Chapter Text
I don’t know how most people find out about the Holy Grail War, but for me it was the dream that started it.
The world swam around me, distorting at the edges, and I blinked to try to clear my head. Wherever I looked the room came into focus, but the blurring and warping stayed in the corners of my vision, and I had to let out a slow exhale and force myself to ignore it to continue scanning my surroundings. I was in a place that looked like the living room of my basement apartment, or at least it did when it was in focus— the old, worn-out bookshelves next to the wall were there, and so were my myriad rugs and second-hand furniture, in the exact same places as I remembered them being. A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace. At first glance, nothing but the way it warped seemed out of the ordinary.
At first glance. But I’m a wizard, and we’re prone to paying a little more attention to things than most folks. And plus, the distortion had already tipped me off to the unreality of this place. Knowing I was dreaming gave me a little bit of an edge playing spot-the-difference.
I turned in a circle, then settled my eyes on the fireplace and focused as hard as I could. I drew my will up through my body, the room got even sharper and clearer— and I finally caught on to what was bothering me.
I wasn’t warm.
I took a step forward, then another, bringing me right to the brickwork in front of the hearth and confirming my suspicions. A normal fire would have made the room warmer as I moved towards it, but here the temperature stubbornly refused to change as I got closer. It was like it was only a semblance of a fire, one that gave off no heat.
I squinted down at the fire, then squatted down next to it, staring into the flames. The skin of my left hand seemed to tingle as I did, but it was less a physical feeling and more a remnant of remembered pain—a vampire’s lackey with a flamethrower had left me with a withered, melted-wax sculpture for a hand not too long ago, except for one perfectly healthy patch of skin in the shape of an hourglass in the middle of my palm. I was hard-pressed to feel anything anymore, fried as my nerve endings had been. It had been bad, bad enough that my doctor had wanted me to amputate, but I refused. It acted as a reminder of what could happen to me if I slipped up just the tiniest bit.
I pushed the thoughts of my injury away and concentrated on the fire with all of my senses, narrowing my gaze until it was practically all I could see. There was the slightest trickle of energy coming from it, but the nature of the magic—if it was magic and not just stray energy— was hard to determine. As I focused harder on it, I started to see how different it was from usual. There was a little bit too much green in the colors, a little too much blue, and some colors flickered that wouldn’t usually be found in a domestic fireplace. The dance of the flames swam before me, drawing my eyes in hypnotic patterns. I wanted to to reach in there and see if this fire burned, too. I wanted to just stick my hand in and—
I wrenched my slowly-moving good hand away from the fire and stood, deliberately not looking back down and trying to ignore the terrified little voice that had just started gibbering in fear within me. This clearly wasn’t a normal dream, which meant the compulsion and the danger were both real and both bad news for me. Compulsions that strong don’t usually get to me in my dreams… unless someone else is in there with me. Unfortunately, I knew exactly who that someone would be.
See, a little while before I had made a mistake that had gotten a carbon-copy of a fallen angel’s consciousness imprinted in my psyche. Since then she had been trying to get me to go full Dark Side, tempting me with anything she thought would work; generally with power, but sometimes with… other things. I hadn’t given in yet, but I knew she took the view that it was just a matter of time.
Could have been worse, I guess. The thing currently residing in my head was dangerous as hell, but she was nothing compared to the real deal, which was currently sealed in a silver Roman denarius and buried under some concrete in my sub-basement lab. She could twist my perceptions all she wanted, but she didn’t truly have power over me.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself.
As I thought more about that fact, I felt anger begin to bubble and rise inside me. She might not have had power over me, but she sure as hell showed no qualms about warping as much of my mental state as I let her.
“Lasciel,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice, but the sound echoed more than it should have in the tiny space, hard anger underlying it like bedrock. “Get over here. Now.”
There was a puff of cool, dry air against the back of my neck, and then a smooth, melodic voice came from next to my ear. “Yes, my host?” Only three words, but Lasciel somehow made them sound like they were wrapped in silk.
It only served to piss me off more. “What,” I said, “the hell do you think you’re doing?” The end of my sentence came out as a barely-intelligible snarl, and I clenched my one good fist so hard I could feel my knuckles turn white. I turned to look at her.
