Prologue: Where the Hero Comes From
Shirou gasped into a darkness blacker than night.
His poor legs were crushed, stone and wood weighing more than the world itself. They had long fallen numb under the merciless load. His battered arms were trapped, like he was clasped in handcuffs all the way up to his shoulders. He could see no light. How could he? The house had fallen on him.
Mom and Dad were silent. They were silent even as the house crumbled, waking Shirou up. When he had cried for Mom and Dad, they were silent. When he started sweating and feeling the moisture of his breath condense back onto his face, they were still silent.
Or they were-
Shirou spent a last bit of his energy to shake his head. No, they couldn't be. Death wasn't something that happened to him. Not to his parents! They promised him when Grandma died that they wouldn't die for a long, long time!
They had to be ignoring him. Or gone! Yes, that was it! They had gone on another late night date after he had gone to bed. That had to be it! They weren't dead, they had just left! And would be getting back any minute now!
They had to be. He had been waiting for hours…
Any minute now…
They couldn't be dead, right?
Did an eternity pass? Shirou couldn't tell. One moment of pain and darkness was the same as the next as well as the hundredth.
Shirou sniffled. He was feeling really lonely. Mom and Dad weren't here. They had to be…they had to be dead.
And Shirou had been stuck in this maddening waiting room for so long that the once-agonizing pain was becoming bearable only because it was starting to feel like he had always been in pain like this.
He wanted out. He wanted out, he wanted out!
"Oi! Kid, are you here!"
Shirou's eyes flew open. He hadn't even realized he had closed them. The darkness of the eyelid was the exact same shade as the pitch black of the collapsed house.
"I know you're here, ya know!" the man was speaking with a funny accent. "I would like to know which part to start digging up before I start throwing rubble around. Kinda embarrassing to go to dig someone out only to plop more debris on them."
"H-h-" Shirou tried to speak up but coughed instead. His lungs were still pressed by the roof, like Dad had belly flopped onto the couch while Shirou was lying there. It was hard to breathe. It was harder to speak.
"No response, huh. Must be hiding out. Well, let's see. How to do this. Meh, I'll just pick one at random."
"Help." Shirou coughed out. Did he even deserve to ask?
He could only hear a loud groaning sound, like the sound the ceiling made before it fell. Fortunately, this time nothing more fell on him.
"Hmm? Somebody say somethin'?" The voice said after the groaning sound stopped.
"Help." Shirou tried to raise his voice.
"Sounds like over there." The voice was getting louder. Or maybe closer?
"Help." Shirou couldn't even shout. His throat was tight from the hours he spent crying before his tears dried up. His lungs still felt the weight of the world upon them, barely able to move under its crushing weight.
"Yosh, let's try this one."
"Ah!" Shirou cried out as suddenly light!
It hurt! It hurt worse than looking into the sun. Shirou blinked back tears that he thought had ran out.
He threw up one hand over his eyes. He could move? How was he free already?
"Ah, there you are-wait. You're a kid."
As he continued to open his eyes, slowly the world began to take on colors, light, and shape.
"Well, I suppose I was told to look for the kid. Don't know why I thought the kid would be older, like 17 or somethin'. This kid gotta be looking at his 7th birthday."
"I'm seven and a quarter." Shirou protested. He already celebrated his birthday three months ago!
"Pft, big diff." Shirou could now see the man with blue hair in a weird blue and white bathrobe and a big stick standing in front of where his house used to be. "Kinda small aren't ya?"
"I'm eating my vegetables. I'll be bigger than you one day." Shirou grumbled. This felt more like talking with a neighborhood uncle. Before everything fell and nobody survived…
Shirou tried to push himself up. But the second he moved his arm, he cried out in pain. It hurt!
"Gotta do a lot of growing first," The man squatted down to face Shirou. "Still, just stay there for now. I'm gonna send you someplace not in this unobservable region, but you need ta hear something first. And remember this."
"Why?" Shirou asked, wishing he could cradle his arm. But his other arm was starting to already feel the pains of the first and Shirou could now see purple splots and red gashes on both.
"Because I was told to tell ya. And the person who told me to find you here and tell ya is very important, so memorize this, ok? Might be the most important thing you do. Or maybe a joke, but let's think its important," The man cleared his throat. "Ahem. 'When you end up lost in a strange place, settle down and wait for someone to open a path for you to return to humans.'"
Shirou waited. Surely there had to be something more. What kind of advice was that?
"Got it?" The man asked.
"Why?" Shirou asked. Return to humans? Where else would he be?
"Dunno." The man shrugged. "But that's the message. Let me repeat it just to be safe. 'When you end up lost in a strange place, settle down and wait for someone to open a path for you to return to humans.'"
Belatedly, Shirou repeated the words, mouthing them along with the bathrobe wearing guy. Why was he walking around in a bathrobe?
"Got it? Because once ya do, I'm sending you out of here." The blue haired weird guy warned.
"Please," Shirou begged. He wanted out of here. Being stuck like this, being unable to even move, his parents both dead and him unable to even help. Never to see Mom's smile. Never to watch cartoons with Dad. Never to eat Mom's cooking, never to hear Dad laugh…
Hot tears dripped down his face. He had failed them. He, Shirou, the son they loved above all else, had not been near them as they died.
