Christmas at the Lafaires was always an interesting event given Micheal and his family's distaste for the Church. Instead of focusing on the Christian aspect of it, they instead made the holiday a day to be thankful for being alive and celebrating their achievements from the past year. The town that the mansion was on the outer edge of however did the full traditional Christmas celebration and so they never really got any visitors from the town and were generally left alone. However none of this stopped Amelia from getting into the holiday spirit.
Micheal heard banging from outside his window and pulled his bedsheets over his head trying to sleep off the aches and pains as well as how tired he still was. The banging, much like the music playing throughout the house, continued unrelentingly causing Micheal to gingerly peek out from under his bedsheet at the bedside clock. He groaned seeing it was just after 7am and rolled over half tempted to conjure a bounded field to get some quiet and sleep in some more. Before he could do so he heard his mother yelling from the main floor. He barely heard what she said but knew she was yelling for him. He sat up blinking in the morning light and glared out the window at the sun, briefly tempted to shoot off a ball bearing at it.
He sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms, and gingerly slipped his legs out and onto the floor. They wobbled under him and for the second week in a row he cursed his uncle and Desmond. After Micheal had gotten his command seals and translated that damn book he had gone to his uncle for advice. After showing him the seals and letting him read the notes his Uncle reached out to Desmond and they decided on a few things:
1. Micheal was to read any book he could find on 'Soul anchoring'. Arnehearte didn't explain further until a few days later but he had explained that when "Dreamwalking" it was your soul traveling through the dream and if your soul ever got lost or trapped in another realm your physical body would die. He provided several examples as well which made Micheal double down on learning about soul anchoring.
2. He was to tell his mother absolutely nothing about his command seals, the war, or anything else. He was to act as though everything was normal.
3. He needed to summon his servant when his mother was not home so as to prevent her from learning about his participation in the grail war.
He then promised to come over partway through the holidays with the intent of having found the location of the catalyst by that point. A bit after arriving he had told Micheal that he had a lead on the relic like he had promised but said they couldn't go for it yet. Some crap about 'waiting for the right time'. In the meantime Desmond had been putting Micheal through the ringer. Summoning a servant was the easy part but given that he needed to be able to control the servant he needed to up his training regimen. Yes he'd have his command seals but he'd need to be able to survive long enough to use them if the servant tried to attack him. He glowered at the triple flames on the back of his hand and took a few tentative steps towards the bathroom feeling his legs grow more firm with each step.
After brushing his teeth and combing his hair he went downstairs and saw that his family had been busy while he was sleeping. There were custom icicles hanging suspended in mid air throughout the entryway, The smell of gingerbread wafted through the house, and the music from earlier seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Micheal wandered past the living room and saw Desmond decorating a giant 4 meter tall tree using a ladder. He had a tiny green santa hat precariously hanging off his head while he used his fingers to levitate and guide various ornaments to their respective positions on the tree. He caught sight of Micheal and smiled warmly at him and wished him a Merry Christmas to which Micheal said that they still had two weeks. Desmond merely chuckled and waved him away with one hand as he used the other to float more ornaments out of their boxes.
Micheal walked through the halls to the kitchen where he heard the clatter of his mother doing something in the kitchen. He walked through the double doors and caught sight of his mother in full cookie baking mode. She had a mixer going, some dough was kneading itself, and she had two trays of cookies waiting beside the oven which dinged as soon as Micheal walked into the room. Amelia walked past Micheal, offering him a brief 'Morning' in passing, and opened the oven with one hand while tapping one of the two trays with her other hand. As she pulled the finished cookies out of the oven the other tray floated off the counter and slid into the oven carefully. Amelia eyed the tray for a few seconds, closed the oven door, and restarted her timer. It was at this point that she took a breather, leaning back onto the counter while wiping the sweat off her brow with a hand.
"Morning Micheal. Sorry to ask this right as you wake up but could you take the cookies I've packed up and take them to the Town's main office? It was our turn to make cookies for the kids this year."
Micheal yawned and glanced at where his mother had come from seeing 6 giant baskets full of cookies of all shapes and sizes.
"Yeah I'll get on it as soon as I get my coffee…assuming I can even make it."
