Riding the Wild Horse
Disclaimer: The world of Fate/Stay Night belongs to TYPE-MOON, Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko-sensei. Neither of them belong to me and no profit is being made from this work.
Authors Note: Just a brief note. This is being based of the Fate/Stay Night anime more than the game though background information from Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel. And Mahou Shoujo Rin from Hollow/Atraxia may or may not be putting in an appearance.
Ada Xenophon sighed as she looked out over Fuyuki city, her breath forming a golden fog in the chill air as it was touched by the last rays of the setting sun. It was a beautiful sight and one that might not last all that much longer though she sent a brief prayer to any power that might be listening that such would not be the case. However she was not free to dwell on that issue for she had more pressing matters at hand and as the last fiery limb of the sun vanished beneath the horizon she turned away and set her mind to the task at hand.
With practiced ease she spun her wheelchair around and faced the place that for the last few months she had called home. It wasn't truly her home though for in her heart that would always be that sun drenched little island in the Caribbean Sea just off the coast of Florida but the old Western style house that to Ada looked more like it belonged up around Boston or in rural England rather than Japan had become familiar enough that she was comfortable there. Most importantly she was comfortable enough to let down her barriers and attempt the greatest magical working she had ever contemplated.
Once inside she locked the door behind her and then sealed it with a quickly cast ward. She had already performed a similar process on the gate to the yard so warding the door was probably redundant but she wanted no interruptions. She wheeled around the house with practised ease and sealed all the other doors and windows on the lower floor, ensuring total privacy before coming to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. She stared at the daunting obstacle for a long, hard moment before finally levering herself down out of her wheelchair so that she was sitting on the bottom step. The stairs were one of the reasons that when she had first come to Fuyuki Ada had tried to rent one of the single story Japanese style house but only the two story Western style houses had provided all she needed, at least amongst those available for lease. Still it was a necessary hardship and Ada had gotten used to working around her disability.
Leaving the wheelchair on the bottom of the steps used her arms to lever herself up so that she was sitting on the second step and a moment later repeated the process so that she was sitting on the third step. It wasn't entirely dignified and it eventually wore holes in embarrassing places in her pants but since losing the use of her legs Ada found it the most effective way to get up a flight of stairs and under normal circumstances she could use her magic to levitate her wheelchair up to her once she reached the top but that day wasn't normal. Over the years she had woven various magics into the frame of her wheelchair that made day to day life a little easier and the presence of those magics could not be allowed to interfere with what she was about to attempt so it stayed at the bottom of the stairs and Ada simply moved around in a method her elder brother somewhat denigratingly referred to as the butt-shuffle.
Ada's ultimate destination was a balcony situated over the kitchen that had probably been originally intended as an place for intimate outdoor dining but which she had co-opted for another purpose but she had another stop to make before that. Just inside the doors leading to the balcony and blocking most of the space was a portable bath tub large enough for Ada to immerse herself in completely and next to it was a table containing a pale, white yukata that still smelled faintly of the sharp, astringent herbal mixture it had been soaking in for nearly a week before she had taken it out to dry that morning and box made of dark stone, but they were for later. Instead Ada shuffled over to the small stepladder that allowed her access to the tub and began to strip.
Her socks were the first thing to go flying. It took some shuffling to get her long trousers off but they went next. Shawl, jacket and shirt went flying soon after that, followed quickly by Ada's bra. The panties took a bit more shuffling around and made Ada glad for the varnish between her bare buttocks and the wooden floor but eventually they too followed the rest of her clothing and Ada finally levered herself into the tub. Water sloshed over the side as Ada manoeuvred herself so that she was completely in the tub but she ignored it, instead focusing on the tingling sensation that washed over her skin. The water in the tub had been purified under the light of the full moon in an exhausting three nights but thanks to that it not only washed the dirt from her skin but also cleansed her body of those accumulated traces of magic that every mage picked up. Of course considering the water was sitting next to a window door it was also ice cold but Ada tried to put the physical sensations aside as she concentrated on the purification ritual, reminding herself that while in the water she was immune to the proof against any germ or virus and even to a limited degree the frailties of her own body. Taking a deep, bracing breath she spoke three short, sharp words in a dead tongue that activated the purifying magics that had been worked into the body of the tub as well and then dunked her head so that her entire body was submerged as the water began to glow with a soft, silvery light.
For a brief moment Ada wondered if she had made a mistake and then suddenly everything became irrelevant as the magics took over. She seemed to float free of her body in a place of soft, gentle light where time held no sway. The rest of the world seemed far, far away without the power to harm her or even cause worry. It was a singular experience and Ada was subsumed by a feeling that she could only describe as complete and utter contentment. But like all good things it came to an end and Ada came back to her body with a rush and as she re-entered her body sensation returned. Her legs were heavy and leaden once again, her entire body ached with the cold and most urgently of all her lungs burned with a desperate need for oxygen.
