[Salone]

With a gust of wind the windows were thrown back. The air rattled the mannequin from its balance, and its form was mere dust before it reached the floor.

Upon the night sky, the ash whirled and drifted downward. In to the drains and sewers it went, down in to the bowels of the city. And as Rasputin moved, he labored.

He dug. And yet he did not. He burrowed, but did not disturb. Deeper in to the ground, Rasputin channeled his strength in to these holes that were not. It outgrew its definition, shaping and molding to become a series of passages. They crisscrossed, running in to each other, spiraling out deeper in to the lower groundwork, tendrils of hollowed halls snaking around the hallowed walls of the palace, only to branch further outward. The tunelling voids grew slowly as the hours progressed, feeling tenderly through the works and infrastructure of the city that lay before them. They pressed in to nooks and crannies, mere inches to basements and cellar doors, of forgotten Avignon passages and ducts and sewers. Openings that could be cut off or exposed at a moment's notice. For the limited time he had, Rasputin worked. It was crude, and yet refined in its simplicity. For everywhere but the grounds of the palace and the nearby church he could feel the footsteps and life of all. He extended his lair's roof to mere feet and inches to the ground where he could, sensing the slice of city teeming above him.

For the time being, he would do as he was told. He would watch. He would observe. All would stand above him, as so many had thought they had done before. All would trod above his sanctum of twisted paths that played mockery to those above. He would note from where each Master approached as they entered the area above him. And after business was over and when the time was right, he would see where they ran to.

Rasputin's grin was lost to the shadows in which his sightless ash resided. He would be among the station that mankind had forgotten had once been theirs. He waited. For the time being, that is what he would do. Rasputin would be waiting.

And always watching.

[Salone]

"Think so eh? You're a lady full of surprises."

Isaac took a bite from his candy bar, studying the demons and the Servant as he chewed ponderously.

"No, I don't think we should unleash them just yet. As much as I would enjoy laying waste to the others, we're bound by a few rules. One of them is no mucking about with the other blokes until some sort of awkward meet and greet on holy ground tomorrow. So, we've got a night to strategize, and er...get to know each other, I suppose. What all do you know about the modern world anyway?"

[Gallagher]

The bruises appeared shortly after Jasper and Benedict had asked him. The Holy Grail War. A fight for an object that was said could grant any wish that was asked of it. A true prize, for any mage that was willing to risk their life in the pursuit of it.

"Will you join?"

Erik had no wish. He had everything he wanted, here in the Clock Tower. He could live, and he could study, and there was nothing else he could want.

"A lot of resources have been spent on you as it is, after all."

It looked a bit like a gecko. His hand raised to the overhead light, he blinked at the faint red marks. White spots danced on the edges of his vision, where the lamp shone from around his fingers. Erik had found his proper clothes and started to pack his supplies when he'd noticed it. A gecko. Or, maybe a rabbit.

Clouds looked different from above. It wasn't a long flight, but it was long enough for his eyes to get tired. Scraps of paper and a couple stained napkins littered his lap, each with intricate summoning circles drawn onto them. It would be important to get it right the first time. He had to practice. There was nothing to do for those two hours, nothing but practice and watching the clouds. He could probably make clouds of his own, if he practiced. Water wasn't his best element, but he'd been getting better with it. Maybe he could keep one in a jar.

He may not have spoken a word of French, but Erik, bags and all, managed to find a small place to eat in time for dinner. There was a house he'd been told he could set up in, but it was already far too late in the evening for that. The mana here was much different than home. Stagnating. There weren't mages here to make the earth breathe, to use its power and remind it, every now and then, to freshen the air.

There was enough money for a room in a nearby hotel. The house could wait for another day. Erik's bags went unpacked and his clothes unchanged when he fell into bed.

He had no wish. But he was to summon his servant that day. He sat in bed, his legs crossed under him, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he considered what the day held. There wouldn't be time for breakfast if he was going to get everything ready. He didn't like skipping breakfast.

