections build over time. This place is too clean, not because someone did a good job cleaning, but because it hasn’t been used.” She drags her index finger across an induction plate and inspects the residue. “Your mother has never taught you to cook?”
“I think she taught me how to make scrambled eggs once.” I get indignant. “Look, if you don’t like the food we have, you can cook.”
“Dearie, you couldn’t afford my rate.”
That takes me back to my dream where soft candlelight illuminated a multitude of dishes cooling on top of a luxurious tablecloth enveloping a hardwood table carved from a single tree, can you believe it, lovelies? Dinner was never just a family occasion. There were always guests around the table marveling at the newest delight from the Orient or Paris their cook had concocted.
“I dreamt about you last night. That’s a magecraft thing, right?”
She seizes up. “Yes dearie, it’s normal for Masters and Servants to see each other’s pasts. It has to do with how the path is set up during the contracting I believe.”
I finish my Eggo. After what happened in the bathroom this morning, it’s good to see her squirm a little. “Oh, it happens to every Master. That’s a bit disappointing. My past is pretty boring, sorry about that.”
“Nadine. . .” You know it's serious when Mary says your name, “What did you see?”
“Peach ice-cream. I saw you making peach ice-cream.” Geez, you don’t have to make that face.
“Aye.” There’s a wisp of pride in that ghostly smile. “Then you saw me on one of my good days.”
Best leave it at peach ice-cream, but after seeing how she immigrated to this country, there’s something that I need to confirm.
“You’re a Heroic Spirit, Mary, but you didn’t do anything magical in your life like err. . . defeating Hades, right.”
She crosses her arms, “Proper Heroic Spirits like Archer and Rider are heroes people revere for doing something. In my case, bad things, unjust things, were done to me and that’s why people still know me today. I’m just a cook, dearie. I can’t help you with magecraft.”
The bowl-cut priest said. . . it seems that I have eyes that see into the world.
Laurent said. . . if my eyes do see into the world, then I could be a Magician’s Egg.
“Where does that leave us?”
“We’ve been contracted for three days now. Don’t take this the wrong way dearie, but you’re not suited for war.”
Sick burn.
“So why stay with me?” I ask, pushing the hope that tries to escape my throat as far down my stomach as possible.
“If there’s one thing I learned during my life, it’s that there’s safety among the weak.”
It was dumb to think that maybe we were starting to be friends.
*****
Beneath the trio of hung kayaks that have never touched water, I pump air into a half-flat bike tire. Ten pumps. Press my thumb against it. Slight give; good enough. There isn’t too much dust on the frame and nothing squeaks so my brother’s bike is probably still ride-able. Tolosa’s big on bikes even if it really shouldn’t be. Too hilly. Sure, it’s fun going down, but you have to get off your bike and walk it up.
“We’ll be riding to the church?” Mary looks at me apprehensively after adjusting the seat on my bike. For the last two days, Mary has always been in her ghost form, following me around when we’re in public. All of a sudden, she puts on my grandmother’s dress and wants to bike around town, see the sights. Something definitely must have happened last night.
“I’ll stop by in the afternoon to see how Father Phahn is doing.” My mum and the bowl-cut priest have some sort of agreement. If I work at the church for the next two weeks, she’ll cover for my absences at school. She didn’t know that the priest she signed up as my mentor was a Master and the overseer for this fucked up ritual. “I texted Laurent last night. He responded this morning. We’re going to meet at Ahnenerbe, a cafe downtown.”
“German.” Mary smiles wryly as we wheel our bicycles outside the garage and proceed to get on. “Freddy would have words.”
Not going to bite. Girls who can insert a boyfriend into any conversation are the worst.
“Yeah, there was a big fight over it a few years back. Had protestors and everything, No one thought that cafe was going to make it more than two months.”
“Because of the name?”
“People were pissed on both sides. It was ridiculous. Then the election happened and. . . ” I shrug. “There are still college students who avoid it because they don’t want to be associated and some kids that go in to take pictures that they think will get them Reddit clout.”
“So why is your friend asking us to meet him there?”
“Laurent said he was going to bring someone from the church. Might be German?”
Mary looks back and shakes her head in disapproval before starting to pedal.
What?
*****
The GPS said fifteen minutes but we take more like half an hour to reach downtown. No problem, I planned for this, thinking Mary would be unaccustomed to riding a modern bike down a modern street. Turns out it was me having to stop multiple times to make sure we made the right turn, and when we didn’t, well we’d have to turn back. It’s been a while since I’ve biked Tolosa. When Krista got her license and her dad got her a car so he could ‘win’ the divorce, we ditched the bikes.
We’re close to downtown now; I can see it on Google Maps. The streets become more labyrinthine the closer you get. How many times have we stopped, already? Mary hasn’t complained yet. Worse. She’s looking through me, gazing down the street. Her eyes are distant, almost forlorn for a shore that she’ll never reach. I’m nothing but an inconvenience.
“It’s that way.” I point in the opposite direction.
She makes a small grunt and follows me down the street.
Is it more difficult for Servants who come from the distant past or those from modern times to acclimate? On one hand you have extreme culture shock; but after they get past the initial shock, they can treat their manifestation as a vacation to a theme park they’ll forget about in two weeks. On the other hand, you have Mary who finds familiarity in the skeleton of a modern street, but that same street reminds her that her present is now a dead past.
“It’s so different, yet everything’s the same,” blithely comes out of her mouth as we pass the neatly packed stores. She doesn’t care to elaborate.
“A small Californian city can’t really compare to Manhattan.”
“Aye.”
When we took the bus around Tolosa two days ago, we passed by downtown but didn’t stop. So as we make our way down the street to the cafe we’re supposed to meet Laurent, I point out a souvenir store, try to explain how ROSS is a franchise, or why there are so many restaurants advertising themselves as breweries.
“If you want to see the town at its rowdiest, there’s the Farmer’s Market tonight.”
“Farmers in such a modern town?”
“Ummmm,” I’m originally from Portland so explaining how the Central Coast works to other people isn’t my strong point. “California’s known for agriculture. Something to do with a Mediterranean climate meaning they can grow more than cash crops. There might not be much agriculture in the town, but there’s quite a lot around it. Honestly though the Farmer’s market isn’t really for farmers. Just an excuse for restaurants to set up booths.”
“Oriental restaurants, Mediterranean eateries, and coffeehouses abound. New York at the turn of the 20th century was cosmopolitan, but I didn’t expect such diverse cuisine so far west.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s all the same. That this town subsumes each foundation, stripping authenticity down to a frame and serving it to customers. There’s pride, there has to be, if they’re willing to sell a product they believe in. But that’s all it is, a product; the vision behind it has undeniably become Tolosa. Except for the fast food. Perhaps those companies were already so homogenized that locality had no observable effect. I don’t know, but I can’t help but think Mary is a bit naive when it comes to food.
We pass the burger place/coffee shop/brewery that specializes in sours preparing for the oncoming lunch rush. The only people on the streets are moms finished with morning Spin class or college students who thought it was a better use of their time to go downtown than attend lecture. We park the bikes at the nearest racks we can find. Totally forgot to bring an extra lock, a single U-lock around the front wheel and spokes should be fine. As long as the bikes are on the racks no one should touch them. It’s Tolosa, after all. Mary doesn’t make a comment about the bikes, but asks me what I hope to get out of lunch with Laurent and his friend.
“Because I don’t think we can win.”
Because after last night I just want to talk to Laurent.
“I thought that was a given, dearie.” She seems disappointed it took me so long to realize. “Was that after Father Phahn made his speech? You left for quite a bit of time.”
On our way down the street to Ahnenerbe I tell her about how Byron made me realize even if I was a better mage than him, we still wouldn’t have a chance.
Last edited by You; February 18th, 2021 at 02:56 PM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
19/ Ecce Homo (I)
After splashing water on my hands and half-drying them on a hand towel that might have belonged to the gardener, the buzz from the champagne starts wearing off and that bowl-cut priest’s speech about Holy Grail rituals, destiny, and the Church starts soaking itself into my brain.
I’m out of my depth, aren’t I?
The mages and Servants all ate up his words like the lobster tail baked in garlic butter that came out soon afterwards. But me, I’m just. . . I have these eyes though. So turn the doorknob and open the door. God, Nadine, you’re not going to let yourself be stuck in a bathroom in yet another party. That’s just too pathetic. Even for you.
The bathroom opens up to the garden. Turning that doorknob took most of the courage I have, so I stand in place, staring at the Iselma family’s well-lit garden.
“Master, multiple sentry units have activated. Good heavens, why didn’t the outer bounded field detect a soul?”
Peeking out from a large spherical hedge, I see an older man’s outline sitting at a fountain’s edge in the middle of the garden looking down at the hill this mansion was built on. Lord Byron. The twinkling voice belonged to his Servant.
My breath catches the back of my throat as she glides into view. Her pale blond hair is tied up in a delicate bun that leaves her forehead and neck bare. The moon daren’t reflect off those porcelain surfaces, preferring to hide in the clouds so it need not confront the █ that puts nature to shame this night. A jeweled choker encircles her throat, drawing my eyes to her almost bare shoulders from which billows a light blue ball gown that the shrouded stars themselves have found fitting to stitch themselves within. Compared to that, I may as well be wearing an unironic garbage bag dress.
“Leave it, Caster. If the system can’t handle it, Estella will,” he raises an empty glass.
“That aside Master, the host should attend to his guests.”
“These guests are a girl, a snake of a priest, and a street performer escorting a half brain dead homunculus he managed to scrape together from busking. Bah! They’re all trash.”
“No need to harry them as if they were vermin, Master. Common vermin can be delightfully magical. A common servant girl can become a Lady for a night if she wishes with all her heart. The Grail impresses upon us the magic of wishes, allowing the less fortunate to overcome adversity through persistence. Everyone in that hall has heard and answered that call. You are no different, so you shan’t insult them in my presence.”
“Hah, no.” In a single word, all the glittering magic in the air that promised a tomorrow that sparkled with kindness evaporated. “Pretending trash isn’t trash is shameful, Caster.”
He looks over at the woman his words should have cut. There is neither shame nor hurt on her face — only serenity that would reflect the stars in the night sky if they were not covered in clouds. That makes Byron uncomfortable. Serves him right.
He wants to confront you, see if you’re worthy of his time and even then you’ll only earn grudging acceptance. I didn’t make that cut, that’s why I’m behind this hedge. I’m not scared of him. I’m scared of destroying him with these eyes because he’s a short-sighted idiot.
Caster was spared indignation because she’s his object; the Servant he summoned. To Byron, she’s both his representative and tool. His ego holds him hostage. Calling her trash is an acknowledgment that the summoner is also trash. He can never insult her as he does with everyone else. The most he can do is deny her worldview, caging a bird that should have soared, spreading its truly sickening blessings to anything under its wings.
“No Master, no one’s shameful. Not even yourself.” She says simply with an understanding smile on her face.
What?
Byron’s eyes widen and relax for a moment as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest. He catches himself though, pushing the weight back down with the entire force of his disagreeable personality. As his eyes narrow, all signs of any vulnerability are gone and what’s left is a tinge of fear because he can once again see the mirror in front of him in the shape of the most █ woman, so bright she could burn anyone’s moral retinas.
She goes beyond the territory of female protagonists in Japanese comics who are chased by every fictional man who should by no rights be attracted to her. She is a competent, complete Madonna who knows her own intrinsic worth so she has no problem accommodating your ridiculous views. Every woman wants her confidence and ease. Every man wants her respect and attention. She affirms them both with a cute laugh to boot. Fuck me dead, they exist. I thought the closest we got was an Instagram filter.
“Y-You,” Byron stutters before recomposing himself in a way no man could after being hit by that mental attack. For the first time, he sees something in her that terrifies him and disappoints him at the same time, forcing these words from his mouth, “What about you, girl? Did you ever consider how your father felt?” he says, head down, defeated.
Caster doesn’t respond. Her perfect brows, two shades more complex than any eyebrow pencil, crease for a mere second. The movement doesn’t dare wrinkle that marble skin. Instead, the inner curve of her cheek gives way to well-deep dimples one could lose their sanity within.
“See, you can care if you try, Master.” She offers him her hand.
Byron doesn’t take it, or rather he can’t find the will to do so, “Let me enjoy the night air a little longer, Caster.”
She softly nods and almost floats past the hedge I’m hiding behind, back to the party impossibly alone. When she disappears through the door, Byron calls out, “No amount of handwashing could get the stench of leaking magical energy off, you amateur.”
Walk away.
“Come here.” He motions me to sit as he’s pouring himself a drink.
I’ve always been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
My dad had a heart attack when I was in the car.
Krista gave my brother a handjob in the first room I walked into.
I summoned Mary in the school football field that had been transformed into a makeshift colosseum.
Leaving my first party early led me straight into a vampire.
I see. I have eyes that allow me to discern the subtleties of nature. All these shitty things happened because I was there. You, ‘Lord’ Byron, are just a symptom. You say you don’t suffer fools, but as Masters we have nothing to suffer but each other. So I’ll sit. I’ll sit in front of this water clock impaled with pipes and listen to you because you’re a mage who said I, the ones with these eyes, the one called a Magician’s Egg, was nothing. So, show me. Show me the difference between us.
“That. . . was all drivel.” His breath smells like sour wood. . . whiskey.
“Yeah. You got issues, dude.”
“Dude, hah. That’s the first time I’ve been called. . . .” He half-drunkenly turns and looks me straight in the eye. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to tease out that memory and tear it apart — no. . . for me to enter,” he taps his temple, “and steal every unoriginal thought you’ve ever had?”
“Yes. But a vampire tried and didn’t get far.”
He snorts under his breath, shakes his head and puts his drink down. “A vampire tried. . . ” he gingerly fingers his cane. “I won’t question why you’re fighting; it’s too trite of a question and most answers are equally so, my own is no different.”
“Mary; she’s not a bad person.”
“Did you really call your Servant a person? Amateur, amateur mistake.”
“I don’t know, you seemed to have a pretty good time talking to her this evening.”
“An artist’s curiosity, nothing more.”
“Artist, not a magus?”
“I’ve been feeling more like a — It’s all nonsense anyway, amateur, forget I spoke.”
We sit silently for a few moments before I ask, “You said that I was hopeless. Trash. Why?”
“Terrible circuits. Calling yourself a magus requires possessing a minimal amount of magical energy. You don’t even reach that threshold, amateur. Resisting a vampire’s mystic eyes. . . pshhh, no doubt took all the Od you had. You’d be hard-pressed to utilize any nature-interference magecraft even if you had that upstart El-Melloi II’s ability.”
“And what’s that?”
“A useless, hateful talent. He’s the closest anyone’s ever come to understanding my system with a mere glance. What else in this world could be more hateful than that?”
“He has eyes that see into the world?”
“Bah, see into the world? All that sniveling man can see are his own students reaching heights he’ll never touch. He’s useless. No, it’s all useless.”
“What’s useless?”
His eyes sharpen the moment the question leaves my mouth. “You really don’t know, do you? You really don’t know and willingly joined this Holy Grail War.”
I. . . I am a Master, the Command Spell on the back of my hand confirms my status. You are a half-drunk boomer who doesn’t realize he’s having a mid-life crisis. Trophy Servant, sports-carriage, getting a little too into acquiring land in the Central Coast. I like you because you’re willing to tell it like it is, but I don’t respect you.
“Have you heard about the Tower of Babel?” He shakes his head. “No, forget I asked, with this country’s education system I’m astounded whatever comes from your mouth is even intelligible.”
“Kids my age are dumb, yeah, but don’t lump us together. Babel. That’s a Bible thing. Back in the day everyone could communicate so they tried to build a tower to reach God. God was not okay with this for some reason and destroyed the tower. So it couldn’t happen again, He created different languages.”
“The first mistake is the most elementary, amateur. The story of Babel was not Man attempting to reach God but to call It down. An allegory for the end of the Age of Gods, but not the story of magecraft. For that, consider the world a library. Each book in this library contains five hundred pages and each page averages about eighty words written in, say, English. For an average magus, it takes approximately a year to read a page. Finishing a book would take five hundred years. Now imagine if no two books in the library were the same and the location of each book was random.”
Dumb thought exercise. Reminds me of monkeys, typewriters, and infinite time. I’m guessing the answer is that there would be a lot of books, but not infinite. There would be a book with the letter A for all five hundred pages and Z for all five hundred pages and everything in between. It would contain all information that could fit on five hundred pages, be it recipes for peach ice-cream, the ending of the last Game of Thrones book, or just ‘suck a dick’ written over and over again for five hundred pages. But it takes five hundred years to read through one book and all the books are different. There's nothing telling you what you’re reading is meaningful or just gibberish. No, that’s the point, there’s no longer a difference between the two.
Geez, what a worthless —
“What a worthless library.” Byron takes another sip. “But it holds the answer to any question, to all the questions. You know it’s all there, all you have to do is look, and if you can’t do it, you hand your notes to your heir and ask them to reach for the Truth you sought. Because if everything is in the library, the Truth must be there too. So that’s what people start doing, organized searches, declaring some sections closer to the Truth than others, disputing what the Truth actually is, searching the books for a guide to a guide of the Truth. But what about the illiterate, what are they supposed to do with these books? They realize they could tear out pages and mold them into commodities: paper mâché clothes, cosmetics, maybe even ferment the pages and distill whisky.”
The quantity of books begins decreasing faster and faster, but that shouldn’t matter because the amount of books is near infinite so even if a book is destroyed, its copy that is one letter different should exist somewhere.
“As the centuries pass the library becomes a world of paper mâché with those few readers left scurrying around with whatever books were still available hidden under their clothes, reading, hoping to one day find the Truth.”
What they don’t understand is it’s all the same. . . .
“What they don’t understand is it’s all the same, just books.”
Nice story for a middle-aged man, sobering up, but there are too many holes. For one, how are the illiterate people supposed to make things if they don’t know what those things are in the first place because they can’t read the books. Secondly, there are just so many books that even if you made paper mâché cities, there would still be an astronomical number of books left. Finally,
“What does this have to do with being a magus?”
“Listen closely, amateur. These mysteries that we try to reproduce are all just paper. That’s why it’s all bullshit.”
“Why are you telling me this if I’m just an amateur?”
“Next time we meet, we’ll be enemies. I want you to know why you lost.”
I don’t have a response to that, so we listen to the unseasonal cicadas in the garden trees chirp and the water clock striking midnight until Caster comes back, still robed in all her glory to tell Lord Byron he’s needed.
*****
Dressed in tailored suits, a small army of wooden waiters mechanically circle the ballroom, periodically stopping at each pair of conversation partners to offer a ‘light bite’ as my mom would say. At the insistence of a partygoer, the silver platter is extended forward while the wooden robot lowers its head to imitate respect with a hint of reverence. It’s a scene directly out of a storybook, that’s why it’s so goddamn mundane. Krista’s mom used to take us to see Disney movies, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, even Brave — you know, the ones they’re planning on milking live-action movies from in the next decade because they can’t find any more folklore to desecrate. She took us to see these movies because that’s what little girls want to see, romance, happy endings, magic — mostly magic. We’d laugh at the girls who would go out each Halloween in a princess costume, as if wearing a flimsy Target costume marked up twenty percent would bring enough magic to self-actualize whether through a Prince Charming or these days, rejecting all the suitors to go out dancing because you just want to dance.
We had a great time laughing at those girls — Krista with a pair of cat ears and me, telling everyone that Halloween is fueled by capitalism preying on the misguided need for escapist wish-fulfillment until my mom shut me up by putting her witch’s hat on my head and telling me to have a good time trick-or-treating because she was late to a Halloween party for divorcees where she was sure to meet a stepfather for her kids dressed as a cowboy, banana, or doctor.
For all Byron’s talk about the world as a library, an almost infinite number of books, and the struggle to find the truth; magic is already thickly threaded throughout the world. All you need to do is go to Buzzfeed to find out what Disney Princess you are. For a moment, you feel so strongly that particular fictional character might truly represent you that you press Tweet. It’s only after you needlessly shared absolutely nothing of substance with the world that you realize it was a shitty personality test some underpaid freelancer hurriedly made before going to their side hustle. If that’s not enough for you, take the four-hour drive to Anaheim and wait another hour to go on one of those rides. Sure, they’re carefully curated, artificial experiences but is that really any different from being served bacon-wrapped shrimp by one of these dolls?
There’s nothing magical about magic in the modern world; it’s been clearly defined, applied, and reproduced. Nothing more than a marketing tool in our paper mâché world.
So why do you care about it so much, Rich?
The geometry of the staircase interrupts the flow of magical energy from the speaker.
The thread used for the golden embroidery on the Silver Princess’s sash should have been soaked in a dye made from sundried flowers from either nine to noon or three to sunset.
What’s the fucking use of a magical mirror if it can’t see?
In short, according to Rich, this entire event failed as a ritual to debut the Silver Princess and subsume the guests with Caster’s presence.
“Lord Byron,” Rich says quite pointedly, “is nothing more than a hack. Rumors really are just rumors. That man touching「」? Unimaginable.”
“Touching what?”
“「」. Keep up, Nadine. The final destination for all magi, the Spiral of Origin where the Truth lies. A proper magus would participate in a Holy Grail War, Church-made or not, if it helped them come one step closer to「」.”
That’s what Byron meant in the garden about the underlying idea behind the library. Mages are idiots who pursue this pie-in-the-sky grand theory of everything they don’t even have a name for.
“So, then why is Lord Byron participating in this Grail War if he’s already touched. . . .” I try to make the same pause Rich does, but mine simply sputters out instead of dripping fervent gravitas.
I don’t need that mystical gravitas everyone else in this room has. I don’t need the ability to make wooden dolls serve hor d'oeuvres. These eyes see all the contradictions that litter this hypocritical ocean and drag them into the depths of a reality, magecraft alone can’t perceive.
See, Rich’s eying me with slight misgivings before continuing, “That’s why he’s a hack. Whatever path he established must have become obstructed, or perhaps something he didn’t account for destroyed the path. He’s nothing more than a has-been trying to walk back his own mistakes with someone else’s Grail.”
“Totally. There’s no way Caster can win against Archer. She might be really lucky, but all her other statistics are caterpillars at best.”
Genuine conversation is like a mountain stream. People think of it as crystal clear and deep enough that you can see the riverbed at the bottom. It’s sparkling, refreshing, and constantly flows. But that’s some idealized form of conversation exhausted writer rooms come up with before sliding in laugh tracks to make it seem more natural than it actually is. Nothing but a stock photo of a mountain stream.
If you’ve ever been forced by your best friend to hike so she could get a selfie with you on top of the hill at sunrise because it was the last week of middle school, then you’ll know streams are wet, cold, and cloudy. They might flow, but there’s always debris and detritus around. They’re butt-ugly, but in that moment, you can’t help but be engaged. For a moment there’s nothing artificial. . . almost like people are no longer thinking about what they want to say or waiting so they can give their take.
“Of course you wouldn’t see parameters as ranks.” He dismisses that momentary thought and purses his lips. “Yes, she can’t beat Archer in her current state.”
Hearing his name, the one-armed mass of muscle in boardshorts pretending to be interested in whatever hygienic wisdom Berserker might be doling out turns and gives me a friendly wave.
“I didn’t know people that pretty existed.” I turn towards Caster, who’s now laughing pleasantly with Mary. I wonder what a fairytale princess and an Irish cook have in common. “And this was before plastic surgery.”
“‘To look upon beauty is to become beautiful,’” Rich distastefully spits. “That maxim is the core of the Iselma magecraft. They chased 「」 through the ultimate beauty, embodying their magecraft as the ‘Gold and Silver Princesses,’ symbolizing the sun and the moon, respectively. The Gold Princess of this era died, but it seems Lord Byron summoned a greater monster.”
He lost one, a daughter. He does get it. . . a bit. But 'everything’s bullshit?’ Seriously excusing himself with that man-pain.
Still, the sun and the moon, pretty obvious then isn’t it? It’s like. . . umm what’s the word for it again? How they were able to make Velcro. . . Ah, biomimicry, that’s it. If you make two people, one with the principles of the sun and the second with the principles of the moon — the moon is going to reflect the radiance of the sun and that’s why it shines. As looking upon beauty makes one become beautiful, gazing upon the sun makes the moon more beautiful and gazing upon the moon makes the sun more beautiful in turn. It’s a simple feedback loop like how increasing CO2 emissions melt the ice-caps, decreasing the amount of sunlight reflected, further increasing the temperature which further melts the ice-caps, further decreasing the amount of sunlight reflected. That would mean the Silver Princess is reflecting Caster now.
“What could be greater than the sun?”
“They’re playing it right now. Do you have Shazam?” His tone shifts into a higher key on the upbeat.
“What?”
“The app that tells you what song’s playing.”
The old-timey, upbeat brass makes the Spanish-inspired mansion more similar to a smoke-filled twentieth-century nightclub where the hardboiled detective swears he isn’t looking for trouble.
“Oh yeah, no one uses Shazam anymore.”
Rich raises an eyebrow, and mutters ‘is that so,’ before good-naturedly chuckling to himself about how quickly times change. His laugh is more of a guffaw than a musical piece, but the moment he hits that downbeat, his expression goes completely cold.
“The light of the planet.”
“What?”
“Something greater than the sun — the light of the planet.”
I’m about to ask him to elaborate so my eyes can trace the hidden connections to drag the impenetrable magical world into the understandable mundane, as connections can’t exist without facts, irrefutable scraps of data that pave the mystical path these eyes lay, but the gnashing of armor scratching ballroom distracts the both of us from walking down that road.
“You’re in better spirits, little lady. When you arrived, you looked like one of my generals reporting that he lost his first campaign.”
This lofty Servant is the bowl-cut priest’s Rider. He helped Mary and me the night she was summoned.
He cuts an intimidating figure, sure, but I can’t help but feel he belongs in a renaissance faire up until his helmet comes off. Then I vomit a little inside. I can’t stand that effortless handsome magazine ad type of fake. Here is a man who doesn’t try, yet everything falls into his orbit. And you could be this man if you buy the right protein powder. Not just a man. The Man.
I hate that type of perfect because it stole my best friend.
Chill, alright? Rider isn’t your brother and he actually went out of his way to help you. You’re a Master now, so act like you’re a Master, okay?
“Ha, no, yeah, just hangry. Your Master’s speech was really great, explained everything really clearly.”
“I didn’t expect Milord to speak. He should have asked me to give him pointers. I’ve given speeches that soared, inspired even wounded men to continue fighting.” He turns to Fillia who has been standing with us this entire time and not uttered a single word. “And you milady, I was unable to greet you properly during our last meeting. Your Servant’s combat prowess are quite grand, indeed.” Rider takes and then kisses her hand. “And you, sir?”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just her humble Tuner. No need to bother with me at all.” He offers a shy smile and waves his hand dismissively.
“I may not know much about magi and their customs, but to be the Tuner for one of the Founding Families must be an honored position. During my time, there was great honor found as an officer of the King.”
“I’ll definitely keep that in mind, sir!” He reaches out to shake Rider’s hand. Rider obliges with gusto. Gag.
“What of you, little lady? How have the past two days been for you?”
“Yesterday, I was attacked by a vampire.”
Why am I describing my near-death experience like I’m recounting what I did for the weekend to a disinterested classmate who happened to sit next to me because she was late for class.
“About tha—” Rich starts, but Fillia gently touches his arm. “Yes milady, of course.” He retreats a few steps.
“I hope the Church is not entirely focused on ‘rogue Servants’ but is also following up on that worrying incident.” The box known as Fillia opens and plays. There’s a hint of steel in her voice that wasn’t present at the beginning of the night. “A Dead Apostle Master expands your duties, Rider. I am sure your Master does not want a replay of Snowfield.”
“It may please you to hear Milord has sought outside help to deal with this. . . infestation. A specialist from the Church should be tracking the vampire this very instant.”
Laurent said that if I wanted to know more about vampires, just like in horror movies, the Church deals with them. What’s the connection between mages and the Church?
“Speaking of Father Phahn, where is he?” The signature bowl-cut is nowhere to be seen. He seems like the type who secretly loves being the center of attention. Byron’s gone too.
The doors slam open and in strides Byron with the bowl-cut priest in tow with serious expressions on their faces. The two well-dressed men abruptly stop in the center of the room, their very presence stopping all of the mechanical waiters in their tracks.
“Fath—” The Silver Princess starts but closes her mouth as Caster lays a hand on her shoulder.
I can feel something benign flowing through the air and then sucked into the cane Byron taps on the marble floor. As the sharp sound rings through the motionless ballroom, a translucent bubble expands from where he struck the floor. It doesn’t take three seconds to become as large as a projector screen. Within the reflection I can see the bottom of a grassy hill.
“If linking the senses of the bounded field to a bubble is meant to impress—” Rich stops muttering under his breath as he squints at the image. “That’s a Servant.”
The woman standing at the bottom of the hill glows a sooty red from the embers flaking off her silhouette.
“Sa. . . ber. . .” Rider mouths, trying to keep emotion from leaking out.
“Saber!” Archer exclaims as if excited at the prospect of meeting an old friend.
Saber, Saber, the whispered name makes its way through the ballroom, first in hushed tones, then in reassuring strokes, before Father Phahn finally claps his hands.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Servant of the rogue Master has penetrated Lord Byron’s bounded field. We currently do not know what her intention is, but as the overseer of this war I will now have Rider engage her in combat. Are there any objections?”
Phahn’s eyes glow like the vampire’s when he held my head. They dare anyone to challenge his right to hunt. Archer’s aura is oppressive, but the priest’s bloodthirst is as sharp fangs that puncture your cranium, dig into the brain, and drag you into his gullet. I think I need to pee again. But don’t worry Nadine, the bowl-cut priest’s a good person. He helped Mary and you when no one else did. This is just what it means to be a Master. See?
Surprisingly, the first person to clear her throat then respond is the Silver Princess, “Saber has trespassed on Iselma land.” Her voice is clear like a crystal bell that will forever ring in your head until you can’t help but tear it off. “We will endeavor to support you as much as —”
“Thank you for your graciousness but that shall not —” Phahn says without looking at her.
“Shall be accepted.” Byron looks Phahn directly in the eye. “Anything less would be an affront to the Iselma name.”
“As you please then, Lord Byron.” Phahn backs off.
I wouldn’t.
There’s a thin line between accepting someone’s relative authority and actually trusting them. Phahn spun this elaborate tale about the origins of the Holy Grail War and why he is participating. It’s too neat and tidy for these mages who live in fictional libraries overthinking about the contents of a book for five hundred years or whatever. But guys, sometimes the world gives you a brother who is perfection in a bottle, a mom from daytime television, and a dead dad. Beat that.
“Myrequests that I help sanitize the area.” With her back straight, Berserker announces her intent. “Courtesy deems it necessary for us to repay Iselma kindness and to beg pardon. I eagerly enlist myself for this operation. Furthermore, as gratitude, please expect a hygiene and health report in the mail.” The crazy lady has enough presence of mind to make her appeal to Byron instead of the bowl-cut priest.DoctorMaster
Byron looks at Phahn, “Any objections?”
Phahn can’t question Berserker’s intentions if he wants to catch up to Saber. All he can do is shake his head.
“Good.” Byron claps.
“You’ve been too kind tonight, Lord Byron.” Rider walks towards the center of the room with armor clinking against the marble. “Let me repay you with a battle for the ages. Milord?” As he gets closer I hear another set of gnashing, but heavier. Horseshoes scratch the marble as an armored black stallion materializes from thin air. Like what guys think they look like when asking a girl to dance, Rider holds out his hand inviting the bowl-cut priest to ride with him.
“Indeed,” but Phahn turns to Byron. “Shall there be a servant to escort me to the support you promised?”
Byron snaps his fingers. One of the mechanical waiters steps forward, bows to Phahn, and motions him to follow.
“Dear Lady?” Unperturbed, Rider asks Berserker, as he materializes a horse right behind him.
She turns up her nose in disgust before muttering some words about bacterial load as both parties walk out of the ballroom.
As they leave, the mechanical waiters return to pushing refreshments and the automatic band begins to play a more war-like track. After curtseying to her new friends, Mary finally comes over. Her red cheeks betray how much fun she had without me.
“Marvelous, just so marvelous. Nadine, did you have a grand time?” Her accent is completely gone, replaced with a facsimile upper-class upbeat chatter.
*****
“I can’t believe that you just grumbled at me.”
That reminds me, “Hey Mary, what were you and Caster talking about, last night?”
“I like her,” she mumbles.
“Hm?” Let's pretend I didn’t hear her.
She looks at me instead of the crowd streaming down the street alongside us, “I like her.”
“I’m sure she gets that a lot.”
Princess Perfection. You know what would be terrible? If she turned out to be a kickass martial artist as well. God save us all.
“That’s not a good thing, you know, dearie. When you’re an unmarried cook looking for work in New York, it's really quite easy to make your employers like you because they really just want the same thing. A project to turn into an ‘honest woman’ through their employment. They want to feel good about themselves. When a household’s mistress’s first question is about cooking, well, dearie, you’ve either found yourself someone desperate or someone worth cooking for.”
Trick question, Mary. “But Caster didn’t say either?”
“Aye, she didn’t. There I was standing in my work clothes and she has the nerve to come up and compliment me. She knows, that one: which stains you can get off, which ones you hide because you can’t. She asked to see my knife since she could tell I was a cook from my forearms and held it exactly the way you would if you were about to gut a fish. She doesn’t come at you as a lady, that one, but a friend who truly understands you.” She frowns for a moment, “You don’t suppose she has some special Servant skill do you, dearie?”
I run through the display in my mind and shake my head.
“I have this skill that makes my presence less than that of a Servant’s.” Right, Mary’s Powerless Shell. Shell implies there’s something inside though. “Caster’s a proper Heroic Spirit, no doubt about it, but you can’t feel any animosity or even competition. Almost like she’s. . . .” Mary trails off.
Like she’s █.
“I like her. . . But I don’t like that I like her.” Because she shows you how pitifully human you really are. “Still, everything was truly magical last night, wasn’t it? Makes me a little sad, you know.”
So transparent, Mary. Sad because all the dreams you had when you were a little girl turned out to be true, and you never got to live them. Instead, you were framed for a murder you claim you didn’t commit.
“Still, you’re right,” she says immediately after a sigh. “After seeing that fight, I don’t know how we’re supposed to compete.”
Oh, the fight.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
20/ Night, stay Knight (I)
~Interlude~
At the bottom of the hill, a lone Servant stood, a long golden sword resting in her right hand. Her mythril armor gleamed, reflecting soft flecks of fire, false summer fireflies flaking off her skin filling the night air. The sanctity of the scene was obvious to all lucky enough to take a cell phone picture. But they would have to reckon with a twisted frown marring her face. A ridiculous filter would be the only way to make her palatable for an online audience.
“How. . . problematic,” Saber murmured out loud as her violet, crystalline eyes lingered on the empty space behind her.
The boy who had lain there was special to her Master; Saber was to make sure he wasn’t killed. In spirit form, she followed him but kept enough distance so the great hero couldn’t notice her presence. Only intervene if his life is in serious danger, her Master had ordered. Her Master seemed like a cheerful person who loved trees and flowers, yet whenever she spoke of the boy, she took on the same expression Saber had on right now. Saber understood; she became troubled often. For instance, she felt disgusted as the great hero tore off his arm. It reminded her too much of the glint from his crystallized wisdom.
Maybe this child is causing my Master's pain? She thought to herself.
But pain was good. Pain was the pure, cerulean flame that burned livelier than any cold divine ring of fire. More, always more. Until there was no until.
Then, Lancer struck. Lancer. . . ah. . . Lancer, how many times have they crossed sword and spear now? Just thinking about it twisted the sooty red flames in her hands to a warm orange. The Servant fought like a feral god of war — oh so different to his knightly strikes. Each piercing thrust was like that of a charging wolf, each slash, the claws of a vulture attempting to grasp its prey, each explosion of magical energy only made him all the more wanting target for her demonic blade. Lancer, her Master’s enemy that she had been tracking since the day she was summoned. No matter for what purpose he was poisoning the leylines of this land, Saber needed to ███ him.
The boy had taken Lancer’s blow, hoping to buy time for the Master behind him to summon her Servant. He failed and Saber saved him. While the boy did not have the slightest heroic aura, Saber couldn’t help wondering how quaint it was to save a life. She’d only taken lives to the afterlife. The sentiment filled her with nothing but the abstract coolness of that wide hall. Saving people couldn’t warm the heart salvaged from a crumbling shell in the Sahara and forged in a kingdom built on a ruse. But the contract must be honored. There was pride in that — and pride was.firewoodemotion
“Saber, Chris is being carried through the forest as we speak. How are you feeling?” Her Master’s soft voice flowed into her mind through their telepathic link.
“Cold,” was the reply. She was always cold.
What Saber longed for was not tepid, ethereal homeostasis, but flame that could scorch drama into myth. She hoped to find it in the hypnotic hoofbeats of the warhorse belonging to the Servant racing down the hill. The scent of battle had never filled her with the berserk fervor so many of those she plucked from the remnants of a battlefield did. Watching those battles when she was operational may have once warmed her heart, but faceless soldiers were inadequate kindling for her pyre. So, what of you, knight?
After predicting Rider’s route from the knight’s killing intent and the horse’s twitching foreleg muscles, Saber readied her stance. Held aloft, the demonic sword’s golden blade now shimmered neon red. The magical energy that traced the edge of the blade converged into licks of sooty magical fire which quickly coated the entire weapon.
In reply to the clear challenge, Rider’s outstretched hand grasped a war hammer — a wicked-looking hunk of steel. No matter the hammer’s size nor intricate design, the magical energy it radiated could not compare to Saber’s demonic sword.
But what made the Rider class unique was their abundance of Noble Phantasms, and most importantly, the mount that put them on par with or beyond any one of the Knight classes. In that respect, this Rider who was less than three seconds from ramming into Saber was —
A diagonal red line coated in a warm orange flame severed and cauterized the horse’s front legs in the same stroke.
— Less than unsatisfactory. A horse that was not even on the level of a Monstrous Beast wouldn’t be able to touch Saber, no matter how cold she felt. The gamey lifeblood dyeing Saber’s skirt crimson failed to force her to recall the many flying horses that lost their lives under her command.
Without its front legs, the great black beast crumpled under its own weight, but the momentum from a no-break gallop down the hill sent the dematerializing bulk crashing into Saber.
The trunk of the horse blocked Saber’s view. She couldn’t tell if Rider was still atop or had already made his escape. No matter, this time everything would burn.
The demonic sword that was pulled back ignited once more. As Saber thrust the demonic blade forward with both hands, orange flames were expelled, expanded, and left nothing in their wake.
“Cold,” Saber murmured.
The force of the attack may have halted the horse’s charge and the flames burned ethereal flesh to a crisp, but within the vortex of the firestorm a shadow flickered for a moment, using the back of the dead horse as a springboard.
Not Rider, because the moment she finished her attack another horse charged at her left flank. Rider must have escaped when she first sliced the horse’s front legs. He used the horse’s body as it reared in pain as cover to summon a fresh horse. The new horse might be chestnut this time but the armor was the same, the charge was the same, and the rider was the same so the result could be nothing but the same.
No matter the number of horses that served as the logs for this bonfire, the fire they could produce wouldn’t be enough to warm her heart. What she longed for was something Father, something Master, something battle couldn’t provide. It existed when. . . when did it exist again? Heroic Spirits were beyond the confines of time so that spark must exist within her. What she needed was the Holy Grail to fan embers into a conflagration. Then she would be filled. That was the wish her Master promised to fulfill when the six other Servants were defeated. So please, burn so that I, in turn, may —
“Saber!” Her Master’s shout cut through the weak orange flames.
Saber’s mission. She should be. . . but —
Four seconds. That’s all the time Rider and his new horse needed to flatten Saber.
Three. Once again, the demonic sword was pulled back, the flat of the blade perpendicular to the sky.
Two. Saber felt magical energy from above. The shadow within the firestorm had decided to rear its head. From its velocity, there was more than enough force to turn Saber into a sizable crater. Conversely, if Saber decided to block the attack from above, Rider’s horse would run her over in the very next second. From the very beginning, Rider had been aiming for a pincer attack. This knight might have an inkling about strategy after all.
One.
A flash. This time instead of being thrust, the flaming demonic sword was swung.
Magical energy masquerading as flame followed the slashing motion like a flaming whip, its thorns horizontally bisected the horse. It was a ferocious attack done with all Saber’s might without any regard for the enemy descending like a meteor.
Why neutralize the lesser threat? The threat from above was much more dangerous than Rider’s horse and hammer, anyone could see that from Rider’s grin.
“Let her have it!” He roared in triumph. “Berserker —!”
Expressionless in the face of Rider’s gloating, Saber didn’t stop swinging. As the bottom half of the horse detached and began to dissipate, Saber was still rotating with her sword outstretched. The only difference between when she unleashed her burst of magical fire and now. . . right underneath where Berserker’s foot was about to land, the blade was flat.
looked up.SaberThe divine automaton
looked down.BerserkerThe nurse of steel
Two eyes with scenery centuries apart seared into them met.
“Please. . . burn.”
“121°C for 30 minutes above 15 psi, please.”
With all her strength, Saber launched Berserker skyward. The impulse was divided by the mass to give a change of velocity that broke the laws of physics, sending Berserker rocketing through the bounded field behind the combatants.
Without any regard to the blood and dust staining her armor or her Master’s congratulations on a job well done, Saber faced Rider who managed to grab the reins of a hastily summoned horse, galloping against the aftershocks so as not to be blown away. He subjugated his shocked expression into a respectful, charismatic smile.
“What a truly magnificent adversary you are, Saber.”
What a cold and disgusting expression.
*****
Moments before Rider’s charge —
“Let me help, I’m a doctor,” Amelia said after Lancer had retreated.
She holstered her gun and raised both hands in a practiced sign of goodwill. After an agonizingly short silence, Saber nodded and stepped back. Her Master must have agreed.
After fixing the last bandage onto the boy, Amelia breathed a sigh of relief.
“This is all I can do here. After taking a Servant’s attack, he’s lucky both arms are still attached.” With a tired expression, Amelia diagnosed the boy. “His eyes weren’t closing so I wrapped a bandage around them. Other than that, he’s stable.”
“My Master wishes to speak to you,” Saber quietly replied as they both heard a buzzing from the boy’s pocket. Saber reached in and presented Amelia with the cellphone.
“Sorry for bothering you, Dr. Levitt. I’m so grateful that you saved someone precious to me.”
Despite the delicate voice, she was no amateur. Information was queen in the Holy Grail War. ‘I know who you are’ logically leads to ‘I know what you’re capable of’ and then finally ‘I know your weaknesses.’ So, this was the woman who deserted the Church.
Amelia could use the boy as leverage but Saber would kill her before she could pull her gun out of its holster or call Berserker. What a mess. This entire night had been a mess.
After last night’s fight with the vampire, Amelia spent the day in her safe house trying to recover as much magical energy as possible while drawing up plans to intercept Assassin this very evening. Then came the signal from the overseer. A surge of magical light that only those with magic circuits could comprehend lit up the sky. The Masters who the Church had registered were sent invitations — the signal was for the stragglers and interlopers. The pattern of the lights gave coordinates and after inputting them into Google Maps, they pointed to Lord Byron’s mansion. Amelia’s plans quickly changed as she referred to her maps of the area.
Send Berserker in as a decoy, isolate a Master, and Amelia, outside the mansion, would neutralize them before using a Command Spell to ensure their escape. And if that girl and her Assassin happened to be attending the gathering the same strategy could be used to bring Assassin down. The boy she had just stabilized had shredded her plan.
Now, the desperation of having the most outstanding class hovering over her with Noble Phantasm in hand sent rusted gears Amelia hadn’t used since med school rotating. Mad Enhancement notwithstanding, Berserker was a Victorian lady who had even sought an audience with the Queen of England. She could hold her own in any high-class social engagement. What mattered to Amelia was conserving her Command Spell and ensuring Berserker was not in any avoidable danger.
“It’s no trouble, it’s my job after all. But the Church must be cold-hearted to force a child into overseeing a Holy Grail War, Miss Matou. Sorry I haven’t been in contact, I had some unfinished business to attend to, and then I heard there was a new overseer?”
Participants of this Holy Grail War had no information about the previous overseer other than he was an Executor-in-training. Most magi would consider taking advantage of his inexperience hoping to twist moderation into an unholy alliance. To further these machinations, they requested additional information. Information that had been blocked by the order of a highly-ranked bishop. However, the agency that Amelia worked for, Thorn, had deep ties with the Church, especially the American branch. On the surface, the Tolosa Mission was taken care of by Father Joseph Kelsey, the pastor. He had his Parochial Vicars and permanent Deacons; their names were all posted on the Mission’s website. But if you went deeper into the Mission’s official paperwork submitted to the Church, there were two names that stood out. The first was a pompous mouthful but the surname stood out — Frampton. Amelia vaguely recalled reading a redacted report from the head of Thorn before the organization took that name.
During the preparatory period for the Fifth Fuyuki Holy Grail War, one of Thorn's consultants could feel the presence of more than seven Mystic Eyes on the same karmic line and therefore found it ill-advised to infiltrate Fuyuki. Always doing her due diligence, the consultant collected some Clock Tower reports about beheading incidents involving magi with Mystic Eyes that were related to the Animusphere family’s investigation into the Fourth Fuyuki Holy Grail War. She believed the incidents were related. The name of the Church investigator for that beheading incident was Frampton.
The second was Sakura Matou. Matou — Makiri — one of the Founding Families of the Fuyuki Holy Grail Wars. The moment Amelia read the name, there was a twinge of emotion as the face of a ten-year-old black-haired girl tried to edge its way into her consciousness.