"Eager to go, huh. Well can't blame ya," The man stood up and started walking around Shirou, wooden staff tapping on the ground. "I know I wouldn't have been able to sit still underneath a house for so long when I was your age."
Shirou's jaw dropped. Where the man was walking. Was a line of glowing symbols. Glowing brightly, light shining. And only after where the man was walking. With a flare, the symbols started connecting lines between symbols. Shapes and swirls appeared out of thin air inside the circle the man was walking. Lines that formed in thin air above the ground.
Was this…magic?
Shirou's seven year old mind, already exhausted, already broken past its limits, completely grappling with his loss and the pain, reeled under the discovery that magic was real. That the world had real life actual magic.
The man returned to his starting point, the glowing magic circle surrounding Shirou and even some lines extended underneath his prone body.
"Gr-" the man started chanting in some foreign guttural tongue. Shirou couldn't grasp the words and the sounds were all weird.
And the magic guy kept on chanting. And chanting and chanting. While Shirou was wondering if magic was actually real-
Shirou glanced away and his jaw dropped even wider.
Above his head was an enormous magic circle. Growing and slowly spinning. And there was another one mirroring it, rotating and getting larger as it fell down towards Shirou and the magic guy.
Shirou felt something picking him up, pulling him up into the air, towards the circle. Somehow, it didn't hurt, the magic not yanking on his damaged arms and legs and torso even though he was somehow floating in the air.
Shirou's shock grew. Even as he floated up through the lower circle his mind sought to find more space to reel. Shirou slipped through a single large glowing line, the line itself wider than his arm. Yet he couldn't feel anything even when the line floated through his torso.
He was filled with shock. He couldn't muster any more emotion. The awe and shock was like a waterfall pummeling an already full bucket of grief, pain, loneliness and relief. Shirou didn't know what he was feeling anymore.
Then he just felt his emotions shut off like a circuit breaker blowing up. His mind couldn't keep up with his heart anymore. He could only watch, everything going numb as a metaphorical emotional house collapsed on him.
"-GANGA!" the magic man yelled.
The circle above Shirou flashed. Shirou cried out as his eyes were stabbed by the white light, reflexively snapping shut.
Like that, Shirou was gone.
Ophelia Phamrsolone shifted her weight, trying hard to conceal her nervousness.
Mother and Father were examining her magic circle. Looking it over for any flaw. Mother had brought out the magnifying glass and was using it.
Ophelia swallowed.
She hates Sundays.
"Not good enough. This is wrong." Her mother tapped right next to a line Ophelia had drawn. Ophelia scurried forward and looked at the line, wincing as she found that the flaw was a single missing speck inside the line that was only visible through the glass.
More flaws and critiques followed. Perfection, perfection, perfection. They demanded it and pushed her to higher and higher standards.
Ophelia just wanted something positive. Something she could appreciate in this world of negativity. Like sunlight. When had been the last time she had been able to go outside and play like the other kids she sometimes saw in the distance from the manor?
"The conjuration circle is barely adequate." Her father declared after he reamed Ophelia for getting an angle off and her fixing it as he talked.
Ophelia swallowed. Her parents expected her to do this right.
Her first evocation. Her first conjuration of a foreign being. If she got this wrong, they would be harsher on her. If she got it right, they would force her to do something harder tomorrow.
Either way, she could never win.
Obediently, she started the evocation. A conjuration. A being capable of guarding her, a spiritual being whose body would be formed from Ophelia's magical energy. Ophelia would have to bind it to her, keep it from hurting her before she could finish the ritual.
Step by step, Ophelia went through the ritual. Word after word as Old Low Saxon dropped from her tongue. The Pharmsolone had been doing this ritual since the Huns swept through Europe. The magical circle responded flawlessly, without any sign of imperfection.
If there was, her parents would wait until after the ritual to scold her. Nobody would be dumb enough to ruin an ongoing ritual as the results would likely just be nothing, but there was always the chance of it all going wrong or warping the ritual into a different ritual, an unsafe ritual.
But that didn't happen. Ophelia wasn't permitted to make mistakes like that.
Except, as the final words were uttered and the magical energy shone, Ophelia must have made a mistake somewhere.
Because she had been trying to summon an elemental, like a salamander of purple flame, a nokk of flowing water, a massive earth giant, or a small stone troll, or even an invisible air elemental forced into the semblance of a visible shape from Ophelia's magical energy. Not even a powerful ifreet.
Instead a red-headed boy dropped into the circle. Splayed out across the ground, a filthy mixture of stone dust, grime, and blood covering him from head to toe.
Plip.
Blood that was slowly leaking out from his body.
Both of Ophelia's eyes widened, both the visible one and the one behind her mystic code eyepatch.
The boy was hurt so bad! The angles of his arms and legs were off, twisted from the normal lines of a human body. There was a line of dirty blood clinging to his red hair all the way down to the ground.
How…how could anyone be alive like that? She had never seen anyone so badly hurt! Weren't people supposed to die when in that much pain?
"Contract with it," Her father said after a few seconds of Ophelia staring at the most damaged human she had ever seen.
"But-"
"Don't make me say it twice," Her father's expression darkened. Ophelia shivered. Father is unhappy.
"Yes," Ophelia whispered.