The bed was pushed up as close against the wall as it would go, the small table and pair of chairs that had once sat at the window now shoved out of the hotel room completely. The entire floor was taken up by the circle he'd drawn, the same one he'd been drawing for three days. The catalyst, given to him by Benedict, was prepared in the center of it all. He was certain nothing could go wrong. Every step, every line, was as perfect as he could possibly make them.

Erik hoped it wouldn't be a rabbit.

[Gallagher]

The ritual was a complete success, in no small part to her beloved Mousse. The War, the Grail, and Lucienne's very future were guaranteed.

Except.

"You- You filthy little beast!" the woman screamed, the furious flick of her wrist making a glob of pus and congealed blood slide down her fingers and squelch onto the floor. Her perfect, unstoppable Servant had splattered the room and all of its charmingly fake decor with rot. Worse yet, her frock was ruined, and not even her perfume could cover the stink. She gagged and covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

Luci's little Mousse, on the other hand, was content with licking dark stains off of the floor.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

"Yes, now that you mention it, I do feel a strangely powerful urge not to act. Am I invited to this soirée of yours? I'd like to meet the putain-petit who thinks she can compel me. You just know it's a woman. They're all jealous, all begging me for love potions, and then they come back asking for poison to kill their paramours!"

Catherine stares blankly at her Master for a second. "What was your question again? Oh, this modern world. The... Grail... if we must name it, saw fit to educate me about the nature of the times. I suspect this country is just as corrupt as the last time I appalled it with my presence. We'll find out, I suppose."

With a wave, La Voisin dismisses her familiars and takes a seat for herself. "And what of you, monseigneur? What do you know of this world? Do you know what men and women will do to each other, in the decadence of too much time? Do you know the name of La Voisin? Why exactly are you seeking that execrable chalice?"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Having successfully conquered the closet (by definitely not melting the door off its hinges), the great wizard now explores the cathedral at large. It's fittingly ostentatious, one thing the French are good for, she supposes. The Grail should have no trouble manifesting here.

But what to do about all the people?

"Hmm..." she mutters, striking a pensive pose while she studies the various nobodies gawking at the architecture. And that one ill-mannered lad gawking at her. "Go ahead and stare!" she shouts at him from across the vestibule. "It's not like I dressed myself!" Hmm... I wonder if I'm cute. I bet I'm cute. I should find a mirror.

Merlin walks off toward the deeper recesses of the church, away from the crowd. "Okay, now I'm supposed to do something. It's... it's... okay, let's try this."

The wizard squares herself, holding her left arm out and focusing her mana.

The sudden surge of godlike power knocks her off her feet.

"Ohhhhhhhhkay, I'm really, really badass. Got it." She climbs back to her feet and assumes the position once more. "Dialing it back just a hair, and there we go... ATTENTION ALL GRAIL WARRIORS (heheh, that's good), BY MY ULTRA-SPECIAL AMAZING META-GALACTIC COMMAND SEAL WITH GLITTER, I FORBID ANY OF YOU FROM FIGHTING UNTIL WE HAVE OUR MEETING TOMORROW. ...AND SOMEBODY BRING DRINKS! OKAY, THAT'S IT, SEE YOU SOON. ~Lin"

She lets out a contented sigh. "Okay that should do it, and as for the crowd, a simple bounded field ought to do the trick. That shouldn't hurt anything, right HG? HG? Aww, I guess you're busy. Oh well, what's the worst that could happen? ... ...okay, well, a lot of things, but I'll be careful! You just... keep doing your thing, summon those Servants. I'll be fiiiiiine. I'll be fine!"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Pelles took in the quarters into which his Master had elected to summon him. Lavish. Exorbitant, even. He had once lived in such halls, framed by every luxury, but such thoughts were those of Adam as he gazed upon the burning portico of Eden, shivering upon the wasteland steppe, beset by the world's predations -- the reminiscence of the damned.

No, far more close to his wretched heart was the recollection of Carbonec's silent corridors, the dust of decades gathering upon its irrelevant throne, the incessant sigh of the sea and its indifference to the pathos of his shore-side laments.