Only someone with access to Thorn’s databases could know Amelia had volunteered for this Holy Grail War. Out of all the supernatural associations and organizations, only the Church had enough influence with the US government; separation of church and state be damned.
“Magi. . . are just as coldhearted, no?” A soft voice leaked out of the speaker. Amelia’s head throbbed; she knew they both recognized the significance of those words. The caller’s trump card misplayed as a Freudian slip. “S-sorry about that. Please don’t mind me. Yes, there have been some complications with the management of this Holy Grail War. Officially, Father Phahn of the Eighth Sacrament is the current overseer.”
What the priest said was true then. The person Amelia was talking to was a Church consultant who went rogue.
“You’re making this kid run your errands?” Amelia spat out.
“Of course not. He’s a good kid. . . a little too zealous. There’s a vampire in town,” she struggles to offer that fact as an excuse.
“Yes, I encountered it last night.”
“You understand, then? He really has nothing to do with this war.”
“Then why was he at a gathering of. . . the Dead Apostle is a Master, isn’t he?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“Your kid attacked me.”
“And I’m so sorry that happened. I take all responsibility, truly. But I don’t have much time, Caster’s Master should have confirmed your location. The moment Father Phahn sees Saber, he’ll send all the Servants at that party to confront her. I need Saber to extract him, right now.”
“Let me take him.”
A short silence, “Excuse me?”
“Take responsibility. I’ll take the boy. Have Saber cover our retreat. I have a car at the edge of the forest. Tolosa Mission, correct?”
The other side of the line is silent for a moment. Saber turns her head, gazing towards the poor excuse for a castle. Finally, a reply comes back, “Your Servant’s inside.”
“Yes,” Amelia admits. “Your kid interrupted my operation, and now my Servant is behind enemy lines. I need to get my Berserker out of that castle. You need to get this kid back home. Quid pro quo.”
Amelia used ‘my Servant’ throughout their call. At this critical juncture, she revealed her Servant’s class. Make Matou feel responsible for the kid’s actions then give an inch. If she really does know your history, her latent guilt should do the rest. She’s a poor excuse of a magus. Just like you.
But she’s still a magus, so she’ll ponder for a moment about how easy it would be for Saber to kill you and then take the kid. Then she’ll ask —
“How can I trust you with him?”
“Children shouldn’t be caught in a war between adults who failed to make their wishes come true.” Amelia’s voice strains against the back of her throat as the words spill out.
“Do you mind calling me when you start the car?”
*****
“Using the flat of a blade as a springboard. Now, that is something I had yet to see. To think it came from a Lady of your breeding. And I call myself a career military man,” Rider nodded to himself as he dismounted, steel boots compacting soil, choking the sparse blades of grass. “Saber. . . how long did it take you from our last meeting to ally with Berserker?”
We’ve met before? Ever since she was summoned Saber’s thoughts were nothing but hazy flames. Truth be told, for Saber’s entire life had been filled with flames. Some may have burned hotter and brighter than others but all flames are eventually reduced to ash.
Her first night in this era, Saber and her Master had been ambushed by a wild flame that planted trees with reckless abandon to claim the mountain where Saber was summoned as his own. As their battle was on the brink of turning the mountain into Muspelheim, two other fires arrived — a brilliant incandescent flame that could light the entire sky and a steadfast fire that tried to burn nobly.
“A weapon should never be turned towards a Lady, even if she imprisoned ones’ self to seize power.” His unadorned helmet materialized on top of a twisted, understanding smile. It must have been an artifact before the popularization of heraldry. “However, betraying the Church and then summoning a pagan is something a Defender of the Faith like myself cannot overlook. Shall you pay the tithe your Master owes?” How much was the bravado of a warrior who knew his opponent was clearly a rank above him?
Rider hefted his warhammer in both hands and charged. The wicked hunk of metal could crush any armor, snap any weapon with its brute strength. Yet the slender demonic sword not only batted the warhammer away but also sent Rider slightly off-balance.
Saber’s attack wasn’t stronger. The quality of their weapons was what made the difference. The demonic blade in Saber’s hand, even unactivated, was a Noble Phantasm. If Rider had not pulled back at the last second, Saber would have shattered the hammer. Even the most optimistic hero understood what that exchange meant, so give up or use your Noble Phantasm. If you continue trying to fight hand-to-hand all that awaits you is —
“A Saxon hero wielding a demonic sword she sets alight with her magical energy. My Master has an inkling of who you might be. Your pagan divinity is weak but present,” Rider said. “The only direct descendent of the Divine is the Son of the Lord. You, Saber, are an affront.” Wait, was he actually talking to her?
Experienced warriors were supposed to completely understand each other in one clash of weapons. If that was the case, Rider knew full well that Saber would not reply. His words were autumn’s false winter breeze dressed up as a bombastic squall.
Cold and disgusting, they couldn’t fan her fire.
Sweet nothings roared to a lover you’ve already grown tired of in the middle of a crowded drinking hall. You hold her by the waist, proclaim you’ve fallen in her well-like eyes and her sweet scent drives you into a frenzy. Not for her but everyone else. But ███, why does she matter when the fire of your eye is sitting beside her brother?
Therefore, cold and disgusting.
“Luckily, I had a good friend who was used to dealing with your kind.” The aura of magical energy around Rider thickened. “A friend who felled your. . . brother, I believe.”
His Od electrified the air and plated his hammer with a shell of sparks, hypnotically dancing, questioning the validity of deified natural phenomena.
Ahhh, yes, now Saber remembered, the Servant in front of her was the stalwart. He was so inconsequential; fire that tried to burn with nothing but imaginary kindling as propellent. But if it’s for the sake of an immortal flame, then let me add even nothing to the pyre.
With a running leap, Rider put his entire weight behind a downward slam. Although intimidating, the movement locked him in the air. Saber would take advantage of the momentary lapse to take a limb and slash him into two.
“Guh —!”
Saber was pushed back, forced to cancel slash into parry against the enormous weight that came flying from above. Rider just. . . threw his weapon.
The sparks crackled against the sizzle of Saber’s blade. The hammer was heavier than before, more spiritually sturdy. More flame or else the mystery encroaching upon her Saint Graph would deny her heritage. Saber didn’t know the identity of Rider’s friend who blessed this hammer, but she could immediately tell he was an enemy to the tribe she forsook.
How cold and disgusting.
Not the sparks embedded in the hammer, not the power used to launch the hammer, not the mystery that must stay closed or it had no meaning, but because. . .
The ground cracked from the flood of the contending elemental magical energy —
“Saber! The real attack’s coming!” Her Master.
The thrown hammer was theatre. A gaudy, supposedly sentimental attack to hide the beat of armored horses galloping at her from either side. All Saber needed to do was redirect magical energy from her sword into her armor, as allowing the hammer to overwhelm her would give her sword enough space to repel the horses. Her battle instinct cultivated from a lifetime of soaring over the battlefield told her she’d take an appreciable amount of damage and may need to reform part of her armor but it’d cost less magical energy than trying to block all three attacks and failing.
The neon-red blade started to dim as the fiery magical energy circulated her body reinforcing her greaves and vambraces, sculpting theinto interlocking swan feathers.mythrildivine steel
“May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”
Rider began running the moment he landed. His sprint matched the galloping horses, bludgeoning the distance between Saber and himself as she struggled to bat the hammer away. He raised his gauntlet a second before the horses crashed into her and smashed the butt of the hammer.
“AAAHHHHHH —!” Saber’s screams drowned out Rider’s own exclamation.
They were nothing alike. There was absolutely nothing similar between the two. So then why was Saber’s mind superimposing his image upon Rider? There was nothing there anymore, girl. He already died. You burned his body — you burned them all. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? So make that pyre hotter, make that fire burn brighter.
— Maybe then you’ll finally feel something again.
Amidst the sparks, horses, and magical energy:
“Saber. . . activate your Noble Phantasm."
Last edited by You; February 18th, 2021 at 09:03 PM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
21/ Skrubtudsen
~Interlude~
ABERRATION DETECTED
Receiving RECORDS via PATH. . . CONNECTING. . . CONNECTING. . . CONNECTION FAILED
Receiving RECORDS via BOUNDED FIELD. . . CONNECTING. . . CONNECTION FAILED.
COULD (NOT) CONNECT TO THE BOUNDED FIELD. PLEASE CHECK LEYLINE SIGNAL AND RETRY LATER.
Proceeding with AUTONOMOUS mode — commencing re-scan of the LOCAL ENVIRONMENT.
FIFTH IMAGINARY ELEMENT SATURATION LEVEL. . . TESTING. . . TESTING. . . ANOMALY: THREE STANDARD DEVIATIONS ABOVE OVERALL MEAN.
LOADING CONTROL CHART - Compare with yesterday’s OUTLIERS.
LOADING WHITELIST - Attempting to find MATCH.
MATCH NOT FOUND. INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!
ATTEMPTING to transmit RECORDS via remote PASS. . . via BOUNDED FIELD. . . via LEYLINE… ALL FAILED. PLEASE CHECK LEYLINE SIGNAL AND RETRY LATER.
Probability of encounter with CLASS FIVE threat CALCULATING. . . CALCULATING. . . 64.59 ± 12.78%. Beta > 0.2. Unable to RE-FIT model with MEASUREMENTS available. Unable to run SIMULATION to obtain additional VIRTUAL REPLICATES without switching MEASUREMENT CIRCUIT to MAIN POWER.
Null hypothesis CANNOT be REJECTED.
Null hypothesis CANNOT be REJECTED.
Maintain PERCEPTUAL DOMAIN as SUBJECTIVE.
Maintain AUTONOMY CIRCUIT on MAIN POWER. Maintain MEASUREMENT CIRCUIT on RESERVE POWER.
Maintain CAMERA on INFRARED.
Establishing PROTOCOL — REGRESS TO SPEED FORME.
PREPARING TO TRACK INTRUDER.
KILL on SIGHT.
*****
Legs reinforced, Amelia swiftly ran through the small forest with the boy on her back. The mental compass her magic circuits were maintaining reassured her that she was heading south towards the suburbs, so why was the brush getting thicker? West was where the forest reigned until giving way to Cardinal’s Peak.
Disconcerting. Dark forests were still rife with lingering mystery. Traditionally, to slip through the trees was to visit an unearthly, isolated world of tricksters, monsters, and fairies. With axes, man pushed back the dark. Then came the bulldozer and primates were able to venture into the heart. The forest may have been tamed, but the stories lived on. From Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream to Sondheim’s Into the Woods, entering the forest meant transitioning from the normal world into a primeval netherworld. The heart of the forest was no different to the belly of the whale. Dense forests were fertile ground for bounded fields — was Amelia’s first thought. After all, if a spellcaster like Amelia was able to find the hole in the bounded field the Iselma placed around their mansion, there was more than a good chance Lord Byron had placed countermeasures for escapees. Escapees who made it through the hole had two options: make their way around the circumference of the estate’s bounded field until the main road or forge directly through the forest. She entered through the forest without much trouble. Logic would dictate that when she made her escape, the forest would still be her best option. But magecraft substituted logic with a rulebook your adversary wrote but never revealed. As long a magus had enough time and resources, any outlandish hypothetical was rhetorical. The who, how, and why didn’t matter — there was only the enemy’svs. the one in her holster.conceptmystery
Magecraft, Amelia had long thought, was nothing but two children playing make-believe, shouting at the top of their lungs that their version of the rules was correct. So how could there possibly be a ‘winner?’ The conclusion was both kids crying for their. Let’s test your resolve against mine, Iselm—mommiesforebears
“THIS BAND WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY”
The boy on her back started to cough violently. His sudden writhing forced Amelia to stop moving. A seizure? She needed to find a space free of forest debris.
Boom.
An imaginary thunderclap traveled through the forest, sending quakes that grounded themselves in Amelia’s magic circuits. An explosion of magical energy from the nearby leyline? At least her reinforced legs kept her and the boy stable.
“dO nOt fOrGeT” and then —
*****
Thank the Gods you’re here, Captain. This idiot believes it’s the king’s job to investigate a phallus on fire.
Sounds painful but you are wise indeed your majesty. The citizenry must learn to keep their phalluses away from fire.
Fie! A fallacy, dear Captain, your majesty. Plain and simple.
A phallus here? Are you dumb, man? No one’s phallus is on fire, here. Captain, you see what I mean?
Messenger, speak! What is this phallus on fire we are not seeing? With haste, a manhood is at stake!
No phalluses on fire here! There is a fire, red phallus in the sterile flame! It’s a sign from the Gods, your majesty. You must consult the oracle!
They’re firing phalluses into the sterile flame, again? That might be more newsworthy, but isn’t that the erect — I mean exact — reason why I gave the temple all those virgins? So that there would be no more fired phalluses in the sterile flame.
Your majesty, I believe he’s saying that a divine phallus has appeared in Vesta’s sacred flame, not that someone fired their phallus into the flame.
Well why didn’t you say so sooner! Heavens, temple messengers these days. You know, they don’t make them like they used to. Had a very nice messenger from a different temple, very nice messenger. Used to be a slave, bought his own freedom, and worked as a messenger for the temple of Jupiter for ten years, very nice messenger. Died of a curse. All the good ones do. Don’t curse the messenger, they say. They always curse the messenger. You would know. Anyway, he comes up to the palace, what a nice palace you have your majesty, am I disturbing you? None of this rushing into my palace, hands waving — what is that? What is that in the first place? This. Groping the air. Do you think it’s going to get me to consult Tethys’s oracle any faster? Honestly, I don’t feel like going anymore thanks to you. A phantom phallus in the sacred flame. After all you’ve put me through, you should go deal with it, go on. Go on, give it a nice big suck, will you.
Your majesty, I believe you shou—
Yes, I know what I need to do thank you very much. Oh, your majesty, save us from the terror of the phantom phallus in the divine sterile flame. Find the answer from the Tethys’ oracle in Etrus. . . Captain?
Yes, your majesty.
Don’t answer this but am I a bad king if I don’t go and just. . . wait this one out. You know, see where it goes, eh.
THE SLOTH WAS BUILT ON HUBRIS
Do NoT FoRGeT
YOU CAN (NOT) PRUNE THIS BRANCH. SEVEN TREES A FOREST DOES NOT MAKE IF ONE IS ROTTEN. YOURS MAY BE AN EMPIRE BUT MINE IS OUR SIN BEFORE IT WAS OURS.
*****
When she regained consciousness, Amelia’s entire body revolted, sending her into cold sweats until her tactical camouflage gear clung to her skin.
That scene as hollow as a sit-com laugh track was a mental attack. From the bounded field? Unlikely. Something of that magnitude. . . . What did that king say, Etrus. . . Etrusca? That was ancient Tuscany. They were talking about a phantom phallus. Wasn’t there a myth about a famous Roman king, one who started out as a slave? No time for speculation, flush it out of your mind because you’re already in enemy territory while carrying a wounded civilian. First priority needs to be —
— Duck
A silver flash. It would have separated her head from her body if she hadn’t dived behind a large tree.
“Target DISAPPEARED. Switching to FIFTH IMAGINARY ELEMENT scan.”
The moment she landed, she reached into her pocket. There were two stones — her trump cards — and the grenade she was looking for. She peeked out to her right, pulled the pin, and lobbed it at the assailant before promptly rolling over and pushing the unconscious boy’s body as far down into the ground as possible while covering her own ears. She counted, five, four,
“Weapon DETECTED. Switching from SPEED FORME to DEFENS—”
One.
The modern death machine detonated. The explosion felt like the equivalent of all the tires in a hospital parking lot blowing out at once. The standard-issue M67 frag grenade was made up of an approximately 60/40 blend of RDX and TNT to deliver a kill radius of 5 yards with shrapnel that could reach even 15 yards. Usually, Amelia wouldn’t immediately resort to something so destructive, but she was carrying a civilian, had just been mentally attacked, and was now ambushed. This series of escalations would make anyone dread what could be coming next.
Even so, a normal grenade was useless to Spellcasters. The magi they hunted could easily defend against anti-personnel weapons through familiars, illusions, or even a spare body. After learning this, Amelia added an alchemical concoction her sister had left to her grenades. The smoke that was still magically lingering, as if bound to the air; refracted and dispersed magical energy, rendering the opponent’s ability to detect magical energy moot. The explosion was to put the assailant on the defensive and then the magical smoke would allow her to escape.
VVrrrrrrr.
That sound was not good.
Vrrrrrr. Vrrrrrr. Vrrrrr.
Something within the smoke was. . . whirling?
No time to wait around; she needed to pick the boy up and run.
— You might actually make it if you leave him.
She turned to her left, but there was no one there. A hallucination then. Either an after-effect of the mental invasion, a feature of this bounded field, or a combination. Couldn’t worry about that right now.
— A hallucination, babe? Do you really think a hallucination could have saved your life?
The same voice that had told her to duck. No, that was Amelia’s own internal monologue or had the Iselma’s spell already taken hold? Then why would it try to save her life? Unless this was just all one big illusion — a midwinter's night dream.
— Me, maybe but can an illusion do that?
Amelia peeked out from the coiled tree roots to find the smokescreen now filled with wafting soap bubbles. She recoiled.
The famed Rainbow Spheres of Iselma.
When clumped together as a portable fortress, they could easily defend against any grenade.
Vrrrrr. Vrrrr. Vrrrr.
These bubbles originated from a small whirlwind in the center of the smoke. Her assailant was spinning, diffusing its defense. That made no sense, you should be concentrating i —
Pop
The first bubble dispersed the smoke around it and like a chain reaction,
Pop Pop Pop
— Popidity Pop di Popty dooooooooooo
PopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPo pPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPop
And like her sister, the alchemical smoke was gone without a wisp remaining. In the center of the clearing, bathed in moonlight filtered through spindly branches was a bipedal figure dressed in a trench coat topped off with a fedora made for tipping. In place of hands were two holes. That was where the bubbles came from. An automaton. And one that used the Iselma’s trump card.
A shiver ran down Amelia’s spine when a useless piece of trivia —
— Hmmm, interesting. So that’s what a Grand is capable of making.
Shut up.
You’ve been through worse. Remember when you were in that oil refinery and your target had trapped you in the airlock? You made it out. You’re alive, Amelia. And most importantly you’re here.
Amelia looked over at the boy, trying to see him as a ten-year-old girl, but she couldn’t, so she took a deep breath and drew her revolver out of her holster as she stepped out to face the automaton.
“Enemy FOUND. Scan COMMENCE. . . .”
The image was an injection. She had done it countless times. But the switch were the faces, some with eyes closed, some squirming, and a few little faces were filled with worry even if they were holding their mother’s hand. This small, small world was all that she ever sought to protect, and that sentiment locked her circuits into place while activating the mysteries living throughout her colon.
“Magic Circuit QUANTITY. . . E, QUALITY. . . C. Threat RANK — D”
She raised her revolver and started pouring magical energy into it. Twice in two days, huh. That’s the most she’s ever —
“REVALUATION. REVALUATION. Threat LEVEL — EX. REGRESS TO SPEED FORME — ASURENDA RAHU.”
The puppet started laughing, a metallic grinding screech that resembled nails on a chalkboard as two heads sprouted from its neck, and additional legs and arms extended out from its waist and shoulders, respectively. Attached to the end of each arm was a serrated, jagged blade. A total of three heads, four legs, and six blades, a mechanical Asura who could see-all and reach-all.
The laughing abruptly died upon transformation. Now, the puppet just stared at its prey, running through all the records it obtained from its predecessors. Mystic Eyes of Petrification, London Bridge, Logos React Replica. The magical energy within that gun had the same quality as the greatest mysteries it, or rather versions of it had previously faced. For the greatest threats, the puppet commonly used its attack forme. Each blade would begin to rotate, imitating a chainsaw, and then the bipedal puppet would spin, becoming something akin to a formerly popular children’s toy. But against Amelia, the puppet opted for the speed this centaur form provided.
“BADIN, KHARASKANDHA, VEMACITRA, RAHU - kings along the ocean - DELIVER THIS BODY FROM HARM!”
About ten yards separated the combatants. With its speed forme, the puppet would cut through that distance and dissect Amelia into seventeen pieces in less than two seconds. Even if she were to fire a fatal round, the puppet’s momentum would ensure her death. A.unilateral victorymutual kill
With a triumphant laugh, the puppet began its death march.
“”SubsumeAdmission Start
A singleaimed at four blades.countbar
One by one the attachments in Amelia’s pockets clicked onto the revolver and when the final piece, the fore-end, completed the pump she pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed as the Ether bullet was discharged as a shell. The force from the magical buck not only completely halted the puppet’s momentum but threw it back as the shots tore through its trenchcoat and the body underneath. These holes were not just physical; magical energy started gushing out. Unless the automaton was continuously receiving magical energy from an external source, it would quickly become inoperational. But Amelia wouldn’t switch off her circuits and let her magical energy fade away.
Knocked off all four legs, the puppet sawed open its chest while in mid-air.
From the beginning, its creator had not aimed to recreate the image of an Asura, questioning the limits of the artificial and the divine. That was nothing more than a ruse protecting the automaton’s true nature.
Matryoshka.
As if mocking Amelia’s shotgun shell, a second puppet was shot out of the automaton’slike a harpoon. The final, revised surprise attack; no matter how supernaturally gifted, no modern combatant could both anticipate and react accordingly.chest cavitycannon
No modern combatant.
Was that why Amelia’s spluttering magic circuits were still rotating? Because the line between Master and Servant told her that Berserker was not only close, but in fact. . .
“HY—!!!!!!”
Like a rusted shooting star, Berserker eclipsed the moon, plummeting into the forest with her body parallel to the ground and elbow outstretched.
“—GIENE!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The steel nurse’s elbow drop smashed the puppet that flew out of its scrapped accomplice into the ground. The collision alone ripped off the automaton’s extremities and sent them flying.
What aattack.ridiculousberserk
Just like the oil refinery, eh. When the girl Amelia had given up on smashed a briefcase into the smug face of the man holding her hostage.
Realizing that everything was over, Amelia’s knees collapsed onto the forest floor as magical energy receded from her magic circuits. Long night. What an understatement. She might have sighed, but couldn’t help feeling a little good about herself.
“Glad to see you arrived just in time, nurse,” she smiled at her Servant, getting off the ground and brushing the dirt from her crimson uniform.
Berserker pulled at her white gloves, snapping them in place. “Sanitation at the Iselma mansion was up to State standard. Servant Assassin was present at the event. Unable to detect any bacterial residue from cutlery used or surfaces touched. Without a biological sample, further analysis is —'' Before finishing her sentence, Berserker saw the boy lying on the ground. “Doctor, must I remind you of the oath you took?”
Amelia felt a little pang in her chest but chose to ignore it. “He’s stable.”
Even so, Berserker walked up to the boy and gave her impressions. “Eyes open even if there are no signs of consciousness.” She replaced the blindfold and put her hand over his forearms, “Numerous hairline fractures in both arms and first-degree burns. Doctor, did this child engage in combat?”
Amelia pushed herself off the ground. What an ideal nurse. Every bit as inspiring in person as the lists of quotes that popped up when you googled her name. But was this what she was really like or is what I see in front of me merely a reflection?
“His mother, Saber’s Master, requested that we take him to the Mission. Don’t worry, they have the resources there.”
Berserker struggled with her instincts as she looked at the boy once more. Amelia, on the other hand, walked right past her Servant and draped the boy over her back, “Let’s get going. I don’t like having an injured civilian in enemy territory.”
Both her body and circuits were aching, they had likely made an enemy out of the overseer, and worst of all Amelia had nothing to show for it.
“You’re a good Doctor, Master.”
Amelia looked back at her Servant but saw her younger sister’s face instead. Berserker and her sister didn’t look anything alike, but the words. . .
“You’re different, Amelia. You’re a good person.”
Amelia swallowed the lump in her throat. There would be time to regroup, convince the Craig girl to quit, and secure the Holy Grail. All she had to do was keep moving forward. For those close to her who lost that opportunity, Amelia would ensure their deaths were not in vain. Let their memories live through her actions. That was how Amelia Levitt decided to live, the reason why she agreed to fight in the Holy Grail War. No matter how worn her body or overwhelming the enemy might be, one step at a time. Do what you believe is right, and eventually. . .
—Murderesssssss.
That sultry, snake-like voice made her head throb. Why did it sound familiar?
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
22/ Night, stay Knight (II)
~Interlude~
Thunderous magical energy peeled Saber’s mythril armor as the horses on either side of Saber crushed her while burning alive. The hammer lodged in her chest began cracking her breastplate — the sparks from the head tearing at her skin. From the delighted expression on Rider’s face, no more than a few more seconds were needed to break through.
“How rigorously the Lord’s righteous anger courses through your pagan body, Saber!” He booms. “Why do you not rejoice? A smile would look better on that pretty face of yours.”
The tempestuous magical energy within the hammer swelled, salivating at the chance to devour Saber.
“Saber! Please. It’s too dangerous!” Her Master cried out.
Saber once loved a hero. Dearly loved. He had left her a ring. Through some devilish machinations, the hero was tricked into loving another. In the guise of her future husband, the hero took the ring back and gave it to his bride. The hussy had the nerve to dishonor her with it. That was as cold as powder snow now.
The records that bubbled to the surface whenever a new piece of data ignited Saber’s neural network were smoldering cinders unable to reignite. But what drama that ring once wrought, what passion had been seared into the cultural consciousness.
Noble Phantasm — the crystallization of Saber’s legend as a knight of the sword. To reveal the proof of such a precious broken promise. . . now meant absolutely nothing.
“What contrivance, Rider.” In the eye of the storm of magical energy that tore her mystery apart, she quietly mumbled. “Let me show you, what it truly means to.”hateburn
In a single motion, Saber stabbed a horse’s neck with the formerly neon-red demonic blade, now reverted back to its natural gold. Ejecting burning magical energy from armored platform heels and using the embedded sword as her fulcrum, she backflipped onto the horse.
“HHHHHiiiiieeeeeee”
With no mythril buttress, Rider and the horses all crashed into each other, a jumbled mess of armor and hooves.
Substituting her demonic sword as reins, Saber managed to pull back her wounded, sweltering horse with her natural Riding ability as the poor steed burst into flames. Although Saber-class Servants automatically obtained Riding as a class skill, Saber’s strong Magical Energy Burst (Flame) personal skill set everything she rode on fire, rendering it either dead or useless in seconds. Yet, Saber persisted, pushing the horse whose mane and tail now sent trails of embers across the plain into a gallop.
*****
It seemed to Rider that Saber’s plan was to break through the bounded field before the horse expired. Since Rider no longer controlled the horse, it would no longer detmaterialize. Instead, he threw himself onto a fresh horse’s back and set off in pursuit. He’d teach her what happens to those who dared challenge his claim to his class.
But she stopped.
But she turned her horse around.
Only a madwoman would falsely retreat when there was no hope for reinforcements and her horse was on fire. Crazy, but how sternly beautiful Saber’s figure looked — divinity atop a flaming horse. This had to send his blood boiling. This had to force him to roar. This had to stir his Spiritual Core.
Creaking broke his train of thought. Wooden musketeers riding carved cavalry were lined up beside him. On the back of one of the wooden horses was his lord. This small detachment must have been the promised support.
“Will this be sufficient?”
Rider claimed to prefer real soldiers, red-blooded men who fought for church and country. He had been given toy soldiers. Rider felt that as an insult, so he spat on the ground to show contempt. War was sacred, he told himself. It allowed man to elevate himself through primal competition. You were a mockery.
“Enough, Milord.”
“Then let me see what you are capable of, Rider.”
Rider raised his hammer and charged. Following him was the host of wooden soldiers save one.
*****
On the third night of Tolosa’s Holy Grail War, the regular thumping of hooves, real, wooden, and on fire drowned out all other sounds on the hill undergirding the Iselma mansion. Within the mansion, the remaining Masters and Servants in the opulent ballroom all watched silently, wondering if a solitary swordswoman could out-joust a small army led by a knight in shining armor. But there was one Master who lost all feeling in the pit of her stomach because it didn’t matter who would win. Her Servant couldn’t even come close to competing with what she saw projected in the magical bubble. She stood fast though, for she believed in her eyes that could see into the world, and they told her. . . .
*****
Two hundred yards —
Saber urged the horse forward with her golden sword blade deep within the burning horse’s neck. He reminded her of the two solar horses that pulled the sun-chariot in the texture where she was manufactured and then born. The horse Saber was riding had no bellows to cool it down, though. What a hellish scene. The horse’s black pupils rolled into its forehead from the pain of being burned alive while patches of skin sizzled and contracted to reveal browning meat underneath. Most of its armor had already melted into molten slag that clung to its skin, mixing with the horse’s hair. Sitting on the dying animal, Saber’s almost haggard figure, her mythril swan armor fragmented and cracked, looked less like a solar deity and more a death goddess.
*****
One hundred and fifty yards —
Rider paid no attention to Saber’s appearance. The ephemeral embers that trailed behind the horse were flakes of burning hair and skin. In place of muscle fibers were. . . scales? Like a serpent, the horse was shedding its skin until hooves became talons as sharp as knives, a lush mane became scaly frills, and those intelligent pupils were now vertical slits covered by transparent scales known as spectacles. As the transformation progressed the mount began rebelling, using its newfound strength in an attempt to buck its rider.
The Riding skill allowed for the supernatural knowledge and control of certain mounts. According to Rider’s Master, Saber’s Riding skill was ranked rose, a rank lower than his own white. While this would be more than enough to control horses, Phantasmal Species like the dragonkind she was now attempting to tame were beyond her. Yet, using sheer brute force and the sword in the draconic horse’s neck she retained temporary control, like captaining a burning ship against a storm.
“The sword allowed her to take control of the horse and transform it into a wyrm, so it would be more resistant to her flames.”
“A wicked Noble Phantasm.” Rider offhandedly remarked to his Master.
“A flaming swordswoman with a demonic blade that draconizes whatever it touches. My, what a grand Servant you’ve summoned, Matou.”
“Aim!” Rider ordered.
The puppet cavalry raised their muskets in unison. Each loaded ball had anti-spirit enhancements carved onto it, but they couldn’t harm the horse. To slay that draconic horse, the heads of the wooden horses opened to reveal small cannons filled with alchemical reagents. Preparing this small force alone must have cost a small fortune. Lord Byron had a small army. Were the Iselma not destitute and disgraced former nobles? Just how much did this apostate have riding on the Holy Grail War?
Fifty yards —
A pair of black, leathery wings erupted from the horse's back, completing the transformation.
Rider’s smile was grim.
There was religious ecstasy. There had to be. A knight of Christianity, Defender of the Faith had just been given an opportunity to smite down a pagan witch who transfigured a horse into an evil serpent. Let him reenact the legends of St. George, St. Martha, St. Mamilian, and others to prove his fealty to the Cause. But Rider, o’ hallowed hero of the western world, you averted your eyes because you understood the greed of man. To lust after that sword is to forgo one’s humanity.
Finally, zero, but the jousters never met.
Two powerful flaps sent Saber soaring.
“Fire—!” Rider commanded his toy soldiers to let loose their first volley of projectiles.
The musket balls that dared touch the burning dragon’s hide burned to a crisp. As for the cannonballs, Saber did her best to control the draconic horse, weaving in and out of their flight paths, but rider and mount were not one; how could they be when thethat bound them was the very thing that bisected the two.swordrein
On impact, these cannonballs popped, delivering payloads of deadly mystical shrapnel. About four of the initial volley of ten grazed Saber’s mount, two were direct hits, crushing its ribs and breaking its back leg. Saber’s armor protected her to some extent, but her mount began to panic from all the carnage, becoming even more uncontrollable.
“She’s trying to escape. Why now?” Rider asked.
“Chris Frampton, I presume.”
An almost shrug from his Master. Rider had seen the footage Lord Byron collected of the two interlopers. A woman in tactical gear fighting a boy in Church robes slightly too big for him. The sentry puppets were unable to take a clear picture of the woman. Perhaps the governing body of this country managed to smuggle disruptive elements into this city. No, Berserker’s actions made it clear. That was her Master. The boy, on the other hand, was one of his Master’s projects — a safety so to speak. He was currently under Saber’s traitorous Master’s protection.
Saber must have been sent to ensure the boy’s safety. Berserker would break a hole in the bounded field to return to her Master. When Berserker’s Master and the boy were safe, Saber would retreat through the hole in the bounded field Berserker created. That meant. . .
“Yes, Rider. ‘Veritas’ and Matou are in league.”
They had been outplayed. Rider, who once gambled with kingdoms, would appreciate being outplayed by a worthy opponent. But not like this, he told himself. This was beneath him.
“Reload—!
Actual soldiers would have questioned their commander. By the time the automata finished and were ready to take the next shot, Saber would already be far out of their range. An elementary mistake from a supposedly world-class gen. . .
—WHOOSH.
Shot out of Rider’s hand was electrifying death. The hammer arched across the night sky, a medieval rocket aimed at Saber, still struggling with the draconic horse. Rider had made sure to shout ‘reload’ so loud that even the airborne Saber would hear him. Counting on a false sense of security, he threw the warhammer with all his strength.
The moment she felt the magical energy rocketing from the earth, Saber tore into the horse’s scaly back with her fiery left mythril claw to seal her left hand in place. The draconic horse writhed, twisting and contorting itself, hoping to dislodge either Saber or the sword in its neck. Saber obliged, drawing the demonic sword from its bloody sheath to intercept Rider’s hammer.
Even though the two-handed warhammer had been thrown with the force of a bunker-busting guided missile, it eventually, unable to hold its own weight, fell from the sky before borrowed sparks met unkindled flame.
As Rider watched the battered and bruised draconic horse limp through the hole in the bounded field, he realized Saber hadn’t fallen for his stratagem. She wasn’t even aware he called out in the first place. She moved because she detected magical energy, that was all.
His right hand was shaking. Must have been from the throw.
“Hahahaha.” Still mounted, Rider boisterously laughed into the night as the clouds began to cover the moon once more, “That Saber sure is something else.”
What a jolly scene. What a noble man.
Paragon of righteousness. Defender of the Faith.
“Personal skill: Madness Enhancement E+,” his Master remarked.
“Crazy pagan bitch.” An unheard whisper in the wind.
~Interlude Out~
Last edited by You; February 18th, 2021 at 04:13 PM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
23/ PenUmbra
“What’s so funny, kid? You’re disturbing my meal.”
A squeaky voice pulls my consciousness into a dark cafe bar. Not an oppressive or gloomy dark, but a fertile, chaotic darkness that whispers that anything is possible.
I turn to my neighbor. “Sorry, I just remembered a joke.” Then almost like an excuse, “I had a pretty rough night.”
A tween in a cutoff blue dress and detached sleeves is eating what seems to be a salad with her hooves? Strange people come here all the time, but this one’s here quite a lot. I think her master has the Manager babysit her. It’s coming back to me now, her name is —
“Salad any good?” I nurse my iced coffee, black.
She tries to purse her lips into a pout but her mouth is too full. Almost a half-smile, but her eyebrows are raised, her cheek muscles twitching. Oh, I’m a bother.
I sip my drink as an apology.
She digs right back into the salad.
“AAAAHHH, no one does carrot salad like Hibiki. I knew it, someone with hair as orange as beta-carrotene can’t be bad!”
“I think it’s beta-carot —”
“NEHH-HH, you’re a few centuries too early to be correcting me, kid.”
“Sorry. Are those a new pair of earrings? They look nice on you.”
“You really are tactless, aren’t you?” Contrary to her sweet-looking face that just yells ‘bully me’, she’s always been tough on me. “Constant remodeling.” She takes a large swig from her carrot juice and then wipes her mouth with her sleeve. “Ahhh, when will I be a proper book,” she says before looking up at the ceiling with glistening eyes.
“But does it matter if you’re an ummm. . . .”
“Pile bunker. You can say it. It’s not a dirty word.”
“Okay, sorry, does it matter if you’re a pile bunker or a proper book? You’re still the same person who loves carrot salad.”
“Vampire,” she holds out her left hoof.
“Dead Apostle,” she holds out her right hoof.
Tilting her head like a pigeon, “Do you think there’s a difference?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. . .”
“Kids these days need to read more than themselves,” she looks away in distaste. “The message. . . is the method. Pssh, nothing personal, kid, but no one cares about what you say. It all depends how you say it, as a gun, as a bayonet, as a book. I don’t like stabbing, gatling, or bunking, I just want someone to sit me on their lap, next to a fireplace reading me while feeding me carrots. Last time I checked, people don’t cuddle with their pile bunkers.” She picks up her glass by the rim and swirls the pulpy carrot juice inside as if she had the world-weariness to order three fingers of whiskey on the rocks.
“I see. . .”
“No, you still don’t get it, kid. What I’m trying to impart is a universal truth — structure decides function. You really should praise me for that nugget of wisdom. No, buy me more carrot salad!”
“Hmmm, I thought it was more that function decides structure. What something is meant to do is what determines what it is. Like if you make a vessel that grants wishes, well, it’d naturally take the shape of a Holy Grail.”
She starts swinging her arms from side to side with a red, tearful face. “Not for us! Structure decides function! Structure does!” she pouts. “Our shapes determine the relationships we have with others and ourselves. These empty expectations create a role that was never waiting for us, a function. And when this shape changes, the very meaning of our existence changes. I’ve been a lot of things in the past so I know. You. . . You’ve just been that.” She tries her best to point accusingly at me with a hoof. “No matter how earnestly we might be written to convey our concepts, our shape automatically limits those interested in us. I. . . I want to appeal to the cute book crowd, not the thuggish gun fanatics!”
“Seems like you chose the wrong organization to serve.” I cool my hands around my tumbler. “No offence, but I don’t see how that applies to me. I’m just your basic high-school kid.”
“Hmph, you’re pretty slow. I had a temporary master once. Lowest of the low, he was.” She lets her face rest on the edge of a hoof, really trying her best to make me believe that carrot juice was fermented. “And even he was more astute than you. Or maybe you just don’t want to see what’s not right in front of you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you happy?”
“Of course, I’m always happy,” I instantly answer.
She leans on her hoof, “How do you know that, kid?”
Let me count the ways. “I have meaningful relationships with people I like, am gaining knowledge that will help me in the future, and a clear path to a career where I’ll be doing impactful work. I think I’m pretty privileged. Nothing to complain about. So yeah, I’m happy.”
“That’s why you’re just a kid. I used to be like that too, thinking that I was happy because I was doing something I thought I should do, something that made people happy. So I kept telling my mom that I was really happy, really glad, but she couldn’t hear me and died.”
A young girl in a white dress stands on an elevated platform. Her head held high, eyes sparkling under the blue sky. A virginal snow-white carpet divides the sea of reed seats into two sections. The guests of honor sitting in the first row are religious dignitaries from far and wide. A wedding. The most important-looking person steps up onto the platform and speaks to the crowd. She says many things:
Merry things.
Kind things.
Congratulatory things.
And then stabs the girl’s heart with a horned spear.
The crowd cheers and the girl dies with a smile on her face no one else can see.
What the girl’s mother saw on the corpse's face was her own failure. A mother isn’t supposed to let her child die so easily. That’s what she must have thought. The only saving grace was that she didn’t know how truly happy and eager her child was to sacrifice herself. Knowing that would have led her to true despair instead of a detached depression that ended her life.
“Then I met my master. She’s a brutal devil who really doesn’t know how to take care of me. Worse than that, she branded me with this,” she points to the tattoo on her forehead, “and welded all this junk onto me,” and jangles her metal accessories. “I ran away and found a temporary Master, the same one I told you about and he asked me ‘by running away aren’t you saying you actually like your Master?’”
For all his rough edges, he really was an astute guy, she adds underneath her breath before continuing. “Harbouring gratitude, getting emotional, wanting to repay a favor. I martyred myself without feeling any of that. I was a normal girl so I did what I believed I should, sacrifice myself. Go make a mistake, kid.’
“Mistake. . . what type of mistake are you talking about?”
“Have you ever been walking along a road and tripped over a rock?”
I shake my head. Come on, I’m not that clumsy.
She scrunches her face for a second, then,
“I hadn’t either.”
So what’s the problem?
Her face loosens as she turns to face the bar. “Hey, I think someone’s calling you.” She points over the counter at a black door in the cafe’s kitchen.
Yeah, I can make out my name and also some mewing? I guess I should take a gander. Leapfrogging over the bar counter, I walk into the kitchen and approach the door. Time to see what on the other side could be calling my name, but before that:
“Hey, Seven?” I ask the guardian spirit of the iron hammer that renounces reincarnation.
“What, kid?’
“Thank you for your service.”
She blows a raspberry.
I twist the doorknob and enter Ahnenerbe’s basement.
*****
Cuatro
Dos
Tres
Smooth elevator music on repeat offsets the winding staircase that leads into a candy fairytale village. Gingerbread houses with strawberry iced roofs pop out from the ground, the walls, and even the ceiling of the cavern. Like tombstones. Then the pink castle at the center of the village center must be the mausoleum.
The bass quickens and the horns flare as the track becomes dotted with electronic accents. Cats. They come out from the houses, the ground, and even the village well. Enough humanoid cats in granny skirts to fill the screen begin to rocket around the village.
“CAT, FUCK, CAT, WELCOME TO HELLCATS!”
A force of cats that look exactly the same as the others detach from the swarm and head in my direction.
“It’s the Abbadon Forces — nyaa!” The murmur runs through the swarm of cats, unable to stop their rockets.
“I heard nyast time the Abbadon Berets lost to a C-Chinya.”
“L-lost? They outright surrendered!”
“Our village is Chinyese, nyaow?”
“Nyo, Nyo, we’ve always loved China, loved the party! Don’t censor our Boogaloo!”
“I-Idiots! The Elite NECO-Corps lost to a Chinya Girl, not Chinya. Remember that climactic battle we filmed? The one where the Twenty-Seven made their final stand?”
“Ac-ktual-ly there were twenty-seven minus five plus one extra, nyaa! But Kitsy-chan’s Bread Amalgam Titan Forme was soooooooooooo cool. Worth spending a hundred cats’ monthly sardine money in licensing and CG. CG was out of this world, nyaa. Looked like actual bread.”
“Nyo, nyo. You’re c-completely missing the point of the climax. It wasn’t just about a giant bread monster punching a pantsless China Girl. Cats gotta consider the emotionya depth. Like when Master Panyda appeared to face his f-former apprentice. I cryy errytime.”
“Did y-you cats really believe the animators are going to have time to include the entire China Girl Master Panda backstory? Who even cares, nyaa.”
“They c-could have at least included a dream sequence to explain how he really felt. . .”
“Anyone who c-can’t appreciate the Twenty-Seven fighting against a TATARI powered seemingly pantsless G.China Girl for what it is has s-shit taste. What’s important is the Nyetflix executives liked it. ”
“#Endgame most ambitious crossover move over, nyaa! Sell-out, nyaaaaaaaaaaa, more like SOLD OUT! We have the Eiichirou hand-drawn Sajou Ayaka. Cat Hell, we have the five star final ascension Shapeless Isle twin goddesses from that super popular mobile game making a cameo. A-And the twist at the end where the cute mascot character turned out to be the Second Ancestor, cosmo murder. They’ll lap up anything as long it's poured into a milk bowl.”
“Isn’t that when the Chinya Girl left? She figured out her brother wasn’t here and the true villain was the other giant little sister. That’s why our village was spared, nyaa.”
“I-Isn’t that enyding way too unsatisfying? Endings these days have to be d-dark.”
“T-That just leaves room for a sequel. A-Audiences love trilogies. inb4 Neco-Arc Vs Saber Wars The Movie — Episode IV: A Nyaa Hope. Coming soon!”
Busy bickering over which interpretation of the flaws and strengths of Neco-Arc The Movie 2: Electric Boogaloo would be the most valid if it was ever released, the swarm quickly forgot about me.
Except for the cats they called the Berets who don’t even wear berets crying, “Abbadon all hope ye who enter the Great Cats Village!”
I continue walking down the path.
“Why won’t you listenya!” The Berets snarl in unison, “We’ve spent years trying to perfect that line!”
But I continue walking down the path.
One of them manages to catch and tug at my shoulder. I don’t think I can brush it off so I’ll follow the pressure to face the cat but. . .
Pale.
Not a blank white that melts everything in the world, but a sickly pallor washes over the village. No more houses, just rotting piles of unconsumed meat, grey from decay.
Not uncoordinated bickering, but a chorus of buzzing chirps you might hear under a tree in the Tolosa’s countryside.
No cats, only locusts, pale and bloated as corpses.
As large as horses, they buzz around the rotten vale, chirping their ancient song of a calm, gentle dark. They sing to themselves, they sing to each other, they sing to the darkness where the cat’s castle stood.
So what’s touching my shoulder isn’t the velvet of a cat paw. Spindly, cold, iridescent like it was covered in an exoskeleton. There’s a slight crunch as it applies pressure on my shoulder. Reluctant eyes move from my shoulder to what’s in front of me.
Exoskeleton becomes sickly skin in the middle of the thorax. Attached to the trunk is a wrinkled but waxen face with sunken hollow eyes. Clinging onto the crown is a long tress or mane of limp, greasy hair.
Its voice comparable to the most seductive siren sings the song of its brethren.
Forsake not your faith, meager flame. And let abyssal woe sound.
Doing my best to back away, I trip. Not over a stone, but myself and start tumbling, tumbling down the path until the nest of locusts snaps into nothing but a pale hole.
*****
My whole body aches but I’m able to push myself off the vinyl floor and begin my descent down the school corridor. It’s hard not to feel the oppressive spirit of the institution when it’s scrawled onto butcher paper emblazoning the walls.
Wait.
It’s dark but I can see the path immediately in front of me. I must have fallen into some cavern. Some acoustics, if a voice reached all the way to the Ahnenerbe door. But if you were to look at the soft, glistening walls and the gravelly, wet dirt that pushes back instead of compacting, it’s more likely this place is the inside of a body.
