It's secret revealing time.


Beta'd by Sesparra


The fact that I'd been granted a book that contained the names and histories of enemies I'd faced in the past wasn't the most shocking revelation that I'd had in the past couple of days. Hell, just off hand, I could think of three different magical entities that could have plucked the information out of nowhere, even if only in the future-that-wasn't.

Just knowing that I had such a powerful information-gathering tool, but I couldn't afford to use it because it would blow the Oblivion War wide the fuck open, and not in a good way, was a real kick in the teeth.

I was going to need to use it eventually. Sooner or later, I was going to run into someone that I couldn't handle without information. I wasn't Harry, with all his investigational skills and the contacts he could lean on if his other skills came up dry, or someone like his godmother who had the kind of savvy to squeeze the information out of anyone I needed. My strengths had always lain in either the subtler magics or enchanted items, which were formidable in their own right but weren't something I could afford to just swing around recklessly. I needed information to not get myself fucked over in a situation I hadn't had the chance to prepare for, and without doing so I was liable to get myself kidnapped and turned into a slave artificer for some monster with the kind of mojo to bind me or the smarts to trick me into a contract.

Not today, though, and I could afford to just leave it where it lay in the Forge. For all that he was a major power and every bit as dangerous as the millennia of marauding implied, he was a very known quantity, especially now that he'd committed Lasciel to a task, and between knowing how he thought and what his goals were, we could afford to forgo the thing.

I tromped up to my room, head heavy with thoughts, and flopped down on my bed for a good long moment. Then, I frowned and pushed myself up.

I hadn't taken much note of it yesterday, but the box on my bedside table wasn't exactly the kind of thing I'd keep around given half a chance, especially at age fourteen. It was clearly well-made, plain with flat planes and sharp corners, but it lacked the… certain aesthetics, shall I say, that I'd preferred at the age, being plain, well-oiled dark wood with a simple border carved and then burned around the edges of the lid.

I lifted the lid off with one hand, three balls of light playing around my right hand and the wand held within, ready to burst into searing life with an instant's notice-

The box contained six clear bottles.

There wasn't a label, but inside each bottle, there was a cloudy yellow liquid, with just a hint of pulp suspended in it.

I was distracted from the bottles by the Forge glowing for a moment. One of the pillars, the one right next to the Nerf gun, seemed to flow upwards up, turning into a deep purple metal, and on top of the pillar, a helmet of burnished steel constructed itself out of flat panes of metal that appeared out of nowhere before painting itself a deep purple.

"Interesting," hummed Lasciel, as the protection of the helmet extended itself over me, and I grinned.

Magneto's helmet was… controversial, for the fact of the man who wore it if nothing else, but what it represented- complete and utter protection from all kinds of mental effects, including memetic hazards like the kind of contamination that would let an old got anchor itself to reality by me knowing its name- was the kind of thing that kind of got you believing that someone up there was looking out for you.

With that weight conveniently off my shoulders, I could turn back to the bottles.

I pulled one out and twisted- failed to twist the lid off. I huffed, then pulled my blouse out from my pants, covered the cap with it, and twisted.

This time, with the cloth covering the lid, I managed to put enough torque on it to pop it off, and a little wisp of vapor wafted off the top of the bottle. I lifted it up to face level to take a whiff, but didn't get much of anything- no carbonation, no hops, maybe a hint of something sharp, but otherwise nothing.

Mentally shrugging, I tipped the bottle up and took one sip-

Damn, that's good.

I hadn't had the pleasure of having Mac's lemonade particularly often, on account of not living in Chicago for a good long time and then all the Crazy Bullshit that came from being, you know, in Chicago meaning that he wasn't open for business when I was in town more often than not. That said, it was extremely distinctive, in the "take one taste and you'll know it" sense. Seriously, I didn't know what the fuck he put in it, but whenever I got the chance, I'd spring for the lemonade over even his special reserve, the stuff was that good.

This was the first time I'd had the stuff in years, and I very nearly drained the whole thing in one go. Another pull emptied the bottle entirely, and I turned to put it back in the box to return to Mac's-.

