Politics can be a real kick in the teeth sometimes.
Beta'd by Sesparraa
Inasmuch as I wanted to see Luccio, Dad, and Shiro tearing into Morgan, I honestly had better things to do than revel in seeing him get the third degree.
As the new knowledge dump had reminded me, I had a whole lot of reading to get done, and while there was a sword (a Daiklave, some part of me insisted) manifesting itself within the Forge, like my service pistol, it was certainly taking its sweet time doing so, and I couldn't exactly rely on being able to borrow one from Yoshimo every time I needed it, so I'd have to put one together on my own.
Fortunately, I was probably the single greatest mortal alive for emergency smithing purposes, so a quick jaunt up to the Future Witness and a couple of ingots of Nth metal had a really nice falcata finished, one that shone gold under the right lighting and was both light enough for my fourteen-year-old noodle arms to hold and big enough that I wouldn't outgrow the enclosed guard once I finally hit my growth spurts.
It was also, you know, a work of craft beyond mortal ken and the equal of any of the weapons of the Tuatha De Danann, even setting aside how bullshit Nth metal was in its own respects, but that was beside the point.
About the time that my brain made it from "hehe sword go swoosh" to "hang on a second, I never made a scabbard for the sword," Ramirez knocked on the door and then, when it revealed itself to be not properly latched, he nudged it open with his boot.
"Is this a bad time?"
"Not really, I'm just in the middle of something. Let me just…" Well, even if it was relatively urgent, I didn't think Mom would take particularly kindly to me raiding her supplies to make myself a scabbard for the sword I made myself out of magic metal, and I was somewhat pressed for time, so I drew some more Nth metal out of my soul and set to work. By the time I finished, the metal had been shaped into the perfect scabbard for my newly forged blade, seeming more like wrought iron with highlights of burnished copper than anything else, coming across almost like someone had cast the image of a wave at sunset and then polished it to perfect smoothness, and it probably had some other fancy features too, but I didn't particularly have the inclination to find out what they were at the moment. "Alright, come in," I said, banishing the tools I'd used to work the scabbard back into wherever the Forge kept them when I didn't need them.
Ramirez walked in through the door, then froze. "What the hell is that?"
"A sword," I said, picking up the blade off of the table and sliding it into the scabbard until the hilt met the top of the scabbard with a satisfying click. "Just made it. The grown-ups kick you out?"
I almost felt bad for the guy, mouth working like a goldfish who just got told it was adopted. He couldn't have been more than… what, twenty-five at the outside? Either way, he hadn't really seen how fucking wild this moonlit world of ours could get, and this week had just been one punch after another for him, as far as I could tell. And it was only Tuesday, too!
He was tough, though, I thought as the Forge flickered, and he managed to rally relatively quickly. "No, there's, ah, a little bit of an impasse between your old man and the Captain, and I maybe thought you could help resolve the situation?"
I added up what I knew about Luccio and those things that would get Dad to really dig his heels in, and… "Goddamn wizard politics," I grumbled under my breath, before raising my voice. "Yeah, sure, I'll see what I can't shake loose. They still in my bedroom, or did they move?"
"Still in your room, I think," Ramirez said, looking a lot less like he was cataloging escape routes just in case Dad decided to throw down with the rest of the Wardens now that I'd agreed to intervene.
"Right." I cracked my neck, then headed up the stairs and back into my room, Ramirez following behind me like I was a walking piece of cover.
By the time we arrived at my room, they'd stopped discussing whatever it was that they'd been discussing beforehand, and had devolved to Dad glaring down at Luccio, who was matching his glare while Yoshimo was pressed against the wall like she was trying to merge with it. Shiro, meanwhile, was moving to place himself between his niece and everyone else, offering both Dad and Luccio a reproachful look that would have probably broken the stalemate if they had eyes for anyone other than each other, and Sanya was sitting on my bed rubbing at his head next to where Morgan was still bound and glaring sullenly.
"What is going on here?" I asked, and I took no small amount of pleasure in seeing both Luccio and Dad jump.
Luccio's gaze tracked to the sword I was still holding before making a run for the ceiling as she muttered something darkly under her breath, leaving an opening for Dad to speak. "Apparently, there's some sort of… issue with the records the White Council keeps? They're saying that they've been infiltrated and some sort of record about you has been planted."
I mean… to be fair, the White Council had had a reputation of leaking like a sieve, both during the War against the Red Court and afterwards, but for their security to be lax enough for anyone to infiltrate and plant a record before the Wardens had really been cut down by the big battles of the war was… concerning, even setting aside the fact that someone knew enough about me to consider me a threat to them and use the Council to try and remove me.
"Do we have any idea who?"
"Some of the circumstances of the record suggest it was done in violation of the Sixth Law of Magic," said Luccio, and that was both worrying, for the fact that whoever it was skilled in chronomancy, and reassuring since it meant we weren't dealing with the mother of all information leaks. "The Merlin was… concerned about this, and suspected you of wrongdoing."
I sighed. "I'd be willing to clear up the situation with the Senior Council once we deal with whatever the fuck Nicodemus is up to," I said, and though Luccio didn't look satisfied, she at least seemed less on edge.