Forced by her parent's expectations, Ophelia stepped forward, closer to the human in the circle.
Was the contract supposed to work with humans? It was a defensive pact meant for Phantasmals to guard a human. Then again, humans weren't supposed to appear in the summoning circle. Was he a Phantasmal human? Maybe this would work.
She hoped so. She didn't want Father and Mother to be angry at her for failing.
Ophelia cleared her throat.
"I ask of you," She began. "Will you contract with me to be my protector?"
The boy's eyes fluttered open, showing exhausted brown eyes.
"Nani?"
Was that his name?
"Will you Nani, contract with me to be my protector?" Ophelia repeated.
The Phantasmal boy's mouth opened again.
And nonsense came out.
Ophelia couldn't understand a word of about two seconds of gibberish before the boy stopped talking.
"Um," Ophelia wanted to glance back to her parents. But if she did, they would be angry that she looked for help. She had to be able to handle herself at the age of 10.
She squared her shoulders.
"Will you contract-"
"Engurishu?" The boy interrupted her.
Ophelia blinked. Engurishu? Wait, was he saying English? Did he want her to speak in English?
Odd, she was told that Phantasmals that could speak would be able to speak the local language. But if that was what was needed, she would use her English language classes!
"Alright." She said in English. "Will you Nani contract with me to be my protector?"
It wasn't easy. It turned out that Nani barely knew any English. She had to repeat herself several times, using different words. Protect. Defend. Fight for. Guard. And then there was his whole question on why not use the police.
Until-
"Will you stay and guard me?" Ophelia closed her eyes, head aching from struggling with English for so long.
Why was trying to speak in a foreign language so hard? No, it wasn't English that was hard, it was because she kept on having to say the same thing in new ways and explaining things to him.
It was all his fault!
"Yesu- Y E S. Yes." Nani agreed. He looked almost proud at saying the word. And more exhausted than she did.
"Finally." Ophelia muttered in her native tongue. Then winced, looking over her shoulder.
Mother looked very irritated. She was staring at the clock, watching time tick by-
Where was Father?
"Dismiss it already," Mother's tone was very annoyed. Ophelia cringed. "You need to improve the speed at which you make contracts."
"Yes Mother," Ophelia whispered.
"Your father will give his review when he returns from his meeting," Mother continued. "I have my own things to do so you will clean this up yourself."
"Yes Mother."
"Ugh, taking so long to make a single contract," Mother scowled as she turned around. "Utterly dismal."
Ophelia flinched as Mother swept out of the room.
She's done it now. Her parents would be upset at her. They'll make her do more work, more studying, and would never let her forget this failure.
Ophelia turned around, head hanging low.
"Can you leave?" She asked the Phantasmal human.
The boy was quiet for a few seconds. His body twitched a few times and he flinched, a rictus of agonizing pain appearing in his features alongside a brief whiimper.
"No." Nani said as the pain receded.
"Oh." Ophelia said.
What was she supposed to do now?
It turned out that she had to get the first aid kit down and start taking care of his injuries. Then carry him up the stairs and into a spare bedroom.
If she knew healing magecraft, she could have used it on him. But that was too advanced for her right now. And she would need Mother and Father's permission to use a healing mystic code and they were busy.
On the bright side, the next morning, her parents discovered that the boy wasn't a Phantasmal but instead a human who had somehow gotten mixed up with the ritual. Which meant that he needed a translation talisman, a place to live, and food.
On the downside, it meant Ophelia had dismally failed the summoning ritual and she was severely punished.
But after her parents talked it over by themselves, the boy, who wasn't named Nami but Shirou, soon to be Shirou Pharmsolone, was still going to be her protector. Just as a bodyguard instead of a summon.
"As Ophelia's bodyguard, your purpose is to keep Ophelia alive, against any threat. Physical, poison, magical, or curses," Mr. Phamrsolone began Shirou's training. "The most basic aspect is the ability to identify and neutralize a threat."
Shirou nodded.
"We would begin with physical combat as that takes the longest to train to adequate levels," Ophelia's father said. "But your physical state is still in recovery and makes it impossible to begin training. As such, we will begin with the next longest training, identifying common magecraft threats. The first one is thaumaturgical links. You must not let any substance of Ophelia fall into another hands. Hair, blood, saliva, sexual fluids. These are the most common mediums, which you must destroy rather than let them risk falling into another's hand, even if it costs you your life."
Shirou blinked. What? What was that about hair, blood, saliva, and fluids? And destroy them?
"To start with, this is a strand of Ophelia's hair," Ophelia's father held up. "There will be multiple strands of her hair on some clothes. You must identify each one."
A brown shirt was brought out, already on a mannequin bust.
Shirou wondered how he was supposed to point out the brown hair strands if both of his arms were in a cast.
"You should have already began," Mr. Pharmsolone snapped, an angry scowl on his face.
"Sorry," Shirou opened his mouth and began to speak about the strands of hair he could see.
"This is the layout of a street," Mrs. Pharmsolone pointed to the map that a maid placed on a table. "If Ophelia was here, what threats should you be aware of?"
Shirou scrunched his face. How was he supposed to know this stuff? But the woman already looked annoyed by having to do this.
"Guns?" He guessed.
