"Should we go to Ryuudou Temple?"
"No way." Gyneth immediately vetoed that decision with a crossing of her arms. "Do you have any idea how many people are going to immediately guess that's our base?"
Gwyrde just shrugged. "It's easily defensible, it has a quick connection to the Leylines, and it's isolated." He countered.
Morgan silently listened to the two kids, not interjecting.
She was wanting to understand them more.
Her niece and nephew, born of her sister. Beyond Mordred, it was not something she ever thought would happen.
Much less two versions of her sister.
As a faerie of her caliber, she was more than knowledgeable about parallel worlds, so that tidbit didn't throw her off.
"And it's so far out of the city! I don't want to walk that far every day to just get breakfast!"
Gwyrde sighed. "Fine, choose a spot."
"Already did." She puffed up.
Gwyrde looked at her in surprise.
"What!?" She narrowed her eyes.
"I just didn't think you actually put any proper thought into things."
Gyneth scoffed, flipping her hair back. "I'm a proper Magus, you know. I already mapped out all the leylines in the city and know the best spots to set up shop." To emphasize her point, she walked up to a seemingly random building and kicked the door in. "And I researched the properties too; this one is abandoned, so that's why I was heading here."
Though, despite his sarcasm, Gwyrde just followed along because he did in fact trust his sister. Her many eccentricities aside, he knew how competent she actually was when she wanted to be.
The building wasn't particularly large, a four-story office building that hadn't seen a visitor in probably a few years.
Morgan watched them curiously still.
She noted her niece take out a wand and start flourishing it everywhere.
Dust disappeared, grime and cobwebs.
Morgan raised an eyebrow as she silently cast spells that cleaned up the building as they moved upstairs.
"This isn't a bad location." Gwyrde acknowledged. "We're right between downtown and residential, and we overlook the river."
"No faith."
"My faith has been ground into dust when it comes to you." He deadpanned.
"Ma ma ma." Gyneth mocked his tone, tilting her head back and forth. "Stand away from the walls; I'm going to expand the space."
Gwyrde took a quick step towards the center.
Morgan furrowed her brow, curious what her niece meant by that.
"Ugh, this is going to suck. I hate casting this spell on concrete buildings; it's always annoying. And this size is going to kick me in the balls." Gyneth held out her wand with one hand and, with the other, grabbed her wrist to steady herself.
Morgan could see her eyes glow brightly and her magical energy surge.
"Capacious Extremis Maxima!"
Morgan, due to her existence, could see it better than just with basic eyesight.
The space around the building distorted, and the building twisted in ways that couldn't be described with the human tongue, all to accommodate the space that had been added. For a brief moment, the building had seemingly twisted itself into various shapes and continued to turn until the world accepted that there was in fact more space in this area than there should have been.
Morgan was silent as Gyneth let out a sigh and nearly slumped to the ground.
Her brother was quick to catch her from falling as she gave a shaky thumbs up. "It's a bitch of a spell to cast on modern buildings."
Morgan could understand how, despite her niece being a dragon incarnate with obscene levels of mana, she could find herself winded after casting that kind of spell.
Frankly, Morgan could accomplish the same; it wasn't that difficult. Most notable Magus Workshops had expanded space, but they usually do it through the work of Bounded Fields.
She didn't say it out loud, but it was an impressive display for someone her age.
It made her even more curious to know who their father was. Because Morgan was sure it was highly unlikely that her sister would have a burgeoning friendship with a magus of the caliber needed to teach them.
Especially since she knew exactly where Merlin was right at this moment and intended to keep him there.
[Line Break]
It was a strange thing for Morgan.
Idleness is one of them, and evaluating her niece and nephew is the other.
They barely even acknowledged her presence, which was…trying in different ways than she was used to. She was not used to being an afterthought and being talked around as if she wasn't present.
Perhaps it was novel in a way.
Instead of fear or worry, they just seemed to treat her like a bystander.
Her nephew was wiping Caliburn.
Something she was still surprised to see.
She never expected that sword to be remade and to be handed down to her sister's son. Though despite her misgivings and her own feelings towards her sister, she couldn't find fault in her.
From what she saw of the boy so far, he seemed to be a proper knight.
As for her niece.
"This one is going to be named Alphonso." The girl let loose a bird as it took to the night skies through an open window. She then used her wand on a pile of dirt—mundane dirt—and pulled a stream of it up and used her spells to morph it into the shape of a bird.
A golem, as the proper terminology.
"And this one will be named Peppermint." She let loose the bird, and it flew into the city.
"How many familiars is that now?" Her brother asked.
"43." She answered casually. "I got a pretty good view of the city now, but there are still some blind spots. And I'm staying away from the spots I know the others are at. Like Aunt Rin's house."
