With his palms pressed against his eyes, he could see her face. He struggled to remember more of her smile and her wide eyes, but like grasping for a dream, the more he struggled, the fainter his memory became. Finally there was a girl's smile that had faded into darkness. He had forgotten even her name.
Emil took his hands away from his face and rested them at his side, letting daylight warm his closed eyelids. The world was warm and peach-colored now, with shadows where a dark manor rose up on one side. The center of a now-dry fountain darkened another. He could feel the cold stone of the fountain walls underneath his hands.
He dared not open his eyes.
If he did, he would see nothing but grey.
Emil buried his head in hands once more. His elbows dug into the bare skin of his legs below the thin, cheap material of his shorts. They still smelled of antiseptic, though Emil had forgotten why. He was glad to be forgetting why. He remembered stale air and dark corridors. He remembered being angry about something, and yet infinitely more sad than angry. He remembered the sound of gunfire and screams and knowing that there was someone at his side that hadn't been there before, someone summoned in his hour of need. Caster. It was like he had crawled out of hell with Caster protecting him from all the demons that strove to keep him there. Whoever Caster had not killed first, Emil had turned to stone while they were still alive. That memory, Emil knew he would not lose. Something had changed his eyes so that everything he looked upon would be turned to stone.
Master, there is someone approaching. Another master.
"A friend or an enemy?" Emil asked.
All other masters are enemies.
"Do they have to be, Caster? I remember a lady-"
Emil felt the mana shift around him, and lithe arms wrap around his shoulder. Caster no longer felt so omnipresent, but instead concrete and defined. Emil felt calloused fingertips against the skin below his short sleeves, rough yet comforting.
"'Ladies' are certainly not necessarily friends."
"You don't like them?"
"I liked one." Caster sighed.
Emil basked in the sound of his Servant's voice, fluid and melodious. Every word he spoke seemed like song, lilting and sweet.
"Can I call you something else, other than 'Caster'? I want to be friends."
"That is dangerous, Master."
"My name is Emil."
"Master Emil. If someone can guess my identity beyond my appearance, if they know who I am, we will be at a disadvantage."
"But I can't even see you."
"You think your eyes will turn me to stone as well? Medusa herself could not. Not for myself as a Servant at least."
"But if I look at you, I will see everything else around you. I wish I knew how you looked, if we're going to be together for this 'War' thing."
"Then take a guess. Feel with your hands."
Caster took Emil's hand in his. He guided the boy's fingers to feel a smooth, polished wood and trace curved holes carved in its surface and strings strung across a gap between two wooden horns above the body. When Emil touched the strings, he could hear them resound in descending intervals even without the intention of making music.
"This is my lyre. Half the weapons I wield in battle." Caster explained. Grasping Emil's hands once more, he guided them upward to feel crisp folds of linen over a muscular chest and further up until Emil could feel soft skin beneath his fingers. Emil felt out the contours of a strong chin, hesitating around an aquiline nose before he reached further upward. Dense curls grasped at Emil's fingers. Nestled among Caster's soft hair Emil felt a multitude of sharp edges. He traced one point between his finger and thumb, a long, ovoid shape that ended at a rounded metal wire that sprouted another, similarly sharp shape on the other side. One of his hands still held Caster's cheek. Emil could feel his face draw into a smile.
"That is my laurel wreath." Caster said.
"You're..." Emil murmured. He had no words to finish his sentence. His eyes were closed. All he saw was the shadow of a man in front of a bright sky. He tried to imagine the what the face he felt would look like. A young man, something between boyish and handsome, though he could be could just as easily be the opposite.
They're close, Master Emil.
Suddenly there was no one beneath his fingertips. Emil could hear footsteps approaching, by the sound of them, one solitary figure.
"But, who are you? I won't tell."
I trust you, Master, but I will tell you later.
"You promise?" Emil asked.
Of course, Master Emil. Guard yourself, he comes.
The shade of the water fountain felt yet colder without Caster's physical presence. Emil waited, listening to the footsteps as they drew closer. They crunched and thudded and jangled as leather ground into gavel, leather slapped against leather, and metal rattled against metal. Emil did not dare open his eyes. Enemy or not, he didn't care. He wouldn't turn them to stone without making sure. The footsteps stopped, not close enough to shade Emil's eyelids against the sun.