With a sharp jerk Ada sat up, her head breaking a thin scum of ice that sat on top of the water, and gulped air into her lungs. It took several long minutes though before she could stop gasping and the fire in her lungs began to subside though her heart still raced like she had just run a marathon. Hands clumsy from fierce shivers that were beginning to wrack her body pushed damp locks out of her face as she risked a look outside where the light was just beginning to lighten with false dawn confirming that she couldn't afford to wait any longer to recover. She forced her hands to reach out and open the stone box on the table next to her and withdraw what was inside.
What was in the box looked at first glance to be a drinking horn, polished to an ivory glow then capped and rimmed in gold and in some respects that was indeed what it was but it was also so much more. In was a cornucopia, an ancient mystical artefact that was also known as a Horn of Plenty. Legends told that a cornucopia could provide its owner with an endless supply of food and drink and that was indeed what some of the few surviving ones did but the one Ada held in her hands was slightly different. It was made for things to be put in it as well as to be taken out. Ada's family had owned the horn for centuries and had made a practise of siphoning of their excess mana into it on a regular basis making it a source of powerful magic, perhaps one of the most powerful in the world.
Ada raised the horn to her lips, tipped it back and began to drink. It wasn't really a liquid that flowed down her throat and seeped into her body but that was the way it seemed to her and it worked to impart the stored mana in the horn into her. She drank and drank and unlike when she drank water or some other liquid it was not her stomach that began to fill full after a time but her entire body. Her skin felt taught and stretched, her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets and the top of her head pop off yet still she drank until containing all that mana became physically painful. Only then did she stop, placing the horn back in its box and then washing the residual traces of magic from both horn and box off with the still faintly glowing water.
Only once she was completely cleansed did Ada pull herself out of the water, a task nowhere near as easy as getting in had been. Not only was gravity working against her this time but her hands were slick with moisture and she was shivering so hard that even dry her grip would have been uncertain. Almost miraculously though she managed to get out of the tub and onto the step ladder on the first try. Once there she grabbed the yukata and wrapped it around her as best she could, but the knot she tied in the sash was crude and clumsy. That couldn't be helped though and Ada hoped it would stay long enough for her to get outside, which was where she headed once she got off the ladder. It did, with only a couple of re-adjustments, mostly because the moisture kept it stuck to Ada's body but once she got out into the open air she put aside such mundane concerns as modesty for her true purpose for being in Fuyuki was upon her.
On the balcony Ada paused a moment to examine her work in the faint, pre-dawn light. After preparing the purified water (and a few days well earned sleep) Ada spent nearly a week preparing the magic circle, first tracing it out in chalk and then more permanently in enamel paints. It had taken longer to dry than Ada had anticipated but it had been ready in time and in the end that was all that mattered. The rough wood of the balcony caught at her yukata as she shuffled along and across the lines of the magic circle until finally Ada sat in the spot she had reserved for herself. It took only a few moments longer to arrange her legs into their proper positions and then she lay back and waited.
The magic that filled Ada pulsed in time with her heartbeat, each pulse growing stronger and stronger at the approach of the rising sun and the moment that Ada waited for. Every mage had a time of day when their magic peaked and their power was at its greatest. For Ada that moment came with the rising sun and even with the magic she had imbibed from the cornucopia she wasn't about to attempt this summoning with her powers at any less than their peak. The minutes ticked by and Ada fought her body that was now beginning to show exactly how great a toll this ordeal was taking on it, especially the assault from the cold but she couldn't surrender. It took every ounce of self control she had not to curl up in a shivering ball and even then she couldn't completely stop the tremors that rocked her limbs.
She was beginning to wonder if no matter how hard she willed it her body would not last long enough to complete the summons when suddenly light seemed to blossom in Ada's half closed eyes and mana roared within her. The peak of her power was upon her and years of preparation suddenly hang in the balance but it was those years of preparation that saved Ada as well. Without thinking she gasped out the first words of the summoning spell, in a tongue none but her family had used for millennia. Even as her lips moved her brain caught up and she threw her full concentration into the spell. The words tumbled from her lips into the still morning air, slowly at first then picking up pace and falling into a rhythmic pattern though that didn't last for long and if Ada thought she had been in bad shape before it was nothing to what she experienced as the spell began to take hold.
All the mana in her body seemed to rush into her left forearm and, turning the blood in her veins to liquid fire and every nerve into a bolt of lightning as it went. Ada would have screamed except the tiny part of her mind not swamped by pain or focussing on casting the spell knew that if she stopped now at that power would rebound back on her and probably not only destroy her but the entire house and a large chunk of the surrounding neighbourhood as well. So she kept chanting, her spell half a command to the unseen forces and half a plea for the torment to stop. Her voice rose in volume from a near whisper to a scream but even the pain of her raw throat didn't register against the raging agony consuming the rest of her body. The was at her complete and utter limit as she gasped out the last two words of the spell and her body collapsed as suddenly the pain ceased and she sended a new presence.
"Are you my master?" a voice asked from a figure standing over Ada asked.
Ada tried to reach up and say yes but she wasn't certain if she actually did or if it was simply a hallucination as she slipped into unconciousness.