Marianne
"You are called upon."
Formlessness wrapped around formlessness, the immaterial lines of fate gripped and distorted by their need, by their wish. The many threads that formed Her strained and frayed, greedy fingers prying into the strings and tugging at the ones they liked the best. Instruction flowed in along the painful bonds of lives linked never by likeness nor soul, but sinister Destiny. She was to fight. It told Her so. It told Her why she was, but It could never say why she would. It was not the voice that sometimes called to her from darkness, but a voice that came from nothingness, without meaning.
A girl raised her head to the morning stars, vicious eyes glowing verdant in the twilight. The flashing of lights beckoned her forwards. Her chest collapsed. Crimson gushed from her ruined body, dim silence marred by the defiant splatter of her life's blood. They laughed as she fell, lost at last. One knee crashed against the stone, and then the other. Writhing, screaming blood from empty lungs, the lie she lived was lost at last. Laughter mated sickness, she retched and cried, she despaired and loved. She had lived, and so died. Her torn body fell to the pavement.
"So it has always been."
One thread was pried from the string, and then the next. It cared not for the stories of strong warriors and brave soldiers, and pierced Her timeless shape to its forgotten core. It hadn't come for a guardian, It hadn't come for a savior. Malice itself wrapped around the most pitiful, frail strand of them all. It clenched, and pulled. She snapped. Broken lines splayed away from the spirit, wounded streamers reaching out to their doomed family before the violation was repaired and the chosen fragments stolen away...
Uncaring hands forced her to the scaffold. The stock cut her neck, her wrists bruised in their restraints. The girl in the scaffold raised her head to the setting sun, green eyes glistening with the pain of things unspoken. A meandering life of petty anger and worthless intent, put to an end by random spite. Tears stained her cheeks, fell to the bloodstained basket that she would soon join. The tricolor waved in her eyes, hoisted by the joyous faces of those she'd stood beside all through this storm. She couldn't hate them: They cheered for Liberty with all their hearts. It was only a passing shame that such passions clouded the mind. All would be well soon, the blade hissed.
... Flying, dancing hands weaved the torn pieces together. The Falsehood called Legend was born at their tips. Pale light flooded the Container as it was built upon the Wish. Their touch was new, soothing, stabilizing. They called not to Her, but her vessel. A third voice, one of softness, one of meaning... one of desperation. Master. What did that word mean?
It spoke to her in her restraints, and by instinct her tired body understood. The form of the Servant took shape, the spiritual body made manifest by Its demand and poured into the mold readied by that chosen Master. She stood with her sublimated body, neither gone nor present yet. The guillotine shattered over her. The scaffold disintegrated under her feet. It showed Her where She would fight. The crowd was wiped away. The blood flowed back into her chest. The craters and the coffins were taken back. The faces of the people brightened. They loved life, they remembered beauty, they knew peace. She had been spared, but her tears did not stop. The two stood as one, witnessed as one. Darkness loomed beyond their peace. She took a step forward. One reached out to take hold of it and destroy it, to banish the unfeeling dark. One reached out to save those beset, to comfort the lost and welcome them home again.
It had obliterated her restraints and now it tore away the dream. Paris evaporated, the fragments of the Spirit fell through into the world beyond, back to the world where they belonged.
The container came to life in an instant. The mistral wind blew over the vessel of mana and magic, filling in the weave of blue strands with pale skin and blackened clothing. Stained with blood and smoke her coat unfurled, hem falling around her knees as her arms folded alongside. Twin lights wove her out of the ether, joining around her neck in the worn, faded colors of a scarf. With the final touches of love, they dragged mournfully across her face and pulled her shut eyes open. Cerulean and scarlet danced together, blinding light filling the room as the welling gas burst with fire.
"So it shall always be."