Lasciel tilted her head, her wavy, strawberry-blonde hair cascading down her bare shoulder as she did. She appeared as she usually did, a fresh-faced and gorgeous woman dressed in an outfit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a statue of a Greek goddess but sure as hell looked out of place against the backdrop of my home. Her blue eyes were normally wide and sincere, but now they were narrowed in confusion. She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this,” I spat, gesturing towards the fire. Her eyes followed my hand, then widened. “What makes you think that I’m going to fall for that? And for that matter, what makes you think that burning my other hand off would be more likely to make me walk down your path? I—“
She cut me off. “This is not my doing.” Lasciel stepped closer, looking directly up into my eyes.
She was one of the few who could do that without fear; anything with a soul that spends more than a second or two looking into a wizard’s eyes triggers what’s called a soulgaze automatically, and both of you get a peek into each others’ psyche. (When people get a good look at mine, they tend to go pale. I don’t know what they’re looking at in there, but I don’t envy them. It can’t be pleasant.)
The difference between them and Lasciel was that Lasciel didn’t have a soul.
I looked down into her eyes, still sparkling in the strange firelight despite her suddenly serious demeanor. “I,” she repeated, “am not responsible for this dream. Which means that something else is reaching out to you. Do you truly believe that I, one who has seen the breadth of the damage your injury has done to your mind, would believe that harming you in that same traumatic manner again would turn you to my side?”
“You know, that’s exactly the kind of the thing I can picture you doing,” I said, but my words rang a little hollow. Her demeanor didn’t sway me, but what she was saying made just a bit too much sense. She was right; my injury had… caused problems. Recreating it in this kind of dream-world, where physical harm might or might not carry over into my life, would not end in a very cooperative Harry. It might not even end with a very sane Harry.
A hint of an angry blush crept its way onto Lasciel’s face at my words, tinging her cheeks pink. “Mortal, I have been tempting minds for longer than your civilization has existed. I would not be so clumsy in my seductions.” She exhaled slowly, then gave me a smile, her perfect lips curling slowly upwards. “You think so little of me.”
I shuddered at the reminder, then shook my head. “Fine. If you’re not the one doing this—“ I gestured around at my warped apartment, “— then who is?”
“I do not know.” She looked around too, then down at the fireplace, then over at my open bedroom door, then down at the fireplace. “If you wish, I can examine the compulsion placed around the fireplace for you. Perhaps I can glean enough information that the spell can be traced backwards.”
I hesitated, then nodded. Lasciel nodded back at me, then kneeled down on the hearth and stared into it much like I had.
Lasciel cut a striking figure as the firelight played over her, bathing her in a pattern of light and shadow that constantly changed. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, right up until she jerked back and gasped, her eyes opening in surprise. She shoved herself away from the fireplace and stood up, stumbling a few steps backwards and into me. Instinctively I took her by the shoulders, steadying her. Her skin was warm against my hands, her breathing fast. After a moment she looked up at me again. “My host,” she said, her voice hoarse. “It is not what you think it is.” She let out a pained groan, and I saw that her legs and hands were starting to become transparent. When she spoke again, she sounded like she was straining to do so from a long way away. “It…. does not…. want me… to interfere… with… the selection process…”
“Wait, what? What selection process?” Out of reflex I looked for my staff and blasting rod, but of course they weren’t there. In my arms, Lasciel continued to fade.
The fire seemed to jump in height and intensity, and Lasciel moaned again, her form going limp. For a spectral being she was surprisingly heavy, but getting lighter by the second. “Look,” she at last managed to say, pointing at the fireplace. And then she faded completely, leaving my arms empty.
I looked.
The fire caught me immediately. The gentle compulsion of before was gone, replaced with a powerful current drawing me in so fast that the world spun around me. I didn’t have time to stop myself before I was on my knees, shoving my right hand deep into the flames.
There was a flash of intense pain across the back of my hand, then a voice whispering in my ear, slipping into my mind through the red haze that was beginning to fill it.
