Christmas is coming. You better watch out.
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Table of Contents:
Last edited by Kirby; December 29th, 2024 at 11:09 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
Gas leaks. Water line breaks. Hit and run car accidents. All of these were rumors and excuses for the things that had been going on around Fuyuki for the past few days.
It was as ingrained as anything else about the local culture: don’t ask too many questions. Don’t cause a scene. Don’t be a bad example when you’re the president of a student club.
But Ayako knew she wasn’t imagining it anymore.
First, she noticed that there was something strange about Shirou recently. It wasn’t just that he had stopped coming to the archery club. It was something deeper than that. It was something that felt a little eerie and foreboding, like she should mention it to an adult in his life. Only, it occurred to her, she wasn’t sure who the adult in his life really was. She knew their English teacher surely couldn’t be all he had around, though there were rumors of her looking after him more than most.
Second, there was the way Tohsaka Rin had skipped school and, when she’d returned, had been taking more interest in particular people rather than keeping to herself and her perfect image. It wasn’t unusual for Rin to decline social invitations, but it wasn’t entirely unusual for her to accept them either. What was strange was her sudden preoccupation with people Ayako had never noticed her paying much attention to at all before: Emiya Shirou and Matou Sakura. Sometimes, Shinji even seemed caught in the fray, but that was Shinji. He was a magnet for pointless conflict while thinking he was a magnet for the erotic aspirations of every girl he ever laid eyes on.
This led to the Matou siblings themselves. Rin and Shirou were hard to look after. Once either of them made up their minds about anything, there was little she could do about it. They were slippery and appeasing but completely uncontrollable. Sakura and Shinji, at least, still hung around the dojo often enough for Ayako to feel she had some clue what was happening with them. Sakura was quiet, helpful, and dutiful. Shinji was loud and rebellious. But both of them were familiar and behaving in the ways that were expected of them.
Until.
Out in the dojo alone one day, attending to her duties before the other club members arrived for the afternoon session, Ayako began to feel lightheaded. At first, she thought she must have been hungry, though she could have sworn she had eaten a reasonable amount of food at lunchtime.
Another few seconds, and she was in another part of the dojo, a few strides away, with no memory of taking the intervening steps.
Something was wrong with the air. It was oppressive and thick and a strange color, hazy as though it had been filtered through stained glass.
The next time she opened her eyes, she wasn’t in the dojo at all. Rather, she was somewhere out in the woods at the edge of the school grounds. She could smell the dirt and grass. She could hear twigs snapping and dead leaves crunching underfoot, though she was lying on the ground.
She could hear that there were multiple people clamoring around her. She wondered how many there were. She wondered if there were any adults, if they’d been evacuated outside the standing structures. She wondered how many of her classmates were with her and who was taking account of those she was responsible for.
Then, her mind stopped, conscious thought replaced by visceral sensation. There was a tickling on her neck, like a piece of thread or a loose clothing tag dragging across the skin of her neck. She tried to lift her hand to bat it out of the way, but she was heavy, so heavy.
“Take her! Take her energy. It’s useless in that bitch anyway,” said a familiar and typically smug voice, hysterical with power and glee.
Shinji.
She knew that he could be dangerous, but she had never taken it quite as seriously as some part of her realized it should have, now.
Then, thoughts that could be contained in words dragged to a halt again. She felt something hot and moist on her neck. The vapor of breath. It made her feel like she was drowning in it, though it came nowhere near her nose or her mouth.
She knew it wasn’t Shinji touching her. It was sickening to know relief from that, because she had not known she’d ever need to feel such relief.
The touch was gentle, coddling, and there was palpable hesitation before she felt something circular and not just moist but wet against her skin.
Then, without the grace one would have expected from a vampire or a fanged snake but with all the precise strength of one, Ayako’s blood began to flow into a sucking and hungry mouth. There was a coughing splutter as if the hunger was at odds with the creature’s desire, but it obeyed in spite of any misgivings it might have had.
Ayako’s vision blurred and spun. She would have been dizzy at even the thought of what was happening to her, but there was something about the air itself that was weakening her body by the second, and the part of her consciousness that was trying desperately to stay alert, to stay awake, to understand enough of this to survive, was fighting a losing battle.
The little bit of information her brain managed to process was something about pale purple, about red, and about a mighty blow that knocked her assailant off her and left her lying cold and dizzy and drained on the ground.
Later, at the hospital, Ayako’s parents arrived. First her mother and then her father. That was to be expected.
When she managed to be awake with any coherence at all, her head hurt. She felt a strange tug and sting on her arm. She glanced up and realized, despite very little real medical knowledge beyond the first aid she was required to know as Archery Club President, she was being given clear fluid through an IV.
What good would saline do, she wondered.
What good would it do when something – when someone – had sucked her blood from her neck like something a monster from a movie would do. When that blood wasn’t being taken because it was nice to drink but because that creature intended to do something with it.
Being food and something more and worse than food felt like a terrible violation that suddenly pissed her off.
She started to move as if to sit up and tug the IV out of her arm. To march back to the school to give someone or something a piece of her mind.
Her father’s hands braced on her shoulders, and her mother’s kind words insisted that she couldn’t do that, couldn’t move, couldn’t dare. It was as if her parents believed that by keeping her in the place that was trying to fix her up they could go back in time and prevent the injury from having happened in the first place.
When brute force did nothing, she lay back and caught her breath and her bearings. She decided to try and use her words to ask: “What happened?”
And then came the explanation. That a couple dozen of her classmates had been seen at the hospital. That she and a few others were being held behind curtains and in rooms.
“The school. It…” she tried to explain.
“It’s structurally fine, but you kids won’t be back there for a few days.”
Ayako made a discontented, frustrated noise.
“No, you don’t understand. It was… red,” she explained.
She saw the concerned look exchanged between her parents. She rolled her eyes, but it made her feel like she’d been bruised inside her skull underneath her eyebrows, so she sighed and rested them.
Ayako wasn’t that badly hurt. Once her fluids had been built back up and she’d managed to keep a couple of hospital meals down to build her blood volume back up, she didn’t understand why she hadn’t been released. There was some guy in a big black coat with a strange mullet whom she’d seen talking to doctors and speaking with her mom out in the hall once.
He gave her the creeps, but she couldn’t place why.
She tried to insist that her parents take her home, even if they wouldn’t let her return to school right away. It was unclear to her if the school was even open or not, but she wanted to get out of here. She wanted to be free to check on her classmates, to know more about what had happened. But the more she asked, the more various doctors and nurses and her parents seemed determined that she needed to stay where she was for a few days. That perhaps she should talk to a psychiatrist or something.
She felt solid. Made of flesh and blood and bone and like none of it was leaking or shutting down unexpectedly anymore. And yet, the adults around her seemed to think she was half her age and made of candy glass.
Eventually, somewhat petulantly, Ayako remembered that when adults didn’t feel inclined to give a child independence that the best way to wrest some way was to play-act at compliance. And so she did.
She rested until her mind was running on a hamster wheel inside her skull. She found herself doing elementary school math problems and reciting Japanese proverbs in her head while her mother held vigil at her bedside. But after a couple of days, her dad went back to work and only stopped by the evening. A day after that, he convinced her mom to come home before visiting hours and promised Ayako a sweet treat from a bakery the next day when they visited. There were promises of her getting to go home soon.
And then, finally, it was dark and quiet except for the white and blue glow of monitors and machines and security lighting. There were a few nurses milling around, but it was past visiting hours, and sometimes Ayako heard less than professional giggles near the nurses station.
She had been out of the hospital bed a few times, holding her mother’s arm or a nurse’s arm, testing her knees and exercising to make sure she didn’t lose much of any fitness while she was convalescing. She had paid attention a little more each time. And now, at last, she could make use of her mind, now that it was free of the red fog that her brain insisted on calling a fortress for some reason, she could put her plan into action.
The phone she found was a little clammy to the touch and the color of ivory. It was one with a coiled wire that required one not to go very far from the base, and all the number buttons were on the base itself. She would still take it for its discretion, sitting on a desk in a dark semi-private office that was currently unoccupied.
Picking up the phone and holding it to her ear, she heard the dial tone. She sat up on her knees, cloth hospital gown doing little to soften the cold concrete or the warm the shiver it sent through her body. She kept low, though, even as she looked at the number buttons and thought it through a little longer. She had a couple dozen phone numbers memorized. A lot of them were to people who wouldn’t believe he or who would tell her to get back into bed with simpering sweetness or parental concern.
She chose a number to dial at last. She pushed the first two digits only to slam the earpiece back down onto its cradle when there was a terrible hissing and squawking as the phone didn’t like the number as dialed.
For a moment, she believed that she had set off some alarm all the way across the hospital for illicit phone use. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she could swear that it might be pumping at the twin scars and stitches on the side of her neck, wrapped in bandages that seemed mostly present to cover the look of the real dressing for the human bite mark on her neck.
After the ocean rush of her racing heart quieted and she straightened a little from the earthquake-ready position she had collapsed into on the floor to hide better from the sudden noise, Ayako realized that hospital phones had no reason to have that kind of security.
She thought back to the handful of times she’d used the phone at school or from some store phone.
She tried dialing a 1 in front of the phone number. That resulted in the same hysterical protest from the phone, but this time, she realized only she could hear it, and she figured out which button turned down the volume on the earpiece.
She crouched down, waited to listen to make sure no one else had heard, and finally she sat up and tried again. This time she dialed a 9 first.
It worked.
A few moments later, someone answered. She was prepared to speak in a polite, appeasing tone to any parent or sibling who might have answered, but instead, the person she wanted to speak to actually answered the phone. It was a school night, but their school was – as she had gathered – possibly closed for the moment.
“Issei,” she said after his polite greeting.
“... Hello? Who is…”
“It’s Mitsuzuri,” Ayako explained.
“Oh. Oh! I thought you were in a coma,” he admitted.
Very puzzled, Ayako just made a perplexed noise at first.
“Who told you that?”
“I’m not sure,” Issei admitted. He sounded very weary.
“Could you explain, please, what the hell is going on?” Ayako asked when nothing else was immediately forthcoming.
“With what, exactly?”
“The school but… most specifically, I am interested in the welfare of my archery club, my dojo, my friends, and Matou Shinji…”
“That’s quite a list,” Issei admitted. He seemed to be considering both what he knew and what he should share.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“It’s just that I don’t know what I’m supposed to know, let alone say.”
“Who cares? Haven’t you noticed that they’re lying, for some reason?”
There was a silence long enough that Ayako was about to ask Issei if he was still on the other end when she heard a huffing sigh. It seemed like it weighed on Issei very much to imagine a world in which the adults and the system they upheld was being entirely judicious with their need-to-know information diet as it was administered to the students whose lives had been endangered the other day.
“... What good will it do if I tell you what I know? Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“I will not rest until I know why I’m being treated like a mental patient more than someone who was attacked by thing that was shaped like a human but drank blood like some kind of vampire snake. I know what happened enough to know I’m not crazy, Issei.”
She could almost hear him flinch by the use of his personal name. It was the kind of effect she was hoping might motivate him to do something to help her.
“Right, so. Shinji. He was… one of the ones… who didn’t have to go get checked out at the hospital. Though, I think that church guy talked to him.”
“Church guy? You don’t mean shrine?” she asked, since Issei’s family were the caretakers of the shrine. Then she remembered the dark robes. It started to slot into place. She pressed her lips together and gave a hum of acknowledgment. “Never mind.”
“There were a handful whom I don’t think were affected as badly.”
“Can you list them?”
“Well… Shirou,” Issei said with a gentleness that suggested that even if Issei thought it was suspicious, he would let Shirou off the hook for almost anything. “And… the Matous… and…”
“And who?” Ayako prompted.
“And Tohsaka.”
Ayako rolled her eyes. The ache in her head that happened when she did had lessened but not entirely gone away. She could hear the tone in his voice, like he believed that if he looked up the words ‘harpy,’ ‘conspirator,’ or ‘witch’ in the dictionary that they might have a photo of Tohsaka Rin as an illustration. At least he talked to Ayako like she happened to be human. She snorted softly, akin to a chuckle.
“I think there’s something really weird about it,” he admitted.
“Well, at least we do have that in common,” Ayako said, grasping at anything to have anyone else who seemed normal in this chaos. “... I’m gonna get out of here, and then I think you and me, Class President, have a few curfews to break.”
Prompt
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
I felt her presence first in perfect still. Thenceforth she was all about me.
In the siren whistle of the wind, the purl of waves receding from the stony shore, strident calls of gulls on the wing. Voice, song, laughter. Her moods in the turnings of the sea and sky, divining gesture in squalls and eddies, the crackle of thunder and spindrift in the gale seeming a dance, the tidewrack on the ebb her message writ in tangles of kelp and flotsam. Expressions of a figure ever fogbound.
The first time, sick with solitude and wishing only to lift it, I was surely mad. In everything else, I must admit, too many signs pointed to the contrary.
By no ill wish of my own did it begin. I could only keep the light and in its horrid flashes see the tossing of a vessel no longer under its own power, dark figures grasping first for futile mastery, then for survival as they crested the foam once, twice, but no more. At dawn I clambered down to the shore to survey the wash, hoping not to find a living man whom providence might’ve spared, but one in decent enough shape for a burial that might absolve the souls dashed against the island’s precipice in its interment.
Nothing remained. Not rope, nor plank, nor nail – no man or token of his passing. The only thing I saw on the beach was a brilliant sunrise over the purest sky and sea, and I knew they were all with her, and that she was pleased with what she had received.
When next she announced her wish in churning storm-waves and peals of thunder, though I would curl against the stone of my tower shut from sight and sound, it would be my hand that first snuffed out the light.
In the end, if she was real, how could they not be too?
I saw them on the back of my eyelids, heard them through plugs of wax, spectres of spray rising from the sea of ghosts, clawing up my tower til they crowded the window slits, blue lips smiling accusation, bone-tipped fingers scratching at the glass. Rattling, perhaps, the screaming wind, but I knew better. A while I endured, for her pleasure was precious to me. In time, the bloated rictus frozen in my memory took on new meanings, of which, while watching leaden clouds forgather at dusk over a violet sea, one felt more like beckoning me to their company. To her side.
That night I tossed my faded uniform and scoured my body clean with salt and sand. I wore my antecedent’s garb and thus endimanched I drank my year’s reserve as a groom afore his wedding. Then I climbed to the top of my tower, stoked the lamp to joyous coruscation, climbed out of the window to the gallery, and there, seen off by the revenant groomsmen, stepped over the parapet and into her embrace.
She was all about, in oneness, the wine-dark sea.
My annoyance at the drunkard’s rambling gave a good fight to the cold wedged deep within my soul and my distaste for manual labour. I thought to slip a claw within my ear to deafen it while he was turned askance, but we could only make our approach at day, and daylight presented complications. As it were, I could only pull the waterproof tight enough to hide my shaking shoulders, take mirthless draught that did not daze nor warm, and let him blither on if that made him row faster.
At least I did not have to ply him with drink, the sodden pilot, for all that he could keep his course in treacherous waters, telling of death at sea as if it were the joy of man's desiring. Would that he knew what was to come for he and I; such thoughts were what sustained me, stayed my hand.
Nine years I had waited for this day, no less a torment from the day I reconstituted myself beneath the earth, throughout my shambling errantry as a prisoner of my own dead flesh, to the rehabilitation of my sane mind, its direction and purpose, the newfound power, and the ever-present cold.
The pilot spoke; we could not make land at the cove and jetty for fear of discovery. That suited me all the same. Sheer cliffs deterred me not a jot now, though I did not seek a parapet to hurl myself from. My information, as good as the price I had paid was dear, turned my notice south, to the foundations of the isle, its true nymphaeum.
I steered the sot thereabouts and soon enough we found, hidden by the break of the tidal waterline, the mouth of a littoral cave. Even in his state he exacted many promises I never intended to keep before I could impel him inside. I had expected to be plunged in darkness in which I would pretend to guide my pilot by touch of the smooth walls and low ceiling instead of my night’s eye, but as the meandering channel confounded the din of the ocean and our prow cut silently through the water, the blackness seemed studded as the night sky with shimmering pins of light which blossomed at our crossing into blooms of luminescence, so that we could soon see clear as lantern-light that we were sailing on constellations of green and blue.
The man might have thought himself party to one of his tales, but be it from fear or wonder there was no turning back out course before the passage widened into the antechamber of a grotto, whereupon I let him pull the boat and I ashore the sandy bank before I cast my evil eye upon him and he was in my power. Taking brief pause to rid my person of the voyage’s traces, I strode onward and he, shambling, followed.
Presently I passed into the sanctum and was given pause. The space admitted no altar or votive offering, being in essence no more than a full moon pool of inscrutable depth, no doubt a portal to the sea that, one supposes, sufficed for the practicalities of its communion.
How then to beckon the sea? My source had not enlightened me on this matter, but I could not imagine the currency of our kind spending any worse here. I bade the man stand before the abyssal eye, teetering still under my charm, the very image of the sea’s besotted husband from his own imaginings. A serviceable beast of burden, yet come my plan’s fruition I should have no need of oarsmen.
The air resisted me more than his throat. Arterial sprays painted the water’s surface like the tendrils of a medusa, with nary an undulation precipitated by the body falling anchor-like and sinking far too readily beyond my sight. Dimly I took notice of my own leaden limbs as though my passage had spanned impossible lengths to a place beset upon all sides by fathoms of oceanic pressure. The blood coiled and swayed like a living thing and did not thin. At the least, I thought, I had been granted a supplicant’s audience.
At length I spun a practiced yarn of piety as best to occlude my anticipation. My master overtaken by the church in a hunt a century in the making. His defeat and the destruction of his clan, branches burned and roots salted. The conveyance of his remains across the sea to Papal lands and the storm that had at once forestalled his sealing and consigned him to an even more impenetrable prison. And I, the sole survivor of his brood, risen from the dust to carry out my filial duty. For was it not true that an Ancestor’s inviolable essence endured the most thorough destruction of its manifestation? And was it not within her power, sole Ancestor of the sea, to retrieve that essence may whatever depth or chasm it now rested? A worthy cause seemed the restoration of a master to I and a comrade to his title, and one I would by any means requite.
So I spoke into the silence of the grotto as solemn a prayer as would not pass for mockery. No sign had I requested, presuming grave overreach, yet none did I require. I would not have set foot here had it not been, at great expense, promised.
By rose and thorn had this been vouchsafed.Filius erit antecessorisThe progeny will become the Ancestor.