"Stabbing." Mrs. Pharmsolone snapped out. Shirou flinched. "A weapon is an easy medium to inflict a hostile Mystery directly into the target. Guns are not just the only thing to be wary of. In addition, you should definitely be aware of other threats. And always remember, your life is less important than Ophelia's."
"I am to teach you about poison, how to identify it, and ways to neutralize. When it comes to food, poison is something to always be concerned of," The Phamrsolone chef explained to Shirou in the kitchen.
Shirou nodded. That made sense.
"So just off the top of your head, how would you realize if there is poison in the food?" the chef asked.
"Um," Shirou concentrated. He had a translation charm on a locket underneath his shirt as his German wasn't good enough yet. "The taste?"
"That is one way," the chef acknowledged. "But there is a problem with that method. Can you guess what it is?"
"What-Oh." Shirou realized. "If you are tasting it, it is already in your mouth."
"Yes. That is why poison testers were employed and in some places, still are employed," The chef nodded. "I'm told you are to be a bodyguard. My first bit of advice is that if you poison test a food and something tastes off, spit it out. Always make sure to think about the taste before you swallow."
Shirou nodded firmly. Always taste before swallowing, got it.
"To do so, you need to know what a meal should taste like," The chef gestured towards the spice cabinet. Shirou's eyes widened as he saw just how many spices there were. There were rows longer than his old family's kitchen and full of nothing but jars of spices. "So we'll begin by training your sense of taste and ability to cook. After all, if the cook is slipping black pepper into the meal but the pepper is green and-"
"It is not pepper but poison?" Shirou interrupted.
"No, some black pepper is made from cooked and processed green peppercorns," the chef corrected. "But I am told that you are going to be a bodyguard so you will need to be able to see if someone is messing with the food. The only way to discover that is if you know what the cooking should be like and what shouldn't be there."
"Okay!" Shirou rolled up his sleeves and looked up at the chef. "I'm ready to begin."
He knew how to cook! He had cooked with mom dozens of times before. Before-
Before she had died.
"Let's see, what would be a good simple starting meal," The chef scratched his bearded chin. "Yeah, an egg."
Shirou straightened up.
He knew how to do that!
Shirou slammed into the ground.
His body was finally healed from the disaster in Fuyuki. While it was nice not to have to worry about his broken arms while he tried to do things, it quickly came with a downside.
He had to get trained in how to fight.
A foot kicked into his sides. Shirou coughed as his breath was kicked out of him and he went skidding.
"Do not let yourself stay still," Mr. Phamrsolone scolded as he strode over to Shirou's new location. "That is weakness that will get you killed. Worse, it will get Ophelia killed."
Shirou wished it didn't hurt so much. He pushed himself up, ignoring the pain from his chest in order to move.
A chop from an open palm hit his shoulder, brutally knocking his head back down to not soft enough dirt ground.
"No opponent will let you get to your feet." Mr. Phamrsolone rebuked Shirou. "If you are fighting, you cannot expect any mercy. You should give no mercy for none will be given to you."
Shirou wanted the training to be a little bit easier. He was only learning how to fight today, why did he have to get beaten up to learn how to fight?
The training didn't get easier. It was only after Shirou was exhausted that his teacher began to teach techniques on how to fight, like footwork and posture.
"However, when in a public meal in high society, it is considered rude to have everything taste tested before giving to the lady or lord," the chef explained. "In which case, if the poison is a fast acting poison, the first sign you might have of a poison is the body shutting down. In which case, you need to know how to apply first aid, especially in getting the poison out of the stomach. To do so, we'll be practicing the Heimlich maneuver, both how to do it to another and how to do it to yourself."
"Also, try to vomit into this." The chef slid a bucket over to Shirou. "The maids will be upset if you don't. And in the future when we are going over other lessons on first aid, try to make sure the bleeding doesn't leave the tarp. Or the burn pus when we handle burns."
Ophelia rubbed her eyes as she trudged back to her bedroom.
It had been a long day. She had to study hard. She barely saw Shirou outside of meal times and he was supposed to be her new bodyguard.
Maybe he had as full a schedule as she did, she consoled herself. He had a lot to learn, even if it wasn't like her. Still, it would be nice to get to know the only kid about her age. Even if he was a few years younger, that was still closer in age than all the maids, butlers, and servants.
She paused as she turned the corner and found herself in the hallway meant for children's bedrooms. She had her room down here and Shirou's door was right here.
Should she check in on him? She had read stories about kids who had things like pillow fights and sleep-overs. But maybe Shirou was already asleep and it would be mean if she woke him up.
She deliberated over whether or not to open his door and check. On one hand, she was tired and wanted to go to bed. On the other, she wanted to see if Shirou could tell her more about the world outside the mansion. Maybe Shirou had done a pillow fight in the past?
But if he was asleep, she could wake him up.
An urge to yawn overpowered her. Maybe that was a sign that she should go to bed instead. She could try to get to know Shirou later and sleep now.
A faint sound came from Shirou's door.
Ophelia paused. But if Shirou was already awake, then, she wouldn't be waking him up. And she could talk with him.
She quietly pushed the door open, peeking her head inside.
It was just a standard room. Nothing really different about it from the other empty bedrooms other than the fact that Shirou was in bed.
Oh, Ophelia's head drooped and she started to draw back. She must have been hearing things. Of course he was asleep. She shouldn't wake him up.
