This morning feels very unpleasant for some reason, probably because I didn’t get a very healthy amount of sleep due to staying up too late.
And, on top of all that, I did not manage summoning the Saber Servant.
Well, I suppose there isn’t much space for complaining at this point. The only option is to make do with what we have and win even with a Caster. Having a pair of two powerful spellcasters is going to make things difficult, though, since the knight classes are typically highly resistant to magic.
Probably the only way for us to win is if Saber, Archer and Lancer somehow get eliminated and we can clean up afterwards?
For starters, I might crawl out of my bed. It’s time to get to scho-!
It’s nine in the morning. Far too late for me to attend school on time! Crap!
Well, guess a quick call there that I am sick is going to fix it. At this point, it might be more worthwhile just taking a day off and spending more time with my new Servant. Lots of strategizing is due, anyways.
I dress up into my casual clothing really quick and leave the bedroom, making way straight into the living room where our conversation ended off last night.
Familiar scenery opens up before me as I enter the part of the Tohsaka household where I spend most of my spare time. Everything seems to be as usual, except for the single intruder that entered this space last night and has been staying there since – my Servant.
Apparently he hasn’t noticed my arrival as he keeps staring out of the window into the city. Seeing him this relaxed, but focused, makes me feel somewhat strange. I expected Servants to be more like killing machines without much emotion, yet his behaviour gives off a very strong sense of emotion.
Perhaps there is more humanity left in him than one would expect from a deceased hero of the past. I’ve always imagined the heroic spirits to be more stoic, cynical even, yet here he is showing signs of feelings natural to humans.
Carefully I take a few steps towards him silently, making sure to check for any reaction from him with every step. Nothing at all comes from his side, the seemingly blank gaze just continues undisturbed.
Finally, as I make it so close I could reach out my hand towards him, Caster’s voice resounds through the living room.
‘Good morning, Rin. Have you slept well?’
Is that it? One would expect something more grandiose or perhaps more like Let’s discuss our next move or when are we fighting. The hero before has answered the Grail’s summon only due to his lasting wish for the omnipotent vessel, after all.
‘G-Good morning, Caster. Fine, I suppose. Let me make a tea first, then we can start the discussion.’
He nods in silence, not making any more sound.
Something might be bugging him. ‘Would you like some, too?’
‘No, thank you. I’m fine as it is.’
With that, he walks to the sofa in the middle of the room and sits down, waiting for me to take place opposite of him. I can feel, thanks to our contract, that there is something on his mind that he doesn’t say out loud, but how do I approach him about it? Ah, it’s difficult dealing with people like him!
Either way, I take my time planning the conversation while making my morning tea. As soon as it’s done, I sit on the other sofa and stare at him for a second.
‘Tell me, Master,’ he starts right away, not even giving me a chance to open a conversation myself.
‘…Why did you want to summon a Saber Servant so badly?’
A very straightforward question. Apparently my behaviour last night started our relationship on quite a bad note, and I might have to fix it before it’s too late.
‘Well, the Saber class made it to the final two in every past Grail War. As such, it is widely regarded as the strongest Servant class and the most sought-after one. Tell me, if you’re a Caster, why have the sword on your back?’
An immediate retaliation to not give him an opportunity to dig into the faux pas from yesterday. His gaze finally turns to me, and our eyes meet in a tough stare down. His look feels so ominous, almost as if trying to scold me like father did whenever I failed something.
‘There hasn’t been a rule that Caster Servants cannot use weapons as far as I know, just as there is no rule specifically forbidding heroes the use of any instrument or weapon that has nothing to do with their respective class. If I were you, I wouldn’t expect an Archer to not hold a melee weapon, an Assassin to have nothing but daggers and knives or a Caster having just a staff to protect themselves.
Despite magic being my primary weapon, my Noble Phantasm itself is not related to my class assignment anyhow. Quite the contrary – you would probably expect me to be a Saber thanks to it.’
‘What does your Noble Phantasm look like?’
