Micheal felt himself drift as soon as he went unconscious. He didn't know where the current was taking him but eventually he found himself standing in a white hallway that was almost clinically clean. He looked around and sent out a pulse of mana only to immediately regret doing so.
Death was walking the halls leaving only Silence in its wake. Micheal ran forward down the hallway to try and see if he could help. He checked door after door only finding bodies that had been cleanly, almost surgically, decapitated. He eventually heard screaming and ran towards it as he felt as though the space around him was extending, preventing him from getting closer no matter how fast he ran or how much mana he pumped into his body. Eventually the screaming was cut off only to be replaced by yelling and the sounds of magic being used. That eventually fell away to silence as well.
Micheal suddenly shot forward as space stopped extending itself and he crashed onto his side as he slid up to an open door only to meet eye to eye with someone who was missing everything from the neck down. He swallowed his scream, sat up and crawled past the severed head and into the room as he felt the temperature sink lower. He looked around and saw Death. He walked slowly, as if taking a leisurely walk in the park, and flicked his wrist launching blood off his blade. Micheal stood up and began to move to see if he could help only to feel his origin tell him to stop. Something was wrong…. He stopped moving and looked more closely around him. All he saw were corpses with no heads….but something was….off about them. Something about the way their limbs connected to their torso...
He saw that every headless corpse had some physical abnormality. One had an arm that was half again the length of the other. Another one had one of its legs coming out to the side of its torso.
None of them are human, Micheal thought to himself as he moved as silently as possible over to a corpse to look more closely. He stood up and saw that the fingers…. He stared, his brain going a million miles a minute. The hand wasn't human…but it looked like it had been at some point. The hands had been stretched out, the bones being pulled longer like taffy. The pinky had been moved to the side of the hand and looked to function as a second thumb. He saw something glint and felt a lead weight settle into his stomach as he saw a wedding ring on the hyperextended third finger. He moved back a little and analyzed the body itself, sending out scanning spells only to confirm that at one point…..
"These all used to be people." He glanced at the surgically clean cut that had been dealt to the things neck and saw that there was no spine in the stump. Just solid muscle. He flinched slightly as he heard another human-like scream come out of another ex-human only to be brutally cut short. He largely ignored Death as he looked around what was clearly a command center. He sent a detection pulse tuned for detecting unmodified human life and only found two.
Well….one and a half.
He frowned. Both signatures were running down the hall at breakneck speeds but one was certainly human because it was lagging behind but the other…its like they were a human and something else…..and both were about to come into the room. Micheal quickly moved to a corner and began to cast a cloaking spell when he felt suddenly deathly cold. He looked over and saw Death stare at him. He saw the blue flames in the skull mask narrow slightly.
Death held a hand out motioning for Micheal to not do anything. He positioned his sword inbetween his feet, placing the point on the bloodstained floor, and laid both hands over the pommel, the blue flames in the skull dimming slightly as though he was resting.
Before Micheal could gather the courage to scan Death, because if he was honest with himself would not have another chance other than now, the door was torn apart with one half being ripped out of the wall entirely and flung forward at Death…only for it to curve away and embed itself into a wall. The blue flames intensified and Micheal watched as a girl in black and purple armor wielding a shield launched herself through the doorway only to suddenly stop midair as if being held by strings. Death tapped the point of his sword on the floor and the girls head cleanly fell from her shoulders, a look of surprise still forming on her face.
Suddenly a scream of pure fear ripped into the room from the hallway as Death walked forward with slow measured steps past the girls body which fell limply to the ground as though its strings had been cut. Death took another step forward and then vanished into thin air.
Suddenly a voice that sounded like whiny sandpaper cried out,
"Mash! Move you brat!! You can't be dead! I need protection you whiny bit-*glurk*."
A few moments later Death walked back into the room dragging a headless corpse in a white jacket behind him. He flung the corpse into the center of the room and the blue flames in the skull pulsed as every corpse erupted into blue flames at the same time. Death then turned towards Micheal as the bodies burned and he heard Death speak,
"Saint. Thou hast seen something you should not have been able to see but do not fear. You will remain unjudged in this act. Do not despair for this is not your world. There were no people left here who would be missed." Death nudged a body as it carbonized into ash. He looked at Micheal with intensity however Micheal didn't detect anything in it except…
….Anticipation?
