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Chapter 11

A Twisted Tale

by Anju Addams


Once upon a time, a powerful dwarven blacksmith forged two magical mirrors: the first spoke nothing but the truth and the second magnified and reflected the worst in others for all to see. He named these objects the Truth Mirror and the False Mirror, and gave them to the good king who ruled in the mountains. What was unknown to the blacksmith, was that the king's brother had manipulated him into crafting the mirrors in order to destroy his brother and take the crown for himself.

The king took the Truth Mirror as a gift for his queen, who became obsessed with the mirror's words and spoke to it endlessly. Eventually the blacksmith realized the False Mirror was too dangerous, so he hid it in the Mountain King's palace and broke it into pieces.

It is told that only the tear of the Golden Child can mend the mirror and only the most magical hammer can destroy it. The False Mirror did not appreciate being shackled in the king's chamber and was slowly consumed with hatred for its human captors.

It swore to destroy the entire earth. If the False Mirror was ever restored, it would project the rawest and basest emotion within its owner to the heavens, and then rain it back down on earth tenfold. If the owner was consumed by hatred, the sky would rain fire. But if the owner was consumed by sorrow, snow colder than death will fall.


Snow fell gently in drifts around Bazett Fraga McRemitz as she took in the sight of the Servant she had just summoned. It definitely wasn't her beloved CĂș, what with the whole ice theme the Servant had going on. Oh, and she was pretty sure, the Hound of Ulster was a guy.

The woman she had summoned, beheld a regal air about her, helped by the shimmering white tiara perched atop her blonde locks and the icicle looking scepter she grasped tightly in one hand. Her clothes were also of a similar air, a great blue dress lined with a fur collar. To be honest, Bazett couldn't help but shiver slightly as she took in the sight of those woman's frigidly blue eyes.

"Servant Caster at your summons." the woman said in a rather monotone voice. "I look forward to working with you." At the words, 'Caster', the man who had been standing next to her, Kirei Kotomine, looked somewhat surprised. He shook it off, and turned towards Bazett.

"I was hoping, that if you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at your command seals." he said. As she nodded and raised her arm towards him, he delicately pulled out several of his black keys from behind his back, making sure she did not see them. He was about to strike, when a cold blast smashed into the side of his face sending him straight to the floor.

"Caster!" Bazett cried. "You just attacked the mediator, what the hell do you think your doing!?" Caster let out a sharp laugh, and pointed a long finger at the man who was still laying in a daze on the floor.

"He was going to kill you my Master, I could tell from a mile away." Suddenly, she summoned forth a rather ornate mirror. However, instead of reflecting the surroundings, the mirror beheld the face of a beautiful young woman, frozen in time. "This mirror reveals all truths, not one can hide from me." she explained sweeping the hand that was not holding the mirror, over to the corner where Kirei's black keys had landed.

"Look there, you should see, this man is not what he seems to be." The echoing voice that came forth, did not come from Caster, but rather the face in the mirror, startling her Master, who then turned and watched the lying priest who began to stir.

"Come on then." she said to her Servant, in a small voice. "Let's get out of here."


A while later the pair had arrived at the apartment that Bazett had rented out whilst she was in the city. Luckily, whilst fleeing from the church, the pair had not come across anymore Servants and the two were able to safely arrive home, Bazett collapsing on the sofa with a groan.

"Make yourself at home." she waved lazily. "I don't care. It's been one hell of a day." Caster bowed and headed over to the shelf of books that was placed in the corner. Trailing a finger across the spine of one, she studied their titles.

"Are these yours?" she asked.

"What?" Bazett replied before looking up. "Oh, yes. I brought them along. Give me something to do other than sit around you know?" She closed her eyes and lay down on the sofa. She was just starting to doze off, when a slamming noise jolted her awake. Recovering quickly, she sat up to see Caster had dropped a book onto the nearby table and was now staring straight at her.

"Caster?"

"I believe you wish to know who I am do you not?" Caster told her, pointing at the book. "You will find the answers in there."

Bazett leaned over to see the cover. "The Snow Queen." she murmured, as she read the title. "By Hans Christian Andersen. Huh."


Eventually the mirror's threat came to pass when the king's daughter had a son who became gravely ill. The illness would also devastate her further, by attacking her father as well. Desperate to save her son and her beloved parent, the woman snuck into the rumored chamber. The mirror, tarnished and in disrepair, spoke to her in a weak voice.

"I can bring your child and father back from the brink of death if you wear this shard and put the other around your father's neck."

Fashioning the shards into necklaces, the woman and then the king chained themselves with pieces of the False Mirror.


The clashing of metal rang out over the abandoned field as Caster's staff parried a blow away from the spear of the green haired girl who had identified herself as Lancer. The trio had come across each other earlier whilst Bazett and her Servant were scouting the area, and almost immediately the lancer had tried to skewer them on the end of her rather bloody naginata.

Now though, the fighters leapt away from each other, Caster sending a wave of frozen hail to pelt the green haired girl and drive her back. She grimaced however, when Lancer breathed in deeply, then exhaled a brilliantly blue flame, melting the ice pellets.

