Hidden deep within the woods and mountains of Aquitania was a castle.
Many castles laid claim to land and sky since long before, but this one was unlike the others. It was not abandoned and gone to seed. It was not a picturesque relic fit only to look at. To look at it was the very last thing one might do. It could not be seen from the skies, nor found on a map, and those very few unfortunate enough to stumble upon it by chance during their explorations were never seen again, their disappearances quietly relegated to a footnote in a newspaper.
One would be forgiven for believing this castle did not exist, but it most certainly did. Those who knew where it was – nearly always by invitation – would at first behold a tall curtain wall that towered above the oaks and chestnuts below and yet could only be seen from close by. Nestled within, past the twisted black iron gates set into the wall, was a vast garden of neatly trimmed trees and hedges in the English style, ringing a wide building that trod the line between villa and palace. Its construction was a strange mix of styles from different time periods: the three-storey façade was painted in friendly white Greco-Roman tones, yet the building was capped with dark, sloping eaves and towers that thrust elaborate spires into the sky. There were no windows on the first and second floors and only a few in certain rooms on the third, tall and narrow windows from which one could gaze down at those arriving from the outer gate. Once past the garden, a visitor would find themselves facing a pair of thick double doors, upon which was emblazoned a many-petaled flower caught between bloom and wilt. Upon even the gentlest knock the doors would swing open, revealing a lavish interior and welcoming a new guest to the Château Rozay-en.
This was as much as Noel and Ciel knew for certain about the home of their target. The description of the approach had been communicated five years ago by a doomed Executor who had vanished behind those doors, never to return. Everything else was guesswork or hearsay, save for one fact they had been assured of: their target was most definitely in the Château at this time, and not one of the other half-dozen castles that dotted the European countryside under her ownership.
"So…"
The Vespa hummed beneath Noel's feet. It crunched along the forest floor, just barely handling the off-road with great difficulty, as expected. Mid-day sunlight streamed down at an angle from above, illuminating their path forward. She stared ahead, gently turning left and right to swerve around widely spaced trees. The noise did not extend far from the bike thanks to certain adjustments, so she was confident in riding it even this far from civilization. She hadn't ever ridden a motorcycle for the thrill of it, and it felt good to have a mechanical beast of such power and poise at her beck and call, even if it wasn't exactly the ridiculous chopper or slick sport bike she'd wanted. What did not feel good was the passenger sitting behind her, arm wrapped tightly around her waist.
"The old routine," Noel said. "We infiltrate as lost hikers and ask to use the phone. Then while the butler gives us the Time Warp treatment, we learn the layout and dispatch the target."
Ciel took some time to formulate a reply that turned out to be quite simple: "It won't work."
"Yeah," Noel sighed. "They won't buy it. Somone here stands out too much because she's too good for prosthetics."
Ciel offered neither apology nor justification. She was not too good for prosthetics. The Holy Church had several on hand, tools to help crippled agents fight on until their usefulness expired. The thought of a false arm with a blade or cannon in it was even appealing in a way. Only it just didn't work. Her body refused to have two eyes and two hands. The gulf between a limb that had been lost and one that had been killed was too deep to cross while remaining human. She could only persist as she was.
"She'd probably see through it anyway if we showed up here," Noel said, mostly to herself. "If only she hunted like a normal bloodsucker, we could get ourselves caught in town." She poked the arm hugging her waist. "Hey, think of something. You're the one who comes up with the crazy plans."
"It's… difficult," Ciel replied. "The old strategies are no longer applicable."
"Of course," Noel scoffed as she steered around a fallen beech. "Only you'd be sad about not being able to kill yourself to win. Any new ideas, then? It's been a month since we got our assignment. Better not have been spending all that time moping."
"It would be based on hearsay and rumor. Very unlikely to succeed."
Noel rolled her eyes. "Oh, just say it! Stop telling me how screwed we are!" She'd enjoyed a brief period of pleasant mania at their last stop, where she had window shopped and enjoyed croissants and coffee and test-ridden the freshly-delivered Vespa on every street in town. Yet as civilization receded and they approached the castle, her mood had soured once more.
"Rita Rozay-en is a noblewoman that likes flowers," Ciel said.
