Fate/Reverse Part 2.10

War Preparations

Magdalena blinked her bleary eyes at the sunlight filtering through her drapes, trying to parse dreams from reality. How much of the past two days had happened? She had slept so much to recover from all the Melding she had done that much of it could have been a dream.

If she went downstairs to the church hall, would Father Damien and the other priests Father had sent be there? Would the six other Master candidates still be having breakfast, Natasha smiling and waving in one of her pristine white aprons?

She slipped out of bed, shivered, and looked at the clock on the wall. 4:37 P.M.

They would not be having breakfast. They were dead.

Only Julia, Natasha, and Marissa’s partner had survived. Peering through the window only revealed the black void where the sky used to be, though somehow the sunlight still got through.

The young mage splashed cold water on her face and threw yesterday’s dress on over her nightgown. No point in dressing up. Only the ghosts would care. But she was still alive, and she could still help Natasha rescue their future.

She went down the hall to where the older mage was meeting with the Servant Aimon had summoned. Magdalena could tell the way simply by following that otherworldly presence, the same feeling that she got at night in the Columbian jungle. Like something in the bushes knew you were there and could kill you, but didn’t quite care enough to.

Magdalena took a deep breath and opened the door to the study. “I’m feeling better,” she said. “What can I do to help?”

Natasha frowned at her from where she sat across from the Servant Alter. Their desk was strewn with notes and strange herbs. A pile of oddly shaped white bark lay on the floor behind them. It seemed they’d been working the whole time she was asleep.

“You might straighten up,” Natasha answered. “You look a mess, Magdalena.”

“Oh come off it,” Alter chuckled. “This is a Christian temple, not a ballroom. Leave the poor dear alone.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Natasha grumbled, and Magdalena stared at the veiled witch in wonder. She had never seen anyone cow Natasha so quickly. There was an eerie sense the witch was smiling back, though she couldn’t see her face.

“Well, we can’t leave her entirely alone,” Alter admitted. “There’s work to be done and my homunculi aren’t quite ready yet.”

“You’re making… those creatures?” Magdalena resisted wrinkling her nose in distaste. Homunculi looked like humans and could even use some magecraft, but there was always something off about them. And the experiments her Father would do on them…

“Only simple ones, dear. They’ll do for heavy lifting, so in the meantime would you go see our… ‘friend’ Caster about the bounded field?”

Magdalena felt her stomach somersault. “You want me to go back into the Quinta?”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha said, handing her a diagram for a set of enchantments. “But it’s only for a message. I’m afraid Aimon lacks the skill for even something as simple as a bounded field.”

Wiping her sweaty palm on her dress, Magdalena took the paper. “Alright. As long as I don’t have to Meld with his magic again.”

The memory of that darkness, the utter despair that fueled the Servant’s power, still made her sick. It didn’t help that she felt a tiny kernel of it in her own heart when she thought of the ambitions riding on her shoulders. But the Servant had needed the power to set up his studio soon after being summoned, right after Natasha had used her first command seal to keep Caster from ending his own life.

This time Natasha shook her head. “No Melding. Just make sure he’s ready to layer his defenses under Alter’s here.”

“And be quick about it,” Alter added. “Each moment my territory’s walls are down is a moment we are vulnerable to attack.”

Now Magdalena was sure the Servant was looking at her, maybe through her. Heart hammering, she stumbled through a curtsey and hurried out of the church.

Out in the open air she felt a little better. They had a plan, after all. Natasha always had a plan and if she just followed it, surely everything would turn out alright.

So she kept along the sidewalk that stretched across the church grounds floating in the surrounding void, determined to enjoy the stroll at least.

A strange and steady whacking sound intrigued her as she drew close to the parking lot.

The unsettling man who had brought Julia back to them stood on the far side of the asphalt, by the lonely little apple tree the church had planted. Aimon had a length of wood in his hands, shaped roughly like a sword. Crouching, he would move around the tree in a furious shuffle of steps and then strike its trunk.

He repeated the motion, ending in that dull thwack, and Magdalena realized he was training. She started to raise a hand in greeting, then saw his face.

The man’s usually calm expression was twisted back in a snarl. A look of rage and grief and hatred had overtaken him, and when he struck the tree it looked like he might burst into tears. But as he stepped about in preparation, his eyes were calm, focused dead ahead. Eerily steady amidst the sea of emotion on the rest of his face.

With a shudder, Magdalena withdrew her hand. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice her.

