Despite Mordred's little tipoff about some evil happening being a complete bust, and just causing tons of chaos, it wasn't like it was without its use.
If it had been, I wouldn't have allowed things to happen like I had.
No, the night itself might have been pointless, but it did allow us to gather information.
Did we need to?
No, no, we didn't.
I was the King of Albion, a Goddess of great power, and had millions of subjects, including an entire intelligence apparatus, or two of them even.
There was no need for me to personally and slowly gather information, but I liked doing it like that.
It made me feel more grounded in the mission.
It wasn't just me being pointed at a suspicious location and blasting it with the light of Rhongomyniad. No, this was a real mission, with all the works.
It might just be me being selfish, but my Alter self was pretty selfish, so it was part of my nature, and I wanted Mordred to be happy. I knew I had failed her in life, and in this second one, a large part of me wanted to do better.
Be a better king, the king my people deserved, my knights deserved, and the father Mordred deserved.
"This is so stupid! Why are they all speaking French?!" Mordred groaned as she threw the remote at the television, forcing me to quickly reach up and catch it as soon as it left her hand.
"Because Mordred," I started as I put the remote down. "We are watching French television." It should have been obvious, but clearly Mordred didn't agree with me.
Mordred slumped back on the couch, arms crossed, glowering at the screen like it had personally insulted her. "Well, it's rude. We're guests. They should be speaking our language."
"They are speaking their language, in their country," Lancelot said from across the room without looking up from the map he was marking. "Which, incidentally, we nearly set on fire last night."
"Yeah, and?" Mordred snapped. "They should be grateful we didn't level the whole thing. I even held back!"
"I'm sure they are ecstatic," I muttered, though I couldn't hide the faint amusement in my voice.
Mordred scowled at me but said nothing, kicking her feet up on the coffee table like a sulking cat. The television continued playing an early-morning news report, the anchor's voice sharp and fast, images of the nightclub flickering behind her — flashing lights, shattered glass, scorch marks, and panicked patrons being interviewed.
<—« TROIS TERRORISTES COSTUMÉS »: LE CARNAGE AU CATHEDRAL NIGHTCLUB EN QUESTION —>
"Costumed terrorists?" Mordred scoffed. "Wow. Rude and wrong. I'm not even wearing a costume!"
"You literally look like someone out of a movie set." Lancelot pointed out without lifting his gaze.
She glared angrily at him. "So, I know the French are stupid and all, but why are they acting like they don't recognize us? I mean, you are famous around the world, Father."
"Indeed, the French aren't that stupid. It's thanks to the magecraft in our outfits, they are my attempt at mimicking the effect of your Secret of Pedigree. It's honestly just divine power trying to fix the gap between the magecraft skills of my sister and me." I explained.
Mordred squinted at me. "Wait. Wait. Are you saying I'm wearing, like, a magic disguise?"
"In layman's terms, yes," I said. "A very subtle one. It doesn't make us invisible, it just makes it hard for people to connect the dots. They see you, but they don't recognize you."
She made a face as if she understood it, didn't fully understand it, wanting to say something, but finally decided not to say anything.
Instead, she just started playing around with her phone.
I in turn turned my attention back on the television, though they were long done talking about us.
It was likely only due to using guns that we were even given time on national news, rather than just local.
The situation in France was just that bad.
The broadcast had moved on to coverage of another mutant-related incident in Marseille — smoke rising from a collapsed bridge, a flickering image of a giant claw print, and a reporter trying very hard not to panic while describing "inhuman sounds" from beneath the rubble.
"Another attack," Lancelot said, voice calm but taut.
"Is it? Or was there an escape from a secret facility." I asked, to which he could offer no answer.
I, too, didn't know what it was. But I knew that it could be both things. There are never any innocent sides in a war; such is the very nature of war. It is horrible, and all who fight are bathed in the blood of innocents.
That didn't mean wars weren't worth fighting, it didn't mean that there weren't rights and wrongs in war. Only that it was nasty business, and it would always be best to crush the enemy quickly.
As I had done when I took control of Albion, I had killed many, caused many children to lose their fathers, their mothers, people to lose their kids; it was bloody, it was cruel, it was war.
And the mutants were very much at war; they had to fight to survive.
In plenty of timelines, they lost, in some, they lost in brutal wars, were hunted down and killed by killer robots. In others? They didn't fight; they were killed off silently.
Drugs were made to weaken them, to stop their birth, slower, bit by bit, they were eliminated without even the ability to fight back.
If nothing else, I would at least allow them to survive in Albion; that was my mercy.
"Stupid phone is broken, I don't understand a word of what everyone is typing, did everyone suddenly lose the ability to write?" Mordred cursed as she shook her phone in some strange attempt to get it to work.
She tossed it to me without looking, arms folded. "Fix it. Everyone's tweets look like scrambled runes. I can't even tell if they're insulting me or not."
I caught the phone, turned it over in my hand — then blinked. The screen was filled with perfectly legible French. My divine comprehension let the words filter clearly into my mind, no effort required.