"Hey there! Yo!" He heard a young voice call out. The voice was a little raspy but high and boyish, confident but wary. The person asked questions in different, strangely-accented languages until finally arriving on something Emil understood in Japanese. "Is that your house?"
The grammar was bad, Emil knew, but no worse than his own. Japanese was not his mother tongue, but neither was anything else that the stranger had tried.
"I don't think so."
"Legion'll get you with your eyes closed like that."
"I don't think so."
"You're in this 'War', aren't you? You got one of those Servant people too?"
"How do you know?"
"Those marks on your hand."
Caster, where is his Servant? Emil thought.
I cannot say. Caster answered uneasily. He is hidden from me.
"My servant tells me masters should make sure other masters are as dead as their servants." Emil announced.
"Assassin said so too."
More crunching of heavy boots against gravel, and then the leaden sound of the boy coming to rest at Emil's side on the fountain walls. He smelled like seaspray and smoke. Emil couldn't remember having experienced either, but it reminded him of an oceanside bonfire. The boy had a nice voice. He had a smell that made Emil want to hold him close, even with the slight sweetness of gunpowder and the harshness of fuel that he could smell underneath the salt and ash. Emil wished he could open his eyes and see if face and body matched words and voice.
"What do they call you, kid?" the boy asked.
The thought of a number flitted across Emil's mind's eye but vanished just as quickly. He answered, "Emil. What about you?"
"They call me lots of things. Depends on the unit I'm in. 'Smartass', 'Wiseguy', 'Encyclopedia Brown'- but last guy at base called us by what colors we wore. Some foreigner. So I'm 'Weiss' for now, I guess. Until I am put in another unit."
"And you're not going to fight me, Weiss?" Emil asked.
"There's no such thing as wishes." Weiss said hotly, "If there was, why hasn't anyone wished for an end to this terror? No, if there even is a Grail, it won't help anyone. There's just us and Legion, and I've told Assassin twenty times already that anyone who can fight is too valuable to waste in some stupid war."
Emil thought on what the boy said, wondering how much trust he would put in him, and how much the boy had faith in his own words. If he had a Servant as well to tell him about the Grail War, then it was self-evident that such a thing as a Grail would exist. It only seemed obvious that the Grail's powers were as truthful as the Servants summoned to help manifest it, and that if anyone was wrong, it was Weiss. 'Smartass' indeed.
"Let's make a deal. We'll work together until the end." Emil said.
"And at the end…?" Weiss asked.
"We'll find out, won't we?"
"You're naïve, kid. I could betray you. I could kill you. Assassin could kill you."
"Then use your command seals." Emil dared.
Master, you don't know what you're doing…
"Use a command seal to make Assassin never even try to kill me, and I'll make Caster swear the same for you. I'll make Caster swear to protect you as he does me, and you do the same for Assassin."
"That leaves one command seal left for each of us."
"Right. One spare."
Master, please!
"One for the end, if we get even that far. I'll do it, Emil. Swear to it?"
"Just swear?"
"We can make it a blood oath. That's what we did in one of my old units. Our blood was our bond."
"How does that work?"
"We cut the palms of our right hands, then shake. If you don't have a knife, you can use mine."
Emil paused. He placed his left hand over his eyes, fingers splayed to keep both lids closed. He stuck out his right hand in front of him.
"I don't know if I'll blink. You do it for me."
Master Emil, don't be foolish. You don't know that boy. Caster complained in Emil's head.
You don't know him either. Emil thought back. Weiss was a fellow Master, yet Weiss valued human life more than a wish on the Grail. That was enough.
"Whatever you say."
Weiss stood up with a rattle. The scratch of Velcro ripping apart and the dull scrape of metal against hard plastic told Emil that Weiss was unsheathing a knife from somewhere on his person. A cool, leather-gloved hand took his and Emil felt the blade of the knife as thin and light as the edge of a feather against his palm.
"Ready?"
Back out of it, please. There are better ways to fight the Grail War.
Emil nodded. He felt Weiss' knife cut into his palm before he felt any pain or had any inkling that the boy would act so fast. The wound stung with every unintentional flex of his hand. Weiss let go and removed one glove with a pop. A moment later he held Emil again in a handshake. Weiss' hand was as wet with sweat as it was with blood.
"We'll say it together. Tell our Servants to protect the other and not hurt them. Then we'll swear to do the same ourselves."
