Chapter 1. The Gang Gets Together
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it wasn't actually, but Yohanan Maveth Byzantium pretended otherwise. A tempestuous eve would've set the mood more nicely than the balmy afternoon that it actually was.
He leaned back in his chair then pushed off it, brushing motes of dust from his brown suit-jacket as he rose and crossed the dark room with long, gliding steps.
'Bah, no matter. Though night has yet to fall, this will do. Wait any longer and the slot I desire might be snatched up!'
The pale man glanced at the crimson sigil etched into the back of his right hand, the Command Seal that signified his right to participate in the Grand Holy Grail War instigated by that pompous snake, Darnic.
Yohanan ran a hand through his white hair. Serpent though the man may have been, the Yggdmillennia patriarch's machinations had opened the way for a most fortuitous opportunity.
Yohanan turned on his heel and beckoned with one hand, whorls of light briefly flickering along his arm as his Magic Circuits called to one of his familiars.
And the being obeyed its master's instruction, taking haunting form from the ectoplasm that followed in his wake no matter where he went. Waxy, translucent limbs sprouted from a torso no wider than a human spine, while a visage not unlike a half-melted skull scanned the room with an eyeless gaze. Its thin, clawlike fingers groped around until they found purchase on seemingly thin air, but this impression was quickly disproven.
With a sound like flan being torn apart by a particularly vindictive badger, Yohanan's Mystic Code, the Sefer Dim'dumiym, fell into the familiar's outstretched fingers. Quick as a whip, the Ectothrall presented Yohanan with his magnum opus: a massive grimoire whose very pages were linked to his own Magic Crest.
With a flourish, the pale Magus snapped the book open and strode to one corner of the room, notably barren. With another gesture, razor-thin blades of ectoplasm carved a magic circle just so into the stone floor. The ectoplasm then settled into a liquid form, sinking into the cracks of the summoning circle as Yohanan looked on in satisfaction.
After taking a moment to cackle maniacally (mentally, of course; he had standards, after all), he turned the pages of his grimoire to a particular spot near the center. This page was a new addition, and one he'd taken great pains to acquire. On it was an aria; the aria. The poem that would summon the Servant he sought, in precisely the class he desired. With this, his victory in the Grand Holy Grail War would be assured!
Or so it would have been. As he stepped forward to begin the ritual, his foot touched down on a small drop of ectoplasm that had splashed out of the circle. His boot-clad feet shot from beneath him, his head collided with the corner of a table, and he knew no more.
-x-x-x-
The first thing Johan noticed upon waking up was that he was no longer in his room. Indeed, he didn't recognize where he was at all. The second thing he noticed was the throbbing pain in the side of his head. He touched his temple, and hissed. That was gonna bruise.
The third thing he noticed was his hands. Or rather, that his hands were not his hands. They were several shades too pale, the fingernails were entirely too well kempt and there wasn't a single hair on either of these hands.
Oh, and the unnaturally bright sigil etched into the back of his right hand was also a glaring sign of unfamiliar things. A crimson circle surrounded a spadelike shape that hinted at a mask, though one divided down the middle, with one half calling a tragedy mask to mind, and the other corresponding to comedy.
Johan clutched his head, his breathing growing shallow and his heart thudding in his chest. 'What the hell is going on?!'
-x-x-x-x-x-
Trent Blackmore, as he had often found himself in life, had once again found himself holding the bag for someone else. Or rather, staring at a glowing circle on a hotel room floor, replete with arcane symbols and what was clearly a glassy-eyed prostitute off to one side.
He stared at the circle, his head pulsing from the lightshow even as he forced his eyes down to his hands, where a glowing tattoo stood out against the back of his hand; the visage of a crying Virgin Mary in red. His gaze tracked back up to the prostitute, his heart sinking with every second.
The circle pulsed and the light grew to be blinding, causing the blond to cover his eyes and squint against the light. There was a strange sound, like the fabric of something shifting across metal, and the light died away, a new figure standing in the center of the circle.
She stood tall and regal, her silvery hair cascading down around her neck in silky curls while her yellow, hawk-like eyes bored into her summoner. She wore a great red overcoat that came with a high collar of old nobility, all decorated with bone inlay or a form of bone armour over it, and beneath that she wore little more than some skimpy black nightwear, a pair of oddly opaque fishnet stockings, and a pair of golden stiletto heels. When she spoke, it was a velvety, aristocratic contralto that caressed the ears of those who listened. "Assassin of Black, has been summoned. I suppose then, that you are my master."
Trent blinked, a small, wry smile on his face as he pieced together just how truly, truly fucked he was. His lips twitched, but he held the smile, as he knew if he let it fall then he'd burst into tears. After a beat, he nodded. "Right, well, I'm Trent Blackmore, glad to make your acquaintance."