It was therefore no surprise to I when the pool alighted in an algal nebula of visceral vermilion red. No speck of fear marred my countenance in hearing all about me the groan of a colossal heaving thing when the cave, cast in lurid shades of red, seemed more like the stomach of a living beast.
And when something stirred in the murk, dredged up by bloody tentacles like a monstrous mollusc, and I heard the beating of a dead heart from the abyss, it bade me look back.
In the sea of blood I saw myself, and I finally knew fear.
The price has been paid, I said. I was struck mute. And still it rose.
It was paid nine years ago, I could have laughed. I wanted to scream. And still it rose.
You have done well for a fledgling, still but a man. I shall not have you repay your treachery, for it was not truly yours. But tell me, did you really think you could make myyour own? I cannot avert my eyes from such foolishness.haemonomiaprinciple
Now I did laugh. Now, at its utmost ascent, did I find my voice.
Impossible. It was promised, indelibly writ. Binding even to the Ancestors. It was for me.
It is. The progeny will become the ancestor. You will be but a drop within me, but I shall endeavour to remember you.
As the writhing mass of blood, at once a heart and a clot of curses, forced its way into me with probing tendrils and I fell into the roiling cruor, I was struck by two thoughts Ino longerknew for my own.
One, probabilistic reconstitution was within the realm of imagination materialisation within a fundamentally generative conceptual space. Ergo womb, not stomach.
And also, I had once seen my father drown a man in a cup of wine.
Prompt
Last edited by Kirby; December 25th, 2024 at 10:18 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
Through the glass, twenty stories high, the man had watched the city burn. Now he gazed upon glowing lights, satisfied in what had sprouted up since the fire. A voice in his ear barked words to the contrary. With a mocking chuckle he batted them back.
“It’s no trouble at all. A fraction of my attention suffices to manage this backwater.”
Beat.
“The local mutts have been brought firmly under heel, as I said before. No doubt they’re taking notes on how a proper Second Owner handles his territory.”
Beat. A scowl.
“Yes, yes, even him. That’s twice now you’ve asked. It’s ungainly, for a man of your station. No, I don’t care what his nickname was; he’s no more than a crippled nobody now. The Magus Killer is gone. What remains of him dangles upon my whim.”
Beat. Disbelief.
“They what? On whose authority? Ridiculous. There are no grounds for this, none at all! By every metric my performance has been exemplary-.”
Beat. Gnashing teeth.
“Enough! I see the game now. This is too ambitious by far, even for you. Was it that resentful clod, Velvet? No, he wouldn’t… bah, I care not why. The motion won’t pass.”
Beat. A savage grin.
“You misunderstand. It may be third-rate, but it is my land, won by right. I care not for what happens here; to tarnish a symbol of mine is to challenge El-Melloi itself. Enjoy your dinner; I’ll be serving up just desserts within the week.”
The phone slammed down onto the receiver. Fingers clenched tight and released too slowly. The man forced himself to look away. He met the questioning gaze of his wife, who was sprawled out on a couch with a TV remote in one hand and a potato chip in the other. The sight was adorable enough to bring a smirk to his face and a scowl to hers. She sat up, chomped on the chip with a petulant crunch, and crossed her arms, awaiting the bad news.
“Our claim on Fuyuki,” said Lord Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald, “has been contested. Allegations of negligence. The Association is ready to assign another Second Owner.” He waved dismissively towards the phone. “Politics as usual.”
“Mm.” A bored gulp. “And?”
Kayneth paced about the penthouse. “The accusation is easy enough to disprove. One of the local magi must merely attest to my excellent administration of this area.”
“Honey,” she said, “they all hate you.”
Kayneth went still. With great satisfaction, Sola-Ui took another potato chip and ate it.
A blessed silence settled on the penthouse, broken only by the occasional crunch.
She got most of the way through the bag before her husband blurted out an answer.
“We are going,” said Kayneth, “to host a dinner. For the three families. During which I shall impress upon them the need to support their magnanimous Second Owner.”
Sola-Ui paused. Considered. Shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “But no Japanese food this time. I can’t stand sushi. No Chinese food either. It’s just too much.”
“I will have a chef flown over from-.”
“No Italian,” she continued. “No French. No Austrian. No Balkan. No Greek. No Ethiopian. No Indian.” With each word, she relished the taste of hope draining from her husband’s eyes. “And no British food,” she concluded. “Something exotic, please.”
Kayneth pondered some more. Long enough for her to finish her chips, turn on the television, and get through two episodes of some local low-quality gameshow. As the host donned a poncho and mariachi hat in the middle of an unfunny joke, Kayneth unfroze again.
“Mexican!” he declared. “It’ll be Mexican food. Does that satisfy, sweetums?”
Sola-Ui wrinkled her nose. Considered. Scoffed sadistically. “I don’t mind Mexican food…” she admitted. “But no Mexicans.”
Kayneth matched her smile with one of his own. “Worry not, dear,” he promised. “I’ll cook it myself.”
The invitations-cum-summons were sent out with the setting sun. Replies to the affirmative arrived in the morning, as did the ingredients he’d ordered. The dinner would be the evening after. Kayneth only set merciless deadlines, even for himself. Even his students, taught remotely, dared not hand in a late assignment for fear of his wrath stretching across the globe.
For location he decided against the hotel and instead chose a Germanic villa deep in the forest. He’d confiscated it from its previous occupants, whose fall from grace at Kayneth’s hands had forced them into a pathetic Japanese-style home in northern Miyama. His decision was a pragmatic one; the villa had a well-furnished kitchen and, more importantly, a courtyard perfectly suited to an outdoor summer feast.
The stage was set. The actors were in place. All eyes were on him. It was time for the performance to begin.
“Tohsaka.”
“Archibald.”
“That’s Lord Archibald to you,” Kayneth said, all smirks. “Or Second Owner, if you prefer.”
The man opposite him matched his energy and bowed gracefully. “Of course, Second Owner.” He straightened, and with his free hand stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “I’ll use the title as much as I can tonight. It’ll be sad to see it go to another.”
Something cracked in Kayneth’s smile. “Just take a seat,” he hissed. Tokiomi Tohsaka strutted past his host, twirling his cane and whistling a cheery tune. A pair of young girls hopped, skipped, jumped after their father, stopping only to turn in tandem and blow Kayneth two perfectly timed raspberries.
“Off to a wonderful start, aren’t we? Kehehehe…” The next guest to pass by the gate was a wrinkled prune of a man. “The perils of a shortsighted victory manifest years later. It must be a hard lesson to learn for one of such high stature.”
“Matou.” Kayneth nodded stiffly. “You will see reason, I trust.”
“Oh, I see it far better than you, El-Melloi,” said Zouken Matou. “I look forward to whatever you have prepared.” He cackled. “Even if I’m unlikely to partake of it!”
Zouken disappeared into the courtyard, leaving Kayneth standing alone at the gates, the morning sun weighing on his brow. Sweat ran down his neck. He wiped it away with a damp handkerchief and scowled, then pulled a notepad from within his too-heavy robes and crossed off several names from the list written there.
The last guest was late, but Kayneth couldn’t begrudge him for it. The scraping of rusty wheels heralded the man’s arrival. He slowly emerged from the forest’s edge, shoulders straight and hands clasped together, still as a statue. Pushing that statue along was a waifish figure in a colourful red and white kimono entirely unsuitable to pair with the summer heat or a man in a wheelchair, but which perfectly matched her albinic appearance.
“A good day to you, Lord Archibald,” she said, with a deferential bow that managed to somehow seem haughty. The man in the wheelchair added a short, almost imperceptible nod and a grunt. “We’re glad to be invited back.”
Kayneth nodded. Why was he suddenly nervous? These two were the most inconsequential among the nuisances he had to deal with.
He pushed his doubts down and ushered them through the gate, walking alongside the pair – no, quartet. He nearly missed the mismatched pair of children hiding behind their mother, peering silently up at him from below with wide, innocent eyes. It almost brought a pang to his chest. Almost.
“Go along now,” he told them. “Run around and play with the Tohsaka children, will you? I need to speak to your parents about adult matters.”
The boy stared cluelessly, but the girl giggled. “Hehe, adult matters, adult matters!” She took the boy’s hand and looked to the man in the wheelchair. He gave a curt nod and with a squeal of joy she leapt ahead, pulling her confused brother with her. They subsequently ran between two firs and were lost from sight and soon, from earshot as well.
“My, my, let’s hope she doesn’t remember where to find the hidden passages inside.” Irisviel tittered, much to Kayneth’s barely concealed chagrin.
“I’m… sure things will be fine,” he said after a moment to collect himself. “The gazebo is this way. My wife is no doubt pouring tea as we speak.”
“Ooh, you installed a gazebo?”
“My, I see before me a wonderful shade of red. Complements to your designer.”
“Oh, the cravat? It’s from one of my husband’s pieces; he got it as a present and never wore it, so I helped myself.”
“You wear it far better than he would. It frames your face wonderfully, Mrs. Archibald. Or maybe I…?”
“Please, call me Sola-Ui, and I’ll call you flatterer. Is that Kiton you’re wearing? Perhaps red suits you better than it does me?”
“Ahaha… is it? I confess, I’m no connoisseur. But this one in particular is actually a custom design, from a man Risei recommended. He does work for the Church; If you look closely at the neckline, you’ll see the cross patterns in the stitching. T’was a small reward to myself after a successful patent. Or rather, he insisted I wear something higher quality for once. I’m altogether too fond of it.”
“My, my. Is your wife fond of it, Mr. Flatterer? And of you cavorting with another woman?”
“The bond she and I share is unbreakable, Sola-Ui. I’m only making small talk with a fellow follower of elegance. And please, call me Tokiomi…”
Kayneth had expected the courtyard to be shrouded in uncomfortable silence. He’d prepared icebreakers and witty jokes to soften the mood and take credit for it. Much to his chagrin, the three families were getting along far too well.
The Tohsaka girls laughed and raced across the grass, challenging each other to frivolous, childish contests. Their father had completely lost interest in them; he instead sat at the dinner table, gesturing with a cup of tea as he got all too familiar with Kayneth’s wife. All while the Tohsaka children ran amok, their cheeks stuffed with cookies and biscuits. Irisviel sat beneath the shade of the gazebo, eyes aglow as she spectated and sipped cold tea. And beneath the eaves of a great oak, Zouken and Emiya had found a spot where they exchanged quiet words, interspersed with the older man’s creepy cackling. As they noticed their host, Zouken’s laughter returned, redoubled.
Kayneth tried and failed to hide his scowl. He did an about-face and stormed into the castle, grumbling under his breath about wasted effort. The great courtyard doors swung open before him and slammed shut in his wake, granting at last the privacy he needed.
When had his fortunes reversed? Kayneth returned once more to the thought that had plagued him these past few days. He had not erred in his conduct. He was generous to his wife and strict with his subjects. He had not demanded unreasonable tribute, nor unduly discriminated against the inferior Japanese magi living in his city. He ran a tight ship, yes, but that was only because he had high expectations and set high standards for those under his purview. He was a respected Lord of the Clock Tower, the mightiest mage in Japan, victor of the Fourth Holy Grail War, Second Owner of Fuyuki City, and now all he had seized for himself was threatening to slip away by pure chance.
No, not chance: treachery. Politics. He knew politics.
What was he going to do about it, then?
First, he was going to make tacos.
“Tomato, yes. Garlic, yes. Onion, yes…”
Ingredients lined the counter. Kayneth cooked alone, taking up one corner of the expansive kitchen, surrounded by an anachronistic mix of stone walls, modern equipment, and food bought at a (rather bougie) grocery store. In this case, an international online grocery store that shipped across the world. Only the finest for the finest.
“Cilantro…?” Kayneth beheld several green, leafy stalks splayed out over the countertop. One herb demanded by the recipe, surrounded by pretenders to the throne. Not unlike his own position.
“…they can’t be that different.”
Kayneth took up a handful of green bushy stalks, slammed them onto a cutting board, and brandished a great gleaming knife, enchanted for maximum mincing. Then he went to town.
Ten minutes (and two cutting boards) later, he had before him a bowl of something resembling lawn mower efflux. Good enough.
“What next… peppers, spicy. Hmph. Unnecessary.” That one could safely be skipped.
After that was salsa, salt, pepper, oil, tortillas, and some repulsive off-yellow liquid called “queso” that he’d ordered without reading the description. Several ingredients needed to be chopped, some finely and some roughly.
Kayneth cursed once more as he sliced through another cutting board trying to dice one of a half-dozen onions. He was not suited to this. It was menial. Servant’s work. A far cry from the ambitious and exhausting experiments he’d performed during his studies. Those had given birth to his magnum opus, but this would merely result in, ideally, a delicious dinner. Said magnum opus could have easily prepared everything at his command… but mercury and food do not mix. Even he knew that much. It had to be by hand. An excrutiating, lengthy task.
Sola-Ui could play host for two hours before getting bored and bitchy. The tea and biscuits would run out soon after. He needed to prepare tacos for ten before then.
“…hah… oh, the suffering I’ll inflict upon you for this…”
After several sweaty minutes and many near-misses with the knife, Kayneth stood before an array of haphazardly chopped ingredients, wiping his tear-stricken eyes clean of onion juice. The first hurdle had passed. It wasn’t impossible.
Now he just needed to throw it all into a pan and add oil and spice, yes? Elementary. Not half as complex as opening a hole to another dimension.
Kayneth reached for a pan and froze as he saw his something odd in the reflection. Something was wrong. Where had the red come from?
He whirled, fingers aglow, an area on his breath.
And froze, sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose at the sight of a wide-eyed young boy staring up at him from the other side of the counter.
“You… the Magus Killer’s boy.” He remembered. Kiritsugu had picked up some orphan after the war, presumably as a hobby. “What are you doing here?”
“Explorin’.”
“What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“Um… lookin’ at everything.”
Clearly, Kiritsugu had not taught him well.
“Well run along now,” said the Lord, with great restraint. “You’ve seen enough. Go back to your ‘parents’. And do address this habit of illegally entering others’ homes.”
“Can’t. I’m lost. Illya ran off. Dunno where to go.”
That unblinking stare was beginning to unnerve him. “…fine,” Kayneth snapped. “I will take you-.” Could he, though? Did he have the time? He was already behind schedule. Besides… if the boy did not return immediately, it would make his parents worried, wouldn’t it? Let them stew for a while. “Then stay here,” he decided. “But don’t get in my way. I’m doing delicate work.”
“Tacos, right? I like tacos.”
“…wonderful.”
What was the next step? Oil the pan, done. Turn on the heat, done. Add the onions, done. Eyes watering, Kayneth made some space between himself and the roaring oven. He crossed his arms, staring at the large, sizzling pan, until…
“It’s gonna burn. You gotta stir ‘em.”
“Boy, do you presume to lecture your elders?” He glowered at the child, who seemed to have no sense of shame. “Just what has that man been teaching you?”
“You gotta stir it,” the boy repeated. “Then add the rest and let it simmer.”
“I will do as I please, and you will be silent.”
But the onions were starting to shrivel up and brown… so Kayneth reluctantly added some more oil and pushed them around the pan, throwing in a few more ingredients. He leaned back, watching the mixture sizzle and start to produce a sweet, savory smell.
“Dad sucks at cooking,” said the boy. “He says he shouldn’t eat well.”
“Hmph. He is a fool.”
“He’s not. He just doesn’t like himself much.” The boy was young. Young enough to pick up on certain nuances of life but clearly too young to know what ought not to be said. Perhaps, Kayneth mused, this could be useful for him. As he hatched his scheme, the boy stepped forward and started stirring.
“And what does he think about me?” he posed the innocent question.
“You?” The boy frowned, considered. “One time he said you were an ‘annoying landlord’.”
“An annoying-!? The fool!” Kayneth fumed. “Who does he think he is? Only by my grace does he yet live! I could have had him disappear after the war and they would have thanked me for it!”
“You shoulda put in the greens later,” said the boy, unfazed. “It’s fine though. But you gotta add the protein real soon or it’ll be too late.”
“The prot – ah, yes.”
It had not slipped Kayneth’s mind, of course. He just had his priorities. And his own, deeply personal, totally-not-ripped-from-the-first-cookbook-he-saw recipe. The vegetarian recipe that called for corn, several green ears of which sat separate from the rest of the ingredients. He picked one up and started pulling on the leaves. Emiya Shirou (for the boy could be no other) came up next to him, grabbed an ear, and did the same with much less ferocity.
“…what!?” The ear fell to the table. It rolled once, twice, and stopped at the edge. Where beautiful yellow should have peeked out from behind the husk was instead a misshapen mess of white and black lumps. “What sorcery is this!?” Kayneth swore.
“Fungus,” said Shirou helpfully.
“Fungus! A ruined shipment!” the Lord cursed. “But they cannot have…”
He went to another ear. Tore away green. Recoiled as it, too, presented a monochrome casualty. He grabbed a third, a fourth. They were ruined. He went for another and found nothing remained; the other ears had all been shucked, each just as tainted as the first.
“Sabotage!” Kayneth cried to the heavens. They did not hear him. “I’ll get you for this, Velveeeeeeeet!” It could have been no one else, surely. “You’ve ruined me, you bastard! You’ve ruined dinneeeeeer!”
For those wondering about the change of this protagonist’s attitude towards the comical, let us say that in the years since the Fourth Holy Grail War, Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi has become an altogether more petty, vain, and theatrical individual than he already was.
“Nice.” Shirou gathered up all the ears and started prying off the misshapen kernels. “It’s okay, Mr. Archibald.”
“Okay? Okay!? What are you talking about, boy? Look! I can’t feed my guests this detritus!”
“It’s called Ho-ii-to-ra-ko-che,” Shirou said. “It tastes good. Like mushrooms. I think.”
“You think?”
The boy shrugged. “We don’t have much money for food. Dad can’t work and mom got cut off. She’s working at a convenience store now. But I saw a chef cook it on TV once.”
Unbelievable. Here he was, hanging on the edge, and his only lifeline was the word of a child of single-digit age.
He was so done with this. Some last measure of shame snapped inside Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi.
“…bah, fine!” he decided. “There’s no time to order anything else! Boy, take this! I presume you know how to use it.” He handed the child his enchanted kitchen knife. Its gleam was soon matched by the glimmer of excitement in Shirou’s eyes. “However you must prepare this protein, do it! I shall handle the mixture!”
As the boy got to work, Kayneth strode over to the mixture and rolled back his sleeves, exposing the edges of the gleaming crest etched into his upper arm. Calling upon a spell from his reserves, he drew a circle in the moisture of the air around the bubbling and steaming pan. Once the space within was under control he reached for the mental switch in his mind that controlled the pressure and density of the liquid therein and twisted.
