Forgotten But Not Lost

18

Rin left for the Tower right after talking to Shirou, bringing a backpack full of scribbled papers with her.

She got funny looks at the gate to the city, a lone mage leaving the city at such hours, but it wasn't difficult to get the gates to let her by. Shirou had already came through and they all knew that she was in his party. He also had quite the reputation among them, earned from carrying around enough weaponry for four people by himself. She told them that she wanted to test her Familiar Elemental's usefulness as a nighttime scout. Which wasn't entirely untrue. While she could handle three goblins by herself fairly easily now, she would rather not get into any trouble that night.
The sensory information she got from Kairi was very useful, but at the same time it was jarring. It followed its own rules so questions of depth and direction were sometimes hard to make out, and she hadn't yet figured out how to tell the difference between one living thing and another while using it.
In the end, she did bump into one sleeping goblin she had thought was just a dense bush. She instructed Kairi in how to use [Freezing Blood] and told the little Elemental where to fire. The Goblin woke up to having half its body encased in ice, and Rin finished the job with an [Earth Spike] through the head. It was good training for the Water Elemental, but Rin had to be careful just how much magic she used, because tonight she was probably going to need a lot of it.
Once she reached the Tower, she moved around behind it, away from the only exit and summoned Terra. It took nearly half an hour just to get the Elementals attention, then it took another half hour to explain to it how to use [Casting Earth] in order to make a flat surface. Even then, she had to kick it a few more times so that it would keep working. In the end, she got to have her ten-foot radius of perfectly flattened and hard ground without having to expend much of her own Magic but dealing with Terra had given her a headache.
With her job done and the only thing left to do was to wait for Shirou, Rin continue to teach Kairi new words and concepts as well as practicing with her how to tell distance. She got Kairi to throw water balls and try to hit small targets. It was enjoyable, watching the little Elemental playing with water, getting closer to the targets and feeling great joy or further away and having a small temper tantrum.
To most outsiders, it wouldn't seem like the little Elemental had any emotions at all. It didn't react the same way humans did. If Rin wanted Kairi to jump for joy, she would first have to teach Kairi the actions, probably by example, and then explain that she should do that action whenever she was feeling the emotion of joy.
Even so, Rin would say that Kairi was the most emotional being that she had ever met. With every moment that they were bonded, she could feel Kairi's even emotion flowing into her. It made her rather giddy, but it also made her school her own emotions, not wanting to taint the Water Elemental's purity. It was why she tried her hardest not to think about what she had seen with Shirou. Because it left her feeling confused and upset.
That scar. Something about that scar had entered into her mind and been rejected, just like when she had heard the word Archer. But just like with Archer, there was a physical medium within this world that made it difficult for the Counter Force to prevent her from thinking about it. With the idea attached to something in this world, the idea gained a meaning. It was just not necessarily the same meaning. Thus giving her both a sense of satisfaction at slipping something by the Counter Force, and made her frustrated to no end because she still couldn't do anything with it.
Scar.
What about the idea of a scar had the Counter Force been trying to erase from Rin's conscious mind.
She recognized Shirou's presence in the magical spectrum long before he reached her. His body had twenty-seven of those odd magical pathways she had noticed in many of the Crimson Moon members. However, she was confused as to why there was another living thing around the size of a man with him. It wasn't until he pushed himself through the bushes with a wheelbarrow full of the things she had asked for that she realized why there was something else alive.
"You brought an entire live Orc with you?" Rin asked, raising an eyebrow. The Orc let out a series of whimpers from its broken jaw. Though its jaw wasn't the only thing broken. It seemed that Shirou broken both of its arms and legs as well in order to insure the creature didn't try anything. "When I said we needed blood, I thought you would hunt a rabbit or something."
"I was going to be killing it anyways in order to get your crystal coins. As for why it is alive, I'm not too sure about how long it takes for blood to start clot after the heart stops." Shirou said with a shrug.
"Fair enough. Just try not to make a mess. Random blood splashes could ruin everything I'm planning on doing here tonight." Rin said before going to the wheelbarrow and starting to pull out the things she would need first.
"Don't worry. Shouldn't be too much different then bleeding a deer." Shirou replied, grabbing the Orc and hosting it out of the barrow, causing it to give a scream of pain. Shirou took it over to a tree where he hung it upside-down with some rope, put a tin bucket under its head and then slit its throat, finally silencing it.
"Just for the record, we are not eating that."
As it turned out, she had only needed around a quarter pint of blood where as the Orc had around two whole galleons in it.
She mixed it into a larger bucket along with measured quantities of the other ingredients as Shirou watched on. "So… what exactly are we doing?"
