Fate/Reverse Part 2.20 – Fae Gate

“I-I don’t think … that’s not quite how it works,” Magdalena stammered as the witch drew closer. Blood rushed through her head at the thought of those teeth lunging forward, digging into her neck…

“She’ll need to be equidistant between us, Alter. And she only needs to place her palm against you.” Natasha’s voice came between them like a firm hand. “Please, we don’t have time to waste. If Ruler attacks us now in force, we’re finished.”

The witch smirked and drew back. Feeling released somehow, Magdalena brought her hands to her chest, clutching for the rosary she hadn’t worn since she was a child.

“Come stand next to me, Magdalena.” Natasha moved away from the desk to stand directly opposite Alter, on either side of the wood-trimmed doorframe. Aimon stood within the doorway itself, the solidity of his new armor blocking any escape.

It only reminded Magdalena that she was in the center of it all. If she couldn’t do this, and if she couldn’t summon a Ruler, they were all doomed. She stepped between the two women.

“Very good,” Alter crooned. She pinched her fingers around the thin tiara that held her veil and removed it delicately, like one might a pair of glasses.

She held it out to Magdalena. “This should give you some connection to my magic. It’s not as powerful as the Secret of Pedigree I bestowed upon Aimon since I used it on myself, but it should be enough for a connection.”

Magdalena couldn’t help staring at her face while she was talking. By now she was used to trying to look through the veil, so seeing Alter—no, Morgan’s—face directly felt surreal. The unreal beauty if it added to the dreamlike feeling. And she noticed the woman’s teeth were normal, not pointed or serrated.

There was an awkward silence as Magdalena stared. A pink began to creep into Alter’s cheeks and her big green eyes flitted away from Magdalena’s. “Yes, yes, you can see my face now. What of it? We need to complete this ritual.”

Natasha chuckled while Magdalena positioned the lacy-soft veil over her own face. “It’s my first good look too,” the woman said. “Careful, Magdalena. I hear that veil makes it easier to be haughty and deceitful while it covers your face like that. Isn’t that right, miss Pendragon?”

“Enough playing the jester,” Alter said, though the color in her cheeks had deepened. She extended an arm imperiously and let her hand hang with a dainty limpness in front of Magdalena. “Let’s get on with it.”

The girl took her hand, which felt unnaturally hot, like the woman had a fever. Their palms stuck together, and she realized that this ancient witch was sweating a bit too. Most of Magdalena’s fear drained away.

She clasped Natasha’s hand firmly, feeling grateful once again. The older mage wasn’t much for jokes, but this time her teasing had torn the veil of fear from Alter’s posturing. Now they were just two mages, bridged by Magdalena’s hands.

She closed her eyes, felt the mana flowing under their skin, and braced herself for the Melding.

She joined with Natasha first, the less daunting of the two. The aching pain of connecting her magecraft to another’s flared up her arm, tracing the lines of the circuits her father had implanted under her skin. Magic circuits carried mana throughout the body like an artery carried blood, letting the mage channel that power to work the miracles of magecraft.

Or, in this case, to meld two miracles together.

Natasha’s magecraft delt with time, blurring it or clearing it out of the way, even manipulating it with the backing of a Servant’s older magic. It was very complicated, but Magdalena had already memorized the calculations and simply needed to adjust them to the new destination locked in Natasha’s mind, the second century A.D. in a German woodland. Next came the greater miracle.

When Alter’s magic burrowed into her, Magdalena expected pain. Instead it came as an icy river, sending shudders down her circuits until the cold numbed them. Her vision grew hazy and Natasha’s study fell away.

A bit of fear returned, ancient fear of things long buried, things best forgotten.

Alter was drawing her in towards the source.

Magdalena reached deeper into the old magic, True Magic that could bend space and time. It felt like wandering through a dark, primeval forest. A heart beat around her, the air uncomfortably moist and warm. Shapes half-resolved out of the murk, tall like trees but slightly curved. Ribs?

Magdalena tasted metal and realized this was no forest but a sea. She was drifting through Alter’s blood. Here the trees curved into a ribcage and a feeling pressed in from all sides. A hateful hunger, older than humanity and resentful of its rise to power. Curses rustled in the shadows around her, always locked in pairs, always fighting.

Two dragons rolled past her, grappling against each other’s scales. One was shining gold and white, its horns forming a noble crown as it strained for dominance. The other was black, dripping with poison. It lunged at the white dragon’s throat, barely missed, and crashed back into the murk behind her.

Magdalena saw other things fighting within the magic as it flowed through her. The dark rush of power bounded by the familiar chains of expectation. Winged freedom sailing through the trees, trying to outrun the many-legged loneliness that thrashed after it, snapping at its tail. And below it all the ground seethed with a deep love, shot through with burning hatred.

The force of the feelings brushed up against Magdalena but something kept their claws at bay. She could sense Alter’s will wrapped around her, guiding the magic.

But it was growing closer, almost suffocating. The tangle of love and hate that made up the forest’s undergrowth crept up around her. She could see a shape in the vines, a noble figure. They were too beautiful to be a man, too handsome to be a woman. On their head sat a crown, its gems pale compared to the emerald of the eyes below it.

The pressure of Alter’s will fluttered. Magdalena could sense its panic, as a cat smells a fleeing mouse. The witch was losing control, and the shadows reared up around her.

“No!” Alter’s voice rang out, cracked with fear. “Stay away! You cannot see! No one must see!”

Invisible force slammed down around her and Magdalena could neither breathe nor see. She cried out and thrashed as something began pulling her down. She could hear Alter gasping, Natasha screaming. Then a strong arm closed around her waist and everything went dark.

For a while she dreamed she was a stone, washing down a great and secret river, buried for centuries. The water would gurgle around her until she flipped over and felt dizzy. But it wasn’t a bad feeling. There was a thrill to the unsteadiness, like spinning in circles with her eyes closed.

The stream flowed on, and she drifted back into nothingness.

Magdalena woke up to a painful gleam of white and gold. She blinked and the shine resolved into a horned helmet with gold eyes. “So you survived,” said a gruff but familiar voice. “That’s good.”

She scrambled back, scraping her knuckles on cool asphalt. “Wait,” she said, trying to shake off a hazy feeling. By now it was fading into the dull ache that followed Melding. “You’re Aimon, aren’t you?”

The helmet nodded. “And you’re Magdalena. Seems we can recognize each other with Alter’s enchantment on each of us.”

“That’s handy.” Magdalena shivered and stood shakily.

Aimon reach an arm out as if to steady her, then withdrew it. “Are you injured?”

Gingerly, Magdalena stretched and felt herself over. Her arms ached when she moved them, but that was par for the course after Melding. “I’m only sore. But what happened?” Now that her head had cleared a bit, she tried to take stock of her surroundings.

They stood in a city, paved and grey with concrete but wreathed in mist. The skyscraper in front of them seemed to fade in and out at the corners, and half of it was simply missing, leaving a revolving door to open into a clump of ferns.

Their leaves appeared to be missing as well, severed halfway down the frond. Beyond them stood most of a thatched cottage and what looked like a small stone well. Mist swirled in the distance, but nothing else moved.

“This isn’t Natasha’s office,” Magdalena said aloud, feeling stupid and helpless. Her mind began to race, trying to tease out what had happened, what had gone wrong. Instead, she only got a headache. The circuits in her arms throbbed along with it.

“Certainly not,” Aimon said. His voice was calm but he kept glancing around, and his hands stayed near his swords. “I believe this is the other side of the Fae Gate.”