"You're rather calm, aren't you?" Her gaze was cold and judging, though her tone was simply chilly. "And that one? What are we to do with her?" Her remark was joined with a gesture to the empty-eyed hooker, who had yet to shake herself from her stupor.
The blond shrugged and replied, "Well, if you want to play with her, you can." The Canadian recognized the woman well enough after a few moments, placing her as the sociopathic master of Jack the Ripper. "The woman herself is something of a terrible person, and if she were to go on from here, then she'd probably ruin a fair few lives."
"My, to think my master would be so well prepared for me, how…exquisite." She stalked towards Reika Rikudou, her talon-esque fingernails grazing the whore's lovely features just enough to draw blood. The dominatrix let out a throaty chuckle as she gently tilted the hypnotized woman's head, taking in every detail.
The Canuck shook his head as he went to exit the room, but called over his shoulder. "Do make sure to take care of her in the bathroom, there's a drain in there and I'd rather not have to explain an ass tonne of blood to hotel staff."
Without waiting to listen for her reply, Trent had all but run into the main room, his eyes darting for whatever luggage there was. Quickly locating a suitcase that looked to be his he began digging through it, finding a good number of bird feathers, an empty but ornate bird cage, and a scattering of notes. Scanning through them, he found that he was apparently still Trent Blackmore, but not because he'd chosen it. He was a member of the Blackmore Magus Family, and was working with the Yggdemillenia family in order to win the Grand Holy Grail War.
Trent looked up to the ceiling and swallowed the scream that he desperately desired to unleash, knowing that the entire thing would likely be a gong-show. The worst part was that he'd actually have to try and be smart, as his Servant was nowhere near the tier necessary to fight on the level of Karna and Siegfried.
He let his shoulders slump as he pulled the notes back up. He might as well try and figure out how to do something with magecraft, rather than be useless the entire time.
The real issue was that he had to figure out what to do with all these fucking feathers, and why there was a bloody empty birdcage.
With a small flick of his wrist, he flipped the cage around to read the words inscribed on its base. His nose wrinkled in curiosity as he murmured, "'Quoth the raven', is it?"
Putting it down, he went back to his reading, trying to puzzle things out in the magic arena. It'd be useful in the long run, if he wasn't able to get back to his world.
Eventually, he was pulled from his reading by Carmilla emerging from the bathroom, the prostitute's clothes held in one hand. She looked at him, an elegant eyebrow raised in quiet befuddlement though she didn't ask. Instead she held up the pile of clothing and inquired, "Just what should I do with these? My meal has no use for them any longer, and I doubt you'd want them."
"Why not wear them?" the blond suggested tiredly, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Amber eyes stared back at him, their owner clearly unimpressed even as she looked about ready to throw the clothes in his face. Before she could, he raised a finger. "I'm perfectly happy to have you out in material form…but you can't stand out too much. You're already an incredibly beautiful woman, but if you're walking around in your normal wear, you'd attract too much attention."
"Fine then," she huffed, relenting and stepping back into the bathroom. Trent smiled at this development, glad that at least he'd not have to deal with too much horseshit as they left the hotel. He felt his smile stiffen when Carmilla returned, clad in Reika's clothes.
Her torso was wrapped in green tube dress, her bosom straining against the zipper at the top while the material clung her hips and behind like a mountain-climber clings to the rock-face. The boots had been eschewed in favour of her own stockings and stilettos, and she wore the coat off her shoulder, leaving it to be held up by her forearms. The Heroic Spirit took in his look with a confident nod, and declared, "These will do, for now."
"Let's…let's just go." As he said that, Trent gathered his things and prepared to leave while Carmilla picked up Reika's now ownerless purse.
The two made their way down to the lobby in relative silence, a stoic air between them as they went. Carmilla stood off to the side as the Canadian settled the bill, taking in the world that had moved on without her as she did so.
When Blackmore had finished paying and turned to leave, with Carmilla following after him. As they walked out the doors, one of the staff remarked to another, too quietly for the Canadian to hear, but loud enough for the vampiress.
"Wasn't that a different whore than he walked in with yesterday?"
-x-x-x-x-x-
Coming down from his panic attack took a great deal of time (the length of which was only exacerbated by the fucking ghost that had popped out of nowhere and started floating around him), but eventually Johan managed it. He staggered to his feet, clutching his still aching head as he leaned on a table, and briefly took note of the small spot of blood on one corner.
It seemed likely that the person whose body he was now inhabiting had hit their head on the corner of the table. Just how that translated into him now being in control of the unfamiliar body was completely beyond him, but the exact mechanics of his situation were unimportant.
