Fate/Apocrypha - Volume 1 Page 8

  Among all the Servants, only Lancer possessed such a zeal and staked so much upon the Holy Grail War. His tenacity was yet another reason why Darnic liked him.

  "So only the Servant of the Assassin remains, then. It is to be summoned in a small country in the Far East, yes?"

  "Yes, Lord. It should originally have been summoned in London, but that is now enemy territory to us, after all. That is why we have chosen to summon the Heroic Spirit near a leyline which suited it."

  "And what is the name of this spirit?"

  "Jack the Ripper - the serial killer which shook England one hundred years ago."

  * * *

  Bucharest, Romania

  The capital of Romania, Bucharest, was known as 'Little Paris' during the early twentieth century. However, due to the bombs of the Second World War, two earthquakes, and the megalomaniacal urban development of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, many of the exquisitely beautiful buildings of that period have been destroyed. Of course, they were not all gone. If you drive along the Calei Victoriei, cutting through the city from south to north, you can see many old churches and historically valuable buildings from the old city.

  However, that was not the only wound carved onto this country by the Ceauşescu regime.

  "...They call them 'the children of Ceauşescu', apparently."

  A voice murmured in a decidedly sweet and unworldly tone; it came from an alluring woman who looked like she could drive men mad with a single expression of melancholy. However, there exist no one near her who her voice would reach.

  Passer-bys watched her warily as she whispered at the air. There were youths who wanted to call out to her but, perhaps sensing something close to madness in her eyes, they were crushed down and quickly gave up.

  "Yes, that's right. It's so horrible... it didn't turn out like that for me. I just became like that before I even noticed."

  As though speaking with someone else, the woman continued her side of the conversation.

  The 'children of Ceauşescu' were part of the destructive legacy of the regime. It used to be that Romania outlawed contraceptions and abortions, and attempted to force all families to have at least five children. The youth whom no one could raise became street children in the end, slipping into lives of crime and human trafficking. The dictatorship may have ended in revolution, but lives that have been born cannot be returned. By criminal organizations, and by people of power, their small lives were devoured and scattered. Those who survived did so by turning from prey to predator before they even realized it.

  The woman wandered through Bucharest at night as she continued talking with a partner only she could see. A young woman walking all by herself - it is like a magnet for trouble.

  There were already two young men following her. Having been waiting for a place with few people and where the eyes of the authority could not reach, they immediately closed the distance.

  The woman, with her light and fluttering steps, so recklessly entered an alleyway flanked by buildings on both sides. The men would no longer be satisfied by simply stealing her bag. No one would find out about one missing tourist; her money, her body, her entire life - they would utterly consume all that she owned. Thinking this, they reached out for her shoulders.

  ...No one would notice a scream back here.

  So the men had thought... but they never could have imagined that the woman was thinking the same thing.

  The woman only needed one of them alive. The other was unnecessary. And for the one who was so chosen... it was his luckiest day.

  "Huh?" blurted out one of the men who reached out to her. For some reason, his hand could not reach her. He froze with horror for an instant, feeling as though he had just tried to touch a ghost. But the ejecting blood and intense pain coming from the cross-section of his own wrist finally allowed him to understand what happened.

  Oh... my hand's cut clean off.

  The man was puzzled as to why... but then finally figured out the severe truth.

  "Aaaerrrgh?!"

  As soon as he yelled out, he was pressed by further pain. The suffering this time was slight, but his sense of loss became all the more terrifying great - for things which can never leave the body came tumbling out from his slashed abdomen.

  There was a cry of exertion from an adorable voice. Truly, he was fortunate; to the man who survived, dying instantly by decapitation would be a fate worth trading for with everything he ever possessed in life.

  "...Wha?"

  The man who just so happened to have not been chosen stood there dumbly. The instant his partner had tried to reach out to the woman, his arm was cut off, his stomach was slashed open, and his head was blown clean off. He could not understand at all. It was simply too nonsensical. All his thoughts stopped.

  "Oh..."

  After a while, he realized it - that they were nothing more than insects drawn to a light. And it was only natural that all those bugs would be decimated.

  He felt a cold sensation between his legs, but before he could find out what it was, the man turned his back and escaped from the woman. No... he tried to escape.

  The instant he turned about, someone's stuck-out leg casually tripped him. When he tried to get back up, that someone quickly held him down.

  It was not the woman. She was watching the man, as vacant as always. So who was it that held him down with only one hand?

  "What do we do with him,

  Master

  Mother

  ?"

  ...He was speechless.