Death seemed to smile as planted the sword point first into the ground again and resumed the stance he had been in earlier,
"I know I need not say this, but be kind to her. She will need someone to rely on in the days to come. Her life so far has been one of struggle with no allies to be found even among the dead. Trust in her as you would yourself."
Micheal nodded, not quite understanding but he wasn't about to tell Death that. Death waved a hand and the world that Micheal had slipped into began to fade as he heard the voice of Death again,
"Fare thee well Saint. I hope not to see you again too soon…."
####
Micheal groaned and pressed his hands into his eyes as he felt them deactivate only leaving him with a massive headache. He rolled over feeling the warmth of the bedsheets and tried to go back to sleep only to stiffen remembering what happened to him while he was asleep. As he remembered his dreamwalk, he shuddered a bit remembering the ex-human monsters, and then went further back into his memory to what he had been doing before he slipped into unconsciousness. He remembered passing his mothers test, leaving the marble, and then…..
"Oh fuck, hang on…." Micheal directed his attention to his mana and was stunned to see that it had not increased by just two thirds like his mother had said but it would be more accurate to say it had quadrupled. He pulled his hands off of his eyes grinning as he relished the feeling of having so much mana to spend on whatever he wanted and sat up in bed, threw on some house clothes, and went downstairs for breakfast. He entered into the kitchen to see his mother leaning against the counter sipping her coffee she arched an eyebrow at him,
"Someones feeling bright and bushy tailed. I take it you like your uncapped mana levels then."
Micheal started making a bowl of cereal to eat as he grinned,
"It feels great. I feel…more complete. If that makes sense."
Amelia nodded and then sat her cup of coffee down beside her on the counter as she looked at him with a frown. Micheal tilted his head and was about to ask what happened when his mother blew out her cheeks,
"I need to go to the Mages Association. I've needed to go for a while if I'm being honest. I've managed to delay their questioning by sending in that initial report a couple months ago but their patience is wearing thin and are demanding a full in person report. I should be back before you leave for Japan but in case I'm not," Amelia leaned forward off the counter and walked over to him wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug. He returned the hug and when she pulled away she wiped a tear from her eye, "While I am gone I expect you to have summoned your servant before you go back to the Clock Tower to finish your schoolwork for the semester. Arneheartes…. The faculty know what happened but the students were told that he has gone back to America on urgent business and no one knew when he'd be back."
Amelia looked up into his eyes her own filled with worry, "Are you sure you're okay with how you found your uncle? That was your first real interaction with what some would call the 'reality' of the Moonlit world…"
Micheal smiled a smile that didn't reach his eyes as he shook his head,
"I'd be lying if I said I still wasn't bothered by…the casual cruelness of it."
His mother pursed her lips and stepped away folding her arms to look at him critically. After seeing whatever she wanted to see she sighed and walked back over to her coffee picking it up and taking a sip of it.
"Desmond and I had a bet, you know."
"A bet?"
"Desmond bet that you'd pass the test I gave you with flying colors. I bet that we'd tie or you'd fail." Amelia shook her head ruefully, "Given that he won I have to give you these now."
"Speaking of where has Desmond been? He's never gone this long. He came back and immediately left right after you started training me. It's been weird not having him pop out of random places in the house."
Micheal mused as he watched as his mother open a drawer and pull out something that she then tossed to him. He caught it easily and looked down at a set of house keys. He tilted his head and looked up at her arching his eyebrow in an unspoken question.
"Desmond apparently has property in Japan in one of the more upscale neighborhoods in Fuyuki. He won it in a bet back when he was deployed there." His mother said matter-of-factly with a glint in her eye.
"Wait. Deployed? And Fuyuki is where the Grail War's centered, right? What-"
Micheal felt confused as Amelia looked at him bewildered herself,
"Did he never tell you? Desmond fought in the 3rd Grail war during his deployment to Japan during World War 2."
