______ Supine
“Despite everything, your present circumstances are less unique than you believe.”
“...”
“Prodigal sons are no novelty. Though the tendency over this last century has been…well, at any rate we are still adapting. You understand this better than most.”
“...”
“I am sure your father previously made you aware of my existence and the services I provide to your family. Our firm is in good standing with the Aberdares, and has been for many centuries. I thus vouch for my probity. I am here to see that things proceed in as smooth a manner as possible. To that end, it were better if you refrain from lying to me. I can varnish events in your favour, but only if I am working strictly with the raw materials. Our human nature regrettably begets less than flawless recollection as is - accidental untruths will be inevitable. It is to be preferred, just between us, if the only deceptions are the accidental ones.”
“You’ve been through quite the adventure. I need as much detail as possible. This may be the last time you are at liberty to disclose these events. You may be assured that no one beyond these walls will hear anything other than some selection from the facts, not your delivery of them. I advise you to take advantage of the opportunity. For the duration of this case I am your confidant, and one that is sworn to a certain type of silence.”
“...You expect me to believe you’re not going to report everything back to Father? That he wouldn’t be satisfied to learn how his pathetic second son sniveled and squirmed and pleaded to be saved?”
“Your suspicion is understandable. But to be frank - such a busy man leaves himself no time to receive anything past the top-level summary. Whatever I convey to Baron Aberdare, should I convey anything at all, shall be devoid of novelistic flourish.”
“...I’d appreciate it if you stopped cajoling me in quite so obvious a manner.”
“A friendly demeanor does more to reassure than you might wish to admit.”
“I didn't do what I did in order to be at the receiving end of sycophancy.”
“Why, then?”
“...Lots of reasons.”
“You see? Cutting to the chase is not so easy as one might like. It pays to first develop a basic rapport. Which is what we are doing.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“You are communicating honestly, which is what I need. We have time, you know. The preliminary hearing is not for eight months. I have known testimony of this kind to be acquired laboriously over several years.”
“From invalids, I assume.”
“If it will make our case better, we shall have you temporarily assume such a state yourself. There is a certain level of understanding accorded, if the one at the centre of things has lost his wits.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It is a fact. A strategy, likely a viable one. But you may find it worth considering whether going mad would in any way lessen your current quality of life. Or do you object on principle?”
“I have the right to my own mind.”
“Spoken like a man who tells himself that often. Let us place that matter to one side for now. We are concerned here with the recent past, not the near future. We may say at the outset that we discuss an extremely unlikely event. Honestly, the claims of the litigants are based on somewhat contentious grounds, and we expect the matter to end with a modest fee at most. While it’s true that not all Subcategory Holy Grail Wars are created equal, the fact remains that you did manage to successfully complete one, no matter how idiosyncratic we understand the parameters to have been. We expect that the court will find that a Subcategory Holy Grail War legitimately took place, and the claims of the plaintiffs will be treated accordingly. Those who perished will be deemed to have ‘known’ what they were getting into.”
“Then why ask for my testimony at all?”
“Mostly to establish a timeline of events, and, now that the actual provider is no longer with us, what you know of the Grail itself.”
“I see.”
“You may be interested to know that his family isn’t among the plaintiffs.”
“That’s not surprising.”
“Oh?”
“They hated him. Wanted him dead, you know. The sentiment became understandable if you spent any amount of time with him, but he was also unbelievably powerful. Which was useful.”
“He received companionship, you received his help?”
“Something like that. No one else at the Clock Tower wanted anything to do with him, despite his gifts, so in that regard we were actually the generous ones.”
“I see. Was he the one to come up with the structure of the war itself?”
“No. Well, he had some suggestions. But we mainly came up with the ideas while he figured out the best way to implement them.”
“Mm, I suppose that makes sense. It would be somewhat unexpected for a twelve year old to have intentions in that direction, at least independently of a more adult influence.”
“Depends on the twelve year old.”
“Doesn’t it just. Were you such a boy?”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“And how would you suggest looking at it?”
“If you view the nature of this Subcategory Holy Grail War as one where the goal was a maximalist approach to destruction, then certainly, it could be said I harbored wishes of that nature at that age. I’m hardly alone in that regard.”
“This world has no shortage of angry, vengeful children, it’s true.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
“Well, not quite. Was the maximalist approach to destruction supposed to be obtained through the means, the end, or both?”
“Ideally both, but it ended up being neither.”
“...I follow you with regards to your war’s conclusion, but I don’t quite understand how the method of getting there failed to live up to your expectations. You did summon the girls, yes? We know that much.”
“Well. Yes. we got the Servants we wanted, at the age we wanted them. But somehow - and I still don’t understand how, no matter how hard I wrack my brains - that little retard fucked it all up.”
“...How so?”
“They came to us with no powers. Can you imagine? Completely depowered Servants? Well, that’s what we got. Outside of their memories, they were barely any different from a random child off the street.”
“I agree, that is… highly unusual. I wish I could ask him how he did it myself.”
“Ah, so you’re also of the mind that it was deliberate, right? There’s just no way it wasn’t; there have been hundreds of these things and there has never, ever been a war where the Servants showed up completely depowered. I’m certain that ungrateful little brat did it deliberately.”