Before she could close the door and go back to her own room, she heard it again. A faint whimper-like noise.
Ophelia paused. Was Shirou awake? She peeked back into the room. Yes, Shirou was in bed.
"Shirou?" She whispered. "Are you awake?"
No response. He must be asleep.
Shirou twitched on bed and another whimper left his throat.
"Are you alright?" She asked, a little louder. "Would-would it be okay if I came in?"
Shirou made a sound she didn't understand. Did that mean he didn't want her to?
Oh, right. Shirou was still using the translation charm. He must have taken it off for bed. Was he saying that she could enter? Or was he saying no?
Ophelia bit her lip. Maybe she should learn some Japanese. It would be nice to be able to talk with him more. Maybe she should come back when she had learned Japanese.
Shirou let out another noise and his arm twitched.
"Sorry," She blurted out. But wait, the way he twitched his arm up, was he saying to come in?
Hesitantly, she stepped inside the bedroom. Shirou didn't protest at all.
Slowly, she crept up to Shirou's bed.
"Shirou?" She asked.
Shirou whimpered and flinched.
Ophelia looked at his face. His eyes were closed and his face was scrunched up. But he looked like he was sleeping.
"Oh," Ophelia finally realized. "Are you having a nightmare?"
Shirou didn't respond.
"Um," She didn't know what to do. Nightmares were not fun. But how do you help someone who is in a nightmare?
Shirou whimpered again.
"Uh," She looked around the room, hoping there was something that could help her. Maybe a servant or perhaps a book on how to handle nightmares. But there was nothing.
Shirou's shoulder shot up and he flinched like he was in pain.
"There, there," Ophelia decided to pet Shirou, like he was a dog. Maybe that would help.
His head was beaded with sweat. It was a little gross. Was this actually helping?
Ophelia looked at Shirou's face. It was starting to relax and his shoulders loosening. Did that mean this was helpful?
Ophelia decided to keep on petting Shirou. She sat down on the bed.
Shirou's nightmare took a long time to die down. It was only after he stopped dreaming that she went to bed herself.
When she checked on him the next night, he was having another nightmare. Once again, she petted him until he stopped. It was kind of cute, watching him calm down while she petted him. Was this what it was like to keep a pet, only a human instead of a pet?
That kept on for several nights until Shirou woke up with a gasp and found her standing next to his bed, one hand hovering above his pillow where his head had been lying until he jerked awake.
It turned out that Shirou was embarrassed to be having nightmares. But if she wanted to talk before bed, he wanted to talk too.
Which was how Ophelia learned the hard way that she needed a full night's sleep. But Shirou was just fine going with less than 8 hours of sleep.
It wasn't fair.
"No!" Ophelia shouted as she stopped Shirou.
"What's wrong?" Shirou asked as he turned away from the basic direction-finding ritual that Ophelia had learned five years ago.
"You're doing it wrong," Ophelia scolded. "If you do it like that, you might get lucky and have nothing happen or you might end up causing the compass to break."
"Oh." Shirou looked down at the small compass he held near the piece of amber and wool. "What did I do wrong?"
Ophelia told him the list.
Shirou had a knack for cooking and Father said he was talented at fighting, but when it came to magecraft, Shirou had no talent at all. Not even the smallest speck. Even a ritual that Ophelia had mastered as a kid half Shirou's age he kept on messing up.
As Shirou tried again, Ophelia sighed and massaged her head.
At least he wasn't trying to cook his nerves again. And like her parents had said when they dumped this duty onto her, she could learn a lot from teaching another person. In this case, she was learning a lot on how not to do magecraft.
She just wished Shirou would stop finding at least five ways to do something wrong every time he tried to learn a new Mystery or spell.
Except for meditation. Oddly enough, Shirou got it down his first try.
Ophelia sighed as Shirou messed up again.
If only Shirou could replicate that success without first giving her heart attacks from how often he nearly killed himself.
"Right…there, to there." Shirou's finger traced an invisible line between two points.
Mr. Phamrsolone nodded.
Shirou relaxed.
He was being trained on Bounded Fields. It was important for a bodyguard to be able to distinguish where a Bounded Field was, what it did, how to infiltrate, enter, or escape a Bounded Field, and even set up a Bounded Field.
"Well done." The man said. Shirou must have identified the location correctly if he was giving compliments. Often a Bounded Field had some kind of physical contour to be attached to, such as the walls of a house or estate, but a large number of Bounded Fields managed to exist without such obvious clues.
As Mr. Pharmsolone had said at the beginning, knowing if you are about to enter a trap was vital for a bodyguard.
"What does it do?" He asked.
"Um," Shirou peered at the Bounded Field and then took a sniff.
Amidst the smells of the estate, Shirou could detect an odor like that of old paper. Like he was in a historical library.
"Preservation?" He guessed. Old paper, historical library, that meant saving information for the future, right?
Mr. Phamrsolone frowned.
"Is that all?" He asked, a harsh note in his voice.
Shirou hurriedly took another sniff. There wasn't any other traces of any other scents that could be a hint. Did that mean he wasn't picking something up or was he overlooking something?
He couldn't give an answer of 'I don't know'. Mr. Phamrsolone didn't like that answer and if Shirou gave it too often, he would give an order for Shirou to be punished.