"I'm making a base which I can used to make a magic circle at that interact with the mana in the air. Its similar to the magic circles I make with my Elemental Magic, except that were the magical lines I make fade quickly, this paint base will last a few hours at the very least." Rin started to explain. "The coins are going to be a power source. I'm going to charge them with my own magic and then the circles I draw with use that power, so I don't have to concentrate on the amount of energy I am giving it all night. I can also use the crystals in order to store the information we gather during the night."
"Oh, I see." Shirou said, nodding his head. It did make a bit more sense, though he had no idea were the list of ingredients came from.
"No, you don't. Not yet, but I am about to show you." Rin said as she rolled up her left sleeve and held her arm over the bucket. "Kairi, I need you to activate it again."
The water elemental flouted over to Rin and placed a hand on top of Rin's arm. Shirou blinked in surprise as blue lines appeared all over Rin's arm. He felt like it was familiar but couldn't place it.
Rin said a few short words and sparks came from her hand, hitting the mixture inside of the bucket. The red and white of the blood and paint turned to a very bright shade of white as all of the bits of metal dissolved inside of them.
"Okay. So what was that?" Shirou asked, trying not to show just how shocked he really was.
"That was basic low-level alchemy. I dissolved all of the bonds holding the various ingredients together and mixed them into a more uniform solution." Rin said. All of those words felt like they should have been familiar to Shirou… but they weren't. "I don't blame you for not remembering any of it. I only know it because of this." Rin said as she held up her arm, the blue lines slowly fading away.
"And what is that?" Shirou asked, feeling like that was going to become his most used phrase tonight. Rin took out some brushes of various sizes and papers covered in notes, as well as lighting a torch to see by. Preparations complete, she got down on her hands and knees on the large flat surface and starting to draw out a Magic Circle.
"I honestly don't know. It is some kind of magical tattoo that is used to store magic energy and information. It isn't natural occurring, it's like someone grafted it into my body and connected it to my mind and soul. Unfortunately, information about itself isn't inside of this… thing." Rin admitted as she stared at her own arm. "All I know is that it contains a vast amount of information about magical theory, and formulas. So much that it would take me six straight months of writing just to write it all down. The problem is, as soon as I am no longer supplying it with magic, it cuts out and the Counter Force erases all of the information. This… Magic Tattoo, contains information about magic from our home world. The system of magic inside it is completely different than the stuff they used at the Mage's Guild."
"And you've just had this magical tattoo this entire time?" Shirou said.
"I didn't even know it was there until Kairi showed it to me. It can be activated by channeling magic into it through naturally occurring channels in my body, but I don't remember how to activate those channels. I have instructions on how to open them inside of the Magic Tattoo, but it takes time to learn. Right now, I'm having Kairi force the paths open whenever I need to access the information, but doing so is draining on her, so I need to learn to do it on my own if I want to have more ready access." Rin told Shirou as she worked. "It also gave me a chance to test a theory of mine. By writing down the information I learned from the tattoo, I can created an anchor for the information in this world, allowing me to relearn it, without having the Counter Force taking it away from me every time. I've been working all day, trying to sort through the information and copy down the most important things I could find. Which is when I found this particular Magic Circle."
"You're going to make me ask what it does, aren't you?" Shirou said quirking an eyebrow.
"It wouldn't be nearly as fun if you didn't." Rin admitted with a smile. "This Magic Circle will detect interactions between Parallel worlds. Apparently, whoever put this tattoo on me made sure it was full of information about Parallel world theory."
"That is… convenient." Shirou said more than a little surprised. No wonder Rin had been in such a rush earlier. She needed to have the circle set up before any sort of event happened that they would need to capture.
"Sadly, I can't open any sort of gateways myself, nor can I see what is happening in the world on the other side. I can only detect the connections and gain information about the relative distance in seventh dimensional space."
"Seventh dimension?" Shirou parroted, not sure he had heard her right.
Rin sighed. "Archer, it would take months to explain it all. Literally, months. I don't even understand most of it without having the Magic Tattoo activated." She said before returning to her work. "If you want I brought the notes on everything I've managed to copy down. They are in my backpack. Just read them quietly. If I make a single mistake I have to start all over."
Shirou nodded silently as went to her pack, pulling out a stack of around two hundred sheets of paper, each one with Rin's small script on it and a few hand drawn diagrams of magic circles. She really had been busy that day. And this was just from a few hours of working on it. If she wasn't exaggerating the quantity of information she had, then it was likely to be more than all the books the local Mage's Guild had put together.