The Fisher King took in all that surrounded him, and decided in an instant: this woman did not know what it was to suffer.

So be it. For nigh a century, he had borne the guilt of Camelot's collective sins; the weight of one more soul would be nothing new.

He unflexed the fingers of his left hand and called it to him, the weapon, the Dolorous Spear. The Godslayer. Gripped it tightly, and felt the familiar bite of the thorns. Yes. With it in his grasp, there was no Servant, no Heroic Spirit conjured from the dross of time, that could stand against him.

Pelles watched fresh blood run from his hand, down the haft, tumbling to floor. Saw the ears of the witch's creature prick at the scent of his perpetual dying.

"I bleed for the wounds of the land," he observed, lifting his one functioning eye to meet his Master's aghast gaze. "And it seemeth your brachez hath the taste for it. Such is the plight of Man, is it not? Abominations though we be unto nature, it shirketh not to consume us. Do you not, also, find this just?"

[Gallagher]

Your brachez hath the taste for it.

Luci gasped and swept towards her familiar, scooping it off of the floor. "Mousse! Non!" The instant that the animal was in her grasp, however, she couldn't bare to hold it anywhere near herself, especially with its tongue lapping at the sticky mess on its nose. Mousse wiggled and squirmed with the pleased wag of its entire rear and the flutter of its wings. "You horrible little thing," Luci scolded, then looked back to her oozing mess of a Servant. "And you! You're ruining all of my plans!" Not to mention the frock that she'd worn for this very moment. "I am not going to spend my evening cleaning up your... your filth!"

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Pelles tilts his head to one side in consideration at the woman's outburst.

"Pray, forgive me, Mistress, how precisely may I make amends?" A welter of pale blood and infected ichor runs from the lesion on his thigh, down his leg to the floor. The muscles around his ruptured eye twitch in the approximation of a blink.

[Gallagher]

"I do not want to hear that tone coming from you! Amends? Honestly!" Luci huffed and stormed into the bedroom, where she dumped Mousse onto the bed. She smoothed her hands over her skirt before turning towards her Servant once again. "This is where I'm living, you know. I won't have you dripping everywhere and leaving that awful smell. Tidy yourself up!"

[Doctor Gabriel]

Mr. Kite’s teeth sank deep into the burger he’d procured from a local bistro he hadn’t bothered to get the name of. The deep crimson of the ketchup blob that oozed its way onto the corner of his mouth mirrored the hue and shine of the blood that danced from his palm like steam caught in a breeze above a hot spring in mid December. It swam through the air, conforming to the shape of the circle he’d found in his father’s journal before gently descending upon the same image caked in dried blood from the previous nights.

He’d spent almost every night in this fashion since his arrival in Avignon. Standing in the crudely furnished garage he’d procured to serve as his lodgings, illuminated by a menagerie of candles and lamps as his blood danced through the air before falling into the necessary shape and alighting on the concrete floor.

Hypothetically, he could have finished the circle in one night, but the journal had strongly warned against it. The repeated rituals served two purposes:

Firstly, ensuring that he didn’t risk dying of blood loss.

And secondly, ensuring that circle would be all the stronger from the layering.

It was the same principle as using multiple coats of paints. Ensuring the first wouldn’t be stripped away by the elements and adding to the deepness with each additional layer.

Shoving the last bits of beef and condiments into his mouth, Mr. Kite wiped his face with a thin paper napkin and bandaged the gash in his palm. He fell into one of the numerous armchairs that littered the abandoned auto repair shop and compared the symbols on the ground to the ones in the journal. Satisfied, he snapped the old leather bound tome shut and let out a deep sigh.

“Seven should be enough,” he muttered to himself before taking in the stage for the most important part of the ritual.

He liked Avignon. Having spent the majority of his adult life working in alleys, the cramped nature of the city felt welcoming to him. Originally, he’d rented an apartment to serve as his base of operations, but upon seeing how small the accommodations were and thinness of the complex’s walls, he informed the super he would not be staying there after all and shook her hand with an apology. The trickle of blood unleashed by the small prick on the underside of his ring told him that the woman also managed this abandoned mechanic’s shop and after some persuasion, he was able to convince her to rent him that space instead.