So it had to be something mixed in with old paper or something relating to historical library.
"It," Shirou tried to think of something. "It is also related to passage of time."
After all, a historical library was a way to store old information into the future. That meant time. Maybe.
"No." Mr. Pharmsolone's face grew more stern. Not that he wasn't always stern, just sometimes he was more stern than others. "What you should have picked up was that it records who enters. If you enter this Bounded Field, it would tell authorized users that not only have you entered but when and how long you are inside. And if you aren't authorized to enter…"
Mr. Phamrsolone narrowed his eyes at Shirou then nodded.
"Enter it." He ordered.
Shirou blinked.
As the muscles on Mr. Pharmsolone's face tightened in anger, Shirou hurriedly ran forward into the Bounded Field. If he was given an order, he had to obey quickly. Even if-
Shirou screamed. It felt like someone was shoving a lot of gobbledly-gook into his head. Words, ideas, concepts, contradictions, paradoxes. All being shoved into his mind without care for him to process. He couldn't even remember the information as each idea flashed through his mind and out in fractions far smaller than a second.
As Shirou stumbled back out of the Bounded Field, his head ached like someone had tried to shove a textbook in and finding his mouth was too small, had decided to instead beat his head in with the book.
"That should be enough to teach you to identify information overload defenses," Mr. Pharmsolone said dispassionately. "Do not make this mistake again. If you fail to identify a defense again, I will ensure your life is the one to end."
If Shirou could think straight, he might have said something back as Mr. Phamrsolone left the room. But all he could really think about was how his head pounded like an elephant dancing on a large drum.
"Ugh." Shirou grimaced as a particularly nasty throb overwhelmed his hearing.
He hated the lessons where he had to learn by suffering the consequences first. Even if Ophelia said that the reason why her parents liked to teach that was because the student learned faster, it wasn't any fun to actually go through with it.
"Ugh," Ophelia groaned in pain as she massaged her hand.
It had started easily enough. Shirou had always struggled with magecraft. Outside of his element of Sword, it was as if he had no talent with the craft. One the plus side, he had been able to perform some basic summonings of weapons, calling upon phantasmal representations of weapons that were elsewhere in the mansion. Even reinforcement worked well for turning something into a weapon.
The problem was, there is a lot more to magecraft than arming yourself. If Shirou wanted to survive, he needed a more thorough grounding than just being able to conjure weapons from elsewhere.
And there wasn't much Ophelia could do about that. Shirou needed to learn magecraft. He struggled at even the most basic of spells and Mysteries. He needed help but Ophelia couldn't force him to learn, even as he kept on putting his best efforts into learning from her teachings.
So he needed some help. Like a crutch. Ophelia couldn't be by his side and double check his work every time he tried a spell or ritual. It just wasn't possible. And Mother and Father weren't willing to do that at all, having given up on teaching him.
Ophelia looked down back to the book on her desk. The half-written book lying in front of her.
She had put a lot of thought into what she could do. She couldn't be at Shirou's side for the rest of their lives. For one thing, even if he was her future bodyguard, she was still older than him. She would likely die before him, if he didn't accidentally kill himself. She couldn't really hire or train someone else to be by his side for the rest of his life to help him with his magecraft.
But Ophelia had spent years studying grimoires. Books that taught Mysteries, written in ancient languages, often from before the invention of the printing press. That was one of the ways she learned magecraft. Not one that Shirou could copy as he was still learning German, even if he was almost fluent. But there was a world of difference (and bad handwriting) between old forms of German and modern German, and it would take Shirou years to learn to read the complicated grimoires.
Then the idea had struck her out of the blue. It had seemed so simple too. If Shirou needed help to learn magecraft and couldn't read ancient extinct languages, then all Ophelia had to do was write a new grimoire to help him. Include diagrams and schematics of rituals, discuss intricacies of Mysteries, review (for the thousandth time!) how the basics of magecraft worked, discuss basic mystical properties, throw in a lexicon for terminology Shirou was still learning. With a book meant to help Shirou do magecraft, Shirou would be able to study whenever he wanted instead of waiting for Ophelia to have time to teach him. His growth would progress by leaps and bounds.
If only it wasn't so hard to write!
Ophelia's other hand doubled down on massaging her dominant hand. She had thought writing would be easy. It was only writing after all. How hard could it be?
Now her hand was killing her, her back was stiff from hunching over the desk the whole time, and she was tired from trying to simplify everything down so that Shirou could understand.
Ophelia sniffed as a finger throbbed, the newly formed writing callus on it not being happy with her goal of writing a grimoire for her little brother.
Shirou better appreciate what she was doing for his birthday present!
Shirou sat in the guard booth in front of an apartment complex the Pharmsolone family owned.
"Why are they having me do this?" the security guard grunted as he scratched his face. "I better get a bonus for doing this."
The guard turned towards Shirou.
"All right, don't know why the boss's boss wants me to teach a kid how to observe people, but a paycheck's a paycheck." The guard said, gesturing towards a few security camera monitors. "First of all, most crime can be picked up in advance by watching how people behave. For instance, if a person is really nervous, that is a good sign that you should pay more attention to them. They might just be lost or they could be looking for something to steal."
Shirou nodded.