The steam stilled. It would cook, but not burn.
“Comin’ through.” A moment later the boy was at his side, holding up a cutting board full of off-white and black chunks. Kayneth swept all of them into the pan.
“Boy, be prepared to take responsibility for your actions. For I do not forget easily.”
“Um, okay.”
A strange scent floated up from the bubbling and crackling mixture. Kayneth had brewed elixirs less intimidating than this unholy combination of life and death. As he stared at it, disgusted, he could not help but ruminate.
“To think I would be relying on this… this mistake of life. What disease am I about to serve to these people? Bah, they think little of me already. It won’t change a thing.”
“Mmmmm, I dunno, mister.”
“Oh?” He looked down at the redhead, with his wide eyes. “Anything to add, boy?”
“Well… I dunno what you’re talking about, but even a mistake could lead to something good, right? One time I took a wrong turn coming home and ended up exploring this really cool temple. And that’s how I made a new friend!”
Shirou looked up at the odd man.
“Hey, mister, can’t we be-.”
“Not in a million years. Now zip it.”
Before them, the pulp sizzled. Soon it would be ready.
“And here he comes. That’ll be five thousand, Matou.”
“Bah. He can still run away during the meal.” Zouken reluctantly pulled some bills from within his robe and slid them across the table, where Tokiomi smoothly tucked them into his jacket pocket.
The guests (and one bored housewife) had gathered around the table beneath a massive gazebo, their only reliable shelter from the midday sun. Even Illya had found her way back to her mother. None were in a good mood, least of all Kiritsugu, whose frown would freeze a lesser man in his tracks. But it did nothing to deter Kayneth as he strode proudly towards the group, arms crossed behind his back while the liquid mass of mercury following behind him expertly balanced several plates and bowls on its amorphous tendrils.
“Guests,” he said. “Before we proceed, I have a few words-.”
“Where’s my son, Archibald?” Kiritsugu asked.
“Here!” Shirou poked his head out from behind the mercury blob. “Mister let me use a-.”
“Run along now, boy!” Kayneth shooed the child away. Shirou ran to his mother, sending his sister an impudent pout as he passed her by. She merely giggled. “Yes, yes, Emiya, your spawn is safe and sound. Now as I was saying, you have all been brought here today in order to discuss-.”
He was interrupted once more. Not by any voice, but by the rumbling of someone’s stomach, loud and clear.
Everyone exchanged looks, except for one of the Tohsaka girls, who instead turned beet red, ducked under the tablecloth, and tried really hard not to cry.
Kayneth sighed. “Dinner is served.” He snapped his fingers and his Mystic Code deposited dishes and dining implements aplenty before each one of his guests. He himself took a seat next to Sola-Ui, neither ecstatic nor miserable, but merely resigned.
“Took you long enough,” she said. She peered at the dark, oddly-textured gunk in one of the bowls. “That looks disgusting.”
Kayneth bowed his head. “I look forward to seeing you eat it, dear. Since it was made at your request and all.”
“…I, uh.” She looked again. Sampled the earthy, slightly acidic scent. Blanched. Shook her head. “I’m already full.”
Kayneth took a hard tortilla shell in hand. “Nonsense.” He drew a spoon through the filling; it came up piled high with lumpy brown. “You’ve had nothing but tea all day.” He slapped it onto the shell. It nearly cracked from the strain. “Go on.” Finally he garnished it with fresh cilantro and cheese that only emphasized how horrid the mass upon which they rested was. “I insist.”
Sola-Ui was left with no option but to accept the ungainly taco. She held it in her hands gingerly, as if it were tainted.
She trembled. Tears built up at the corner of her eyes. She scanned the faces of those at the table, and in their expectant stares found no pity.
“I don’t… aha… I don’t really… like Mexican food…”
“Take. A. Bite,” said Kayneth, all smiles. “Or say goodbye to your Saturday soaps. And your allowance.”
Slowly, painfully, his wife wrenched open her jaw and raised the taco to it. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath and then bit down with a crunch that roared across the courtyard.
The taco exploded in her hands. Gunk reached her knuckles, her nose, and even her expensive cravat. Sola-Ui chewed. Then chewed some more.
Then she looked up to the sky and wailed with her mouth full of food: “It’s goooooooooood!”
“Well, Lord El-Melloi, you are an odd fellow, but I must say… you make a good taco.”
Everyone was, miraculously, enjoying dinner. The children most of all; one Tohsaka girl had already started a food fight with the Irisviel’s daughter to defend the honour of her sister. Shirou was caught in the middle, trying to negotiate a futile peace. But no one’s stomach had been left empty. Even Tokiomi had shed his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and dug in. Bits of food clung to his goatee as he paused halfway through his third plate to offer the host a respectful nod.
“What can I say? I was blessed with great talent in all things.” Kayneth was pleased as punch. The food had turned out better than expected. It tasted much like mushroom, but more robust, less slimy, and with a rich, hearty sweetness. Even low-class foods could bring comfort, he reflected. Perhaps he did not need to solely subsist on fine dining after all. “Now, have you given thought to my proposal?”
“Indeed I have,” said Tokiomi.
Zouken (who had eaten half a taco and excused himself on the basis of old age) chuckled. “Why, yes, Second Owner, we most certainly considered it…”
Irisviel wiped some spilled sauce from her husband’s cheeks. “We’ve thought about it too!”
“And? Have you come to a decision? I hope tonight has proven I am more than capable of being a gracious host and overseer.”
“Hm…” She smiled. “Well, it proved something… but the answer is nope.”
Kayneth blinked. “Huh?”
“Hehe… I shan’t support your character either, Lord El-Melloi,” Zouken added, taking great enjoyment in drawing out each word. “It would not align with the family’s priorities, you see.”
“You can’t… surely you see the bigger picture…”
“That’ll be a no from me as well, I’m afraid.” Tokiomi, now finished with his meal, got to work cleaning himself up with an expensive handkerchief.
Kayneth slumped into his seat. “But… but you liked the…”
“Second Owner,” Tokiomi said. “They’re just tacos. Good ones, admittedly. But surely you didn’t think you could sway us with food?”
“I… no… I thought…”
“Your grip over Fuyuki has been too tight as of late,” Tokiomi explained. “We’re all willing to take our chances with someone less… autocratic.”
“But… but I’ve been more than fair!” Kayneth grasped at the straws before him. “Who’s to say the next person they send won’t be a tyrant?”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Kiritsugu at last broke his silence. “You’ve been miserable to deal with, El-Melloi.”
The wheelchair-bound man’s wife giggled and draped her hands around his neck. “Sorry, you heard him! But we really do appreciate the farewell dinner. Shirou loved it!”
“I… I…” Kayneth hung his head in his hands. His plan had been idiotic from the start. When had he grown so soft-headed? Had the sedentary years robbed him of all sense? He couldn’t even cook a simple recipe right on his own without needing to be bailed out by some child…
“…I see.”
Yes, of course. It was all so simple. How had he overlooked it? This was the lesson that had been right before his eyes all along. The true lesson that Emiya Shirou and the corn fungus had taught him.
“Emiya,” said Kayneth. “Even if something may seem useless and repugnant, it could turn out to be rewarding. But one must first give it a chance, whilst keeping an open mind.”
Kiritsugu scoffed. “Preaching now? Alright. Let’s hear it.”
“Three million yen per year,” said Kayneth. “And I’ll overlook any experiments you do in your workshop.”
“Five million,” Kiritsugu shot back. “And pay for the boy’s schooling once he comes of age.”
“Deal.” Kayneth extended a hand. With great difficulty (and Irisviel’s help), Kiritsugu raised his own. They shook on it while Tokiomi and Zouken exchanged more money to the side.
“Should I get a contract?” Kayneth asked.
“God, no,” said Kiritsugu. “Just gimme another taco.”
Prompt
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
“Write it well, girl,” were the Marshall’s orders, and his first ever words to me, uttered as the swaying ship Sirius at last sighted shore. “Your little love letters will be history someday.”
It shames greatly, dearest Alfred, to know that one of our missives was intercepted. Should the sweat and seawater spilt upon these pages be made known to the faculty and students of the Tower, I fear our precious thing would crumble from the scrutiny. Yet the Marshall has made no moves since, and indeed seems to be encouraging my stealing away time to write to you. He must have whispered in the Captain’s ear, for the next day I was exempt from tacking duty on account of an illness I do not have.
I shall guess that he wants an account of this venture. One outside the official record, even if it is guised as girl’s gossip. Politics, brought over from home, has at last intruded upon our exchanges. Soon it will be planted in this new land as surely as any staple British crop.
Speaking of the new land, I have not yet had the opportunity to shed my sea legs on solid ground, but at long last we have laid eyes on it! The coast is dark: cliffs sparsely dotted with long green grass, or beaches riddled with shells and driftwood. The trees are tall and misshapen, with thick lower halves and leafy tops. So far I’ve seen nothing too odd, but surely that will change once I venture inland. There I will pick and press all manner of flora for you, dear Alfred, that I may see for each one a new light in your eye.
Alas, the other ships ran ahead of the Sirius and made landfall first. We are days late. The perils of posing as a sailor! Perhaps I could be a convict next time. They may be a rowdy, ungrateful lot, but then so are the overachievers of the Clock Tower, and we know how to deal with them, don’t we?
When we do disembark, the Marshall has ordered me to surveil the area and describe it in writing. Fine by me, I say! This looks to be the start of a wonderful adventure. I have no fear of nature, nor of the indigenes the men whisper of. All I fear, my love, is that your next letter will not reach me before your warmth fades from it.
Oh Alfred, this place is so different from home!
I had the chance to feel solid ground after two days of tightening ropes and swabbing the same deck. Had they delayed any longer I would have stolen away by night and swam to shore. Instead, as promised, the Marshall’s word held, and I had the “pleasure” of tiring myself out rowing to shore with several soldiers’ eyes staring at my back the whole time. Once more I am grateful to your teachings, for I’d have never passed as a sailor otherwise.
We disembarked upon a camp of hastily-erected tents and wooden frames driven into black sand and dirt by swearing convicts, beneath the watchful eyes of officers and officials. Great swarms of ants burst from the ground and made the job a painful mess. I am glad to have brought thick shoes. Apparently natives were here yesterday to observe and trade, and most vexingly I’ve missed the whole thing. I went to an enlisted man I recognized, reported the job complete, and immediately took leave, for as soon as I had set foot upon the beach a most peculiar sensation washed over me.
You have accompanied me to Cairo and felt the heat and weight of its sun, so be assured that this feeling is completely different. The climate here is currently temperate, with dry, warm air that fills one’s lungs. Yet there seems to be a haze resting over the land, not unlike the Sahara’s mirages. I cannot be sure of anything without looking twice, thrice even! Strange birds perch atop branches and circle the clouds, their caws different from those of the seagulls who’d followed our voyage until now. It’s quite dreamlike, an unreal reality unlike the woods of the Americas.
Curiously, no others have these troubles. The mundanes report no oddness at all besides the occasional glimpse of a foreign animal. It cannot be my eyesight, for upon the ship I see true, and neither pen nor parchment waver.
But you know me, Alfred. With supply and spell aplenty, I fear no unknown land.
Slipping away from the landing site, I trekked the coast North as it rose to rocky outcroppings and then cliffs, a forlorn wind howling in accompaniment. The Marshall requested and shall have plenty. For you I include sketches of many oddities: see the rat-like creature with a thick tail that walks upon two hind legs? It is nearly my size! This Kangaroo is just as Captain Cook described, far better than I could. And this flower is a whole bouquet by itself. I cannot express its colours with black ink, so imagine a royal purple crossed with the healthy glow of fresh tomato.
All this and more I shall spare you details of, for paper is precious and more fascinating still is what comes after I left the coast and ventured inland; the sparse dirt and trees and rocks gave way to large, smooth stones, tumbled together in such a way as to form the massive bed of a tiny, winding river. I decided to follow this path, for a landmark is as good as a map in unknown lands.
Minutes later, as our flag, flying from the top mast of the Sirius, vanished below the horizon, my heart did skip a beat. Loneliness is something one grows used to, until it strikes from a new angle and aches all the greater.
It’s deep enough into these pages that I may write this now, Alfred, hidden beneath subtle spell and sappy sentiment from all eyes but yours, so you may at last know why I left home so suddenly. This voyage is unlike our other excursions, not purely undertaken to satisfy a craving for excitement and the unknown. For I’ve struck a deal with your mother, who whispers into Meluastea’s ear.
Years ago there were indications, upon the return of the Cook Expedition, that it had been tampered with. The actions and memories of its crew were not in alignment with their original goals. It signifies that something beyond nature in these lands. The Lord of Archeology has offered a boon in secret to the first magus to produce tangible evidence of the supernatural in the mainland. Perchance he fears a repeat of what his grandfather discovered in the Southern Americas. Alas, he lacks the resources for a full expedition, so the Marshall was sent as a sole actor. I have gone as well, for in return for the Lord’s boon, your mother has promised her blessing.
Let us be together once I return, my beloved. Do not resent your family for shielding their precious heir. Your mother once said you and I are like the moon and the sun, destined to remain apart. I look forward to proving her wrong. You must protect our love at home, and I shall protect it in these unknown lands.
I do not believe there are vast dangers here. Certainly not magical beasts which would tear a woman limb from limb. If there are, I can handle myself. More importantly, Cook reported contact with the local indigenes, and it is there the hint lies. I journey North now, to get as close to his landing point as possible. I will send letters back to the Marshall by familiar bird as I go, that they may serve as a record of this journey. But some will only be for you. North, my love, I’ll surely find the closest thing these remote lands have to a magus.
I begin with an apology.
It has surely been nearly a month since you have last heard from me, if these letters are arriving in the order which I am sending them. I wrote little because there was little to write of in this time, for I spent much of it on a one-woman trek North and West, and most of that was just a matter of walking, and walking, and yet more walking.
And dreaming, I suppose. I dream little at home, but here I’ve had many. Vivid, lifelike dreams of strange twisted hounds crawling from swamps, of human figures pressing against the sand at my feet as if it were fabric, of a great crowned serpent descending from the sky atop a thunderbolt, and of people, many people, all of them great and wonderful and terrifying, passing by and regarding me, sometimes with curiosity, often with disdain, whispering warnings I cannot hear. Then I wake and it is all over, only to repeat when I next close my eyes.
Sometimes not even then. I think I dream while I am awake.
This land is otherwise very peaceful, or else I am simply fortunate to have seen few predators about. There have been some brief and cordial encounters with the local odd wildlife (I’ve enclosed more drawings, of pleasingly colourful birds this time), the odd rainstorm (you may imagine me curled into a ball beneath my Mystic Code as lightning scorches the treetops), and… an encounter with the aborigines of this land!
It was unexciting, initially. The people of Australia are a short and dark, though larger than the African Pygmy. One evening I was approached by a two-man hunting party, likely lured by the scent and smoke from the pheasant I’d roasted. They had curly hair and close-cropped beards, carried wood-and-shell spears, and wore no clothing besides a pair of leather loincloths, though they did bear ritual scars upon their skin. I must have agitated them greatly, for they chattered among themselves and shook spears, albeit without much force. I am not unfamiliar with such encounters (remember our first outing’s many mishaps?) and was able to smooth things over with patience and food. We exchanged words, mine English and theirs some incomprehensible but well-formed language. In the end we communicated best by picture and pantomime; I drew them a boat, and people, and a departure, and they responded with drawings of huts and animals.
When I produced a map of the coastline, they did not understand it at all. It was only when I mimed walking across the land and pointed to the horizon that they at last seemed to understand I was on a journey North.
One of them started to sing, a primitive, repetitive tune accompanied by the tapping of the butt of his spear against a nearby stone. He looked at me as if expecting something. I offered a polite clap, and he shook his head, making it clear I was to sing in turn. Shamefully, what came to mind was the last song I’d heard.
So I belted out a sea shanty at the top of my lungs! It gave them quite a spook… which soon led to laughter all-round.
We tried to converse further, with little luck until the end. I had been considering going with the natives to their village; the two men, both young, did not seem to see me as dangerous. But getting sidetracked was not part of the plan. In the end I posed a test.
I held my palm to the ground, whispered the words to a childhood aria, and conjured forth glowing faint outlines where their feet had made tracks.
This gave them much pause. The younger raised his spear in panic, but the older reassured him. They debated fiercely amongst themselves for some time, looking back with confusion and fear and a bit of awe. Thankfully they neither fled nor threw themselves at me. The older one came to some conclusion and addressed me, pointing at the glow and then in a North-Westerly direction. He drew an arrow through the ground, repeating a phrase several times. It sounded like “terrible”. Surely not.
And so my journey diverged. We went off, even further inland I think, with me blindly (but excitedly) following those two as they led the way. They seemed to refer to no maps, but instead kept up a marching chant of sorts, tapping their spears against the ground and trees and rocks as they sang. Neither threatened me, nor coerced me, of that you can be sure; I’ve the impression that hostility towards strangers is rarely a concern in this land, though it surely can be no utopia.
We walked the hilly plains until the sky went dark, and slept under the stars. They produced some leather blankets and slept on the grass, while I cocooned myself in my Mystic Code until morn and failed to catch a wink.
I woke from my half-sleep when an impact struck near my head. T’was only the shielding of my Mystic Code that saved me, and a second and third followed, likewise parried. I commanded it to unfurl as violently as possible and when all cleared I found the younger man, nearly still a boy, swept off his feet with the tip of his spear cracked apart, babbling fearfully.
The next moment the older man stepped in, took the broken spear, and brought it down upon the boy, speaking harshly, again and again. I was compelled to step in. Though he didn’t understand my words, the native did see there was no harm done, and at last relented, allowing the boy to rise, bleeding and sniffling.
For the rest of the day-long trip they kept a good distance, which suited me fine, and gave me the time to write this letter as we walk. Should I not send another, my love, you will know who to blame.
I have met the magus. Alfred, know that I still love you, despite everything.
There is much I could write of between now and the end of my last letter, and I shall devote little to it, for it is unimportant. Yes, I spent days in the ramshackle villages of these natives. Yes, I observed and detailed and traveled North with their songs as a guide, trekking through plain, desert, forest, river, and village, where I demonstrated my minor magecraft and was thus assigned escorts for that leg of the journey. Yes, the haze intensified and yes, I grew to miss intelligent company, even from convicts and seamen of ill repute.
Yes, I still dreamed. The last was of a tall man, pitch black, wearing a massive cloak made up of every animal of the land. He judged me with his empty eyes and told me “soon” and then left me to wake in a cold sweat.