"Thank you for being… reasonable," said Luccio, and even though Morgan appeared mutinous, he didn't make any attempt to speak from where Sanya's hand had settled on the back of his neck.
"Someone has to be," I said, shrugging one shoulder. "Now, if you don't mind, I've got some stuff to catch up on, what with being called out of school, so if I could have my room back…"
Sanya stood up and hauled Morgan onto his shoulder like a particularly disgruntled sack of potatoes. "Have fun with homework," he said, striding out of the room with such gravitas that most of the rest of the people crammed into my room followed him out the door without so much as a second glance.
"Are you sure about this?" asked Dad, brow furrowed with worry.
"Not really, what with how much the Council leaks, but it's probably the best option. Besides, even if someone does sneak in to try and off me, I've got… precautions I can take." I sat down at my desk heavily, groping blindly around until I found my datapad.
"So long as you're careful," he said, holding eye contact for just a hair shy of the threshold to initiate a Soulgaze before nodding and walking out of my room.
I waited for just a moment longer to make sure that no one else was going to come into my room before slumping over. Say what you will about living through the fall of the Outer Gates and the return of Ethniu, but being the adult in the room with both your own father and Anastasia motherfucking Luccio was absolutely exhausting, and I'd already been running on an emptier tank than I'd prefer.
"My host," said Lasciel, and I had to resist the urge to both jump through the ceiling and draw my sword and try to cut her in half despite not having a physical body. "Might I suggest more rest?"
"Honestly, I wish I could," I said, rubbing at bleary eyes and failing to muster up enough irritation for so much as a mild glare in her general direction. "Nicodemus has too much planned for me to feel comfortable taking time off, and reading through my data dump is already closer to toeing the line than I'd prefer, but there's not really anything I can think of that I can do that can't be done better by anyone else."
Lasciel looked more than a little pained at this. "My host, if you truly cannot see anything that you can do better than anyone else in this house, that would be relevant to the situation at hand, you are much wearier than you can afford to be."
The Forge flashed as I chewed on what she said, and I came to the conclusion that she was, in fact, right, which was something that I didn't know I was willing to admit anywhere outside the security of my own head.
"Of course I am correct, my host," said Lasciel, just a hint of smugness in her tone. "I am, after all, observing you with millennia of experience of reading humans. Just because it is…" She faltered, seeming almost mournful at this. "Just because it is not the use to which my expertise has been turned to in the past does not mean that my insight is meaningless."
I almost demanded if she didn't have anything better to do before quashing the urge- she was locked inside my head, I really didn't want her getting ideas, either inside it or outside.
"Are you sure?"
Lasciel chuckled. "As I am, I can be sure of very little, but I will ensure that you awaken when you are needed."
I wasn't sure how much of the suspicion I felt towards her made it through to whatever representative of me she was experiencing in the Forge, but evidently some of it registered, and she sighed, for just a moment looking far older and more tired than the classical Greek beauty that she normally appeared to be.
"My host," she said, more weight in her voice, "believe me or not, I do have your interests in mind, if not necessarily at heart. If you die, I do as well, and-" She cut herself off. "The point is, I will not compromise whatever goodwill I have built up over some scheme of Nicodemus'. Have faith in the fact that I would not let myself be so easily subordinated to Anduriel, if nothing else."
I gave my tired brain a few moments to work through the situation. "Well," I said, "if you can't count on the rebel to rebel, what can you trust?"
"I thank you for seeing reason, my host," Lasciel said as I turned off the light, closed the door, stretched, and then shucked my shoes.
"Had to happen sooner or later," I said, shrugging with one shoulder before grabbing my sword, carrying it to my bed, curling up around it like a particularly pointy teddy bear, and closing my eyes, expecting to spend the next twenty minutes-
"Awaken, my host," said Lasicel, and my fingers spasmed around the sword as I rolled off the bed, trying for leg sweep and managing undignified sprawl, tangled up in the blanket I pulled off my bed and my sheathed sword.
"Fuck," I said, untangling myself from the blanket just in time to hear a knock on the door.
"Molly?" asked Mom. "Everything okay? I heard noises."
"For a given definition of okay!" I replied, inspecting where I'd smacked my knee hard against the floor, hard enough that I could see the bruise blooming under the skin already. "Fell out of bed, little banged up, but nothing too bad."
I could almost hear Mom working through three or four different responses before she actually replied. "Don't take too long, you have homework to do after dinner!"
I pushed myself out of the blanket and then to my feet with a groan before rubbing at my face, grateful for the brush I'd made earlier today if for no other reason than for the fact that I didn't have to splash water in my face when I could just run it through my hair and look like I'd spent the hour it usually took me to wrangle my hair into a halfway decent French braid, and far neater to boot.
"Thanks, Lasciel," I said, more than a touch begrudgingly.
"Of course, my host," she replied, seeming almost mournful. "I am ever at your disposal, you need only ask."
With that not-at-all ominous rejoinder all but ringing in my ears, I opened the door and headed downstairs, ready to face what probably wouldn't be the most awkward dinner I'd ever had but might be able to contend for second or third place.
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