"Damn." Caster cursed. "She's must be an eastern dragon." She racked her brain for a few ideas until she could come to only one solution. "Guess, I'll have to use that." With a wave of her hand, she manifested another mirror, this one oval shaped and beholding the face of an ugly old man. Grasping the object, she faced it towards Lancer.

"Behold!" she cried. With a bright flash of light, Lancer began to gaze into the mirror, looking at only something she could see. Abruptly, she leapt back shrieking and covering her eyes.

"STOP IT!" she desperately cried, rubbing her hands frantically over her eyes. "STOP SHOWING ME THAT!" A few seconds later, she collapsed to the floor sobbing. Bazett could hear the anguished Servant muttering to herself.

"I-I'm sorry Anchin...I'm sorry." she was muttering again and again. It was clear that she wasn't in the right state to fight at the minute.

"Is she going to be okay?" Bazett wondered, looking over the Lancer, who was now sobbing into the grass.

"I don't know." Caster sighed. "Possibly. But for now we're going to have to flee. I don't really enjoy using that mirror anymore, not after what happened. I could use my other Noble Phantasm, but it's a one time use for emergencies and I don't want to risk it." she let out another sigh. "If my Territory Creation skill wasn't so basically useless in this environment we probably would have fared a lot better."


The Mountain King was the first to succumb to the mirror's curse. The guilt that plagued him for not protecting his daughter, slowly morphed him into a hulking beast who would forever guard her. The False Mirror projected the princess's sorrow as winter and her constant tears began to fall as snow. The air turned so cold around her that time seemed to crawl to a halt. The servants began calling her the Snow Queen.

Scared witless by the king's and the Snow Queen's transformations, most of the kingdom's inhabitants fled. Soldiers loyal to the king stayed on, though each eventually succumbed to the deadly cold. The Snow Queen saw that her son was still ill so she visited the False Mirror a second time.

"I am still in disrepair. Heal me with the tear of the Golden Child, and I will heal the child in kind." The False Mirror spoke.

Enshrouded in coldness, the princess, now known as the Snow Queen ruled the kingdom with an icy hand.

Though the Mountain Kingdom has been forgotten by history, the villagers in the valley below carried on its legacy with folklore. Adults warned the children about the evil Snow Queen who snatches children who wander off in storms.


"So another false king has appeared before me?" The King of Heroes exclaimed as he shimmered into reality atop a streetlamp. "Aren't you the mongrels who fled from Kirei?"

As Bazett took a step back, Caster raised a single perfect eyebrow. "I'm a queen, actually." she told the golden king. Gilgamesh laughed, a smirk cutting across his face.

"Interesting. You at least have a backbone, I think I should like to fight you." As he spoke, various weapons appeared behind him, pooling out of his treasury. Then, in an instant, he fired them at the pair.

Thankfully, Caster was more than ready, and with a gesture of her staff, a great torrent of snow blasted forward, blanketing the unusual projectiles. When the snow finally settled down Bazett saw the great wall of ice that had appeared, the weapons frozen solid inside. Gilgamesh nodded his head.

"Impressive." he conceded. "But you won't survive long."

"Then if I am to die." began Caster. "I would like to offer a magnificent gift to his majesty."

"Hmm? Are you trying to trick me mongrel?" Gilgamesh snarled. "No more tricks!"

Caster shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not tricking you." With her free hand, she reached into the depths of her dress and brought out a single object. Bazett noticed it seemed to a single ordinary apple, with only one difference. The golden glow that softly pulsed around it. Even from this distance away, it made her feel warm just by looking at it.

Absently, she noted that Gilgamesh was also staring at it, transfixed.

"See how it matches your splendor my king?" Caster regaled. "This apple brings anyone who holds it untold fame and wealth, fitting for the King of Heroes." She raised it closer to him. Almost dreamily, he reached out a hand.

"Give it to me." he ordered. Caster's blue eyes lit up and she dumped the golden fruit in his open palm. Gilgamesh, however didn't seem to react apart from a slight sigh when the apple touched his glove. For a few moments, the three stood there in silence, before Bazett worked up the courage to speak.

"I-Is he okay?" she asked her Servant. "He's just staring at it."

"He'll be fine." Caster explained. "In a manner of speaking."

"I don't understand..."

"That apple of mine." Caster gestured to the fruit still clutched tightly in the man's palm. "Is enchanted. Anyone who gazes upon will become transfixed. But, if they touch the apple then they will forget everything and only love it. But that's not all." she continued. "If he was to eat the fruit...well I would say he's finished." She raised her staff once more.

"Strike while the iron is hot, and all that." she said, snow falling gently around her. "He's not going to be defending himself anytime soon."


"You know..." Bazett said to her Servant, when they were finally back in the apartment, celebrating their victory over the wayward Servant, with a hot cup of tea. "I read your story back to front. All the other versions as well, but I can't figure out where the apple comes from. No version had it..."

"Ah." Caster gave a wistful smile. "Actually the apple is the most important part. No one ever quite forgets it."

"I still don't understand." her Master groaned. "Apples and Snow Q-" she cut off, eyes wide. "No way!" she gasped. "You're...! No! You couldn't be!" she turned to the woman sitting opposite her. "Are you?"