“From what I understand of his abilities, it does seem unlikely that it was an accident.”
“We’d have been better off just acquiring orphans through the usual channels and making them fight to the death, if this was how things were going to turn out. That little faggot is the one who’s responsible for the deaths of my friends. I’m being completely serious, you know. It should be him dealing with this bullshit, not me.”
“I note that I am the one who will be ‘dealing’ with it for the most part.”
“It’s your job.”
“There are aspects of my work that I enjoy more than others. It is true that you would not be in the position you are now if we could find him. But in light of what we know, that seems unlikely.”
“Fine. Whatever. What do you want?”
“I want first to discuss what made the means especially destructive.”
“Don’t start thinking we were out to level a city. The destruction was supposed to be highly concentrated and highly personal. It was about taking someone mighty at their most promising, hopeful time of life and making them suffer in every way we could think of. The winner would be the one to cause the most damage without dying themselves at the hands of the Servant. Of course there was a suicidal element to it, but that was the point. Our lives were our own, to throw away as we wished.”
“But why girls?”
“Because harming a little girl flies in the face of decency as few other things do.”
“You built a war from pure spite?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“Why not infants, then?”
“Logistics didn’t work out.”
“I must admit I cannot comprehend the amount of free time needed to dream up such a thing.”
“Oh, of course you can’t, you have a place in this world. You weren’t born to fight and die in a Subcategory Holy Grail War of your family’s choosing. Your parents were rational enough to have you trained as a middleman, and there’s nothing you could possibly know about what it means to be born in the service of such a half-cocked monumental waste of a pursuit.”
“Ah. You have criticisms of our society’s current fascination with Subcategory Holy Grail Wars, I see.”
“I’m hardly alone in that regard. It seems at least half the people who participate willingly are in agreement with me on the basics - that they’re a colossal waste of time and of talent, and that magi only continue to participate because the thought of missing out on the spoils to someone else, of falling behind, propels the farce forward. Is it any wonder that most families have simply begun subcontracting the work out to their second plus children, bred specifically for the occasion?”
“And you think children bred to inherit the Crest are endowed with significantly more humanity than those in your position.”
“Are you kidding me? If you have to ask that, you haven’t understood a damn thing I’ve just said.”
“Then don’t just sit there, sulking in silence. Enlighten me.”
“No. If you don’t get the difference between a life led in pursuit of your family’s highest ambition versus being born as a throwaway sacrifice, there is nothing I can possibly say that will enlighten you! I mean, don’t you get it? For thousands of years, we lived our lives wholly in pursuit of gathering as much knowledge as we possibly could in one highly specific area in the the hopes of someone in our family, somewhere down the line, achieving some sort of breakthrough towards「 」! Now? We gamble.”
“I think you romanticise a way of life that was never quite as pure as you imagine it to be.”
“I do no such thing. There is a difference between the more base actions taken in service of a scholastic goal, and that of pissing in the wind because you want a wish granted.”
“And you perceive the wish granted as being somehow separate from the road towards 「 」.”
“I dare you to tell me it isn’t. You know as well I do what sorts of things people have wished for.”
“The routes a family’s magecraft can go down are no more circuitous, at times.”
“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”
“Subcategory Holy Grail Wars are not so burdensome if done correctly, and we still have the intended heirs pursuing the traditional work. Our society can and has adjusted, as it has done so in the past, and will do so in the future. The new exists alongside the old.”
“So many magi have been lost through this hedonistic pursuit that the ranks of the remaining have been artificially inflated just to compensate, and you still insist that everything is fine.”
“No, I deny that someone like you has the right to this conversation.”
“Oh, do share.”
“You see the world as degraded, a shadow of what you imagine (but do not know) it once was, and the people who populate it to be beneath you. Yet, despite your professed yearning for this allegedly since-past elevated lifestyle, instead of aspiring towards it as best you can from benighted position, you don’t actually try to be any better than those engaging in what you perceive as degeneracy beyond patting yourself on the back for noticing what you think they have not. I understand perfectly why you and your friends got it into your heads to try and carry out the most depraved Subcategory Holy Grail War you could think of. Spitting in the face of things is where your imagination begins and ends.”
“Go fuck yourself. More and more magi in my position are going to draw the same conclusions I did, and when they do, they’ll lash out in the same way. You should be praying that their Servants come out equally useless, and that their Holy Grails also explode. As much as you insist you’re fine with the endless pursuit of wishes now, you won’t be the second someone who doesn’t like people like you ends up in the possession of one.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. At some point, relatively early on, we worked out how to mold children into magi, and how to convince those children to mold their children into magi - and so on. You and I exist as a result of millennia's worth of indoctrination. The introduction of these Subcategory Grail Wars is a relatively recent phenomena - the kinks are still being ironed out. And when they are ironed out, viewpoints like yours will cease to occur. Whatever uprising you’re fantasizing about will never come to be. As it is, your actions have widely been perceived as those taken by someone in the middle of a mental breakdown.”
“What? I'm not crazy, I am in pain. Why can't you understand that? Why can't anyone understand that?”
“They're one and the same.”
Fin______
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Originally Posted by castor212