Wait.
No need, just a stray thought to be immediately dismissed.
After continuing to the end of the corridor, I make it to my locker.
As for the person calling my name.
“Morning, Kayla.” I say without looking down at the girl sitting underneath the locker next to mine. “Farmer’s tonight, right?”
Thursday’s downtown Farmer’s market. The city calls it a farmer’s market but it's more like a little festival. Vendors and restaurants throughout town set up stalls on the main street, there’s live music, and even some solicitors who want you to sign this petition or join this cause. For high school couples, it’s an institution. Being seen at Farmer’s with your ‘bae’ is equal to being Instagram official.
— Chris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . foam.
“Sorry?” I look down. There’s no one there.
Oh, she must have just been my imagination. I drop my bag, fiddle with the combination, fail once, make a face at my locker, and try again —
Wait.
You’ve had that locker for longer than a year now. You know the combination by heart, 08-22-04. So why do you always fail once? Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten so used to failing the first time that I feel uneasy when I don’t. Something psychosomatic, but that doesn’t sound like me.
As long as the same gears grind, the mechanism moves. Thus, yesterday cannot be different from today. Without a wish, without hope, it responds no matter who turns the dial. How promiscuous. . .
But it’s not the lock’s fault, no.
It’s me who gives meaning to what the lock seals away.
It’s me who gives meaning to those I want the lock to dissuade.
This lock just clicks open when the dial passes the correct three numbers.
Click.
Like so.
I reach in and feel something soft and round. I don’t remember putting a basketball in my locker. I don’t even play. Maybe Ian’s locker was full and he asked me to look after that ball for a night? Lord, he loves that ball. He even polishes it in class.
So I take it out and what was calling my name stares at me.
“Kay—” I manage to croak out.
Sandy blond hair framing a heart-shaped face with green-grey eyes.
Without a doubt, I’m holding my girlfriend’s head.
Don’t drop it, no, her.
The mouth twitches and the eyes follow to curve into a smile.
I. . .
“All of us, no matter who we are,” Please don’t say it. “are merelyidiotic, pathetic, weak human beingsfoam.”
The tidal wave ofknocking me to the ground.heads in my locker pours outbubbles in the cavern flows upstream,
Beyond the number of human heads are their voices. They reject, they converse, they argue, they decry, they proclaim, they joke, they lecture, they accept. Every word creates a new meaning. Every meaning demands a reaction. Every reaction leads to a critique. The law of conservation of events? Ha, the bands snapped when humans started trying to express themselves.
The talking heads cover my body demanding my attention while expanding like soap bubbles, stretching, coalescing, and popping, each a tiny bubble in cosmic foam. Without a reason, without a moment’s notice, entire universes are created and destroyed, yet the overall shape stays the same.
I can’t help but accept that I’m laughing.
Even if the sea of screaming bubbles reaches my waist, crying out: stop for a moment and see our pain, I can’t see them, I can’t hear them because they’re only bubbles that linger for a moment and pop, easily replaced with another.
Even—tually I’m dragged into the foamy undertow. Millions of bubbles, millions of voices, millions of forsaken. Considering my past, I should be terrified of drowning. Aquaphobia. I’m gasping for breath and my sight is fading fast, but I can’t stop laughing.
Even when flames erupt from the bubbles, illuminating the black ember which asks me how I can continue to fail to reject what’s so clearly in front of me if. . .
“Sorry.”
Yes, because
everything is,
nothing is,
. . . merely foam.
*****
I reach over my bedside table for my phone. Who left a lollipop on top of it? Cherry knows that I can’t do candy. Anyway, the white numerals on the screen tell me it’s still morning, but going to school isn’t an option. My arms are also bandaged. Last night, right. I went to the Ferrini Open Space to make sure the Dead Apostle wasn’t at the Master get-together. Everything after that flashes through my mind: the news that Father Phahn was a Master, having to run from the Iselma’s automated security, losing to Lancer, and then being saved by Saber. I. . . have no idea who brought me back. I suspect it was Saber.
. . . The team that he had left at the Tolosa Mission to oversee this Grail War, whether it be out of ambition, loss, or spite. . . obtained Command Spells and summoned a Servant. . .
Yeah, I know, I can’t keep turning a blind eye. A decorated member of the Eighth Sacrament, Father Phahn wouldn’t lie. Out of all the people who were originally going to help oversee this conflict, the only two who meet the qualifications to summon a Servant are Cherry and me. Damn it, why. . . It’s okay, there’s nothing I can do about it right now, so it can wait until after I’ve finished using my morning routine.
Make sure to get today’s login bonus; don’t want to miss out on that. But there’s no time to play the game because you have to do your daily hearts for Kayla’s Instagram. Scrolling down, it seems like everyone who followed you and then you followed back, or you followed and they followed you back are living eventful lives to their fullest. Good on them.
I finished before I could check the news. Well, wet my hands, two pumps of hand soap, twenty seconds of scrubbing remembering to pay special attention to the inside of the nails, and then twenty seconds in hot water, dry on my towel. Brush teeth: two minutes then put the toothbrush back in the charger because you need to floss. Wait, I forgot to wipe the toothbrush clean with a square of toilet paper. Enough hard water scum leads to a brown crust. The Oral-B toothbrush manual always recommends drying it after brushing. As for flossing, I can never truly get my back teeth but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.
While flossing, I remember drinking my usual iced coffee with someone who was eating carrot salad, no wasabi, at Ahnenerbe. I went into the basement because someone called my name. Not too sure what happened next. Well, it can’t have been too important — just like the letter on my desk I haven’t opened.
*****
“Hey. Sorry about yesterday.” I close the door behind me before fluffing the old man’s pillows so he’s comfortably propped upright. He looks the same as he did the last time I saw him.
“Worse for wear,” he says with a small nod at my bandaged arms. Uncanny, what a blind person can notice.
“Yeah these. . . don’t worry about them.” I sit in the chair beside his bed. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Even after what happened two days ago? By the look of you, boy, you’re finally hunting vampires.”
Oh, Cherry must have told him. She comes up here sometimes to help clean.
“That’s not how I got this, though.” Last night’s clashes ring in my ears. Sounds come from mistakes made. “You know, the Holy Grail War is really white.” Light conversation is good for taking your mind off things. “Starting to wonder why we had to run that diversity seminar last year.”
He turns to me, “You say that like you’re not white.”
“Am I? I mean I’ve never really looked at my birth certificate and people tell me I could pass as Hispanic.”
“You’re a vanilla Tolosa white boy, Chris, or at least you want to be.” He almost barks my name.
“I guess.” I want him to continue.
“Hmph,” he obliges. “Tolosa’s so white it doesn’t matter what you are — if you’re going to try to fit in, you’re white. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to treat you white. Ha! Holy Grail War. The only magi insane enough to fight for a wish-granting vessel are unbelievers who assume they deserve the Lord’s.”divine blessingwish-granting vessel
I nod at something that I don’t have to agree with. “Then we’re a sorry pair aren’t we, an old black man mentoring this vanilla white boy.”
“Didn’t we talk about this before?”
I think so. Maybe it was one of the numerous times we camped on the Sister behind the Mission and gazed out at the washed-out stars together after a long day of tracking or target practice. Maybe it was when we’d sit together and he’d tell me all the stories he liked from his bible. Maybe it was none of those times and because interacting with this old man throughout the years made me aware of his opinion on this topic without having to discuss it at all.
“But it matters, doesn’t it,” I insist. “How we’re seen and remembered. That’s how Heroic Spirits are born.”
“And how will you remember me?” he asks, his voice never cracking.
“Come on old man, you’re what they call ‘old but not out.’ You’ve still got some years in you. At least we’ll get through the next two weeks.”
“You’re doing a terrible job of trying to convince yourself,” the old man says.
No one’s trying to convince anyone of anything because there’s sincere sentiment in what I said.
The old man takes a sip of his water. “We were never talking about me, were we?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Do all Executors feel desperate when they’re hunting Dead Apostles. . . Did you —?”
“Righteous anger, lust for vengeance, wanting to protect something. Those are the most common emotions you’ll come across. But desperation you say. . . I do remember hearing of a particular Executor who was desperate to kill Dead Apostles in my time. Joined the Church because he had the ability and thought he could use it to make the world a better place.”
“And faith?”
“Quite faithful, but never the most pious. Faith is a funny thing Chris: we talk about having faith in the Lord, faith in the Church, faith in ourselves. We actively ascribe faith in these things to protect our own faith. That was the urgency this man felt. The more he saw, the more he experienced, the more he felt he was losing himself. So, he kept killing Dead Apostles to prove to himself no matter how much of himself he lost, he was still himself; he still had faith. Eventually, he became a husk that could only affirm his own past each time he felt his Black Keys purifying a Dead Apostle.”
“I see.”
“I told you that you were the type to follow orders blindly because I’m the same. But — these past five or so years have been nice.” His hand goes up to his blindfold behind which should be two empty sockets.
I see. I really do. But I want to feel like we’re different. That I won’t go down that path because each of us is different, unique, and shut up Dilo.
“Is that why Dilo chose you to be the overseer? N-not the following orders blindly thing, but because of your experience. I can’t believe I’ve never asked you this.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, that seminar made it sound like you might have been a token diversity hire.”
“Surprised you think so little of the man who raised you, Chris.” Yeah, me too. I think it's normal to underestimate the elderly. Find me a kid my age who idealizes them instead. “None of this is Dilo’s design. I’m overseeing because I want to.”
“And the Church was okay with that?”
“They had no say; they needed someone to supervise you and I was the obvious choice.”
“Because you’ve fought a Servant.”
“That’s all in the past, Chris. The Tolosa Mission is no longer overseeing the Grail War — you’ve decided to hunt this vampire instead.”
“I —”
He stops me, “You’ve followed all the protocols from your online program and employed all the tracking techniques that I’ve taught you, yet you haven’t found a single clue. You came to visit me today only to ask if there was something missing from your training if I had some trump card up that could help you magically find this vampire. No, Chris, you’ve taken everything that I am. You decided to hunt this vampire, so then the question you need to be asking yourself now that all the traditional methods have failed is: what are you willing to give up to hunt this vampire?”
*****
“Glad to see you alive and kicking, fam.” Father Kelsey leans back on a dining table chair. “All that hard work getting those Missions to lend us their relics finally paid off, huh.”
So that’s why my arm is mostly healed. In preparation for the Holy Grail War we cashed in centuries of favors requesting artifacts and shrouds from the other Missions in the state. None of the other Missions wanted to part with any of their relics: they would be lost in the carnage or worse, squandered on heretics. How did we convince them, again? Right, Father Kelsey was running point on that. He held up some letter he got from a higher-up and told the rest of us not to worry. God, that feels like more than just half a year ago.
“I woke up a bit earlier, and went up to see how —” Damn, “That letter. . . .”
He blinks twice.
“The other Missions didn’t want anything to do with the Grail War. You waved this magical letter and they all started coming to the negotiating table. I always thought it was something from the Eighth Sacrament or the old man sent a letter to one of the Cardinals in charge of Executors but that was Dilo wasn’t it?”
“Dud—” he catches himself this time, “Chris.”
I run my hand through my hair. “It’s whatever. Did you know Cherry was a Master as well?”
The right side of his face slightly twists as he motions for me to sit in the chair opposite to him like I’m a kid in the youth group he runs behind the Mission.
“Yeah, no. Look, it’s complicated.” He lightens his tone into the one he uses to counsel kids whose parents are either way too religious or aren’t in the picture. “Shirt, Cherry should be the one explaining this to you. Okay, from what I understand, when Dilo asked Cherry to help with the overseer thing, he also asked her to be a Master if things went south.”
“Like he knew something bad would go down?”
“I don’t know, I really. . .” he catches himself snorting softly and smiling to himself. “Come on, what do I always say?”
“Just because marijuana is legal doesn’t mean it’s harmless, especially for teenagers whose brains are still developing?”
His gesture says, ‘the other one.’
“A literal interpretation of the Bible may state that homosexuality is a sin, but the Lord preached love in all forms. Magecraft on the other hand does no such thing, it muddles the connection between us and the Divine, deepening divides, separating people, failing to deliver users to the Kingdom of the Lord?”
He presses his forehead. “Appreciate you remembering all those important lessons, bud. Geez, that last one was a tough conversation to have.”
I’m guessing he forgot the conversation we had about how being pro-life does not mean you should cherish the life of a Dead Apostle since while something that moves is technically ‘alive,’ this does not mean it has life.
“Backups! I always say you need backups.” He throws his arms up. “Right? It’s not just me, right? I always tell those kids, sure, your dad might want you to go to Caltech but how about applying for a few State Universities.”
“The Church didn’t just want someone from Fuyuki who had experience with this type of ritual for logistics support and to train the new overseer. Dilo wanted her because she was a former Master and a member of the Founding Three Families, so a mark of the chosen would almost certainly manifest. But why participate? She’s just gone and made things worse. Father Phahn’s labeled her a rogue element and summoned his own Servant. What? You’re doing that thing when you’re worried”
He wrenches his face into a smile. “You’re a good kid, Chris, to worry about all this, but the Holy Mother said Phahn’s the overseer. You don’t need to worry about the Grail War anymore.”
I take a deep breath. He’s right. What Cherry, a Master, does must be her own business. I doubt she wants us to get involved either. She’ll be fine. I know firsthand how capable she is as a Master and the strength of the Servant she summoned. Leaving magi squabbles to magi is always applicable advice.
“She’s still living with us, though.”
“Of course,” Father Kelsey says slowly. “This is her home. . . and where she works. Also not gonna lie, but her Servant is pretty cute. She’s kind of got that sad, silent, cyber-fantasy look going for her.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“Dude, just because I’m celibate doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate.”
Oh, Father Kelsey, if you just knew how many at-risk girls in your Youth Group dream of making you realize that God is a woman.
“You can appreciate whoever you want, Father. But she’s not real, she’s a Ghost Liner — the silhouette of a soul shaped by legend seared onto the scroll of the Human Order.”
“Forking magi, and their convoluted expressions.”
“Forking, really?”
“It’s a new thing I’m trying. One of the kids at Youth Group said their parents were not okay with them watching this show on Netflix because it blasphemed against how God ordered His universe.” He shrugs with some guilt on his face, “But hey, we didn’t get that Netflix subscription just for ‘Movie Nights at the Mission,’ okay.”
This is getting off-topic, time to get out of this chair.
“You’re not going to be looking for Masters, right?
“There’s a vampire in town.”
“Chris,” his voice quivers for a moment. “Father Phahn brought a small army of Executors with him. Leave it to them. You’re not ready to be hunting vampires by yourself.”
“I know,” I lie. “It’s Thursday though, Farmers’. With the Grail War going on, they’ll be spread thin. I’m going to do some routine surveillance and make sure the bounded field is maintained around Higuera. And you know, Farmers’ date night.”
His expression relaxes. “Tell Kayla I said hi.”
I nod. Before I leave the Mission, I’ve got to figure out where Father Phahn’s base of operations is. Then the hard part, convincing him to leave this vampire to me.
Last edited by You; February 28th, 2021 at 06:33 AM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
24/ Mirabilis Deus in Sanctis Suis
The doorbell rings and we’re greeted with a cheerful “Welcome to Ahnenerbe. Table for two?”
Talk, Mary. You’re the adult.
Mary’s expecting me to say something since I was the one who had an appointment.
We’ve been silent for too long. The orange-haired waitress looks worried now.
Fuck it, “Hi.” Fuck, why do you sound like a telemarketer. “Ummm, we’re waiting for someone. I think he might have made a reservation under Laurent?”
The hostess lifts a page from the clipboard and makes an ‘o’ with her mouth, “We’re a little busy at the moment, but I can clear a table — oh, Chika is already clearing it. Would you like to wait here or at the bar?”
“Bar’s good.”
‘Why,’ Mary says with her eyebrows.
‘I just gave an answer,’ I return with my own eyebrows. Then a ‘you should have said something if you wanted to wait here’ jut of my jaw.
She blinks. I don’t think she got what the jut meant.
“Can I help you with anything else?”
Mary’s left raised eyebrow accuses me.
I roll my eyes because speak up if you want something, geez. Nothing stopping you. But, whatever, let’s get going.
We end up with our backs to the bar, sitting on stools about a foot apart, wordlessly watching the green-haired chica (hostess’s words), stack the half-finished plates each layered with used napkins soaking in sauce or drippings from what will be our table. People in this town really don’t get how wasteful they are.
Laurent should be arriving with his friend any minute now. I’ve known Laurent for. . . a while. There’s something special about him that’s comforting and trustworthy. Like he’s seen so much that nothing really bothers him anymore, so of course the Grail wouldn’t choose him as a Master. He has no need for a wish.
“Why, Master Alcatraz, it hasn’t been that long.”
On my right is a tanned, middle-aged man in a black sports jacket and matching pants holding a blue flip phone. Older phones are so much more interesting than phablets.
To my left is Mary with clasped hands in her lap. She’s nervous. First time she’s been ‘herself’ in public. Apparently, Taco Bell doesn’t count. “You sure his head ain’t cut? What sort of outsider would want to get himself involved?”
“He’s a good person who wants to help us.”
“Come on, come on. When’s the last time we spoke? Years by my reckoning.”
Mary catches herself and swallows the Irish in her before speaking, “There are good folk out there who really want to help, even have your best interests at heart, but they’re not you, dearie. If they fail, they’ll say sorry, go to an establishment like this, sigh, and order a pint. But you. . . you won’t. You can’t.”
“I know.”
“Why, we are all your pupils, Master. This? Just some business. Nothing related to you. . .”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
We’re not talking about the Holy Grail War, are we?
“An old friend asked me to pop by and I wanted to thank you for looking after my girls.”
How enviable.
“I get that, but we’re up against knights, vampires, and Hercules. Laurent is a mage, may-gas, whatever. I’m a teenager, you’re a cook. Let’s hear him and his church friend out.”
To have experienced that. To feel the need to warn me about that. What a full life you must have led, Mary.
“But it turns out I’m not the only one related to you in this town. Oh, hung up.” The man looks at the phone for a moment and then places it on the bar counter before starting to walk away.
None of my business, I just want to shout something.
“Hey, you left your phone on the table!”
Both Mary and the tanned man turn to look at me. He smiles, she doesn’t.
“You’re Nadine, aren’t you?”
Stop looking at me, Mary. I don’t know what’s going on either.
“I’m Laurent’s friend. Let me pop to the bathroom real quick.”
“What about your phone?”
“Not mine, leave it.”
What?
*****
“Let's wait for the old bastard before ordering.” The man folds his menu and leans back so one arm dangles behind our booth. “Never thought I’d have the chance to meet a Ghost Liner before.”
“This is. . .”
“I’m Mary, pleased to meet you.” She inclines her head. “You’re a man of the cloth?”
He wags his finger at us with a twinkle in his eyes, “Is that what Laurent told you? No, no. Well, yes. Yes, I guess I am technically part of the Church again. Have to get used to that. Oh, where are my manners, Lorenz Trendel.”
He holds his hand out. It betrays that dad-joke of a face of his. Only Rich’s hands came close to how rough this man’s hands are. After releasing my hand it goes straight back to his side of the table. Strange.
“Father Trendel, then?” Mary asks respectfully.
“Just call me Lorenz, ma’am. Father Trendel was my dad.” Did he just? “And to be frank, I haven't had a single priestly duty for more than a decade.”
Let me get this straight.
“You’re technically part of the church, but you’re not a priest. Do you just volunteer at bake sales for the tax write-off?”
A mischievous smile brimming with innocence. It’s borderline disgusting. Nothing like the bowl-cut priest’s soft serpentine.
“My daughter used to ask me questions like that. For someone in our line of business, we use the terms Church and church interchangeably. It’s easy to forget how esoteric these concepts might be for outsiders.” He clears his throat, “As you know, there’s the Catholic Church: a major religion, elects a Pope, main power is in the Vatican, its priests wear funny hats, etc. There’s also the Holy Church, or the Church.”
“Surely, they are the same organization; the Church is the Church?” Mary protests. Oh yeah, she’s Catholic.
Lorenz closes his eyes and nods. “I see why Laurent asked me to meet you.”
Because even if the Master is an ordinary person, a Heroic Spirit usually is not. In my case, the worst Master summoned the worst Servant. What a joke. I don’t know if we’re supremely compatible or the opposite.
“I’m allowed to say this because I’m not really a priest anymore.” Famous last words, much? “I preached at a small church in the Netherlands. The village burned down; my church included. Terrible accident. I had some very good friends; all perished in the fire. Their daughter survived. We were the only survivors. That’s when I realized God had put me on this earth to take care of this girl. I. . . wasn’t the greatest priest anyway. About ten years ago, some very bad men wanted my research. They went so far as to send a paramilitary unit to retrieve me. I left my daughter and her maid with the owner of this cafe. We’re good friends. The two waitresses who work here? Went to high-school with my girls.”
Oh, so that’s why we’re meeting at this cafe.
“The organization chasing me was persistent. I eventually got in touch with the Holy Church and they sorted it all out.”
There’ll be a movie with that plot in five years. Nominated for best picture, won’t win.
“My research at the time was. . . unbefitting of a priest. And that’s what the Holy Church deals in.”
“An inquisition?” Mary piques.
Well, as they say, no one suspects. . .
“Not wrong,” Lorenz taps the menu. “Christians believe the Bible is the Word of God. That would mean anything that dissents from the scripture and the doctrine resulting from that scripture is heretical, no?”
We both nod. She, from years of brainwashing. Me, because Lorenz and I both know the question behind the divine authenticity of Christian traditions can’t be summed up in two sentences, the second of which is a rhetorical question.
“But, wait! If God created all and He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good doesn’t that mean he created the heretical as well?” A mock gasp.
Sounds like a question that turned wealthy land-owners into full-time philosophers. If the Bible is the Word of God and Christianity derives its doctrine from that text, then how do believers reconcile things that don’t exist within that text?
“More than a thousand years ago, a Supreme Ecumenical council for all denominations was gathered. Through their artificial providence an Eighth Sacrament was created. Those who partook in this Grace which does not exist were allowed to be involved with heretical matters. Military outfits were commissioned to protect churches against heresies. A force was assembled to retrieve holy artifacts from heretics. The Cardinals commissioned agents to execute the Lord’s will, destroying monstrosities that were not part of His natural order. And finally, for her suffering faithful, the Church prepared solemn pilgrims with minds of steel to exorcise. This is the Holy Church, the singular from the Council’s universal.”demonsdistortions
I can’t help but think there’s somethingin those words.wrongsacred
“Black magic is heretical. Yet, you’re good friends with a magus, how did that come to pass?”
“Why ma’am, let the old bastard himself tell you.” He winks at someone behind our booth.
“Lorenz, old friend! So glad you could make it on short notice.”
Coming from behind us, Laurent removes both his hobo jackets and slips off his beanie with one hand before vigorously shaking Lorenz’s hand with the other.
“No problem at all, in fact, my pleasure. I was just telling the girls here how this meeting gave me the perfect excuse to ambush some old friends.” Lorenz shuffles along his bench towards the window, giving Laurent space to sit down.
“The old padlock, huh. So, he’s still kicking?” Laurent shakes his head good-naturedly. Then with his face resting on his fist, he winks at me. “Hi, champ. Sorry, got caught up. What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”
*****
“Most of the menu’s pasta?”
“The owner’s German, but the manager’s a master of Italian cuisine. My little girl often complimented their assistant cook, the waitress with the orange hair there. Much better than our maid.”
“You’ve been staring at your menu for a while, dear lady. Are you having trouble deciding?”
“Japanese. . . curry? What a notion.”
“Oh yes ma'am. The manager hails from Japan. Apparently, they used to do a curry of the month, here. Turned out to be so popular, curry connoisseurs far and wide made the pilgrimage to this very establishment.”
“Like the annual Tamales festival up north.”
“What about you champ, see anything you like? I’m paying.”
“Wow, thanks. Just surprised they have a carrot salad. Tolosa salads are usually just a garden, Caesar, or cobb.”
“You heard Lorenz, champ. You can’t settle for salad. Master Italian chef, famous curry. Need more meat on your bones, anyway.”
“Well, what about Mary?”
“Hmph, I think she’s quite taken with the curry, ma’am?”
“Japanese? Curry?”
“What about you two?”
“Steak to go with this red. I’ve survived this long, may as well enjoy it.”
“They don’t have a good Sangiovese here? Shame, Laurent. Why would you move here in the first place?”
“You learn to drink Cabernet. Californians and their Cabernet. Dear lady, I noticed you haven’t ordered a beverage?”
“Irish. Looks poorly on me as well.”
“Lorenz, how big are the pizzas?”
“Definitely enough to fill a person and have some left over to take home for dinner.”
“Hello everyone, have you decided on what you want?”
“Ladies first.”
“Could I get the Salsiccia pizza?”
“Of course. And you, ma’am?”
“Japanese. . . curry! Please.”
“The lunch special 8 oz Sirloin, for me. And Lorenz?”
“Tell Hibiki to make me Harriet’s usual. Let’s see how my little girl’s tastes have changed. Thanks, Chikagi.”
Oh, Chika is short for Chikagi.
*****
When lunch arrived, Mary couldn’t stop complimenting the innovation of ‘oriental fusion’ in the form of a Japanese curry with white rice. Laurent tore into his steak and sipped his wine with a somewhat dissatisfied look on his face. Lorenz. . . the waitress came out with an omelet on top of fried rice. He was grimly happy? He even said ‘guess she’s still my little girl.’ Creepy.
And me and my pizza. Was it as good as Guiseppe’s or is Giuseppe's really just overpriced and overrated Americanized Italian food with fancy Italian names to make it seem less American? That’s what I hoped to find out, but I think people who criticize cuisine are exaggerating the difference. Okay, Dominos vs. this pizza, sure there’s a difference. But at a certain point, things taste just as good? It’s all kind of just food.
“How’s your pizza?” Laurent asks with his knife digging into the meat.
“Good as Giuseppe's.”
Laurent bobs his head ambivalently.
“Mary, how’s the. . .” but her plate was already cleared.
“While we’re digesting, I’d love to hear how you and Mr. . . . .” She shoots Laurent a small smile. “Why, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”
“Of course, dear lady, of course. Last time I believe you were relatively incapacitated. No need for formality, call me Laurent. Magi names are too long and nonsensical. Even applying for a credit card is hurdle after hurdle.”
“My pleasure, Laurent. Mary. Don’t put much stock in last names either. Lorenz was regaling us ‘bout his exploits through the years but never touched on how a man of the cloth came in contact with a magician.”
Lorenz raises an eyebrow at that last word as he sips the last of his wine, white. Laurent takes his time wiping his mouth before leaving the napkin on his plate.
“You are bold, dear lady, participating in the Holy Grail War without hiding your name. I would say, even honorable. On the other matter, I’m not too comfortable with telling that story,” he looks at Lorenz. “A dear friend shouldn’t tarnish the honor of another.”
Laurent’s pretty cool. Real. In fact, all the mages I’ve met are some version of this. They don’t hide behind memes. They say what they mean without being scared of who they are.
“Why I believe it was Lorenz who said you should be the one to tell us, so please go on right ahead,” Mary smiles.
Lorenz apologizes with an amused frown, “The girls already know I was not the most pious of priests.”
Laurent sighs, defeated. “Lorenz’s research involved a collaboration with the Frise family, a magus family that I was also entangled with. Mutual friends often have a way of meeting. We kept in touch after he adopted their daughter. I helped out with her magical education and when the Pralalala forced Lorenz to go underground I offered what meager assistance I could at the time.”
“Couldn’t have been meager assistance if he came all the way to a warzone to tell us about the Church.” Mary protests.
“Can’t find a magus humbler than Laurent. Saved my life, this man has.” Lorenz good-naturedly slaps Laurent on the back. Laurent rolls his eyes. “But, no ma’am. I arrived a few days ago. The Cardinal commissioned me to help Father Phahn with administering this Holy Grail War. It was a good excuse to come to Ahnenerbe and see some old friends.”
Wait, where have I heard. . .
“A Cardinal? Ph— I mean Father Phahn said it was a Cardinal who started this Grail War. Wait, do you know Father Phahn?”
“No, Nadine; that Cardinal has long since passed.”
“Laurent’s right. When the Tolosa Grail was brought to the Church’s attention, a well-known Cardinal established a commission with the bishop who found the Grail as his co-chair.”
Right, Phahn talked about this last night. The bishop recently died and a member of his faction became Saber’s Master. So that would mean the Cardinal who commissioned Lorenz, commissioned Father Phahn, is the one handling this Grail War all the way from the Vatican.
“Father Phahn’s reputation precedes him. A master negotiator, by all accounts. During his time in the Eighth Sacrament, it’s rumored he provided the initial dataset that allowed the Church’s Beowulf team to create a model that forecasts the movements of relics in collectors’ hands. Truly no one better suited to moderate this war.”
Wow Lorenz, who knew the bowl-cut priest who looks like a Walmart greeter was such a big-shot.
“When I became a Master, I thought it was just a secret fight between seven people. I’m glad there’s so much. . . structure.” I give a reassuring nod.
“Oh no, champ, please don’t get that impression.” Laurent shakes his head. “Being a Master is the equivalent of signing a liability waiver on your life. There might be people like Lorenz, personnel that the Church has requisitioned, as well as local and state officials, but they’re not here to protect you. They’re to protect everyone from you, well, you, dear lady.”
That. . .
“Y-Yeah! That’s what I meant.” Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject. “But yeah, like, thank you guys for coming and helping us out. Like I’m a high-school student and Mary’s a cook so there. . .” I just stop there because damn, it’s going to just get worse.
“You feel like you’re out of your depth,” Laurent says flatly.
“Exactly, especially after last night’s Master gathering.”
“Then why not quit?” Lorenz asks me point-blank. Laurent looks at him. “You might die.”
I nod, “Mary. . .”
“I want to clear my name,” Mary says clearly.
“And I want to help her,” I say as clearly as I can.
Lorenz looks at us for a long second before sliding a screen protector across the table.
“You’ll want to peel off the cover and put it over your Command Spell.”
This is my mom’s waxing strips-level sticky.
“Even if this hides magical energy, you can still see. . . Oh.”
All visible traces of my Command Spell disappear.
“As expected of Church cybernetics,” Laurent raises an eyebrow. “Truly cutting-edge technology. Weren’t there rumors of an Executor whose body was about seventy percent modified with consecrated weaponry?”
“Like Robocop in robes. Is Father Phahn a cyborg?” And more importantly what the fuck did I just put on my hand.
“Sancraid Phahn isn’t an Executor. Like Laurent said, the Church has some agents with some ‘improvements’ to better serve the Lord. In order to create and maintain these prostheses, the Church has been required to create a low-cost, fast-acting skin replacement. Let’s say one of our agents wants to go to a public sauna on their day off or the covering of their prosthesis is damaged during battle. Normally, the agents use an aerosol but these are easier for small, instant applications.”
“What happens when I use a Command Spell?”
He takes a small plastic ziplock of those screen protectors out from his jacket pocket and drops them on my side of the tables.
“Reapply. These should last you until the end of the Grail War.”
“Thank you, Lorenz.”
“No need. Thank this man.” He points his thumb at Laurent.
“Thanks. . . for everything.” I’m surprised how much I mean it.
That night the vampire almost killed me, Laurent let me into his car with such understanding eyes, not the sympathetic way my father used to look at me when I had a bad day at school or my mother was being particularly melodramatic, but the encouraging kind. Wanting to let me know that I can trust him. That he’ll do whatever he can because he wants to help me.
“Now to business. A vampire recently attacked you, correct?” Lorenz becomes a little more serious.
“Yes. Last I heard, the vampire’s a Master and the Church called in a specialist. But if the vampire is a Master, the neutral Church shouldn’t have errr jurisdiction?”
“No,” says Laurent, “The overseer should be neutral. But the entire Church is not the overseer. The Church has a duty to slay Dead Apostles. They will not shirk their responsibility.”
Lorenz nods.
“If the vampire is a Master, he would have a Servant. Can this specialist stand-up to both a Master and Servant?”
“'Fraid not.” Lorenz admits. “The Church would break the overseer’s neutrality and deploy Rider if there’s a Dead Apostle after the Grail. This Grail especially.”
Because this Grail was embezzled from the Church’s very own treasury. That’s what Phahn said last night. The bowl-cut priest has it hard. He needs to fight off Saber and now this vampire’s Servant.
“A vampire would want to be impervious to sunlight, right? That’s a vampire’s greatest weakness.”
Or a Van Helsing.
“Assuming there is a Dead Apostle as a Master, champ, their objective was to become a Dead Apostle. After that, there’s nothing left. In the ecstasy of their heresy, they failed to realize everything they valued would eventually become trite and meaningless.”
“For the vampire this is just a game?” Mary says. “Playing the role of a Master so they can feel something. Ridiculous.”
You tell him, Mary.
“Is there anything that I can do if the vampire attacks me again, Lorenz? How does the Church usually fight against vampires?”
“By appealing to their humanity, no?” Lorenz nudges Laurent who chuckles. “But really, the Church gathers information about the vampire to find a lair and undo the Curse of Restoration, usually with a religious symbol they were familiar with when they were human. In extreme cases, the Church will employ Scriptures.”
“Scriptures, truly? Hurtling a Bible at someone seems blasphemous, bordering on ridiculous.” Mary asks.
Lorenz shrugs, “Something of the sort.”
I swallow my disappointment. There’s nothing I can do to forget that claw driving itself into my scalp, replacing everything I thought I knew. I’m a Master. I have eyes that see into the world. So. . .
“Don’t be discouraged, champ. Dead Apostles are on a different level from magi. All the Masters, even Father Phahn would have a tough time.”
“I’m sure the overseer would have an easier time than the others.” Laurent butts in.
“No question, but let me explain it to Nadine and Mary. Dead Apostles and magi, generally speaking, have the same idea of the supernatural, but Dead Apostles are vampires so naturally, they start at a higher place. Because of our purification rites, the Church is the natural enemy of the Dead Apostles who were formerly human. However, it may be difficult to admit, the Church lacks,” Laurent scoffs, “the supernatural resources magi have. It’s a rock, paper, scissors relationship.”
Or a Mexican standoff.
Mary looks worried. As a Servant, she was supplied with information about the existence of magecraft, but vampires and vampire hunters? The fabric undergirding the narrative she had told herself throughout her life has just been severed and restitched. But I don’t really understand why she’s so worried. Humans, not vampires, are behind climate change.
“I understand why the Church doesn’t approve of mages or vampires, but why do Dead Apostles not get along with mages?”
“Good question, champ. Yes Lorenz, why not, they’re both heretics are they not?” This time it's Laurent nudging Lorenz.
“The first rule of magi is to conceal magecraft. Dead Apostles are supernatural beings preoccupied with their own games. They conceal themselves out of fear of the Church and magi, if at all. To summarize, the Dead Apostles fight to continue existing, the magi fight to be left alone with their research, and the Church fight to correct the world.”
So they can continue to Live in their undeath.
So they can continue to search for the Truth.
So they can continue to be Right.
Byron, why is this all bullshit?
“So, then what about this is a mystery?” I ask.
Mary looks at me, confused.
“What’s a mystery?” Laurent asks.
“Mystery is.” Lorenz responds, but upon seeing Laurent’s confused face, “Heresy.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about what’s heresy,” Laurent responds.
“No, she means mystical.” Lorenz puts his hand up.
“Mystical things are certainly mysterious and heretical,” Mary says.
“There’s a difference in something being mystical versus mysterious?” I ask.
“What a mystifying conversation.” Laurent gives up.
“A real mystery.” Mary piques.
“Mystère,” says Lorenz exasperated. “She’s asking about mystère.”
Right, I remember Rich saying the word.
“Of course, mystère. Champ, do you know where the word mystery comes from?”
Truthfully no, but these eyes let me glimpse into the shifting clouds of context to find the answer hidden within the question.
“Mysticism, right?”
Laurent nods, “Originating from the Grecian Mystêria, there are many known religious mysteries today: the Eleusinian mysteries, the mysteries of Isis, Disciplina Arcani.” He looks at Lorenz as he says the last one. “There was a level of secrecy to these rites. Only the initiated could learn and participate. Magecraft is based on this learning system while beings such as vampires are known as mysteries in the sense that a supernatural explanation is required for their existence.”
“No,” Lorenz says shortly.
We all turn to look at him slightly shocked.
“Don’t get me wrong, Laurent is correct in the traditional sense. But mystère, mystery, heresy goes beyond the idea of pure mysticism. A mystery is self-complete, concealed, and stagnant. A body without organs. It is what it is simply because it is.”
“But mages use magecraf. . .”
Mages use magecraft. They don’t willy-nilly wish it to existence because they can like in Disney movies. It’s a process that has a beginning and a result. . . like science. But then if a mystery is self-complete, applying a process to it, adding meaning onto what it already is. . . .
Studying mystery inherently dilutes the mystery. It doesn’t matter too much if only one person understands and utilizes the mystery. No matter how hard that person may try, the mystery yields to their interpretation because it is self-complete. On the other hand, two people is another story. With two people, you can create a world. One to establish, the other to affirm. The mystery is now reliant and therefore is no longer isolated. It is no longer stagnant. It is no longer Truth. Thus, it loses power as a pure mystery.
People too.
When two people are in a relationship, platonic or romantic they take on each other’s attributes: identity, ideology, feelings. If Krista felt insulted enough to slap a hoe, you bet I would feel the same way. We become more than ourselves when we’re with someone. That’s why she’s so ridiculous for believing she could still be my best friend while going out with my brother. Because that mystery is no longer going to be split two ways, but three. At first, she’ll have part of me, part of herself, and part of my brother. But he’ll. . . he’s already. . . nothing. Just a popular, perfect, pretty boy. Eventually, she’ll meet more and more of his friends and become part of more and more people. As for the part of me attached to her? It’ll whittle down to nothing. The part of her attached to me. . . still everything. Ha! Relationships make us more than ourselves? No, we’re less, so much less. Self-complete, I know who I am. I know how I feel. I know my truth. No interference, no burdens, no Krista. So just like people,
“Mystery becomes diluted the more people know about it.” I test a mage’s maxim on my tongue, “But doesn’t saying that in and of itself dilute mystery?”
If mystery is self-complete, measuring it, comparing it, categorizing it, disregards what it is. . .
“Application, reductionism, reproduction. These are all scientific concepts. Yet, magi like Laurent use these tools on mysteries to reach the Truth. Quite the paradox.”
Now say something smart.
“So it’s all just paper?”
Lorenz frowns, “Where did you hear that from?”
“Something Lord Byron said, last night. Ummm, Lord Byron is Caster’s Master. He said something like the world was a library and mystery was just paper.”
“Laurent, do you know what that means?” Lorenz asks.
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“Well, he had been drinking. . .”
I make an excuse so we can dismiss it as nonsense. But, if it was really nonsense, why has it stayed with me? Because you’ve always felt that way, haven’t you; people don’t see the things that you do. Because they’ve diluted themselves with each other so much, their heads are now stuck in their, creating paper mâché while believing it’s exactly the same as the real thing.phonesbooks
They’ve lost their mystery.
They’re lost in their mystery.
“But that doesn’t explain what mystery actually is,” says Mary.
Oh Mary, can’t you see? It’s nothing. It’s everything. It’s nothing but everything or everything but nothing. Us. Them. This. That. The gaps between DMs that high school girls cry themselves to sleep with. The five-second timer between one episode ending and the next beginning during a Netflix binge. All the things you can’t see but I can, that’s mystery. That’s Truth.
“You know it when you see it, dear lady, that’s what I always say,” Laurent sniggers at his own joke. “I do not mean to disrespect but you yourself dear lady are a mystery.”
Lorenz explains, “If you were to compare yourself to a human, ma'am, there are fewer hows and whys, layers of truths, obscuring the Truth. Rather than skin and bones, protein and fat, legend itself clothes your form, and you use that very same legend as a weapon. The legend itself no matter how many skeptics debunk it cannot be rationalized away. A pure mystery is a maelstrom of the unknown, yet it Is, so at the core must be the Truth.”
The opposite has to be true though as well. How and why might obscure, but collect enough of valid truths and you’ll find the Truth within them. Is that also mystery?
“I’m impressed, Lorenz; you know so much about mystery.” Mary says. Why are you looking at Laurent?
“That was really helpful. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this may. . . mage thing. Not like I have time to learn any practical magecraft that could help me in this Grail War, and Mary’s not the strongest Servant. What do you guys think about me allying with the Church?” Damn, that was an awkward smile, “They’ve helped me before and like you said Lorenz, the bow — Father Phahn’s pretty okay.”
Lorenz raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’m supposed to be neutral, so that’s all Laurent.”
“You’re going to see him, champ?”
I nod, “When we were leaving Lord Byron’s get-together, Father Phahn said we should meet up to get our stories straight for my mom. That’s in about. . . oh fifteen minutes.”
“Let me get the check and we can talk shop while we walk, champ.” He looks at Lorenz. “What about you, old friend?”
“I’ll stay here for a while. Sip a nice whisky and listen to some stories about my girls. It was good to see you again. . . old friend. Good luck with the Grail War, Nadine, ma’am.” He flashes a shining smile. You couldn’t imagine there was grey in that messy brown hair.
*****
It took seven minutes for Laurent to get the waitress’s attention, receive the check, pay, and get his silver rewards credit card back. As we leave, Lorenz waves from the bar and starts peppering the orange-haired waitress with questions. He’s probably a really good dad. Unlike moms, most dads are. Even during their divorce, Krista’s dad tried being a good dad. Tried. Because no matter how sincere he was, there was always part of him that resented how much of her mother he saw in her. At least that’s what she told me while trying to hold in her tears one night. I want to be able to talk to her like that again, like Laurent, Lorenz, and I talked in this German cafe. Talking about things that really mean something and not just banter for the sake of banter like my mom does with her interns or my brother with his AP study groups.
“You’ll be safe with the overseer but how is allying with the Church going to help you win the war, champ?”
Got me there.
“Archer and Saber are the biggest threats.” Oh, Mary’s answering? “Archer. . . is fond of Nadine; we should have no issue bartering with him later on. Most pairs won’t attack Rider, who’s targeting Saber. They’ll wait to see who comes out on top. Under Rider’s protection, we’ll be right as rain till Rider or Saber is defeated. By that time, Archer should have thinned out the remaining Servants. It’s anyone’s guess what happens after that.” She shrugs like it’s a simple thing anyone could think of in seven minutes.
“Say you make it to the end, dear lady. Archer and you; how do you win?”
A few steps ahead of us, Mary abruptly stops and turns on her heel to face Laurent. Her muddy blue eyes glimmer as she looks up at the retiree slightly taller than her.
“Doesn’t matter as long as I can clear my name,” You can’t help but feel she’s double her size.
It’s too late for me to let go; I’ve willingly tied my fate to Mary’s. Risking my life to make her wish come true is the only way I’ll be someone else, anyone else. Not Nadine, Krista’s friend, the star quarterback’s sister, the interior designer’s daughter, but Nadine, Holy Grail War Master and Magician’s Egg whose eyes see into the depths of the world.
All the people walking down the street with us pay no attention to yet another mopey teenager, woman past her prime who’s only fit for domestic work, and a poorly dressed average retiree. We’re part of the scenery like the mannequins behind the storefronts or everyone else on this sidewalk. But they don't know about the truths that actually matter. I — We do.
“What about you, champ?”
Now shrug because this is normal for you now, “Father Phahn already told my mom we’d be working for him for the next two weeks. I don’t want to be a liar.”
He smiles sadly, “Good. Too many lies in this world, champ. So easy to get swept up in them.”
Most of it is lying to yourself so that you can live with yourself. It’s pathetic. I couldn’t lie to myself because I wouldn’t be able to believe it. That’s why it’s hard for me. It’s hard if you can always see the core, the starting impulse, the mannequin, no matter how the wardrobe changes with the seasons. But that seems to be all people care about these days, like wanting to go on a Bachelor-esque date, or getting really into yoga because 'it’s great for my butt.’
“You, Laurent, learned that from being a magus, endlessly searching for the Truth?” Mary asks.
“I’m retired.”
“Your daughter is the one doing that now, right? How is she?”
“We don’t talk much. My fault,” he smiles apologetically to me of all people. “I regret being the person I was. I’m sure you’d understand.” That last part was to Mary.
Things you should have fought harder for, former friends you should have forgiven, times you should have truly enjoyed. These are the regrets that people usually talk about. Dumb. What truly you regret isn’t the action or inaction, but like Laurent says how you felt.
“Part of me is relieved. When you’ve searched for the Truth as long as I have, you encounter so many lies and excuses — from others and yourself. We say we’re Truth-seeking machines but we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live that Truth. It’s sad that for all the years I’ve lived, I’ve only come to realize it now in my dotage.”
We stop in front of a surfboard store adjoining Phahn’s Church, previously a Masonic Temple. Laurent isn’t looking at the church signboard, the fancy Church architecture, or the California Pizza Kitchen across the road. He looks longingly not at the row of surfboards on display, but his reflection in the double-glazed window.
“I may be a heretic but if I pray hard enough, maybe the Lord will forgive even me.”
“Is that why you haven’t offered to teach me magecraft?” Why am I hearing my internal monologue come out from my mouth? Quick, “because the mystery would decline.”
He doesn’t look away from the glass. “There are two times a magus reveals his magecraft: when ascending to the next level or when fighting another magus.”
I don’t need to teach you if you truly have the eyes that see into the world. Show yourself that you are worthy of understanding what it means to be a mage. After all, this Holy Grail War is nothing but a mage fight, isn’t it?
That must be what his slightly hunched over back burdened with layers upon layers of jackets tells me.
