[Fate/ninth heaven] Glass Coffin; glass slipper [route IV, day 2]

[feral-phoenix.livejournal.com]

Masterlist and readme are here.

glass slipper   …I wake up.   “—”   I shake off the vague sleepiness and get out of bed.   The room’s a little cold from the outside weather, but I turn up the temperature with the air conditioning control near the door.   It’s mid-morning.   I’d hoped to be awake earlier, but it was difficult to get to sleep because my internal rhythms can’t adjust to the time difference in one day and because the bed is a lot softer than what I’m used to sleeping on.   I go to wash my face, and in front of the mirror I brush and braid my hair.   I change out of my pajamas, and open the window so that Moja can go outside.   Once he returns I’ll be able to sense him and let him in, or if I go outside myself before he gets back, he’ll be able to sense and return to me if I call him.   He can eat basically anything and survive, so even if he can’t find bugs or animals to eat, I think he’ll probably be fine even if he winds up scavenging through the trash.   I double-check to make sure that I have my key cards, though it would be simple enough for me to get back into the room with magic even if I lock myself out.   At this stage it’s probably best not to waste extraneous prana since I’m saving it for the summoning, and I may have to conserve my magical energy later depending on how much of my internal stores wind up going to my Servant.   With the card securely in my skirt pocket, I exit the room and head for the elevator.   As expected, the door to the roof is locked.   It’s winter, and presumably only hotel staff would have reason to go here most of the time.   I touch the lock with a fingertip, carefully turn on my Magic Circuit, and exert a tiny amount of “force” to undo the lock.   Even for such a quick spell, the activation of my Magic Circuit makes my skin ache like it’s being pressed from the inside with sandpaper, but I’m used to the sensation.   The human body rejects magecraft, and so some amount of pain is always going to be the price for resorting to magic to solve things instead of modern mechanical methods.   But some things, like disabling locks in a split second with magical energy, are a lot faster and easier to accomplish using magecraft than with mundane methods, so it’s considered a useful trade-off.   “—”   I step out onto the roof.   The sky is full of clouds, and through the streamers of gray and white the sky is blue.   It’s bitter cold this far into the sky, and the ground under my feet is pale gray stone.   A chain link fence surrounds the walls, likely there to serve as a barrier for anyone who might jump or fall off.   Shivering a little in the cold, I extend my hands.   My Magic Circuit is still on, and so I direct my power to the Magic Crest inherited from my mother, and seek out the spell for creating boundary fields.   The boundary field I can create is very simple, and only closes off a space so that other people are repelled from the area.   A magus with strong magical energy could probably still force their way in, but until I remove the boundary field it should be enough to keep the other residents of the hotel from coming up here.   I’m lucky that it’s cold.   As compensation for my not having words, my magecraft relies on internal imagery, and it’s easier to focus when I have something to create a rhythm with.   For now I don’t need anything, but for the summoning ceremony I may need to bring a baton and have Moja fly in orbit around me at a fixed tempo.   Thought is instantaneous, and so I need to time the words inside me with my visualization techniques.   Combat magic involves techniques adapted from the Magic Association’s records of certain famous families of magi and their styles.   My elemental alignment is with ether, and I cast attack spells by visualizing streams of light and explosions, like shooting stars and fireworks, or patterns of simple shapes like stars and crescent moons.   It’s sometimes more difficult to do this with non-combat magic because the imagery isn’t always compatible.   For the boundary field, I can imagine a dome of stars closing off the roof like a planetarium ceiling, and to create the magic circle tonight I can use imagery of nebulae and constellations, but for spells that just don’t fit the imagery, a baton or a movement that I can feel is a lot easier.   “—”   I exhale.   My breath rises in a cloud of white steam to join the pale streamers in the ice-colored sky.   The boundary field is set, an invisible bubble that will repel mundane people until the time that I break it or it wears away.   But it should last for the next several weeks, if nothing else.   …Now that that’s done, I’m getting hungry.   I should eat lightly today so that I don’t have trouble casting the spell tonight.   So—I’ll get the money necessary for breakfast, and go out and buy something in town.   The marketplace is bright and filled with people in the midmorning.   It’s cold, but the presence of energetic people is really invigorating.   I get a few glances, probably because of my hair color, but that’s all.   I don’t feel particularly unwelcome in the busy city.   I wander for a while.   I can stand the hunger for a while, and it seems as though the shopping district across the big bridge will be a cheaper place to get food.   It’s a good workout to cross the long bridge, and despite the chill my legs are nice and warmed up by the time I arrive at the shopping district.   By the way, it seems like this side of the town is the residential district, and the buildings and such are considerably smaller than the tall city called Shinto where my hotel room is located.   The way that the marketplace in the residential district called Miyama is set up reminds me more of home, and so I’m not nervous when I purchase a bun with chocolate in the middle at the bakery.   