Amelia offered him a small smile in apology only for the self-kneading dough to stop and flatten itself out. His mother then busied herself with cutting out various shapes as Micheal walked around her to get some of the premade canned coffee they had in the fridge. He popped the tab on it and took a sip shuddering as the bitterness of the coffee hit the back of his tongue. He reached around his mother and stole some sugar to put into it and then got some milk as well. His coffee made as best he could he took a few sips of it eyeing the baskets as he did so. He shook his head, quickly knocked back the rest of his coffee, and got started carrying the baskets out to the family car. Halfway through making his trips and as he was coming back to the house he saw Arnehearte watching him with a cup of tea in one hand.
"I see your mother has tasked you before I could."
"Yes and all it is is taking cookies into town."
"Into town you say…"
Arnehearte rubbed his stubble covered chin with his hand and looked at Micheal with that damn glint in his eye. Micheal stopped and folded his arms at his uncle glaring at him.
"Whatever you're planning can wait until after I've delivered the cookies. Do you really want to get between my mom and her holiday habits?"
Arnehearte frowned at this and sighed checking his watch.
"Alright then. As soon as you're done with the cookies. We need to go out for a few hours."
Micheal groaned. Desmond in his attempt to help Micheal prepare for potentially summoning a Servant, had gotten a hold of some military training manuals from the United States and had been using those to train Micheal. Yesterday he had been forced to run around the Lafaire property in 'Full kit' three times. Which meant that he had run almost 25 kilometers with a bunch of crap strapped to his back weighing him down.
"Surely it's not more training right?"
Micheal asked warily. He could still bolt to the car if he needed to escape.
Arnehearte chuckled a bit and shook his head as he waved Micheal back into the house. He stood to the side to let Micheal pass and as he did so he heard Arnehearte whisper to him under his breath.
"Just got word that the Relics being held right now at the Orleans Branch of the French National history museum. Right now they have conveniently evacuated the building due to a 'gas leak'. We'll leave whenever you're ready to do so."
Micheal felt like lightning had shot through his system as he walked past Arneheart which wasn't that far from the truth as he noticed he had accidentally singed his shoes. Grumbling a bit as Arenhearte laughed Micheal went back into the house to get the rest of the cookies as well as come up with an excuse to drive the thirty kilometer journey north to Orleans and his relic.
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Micheal smiled as he left the town hall looking up into the clear blue winter sky while shielding his eyes from the winter sun. He put a hand in his pocket and half jogged back to the Lafaire family car. He got in, started the engine, and navigated his way out of the center of town. As he drove back to his house he couldn't help but look around at the various buildings. He saw that the Sweets shop off the town square was open, that one of the library workers was sweeping some of the snow that still lingered from a snowfall earlier in the week, and then turning a corner he drove through the outer edge of the main town and into suburbia.
All in all it was a quiet, peaceful town. Not quite small enough that everyone knew each others names but also not quite big enough that you didn't see a few of the same cars or people out and about everyday. Micheal pulled up to a redlight and idly drummed his fingers on the steering wheel waiting for the light to change. As he did so he let his mind wander a bit which led to him thinking once again of what kind of servant Jeanne D'Arc would be.
The more he thought about and read her legend the more uncertain he was as to her class. While initially he and his uncle had thought of a few classes she could be they all broke down under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Micheal focused back in as the light turned green and he turned left and soon was out of the town completely. He drove by some farms and sped up a little glancing down at the speedometer to make sure he didn't speed. As he passed by farmland he resumed his train of thought about Jeanne D'Arcs class. The thing was according to her legend she didn't even have any regrets or wishes when she died. She went to her grave content with her life.
Micheal eased the steering wheel to the right and turned onto the road that marked the start of the Lafaire property.
The more he thought about it the more he wondered if she would even answer the summons in the first place assuming she was a heroic spirit at all. He slowed down as he entered into the outer edges of the mansion, hit a button on the dash to open the garage door, and gently eased the car into its spot alongside the other vehicles that they owned. Micheal turned the car off and stepped out twirling the keys around a finger as he closed the garage door and began to walk up to the mansion. As he did so he saw Arneheart leaving the front door pulling on a jacket. They caught each others eyes and briefly nodded at each other before walking past each other in determined silence.