Last edited by You; February 18th, 2021 at 04:42 PM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
25/ Terror ExeMPLAR
On the Mission’s stone steps overlooking the plaza, bustling with almost-lunchtime foot traffic, I scratch my head after a confusing phone call. The plan was to beg Father Phahn for any information he had about the Dead Apostle but I had no way of contacting him. Moreover, the church acting as the new Holy Grail War operations headquarters will be absent of detectable bounded fields or wards. The overseer’s base of operations is neutral ground that shelters retired Masters. The Mission? No wards outside, but we do have holy defenses around our relics and the altar.
I called Tolosa’s Parks and Rec department. We’ve been working together for years and this has nothing to do with the Holy Grail War — but I got the bureaucratic run-around anyway. Thank you for your time, best of luck, now to try the mayor’s office. Her personal assistant asked if I had an appointment and when I tried to explain who I was, well, she told me her boss told her to tell anyone from the Mission it was out of our hands. That hurt a little less than the response from Parks and Rec.
The former mayor was more than happy to work with the Mission; her office offered a high level of administrative assistance and impartial oversight for the project. There was tension, of course. Event management is never smooth sailing, but the Church and the city had a mutual goal — minimize damage. Two years ago, she lost her bid for reelection and we introduced the Grail War to the current mayor. Don’t get me wrong, the new mayor is nice. Everyone says so. But when your platform is local climate change response reform and community inclusivity, yet you end up unwittingly inheriting the planning committees for a Church-run secret war fought by magi using heroes drawn from the well of human culture, well. . . . We went into that meeting with many brightly colored charts. Cherry congratulated the new mayor, complimented the flower threaded in her hair, and then told her point-blank there was the equivalent to a nuclear bomb underneath the city and she could either let it explode or let us handle it. We knew we lost her when she was more interested in Cherry’s arborist background than how prompt channels of communication between the ground team, Tolosa airport, and the nearby military base was paramount, especially if the Caster Servant was a summoner. Hard not to be in denial, coming off the high of winning a mayoral election. At the end, she decided her office would have minimal involvement in the Grail War and delegated decision-making roles to the senior career bureaucrats we had been dealing with before. Cherry smiled when we got the news. Had that been the goal all along? She did look at me funny. The mayor, not Cherry; like she wanted to protest my involvement with all her heart. A teenager shouldn’t be involved in the planning of this — this deathmatch! Something like that. But she didn’t say anything. I wonder why.
With my Hail Mary having failed, I called Mr. Kars’ personal number. He said that I shouldn’t have called him and couldn’t help me before tapping the back of his phone with his fingernail twice. Tump. Tump. Right, so Father Phahn tapped the line. I was trying to figure out how to send a coded message when,
“When this is all over, we should go surfing, again at Isla Vista. We’ll grab a slice afterwards, buddy.”
But Mr. Kars doesn’t surf and I’ve tried surfing once but Mr. Kars doesn’t know that, so, “That sounds great, good luck with everything.”
Hang up. Google maps. A church that’s close to a surf shop and a pizza place. Two hits. First, there’s a Central Coast surf shop franchise next to Giuseppe's. The church closest to that is the Mission. There’s a Seventh Day Adventist church opposite to a California Pizza Kitchen and right next to the local surf shop. That’s when I unconsciously scratched my head. Not because the church used to be a Masonic lodge, but why did the Church establish the new overseer’s headquarters five minutes away from the Mission?
*****
You can’t find this soft a carpet in a California Mission. The atmosphere inside of them engulfs you, sparks shooting up your spine, forcing your back to straighten because you’re entering a consecrated domain filled with tradition. That’s why I enter the date and occasion in the logbook every time I ring the bells. When that logbook is filled, I shelve it with the other logbooks, another link in the unbroken chain of succession. But this church replaces tradition with encouraging fluorescent posted notes, entries to the Bible coloring competition taped on the walls, and checkered tablecloths on the snack table.
“Excuse me!” I call out.
Father Phahn appears from the sacristy in his casual robes. His eyes widen at the sight of me before mouthing something to his left.
“Chris, such a pleasant surprise. Sit, sit.” He motions to the front row of pews. “I ought to be surprised that you found us, but experience tells me I shouldn’t. This out-of-the-box problem solving is exactly what we expect from our Executor candidates.”
Ignoring thein the room? Fine, let’s dance, Father Phahn.elephantServant
“You’re too kind, Father. But my present troubles would shame the Ashura’s Pit. I know the Grail War has tied your hands; however, what was said during our last meeting left quite the impression. In truth, I’ve spent the last few days attempting to investigate the Dead Apostle.”
His second nod peters into a five-second silence. “I want to be honest with you, Chris. I know this restructuring led to my taking of your position. You have all the right in the world to resent me.”
“Of course not, Father. This was the will of the Church—”
His pale, thin raised hand stops any protest that could have come out from my mouth. “And you were close to him weren’t you. The legendary bishop, Dilo. This must be a difficult time for you.” I — no, we weren’t that close. He said some unimportant things and then left me with the old man. “To let you know I have the utmost respect for you, your position, and the Mission, I want to share our Dead Apostle strategy with you. We’ve funneled our approach into two buckets, holistically and on a granular level. Best practices of course. Big picture, we’ve mapped where the Dead Apostle has been, but because of the Grail War, our assets haven’t been able to interview stakeholders. Forgive the pun.”
Really, the Church has nothing?
What did Sunao-sensei say on the topic again? Heyo you Executors-in-training yada yada yada. Ain’t that difficult, if there’s a credible vampire threat the local priest will call you, okay maggots? Skip, skip, skip. Maggots, if you’re called to an isolated community, hear a rumor about an individual that is an extension of something human, know several witnesses to that rumor, and the place is on the Church’s list of possible danger zones, that ain’t any old Dead Apostle, that’s — Nope. Come on brain, how many times have you watched those online lectures, searing every word beyond the grey folds and into the neurons. Maggots, we don’t look for Dead Apostles, those motherfuckers are too hard to find. We look for The Dead. If there’s Dead, there’s a Dead Apostle close by. But what if the Dead Apostle is one of those weirdos that doesn’t create Dead? How do you know there’s really a Dead Apostle?
“Those affected, Father?”
He doesn’t need to know the first thing I did was scope out the Men’s Colony because I didn’t have access to the coroner's reports.
“Hmm, impressive question. Typical cause of death. Our investigators haven’t been able to determine why the Men’s Colony, in particular, was attacked.”
The California Men’s Colony is a state-run prison on the outskirts of Tolosa almost ironically known as the ‘Country Club.’ Covering three hundred and fifty-six acres and consisting of minimum security to medium-security facilities, it's the perfect Dead Apostle weekend getaway: play pretend prisoner, participate in low-stakes factional gang fights, instigate petty civil upheaval in the form of a prison riot, all the while knowing you could escape any minute and no one would be able to do a thing about it. Prisons: Dead Apostle theme parks. Why else do you think the DOJ has such a prolific and longstanding chaplain program?
“What do you think is their motive, Father?”
He creases his eyebrows while looking at me, “Hmmm, fascinating question. The obvious would be the Holy Grail. A copycat, no doubt?”
One of the Masters in Snowfield was an old Dead Apostle known as the Six-Hearted Revolver whose goal was something boring like ‘wake up the Fifth Dead Apostle Ancestor.’ Probably his parent vampire. According to the Snowfield overseer’s report, Jester was exterminated. I guess bloodsuckers and heretics really are the same. There’s no better way of advertising a Grail War than telling them one of their elites died participating.
“Father. . . who was the Master that the Dead Apostle attacked?”
“My, my, you honestly shouldn’t sell yourself short. To know even that? How resourceful. That would have been Assassin’s Master.”
When Archer told me the Dead Apostle attacked a Master-Servant pair, something didn’t make sense.
“Nothing but a lucky coincidence. But escaping from an Assassin — It’s at least a Class Five.”
“No, Chris,” Father Phahn clears his throat. “That vampire defeated Assassin and severely wounded Berserker.”
A girl crying in the middle of the football field as a cook stands over her.
A woman in a crimson military uniform emerged relatively unscathed from a barrage of Archer’s arrows.
This Dead Apostle fought evenly with Servants? That’s on the level of an Ancestor.
Breathe. This is what the old man was talking about this morning and you — trying to do this alone has got you nowhere. You know what you have to do, so open your mouth and—
—A boundary line filled with familiar magical energy knits itself around the perimeter of the church. Unable to contain themselves, the church doors swing open for two women.
Jeans don’t suit the one in front, but she always insists on wearing them on workdays. When her boyfriend’s over she only wears flowing dresses or long skirts. Her pursed lips and lowered eyes complete the face she has when she’s done all she can and has no choice but to rev that chainsaw and put a sick tree out of its misery. All that determination crumbles when she sees me.
“Chris?”
“Matou.”
Rider materializes on the other side of the aisle with a single world, “Saber.”
“Cherry —”
“Phahn!”
Father Phahn is the first to recover from the shock, getting up from his seat and proclaiming, “Dear Master, were you perhaps seeking sanctuary from the Grail’s trials?”
What a bad joke. Surrendering Masters aren’t supposed to form bounded fields around neutral ground then stride in with that look on their face and a Servant close behind. No, the real reason why Cherry came here today was,
“The things you said last night,” she tries to start.
“Were merely the truth. She’s behind you, no? Your Servant.”
A smoldering shadow, Saber doesn’t make any indication of having heard her name.
“Dilo left this city to me. To us. If I need to summon a Servant to protect his wishes, then —”
“Admirable, but Bishop Dilo has passed away. Furthermore, while the late Bishop was a singular voice in the committee, he was just that, a singular voice,” Father Phahn licks his lips. “You aren’t even a citizen of this country. You are a consultant, not a member of the Church. In fact, was not your bloodsucker grandfather an enemy of the Church?”
“Don’t bring my family into this,” Cherry shoots back without flinching.
“The Holy Grail found it fit to bestow upon you a Command Spell, the rank of Master. As overseer I shall afford you the respect that position grants you, but nothing more. Therefore, did you come to surrender?”
Head high and violet eyes trained directly into Father Phahn’s almost serpentine pair, “No, I came to declare war.”
Then, “Chris, we’re leaving.” She turns on her heel and begins to walk away.
I don’t move. I could stay, I could really stay. Because I should hate Dead Apostles. They killed my parents. I would do anything to gather more information to exterminate the one threatening this town. Nothing else matters if the joints still move, the mechanism rotates, thus the boy continues to kill Dead Apostles. Throw away family. Throw away comfort. Throw away love. Because all of us, no matter who we are, are merely foam. The individual pops but the overall shape remains the same. I tell myself this. I say it so that I don’t forget.
But what did you forget?
What else did you promise when Dilo visited you that day?
What does that forsaken boy who died in your place want and what can you do for him? You owe him enough to keep up the illusion of everyday life; so his existence can be continuously reaffirmed in each action you take, each word you speak, each expression you make. Like that the past isn’t forgotten — it bubbles up until it reaches the horizon that is the present.
Cherry stops and looks back. Her brows furrow slightly and she opens and closes her mouth once before being able to say, “Chris,” with a slight quiver in her voice.
I tell myself the continuation of the boy’s story. How he was adopted into a loving household and became part of a community. He never forgot the Dead Apostle that killed his family, but that didn’t stop him from living a blessed, everyday life. He found something to protect, because everyone else had something to protect. He worked hard, because everyone else worked hard. He wanted things, because everyone else wanted things. And now, he has the chance to throw away the dearest connection he’s made to obtain more information about a Dead Apostle.
There’s an obvious choice and a right choice.
That boy who drowned in that stream of bubbles will always choose the —
I stand up, bow my head at Father Phahn, wordlessly thanking him for all the information and leave the church with Cherry.
*****
“Have you eaten yet? I left something in the fridge for you.” Cherry looks over her shoulder at me before starting to fuss, “You shouldn’t be up with that injury.”
“Father Kelsey didn’t say anything.” I check the time on my phone. The lunch rush should be over by now. The only people left in the downtown eateries are college students or retirees. “Rare for you to come downtown on your lunch break.”
She offers her standard crooked smile, “After settling business with Phahn, I wanted to go back to the Mission and check up on you. It’d also give me a chance to show Saber the town.”
Do you know the meme of that guy walking with his girlfriend but the guy is staring at another girl? That’s a meme because the sentiment is relatable, not because it happens in real life. Behind us is Saber with her black frilly shirt tucked into a long proper skirt (one of Cherry’s?). The top half of the shirt is gauzy but the black never betrays a hint of skin, only the suggestion of milky shoulders underneath. Waving back and forth as she walks is a single long braid of hair as blue as the Pismo shallows. Her serene eyes intermittently switch between a smolder and a glazed look. Every woman who walks by can only dismiss her as a doll with a soundless sniff. Every man who walks by avers with his eyes, what a doll, like it’s 1920. We continue down the street, parting the sea of pedestrians. They subconsciously know that this being walking beside them isn’t human, but the mind is too well developed. To meet the world that recompiled itself to suit us halfway, the brain filters all information. The permeate? The extraneous, the improbable, the scenery. The rules of our modern world state exceptionalism is the peak of mundane; famous, super-rich, or a supermodel. Wow, they sure look different in real life. Man is the god of man; even when she’s actually a degenerated divinity summoned as a Ghost Liner.
We stop at a thoroughfare as Cherry points to a square green sign, “I heard this place is good.”
“Any reason in particular?”
“They’re farm-to-table, Chris. Small businesses remind me of home.”
*****
After seating us, the waiter leaves to get some water. Cherry skims the menu, immediately picking out the kale chips as appetizers for us to share. She’s going to have the rainbow trout because she’s still trying to go keto. Except for rice; Japanese people have to eat rice. In an octave higher than her normal voice, she assures us that we can take as much from her plate as we want.
I already know I want the grilled mushrooms and beef meatloaf. Extra horseradish on the potatoes and well, everything thank you. If you add enough horseradish, you pretty much get wasabi.
The problem is Saber. She kept saying that she wanted something hot; something to warm her up. Maybe a hot grilled chicken and smoked bacon sandwich? Saber’s too regal for a sandwich, Cherry. Then do you think she’d like the gumbo? She’s a Servant, she really doesn’t need to eat. Cherry raises her eyebrows at me because yes, she’s right, I’m mistreating a guest. I’m sure she’d like gumbo.
The waiter comes back with our waters. After he puts them on the table, he pulls out a notepad. Cherry asks about the gumbo. Warms the soul. Right answer. She quickly makes the orders and he says he’ll be right out with our kale chips. They’re keto, she says, almost to herself.
As we wait for the kale chips, I ask Cherry about last night. I don’t remember Berserker’s Master saving me, but I should thank her for driving me back to the Mission when I get the chance. If I was reading the register of Cherry’s voice correctly, she and Cherry might have hit it off? That isn’t surprising though. People usually think of Cherry as slightly gloomy when they first see her, then she hits them with her sometimes overly cheerful personality. The resulting guilt cements their fondness for her. At least, that’s what Father Kelsey told me one night when he got kind of wasted on G&T. I’ve never asked her boyfriend though.
Cherry apologizes and leaves to use the restroom. She does that a lot, apologize. This time I think it’s because I have to ensure Saber doesn’t do anything too Mad Enhancement-y in this cafe.
Saber’s expression is so slack that I can’t help but think she’s looking past everything — like a life-sized doll placed in an art installation except for her smolder. You can practically hear tinder crackling. That’s why she’s beautiful. Not a garish beauty or anything divine, although her level of divinity is pretty much no longer possible in our era. No matter how soft-spoken she might be, she burns with life that none of her features allow for. Too delicate, too frail, a human-shaped china doll to be placed in a little girl’s room - it should have no life. Yet, she burns.
“Thank you for saving me, last night.” It’s important to thank those who help you, more so those who save you, even if they are more mystery than person.
She doesn’t blink or look in my direction. “We’re different. . . How problematic.”
“Yes, you’re a Servant and I’m a person.” Try not to think about what her use of ‘problematic.’
“Sorry, no.” She looks through my eyes. “Different. You may be flame but you are unable to burn anything. Like Rider.” I’m not sure what the last part meant. “Fire without heat.”
For a moment, the cafe is a grand feasting hall. There’s blood everywhere and atop of a great burial pyre is awho wants to feel again.mad queendrakon
“Getting along?” Cherry’s voice extinguishes all the flames, bringing me back to the eatery that calls itself a cafe.
I swallow, about to answer but the waiter comes back with kale chips. They’re seasoned with authentic sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. I’m not sure you could advertise these as kale chips; there’s parmesan baked onto each leaf, delivering a double crunch when you bite in. Typical Tolosa food, slathering everything with cheese. Cherry looked guilty after taking two of the biggest intact leaves. She asks Saber what she thinks.
“Seaweed cooked in lard. . .” she says quietly.
“Why did you summ—” I almost break the facade, but I’m able to stop myself. Cherry is my legal guardian and my magecraft teacher. Her being a Master has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with me because I’m hunting a Dead Apostle.
The entrees arrive, but before I’m allowed to say grace, Cherry forces me to move closer to Saber so she can take a picture of a silent Saber with eyes downturned and me with the smile I use for pictures.
Food’s good; they didn’t skimp on the horseradish so I don’t need to whip out any of the wasabi packets I have in my jacket pocket. When I’m close to finished, Cherry abruptly tells me, “Chris, you can’t keep hunting that Dead Apostle, alone.”
I put down my fork. “Pardon?”
“We talked about this yesterday, but you ignored me and went off on your own. Do you know how worried I was?” She doesn’t look at me while saying it, just puts one of the few remaining pieces of fish in her mouth.
“I don’t know why. Saber was looking after me.”
She offers me a glazed-over half-smile before going back to sipping her gumbo.
Cherry crosses her arms on the table. A Servant almost killed you, her demure but strict posture seems to say. Instead of voicing the obvious, she takes a deep breath, “I accept that you’re a member of the Church, but alone in the midst of a Holy Grail War? Don’t you think that’s a little, irresponsible?”
“Yes.”
Yes, but don’t you think it’s a little irresponsible summoning a Servant to participate in the Holy Grail War when we had been preparing to oversee this very War. Now all the Masters see you as a traitor to the Church, delegitimizing our replacement overseer as well as the government agencies that helped us prepare, putting yourself and possibly the entire Mission at risk?
But I don’t say this because I have nothing to do with the Holy Grail War.
She sighs with her nose then massages her temples, “Sorry. You deserve to know why I’m. . . You’re a good kid, Chris.”
“Is it the trees?”
She blinks twice, “What makes you think it’s the trees?”
I side-eye Saber eyeing the whole shrimp on her spoon stranded on an island of rice, drowning in Americanized creole soup.
“The trees at the Grail summoning locations are mostly burned down. It wasn’t hard to make the connection when I finally saw Saber fight. Magical Energy Burst (Flame): A+. And Lancer, he’s the one creating those trees, isn’t he?”
“Yes. . . ” she says with a small crooked smile while nodding. “I managed to summon Saber on Cerro Huerta’s leyline before Lancer noticed my presence. If you saw the aftermath you should know the danger.”
Something horrifying comes to mind.
“You stole one of the Mission’s relics?”
“Of course not, Chris. It’s better without one, anyway.”
Cherry, I know you’re a former Master but that’s insane. You know as well as I do, no, even better than I do that the only two classes you can control for during a compatibility summon are Assassin and Berserker. For any other class, you’re YOLO rolling the gatcha with no guarantee or pity. That’s almost like your goal wasn’t to fight in the Grail War but just to summon a Servant.
“If you needed a Servant, couldn’t you have asked Rider?”
Rider is Cherry’s former Servant. Due to ‘extenuating circumstances’ during the final Fuyuki Holy Grail War that I have no knowledge about and Rider’s Independent Action skill, she didn’t need to return to the Throne. I’ve never met Rider in person, but I have said ‘hi’ when they Facetime.
Cherry shakes her head, “I couldn’t do that to her. Not after theprocession.”EulyphisDepartment of Spiritual Evocation
There’s a story there I haven’t heard.
“Are you really okay, supplying magical energy to two Servants? One who isn’t being supported by a Grail.”
Cherry watches Saber finishing her soup. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. I usually can but this is a Master who fought in a Holy Grail War and survived, not my magecraft teacher.
“Saber does take quite a bit of magical energy. I’ll be fine. Fuyuki’s ley lines should be enough to maintain Rider until this war ends and Sen—Shirou doesn’t need much,”
“Have you told them? Your family.” I ask quietly.
“Chris. . . you. . . t-the Mission is the family I should be worrying about.”
She didn’t answer the question.
The waiter comes to take our plates. Emotionlessly, Saber dabs the edge of her mouth with her paper napkin and thanks the waiter for the meal. I think that melted his heart. Anyway, I thank Cherry for the food as she asks me to calculate the tip. Americans, she mutters like always.
“I should be going back to work. I’ll take you back to the Mission. You need to rest.” She urges me as we step off the patio.
“Farmer’s tonight. Kayla said she’d meet me at Ahnenerbe. I’m going to check the bounded field on Higuera first.”
“Okay,” she nods to herself for a moment before adding, “Nothing strenuous. Meet me in front of the foundation at nine.” She pulls out a purse that belongs in a Daiso and hands me a twenty instead of context. “And don’t you dare break that nice girl’s heart. Treat her like a princess. Stop making that face.”
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
26/ Farmer’s (Too Nice For a Jacket)
Maintenance on the bounded field extending from the local Sephora all the way down the road to a local deli/bottle store took the better part of three hours. Equivalent exchange, am I right? Typically, the circumference of a bounded field delineates a natural boundary: a forest, a house, a body. Physical separations give the traveler the impression they might be wandering from a known world into an unknown.
If none of these are present, magi are known to use certain psychological tricks in architecture or cunning city planning to carve out an isolated area beforehand. That doesn’t work when you’re trying to detect overly hostile intentions mixed with magical energy threatening farmer’s market shoppers on an already built street. Cherry ingeniously carved a series of sigils to extend the range of a single bounded field. She wouldn’t explain the mystery, but each sigil is made of seven strokes. It might be ridiculous, but I think they look Mycenaean. The Matou originated from Russia, specifically Kiev before it was Ukranian.
To ensure some Master doesn’t go around washing out the sigils with their magical energy, Cherry locked them within imaginary number space pockets fixed to the relative space they occupy. We might not be overseeing the Grail War, but the Mission still has control over our custom-built magical infrastructure. My magical energy unlocks the pockets, and I gave Mr. Kars a gemstone filled with my magical energy so he could activate the bounded field if I wasn’t present. We first tested the system a month ago at the weekly Farmer’s Market and have been fine-tuning exactly what ‘hostile’ meant since.
Checking the sigils and refilling them doesn’t take too long; it’s making sure the Executors that Father Phahn brought in haven’t tried constructing their own bounded fields on top of ours. Never know what happens when magecraft mixes.
That must be why Cherry hasn’t tried taking down those trees. My best guess? They’re catalysts for a defined domain to activate a territory-based Noble Phantasm, possibly an otherworld bounded field equivalent to the ones elementals and Dead Apostles construct. That would mean Lancer was a magus or at least has enough knowledge to perform high-thaumaturgy. Yeah, that’s why I said it was my best guess. Cherry would have a better idea since her element is. But I feel like the trees are hollow to the point of「」. Trees of emptiness? Internally shrugging to some crazy vernacular no one would even think of using, I enter Ahnenerbe.imaginary numbershollow
*****
“Hi Manager; the usual, please,” I offhandedly say as I pull myself onto a bar stool.
Lowering a pair of shades in a dimly lit cafe is always striking. “House roast, Black, Japanese Iced on your tab?”
“Slightly offended you needed to ask.”
We both politely laugh. Repeating the same little comedy routine is what it means to be regular at a cafe. That and having a tab.
“Farmer’s tonight.” I tell him as he puts the beans in the grinder. “Kayla’s going to meet me here in a bit. Oh, Kayla’s my girlfriend; I think you’ve met her before.”
He smiles to humor a regular while blooming the coffee on top of a cup half-filled with ice. Watching makes me uneasy. It’s not butterflies. I’ve been going to Farmer’s with Kayla since the first semester. How audacious to continue holding a farmer’s market during not only a Holy Grail War but with a Dead Apostle at large. Yes, I know the worst way to conceal mystery is to disturb routine. Surely, everyone in town can feel the tension in the air, but they choose to ignore it — to keep the hope that tomorrow will be better than today alive in their hearts. How resilient. No doubt the Churchthe supernatural will make the world a better place.destroyingmanaging
I thank the Manager as he settles the glass on a square napkin in front of me. Freshly brewed, exactly one calorie for every three-point-five fluid ounces of beverage (give or take the density). Over ninety-nine percent of coffee is water. It has no nutritional benefits yet — I take a sip and let the aroma wash over me. The infinite branching products originating from a single ubiquitous chemical reaction in the pursuit of pure hedonism results in a drink that’s become a lifestyle.「」in a tree? Don’t make me laugh. If the magi idea of「」has any validity, it exists in every cup of coffee.
I do my best to swallow. I don’t like coffee, it tastes like dirt and the caffeine does nothing for me. But drinking it is comforting because it demonstrates — well, I’m not sure what it demonstrates but you don’t order a Coke at a cafe like Ahnenerbe.
“How is it?” the Manager asks.
Feigning depth, I try to snatch at whatever descriptor comes to mind, “Very smooth. Not acidic at all. A deep flavor, very deep. Maybe hints of grass and malt.”
He scoffs a little. “Enjoy the coffee, Chris. If you have some time, there’s someone in the kitchen who would like to meet you.”
“No problem.” I reflexively look at my phone after I say the words, “Yeah, I got a while.”
He walks into the back room.
I wonder if it’s Seven, the hooved girl the cafe sometimes babysits. The special salad they make for her is finally on the menu. What’s that feeling of deja vu? She hasn’t been to the cafe for three weeks, so why does it feel like I saw her this morning? A cat hell and my locker too?
The stray thoughts are swung out of my head like the cafe kitchen door, revealing an almost middle-aged, darkly tanned man who still pops his collar. His black sports jacket is draped behind his left shoulder and a cerulean flip phone that’s always on the bar is squeezed to his right ear. As he walks to the bar, the somehow soft Ahnenerbe state-mandated fluorescent lights catch his showy rosary slow dancing across his collarbones. My hand almost unconsciously reaches out for my own.
“Yes, your Seventh, can you believe it? The Church is still monitoring his movements. No, no, there’s no need for a response. I thought I’d just fill you in. . . for old times sake. Hello? Hung up. Twice in a day too.”
He closes the flip phone and places it on the bar counter where it belongs, “Chris, the former overseer? Pleased to meet you, Lorenz, Lorenz Trendel — part of the delegation the Church sent to assist Father Phahn.”
“Pleased to meet you, Father Trendel,” I offer him my hand but instead of taking it, he slips a business card into my palm. “Very tasteful how the raised cross-hatching texturizes the off-white. The Pastor for our Mission loves looking at other clergy member’s business cards. Do you mind if I show him?”
“Only if you call me Lorenz. Father Trendel’s my father.” He leans in and taps the line on the card which states his occupation. “I’m more of a specialist than clergy.”
The Church has many of those, “Demons, demonic fiends, demonic aberrations, demonification, demonation or true demons?”
“Have you heard of the Pralalala?”
Everyone has. It was a heretical organization that sought to combine magecraft and sacrament to create monstrosities. The Pralalala purge was considered to be one of the modern Church’s greatest victories against a heretical organization. Those are rare considering the tepid war we’re currently fighting against the Association.
“Are there Pralalala remnants in the region drawn to the Grail War?”
That’s the logical answer. The Grail is the holy vessel that exists in utopia. According to magi, the Holy Grail of our Lord is merely one variation of that myth. As Father Phahn said last night, this Grail War was constructed using a Grail stolen from the Church’s treasury as the core. That is to say, covering one of our Grails with the shell of the 726th Grail system to summon Heroic Spirits. So it's natural that the cultish Pralalala would be drawn to this sacrilege — Wait. What if the opposite is true?
“You’re quick. I can see why the Church cleared you to be the overseer, despite your age.”
There’s no doubt the Church would expunge records of Pralalala involvement in constructing this Grail. A Grail War due to a Cardinal’s lapse in judgment sounds a lot better than a heretical organization we purged, abetting a Cardinal to create a Grail War. Father Kelsey would have a heart attack if he heard that. But, this is just baseless gossip between fellow off-duty Church agents, nothing more.
“Thank you for the interesting history lesson, Mr. Trendel. I’m not sure why you told me. I’m hunting the Dead Apostle threatening this town, not the Grail.”
A gentle but toothy grin. “Every one of Phahn’s Executors is too busy with Grail War logistical or administrative work and I’m just one person. You, on the other hand, are running all over town, turning over mystery upon mystery to find this vampire, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. All I’m asking, one believer to another, is to keep your eyes and ears open. If you hear anything about the Pralalala, give me a call. You have my number. And Mr. Trendel? He’s my father.”
“Of course. . . Lorenz,” I offer him my hand again. This time he takes it for a firm handshake. “Did someone from Parks and Rec let you know I’d be at Ahnenerbe?”
Of course, that’s not the case; he came out from the kitchen.
“No, no, no. My daughter is friends with Chikagi and Hibiki. You might have seen her around, Harriet. Harriet Frise.”
A pouting face under an oversized beret covering waves of gold, childishly chiding other patrons while stuffing her face with omurice.
“Oh, you’re Harriet’s father? Pleased to meet you, she’s always taking care of me.”
She might be the worst part-time waitress here, but she has a cult following. A few years ago some Tolosa High kids would come in trying to find iconography they could pose with for clout. But a trio of teenage boys is nothing against a tall, glamorous but hateful Nordic waitress. I wasn’t there, but from what I’ve heard from other regulars, she literally kicked them out despite the Manager’s protests. I can’t help but imagine the surprise of the leader who came back the next day to apologize to her and implore her to let him do the dishes, just to find his bros also scrubbing plates in the three-compartment sink. And they kept coming back because they had assured themselves and each other that with enough proximity, she’d add them on Snapchat. Yes, that Harriet Frise.
There’s only one thing that doesn’t make sense. I’m sure Harriet Frise is a magus.
“I better be off. It was great meeting you, Chris. You’re a promising young man who’s going to do great things for the Church.”
I smile, tell him he’s too kind, shake his hand, and watch him leave.
Did Cherry or Dilo know about the Pralalala connection? The last sip of cold coffee finishes coating my throat. Even if they knew, they wouldn’t tell me. My job’s to keep Masters from destroying the town. Not mine, Father Phahn’s.
“Psst, kid. Get your ass over here.”
A very welcome distraction.
Pocketing the business card, I get off the barstool and slide myself into a booth to face an absolutely glowing Detective holding a lowball glass half-filled with amber liquid. There are two empty glasses beside him.
“Where’s Curie?”
He takes a gulp before answering, “Ain’t even her name. That troublesome woman. Kei. . . Kirara is too obvious.” He imitates a high-pitched voice. “Doesn’t she look cute, all meru-meru. After all, a comet is just —”
He finishes the drink instead of the sentence, slamming the empty glass onto the table, breath irregular and eyes unfocused. I don’t allow myself to shrink. He’s been drunk before, usually during a particularly difficult case. Regulars know to steer clear because the next day he’ll triumphantly march into the cafe, shouting that the round’s on him only to scoff, rebuking everyone who cheered because they should earn their own money, but tonight he’ll buy the round anyway because they’re all peasants.
No matter how unpleasant, sober or drunk, that little girl was always beside him, patiently waiting and asking obvious questions so he could tell her how stupid she sounded before answering with his signature quick-witted deductive reasoning.
“Are —”
“The fuck was that?”
“Pardon?”
“That! Wha twas, that?” He wildly gestures at the barstool I stood behind while talking to Lorenz.
“Sorry Detective, I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about that. He’s an associate.”
He muttered something almost unintelligible underneath his breath about what sort of teenager has associates before, “One thing.” He puts up his perfectly manicured index finger. “One fucking thing. Andyou. . . Doyou know hwat your problem is? Do you. Knowhat your problem is?”
“Should I call you an Uber?”
He scoffs. It’s a harsh hacking originating from the back of his throat. “That. Exactly, fucking that. You really love sucking dick don’t you? Whoever’s in front of you, you just get down on your knees and slurp it all up. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Thank you, sir, can I fucking have some more?”
Excuse me?
“Fuck. It’s the most dishgushting thing in this excuse of a cafe. You’re the best detective in Japan, even better than the Refrain duo. Shurely you can get informashion on one little dead girl’s family. Fuck.”
The correct response would be ‘Can I do anything to help?” But there’s nothing I can do because I’m hunting a Dead Apostle and in the Detective’s eyes I’m just a teenager who frequents the same cafe that he does.
Instead, a small smile, “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
That sets off a barrage of abuses that start out muttered but reach a volume loud enough that other patrons look over to see what’s happening. The waitresses try to get his attention, but without looking at them, the Detective puts his hand up silencing everyone who wasn’t talking. “Igeddit. I geddit. I’llgo. I’llgo. But you, kid, fucker. Don’t look at me like. Fuck! I had a friend once. Once. An idiot who didn’t care if trash was trying to take advantage of him. Fuck. I can’t believe I’m using her words. Aiming farther for other's sake, thinking of others before yourself, and hating the fuck out of yourself more than anyone else. That’s called being broken. You, the way you suck dick, just so much dick. . . like there was nothing to break in the first place.”
He wordlessly snarls at the table then stops short of crashing his fist into it. “Shit.” He glares at me with the entire cafe watching. “Fuck. Why the fuck am I even trying? Fuck.” He tries to throw his hands up in his drunken stupor but they just comically flop around. No one laughs.
“Sir, I think you should —”
He gets up so the waitress can’t finish her sentence and stumbles to the door muttering. “Peasants, this is why peasants, just peasants, fucking peasants, fucking kid, fucking mafia, fucking Kuruoka, fucking Curie.”
He almost collapses at the door but is able to grip the frame for support. He smashes it with his free fist. One more frustration filled “Fuck!” as he pulls himself outside, leaving us with the tense, awkward silence that grips the room when a teacher finishes shouting at a student. The shock and internal monologue of each person push all the oxygen out of the atmosphere to create a single shared moment of forever, floating in vacuum.
But that quickly collapses into conversation. It always does.
One waitress vehemently apologizes and asks me if there’s anything that she can get me. It’s on the house.
The cafe isn’t at fault. The Detective was just having a bad night and I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. It happens. It happens. My girlfriend should be arriving soon so no need to worry about me.
The waitress takes the empty glasses and leaves me to play my mobile game. While I wait for the hit Japanese arcade card game now billion-dollar, mobile hero collector Heroes of History: Grand Offensive to load, I can’t help but dismiss what the Detective said about me. The thing I like about me is that I approach every interaction sincerely. I have to because that’s what — Right, because each and every one of these experiences should be a precious bubble that adds to the foam which becomes the shape of his life. For him, the world must be beautiful. I am only here to give it meaning, to reaffirm what was. I’m doing a good job. The Detective sure has some weird friends. I better put my phone away since Kayla walked through the door. The paint on the frame is slightly chipped.
*****
The drone of hundreds becomes a dull roar as we step out of the cafe into the brightly lit street with brightly painted wooden stalls advertising exotic honey, artisanal cheeses, and local olive oils sometimes all in the same booth. If we go further up the street we’d find milk crates filled with freshly picked vegetables onto cardboard-covered plastic tables, whereas the opposite direction has no displays, only menu items written on the booth or carts. None of that should matter right now.
“Yeah, I had a pretty great time. We rolled our characters and Papiyas, he’s the character I made, is the cutest cinnamon roll, so yeah. He’s like a really nervous baby demon with a flowing ponytail. But like, ‘cept a nice kind of wild. And sticking out are baby horns and ummm can you guess what class he is?”
“You guys aren’t playing D and D anymore, right?”
A head shake, “Not DnD but you can still guess. Errrr, I’ll give you a clue. No wait. That would be too obvious. Ummm.” She frowns, brow crinkled as we stand on this concrete riverbank because if we dip our toe into the stream, the current of people will wash us away.
A month or two after arriving at the school and propositioning me to start a pretend relationship, Kayla found some friends and they started playing a tabletop roleplaying game together. That’s the cool thing to do these days. Her first character, named after a fruit, was a six-four, one hundred and eighty pound, flower crown manbaby who wore his cloak backwards and played the ukulele.
“Is he a bard who plays the ukulele?”
Her mouth slightly opens. “Howdidyou? But yeah. I think this is the one. You know like I’ve told you before that umm I’ve always wanted to make a DnD podcast. But like everyone just makes ‘DnD’ podcasts. But Evie, she’s in the same Discord server as this guy from England who's running a Kickstarter. He was trying to fund a tabletop he was making with the help of a supercomputer with this state-of-the-art AI called Tri-Trimeow? It’s crazy, right? Like of course no one believed him and everyone thought it was just some random meme so he reached the target in a week.”
“You guys pitched in?”
“Ummm yeah, just like as a meme, you know.” Half-way into mockingly rolling her eyes, they droop down, now fixed on her strappy shoes. “But when we got the sourcebook bundle in the mail, Evie said Iron Emblem, that’s the name, nothing to do with Fire Emblem, was going to be the next big thing in TRPG. So yeah, I think this is going to make an awesomesauce podcast because you know there are so many DnD podcasts but this is like ummm disruptive. Is that dumb?”
My finger lightly jabs her bare upper arm to get her to stop looking down. “If you guys are having fun, there’s no way it could be dumb.” At least I think it should be true. “Aren’t you cold though? Here. . .” I start to take off my jacket.
“Oh no!” she steps back. “No, sorry. Sorry. Thanks for the thought, but I’m good,” and immediately starts faux-flexing her biceps while gwaffing in an overly dramatic manner. “Cold? Can’t feel a thing with these guns hahahahaha.”
Without saying a word, I zip up my jacket.
“Sorry. That was cringe wasn’t it?”
“What do you mean cringe? I thought you couldn’t feel anything with those.”
She won’t laugh. All I get is a nasal ‘hmph.’
“You know,” she says while shaking her head. “You know that feeling when you’re talking to someone and you can’t help but feel like they’ve already judged you. I don’t. . . get that with you. Like you kind of just accept things as they are, no questions asked. That’s ummm really cool.”
I don’t know the feeling, but thank you for the compliment.
The hand I held out to her is a weak excuse for a non-response. If we want to really convince people we’re in a relationship we need to hold hands at these types of events. Practiced, she slips her hand into mine. The beads of sweat from her palm dampening mine and the little clockwise twist of her fingers so they fit more snuggly betray how she really feels and how I should feel. Like that, we’re swept into the current of bodies.
“I ummm didn’t see you at school today? I thought you weren’t feeling so good but umm. . . here you are!”
“Oh, I might have mentioned it before. There’s a private church conference in town with delegates from across the world attending. The Mission and the city have been planning it for years, and guess who’s lucky enough to be allowed to help out?” I raise my eyebrow for emphasis.
“That’s wow. Kind of like an internship. That sounds like a great opportunity! What sort of people have you met?”
“There was a former sailor who only had one arm. Yeah, he talked about how his former captain helped him find faith and the Lord. Oh, there’s this fashion designer, a former supermodel. She might be around here. She gave a talk about how the church can incorporate itself in the sustainable fashion movement. And ummm, there was a priest from a different part of the country, I don’t exactly remember where but he’s sort of an antique collector, like Indiana Jones, so his talk was cool. A lot of inspirational stuff, ‘cross the board.”
As we’re walking and talking, she intermittently makes sure she’s making eye contact with me. Her eyes are almost too wide and she’s slowly nodding, signaling that she’s definitely paying attention. She wants me to know that. I think that’s why I should like her.
The pull of Kayla’s hand that I’ve been letting myself follow stops and I almost bump into her back. Her eye’s on three booths with a variety of vegetables and fruits laid out. There are four or five browsers at each store weaving in and out, examining the bottom of a small basket of strawberries or juggling two heads of cabbage trying to grab a third. All aim to purchase the freshest product available at the best price possible without regard to what their fellow shoppers are left with. For that purpose so many esoteric methods of evaluation are created, shared, and transmitted. Everyone in that store narrates to themselves their way is the best. Those without a method? Next time. Next time I won’t scroll past that lifehack video on my timeline.
All except a woman dressed almost like one of those Victorian nurses. What did they call them again? Sparrows, starlings, no — nightingales. Without looking at any of the produce, she marches up to the shopkeeper, bows, and asks “walnut. . . cake?”
The bewildered shopkeeper tells her to try the bakery or dessert sections down the street. She nods, thanks him, then moves to the next booth to repeat that cycle.
White strands of hair peeking out of her headpiece and sharp red eyes, that’s an Einzbern homunculus. But even homunculi aren’t that. . .
Kayla’s hand fidgets as she unconsciously bites her lip while staring intently at the homunculus.
Don’t call out. I open my mouth but can’t shape the words because I want her to call out. Because those eyes almost wet from fear are smoldering — telling me that her tabletop character might be a nervous, precious, ukulele-playing bundle of anxiety but his character arc will be overcoming that carefully designed flaw through the enjoyable and exciting adventures he’ll be having. And if my character can do it, the character I created then I — Like she always says, is that dumb?
Even if it is, I’ll accept it, a bubble that burns. There’s sincerity there that I can’t fathom matching until I kill a —
So I don’t say anything.
“Excuse me!” She calls out but the crowd drowns out her voice.
So I let go of her hand.
She half-runs to the homunculus, then taps her on the shoulder, “Excuse me.”
“Are yo—? Um, sorry to bother you. Hahaha, yeah, this place can be really confusing. We can show you where the cakes are. O-only if you want to ofcourse.” Kayla nods like a jackhammer with an almost tearful smile plastered on her face.
“Thank. . . Leysritt, but you call Leys.” She pulls up her ankle-length skirt and curtsies.
“Oh. . .” Kayla tries to curtsey in reply.
I arrive as Kayla finishes trying to introduce a previously imaginary me. There’s no time for more words. The frown on the shopkeeper's face tells us we’re taking up too much space, so we quickly take our leave, dragging the homunculus, Leys, with us.
“So umm walnut cake. . . yeah the walnut cake here is really great.”
Is this sharp unease what Cherry felt when I left to hunt the Dead Apostle?
“Ilya. . . father fun. Sella. . . common taste. Combine. Walnut. . . cake. Everyone happy.”
“Oh yeah, definitely.” She turns and looks at me.
First, I need to take Kayla’s hand again. Pretending to be a couple means consistent public appearances. With that out of the way, what to ask a homunculus without giving away that I know what she is?
“Are you here with anyone else?” There we go, safe question. Nice. Smooth as anointing oil.
“Tuner. . . Archer . . .”
Change the subject. Change the subject. Right now!
“Turner and Arch—?” Kayla starts.
“Wow, these desserts really look great!”
“Someone’s excited.” Kayla pulls her neck back until a slight double chin pops out.
“What can I say, I’m a sucker for sweets.”
She frowns, one eyebrow drooping lower than the other, “Wasabi Chris, sweets?”
Before the length of my silence became awkward, Leys strides up to the counter with a “walnut. . . cake?”
*****
All the Tolosa Farmer’s Market dessert section and no walnut cake. Walnut and date loaf, a staple. Homemade banana bread with walnuts in it, a crime if there wasn’t. But Leys wouldn’t budge, it was walnut cake or nothing. She did mention wing nut cake was fine too because wing nuts were actually a type of walnut or that had been what ‘Ilya’ had told her.
“Leys!” Has there been a name called out so cheerfully? “Thank you two so much for finding her. . .”
All three of us turn, Kayla blinks twice and then her eyes widen. My heart almost stops.
Forget the youthful blonde with green eyes that still sparkle underneath the dim, moth-infested stall lighting, freezing all of Kayla’s face muscles like the first time she met Cherry. Behind him is a towering heroic mass of muscle over seven feet tall whose aura is as suffocating as the empyrean — dematerialized. Phew, that was close. Archer smiles at me. I die inside a little; not in the good way. I’m able to keep my mind mostly clear because he’s in spirit form.
“Are you?” Kayla starts.
Leys said she was with Archer and the Tuner — the man looking at me. We’ve never met, but I know of him the same way he knows of me. Before he says something weird that makes Kayla suspicious or worse I need to. . .
“Mr. Rick! Good to see you!”
“Wrichmotifs from Youtube?
Wait, Kayla knows a magus and he’s on Youtube?
“Chris, you know him?” She almost shrieks.
Quick thinking. Thinking quick.
“Ummm yeah. I was telling you about the convention theand the town put on together. Mr. Rick is umm one of the keynote speakers, yeah.”Churchchurch
There’s something about his eyes when he talks. It’s not magical; there’s absolutely no magecraft involved but they’re so gentle and caring without trying that it’s hypnotic. Like he practiced that look every single morning for ten years trying to get it just right.
“Right! You were at the front desk helping oversee the convention. M. . . Mo. . .”
“Chris. Chris Frampton,” I extend my hand.
He doesn’t take it. Instead, he points at me while smiling, “Chris. Frampton. Of course you are.”
“This is my girlfriend, Kayla.”
“K-Kayla Day.” She grabs the finger that was pointing at me and shakes it. “I really, umm, really loved your video on how the Undertale leitmotifs like were used to tell their own story. Yeah. Um, like most other content creators kind of only identify and play the tunes, but I love how your video really dissected like the musical arguments they made. I play the ukulele.”
Heretics are getting shrewder with the decline of mystery and the rise of big data with how they present themselves to the world. But resorting to being a video game music content creator is something I still firmly believe is beneath any magus, let alone the Einzbern Tuner.
“Love the energy, Kayla! It’s fans like you who inspire us to keep creating content about things we’re passionate about instead of whatever’s popular. But, how do I put this —” He looks down at her hand wrapped around his finger, “How about you let go of my finger, and we can take a selfie?”
