The oceans below were as limitless as the skies she found herself anxiously waiting in, both stretching off beyond the horizon and far, far above and below the plane. Looking out the window and imagining herself flying through the air was the only way she could really tolerate being in what was essentially a giant metal boat with wings for so long, even if it was kitted out with all the amenities that had spoiled the wealthy for as long as there were private flights.
Granted, only the wealthy could truly enjoy the expediency and luxury of flying nowadays. The only airstrips that still existed were far beneath the waves so these expensive amphibious craft were all that were left. Not even an eight-point star city could afford the space for an actual paved runway and Kari could not even begin to imagine spending weeks on a boat, a day and a half on a plane was enough already. What she was going back to wasn’t necessarily better either, the decrepit city of Persepolis growing ever bigger in the frame of her window.
Just thinking about that place made her feel cramped again, seemingly everyone knew each other and there was nowhere you could really go to be free. It was already decaying three years ago and from what she heard from her aunt, it was only rotting more. Just like D- No!
She couldn’t let herself fall into that hole of self-pity and guilt again. Already it had been hard enough to crawl out of that three years ago and the price she paid for such weakness continued to weigh heavy on her heart and disfigure her body to the present day. No one could these marks or feel the cold pulse of her veins for she always made sure to keep her entire body covered when possible.
The thought of exposure made her shift her red coat anxiously, casting her eyes around to see if anyone was looking. No? Good. At least everyone else was just as wound up in their own thoughts as she was. She had far too much to do once they landed to worry about some hypothetical pervert eyeing her up and down, mentally undressing her or a mafia hitman sent to end her trip before she could even set foot on the island.
The Mafia… it was their greedy, bloodthirsty gangs and the crooks they drew in that were the main problem in the city and her mind. They had killed her father in cold blood, long after Republic had left. She knew they did, who else would leave a calling card behind to gloat over their kill? There had to be a reason behind the murder and she had plenty of ideas stew in the back of her mind for three long years. Kari then could not have stopped the murder of her father but perhaps now, with her Mage Association schooling, powerful magecraft and sharpened mind, now she could hunt down and punish the bastard who ripped away her parent, her body and her dreams with one pull of a trigger
___
Kari’s pursuit of the truth was not going how she expected it would. Sure, she had budgeted out a day or two to get reacquainted with Persepolis and the family business at Rossum Place before she could move on to her investigative work, but two full weeks of having to deal with both her clingy, drunk aunt and the minutiae of every business account, tab and tax that said aunt was now shoving onto her was ridiculous. Why should she have to deal with all of those financial transactions, business connections and charitable donation, wasn’t that what the employees, both human and homunculi, were supposed to handle for her? Seriously, a mage like herself should only have to concern herself with matters of research or arcane matters.
Already, Persepolis was trying to drag her down into its boring grey cage of the mundane and dying. There was no place here for her to fly or flow, everything had to be done this certain way by this specific time or people would start to gossip or come ask to see why such and such hadn’t been taken care of. It was already starting to blur together in her mind and found herself pleading to no one in particular to give her some tiny break for her to expose before burying her head her arms on what had originally been her father’s desk and letting out a groan.
Knock, knock, knock The sound of someone rapping gently on the door made her pause and rub her temples before responding.
“Go away, I’m busy here with that city tab right now. I’ll handle it another time,” her tone blunt and frosty.
“I would if I was here on official business. How about you let an old man in for a bit. I brought a little something for a certain Ms. Icicle,” the voice on the other side mockingly chided Kari before chuckling at itself. There was only one fool who would say something like that to her directly and perhaps the last good man left in this decrepit place.
“What are you waiting for then, Kafka? Come in” She said, her tone far softer than it had originally been, the man she addressed now stepping into view. She could see the characteristic silver wispy hair, the gold disks that glowed brightly with warmth within his eyes, and the almost translucent, pale skin with hints of circuity beneath marked him instantly as one of the Tovesky homunculi. They were meant above all else to be multi-generational servants of the family with Kafka in particular was rumored to have been created immediately after the Great Flood, making her the fourth generation of the family he had served.
“Protocol of course, it would be quite rude for me to barge in. But now that I’m here,” The mention of protocol annoyed Kari but it would not be Kafka to go against such tradition. After all
consistency, persistency and sensitivity were his virtues and he would not break them anytime soon. The servant had already closed the door gently behind him while holding a silver tray in the other, a familiar amber liquid resting on top in a crystal decanter. “I thought that I might come and relieve you of your work for a short while and deliver a few tidbits that might help with the headache of yours.”
“I mean you had me at the brandy but I’ll listen all the same. Also take a load off, Kafka, it’s not like anyone is watching here,” Kari said with a bit of a smirk, sweeping the stacks of paper off to the sides of her desk, a few pages fluttering off the edges. Kafka followed by setting the tray down and moving to pick up the papers all the same, placing them elsewhere before pouring Kari a glass. “Ah thanks, now get on with it.”
“Right so, first off, as you could have guessed from the current reports, Rossum Place is marginally within the black with expected gains to be significant as the harsher winter weather will lead to more repairs and more frequent rechargings of the weather dome, meaning more contracts for us.”