Some time later Micheal was sitting in the passenger seat of his uncles convertible and felt the wind whip over him blowing his hair back as his Uncle accelerated onto the main motor way north to Orleans. As he did so he pushed a button and caused the roof of the car to come out of the back of the car and pull itself over their heads. Now covered Arnehearte tapped a rhythm onto the dashboard of the car and Micheal felt a bounded field envelope them. He glanced to his right at his uncle who just looked at him out of the corner of his eye and smirked
"Just in case."
Micheal nodded,
"Alright so tell me more about where we're going."
"Right now the relic is being kept in the archives of the Museum itself amongst all the other priceless artifacts. Our goal is to get in there and swap the relic with this," Arnehearte reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a several centimeter long piece of burnt wood from the Lafaire fireplace. He handed it to Micheal who stared at it and turned it over in his hands, "The Mages have all scarpered off now that their job is done so no one will actually be able to tell that this piece of wood is any different than the relic. As for how we get in there I have an idea on how to do that…"
Micheal listened to his uncles plan and found himself approving of it. They would use a spell to unlock the door and go inside as if they were meant to be there. Naturally the guard will approach them at which point Arnehearte will cast a suggestion on the guard to convince them that they were there to verify the authenticity of some recently discovered finds related to the 100 Years War. The guard would then either let them go on on their own or they would go to fetch the curator at which point the plan itself broke down into sub-plans.
"Didn't know you were this much of a planner Arnehearte."
"Schemer more like. Once you've survived in the Clock Tower for as long as I have you pick it up whether you want to or not." He grumbled, "So. Tell me again about this white haired woman you 'traveled between dimensions' to see."
Micheal rolled his eyes at his uncle's implied quotes and began to describe everything he could about her to him. He had showed his translation notes to his uncle within a day or two of him arriving at the Lafaire mansion and he didn't believe him at first until Micheal told him exactly where to find the white leather book. Arnehearte then went back to the clock tower for a day or two and then came back having done his own version of the research process that had taken Micheal an entire day,
#####
"..and thats how I woke back up."
"So you promised this woman that you'd meet her again and then she vanished into golden particles….question. Do you remember what the mana in the air felt like."
Micheal closed his eyes and cast his minds eye back to the location. He tried to focus on singling out any mana that he would have sensed but between the battle between the woman and the shield girl it had all gotten mixed up. He focused instead on anything else he might have noticed only to not think of anything.
"I got nothing. Why?"
"You said this woman had white hair and yellow eyes right?"
"Mhm. again, why?"
Arnehearte went quiet in that way that meant he was thinking how to say something or how to avoid saying something. After a minute of driving in silence they both saw the exit for Orleans would be in a few kilometers which provided the perfect excuse for him to not answer the question. After exiting off the motorway they drove over the cobbled streets and parked the car outside the museum. They got out and Micheal felt his uncle cast a spell on the doors as they walked up to them. He opened the door without issue, Micheal following closely behind, and as expected a guard came out to greet them. Arnehearte looked the guard in the eyes and planted the suggestion while speaking about who they were and why they were there. Micheal was only half listening as he let his senses expand, both his five natural sense and his mage ones, and felt an utterly massive amount of mana coming from somewhere to the northeast of the entrance. He focused back in right as the guard, who's face had gone curiously blank, led them around the corner and through a door marked for an employees only.
After going through several other doors they eventually stood in front of one with a security badge scanner. The guard briefly reached for a badge only to realize that they didn't have one for that level of door and as they muttered to themselves they slowly became more coherent in the process. Quickly realizing that the suggestion was wearing off Arnehearte looked at Micheal and without saying a word he fired a small gandr shot into the guards back knocking them unconscious. At the same time Micheal focus his mana on lightning, pointed his finger at the scanner, and quickly shot it with a bit of electricity meant to spoof the reader. Arnehearte caught the unconscious guard, lifting them up, and nodded silently for Micheal to go in.