She blushes and immediately lets go to dive into the purse she’s carrying.
“Hope you’re having a great time seeing what our town has to offer besides inspirational spiritual seminars, Mr. Rick.” Because any good boyfriend knows how to fill the awkward gap when his girlfriend is rummaging through what has to be a training purse. Maybe one day, she’ll carry a purse the size of one of Cherry’s. When it’s that big is it more a purse or a bag?
“No kidding, I love the rustic, Mediterranean vibe the Central Coast of California has going for it. I’ve been to a lot of places, but this one feels. . . like a home.” Nice line. “Anyway, Chris, call me Rich.”
“Sorry, Rich. You’re German, right?”
"Genau. It would be pronounced ‘ʁɪç’ but my friends call me Rich.”
With trembling fingers, Kayla fishes out her phone, Animal Crossing case and all. She hands it to Rich so he can take a picture of us and the forgotten Leys.
“Thank you so much! My friends are going to scream when they see this.” Kayla says looking at the picture. “Oh, umm, Leys wanted some walnut cake.”
“That’s where she went. I turned around for a minute and she was gone. Don’t worry Leys, we have walnut cake at home, where Sella is.”
Kayla wants to ask whether Leys is his daughter, but Leys is definitely an adult. Rich? With his boyish face, mid-twenties, but considering the lengths some heretics go mid-fifties wouldn’t surprise me.
“How do you and Leys know each other?” I ask for her.
“Have you two ever heard of savants?”
I nod because I know this is all a farce. Kayla nods because she doesn’t want a Youtuber to know she doesn’t know what a savant is.
“Leys is extremely talented at music, the strings, specifically. But she’s never been outside of her home because of her gift. She has some relatives in the US who she’s never had the chance to meet.
Hearing that I was visiting the US for this convention and to teach at the local university, her parents, old friends of mine asked if I could take her with me because I have experience with special education.”
“Oh wow. . . ” Kayla gasps.
Oh wow, this heretic is good at lying to kids.
“We should be going then.” He takes Leys’s hand. “It was really great to meet you. You’re a cute couple. Chris, by the way, give my best to Matou, we’re old family friends, after all.”
With small shivers running down my spine, I manage to wave goodbye. Even if he was at last night’s gathering he shouldn’t know that Cherry is a Master, yet. So that’s just a courtesy. As they leave, I think I saw Archer with arms crossed, raising his eyebrow at me like ‘she’s your mate?’
Starstruck, Kayla starts getting the photo ready to upload. “What should the caption be?!” Before I can answer, “His Insta is soooo inspirational. He was part of this campaign to reduce microplastics in the Rhine River and his dogs are so adorable! Linde, Gunde, and Floss.”
Those aren’t cute fluffies playing in a fairytale winter forest, Kayla. They’re definitely wolves, magically enhanced wolves.
“How about errr, ‘Guess who we heard tonight at Farmer’s?’ Heard because he does leitmotifs?”
“Perfect. What would I ever do without you.”
How unlike her.
“Hey, all this looking around for desserts has got me hungry. What do you —”
“Tamales.”
Good choice. They’re made fresh.
“The line’s pretty long, maybe a ten-minute wait.” No matter how much heat she’s generating typing furiously on her phone, the fine hairs on her arms are still standing. She’s too nice to take your jacket, so she’s freezing. “How about I wait in line and you get a table for us.” I point to a side street where there’s an array of white, plastic tables underneath heat lamps. “One chicken and one vege right?”
She looks up from the cinematic glow of her phone. “Oh it’s full of families. . . oh wait, there’s a girl eating ice-cream by herself. I’ll ask if we can sit with her!”
As I slide into the tamales line behind a middle-aged white couple discussing whether they should invest some of their retirement money into that nice lady’s fashion company, I watch Kayla almost skipping to the dining area.
I want that.
Tonight, she proved to herself that if she sincerely faced her fears, reaching for the person she wanted to be, the world would meet her with unexpected rewards.
I want to feel that.
So kill the Dead Apostle.
— All of us, no matter who we are, are merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings.
Kill the Dead Apostle and, you’ll feel the gratitude that forsaken boy who drowned should feel.certainlymaybe
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
27/ Farmer’s (That Dress’)
The bowl-cut priest leads us to the back of the church. From the small lectern in front of a small circle of blue plastic chairs, I guess this is the room they use to teach Sunday school or host bible study.
“Hot Chocolate?” The priest asks.
As we sit down, Mary thanks him. Phahn’s hot chocolate’s supposed to be to die for. Whatever, I missed my chance to speak up because honestly, Rider, you’re going to break something clunking about if you keep materializing in that ridiculous suit of armor. Put on some normal clothes.
Phahn finishes making Mary’s drink. He strides over, handing her two stacked paper cups filled with steaming brown liquid interspersed with feeble amounts of foam.
She thanks him then adds, “Inspiring sermon last night, Father.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it, Mary? And you Nadine?”
Phahn doesn’t sit in a chair or move towards the lectern. He looms over us waiting for my answer.
A call to arms for the Masters against a common enemy while legitimizing his own summoning. That’s not what he’s asking. I didn’t go to that event willingly. He asked my mom to make me go.
“No use in pretending. You failed to scare me.”
The classic, take the girl to a ball to show her this isn’t her world and can never be. But Phahn, that place wasn’t any different from anywhere else I’ve been. Just gaudier.
“You’re clever, Nadine Craig, but being clever doesn’t mean Mary and you can defeat other Servants.”
“We can’t,” I smile at Mary. “But we can help you defeat Saber.”
“Little lady, what can that cook and yourself do against her flames, her dragons?”
Fuck that. These are eyes that see into the world. Masters, Servants, I want to tell Rider they’re all the same, so there’s no way we couldn’t win. But we haven’t won. Mary and I have lost every single encounter these past three days. Archer and Rider saved us against Berserker. Berserker saved us against the vampire. We were saved, not because they thought us valuable, but because they had more important things to do and in doing them, we happened to be saved.
“We might lack your combat abilities, but that perceived weakness of an Assassin whose presence isn’t concealed has allowed us to easily form relationships with other Servants, for instance, Archer.”
Sure, Mary may have stretched the truth, but the unease on Rider’s ruggedly handsome face and the bowl-cut priest’s approving nod is so worth it.
“Then why not parley with Archer?” Rider gently retorts.
“Because. . .”
“Because,” I can take over here. “Because Rider, you’re the one who saved us that first night.”
Rider’s about to open his mouth, but Phahn holds a hand up so I can continue.
“We might not be able to help you fight Saber, but we can make sure the battles are uninterrupted. You have people working for you, but a Master and her Servant have more influence.”
Phahn wants to disagree, but all the Masters present saw Archer’s expression when Rider rode out to confront Saber. The one way of proving he’s the perfect hero is having stupid fights with everyone with only one arm.
“A valiant offering.” Wow, quick reversal, Rider.
“What’s in it for you two?”
To not die.
“We want your protection until both Saber and the vampire are defeated.”
Rider nods, his armor creaking; Phahn’s mouth forms a little ‘o,’; Mary finishes her hot chocolate.
“We err. . . talked to someone. The vampire I asked Rider about last night attacked Mary and me. He’s related to the Grail War isn’t he? Like he’s a Master.”
“Nadine, if he is a Master, then as overseer there is no place for Rider and myself to. . .”
“That vampire defeated Mary.” She looks away. “Rider told me last night you have a specialist, but do you think that specialist could beat Mary in a fight? And if it does turn out to be a Master. . . only a Servant can beat another Servant, you said that too, right?”
Phahn, you’re a top negotiator? The first mistake of negotiating is assuming your opponent doesn’t know everything that you know.
“Safe harbor to wait out the initial storm of the Grail War. Saber and potentially Lancer have their fates sealed. Caster and Berserker, no doubt ally in an attempt to defeat Archer. Your scenario creates two separate battlegrounds with you and the Archer as the last two standing.”
Yes Rider, that’s exactly what Mary told Laurent.
“This is only curiosity talking, Nadine. But, how are you and Mary going to beat Archer?”
I take a deep breath. The final card. Time to amaze them with what these eyes have seen.
“I’m not. As a god-fearing Catholic, I have faith the Church will clear my name.”
Wait Mary, what?
“Oh?”
“History and the press haven’t been kind to me, stripping me of my freedom for crimes I didn’t commit. I’m a simple woman, Father, Sir Rider. I only want my good name back. From the size of the operation you have going in this town, I’m sure you got more than enough friends in high places to investigate why I was framed.”
Phahn crosses his arms. “Rider?”
“With the lady’s Presence Concealment, infiltrating the Mission becomes a real possibility.”
The bowl-cut priest grins broadly, swallowing everything Mary said.
“May this be the nativity of a mutually beneficial relationship.” Phahn extends his hand.
I reach out to grasp it but. . .
“But infiltrating the Mission, holy ground?” Mary sounds horrified.
Rider pulls out printouts and manages to stick them to the whiteboard with magnets. Bravo, seriously. Phahn approaches them. You’d think he was going to point something out, but instead walks right past Rider and continues circling the room. My hand dangles in mid-air, never grasping anything yet again. That’s so dumb, pull it back.
“Saber’s Master declared war on us this morning.” Rider tries to explain.
Saber’s Master, the rogue Church agent who decided to summon a Servant. From her picture on the whiteboard, she doesn’t seem like a person who would put a kick-me sign on herself. Actually, I take that back. Her face might scream harmless Asian lady, but the way her straight black hair almost shimmers purple in the background light screams of an atrocious dye job you only get during a quarter-life crisis, halfway down a pint to Chubby Hubby while still in your PJs.
“But the Mission?” I ask Phahn before Mary can say anything else.
Rider answers instead. “This church was always meant to be a temporary base of operations until the position of overseer was rightfully transferred. I’m sure you understand, our Holy Mother never expected such provocation from one She trusted. Thus such an insult must be met with corresponding force.” His voice is as rough as if his gauntlets were grinding against each other.
“An inviolable pact of nonaggression protects the overseer’s church, a Grail War’s only truly neutral ground. There is no need for additional protections. However, a few minutes ago, multiple bounded fields were activated around the Mission. Sacrilege aside, the Mission is no longer neutral; it should be considered a workshop. The offensive necessary to break through all the defenses will require all our ground assets and at least two Servants. One Servant to keep Saber at bay and the other to help sweep the interior for threats.”
Mary swallows the lump in her throat. Despite her personal disapproval, she knows Rider, the paragon of good ol’ Christian virtue is right. That’s why they agreed with just enough resistance to keep stringing us along. The bowl-cut priest wasn’t tolerating our request; he expected it and hoped for it. This is bad. But you knew that from the beginning, right? So nothing’s changed.
“I’ve always told my generals preemptive attacks are the best strategy, especially to cut supply lines. Your infiltration of the Mission will be the keystone to our eventual triumph,” Rider continues.
Phahn stops beside my chair and produces a small black box the size of my thumb and a long white candle. Did he pull those out from under his robe or collected them while circling us?
“You want us to bug the Mission and err. . . give it some mood lighting.”
“That’s an altar candle, dearie.”
Phahn clears his throat. “Rider, their objectives.”
“Our raid is planned for Saturday sundown. Madam, you’ll want to place the device in the staff’s private quarters, underneath their kitchen or dining table.” He circles the corresponding location on the printout in red whiteboard marker. “Then, you’ll replace one of the candles.”
“Why the altar candle?”
Mary, Mary. If the listening device is for knowing when and how to attack, then the candle has to be for the other obstacle. Laurent would know how a candle could break magical barriers.
Rider answers, “The Mission, like most churches of its stature, has been consecrated. The diablerie Saber’s Master has applied deceptively syncretizes with the consecration. Then what if the altar, the spiritual keystone of the Mission were to be reconsecrated? Why the evil shall be expunged and the church made holy once more.”
Religious mumbo-jumbo aside but if you repeat something enough times, it’ll start to make sense. Like, is replacing a single candle they probably bought from Costco really going to change the entire meaning of a ritual?
Phahn’s got that ‘do you want to share with the class?’ look on his face.
“What makes that candle special?”
“Here, Mary,” Phahn hands her two identical-looking candles.
I seriously hate it when people pretend to use their hands as balances. You just have to hold them, not move your hands up and down as if that’ll change your opinion.
“One is heavier.” Her face blank from being deep in thought, Mary rolls the candle in her palm.
“Yes, that one has been partially hollowed and filled with a container of anointing oil a Saint had blessed. You’ll want to place that candle in the leftmost or rightmost holder. Father Kelsey likes to light the middle candles for daily mass.” He takes back the candle that's just a candle.
I see, so by adding an additional mysterious element, the magical barrier around the Mission will disappear. Two questions and I hope you have answers for these because seriously, I don’t want to deal with amateurs. . .
“What if they just throw the candle away?”
“Nadine, the Mission replaces their altar candles on the last day of each month. There is no danger of removal.”
“Then, what if it doesn’t burn down to the oil?”
“Are you familiar with RFIDs?”
Weren’t there dumbasses who declared themselves into thinking microchip implants would be the future but then phones came out.
“I don’t see how barcodes solve bounded fields?”
“The candle Mary’s holding has a sigil inscribed within it, similar to a RFID. With the right magical energy signal, it activates, breaking the candle.”
In summary, get Mary into Saber’s Master’s base to plant a listening device and a magic candle. Okay, when did ‘we’ll keep Archer off your back’ turn into mission fucking impossible.
“And you’ll be distracting them while we do this?” I ask.
Rider shakes his head, “We attack once, Saturday sundown. Preemptive military action will arouse suspicion. But, little lady, do you know who is very interested in crossing arms with Saber?”
Once again, go ride yourself.
Didn’t you just boast about how you always told your generals preemptive attacks were always the best strategy? Though I guess you can’t really expect much thought from someone who has the same aura as my meathead of a brot— bother.
Enough about Rider. We can do this. We can do this, right? Because even Laurent said our best option was to ally with Phahn. I. . . haven’t done anything. There I said it. I haven’t done anything and I hate it. I hate it so much because even if I told myself that I would change, I would finally be someone else, all I’ve done is run away or lose.
“If we do this, the religious bodies that comprise the Church will immediately investigate my case,” Mary says suddenly, her eyes snapping away from the candle.
“Pardon?” Phahn doesn’t show it, but I know he’s shocked.
“When we agreed to ally, we had no knowledge of such a potentially fatal undertaking. You’re both undoubtedly chivalrous gentlemen, so you understand our current compensation is lacking. Therefore, will the Church exert its influence upon its member religious bodies to immediately begin an investigation of my case or not?”
But Mary, how are they supposed to investigate you without knowing who you are?
“Tall order, woman, do not think the Holy Mother shall —”
“Very well,” Phahn smiles so widely you can barely see his eyes. “My higher-ups will want results first. We can begin talks on the parameters surrounding the investigation after the Mission is in our hands.”
“After your candle is in the Mission.”
The clang of armor against carpet does its best to ring through the room as Rider puts down his foot and attempts to use that ridiculous bulk of his to intimidate.
Mary holds her head high. “After your candle is in the Mission.”
Phahn throws his hands up with a snort, “After the candle and the listening device are in the Mission.”
“Thank you, Father, Rider. Now Nadine, dearie, I believe you were going to take me to see the Farmer’s Market?”
Ew.
That wasn’t badass. That was pathetic.
*****
With pizza slices on paper plates, Mary and I try to carve a path through the main street turned to what romantic comedies think a subway platform looks like at peak-hour. Even if there are clearly marked yellow lines dividing the street into two, the sheeple amble forward and back in the center of the tar paddock, irrationally afraid that if they stop for a second for whatever reason, they’ll inconvenience the person behind them. Boisterously brain-dead, you drink in the fairy lights and avoid eye-contact with the vendors because god forbid they’ll magically hypnotize you into buying something you don’t want. Don’t get me started on the couples.
Mary takes a large bite out of the slice I paid for, crust first.
“A weekly night market, how romantic.”
Never knew Mary was the one to gush over pathetic displays of a sociopathic general disregard for others in pursuit of an ideal so eloquently and poetically named “bae.” Worst of all, they’re definitely here, Krista and my brother. God, what am I going to say if I see them with my middle-aged ghost cook who happens to be great at negotiating breaking-and-entering deals with Catholic priests my mom definitely has the hots for.
“Sometimes the Master of the house would give us the night off to come to one of these. Support the town, see the sights, all that city air can’t be good for you, just look at your skin. ‘Course dearie, there always was the odd, new girl who dreamed of finding her Prince Charming in a local baker or a flower store owner, but the rest of us, the ones who lived by the agency were thankful for the time off, but nothing more.”
Whatever, I can’t believe how carefree everyone here looks, unaware their city has turned into a battlefield. Bread and circuses. Everything is awesome. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be having this Farmer’s market where everything is awesome.
“Nadine, you haven’t said a word since we got the pizza.”
I got the pizza.
“You know, dearie,” her face breaks into a gentle smile. “Sometimes I wonder if this is a dream and when I wake up, I’ll be back on Bro— back where I was.”
Lukewarm pizza grease mixed with slightly too salty marinara sauce slides down my throat as I swallow. Cardboard that fills you up — that’s the modern world.
“If you like it so much, why don’t you wish for a second life?”
She’s too drunk on Tolosa’s city lights to respond. They’re too blinding; that’s why she can’t stay.
“The Grail tells me I died from a stroke. No matter the condition, I still remember being alone in that little cell trying to call for help, but quickly realizing no, no one will come and it’s not your fault, you gentle fool. You’ve loved with all your heart, you’ve tried your best so many times, and this is the end. At least, this is the end, be satisfied Mary.” She tries to laugh the stray thoughts away. “But I awake to a new world where everything is. . . is like this. And I’m, or rather, the memory of me is so. . . no way of putting it politely, I’m a joke. Nothing more than a tall tale told to children to scare them into behaving. My life ended in that cell. This is redemption, do you understand, dearie?”
She hardly said a word during lunch and now it's pity me, Nadine. I had a hard life, Nadine.
Why are you suddenly so blatantly obvious like everyone else? Phahn gives you a glimmer of hope and you start pouring your heart on to me. I’m done.
“Let's go home and figure out how we’re going to get in touch with Archer.”
I tilt the box carrying the candle towards Mary as I slide my paper plate into the trash can next to a booth that’s more like a pop-up store you see at the college during Earth Day, selling overpriced second-hand clothes and accessories.
“Sorry for the bother. That goes with the compostables.”
A bell-like voice that will never let you forget you’ve heard it before.
Whether she’s in an aristocratic party dress or commoner athleisure, Caster is still —
“Mary? How divine! That dress brings out your eyes so well. And Nadine, Nadine correct? Heavens, I didn’t recognize either of you. Let me help this dear customer first and then I’d love to have a chat.”
Unsure what to do, Mary and I stand to one side as Caster works the register. By register, I mean an iPad with a card reader. And it's not just one dear customer, but a long line of women and partners with tired expressions until they see the woman at the register. I’d like to say the potential customers are all shapes and sizes but middle-aged women in Tolosa kind of have the same physique as my mom or at least anyone shopping at this store is aiming for that physique. Let’s not start with the local co-eds they’ve hired to help with the store.
After a few minutes, it becomes apparent why the entire town and half the neighboring ones showed up at Farmer’s tonight. I’m surprised no one’s protesting a brand called Twin Towers. Maybe there would be more outrage at a New York pop-up. Or, more likely, everyone’s too excited at being able to take home a Paris Fashion Week runway-ready outfit for a price that can give Lululemon a run for their money. God, the line is going around the block now.
This would totally be a Krista thing. Get in line as a joke repeating ‘every purchase gives a child a pair of shoes,’ ‘everything is just so cute and unique,’ or ‘so sustainable they’re carbon negative’ with ever-escalating voices, so everyone in line would know how lame they were for standing in line. If we got to the front of the line without being asked to leave, Krista would say “how about we look around; there might be something that goes well with your jacket.”
Nothing goes with this blue ski-jacket. That’s why I wear it. That’s the joke.
We’d end up getting something because Krista would say you can’t wait in line for that long and go home empty-handed. And now. . . with his neanderthal football attention span there's no way my brother’s going to wait in a line this long for a girl he’s going to, let’s face it, dump before this Grail War ends.
“A thousand apologies for making you wait, my little bluebirds. There were oh so many wonderful people spellbound by my dear Estella’s textiles. Conversing with them and learning their truths invigorate me so.” With palms together and eyelashes fluttering like hummingbird wings, “Allow me, dear ladies. This way to the back, where my dear Estella, who I love as a true sister, has retired to.”
At the Tolosa Famer’s Market, the back of a booth means the back of a pick-up, but wow these are the people who waste money on glamping equipment. Four LED chandelier-lanterns hang from the pastel canvas ceiling illuminating a number of leather armchairs beside a glass coffee table to one side, and a wet bar on the other. Looks like an airport lounge ad.
“Chilled beverage?” Caster opens the fridge, filled with the glass bottles you see in a Whole Foods refrigerated section.
“I recommend the cider. Bottled last year at a little orchard outside our Windermere.” Sitting next to the space heater (of course they’d have a space heater) in a dress that belongs in an opera or at least a Broadway production is the Princess of Silver, Estella, with a Kindle in her lap.
“Nadine, have you debuted?” Caster perks up.
Regardless of the name, sixteen is bitter. “I’m seventeen.”
“Truly? Heavens, your mannerisms speak to a certain degree of learned maturity a lady does not accomplish until her twenty-first year.”
Holding a tray of four wine flutes, Caster skips towards the coffee table. She’s not actually skipping. Her walk was so gracefully lively there was no other way of describing it. She offers each of us our drink while curtseying. Mary’s so taken aback she reflexively curtsies back, making Caster feel obligated to reply with another curtsey. God, Mary, you don’t need to cover up your embarrassment with a sip of your drink before we even sat down. Now you got me doing it too. When I put the crystal to my lips, unsweetened apple juice fizzles, tickling my chapped lips. There’s no sharp kick.
Oh. In Caster’s mind, the modern debut means turning twenty-one. She was asking me whether I could drink or not. That’s funny. A girl becomes a woman when society is presented to her now, not the other way around.
“Lovely cider. Crisp and tart. So refreshing after walking through the market.”
“Oh no, Mary. You were not walking in such cold with only that dress. As your dear friend I couldn’t, I shan’t bear it if it were true.”
Dry heat like a Tolosa noon wafts from the space heater. Not to mention Mary and you are Servants. You don’t get cold.
“You’re absolutely right, Caster. We can’t leave our guests cold. Why don’t you show Mary around the booth to pick out a jacket and introduce her to our talent? As illustrious Heroic Spirits incarnated in the modern era, you must have many things to talk about.”
“Terrific idea as always, Estella.”
Mary looks at me.
“Don’t worry, Mary. Your Master will be well taken care of.”
“Of course, Miss Estella.” I guess they don’t teach cooks how to curtsey with a crystal wine flute in one hand. Caster quickly takes Mary’s arm and starts chattering about jacket stitching as she leads Mary through the partition to the front of the store.
Estella something Iselma, Princess of Silver and Byron’s daughter. At last night’s party, Rich said the princesses were modeled after the Sun and the Moon in an attempt to reach. . . damn, even in your head you still can’t do it. Through true beauty. She’s really pretty, almost iridescent. Her skin is almost every shade of porcelain blended together to create a soft glowing hue free of any blemishes. Free-flowing hair, a soft somehow natural grey-blue catches the hard LED light and glistens as if threaded with what hack poets describe as moonbeams. She’s beautiful as a human, not █. Caster in yoga-class leggings, running jacket, and matching scarf still feels like she’s still looking down on us from a different dimension. The women in line worshiping the register she’s handling is a testament to that. The moon really can’t shine without the sun.
“I’m sorry I missed you. Sit, sit,” she leans over and pats the seat next to hers. “Caster was very enthused with Mary last night and I couldn’t find a second to get away. I heard you had a very interesting conversation with Father though.”
I wouldn’t call it as interesting as the ones I have with Laurent, but I’m tired and that armchair looks much more comfortable than plastic Sunday School chairs.
“That’s. . . a gift?”
She nods at the coffee table where I’ve set my empty flute and candle box.
Anyone should be able to see the candle through the box’s plastic window. Now I’m closer, that Kindle screen has raised bumps, and where the logo should be are a series of raised buttons.
“A gift for my mom. She likes candles. She’s, umm, an interior designer.”
“How charming. I’d love to see her work. See what she can come up with for our pitiful space.”
But you’re blind.
“You don’t need to look at me like others do when they realize I’m blind. We’re magi; I might not be able to see you through my eyes, but I know you’re running a little hot right now and I don’t think it’s just because of the heater.”
Laugh. Politely. And then take a sip of your drink. Shit, it’s empty, remember.
“But even magecraft has limitations. There are spells for universal translation and intent transference, but they’re almost impossible to apply to visual media. I’d usually have Regina or Islo read me the financials for the company, but it’s astounding what can be made with a few hundred thousand pounds of funding,” she raises her braille reader. “Most magi would balk at this, but our Department Head found herself trapped within the Apple ecosystem a few years back so I shouldn’t feel too bad.”
I want so badly to believe this woman was one of those sheltered BBC rich ladies who spend their days watching polo and playing bridge. And like, eventually she’d meet a rugged down-to-earth working-man who had financial troubles but didn’t want her money. He only wanted to show her what it truly means to live, like eating pizza and singing karaoke. Like fuck, after seeing Caster, part of me kind of hoped that fairytale ending was at least true for her kind. But hey, if this is second place, I think I like it better.
“I almost died once.” Okay Estella, where did that come from? “A lot of people make that face when I start talking. I’m exactly the person who you thought I was but when my sister died there was a cover-up, and I walked up to the most powerful woman I knew, accused her of being my sister’s murderer and asked her to kill me without any real plan, reason, or leverage. Do you know what she said?”
“You’re an idiot, get out?”
That perfect, thin mouth curves. “My answer exactly. She on the other hand closed an eye and said, and I still remember it after more than a decade, ‘So you're putting your own life on the line. Things really can't be easy with you these days, can they Princess? Under different circumstances I might have even taken a liking to such behaviour.’ Talk about an insult.” She almost spits.
Because that’s not how you talk to a person. That’s how little girls praise their dolls for keeping still while having their hair brushed. If the very first thing you offer is your life, you really don’t value yourself, so what can you possibly be worth?
“I had planned to die alongside my father that night, but we were saved. Alive, but left with nothing, so I married my childhood friend. I’m glad I was saved. I had things I couldn’t give up and a place I needed to reach, so with his family’s expertise, the Iselma continued their quest as this. . .” She vomits out the last word, afraid of defiling her throat.
Unlike Caster, you’re a strong, independent woman who can do everything but probably has a flaw that makes you actually relatable and therefore likable but never loveable. That’s my mom’s shtick too. You’re just on a different level.
“That’s me, warts and all.” As if you’ve ever had a wart. “Now it’s your turn, Nadine. What do you think about my father after your conversation with him?”
Take a person, shave off all her excess and you’re left with a crescent moon. It’s refreshing because you can feel what was once there, this supernatural charm that only now lingers, urging you to speak honestly.
“He really can’t get over himself, can he?”
Estella nods and then with the softest hint of a smile, “Then, will you help me kill Caster?”
Will I, what?
Excuse me. You’re talking about,
“Talking about killing my own Father’s Servant. After the Clock Tower finished their investigation on the Iselma, my father was in ruins. Simply put, he had wagered all he had and lost. He’s a broken man. You heard him yesterday, use the Grail to reach「」. For him, nothing matters.”
It’s all just paper anyway.
“Rich said, he reached. . . err. . . urgh, the Root.”
“Yes,” she brushes her cheek with the back of her hand, “Father did. That’s why it's all the more inexcusable. Broken or not, I want the best for my father. You, Nadine, are a Master fighting in this Grail War for no doubt a wish you believe is important. Help me take my father home.”
“Why me?”
“Magi, we decide the core of something and change it as fast as we can. My father’s a prideful man. After these long years of continually having his pride stripped from him, all that remains is the pride of being prideless. You’ve heard him characterize the world and disparage everyone within it. A girl posing as a magus, you’ll be a feast.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Other than less competition? He’ll agree to teach you, you know. Magecraft. Because you disgust him, he wants to prove your worthlessness to you.”
“I-I need some time to think.” Everything’s spinning so I get out the chair, lift one side of the tent and just walk out into the night air. Estella doesn’t try to stop me.
Spent too long in the tent with a space heater. Forgot the candle, whatever you need to — like there’s a crushing feeling in my chest. Kill Caster, what the hell did she just. Your brain is on fire. You can’t stop thinking it’s all just bullshit. But Nadine, Laurent alone isn’t going to. Why the fuck are there just so many people here, so many fucking. “Hi, would you like to try a sample?” But you’re already helping Phahn and Rider. Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in. As always, always in, nothing out. To reject everything to become someone I want. But you’re just a girl and no one likes you because they’re too busy farming the market for clout. Master. Mage. Magic. These are the eyes that see into the world, the eyes that make you into a Magician’s Egg. Decide the core and change it as fast as possible.
So I reject it. Master the contrary and simply brush away everything that has happened as mundane. A Master is a mage. A mage uses magecraft. This is why you are. . . now calm down and get your stupid bitch self an ice-cream sandwich from Cream. Desserts at Farmer’s are always overpriced.
*****
I find myself an empty table in the dining area and work on my scoop. Cookies felt too excessive after hearing about how the heiress of a magical fashion empire wants my help to kill her father’s guardian ghost. She’s doing it out of love. No doubt. She can’t stand to see the dismissive drunk he’s become. I don’t blame her. If dad was here right now, he’d probably. . . tell me I should have gotten an extra scoop for him. He’d ask me what was wrong. Everything. He’d ask me if there was anything he could do. No, because you died and for all this talk, all this internal monologue, I haven’t actually done anything. And honestly, I’m a little scared I’ll never be able to do anything.
“Ummm, excuse me. S-sorry to bother you, but is it okay if like me and my boyfriend share the table. With you.”
“Free country.” I look up.
Even under the orange-red glow of the heat-lamps, you can still easily make out that banal freckled face. After talking with Estella, this girl looks like someone cut out a generic piece of scenery and slapped me with it. She doesn’t exude Phahn’s slipperiness, Rider’s pompous nobility, Laurent’s homeliness, or even Mary’s quiet despondency punctuated with moments of fiery ardor. She could be any one of these family members or couples eating their street food. This is the first normie who’s talked to me since the Holy Grail War started and I hate her for it.
“Thanks. Ummm, I’m Kayla. You go to school in Tolosa? I umm haven’t seen you around. Before.”
There’s a lot of people in this shitty town I haven’t met before. Like you.
“Mission Prep, then? Tolosa High, Nadine.”
“Oh wow cool. Nadine, that’s umm a really unique name. Really cool.”
The baby name website my mom got it from said it was French for ‘Hope’ and look where that’s gotten me.
“What about your boyfriend?”
“My boy—? Oh, yeah! Umm, his name is kind of long and he doesn’t like using it since he says it’s pretty umm pretentious. Like it's super funny when substitute teachers say it, yeah.”
“I meant like where is he?”
“Oh gosh, sorry. I really hope you didn’t like think I was like one of those girls who ummm yammers on about their boyfriends at the first chance they get, hahaha.” She points to the food trucks and stalls as she sits down. “He’s getting our tamales.”
The last plastic spoonful of ice-cream eases the pizza grease slick in my stomach. Pizza twice in a day, no wonder I wasn’t feeling great after the sparkling apple juice in Estella’s pop-up. I’ll just leave when her boyfriend comes. I bet he’s just as sickening.
“Do you umm like play any video games?”
How dumb can you be to mistake a vacant stare through you as interest in your cartoon animal-covered phone case?
Muddy green eyes, sandy blond hair, bulbous nose, slightly hunched shoulders, vapidly hopeful expression on her red face. Just why? We could have sat in complete silence for two more minutes and then I’d get up and throw my ice-cream cup in the trash or her boyfriend with the apparently ridiculous name would come over and they could nauseatingly play beer pong while pretending I didn’t exist. But you had to say something, you ridiculous girl in a spaghetti strap navy dress that your figure can’t possibly fill. Because you don’t, don’t get it with your tamales, Mission Prep, and boyfriend. This happy little life where you probably go to the Farmer’s Market every Thursday is as fucking hollow as those games you play.
“They’re the stupidest waste of time. Press a button. If you press the right button at the right time something good happens! If you press the wrong button at the wrong time something bad happens. Everything else is a distraction or just meaningless background to make you want to press that stupid button just one more time. Just one more hit of dopamine or whatever brain chemical. You’re a fucking gerbil on a wheel, running the same loop over and over again hoping for something different until you realize it’s all the same bullshit. And you want me to pay for that? No, thank you.”
No one looks at us. They’re too busy with their own meaningless conversations about the weather or who did what when or how someone might react to this and that. Don’t get me wrong, what I said and how I said it was just as meaningless. I can see that.
The girl, Kayla, shrinks in her plastic chair like I’ve slapped her across that pathetic, freckled face. That was bad. This is awkward. I end up crumpling the ice-cream cup in my fist. It’s not her fault. It’s not her fault you woke up to your best friend giving your brother a handjob which made you join a magical war. Great, now she’s retreated to the comforting glow of her phone. No, she’s just staring at it for a few seconds before putting it down.
While looking at the table with her face half crumpled, “Look, I-I don’t know who you are and what you’re going through but you can’t talk to people like that especially in a public place or like anywhere. All I wanted to do was find a place for my boyfriend and me to sit. He’s getting us food so I volunteered to find us seats because he’s been really nice to me like he knew that I was cold and offered me his jacket and I want to show him that I’m a nice person too. If you didn’t want me to sit here because you were having a bad day or whatever I’m sorry but y-you should have just said that and I c-could have sat somewhere else. And yeah video games can be like dumb but there are some really good ones that are like at the forefront of artistic expression in the way they errr integrate multiple forms of mediums to create unforgettable experiences for players. And I think you would know that if you had ever played a game or something because this isn’t sexist or anything but you look like you’re the type of girl who’s too cool to try things and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because I used to be really scared of trying things too but then I started being myse— Sorry, that’s beside the point. I don’t know why you are the way you are and it’s none of my business but whatever what I’m trying to say is that what you said was really mean because I just wanted to let you know that Rich from the Wrichmotifs is here in case you were interested in seeing him because at least at my school a lot of kids our age are fans and he’s a really nice and inspirational person and I was really happy to see him and you’ve kind of just ruined my night.”
Rich is at Farmers?
I don’t understand half of what she said and why she said it. It’s dumb. This is dumb. I have more important things to worry about. She’s dumb. Like really dumb. I worry for her boyfriend. I need to leave, but I’m not going to let her have the last word.
“Hey, Kayla, right? That dress is too nice for a jacket anyway.”
He must really be someone special if you’re dressing like that despite what you actually look like. It doesn’t suit you. Who do you think you are in those saved photos of yours anyway?
Crazy that I almost crack a smile. Somehow that barrage of nonsensical emotional diarrhea lightened my mood. Nadine Craig will become someone else, someone above this rabble who avert their eyes instead of looking straight into the world. Turning on my heel without looking back at the plastic tables and canvas umbrellas I walk back into the circus of a Farmer’s Market towards the waving cook in her new jacket. Find Rich, then, let my Holy Grail War begin.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
28/ Camilla (I)
“Rich is here.”
“Caster invited us to volunteer at a soup kitchen tomorrow evening.”
“A soup kitchen?”
“The market? Right now?”
We’re pretty bad at trading information.
“And dearie, can’t believe you forgot the candle.” She hands me the box I left with Estella, “What happened?”
“Nothing, just needed a bit of fresh air because. . . whatever, we got to find Rich.” To convince Archer to fight Saber tonight.
Kids brush my knees, parents sliding by not bothering to apologize because they’ve already apologized to the five people before us. A half-drunk stumbling girl bumps into my shoulder, her drink sloshing then hitting the tar road. That makes me wince. There are hundreds of people here; how are we supposed to find Rich?
Lightbulb. The same glint appears in Mary’s eye too.
“Live music!” She points to the patch of asphalt that’s not even an excuse for a stage. Take away the amps and the mic-stands, may as well be a busking station.
“Kettle Corn!” I point to the dessert booths then remember they don’t sell kettle corn, just the caramel-covered stuff. Eh, he could be making the same mistake.
We walk to one side, flip a coin, I call tails and lose.
Performing on the raised wooden stage is your typical small-town band with a female singer covering generic 2015 pop songs to about ten families animatedly swaying to the beat so their giggling toddlers will do the same. No Rich though. Found him looking for kettle corn at the dessert booths.
“Nadine! Mary! Great to see you two. We were just about to check out the band. Great if you could join us.”
‘Us’ was a woman with Fillia’s hair and red eyes in a space-nun outfit. Family uniform I guess. No sign of Archer, but Mary said he was in ghost form behind them.
“This is Leys.”
The space-nun named Leys curtsies while walking through a crowd without bumping into anymore. Mary and Caster, I understand, but you’d think modern women would be beyond curtseying. It’s strange though, no one’s bumping into me anymore as we walk down the thoroughfare.
“She’s Fillia’s bodyguard.”
“F. . . Ilya. . . yes.”
When we reach the wooden stage again, our little party of four plus one ghost stands about two feet behind the other families. Seems the band has switched to one of their originals. No one is listening anymore. I see two cameras out. I’m sure they’re more interested in promoting ‘live music at Farmer's than whatever this indie band has come up with.
“Got any pointers for them, Rich?” Mary asks.
“Me? That was such a hearty effort that I couldn’t. You can tell they’re doing it for the music.” With that refreshing smile, he shakes his head, “Anyway, no use asking me for performance tips. Couldn’t play a note in tune to save my life.” His short laugh is like a bird’s trill that sends the morning dew plummeting onto the ground.
“What about magecraft. Can you give me some pointers?”
He laughs, “Don’t ask questions with obvious answers.”
“Yeah, thought so.” No part of me was disappointed because my eyes saw that this man would never share that part of himself and risk dividing its value. “Where’s Fillia? We had something we wanted to tell her.”
Rich checks his phone, “She’ll be here with the car in about ten minutes. She had me bring Leys since Archer would be in spirit form.”
You say that, but why would you need to bring Archer to something like this. . . oh, of course, he must have been the one who wanted to come. Okay, so then why is Filia’s bodyguard protecting you?
“Are there any messages you would like me to pass onto milady? After last night, I take you’ve reevaluated your position on our generous non-aggression pact?”
“Sorry to disappoint, dude. Just thought she should know Saber’s Master lives in the Mission.”
Rich starts muttering under his breath, “I knew it. Why else would Matou. . . then that boy was. . .” He takes a breath, “Where did you get this information?”
Shit. Can’t say, oh the overseer told us because then Rich would be like, why doesn’t the bowl-cut priest take care of it himself and why would he tell you to tell me. Oh crap, it’s been too —
“Nadine was showing me the Mission today. I’m Irish. Irish Catholic. Wonderful place. But for some reason, there were bounded fields within the holy space. Nadine, the poor ganch, fell into one and Saber appeared.”
“I sure underestimated you, Mary, if you got away from Saber.”
“S-She was in spirit form. We were close to the public museum section,” I quickly say.
He half buys it in his eyes we’re too dumb to lie. “Why are you telling me this? Why not go to the overseer; he’s the one actively hunting Saber.”
“Rider. . . can’t beat Saber.” Last night’s holographic truth that was seared into my eyeballs. Rider can put up a good fight, but Saber’s stronger than him in every aspect. That’s a half-truth. Saber is clearly stronger than Rider, but Phahn has enough resources to revise Mary’s history. Both Rich and I know this, so here comes the piece de resistance, “And Archer looked really excited last night when he was watching their fight.”
“We shouldn’t be doing the overseer’s job for him,” Rich says to empty space behind him. “Yes, we do have a bone to pick with the Matou.” He turns back to us, “When’s the market closing?”
My phone says a quarter to nine. “Twenty minutes. The food rescue volunteers are already collecting the excess veges. The place should be empty in like fifteen?”
“Cheers. Thanks for the heads up, Nadine.” He clicks his tongue. “You’re not a half-bad Master, forcing Arch— milady’s hand like this.”
Say that to me with your mage face.
“I get why you won’t teach me magecraft, but can I at least get Fillia’s number? Because you guys owe me, us.”
“You kind of make me want to take that back now. You still have a long way to go if you think milady would lower herself to using something as degenerate as a cell phone. But I can give you mine.” I slip my phone into his outstretched hand. “By the way, Nadine. What were you doing on campus yesterday? You’re in high school, right?”
Weird question. “Mary wanted to check it out. Something about the chance to see scholastic opportunity provided to women in this enlightened era was too good to pass up?”
“No dearie, you didn’t want to show your face at school.” She puts a hand on my shoulder. “You wanted to hike up to the dorms because you can see the entire campus from up there, but your Command Spell started hurting.”
That doesn’t sound like me. I hate hiking because it’s the only thing people in this town talk about with even a hint of nuance. I do remember my Command Spells hurting though.
“Only because when we toured the city, you were really excited about the campus. Anyway, what’s it to you, Rich?”
“Amazed that you happened to walk into my guest lecture. Small world.” Don’t exaggerate. The world’s huge; Tolosa’s just small enough that you can run into a vampire’s feeding ground after ditching a party. He hands me back my phone.
“Have a safe trip home. Great networking with you!”
I give him a thumbs up that’s as fake as that line.
With that, I’ve set up the distraction. Now, how are we going to get in?
*****
After leaving the Farmer’s Market, Mary and I sneak into an empty parking structure a block away from the Mission. You can usually get an unobstructed view of the Mission’s gardens and back entrance on the top floor. The only problem? I pull my jacket sleeves over my fists and hug my knees behind the cement barricade.
“A-Anything?”
Mary stands tall with a frown on her face. Her elbows rest on the metal railing, and her new, stylishly oversized knit Twin Towers brand jacket flaps in the bone-chilling night wind.
“No magical energy yet. Did you set that timer, dearie?”
“It’s on vibrate. Five m-more minutes.”
Mary said there’s a bounded field, a magical barrier that won’t allow anyone inside the Mission, that popped up when the sun went down. Mary’s Class Skill, Presence Concealment should be enough to get her through the bounded field undetected, but because she’s going to be carrying a candle and the listening device that’s currently in my jacket pocket, she can’t go in as a ghost. The way she explained it, Presence Concealment is similar to obfuscation magecraft. At really high ranks you can’t see or recognize her even if she’s standing right in front of you. I’m guessing a high rank would mean a butterfly, Mary’s is a fat caterpillar, not even a chrysalis, so it’s difficult to sense her presence but possible if the Servant or Master have strong magical energy-sensing abilities. Luckily, we’ll have Archer starting an all-out assault on the Mission, giving Mary the perfect opportunity to jump down, make her way across the street, and sneak in. As for me, I’ll be up here looking after her new Twin Towers jacket, trying not to catch a cold.
We took ten minutes to get from Farmers to the top of the parking structure. I called the bowl-cut priest, letting him know what was happening tonight and to have the app or program he was going to use to listen ready. Then came the waiting. There’s a lot Mary and I could have talked about that five minutes like what do you mean Caster invited us to volunteer at a soup kitchen tomorrow, what’s so bad about infiltrating a church when the priest who rightfully owns the place tells you it’s okay, or Estella asking me to help her kill Caster. But there are butterflies in my stomach that might really be Mary’s. I want to say something Masterly like, ‘I’ll use a Command Spell if things get bad’ or maybe even ‘that’s a nice jacket.’ Still, what sort of pathetic Master am I to say, ‘Good luck!’ as she tries to infiltrate another Master’s headquarters while I’m freezing my ass as a glorified coat hanger?
Without warning, Mary pushes herself from the railing to face the vista of empty parking lot spaces.
“Ma—”
“Get up, girl.” She swallows. “They’re coming.”
I clamber up, my hands in my pockets. My invisible Command Spell hurts. That means. . .
Click, click, click.
The footsteps don’t come from the staircase behind the locked door on the left corner of the room, but the incline the cars use to access rooftop parking. Step by step, a woman I’ve never seen before forges into our reinforced concrete wasteland of faded white lines and half-functioning parking lot lights.
Strawberry blonde, pointed face with slight bags under her gentle eyes, she might have her hands up but honestly, I don’t know if she’s surrendering or threatening us, because on the back of her right hand is a Command Spell, the three strokes creating an angelic bird with a sword as a beak facing the light-polluted sky.
“Mary, if I jump off the roof can you handle the landing?”
“First time for everything, dearie. . .”
Okay, I don’t want to go splat so that’s going to be our last option.
“Nadine. Can I call you Nadine? I don’t want to fight.” Too calm, too controlled, her voice effortlessly warms the chilly night air between us without betraying any emotion. “I’m Amelia. My mom named me after one of her heroes. I represent the U.S. Government in this Holy Grail War. I know you’re not a magus, just a normal high school student who got caught up in this. I know your Servant isn’t controlling or coercing you. I know that the overseer being a Master in this war makes it difficult to resign. But I need to let you know that if you keep fighting, not only you but the people you care about are going to be in danger. I can help you. I have been helping you. We have people who can protect you and your family until this all blows over and you go back to school, take those SATs, and get into a good four-year college. How does that sound?”
Stop being a Master?
I can help you, I’ve been helping you. . .
Mary sprawled in a puddle of her own blood while I was frozen, a claw kneading my skull, tightening until I felt like it was pulling at my insides. My chest clamps itself at the memory because switching on my magic circuits isn’t what saved me. It was a white-gloved hand crushing the vampire’s deathly pale wrist.
“She’s. . . Berserker’s Master.” Words croak out from my dry throat. Come on, say it louder, with more force, otherwise, “She’s Berserker’s Master. The doctor she was talking about at the party.”
Mary grows pale.