  The one who spoke with such a serene voice and held the man down was a child. In his moment of solace, the man gathered all the strength he possessed and grabbed her small arm, as though to throw her off.

  But the arm of the child did not budge an inch. He grasped at her arm tightly, giving it everything he had. And yet, like a steel beam, her arm did not yield.

  The man threw a punch. The soft sensation he felt when his fist made contact told him that her arm was not a prosthetic. But then, why? How is it possible that a punch with all the strength he could muster did not move her thin arm a single millimeter?

  From his mouth came a pathetic shriek. He took a knife out of his pocket and thrust it at the girl's arm. Without a care for the unsightliness of his act, he stabbed at her again and again, trying only to escape from this aberrant scene.

  He stabbed, and stabbed, and stabbed. So, why... why, why can't I hurt her?!

  "Oh, my... doesn't it hurt?"

  The child turned at the woman's question. Not noticing this, the man continued stabbing with his knife.

  "We're all right. We're a Servant, after all. It doesn't hurt at all. It bugs us, though."

  "Oh, well, then you can cut him a little bit. But not the throat. He still needs to talk."

  "Okay, Mother."

  The child nodded with knife in hand. To stop the prickling irritation, she severed the tendon in his wrist, and stained the areas around his chest, neck, thighs and face with blood - but not to a degree which would kill him, just as her Master instructed.

  "Well done. Now, wait for a moment."

  Stopping the child who was swinging a knife with precision, the woman called out to him.

  "Hey... you have a lot of friends, don't you? Where are they? Would you minding telling me the name of the building, and which street it's on?"

  The man lost his will to fight completely. When she asked her question, the truth came spilling out from him. Anything was fine with him. He was willing to do whatever it took. If she had told him to lick her shoes, he would have done it without the slightest hesitation.

  While listening to the man's confessions, the woman confirmed the location he indicated on the map of a guide book. Perfect, murmured the woman as she lighly patted the child's shoulder.

  "Jack? You can eat him now."

  Eat... him?

  Not understanding these words, the man attempted to ask. The child who was called Jack stared at his face... and he screamed, unable to be
ar it. Wearing those terribly emotionless eyes, Jack carved out the heart of the man.

  More than the pain, he could not believe the briskness of the act. It was nothing to her - as though she was just picking a flower. As though she was just stepping on an ant.

  Jack swallowed the heart of the man. And so the man died in agony, encased in his despair at the knowledge that one's life can be lost so easily.

  "Hey, Mother? What are we going to do now?"

  "The man just told us where his friends are, didn't he? Why don't we go there?"

  "Will we get to eat a lot?"

  "I think you will, Jack."

  The woman, Rikudou Reika, stroked the head of the innocently joyful Jack, soothing her. Jack accepted it, shutting her eyes; there was no trace of the monster who had just dissected a human body and carved out its heart.

  "Now, let's go."

  "Okay. Bye-bye."

  Jack shook her hand lightly at the two corpses. They were discovered the next day, and it also became known that their comrades were found slaughtered at a bar they had frequented. The police suspected it was infighting among criminal groups, but there was one mysterious point of note: every single one of the fifteen corpses had had its heart carved out.

  Catching wind of this, one newspaper wrote up an amusing article on 'The Return of Jack the Ripper?'. However, it never occurred to the police or the media that, going back to several days ago, an extremely similar event occurred in Japan as well.

  ---

  Chapter 2-1

  ---

  Thus, the Yggdmillennia clan have gathered the Servants of Black in their fortress of Millennia. They have already obtained every edge conceivable, but it is too early to lower their guard.

  Archer and Lancer have already spoken with the Yggdmillennia magi on many occasions, spending the time by preparing measures against the enemy Servants.

  Rider, despite his Master Selenik's strict control, still heads out from the castle and into the streets of Trifas below for his own pleasure. Of course, the clothes he was summoned in would draw too much attention, so he changed into a plain outfit for homunculus use.

  As for Caster, having set up his workshop in the fortress, he has devoted himself solely to the production of golems. The workshop, formed by the Caster Class skill of Territory Creation, is more along the lines of a factory specialized in golem construction. Despite being subpar in terms of defence, it possesses the power to produce thirty golems in a single day, each of which a modern magus would barely be able to build even with a year's time.

  At this very moment, two men are sitting on opposite sides of a table in the workshop. A slender golem made from spirit wood placed cups before the two of them, its actions fluid and without a trace of the awkwardness typical of golems.

