It had been a LONG six days.
While Rin and Ferdinand could tolerate each other's presence whenever the both of them were merely focusing on paperwork and had people watching them, without that, they were at each other's throats constantly.
Ferdinand was trying to interrogate Rin. Rin refused to answer any of his question and was trying to interrogate Ferdinand right back.
Ferdinand poked fun of her for her short stature. Rin insulted him for his lack of friends and being a miserable loner.
Ferdinand threatened to shut down the Gilberta Company and Orphanage Workshop. Rin threatened to murder the Archbishop and pin it on him.
Ferdinand threatened to throw her off his Highbeast. Rin threatened to destabilize it so that it would explode and kill them both.
This went on for their entire trip, with them putting on a noble's smiling mask whenever they entered a town or village, only to be at it again the moment they were alone. The fact that every day that went by took them further north into colder and colder weather didn't make them any happier. By the last day, Rin was jumping off the Highbeast only to sink up to her chin in snow, only for the Fake Priest to smile venomously at her, and was contemplating killing Ferdinand and seeing if she can find a way to overwrite his mana signature on his Highbeast.
It was theoretically impossible, and if she failed she would be stuck in the frozen north, but at this point, she liked those odds.
Finally, FINALLY, they reached the last stop on their trip, the province of Haldenzel.
It was surprisingly different than the other places they had passed, as while the rest of the country dealt with the Spring Prayer as an obligation for receiving the blessings of the Goddesses of Spring so that they could get to work in the fields, Haldenzel wasn't going to see an end to the snow for another two months at least.
With work not immediately at hand, and with several more weeks of bitter cold ahead of them, the citizens of Haldenzel were using the Spring Prayer as an excuse to throw a party to raise everyone's spirits, with Ferdinand and Rin being treated like guests of honor.
It was odd, seeing nobles and commoners side-by-side, singing and dancing around a large bonfire. All of them were eating the same Feybeast meat that the hunters had gathered, as that was one of the few ways they had to get food during the harsh Winter months.
It was while Rin was watching all this that the local Geibe came over to meet them.
"Ferdinand, it is good to see you again!" Claudio shouted, the cheerful Archnoble coming over to give the High Priest a familiar pat on the shoulder.
"I hope the season has been treating you well." Ferdinand said, too spiritually tired to care. Something that didn't escape Claudio's notice, though the man's eyes moved on to Rin.
"Is this lass the Apprentice Blue Robe you told us about?" Claudio asked as Rin knelt and greeted him.
She gave the proper greeting with a cheerful smile that could shoot through the heart of any adult, earning a laugh out of the Count.
"My. You are much more polite than Ferdinand made you out to be." Claudio laughed hands over his stomach.
"Please, take her." Ferdinand said flatly, stunning the Count.
"But I thought…"
"If it is money you want, I'll pay it." Ferdinand said, sounding all too serious.
"How cruel." Rin said, covering her mouth and lowering her head as if to hide tears. "After all that slaving away I did, helping you with your work at the Temple, cleaning up the orphanage and even fulfilling the prayer rituals that were assigned to you by the Archbishop, you still wish to get rid of me." Rin said. Her acting was good enough to puzzle the noble and his guards. "I've only tried to be nice to you, since you seemed so lonely all by yourself at the Temple."
Claudio turned his head towards Ferdinand who stared him straight in the eyes. "Don't fall for the tricks of this Goddess of Chaos. It will only lead to your ruin."
Claudio didn't know how to reply to that, but was spared the awkwardness by the sound of laughter. "This is exactly how I imagined you playing babysitter would turn out." A man with wild purplish-blue hair said as he walked forward wearing a friendly smile, a large number of knights standing behind him.
"Lord Sylvester, I am glad to see you made it." Claudio said, immediately moving to show respect for the newcomer, the Archduke of Ehrenfest.
Rin knelt out of respect, getting annoyed by how many times these stupid nobles were showing up, making her kneel down in the snow and wait for acknowledgement while they talked casually to each other.
God, as soon as she got her noble connections, research materials and her workshop, she wasn't going to bother with this crap ever again. She didn't care who she offended. Her underwear was getting wet and cold from the snow and there was no worse feeling.