Micheal nodded, waited for the spell to spoof the reader, and was rewarded with a metallic clunk as the door unlocked. He went into the artifact storage section of the museum as Arnehearte picked up and moved to put the unconscious guard back into their security booth as the door separated them. As Micheal walked into the massive room he noticed several things in quick succession. The first was there enough ambient mana that it gave him goosebumps. Another thing is that all the artifacts were either being kept in glass cases or sitting on top of the various standing desks scattered around the area. He walked slowly past them all and caught sight of a pair of 19th century dueling pistols sitting to the left of a wooden box. Curiosity getting the better of him he walked over to look more closely and saw the name "Napoleon" engraved on the front of the box along with the Napoleonic Crest. His eyebrows shot up,
"Well if Jeanne D'Arc fails I can always summon Napoleon I guess...not sure how he'd get on with my family though."
Micheal straightened up and looked around the room once again noticing this time that there were easily a hundred other desks just like this one. He frowned and started to move at random when he felt his origin pull him in a specific direction. Following it a minute later he found himself standing in front of a desk that the surface of which had been covered in white cloth. Sitting in the middle of the desk was a charred piece of wood. Even without turning on his mana sense he could feel the mana practically water-falling off of the charred remains of the stake she had been burned on. He reached out to grab it and then stopped. He pulled out the other piece of wood and compared the two. They looked…similar enough he guessed. He quickly swapped the two and as he held the stake piece he looked down at it and staggered as he suddenly was overcome by successive waves of vertigo.
His vision blurred with the exception of the relic. It seemed to grow more detailed and larger in his vision and right as he thought he couldn't see anymore detail than that he fell to his knees and glanced up to his left into a pair of amethyst eyes. He tried to look over more only to see a long blonde braid dissolve into golden particles. He continued to turn his head as he fell forward onto the floor and then abyssal black armored boots enter his vision. He tilted his head up and saw a woman with golden eyes and white hair glaring at him. The last thing he saw was the woman in pitch black armor walking away from him only to dissolve into golden particles right as she looked back at him and smirked as he slipped into unconsciousness. He didn't know how long he had been laying there but eventually he woke up and felt relieved that the world had stopped spinning and he managed to stand. He steadied himself on the desk that the relic had been on and shook his head a bit.
A minute later he had gathered enough of his wits to walk out of the storage area. Curiously the door to the room had been relocked from the outside. Shrugging he unlocked and opened the door only to see the glint of a dagger flying towards him from the hallway beyond the door. He activated his field and flooded his legs with mana causing him to duck under the dagger as it embedded itself to the hilt in the solid steel door. He refocused and pushed himself into a slide catching the attackers legs in between his own. He quickly twisted his body and scissored his legs causing the attacker to yell in pain as they fell down, their shinbone broken in half. Micheal quickly detached his legs and hopped up, already swinging his leg in a roundhouse only for the person to laugh and shoot themselves in the head. Micheal stared at the corpse for the briefest of moments before he flooded his legs with mana and sprinted back out into the main area of the museum foregoing all hints of subtlety. He looked around wildly for his uncle and saw red flowing out from under a door nearby
He kicked in the door and saw that his Uncle had been tied to a chair. He was breathing but was in rough shape. His head snapped up at the sound of the door being kicked in and had enough time to say,
"Micheal. Run. They're after yo-"
Micheal activated his magic eyes with more mana then he had ever done so before and felt the strain immediately. Grenades would fall from the ceiling as soon as he stepped into the room to save his uncle yet the grenades would fall anyway regardless always killing one or both of them. Micheal watched all of this in slow motion as he used the nanoseconds his eyes bought him to try and find any way to save his uncle.
There wasn't one.
He looked up at the ceiling right as the pins were beginning to be pulled from the grenades due to being tied to the back of the door which had flown back into the room due to Micheals reinforced kick. He focused on anything that could tell him who did this but couldn't find anything. Feeling more rage than he had ever felt he looked back at his uncle who just looked at him with hollow bloody eye sockets and a smile with too few teeth. He knew that Micheal would make the right choice. Swearing Micheal pulled out a ball bearing from his pocket aligning his fingers into a barrel. The sound of cicadas sounded and Arnehearte had enough time left for his smile to widen,
"Good lad."
The ball bearing tore through Arneheartes head. Before the bearing had even hit the wall behind Arnehearts corpse Micheal had torn out of the museum and was on his way out of the city, a cold fury in his heart.
He would find whoever this was…and he would kill them.
He swore it.