FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 77: War and Forge Without Love

12:02am

Shenghuo entered the basement chamber of the old building. According to old local history, the chapel had once been a winery, but a drought had killed the plants and the industry moved along. The vineyard became a graveyard, and the farmhouse became a steeple, leaving only this cellar behind.

You could still make out the wooden supports in the walls where barrels once laid, but now there was more than enough to distract the eye, such that these remnants of the past faded into the background. Specifically, this was the front half of the long room which had been turned into his workshop.

While the typical "workshop" of a Mage was closer to a library or a study, filled with books, journals, and odd knick-knacks, forgetting the odd bubbling cauldron or mysterious vials, his was far closer to the layman's idea of the word. Against the wall was a long, wooden table adorned with, yes, mysterious vials and substances, but also tools, scrap metal, and half-complete projects so newborn that it wasn't yet clear what they would become. Around it, on both walls of the space, were metal lockers: two adjacent and thin, and two wide-built ones across the room.

Beyond these were the usual suspects for a Mage: circles drawn across the floor in chalk, especially in the unoccupied half, journals and pages, handwritten and acquired, and script teeming with magic better left unspoken. The only oddity that remained was his sister: bound in chains and hanging upside-down from the rafters like a butterfly in a spider's web.

She was blindfolded and gagged, and hung still as a corpse. Only the almost-invisible swaying of the chains proved she was still alive.

He pulled out the chair at his work table and wrapped his legs around it. Sitting with his chest against the back, he considered his prisoner. He marveled at her stillness: he hadn't been at all quiet or subtle, but she remained as she was. Perhaps she was unconscious, but she was a soldier trained in mystic arts and possessed such control of her body that even her blood flow was hers to will and bind as she pleased. It was more likely, he concluded, that she was choosing to remain still and to pretend she wasn't aware. He only wondered whether this was an act of rebellion, fear, or an attempt to lower his guard.

'Pitiful. Like a wounded animal.'

With a turned nose he stood straight and opened the locker immediately next to the table, pulling three objects from the perches and laying them on the table with a thunk, clatter, and tink respectively.

A voice echoed into his skull without warning, 'Master, Rider seems very insistent on Lancer, what should I do?'

"Exactly what we discussed: nothing. Don't imply that we know anything at all, and keep the conversation elsewhere when you can."

'But don't you think it's on purpose? I think they're trying to turn this alliance on us.'

"Of course they are: it's obvious. Lancer would've told them. Let them be as petty as they like; they still need us. We only need to keep things cordial temporarily before the war returns in full. Follow my orders, and all will be according to my plan. Asking questions only wastes time."

He had made a point of speaking out loud, but there was still no response from his prisoner.

With the ice of his patience becoming colder and thinner, he returned to his table.

Shenghuo had no fear of Caster. The strength of a Caster extended only as far as the boundaries of the territories they established. As magecraft revolved around the abuse and deliberate misreading of the universe's laws, the mystic boundaries that Caster-Class Servants and Mages could create, including their workshops, allowed them to bend and break these rules further and add new rules on top of old ones. This also meant that the true power of a Mage, and a Caster by extension, was limited heavily by location and terrain: things his Archer was not bound by.