I looked at the phone, then at Mordred, then back to the phone a few times. Trying to understand what the problem was.
"Sir Lancelot, take a look at this." I held out the phone towards him.
He bowed his head as she stood up and gently took the phone from my hand. "It seems to be in working condition, though the text is heavy on shorthand and grammatical errors."
I nodded at his response and took the phone back, and started tapping away. Just because I didn't use one myself didn't mean I couldn't use one, just that I didn't want to.
Mordred was balancing on the backrest of the couch as she looked over my shoulder.
"Sir Lancelot, try reading this." I asked, handing the phone back to him.
This time, his brow furrowed, he looked for a long moment, not saying anything before shaking his head. "I'm afraid I don't understand that, Your Majesty."
"Ha! Not so smart now, are you!" Mordred gloated.
Lancelot calmly handed the phone back to me. "It's not a matter of intelligence, Sir Mordred. It appears the enchantment tied to our passive linguistic comprehension is failing—likely yours has already faltered entirely."
"What?!" she barked. "Can that happen?" she asked me.
"No, Sir Lancelot is wrong on this one. The first test was French, something he understands, even if it is an older dialect. The second one… I'm not sure, to me it was English, what I think is happening, is just the…" I paused.
I hadn't expected something like this to happen, and I wasn't entirely sure about the possible cause, but looking at Mordred from the corner of my eye, I knew she wanted an answer.
"As Servants, you are given the ability to communicate with all humans, so it's a translation charm. What might be happening here is that the magic struggles with the technology, because this text might not be written to a person; the intent was to send it to the internet, so the magic isn't seeing it as human communication." I offer up my current theory.
Lancelot nodded slowly. "That… would explain it. The enchantment interprets spoken language and direct written forms as extensions of human communication. But social media posts, algorithm-filtered and churned through ad engines and auto-moderation systems… perhaps the spell cannot recognize them as language at all."
"Wait," Mordred said, squinting. "So because a tweet isn't 'person-y' enough, magic gives up? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"Magic is not infallible," I said. "It's shaped by intent. If the writer wasn't consciously directing the words at another living person, the enchantment might not know what to do with it."
"So the internet broke magic." Mordred leaned back, horrified. "This is worse than France."
"You are getting far too addicted to the internet, Mordred. Maybe you should spend more time doing something proactive." I said, handing the phone back to her.
"And it's no magic breaking, just this one enchantment which wasn't made with such things in mind."
Mordred took the phone with the same expression one might use when handed a broken sword — baffled, insulted, and deeply inconvenienced. She stared at the screen like it owed her money. "So what you're saying is, I have to ask people what memes mean now? That's humiliating."
"You could simply not care," Lancelot offered, returning to his mapwork.
"That is not an option," Mordred shot back instantly. "The memes are how the commoners speak truth. It's the only language half of them know."
I resisted the urge to sigh. "You'll survive."
"No, I won't. You don't understand. I could be getting flamed right now and not even know it. That's social assassination!"
"Just read English memes, I'm sure you can at least do that much." I said, though my voice was weak, because I wasn't sure how she would handle modern English.
But I believed it would be fine, she hadn't complained before now, so likely only now that she surfed French sites did she run into problems.
Honestly though, it was a curious problem. Servants had something like a limited form of allspeak, allowing them to communicate with all of humanity, no matter when or where they appeared.
However, it seemed like it wasn't without fault; it didn't translate language as much as it did communication. It was very intent-focused. And well, most people posted on the internet with the intent of showing the internet, not people on the internet.
No doubt Mordred would still be able to see everything that was meant for people, anytime someone had other people in mind, it should work.
Just like how we could understand the television, because the people on screen spoke to people on the other side of the camera, not just the camera itself.
Just as I finished my thought, the television abruptly cut to a flashing banner: « ÉDITION SPÉCIALE – NOUVELLE CRISE EN COURS ». The anchor's expression was tight, her voice now louder and more clipped, the background changing to live aerial footage.
"What now?" Mordred muttered, leaning forward.
The camera panned over a cordoned-off section of Lyon — a high-rise complex surrounded by emergency services. Black smoke billowed from the lower floors, people scrambled on balconies waving for help, and flashes of something moving — too fast, too large — darted through the shadows.
The caption beneath the feed read:
"MUTANT HOSTAGE SITUATION – UNCONFIRMED NUMBER OF CIVILIANS TRAPPED"
"Local police overwhelmed," the anchor reported, "and no response yet from national emergency forces. The threat is being described as non-human, aggressive, and highly mobile."
The feed zoomed in. For a split second, something that looked like a scaled tail flicked past a shattered window — followed by the outline of claws.
A mutant or something worse. Possibly both.
I stood, already reaching for Secace Morgan where it leaned against the wall.
"We're going," I said, voice firm, certain.
Lancelot didn't question it. He rose immediately.
Mordred blinked, then lit up. "Finally!"
(End of chapter)