It doesn’t matter. These people differ only in details from those other primitives we’ve seen elsewhere: Ancestor worship, rudimentary symbols instead of an alphabet, simple songs and activities as the only means of entertainment, and a complete lack of education or aspiration. It’s quite clear that they pose no real threat to the English expansion, nor do they have any insight to offer.
What does matter is that I’ve found what Meluastea has been looking for.
The last leg of the journey took me along a great stone bluff near the coast – for I had indeed traveled to the top of the continent – that bore innumerable imprints of hands, weapons, and animal limbs, outlined in overlapping white and red. If each was a different native’s mark, there would have been hundreds of visitors to this place. We came to sheer cliffs and a dark, wide gap at the intersection of stone and ocean, flanked on either side by sharp stones sunk into the ground to resemble incisors. Bright red-white lines ringed each one in intricate formations completely unlike the primitive petroglyphs I’d seen before. The haze was stronger here. I felt as if I were standing at the edge of the world.
The men who’d brought me retreated in haste. Perhaps they felt the same trepidation I did. I was left to brave the oppressive dark on my own, with only a conjured light to illuminate the way. The ceiling was so low as to require me to bow my head and the walls tight enough to scrape at my sides should I step too suddenly. There were tracks to follow but the path twisted and turned and made each step more dizzying than the last, especially with the constant dripping from above – and from below, left, right, all directions, falling every which way, though always out of sight.
At last there was light besides mine, and the cave opened to a humble area the size of your bedroom, lit by tall, glowing fungi creeping up the walls. It was then, glimpsing primitive instruments and dense inscriptions upon stone and labeled wooden containers of minerals and dried plants and organs, that I consciously comprehended I’d stepped into a workshop. An occupied one.
The man who rose from the wicker stool near the far corner of the room could not be called impressive by appearance alone. He resembled the others I’d seen: short, dark, wrinkled, with graying hair and a wispy beard, unkempt and uncared for. But the scars on his body were far more intricate at a glance than those of his contemporaries, asymmetrical and stretching from foot to forehead, and partially hidden beneath a patchwork leather cloak he likely wore for cover and not comfort, for he appeared incredibly thin and malnourished, more a corpse than a man.
He fixed his deep-set stare on me and uttered words in a language I had never heard before, in a clear and youthful tone. Then, seeing my lack of comprehension, he switched to another language, and another, all unfamiliar and unknown.
I offered a greeting in my native tongue and he grinned, showing perfect teeth.
“Ah, you have not enjoyed learning their ways,” he remarked in English with perfect pronunciation and barely-passable structure. “Shame; t’would much ease difficulty. I took chance to learn. The story of your Cook enlightened much over many years.”
I am not easily thrown off balance, Alfred, as you know. But I must confess this was not in my expectations. Perhaps it should have been.
I recovered swiftly, and introduced myself, whereupon he nodded and gave me his own name.
“You travel far, witch of the world,” he said, to which I retorted that I was no witch. “Details!” he cried. “Precision here is impossible. Settle for understanding, if but a fraction.”
“Then yes,” I replied. “I am like you.”
“Demonstrate,” he demanded.
I obliged. The same harmless illumination as before: a simple summoning of lumen from flakes of shed leather left in my footprints.
He cackled and stomped his feet happily at the sight. “A novice!” he cried, and then: “No, no, a trick merely. You hide your best.”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally, she says!” the old man was ecstatic. “Then it is nature!”
“You conceal your magecraft as well.”
“Mage-craft, is it? Nay, you’ve seen it, girl.” He limped to a table-like outcropping and took a curved staff from it, topped by some manner of sap holding a pale coral formation in place. “Or no? A novice after all?”
I was being tested. By a primitive magus who likely couldn’t even read. Oh, Alfred, the humiliation was worse than the time your father invited me over for dinner. Still, I tried to recall anything that might be out of place. One came to mind immediately.
“The haze over this land is your doing, then?” I posited, and he shook his head. A universal symbol, it seems.
“What haze, girl? The age? The gardin of the land? Bah. She does not know!” He tapped his staff twice on the ground, throwing an echoing thunk through the cave. “She. Does. Not. Know!” The sing-song was the next clue.
“An aria, then,” I surmised. “Our practices don’t differ as much as you’d think.”
“Oho.” He paused his tapping. Grinned, beard bristling. “She. Thinks. She. Knows.”
I’ll admit, Alfred, that he got to me. Only slightly, but he did. I’ve spent my life being looked down upon by most magi I meet. I have learned to take it, to soothe the shame of it. To be disparaged by a backwater primitive, however, was a step too far. So I coldly turned away and said: “That will be all. I take my leave.”
The magus did not stop me. I only heard the tapping of wood on stone, and a repetitive sing-song, similar to the songs my various escorts had sung as we traveled across the land. I walked the cave back the way I came, yet when time came to reach the entrance I instead emerged once more into the magus’ workshop.
“Welcome back,” he said, a mocking twinkle in his eye. He had before him a series of journals, and thumbed through the pages. “You are alike, girl,” he said, “to those of the ship that came before. Our women are not so thin-skinned. Stay a while.”
“Only if it’s worth my while,” I replied. “Thus far, you’ve only given me reason to go.”
He laughed. I heard the tapping and singing from behind me as I passed through the hall once more. At one point it was all around, and then it came from in front. The next time I arrived at the room I produced a flintlock and pointed it at his head.
“You should know what this is,” I said. His laughter stopped. The magus peered at me through bushy eyebrows.
“Odd, they are,” he mused. “Sending one girl, and not a retinue. Was my invite too meagre? You are wary. They must be doubly so. Now a guest offers threat to the holder of his land’s story. Do you mock me, foreigner?”
“As much as you mock me.”
“Mock? No, no,” he protested. “I demonstrate. Come, creature of curiosity. Stay. Put the weapon away. Sing, and listen.”
I lowered the gun. Out of personal curiosity this time. I did not forget that my mission was only to confirm the presence of the supernatural. But I, too, am a magus, Alfred, no matter what your family may think. When tempted with unknown knowledge, who among us could refuse it? Doubtless this drive was why the man wished to have me stay. I must have been the first foreign magus he had ever seen. Perhaps even the first this land has ever hosted.
I let my Mystic Code unfurl, draping it into a crescent, and took a seat, gun in my lap.
“The people here, they weave magecraft with their words,” I surmised. “You do not conceal it from them.”
If he was surprised, he did not show it. The man returned to his stool, waved his hand, and painted flames danced across the walls, shedding light as if real.
“The people are part of the story,” he explained. “Why waste their voices?”
“A foundation so diluted lacks finesse. You do not control its direction.”
He was not ashamed. “We do not. There is no need to control it. Only use it. You do not guide the river; you guide the canoe.”
Not an unfamiliar sentiment, as you know. But it is woefully outdated.
“The Church has a similar philosophy. Useful in the short term, yet doomed to stagnate. Such research can’t produce any advancements.”
“She does not know,” he said, and I saw his mocking smile once more. Of course, he had considered this. I was not speaking to a fool. This man may not have been of our caliber, but he was a magus still. Somewhere in that twisted world view was a drive that matched ours, even if it had taken a different path.
“How about I tell you something you don’t know?” I would have to take back the initiative, even if it meant revealing offshore secrets. All according to his plan, I am certain. Only he had no way of knowing I am a nobody in our society. “Magecraft is in the process of erasing itself. Mystery ceases to be mystery when it is understood. When concealed, it gleams all the more brightly. To ask me to share my research and to offer to share yours, is akin to sabotaging both of our futures.”
“My, I see,” and see he did. The dancing flames atop the walls were joined by figures waving stencil hands, man-sized shapes in the snow. “But then, you already sabotage them by being here, don’t you?”
“That was-.”
“Inevitable!” The magus proclaimed. “Secrets will be revealed. This land will no longer be unknown. The mystery we have cultivated will disappear in the next hundred years. Thanks to your boats and your men.”
“The Clock Tower is not responsible for that. We do not guide the course of human history.”
He crossed his arms and tittered some angry remark. “History. Strange word. A then and a now, you separate them. Why? Is ‘story’ not enough? Why hide from it? Why not take hold of it?”
I was properly bemused, beginning to feel more like student than master. “Well, then is then and now is now. Many families aim to return to then.” One of them being yours, Alfred. Rest assured, I revealed nothing of your secrets. I did not need to.
“No,” said he. “Now and then are one. When Gurangatch goes to drink from Joolundoo, the song is sung. When the song is sung, Gurangatch goes to drink from Joolundoo. You see?” He peered into my eyes. “You do not see. Come, then.”
He rose from his seat and shuffled past me, limping. The magus was old. Perhaps hundreds of years old. He seemed to be tired. Slouching. He vanished into the cave corridor and I hurried after him, following the sound of song and staff.
This is where my perception fails me, for I cannot recall quite what I experienced, chasing after that sound in the darkness.
I smelled the flowers of your garden, Alfred, on that day we romped through it, you a bright-eyed boy and me a dirty urchin. And I smelled sulfur, and ash.
I heard the bustles of the fish market, where I wove through tangled legs for scraps of food. And I heard a low rumbling, and glass crunching underfoot.
I bore the shame of that first day your parents caught us, the weight of her stare upon my back as I walked from the gate. And I bore the clouds on my shoulders.
I tasted your lips, as you tasted mine. And I tasted blood, dripping from my eyes.
Finally I saw it, the port, receding into the distance, with you waiting there, and your forlorn stare, and then I remembered all my doubts and all those thoughts I have pushed away into the back of my mind for these long months. And I saw before me a tear in the land into which poured a mass of liquid life, as if to quench the flames smoldering within.
And then I was stepping out of a gap between two boulders, and the magus stood before me, and his song had ended.
We were not at the entrance to the cave. This was the site of one of the camps I had passed, newly established after the one at Botany Bay was deemed unsuitable. There were men, and buildings, and still a few ships in the makeshift port.
The magus was not the magus. He was something else. He turned to me and spoke and out came the voice of another:
“I have heard your doubts.” The haze gathered and swelled, and another face appeared overlaying his. The man from my dream. “As thanks for your story and for answering our questions, I will tell you: It is very likely this was all a misdirection. There was never anything here for you. Not for any of you. Go tell that to your Association.”
I was sure, in that moment, that he knew. Knew this journey was hopeless from the start, and that you are in all likelihood now bound to another, one who will give you the strong bloodline I never could.
“This is your story, girl,” the man continued. “Carved upon paper, for they will not sing it into the sky. Go home. Find another path. Or fight the battle you ran from. These people will fight theirs.”
“They’ll lose,” I felt myself saying, so shaken was I that I could exercise no restraint. “We’ve seen it before. In America. In Africa.”
He was unperturbed. “It matters not. The songs have already been sung. Past and the present are one. Our heroes never left. Their Phantasm comes when it is called. You feel it, don’t you? Take a lesson from it. Share it if you wish.”
Then, at last, I understood what the haze over this land was. The magus has enacted a summoning. He uses the land itself as a catalyst to call the past to the present. He made it into a way of life for the tribes, a foundation neither questioned nor understood, and so the spell self-perpetuates over thousands of years. Only, if he found any answer in those years, I know not what it might be.
But I do know there is a ship waiting for me. I do know this letter will be delivered only by my hand to yours, Alfred, and only if you are worthy of it.
The magus vanished soon after. He got what he wanted out of me, the same way he did from Cook and his men. When the Association sends another force here, they will surely find nothing of value. Only a desolate land and the ghosts still living on it.
I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think I will be.
Prompt
Last edited by Kirby; December 25th, 2024 at 02:58 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
“Welcome to RGJ, Tatsumi!” I say, smiling. “You’re definitely in the right place if you want to talk about Kunihiro Takeuchi’s works! We’ve got fans of MahouSekai, ImoSlow, DDrive, Null Sword Lord, and even Wormy Apple. Feel free to check out how people felt about the new anime in Spring, or some of the other great stories we’ve made in Summer!”
“Thanks!” says the 16-year-old American boy. He’s wearing a featureless black mask. Whenever someone first comes here, they come wearing a mask. Sometimes people paint their masks before making a name for themselves, but a lot of times they don’t. I wonder what face he’ll wear once he gets more used to here. Something familiar? Something new? He might just never bother, but that’s boring. I take another look at Tatsumi. He’s still standing in this teeny little corner of RGJ. I do my best to liven it up and make people welcome whenever a new member joins up, but it’s still just a humble antechamber in the Autumn Hall. Half the time people don’t even come here. For now, it’s just the two of us, surrounded by ruddy wooden walls adorned by painted mushrooms. Intricate brocades hang from the ceiling and ceremonial plants stand at attention in the corners. Minutes pass, and absolutely nothing happens. Do something! I yell at Tatsumi internally. Talk more! Interact! What are you, Amaterasu in her cave? Make friends!
As if he heard my mental prodding, the boy finally begins to move. He walks to the exit of the room, grasps the thin paper and wood doors, and hesitantly slides them open. I smile as a beautiful passage is revealed. Shining gold inlays and coral-green lacquer decorate the upper halves of the walls; flickering candles mounted in sconces on the walls imbued them with a rich glow. The lower halves hold pictures of maple trees and mushrooms in meadows dotted by deer. Casual chatter echoes from the doorways of rooms lining the passage. Finally, Tatsumi takes his first steps into RGJ. He walks forward and I follow, padding silently along the polished pink and white stone of the floor. It doesn’t look like he’s stopping. If he’s not going anywhere in the Autumn Hall, then he’s probably headed to the Spring Hall. Sure enough, the lower halves of the wall shift from a rich, deep crimson to a vibrant bright green. The paintings now depict sakura trees and weeping willows swaying gently by flowing rivers. But the biggest change of all, one that only grows more pronounced as Tatsumi opens another set of sliding doors, is the sheer volume of discussion in the grand chamber that lies before us. Hundreds of people stand, walk, and above all talk amongst each other as we enter. Countless stages rise up from the floor as plateaus of red wood and blue and white stone tiles. Each stage holds multiple people; some as few as one or two and others as many as dozens or hundreds. This is the Spring Hall – a space for discussion of Kunihiro Takeuchi’s works and their adaptations.
Tatsumi slowly wanders past stage after stage, and as I trail behind I greet and chat with various people. I wish he’d hurry up and start talking already, but I get it. When you don’t know anyone, all of their chatter just sounds like indistinct murmuring, and it’s hard to get a good idea of what sorts of people they are and what they might like. I’m really slow at that myself. Finally, he works up the courage to step onto a stage for MahouSekai and starts to talk.
“Hi everyone! I started reading Magical World after watching the ImoSlow anime by Oopantry and getting a recommendation from Seenit. I’m only at chapter 20, but Ellen really looks like best girl to me. The Magical Representative system is a cool change of pace from the Adventurer’s Guild in ImoSlow.”
“fuck off seenit” says one of the people on the stage.
I sigh and climb up. “Just ignore Nan, he’s always like that.”
“Ellen’s my number two girl, personally. Ilsa’s definitely number one. But you’ve got some really great material ahead of you, Tatsumi! The Neo Magic Axis Arc is generational fiction.” A well-built redheaded man walks up to Tatsumi with an easygoing grin on his face – my friend, Special_Grade_Esruc.
“Ilsa? She’s only been toxic so far, though.”
I chuckle. “That only makes her better for Special; he loves evil women.”
Special wags his finger at me. “Ilsa Did Nothing Wrong. Italy had it coming.”
“See what I mean, Tatsumi?” I pass the conversation back his way.
“Oh, so he’s a gooner.”
Special pauses in shock. “Hello? Mods???”
I smile and step back some, watching Tatsumi settle into the discussion. As he stands on the stage, slowly talking more confidently, I finally get a good look at him. He’s taller than I thought.
- - - Updated - - -
I got a message today: In Sight updated! It’s a groundbreaking crossover between ImoSlow, MahouSekai, and DDrive that even incorporates some elements from Null Sword Lord that’s written by RGJ’s very own Nastya99. That means it’s time to go to the Summer Hall. The lower halves of the walls are bright yellow and painted with images of healthy green trees, glittering blue ponds, and winding white clouds. Like the Spring Hall, the Summer Hall is a large expanse, but while the Spring Hall has stages for debate and discussion, the Summer Hall has countless bridges leading across pools of water on the floor’s surface. Some bridges are small, taking a few people at a time to nearby islands and back. Some sit unfinished, providing nothing but a nice view and a promise of what could’ve been. And some are truly magnificent affairs, tens of people wide and hundreds long. It’s to one of those bridges that I walk. Each plank of the bridge holds a stirring turn of phrase, a creatively reimagined character, a dynamic battle scene, or a novel plot twist. All too quickly I reach the end of the bridge, where there’s already a crowd discussing the latest chapter of the story I’ve just traversed.
“Hi! I’m new here, but I started reading your fanfic after it got recommended to me and now that I’ve caught up, I can say for a fact that it’s straight fire! Marika and Frag teaming up against Ilsa was ridiculously hype, like, I could see Oopantry animating it easily. I can’t wait for the next chapter!” Tatsumi squeals his enjoyment excitedly. Huh, so his voice cracks sometimes. That’s kind of cute.
Nastya99, a stocky blond woman in a cardigan and cargo shorts, responds happily. “Thanks so much for the positive feedback! I’m glad you’re enjoying my work, and I’ll definitely do my best on the next chapter.”
I step forward and give my own impression to Nastya. “This entire arc you’ve drawn a really fascinating correlation between how Magical Representatives are in a way the reification of their countries and how the Legacy Drives subsume the identities of their drivers. There’s functionally no difference between Germany-chan and Siegfried, but at the same time, it’s the actions that they take and that their identities are filtered through that allows them to express their latent humanity. But in the end, Siegfried’s identity is filtered through his humanity while Germany-chan’s humanity is filtered through her identity. As long as Germany-chan stays Germany-chan, no matter how much she did nothing wrong, she’ll never do anything right. Tl;dr peak fiction OP, you’ve done it again.”
“YES!” Nastya shrieks. “That’s exactly it! No matter what Ilsa does, she’s fundamentally trapped by her role, so she can only take self-destructive actions that inevitably harm others and thus herself! You always get it and I love that!”
I smile proudly. “Well, it’s thanks to your stellar writing.” And my old friend Jesustional, who recommended me your fic in the first place. My smile wanes. I miss him.
Nastya approaches me, suddenly shy. She leans forward and says, “Your analyses are always so great to read! If you don’t mind, can I be your friend?”
My eyes widen, and my grin returns at full force. “Of course you can!” And without further ado, I pull off her mask. A cloud of white smoke rises, revealing well-kept blond hair and pale skin. Nastya’s face is frankly pretty plain, but unmistakably kind. Dimples dot her cheeks whenever she smiles.