A Noble Phantasm. The ace in sleeve of every Servant, a weapon or other artifact somehow connected to the hero’s legend. Most commonly, it is just the tool they used to slay their foes, be it Excalibur for King Arthur or Gram for Siegfried.
Sometimes, however, a surprising example can appear. For example, one could count Perseus’ Pegasus a Noble Phantasm, or perhaps this man’s sword.
Despite being a prodigy of a mage, Sunamar has, according to his legend, taken great liking in swordplay as well, often training with his elder sister when he was younger. Perhaps that was the reason why he ended up with the blade on his back.
His look grows darker after me asking this question.
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‘Hopefully you will never have to see it. That is all I can tell you.’
The tone of his voice shows that he does not intend to elaborate any further on the subject, forcing an awkward moment of silence.
I guess talking to this man is not going to be easy. Perhaps he’s going to be more compatible with me once it comes to fighting. I really hope so, otherwise this war might be as well as over for me, for us.
‘You seem to keep draining a lot of my mana constantly, Caster. Do you need to maintain your physical form at all times? I thought Servants could switch between that and a spiritual form in order to conserve the magic of their Masters.’
‘Well, about that… There is this thing that, for some reason, I cannot enter the spiritual form. It might be our contract not being a proper one, or just the Grail itself penalising me for whatever reason.’
Yes, that seems very odd. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with our contract, since it has been established properly right after the summoning ritual was completed. If the Grail itself denies my Servant to enter his spiritual form, it might complicate lots of things.
For instance, he cannot follow me around the city without staying visible and, as such, being an easy target and already giving off who he is.
Back to the present now, I speak up:
‘Say, Caster, how would you like a walk around the city in order to get to know Fuyuki a little? Perhaps we could locate good spots for you to fight in if we patrol around the town?’
Sunamar stands up and reaches his hand out forward. Murmuring an incantation in a language I do not understand, he casts a spell I have never seen or heard of. Once he’s done, he reaches out for me and touches my shoulder.
A massive spike enters my brain, causing me head to go dizzy from the pain. A flux of immense amounts of information flow into my mind, nearly making me faint on the spot.
It’s the information on every place in the entire city. Every district, every street, every building, every person that we could possibly bump into outside. All of that with just a single spell that took mere seconds to cast.
‘I believe this skips the annoying part of having to walk around the entire place, which would take us days if not weeks at a reasonable pace. So, do you still consider summoning me a failure?’
The last sentence comes with a decent bit of sarcasm as he smirks a little at me. He seems very delighted by the spell cast just moments ago, expecting great praise from me, his Master.
‘We will see about that once you get to an actual fight between Servants. Until then, you’re staying on the list of things I consider very unfortunate in my life, sadly.’
Don’t get so full of yourself. Just because you can cast a fancy spell that saves us time doesn’t mean you’re immediately up on the throne of “the best Servant”. But, if he can cast a spell of this scale with such ease, I can’t wait to see what he’s going to be capable of in actual combat.
My plans are out of the window thanks to this, though. So, what now?
I take the initiative of the conversation back into my firm grasp: ‘Well, how about we take a short walk anyways? It’s not like we have anything better to do right now, do we?’
Taking a second to decide, Sunamar eventually nods in agreement. ‘As you wish, Master. But I don’t think walking out in the open in this clothing might be the best idea.’
‘I haven’t thought of that until now. Maybe we could find something you can wear.’
After a while spent searching, we manage to find something at least bearable enough for my Servant to wear. A casual pair of black jeans, a dark shirt and a hoodie. To be perfectly honest, he doesn’t look like someone from the ancient times in this, quite the opposite actually. He could very easily slip into the crowds of Fuyuki without a trace of anything strange about him if not for the aura emanating from him.
Albeit a fairly weak one for what he has already demonstrated before, I am very sure that he has been suppressing most of his actual aura in order to not draw too much unwanted attention. A pair of mages walking together outside is going to be odd enough for anyone capable of sensing our powers.