"Assassin, I command you to protect Emil like you protect me." "Caster, I command you to protect Weiss like you protect me."
The back of Emil's hand felt like it was being branded with dry ice. Caster was trying to resist the order. By the way Weiss' grip tightened, Emil guessed that the using of a command seal affected him the same way.
"Caster, I command you to never harm Weiss." "Assassin, I command you to never harm Emil."
"I, Weiss, swear to protect my blood brother Emil." "I, Emil, swear to protect my blood brother Weiss."
Another searing pain as the second command seal burned up, and the deal was done.
"I got some bandages in my kit for your hand. Say, how about I put them around your eyes, too? Then you don't need to worry so much. You can have your hands free for whatever, even getting rid of your bandages if you need to use your eyes."
Emil nodded, then waited and listened. Weiss fumbled around himself without the use of his right hand, he could tell. The jangling of his equipment came in fits, and at one point Weiss cursed in this mother tongue after something fell to the ground with a heavy thud. A zipper moaned haltingly, then came the sound of rummaging papers. Emil strained to hear the whisper of cloth unwinding from its coil and wrapping around Weiss' injured hand. Emil smiled slightly with pride. He was learning how to adapt without eyes already, he thought, though it would still take time before he could understand his senses without so much given context.
Weiss moved with smooth rapidity once he finished binding his own hand. In the time that it had taken to wrap his own right hand, the boy had covered both Emil's injury and his eyes. The cloth squeezed against both reassuringly. Emil dared open his eyes to see a world of white linen turn to dark stone-grey.
"It worked!" Emil smiled, wishing he knew where Weiss stood so he could hug him close in thanks.
"'Course it did. Let me pack up again and let's go."
"It's a weird question, but what are Legion?" Emil asked when Weiss finished putting away his gear.
"You never met them!? How old are you?"
"Ten."
"New recruit or something? I'm twelve. I've been fighting them two years, since joining Hamelin. Maybe you're lucky you don't know them." Weiss said, his voice cracking momentarily, "They're all white- like people who turn to salt with WCS- but they still live. They're stupid berserkers, but some say they're led by a worse one named Red Eye. Guess why that is. Anyway, they're tough but still bleed. We burn them when we're done." Weiss tapped something of hollow metal near him, "So I have this flame thrower to do it. The Luciferase we get might prevent WCS for us, but fire is the only thing that makes sure the particles that cause it don't spread."
"Is it hard, killing Legion?"
"They fight like bastards. But they still are, were, human. A little. That's the hardest. Anyway, let's go. I need to refill my canister and my magazines. Just hold onto me and you'll follow fine. Not so many Legion on the outskirts here."
Weiss grabbed Emil's wrist and placed his hand on a cold metal canister. Emil pieced together that it was strapped to the boy's back. Something liquid sloshed around inside with every step Weiss took.
Emil. Caster said, coalescing his mana just enough so that Emil could feel his lips brush against the ear Caster whispered into. Emil immediately noted that he was not 'Master' now. Emil, more than your servant, I feel it is my duty as a man to a boy to teach you properly. Even if you are young. Why do you put your life in the hands of this child?
Emil squeezed the cold metal of the fuel canister on Weiss' back. Weiss tells me his name. He gave up more than you could to be my blood brother. I'm not mad at you Caster, but…
No apologies. He is my charge as much as you are now, at your demand.
Phantom lips kissed Emil's cheek. Emil startled, a chill coursing down his spine. I will not fail you, Master Emil. For you, I will go to hell and back.
And you still won't tell me your real name?
That boy hasn't.
He's not my Servant. Emil thought icily.
I promise you, I will tell you in time.
And Assassin? Have you seen him? What does he look like?
Not yet, though neither did I reveal myself to that child during your bargain.
They walked for a while before Weiss stopped with a scuff of his heavy boots against asphalt and a jangle of equipment.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
Emil strained his ears. He could hear the breezes whistling through empty windows and the constant hum of insects underneath infrequent birdsong. Tree leaves rasped against each other like waves breaking on a sandy beach. Barely audible in the distance was something else that faded in and out of hearing with the changing direction of the wind.
"It sounds like… singing?" Weiss said, followed by the sound of folding cloth and stretching leather straps. The sound of the boy lifting his arm to point, Emil told himself "Over there."
A woman singing, Emil thought, though through some trick of the wind the voice changed between one person and many different ones, La la la la la. La la la la la.