What really mattered was the sinking suspicion that he'd developed upon seeing the sigil on the back of his hand, and upon scooping up a thick book that had sat on the floor near where he'd woken up, his suspicions only grew.
Written in a language he didn't recognize and yet could somehow read as though he was born it, were a series of lines. Lines he recognized.
Lines of a spell, meant for calling forth the spirit of an age-old Hero or Villain into the vessel of a Servant.
He couldn't believe it. No, it would be more accurate to say that he didn't want to accept it. As he threw down the book and sprinted out of the dark room, Johan stifled a scream.
He continued his run down a long stone hall dimly lit by torches as his mind raced.
'This can't be real, right? Servants, Magecraft, the Holy Grail War...it's all fiction! It has to be fiction. Otherwise—'
As though the world refused to let him complete his despairing thought, his ankles crashed into the bottom step of a staircase that ended in a flat ceiling and he toppled forward. As he struggled back to his feet, hands scrabbling at the wall for purchase, his hand caught on a ring of metal, tugging it downward.
A deep rumble of ancient stone scraping on stone resounded through the passageway, as the ceiling at the top of the stairs slowly groaned open. The dim light of the torches ended just past the opening, so Johan couldn't see much.
His heart thumped in his chest as he slowly climbed the stairs. He didn't know what waited above, but surely it would be better than a dark dungeon of stone, right?
-x-x-x-
'Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.'
On second thought, a nice, safe stone fortress seemed much more inviting than the unlit catacombs above. Who knows who or what could be lurking up there?
'Nnnnnnnope nopeity nope with a nope rope on top.'
A thoroughly drained and frazzled Johan staggered back into the chamber he'd awoken in, only to see that same pale spirit carefully running its skeletal fingers over the book he'd dropped, as though it was making sure it wasn't damaged. As he re-entered the room, it turned its ghastly visage toward him and rushed forward, eliciting a startled yelp from Johan. Rather than trying to hurt him, however, it instead proffered the tome, handling the book with care approaching the level of reverence.
With unsteady hands he accepted the book, letting it fall open in his limp grip. As he gazed at the same pages that it had been opened to before, he registered the spirit creature fade from sight.
Johan sat in front of the ritual circle, eyes glued to the Servant summoning aria. In all honesty, he didn't want anything to do with a magical fight to the death, even if by some miracle this Grail wasn't filled with the endless malice of Aŋra Mainiiu and actually functioned. On the other hand…
He was alone. Desperately, unequivocally, painfully alone. Johan wasn't the most social of people on the best of days, but he'd always had the ability to reach out to someone. But now…
He chuckled bitterly as he slowly slouched to his feet, book dangling from his left hand. 'Summoning a Servant out of a fear of isolation...what kind of idiot am I, really?'
"So be it, then," Johan said, his voice like silk being shredded by sandpaper. He thrust his right hand over the sigil and began to chant, hoping he didn't botch the ritual.
"Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation."
As he intoned the first line, he felt a heat spread through his arm and back that straddled the line between bliss and agony. As he spoke the second, the circle before him began to glow with unearthly silver light.
"Let Red be the color I pay tribute to. Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall."
As soon as the word "Red" left his lips, the silvery light flashed crimson, the exact color of his Command Seals. In tandem with the word "wind", an unearthly breeze rushed from the circle, pushing at the suit-jacket that had long since come unbuttoned in Johan's frantic romp around the dungeon.
"Let the four cardinal gates the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate."
The heat beneath Johan's skin was now firmly across the line into agony, but somehow, it wasn't really registering. Maybe it was the ritual, maybe it was a sense of detachment from the foreign-yet-familiar body, but...
"Let it be declared now; your flesh shall serve under me, and my fate shall be with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail. Answer, if you would submit to this will and this truth."
By all rights, he should've been incapable of continuing the aria, but his lips formed the words completely heedless of his pain.
"An oath shall be sworn here. I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven; I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell."
Johan had always prided himself on his ability to endure, but he knew himself well enough to know this was something completely different.
"Yet you shall serve with your eyes clouded by chaos."
Something unnatural.
"For you would be one caged in madness."
Something unearthly.
"And I shall wield your chains."
Something not his.
"From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint, protector of the holy balance!"
The flame in his skin reached a scorching crescendo as the last line of the aria fell from Johan's lips, and the world was consumed with light.
Mercifully, as the light faded so too did his pain, though it left behind a hollow ache that made him shudder. The book tumbled from numb fingers as his outstretched arm flopped to his side.
He let out a breath, and looked at the circle—no, at the man standing in the circle. To his shock and relief, in spite of only realizing he'd added the extra lines for the Berserker Class after the fact, the person standing before him had utterly unclouded eyes.