She also passed the warehouse where Julia was resting and decided to risk a quick peek inside to check on her. The young woman was sleeping peacefully in the corner, curled up on her side with her bright copper hair pooled under her head. It made her look harmless.

But the edges of the wooden crates around her had been etched away and the mattress of her cot had crumbled to dust. Even unconscious, she was eating.

Swallowing once, Magdalena backed away and edged the door closed. She kept moving.

But the girl had spent all her courage and now the Quinta del Sordo loomed before her, its walls a pale imitation of yellow.

These are my allies, she thought to herself. Monsters, witches and madmen. For a moment, the air of the Casa threatened to ignite that seed of despair again, and the crushing void in the distance almost looked inviting.

I still have Natasha, she reminded herself. Where her Father had always been harsh and demanding, pushing her to be the best mage she could be, the Russian mage had been kind and gentle. For her, Magdalena could do this.

She pushed against the rough wood of the outer door and was greeted by the cold air within its walls. Hurrying across the small inner courtyard with its piles of ash and gnawed bones, she darted inside the manor proper.

The air inside was colder still, and stale. It felt more like a catacomb than a home. Each and every dust-laden board creaked. Magdalena flinched at each one, though she knew Caster couldn’t hear it.

He would pretend she wasn’t there, that he couldn’t sense an intruder into his domain, hoping she would just go away. She would have to force him to recognize her and that meant she would have to touch him.

Creeping around a door, she found the Servant in his studio. He was painting.

The man in front of the easel was young, since all Servants were summoned in their prime, at the point when they were the strongest. But his grey hair and squinting yellow eyes betrayed the weariness of age deep within him.

Magdalena tiptoed up to him, in spite of his deafness. He painted on peacefully, one half of the canvas obscured by his arm, the other half draped in a dusty sheet. But as she put her hand on his shoulder, brushing against the faded collar of his old coat, the man started and moved his hand out of the way.

Magdalena’s breath fled her body.

An eye bulged wildly out at her, mad with terror. Below that was a blur of flesh, a cavernous mouth chewing and consuming, taking in the limp body of a man. No not a man, a god. The certainty settled in the pit of her stomach, spreading numbness throughout her body.

Here was a god dying, eating itself out of its own foolish. Even half finished, the painting was clear. Its dread coiled around her heart and Magdalena’s vision began to dim.

Numbly, distantly, she realized this was Caster’s Noble Phantasm. And it was killing her. But looking at that painting and breathing this manor’s air, she wondered dreamily if that was really a problem.

The Servant dropped his brush and sprang at her from his chair.

“Foolish girl, foolish, foolish!” Those wiry hands clamped around her shoulders and shook her, shook her hard. His voice was unbearably loud in her ears. “Do you seek madness? No? Why do you disturb my painting? Why must you all disturb me? Is that why? Well?”

He let go and Magdalena backed away in a daze, like she was waking up from another night of bad dreams. “Sorry…” She managed to say before doubling over in a fit of coughing.

“Idiot girl,” The Servant hissed, but he only sat back in his chair and took up his brush. “Your pity is wasted. You can still fade, be forgotten, be free. But not I, not I. So leave me to rot in peace, I beg of you.”

Magdalena found herself nodding wearily, then shook her head. With an enormous amount of effort, she steadied herself, pushing mana through her body. The magic strengthened it, washing Caster’s enchantment out of her system and fighting back convulsive shivers.

“Wait,” she said and pressed the diagram into Caster’s hand.

He looked at it like she had presented him with a dead rat.

“It’s—” she started to explain, before remembering he wouldn’t understand. Perhaps he wouldn’t understand even if he could hear her.

Pointing at the paper, she traced the lines of the bounded field around the church grounds, the sunken enchantment that formed their barrier against the consuming void and marked this as Caster’s chosen territory. Then she pointed at the symbol Alter had made in its center, a raven with three eyes, and put one of her hands over the other, in a layer.

Then she stood there in silence, feeling silly.

Caster looked between her and the paper for an uncomfortably long time. “You want me to subsume the magic you made me set up for you? All so this monster you summoned can sink her claws into this holy ground?”

Magdalena nodded vigorously, relief washing through her.

“Bah, sacrilege and sacrifice. Both pointless.”

Magdalena held her ground, putting her hands on her hips.

Caster threw up his hands. “Fine. I will do you this favor if you go die elsewhere. I’ve dust enough here without your corpse.”

Skipping the curtsey this time, Magdalena waited just long enough to be sure he started the enchantments, then fled the manor.