"But that is mostly for amateurs," the guard sighed. "The competent criminals will be confident. You have to watch for other behaviors and body language. For instance, where are they looking? A normal resident will be lost in thought while they walk back, but a stranger will be looking around. Further, they will be looking for stuff to steal. Whether it be jewelry or wallets on a person, or dumpster diving or unoccupied houses, their eyes will be gravitating towards those sorts of things."
Shirou nodded. That made sense.
"Rapists too. They'll be looking at people," The guard scratched his head. "But perversion isn't a crime, just makes people uncomfortable. Until they act on it, but by that point, you are probably too far away to do anything unless you are already moving. But like thieves, before they act, their gaze will focus on the body parts they are attracted to. I guess as a guard, the most important thing you have to be aware of what a person is looking at. All that said, the most you can do is tell them this is private property and to get off, until they act. Once they act though," The guard maliciously grinned. Shirou found himself shivering. "That is when it gets fun…"
"Happy Birthday, Shirou, Happy Birthday, Shirou, Happy Birthdaaaay~"
Shirou squirmed on a stool in the kitchen. The chef, Ophelia, and a few of the other mansion servants were gathered together to throw a birthday party for him.
Officially, there wasn't a birthday party for Shirou. The Phamrsolone parents viewed celebrating Shirou's birthday as a waste of money and time. They fed him, clothed him, trained him, gave him the necessities of life, what more did he need? A party? That was asking for too much.
Unofficially, the chief of staff might have arranged breaks to coincide so that those who wanted to do a quick birthday party could attend.
"Happy Birthday to youuu~" The chef pulled out a cake he had baked at home and laid it in front of Shirou, a smile on his face.
Shirou blew out the candles to scattered applause.
The cake was cut up, everyone got a slice, with other slices left for those who couldn't go on break but still wanted to come. Or who just wanted a slice of cake but didn't want to come to the party.
Shirou ate quickly, taking note of how the cake tasted. The chef must have made the cake for him as it had less sugar than he thought the recipe would call for. As Japanese, he had less of a sweet tooth than the Germans.
"And here's some presents to you," a butler said as he handed Shirou a wrapped gift. "Go on, open it."
Shirou opened it to find a remote controlled car.
"Figured a boy like you could use some fun toys to play with. It does no good for a child to be all work, no games," the butler shook his head. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work."
Several other presents were handed over to Shirou. Some lingered to watch, others had to go back to work.
Amidst the giving of gifts, a maid pushed Ophelia forward. "Go on." She whispered.
"Um, Shirou," Ophelia's grip on her wrapped present tightened. She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Thisisforyou!" She shouted out as she thrust the present forward. "Ifyoudon'tlikeitI'msorry!"
Shirou barely had time to get a hold on the present before Ophelia ran out the door, her face flush and her visible eye brimming with tears.
"Ah," Shirou looked hesitantly between the gift and Ophelia. What did she just say? He couldn't make out a word.
"Just open it. She put a lot of work into making it for you," The maid sighed. "I'll go talk with her again. Oh, and this is my present to you."
After receiving the maid's gift, a pair of socks with the Japanese flag on them, Shirou curiously opened Ophelia's present.
"Is that a handwritten book?" a janitor asked. "Did she write it herself?"
Shirou opened it to a random page. On one page was a diagram. Shirou wasn't sure what but he thinks that Norse rune meant winter. On the other page was the exact same diagram, only in Japanese.
Shirou glanced back and forth between the two pages. The Japanese was a translation of an old ritual. A ritual that to Shirou's poor knowledge, was copied directly from the old Norse grimoire that Ophelia had been trying to teach Shirou how to understand for the past five months.
Shirou's jaw dropped.
This- this was- this was perfect!
"What does it say?" The janitor peeked. "I can't read moon runes like my nephew does with his foreign comics."
Shirou snapped the book shut.
Some of the human servants in the house were aware of magecraft. Others were not. And the Phamrsolone had repeatedly ordered that the secret was not to be revealed.
"Its…" Shirou's mind raced, trying to find a way to lie. "It's a translation of a book Ophelia had been reading."
"Cool," The janitor nodded. "What kind of book? Fiction? Mythology? Nonfiction?"
"Ah-ah," Shirou stuttered, glancing hopefully at the door Ophelia had ran off through.
Shirou didn't recall how he fended off the janitor from prying further. However it was done, it felt like interrogation training, complete with nervewracking mental torture.
That night, Shirou's door quietly creaked open.
Ophelia crept into the room. The lamp was on, betraying that Shirou hadn't gone to sleep yet and instead was sitting at his desk.
Ophelia sighed. Even if it was Shirou's birthday, he needed to sleep.
"Shirou," Ophelia said softly. Shirou didn't respond, too intent on whatever book was in front of him. Given that his chin was on the desk, hopefully it meant he was getting bored and tired. "Shirou, you need to go to bed soon. How about I sing a lullaby?"
She didn't want her little brother to have nightmares tonight. It was his birthday after all.
She had even learned a lullaby from the maid! She had to make right her disappointing birthday present after all.
"Shirou?" Ophelia arrived at his desk. Shirou still hadn't moved a muscle. Had he fallen asleep while studying again? "Are you awake?"