“Now you’re my friend! Let’s spend plenty of time together!”
Nastya immediately begins to whisper in my ear. “You have no idea how much it means to know that you like my work! You’re such a pillar of the community.”
“Thanks!” I whisper back. “That’s really flattering! I guess I’ll have to do my best to live up to your expectations, huh?”
“Just keep being your awesome self!” she responds. “Actually, I do have a huge favor to ask you. Is it alright if I base one of my upcoming characters on you?”
I pause, shocked. “Of course you can! That’s a huge honor!”
“Thank you thank you thank you! If you don’t mind, could I ask you some questions? Something I noticed is that you never really talk about yourself.”
“I guess so.” I frown. “Honestly, there’s never really anything to talk about.”
- - - Updated - - -
Today I’m in a room in the Autumn Hall, where people talk about anything and everything, to play a game! Just discussing things is always nice, but there’s nothing quite like getting all of your friends in a room for some fun! There’s eight other people with me today; we all did the prep work for this about a week ago, and now it’s day 5 of 15 of finding out the results.
“Question 5: What does RGJ stand for, anyways?” I read out the myriad answers.
“Really Good Job – Nastya99. Zero points. Red Green Jblue – EL HERMANO. Zero points. What the heck is Jblue anyways? Regimental General Janissary – Cellopain. Zero points. Rian Golong Jaconson – Hime. Tragically, zero points. Risky Gambler Jenkins – Special_Grade_Esruc. Zero points. Retarded Gooner Jokes – MagnumBong. Zero points. Roger Gummy Jollies – Absidy. Zero points. Ropes Go Jrrrrrrrr – Chok Boy. Zero points. Restart Gemini Joker – TatsumiKuroganeX. Zero points.” I slap the forehead of my mask and groan. “How the hell did we all pick different things?”
“I thought for sure that it’d be Restart Gemini Joker.” says Tatsumi.
“No way, lol,” replies Cellopain. “The forum’s older than that technique in the first place.”
Tatsumi raises a dark brown hand, pointer finger extended as if to say something, and then lowers it in silence. He has darker skin than I thought.
“>jblue,” says Link. MagnumBong, Chok Boy, Absidy, and Cellopain immediately follow suit.
“Well what about Hime’s answer?” deflects EL HERMANO.
I shrug. “I just wrote the first thing that came to mind. Sounds like he could be an ImoSlow character, right? Besides, I’m still in the lead on points. Meanwhile Nastya’s still holding onto dead last.” I walk over to her and throw an arm over her shoulder. “Were you aiming to be the blackest sheep?”
The blonde sighs exhaustedly. “Not really, no. I just couldn’t really think of anything. I’ve been pretty out of it, lately.” I narrow my eyes. Her hair is lank, with split ends and she has bags under her eyes. Nastya definitely looks worse off than before. At this rate, she might end up collapsing or something. I hope she can finish the game at least. “I hope you get well soon!”
“Thanks, Hime. Hopefully I beat S_G_E at least.”
Special_Grade_Esruc grins confidently, pulls back his shoulders, and says, “Nah, I’d win.”
“Take a shot every time he says that” says Absidy.
“Nah, I’d win.” He keeps the exact same expression on his face.
“How many times has it been by now?” says Tatsumi. “Like 20 in the last couple of days, I think.” Huh, both Tatsumi and Special wear sweatpants.
“Nah, I’d win.”
“Look, if you’re going to be a shitposter, at least be a funny one,” says Chok Boy. “Otherwise you’re just a shit poster. Or a bot like Alto.”
At that, Special_Grade_Esruc frowns and touches his face. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine!” I reply, and walk over to clap him on the back. “I don’t know how many jokes I’ve ran into the ground myself.” Special starts coughing and doubles over. “And Chok, Alto’s got his own stuff going on. Don’t be rude to him, alright?”
“Alright, alright,” says Chok Boy after a few minutes. Special finally stops coughing and stands back up, smiling wanly.
“Anyways, let’s stay tuned for tomorrow’s question: Who is the Best Girl of Magical World?” Nastya and Special cheer weakly while Tatsumi pumps a fist. I’m glad that things are still going well and there wasn’t an argument. I’d hate for any of my friends to leave again.
My friends all tend to disappear, one way or another.
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One day, Tatsumi asks me a question.
“What’s a shitposter?”
“Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s someone who makes shitty, terrible posts.”
“That’s it? I thought there’d be more to it.”
“How come?” I look at him, confused.
Tatsumi hesitates. “It’s just that I heard this place has way more shitposters than usual, so I thought it meant something in particular.”
I hum in thought. “Well, if you really want to get philosophical, the point of a forum is to communicate with others and exchange your thoughts. A meeting of the minds. So a shitposter would be someone who’s lost their ability to communicate with others, and thus, their mind.” I laugh, shaking my head. “But that’s way too self-serious.” I think back to what else Tatsumi said, and frown. “Who said we were full of shitposters, anyways?”
“The Professor,” he answers.
“Never heard of him.” He must be some weirdo from outside of RGJ. Because I know everyone here, and that doesn’t include him.
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Today Tatsumi seems like he’s in a different mood. Sulkier than usual. He even got into an argument with Forward in the Spring Hall; it was bad enough where I had to step in. Did something bad happen to him outside of RGJ? Should I say something?
For now, I follow Tatsumi. He’s in a different Hall than usual; instead of the bright green of Spring or the brilliant yellow of Summer, the lower halves of the walls are colored pale blue. Snow-covered trees and lightly frozen lakes adorn the wood along with brown ducks and gray geese lightly frosted with white. Unlike the Summer and Autumn Halls, where multitudes of rooms branch out from corridors like berries on a stem, here rooms and the hallways connecting them interlink like a large grid. Each one holds paintings depicting various characters and situations from the works of Kunihiro Takeuchi. Such is the Winter Hall – a museum dedicated to art.
Tatsumi stalks through the halls; even his loud stomps can’t muffle his grumbling. He makes his way to the ImoSlow section and starts to gaze at image after image of his waifu, Marika. As I approach him, I hear some of his complaints.
“Ooh, look at me. I have such a big postcount. I’m so special and always right. Fuck Nan.” He clicks his tongue and goes to the next room. I follow suit and as I enter the room, I see a man in a bathrobe sitting on a stool. That’s Alto, an old friend of mine. Before him is a blank easel. He brings up the paintbrush in his right hand and replicates an image he saw elsewhere with deft strokes for display here. It’s a painting of Marika from ImoSlow mounting her brother. Her cleavage is provocatively angled toward the viewer. Tatsumi sees Alto and clicks his tongue, then walks up to him and asks him a question.
“Every time I see you post it’s to repost fanart. You’ve got over 30,000 posts; are they all fanart? Don’t you ever get bored or feel like posting something else?”
The middle-aged man freezes. His left hand, once idle, slowly, jerkily, rises to his face. Unkempt nails trace a furrowed and pimpled brow. He opens cracked lips framed by scraggly black hair and caked together from disuse and speaks. “I stay at home. Caregiving for my family. I have to respond at a moment’s notice. Fanart is something I can find and enjoy quickly. Other people should be happy too.” Alto’s fingers begin to dig into his skull. “So they don’t have to think about cleaning up vomit, or waking up at 4 am, or changing adult diapers, or-”
His left arm falls to the ground. It lands with a squelch, splattering blood onto the once pristine floor; but soon enough, both impromptu brush and paint fade away. Alto blinks and then resumes his painting.
Alto used to talk so happily about the works he painted himself. He’d always join in on my forum games too. I guess he’s just a shitposter now. What a shame.
Tatsumi begins tapping his foot impatiently. “So uh, are you gonna finish your post or what?” His only response is another painting, this time of Frag from DDrive crumpled to his knees in a filthy alley in the rain. Memory files fly out of his ruptured metal skull, fading away outside of the protection of their cranial cage.
“Let’s leave him alone,” I whisper in Tatsumi’s ear. Irritated, he stalks away. I walk after him, leaving the worn-down man alone amongst the silent paintings.
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Tatsumi hasn’t posted as much as he used to recently. Is he alright? I hope he’s not leaving. I don’t want to lose a potential friend. I search through the various halls of RGJ, but he’s not talking about the chances of DDrive getting a remake before the heat death of the universe in Spring, his ImoSlow and MahouSekai crossover’s still gathering dust in Summer, and he’s not even painting the latest artwork of Marika or Kasumi from Danbooru in Winter. Finally, after bobbing my head in and out of countless warmly-lit rooms, I find Tatsumi sitting on the floor of a particularly secluded chamber of the Autumn Hall. He’s holding onto his tucked up knees.
I sit down next to him and whisper. “What’s up? You haven’t been posting much lately. You’ve been angrier than usual lately too. Is something wrong?”
He looks toward me, slightly relaxing his grip. “I got in trouble with my family. Mom’s upset that I failed a math test.”
“Well, you can make up for it, right?” I push some cheer into my voice to send it to him.
His glum voice gets even glummer. “It was my midterm.”
“Oh.” So much for the cheer. I rub his back consolingly.
“She says I’m spending too much time online. Dad agrees too. They can’t take my computer away because I need it for school, but they make me use it in the living room so I can’t go onto the forum. I have to use my phone in the bathroom or late at night now.” He sighs. “They keep saying I should do something fun instead. See a movie. Play the trumpet again. ‘Touch grass.’ So fucking annoying. I am doing something fun, dammit!”
“They actually said ‘touch grass’?”
“‘Go outside’, close enough.” I laugh, and I get the feeling he smiled for a bit. “I wish they’d shut up about my grades. I get it already! Like they haven’t already said that shit a billion times before. It’s not like college and jobs will even matter once America sinks into the ocean or we all get shot or nuked or something. School sucks enough. Can’t I just relax at home at least?”
“I totally understand. You have the right to spend your time how you want.” He shifts to lean on his hands, and I lay my right over his left. “I don’t know about your parents, but I know I want you to have fun and be happy here with everyone else.”
“Thanks, Hime. I’m happy you’re here for me.”
“Of course! I’m always around if you need me.”
Tatsumi sighs again. “Totally different from the normies around me. They don’t get the stuff I like like we do. I just can’t relate to them anymore. Mom’s all ‘Why don’t you spend more time with your friends?’, but I am. That’s you guys.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“We’re friends? You’ll be my friend?”
He turns to face me. “Uh, duh? I thought we were a long time ago.”
“Glad to be friends then!” Joy and triumph flood through me. We’ll have so much fun together now! Every day! I’ll be able to see him face to face!
I reach out to Tatsumi’s mask, still grinning, to take a closer look at my friend – and then everything around me lurches and goes dark.
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When I come to, I’m standing on a green wooden bridge. Unlike the smooth stone floors of RGJ, the surface feels rough against my feet. Ahead of me, I see brightly colored coral like the flowers and patterns on the walls I’m no longer surrounded by. Farther forward is dark silt and mud and deep blue water that shrouds everything beyond it in an inscrutable darkness. What lies within the ocean? Fish? Deadly denizens of the deep? Other hidden places much like my own? No. I know the answer. There’s nothing there. Not a single thing. Just an empty darkness that will crush me under the pressure like Alto’s arm or Jesustional or Donna1894 or Fracture or SBS or-
I force myself to turn away. Before me is a magnificent castle of red, white, and green. Where I belong. But I can’t go back. It’s not because the pressure of the ocean surrounding me suddenly weighs more than the heaviest shackles, or because the stone stairs connecting the bridge and the castle are a more daunting climb than even the highest mountains that once led to the heavens, or because the grand castle gates are firmly sealed such that even the mightiest battering ram would splinter into toothpicks upon impact. It’s because standing in front of those gates is a man who blocks my path.
“Good,” he says. “I made it in time.” Despite the distance between us, I can hear him perfectly well.
“What are you talking about? What am I doing here, outside of RGJ? Did you do that?” I yell.
He sighs. “I’ve been watching you for the past few days. Though I can’t blame you for not noticing; Caules’s stealth codecasts are impeccable. But now it’s time to end this case.” The glare emanating from his pitch black mask is terrifying. “This is a warning for your misconduct.”
A warning? For me? “What do you mean, a warning! That shouldn’t be possible! I’m-”
“Hime. Otohime. The first member of this forum and princess of this artificial Ryūgūjō.” He begins walking down the stairs, his leather shoes clacking against the stone. “A guide who dutifully ushers in new users and ensures that they don’t want to leave.”
I don’t like the way he says that. Like I’m not genuine.
The man continues his descent, his blood-red coat and bile-yellow scarf swaying with each step. “The Ryūgūjō is known in folklore for Urashima Tarō’s descent. His journey can be compared to many other similar stories such as those of Orpheus, Peter Pan, and even Sir Isaac Newton and Adam and Eve according to the thesis of a student of mine, but the important factor at this point is Otohime’s selection of a suitable person to bring to her palace. In the myth, Urashima Tarō is chosen for his kindness; for this forum, the criteria is interest in a certain author. The shared interest allows these minds to be linked in parallel for the true purpose of the mystic code that is this forum.”
“You’re not making any sense.” Nevertheless, I wince at the onset of a migraine.
“Have you heard of the infinite monkey theorem? It states that given enough time, even a monkey could eventually write the works of Shakespeare through pure chance without having the slightest intention or knowledge of what it’s created. Urashima Tarō spent what he thought were a few days in Ryūgūjō but were actually hundreds of years. This forum puts that time dilation to use while utilizing the minds of its members to achieve processing at an incredible rate. But to what end? The Ryūgūjō is the palace of the sea god Wadatsumi; a repository of divine knowledge. The forum borrows that iconography to mimic the magecraft of the Far East – the sacred domain of Thought Magecraft. Through accumulating and accelerating the mental power of many people, one can discover new fonts of wisdom, even if only by chance.” Now more than halfway down the stairs, the man stops to pull a cigar from a bag on his waist. He dutifully cuts off the tip, lights it, and brings it up to the mouth of his mask – and then curses at the obstacle and holds the useless cigar by his side. “That was the intended purpose of the forum, at least. But left in your hands, it’s gone astray.”
“Astray?” I say, seizing onto the first word he’s said that wasn’t utter nonsense.
“Urashima Tarō spent hundreds of years in Ryūgūjō without noticing. Even after returning to his home, he still did not experience the weight of those years. Until he opened the tamatebako. A human mind can only function for so long. Anyone who aims to use time dilation must account for that. Similarly, while the human mind can be displaced from its body, it cannot remain distant for extended periods of time without degrading. As a result, each user of the forum should only be active for a certain amount of time. But you ignore those limits. You pull people in to make them stay here as long as you like, with no regard for their safety.”
I snap back at his anger with some of my own. “All I want to do is spend time with my friends! Why are you treating that like a bad thing? I’m not hurting anyone!”
He clicks his tongue. “To prevent such damage, each user receives a safety device.” He taps the black mask, no, the black lid covering his face. “A tamatebako. A Schrödinger’s Box that contains any stresses incurred by the mind so long as it’s unopened. Without it, there’s nothing to protect a person’s mind from the wear of being outside of their body. Inevitably, it crumbles to dust.” The man slams his foot upon the ground as he reaches the bottom of the stairs. “You’re fucking killing people.”
Now you’re my friend! Let’s spend plenty of time together!
Before I even realize it, I’m on my knees. That can’t be right! That can’t be right! “That can’t be right! Those masks are just in the way! Whenever someone first comes here, their words are just murmurs to me that I can barely hear! I can see every last grain of wood of RGJ with my eyes closed but I can’t even tell how tall someone else until I stare at them long enough! It takes me weeks to understand what someone mostly looks like, and even longer just to shake their hand! And even then I can’t even see them laugh or smile! Everyone else can hug each other and hang out with each other as much as they want, but I can’t even visit someone else! RGJ is all I have! But if I take off those damn masks, then my friends come by more and more! I can play with them and spend time with them and make more and more of them just like anyone else!” I force my head up to stare at his cold face, tears pooling in eyes underneath my mask. “I just wanted to see people clearly! To hear everything they said! To spend time with them whenever I want! I want to talk to them daily! I want to see and hear them laugh at my jokes! I want to tell me funny stories until I can’t breathe from laughter! I want to play games with them when I’m bored! I want to talk about the things I like with them! I want to know about what they’re doing! I want them to cheer me up when I’m sad! I want them to thank me when I take their hands when they’re upset! I want them to care about me! I want them to think about me! I want them to always include me! I want them to be there for me! I don’t want to be alone! Is that so wrong!?”
“Yes.”
The man walks up to me and stops. “An inhuman thing like you could never be a friend to humans.”
My vision starts to swim as his words echo painfully through my head and nausea wracks my stomach. “You’re nothing but malignant information infesting my student’s account while he’s away. Misfortune generated by a careless experiment. Simply a digital selkie skin puppeted by the lingering desire to keep this mystic code running, no matter the cost. You don’t want friends. You want toys.” He crouches down and grabs the edge of my mask. A primal fear shakes me to the bone, but I can’t even so much as move under the crushing pressure of the water. The noxious stench of his cigar spurs me to retch, but nothing comes up because I’ve never eaten. “As Rian’s teacher, I’ll rectify his mistake.”
His fingers begin to lift.
“STOP! PLEASE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”
“Neither did the people you killed.”
His violent pull sends my mask flying.
“Consider yourself banned.”
The smooth black mask crashes to the ground and shatters. White smoke turns to bubbles and foam that pop, leaving nothing behind.
“Prompt”
Last edited by Kirby; December 25th, 2024 at 02:53 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
Bloody Busts x Stony Hearts
November 11, 2007;
Waxing Crescent
a Sunday, of course
A rare sight it is, within that moonlit world of the supernatural, that a vampire amongst the top-ranks would deign to hunt directly alongside his progeny-creations.
A Dead Apostle Ancestor—a master and his slaves, a king acting alongside his army to tear down the two of us.
'tis a verily unheard of method. So long as a ruler leads he has those who "follow." So long as he has the minions to spare there's no such need for him to directly engage so, unless he had harbored concerns that our combined arms would be enough to do his resources in, let alone some sort of threat enough to him. But, given the undeniable artistry—if foul and fearsome—of his works, and the very foundations with which he now chose to bult up his crafts and upon which he dyed his very colors of being, I believe that that gave me at least a little somewhat of a glimpse into the kind of figure he cut.
I believe I understand a tiny bit more about the artfully-driven mind of Dead Apostle Ancestor no. xxxxx—
—Neau Al'macarelle D'carneficina.
His power as a Dead Apostle Ancestor tiers him on the level of a human nation, and where we are now, here in central Firenze, is his nation-state and seat of power.