“Look, Nadine,” Berserker’s Master is about five meters away from us now. “You’re not the first civilian to accidentally enter a Holy Grail War. There was a nice freelancer who came back home to visit his parents. Found some ancient documents in the shed with instructions on how to summon a demon. Thought it would be a laugh. Summoned a Servant who forced him to kidnap children. Another Master put a bullet in him, right here.” She taps the middle of her sizable forehead. “An ethics teacher came across a wounded Servant who had just lost her Master. Nice guy. Took her in and made a contract with her so she could stay in this world. Practice what you teach, right? Found out she was draining the neighbors’ life force because he couldn’t supply her with energy. Stabbed right in the heart. As luck would have it, that teacher had a student who became a Master as well. Orphaned by a previous Grail War, he probably fought because he felt like he needed to make sure bad things didn’t happen in his town again. But against magi? Servants? He didn’t stand a chance. And. . .” She hesitates but pushes through. “There was a girl. She was only ten but the Holy Grail gave her Command Spells. She still haunts me.” Why did she suddenly look to her left for a moment? “A-anyway, it’s not just Masters. My own sister was a cop, a lieutenant. Her squad was trying to protect the citizens of Snowfield from being collateral in a Holy Grail War. To this day, I don’t know what really happened to her. Nadine, please, I don’t know what the other Masters and overseer have told you but this is not a game.”
Snowfield, Nevada. Right after a bunch of politicians died from heart attacks there were some freak storms and a pandemic there. The entire city went into lockdown. I was a kid but I remember my mom panic buying toilet paper in case it ever spread. That was all related to a Holy Grail War?
But, like, you don’t need to speak to me like I’m a kid.
The Holy Grail War is dangerous. I know.
This isn’t a game. I know.
People die. I know just as well as you do.
You don’t need to unload your entire sob story onto me.
“I — We’re going to clear Mary’s name!”
Nadine Craig yells back because she wants to be someone else. On the roof of this vacant parking lot, I’m confronting you as a Master, not some pathetic girl no one understands because they’re too blind to see the world in all its mystery. I can’t let that go. I won’t let that go. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to let you take that away from me!
So, I’ll reject everything you are to accept everything I want to be.
Annoyed, she mumbles, “What? No, of course, I’m not going to. . .” Is she talking to Berserker? “We’re willing to work with you. That’s not a problem, at all. Let me take you and your Servant in and we’ll figure out what Mary wants to be investigated and all our agency’s resources will be at her disposal. You have my word as a doctor. First, do no harm. I’m trying to make sure as few people die as possible.”
Mary steps forward; she’s almost a sickly shade of pale green.
“Mary?”
Unbridled pale fury.
“You don’t get to spake that line, Doctor. No, not again. How many times do you think you so-called ‘medical professionals’ have promised the EXACT FUCKING THING! Take the tests, Mary. Humiliate yourself and take the tests then we can help you. Help you, we’re only trying to help you. We’re keeping you here because of you; we’re trying to help you. And you can help us help you. Because that’s all we’re thinking about, your best interest. You want to be helped, don’t you, Mary? You need to be helped because you’re an uneducated, Irish COW! Not this time!” Breathing ragged, she’s burned most of her fury off. “Nadine, we’re getting out of here. . . Jump.”
Berserker’s Master, the Doctor, Amelia, whatever, her arms slump to her side as she realizes, “You’re. . .”
“Nadine. Jump,” Mary says without looking back at me.
“No Mary, you’re going to attack her.” Hands trembling in my pocket, I say so as calmly as possible.
“Nadi—”
“Mary, listen to me.” I cut her off because, “The alarm just went off.”
The world heaves and convulses as two shockwaves of divine magical energy collide a street away. The after-effects produce enough illusory air pressure that the Doctor and I both reflexively shield our faces. Yes, both the Doctor and I.
Her charge might not be as tempestuous as Archer’s or as fiery as Saber’s, but she’s still a Servant. My Servant.
The twenty feet separating us are chopped and diced in less than a second.
That’s the time difference for those who the tsunami of magical energy caught unawares and those who expected it, using it to their advantage.
The silver meat cleaver is drawn and raised in a single practiced motion. She’s not a killer, she says, so let your fury drive that knife. Cut her legs, her arms, any part of her that attempts to compel us into accepting that we aren’t fit for this moonlit world.
— Crunch.
The sound of steel carving into meat.
— Cling.
Metal yields to flesh and shatters.
“Mary —!”
A flurry of white fists and then a finishing crimson kick send my Servant flying into the metal railing. The impact cracks the supporting concrete and bends the railing, but it doesn’t snap so Mary doesn’t plummet into the street below. She howls at her impossibly broken limbs.
Berserker materialized and defeated Mary in less than the moment it took for Mary to close the gap.
Inverted nerves grind against each other as Mary starts pulling something vital from inside of me. My insides are on fire, molten butterscotch again, no, liquid steel, and I can see my death quickly approaching. Ram’s horns erupt from my head, the leathery wings on my back snap open, skin melts off to reveal scales. Theboils over in a walk-in freezer. A contradictory illusion isn’t a fantasy if the feeling is real.potbody
I gasp, “Mary, get up.”
Everything inside of me gets pushed out.
“GET. UP.”
I eject my life into the magic circuit rejecting my body until I can taste blood in my mouth. Mary starts snapping. The excess magical energy I’m sending struggles to set her broken bones.
Slowly, she pushes herself off the ground. She can move again, but only that, move.
Amelia’s silent, looking off to her left, again. Berserker hasn’t moved, waiting for her Master’s command. She won’t wait much longer; she’s confirmed Mary’s an enemy that needs to be exterminated, no, sterilized.
There’s no escape. Even if I were to jump off the roof and Mary correctly handled the landing, we couldn’t outrun that crimson health nut.
“Nadine. . . ” A desperate weak voice.
Our connection tells me it’s nothing fatal. My clairvoyance shows me Berserker has a skill, Anatomy Understanding. From the description, she instinctively targets a human’s vital points and cripples them with surgeon-like precision. Fighting Berserker, you can’t expect anything less than what Mary’s experienced. But at the same time, there’s nothing more to a Berserker.
“Tsu— Nadine. If you keep this up. Your Servant, Mary, is going to die.”
Because she’s not strong enough.
Not enough.
There wasn’t enough magical energy. Archer and Saber’s clash easily overshadowed the amount both Berserker and Mary spent. But everyone’s stopped, except me.
“I’ll supply you with more magical energy. You’re fighting.”
This rooftop that was so cold five minutes ago is hot to the point that I’m sweating uncontrollably. Instead of my ski-jacket, I peel the covering off my Command Spell without laying eyes on the numerous eyes mocking my uselessness against another Master with that constant prickling pain.
“Nadine?” Something looks up at me, almost begging.
Berserker or me. Who is she really scared of?
That doesn’t matter. Concentrate on the feeling. You’re not special, no one is. But you don’t need to be like that girl waiting for tamales. You don’t need a boyfriend to make you interesting. You don’t need a best friend to tell you you’re worth something. You don’t need to be divided. The difference is in the. For these are eyes that see into the world. I must be mystery: isolated, self-complete, unreachable. . . for everything is paper. So you don’t need to search for the Truth like everyone else because it's Right here.knowingrejection
Right?
Right.
The soundless roar of my magic circuits makes everything go red. My face is numb, my knees are numb, even my fist in my jacket pocket, desperately clenched, is numb. I won’t let myself fall because that means yielding to a cruel, fake world where the script is more important than the reality I see in front of me.
“AAAAHHHHHHH —!” Mary gets up shouting to rid herself of fear, fury, feeling so that she can commit to a feeble rush.
Half, no, a third of the speed as before gives Berserker entire seconds to respond.
Paring knife — bent out of shape.
Boning knife — blade sent flying.
Chef’s knife — shattered.
Mary — tossed aside like biological waste.
Berserker walks away from her Master, stepping towards Mary’s spent body. With the waning once-blue Tolosa moon glistening behind her, Berserker looks down, not at Mary’s face but just below her ribcage.
“Why aren’t you sick?” An innocent question.
“Because I’m strong.”
“You are misinformed. Muscle hypertrophy has no effect on immune response.”
A wad of spit squarely hits Berserker’s face. Steel-faced, Berserker simply reaches into her chest pocket for a disinfectant wipe. Without taking an eye off Mary, Berserker wipes her left cheek, then crumples the soiled wet wipe in her fist before dropping it onto Mary’s equally crumpled body. A lady never litters, so Berserker materializes a grenade they might have used in one of the World Wars to dispose of the trash.
Utter travesty. I’d be laughing if I could move my face. Servant. Master. Equally useless. But this is what it means to be a Master. This is what it means to be a mage. My eyes tell me this is right. This is where you belong. On top of a concrete wasteland, body on the brink of breaking, magic circuits spent, holding your clenched hand up high just a moment before Berserker pulls the pin, you announce what has been in your hand this entire time. That everything happening on this rooftop is being recorded and transmitted.
We’re all thrown off-balance, but this time it's not because our magic circuits are rattling from a tidal wave of divine magical energy. The very concrete underneath our feet starts trembling. All my expended magical energy has been a beacon to make this one moment happen.
“Your reinforcement has ARRIVED —!” A jolly shout from. . . below.
The ground underneath Berserker’s feet cracks and then ruptures as a greatshield breaches, spraying chunks of concrete, grey asteroids with no orbit to follow, all over the vacant lot. As cement dust begins to settle, I can’t help wondering how many floors of the parking structure he broke through.
“Ri. . . der?” In one swift motion the Doctor unholsters her handgun.
He pays her no attention. He only has eyes for Berserker. “Good evening, deserter.”
The insult doesn’t register. Berserker has unfinished business. She pulls the pin like it’s the tab of one of my mom’s diet sodas, and pitches the grenade at Mary’s powerless body.
— Clang.
With one sweep of his shield, Rider parries the explosive on a stick, sending it high in the sky where it detonates, filling the lot with the acrid smell of gunpowder and burned shrapnel.
“Berserker, please stop.” The Doctor is still pointing her peashooter at Rider. He just deflected Berserker’s grenade. There’s no way that smaller grenade you pulled out of your pocket will do anything. “Nadine. Did you ally with the overseer?”
“The treaty was drawn and signed earlier this evening.” Rider answers before any instance of the truth can come from my mouth.
“What happened to Church neutrality? Phahn said it himself last night, ‘we will neither harm nor aid any of you.’ How can you call yourselves the faithful?” The Doctor says in a dead voice.
“I have been notified of the contract between this union of states’ governing body and the Church. Milord remains neutral. If you recall, healer, the overseer impartially gives shelter to all Masters who seek it.”
“She still has everything to do with me.” The Doctor says through gritted teeth to no one in particular, before turning to me. “Nadine, you forfeited?”
I try to answer but my throat seizes up. What was red starts to flicker.
“Both Servant and Master renounced the Holy Grail but showed interest in helping bring Saber and her Master to justice. The Church’s neutrality remains unblemished. We understand your confusion. As this was a recent development, we had little time to send a missive. Nadine Craig and her Servant are hereupon commissioned by the Church to aid in overseeing the Grail War under the supervision of Father Sancraid Phahn. On the other hand, Amelia Levitt, invited representative of this union’s governing body, was your Servant not aiding Saber last night? If you continue to ally with the traitor, the Church will have no choice but to. . .”
He stops because Amelia lowered her gun, pocketed the egg-shaped grenade, and is running at me.
I’ve fallen to my knees, blood uncontrollably spilling from my mouth. It gurgles out, clogging my throat, saturating my lungs.
Something inside me must have ripped. Who am I kidding, everything probably ripped.
I’ve lost so much control that my chest seizes up and my thighs are wet. Without oxygen circulating through my body, my knees quickly lose strength and I’m on my back.
Someone yells my name, but I’m not interested.
When that superhuman force ran rampant through my body, I finally felt something that I hadn’t in a long time. It welled up and filled every cell in my body just long to make itself known, and even if a flood of pain quickly drowned it out, the sensation’s phantom lingered just enough for me to savor what could have persisted. In that maelstrom of mystery, these eyes found aeveryone who’s ever walked this path shares.scarexperience
Black oblivion begins filling the edge of my vision.
With all my remaining strength I reach out into the empty, blue-grey light pollution for the stars no one else can see. . .
What a glistening, accepting.truthdream
. . . I don’t want to die.
*****
Ba-dump.
An external will forcibly injects life into my heart. The only difference between a defibrillator and this? My dad’s heart never restarted, mine does.
I gasp and splash.
The red, viscous liquid around me doesn’t let me struggle and honestly, I’m too tired to do anything but float so the current takes me along the pristine maze. No matter how the water (?) laps at the tightly packed white marble walls they don’t stain. Pity, it’d look better in checkerboard. At least the sky is the right color. Because the color of the sky is supposed to be a reflection of the water. Relieved, I close my eyes and let the buoyant forces wrap around me, a little boat floating down a river one summer morning a lifetime ago.
*****
This pillow is crushing my ear so I turn my face and no-oww, this pillow is crushing my forehead. Not a pillow, the back of a chest plate. That’s when the gamey, earthy smell underneath me hits my nostrils. Not the gentle rocking of my dad’s old boat, it’s a horse and my arms are draped around the rust bucket Rider calls armor.
Where’s my phone?
This fabric isn’t denim. How did I get in tights and God this isn’t my underwear.
Shit, grab onto horse’s butt or you’re going to fall.
“Hey girl, comeon, comeon.” Rider rubs the horse’s neck. “What in the Blessed Lord’s name are you doing back there, little lady.”
“Got it.”
My phone was stuffed between the waistband of second-hand underwear and tights like the women in my mom’s gym cult who can’t afford the tights with pockets stitched into them. The display says one in the morning, So I’ve been out for three, maybe four hours. No messages, that’s strange. You’d think my mom would be —
“Rider. . . where’s Mary?”
She’s alive. I can still faintly feel her through our Master-Servant link, but the looming presence that’s so enraptured with an undeserving world isn’t beside me anymore.
“Unnecessary worry, little lady. Milord constructed a holy circle for her to rest within. She’ll be combat-ready come dawn.”
Right, Mary and I were supposed to infiltrate the Mission but a fight broke out with Berserker on the parking structure’s roof. Man, that was cringe, wasn’t it, losing control of your bladder because you overused your magic circuits. I’m just glad. . .
“What happened after I fainted.”
No, you fucking almost died.
“Berserker deployed her Noble Phantasm to heal you. Quite honorable adversaries.” Noble Phantasm. That was the thing I didn’t need Archer to explain. “Milord soon arrived with support. He took the servant and yourself back to the Church. Don’t worry, he had female Executors proficient in healing look after you.”
A sigh of relief, it wasn’t the bowl-cut priest though I suspect he’s the one who picked out these galaxy print tights from the clothes donation. “Milord called your mother who insisted he take you back home rather than allow you to stay in the church overnight, but considering the repairs necessary, here I am, at your service.”
At my service? Rider, you’re trotting down suburban Tolosa on a fully armored horse.
But I won’t bust his balls about that because I feel good. Like for once, I want to get home as fast as possible so I can go to bed and see what tomorrow brings. Do people usually feel this good after collapsing from exhaustion?
“Thank you, Rider,” I say to his metallic back. “For coming to help us.”
“My pleasure, little lady. Though it was wholly out of duty. No pleasure was taken.” He forcibly chuckles at what he thinks is a little joke.
I laugh a little because it’s terrible.
“I must confess, little lady; this moment calls in the tides of nostalgia.”
Are knights this dramatic because they’re chivalrous or chivalrous because they’re dramatic? If it snowed in California this would be a scene from the annual Netflix Christmas romantic comedy. Should have left me on the rooftop, renaissance faire.
“After an unceremonious weekend hunt, my boys would ride back home with me like you’re doing so now. Like any other good father, I would tell them fairy stories. Their favorite concerned a king’s bastard, son of a favored concubine. After the king died, his evil stepmother imprisoned the boy so she could rule as regent. Naturally, as these stories go, the boy broke out of prison and using his preordained princely nature, stirred a rebellion, overthrowing the evil stepmother. Thus, the kingdom lived happily ever after.”
Suppress the yawn. I think we’re just about five streets away?
“They really loved that one. Really did.” He coughs out a laugh. “But when you love something, you interrogate it, doubly so for children. They would ask all sorts of questions like if the prince had a magic sword, how did he break out of the prison, or what did the evil stepmother do to the citizens. Naturally, I would answer, humoring them, trying to instill a sense of wonder, or perhaps reveling in fatherhood. Peculiar, how after all this time I still remember. As I made up answers or reused material from other stories I knew I would wonder about the characters I was embellishing. The stepmother was only evil and the boy only became king because the story called for it.”
Characters aren’t people, though. They’re vehicles you make do something to drive home some moral. Words on paper, they can never truly come alive, no matter what the Holy Grail does. That’s you, renaissance faire.
“You’re a Heroic Spirit. How about when you go back to the Throne, you ask the hero of that story about what he thinks of what you told your kids? Anyway, your kids, they really loved those stories didn’t they?”
He removes his helmet, turns and raises his eyebrows.
“Aye, they truly loved those stories.”
I want to vomit because I can’t stand looking at someone who’s like my brother, positively glowing. Turn back around already.
“What’s your point, Rider?”
“Heroic Spirits are traditions that lend ourselves to future generations, inspiring them, warning them. “
“What profound knowledge did you want to bestow upon me, Sir Rider?”
“After each battle, I would walk through the fields of the dead reminding myself to be faithful, for my cause was true. You’re bright for a girl, little lady, and glory does lie in the battlefield. But you almost burned out tonight. Next time, your enemy is not going to heal you.”
I’m doing fine on my own thank you very much. Did you see how great I was out there tonight? And you, when you strip away the mystery, you’re just the same as everyone else, mansplaining your life away to a supposedly rapt audience who can only parrot what you say because they’d rather look at you.
“A warning then.”
“If that’s what you heard. Best of luck tomorrow, little lady.”
He stops in front of my house and I thank him for the ride, but not the chat as I dismount. By the time I get to the front door he and the armored horse are already gone. Ghost form I presume.
The house is dark so I use my phone as a flashlight. Turns out there was no need because my mom scuttles out of her room as soon as she hears the door creak open. Half-dressed she looks at me from the stairs.
“Turn that thing off.”
I shimmy my wrist so the spotlight dances on her for a moment. She’s beside herself.
“How on God’s good earth did you get drunk off communion wine?”
First, God’s good earth, that’s new.
Second, what the fuck you bowl-cut priest.
“I thought it was errr, normal wine?”
“Did you think about me, at all? How embarrassing to have my own flesh and blood. . . shit. I can’t even say it. You have to make it up to that nice priest. I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you. . .”
“No problem, mom. I actually really like working there.”
Check.
“Give me your phone.”
“What n—”
“Nadine Francine Craig, give me your phone.”
I hand it to her and she shines the light at my face. Fuck, it’s blinding.
“Say that again.”
“Mom!”
“Say it again.”
“I really like working there. Even going to volunteer at the local soup kitchen tomorrow with them, geez.”
She switches the light off. All I can see are rainbow rings and translucent floaters.
But Mate.
“Thankfully, Sancraid said he would keep it all under wraps. I have enough to worry about tomorrow night.”
“What’s tomorrow night?”
“To think how proud of you I was before Sancraid called. Turning this whole teen angst thing you have going for you into something positive for once. But no, you don’t deserve to know, Nadine. Not anymore.”
Wait. Hmph, so that’s how you pronounce his name, huh. Disturbing. And what does she mean to deserve to know?
“People don’t deserve anything, mom.” I start walking up the stairs. I have to infiltrate a magical fortress masquerading as a church tomorrow. Whatever interior my mom’s helping design is not even a tertiary concern anymore. “Night, hope that movie was good.”
There was a half-finished bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.
“That was Krista and your brother. She waited for you, you know, wanted to clear the air. But someone was so drunk they spilled communion wine all over themselves.”
Oh.
“Hear her out, Nadine, she’s always been good to you and for you.”
Oh?
And I’ve always said —
“And I’ve always said, it was just a matter of time before she fell for your brother.”
There we go. You’ve never actually said that though. You just think every girl will inevitably fall for my brother because who wouldn’t. He’s so perfect.
Normally, I’d get mad and storm off to my room because I know that perfection is all everyone sees in him with their imperfect vision.
Tonight, I smile. No, not to humor her.
Just. What a useless, mundane perfection.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
29/ Winter’s Detritus
Kayla was unusually flushed and quiet when I brought the tamales to the table. Most families had finished eating, so we could move if the lamps were too hot. She kept shaking her head and thanking me for the food. I took out a wasabi packet, tore it and squirted a pea-sized dollop onto the masa. She rolled her eyes. After four months, a practiced reflex.
“Why wasabi?” She almost always asks me that too.
“There are people who like bacon soda.”
“Chris, no one thinks bacon is cool anymore.”
“What about putting melted cheese on everything?”
“Doood, melted cheese on anything is so good.”
“It’s like that but wasabi.”
“But ummmm, can you really taste anything?”
I take another bite out of my chicken tamale and count off the ingredients in my head. “The wasabi just makes it better. An extra kick.”
“I don’t know. Aren’t tamales like pretty good on their own.”
Sure, you can taste every ingredient and spice used to make this cuisine, but when you add something that doesn’t belong, i.e. wasabi, you can glimpse true flavor within the oxymoron before the impurity blocks everything out.
We continue eating and chatting. By we, I mean, she gossips about what’s going on at school, what song she wants to learn on the ukulele next, and the progress she’s made in the new game she’s playing. I ask questions so she’ll keep ummming and liking. When our Farmer’s date is over, I, as always, take her to a small parking lot down the road where her dad always parks.
He’s a single parent. Something happened to her mom when she was really young. They don’t talk about it. She says he’s a decent dad, but sometimes too helicopter-y and super obvious. On our first ‘date’ he followed us and I ended up waving at him. Their faces. You could tell they were related from that alone. I was just happy to have a chance to apply my Executor training.
I thought her dad and I would get along because he’s in middle management and I’ve been told a kid my age shouldn’t be such a good cog in the local governmental machine. As our pretend relationship progressed, he liked that I was dating his daughter too much. Everyone likes me, but it’s a general level of like where they’ll smile politely, ask me how I’ve been, and what I’m doing. Then, I give them one personalized compliment, one general answer, one specific answer, and an almost self-deprecating joke. Then — well it’s a thing; I could go on forever. With Kayla’s dad, it’s always so great to see you, she talks about you so much, we should go hiking/fishing/camping together exclamation mark. He’s not interested in me; just that I’m treating his daughter the way he thinks she deserves to be treated by someone romantically interested in her.
“Come on Dad, let’s go. Chris has to get home before nine.”
The only time Kayla manages a stage-worthy sentence deserving of the standing ovation she so desires is when she’s admonishing her dad.
“Okay, okay already, let me start the car first.” He winks at me, “Stay gold, zoomer.”
Kayla buries her face in her hands.
*****
These bounded fields around the Mission must be why Cherry asked me to meet her. I’m no expert but they were most likely activated just after sundown because she didn’t want to deal with the gap between day and night. As I walk up the stairs from the plaza, the air feels slightly colder and my face is getting tingly. If I blink, I’ll find myself walking in the other direction, believing I’ve finished whatever I came here to do. The first layer must be for general foot traffic.
“I’m home,” I call out.
Cherry’s on her phone sitting by the foundation — reading a horror e-book, no doubt.
“Did you have a good time?” She looks up and tilts her head. “What did you get her?”
“Tamales.”
“This might be a little out of order, but you could have done better.” She touches her phone to her chest.
I shrug. Kayla said she wanted tamales. “Thank you for waiting.”
“Chris, I don’t want you falling into imaginary number space.”
Not a joke.
She gets up, pockets her phone, and starts to lead the way through the second layer of the bounded field.
— Click, click.
Soles on stone.
We both immediately turn since the only people who can get through the first cognitive barrier are severely mentally ill, meditation gurus, absolute contrarians who blindly walk through life, or part of our world.
A silver-haired woman with a man behind her.
“Illy—” A somewhat familiar name I heard a little more than an hour ago chokes itself out from Cherry’s throat.
The illusory sonic boom accompanying the storm of divine Lesser Source annihilates that last syllable. Lancer gave me less than a second to react. Archer floors the pedal, instantly accelerating into godspeed. Sever Cherry’s head? Stab Cherry’s heart? Cleave Cherry in twain? His killing intent says he can do all three at once no matter what defense we paltry, pathetic humans can offer.
— Clang.
Sparks light up the Mission steps as they do every year. Tonight, they’re not from the local fire-dancers, but crystallized mystery refusing to yield to bronze.
Saber materialized just in time to save us. The inferno of released magical energy still blows us back. Push yourself back up and get away as fast as possible because Saber’s struggling. The lag time from materializing meant she could barely defend against the tempest raging up the Mission’s steps. She doesn’t need us to worry about.
The rest of the world fades away as the edges of their swords lock.
Archer with only one arm.
Saber with the high ground but a disadvantageous stance.
Archer’s the first to attempt breaking the stalemate; his forearm and bicep strain and then tighten as additional brute strength is brought to bear.
Saber’s only reply can be fiery magical energy immolating her golden sword red. Even the ambient magical energy threatens to break through whatever defenses Cherry managed to muster. No, parts of the bounded field have already been broken, and like steam escaping through an exhaust, the pressurized magical energy evaporates into downtown Tolosa.
The magical energy output of a quartet; no, order; no, battalion — Not just the quantity pouring out, but the very sanctity of the magical energy sunders every sense. Two demigods flagellate their mortal shells with divine flame until they’re purified of mortal sin, then, finally, released from this earthly coil.
“MATOU! SAKURA —!”
Unable to restrain what seems to be his entire purpose, Archer shouts at the figure behind Saber.
He shouldn’t know that name. I turn.
She’s looking down, hair hiding her eyes, one arm across her chest gripping her other elbow.
It’s not the name but how he bellowed it. Archer knows Cherry. That’s impossible, Servants don’t retain their memories from one summoning to the next. Imagine the paradoxes that would occur if they did. Then after he was summoned?
“AAAAHHHHHHHHHCCCCCAAAAAAAAAA —!”
In reply to Archer’s roar, Saber’s slack expression contorts itself until her face is nothing but lines as she screams in either anguish or hate. Passionate flames flow from her sword, swimming upstream to envelop Archer’s sole arm, licking at sparks of magical energy. The seconds the flames rush to immolate him seem like minutes to us watching.
Archer burns on Saber’s pyre without batting an eye at the corroding flame that bathes his body. The instant gratification of catharsis burned off; his expression is as it was yesterday evening on top of that hill. The gold eyes set in that slate gray face focus solely on what’s in front of him, Saber’s flickering warm orange flames only lighting up the stalwart heroism glowing within.
Seeing this, Saber hisses not in frustration, but with pure hatred at that immortality. There’s no life, no romance in that. A stone statue. An ice statue. If it can’t burn it's just as useless to her. So then, a stronger flame, a hotter flame. If it’s Saber, she can definitely produce one.
Because humans don’t set things alight because they want to see things burn or to feel the warmth. That’s nothing more than a mechanical natural disaster; my thoughts and prayers to those caught in its conflagration.
We’re different, she told me during lunch. She’s right. The statue aflame, shedding its mortality may be divine, but the doll striking flint against passion again and again, as it attempts to light the pyre to curse reality is — well it makes me feel warm inside. To be filled to the brim, yet to continue protecting the box she’s constructed for herself, she weighs her past and her dignity and has no choice but to burn off the excess.
Saber’s sword, now an incandescent light-bulb yellow, begins to melt through Archer’s bronze sword. It’s clear who holds the greater mystery. But mystery alone does not determine the victor. The resolution alone in the Archer’s stance won’t let anyone watching forget that. It’s hopeless though, even if Archer won’t burn, the bronze sword finally catches aflame, and begins to smelt. I think I catch the faint sound of a pop or a squawk from the gasses being driven off.
Missing an arm and his weapon almost completely worthless, the giant, clothed in flames, retreats, hopping down the stone stairs, landing in front of his homunculus Master and her Tuner. Deprived of their source of magical energy, the glow of the yellow-orange flames softens, and then the embers wink out, leaving only his almost slate-skin unmarred.
No doubt everyone other than the combatants is thankful for the reprieve, but this is still bad. If Archer and Saber continue fighting, they’re going to destroy the entire Mission. Cherry knows that; that’s why she, “Einzbern! W-What are you doing here?”
The homunculus curtseys, her eyes are the same as when I first saw her in that high-school stadium. The grey snow that clouds the crimson hasn’t melted. “Fillia von Einzbern. Pleased to meet you, heiress of the Makiri.” With a gloved hand, she gestures to her companion, another familiar face. “My Tuner. You may call him Rich.”
Rich bows. The shimmer from those blonde locks seemingly bounces into the street lamp as he offers a half-smile.
“Counterfeit as this Holy Grail War may be, our millennia-old undertaking requires the Einzbern to participate. We see the Makiri too have been drawn like moths to this Grail’s flame.” The homunculus says. Cherry’s downturned expression doesn’t change. Even if it did, she wouldn’t have stopped. “In accordance with the protocols agreed upon prior to the Second Holy Grail War, our only recourse is combat.”
Fillia. . . von Einzbern. She definitely said that was her name. I know that name. It’s in Father Cervantes’s report from the Snowfield Grail War. Possessed by some mystery from the Age of Gods, the homunculus called a storm to destroy the entire township and twisted a forest into an otherworld. An alliance of Servants and Masters defeated the storm and she was eventually slain, so how can that be Fillia von Einzbern unless it’s a completely different homunculus using her name.
“The Einzberns. . . the Einzberns are gone!” Cherry shouts, “Illya. . . ”
“Hoy, witch.” A low-pressure system of murderous intent clings to the plaza like the mountain fog that rolls in from the Sisters on crisp winter mornings. The moisture seeps through your clothes, brushing your skin so the fine hairs stand on end, reminding you, there’s nothing you can do about the discomfort. The source, Archer, opens and closes his right hand a few times before materializing an exotic hide. “You have no right to say that name.”
Everyone in the plaza knows how dangerous that hide is from the suffocating amount of magical energy leaking from it. I almost double over because I can’t breathe. My mouth is stuffed with a damp my meagercan’t dry.circuitsflame
Something warm squeezing my shoulder breaks the illusion. It’s Cherry, eyes tightened but trying her best to reassure me with that rare straight smile.
“Chris, go inside. I can take care of this.”
I really should because this doesn’t have anything to do with me. To be frank, I don’t think I would feel bad about leaving you here, Cherry, because I know how strong you and Saber are. But, God, stop speaking like you’re a dependable adult when your voice is clearly shaking. That means you’re scared, right. And that boy. . . would never leave the person who raised him when she’s scared. So I have to stay.
The bubbles ignite, sending plumes of magical energy through an array of interlockingto transform me into a machine that produces mystery. There’s no need to connect to a system tonight, just the flue gas is enough to announce my presence to everyone because while I don’t know anything about Fillia, the other two, Rich and Archer — are nice guys. Rich is a heretic so he doesn’t count. Archer, on the other hand, is a hero. Probably the greatest hero in the world.circuitsshafts
“Good evening, sir. Hope you’re doing well.” I wave at Archer, trying to get his attention.
He looks up and blinks once or twice, the suffocating aura around him deflating. “The boy-child from the trees. Easy to miss your minute figure amidst such radiant divinity and a witch. Well met, well met. How goes the Lamyros hunt?”
Rich’s flat look drives daggers into me. Our conversation in front of Kayla at Farmers might have been a charade, but there was some level of mutual respect — the same type the regulars at Ahnenerbe all afford each other just because we’ve chosen to hang out in the same cafe. That’s gone.
“Great hero,” Cherry slowly steadies her voice and bows, “I- Before we continue this duel, thank you for helping my ward, yesterday, even at the cost of your arm.”
“Your flattery is nothing but wind, witch.” There’s no way even this great hero will keep such a peaceful, casual, composure under his Master and Master’s Tuner’s contemptuous glowering. “Though I must admit your gratitude is sincere. I will not deny it.”
Haven’t I learned to stop underestimating him?
As long as he’s interacting with us, he isn’t trying to kill us. The problem is Saber. Although her sword is at her side, it’s still yellow and trembling. She still wants to set him alight — right, Mad Enhancement. Cherry must be talking her down telepathically, so negotiations are up to me.
“Sir, yesterday you asked me to find you if I was ever hunting Lamyr— Dead Apostles. I-I have a new lead.” What a lie.
“Why not ask your guardian and her Servant for help, kid?” So this is Rich as a magus. “Why not ask the overseer? Dead Apostles are a matter for your Church.”
‘Your Church,’ he said. Don’t let it faze you.
“That’s the problem, Rich. Father Phahn is busy trying to neutralize Cherry and Saber, here.” Maintain the neutrality each day spent learning to oversee a Grail War drilled into you. “They’re busy responding to attacks from him and other Masters such as yourselves.” Now throw your hands up in the air in mock exasperation, “There's no one left to do good, honest Church work.”
“Milady, please have Archer attack.”
“The boy-child speaks of too common an occurrence. Many times innocent citizens have beseeched me to save them from foul monsters. I naively asked, what of your sovereign; doth he not stand with his people? They often reply that their kings had conscripted their men-folk to fight wars against neighboring city-states for their own selfish purposes, leaving none to protect the women and children. Despicable! This Lamyros is a threat to innocents. It harassed our broth— comrades-in-arms. What more reason do we need to hunt?”
“Archer, you would sully your contract to the Einzbern family for a Church picnic?”
“Tuner. . .” Archer slowly looks back at a stone-faced Rich.
The contract can only function because the trine redirects the tension, circulating any contentious energy between Archer and Rich into their Master, the homunculus Fillia. What they feel for h— that artificial nature spirit, I don’t know, but Cherry might.
“How about we come to an agreement, Fillia? Archer helps Chris with the vampire and in return. . . a duel with Saber to the death.”
“Preposterous. We can finish this right n—”
“That opportunity still exists, we are ensuring an honorable exch—”
Fillia’s misty red eyes favor neither appellate. They peer above the Mission into the skyline where the light pollution meets the sky. We all do because for an instant there was a flash of magical energy. Wispy, insubstantial even for magical energy, it was nothing like the solemn pressure emanating from Saber or Archer’s divinity that either dries or electrifies the air, respectively. A meaningless amount of magical energy, but it made us, even Rich, stop for an instant. Too pathetic, struggling to announce its presence to our world, it burned itself up in less than an instant. Yet, as everyone stopped to look, all the tension that bubbled up in this plaza didn’t boil over; it wafted away with that paltry breeze.
Archer, of course, is the first to recover.
“I’ve decided. A Lamyros will be the perfect warm-up for challenging this burning warrior queen.” The cloth in his hands dematerializes. “Milady, Tuner, let us return to camp.”
“Archer. . .” Fillia starts.
Rich’s face doesn’t change. He already accepted the decision even if he doesn’t like it. A heretic’s determination bound to a higher purpose.
“How can you trust the witch, Archer?” I was wrong. “After all she’s done, do you think she’ll keep this promise?”
“I’m more than happy to make a binding contract.” Cherry walks down the stairs so she’s standing right beside Saber and level with the Einzberns.
Archer turns back, glancing at Cherry, his eyes can’t help but linger just a moment longer. He’s trying his best to rectify an image of her in his mind to the puny human in front of him. Eye contact breaks as the sound of crumbling concrete resound in the distance accompanied by police sirens and the hum of fire engines. Something happened in the parking garage two streets away from the Mission.
Archer begins to dematerialize as he walks down the plaza steps towards the snow-white homunculus and Tuner. Dismissively, “A witch’sis easily broken. I do not require any words from you —”contractrule
“I-I swear on the name, Illyasviel von Einzbern,” Knuckles white, fist clenched, Cherry speaks.
His upper body quickly becoming insubstantial, Archer flicks his head back in our direction. Only for a second. I can’t read the expression in his distant eyes.
Fillia nods to both Cherry and me before following Archer’s nonexistent footsteps.
Rich looks at us, shaking his head, “See you nice and early tomorrow, Chris. I’ll text you our address.” Dead Apostles come out at night, though.
The heretical drains itself from Rich’s face leaving a quick, toothpaste commercial smile before he follows his mistress.
I take a deep breath while Cherry is making sure Saber is okay.
“But my pyre,” she almost hisses.
Cherry pats her on the back. “Don’t worry Saber, your pyre will be built.”
We pass the statue of the Mission’s founder holding a gigantic wood cross to reach the front entrance. The imaginary number space boundary layer has been thoroughly torn apart. It’ll take Cherry at least a full day to repair it.
“What about the parking garage?”
Holding the front door open, Cherry answers, “From the sound of it, Father Phahn and the clean-up crew have that taken care of. Anyway. . . after everything that’s just happened, you probably have some questions, right?”
Yes, because now cooperating with the Einzberns is instrumental in finding and killing the Dead Apostle.
*****
The kitchen light is on the dimmest setting. Don’t want to wake Father Kelsey. Saber’s dematerialized, so it’s only the two of us and Chinese tea in a teacup that Cherry’s holding with both hands as if it didn’t have a handle.
“Who’s Illy—”
“There’s a lot —”
We slightly recoil from the kitchen table as our voices overlap. She looks down at her tea, so my gaze is level with her bangs.
“Illyasviel von Einzbern. . . Illya was Sen— Shirou’s sister. She was a Master in the Fifth Fuyuki Grail War. She, Fillia, looked like her, grown-up.”
Shirou. . . he’s Cherry’s lawyer boyfriend. He visits whenever he gets the chance, even helped repair my bike a few times. He also knew Dilo. I always thought it was strange he was Japanese and also a ginger. His sister being an Einzbern homunculus kind of explains that but opens up a whole can of worms that isn’t my business.
“How did she. . .” Officially, there were only two Masters who survived the Grail War: Cherry and her sister.
“Saving Shirou.” That explains why the Kotomine HGW-726-F5 report listed him as a casualty. “She was the strongest Master. . . and possibly the most advanced homunculus the Einzberns ever created. I think that’s why they shut down after her defeat.” Except for the remnants that fought in Snowfield.
There’s something that doesn’t make sense.
“If Illya died saving her brother, why do Rich and Fillia resent you? And Archer — what was that about?”
She sips her tea while trying to force a smile.
“I. . . took Illya’s Servant and opened the gate she was coined to open.”
All these years and I had forgotten. No, I didn’t forget, we were just talking about it at lunch today. I didn’t want to remember that Cherry is a Holy Grail. And because she was a Holy Grail, innocent people died in Fuyuki. Every time her boyfriend’s taken her out for a date, she’s had to reckon with whether their server or cashier lost someone because of her. Waking up every day knowing that you irreparably ruined lives and you’ll never be able to make up for that — she faces it all with that crooked half-smile printed on her face to feign nostalgia like whenever she tells me an anecdote about her life in Fuyuki.
She’s said the damage could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for the help of the Burial Agency’s No.7 and their assistance was a large reason why she agreed to move to Tolosa and consult for the Church. I think that’s why she worked so hard, training every employee, editing every protocol, attending meetings about setting up meetings along with her day job. If you were so haunted, Cherry, why did you become a Master again?
“Her Servant, Berserker, was Herakles. Archer looks less monstrous, but they’re very much the same Heroic Spirit. The Einzbern must have inserted his Berserker form’s memories into him.”
The Einzbern specializes in the flow and transfer of power. They can even shift consciousnesses into objects. Disregarding how conscious a Berserker really is, “The Einzbern family is gone. No one’s seen them after Snowfield. That homunculus, Fillia, she must be the very Einzbern from Snowfield.”
“Chris,” her violet eyes look straight into me. “The Einzberns are for me to worry about.”
She’s right. Archer will help me track the Dead Apostle. That’s all I need to know.
“Have you read the letter Dilo sent you?”
Ummmm.
“Cherry, do you think I suck too much dick?”
“What? Oh, Chris. . . Who said that to you?” She pushes her chair back, her brows slanted down, nose flared. “It wasn’t K—”
“No, no,” I shake my head. “Just some drunk guy at Ahnenerbe when I was waiting for her.”
“Not to be rude, but the clientele there is. . .”
“What do you mean? We’re the clientele.”
“Look, Chris. . . You’ve made taking care of you these years so easy. No. . . that’s not what I meant to say. More. . . when I was your age, I mostly kept to myself, wishing for other people to fail. I was a bad girl. You don’t have the same eyes I did. You have kind eyes.” She walks over to the sink and turns on the faucet.
I can’t imagine a gloomy, hateful Cherry. She’s always so kind, supportive, and upbeat in a dignified sort of manner. Eh, she’s probably exaggerating how bad she used to be.
“I should go to bed. Big day, tomorrow.” I yawn to show that I’m tired. Considering the day she’s had, Cherry should turn in too. “You aren’t patrolling tonight, are you?”
“Oh, no.” She doesn’t look back. “Saber’s strong. But she can’t win against both Lancer and Rider.”
Then tonight Lancer will be planting trees, unchecked.
As I’m ready to leave something pops into mind, “Cherry. Was it correct to reveal yourself to Father Phahn?”
She turns to face me while still drying her teacup with a dishcloth.
“Correct does not necessarily mean Right,” her normally crooked smile straightens out.
And here, I thought she only smiled like that when he was around.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
30/ Grace Note (II)
At the precipice between consciousness and dream, I see the old man. Ah, it must be because he’s told me this story so many times that I’m able to visualize everything in 1080p.
The magical engine keeps the train running towards its destination while the passengers face the opposite direction. They’re all watching a black-haired woman in a kimono with a blonde secretary’s head in her lap. Don’t tell me the same old story, told the same old way. I don’t have the energy for that. I need to rest. I have more important things to do tomorrow and my arms aren’t fully healed. So close your eyes and let dark oblivion take you.
. . .
Why can’t I go to sleep?
I try to set aside the images — encapsulate the train within the depths of a frozen, disemboweling forest in the bubbles of the dark water where I began. Let me drown until I recede into tomorrow like every other night. But I can’t, for my consciousness slips its ethereal fingers into the folds on my brain, gripping and then dunking it into a tank of black and white film over and over. The liquid film slaps the organ so violently that white water foams around my hand doing the dunking. Within the bubbling tank, the scene tries to play, but the me on the outside, repulsed, reflexively pulls me out only to force me back in a second later.
— I told me, I don’t want to see this because I know what it is.
Let the scene play through me so the information can corrode part of who I am.
— I don’t want to end up as just another scorched mark on that island’s mountain. If I am to be filled, I want to be filled with the things that I should want to be filled with. That’s what he would have wanted because he’s a weak, pathetic —
I’m human. I have to be human. But if I was a machine — a machine doesn’t stop existing no matter how many parts are replaced. As long as the core is present and the circuits aligned, the combustion engine will run.
— Why?
My answer is letting go, drowning me to affirm that this is not just the old man’s memory. That’s why I can seereflection in the window, hear the accusations, smell the tension in the air, taste the chill from the receding blizzard, feel the rhythm of the train moving under all of us, and unlike last time, the exchange does not just become a record my brain compiles but a conscious memory to enslave me, us.the old man’smy
“Ah yes, when Olga Marie took it out of the imaginary number pocket, Trisha's head was still alive. Anyway, within imaginary number magic formulae time is stopped. While there wasn't enough time to write a note, she chose to leave us with the starkest dying message. With her last breath, she left behind a single word. What do you think it was?”
Even Rich doesn’t come close to how she weaves words like a conductor’s baton. All the heretics in the room are entranced by something unpleasant.
“It whispered. . . Karabo.”
Murderous hostility assails me, but I know the story so it can’t hurt me. Because the old man survives, raised me, and is enjoying his retirement upstairs.
“Karabo Frampton,” she repeats. “Your Hindsight is determinative — no, strictly speaking, it’s more determinative than predictive?”
Predictive — calculating the past from surrounding information to simulate a perspective.
Determinative — choosing the past based on the present to affirm an interpretation.
"It's often said that prediction or determination makes no difference to Hindsight. Unlike the future, the past is constant, so it doesn't matter how you look into the past. But, that's just the conventional wisdom. Yesterday's topic, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception which imposes death equally of all that is seen, the Rainbow-ranked Mystic Eyes, is anything but conventional."
On the verge of simmering, bubbles collect around my brain within the liquid film. I’m melting. Part of my brain is melting into this vat, mixing with the black and white, telling me to grab my eye that doesn’t exist.
Why is the old man gripping his eye? The old man’s eyes aren’t those once-fabled eyes that now belong to two Japanese citizens, one with a lengthy Church file.
“I've never seen such a mystic eye, but if you'll allow me to use my imagination and speculate for a moment. Wouldn't it be the supreme form of Foresight or at the very least one of the abilities that allow one to see fate?”
A moan comes out ofmouth, “The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. . . are the supreme form of. . . Foresight.” The woman nods. Those words weren’t meant for her.the old man’smy
“Naturally, everyone eventually dies. Because everything is imperfect, hidden within all is the wish to be beautifully broken and created anew. Looking at the end and reeling it into the present, what else can you call it other than the supreme form of Foresight,” she explains.
The words that I managed to croak out are telling me to listen to the woman accusing the old man because she’s describing my natural enemy. That once upon a time, someone thought the world was unsatisfactory and it would be better to reject everything instead of facing an uncertain future — to create the absolute Right from Truth. What a lonely wish.
"If that's the case, the opposite is also true. Everyone was born. Imperfectly born, we resent the original error. Looking upon the beginning and having it rise to the surface of the present would be the supreme form of Hindsight, no? Ahh, if that is the case, then the world might look like bubbles."
Bubbles haunt the old man and me. That’s why we got along so well. That’s why he was chosen to be my foster-father. Who said that or was it never needed to be said. Something simply accepted.