When I unwrap the bun and start to eat it, it’s warm and fresh and sweet, and I think it will be worth it to come out here every single morning if I can get bread this nice.   On the way back, I see a vending machine on the side of the road.   …Hmm.   I have change left over from buying the bread, and it would be nice to buy a drink for the way back home.   On top of that, we don’t have these back at home and I’ve always been curious about trying one, so—   I approach the tall machine.   Different drinks with brightly colored cans are lined up next to each other in the display, all labeled with prices, and it looks like sweets in a patisserie.   Toy stores and candy shops aren’t the only things with dreams lined up in the windows, it appears.   This machine features everything from coffees and sodas to fruit juice and flavored milk.   One of the kinds of milk is red bean flavored.   Apparently red beans are a traditional ingredient in native Japanese sweets.   I’m not picky, and if it’s sweet I’ll generally like something, so I may as well try something I can only get in Japan while I’m here.   I shift my half-eaten bread to the other hand and take out my wallet to put change into the machine.   With the amount of change lit up in the display, I reach out my finger and push the button for the red bean milk.   …   ……   ………Eh?   Nothing’s happening.   I’m sure I’ve done this right.   Even if I’ve never used a vending machine before, it’s not like I don’t know how they work.   We don’t have them in the city at home, but it’s not like I’ve never watched television.   I glare at the vending machine and push the button again.   …It, it’s still not coming out…   Why, you—I paid money properly, so what do you mean by not handing over the drink I’m trying to buy?!   I stab the button with my finger in a rapid-fire barrage.   …Still, nothing happens.   I-I’m pissed!   I might be more understanding with something else, but food is a serious matter and I can’t just retreat and take it philosophically when I’m being cheated.   I’m about to step back and give the recalcitrant machine a good kick when—   “Um, excuse me…”   ?!!!   I leap backwards in a masterful display of physical finesse and manage not to drop my bread.   There’s a plain-looking teenage boy in plain-looking clothes with plain-looking grocery bags in his arms.   S-since when did he manage to sneak up on me out of nowhere like that?   That’s bad. I was concentrating too much on the vending machine and stopped paying attention to my surroundings.   …I probably should have brought Moja, since he could stay alert to the surroundings even if I’m not.   The boy bends over and looks at the vending machine.   He looks back at me and points at the red bean milk.   “This is what you want, right?”   …I can’t let my guard down, but for now I just nod.   He lifts a hand to his chin and returns his gaze to the vending machine.   As if making an experiment, he reaches out and presses the button.   …Eh?   There are two heavy thuds in the tray beneath all the drinks.   “See? It was just being stubborn. And now you get two for one, look.”   I don’t get what’s happening anymore.   Why did it listen to him and not to me? Would it have put the drinks out if I had just pushed the button one more time, or was he doing something special to make it behave that I couldn’t perceive?   Still pondering the incomprehensible turn of events, I fish the drinks out of the tray.   The milk I was trying to buy and a bottle of iced coffee come out, but while I’m trying to decide how to carry them—   The half-eaten bread falls out of my hand and hits the ground with a plop.   …Ah.   The flat bottom hit the ground and is already covered in dirt and grit.   Even if I pick it back up to try to eat the part that isn’t dirty, so much of it is dirty that it wouldn’t be safe.   And if dirt has gotten into the filling, the bread will be completely inedible by now.   Ah.   …It’s no good.   I could honestly cry.   There’s a rustle.   When I look up, the boy is digging something out of one of his bags.   He looks at it, and then holds it out to me.   …It’s another roll of bread identical to the one I accidentally dropped just now.   Even the wrapping is the same as the one I got, and it looks as though they’re even from the same store.   “I have a lot, so take mine, okay?”   The boy says so with a smile.   …………Well.   If he insists, I’m certainly not going to refuse—but is that really okay, to just hand over something you bought for yourself to some stranger?   This boy is either very stupid—or very kind.   Whichever it is—I won’t forget this offer.   I accept the bread and smile in thanks.   Without opening the packaging, I bow my head once and turn to leave.   …I think I’ll wait to open all of these until I get back to the hotel, just in case.   “—”   The sun has gone down.   I’ve spent the evening in meditation to purify my body and not waste any unnecessary prana.   So, now that it’s night, I collect my tools into my bag and ascend the elevator and stairs to the cold rooftop.   “—”   Moja is perched on the fence, waiting for me there.   When I emerge, he flaps over to land on my shoulder.   He scatters ragged black feathers all over the place and sticks his beak into my hair.   I’m used to it, so it’s not a distraction.   The cold, distant air of the rooftop is suitable for such a ritual.   This isn’t my workshop, and just setting a boundary field isn’t enough to create an atelier.   But this place so far removed from any human presence is barren enough that my thaumaturgy will take root here.   It’s like a closed-off world.   I feel like I’m standing at the top of the tower of Babel before it was destroyed.   Even though the tower was never completed, and even though we only know its intended form through oral history, I feel as if I am standing a hair’s breadth from the heavens.   