Command seals implanted, the voice said. It was female, but different from Lasciel’s— whereas Lasciel’s voice was smooth and silky, this voice just felt cold. Master candidate selected. Holy Grail War: commence.
Then it stopped, and the compulsion and the dream both broke.
I gasped and opened my eyes into the pre-dawn dark of my apartment, clutching my hand to my chest and breathing heavily. My whole body was shaking and my eyes stung something awful. The pain was beginning to subside, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t bad. It could mean it was worse. I swallowed hard, briefly imagining what it might be like to have two non-functional hands instead of one. Then I took a deep breath and looked.
My hand looked just as pink and healthy as it had before it had gone into the dream-fire. I drew back slightly in confusion, then wiggled my fingers. “What?” I muttered to myself. Confused, I flipped my hand over and stopped dead.
There were three symbols in red on the back of my hand, like tattoos. They didn’t have the irritated, raised appearance of new tattoos, though; they looked established, like they had been there for a very long time.
I had never seen them before.
I brought my hand closer to my face and examined the marks closely. The first was a circle, surrounding the other two, which were both twisting, multi-pointed marks that within it made up what seemed to be a stylized pentagram design echoing the one I wore on my necklace. I flexed my hand one more time, making sure everything worked properly, then sighed. Being marked in your dreams is possible, but it was almost never this literal. I toyed with the idea of asking Lasciel if she knew anything about it, but hesitated. She might have the answers I wanted, but… I remembered the way she had faded. Lasciel had looked like something was tearing her away. Could she be gone? Could I entertain the hope of finally being free?
I shook my head in resignation, then stood. It seemed unlikely that Lasciel was gone for good, even after something had invaded my mind like that, but judging from what had happened she might be out of commission for a while. In the meantime, I would have to get help from other quarters. Slowly, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I walked out of my room and into the living room, which was considerably messier than the one in my dream had been, but also empty of everyone other than my dog, Mouse— my brother Thomas must have been out for the night. I felt a pang of worry, but tried to brush it away. He was fine. He was probably fine.
Yeah, maybe I wasn’t convincing myself, but what else could I do?
Mouse raised his head and let out a tired, doggy noise as I uncovered the trapdoor to the subbasement, then decided he didn’t need to be involved and laid back down, curled up on the couch. He stayed sleeping as I opened the trapdoor and descended the ladder into my laboratory.
Calling it my laboratory made it sound like something out of a pulp sci-fi book, but I guess it looks the part in some ways— shelves lined with magical instruments, artifacts, and containers full of ingredients for potions lined the walls, and books and research notes were strewn about on the shelves and in some cases on the floor. But given the candles haphazardly placed around, the whole thing is less science fiction and more below-sea-level fantasy. On the far end of the long work table that divided my lab, there was a blank patch of concrete floor with a ring of silver about two and a half feet in diameter set into it. The concrete within the ring looked fresher than the rest of the floor, and I shuddered as I tore my eyes away from the space where Lasciel’s coin lay buried.
Turning my thoughts away from Lasciel and towards more irritating sources of help, my gaze came to rest on the one shelf in my lab that didn’t match the others. It was bare wood, and on it rested several Victoria’s Secret catalogues, a few romance novels of the kind you can get for 50 cents at the used bookstore with a lot of lines about heaving bosoms, and a human skull bleached white with age.
“Bob,” I said. “Get up. I need you now.”
Orange lights flickered to life in the skull’s eyes. “Just for once,” Bob the Skull complained, “can you make me work a little harder to make fun of you, rather than pitching me a direct line like that? It’s too easy when you do!”
Bob’s not really a skull. He’s more like a spirit of knowledge and intellect contained within a skull, and while he can annoy me, he’s almost a friend and definitely an ally (at least, as long as I keep his vessel with me). Plus he’s got a trove of information that’s almost unrivaled, which doesn’t hurt.
I rolled my eyes. “Forgive me for not giving you quality ammunition. It’s been a long night.” I pulled a chair out from my workbench and sat down heavily on it. “Do you know anything about something called a Holy Grail War?”