It was nice to breath again. Aimon was gone, so the grounds were quiet and all to herself. Magdalena made her way to the apple tree and leaned against it, feeling the splintered lines of bark where the swordsman had hit it. “Sorry, poor little tree,” she whispered to it. She thought of asking him to stop, but the image of his snarl killed the idea quickly.

Instead she just rested for a while, until the fear was replaced with knowledge of the minutes ticking by. Her mind began making its calculations again, measuring how much time it would take to do this task or that, and the pressure brought her back to her feet and on towards the church. She had rested long enough already.

But when she went back to the study to report, the door opened in front of her.

The frame filled with a tall figure covered in shining white armor. A great horned helm covered their face, eyes gleaming steadily from a row of dark slits.

Magdalena jumped back, her first instinct telling her there was another invader come to kill them. Then the man tugged the helmet off and she recognized the two swords at his waist. “Aimon?”

“Sorry,” he grunted and stepped aside for her. “Didn’t know you were there. It’s hard to sense things through this helmet.”

“Yes, that is a downside,” Alter’s voice snaked out from behind him. “But the helm is necessary. My Secret of Pedigree will help hide you from the enemy Servants. And the armor hardly needs explanation for a swordsman.”

Magdalena stepped around the newly clad Aimon, staring at the suit of plate. It gleamed white, but didn’t have the texture of metal. Then something clicked in the back of her mind and she realized it was the strange bark she had seen earlier.

“Well? What do you think?” Alter crowed at her from the far side of their desk. “A true knight in shining armor. Hehehe… I’ve always wanted a knight of my own…”

Aimon’s mouth formed a grim line and Magdalena almost felt bad for him, being partnered with a Servant like that. But Natasha needed Alter’s help so there was nothing to be done. She turned to the two women. “Caster said he’ll work with you on the bounded field.”

“Oh, I know,” Alter said. “My blood has been planted, waiting. I’ve already placed my bounded field on top.” She stood up and spread her arms wide. One hand seemed much smaller than the other and was still wrapped in bandages. “As of now, I welcome you all to the future site of my castle. Its walls will keep us safe. No more bothersome assassins to see off.”

“Morgan’s castle, huh.” Natasha sighed and Magdalena could almost see the tension drain from her shoulders. “The fey fortress that can only be found when it wants to be found. Now we have time at least.”

“Indeed,” Alter said. “But if all eight Servants attack at once then I make no guarantees. I’ve no doubt at least one of them has an Anti-Fortress rank Noble Phantasm. Not even I can stand against that.” Her head shifted a bit to look at Aimon’s helmet. “Not directly, in any case.”

“So we need to summon a Ruler then,” Magdalena said. And she would have to do the summoning. The pressure almost made her squirm.

Natasha nodded. “Using Alter’s fey pathways, I’ve found a way to match our time with the world our enemy has stolen. Or part of it. I’m not sure what that Ruler has done but the timeline is so scattered I can hardly find any temporal bridges that—”

Alter cleared her throat and Natasha faltered. “Sorry. I’ll figure it out. What’s important is that I’ve located a catalyst that should be suitable for a Ruler, though I don’t know which one.”

“So Aimon is set to retrieve it, then?” Magdalena asked, eyeing his armor again.

“Almost. My magecraft is too weak to send physical matter through these fey gates.” Natasha looked to Magdalena and then to Alter. “So I will need some assistance.”

Magdalena’s throat felt dry. “You… You want me to Meld with her magic? With Morgan le Fey?”

“She’s our ally,” Natasha remined her. “She’s saved us several times. And I can’t do this alone.”

Still, Magdalena hesitated. The witch scared her. It was a different fear than that of Caster’s infectious despair or the hard lines around her father’s mouth. But it was fear nonetheless. An old fear of something in the dark. Something with sharp teeth and an empty stomach.

“It’s alright,” Alter said, moving gently around the desk towards her. “I won’t lie and say there’s no danger. My blood is magic, filled with fire and curses. Old curses. But I won’t bite. Not you, little one. I will do all I can to shield you from the dark in me. After all, I need you alive.”

Now Magdalena was certain there was a smile behind that veil, filled with sharp teeth. But the logic made sense. There was no reason to be afraid when their goals were aligned. After all, that was how mage families operated, on reason. How many times had her father told her emotions would be the death of her?

Now the witch was in front of her, filling the air with the scent of pine needles, unearthed stone, and fresh blood. She reached out and Magdalena closed her eyes, forcing herself to stay still.

“So then, my dear…” Alter’s voice became a coo as her hand brushed Magdalena’s unruly hair off her cheek. “Will you Meld with me?”