Invasion and Insubordination

[old_man_acht]

Acht storms down the central stair, practically vibrating with power; the air around him shudders as though with distant thunder, and the chandeliers flare to light as he passes. As his shoes strike the tile of the entry hall, he raises his eyes to the door and calls, "Larasviel." The name is unmusical in his mouth, unemotional, without even the singsong cadence of a man calling his pet to heel.

Her name is a summons that cannot be disobeyed, and it never occurs to him to inflect it with a note of pleading.

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[hikikomoe]

Grandfather's voice resonates in her bones; even after he's spoken, she remains unquiet inside, as though the echo of his words still rings somewhere within her. The distance between this part of the forest and the castle is hardly long, but she is less able to measure the time. Counting her steps, or the beats of her heart, doesn't mark its passage sufficiently.

The doors open for her again, bolt themselves shut behind her. Lara stands in the foyer, her hands balled into fists at her sides, and stares up to where Grandfather is waiting for her.

[old_man_acht]

"You let the priest go," he says. An observer might think him entirely cool and composed--but even an observer could feel the blood rising unquiet in her veins.

[hikikomoe]

She steels herself not to shiver at the feeling, but her fists tighten even more, enough to press deep marks into her palms. "You gave me permission to make my own judgments as Caster's Master. So I did."

[old_man_acht]

"Explain your reasoning."

[hikikomoe]

"I did not judge him to be a threat." She bites her lip, where she bit it earlier this evening, and the tang of copper is sharper this time, more sour. "I know his face, and I can guess his capabilities. If I killed him, the Church would send another agent here." Her breath comes faster; so does her speech. "Perhaps several of them. Perhaps Executors. It would take time to discover who they were, and what they could do. And he told me he wasn't one, and I had no reason not to believe him."

[old_man_acht]

"And it would take time for them to learn of his death, and time for them to send Executors--time enough for us to finish the Grail War. Our victory in the Grail War would reduce their Executors to a negligible threat, and his interference jeopardizes our chance of success. Your caution has compromised us and done nothing to ensure our safety from the Church in the future. I find your judgment lacking, and so I intend to modify your judgment. Kneel."

[hikikomoe]

Her knees give way, almost before she processes the command. If there is pain, she barely registers it; her pulse is spiking, and her adrenaline with it, and removing it from her bloodstream takes more concentration than she is able to muster --

Lara's nails bite hard enough into her palms that they nearly break the skin. That pain doesn't register, either.

[old_man_acht]

He presses his palm to her forehead; his skin is cool and dry, but so is cold iron, his fingers close iron-like on her skull. He closes his eyes and sends power screaming along his circuits, interfacing with Larasviel at the point of contact.

If the lights flicker madly, he doesn't notice. If the clouds above the forest break into sudden rain, he neither hears nor sees the drops pattering against the windows. He is searching her as he would search an archive, seeking the repository of her Self and the document upon which her nature is written.

[hikikomoe]

Please, she thinks, sudden and wild and unbidden, please --

But the thought flickers and dies, and it's difficult to maintain any kind of conscious presence at all when the magics that hold her in place are changing.

[old_man_acht]

That please is a pathway that he can follow to its origin, to the set of codes that produces a frightened plea. It pleases him--after a detached, impersonal fashion--that he will not have to rewrite her blindly. He faces less potential loss of data, when he knows precisely what he means to reshape.

Fear creates a desire for safety; fear unlocks self-preservation, the program reads. This, Acht unwrites entirely. Fear creates a desire to preserve the Einzbern family by destroying its enemies, he codes in its place. Self-preservation is irrelevant; self-sacrifice is noble and permissible but not in itself desirable.

[37thstrategem]

"Master," Caster says, descending to the front hall from the grand stairs, "I have sent a--"

[old_man_acht]

He looks up, still flushed with power, circuits wide open and pupils contracted. "A bird?" he asks, when Caster ceases to speak, as though there is nothing at all unusual about the tableau upon which Caster has stumbled.

[37thstrategem]

Caster takes in the sight: Lara, collapsed on the floor, magic still cracking in the air around her, and his Master as nonchalant as ever over her. He remembers the sight of peasants looting corpses heedless of plague, fields of the pious dead.