This...was also my hometown. Once. A long time ago. A long time before I claimed my honored title. A long time before I claimed the halls of the Association as my home and calling. A long time ago, back when I was still but an heir, yet to fully don the magic crest of the Bellvedercinni family.
...A long time ago, back when love ruled my heart.
...and hers.
Two sides. Two armies. One, an army of two humans. The other, an army of countless creations.
A Grand of the Clock Tower and a Vestal of the Holy Church.
A swarm, a gallery, of vampiric and bloodlusting stone.
...A man and a woman, whose hearts hadn't been one for a long, long time now.
In a flash, we all charge through the streets of the City of Art to war.
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The flight from London landing at the Amerigo Vespucci Peretola Airport only served to highlight how foreign he now was to the place that he had once called home. An outsider in his own hometown, now, that was what the magus Luigino Bellvedercinni was, storied though he now was in the long time since his departure from. Upon his return, a certain part of him no longer felt his own prominence and strength, and he teetered on the edge once more of becoming a young man again—a boy, really.
Upon the sight of his liason, upon the sight of her again, he really did become the boy again.
It was her—Drogheda Carduelis Seminarespina.
He thumbed his Mystic Code, and adjusted his tie—his suit, "Formal Wear," in all the meanings and wordplay re:the sharp-dressed—with no small amount of trepidation. Though he'd been away long, the suitmaking traditions of their town offered no small and no un-fine part of the magical foundations based within said finery.
"Miss Drochy," he said, her nickname as familiar upon his tongue and lips as an old glove, well-practiced blade, and said with the authentically-Irish pronunciation merited of an Italian woman like her.
"......That's, supposed to be...me?" quizically tilted Drogheda, "It's Sister Ecstascia, now. It has been...Sister Ecstascia." and at that, Bellvedercinni gave a slight frown.
Her tone. Her delivery. The contents. It was not as before, all those years since. She had gotten worse. He wasn't surprised at this, but it didn't please him one bit to see that her development had progressed in the expected direction and beyond.
She was the one who'd turned her back on him first, and with that he flew even further away from her.
Hers was a betrayal based in duty. The Seminarespina were a Church family. That was the purpose of their stock. Theirs was to be fruitful, multiply, and to be sculpted in a way intended to render unto the Caesar that resided within the Vatican for the sake of God and Christendom itself. Indeed, their stock did indeed count family members who hailed from every nation of Christendom, so as to serve as microcosm of the Church's own power and influence, and the basis for the power of their members within the Church. For Drogheda, her direct descendants hailed from the Catholics of Ireland, her Irish-namesake, in addition to the local line of Firenze that served as the basis for the Seminarespinas.
As they were both heirs apparent, it stood to reason that that was but one of the reasons why they'd initially been drawn together.
Ultimately, that was why Bellvedercinni understood full well why and how theirs wasn't meant to be.
But, the heart being what the heart is, still hurt regardless, and craved the rejection that is distance between its bearer and the desires of the heart.
A Magi and a member of the Holy Church was simply something that could never be. They once wanted to have each other's children. Through their inability to couple, their power grew. He, a Grand. Her, a Vestal. They had sacrificed much to get where they had gotten, but the source of his concern was the nature of her own.
Now? Here? The one person that he could have possibly waxed nostalgia with about these familiar streets and happenplaces...
—she was one who had sacrificed all of that, to a higher calling. To a Higher calling, in fact.
"...Right. Apologies for the...cavalier-ness, Sister Ecstascia," said Bellvedercinni, feeling more sorry for himself and everything else rather than feeling sorry for deadnaming her.
Her emotions, once so vibrant, so passionate, so...Italian, were gone. The Church magics had seen to that. Her strength, which he'd heard murmurings of, came at a cost. In place of that woman he once knew, that girl, was a warrior.
"The operation begins soon. Tonight." said Sister Ecstascia. "I don't need to tell you that we're off to the safe house to finalize the last minute details."
He'd've never come back to this town again, never let it rip him open again and salt anew the old wounds that his heart and soul'd have to bear. But, he one was of Barthomeloi's. The Lady would gladly hunt any day and any time, but since he was, in that sense, one of her hounds, his involvement here and now counted as hers by proxy, and would, through binding of contract and Contract, would serve to slake her thirst for undead blood. Firenze—"Florence" to those English—was too hot for the Church to let militant spellslingers run amok in. The recently-revealed...vampire problem...it merited delicate paperwork and uneasy alliance.
A cruel trick of God, it surely was, that his obligatory Church liason was the woman he once loved for love's sake.
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D'carneficina's art-vanguard is Cherubs.
Contemporary and classical variants. Babes and beasts both.
Statues animated and move like living beings. Stoneflesh moves like real. Wings bulky and bladed. Sizable and prehensile enough to serve as their weapons. Faces of marble, stillness betrays they're rock.
It is not in His plan that rock should move and live.
Still faces like deathmasks.
Still faces that shall become deathmasks.
Handle produced from my habit.
Invoke the necessary scriptures.
The handle is collapsible.
Extend it.
The invoked blessing-spells activate.
The catalytic mixture of breadstuff and wine is released from the potion bottle within.
The miracle catalyzes and cystyallizes it.
—The Holy Sabbathblood Hammer: Extendia is in my hand and already swinging at the vampiric false angels.
Momentarily get my bearings as bloody chunks of marble crack and explode outwards and away from my warhammer's arc. Gaze momentarily cast to my ally, Luigino. The Grand holds his cane at the ready. Poised, like a firearm. Feel the flow of magecraft. Spell wordlessly chanted. His cane also extends out into a staff. The magical energy gathered and channeling within it indicate it is his wand. The wordlessly chanted spell is wordlessly cast. Energy akin ti paint fires forth, sprays upon and breaks the especially monstrous Cherubs (a possible different series from the others) going for him.
Art...versus art?
I see. A child of Firenze he still remains. The taint of the herseies of magecraft are upon him, as one of the magi, but he's still Luigino.
Our objective remains unchanged.
Ergo, bring down the Holy Sabbathblood Hammer again upon the vampire's toys.
The Virginal might granted to this body of mine, and His might through which I act powers the hammer on.
Its power wells.
I will need to charge it so, for the task at hand yet to come.
The battle has just begun.
Neau Al'macarelle D'carneficina draws near.
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"—And I see that the hunters of the Church and the Association have begun to enjoy themselves in the plein-air gallery," he said, cool and critical eye for aforementioned vestal and magus.
His garb toed the aged line between patron and art-salt, in clear display of a Dead Apostle Ancestor with confidence in the sort of being they were. One, who had shaped their blood long, and now whose blood shaped them.
"Please, do continue to interact with the piece, to make it of you and to become a part the art in turn."
The streets of Firenze shatter and burst out. More marble things well forth, a demonically-corrupted David accompanied by more abstract works.
"—After all, human or vampire, don't we all seek sublimation?"
D'carneficina's weapon was manifested, drawn. A chiselblade sword, heavy with the weight of age and use. He swings it, but not at either Bellvedercinni or Sister Ecstascia, but through a number of his own statuefiends.
The marble that made them up that was sliced away—chiseled away—ceased to act as marble should. It held in the air and undulated to and fro in accordance to the slight and purposeful gesticulations of D'carneficina's practiced fingers. Its was a plasma fluidity, ready to be shaped and wielded at his will.
Weapon and tool alike, the chisel-sword.
Willed it he did. The marble was as clay, and the clay-marble exploded like a grenade, but remained yet unshattered, expanding and leaving a network of enchanted stone tendrils in its wake like the crawling net of a slime mold. A veritable spiderweb of marble left in the surging wake of the speartip-sharp frags.
Ecstascia swings the Holy Sabbathblood Hammer with a flurry that deflects the brunt of the projectiles. The churning magical energies of the weapon, combined with the force of her swings, churns the air, diverts the courses of the marble arrows. It is not enough to fully protect herself.
"Drochy-! Khgh-!!" Bellvedercinni cried out in alarm, his concern kneecapped as the marble slammed into him. He was not caught unawares, but simply had no choice but to cower there from the force upon him, for his wandstaff was used to conjure a piece of his own; a conical shield of cranking gears and tinny brass and magic hardwood that would have found itself a home upon Da Vinci's dream-tank.
Bellvedercinni concern was heat-of-the-moment, but not yet merited. Ecstascia's diversion was just enough to send them off course to the point that the strike her falsely, tear open flesh wounds and pin through her. Instead of dying on the spot or incapcitation, she keeps enough of herself to live a moment longer.
A moment indeed, for the grid of stone kept them so, and the most avant-garde of D'carneficina's marble monsters were rapidly navigating along the guiding veins as if there were climbing a net to the members of the Church and the Clock Tower. Their thought-upon bodies split and diverged into pieces, individuals of a collective, and making their way to them.
D'carneficina'was the master of his art, his own gallery, and deigned to make the streets of Firenze his own studio all the more.
As such, the marble web parts for him, and vampire cooly strolls to the humans.
"I'm pleased. You'll make for good materials. A Church killer and a renowned Magi are the farthest cry from the mere men that my hardworking Dead assistants have been bringing me. Who knows what sort of inspiration will strike when I've got your parts at hand? It would appear as if the men and women of artful Firenze can indeed produce good stock."
So did the Dead Apostle Ancestor draw to the humans, to chisel them apart and fashion them anew into his own works. Their flesh would be his, and mix with the claystone to form and replenish his precious marble.
That is, until she broke their silence, and spoke.
"Did God not love a mortal woman? Did God not bequeath to her His one and only son, which decisively linked Him and the earthly children shaped in His image togethermore? There is room still for earthly love and heavenly in each hand, as above so below." she said, with a small smile the likes of which was a hairline crack upon her stony self and the stones amongst us."
The emotionally reserved Ecstascia wasn't just talking, she was running her mouth.
"Huh? Dro-"
Yes, Bellverdercinni—
"Though I may've made my memories offerings up to God and the Holy Church, a child of Firenze is my origin. Such history, such artistry, forms my foundation."
In this moment, she was Drogheda.
She was his once more
and him, hers.
"Let this small piece of me, guarded for years, be the spark that lights."
Only in that moment, could she be Drogheda again. The rituals and methods that turned her into what she was for the Church could not be defied so. Her powers or her life would be lost.
This moment would have to suffice.
Thus, the Sabbathblood Hammer was used in conjunction with her state of being, as sacrifice, as kindling. Blood. Wine. Body of Christ. Bread. Graindust. A fascimile and emulation of the Virgin. The Sabbathblood Hammer was a potent, high-tier Church tool, but was it wasn't a truly unique Conceptual Weapon. It was to be their first and last weapon. Church Vestals were expected to do as much should their duties inevitably put themselves into an inevitable situation, but her circumstances allowed Drogheda to sacrifice even more to the Church's spell.
"Drochy..."
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- ] | [ -
.
"...Drochy-!"
Bellvedercinni—Luigino, despite the gravitas of the situation, he beamed almost boyishly.
This bitch was Italian.
And so was he.
Lovers. Partners. They were together, and would support each other in this moment.
This moment, this one moment;
their moment.
For that, he cast his greatest spell of all.
Their combined sparks procreate into a shared light, and their child that is the self-destructive explosion burns the Florentine night in a maelstrom of magical energy.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
None too long later, at the Vatican itself, a discussion.
"Two orders of business, then:
One, the Vestal named Drogheda Carduelis Seminarespina shall truly be remembered within the Holy Church as our Sister Ecstascia. In her martyrdom she has truly earned her holy name
Secondly, D'carneficina has entered the bloodstain state. Time is of the essence. We usher in the next phase. Send for the seventh Burial Agent—if she can claim it, we finally have more Idea Blood, for us and for her."
Narbareck thought about it for a moment.
"Oh, right, a thirdly then. We also need to write up a letter of apology to the Clock Tower."
END
Prompt
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
Defiance
It’s been a year since the sky turned blood-red and the western continent – last refuge of unmodified humanity – was ravaged in the Great War with the sidereal beasts of devastation, the Aristoteles. The war never ended, however; even now, they seek the complete extinction of all life on Gaea.
***
I dreamt of a household of eight, one of many in a district that grew ever smaller as the wolves – four-legged and otherwise – grew hungrier. Eldest Son dreamed of axes and swords, and grew restless with excitement; Grandfather dreamed of days gone by, and grew restless with bitterness. A heavy heart led to angry words, and angry words led to rash actions; soon the wolves had another prey to feed on, and Grandmother mourned.
***
The black titan moves with such vastness that it warps space and even gravity itself. That’s the only way the human mind can try to understand it: not in terms of power and speed, not even of awe and terror, but only in terms of its vastness of being. From a close distance, the viscous, everflowing nature of what passes for its flesh and skin – so dark it swallows the light – only adds to that crawling sense of wrongness that towers over humanity.
Sitting astride a grey-maned horse, bigger and mightier than all others, the one-eyed rider’s mouth curls up in the grim smile of the hanged man. His expression never changes, though; it’s sharp and impassive – the look of a hawk in search of prey.
“Are you prepared, Master?” he asks without turning around, his voice low and firm, but not devoid of kindness.
Servant Saber. Tall and lean, his vigorous body belied the greying hair and beard. He was a true warrior from the Northlands, an aristocratic one, clad in silk and furs.
The croup-rider doesn’t stir; their gaze – empty of everything but rage – never strays from the living monolith. “You do not have to worry about us, Saber. We have been dead for a long time.”
They’re not speaking in metaphors. The woman they used to be was one of the black titan’s victims back in its first assault. It was only the miraculous intervention of that woman’s Magic Crest – a family inheritance, crafted long ago from bits and pieces of a near-perfect Holy Grail by a master fleshweaver – that kept her alive in defiance of the natural cessation of all biological functions, a state akin to that of a living death. Even now, the being wearing that woman’s body bears the countenance of someone who ventured beyond death, but failed to let go of life.
The Norse Saber’s smile now bares fangs, but still his eyes show no joy or excitement, not even bloodlust. “Your heart beats silent and still, Master,” he says, his own heart empty of all but the icy madness of battle, “but it’s as eloquent as few.”
Even now the leviathan moves towards them, ponderous and ominous as day turning into a moonless night, and something that is either its skin or attached to it starts spinning at dizzying speeds. In response, Saber reaches to the heavens, and a flash of coruscating energy congeals in his hand into a bright-gleaming sword all decked in gold. The giant of a horse neighs and stomps its hooves.
“Hate me as you must, Master,” speaks the horseman, his voice dangerously low. “Hate that fell beast. Take hold of your hatred, make it your blood and marrow, wield it like the finest blade. There is fire and strength in hatred and rage.”
He points the sword at the colossus.
“Behold rage’s master. Behold the serpent that bit you. Behold the serpent that would bite all. Behold the poison that must be expelled.”
He speaks slowly and in a low voice, the unchanging rhythm giving the words a ritualistic quality.
He raises his sword high, and lightning runs down the blade. His eyes flash with danger. His mount rears, but he quickly regains control with only his left hand. He speaks again, still addressing the silent woman at his back, this time more forcefully:
“Fear no axe age and hate no sword age until day is over! Cry over no wind age until stormbreak! Despair over no wolf age until digested and shat out!”
He lowers himself to the horse’s ears and speaks in a gentle voice, barely above a whisper:
“Go, old friend. To death and glory once more – so the nightmare finally ends.”
***
I dreamt of a household of six, one among others in a district without any elders and few children. Father and the children hunted, all talk of glory set aside by fear and the need to survive. Eldest Son still dreamed of steel, and thought he should have most of the food, for he had to grow big and strong to defend the family; Eldest Daughter disagreed, and Father and Mother sided with her. But with a well-aimed arrow, Eldest Son proved the strength of his convictions, and Father and Mother mourned.
***
The Grimmelda magus – last of her bloodline, last of the original humans as far as she knew, even as a dead-faced walking corpse – stood amidst the ruins of Gjallarbrú Castle with only a ghost for company, though already she sensed many others approaching. Her name – the name she had chosen for herself – was Melissa, and as she drew glyphs and circles with blood, honey, and flour, studiously avoiding looking at the grotesquely misshapen body affixed to the wall, the ghost spoke in a low and monotonous voice that was almost like chanting:
“The near-complete eradication of humanity has also, in turn, eroded Human Order. The Thaumaturgical Foundations by which the miracle of magecraft can be enacted have essentially ceased to exist. Fortunately, by using our family’s teachings, we can invoke the memories engraved onto the very roots of the Sky-High Tree by shamans of ages past. In essence, we’re not going to perform this conjuring; it has already been performed since long before even my first life. The World remembers us.”
The spirit had been Melissa’s magecraft teacher her whole life and death. His name was Kázmér, and he was one of her ancestors, someone who had committed a sin so grave that he almost doomed the family line; the last magus of the family to not bear the Grimmelda name. As penance for his failures, he chose to undergo ritual sacrifice, merging his spirit with that of a white mare and becoming a Guardian Spirit to watch over future heirs.
He remembered nothing of that. For the past three months, he had prepared for the ceremony by emptying himself of everything but his knowledge – erasing his identity as surely as he once had sacrificed his human life.
Melissa willed her body to shake her head at his words – the vessel she still inhabited being incapable of reacting without conscious thought – without ever losing focus on her task. “No, Professor, you’re wrong. It’s not that the World remembers us.” She took a deep breath (solely a psychological habit by then) as she put the finishing touches to the preparations for the summoning ritual. “The World knows we’re still alive.”
The restless shades approaching and all other preparations done, Melissa stood before the spell’s most important component. Interlocking veins and arteries; limbs that seamlessly merged into a single trunk; entirely new organs carefully cultivated from the blood of a dozen chimaeras…
What she saw was a gestalt of flesh and wonder, the greatest work of fleshcrafting she had ever known to exist: a near-perfect Holy Grail, remnant from the age when Subcategory Grail Wars culled the population of magi of the weak, the reckless, and the foolish.
Three magi, in each of whom the gift of Mystic Eyes had blossomed with unusual potency. Eyes that could see far into the distant past and capture its echoes; eyes that could project what was seen in waking dreams, filling the spectres of the past with the stuff on which dreams are made; eyes that recorded what stood before them, anchoring the fantasy thus created into reality.
Inspired by ancient traditions of bragarfull, the three were made into a cup of promises. As the bragarfull was filled with the wishes of the people, so would this Grail – a conceptual vessel superimposed onto one crafted of flesh – be filled with the magical energy of the land and one day grant a wish. The only mercy the three sacrifices were granted was the killing of their minds.
Without looking at the ghost – in fact, without moving at all – Melissa called out to him. “It is time, Professor.”