At that, Bob laughed. “Wow, and here I thought you were going to actually give me a hard question to answer this time! Yeah, I know about the Holy Grail Wars.” He put emphasis on the last word. “There’s been way more than one. Nasty business, most of the time, but the reward’s worth it. I mean, wishing for anything you want?” The skull’s eyelights shone a bit brighter. “I know what I would wish for—“
I waved my hand. “Don’t want to hear it. Start from the beginning. What do you mean by “wishing”?”
Bob sighed, then started talking slowly and clearly, as if he expected me to be taking notes for a test later on. “The Holy Grail War is basically a wish machine. It was developed a long time ago by a bunch of mages—“
“You mean wizards,” I interjected.
Bob gave me a dirty look. “I mean mages. No one knows exactly if they were wizards or warlocks or if some of them weren’t mortal at all, but they were all capable of doing magic in some capacity. In some accounts one of the original ones was even a vampire using a bunch of energy they gathered from humans to fuel the ritual. In any event, they wanted a wish granted, and they figured out that the only way to do that was using the Holy Grail.”
“Hold it,” I said, grabbing a notepad and pencil and beginning to scribble this down. “The actual Holy Grail? The cup that caught the blood of Christ?”
“No, not exactly. It’s more like an intensely powerful magical artifact nicknamed the Holy Grail because of its power. Get it?”
“Not really, but keep going.” I motioned with my pencil.
Bob snorted, which was a trick without a nose. “Of course it doesn’t make sense to you, blockhead, but trust me on this one. It’s not the actual Grail. That’s tucked away somewhere else, and while it most likely has intense magical power, faith magic isn’t really the same as this thing. The Grail for the Holy Grail War requires a ton of magical energy to power up, but once it does it can basically take any wish you give it and brute-force its way through granting it.”
I nodded along. “Okay,” I said. “Where does it get the magical energy, though?”
“See, that’s the thing.” Bob made a noise like he was sucking in air. “The original founders of the Grail War decided that the best way to do this would be to summon beings that are, essentially, ghosts of historical or mythical figures. They’re usually called Heroic Spirits, and they exist sort of outside time. Most of their stuff is irrelevant, so I’m not gonna go into it unless you desperately need to know, which I’m assuming you don’t.” Bob paused.
“When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me,” I said automatically. “But you’re right, I don’t need the details.”
“Good. Alright, so they created a method for summoning Heroic Spirits, but also a method of pouring basically a ton of power into them and transforming them into something more… corporeal. Then they’re called Servants, and they’re each bound to an individual Master. Most of the power involved in their summoning comes from the surroundings, but some of it comes from within the mage who summons the Servant, and from there on they’re mostly powered by the mage’s inherent energy. There are usually seven classes of Servant summoned in the Grail War: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. Sometimes there are extra classes, but they’re mostly irrelevant. I guess the only one that matters is if something’s weird with the Grail War, in which case a Ruler class gets automatically summoned to mediate. Sorta like a fail-safe.”
“Hold on a sec.” I scribbled down the list. “What determines the class a Servant is summoned in?”
“Lots of things,” Bob said cheerfully. “But mostly it depends on weapon use, how they were in life, and general temperament. Saber, Lancer, and Archer are mostly what they sound like— swords, spears, bows. I guess Archers could use pretty much any projectile weapon, but mostly bows. The others are a little bit harder to pin down. Rider mostly has to do with— you’re a huge nerd, right? You play table-top RPGs?” I glowered at the skull, but he ignored me. “Think of it like vehicle proficiency. Having notable riding skill and being able to use it. Casters do magic, but not magic as humans think about it. They’re usually people who were creative or scientific types in life if not outright mages. Basically, if they weren’t powerful magically in life, that’s how their impact gets interpreted when they’re summoned. Assassins are mostly killers with a shrouded identity or killers who committed a notable murder and didn’t get caught.”
“And Berserkers?”