With the preparations out of the way, we opt to take a short walk around the city’s most powerful ley lines. At every spot, Caster stops for a moment, sometimes murmuring something, sometimes just walking around its borders without a word. I assumed he’d want to see these places up close, since they contain the highest magic particles concentrations in all of Fuyuki. It could make for the perfect place for him to regenerate after a battle.
A very strange reaction comes from him when we approach the mountain shrine, one of the last spots we were to visit:
‘This place is tainted. It’s as if the entire place has been defiled by something very evil.’ He utters plainly.
‘What do you mean?’
He points in the direction of the shrine’s gardens. ‘Can you feel how the ley lines are disturbed in this direction? It’s almost as if somebody tore them into pieces after using them.
It’s either that, or somebody has used a very powerful spell on this place.’
‘You mean, like summoning a Servant?’
‘Exactly.’ His answer makes me feel a little uneasy. Does it mean we have just located a Master before the fighting has even started? If so, that would be a great piece of information, although somebody could’ve just summoned their hero here and then left.
‘For now, it might be for the better to steer clear of this place, Master. It’s possible there are traps and other nasty things in store for us should we try venturing any deeper. And there’s a lot of civilians around. I would prefer avoiding unnecessary casualties if possible.’
‘That makes two of us, Caster. I will not let you devour humans in order to sustain your magic, nor will I justify causing needless casualties on people not involved in the Holy Grail War by any means.’
He answers with a slight smile and nod: ‘It seems I have found a solid Master for myself, then. Hope you won’t fail meeting my expectations from now on as well.’
With that, we silently leave the temple grounds with a new valuable piece of intel.
There has to be another Servant residing here. I’m sure of it.
Our last destination for the day is the Fuyuki Central Park in Shinto. The place holds an unbelievably negative presence to it.
No wonder – after all, it is where the Holy Grail manifested ten years ago. A great fire burst out around here after a Master has rejected the Grail’s omnipotent wish-granting powers and destroyed a large portion of the city, burning hundreds in the process.
‘Yes, I can feel mana residues that are similar to the Grail’s nature here. It would also explain why such a large space is there, with almost nothing but grass.’
I make a quick circle around the place to see if there is anything noteworthy and then finally sit down on the grass, relaxing for a moment. It has been quite a tiresome day spent walking and showing Caster so many places and things around.
He seems to be enjoying this, too, though, as he takes seat nearby, maintaining a distance of about a meter.
‘Why are you so far, Caster?’
His face turns slightly red as he averts his gaze: ‘W-Well… wouldn’t it give a bad impression if we’re sitting close to each other?’
I can’t help but laugh.
‘Is the great Sunamar Pendragon afraid of being seen around a woman? Or are you just that shy in general?’
He turns back at me: ‘You… don’t mind it?’
‘No, I couldn’t care less what these strangers think. Just come here so we don’t have to shout at each other.’ The confused look on my face seems to convince him of the honesty of my words. I mean, who would care about a pair of strangers, anyways?
With that being said, I pat on the ground next to me, showing him to sit closer. He moves a little bit but then stops again. This process repeats four times before he comes close enough.
Much to my amusement, I can almost hear how loud his heart is beating. I wish I could tease him a bit about it, but now’s not the time for jokes.
Especially not with an ancient hero like him. Despite knowing that his true identity is that of a long-deceased mage from the times we have absolutely no traces of, somehow in this outfit he feels just like any other person we could meet on the streets today.
Almost as if he was one of those creeps at school trying to ask me out, except for this one is at least somewhat cool.
The powerful aura that would make anyone tremble in fear is suddenly outshined by a feeling of warmth, making it seem as if we’re just two friends hanging out.
It’s truly an odd feeling that my Servant is giving me.
‘Hey, Rin,’ he pulls me out of my thoughts, nudging my side. I look up to meet with his eyes and I see a gloomy and nervous expression on his face.
‘Could we leave this place? The aura of this place feels very unpleasant.’