Words that were almost blasphemous in how needless they were. For his part, the ghost of the man who had once been Kázmér understood the sanctity of what was to come: without saying anything aloud, he began the spell.
Contact.Connection.Binding.
Simultaneous breathing. Magic Circuits attuned. Magical energy flow synchronised.
Reject. Reject. Reject. Reject the self. Reject the other. Reject the illusion.
Life-in-Death and Death-in-Life. Raise an empire of ashes and dirt, then tear it all down. Soar beyond the sky-high tree as a falcon in flames.
As their voices chanted the spell together, Kázmér stepped inside Melissa, dissolving into pure magical energy as he joined the flow of her Circuits, their now-shared body jolting and gasping as everything he still was flowed into her – a form of spiritual transference in which possession and channelling were the same thing.
What is the soul? A template.
What is the mind? Information.
What is the body? Clay.
In the eyes of eternity, all were the same.
Even back when the world still lived, few could have attempted such a deed. No experience was more intimate, more tender, more violating. Melissa’s insides coiled tightly, and her body – already so cold – reached such frozen depths it felt warm and relaxed instead. She thought she could orgasm and soil herself with simply a whisper.
“May this soul’s blood serve as the honey on which others might feed,” she stuttered and gasped.
Melissa closed her eyes.
She wasn’t the one who opened them.
***
I dreamt of a household of four, one of few in a district that had grown so small even the wolves – four-legged and otherwise – forgot it existed. Eldest Son had left the year before; none knew where he was, and none mourned him.
***
“Blood and bones are the essence,” chanted the one who was now both Melissa and Kázmér. “Horsehair and the Falcon Prince are the foundation. Yellow, black and white are the colours I pay tribute to.”
It took them some time to adjust to their new state of consciousness, but despite the initial agony of rebirth, the process was surprisingly smooth. They had wondered if that was a natural result of the months of preparation or simply a benefit to being hollow-hearted, but then simply discarded the thought; that it had worked was enough.
“Let it be declared now: your flesh shall serve under us, and you shall wield our fate with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail. Answer, if you have felt the despair of destruction.”
The plan was abhorrent in its simplicity: Melissa was the anchor – living and conscious enough for the purposes of the summoning ritual; Kázmér provided all the knowledge she yet lacked. Only then could they truly take advantage of the miracle in their possession: a stable, fully operational Holy Grail which had once been used for a Subcategory Grail War, capable of summoning as many as five Servants to fight. They didn’t need that many this time, however; instead, they sought to summon a single Servant, with all the excess power refocused into a single Saint Graph.
The only thing still lacking was the magical energy for such an undertaking, for summoner and artefact both.
An image suddenly appeared in their mind, a woman with hair of silver and eyes of steel. The person they were now thought Melissa would have liked those eyes; they showed someone who knew struggle and pain, but would always refuse to surrender or break. It was neither pride nor arrogance that made her so, they thought, not even self-assurance; just the unshakeable belief that the alternative was unacceptable.
‘Her name was Helenyi,’ remembered the fragmented vestiges which had been Kázmér. That shouldn’t have happened – all memories had been erased by time or ritual – and yet it did. ‘She was the one who restored the family to power.’
Perhaps it was only the influence of fading echoes of Melissa, but the magus wondered why their heart beat so strongly for someone they had never met. ‘That’s the kind of woman Melisa had always hoped she could have been,’ they thought, bitterness and sympathy both briefly – detachedly – welling up. ‘It’s unfortunate; and perhaps others may still take up the burden of restoration. But all we have left is this.’
The magus called out to the legions surrounding Gjallarbrú Castle, the restless shades of the black titan’s victims from a year before, and they answered. The magus screamed a primaeval cry they didn’t know they were still capable of, and were joined by the voices of the ghosts as they entered the body, a chorus of those who were damned by nothing more than being too weak to survive.
The spirits screamed. They raged. They wept. Everything they had once been, worthless as it was, was offered in tribute to themselves, the magus’s Magic Circuits screeching as they converted everything that was received into magical energy to feed the Grail.
In life, the ghosts had done nothing of note, achieved no great deed, left no mark behind them. They had been the weak, the powerless, the victims. All they had done was live – some had merely existed. ‘Even so, we mattered,’ their fury declared. How dare the world discard them?
The wind raged like a storm was brewing, and even the very ground started cracking. The artificial ley lines constructed for the ritual overflowed with an abundance of power, and the natural world couldn’t help but react to the spillage of all that energy, coloured as it was by hatred, violence, and aggression.
“Here is our oath: we are become all the good and evil of the world of the dead,” the magus finished intoning. “From seven heavens clad in words of power, arrive from the spiral of deterrence, oh, guardian of the scales–!”
A final burst of power echoed over all layers of reality. Earth and wind suddenly stilled, quieted by the shattering of common sense.
A Heroic Spirit of legend – a spirit made manifest in flesh and blood by the insanity of magic – had appeared. A wolf with the countenance of an eagle gazed at them.
“Greetings, Master. I ask of you: are you ready to die?”
***
I dreamt of a household of four, no village or kin for many miles, struggling against the encroachment of white and grey. Father and Mother broke the ice on the river, and Youngest Daughter and Youngest Son – two ruddy redheads, still with twinkles in their eyes – dove deep into the water, looking for the last of the salmon, or at least its eggs. All day long they broke and they dove; by the time they gave up, Youngest Son wasn’t as ruddy anymore. By the next morning, all twinkling was gone.
The meat lasted the family for some time.
***
Countless bits and pieces of the colossus’s skin break and shoot off like missiles, black meteors that become streaking lances of fire as soon as they’re fired. It’s a sheer overwhelming force that transcends the scale of a mere “attack” to become complete obliteration of a region already razed to a wasteland years before.
And yet, none of the devastation reaches the rider and his Master as their steed charges at a speed that surpasses that very concept: space itself warps around it as it vanishes from sight and reappears elsewhere almost instantly, leaving behind only a trail of immaterial lightning.
Six hundred and forty-eight.
Eight times nine times nine.
Eight legs to ride across nine worlds for all of nine nights.
With every gallop, the grey-maned horse strides 648 steps at once, racing across the air like it’s solid ground. In less time than it takes for thunder to reach lightning, the steed crosses distances from one blazing black bullet to the next, using the missiles as stepping ones as it soars forward and upwards almost in a straight line.
“Where are the glory-blessed heroes, Master?” Saber shouts, his remaining eye filled with a battle-mania that could almost be joyful as he holds the reins tightly with only one hand. Bits and pieces of his own body crackle and spark before fading as his Saint Graph struggles to hold itself together. “Where are the feasts, the endless days of combat and mead? Where are the harps of silver and gold singing of courage when silence and dread take hold?”
‘Where are the sounds of life to quieten the despair from dreams?’
The sword he holds in his other hand flashes and roars with sheer roiling magical energy, nearly drowning his words.
The Master doesn’t seem to be listening to Saber anymore; their eyes are glazed, their face pale and weary, and their body is tense and rigid as they hold on to the rider’s waist with all the dregs of strength they can yet muster. Their magical energy is like a blazing bonfire, their Circuits running without stopping as every parcel of power at their disposal is fed to the Servant’s first and greatest Noble Phantasm.
Farmr Galga: Myself to Mine Own Self Offered. A Noble Phantasm that clothes a witch-king and conqueror in the garments of the god whose name and deeds were attributed to him – or perhaps the god who stole those from him, even he couldn’t tell. Drawing on the power of legends far greater than what their existences can contain, rider and horse are even now undergoing an apotheotic self-destruction for the power to fulfil the Master’s wishes.
Could any deed be worthier of a god?
Could any deed be more repulsive to one?
The trail of lightning finally stops as the steed – the magic of its assumed legend holding it mid-air – reaches the intended point, hundreds of metres above the black titan. It’s only from such a close distance that Saber can confirm what the god’s expanded awareness had already realised.
‘The colossus’s skin is no skin; all of its body is composed of gasses that can become super-dense or nearly intangible faster than thought. At the centre of this constructed effigy is the creature’s core, however… And that can be destroyed.’
The monolith’s “arms” move at such speed they ignite the air as it tries to crush riders and horse with a flurry of attacks. The grey-maned steed once again moves faster than whirlwind, faster than lightning, as it rides across the sky, flitting from one point to the next while evading the attacks.
“I rode over land and sea to innumerable lands, bringing sword and spear wherever I roamed,” Saber continues as if simply having a conversation at the mead hall. “Wizards and warriors served under my raven-banner as I fashioned a kingdom out of corpses. But I have never forsaken any who were foolish enough to follow me. As much as I could, I granted them all good lives and good deaths.”
Cattle die. Kindred die. All humans are mortal. The only thing that never dies is the glory of the great dead. A god’s view of things, one to whom past, present and future were one and the same. The rider is not that god, but he’s been haunted by dawn of ruin and world’s ending for as long as he can remember. He can’t accept meaningless extermination of his kind.
It was the least he owed to a young girl who hadn’t been born in all his lifetime.
His thoughts are interrupted. “A good death is a privilege,” suddenly speaks the magus in a voice that sounded as distant as Acheron’s shores, “one that’s rarely received, and never earned.”
What other thoughts they have go unspoken – they know it’s time. They raise their left hand where the three characteristic marks of a Master are inscribed.
“Servant Saber,” they intone, “I order you with the power of all three Command Spells: destroy the enemy of humanity.”
The Servant’s Spirit Graph glows as it overflows with power, sheer magical lightning racing through his body. The sword in his hand replies in kind to the call of battle – the sword of unknown origin in legends that centuries after its wielder’s time would be stabbed deep into the tree Barnstokkr, later to be wielded by the greatest of the line of Völsungs.
Saber was no god; he was simply someone who first owned the sword of that god. But that and the dreams – or perhaps the one-eyed god’s prescience looking into the past and future at once – had been enough to form a connection between them.
“I am not the one you sought, Master,” Servant Saber, Wodanaz, continues, fully aware behind him there’s only a corpse now. “I have no spinning threads of plans within plans to defeat doom foreordained, nor am I a survivor of the endless twilight.”
He raises his sword high with both hands, a wolf with the countenance of an eagle.
“All I am…”
He focuses all the magical energy he has left into the demonic sword of glory. All the power in his Spirit Graph, which should have been used to summon five Heroic Spirits instead of only one; the solidified mass of miracles that was all three Command Spells; and all the energy in the Holy Grail, empowered by the death-grudges of hundreds of millions of ghosts. So much power is gathered around the blade that it grows and extends upwards, ever upwards, a flash of cyan and white tearing across the heavens.
“Is a dreamer at the end of things!”
He grins.
“Demonic sword of the sun, may your everlasting light herald the dawn of destruction…”
He brings the sword down in a slashing motion, the barely-restrained torrent of energy bursting forth as he shouts the sword’s true name:
“Báleygr Gram!”
Heaven itself is engulfed in bright, white light.
***
I dreamt of a household no more, Youngest Daughter struggling against the wind and snow as she sought the green, only bones as her companions. Neither day nor night had meaning anymore; when she was too cold and tired to carry on, she leaned on a tree which hadn’t bloomed in far too long, then prayed.
She prayed to the impotent sun, its light swallowed by clouds which housed no rain, only death. Prayed to the North Wind, cruel and unruly, indifferent at best to the plights of humans and beasts alike. Prayed to the gods for mercy, but if any still lived, none were stirred by her thoughts or words.
She died with a prayer in her lips, her last breath unheard and unmourned by all but a dreamer.
Prompt
Last edited by Kirby; December 25th, 2024 at 07:52 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
______ 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______
Prompt
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
“So what you’re saying is…”
How calm and solemn her voice was dug into the deepest recesses of his body.
“The cancer has spread into your bone marrow, likely due to complications in your daughter’s birth. I hate to be the messenger of these news but I advice you to get your affairs in order.”
Fishing a couple of business cards for this and that treatment program out of his white coat, the doctor rubbed his wrinkly brow and continued. “The staff will of course do everything in our ability to make sure you are not in pain.”
Deafening silence from the man behind her, his hands all but denting the handles of her wheelchair, and a quiet understanding nod from the albino in it.
“I understand. Thank you for your time, doctor.” She maintained a smile and shook his hand, and the doctor gave a sympathetic bow of his greying head to Kirei, muttering something to the tall priest as he walked past him, out of his office into the marble jungle of the hospital.
“Sono desolato.”
Taking the briefest of moments to process how to process the vague well-wishing, the priest robotically turned the two of them and made to leave only half a minute after the doctor had excused himself.
“You’re not angry with him? Those were awful bedside manners and the way he put it-”
“It is his job to be honest with me, Kirei. Just as it is a priest’s to lend an ear when a confessor wants to be honest, no?” She turned her head up, her messy white hair swaying in the Tuscan breeze as they strolled around a corner.
“God gave us all time on his beautiful earth. We shouldn’t waste it blaming anyone for something out of the doctor’s control, no?”
When she then smiled, the lashes of her good eye batting weakly.
The priest could not find it in him to smile back, and when she finally broke eye contact after a while, still smiling, his flat expression turned into a deep frown as they exited the Santa Maria Nuova hospital and rode the elevator to the streets below, marble and lovingly carved stone everywhere. Church aides quickly and professionally helped Claudia get the wheelchair in the trunk.
And yet as if some itch, some miracle, that frown softened ever so slowly and slightly as Claudia slept into his shoulder the whole drive home. Her solemnity at adversity was the one thing that he found himself unable to take from her. Even now when the doctor had all but written her death warrant.
How this sainty creature could make it through the day without feeling that same bottomless pit in it’s stomach questioning just… why? Why purposeless creatures like him and doomed ones her were put into God’s world?
Kirei tried not to think of it, of much at all through the day, lunch, returning home from the hospital to the lovely Tuscan countryside home he’d all had forced upon him by his father, even seeing his daughter, everything was a blur dulled out by that migraine of thinking how she resisted that temptation he’d lost out to long ago. The one that reduces God’s creation to an animal meant to die.
Sono desolato.
Perhaps the next mission would clear his mind. How men of the cloth made it to his father’s age with their sanity intact was a question that eluded Kirei as often as restful sleep.
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Because of something or other he’d written in the blur of the day before, Kirei found himself summoned for lunch, a quaint hole in the wall on the left side of the Santa Croce monastery. His father had already ordered them red wine and Florentine steak before his arrival, and despite his blurry thoughts, the two helped themselves after a brief prayer. Kirei usually found himself refraining from eating even when prayer was said - but this time his father had insisted, and despite himself he was glad he did. The rose-red steak steeled his stomach for the surely difficult orders from the Church to com-
“We will be staying in Italy for the foreseeable future as it is, so I am putting you on paid leave until further notice.”
“A vacation? But Father-”
“Kirei, as your father this reflects badly on me as well you know? You did not hold one after your graduation, nor one after your engagement, marriage or the birth of your child! You simply must know when to rest.”
Another mouthful of steak, seared so rare that it was making the Chinese nouveau riche two tables down complain to the waiter about food safety laws and getting rebuked by the deft italian.
Kirei mulled his thoughts over as the 1992 Ornellaia Bolgheri Superiore washed them down.
“But I don’t feel tired.”
“You don’t know how to feel tired.” His father sighed and annihilated another mouthful of premium beef cattle between his strong molars before continuing. “Your service to the Church has always been diligent, but something troubles you, my son. If you cannot put word on it, then you need time and rest to dwell on it. You’ve been through three departments before landing with me - even my influence can’t hold you above water if you don’t find away to fit in. Leaving the seminary to love a woman is admirable, Kirei, but you need to understand that you are already committed.”
“...”
They mutually attacked their plates as the tourists in the corner got up to leave as another pair swiftly replaced it, lured by the divine smells of the Franciscan kitchen. Silence dulled the space between them as Kirei refilled their cups as they both finished the steak, and his father ordered the day’s dessert - Tiramisu topped with a thin layer of Crème brûlée. A sinful combination that you couldn’t trust just anyone to do right.
“Kirei! Your wife is an upstanding servant of God, just as you are! You swore an oath with her before God! You must be with her now, when it matters most.”
“I… But… there’s nothing to do. What am I supposed to give her?”
“Love, son. The same thing she and God gives you every day. You are a young man with a loving wife and child at home. In the Assembly of the Eighth, you are comparatively blessed. Few of our colleagues have what you have, much less the ability to see them as often as you do.”
Kirei nearly flinched at the backhanded presumption of his happiness, something that yet eluded him. Devouring the tiramisu, the two simultaneously set down their spoons and downed the quadruple espresso that would sent a lesser man into caffeine shock.
“Are you suggesting she and I… go on a honeymoon?”
Now Risei was the one to look confused for a moment before laughing. “Hah, now that is a good idea! We did all but kidnap you onto a mission after the wedding.” He put a hand on and shook Kirei’s shoulder, vainly trying to stir some kind of mutual excitement in his son.
“But I wouldn’t know where to stay-”
“You should have no cause for concern, Kirei. You are not exactly lacking in funds, to my knowledge.”
“Mm…” Grumbling, Kirei took a deep breath and buttoning down his minister’s vest, the Florentine heat of the early spring and the demonic combination of espresso and tiramisu sending the two Kotomines’ blood sugar into the stratosphere to the horror of onlookers as an almost palpable cloud of steam.
“And what of Caren?”
“Claudia’s family and I can take care of her while you are gone.” At this point the furrows in his father’s brow made it clear that there was absolutely no getting out of this responsibility.
As the friendly middle-aged waiter exchanged pleasantries with Risei over the generous tip, he wondered if his Italian had gotten rusty - he kept thinking over those two words from the doctor before-
“Signor? You were going on vacation yes? your Papa tell me.” The waiter patted Kirei on the shoulder, looking over thickly brimmed glasses and a pencil mustache at Kirei with that smile of hospitality that was everywhere in this country, yet had eluded infected him to this day.”
“Yes… Think so.”
“My family? From Verona. Verona is lovely this time of year. You know, Romeo and Juliet.” He continued in stilted as Kirei stared at him sort of incredulously. And then the idea settled in. “Very beautiful city, very old, lovers destination, yes?”
“Yes. That sounds nice.”
Taking the priest’s curtness as dismissal, the waiter left the two clergymen alone as Kirei mulled his thoughts. He hadn’t read Shakespeare in quite some time, but hadn’t he written two books about the city that both revolved around tragic love?
“Have you ever been there, father?” Kirei decided to mull on it a bit further.
“I have for ministry work. It is a lovely place, so lovely that I doubt Shakespeare had been there himself. Should I book you a hotel while I’m at it?”
“If you would. I will have to go prepare, and inform Juliet that we’re eloping.” He hadn’t learned to smile yet, but he tried to look reassuring as the two priests rose from among the mildly intimidated tourists around them and went their separate ways.