“Berserkers are a weird one. What’s up with them is that they’re insane. No matter what they were actually like in life, if their legend says they went mad, their madness can become a fundamental part of their identity and allow them to be summoned as a Berserker. A lot of them aren’t coherent, and the ones that are don’t make a lot of sense—if you want to understand one you’ve got your luck cut out for you. What’s interesting is that Servants can kind of be force-summoned as Berserkers.” Bob was getting more and more animated as he spoke. “See, if you add some lines to the summoning, you can kind of bring out the madness part in a Servant that might otherwise be summoned as a different class. Then you get a Servant that’s basically a tank, point them at the enemy, and let them go wild. Impressive, right?”
I shivered slightly. Plenty of people I’ve known have been willing to call me mad, and they weren’t completely wrong; I knew what it was like to go a little crazy. The idea of being stuck like that just because someone wanted me to be… wasn’t appealing, to say the least. “No, Bob,” I said. “Not cool.”
“Oh.” Bob cleared his non-existent throat. “Anyways, the point is that these seven are summoned by seven Masters who control them with the use of things called command seals.“ A chill ran down my spine as I remembered the cold voice in my dream. Command seals implanted. Master candidate selected.
“Bob,” I said quietly. “What determines who’s a Master and who isn’t?”
“Usually a bunch of people get chosen, and the first seven to summon Servants get chosen to participate in the Grail War. You can only really do the summons once every candidate’s gone up, though,” Bob said. His voice was way too perky for how I was feeling at the moment.
My belly felt cold, like I had just swallowed an ice cube whole. “And how can they tell if they’re a candidate?” I asked quietly.
Bob rolled his eyes. “Command seals, duh,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Each Master gets three. They’re a way to make sure your Servant doesn’t go rogue and kill you or something, or supply extra power, or make them do anything you want.”
I glanced down at my hand. “And they look like tattoos? On the back of the hand, in red?”
“Well, yeah. How’d you—?”
I held up my good hand and showed Bob the back. “I got a visit from something in my dream tonight. Woke up with these.”
“Oh. Oh,” said Bob. His eyelights expanded, giving the impression that his eyes had widened. “Damn, Harry, you must have attracted attention in a big way.” He whistled. “Wait, you know what this means, right? You have to participate!”
Bob was getting more and more excited, almost shaking in place on his shelf. I glared at him, then stood. “Absolutely the hell not. I’m not getting involved in anything this big if it doesn’t absolutely need me. And it doesn’t.”
“But Harry,” Bob whined, “any wish! Any wish you want!”
“I said no, Bob!” My voice was harsh. “I’m not doing this. Stop, period, end of road. I am not getting involved.”
There was a pause before Bob spoke again. “Even if you might have to?”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Bob said, “that a place usually has to be prepared for upwards of sixty years in order to be a site with enough magical energy for a Grail War to take place. Chicago, as far as I know, has not been prepared like that. Which means something’s up here. Something big.”
I swore and pounded my fist on the table hard enough that my hand hurt, my vision suddenly red with anger. “Something big? Something big? God damn it, I’ve had just about enough of big somethings going down in my town!” I didn’t realize I was yelling until I hit the end of the sentence. “I’m tired of cleaning up after other people’s messes—“
“But you’ll do it,” Bob said. His tone was level and matter-of-fact. “You can’t not do it. Face it, Harry, sitting around while the grown-ups play with fire just isn’t your style.”
There was a pause as I glared at Bob, but the anger was rapidly fading. He was right. Hell’s bells, he was right. I couldn’t just sit by and let things happen. It wasn’t in my nature.
Bob watched me expectantly until I sighed in resignation. “Fine. Fine. You’re right.”
“Yes!” Bob crowed. “He admits it! You’re gonna do it!”
“I’ll do it,” I said, “but only once I get more information. You said mages made the original Grail War. Were any of them White Council?”
“Oh, probably. They might have records, but they’re a bunch of stodgy bastards—“
“Stodgy bastards I can deal with,” I said. I sighed again. “What time is it?”
“Hey, don’t ask me. I’m a spirit of intellect, not a clock.”
“Yeah, yeah. You just resent being used as one.” I checked my watch, then groaned. 4:50 am. Middle of the night for me, but unfortunately a perfect time to call some people I knew. Even if all I really wanted was to try and go back to sleep.
“Bob,” I said, “do me a favor and be quiet. I’m gonna make a long-distance call.”