Justabcheit von Einzbern

The Grail War has kindled quickly, and so it is for the best that Acht has thought better of ordering his father's documents shipped via train. Airplanes strike him as a highly unreliable mode of transportation, but this much he can say for them: They're fast.

He is at present bent over a stack of documents, hands closed in cotton gloves to preserve the paper, searching for that queer code of slashes that is Rider's native language. All around him, leather-cased chests and cardboard boxes lie waiting to be cracked open.

Acht would curse his father's prolific note-taking, were he not convinced that it will be the Einzberns' salvation.

The basement has become a second home to Jubstacheit, while outside the walls, the Grail War passes him by. He devotes himself to studying the films that Caster has taken of likely spots along the river, watching the passage of fishermen and children and young women traveling in twos and threes. Until his father's papers come, until Lara's birds have news to report, there is nothing to be done but brew pot after pot of tea and watch the flickering screen.

He can't remember when last he's slept. But for the regular chime of the clock, he'd lose all sense of time.