Ophelia leaned forward onto Shirou's desk. Shirou's eyes were closed and only the bottom of his chin kept his head upright instead of planted into the hardwood.
This close, Ophelia could hear Shirou's soft breathing. A regular slow pattern, nothing like his breathing or thrashing while he dreamed nightmares.
Ophelia shook her head. Shirou pushed himself too hard again. If he was this tired, the correct action was to go to bed, not force himself to stay a bit longer.
Carefully, Ophelia eased Shirou's chair back from the desk and picked him up. She almost grunted. Little brother was getting heavier.
But as she stood straight up, the book Shirou had been reading scrapped across the desk. Ophelia winced but Shirou's breathing didn't hitch.
"Bedtime, Shirou," Ophelia whispered, deciding to take the book away after Shirou was in bed. She glanced at the closet and shook her head. He would just have to sleep without changing into pajamas first tonight.
With an experienced flick of her foot, this was far from the first time that Shirou had fallen asleep in the middle of something else, Shirou's covers were opened enough to let her slip the growing boy in.
Even with the transition from sitting up to lying down, Shirou's hands didn't let go of the book. Now without a sleeping boy to distract her, Ophelia looked at the book cover.
The cover didn't have a title. Shrugging, Ophelia tried to slip the book out of Shirou's grasp. You did not go to bed with a book.
Even fast asleep, Shirou's fingers clutched tight onto the book. Ophelia switched her efforts to sliding Shirou's thumb off the page so she could take the book out of his grasp.
Eventually, she had the book. Curious what he had been studying so late at night, Ophelia flipped to where the title page would be.
"Hah?" slipped out of Ophelia's mouth.
A Basic Grimoire for Japanese-Germans
The title was familiar. She would know because that was the title she had eventually decided on for the unsatisfactory present she had given to Shirou today.
"You were-" Ophelia started to ask before cutting herself off. Shirou was fast asleep after all.
Curiously, she peeked at Shirou's frowning face. He didn't seem too happy to no longer have his birthday gift in his hands.
Hesitantly, Ophelia slid the book, now closed, into Shirou's arms. Instinctively, his arms hugged her grimoire to his chest.
Ophelia felt a surge of warmth in her chest. Like someone had decided in her last magical enhancement surgery to install a small candle adjacent to her heart and it just lit up.
"Aww," She cooed.
A yawn interrupted the happy moment. Even if Shirou was asleep, she still needed rest too. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day again.
She turned off the lamp and quietly walked to the door. Glancing back, she could see a slumbering child still holding her birthday present.
Maybe it was just the shadows, but she could swear he was smiling now.
Shirou glanced back and forth between his grimoire and the magic circle he was drawing out of chicken blood.
Alright, the check was complete. He got the symbols all right. He had even redrawn one segment three times until it matched the diagram exactly.
It was time he did his own summoning ritual. A familiar would help expand his options to protect his big sister. And he was a Pharmsolone after all. It would be embarrassing if he couldn't even do a single evo- ebo- epo- a single summoning spell.
"Okay," Shirou muttered in German. He was starting to get a hang of the modern language now, without relying on a translator charm like he had been for the past year.
Now 9 years old, he was still too short. But he thinks he was starting to get a grasp on magecraft. And Ophelia's grimoire made it much easier to get things right.
He could do this. And if, no, when he got this right, Ophelia wouldn't have to be so worried whenever she taught him.
Shirou flipped the page. Here was the invocation. Shirou closely examined both the Japanese and Old German versions. He would have to chant in Old German, but if he knew the meaning, that would make it much easier.
Shirou stepped into the center of the circle. Right, this should make it clear that Shirou was looking for a partner for a familiar, not a lesser.
Shirou took a deep breath.
Should he really do this? This was the same ritual that had caught him back when the blue bathrobe mage had magically sent him away from Japan. Then again, Ophelia had done it when he was seven and he was now nine. That meant he was old enough to do it.
And he had his grimoire. That had to make it possible, right?
Yeah. Shirou nodded. He had to show Ophelia that her grimoire worked. That her work was good. Mr. and Mrs. Phamrsolone had been really harsh on Ophelia lately so it was up to Shirou to show her that she was better than she thought.
Shirou took a deep breath and started to read off the ritual in ancient German.
Ophelia's throat was dry when she walked past Shirou's room in the family workshop. Seeing the door ajar, she took a small stop to look in and see how he was doing.
Her eyes widened.
What was he doing, standing inside the circle! You never stood inside the circle in the summoning unless you were part of the target! Like, a Servant summoning ritual for the Fuyuki Grail War had you stand inside the circle, but that was because the Master had to receive a Command Spell for that Servant. It was part of the summon spell.
Ophelia slammed the door open.
With a closer look at the ritual drawing, she could tell that the circle was off. Shirou had gotten everything backwards, in the wrong spot! No way the spell would work properly like that! Especially with how the proportions were wrong, with entire arc of the circle being larger than other parts and some being much smaller. And she could hear Shirou speaking in Old German, not the Old Low Saxon that the Phamrsolone used for their familiar summonings!
"Shirou!" She shouted out.
But Shirou finished reading the last line from the grimoire even as she started shouting out his name.
The ritual finished.
The circle flashed.
"Shirou, stooop!" Ophelia shouted into an empty room.
Empty. And no Shirou.