Noel would have turned around to stare at her if her attention had not been demanded elsewhere. "And?" she asked.
"There are no flowers in the land surrounding the estate. No vines –" Ciel paused as they both suppressed a shudder. "– or Dead. She wouldn't be satisfied with just what's on the outside. Nor would a few indoor plants or a greenhouse suffice; she must live lavishly. Compromise is not in her nature, especially when it comes to pleasure. There must be an inner courtyard that opens to outside air and houses her personal garden, which she periodically visits and tends to."
The Vespa came to a stop. Its motor went quiet, plunging them both into silence, surrounded by fallen leaves and wood in all directions. Noel's reply was quiet and full of spite. "Did the snake tell you that?" she asked.
"Only indirectly," Ciel said. "He was… not fond of her, nor most of his collaborators. They cooperated to further their shared goal, but each looked down on the others. He made use of her talents and she his, but that was all. Outside of their shared penchant for the theatrical and appreciation for art –"
"Stop." Noel dug her fingers into the arm around her waist, which Ciel had forgotten to loosen. "That's enough."
"…yes, sorry. In any case, this is what he surmised after repeated contact."
Noel stared off into the distance. Just past the edges of the tree line, she caught a glimpse of what might have been a grey stone wall. They were close now. No more running from it.
"S-so," she said. "We just ambush her when she's stopping to smell the flowers? That's it?"
"Yes." Ciel disembarked from the Vespa, stepped away, materialized a straight blade from the Black Key in her hand, and carved into a fallen tree trunk symbols for protection and concealment that would keep them from being discovered by a wandering patrol. "It's as you said. We can't afford any slip-ups. Infiltrating the castle is a fool's errand. Better to skip over it."
They knew what the consequences would be for a mistake. The best ones were immediately fatal, and the worst would make them wish for the mercy of death. It was clear to Ciel from the faint trembling in her fingers and the far-off look in her eyes that Noel was imagining those ends in detail. The one-armed woman, meanwhile, found herself in an almost peaceful state. It would not be long now.
"F-figures you'd be calm," was all Noel said. "I'm – I'm going to take a walk. Clear my head. Read the Bible or something. There was a pond back there."
"Executor Noel…"
"What? What!?" Noel snapped.
Ciel paused. "Nothing. Please don't wander too far away. Even if the Dead should sleep, this is already enemy territory. I'll come and get you when it's time."
Noel wordlessly left, trudging back on foot following the faint trail the Vespa had left. She turned only to shoot her partner one last pained look, and then squared her shoulders and kept on marching.
Ciel wondered for a moment if the woman would run away, flee their fate and the Church. Now was the best time for it, even if the odds of surviving for long were slim. Would she give chase if Noel did run? Both were unsure.
Similar thoughts ran through Noel's mind as she found the pond in question and sat down upon a large stone near the edge. She could not bring herself to flee, despite the temptation to do so being unbearable. A life spent in hiding would forevermore deny her peace of mind. Yet the vampire they were about to face could do far worse for far longer to those unfortunate enough to be her victims. Ciel, too, would not be spared such a fate. Staring into the pond's reflection, Noel found her expression utterly intolerable.
She reached into her bag, which carried all the personal goods she had left. Among them was a pink and purple and lilac dress made of fine, delicate cloth, utterly useless for their mission and now too small to fit the adult she had become. Noel ran her fingers across it, feeling the material.
Then she pulled out some empty vials, scooped up some of the pond water, and began to pray.
Hours later, the sun rested atop the horizon. Ciel heard the familiar rustle of footsteps from behind. She finished tightening the last screw on the metal monstrosity before her.
"Are you ready?" she asked without turning.
"Yeah," Noel replied, her voice utterly defeated. "Let's get this over with."
The half-moon rose, caught between wax and wane, its unnatural brightness drowning out the stars around it. There was enough light to read by, at first. It had been a sunny day, yet clouds had crept in during the evening, and soon the moon was hidden behind one of them.
Two shadows flitted from the woods.