  Sipping the tea he was offered, Darnic looked around at the workshop which was brimming with activity. However, the ones busying themselves were not people, but golems - some built in the form of humans, some with several limbs like spiders, and more besides - who are going about cleaning the workshop and organizing tools.

  "...Concerning the materials I requested several days ago, may I know when they would arrive?"

  Darnic nodded with a smile at Caster's question. Previously, he had requested jewels which would be used as the organs of golems, and parchment which would become their skin. Both must be at least eight hundred years old, he had implored, and in great amounts; even to the Yggdmillennia, whose blood had spread all over the world, searching for such things was most difficult a task.

  "It should already be in our hands. The process took longer than expected as we could not go through the Clock Tower. On that front, I must apologize."

  Being the headquarters of the Association, all manners of thaumaturgical implements circulate through the Clock Tower. Whether you are looking for eight-hundred-year-old jewels or even thousand-year-old parchment, as long as you have the resources and connection, getting hold of such things would be simple.

  However, that route is no longer open to them now that they have seceded. They had no choice but to use other trade routes, or place orders under false names, or slip through the black markets searching for these items. Whatever the case, some time was needed in order to obtain such large amounts of items without drawing suspicion.

  "Well, any amount would be welcome. Which leaves us..."

  Royal Crown, the Light of WisdomGolem Keter Malkuth - the A-ranked anti-army Noble Phantasm boasted by the Caster Avicebron.

  "My Noble Phantasm is made to consume. Once summoned, it will continuously require an infinite amount of prana. As such, it requires a core."

  "Yes, I understand. But we must be prudent in our selection. After all, it does not yet exist."

  Caster nodded at his words.

  "That is true... perhaps I was being somewhat hasty. In any case, I will begin the casting for the components besides the core, and attune it so that the core can be inserted at any time."

  "How long will this require?"

  "If all goes well, it should take around three days."

  "...That will not be a problem. I will leave you to it, then."

  As Darnic was leaving, he passed by Roche returning to the workshop. He was carrying a large amount of parchment and jewels in his hands.

  "They've arrived, sir."

  "Excellent. Let us begin the production of the large models straight away."

  "Yes sir!"

  Roche gazed at Caster - his own Servant - with respect.

  The normal relationship between Master and Servant has been reversed. If a Servant had been a king in his previous life, for example, then he should be treated as such to avoid hurting his pride; however, Caster was neither a king nor a knight. In life, he had been a mere philosopher - and a spell-caster, just as he is now.

  But were you to consider the background of the two, it became clear that this relationship is only natural.

  Roche Flyn Yggdramillennia - as magi go, the house of Flyn was quite well known in the field of doll engineering. The children of the house are left to be nursed by golems from the moment of birth, and until they reach the age when the family crest can be transferred to them, their parents practically never leave the workshop to see them. The golems have complete responsibility even for their education.

  As such, every child of the clan becomes very familiar with golems. The acts and speech of these dolls modelled after human beings - the way they continue to work day and night - becomes what is common sense to them.

  Having been raised on such an eccentric upbringing, they become magi for whom golems rather than other humans are the norm. They may have forgotten even the faces of their own parents, but they remember the form of every single golem who has cared for them.

  Roche is much the same. He has no interests in another human being, or any sort of magus. He can exchange words with other people, of course; he has had dealings with people, just as he has fought others in deadly bids to secure precious resources. But he has none of the cordiality one would find between human beings, or between magi. To Roche, the act of speaking to a dog or a cat hardly meant they actually understood one another.

  However, the Caster before him was an exception beyond exceptions.

  Avicebron - Solomon ibn Gabirol - was a twelfth-century poet and philosopher, born in Málaga, Spain, and the one who brought Greco-Arabic and Jewish lore and enlightment to the cultural circles of Europe. He had not achieved glory as a knight or a king would; nor had he produced works of art which would live on for a thousand years. However, he was one of the starting points for what eventually became the Renaissance in Europe. He was the father of the concept of Kabbalah - the Hebrew word for 'tradition' - and thus an entire thaumaturgical system; it cannot be denied that he was a 'hero' who heavily influenced the history of the world as well as of thaumaturgy.

  In life, due to his poor constitution and pessimistic bent, he had been extremely reluctant to come in contact with others. While he obviously p
ossessed enough rationality to be capable of holding conversations with others, he would never allow a single emotion into the exchange. On the other hand, having excelled at a single type of thaumaturgy as a magus, he had never needed to worry about the miscellaneous chores of his abode.

  The reason why Roche respected Caster to the point where he called him 'sir' was because Avicebron's expertise with golems surpassed even his own.