Morgan's lips twitched as she watched her niece do her spellwork. She wanted to say something; there was a better way to go about it. It was hard to resist the urge to offer her own…advice.
"And this one will be Brock—" She was about to let another of her fake bird familiars fly off, but Morgan waved her hand and snatched it out of the air.
"No, Brock!" She cried out.
Morgan rolled her eyes. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
"Have my familiars all over the city, duh." Gyneth replied.
Morgan questioned her niece's upbringing, because she did not act like proper royalty as they were.
"Your craft is unnecessarily complicated and redundant."
"Okay, boomer." Gyneth deadpanned.
Morgan didn't know what that meant, but it felt like an insult. She scowled and began to verbally dissect it. "You have a Rune inside that adds no variable purpose, acting as a center for the Magic Formula of the Golem. There are no safeguards, and if someone captures your familiar, they could easily—"
Morgan, to prove her point, was going to usurp the familiar and take control of it, but strangely, both Gyneth and Gwyrde ducked for cover.
The bird immediately exploded in her hand.
She was Morgan le Fay; an abrupt explosion wasn't going to harm her, even if it did cause her hair to become disheveled and her face covered in soot.
"...what happened?" Morgan was confused.
Gyneth looked up. "Oh, would you look at that? It's the safeguard I put in my familiar that activated when someone tried to steal it, change its structure, or spy on its spell structure." She said dryly.
Morgan's eye twitched.
"You should assume, in the future, that anything Gyneth puts her hands on will explode at some point. Intentionally, but all the same." Gwyrde stated.
"There were no defense spell structures woven into the golem; I checked." Morgan defended.
Gyneth rolled her eyes. "The entire spell structure is the in-built defense. The 'Rune' isn't pointless; it acts as a checker, an if-then statement to verify, like a password." Gyneth went back to her spot and continued her work. "IF [Insert Rune here] is actualized when accessing the Familiar, then the explosion isn't triggered. The rune itself is irrelevant; any rune will work."
"And you would not be able to check the Golem's structure without casting a spell in the first place, thus making it impossible to verify." Morgan summarized, understanding the principal immediately.
It was novel, or more than that, it was very intelligent.
It was a password, and you couldn't even check to see what the password could even be or if there even was a password without having the password on hand; otherwise, the Familiar will blow up.
She only knew about the Rune itself because she was watching her niece work.
Any kind of magic cast on the bird or interacting with the bird will cause it to self-destruct.
It wasn't foolproof, but it was almost damn near impossible to get anything out of them.
Morgan bit back a scathing comment in her annoyance. She wasn't used to being insulted, even accidentally, and by her own hand.
"And this one will be Sir Lancelot." Gyneth stated as a new bird joined the others, and Morgan nearly choked as she glared at her. "Unfortunately, he has some mental defects. Such as being French. Our thoughts and prayers are with him."
"Gyneth, stop insulting the French every opportunity you get." Her brother let out a sigh. "I swear, you're worse than Dad about it."
"Never!"
Morgan shook her head.
These were her sister's children.
[Line Break]
Despite the excitement of the Grail War, the building up to it was...lackluster.
For the most part they were sitting around doing nothing.
Morgan continued her silent observations. Emphasis on the silent part for most of the night.
One matter after another had her words forced back down her throat, and she was unable to properly speak.
It's not that she was so enthralled or awestruck at what she witnessed by itself. But it was the fact that, for one, they were her sister's children. And for two, after iterating with her niece for hours, she genuinely questioned if there was something wrong with her.
But now, she sat in a human-made modern building that had a bounded field around it that she had never seen before.
Cast by her niece.
Apparently, it conceptually hid its existence as a 'secret' within the caster's soul.
The world worked to keep it a secret as long as the one 'holding' the secret didn't reveal it to others.
No human would remember it existed. It was as if it was removed from the collective unconscious of humanity completely while the Bounded Field persisted.
Of course, her being a Servant, she was resistant to such things, and that was speaking nothing of her own skills in the field of magecraft.
And she was also sure that the other Servants would at least be able to glean that something was wrong even if they were not skilled in the field or had the required Magic Resistance.
But even so, it made Morgan speechless.
How did the daughter of her stupid sister become so proficient in a field that the idiot had so vehemently rejected in her own life?
Her original curiosity turned into something that now left her unwilling to leave.
She had far too many questions, and she found it hard to demand answers.
"Oh!" Her niece suddenly shot to her feet. "Something's happening."
Her brother also was startled. "What's going on?"
"I found Assassin, and he's attacking Aunt Rin's house. My familiars are flying over there now." Gyneth said happily. "Ooooh, Archer made an appearance now too!"