I take out a ritual dagger from my bag, and create a shallow cut along my arm.   As cold needles enter my tendons, a phantom sensation from the activation of my Magic Circuits, I move the dagger so that the blood that flows out of the wound flies through the air in a slender black ribbon to decorate the clinical stone under my feet in the pattern of a glyph.   I feel light-headed, as if I’m pulling a black tapeworm out of my veins, and the sensation of blood being dragged out is a bit nauseating.   But I don’t stop until the glyph is complete.   “—”   I breathe out and seal up the wound.   In a more rural area you could hunt animals and use their blood for this ritual instead of your own, and if you were rich you could substitute another material for blood, but this is the city and I’m poor.   If I wanted to use animals as scapegoats, I’d have spent days having Moja hunt for small birds. That’s not cost-effective use of my time, especially because I don’t know how many seats are left in this war.   With the circle complete, I remove the fossil from my bag and place it in the center of the glyph, the focus of all the power inside it.   The relic will call for the Servant, and I’ll use the incantation to open the gate and forge the connection between us.   I take out my snap baton and unfold it.   It’s a simple length of metal with a small weight on either end, like a rhythmic gymnast or a marcher’s tool.   But it’s very plain instead of cute or showy, made of metal and hard white plastic.   I flip it over in my hand.   A broom would be better.   The extra weight and the length are more what I’m used to folding over and over in circles while casting spells that require me to empty my mind of all but the incantation.   But there’s no real way to fit a broom into a suitcase without breaking it, and even if I went to a department store to buy one, it wouldn’t have the clinking weight of the charms and baubles that I attach to my focus at home.   The weight, the heft, and the little sounds of metal clicking together.   I can’t have any of those, but the baton should be a suitable replacement for now.   Moja’s claws dig into my shoulder.   There’s a little pain, but it’s so small and insignificant that it won’t create a distraction.   Even if he takes off from his perch, it won’t break my concentration.   Being used to having a familiar is useful at times like this.   …Now.   I stabilize my breathing and hold out my hands.   …Let’s begin.   Ye first, O silver, O iron.   O stone of the foundation, O archduke of the contract.   Hear me in the name of our great teacher, the Archmagus Schweinorg.   Let the descending winds be as a wall.   Let the gates in all directions be shut, rising above the crown, and let the three-forked roads to the Kingdom revolve.   Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut.   Five perfections for each repetition.   And now, let the filled sigils be annihilated in my stead!   Intense pressure like a building wind about to create a tornado.   It erupts throughout the enclosed space of the boundary field.   I can feel the power buffeting my clothes and hair, and near my ear Moja makes little squawking noises in protest and mantles his wings.   All of that is in the background.   It’s just unnecessary white noise.   What’s important is the steady weight and rhythm of the baton in my hand, and the words I carve into my heart.   …I can feel it.   It’s a tug like a fish pulling at a fishing line.   Little fishing hooks have been inserted under my skin, and something on the other end of the line is caught, tugging as if urging me forward so that we can meet.   …Now.   Set!   Let thy body rest under my dominion, let my fate rest in thy blade.   If thou submittest to the call of the Holy Grail, and if thou wilt obey this mind, this reason, then thou shalt respond.   I make my oath here.   I am that person who is to become the virtue of all heaven.   I am that person who is covered in the evil of all hell.   Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words,   Come past thy restraining rings, and be thou the hands that protect the balance—!!   Enough mana is crashing around in the air to bring the building down—   As soon as I think that.   There’s a hot, searing, horrible pain in my hand as though red-hot metal is being set against my skin—   And then there is a sound like a footstep.   The wind dies down.   Somebody speaks in a clear voice.   “—I ask of you. Are you my Master?”   There’s a clatter.   My hand must have hurt too much, because I’ve dropped the baton.   Sweat is dripping off my skin, and I feel like I’ve been standing in a heavy downpour.   My head is pounding and my legs feel like soggy noodles, but I open my eyes.   There’s a young man standing in the middle of the summoning circle.   He wears old-fashioned leather clothes, with the crest of a running horse and spear-wielding rider stamped here and there on his armor.   His eyes are like precious stones.   They’re pretty like the sea, blue-green in his dark face.   He looks straight at me.   As if he won’t move or speak or do anything else until he confirms my answer.   I raise my hands.   They’re like heavy steel weights, but I lift up my hands and shape them.   —Yes.   I’m the one who summoned you here—   The man smiles.   “I, the Servant Archer, have come forth in response to thy summons.   “From this time forth, mine bow shall be with thee, and thy fate shall be with me.   “Now, our contract is complete.”   The back of my hand is throbbing.   It feels like all the prana is leaking away from my body in an invisible mist.   “—”   “…Master?”   My Servant—Archer blinks as if in confusion.   The world tilts.   I fall.   I don’t feel any impact against the stone, but simply fall as if my body is sinking into a sea of soft velvet—