Suddenly every little oddity about Desmond clicked into place and Micheal had to steady himself on the kitchen counter as everything he knew about the man who had been second surrogate father alongside Arnehearte reoriented and re-contextualized itself in his mind. From how he would never let anyone see him in anything other than a suit, Why he had always been up at 4am no matter what happened the night before, How he managed to sneak up on anyone no matter who they were, and how when he had been instructing Micheal on the finer points of firing his his mystic code he had looked so at ease firing it. Micheal even remembered Desmond staring at the mystic code after firing it as if remembering something. It had taken him several attempts to pull Desmond out of whatever memory he had been lost in.
"Desmond…why did he never tell me? Why didn't you?" Micheal asked flabbergasted,
"You'd have to ask him that yourself honey since its not my story to tell." Amelia said knocking back the rest of her coffee and looking at the clock, "He was so sure of your 'overwhelming victory'-" Amelia adjusted her voice into a poor imitation of the Lafaire Butler which earned her a snort of laughter from Micheal, "that he went on ahead to Japan to set up his estate for your and your servants use. He had to leave early because he wanted to get it all done by the time you got there. Something about Japanese bureaucracy."
Micheals mind was still racing but he managed to stow his curiosity for a bit as his mother gestured for him to follow her and led him into one of the lounge areas. He saw upon entering that there were at least 6 suitcases in varying states of being filled. He walked over to one filled with tomes and picked up one at random. Glancing at the cover his eyebrows shot up,
"'A practical history of combat magicks'." Micheal muttered as he picked up more tomes and felt concerned seeing that they were all themed around physical and magical combat. He glanced over at his mom as she struggled to close a suitcase, "You're….just going to a questioning right? I don't see why you need to pack so many tomes and mystic codes on combat."
Amelia grunted as she managed to close the overstuffed suitcase shut barely latching it closed. She wiped her brow and turned to look at Micheal,
"Yes. It is a Questioning but it's the Mages association questioning a Brand which means that I'll be constantly challenged by everyone ranked lower than me to fight me since my position is being questioned in and of itself by this farce. If whoever challenges me wins they get my spot and all the rights that go with it. Which means that they also get the house."
"Ah. So you're going into this like-"
"Like I'm going to war, yes. Be a dear and hold this closed for me?"
Micheal put down his cereal that he had taken with him out of the kitchen on a nearby table and went over to help. After he had helped with that suitcase he then was asked to do the same with four more. He was sweating lightly by the end of it and grumbling a little bit, went back to his now soggy cereal. He frowned as he lifted some out on his spoon but ate it regardless.
About an hour later he was standing in the main entrance way to the mansion. His mother had levitated all her suitcases into the back of the other family vehicle that the Lafaires had: an SUV that had been kitted out with enough armor to stop a tank shell as well as enough installed wards, bounded fields, and the like that nothing could get within 3 meters of it without being noticed and/or burnt to a crisp. He walked to the front door and leaned on the doorway as his mother, Amelia Lafaire, Brand of the Clocktower, slammed the boot of the SUV shut. Dusting her hands she glanced over at Micheal who raised his second cup of coffee in salute. Rolling her eyes she came back up the steps and gave him another hug,
"I know I keep saying it but please be careful. If anything happens I'll try to be over as quickly as I can. You'll have your servant to protect you but even then I'm still going to be-"
"Worried about me," Micheal hugged her back making sure to squeeze a bit, "As you have always told me its a parents job to worry over their kids. Now go~," Micheal made a shooing motion with his free hand as he smirked at his mother, "I'm sure the Association has familiars watching the house like a hawk to track you so you best be going before they find another bullshit thing to pin on you."
Amelia let go and reached up to pinch his cheek,
"Language."
Micheal stared at his mother incredulously,
"You do not get to tell me that anymore after what I heard you say in your workshop."
Amelia rolled her eyes and walked away waving farewell behind her. Micheal stayed at the door until he stopped seeing the dust kicked up from the SUV. He took another swig of his coffee and went back into the house making sure to lock the door and set up every bounded field and ward the mansion had. He finished his coffee and went to the Lafaire vault to get the relic Arnehearte had sacrificed himself to ensure Micheal was able to retrieve.
He had a summoning ritual to perform.