'Stupid robes.' Rin mentally cursed for what had to be the hundredth time that trip while the adults talked.
They really weren't meant to be worn outdoors, and when Priests went out to visit villages, they were never the ones kneeling, because they never normally met the nobles.
"What brings you here?" Ferdinand asked Sylvester with his normal neutral face.
"With last year's harvest being less than we had hoped, I'm trying to increase the number of Feybeasts gathered during the Spring Hunt in order to make up for the difference." Sylvester said, giving his excuse for being so far away from his post.
Rin doubted that it was the real reason, but considering how much of his paperwork the man sent to the Temple, she doubted he needed much of an excuse to go hunting instead of doing actual work.
"We are grateful for the assistance of Aub Ehrenfest and the Knight's Order." Claudio said, full of cheer again. "What about you, Ferdinand? Will you join in tomorrow's hunt?"
"I'd think not. I need to return Tohsaka to the Temple." Ferdinand said, rejecting the idea. Claudio looked disappointed, until Rin spoke up.
"Come now, High Priest. It wouldn't be disastrous if we were gone for one more day. You need to socialize more, so just go and hunt with them." Rin said, earning a look from the man.
"What are you planning?" Ferdinand said, immediately accusing her of plotting something.
"I'm planning on resting. You've had me flying around on that Highbeast for the last six days straight and I have performed the Spring Prayer thirty-two times. I'm tired and want to have a chance to rest before I have to endure the long trip home with you." Rin said, complaining in a very childish manner to earn the sympathies of those who didn't know any better.
"Ferdinand, have you really been running this little girl ragged like that?" Sylvester said, looking genuinely surprised. "She's, what, four?"
"...She'll be six this Summer." Ferdinand replied, not that it made it sound much better. "Fine. You may spend tomorrow resting, but you will be watched." Ferdinand said before looking over Sylvester's group of Knights. "Eckhart."
"Yes, Lord Ferdinand?" One of the Knights said, standing at attention.
"You are to watch the girl. Make sure she doesn't do anything that would cause trouble. Tie her up if you have to." Ferdinand told the man.
"Geez, you are treating her like a hardened criminal." Sylvester said with a raised eyebrow. "Aren't you being a little too extreme?"
"You have absolutely no idea. I pray for Eckhart's safety."
Rin had a long sleep after draining herself of her excess mana, pouring it into magic tools she had created by changing Feystones into a crystal structure. She had ten of the small stones, each capable of holding two days worth of her mana thanks to the complex structure.
She had a hard time hiding them from the Fake Priest during her journey, and she didn't trust the man not to steal them from her if he found them.
That said, she now found herself pondering if she should put those precious stones to use.
"Sister Tohsaka, what are you doing?" Eckhart asked her, confused as to why she had immediately asked to see the stage used during the Spring Prayer after Ferdinand, Sylvester and all the other hunters had left in the morning.
"Oh, nothing of importance. Don't worry about it." Rin said, not so much as looking at him as she analyzed the stage.
It was a mystic code of some kind. A magic tool that was connected to the Leyline, the world's natural flow of mana. It was old, and it was powerful.
There had been similar stages in several towns that they had visited, but Ferdinand had never let her get a good enough look at them to understand what they were for. Now with him gone, she was going to take this chance to figure out exactly what it was.
They were a part of some kind of grand ritual, acting as an external control array for a much more powerful artifact that was hidden somewhere out of sight. When enough magic power was poured into the stone platform and the correct command was given, the stage would release a magic circle that would… do something.
All of this reminded Rin of the magic circles that were used to interact with the Greater Holy Grail as part of the Summon Servant ritual, but she couldn't be sure what exactly this would do.
…Well, considering that it was located in such an open space, it couldn't be THAT dangerous, right?
Rin was burning with curiosity, and knew that if she didn't take her chance to test it out now, the flow of the Leyline may change and the circles might become unusable for days, months, years, decades or even centuries. So she decided to just try it and see what happened.
"It seems to want water and fire attributed magic energy." Rin mumbled to herself as she brought out the appropriate crystal Feystones, one dyed a dark green, while the other was a dark blue.