"Margaret. Katherine. Amanda. Carpenter." Mom's voice caught me with the bottle half-visible behind the wood of the box, and even though I'd faced down vampires, Fomor, Denarians, and more, it still spoke to an old, old place in my brain and froze me in place more thoroughly than even old Mother Winter could have.

"It's not alcoholic?" I tried, although from the thunderous expression on Mom's face, it didn't much help.


If I were a little bit less worried about both being in trouble and the fact that Mom was already stressed, I'd almost call the experience of her dragging me down the stairs by my ear nostalgic. As it was, I was glad to hear the sound of Dad's truck rumbling into the driveway as Mom pulled me into the kitchen, since he'd always been the one to temper Mom's most severe punishments, at least, when he was around.

As such, I was waiting in the kitchen, decisively not rubbing my sore ear, as he led Sanya and Shiro into the house, in that order. The two foreign Knights took one look at Mom's expression and turned on their heels, walking directly into her sewing room and closing the door behind them.

To be honest, I couldn't blame them for quailing in the face of Charity Carpenter, but I wished I could have had a little more support than just Dad, as much as I knew I could count on him.

"What happened?" he asked, setting himself as the third point of an equilateral triangle with me and Mom as the other two points. It was his preferred position when we ended up fighting: it served to effectively declare himself as a neutral party between the two of us, and, when things had gotten… really bad, in the future-that-wasn't, he'd been better able to interpose the bulk of his body between the two of us to forcibly deescalate the situation.

"I found our daughter drinking," said Mom, thrusting the empty bottle that she'd caught me holding at Dad.

He turned one upraised eyebrow to me.

"It was lemonade," I said, too level to be a whine as I made direct eye contact with Dad for just a moment, making sure to look away just in time to prevent the Soulgaze.

"Was it?" he asked, exactly as level as my words.

"I'm pretty sure that I have five other bottles of lemonade up in my room," I replied, shrugging with somewhat overblown casualness. To be fair, it helped that I was fairly sure that the bottles came from the Forge somehow, given the fact that I could see a box twin to the one on my bedside table resting "If you'd like, I can share some of the bottles that I got on my own with you and Mom, so you're sure that it's not an actual problem and that I'm not drinking alcohol," I continued.

His other eyebrow rose. "Other bottles?"

When he turned his gaze onto Mom, she flushed with embarrassment. "I didn't see any."

"Of course not," I said, perfectly calmly. "You just dragged me downstairs by the ear and pulled the empty bottle I had in my hand out of my hand."

It was possible that I was not, in fact, perfectly calm, but either way Dad just sighed. "Molly, please go bring the box."

"Sure thing, Dad!" I chirped, the false cheer eliciting a wince out of Mom, for some reason.

As I hurried up the stairs, I could hear the wry amusement in Dad's voice as he asked "Really?"

I paused for a moment at the top of the stairs as the Forge glowed briefly, but once it was clear that I wasn't getting anything new dropped on me, I continued into my room, picking the box up with a grunt of effort, and then carried it back down the stairs, letting it slam to the countertop and rattle the bottles inside. "Here we go," I said, gesturing to the box. "Feel free to try any of the bottles.

Dad nodded, then reached into the box without looking. After pulling out the bottle, he twisted the cap off with just the thumb of the hand that was already holding it by the neck, which was unfair as all get out, before taking a careful sip.

He sighed, setting the bottle down on the counter with a clack of glass on marble, and made eye contact with Mom. "It's lemonade."

"I'm… sorry, Molly," said Mom, still looking a little bit spooked as she apologized for the fact that she jumped down my throat for what ultimately turned out to be a false alarm.

"No harm, no foul," I said, lying a little, but in the face of, you know, being assassinated in your own bed and ending up back in time with a chance to prevent so many future tragedies, I'd like to think that I'd be willing to cut Mom at least a little bit of a break.