The curtain wall proved to be no obstacle. One of them muttered a prayer of silence and the other slammed a black stake between the stronghold's stone bricks, summoning up a momentary gap one meter wide and a hundred tall where heretical magecraft could not intrude. The next instant the two figures climbed up the wall, one running effortlessly against gravity while the other followed clumsily in her wake, dragging along a halberd as long as she was tall and driving it between the stones for leverage. Their black battle garb melted into the night, with only the silver flashes of their white habits leaving any sign of their passing.
Upon alighting atop the wall, the women beheld the garden below. It was utterly dark, barely illuminated by stifled moonlight, yet the strange swaying of several shrubs suggested something sinister. Paths joined and rejoined and between them the glossy grass squirmed. There was not a single lamp in sight.
"I am not going down there," Noel muttered.
The distance from the outer wall to the estate was at least two hundred meters. Ciel did not even need to say it would be an impossible jump. She materialized a trio of throwing blades between the fingers of her hand and took aim.
"H-hold on. Don't just do something stupid on your own either."
Ciel paused. Her eyebrows furrowed and she sighed. "What am I going to do with you? Very well, Noel-sensei. Please hold on. And pretend you never saw this." The Black Keys vanished into her robe as she extended her hand towards the estate, fingers splayed far apart. Noel instinctively wrapped her arms around Ciel's waist. There was a crackle, like that of electronics failing, and a red flash from her partner's fingers, and suddenly they were falling towards the estate in violation of all laws of physics.
Over nearly seven seconds, the two shadows fell from the wall to the estate. Contrary to predictions, they landed softly on the roof, an application of a velocity-dampening spell keeping Ciel's legs from splintering. Noel wordlessly collapsed, face pale, and Ciel waited patiently until her partner had collected herself.
Two shadows flitted across the roof of the castle.
Ciel had been right. Once they crested a peak, they beheld a gap in the tiles and towers within the center of the Château, where walls reappeared. Carefully they approached under cover of darkness, with Noel nervously looking upwards at the sky, watching the moonlight stab through fading clouds.
Once they arrived at the edge, the inner courtyard came into view. It was the size of a small park, much more restrained than the vast outside yard. Yet the garden itself was an impossible collage. Every inch played host to flowers of all kinds, just as Ciel had predicted. Lilies grew next to apocynum, as nightshade and orchids and pincushions mingled freely. There was not a blade of grass in sight; every inch of ground that wasn't a paved pathway was stuffed full of flowers. White marble pillars held up planter boxes full of even more. Vines crawled along walls and pillars, and leaves and petals floated through the still air, borne aloft by a faint breeze. One escaped the garden and slipped through Noel's outstretched fingers.
The whole garden seemed unreal to her. The moonlight illuminated it in strange ways, and she realized what was so off; flowers were not meant to bloom so beautifully at night.
"Be ready," Ciel said, still as a statue. "On my mark."
"Y-you don't need to tell me," Noel said. "Just don't – don't get soft again."
"I won't."
They stood still as statues upon the edge of the roof. They did not have to wait long.
A door opened. A figure, colorful as her own garden, slipped through. Noel could only make out pale hair and an elaborate dress from her perch, and even that was enough to make her blood run cold. Her instincts, honed over years of grueling training and many close brushes with death, screamed at her that this was the one, this was an Ancestor among Dead Apostles, this creature could annihilate her with but a look, and there was something deeply, deeply wrong that they did not, could not, would not ever account for until it was too late.
Ciel's hand closed around her wrist, and as Noel tried to retrieve her hand, she found she could not. Her attention was pulled away. She looked up, into her partner's eye and the apologetic expression on her face. In that moment Noel wished for nothing more than to scream at Ciel that she'd had years to apologize and had never done so, and there was no way she could ever be forgiven that way, and how dare she do this now, and a dozen other curses and wishes that crowded around in her mind and mixed together, and in the end all that remained was fury, fury and determination to unleash all her hatred after this, but before then to live, to survive, to fight.
The one-eyed girl nodded, satisfied with what she saw.
Below them, Rita Rozay-en, the fifteenth Dead Apostle Ancestor, the Artist's Lady, stopped in the center of the garden. She closed her eyes and smelled the flowers, and that was when Ciel leapt from her perch, descending upon the Rose Princess like a silver guillotine.