Rin then turned to face Eckhart with a magic circle appearing around her arms. The man was stunned, literally, as Rin incapacitated him with a spell to stop him from interfering, before she started the ritual.
The two stones became suspended in the air, magic circles forming around them as Rin began to control the flow of mana, enough of it to fill a dozen of the chalices that they had been handing out to the villages.
She didn't know the exact chant required to activate the magic circle so she began the process of decoding it. She smiled to herself as she worked, not even caring about the crowd gathering to see what she was doing.
For the first time in this new life, she'd finally had a challenge.
Ferdinand was still grim as he and Sylvester hunted whatever beasts they came across.
"I can't believe you care so much about that girl." Sylvester said, seeing his half brother's face. "Lighten up. You know that Eckhart won't let anything happen to her."
"I'm not worried about anything happening to her. I'm worried about what she might do." Ferdinand said, not holding back with it being just him and Sylvester.
"You say that, but I haven't seen you this alive in years." Sylvester said, smiling at Ferdinand. "You used to walk around like a man who had given up on life, but now you are so active."
"That is only because of how valuable and dangerous that girl is." Ferdinand said, denying his brother's accusations.
Having seen her in person and hearing a bit about her personality, Sylvester had to agree that the girl reminded him of Hirschur, the Professor who sheltered Ferdinand during his years at the academy, going so far as to ruin her own life in order to protect him from Veronica.
Hirschur was probably the sole person who hadn't 'offered their name' to Ferdinand who Ferdinand would trust unconditionally. Someone who he would feel an obligation to and who he deeply missed now that he was in Ehrenfest and she in the Sovereignty, even if he doesn't admit it.
"I get that she is a manipulative little gremlin, but isn't calling her dangerous a little…" Sylvester struggled to find a word to describe it, before Ferdinand cut him off.
"She's already killed three people, at least." Ferdinand said, letting his words hang in the air.
"...Are you serious?"
"While she was living in the lower city, no one knew that she was a former Noble. No one even knew her name or what she looked like. They only knew about the rumors of a child that was responsible for the Gilberta Company's sudden boom in business." Ferdinand said, telling Sylvester what he had heard from Justus in his reports. "One of the Guilds whose territory they were muscling in on, the Ink Guild, sent three thugs to kidnap her, and she killed all three. One by smashing his skull, one by breaking his ribcage, and the final one by using some form of magic that caused all of his major organs to rupture."
"Yesh. That little girl did that?" Sylvester said, his face becoming more solemn. "So much for the sweet kid who takes care of orphaned children. Even if they were justified killings."
Ferdinand didn't tell Sylvester that the thugs hadn't actually tried to kidnap Tohsaka, but rather an innocent passerby who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That Tohsaka had gone overboard to defend a child.
She seemed to have a habit of suddenly showing unexpected compassion whenever pre-baptism children were involved.
Justus also uncovered that Tohsaka was introduced to the Gilberta Company only recently, through a former traveling merchant from Frenbeltag named Otto, who had recently married Benno's sister. This made Tohsaka's story of originally being from Frenbeltag more believable.
Especially after digging into the family she supposedly came from and realizing that if her claim was true, she would be the rightful heir to a large fortune. A good reason why the extended family who inherited it in her stead wouldn't acknowledge her claim.
While Ferdinand didn't believe it, she really did look like the genuine article.
"Her talent for magic and magic tool creation can't be understated, nor can her creativity when it comes to making new things, and her Archnoble background appears to be real. Even so, I don't think you adopting her is a good idea. She is too chaotic and dangerous, and keeping an eye on her all the time is impossible." Ferdinand warned.
"I think you are exaggerating. How much trouble could she possibly cause?" Sylvester said.
The both of them stopped and turned their heads as they sensed a massive amount of magic power coming from the town and saw a giant golden magic circle rising up towards the heavens as the clouds overhead darkened into an inky black and bolts of lightning started to appear in the sky.
"...I don't suppose it is possible she isn't involved in this, right?" Sylvester said flatly as the wind picked up and rain started to pour down around them.
Ferdinand didn't respond. He just took in a deep breath and then exhaled, rubbing his eyes in frustration. "This troublesome brat."
You put an ancient magical relic of unknown function in front of Rin and tell her not to touch it and see how long that lasts.