"I must ask, though," said Dad, pausing for what I can only assume is dramatic effect, "when did you have the chance to go to McAnally's Pub to get some of his lemonade, and what did you have to do to convince him to enchant the box for you?"

Ah, shit.

"What gave it away?" I asked, desperately wracking my brain to come up with some kind of explanation that would pass muster without blowing the lid off of… well, everything.

"It's a wooden box," Dad said dryly, which… yeah, that's fair. I wasn't exactly thinking about it when I had mine, but the stuff was cold, the kind of cold that comes out of a good fridge and not hardwood. I reached out to the box with my arcane senses and felt the power of the Forge suffusing every inch of the box, guaranteeing that every day, I'd have six bottles of Mac's lemony goodness waiting for me, ice cold and everything.

"Well-" I started, but before I could continue, the doorbell rang through the house. Without thinking, I swung my arcane senses over to check at the door, since I'd already been in that mindset, and recoiled at what felt like a sun standing outside the door.

Fortunately, it was a familiar sun, and even though I couldn't know why she was here, I did know that it was a better idea to let her in than to just leave her waiting out on the porch, especially if this was back before she fell out with her driver.

"Hang on, we need to deal with this," I said, and though Dad frowned, he didn't do anything to stop me as I went over to the door. "Who is it?"

"The Archive," and yeah, that was Kincaid's voice coming muffled through the door.

I opened the door and… wow, seeing Ivy as such a small child was kind of a trip after the last time I'd seen her was when she was going through a pack of cornerhounds like Harry through one of Mac's steak sandwiches. She looked downright adorable in the kind of dress that I could see Mom pushing onto Alicia if not for the teeth-vibrating level of defensive enchantments on the thing, and in other circumstances I could see Mom saying that her hair was the kind of thing we should all aspire to, at least in terms of how well she clearly cared for it

"Ivy," I said, nodding to the girl, before turning to the hulking form of Kincaid. He'd changed much less in the decades between now and my death, but he had a few less scars now. "Driver."

One corner of his mouth quirked up, and he nudged the girl. "Miss Carpenter," she said, prim received pronunciation and all, "I have a matter of some importance to discuss with yourself and the Knights on the premises. May I come in?"

"Enter freely, and be welcomed as a guest," I said, extending my arm in a grandiose gesture that nonetheless elicited an adorable giggle from her. "Kincaid, you coming in too, or you want to stand guard?"

He gave me a considering look, then shook his head. "I'm good right where I am."

"That is your prerogative," I said, before gently swinging the door closed.

"Mrs. Carpenter, Sir Carpenter, I am the Archive," said Ivy, having made her way the short distance to the kitchen in the space of the time I'd spoken to Kincaid. "I need to speak with you, Sir Carpenter, as well as the two other Knights listening in at the doorway and your daughter."

I made it into the kitchen just in time to see Sanya rub the back of his neck sheepishly, following the unfazed Shiro into the kitchen.

"Real quick… anyone want some lemonade?" I asked, not making eye contact with Mom.

She shook her head slowly, still looking at Ivy where she stood on a step stool with no small degree of confusion, and Shiro also demurred, but Sanya shrugged one shoulder before nodding, and Ivy said "Yes, please."

I pulled three bottles out of the box on the counter, two for them and one for myself, and made sure to savor the expressions of appreciation on their faces.

Once she was done sampling Mac's wares, Ivy nodded to me. "Thank you, miss Carpenter. Now then, everyone else… how familiar are you with the Venatori?"


And that's that!

Perks Earned:

Mental Resistance III (Essential Body Mod Supplement, 200CP): "Your mind and will are strong.

I: You are very difficult to intimidate and have a high resistance to mental fatigue (such as from extended warfare or study) and can generally delay dealing with mental trauma until any immediate crisis is dealt with. Also, you do not get bored with tasks easily and can study or practice abilities for extended periods without penalty or need for a break.

II: Immunity to the items in tier I plus a high degree of resistance to memetic hazards, insanity, mind control, and other factors that would impact how your mind works.

III: Complete immunity to the items in tiers I and II.

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