"...Yes," he says, still stalled halfway up the stairs. "After the priest. He may go after the other masters he knows of and we would benefit from the intelligence."

[old_man_acht]

"A wise choice. Other Masters are likewise unlikely to be forthcoming with him, but identifying their weaknesses and the tenor of their lies will allow us to make useful projections regarding their strategies."

He cannot fail to notice that Caster has paused, arrested by what might be shock or horror. "Your Master's priorities have been adjusted," he says--softly, clearly intending to offer comfort, but without a trace of shame. "She will return to full functioning capacity as soon as she has integrated her new directives."

[37thstrategem]

His speaking of his daughter the way Caster speaks of the car and the camera and the projects in the basement. He reached inside her soul and adjusted it like gears. She is his daughter, by intention if not by blood.

Liu Bei once spoke of his addled son with regret for his stupidity, but never thought to reach inside and change him as if his were the hands of the gods.

"Master," Caster says, tense and careful because there is no sense in pretending that Lara commands him anymore if Acht commands her, "I would ask you to explain to me what you have done. I admit to some difficulty understanding how you can adjust her as such."

[old_man_acht]

He raises his brows as Caster drops the pretense. "She is a complex tool, fashioned from a very particular mold," he says, eventually. "We call her type the 'Justeaze' line, after the first model. They have been designed for the purpose of serving the Einzberns in the Grail Wars, and we have modified the design in order to make them more effective tools. If you think of a set of magic circuits as an irrigated field, and a homunculus as a sort of animated magic circuit, then the design is the pattern of channels through which the water flows. This design maps out the homunculus's capacities, her tendencies, and even such trivial matters as what brings her joy. I do not wish to imply that nurture has no role in shaping her; by analogy, nurture is drought or flood, sapping or filling the channels of her design. Larasviel, for example, was granted more than usual independence, and it shows in her reluctance to take orders. However, like my father before me, I maintain a working knowledge of the basic design, and I am capable of altering the flow when I find one part of the 'field' parched or flooded."

[37thstrategem]

"Forgive me," Caster says, "but I am aware of the magical dimensions. I have had much time to read here, after all. What I asked was how could you do it."

[old_man_acht]

"You ask me, ethically, how I could bring myself to reshape her." He turns to look down at Larasviel's crumpled form. "She is necessary to the Einzbern family's victory in the Holy Grail War--but like all homunculi, her life is limited. She cannot be sustained in this world because she was not born in it, but shaped of and held together by magic; when the priest spoke of how her magic felt different from any other person's, that is what he meant. Her magic felt like yours, Caster; it is all that she is. Everything that she is.

"Without the Third Magic, she will come apart, just as you will. The only way that I can preserve her life and the lives of the other Einzbern homunculi is to return the Third Magic to this world, and the only way that I can do this is to win the Holy Grail War for our family. If the question is an ethical one, then yes, I feel ethically justified in remaking her as a tool so that one day I will be able to remake her as a living human."

[37thstrategem]

Once, Caster stood in a tent, awash in prayer and magic that his life last beyond its means. He called on the forces in his own body and the spirits of the land around him to augment his own life and stave off the death of his age.

It did not work then. It may not work now. The Will of Heaven is inexorable, wishes or none.

"Then forgive me, Master," he says, "for thinking of her as one from the start, even knowing how she was created."

[old_man_acht]

"Tend to her, then, if you feel for her as though she is a human. I--" He hesitates. What comes next is an admission of weakness, but it cannot be a claim of strength no matter how he reshapes it. "I meant to think of her as a human, but I found myself incapable of it. I had too direct a hand in her design, and I can only see her as an abstraction. You met her fully formed; I labored over her for decades before we gave her shape. I look at her and see nothing but interlocking proofs and causal chains. Even when she takes on a life of her own, I may never be capable of seeing her as fully human."

[37thstrategem]

"Then she should not call you Grandfather," Caster says, and that is that.

He descends the stairs, coils of wind billowing through the flaps of his coat and the hem of his trousers. Acht stands aside once Caster is near enough to Lara to lift her up and carry her like a child, around the curving rail of the stairs and up them again.

When she wakes, she'll want to read.