"...Gyneth, don't do anything."
"Too late!"
"Gyneth, what did you do?"
"Hehe~"
Gwyrde let out a sigh. "I suppose it doesn't matter; they will be our enemies anyways."
"Don't worry, I was just declaring war on everyone else." Gyneth said proudly. "Now you can fight to your heart's content. Didn't you want to fight the Knight summoned as Lancer?"
Morgan saw how easily her niece manipulated her nephew by striking right at his pride and sense of chivalry.
It was rather nostalgic.
"You are intent on facing a Servant?" Morgan finally voiced after the prolonged evening silence. "I had assumed that only one half of my sister's offspring were touched in the head, but it seems that it runs in your line."
"You know we're not exactly normal humans, right?" Gyneth responded first.
"Yes, I can tell that you're both incarnate dragons in the form of humans, however lesser than my sister in comparison." Morgan waved flippantly. She could not expect the offspring of her sister to match her when she had the Dragon Core of Albion.
"Haha, she hasn't noticed." Gyneth let out a chuckle.
Even Gwyrde had an amused smile on his face.
"Notice what?" Morgan's eyes narrowed; she felt like the butt of a joke.
"You're only talking about what we got from Mom's side. But…Dad wasn't exactly a normal human either." Gyneth said cryptically.
Morgan paused, because it was also a question she's had on her tongue for many hours now.
"Who is your father? Who was so bold as to seduce two of my sisters simultaneously?"
"Father is—"
"Dad's the son of Lucifer." Gyneth cut off her brother intentionally.
Morgan's thoughts came to a screeching halt.
"What!?"
[Line Break]
Earlier in the evening, across town, Assassin made his way towards the Tohsaka mansion.
Everyone participating knew that the Tohsaka family would also be one of the participants, even if they made no obvious showing of it.
However, what many didn't know was that Tokiomi Tohsaka, father of Rin Tohsaka and the patriarch of the Tohsaka family, had made a secret alliance with the Church. They are the ones supposed to oversee the Grail War as neutral observers and referees.
The Church side had summoned Assassin, one of the famed Hassan-I-Sabbah. Hassan of the hundred faces was capable of splitting itself into many different 'copies' of itself, all different personas.
So both Tokiomi and his Church ally made a plan to have Assassin attack his home with one of its personas, only for Tokiomi's Servant—Archer—to kill it in view of everyone.
It would make them think that Assassin had died early on.
Archer, despite his dislike for the plan, played along.
The King of Heroes, Gilgamesh.
Perhaps it was a whim, or the anticipation of something more amusing that would come out of it, but he reluctantly accepted the 'role' with some groveling from the Tohsaka patriarch.
He stood upon the highest recesses of the mansion, ready to lay down divine law upon the Assassin that crawled upon the dirt.
If nothing else, it would give him amusement for a brief moment to end the life of a so-called 'hero' who dares to claim such a title next to him.
One he finds unworthy of it.
The Assassin appeared and attempted to attack the Bounded Fields of the Tohsaka Mansion in a very blatant way.
The various familiars and spells cast to observe the mansion had immediately picked up on it, and their receptive owners were now watching with great interest.
"Mongrel, you dare approach this king's place of dwelling? Grovel in the dirt where you belong." The king made his declaration, and a golden portal appeared under the night sky illuminated by the crescent moon. Noble Phantasms peeked out, each one peerless and a legend in and of itself, and they aimed to take the Assassin's life.
"Kill steal!" A voice called out.
One Archer didn't recognize a feminine voice. Gilgamesh looked up to see the fake bird, a mongrel's familiar that he cared not of before, and where the voice originated, as it dived down towards the assassin, and when it got close, it exploded.
Gilgamesh paused in his usually decisive execution.
On one hand, he was furious that someone dared to intrude upon his preordained verdict.
But on the other hand, he watched the Assassin become utterly confused as more birds, a flock of them, descended from the sky and started to chase him, exploding when they got close.
The Assassin had been blown up into the air with very minor damage, but they continued, much to the Servant's dismay.
It started small, but Archer's lips curled up, and a faint noise escaped his lips.
Then finally, he started laughing fully and dismissed his portals completely.
He was with full belly laughter as the Assassin servant was being taken advantage of by some random Magus, and he couldn't help himself.
He originally accepted the summons because someone dared to try and claim one of his treasures, the Holy Grail.
But now, someone appeared who wished to entertain him?
He would allow it.
He took out a glass of wine and watched the spectacle with great amusement even as he heard his 'Masters' voice through their shared link scramble and panic.
[Line Break]
A/N
The Twins begin to screw up the war. Morgan questions the sanity of her sister's children repeatedly.
If you want to support me, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone
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