“Like a space-time bubble,” a snow-white wisp of a man forever on the edge of death and therefore the dearth of Father’s expectation until Mama made me a violin and gave me something to do interjects.
“You’re familiar with the subject matter?” The black-haired woman encourages him. A possible expert witness can’t hurt.
"I'm only familiar with the scientific concept. At extremely small scales, objects are known to be like aggregates of bubbles. I doubt what he sees is scientifically accurate, but would you say it's a concept close to that model?"
“Probably just like that.”
Replace the probabilistic electron cloud with a bounded field line sandwiched between two monolayers of mystery and strip away the nucleus because electrostatic interactions and gravitational fields aren’t necessary to hold the shell together. The past is not grains of memory and record dispensed from the present into three dimensions, but individual bubbles, until they aggregate, their interfaces brush and decide whether the individualorflocculaterejectthe narratives reflected on their surfaces. But no matter how numerous or large the bubble may be, they’re still hollow.coalesceaffirm
“. . . Ah, unfortunately, unlike the rumored Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, this Mystic Eye mostly likely hasn't reached the extreme. It does not see the end. It does not see the beginning. At best, it recognizes and then calls forth a previously established past event — or something of that sort. Determinative Foresight establishes the future. Then it's obvious that Determinative Hindsight affirms what was established in the past. So, if we haveas the end of all things, it's natural that the beginning of all iscessationdeath. These Mystic Eyes revive the facts of the past in the present.”activationlife
Politely and meticulously explained, the logic reminds me of the monthly plinking contest at the shooting range where you’re given twenty-seven rounds to shoot twenty-seven empty cans arranged in a row. Entry fees go to a local cause of the winner’s choice. The Tolosa Sportsman Association calls it ‘having all your ducks in a row,’ after a line in a Stephen King novel one of the owners really found funny. Because even non-hunters know ducks never line up except when mother duck leads them over the hills and far away. Her words are just like the bubbles she’s trying to describe, expose, and cut-down. Are they established because they accurately describe a past or is it because she’s established consensus to the point nothing else could have happened in the past without new evidence? She didn’t even need that particular pair of Mystic Eyes.
“In short, Mystic Eyes that reproduce what happened in the past?” Pink-hair, eye-patch, sobbing as the scratchy whirl of a cranial drill bit grinds against the skull to build the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, abbreviated artificial highway into my airhead.
"Yes, but what can be reproduced from the past should be limited. For instance, in this case, the pre-recorded slash was most likely played back at a specific time, like this."
She picks up an apple and a fruit knife. They must have been brought from the dining car. With a deliberate motion, she draws a vertical line in the air with the blade.
“The slash is recorded here.”
Then with her left hand, she moves the apple to where she drew the line and makes a small cut with the knife.
“After that, if the Mystic Eye holder observes it, the recorded slash severs the target. I would say this is how this Mystic Eye is used — what do you think. . .”
She looks at me.
“Karabo Frampton.”
“Me. . .” There’s so much resistance in the throat that when the words spill out, it feels like having a tooth extracted.
“On the Rail Zeppelin, it’s easy to lay the trap; after all, the train runs on rails.” She traces imaginary rails with the knife. “You slash at thin air in the preceding car with the knowledge Trisha’s head will eventually reach the same place. It’s easy enough to see where she was sitting and you could always increase the length of your slash to account for anything unexpected.”
Everyone watches the apple traveling to the knife. When it finally reaches its predetermined destination, “The train had stopped in the woods when Trisha’s corpse was found. Karabo, you were outside. You looked through the window, recalled the past you perceived, and that area was slashed once again with Trisha Fellow’s head. At that moment, she sealed her head in imaginary number space.”
This has everything/nothing to do with/the old manme.methe old man
The eyes have been explained; that’s what my consciousness wanted to show my brain, right? Because of what the old man and I talked about this morning — how what he perceived eventually enslaved him and by baring that part of his soul, I would know better. That’s how a mentor and apprentice relationship goes. So me, let me go to sleep already. I have a Dead Apostle to hunt tomorrow —
A white hat with a goatee tips the brim with my left hand and scratches sandy blonde hair under a toque blanche with my right as my left hand reloads a six-shooter because my right hand is clenched as I watch a moving company repossess my workshop, leaving only cobwebs as a reminder of the mysteries I once spun, “Hey, wait a sec, doesn’t that mean the serial killings seven years ago were. . .”
The black-haired woman doesn’t let him finish, “I don’t know if you were the serial killer from seven years ago or even the killer this time around. There is no hard evidence. But in this case, there is one measure that we can take. Can you show me? If it’s you — if it’s your Mystic Eyes, no matter how far in the past she was decapitated, you can show us what actually happened.”
“My Hindsight can’t. . .”
Because my eyes aren’t a mystery.
“I want everyone to wait.”
The door to the lobby opens and in walks a teenager in glasses whose heart broke as I fell down the pit of betrayal wheeling a man with long black hair crying on a bridge at my own helplessness.
“Master!”
“Waver!”
Two shouts.
“Finally awake, Lord El-Melloi II?” Even the woman who controls the room acknowledges him.
“There was a little accident and I’m still a little unsteady on my feet, so I asked my disciple to prepare a wheelchair with the help of the Rail Zeppelin staff. . . Impossible, I wouldn’t have thought Melvin would be here.”
“Yo yo, It’s normal to come running when a buddy’s in a crisis!”
“This is none of your concern. And you’re the only one who calls us buddies.”
“Friendship is not formed from a mutual agreement! It’s the intermingling of our hearts! Unconscious approval of each other! Let us further open our hearts to each other and embrace!”
What an agreeable young man. A little anemic and with the bags under his eyes of a predator unable to look away from its eventual meal, sure, but he’s pushing all his resentment into a positive space. Can’t fault him for that.
“Okay, okay, just shut it.”
“Professor, your body. . .”
“There’s no problem. Really, there’s nothing. If there was, I wouldn’t have come out.” He strokes the top of her head through her hood’s ash-grey fabric. If she were a student at my school, the teachers would have her take it off indoors.
“I heard about the situation from Caules. Many things have happened. . .”
“. . . Yes,” she nods. What emotion was lost within that simple answer? “So many things happened. . . so, so many things but I. . . couldn’t. . . but you, Professor. . . ”
“Ha, a Servant, a Child of Einnashe, imaginary number magecraft, and supreme Hindsight. So much crammed into half a day.”
“Ho, where did you hear that from?”
“‘You recalled the past you perceived and that area was slashed once again.' After hearing that much, you can guess what was talked about. Gray. . . we’ll talk about the Servant later.”
He lifts three fingers, his defensive trident.
“Miss Hishiri, your story has three problems.”
“Such a dramatic entrance has left me eagerly waiting for your deductions.”
“One, does Karabo’s Mystic Eye even have such an ability? Two, even if such an ability were to exist it does not preclude another magus from committing Trisha Fellows’ murder. Third, your deduction has no motive. There is no rational reason for Karabo Frampton to kill Trisha Fellows. You can’t corner people with such incompleteness.”
A deduction is an interpretation formed from the facts before one’s eyes. Facts are only dangling points in the ether begging to be connected or dismissed. To challenge a deduction is to challenge a constellation forever falling through a vacuum.
“I see. Your forte, the whydunnit. As you say, the reason is unclear. Maybe the other magi could do something similar, but how do you explain Trisha’s dying message? Either way, we don’t follow the laws of a modern society nor are we police managing a state.. There is not even a trace of a reason why we should follow such a principle here.”In dubio pro reoIn doubt, for the accused
She understands this.
“If you need a reason, then how about his Mystic Eyes of Hindsight made him identify as the serial killer. After gazing at the serial killer seven years ago, the serial killer mixed into him. If the Mystic Eye went out of control, then it’s easily probable.”
He refuses to.
“Are you being serious?”
“And serious equals sincere? Whether we’re serious or simply doing a bit doesn’t make a big difference. After all, we’re magi, Clock Tower magi. Don’t we have enough cause with what I’ve detailed to restrain Karabo? If it’s a question about ability, the evidence is right here.”
“I’m telling you, I can’t do something like that,” I beg.
“Ahhh, you’re telling me you can’t? That’s fine,” she laughs at me. “Karabo’s Mystic Eyes are on auction. Let’s hear what ability your Mystic Eyes have right from themouth.Rail Zepplin’sMystic Eye Collection Train’s
“Heh, these Mystic Eyes will do just nicely.”
An illusion within an illusion imprinting its concept in the brain of all of us within the room, the rose woman sprouts from poor soil, a shaggy, crimson carpet. She is thewho rules the train in her mistress's absence.regentshadow
“It’s time. I’ll be taking them before the auction begins.”
The room is silent. The rosy ghost is waiting for the old man to give his consent, but he won’t speak. No, he can’t speak because I’m the one who moves the mouth. But how can that be when I’m in my bed and it’s —
“What. . . time. . . ?”
“The staff should have told you. We remove your Mystic Eyes half a day before the auction.”
Everything is wrong. I don’t have Mystic Eyes. You want the old man. Let me go upstairs to wake him up. Please. The old man is the one who should be having his eyes taken out.
“W-Wait! There’s still —”
Her fingers as cold and thin as a single sheet of glass slip into my face.
— someone you haven’t considered.
The words never manage to croak out of my dry, sour throat because
— Snap.
With the practiced, ghostly hand and precision of a witch doctor, she severs the spiritual body of my left optic nerve. Half the world and my breath disappear in an instant, snapping the film strangling my overheating brain. I wasn’t given even the seconds necessary to scream because she finished her spiritual surgery and collected my right eye in less than a second.
I can’t see because what she took were mysticeyes.
I can’t breathe. I try to draw breath, but all the oxygen was sucked out when my eyes were plucked out. Sucked out? No, it’s used as propellant to set my melting brain on fire. Soon the smoke will ignite the liquid film but my consciousness refuses to pull my brain out. I grab at my chest because it hurts and because there’s no longer anything to see. I collapse.
“Acting manager.” Then, the sound of the old man’s eyeballs splashing. “With this, the Mystic Eye extractions are complete.”
“We can do transplants, but extraction is a secret technique only the acting manager knows. Usually, she’s asleep and after she waves her hands about, she’ll go back to sleep,” someone I can no longer recognize says.
Sleep. Right. Go back to sleep. You’ll wake up. This is just a bad dream. You can’t breathe properly because your face is under the covers again, so just —
“Oh. . . this is amazing. I don’t think Karabo was aware of this but these eyes reach ‘Jewel’ rank. They’re very suitable as our auction’s eye-catcher. The long-gone shadow of the past raises up to the present like foam, shall we call these the Mystic Eyes of?”TransienceUmbral Foam
Cigarette burns begin to blacken the voided film, artificially aging it like parents do to children’s treasure maps. Soon the offending memory will be forsaken, so affirm the past burning away until it’s nothing but black snow in your mind, for everything is. . .
No, this is real, my dying brain screams, forcing me to accept my other senses.
What is happening to you on that train will continue until it reaches the event horizon known as the present. The accusation will chug along to auction. The auction is struck down by frenzied lightning summoned using the distortion of one Ancestor’s train and another Ancestor’s sterile child to create ato be filled until it becomes a temporary paradise,crenel凹this town nestled in the bosom of the California Central Coast’s Seven Sisters that means nothing to Dead Apostles.just likeunlike
Dead. . . Apostles. . .
That’s right tomorrow you —
“HAAAAH —”
Pure darkness reverts to grayscale to discrete black and white as my consciousness pulls my brain out of the smoking film vat. I seal away everything that just happened somewhere that won’t scald me and focus on the only one question on my mind that can’t be related to anything I experienced.
How did someone install a Grail on this land, and more importantly, why?
Day 4 — End
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
31/ Teleport in the Air
~Interlude~
The sun had yet to peek over Tolosa’s eastern border, a spine of verdant mountains when Lancer returned to his Master’s side. During their brief acquaintance, Lancer found his Master loved watching this interval — when the darkness he ruled retreated into the Pacific — an hour’s hike north of the student village, on top of this volcanic plug. The Sister towered over a pit of graduated students’ architecture projects that Lancer walked through. Miscellaneous, grotesque installations brought forth into this world as an academic means and systematically abandoned here because they had no marketable end. A labyrinth of avant-garde mausoleums, enhousing nothing, commemorating nothing. For Lancer, a waste of time, space, and effort. Yet, this cemetery was his Master’s newfound kingdom.
After climbing the sandy hill, Lancer spied his Master lying on his side, black cape dangling over the edge and right elbow against a plywood table with “Eat, Sleep, BP, Repeat,” scrawled in permanent marker. For a moment, just for a moment, Lancer couldn’t smell the monster on him, only the pristine home.
“Lancer.”
That was only an illusion. A momentarily blocked nose from the pollen of a new day, for as Lancer’s Master spoke, he hoisted the meat sack he had been emptying, and tossed the corpse over his shoulder. The body never landed. As if its depths hid a swarm of piranhas, the dark cape eviscerated the body in seconds leaving nothing but a gentle bloody mist.
“Ensconce oneself, and bestow unto mine self good tidings.”
Without looking back, Lancer’s Master gestured at a swing hanging from chains wrapped around a particularly thick tree branch of the tree. The table or the swing, which amusement did the students install first? Either way, such a flimsy piece of wood couldn’t support Lancer’s bulk. The ground then. Facing away from each other, the vampire laid on top of a cheap homemade beer pong table, his Servant on the ground trying his best not to rest his back on a table leg lest it snap.
“The final trimming has taken root without resistance.” As luck would have it, there had been no sign of the meddler. The madwoman burned his trees with self-interested flames and a troubled face droning on about how problematic everything was. The sheer disregard. He tried to reason with her, beg her, but his lamentations fell on deaf ears. They always did. “There will be enough magical energy injected into the leyline to begin the ritual tonight.”
His Master had nothing to offer but a sharp intake of breath at the realization of Lancer’s greatest wish. For Lancer’s Master, tearing down what he called The Great Tree Known as Time was nothing but a tool to establish the promised land and corral Servants. He cared not of this surface world nor what was outside it like the other participants. Only what could be within. The promise of natural apotheosis had lured him from the hole in the ground where he had been squatting to the prison outside of this vibrantly mediocre American town. A men’s colony, filled with petty criminals struggling to create a life for themselves in its walls was the perfect sanctum to summon Lancer.
“Being that their ugliness is your reason per which to supplant (根こそぎ, nekosogi, pull up [out] by the roots, lit. ‘root/branch shave’) the ways they be?”
Dry grass that begged for late-winter rains prickled Lancer’s palm as it dug into the dirt. The small hole looked like the efforts of a domesticated dog offering a bone to its future self. In Lancer’s case, the offering buried was a frozen burger patty — vegan. Before he returned, Lancer broke into a supermarket to find an offering. The frozen, plastic-wrapped burritos had been his first choice before he noticed the veggie burgers beside them. That was monstrously efficient, Lancer thought; the anthroposphere of this era was destitute of respect for mystery’s absoluteness. Still, Lancer shook his head at his Master’s attempt to rationalize his motivation.
“Ugliness is something I can forgive,” Lancer snarled, canines on full display. “Ugliness is unjust rules forced upon fellow men, locking them into following a certain path, not to prosper, but merely survive. In their pettiness, each sentinel, prisoner, bureaucrat merely acts his part and in doing so carelessly prunes each other’s choices so that tomorrow will be the same as today to preserve the. But what of the voices read but unheard? The exploited, through no fault of their own who find themselves forgotten and without a voice.”treesystem
“You rail not towards the endless stagnation, science, the mode of advancement of which of the Common Sense of Man has manifest unto this world, but the very average fixtures determined by the shared unconscious of all ‘humans alive within the current era’ across all valid adjacent realities (並行世界, hekou-sekai, ‘timelines within a Greater History of Man’). Ergo. . . would I not be as the ultimate embodiment of your hate towards this World?”
The truth in those words was the very contradiction Lancer faced since his summoning. While he may not be a proper Heroic Spirit, heroism still flowed through his veins. He was not the type to contract with a blood-sucking demon, much less one who only saw Lancer as a tool for ascension.
“You smell like my wet nurse.” For one whose hands shall never build anything, that was enough. “What of myself? I cannot accept that you chose to summon me with full knowledge of my identity.”
A sharp inhale like a reverse sigh. “In an antecedent age, ebullience was found in partaking of a game with a lady (美人, bijin, ‘beautiful person’) who was as a friend. Trifling at its core. A sable marble (マーブル, ‘It can mean ‘marble (大理石, dairiseki)’ as in ‘a marble floor’ or ‘a marble pillar’ It can also mean ‘marble’ as in a small glass ball’), centuple, save the sole bone (白いこと, shiroi-koto, lit. ‘white entity’) held, within a receptacle (ビン, bin, ‘a jar’). The victor? Determined per the objective of isolating the white. Unto a duo of hypothetical exemplars exist by which to achieve victory over the lady who is as an opponent. The prelude, the magnum opus (偉業, Igyou, ‘Great Work’) known as transmutation of sable to bone, and its epilogue, picking nothing but the bone. In these matches, the blood-soaked fae (紅の精霊, kurenai no seirei, lit. ‘crimson faerie’) recorded by which I called my opponent snatched bone endlessly (無限, mugen, lit. ‘void limit’) extant. On account of my inability to replicate, I lost and thus besieged with investive query. By what interfacial request, thaumaturgical (魔術的, majutsu-teki, lit. ‘pertaining unto the demonic techniques’) or otherwise was with such phenomenon incurrence unto so absolutely materialized (実体化, kittaika, lit. ‘manifestation to material’)? Be as absent an answer the beauteous one of rouge poured globe (マーブル) unto ground through by which I premised upon myself that naught but parametric accounting was required to enforce such interfacial reaction. Ergo, extant disparity was not unto our means of natural substantiation (現界, genkai, lit ‘present border’) but per which permissed planetary and textural cognition.”
The anecdote washed over Lancer. Try as he might, he could find no fault in his Master’s rationale for fighting in the Holy Grail War; for his own reason sprouted from a similar story. En. His Master’s word. But there was one point where they differed. Where the loreful Master saw a springboard to a reverence that lasted millennia, the feral Servant was left with a simple question.
“What’s wrong with choosing a black marble?”
“Bone is by which the victor is determined.”
“I understand the objective, but to choose white is to discard the black. To develop a method to always choose the white is to eternally discard the black.”
“Marbled corpora makes nothing per but numbered Forms (形態, keitai, lit. "form-state"), wisped. Why challenge simple analogy?”
The black marbles exist so the white marble can be chosen again and again and again. All the suffering, all the laughter, all the marbles never picked are carved onto his Saint Graph, yet appear nowhere else, not even within the so-called omnipotent Grail.
Branches sway in the wind for they are destined to break, returning constituents to the soil to grow cities, empires, worlds. Speculate upon but do not mourn the lost, for the wave returns to the gentle ocean.
“If I don’t, who else will?”
Waves aren’t people and the ocean lost her ability to smile long ago.
As dawn broke, Master and Servant bade the Sister farewell and retreated back to their cauldron, ready to supplant the world with the utopia bubbling within. One sought to affirm his real of the world, the other, in rejection of the sin his sacrifice conceived.
~Interlude Out~
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
32/ Overture
That’s the second time I’ve dreamt about the Rail Zeppelin. Since bad luck comes in threes, especially in magecraft, I consult the old man after I’ve finished my morning routine but before I go down the stairs for breakfast. Blanket around his lap, the old man faces his window. I can see all the commuters rush downtown to either start work or get a coffee so they can start work.
“Do you want me to describe them for you?” I take a seat.
“No need, they’re just like you.” He doesn’t face me. “You’re just like them.”
I tell him about how I went to see Father Phahn yesterday and then what happened after Farmer’s. He doesn’t interrupt, just sits there like he always does listening as if he already knows everything I’ve said or will say. Then, when I’m finished,
“Good you learned what you aren’t willing to give up to hunt this vampire.”
I. . .
“If you were desperate why did you leave with Cherry?”
“Old man, you and Cherry raised me. There’s no way I could. . .”
That’s not how the story goes. At the cusp of fulfilling his want, the hero chooses between a shortcut or to keep with the words of his mentor. He always chooses the shortcut and fails. It’s through this process he learns his need. Such a structured plot can’t be what he wanted. Maybe. I don’t know. Every kid wants to become a hero of justice at one point in their life so I made sure to want that when it was appropriate. But as we grow, we learn that at the core of wanting to be a hero is the need to be acknowledged by and therefore protect the people close to us, so I made sure to want to choose the people close to me. The surface tension of the interface between ideal and reality is what buoys bubbles. Speaking of bubbles.
“I’ve been having dreams about the Mystic Eye Collection Train. Your eyes — after you saved those heretics, you gave them back to the attendants and they were resold at the next auction.”
“Not heretics, Chris. Children, like you.” Almost embarrassing at how he nonchalantly says these blasphemous things. “Have you looked at the Church file?”
I shake my head. I have the primary source who wrote the report right here.
I go on, “Your Mystic Eyes let you see the past — Hindsight. ” There are a few more particulars like they are often more active around mysteries or since they’re an independent magic circuit they can operate without the user taking in visual information. “But why did the black-haired woman and manager call them. What actually are the bubbles?”TransienceUmbral Foam
Because I’ve seen them too.
“Light as foam on the waters, nor light the doom, surely, that awaits him on earth.”
“Job 24:18. The foam is the unrighteous?”
That’s the obvious answer but in that monologue, Job is questioning God’s apparent mercifulness towards the wicked then declaring it serves to deliver a final judgment upon him or her. Theologians have long debated what the verse the old man quoted truly means due to its fragmentary and seemingly contradictory content.
“The Lord Almighty sees through a person’s true nature at a glance. Humans only see a fragment; therefore, we are unable to judge a person’s absolute goodness or wickedness, their worth. These fragments cling together like bubbles forming the foam on the surface of the ocean, fragile and contradictory. This body of foam is not what the Lord sees, Chris. The foam is nothing but a reminder of His true glory. Don’t forget that.”
— All of us, no matter who we are, are merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings.
“You’re a kind person, old man. That’s probably how you withstood having those eyes for so long.”
“You really can’t stop being wrong, can you?” He snorts, “It’s the eyes that have taught me how to be kind.”
“Even as memories that weren’t yours encroached upon and eroded your mind, your very identity?”
A soft smile, “On my worst days, I’d simply look in a mirror to remind himself who I was. Because of that, I wasn’t hollow. There was someone to protect.” To be hollow means one can fill that hollowness with whatever they want. There’s no better future than that. “These eyes will never fill you because bubbles are nothing more than an inverted hollow vesicle, separating the interior and the exterior.”
The old man says the last sentence without changing the register of his voice because his life, difficult as may have been, was certainly full.
“I’m going to kill a Dead Apostle today.”
“Are you afraid?”
Of what?
“Yes. Every conversation we’ve had in the past four days has seemed like a goodbye. You’re. . . not going anywhere soon, right?”
He removes his blindfold to reveal eyelids sewn shut to remind me what’s waiting at the end of this road. Our reward for continuously executing the Lord’s will until there is no more foam, only the Right. I chose this path because the boy whose parents were murdered doesn’t need the Truth. And I. . .
“I’m not going anywhere. You are.”
*****
Time for breakfast, the most important meal of the day.
“Morning.” Usually, I ask Cherry if she needs any help, but she’s materialized herself a minion today who’s hacking at a thigh of daikon.
Father Kelsey’s sipping his coffee with a suspiciously happy smile. He usually complains when we’re having Japanese for breakfast until he gets some food in his mouth. Must be the guest, looking stylish in one of Cherry’s old sweaters with a long silver braid flowing down her back. In a blue checkered apron, she wields that knife like she’s going to shank someone. Realizing this might not have been the best idea, Cherry takes Saber’s hand and guides the knife into the root vegetable. If you look closely, you’ll see Cherry’s hands tense at the last moment, just as the knife touches the board. Her boyfriend once told me this was a marked improvement since she used to give out a “Hm!’ before she started cutting anything to psych herself up.
Cherry goes back to her roots trying to either impress or teach. I don’t know why Saber would want to learn to cook. Maybe she tried touching the gas burner and Cherry mistook that as interest.
Cooking takes longer than usual, but eventually there’s rice, miso soup, and the side dishes: curried sardines, omelet, braised chicken wing and turnip, and simmered pumpkin with broth and soy sauce. After Father Kelsey forces us to say grace, Cherry forces us to say the thing Japanese people say before they eat.
I squeeze out a dollop of wasabi paste onto a little dish. Almost five years, yet Cherry’s mouth still quivers and her left eye slightly twitches at the sight of my wasabi. No doubt, like always, she blames herself. A few weeks after my adoption in the Mission, Cherry, out of the blue, took it upon herself to make sushi. I didn’t know who I had been, but I knew what Cherry prepared was high-quality vinegared rice and raw fish. Father Kelsey bemoaned what a tragedy authentic homemade sushi was without wasabi and scoured the cupboards until he found an old packet he must have tossed away after finishing the supermarket sushi. Cherry clicked her tongue. I still remember the echo that “tch,” made.
Father Kelsey wasn’t wrong, the wasabi added an entirely different dimension of liveliness and purpose to the sushi that Cherry made. So then — I remember thinking to myself — why not add this condiment to everything? A pungent cover through which to appreciate the true nature of each dish, wouldn’t that make everything taste wonderful?
Anyway, I distract Cherry by asking if the old man has had his breakfast or if I should bring him something. Turns out he had some oatmeal before I woke up. He has that quite a bit.
“Who’s the old man?” Saber asks.
“Karabo Frampton, former Executor. He lives in the empty room upstairs.” What an energetic answer from Father Kelsey.
Cherry glares at him while there’s still a piece of fish between her chopsticks.
He coughs. “Saber. . . how are you liking TOLO?”
No one calls it Tolo. Correction, TOLO YOLO was a thing a few years back, but now it's just cringe that friendly neighborhood priests say.
“Needs fires.”
Father Kelsey almost hacks up his miso soup and my nose, already itchy from the wasabi, goes nuclear while Cherry looks away with slightly pursed lips. There’s her understanding but dismissive dignified look.
“You must be from a hot country.”
Father Kelsey said that’s what kids like me call a ‘nice tech.’
“She’s Scandivanian.” Cherry replies to the priest as she finishes her miso soup. And that would be the punish? “Chris, did the Einzberns respond?”
“Yes, Rich texted me. They’re based at the University House.”
While placing her chopsticks on top of her empty bowl, “Amir mentioned there was a famous musical scholar visiting the university. . . Who would have guessed it was a Master. . . I should go with you.”
“No, no, no. You and Saber should concentrate on the Holy Grail War.” Like gathering more information on Lancer or drawing out Rider. Knowing how muchSaber expends, fighting one is a beacon for the other. Not my place to strategize with her, just to convince her this is completely Church business. Because it is.fuelmagical energy
“Since her summoning, Saber’s been assisting me non-stop. Father Kelsey’s been so kind as to offer taking Saber for a beach day.”
Cherry almost drops her chopsticks. I stare at Father Kelsey’s open mouth.
“Fa. . .” Cherry starts.
“Chris and the Einzberns? What are you playing at, Cherry?” He hisses. “He’s got nothing to do with the Grail War anymore!”
Cherry looks down. Her right hand wraps around her body and grabs at her left elbow, “I. . .”
“It was my fault, Father. I’m sorry. Archer attacked us last night. To buy time, I asked him to go hunt for the vampire with me.”
Father Kelsey look directly at me for a second like he’s about to say something but quickly moves onto Cherry. “And you let him?”
The tone of his voice must offend Saber because she’s glaring at him.
“We were protecting the Mission.” Cherry finally says. “Like Dilo wanted.”
“Don’t sa—!” He’s only halfway out of his chair before Saber’s sword materializes across the kitchen table.
“Saber!” Cherry shouts. “Please, put that away.”
The golden demonic sword evaporates into magical energy. Father Kelsey’s eyes linger on the fading sparkles, the rage on his face replaced with… a deep longing?
“Father, sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll. . .” Cherry apologizes, but I don’t think Father Kelsey can hear. He shakes his head as if trying to get rid of something before blinking twice.
“It’d be a shame not to show Saber the additional two Sisters by the coast and maybe some clam chowder could warm her up. I don’t like but the Einzberns aren’t exactly your biggest fans, Cherry. If this keeps them away from the Mission then. . .”
What did he see in that sword that made him do almost a complete one-eighty? I check the Master’s Clairvoyance I obtained from the book but there’s no Wise-Up. It must be a property inherent to the Noble Phantasm but not part of an entry.
“It’s dangerous. . . I’m not sure I like him going alone.” Cherry lets go of her elbow.
“I’m sure a Knight Class Herakles can take care of me. Aren’t you in more danger?”
Cherry’s doing the you’re right but I don’t agree with you but I don’t want to stir the pot thing where she holds her hands in her lap.
“Well, because of everything that’s been going on the last couple of weeks I have been neglecting the Mission’s grounds.” And effortlessly breaks into a crooked smile. “Keep your phone on, okay?”
I nod and say the thing Cherry wants us to say when we’ve finished our food before excusing myself because I texted Rich I’d get to campus in. . . thirty minutes. Better hurry.
I’m almost halfway out the door when, “Chris, take your Ash Lock. It’s still in its box.”
What a serious voice for someone still in his Batman pajama pants, but he’s absolutely right because today’s not just another day when we have Japanese food in the morning. Today’s the day I get to properly use the thing.
*****
After pulling myself up the concrete retaining wall behind the Catholic center behind the university campus that is not affiliated with the campus because this is a federal land grant university which makes no sense because the Catholic center offers free coffee and lunch to university students, I slide through the prickly bushes, only to find myself jumping back into the bushes because a cyclist almost ran me over. Looking both ways this time, I manage to cross the road and start climbing the gravel incline to the University House. It’s been two years since I visited this oasis of luxury at the center of a reasonably sun-faded campus.
There’s a fallen leyline on university land — imagine if a Master decided to summon the Grail on the Sister where students put up a ‘serenity swing’ and where a frat was rumored to have carried up a dining table for drinking games. Negotiations required a sizable donation to the university from the Church that had to be laundered through Thorn. The Mission was thanked with an invitation to the annual holiday party the President of the University hosts.
You could almost never guess a magus is squatting here. There are no magical defenses around what you could almost describe as a mansion; honestly, the perfect base. Just south there’s the university’s childcare center and on the left and right are lecture halls. Secure the mystery and bury it inside the mundane — that sounds nothing like the Einzberns in the reports I’ve read.
The bell rings and an older man in a robe emblazoned with the school crest comes out to meet me. Should have texted first because he’s telling me that no one by the name of Einzbern lives here and then asks me to leave or he’ll call campus security. I thank him, say I’m sorry I must have gotten the wrong house, and let him close the door.
There was no point pushing the matter. He must be under a suggestion, so I give Rich a call. Two minutes later the door opens again, but this time it’s a homunculus wearing the traditional Einzbern victorian nurse costume.
“Leys. . . right?”
While curtseying, she wears the same frown Cherry makes when finding ‘unwelcome biodiversity’ in her garden.
“No, sir. I am not. Please refrain from referring to us so familiarly in the future.” Without giving me her name, the homunculus politely harries me into a wide corridor. She doesn’t attempt to guide me through the paintings and the odd installations garishly hanging from the walls. I can almost hear the lingering conversation from past honored visitors as they nibble on canapes and sip the delightfully local 805 brewed just up the 101.
The kitchen, the small staging area for these events, has a living room attached to it. On the couch sits the man who answered the door, the president, and his wife. One mindlessly replies to emails on a laptop, the other binges reruns of The Golden Girls on the 4K Ultra HD LED TV. Probably a typical Saturday morning if it wasn’t for Rich in a dark green apron with the school mascot emblazoned across its chest and matching school pot-holders shaking an enameled cast iron dutch oven (Cherry prefers seasoned).
Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop Pop.
“Thank you, Sella. Didn’t want to burn the —” He’s practically beaming, paying absolutely no attention to the couple in their pajamas, “Chris, absolutely great to see you again. Kettle corn?” There are multiple bags on the kitchen table.
Big breakfast and I don’t even like sweets because you can’t put wasabi on them. Or at least everyone looks at you weird, so you learn not to.
“Of course.” I take a piece from the bag closest to me and put it in my mouth. “Wow, this is really fluffy but there’s a little crunch at the end too.”
“Freshly made.” He winks at me. “Sella’s been an angel putting up with me making a mess of the kitchen all morning. Couldn’t stop, the caramel stuff you have at Farmer’s is aight. Still can’t beat the family recipe.”
So Rich comes from a family of magi who transmits a recipe for popping corn in a great stone castle somewhere in the secluded winter wastelands of rural Germany. I find that hard to believe but just nod.
“Who’s going to eat all this?”
“This is a little embarrassing. I posted a picture of my kettle corn once then fans being fans, kept DM-ing or @-ing me to sell them Rich’s homemade kettle corn from his secret family recipe. Every month I make a few bags and send them to some lucky subs.”
“Kettle corn startup to go with the channel?”
“What’s the point?” He pours the finished batch into a plastic bag so that not a single popped kernel falls onto the granite kitchen table. “There’s no usable mystery in kettle corn.”
That means there is usable mystery in sending homemade kettle corn to subscribers.
“Well, thanks. The kettle corn was good. I’m sure your subs will be hyped.”
Rich leaves the empty dutch oven on the stovetop and as he removes the potholders and apron, he notices that the homunculus he called Sella won’t relax around me.
“You two haven’t — Sella, this is Chris. Great guy. The former overseer of the Grail War before Father Phahn.”
Sella’s eyes immediately lock onto the chain I’m wearing around my neck. “Overseer implies Church, Albert.”
Rich’s real name?
“Come on, Sella. Church or no Church, Chris is a good kid. Even Archer thinks so, right buddy?”
Little illusionary zaps of static electricity within my circuits sends me into shivers as Archer materializes behind Rich. “Hail, child. A good day for a Lamyros hunt.”
I’m not sure whether the True Ancestors came up with the name Dead Apostle or whether it was something the Dead Apostles themselves coined during their rebellion, but I wish Archer would at least say vampire or even just bloodsucker. On a good day, I’ll even take hematophage.
Sella bows without hiding the scowl on her face as she turns to walk away.
“Already time for your daily swim, Sella? We can adjourn to the jacuzzi if it’s convenient.”
“I didn’t bring any swimming trun—”
“You forget yourself, Albert. I must make it known to milady that her. . . guest has arrived.” She exits the room and heads up the stairs.
I won’t let the drone of the television dominate in her wake. “Very professional. A real work of art. How long have you two —”
“Sella’s wonderful.” He pours himself a water. “Made me everything I am.”
Rich looks like he’s in his early thirties so that would mean Sella, a homunculus, is at least twenty years old. Wow, Einzbern homunculi are really in a league of their own.
“And you?” He fires back. “The Matou truly have fallen if one of their own has joined the Church,” then mumbles something about giving the Ishtari a pass.
“Cherry and I aren’t related. I’m adopted. She was Di—” This is enemy territory, but since I’ve already started speaking, “She’s an arborist. Certified, of course. Did her training with the Arborist Training Institute in Japan under the instruction of— I forget, but someone important. Passed the ISA certification exam and was part of the Japanese Arborist Association before she moved here. She’s currently the Mission’s resident arborist, and also does independent consulting around the county. There are about thirty, I think, ISA certified arborists in the county because of all the new vineyards up in Paso. If there’s a big job and they need an extra chainsaw, she’s always willing to put her spikes on.”
“Good on her! Sawing down the glass canopy, now that’s what I like to hear!”
Archer almost snorts. “Witches have been known to heal a tree nymph or two. Nothing remarkable, Tuner.”
“What about yourself, Rich? How did all this —” I make sure he sees me turning my head, admiring a room created to be visited, pretending to not see the couple going about as if everything was normal.
“Oh this? The family decided it was more efficient to take control of a building in Tolosa than build our own again. Your Church and Thorn aren’t exactly helping, refusing to recognize the Einzbern’s rightful claim over the Grail.” He slips into the heretical face I saw last night.
Just laugh.
Luckily, Fillia walks into the room before my laugh becomes awkward. Both Rich and Archer immediately stand to attention and bow. I guess Sella did take a dip in the jacuzzi.
“Executor—”
“In training.”
Rich coughs at me for interrupting.
“Executor in-training, I have permitted you use of Archer to exterminate the vermin scuttling about our family’s noble ritual. Therefore, I believe we have the right to know your methods.”
“Archer mentioned your friend—”
“Amazing person that I would be happy to call our friend, but not a friend,” Rich interrupts. “A cute stray Archer picked up. He does that, breaks trees to save stray kites.”
“Twice, Tuner. Seeing those children’s disappointed faces reminded me of the wish a dear crewmate once confided in me. In this era, her wish would likely require the Grail. . .” He finishes drinking and then compacts the can of 805 in one hand. “I admit the Tuner is correct, child. That distracted, sharp-tongued girl-child is more like the daughter of a tiresome cousin and her Servant, a reluctant attendant.”
“I was hoping to talk to her. Maybe she got a look at the Dead Apostle. Anything, really, would help.”
“Worthy idea, child. Tuner, did she not give you her communication numerals yesterday?”
As if conducting the first downbeat, “I’ll make the call for the location of the Greater Grail.”
“Mila—”
“He has every right to ask this of our guest, Archer,” the homunculus says. “Hunting a vampire alone brings us no closer to the Heaven’s Feel. With the Grail’s location, we can guarantee its status and authenticity.”
I thought they might ask that. Winning’s important, but they’re homunculi. If they lose, they can construct a second generation to fight again. What truly matters to them is whether the system they’ve built has survived and is usable to reach their objective.
“I can’t do that.” Because I don’t know. And more importantly, yesterday, I stood up and left with Cherry. Consistency demands I accept and follow through with my choices. “But I can take you to the city's fallen leylines, the places where the Holy Grail can descend. From that you can interpolate the most likely location for the Greater Grail. . . and any Dead Apostle lairs.”
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
33/ Beneath the Cherry Blossom Tree
By the time I get out of the house and bike to the former Mason Lodge, now Church, the Sunday school room is empty except for Mary in a corner with only a mug of the bowl-cut priest’s hot chocolate for company. Intently reading a paperback, she leans back on a small, blue plastic chair while using a second one as a foot-rest.
Hats off to you Mary, at least you don’t look like a cook from Downton Abbey anymore. That designer jacket over my grandmother’s dress makes you look like an aunt who decided to deepen her relationship with God after her kids went to college.
“Any good?”
She doesn’t look up, “‘Bout an Irish girl, member of the Walking People, who immigrated to New York.”
I meant the hot chocolate.
“So. . . like you.”
“Aye,” she spreads the book, eagle, in her lap. “If ya cared enough to remember that much about me, why on the Lord’s good earth did you pull such sheer nonsense last night.”
Don’t look down.
“Answer me, girl!”
As coldly and matter-of-fact as possible, “To win.” This is not an apology, but an explanation.
“To win?” She starts going red, “You almost killed me and from what I heard you got yourself killed.”
That was all. . .
“This is a war, right Mary? Or opponents might be magi and heroes but that’s just a sanitary illusion hiding the despair and the meaningless sacrifices that any victory is built upon. We have to live in reality, unlike Rider, with his head stuck in that helmet going on about glory being in the battlefield or whatever.”
We only escaped last night because I did what needed to be done as a Master. For the first time in a long time, I tried my best and succeeded. I need Mary to understand.
“What does. . .” she pauses and looks me in the eye for a second, “Nadine, weren’t you scared?”
“I. . .”
Before I’m able to reject that ridiculous question, the door opens and in strides Phahn and Rider to debrief us. Phahn explains the Church didn’t have to close the entire parking garage but the roof won’t be usable. The cover story they’re using is that a pickup truck was parked on the third level with faulty gas cylinders in the back. Additionally, there are no additional defenses around the Mission, which would mean Saber’s Master doesn’t suspect what happened was a failed breaking and entering but just an unrelated skirmish.
“Berserker’s Master. . . Amelia was it? What was her deal?”
Happy to oblige as always, Phahn pulls a manila folder out from the bottom of a pile and flaps it in the air. “Amelia Levitt, former pediatrician at Snowfield Central. Her sister was Lieutenant to Police Captain Orlando Reeves of Snowfield, a Master affiliated with Thorn.”
Why even produce the folder when you’re going to tell me her life story?
“You might not have heard about Thorn before. It’s the name the US government’s supernatural special forces adopted out of respect for what happened to their compatriots during the Snowfield Grail War. From recordings the Church has access to, one of the masterminds of the ritual — Assassin’s Master — was known as Cattle, and Lancer’s Master was Famine. Amelia Levitt is known within the organization as ‘Veritas,’ no doubt in tribute to her sister.”
Let me guess, type-A personality, qualified at the top of her class, strong, yet not overbearing, recognizes it’s her insecurities and flaws that give her true strength. She lives in the shadow of her sister and is haunted by some violent childhood event involving puppies, birds, or lamb screaming.
“Are they more like magical 007 or Men in Black?”
Phahn smiles, “A mix. Their work mostly consists of toppling heretical regimes, the occasional asset extraction, and assassination. I hear they have an agreement with the owners of a sacred mountain in the American heartland for use as a prison. Their version of the Clock Tower’s Bottom of the Bridge. From Veritas’s record, she was an assassin: Seraphix, the North Sea, Monaco, even Albion. She chased down the remnants of the Scladio Mafia. They’re. . . .”
I put my hand up, “I think I get it Father, no need to explain further.”
If magical spycraft can exist in a thousand pages, a thousand voices, a thousand screens; then surely reality, the largest canvas, can contain these narratives. There’s no reason to be astonished because Americans lost faith in our institutions a long time ago. The general public just lacks eyes that see into this world.
“Not to mention her rabid gorilla may as well be my natural enemy,” Mary spits out. “What do they want with Nadine?”
“Tuba. She muttered something about a tuba.”
Phahn raises his eyebrow, “Now there’s a lead I’ll follow up on. Either way, ladies, you are under the protection of the Church now. They aren’t likely to bother you again.”
Forfeiting the Grail in exchange for granting Mary’s wish was the optimal play, so why do I feel so unfulfilled?
“Now the pleasantries are over, let us replan your infiltration!” Rider’s booming voice breaks my train of thought. While Phahn was talking, Rider was sticking yesterday’s print-outs back on the whiteboard. He’d make a good wedding planner. “How I’ve missed restrategizing in a canvas tent among my surly officers. They would all complain that we were men of action so there was no need to restrategize. But I, the true man of action, led and acted according to the situation. And what is the current situation we find ourselves in, little lady?”
Dude, that’s one self-satisfied rust-smelling finger you’re using to force me to participate.
“Depends. Did Archer manage to kill Saber?”
I’m getting good at this Master thing.
“No such things as dependent variables in war, little lady; only decisive action brings victory.”
“She’s right, ‘sir.’ Bounded field alone, I’m sure I could manage, but I’m more than a few ranks below that braided gorilla-woman and Saber is a few ranks above her. We need Archer to distract her.”
“Needless worry. Saber will be absent for most of the day.”
“How do you —”
“Because it’s the Mission, Mary. These guys are the Church. I’m sure they have eyes and ears somewhere inside like a Trojan Horse, right?”
“Observant, Nadine. You really do strike right to the core of the matter.”
Come on, yeah, but you don’t have to say it every time with that approving smile on your face. Geez.
“And, Mary. If you don’t mind, we will need your help for tomorrow evening’s assault.”
“I do mind, Father. That wasn’t part of our agreement.”
“Our cooperation was contingent on Saber’s defeat, no?”
“Nadine.”
“He’s right. . . Getting your name cleared is important and I know you don’t want to attack a church, but we requested sanctuary from the Church in exchange for helping defeat Saber. We’re not fulfilling our side of the promise if we’re not doing as much as we can to help.”
Mary turns away even if that’s the truth.
“Worry not, madam. Your role will be insignificant and most likely unnoticed. Simply, we wish to keep you within the Mission in reserve to warn our forces if reinforcements arrive, or if the situation calls, cause the demise of Saber’s Master.”
“First attacking a Mission and now assassinate someone? I’m here trying to clear my name and you have the nerve to. . .”
“Mary. Rider doesn’t mean killing her. You could ummm knock her unconscious or like cut off her Command Spell.”
“No, little lady, I quite literally meant the madam should put that witch out of her misery. But when you put forth such alternatives, no doubt built from your modern feminine sensibilities, I shall have to defer to Milord.”
“As long as Rider has the support of the Mission he’ll defeat Saber. Mary, you’re to ensure victory in whatever way suits you.”
Master negotiator in the house, right, Lorenz?
Mary glares at their boyishly soothing grins until, “Fine. Have it your way. You people always have.”
“Mary. . .” I start.
I’m interrupted. “Mary, I beseech you as a humble servant of the Lord to another. We cannot deliver the Mission dedicated to Saint Louis from Makiri heresy without your aid. And once Saber’s Master has paid the price then —”
“Ain’t vengeance solely the domain of the Lord?”
“Not vengeance, woman, this is justice.” Rider barks.
Phahn puts a hand up to calm Rider down. “Mary, you of all people should understand justices’ purifying waters. Do you not seek the justice that you deserve?”
“Justice doesn’t make an entire life’s worth of suffering disappear, Father.”
“Of course, but justice can ease the pain of victimhood, no?”
“Bah, such pain can only exist when there is hope of salvation.”
“All may find salvation under the sacrifice and guidance of our Lord and Savior, madam.”
“Aye Rider. That’s why I forfeited the Grail and joined you at the Church. . . no?” Her eyes almost sparkle with distended rage.
I don’t understand why she’s mad. True, all life is sacred and humans do have immutable rights but Mary, you’re a ghost. Whatever happened is already beneath and behind you. None of what happens here on out will affect your ‘good name,’ nor will it change your past. Rider and Phahn are just trying to help, so why won’t you let them help you achieve your selfish goal. Because honestly. . . I think they’re being quite reasonable.