Starlight shone in her eyes. Fire scorched at her skin. The specter of gunsmoke and shadow ignited, the hollow world around her overpowered by a hell of light. Her boot came down on charred wood. The specter did not falter, even as flames danced from its darkening body. Its tall, winding form surged forward. Moving without feeling, without thinking. Desolation surrounded them. Her Master, that could be the only title for the girl cradled in her arms, the only explanation for how such a frail body had been spared the fate of the world around them. Chunks of flaming woodwork fell from the sky, fragmentation launched by the blast still skittering to the ground in their vicinity. Smoke swirled in the waste, occluding sight, staunching breath. Her legs carried them both. Without hesitation she charged the boundary, the last remnant of incinerated vagueness shattering over her slender shoulders.
Archer plunged into the cold night, her charge held fast in her arms. Smoke trailed from the smouldering Servant, her coat charred where it had not been simply burnt away. She knelt where she landed, attentive to nothing but the unstirring, weakened person with her. Marianne shifted the girl in her arms, turning her to look at her Master's haunting, pale face. The fire cackled behind them, and for a moment she wondered if her Master had already been claimed. Archer's lips parted, her cold eye peering into those hollowed lids for the slightest stir beneath, for a next breath from her new comrade.
"Master?"
It was all she could bring herself to ask. As soon as she allowed her mind to turn it flooded with uncertainty. This was not where her vision had pointed, this girl was not a hardened warmagus come to claim the Grail... and she herself was not whole. Already, the specifics faded from the corners of Archer's memory, but the Servant had no care for the specifics of her ephemeral, unconventional identity. As her face hardened her fingers began to clench tighter at the lithe arm beneath them, as if her own strength could be willed to another. Her Master needed to live. No logic preceded that idea, it was primal instinct encoded upon this new flesh.
"Open your eyes, Master."
Walter Moen
More than anything else, he was looking at a fucking mess.
In kinder words it was a Parisian alleyway. He'd made it his home, though. At least for the past twelve or so hours. Spent fast food wrappers sat atop the nearest garbage can, some still warm. Nothing else had been added to the alleyway in the past few days, he'd made sure of that. He'd spent six hours crawling around in the dirt with a ritual chisel, physically carving the required circles into the concrete and establishing the most essential tool of the urban magus: His bounded field. It was a typical design for Association magi, documentation was widely available on how to construct such things and fortunately they were self sufficient, to a degree. It would collapse after he left it, but only because the intent to sustain itself on the natural mana was gone. It made sure some enforcers weren't caving his skull in in the middle of his trance, and more likely, it stopped some Parisians from wandering into the summoning. Witchcraft was particular upon its circles, at least the school he was employing. Were they to be broken by anything other than his ritual knife, their magic would be released in an unpredictable way. After this long, siphoning the Greater Source? A mistake here would be catastrophic to everyone involved. At the very least, he would become modern art until they scrubbed him and the French kid who ruined everything off the wall. Walter sighed out smoke. European cigarettes, every time. He threw the just-lit stick away, scowling. The westerner slipped off of his dumpster, boot heel crushing his last cigarette as he looked over his handiwork.
He couldn't power the ritual himself, that much was obvious. Every last drop of magical power that went into activating the summoning would have to come from without, but he was fortunate. The ritual was just that, and Formalcraft was his sole specialty. He'd done his research, even if it had meant brushing shoulders with Clocktower types. The Grail, in every manifestation of the War prior, had served as the primary summoner for the chosen Heroic Spirits. Only it could produce the miraculous power needed to rip the Servants from the Ring of Deterrence. The Masters who first desired to shackle them for their ritual decided, in their treacherous wisdom, to bind them to the world themselves, treating those heroes like mere familiars, and establishing a common sense method of control. They created a need for something, and then they took that thing away. In this case, it was the magical energy these Servants required to operate and survive. He would play a precarious position, chasing after the heels of those sinister Magi. He would create the promise of mana... without having any to provide. The bounded field would suffice for that for at least a day, maybe two if he was lucky. He had amassed more than enough of the Greater Source to actually power the summoning (in theory), the rest of it was to be his first offering. Hopefully he drew a binge eater from the Throne, because they were likely only getting to get supplied in infrequent bursts when they could afford to establish a bounded field. Maybe he underestimated himself, maybe his Od could suffice, but he would certainly not be able to use any Magecraft to defend himself. What Magecraft? The realization elicited a smile, at least.