Shirou tried to read it, but since they weren't in any particular order, he couldn't make heads or tails of most of the stuff. Some of it triggered that odd feeling that he should have known it, but didn't, but that was a very small amount. The only two things that got a good reaction from him were the mentions of [Structural Analysis], a basic spell that sort of kind of sounded like what he did with weapons, only with far less depth, and one other ritual based spell.
"Summon Servant." Shirou whispered to himself, tasting the words even as the back of his mind did cartwheels. Every word on the page seemed familiar but new at the same time. The pseudo gods empowered by Human belief, the crystallized legends that made up their weapons, the draining of energy by the Leyline by this Holy Grail thing that acted as the full source for the summoning, the command seals, the classes.
Caster, Rider, Berserker, Assassin, Lancer… Archer, and Saber.
Unlike all the other items in the stack of papers, this one seemed to have nothing to do with traveling between dimensions or basic magical theory. Rin must have picked it because it had felt like it had great meaning to her too.
"I didn't really understand that ritual to much." Rin said. "I copied it down because something about it seemed familiar to something in this world. Seven Servants and Seven Guilds. The Seven Guilds were all set up in honor of Heroes who took part in the fight against Undying. I was going to look into it later. Thought it might mean something."
It was an excuse, and a bad one. She was just trying to pretend that she didn't feel a strong attachment to the words. But Shirou could tell. After all, she did refuse to call him anything but Archer.
"I guess even if it does, it wouldn't get us any closer to our goal, so there is no point in pursuing it." Rin said with a small shrug as she got up and moved away from the now finished magic circle. It was all extremely detailed. Shirou was personally shocked that she could set something like this up without making a single mistake.
Year of practice were years of practice, even if you didn't remember them.
After completing the circle, she went to work on the crystals, calling on Kairi again to activate her Magic Tattoo. Shirou didn't know what she was doing, but the crystal coins glowed from within as their structure and shapes were changed ever so slightly.
But what she said about pursuing lines of research jogged Shirou's memory a bit. "I forgot, I received Barbara's report on the World Passages. We've got a solid hit on the location of one of them. The entrance to the Dusk Realm is located inside of the Wonder Hole."
"That close?" Rin said, surprised. The Wonder Hole was barely more than a two day's trip away on foot.
"Most people don't bother with the place, since the constant infighting between the Demi-human factions keeps the population down there. You'd have to actually go into the Wonder Hole in order to fine the passage, and once you go in, you aren't likely to be coming back out. Even if you do return to Grimgar, you don't necessarily return to the Wonder Hole." Shirou explained. "Barbara has also found out about a second group of people who are trying to research the World Passages in secret, though she hasn't figured out who they are."
"Really? Well, if they are just searching out of curiosity, then we won't need to care. If they come looking for us because we are looking into it… we will cross that bridge when we get there." Rin said a small frown. "As for our own actions, I don't think we are ready for an expedition into another world just yet. We still have plenty of things we can do researching around here. We can give the others in our party some time to grow up a little."
"Yeah, some of them really do need to grow up." Shirou mumbled, remembering his conversation with the half-drunk Riku. He hated to admit it, but his and Rin's presence had a negative effect on the team. Most of them were unmotivated to continue training, the only exceptions being Itsuki, Sara and Megumin, though Sara was more trying to make up for lost time when she was fighting nearly blind.
While they were getting stronger, it was at a very slow pace. None of them had reached the level where they could take on a single Orc. Most of them couldn't take on a goblin one on one. Itsuki was ready to move on to Kobolds, and so was Megumin if she didn't get too excited and blow all her magic at once, but the rest of them had a long way to go.
"Done. Thank you very much Kairi, you were a big help." She said with a smile, petting the Water Elemental on the head, causing ripples to form on its surface. "You can rest now. You've earned it."
The water dissolved and splashed against the ground outside of the magic circle.
Rin then moved back into the magic circle and put the coins in their proper spots. Then, adding a bit of her own magic power to the circle, she activated it. The circle began to glow as Mana from the air was drain into it. "Now all there is to do is… wait." Rin said with a tired yawn.
Shirou smiled as she rubbed at her eyes. "Take a nap. I'll keep an eye on things." Shirou said, pulling out a bed roll from the wheelbarrow. He had been expecting that it might be a night outside.
"Thanks." Rin said as she took the bed roll and promptly went to sleep.
Most likely going to have a small time skip, followed by a larger one, then introducing Yume, and then through her the rest of the normal cast. So it will likely be another 5 or so chapters before I get there. So anyone who thought that act 2 would be around the same length as act 1... no.