Thankfully, the space still had the running water and bathroom the workers and customers had used in it’s hayday. And though the plumbers had been hesitant and more than a tad perplexed when he asked them to install a shower in the old garage, a handshake and hefty sum of Euros was all he’d needed to assuage their concerns. So he’d spent his days furnishing his secret base with all the used furniture and appliances he could get his hands on and his nights repeating the ritual to craft the strongest summoning circle he could manage.

He eyed the clocks that adorned the walls around him. Nine out of twelve of them proclaimed the time 11:58 PM. He rose from his seat wearily and flipped to the needed page in the journal.

“Alright, let’s see if this works,” he spoke to the empty room.

He was about to begin before remembering that he’d forgotten an important detail. His bandaged hand grabbed a remote from a nearby table and a button press later the garage was filled the cacophonous thumping and guttural wails of Rage Against The Machine.

“Perfect,” he grinned to himself as he stretched and adjusted his posture to ensure the blood and magic circuits that it utilized would flow easily.

He extended the hand that had minutes before unleashed the dancing blood that made the circle he now loomed over and raised the journal to his eyes before he began reciting the words of the summoning between the cries of the ever enthusiastic Zach de la Rocha.

“Heros antiguis.”

“Fuck you, I won’t do what ya tell me…”

“Audient vocem sanguinis mei.”

“Fuck you, I won’t do what ya tell me…”

“Veni foras! Enim sanguis meus novi postulata…”

“Fuck you, I won’t do what ya tell me!”

“Victoria!”

“Fuck you, I won’t do what ya tell me!”

“Servus meus es tu! Et ego…”

“FUCK YOU I WON’T DO WHAT YA TELL ME!”

“VIR DOMINUS!”

The red glow of the circle illuminated the smug grin upon Mr. Kite’s face as he quivered in anticipation to see what great hero his blood had called forth.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

The Fisher King stares at her for a moment longer, bows his head and suppresses a sigh. She is his Master, after all.

"Merely know, my lady, that covering such wounds doth naught for the anguish that I bear. I prefer to wear my suffering as a mantle, spun by cruelest fate, but for thy sake, I shall gird myself more befitting of thy noble company."

Pelles slowly raises his head, and as he does, power streams from his sores, his lacerations and stigmata, his eyes and mouth, forming around his cadaverous frame in a chrysalis of dun feathers. It lasts merely an instant, the inverse molting sheathing his entire body until the magic subsides, taking form and hardening into his kingly armor. So very, very regal...

Fresh blood runs from beneath the crown of thorns upon his brow, trickling into the ruin of his eye, down his stained and battered armor. Such as he is, it will have to suffice.

[Salone]

"Some birds can be a bit barmy, aye. What do I want with the Grail eh? That's...a good question."

What did an old tosser like him want with the Grail? He had spent all this time wondering if the thing was even real, he had never even thought that far ahead. He had always been wrapped up in his work, he had never given himself time for a wife. There had been girls, yes, but never one to bring home. No time for a family. He had grown old now, old and alone with his thoughts. He pondered for a moment as he chewed at his candy bar.

"I think" he said, "I would wish for a lot of Curly Wurlys. Not as a serious wish mind you. I just don't know what to want for in this world. Who knows how it grants wishes? You wish for peace, peace can be achieved by wiping out all life. Ask to remove all the bad from the world and people can become soulless vegetables. I don't really know how a magic cup tackles conceptual wish granting, but until I know I plan to keep my wishing very materialistic. I'm not much of a greedy man mind you, I just haven't the foggiest. Ah well, I suppose there's time, right?"

[Doctor Gabriel]

Most Servants are summoned into our plane of reality with at least a general idea of their purpose in being there and the state of the world they’re entering.

Don Quixote was not most servants.

As such when the eyes of the aging Spaniard standing proudly in his shoddily homemade suit of armor blinked open to take in the room, his first reaction was to let out what must have sounded to him a triumphant laugh. In reality, it was closer to the cackle of a mad man.