The Master looked to the stars. The light of morning was approaching quickly, the distinct glow of the coming sun beginning to the brighten the horizon and dim his guiding stars. It was time to begin. Clad in red and black he approached the primary summoning circle. Unlike those that sheltered his bounded field it was precise, not the mere suggestion it took for this alleyway to subconsciously seal itself from passersby. Nine feet in diameter, its defining features carved into the ground with the same, blackened knife he would be using to conduct the ritual. It alone was attuned to this circle, wrapped in salt six times and dragged across its perimeter with the turning of the sun. No lesser athame would suffice, the resistance met by an unattuned but suitable knife was negligible to the ordinary circle. Here it would be akin to stepping upon a landmine. It rested in his backpack, ready if he needed to puncture the circle and intervene in the Thaumaturgic Program already set down within its structure. If that were the case, he would be doing so only for the convenience of those living in the surrounding buildings. Beside it was an ordinary circle, one for himself that served the simple purpose of protection. It wouldn't stop a servant that chose to kill its summoner, but it would keep him rooted and insulated from the tumultuous nature of the summoning itself. He stood within its bounds, backpack balanced atop his feet to keep its structure firmly within protection as well. The saint's ashes within would defile any circle of this nature if they passed, and a number of other artifacts posed stability issues if they were to be introduced. Four white candles formed the boundary that sealed him from the outside world. A force of compulsion and weakened fate, it was a barrier that worked less on the physical level than it did on the conceptual. The winds of the summoning would warp in his favor, fragments of concrete would miss him by chance. That was all he could ask for.
His catalyst laid at its center. Fragments of obsidian, the one remnant he had of a system that could serve no purpose here. Recovered from Central America in one of his brief treks through the area, their rituals were those of human sacrifice. It occurred to him that he was vaguely taking part in a human sacrifice (reincarnated, approximated humans, sure), but it was at some level a voluntary one. What was he going to do? Tie up a French national and gut them over a circle? Realistically speaking they wouldn't yield enough mana to make a different anyway, not compared to what he could accomplish within his expertise. If he could summon one of them though, perhaps contain their bloodlust or feed it with... cadavers, or animals, or something, an Adherent of the Sun God would make for a powerful Caster. Their magic may have been devastated by the western world, but the fearsome legacy of what they could accomplish was stricken down in their beautiful, gilded cities, in their powerful jade Mystic Codes, and in the terrifying exploits of their bloodstained mythos. He found his knife, he buried it in his arm. Blood poured into the circle, and as he swung his arm the blood fell upon it. Red droplets filled the shapes inscribed, sizzling as magic began to course through them. The cone of power, an essential funneling mechanism for the magic circle. It was ordinarily formed of a chanting crowd. Here, the circle crafted it itself. A brilliant archway of pure light, the color of mana manifest filled the alleyway and pierced the sky.
"
Blood and stone are the foundation, wrought in toil and sealed in love. On Man's Authority of Rite I call upon the gift of Azaz'el.
The walls beseech thee, made in thy name. The circle is prepared, the four gates sanct to all but thine coming. The spoked road calls thee down from thy Kingdom, to the kingdom begotten here.
It is carved, again, again, again, again, again.
It is blessed, again, again, again, again, again.
We have bled, again, again, again, again, again.
I swear my fate to yours, I swear thy sword to victory.
By these rites of the Holy Grail, abide my just call to arms and answer these summons.
I swear to be one which excises evil from this world, I will be one which carries out justice.
Hero of the Ring, come to me! Come to your destiny!"
He called out to the light, holding his bleeding appendage out to the summoning circle. His eyes welled with water, blinded by light. Every facet of him seemed to boil as mass crashed down within the circle. Within his boundary he was shrouded with the dust of shattered concrete and his evaporated circle. He was alive, and that in itself was an accomplishment, but mystery remained as to what had answered his call...