"Let me tell you a tale." Caster said. "Once upon a time, a powerful dwarven blacksmith forged two magical mirrors: the first spoke nothing but the truth and the second magnified and reflected the worst in others for all to see. He named these objects the Truth Mirror and the False Mirror, and gave them to the good king who ruled in the mountains. The king took the Truth Mirror as a gift for his lovely queen. However, the queen became obsessed with the enchanted object so much so, that everyday she would ask it..."

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall."

"Who's the Fairest of Them All?"


"Snowfall threatens to ruin the kingdom and I am gravely ill. My daughter, Snow shall rule in my stead."

- King Edric White of the Mountain Kingdom.


AN: So, another pretty obscure Servant. This time it's from a neat little series of IOS/Android games, called Dark Parables. They're basically a bunch of find the object games and are pretty easy. It probably takes about an hour to beat them. At current time there's about twelve with the latest, The Thief and the Tinderbox released just a few weeks ago at the end of September 2016, with a thirteenth in the works. The story-line is really fascinating, with you playing a detective, who deals with helping various fairy-tale characters with their problems or curses.

The third game in the series is my favourite and is known as Rise of the Snow Queen. It probably has to do with just WHO the Snow Queen is. It's a really unique take on both characters, so of course I had to use her. She's just perfect for Caster class!

The Lancer that I used was Lancer Class Kiyohime btw. She's normally a Berserker, but the Fate/Grand Order Summer Event has a swimsuit Kiyohime as Lancer, so it works, I guess.


Statistics:

Class: Caster

Identity: The Snow Queen

Titles: Guardian of Flora, Fairest of them All, Snow White.

Origin: Dark Parables

Basic Stats:

Alignment: True Neutral

Noble Phantasms: A++

Strength: B

Mana: A+

Endurance: C

Agility: B

Luck: D

Class Skills:

Territory Creation: A+

Personal Skills:

Divinity: B

Innocent Monster: A

Noble Phantasms:

The Mirror of Truth 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall': C

The Mirror of False 'Whose the Fairest of Them All?': A

Poisoned Apple 'Fruit of Eternal Slumber': A+

Exposition:

Territory Creation: A+

Because Caster was a princess in life, she can summon her castle into the real world and use it as a base of operations. It contains a large library, an observatory, an elaborate graveyard and a sprawling set of dungeons. The rank of this skill is decreased however due to the fact that it can only be summoned in a location that receives heavy snowfall, as well as being a large enough mountain.

Divinity: B

As a guardian of the goddess Flora, Caster is blessed with several unique skills, including eternal youth. Another blessing is the ability to control both ice and snow with deadly accuracy. She is able to freeze nearly anything, create vast snowstorms and even raise large barriers. When used in conjunction of the 'The Mirror of False' her powers grow so strong that she is able to destroy entire armies with enough effort.

Innocent Monster: A

Caster was known for her reign of terror as the Snow Queen for many centuries, passing into legend and inspiring a world famous novel. Due to this level of distortion any and all skills except for 'Poisoned Apple' that have to do with the legend of Snow White, including the summon Noble Phantasm 'Seven Dwarves' and the skill 'Animal Dialogue' become unusable by her.

The Mirror of Truth 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall': C

A magical mirror crafted by a dwarven blacksmith for a beautiful queen which was eventually given to 'Red Riding Hood', as thanks for saving the Snow Queen's son from certain death. This object will speak only the full proper truth to whomever asks it a question and can tell no lies or even half truths. It is also capable of allowing the user to see both into the past as well as five minutes into the immediate future. If asked, the mirror can also reveal the location of anyone in the world at that current time as long as they are not using a skill like 'Presence Concealment'.

The Mirror of False 'Who's the Fairest of Them All?': A

The second magical mirror crafted by the dwarven blacksmith that he would later attempt to destroy. Unlike it's counterpart, this mirror will reflect and magnify the worst qualities of all those who look into it, twisting them into uncaring monsters. If Caster uses this Noble Phantasm, her Mana stat becomes EX ranked, while her Divinity Skill rises to A+, strengthening all her ice based powers exponentially. The longer Caster uses the mirror however, the more her Alignment will drop, eventually becoming 'Chaotic Evil'. Other Servants that look into the mirror will be faced with their deepest regrets and fears, possibly driving them to madness.

Poisoned Apple 'Fruit of Eternal Slumber': A+

The most famous object in Caster's legend. When the 'Evil Queen' grew jealous of her stepdaughter's beauty, she fed the girl a poisoned apple putting her into an eternal slumber. However, the girl was saved with the help of the 'Seven Dwarves' and her brother 'Ross Red', who brought the 'Frog Prince' to give her true love's kiss. When, the young princess eventually became an icy monarch, she began to create her own apples to help her search for the Golden Child. Because of the enchantment on the fruit, whomever looks upon will become transfixed, those who took it forget all things and worship it's beauty. If the apple is eaten however, it will curse the victim to the same eternal sleep that struck the princess, which can only be broken by the kiss of the victim's true love.


Next Time:

Dawn of the Deranged