“Rejoice, people of the world!” he declared to the empty room with a sweeping gesture, “For the Holy Grail has bid Don Quixote de La Mancha to return from Avalon and once again battle the forces of evil on God’s Green Earth!”

The self proclaimed knight stroked his greying goatee in a pensive sense of accomplishment before finally noticing that he was not alone. The Mad Knight beamed and embraced the young man like a long lost brother.

“Sancho!” he proclaimed, pulling away to get a good look at the lad, “My the years have been kind to you! I dare say you look younger than when we parted!”

Don Quixote suddenly remembered himself and quickly adopted a chivalrous bow, still grinning like an idiot.

“I am overjoyed that I was summoned by you, my friend! El Santo Grial has selected me to be the Saber at your side! I will serve you with honor and unshakable loyalty as you did I in life!”

He was on his feet again in the second, striding proudly toward the exit while grinning back at his master.

“I almost feel sorry for our opponents! That heavenly chalice is as good as ours! Come Sancho, I shall saddle Cervantes and we will make haste-”

THUD

Saber was suddenly on his back, having failed to notice the door he’d just slammed into in his excitement. He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms with a pout, still staring at the ceiling.

“Ah, our enemies are clever! Careful Sancho! Some dastardly mastermind has trapped us with a most deadly snare: a door!”

[notDEADyet]

Easy peasy. No one’s looking. Don’t make it obvious. It certainly wasn’t the first thing she’d stolen. But, perhaps the most secure. She had taken care that no one really saw her when she made off with her new item a week ago. If only someone could use, say, magic, that sure would be nice.

She bit her lip to keep from smiling, she didn’t need anyone in the station stopping to talk to her. Not the security guard she just passed, not that shifty looking man in a suit. Now,helooks suspicious. They might ask to look in her bag. And that might, probably, lead someone to finding her newly acquired piece of paper.

A special piece of paper.

Probably.

No, no. She smoothed her hand over the strap of her bag, looking perfectly natural as she walked out onto the street. Special.

Ell wasn’t an art historian. She wasn’t any sort of historian. In actuality, giving her any manner of official title would be a serious misstep on the part of someone's administration team. On her best days she was a freelancer. On her worst, a homeless mage. She'd had enough forethought to do just a small amount of planning. She'd planned out the theft. She'd planned out a place to live. That really was all the planning she had gone through. Her response to being called out on such a lack of plans was always the same. I hate being tied down. As true as that might have been, the honest truth was that she couldn't be bothered.

She’d never even been to France. She'd never been a lot of places outside the States. The continental states. She pressed her fingers against a yellow stone necklace, Sammy'd like Hawaii. Not being able to speak French would, more than likely, not end well for her. It might have been easy enough to grab a recording that taught basic French before she left. But, she hadn’t.

Not that it really mattered, she had been far too busy on the three hour ride over.

With a sudden jolt Ell sat straight, hair a mess from being rolled against the back of her seat, a single line of drool having made it’s way down her chin.

Attractive.

So busy. It was too late for that, though. It shouldn’t really matter. The nice couple she had rented the studio from had spoken English. Hopefully anyone else she needed to talk to would also.

Not being arrested on her way to her new home for the duration of the War was a good sign. “Won’t be arrested,” she muttered, unpacking her single bag carefully, “Won’t be eviscerated summoning my new friend.” She took the sketch page out of the folder she’d been keeping it in. “Pft,” she nodded, satisfied with it’s state, “Not even smudged. I’m amazing.”

After patting her own back she cleared space in the sitting room, hoping the nice couple wouldn’t notice the mess she was about to make. “I’ll just repaint… Re… Put new hardwood…” She shrugged and began putting together what she’d need to get things right.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

La Voisin is silent for a time, considering her Master's words. "If you've no use of the Grail, I'll happily take charge of our wish. Twisting the artifice of God to some unholy purpose would be profoundly satisfying." She snickers at the thought. "The hour grows late, though. I will take leave of this flesh while you rest, and keep watch for assailants."