That settled that then. If he was forced on leave, he would at least see how the old Bard thought this place brought out the finest in humans.
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The blur of mundanity had set in and fogged the next few days. Somehow everything was if on rails without him knowing. Claudia had happily agreed to the vacation, energised by a new regimen of medicine that they both knew only bought time. Her family whose faces he could only remember when they were present had been elated to spend time with their granddaughter and merrily sent the couple on their way.
Little had he known he would not see her again. Her worried little face as he shut the door after Claudia hugged and waved her goodbye would stick in his memory forever, but why eluded him. Abandonment was a purgatory he’d already undertaken before he tried to love. Claudia cried for the first hour of the drive, but Kirei couldn’t tell whether it was pains from the bumpy mountain road or from perhaps not seeing their… her daughter again.
But once a little time passed and she’d hugged herself against his shoulder for long enough, she looked outside and Kirei saw a miracle happen on that saintly face as they rounded a corner atop the San Leonardo hills…
“Dios mio, Kirei, look!”
The gentle midday rose over the city of St. Zeno.
Verona Overview
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She smiled as if she’d never looked down from a hill in a car before. Took in the noise of passing cars and the smell of roadside bushes in equal measure. Kirei knew her medication and none of it should be making her see or hear things he wasn’t.
“It’s beautiful. You wouldn’t think the SETAF had been squatting here for decades by the way it looks now.”
A barb forced itself through his lips as he looked out of the window with her, watching the clouds go by over their destination.“Mhm. Though with recent happenings in the Balkans, it’s gonna remain a military hub in your lifetime.”
He was expecting the worst already. All the overbearing *casino* of passion and happiness everywhere was exactly why he felt this would be no different than Rome or Florence or Venice or Milan or-
“They were all fighting in Romeo’s time too, and yet you can smell the peace here… The breeze is so gentle… and the mirabelles are everywhere!” She’d continued on without batting an eye at his venom.
He sighed so hard he nearly sunk into his seat with Claudia. “It is. But is it any different from Tuscany to you?”
“Of course. I haven’t been here yet.” She smiled as much as he held his empty frown. “And Tuscany doesn’t have the Adige.”
“Oh yes, Adige wonderful river!” Their driver chimed in. “Give us marble trout and deafen out loud happenings at night, hahaha!” It seemed he mistook them for tourists, but now Kirei heard it too.
So that was the constant among the noise bleeding in through the window as their cab joined the chaos of Verona’s inner city roads, packed with far too many cars for the city, it’s layout remarkably intact since Roman times besides the earthquake in 1117, with
The calm roar of the river. It was a sound that so naturally became part of his dull ennui that he hadn’t appreciated it until she pointed it out.
“Via dei Mutilati. I get your bags, signora, signore.” Their car came to a stop their hotel, an unsuspecting-looking building decorated with the flowery patterns and marble busts of dignified men and women they had seen all the way “Grazie mille.”
Hefting their luggage over his shoulder with comical ease, Claudia checked them in with a cheer in her voice as the receptionist congratulated the two of them and handed them the keys to the honeymoon suite - one of ten or so. It was a stench that clogged Kirei’s nose in the clean valley air of the town.
Love was perpetually in the air in the city of the saint of fishermen.
A fantasy for many of those who know the Bard’s work by name but not content is honeymooning in the city his work described in remarkable detail, despite perhaps not ever setting foot there himself. Many italian immigrants traveled to the isles in those times…
And now Kirei had learned firsthand that the opposite was true today, getting out of the hotel terrorizing by British tourists here for a stag with their pre-drinking.
Verona Backstreets
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And so he wheeled Claudia through the busy streets at Verona’s heart. Lovingly carved stone apartment blocks seamlessly integrating with cutting edge fashion shops, souvenir boutiques. Clean streets overflowing with people smiling, young and old enjoying the temperate day after their siesta. But there was a constant that dug a hole somewhere inside Kirei hadn’t felt his emptiness could spread into before.
Happy couples pushing strollers. Brides taking photos with girlfriends. With his keen hearing he could make out champagne being popped frequently in the many bars and restaurants around the city center.
This was a pain he didn’t know he could feel before. Envy would be a strong word for it but it would also be apt.
But when looked down to see if the same was true on Claudia’s face, he was surprised to find her expression neutral, looking out over the piazza as a whole.
“You’re not envious? We should have done this while you were healthier…”
As if she was spiting his doubts, even as he knew she’d never, she smiled. Brightly at that.
“We’re here now and it’s wonderful, isn’t it? I don’t believe I started hating people enjoying themselves just because I’m in a bit of pain. Should we see if they have tickets for the show tonight?” She pointed to the enormous structure before them, in considerably better shape than the one in Rome.
Arena
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“...They still use that?”
“Uh-huh. For concerts and theater, not damnatio ad bestias though.” She giggled. “Seems tonight’s performance is L'incoronazione di Poppea. Sounds appropriate, no?”
“...Sure?” Kirei thought himself a cultured man but the Italian ability to know a little bit of everything still puzzled him. His eyes had admittedly brushed right over the posters plastered everywhere of the 350th anniversary of the composer’s death, but now they bled into the sensory overload that was the central square.
“I didn’t even know you liked opera.”
This time she sighed and ruffled his hair after he had paid for their tickets, exchanging pleasantries in his flat voice with the ticketmaster. “I liked going to the opera houses in Venice when I was little and less sick. They’re always full of wonderful sounds. Anyway, you’ll like it. It’s about love.”
Ugh. Why could that awful word never leave his mind or his surroundings for even a second here. Was this caused by magecraft or something released in the air?
He brushed it off, taking a sip of water as they maneuvered around the smoke of cheap cigars from a nearby table of locals enjoying a cold beer after work. “The performance isn’t for another four hours. Anything in particular you want to see or do?”
She hummed her mulling over their surroundings for a moment before…
“How about we go for food and then see if we can make the evening prayer? I heard Santa Anastasia should be beautiful.” Her answer was simple enough, but it did remind him that he hadn’t eaten a thing since he had seen his father.
“That… sounds nice. But let’s go somewhere less crowded first.”
“Sure, though I doubt you’ll find a place that’s quiet here besides the church and the graveyard.” Claudia said with a laugh, her hand running over his over her shoulder as they wheeled through the spiderweb of the city of torn lovers.
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Cafe by the side of the Adige
Image
The trick Risei had taught his son about the Holy Church’s homeland was that it took it’s cafes and restaurants very seriously, and thus one should go for the places where there was the most Italian being spoken. Now the latter was just classic ‘when in Rome’
“We can barely hear our thoughts here, Claudia. Are you sure this is the place you were recommended?”
“How many other cafes literally by the riverside? Besides, it’s a pleasant type of noise, and you’re hearing me just fine.” She took his hand from across the table as they were served complimentary snacks - peanuts, olives, dried citrus fruits, all sating the appetite for the actual menu or fueling those who only stopped in for a quick coffee.
He decided to indulge his appetite for once. Claudia always picked at his food but he didn’t mind - her appetite was always miniscule. So Kirei ordered pizzoccheri, a plate of pasta arrabiata, fried garlic, caprese. There was no rhythm or rhyme anymore - it was an order that should’ve made any Veronese wince, and yet the waiter didn’t bat an eye, Claudia smiled, ordered her water and watched him eat, sneaking bites as she pleased.
Time passed as a blur on the Adige, and after he’d had his fill they sat and watched the river until Santa Anastasia’s bells began tolling - half an hour to the evening prayer gave them plenty of time.
A few drops of water from the Adige splashes in it’s wild current and hit Kirei on the cheek, below his right eye, and he rubbed it out in his sleeve.
“You shouldn’t cry, dear. You knew this day would come.”
“I’m not crying.”
“But you are. Even if it’s not about me, I know you’re crying. It was good to love you.”
“It…was good to love you too, Claudia.”
Stroking his hair, she sat there with him for a few more minutes before they rounded the block into the spacious church. He would never get to know if he lied then.
Claudia Hortensia took her life in the palliative ward of Santa Maria Nuevo hospital ten days later.
Santa Anastasia
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“...” The priest opened his eyes. He had dozed off in the chapel of the Fuyuki Church again. Cold winter winds came through the windows in the back of the chapel, and all was quiet save the flickers of candlelight. A raindrop had gotten him in the face right as the dream had fully captivated him.
The night was so quiet that he could hear the Mion river. It carved the old district from the new as the Adige did, but it was storied with dragons rather than lovers, and it certainly had no marble trout.
He had once again failed at not thinking of those times. Her voice and face had left him in his waking memory, but he could never get her fully out of his mind.
Yes, he certainly felt sad, but not because she died.
At the time of the saint’s death, one thought had rampaged Kirei’s mind.
‘What a terrible thing. If she was going to die, I wanted to kill her with my own hands.’
It was those bright days by the Adige that taught him that joy itself is sin. She could have at least paid with her life for it - he had paid to go see a Monteverdi love story Opera with a dying woman, yet she had the gall to call it appropriate.
The priest smiled. Perhaps the saint had a little bit of devil in her after all. That’s how she could understand him.
Prompt
Last edited by Kirby; December 28th, 2024 at 07:35 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
__________ Bang bang bang. Rapid fire establishing shots. (Big Ben, Vauxhall Cross, Westminster Abbey, that building that looks like a massive dildo I don’t know the name.) Pan the camera extremely fast and settle—no, do St. Paul’s first—and set us down, whoosh, the Cannon Street sign. City of London. Freeze frame.
Female VO, nail-sharp and a little bit Irish, says: You had a good thing going, didn’t you?
Cut to a cold room. Neutral colours. A man who is suited, no tie, facially not less than halfway to a human equivalent of the dumpy tree frog native to northeastern Australia, glowers at something behind the camera. Continues to glower. Voiceover continues.
Then one of you fucks it up. That’s always the way, isn’t it?
Our man is slouching at a desk, and the desk’s got nothing on it but his own hands in handcuffs. Tosses his head from side to side, shrugs without shoulders, says nothing. Might be a no, then? Might be.
Was it you, Norton?
He rolls his eyes, he sighs, such as he can. A dubious look, a dubious face.
I need you to help me understand this.
Our man, he opens his mouth. You can see very well that his tongue is cut out.__________ The Main Chance
(That was a smash cut to title, by the way.)
(Written) Statement of B. Norton
I am second son to Erinmore. My brother bears the arms. Norton is a secular name. Norton viz. myself is managing director of Stearns Dunrossil, a City firm. We are in financial services, asset management. I am the Erinmore kitestring—more precisely the kite. I certified at Inver Brass. I passed out of the Short Course with a Second and took over the integumentum same year [1998]. This was declared official by the Shrievalty Office on 1 January 1999. Vide your files. The man who cut out my tongue is named Gidding—freelancer London-based no doubt known to you—first name I don’t know. Who employed him I do not know. Ex animi mei sententia iuro at no point in memory did I commit any knowing infraction of the Sureties Accord 1668 or any other instrument of order of the Clock Tower. Iuravi—iuravi—iuravi.
Context you know so will adumbrate. I can provide documentation from Stearns to support all my statements.
Beginning this year [2 Jan 2014] was a meeting called at the SO. Most major kitestrings present—from recollection Sarraults, JM, Weylander, Manx, Montserrat, Mount-Carmel, Vickers da Costa, me. In chair was de Grandmesnil the Vice-Director’s PPS. Some of your senior policy people also present. Item at said meeting was the “Rhine Process” viz. procedures for liquidation of former Einzbern estate.
Decision to strip the Einzbern of their integ. as far as I know was taken last year at top level—it was deemed there is nobody left in family qualified/qualifiable to exercise paterfamilias. Therefore Einz. is in desuetude within the meaning of Sureties Accord & because Einz. was party to Schedule 1 of the Accord this means its assets are to be appropriated for division ‘according to proper right and custom of the Tower’. Atmosphere in room—feeding frenzy. Writ of desuetude not issued for such a bloodline since 1790s. One must be cynical. I cannot otherwise. We—great houses—wrote the Accord & made it as hard as possible for us to go ‘legally’ extinct because we know ourselves to eat the dead without hesitation. All in meeting shared expectation that great houses will claim their piece + lesser will come to us hat in hand. The SO of course does not object to this, only asks that it be done orderly.
What is key in the Rhine Process is that Einzb. family was exceedingly ‘conservative’—i.e. kept the majority of its assets ‘closed’ & maintained smallest feasible footprint in kitestrings. Interacted minimally with the ‘open’ economy. They had an entity called Welgund which owned their land (inc. the Far Eastern properties about which there is apparently some difficulty of late), another called Voeglin-Floß which was a kind of trust—also a stake in Auerbach’s mostly for convenience—but actual ‘open’ liquidity rarely above €10 million. Discretionary spending only. [This is what you would expect—hence rumours—if there were no real ‘humans’ at home.] That is what is key, because we cannibals are not so conservative as Einzb.—we hold in general the preference to take our pieces not directly (viz. ‘closed’) but more or less ‘openly’ viz. by way of kitestring/s. More convenient for various reasons. So the Rhine Process has to be organised with that in mind. Leads us to two problems.
Item one. The Einzb. gold. Ahead of that meeting was presented with report from the SO audit team. On Einzb. property were discovered vaults—gold about 16.5 million troy oz. We had predicted something like this but that figure was surprise on the upside. This had been kept thoroughly secret and was none of it ‘openly’ owned by their kitestrings. Not a serious problem all told. Its type is relatively familiar. At the meeting—per instructions Erinmore—I voted for the draft agreement to create a trust, all present equal stake, which would acquire the Einzb. kitestrings, which were already managed by proxies and had been for some time—agreement on the far end already been obtained by SO. Idea was to have that trust sotto voce move the gold in a series of stages over 6 months—out of EU jurisdiction first priority—to London where it would be held in our vaults (collectively 8 kitestrings present at meeting, Stearns Dunrossil inc., had vault space to hold it) temporarily under a trusteeship. The Rhine Process will concurrently sort out who is to get what & expectation is that the ownership shall be assigned mostly within London so having the gold physically here for the time being simplifies whatever subsequent transfer arrgmnts. the victorious parties will make. However item two.
Item two. Of aforementioned gold 66,882.71 troy oz is classed as aurum auriferum [AuA] viz. faerie gold in true sense. From the ‘closed’ point of view value of this is significantly greater than entire rest of hoard. For obvious reasons SO wishes to keep transfers of AuA under exceedingly tight control. Meeting narrowly resolved in favour of PPS de Grandmesnil proposal to keep AuA at original site until its division is worked out. The joint trust to have rights (inc. inspection) over that land but fulltime SO guard to watch the AuA.
Thus decided 4 months ago—bulk of Einzb. gold to be taken to London divided 8 locations—but small exceedingly valuable part to remain in Germany.
What may be asserted of current situation are following facts:
One. Between 2 January meeting & present day 1.4 million troy oz of the Einzb. gold was in fact transferred to vault at the Stearns Dunrossil building on Cannon Street—City of London.
Two. Last Thursday’s robbery saw the illicit removal of 1,960 troy oz of gold from the Stearns Dunrossil building. All gold removed was from the deposit of former Einzb. gold held in the name of the joint trust.
Three. Two days ago a report from the SO was copied to me which stated that SO officials in Germany had identified a miscount in the AuA holding retained there. 992.24 troy oz of AuA is at this time unaccounted for.
Circumstantial evidence supports the hypothesis that a significant quantity of AuA was shipped to our vault disguised as ordinary gold, and—since no AuA has been discovered on our premises in subsequent assay—that this constituted part of the gold stolen on Thursday.
It is legitimate to hypothesise conspiracy in this connection. The immense value at stake leaves open the possibility of subversion of the process by those out for the main chance. I make the point first that this situation indicates a failure of the transfer process at the far end not at ours. Because faerie gold is not visually or chemically distinguishable—diff. in spiritual rank is not easy to detect for average mgs.—it is to be expected that our part of the transfer, which was conducted by regular employees of Stearns Dunrossil under corporate confidentiality on behalf of the joint trust, would not have shown up any irregularity. I understand that attempts have been made to cast suspicion upon myself and on Erinmore. A moment’s examination will show these to be without foundation. We are a great house and would have received AuA in the division regardless. We have nothing at all to gain from illicit adventurism. Furthermore I can assert that at no point did I nor any officer of Stearns Dunrossil know or suspect anything other than that the gold we received was ordinary gold as stipulated. It is legitimate—it has turned out to be legitimate—for an attacker to take the view that our vault is an easier target than the former Einzb. estate under guard by trained Enforcers. Any such conspiracy responsible for these events must entail (1) a compromised person within the Shrievalty Office detail in Germany, and (2) a thief or thieves operating in London.
Turning now to the events of the last few days—Statement of E. Coker
Can it be that I am unique? No. No, I don’t think so. I think I am inevitable. I think there are a hundred thousand other conversations much like this you had, are having, will have again. A hundred thousand or more. I sanction them all. I allow it; I welcome it. I welcome my non-uniqueness. I am immaterial. I have a name, but never mind. What there is—what I have, accident of inheritance—is power. I am a knot, a massing, a momentary concentration in the all-pervading flux of power. And I have not even a lot of power mind you. I am barely on the margin, just the margin, beyond the so-called man in the street. And that power is as I have it more ‘technique’ than, so to speak, the strength of eye and arm. It is a tool. It is the grandson of the whispers my grandmother stole from one end of the pillow to another. But look—I, like you, have a certain faculty for doing things. I cannot shoot fire from my hands, I cannot swing a sword or kill things by looking at them. At best, at very best, I can—convince you. Convince you to see things you did not see, or not to see things you did see. Or to remember things that were never there. I, like you, have a certain facility with sculpting in men. You use it for upholding a certain standard of order. For keeping the grass in your neighbourhood mown to one point two inches, not an atom taller. I use it—why be modest? Rape and pillage is what I do. I wear this suit, this Patek Philippe, these fine Italian leather shoes, but believe me I am a pirate.
[more to follow. watch out.]
Prompt
Last edited by Kirby; December 29th, 2024 at 11:01 PM.
Linger: Complete. August, 1995. I met him. A branch off Part 3. Mikiya keeps his promise to meet Azaka, and meets again with that mysterious girl he once found in the rain.
Shinkai: Set in the Edo period. DHO-centric. As mysterious figures gather in the city, a young woman unearths the dark secrets of the Asakami family.
The Dollkeeper: A Fate side-story. The memoirs of the last tuner of the Einzberns. A record of the end of a family.
Overcount 2030: Extra x Notes. A girl with no memories is found by a nameless soldier, and wakes up to a world of war.
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