The man was blond, bespectacled, and slight of build, though there was an air of quiet strength around him. His clothes and posture both spoke of his being an educated man, and when he opened his mouth such was confirmed (not that Johan had harbored any doubts, considering just who the Servant was).
"Berserker of Red heeds your summons," Henry Jekyll said with a solemn bow. "So then, Master; shall we make ready for the battles to come?"
Berserker was quite put off balance when, instead of making some sort of arrogant proclamation, or even agreeing with him, his Master promptly flopped forward and began sobbing into his shirt.
It was quite distressing, in all honesty.
Fortunately for Jekyll's stress levels, the pale, shaking young man clinging desperately to his shirt seemed to run out of both tears and energy quite quickly. After muttering a nearly inaudible apology, he flapped a limp hand towards a couch, then shambled to a chair and collapsed into it.
"I...I'm sorry for all that, Doctor," Johan gestured vaguely at where they'd been standing, not noticing how Berserker started at the way he'd been addressed. "I...I've just had a bunch of stuff happen all at once and I really don't know what to do." He let out a shuddering sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly holding back tears.
Jekyll leaned forward to lay a hand on his arm. "I do not know if I can help, Master—"
"Johan. Just call me Johan. None...none of that 'Master' crap."
Jekyll cleared his throat, then started again. "I do not know if I can help, Johan, but I am willing to listen if you are willing to talk."
Johan let out a deep, shaky sigh. "Where to begin…"
"I am told that the beginning tends to be the ideal place," Jekyll quipped, prompting a snort from Johan.
"Well, it all started when I w-woke up in a b-body that doesn't belong to me.."
-x-x-x-x-x-
Trent followed behind his Servant slowly, dragging a newly bought suitcase behind him as the woman wearing the name of the literary temptress and vampiress perused the shops. She was quite handily ignoring the stares being directed her way as she looked over the various different clothing shops.
The blond, still not quite on the same page as her, asked, "So, remind me again why this is necessary? Why it couldn't wait until we got to Trifas?"
"Because I've no desire to continue being mistaken for a common streetwalker. These clothes are good enough for the task of buying better ones, but no more than that." She gestured at the green minidress with more than some distaste, her mouth pinching in annoyance. "Though, I will be keeping the jacket; I quite like it."
Trent had to admit, it was a pretty nice jacket and Carmilla wore it damn well. He was about to, but stopped and remarked, "You might want to know that I do know your true name, just an FYI."
"…And you'd still trust me?" the white-haired woman asked, still facing away from him and seemingly giving a lot of scrutiny to a rather lovely camisole.
The Canuck shrugged as he pulled the suitcase up over his shoulder, and plainly stated, "Willing to, at least. You've not really given me a reason to mistrust you."
"Actually, why did you choose me, if you apparently had the option of knowing who I am?" Carmilla inquired, shooting a narrowed gaze at her summoner. She kept on going through blouses, picking out a few that she found either flattering or to be in colours she liked.
The blond shrugged as he pointed out a few he thought looked nice or would suit her, though most of his picks earned him grimaces of disdain with only a few getting thoughtful hums. "I wanted to fit with the faction's theme."
"Our faction has a theme?" the older version of Elizabeth Bathory asked, seeming utterly incredulous even as she moved from tops to bottoms. She clearly favoured slim pants that flattered her long legs, or skirts that did the same, though more than a few times did the blond catch her eyeing clothes that were more cute than mature.
Trent didn't say anything on the matter of her gazing longingly at the cute clothes, knowing just the turmoil that she was facing due to her younger self. Instead, he nodded sagely as he answered, even as he prepared to pay for whatever purchases that Carmilla might rack up. "It's the Monster Mash."
Her eyes unfocussed slightly as she went through the information on the current age that she'd been granted by the Holy Grail. "I don't believe you in the slightest," she huffed haughtily a second later as she watched him pay for the clothing, finding the whole idea absurd.
The Canadian gave another shrug, though he silently despaired for both his bank account and credit score. He didn't even want to know how much she spent in the lingerie boutique. "You say that now, as you're not ready for the upcoming Graveyard Bash."
The pseudo-vampiress rolled her eyes in exasperation even as she prepared to swat the Canuck with her purse, finding the joke trite and ill-fitting for someone of her stature. Rather than dodge the telegraphed blow, Trent rolled with it in an exaggerated way, acting as if he was gravely wounded as he rubbed the place that was hit.
His stomach, though, felt like it was roiling; tearing at its own walls and making him nauseous. For all his jokes and bravado, they were just that—a means to try and keep from utterly breaking down in the face of what was looming over him.
One of the most hectic and dangerous types of Grail war was about to begin…and there was little he could do but prepare to fight for his life.