*****
According to Mary, there’s no longer a bounded field around the Mission. Makes sense, someone’s about to notice if no one wants to visit the biggest tourist attraction in the city. My guess is the bounded field is only active when the world is moonlit and Servants fight. Lucky us. We get to waltz through the back gate, past the parking lot into the empty garden, before sneaking behind the rosy, speckled stone Youth Center into an outdoor ladies room.
My heart tries to burst out of my chest when Mary takes the candle and listening device from my bag. She looks worried. That reminds me of what she asked his morning before the bowl-cut priest and Rider interrupted us.
“I wasn’t scared.”
She blinks.
“Last night, I wasn’t scared.”
“Is that so, dearie, well that makes one of us.”
“Yesterday morning, you said I wasn’t suited for war. You’re wrong. This war is exactly where I can do the most good.”
“Maybe you should have said that before you forfeited.”
I show her the blank back of my hand. She can’t see what’s hidden underneath, but we can both feel our contract, the intricate Command Spell, that binds us.
“Yes, because it was obvious we couldn’t win.” And neither of us has any use for the Grail. “But I am a proper Master. The Holy Grail chose me.”
“Was that meant to inspire, dearie? Like one of Rider’s ridiculous speeches.”
How about being happy for me?
“No matter what happened last night, Laurent was right. We made the right choice allying with the Church.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“This. . . this is all for you, Mary. To clear your name.”
You don’t have to like it. You need to look at the bigger picture for once. That’s your weakness. You’re forever stranded on that little island where they placed you at the end of your life, and comparing everything to that single transgression.
“I just want you to understand where I’m coming from.”
“Oh, I understand alright, dearie. I was the one who proposed the alliance in the first place so don’t talk to me like I don’t understand.”
“Then why are we arguing? We have a Mission to infiltrate.”
She looks at me through the paltry light a single bulb can offer, opens her mouth. . . and then shakes her head. “No reason, Nadine. Come on then, put on the hair ornament as planned. Then we’ll infiltrate the Mission. Lord forgive me.”
*****
“I sit on a wooden bench overlooking the first three bells ever used in Mission history, a well where a mother might tell her daughter a princess kissed a frog, some recently abandoned gardening equipment, and a long pergola above the main path filled with climbing plants any Italian vineyard would be jealous of that allows slants of glare to make what I’m scrolling through almost unreadable even at max brightness. With a flick of a fingertip, celebrity, authority, supposed peers all sail by without distinction, without filter other than the button you tap when you don’t agree with the other person.
“I’ve placed the listening device under the kitchen table. I’ll be making my way to the altar now. Oh and dearie —”
“Sounds like I’m about to get another famous Irish lecture.”
“Girl, you do not want to take that tone with me.”
“Shit. She heard that?”
“Are your thoughts always this crass?”
“Damn this experimental Church forelock relic. It’s not like Mary and I can talk in person or electronically while she’s infiltrating the Mission with her Presence Concealment, so Phahn loaned us these hair extensions the Church is trying to develop as universal translators. For now, they can only do telepathic connections between people a few meters away from each other. Apparently, most agents are proficient enough with holy sacraments they don’t need a sacred relic to communicate. This relic only works for women; something to do with the holiness of the Virgin's tresses. Sounds a lot like magecraft with some extra fancy words to be honest.”
“Girl, I’m trying to concentrate so could you please, shut up!”
I immediately unclip the lock of hair because that wasn’t only an annoyed Mary thought. Not going to lie, pretty terrible at this telepathy thing, but I felt her fear through both the artificial telepathic connection this relic established and an additional sense of urgency through the Master-Servant link. Worst case scenario, the Saber’s Master smelled? sensed? whatever the verb is, the magical energy from the relic.
I’ve cut the connection’s so Mary should be fine. . . No, I’m her Master, it’s my business to make sure she’s okay. It’s a Friday, there’s bound to be quite a few people in the Mission even if no one is in the garden. I’ll just make my way through the back entrance here and. . .
“Oh. . . sorry, excuse me. . .” The woman I bumped into apologizes. She’s wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and work gloves while carrying an Archimedes screw attached to the motor of a hedge trimmer. “Excuse me. . . but the sign in the front says the garden’s closed today for maintenance.”
Asian lady with black hair that shimmers purple in the sunlight tied back with a red ribbon. Fuck. Saber’s Master. At least Mary’s okay; I can still feel the magical energy she’s taking from my magic circuits.
“I came in from the back so I didn’t quite get the memo.”
“Since you’re already here, how about you give me an extra hand? I’ll get you a pair of gloves. What’s your name?”
“Nadine.” I look away even if I have nothing to hide.
“Nadine. . . that’s a lovely name. You can call me Cherry.”
Her smile is soft, serene, and crooked. The slight asymmetrical curve makes it more believable, relatable.
*****
The fuck is taking Mary so long. She left to infiltrate their kitchen and hide the listening device under the table fifteen minutes ago. I’ve been digging holes close to double that and I can’t clip on my hair extension because Cherry, Asian tree lady, might turn her motorized drill on me instead. Don’t worry; she doesn’t know who you are. Magi are just eccentric people who ask girls they find sitting in a perfectly public garden to help fill holes with foul-smelling fertilizer.
Worse, rather than just shoveling the fertilizer around the trees, putting a layer of mulch, and calling it a good day’s work like my mom’s gardener does, this lady drills holes into the turf. The regularly spaced holes extend to the circumference of the branches forming concentric circles, miniature crop circles, that I fill. Then, she fills the remainder of the space with some sort of filler.
“You’re doing this for every plant in this garden?”
“Only the ones who need it. Over encouraging a plant is fatal.”
Story of my generation.
“What about the ones next to the footpath? You can’t exactly drill through concrete.”
“For those unfortunate little ones, we’ll do our best with what we have. Just like me with you.”
Fuck you too. I’ll pretend not to have heard that and focus on shoveling the fertilizer to keep Mary safe.
Asian tree lady is unnerving because at first glance she’s the type of person you bump into and don’t feel the need to apologize because she’ll always apologize first, but as we’re working, she’s so bright and cheerful in a dignified way that you can’t help remembering the gloomy stain of that first impression. Almost like some blackened sun and these plants are the shadows she casts.
“You don’t have that much experience with gardening do you. . . I mean to say, I can see you’re outside of your expertise, so thank you for giving it your best shot,” she speaks with a quiet, unassuming voice that’s a toe behind the boundary separating kindness and patronization.
“It’s a beautiful garden.” People don’t appreciate gardens anymore, you know. They just come here with boba in hand to take selfies, forgetting there’s real magic in this, real mystery. She’s proof.
“When I bumped into you, the look on your face was the same as the boy I’m looking after. You can see it on his face that he knows I’ll take the blame, yet he always apologizes. You, on the other hand, had the same expression, but said nothing.”
Asian parents shilling their polite kids, amirite? If I had known you were just fishing, sorry, digging for an apology, “Sorry?”
“Like that. You cut to the core of the problem and immediately reject the premise. There’s no attempt to punish yourself or aim to correct. Almost like you’re one step behind yourself, overlooking everything.”
“Your kid must be the same then.”
“My. . . excuse me?”
“Your kid, the one you said that had the same expression.”
“Oh. . . yes.”
Come on Mary, give me an out already. Even if we can’t telepathically communicate, I’m sure you can think of some way to contact me, because I think Asian tree lady is getting dangerously close to suspecting I’m a Master. Or perhaps she’s already figured it out and is just toying with me. No wait, I’m panicking when I should be thinking.
“What about you,” I ask. “How did you get into all. . . this?”
In her mind, I have the.upper handdematerialized Servant
In my mind, she’s.a better magethe one with the upper hand
But. . .
I know she doesn’t know Mary’s in the Mission.
She doesn’t know I know Saber isn’t here.
“This? My grandmother.”
I can win this incomplete battle of attrition.
She whacks the back of a shovel against the last hole she’s filled to even out the filler material. Instead of piercing the ground with the tip and leaving the shovel as a marker, she cradles the shaft in both arms.
“My grandmother planted a cherry blossom tree in the front yard of the house I grew up in that never blossomed. I never knew her, but according to my family, every day without fail, she would go into our family’s greenhouse and haul the refuse from the worm farm to fertilize her cherry blossom, so while the tree never bloomed, it still grew. When she passed away no one looked after the tree.” Walking up to the tree we were fertilizing, she gives it a friendly tap on the trunk. “During my first year of high school I was going through a tough time and looking for distractions so I borrowed some books on tree care from the local library. I worked on the tree little by little until a few years later it finally —”
Through hard work, grit, and determination, the day was won. How American. How many times have I heard the same thing?
“Sen— My boyfriend even came over and we watched the blossoms together. The tree was beautiful. I was happy. It was a really, really precious time for me. And do you know what he said?”
Dropped down on one knee, pulled out a ring worth three months of salary and popped the question?
“‘Your caring touch is the best thing about you.’ Like everything my grandmother and I placed underneath that cherry blossom tree to make it grow and then blossom had been a loving gift. But underneath all this. . .” she plucks a still verdant leaf from the tree that should be nothing but bare branches.
“Quite a mystery, isn’t it?” I tap the bucket of fertilizer with my shoe. “You look at something so disgusting and wonder how it can produce flowers.”
At the end of the day, ugly and beautiful are words to describe variations of the same thing. Like trees and shit are just carbon, so is paper.
“No. . . a mystery isn’t something that is simply seen and then understood. It’s inflicted upon you, until it’s carved into the pit of your body. Understanding ‘what’ isn’t necessary, but ‘how.’ How it sounds. How it smells. How it tastes. How it feels. It is completely foreign, completely other, until it becomes a part of you, so that no matter how much you detest it, you can’t reject it. The mystery is all theunderneath the cherry blossom tree,” her eyes distant. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say. . . Master?”corpsesscars
Of course. My best friend gave my brother a handjob. A vampire tried to suck my blood. And just yesterday a government operative cornered me in a parking lot. I get it, Asian tree lady. Mystery is the infinite moment between two heartbeats that melts everything inside of you and when you’re stripped to your very essence, when you’ve gone beyond the self, you see those corpses that you mentioned underneath everything because they’re just paper. You boast this is a world you can feel, lady, but I can see it.
“Pausing to emphasize an everyday word doesn’t make you threatening.” My heart’s racing. My face better not be turning red.
“You were really helpful with gardening and I enjoyed our conversation, so that was only a friendly warning. But I have a prior appointment to keep, so could you and your Servant please leave before I call mine?”
Bitc. . .
My phone vibrates. Caller ID says Bowl-Cut priest.
“Hello?” I answer right in front of Saber’s Master. That’s right, this is what your local young professional’s Facebook Group calls a power move.
“Nadine, I’m at the ch—” I hang up because who knows what mages can do to their hearing.
“It seems we have lunch plans too.”
In one swift motion, the lady pierces the ground with the tip of the shovel before crossing her arms underneath her chest. “Hopefully, we’ll be seeing each other again. Take care. . . again, thank you for the help.”
“You too.” I start walking out of the garden and onto the asphalt of the parking lot. “And if your kid’s anything like me, good luck.”
Stop smiling like a buck eejet, dearie, and clip that hair extension back on is what Mary would say. Clever, Mary. She knew that I was with Saber’s Master, so after finishing the candle swap, she must have returned to Phahn’s Church instead of trying to signal. I’m not so sure why she took so long to swap the candles, but we can talk about that later.
“Nadine.”
My heart throws itself against my ribcage again as I jump, startled. Who grabs people’s shoulders from behind in a public street? The pounding heart almost stops when I recognize that voice.
“A-Amelia. . .”
The same strawberry blonde so-called secret agent who tried to kill Mary. She seems to have a few more lines on her face.
“You can’t do anything here in broad daylight. There are too many people.” Am I trying to convince her or myself because there are hundreds of ways she could magically kill me and get away with it running through my head. They should give me her job.
“Nadine,” she says. She pauses, blinks twice and then nudges her head the same way my brother does when he tries to get water out of his perfect ears after his mandatory twenty-minute morning shower that leaves me with less than five. “Nadine, I am, sorry, not here to hurt you. Really. I just want to help you. I know you are under Sancraid’s protection, but if you ever need help, call me.” God, you’re a magical secret agent not a school guidance counselor.
She presses a business card into my palm. The raised lettering brushing my palm is nice, pretentious, but nice. I thought she was done with me from that gesture, but no, she has more, “Why were you two visiting the Mission?”
You two, huh.
“My Servant’s Catholic. The Mission’s the most Catholic place in the city.” You’re not getting away either, “What about you?”
“I’m from the Silver State. We get a bad rap for being mainly desert and having the biggest adult playground in the country, but we have a lot of towns like Tolosa, so I wanted to take a look around.”
Liar.
We shake. Like one of those fabled awkward gyno-handshakes when you’re not sure what to do after your first pelvic exam. After that torturous three seconds, she turns and her sensible flats start clicking up the Mission’s steps.
As for me, let’s hurry back to the Church to let Mary know why you hung up on her. Considering our big win, there’s no way Mary’s still mad about yesterday. She’s your Servant. She’ll understand. Then, with a bit of good luck, we’ll be able to hear Amelia and Asian tree lady with the listening device.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
34/ Winter Factory — magni
When there’s no available information on a Dead Apostle, the default becomes hunting The Dead.
Disposing of enough of these familiars forces the Dead Apostle to move. The Dead are worker bees, supplying their Queen with blood. Wringing that metaphor for all its blood, creating Dead is almost like a mating instinct for Dead Apostles. Consequently, the oddest thing about our situation isn’t that a Dead Apostle has intruded upon a Holy Grail War; it’s that there are no Dead in Tolosa, yet there is clear evidence this Dead Apostle has been hunting, making potential mistakes or producing a pattern from which I should be able to construct a profile.
Father Phahn and the network of Executors around the city may have actual information about the Dead Apostle, but my ally isn’t a member of the Eighth Sacrament, but a family of alchemists who specialize in the flow and transfer of power. So, I used them for my original plan: finish mapping Tolosa’s main leylines, find any distortions, and launch Archer at the Dead Apostle’s lair like a tactical missile.
The afternoon ended at the last fallen leyline — Hollister Peak, one of the Sisters in the Irish Hills Natural Reserve at the south-western edge of town. Other than Lancer’s tree and the sparse shrubbery, the only feature of note is a creek that delineates the border between the Sister and civilization — a shopping village Costco where Archer and I are currently sitting because our food court dinner’s on Rich.
From the red plastic bench heaving under Archer’s weight attached to a table that doesn’t have its own Kirkland umbrella, our view is either two almost dead trees on either side of a sign letting shoppers know this is parking lot row B/C or the soda foundation/condiment station behind us. Archer looks directly at the customers, some with filled shopping carts, others with nothing but their phones and keychains, all waiting to order or pick up pizza.
They should all be hysterically screaming or foaming from the mouth, but Rich cast an attention diversion spell on Archer. He temporarily lowered his magic resistance to make that possible. My guess is rather than showing anyone who looks at him an illusion, their attention, no, probably their consciousness is diverted away from the hulking divinity who refused to go back into spirit form after we encountered another one of Lancer’s trees on top of a volcanic plug because there might be ignorant hikers who need his help. The words from the trees were the same except this time it was lust, I believe, that was built on rape. Isn’t sexual assault supposed to be about power?
Envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, and now lust. That’s five out of seven, each one of the Sisters. Exile, augury, abduction, hubris, and now rape. The foundations of Lancer’s Noble Phantasm, the symbol of the Heroic Spirit. These trees then must be injecting his very legend into the leylines. However, greater rituals like that cause changes in the World. We’ve seen trees at five of the seven foci. There should be more than enough magical energy in Tolosa’s leyline system to see some environmental change. Since there hasn’t been, maybe Lancer needs a catalyst or separate ritual to fully active those trees. I’m not sure what we saw was Lancer’s legend though.
In our collective vision, after tending to the temple flame, the young woman rested on a couch. The flickering flame burst into life, molding itself into the shadow of a figure wreathed in divine thunder — Archer. The divinity stepped down from the everlasting flame; the crackling woke the poor girl up. Archer denied what happened next with an ‘I had no relations with that priestess. I’d remember such fine a physique,’ when we regained consciousness. I accepted what happened and didn’t ask anything else. Rich suggested that we get dinner to clear our heads.
“I was wrong,” Archer says, eyeing a father and child collecting a cardboard box. “Nothing’s changed, only hidden. What was so obvious to my contemporaries: the survival of the fittest and the fragility of life has been exiled to the depths of human consciousness, unable to be spoken of in polite company. All the while what those in my time dismissed as fleeting fancies have now become eternal foundations that culture is built upon.”
“Was 2004 so different, sir?”
“I recall nothing of substance. The Grail strives to avoid paradoxes.”
“But you remembered Cherry, sir.”
“Yesterday was the first time I’ve met the witch. But yes, your mother was temporarily my Master for a time.”
“Excuse me, sir, she’s not my mother.”
“Good. I was concerned. You look nothing like her and witches are known to spirit babies away.” He rests his elbow on the plastic table. “Her tresses, attire, and aura may be different, but that gloomy, guilt-ridden, demure expression remains the same.”
Cherry’s thoughtful and caring so she cares about how other people see her. At the same time, she exudes a certain dignity, knowing exactly what to say at the right time, to the right person. I bet that came from being the captain of her high school archery club. I think they even got to nationals that year. If she wasn’t a magus, she’d be an extremely boring character in a movie.
“Not the guilt one feels for having hurt someone close or dishonoring oneself, but guilt at one’s inability to fit within the tales told in a ship’s mess hall or in the cave of an old friend over a jar of wine. I understand that feeling too well — as if you are nothing but a plaything for the gods. However, you should not feel guilt over that. Resentment, anger, the need for vengeance, all valid. But not guilt.”
“Vengeance only begets more vengeance, sir. Dark flames continue burning long after the actors become the forsaken.”
“Better burned alive than let self-inflicted guilt fester. Lamenting the incongruity of expectations and reality, the tendrilled curse perverts all aspects of one’s life, producing a shadow phase of inverted meanings, namely, all the possible evils in this world.”
All the evils in the world — isn’t that just another name for everyday life? The accumulated misunderstandings, the unbreakable status quo, the mediocre box we force ourselves to exist within; I can’t help but think that’s everything he could have wanted. But, I’m the one that’s here in his place. So I must forgive it, because it all has value, it all has to be beautiful. And Cherry is part of that. . . yes, just like the Mission, Father Kelsey, the old man, and Kayla. They’re all.merely foamjust heads in a locker
“What about Saber?” Her mechanical expression was as dull and cold as the clouds that covered the moon the night we met, yet caught my breath. “You seem eager to fight her.”
“Once, I wrestled Death to save my host. I wouldn’t mind doing it again if Death was she —”
“I’ve always wondered what would happen if Costco started serving currywurst.” Rich drops two empty Pepsi soda cups with foil-wrapped hotdogs inside each onto the table and hands me a sundae. I hate Costco berry sundaes, but Rich incessantly told me I’m his guest, so I take it to give him another opportunity to let me know what a proper host he is. “You shouldn’t have.”
“No, no, no, you’re our guest. I insist.”
I look to the greatest hero in Greek myth and possibly the world for splitsies, but he’s too focused on making sure there aren’t any pedestrians in the blind spots of cars backing out of parking spaces.
“Hey Rich,” I call out, but he can’t hear me because he’s already halfway to the condiment stations. I rush over as he’s pumping neon-green relish onto his hotdog.
“Go ahead, Chris.” He takes a step back so I can get my condiments first before noticing my empty hands. “Where’s your hotdog?”
“Oh no, I carry my own condiments. Church thing. Didn’t you get Archer anything?”
Blank stare for a second, then his eyebrows twist into his forehead as his neck slightly tugs his head back. He doesn’t understand how a former Grail War overseer could say something as outlandish and unbelievable as the earth being flat. Scratch that. Dead Apostles being able to use Reality Marbles because they’re distorted. Scratch that. Ah. As unbelievable as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Son of God being a Magician.
“Chris. . .” A lopsided smile, as if half-afraid he might offend his guest, half as if he’s explaining fundamental ether theory to a child. “You know that Servants don’t need to eat, right?”
*****
“Wasabi on a hotdog is just like adding too much mustard and then feeling everything in your sinuses.”
“I understand sushi, but a hotdog?”
“There are people who put ketchup on everything.”
“Pfft, Americans. So, it’s true then. You Church folk have no sense of taste.”
“And what’s a magus doing making video game leitmotif videos?”
Like the diced onions falling from the bun into the foil, Rich’s smile instantly drops, “Are you asking me as a content creator or a magus?”
“I wouldn’t dare ask you as a magus; that’s meant to be a mystery, no?”
He picks that smile right back up and pastes it back on his face, “You don’t look like one of those ‘true believers’. What’s your deal then, revenge, side-hustle, nepotism?”
“Revenge with a side of nepotism. Dead Apostles killed my parents.”
“Oh. . . I don’t know how much this means coming from a magus, but I’m sorry.”
He’s not. I know what false sympathy sounds like.
“Truly, child? I would have never guessed your labor against this Lamyros was so personal. You railed so ardently against vengeance not yet minutes ago.” Archer turns back towards us.
“Haha, yeah I guess I’m a real hypocrite, aren’t I. It’s different when you’re the person involved.”
Rich nods like he completely understands the sentiment, but Archer won’t stop looking at me. Does he want the rest of my hotdog?
“So there. You know all about me. Rich, but you still haven’t answered.”
After rattling his soda cup to make sure there’s drink left, he slurps the residual raspberry-flavored iced-tea. “Matou ever take you to Japan?”
I shake my head.
Cherry’s been back a few times even though she relinquished temporary Second Ownership when she agreed to help Dilo. Her sister was up in arms about the move, all ready to march into Tolosa but from what I’ve heard, the Tohsaka family has a good relationship with the Church they don’t want to ruin; at least that’s what Cherry emphasized to get her to back down. I think if Cherry’s sister had known about the Grail War, she would have single-handedly declared war against the Church.
“I had just finished my Masters in Berlin around the time the Clock Tower’s Spiritual Evocation department mediated some territorial disputes in Japan. I believe it was due to the untimely death of the former Matou head. As the Einzbern Tuner, I had no reason not to visit.”
“No reason not to? Isn’t Japan a Far-East backwater?”
“Chris, how could you say such a thing! Japan’s a beautiful country with a wonderful culture.”
How quickly his switch flips.
“With warriors employing such reckless tactics they border on profound,” Archer scoffs with a grin. “An elegant swordsman putting on the stance ‘If you come any closer, I’ll perish but I most certainly will take you with me,’ is inviting as any blossoming virg—”
Rich coughs, cutting Archer’s reminiscence of the previous Fuyuki Grail War short. I can’t believe he still claims he didn’t fight.
“I took the opportunity to teach for a little while in rural Nagao. Great hiking trails; could easily compete with Tolosa. I’ll never forget watching the Magnituning.”
“Magni-tuning?”
“A Japanese underground marathon. It’s broadcast throughout the Dark Web. The race itself is called Magni. Crazy stuff; people die.” His eyes brighten, not at the mention of death, but at the chance to explain. “The contestants for this one were all men: a boomer, a millennial hustler, a very. . . fluffy fellow, the cutest old man, and a yakuza stereotype with a sword tucked into his waistband who was definitely on heroin. Would you like to guess who won?”
“No one. The race is a metaphor for —”
“As if in the grips of Lyssa herself, the addled bandit slaughtered the other athletes!”
“You’re both wrong but at least Archer was close. Man, that yakuza guy, euthanized a puppy, sexually assaulted a lady, executed a gigolo, and then went on a shooting spree before a rival gang put him out of his misery. Amidst the insanity were people watching, reveling in the carnage.”
Like you.
“The girl who introduced me to the event was part of a group chat from either an imageboard or Twitter. Anyway, these folks, boy, you could tell for the duration of the race it meant everything to them and somehow absolutely nothing. They’d change their usernames to match the hurdles in the race they most identified with or thought would make the best meme; speculate who had the biggest dick; get bored and type something into that little box just to have it appear in a larger chat box.”
I see a different scene. The moment each door opens the contestants start jogging, sprinting, walking, waddling, dancing — the method doesn’t matter, the finish line might not exist. All that exists are the thirteen frames of action. The marathon is nothing but a recorded band with each event as a snapshot in time. Five courses, but the contestants aren’t Olympic track and field material, so they’ll never stay in their own lane. They coalesce, intermingle, add and subtract value yet theremain the same.thirteen frameswhole
“There was this guy in the chat called ‘Nameless’ who had been complaining about missing the deadline for a manuscript. Can you believe the guy ended up writing a fanfiction about the race instead of finishing his overdue work? Everyone else in the chat hated it, but he had the right idea. Summarizing, commentating, speculating on the work was entertainment. The interactions between the viewers became the spectacle each viewer hoped to find within the race. Without intending to do, each viewer defined the boundaries and the rules for their version of the Magni, creating a maze that utterly isolated the content in front of them from its context, leaving themselves with the impression, ‘everything makes sense in the end,’ simply because there was an end.”
This race is not a miniature version of life. Those chosen for the race are not special. Those who watch aren’t average. We’re all just weak, pathetic human beings trying to kill a Dead Apostle to prove to ourselves even if the bubble is empty, there’s still value. There’s still a race to run.
“Tuner, the boy’s losing interest. Who won?”
“The pedophile. He made a mad dash towards the end, lost almost all his body fat, and was greeted at the finish line by all the girls he ever loved and had rejected him.”
The fat guy was also a pedophile?
“Did he get arrested?”
Archer raises an eyebrow at me.
“The yakuza man shot the arresting officer.”
“Then what happened to the girl?”
“I never mentioned a girl.”
The little girl in the TV screen who waved to the suburban dad as the millennial bureaucrat grabbed his groin. The little girl who held the old man’s hand before he was run over. The little girl Rich never mentioned but I assumed had to be there because —
“You said he was large and a pedophile. . . My fault for assuming.” I finish my hotdog. “Are you, the Einzbern Tuner, participating in the Grail War to find an ending?”
The Gate to Heaven is closed, the Winter Saint’s magic circuit dismantled. There is nothing left for the Einzbern family to run after.
Rich flattens out his foil on the table and starts folding it in halves until the foil’s a small rectangle the size of his thumb before dropping it into his empty soda cup. Without a shift in expression, he flattens both with his right fist.
“Imagine a doll that repeats ‘I love you’ even if it’s cast aside, forgotten, worn down until it’s unrecognizable while expecting nothing in return. That heartbreakingly pure sincerity, how... how do you begin to make amends?”
You can’t. The most humane thing to do would be throwing it away because you couldn’t bear its purity. I need to throw that thought away because it can’t make sense. Just because Dead Apostles abide by their own constructed rules does not mean they have a hint of ‘purity.’ Dilo’s wrong, and a german boxer dog and a jukebox are entirely different things.
“I thought a magus’s objective was to reach 「」.”
“I like you,” Rich, the magus, says. His eyes don’t sparkle and there’s no accompanying wink. He is just commending my adherence to the formula. He knows that I know the Einzberns who settled next to the Rhine reached「」centuries ago. A magus would never subordinate himself to homunculi, otherwise. There can’t be bitterness because if the mutual destination is clear, the river’s current can be twisted until —
“Rich, show me the map again.”
He takes the iPad from the man-purse that was no doubt part of a sponsorship agreement. After entering his pin, the screen shows a blurry satellite map of Tolosa with the major leylines drawn in red and the leyline foci, the Sisters, circled.
“The trees representing the cardinal sins align to the Sisters.”
“Obviously, Seven Sisters, seven hills of Rome. This is a Holy Grail War the Church organized —”
“Not the Church, a single treacherous Cardinal.”
“Cardinal, Church, what’s the difference? Aren’t you Catholics still purging other denominations from the organization anyway?”
Of course not. Like Father Kelsey says, it’s like Islam; the militant fringes of the religion don’t speak for the rest of us. The Church does important work, killing Dead Apostles, exorcising demons, and appealing to the souls of the masses, so let’s focus on that.
“I respect your opinion, Rich. What’s important is that this spiritual ground can’t support a Holy Grail.”
“That’s retarded. Use the Golden Grail the Mother Harlot. . .” he trails off before rapping his finger against the plastic table.
The Golden Grail is the opposite of any Holy Grail that the Church would want to summon. It is a falsethat can only grant the owner’s selfish wishes. But that attribute renders it ‘genuine.’ Rich didn’t notice, because for magi, as long as the function is identical, the authenticity of the artifact doesn’t matter. In imitation, the Golden Grail which does not come from utopia and does not exist withinutopiaGrailcannot connect this land to the outside of the world.Tolosautopia
“Correctly molded, this land will accept a Grail as the Golden Grail, but the Golden Grail won’t connect to outside of the World,” he mutters.
Without that connection, it’s impossible for this Greater Grail to trace the returning spiritual cores’ path and punch a hole to the outside of the World, one of the functions of the Fuyuki Grail. I had never questioned the Tolosa system as the evidence it worked was below where I’ve lived for as long as I could remember. There’s no point planning a cover-up to contain something that doesn’t work.
“We should have been following the water.”
The beat of steady tapping ceases. “Who the flying fuck would be retarded enough to consider the water?” He almost whispers.
Of course, he’s right. Only an amateur third-rate would not take into account magical runoff; after all, water is a major candidate for one of the great hidden mysteries of alchemy, the Alkahest. This Dead Apostle should know that. Hell, even Assassin’s Master might know that. Therefore, suggesting water as a way of tracking an enemy is an insult to Rich who serves one of the greatest alchemic families in the West whose spiritual land borders one of the most mystery-rich rivers in Europe.
I open a Chrome tab and type ‘Tolosa groundwater basin’ in the search bar. After following the first link and waiting for the page to authenticate our browser, there’s an interactive map of the city, almost entirely blue.
“Tolosa sits on top of a gigantic aquifer. During the drought, the entire basin was mapped as part of a Danish aerial electromagnetic survey to give us this. Overlay this with the leyline map —”
Rich doesn’t need to; the correlation is obvious at first glance.
“The leyline foci, the mountai—”
“Not mountains, volcanic plugs.”
He blinks twice at me before continuing, “The volcanic plugs, well, plug the water. Keep it from leaving this region. That must be what the trees are drinking. . . except for the one on Cardinal Peak, there’s no water. . . oh, that volcanic plug guides the water into the city’s basin, but how does the water get from the coast to the city?”
Unpinching my fingers, the map zooms out to show the coast.
“There’s nine.” I draw a circle around the famous Morro Rock, thewhere Falcon and Raven hackedcrowngrandinto pieces with their knives. Then following the direction of the water, I circle the mystical tributary at the base of the mountain range’s spine, the rhyodacite peak — Cerro Cabrillo — known for its east-facing rock shaped like a Tiki statue that watches over the city. No doubt, Father Kelsey’s going to be showing off those two landmarks to Saber in the name of ‘education.’ Then, the final connecting line to Cardinal’s Peak. “Two to direct the blessings of the sea to the seven that encircle the city.”Taliyekatapeltathe twin-headed serpent
“The Muses.” Archer leans in. Him reframing the discovery with a familiar concept means he’s interested again.
From the root men-, to have in mind or to mountain (over), the Nine Muses are the Greek goddesses that express the illusions humans have dreamed up throughout history. From oral traditions told next to a campfire to electronic documents in the cloud.
“No offence, sir, but I was thinking more Arthurian — Preiddeu An-”
“Shut up, kid. I’m thinking.”
— The nine sorceresses of Avalon were the nine priestesses who were tasked with reviving the once and future king, Arthur. Cherry made me read a lot of Grail myths, so I know there’s a related medieval Welsh poem with this trope. Nine virgins guarding a sacred cauldron within the Celtic netherworld that does not boil the food of a coward. It’s? Bardic inspiration that the narrator claimed.spoilsgrail mud
“You should have stopped at Arthurian.” Rich traces the leyline from the Pacific Ocean and circles around Tolosa, like a lasso. “An inlet sea. . .” His mouth closes and his eyes light up. Pshhh, heretics, just because it’s complicated and connected doesn’t mean —
“And here. . .” he points to the only lake in the city, just a five-minute drive from this Costco, “is utopia.”
Ahhh, so that’s the most spiritually pristine area in this town. We’ve never had it on any of our maps because it's not a place of power. But if a second-rate Dead Apostle is finding it difficult to create an otherworld, of course, they would choose the place that is the most spiritually resilient to civilization. There’s just one problem, “What if a Servant’s there? Should we wait for Fillia?”
There’s always the possibility the Dead Apostle is still at large, and we’re walking into Lancer and his Master’s nursery. They’ve been priming the city with roots of cardinal sin and there would be no better place to nurture those trees or activate them than the lake. If we’re fighting that feral god of war an alchemist would be better support than a Tuner.
Rich’s reply is igniting his circuits to produce a hostile wave of magical energy, declaring that, at this moment, I’m his enemy.
“Tuner,” Archer forgets his strength for a moment and slaps his hand against the table, making a hole the size of my head. “’Twas an honest mistake.”
Einzbern homunculi are almost perfected. Assuming they’re well built, a child of nature can survive indefinitely as long as the greater source exists. At the same time, as lifeforms, they’re weaker than humans, so when cut off from nature — like from a Dead Apostle’s bounded field or possibly the activation of one of those trees. . .children of natureartificial nature spirits
Rich won’t put out his circuits. What I said was out of line. Either the heir of a now defunct ‘founding family’ raised a failure not fit to even be called a spellcaster (I should be since I’m a heretic hunter) or I’m trying to lead his fair lady to certain death. I understood that when I asked the question. I accept his devotion to a dilapidated factory. I still needed to ask.
“I’m so sorry Rich. I thought we could use her Command Spells. I didn’t stop to think.”
“There is no we, child.”
The sun has been sinking into the mountains throughout our dinner. Most of the families have left. There are only six patrons around us excluding the employees closing up the food court. Everyone faints and I don’t dare turn because lighting storms are so much more frightening at night.
“The Servants are mine, alone.”
No anger, no malice, no hate, only the pure thunder resounding through my body, threatening to pop my bubble of a soul.
Rich is almost unaffected — no, he just retreated into the blizzard etched into his mind. I can see it in his eyes. At least Archer’s outburst extinguished his circuits. Rich looks out towards the curtain of darkness chasing the retreating twilight. “Let’s get going.”
“Halt Tuner, w-what befell these patrons?” Archer looks back at the figures slumped over the plastic tables.
You did.
He rushes over to a trio of unconscious college students, breaking another plastic bench in the process, to pull a man’s head from his pizza slice. There’s marinara sauce all over his face. I hope no one was working the churro deep fryer.
I pull out my phone to call the EMT division put aside for this war while Archer’s still looking around for a threat.
“Put the phone down, Chris. There are other shoppers; they’ll take care of this. Let’s go.”
The gap between night and day is when most magecraft is at its weakest. There’s too much of a shift in mystical meaning. When the moon starts to make her journey, we might not even be able to find where the Dead Apostle bounded field begins, let alone break through it. So yes, Rich is right, again.
Rich coaxes Archer into dematerializing and we start walking to the car. There’s a small crowd around the al fresco Costco food court now. Most shoppers have empty carts and their phones out, updating their Snapchat story, live blogging, calling emergency services.
I don’t put my phone down. On the screen is the contacts list and at the very top is Cherry’s name. I've been staring at it. She said. . .
“Are you going to get in?” Rich is looking at me, impatient.
I pocket my phone and slide in.
*****
A local Chinese restaurant serves as gatekeeper to the road leading into Laguna Lake. The lake and the land adjoining it make up the three hundred and forty acres known to local bureaucrats as ‘The Reserve.’ Anyone who regularly walks their dog here will tell you it’s another nice Tolosa park and how could it be sacred when there’s an entire suburb overlooking its southern bank? But just as the fabled Millennium Castle is always the closest place to the moon even when it’s not physically close to the moon; this lake must bear the responsibility of being artificially molded holy ground.
Archer materializes as Rich and I step out of the car the Einzbern are ‘borrowing’ from the president of the university and we start a small sojourn through the lakeside trails. The Parks department labels these hills golden on their website while scoffing in the office that the lack of rain left them a drab brown. In this interlude where the orange sunset is a line hugging the horizon and the moon has yet to hang itself from the sky, we step in nothing but varying shades of black.
Crackle.
Thoughts start folding into themselves like crumpled newspaper recycled as tinder.
Rather than blinding sunshine that erases everything or this unsteady pure darkness built from layers of compromises, I prefer a weak moonlight where I can easily accept anything.
After a few minutes of walking, we reach a fork. Continuing on the main path leads to the open space the city uses to host its summer renaissance faire. The left branches into a lush inlet, stretching inward to the center of the lake.
“They’ve at least taught you how to dowse?” Rich asks with magical energy flickering through his eyes. He’s holding up a tuning fork; must be a Mystic Code. When you hear the title Tuner, the first thing that comes to mind is a piano tuner. There used to be a famous Tuner who kidnapped heretics, using their stolen magic crests to restore his clients’ decaying ones, but Rich seems to be a disappointing stereotype.
While I’m materializing two black blades from their scarlet hilts, Rich holds the tuning fork against his finger. Magical energy sparks and then pulses for ten, no, nine seconds until the tuning fork starts to hum a short, repeated phrase. When he taps the fork onto my black blades, they resonate, playing the same ten rising notes.
Using Black Keys to dowse is like using a metal detector to search for treasure at a beach. The technique will pick up anything as long as the amount of magical energy leaking from the artifact or location exceeds a certain quantity. By applying a specific wavelength, Rich narrowed down the attribute of the magical energy my dowsing would pick up. There is magecraft theory that states all things have an inherent wavelength that can be amplified, synchronized, or even canceled. A famous Clock Tower hunter uses that principle to slice opponents’ spiritual bodies from hundreds of meters away with a sword that’s more instrument and a Dead Apostle Ancestor who transmits his soul as a numerological, spiritron wave-function.
Following the enchanted Black Keys, we’re able to quickly find the edge of the bounded field in the dark. Now if we follow the circumference, the Black Keys will indicate whether a portion of the bounded field is weaker than the rest. All we find after walking half the length of the inlet are trees. This inlet, evergreen, is perfect for family picnics by the water’s edges, but the size and amount of vibrant foliage isn’t normal. To make matters worse, the moon begins to show her face so the Black Keys are no longer dragging me towards a certain direction. But that’s good. That’s exactly what I want.
Rich clicks his tongue. He must be thinking the same thing.
Dead Apostle bounded fields are capable of fooling nature; that is to say, the area temporarily becomes an artificial nature. So as the ward weakens due to say a shifted leyline or the transition between night and day, talented magi and Church operatives are able to find traces of the boundary line. The signal progressively deteriorating means the bounded field is getting stronger, evidence of a sophisticated bounded field, most likely a Dead Apostle’s lair. Or a Caster’s. But it’s not Caster. I haven’t seen Caster, but the Iselma bounded fields are nothing compared to this.
I dematerialize the Black Keys since they’re useless now, “All yours, Archer.”
A weaker mystery yields to a stronger one. It doesn’t matter if this bounded field is on the level of high-thaumaturgy. Archer, the son of the chief Greek God Zeus, is capable of A-rank attacks.
Archer steps forward, facing thin air.
It doesn’t matter if we know nothing about this Dead Apostle. It doesn’t matter if we’re waltzing into his sanctified ground without preparation. With our reinforced vision, Rich and I weren’t able to see the bounded field even in its weakened state. When nature embraces illusion once more, we’ll have no chance of reidentifying it until tomorrow evening.tells me that’s too late.SomethingI
“Arche—” Rich stops himself. He’s a magus. Confronted with a higher mystery than his craft, his upbringing must demand he investigate, exploit, understand its core so he can switch it as fast as possible. Being at a strategic disadvantage is no excuse, especially when there’s a Ghost Liner at his side. Magi are opportunists at heart. That’s why localslaying organizations make fun of us Church heretic hunters, calling us nothing but ‘aberrantdemonslayers’ because it’s so easy to kill a magus who wants something. “Break it.”daemonfamiliar
Archer winds up his sole arm. Muscle fibers tighten as magical energy crackles. Rich and I both ignite our circuits to repel any mental aftershock. Then, with one swift motion, the demi-god’s thunderous fist shatters the space in front of him. I say shatter but since the bounded field is only a magical construct any sensation should be entirely imaginary.
I vomit.
Ghosts of the dead are flying above like vultures, and the trees are made of invisible blood. Utopia? Don’t make me laugh; they’ve converted this place into a graveyard that time will no longer dare to forget.
Rich steps over the small puddle of half-digested hotdog and ice cream.
“Come on, child. It’s just nerves,” Archer says as I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my robe.
My ‘nerves’ aren’t failing me, neither is the dense magical energy causing such a reaction. Everything here is acceptable as a Dead Apostle lair. It’s just that for a moment, the forest was a stream of bubbles from my mouth as I drowned in a dark lake. That must be anticipation or rage or something because I finally have the chance to exact my revenge on a Dead Apostle.
A carrion bird’s shriek rips through the forest as a mass of roots streams up from the damp forest floor. Gnarled, wicked stakes will disembowel both Rich and me before he’s able to cast a Single-Action or I can activate my Ash Lock.
“Hrgh —!”
But they fail to reach us.
With a downward crash that surpasses god-speed, Archer seizes the roots, wriggling wooden snakes, with his sole hand. Then, without as much a grunt, he tears them out from the dirt, tossing them aside with the same uninterested look as Cherry when she throws yard trimmings into the green cart.
“Run!” Archer orders as his dark skin begins to glow an incandescent red.
In response to his magical energy, the entire forest wakes and begins to attack. While the cacophony caws to each other in raspy serpentine hisses, branches extend from the tree tops to either whip or pierce and roots seek to entangle Archer’s muddy feet, sealing his movement. So the solution is simple — if he destroys the forest, it can’t kill us.
With superhuman agility that betrays his bulk, Archer charges into the nearest tree, his shoulder bashing away the branches and all the roots that dare challenge him. The moment before he collides, he flips in mid-air to land with his feet planted on the trunk, both snapping it in half and using it as a springboard to continue his game of pinball, drawing the attacking forest away from Rich and I who have only started running towards the center of the forest.
“They’ve been raising a child of Einn—”
That magic bullet you just fired could have killed me.
“Stop being so fucking retarded.” Without looking at me, Rich keeps running. “If this was one of those Einnashes’ reality marbles, how did I draw the mana to fire that?”
He’s right. I felt him draw on the Greater Source and set it aflame. That would be impossible in a disemboweling forest. There’s only one type of being capable of manipulating nature to this degree in Tolosa right now. Archer must be fighting against the Dea—
“. . .Lancer.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s fucking Lancer.”
“No, the bounded field Archer destroyed; that was a Dead Apostle bounded field.”
“Holy fu. . . I’ll kill you myself if you’re going to be that useless. Don’t you get it? Your precious vampire is Lancer’s fucking Master.”
No. Because that doesn’t make any sense.
If he’s a Master, he’s none of my business. I’m not the overseer anymore; the Holy Grail War is outside my jurisdiction. But that has nothing to do with how I know the Dead Apostle can’t be a Master. That’s just logic. Just becausekill this Dead Apostle doesn’t mean —it’s my job toI want to
The unearthly forest filled with the cries of carrion birds breaks away into a perfectly round clearing, the center of the inlet. No blood-soaked tree dares trespass on this holy ground. They’re merely sentinels safeguarding a hollow, hand-shaped trunk at the circle’s origin reaching out to seize the moon. Lost within the moonlit shadow of the trunk is true darkness.
It turns to face us.
Somehow, the entire clearing and the lake behind him look crimson red.
Hair as golden as the sun he can’t stand, a face as angular and sharp as his fangs, and a black cape as aristocratic as the half-tie, half-scarf that flutters in the February night breeze.
I step forward, leaving Rich behind.
So, you are my enemy, Dead Apostle.
The fictional friction of coalescing foam ignites the circuit. The gloves snap on. The keys of purification are drawn. What’s left is the activation — thelocked in my rosary, declaring revenge being the Lord’s domain alone is inserted, expanding the holy text hidden within these gloves and boots until they constrict almost half the body I willingly submit to execute the Lord’s Work.versescrap
: Ash Lock — KNOX-B Rom. 12:19, Amen.Logic CancerConceptual Weapon
My enemy raises an eyebrow that’s half as long as his eye, “I would askance your selfhood, but your garb conforms unto a Church dog (教会の犬, kyoukai no inu, lit. ‘dog of the church’), though any semblance of the scent is nonextant (存在しない, sonzaishinai).”
I can’t hear his words even if I’m steadying my breath because the only thing that matters is the lack of a visible Command Spell.It could be anywhere on his body. It takes nothing to hide a Command Spell.
Everything he’s ever wanted is here, so no doubt the flame of vengeance burns within my circuits seeking escape into these fists.
All of us, no matter who we are, are merely idiotic, pathetic, weak human beings.
Not him, Dilo.
To accept that forsaken boy, I have to reject this one thing. For that I thank —
This... isn’t a fate that you should thank me for.
Shut up. You’re dead.
Without taking off his cape, the Dead Apostle uncurls his claws. No words are necessary, it’s a narrative older than Archer. To have lived this long, the Dead Apostle’s acted in his role for thousands of years. And me? This is all I’ve ever had.
So like my life, I’ll throw this Black Key into you while, “Hello. My name is Chris Frampton. Dead Apostles killed my parents. Prepare to die.”SetI announce
Last edited by You; February 28th, 2021 at 06:31 AM.
Though abandoned, forgotten, and scorned as out-of-date dolls, they continue to carry out their mission, unchanged from the time they were designed.
Machines do not lose their worth when a newer model appears.
Their worth (life) ends when humans can no longer bear that purity.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote