A/N: Hi, I'm back again. Sorry for the wait and thank you all so much for all the suggestions for Harry's Mystic Code. They helped so much and I hope you're happy with what I came up with, when it turns up in a few chapters. This chapter has a lot of time skipping, I'm afraid, but there are some important things which happen.
Disclaimer: I do not own TYPE-MOON or Harry Potter.
In the taxi on the way back to the Hotel Corinthia, Semiramis examined the files that the goblins had provided on Harry's holdings with the bank. They were quite expensive, a near-folder's worth, and they corroborated what the bankers had told her. Her adopted son, whom she had found being tormented by commoners, was heir apparent to one prominent Wizarding family and heir presumptive to another. Truly, he was nearly a prince himself, for all that both of the families were near-extinct and one was in disgrace. And on top of that, he was a celebrity, hailed for the defeat of the 'Dark Lord Voldemort', although it had taken a great deal of trawling through recent history books to obtain more than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
It was an act of extraordinary providence, as the wealth she had access to as guardian of the heir of the Black and Potter lines, as well as the various businesses which they held shares in, would be more than adequate to begin building contacts in the British wizarding world.
It had taken becoming Harry's magical guardian in addition to his guardian in the mundane world (a position secured by virtue of copious amounts of paperwork submitted to London's adoption agency, exploitation of her constructed background and some hypnosis on the Dursleys to make them sign him away and on the social workers at the adoption agency to significantly speed the adoption process) but far better her than the same Albus Dumbledore who had abandoned the child to the tender mercies of the Dursleys.
The goblins themselves had been more than happy to secure the guardianship for her, as having the wealth of two major families back in circulation would be beneficial to the bank. For all that they were greedy fiends, they were nothing if not efficient when they wanted to be. At her request they had swiftly arranged a link between her Santander account and the liquid vault of the Potters.
A visit to the Potters' artefact vault had been both incredible and frustrating, as the position of Family Regent that she held would not allow her to remove any of the heirlooms from the vault unless an adult member of the family accompanied her. Irritating, considering that it would be another twelve years before anything could be withdrawn from that vault, but not an entirely insurmountable problem. It would be easy enough to return at a later date with the proper equipment to copy the books and analyse the Mystic Codes contained within. She might have simply taken a few of the artefacts, were it not for the powerful magics she could feel thrumming maliciously within the stone walls of the vault, coiled like serpents waiting to strike out at intruders and thieves.
Following the unexpectedly productive visit to the bank, a further hour had been spent browsing the wares of Diagon Alley. It was almost unbelievable to the Servant how little value these wizards placed on their magic. They sold Mystic Codes by the hundreds, kept books of magical theory and even ready-constructed spells openly available in shops, sold the parts of Monstrous and Phantasmal Beasts - albeit minor ones - by the jarful and even used spells for things as trivial as making their shop displays flash different colours.
To be sure, they had some ingenious inventions - a personal favourite of hers was the space-expanded and feather-light bag she used for the carrying of the numerous books and artefacts which she had purchased - but they seemed to care so little for it all. There was none of the mysticism of magecraft, or even the magic of the agugiltu of her time. It was all so... vulgar. Mundane. She almost pitied them, to be so focused on the physical that they could make the ability to warp reality itself a mere fact of life, rather than a thing of wonder.
The taxi finally pulled up infront of the hotel, the engine sputtering quietly to rest. Replacing the documents in their folder and stowing the folder in her bag, the ancient queen handed the cabbie his payment and left the vehicle. She made her way up the pale marble steps of the hotel and flashed her hotel card to the receptionist before stepping into one of the five lifts set into the patterned walls and keying pressing the little button which corresponded to the Royal Suite, where she and her adopted son had been staying.
As the doors of the lift dinged open, though, the yellow-eyed sorceress' guard was raised. There were voices sounding in the rooms. One was the clear, high and joyful tones that she had managed to tease out of Harry only a few times, while the the other was entirely unfamiliar. It was the voice of an old man, worn with care.
Semiramis opened the door in the back of her mind, the one behind which the sounds-beyond-sound that were the Divine Words were kept. She recalled the Word that was Sight. She opened her mouth and soul and spoke it to the world, along with Unseen, bolstering the power of her Presence Concealment. The power of the Word rippled out, peeling away the walls. She saw her son in the lounge, she saw the old, grey-haired and bearded man sitting heavily in one of the leather armchairs and she saw the many-hued window opened in the air, through which some distant landscape could be seen.
There was an unknown magus with her son, the same son whose magic circuits and core would be invaluable to any magus' research.
Cursing herself for relying on her concealing Bounded Fields and being lax in her actual defenses, the queen prepared the Words of Immobility, Powerlessness and Pain. She would discover the chink in her defenses that this intruder must have exploited and make certain that her next residence had no such vulnerabilities. The Gardens would have to be constructed as soon as possible.
As she rounded the corner into the lounge unleashed the first Word, that if Immobility. As its attendant magic circle bloomed into existence beneath the man's armchair, though, a wash of prismatic colour erupted atop it and when it had subsided, the magic had vanished.
The man turned towards her, her attack having shattered the protection of the Presence Concealment.
"Peace, O queen of Assyria. I mean no harm. Why don't you join Harry and I? Can you believe he's never seen the sea? All children should go to the beach at least once, don't you agree?"
The scene was so utterly incongruous, a magus - a sorcerer, even, if her suspicions were correct - with power sufficient to wipe away magic from the Age of the Gods speaking like an old grandfather come over to visit, that Semiramis found herself with nothing to say. The man's face hardened.
"Why don't you go and have a look at that Blue Planet episode we saw on the TV guide earlier, Harry?"
There was magic in his words and, just as she had been able to overcome her son's innate resistance to magic with her hypnotism more than a week ago, Harry wavered for a moment before shaking himself like a wet dog and wandering, somewhat robotically, from the room.
"Children shouldn't have to hear what I'm about to tell you."
Drawing herself up, the ancient queen looked down into the seated man's crimson eyes.
"Why have you come?" she asked, speaking the the asme voice she once used when addressing her subjects in her long-vanished throne room.
"I'm here to give you a warning. Not a threat and not an ultimatum. An honest warning."
"Deliver it, then."
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, Sorcerer of the Second Magic and Wizard Marshal of the Clock Tower. It's in neither capacity that I've come today. I've come as a witness to the creation of the Heaven's Feel Ritual and the construction of the Holy Grail.
"I helped make that artefact for the sake of wishes, for the sake of, maybe, materialising a wonder in this darkening world of ours. And so, when I saw a young boy desperately in need of such a miracle, I gave him a way that he might fulfill it."
It was him, realised Semiramis, He was the one who left a book inscribed with the formula for the summoning of a Servant on the other side of the world from the Grail.
"However, I didn't give Harry that book, only for you and he to be taken by the magi of the Clock Tower and strapped to a dissection table. I thought that you'd have left London by now, so I thought I'd drop in and give you a heads-up, along with a hand."
He reached into one of the pockets of his voluminous jacket. Semiramis tensed, readying a Word, before she saw the objects he pulled out. A pair of paper slips, about thrice as long as they were wide and printed with reams of blocky type.
"Two aeroplane tickets from Heathrow to Fuyuki City East, leaving 11:35 next Saturday. That's four days." He levered himself up and held them out to her.
"There's going to be a crate on that plane too. Half a tonne of assorted Iraqi plants, dirt, water, stone and such. Good for a garden, one might say."
"How came you by these secrets of mine?"
"I told you, I helped make the Grail. You think that any magus worth their salt wouldn't add in a thing or two of their own?" A mischievous, lopsided grin split his face from ear to ear. "So, will you take it, or not?"
The days leading up to their departure from England were busy ones, both in the mundane world and that of the wizards. Accounts were arranged for the sake of worldwide accessibility, incorporating everything from communication mirrors to credit cards. Magical goods ranging from Language Lozenges™ to books of (questionable) spells were packed into bottomless bags. Control over thralls and pawns was reinforced and made more permanent, until Semiramis was satisfied that her nascent network would suffer only minimally from her absence from direct control.
Schemes were laid, both with the goblins and with mundane businesses, for holdings and properties to be purchased in Fuyuki and the surrounding areas. Those would not bear fruit for at least a few months yet, but it was a start.
The flight itself was primarily characterised by Harry's extreme excitement, although he did his best to hide it. Semiramis could see the shine in his eyes as they walked over to the Boeing 777 that would carry them around most of the world.
In truth, Semiramis could understand the child's excitement. For all that she could probably use the power of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to replicate the feat of such long-distance travel, that the mortals of the present day had done it with no magecraft at all, no bending of the laws of reality, made it an incredible achievement.
The look on Harry's face as the vehicle left the ground and at seeing the English countryside laid out beneath him like a great green tapestry bought a smile to her own. The unrestrained wonder was beautiful while it lasted, more exquisite in her eyes than all the fine silks and jewels she had taken from the citadels and fortresses her armies and venoms had conquered.
The excitement eventually faded, though, defeated by the exhaustion of the hyperactivity that only a five-year old could achieve. He eventually succumbed to sleep somewhere over Russia and snuggled down into his seat, a small, timid smile gracing his lips.
It was a week after Semiramis and her adopted son had arrived in Fuyuki City. Their first few days had been spent in a luxurious hotel room, awaiting the finalisation of the purchase of the large Western-style house, almost a mansion, that had been bought in Miyama Town, the older and more traditional side of the city. It was on the borders of the forest near the foot of Mount Miyama. Harry had been delighted by the fact that it was barely a five minute walk from the house to the sea. The first day they had moved in, it had taken the promise of his favourite dinner cooked by one of the servants that the ancient queen had preemptively hired.
Shinto, the newer half of the metropolis, was still in something of a shambles. The official reports were that there had been some kind of chemical accident, a spill of volatile chemicals which had ignited and poured through a large section of the city. It was a lie, though. Semiramis' doves could feel the malice that even now, months later, was soaked into the ground there, far more than even the despair and torment of the 500 people who had died in the fire could account for. No, the cause of the Fuyuki Fire was of magical origin and, given its location and timing, was almost certainly connected to the Holy Grail War.
On the other hand, though, the way that the mana of the city still writhed invisibly was a boon to the Servant, as it would make it harder for the magi of the area to detect the construction of her principle Noble Phantasm. Of course, that alone would be nowhere near enough to entirely conceal it, but combined with the powerful Bounded Fields which she had erected and the , she hoped that her activities would remain unnoticed for the time it took for the Gardens' ritual to become self-sustaining.
The crate of necessary materials for the construction of the Gardens had already been taken apart and its contents laid out in the courtyard of Ryuudou Temple, beneath which the Greater Grail was hidden. The priests had been hypnotised into ignorance of her presence and Harry had been placed in the care of the head priest, Katashi Ryuudou. He and the priest's younger son, Issei, had already struck up a friendship, despite Harry's younger age. She had summoned what guardian familiars she could, mostly Dragon Tooth Warriors, and had them hide in the forests surrounding the temple, but the protections were far less than what she would have constructed, had she not been in a hurry to bring her greatest asset to the battlefield.
Within Semiramis' mind, venom fell into a cup and the floodgates of her magic circuits opened beneath a deluge of prana. She spoke, with lips and soul:
"Hanging Gardens of Babylon."
The prana rushed from her into the stones and plants laid on the grass before her. Golden lines stretched from one to the other, the beginning of the arcane matrix that, when completed, would allow her to work magecraft that reached the realms of True Magic. Golden energy burst from the earth in sinuous strands and twisted into a throne. The queen settled herself upon it and began the chant that would continue the construction of the Gardens
"O babbanû kirimaḫḫu, eṭēlu, eṭēlu to ašratu."*
Pale stone faded into existence as pillars around her and impossible plants draped themselves in artful traceries. Her throne rose from the ground on golden legs as gravity wavered for a moment before lifting the heart of her domain into the air.
"O babbanû kirimaḫḫu, eṭēlu, eṭēlu utāru banûtu Ishtar."**
Her garden grew strong.
*Oh beautiful garden, grow, grow to reach the heavens.
**Oh beautiful garden, grow, grow to exceed the beauty of Ishtar. (the Assyrian goddess of fertility, warfare and love)
A/N: OK, Divine Words have happened and as they're only explained a little on the TYPE-MOON wiki, here's some information on them. In essence, Divine Words are 'orders to the world' which modern magi lack the capability to pronounce. In my world, this is due to the fact that the Divine Words are not solely physical, requiring structures which are to the vocal chords as Magic Circuits are to the nerves. This 'Divine Voice' vibrates the mana in the atmosphere around the speaker into carrying out their will, in accordance with the Word that is spoken. However, there is a price to the use of Divine Words. Overuse of the Divine Voice inflicts damage upon it, as well as the throat and vocal cords, resulting in muteness, large-scale and irreparable damage to the esophagus and trachea and eventually the wholesale loss of the Divine Voice. Furthermore, the damage to the trachea can cause it to swell and block off airflow, suffocating the magus.
Also, Zelretch! I hope you liked him. I don't intend for him to turn up constantly, but he'll drop in every now and then like the troll he is, so anticipate more of the wonderfulness that it Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, probably when you least expect it. On another note, I finally understand why so many people write so much about Zelretch. He just so fun to write.
Lastly, I am looking for a beta reader. If anyone is interested, please send me a PM. If you do, I'll be eternally grateful.