“I mean that’s sorta how the cause and effect works here right? Two weeks here and it’s still a bit hard for me to wrap my head around the whole business thing. Too cut and dry, especially the talk about accounting and such. You wouldn’t normally bring this up to me though…” Kari said, her blue eyes drawn tighter as she assessed Kafka’s reasoning, idly swirling her glass in her hand.
“Quite so, what I am saying is that you should not have to worry about the company’s future for the time being, or Madame Marianne for that matter,” A sly grin now grew across Kafka’s features, making him look more like an elderly fox than the dapper individual already had.
“Oooh, now I see why you brought the brandy, it's for us to celebrate the bitch leaving, yeah? I’ll toast to that!” Kari said, tilting her glass of brandy towards Kafka before downing the rest of the drink and leaning back in her chair, arms behind her head and boots resting on her desk. The homunculi only shook his head and chuckled in response.
“I’d be a bit more respectful to your family, Kari, even if they are like our mutual acquaintance, but yes, she has apparently been satisfied with your acclimatizing to the position of both family head and head of Rossum Place. She will be leaving within a few days and everything should go back to normal then. That will be something to truly celebrate…”
“Hear, hear! The sooner she leaves, the sooner the ringing in my ears stops and the sooner you can go back to managing the day to day of this place for me,” she said holding up a hand preemptively before Kafka could get in some modest remark. “I know my father was a genius but with how much time he spent in his workshop, there was no way he was handling the business as well. So I’m going to need you just as much as he needed you, and I can’t take no for an answer. Alright? Good.”
“Well I don’t quite know what to say, Ms. Kari, but thank you,” Kafka gently bowed his head and the faintest hint of a rose color blossomed on his cheeks.
“Don’t mention it. You gave me plenty of good news today, thought I might give some back, ya know? Only way it seems fair,” Kari replied rather nonchalantly with a brief shrug. The servant moved to pick up the tray along with the decanter before she interrupted. “Oh and leave the brady where it is, gonna use the rest of this to celebrate and give myself an executive vacation for the rest of the day. Go and enjoy yourself a bit too, Kafka, you work hard enough as it is.”
Kafka nodded before he picked up the tray and left. But where it once was, now laid an envelope, the edges of the paper discolored subtly by time. A red seal was imprinted on the front that made Kari’s eyes widen and brought her out of her reclining position. Just looking at what the seal was made her heart flutter and something well up in her eye. Seems her father still had a few words to say to her, even from the grave. Setting down her refilled glass of brandy, she let out a deep breath before opening the letter.
___
A few days later…
The workshop was almost exactly like how her father had left it three years ago, messy and filled to the brim with various gadgets, blueprints, alchemical supplements and journals. It was unnerving how little had changed, even no cobwebs had formed in the corners. Kari looked down at the floor and there still was a faint stain where Mihaly had taken his last breaths. She felt a familiar whirlpool of emotions begin to churn in her stomach, just looking at that memento. Yet it was no time to feed the guilt, the sadness or the rage, she had something else to find that night.
Thumbing the letter in her hand, Kari thought back to when she first opened it and found it contained an old code that her father had written in to avoid thieves or spies from other families stealing his work. She could only ruefully smile as the memory of Mihaly showing a younger version of herself how simple it really was came flooding back to her. He had put a mirror in front of the text and then asked Kari to put the letters in the opposite order. To the girl’s wonder, what she wrote was actually a real sentence. Though what Kari remembered most was what her father said next.
“See, it’s not as complicated as it seemed at the start. All it takes was just a little honest work and breaking it down into a few baby steps,”
“But if it’s that simple, then why has no one figured out your code, Dad?”
“Far too many people in my profession think there’s some great, elaborate code behind everything they find and that they must crack. And they end up driving themselves crazy with all these theories of how to figure out the code. They were smart but not wise. It’s not always about what’s up here” he said, pointing to his head “but rather what your heart leads you to. So follow your gut and you’ll do better than most.”
The letter she held was a copy of that paper Mihaly had shown her years ago and she never had grasped until now that it was a guide to finding something hidden within the workshop, a final gift from her father. It was oddly structured for a guide, reading much more like a poem. Mihaly was sentimental for a recluse but she knew her father did not waste time with what he wanted to say. Wait...
With her father’s words still in her head, she took a second look at the phrasing and her hands began to shake as she read it again. Of all the things her father had to hide until now, she would never have expected him to hide a summoning ritual right in front of her the entire time. She had practiced her own encoding with that passage!
That meant there had to be a S.E.R.V.A.N.T. suit hidden somewhere nearby and likewise for the summoning circle design. Looking around at the piles of papers and drawers, that would be an ordeal in and of itself. That was until a rather childish idea crossed her mind. If her father was already in the mode of using corny methods to hide his secrets, what’s to say all the empty space on the original letter didn’t have something hidden on it anyway. All she would need is a candle to see if he pulled the old invisible ink trick. Likewise, she’d need to check behind a few closets…
___
It was done, she had finally completed the summoning circle and dragged the hidden suit out not a moment too soon, it was nearing that time of night when her magecraft would be the strongest and the air densest in mana. All she would need to do now was run a quick check to ensure everything was in place.
Kari looked down at the circle before her and she couldn’t help but stare and smile at the work of art her father had designed and she had drawn. There was something elegant about the flowing lines that branched off or intersected like the veins of leaves, the concentric circles themselves a mechanical contrast in their precision and flawlessness. Perfect circles perfectly nestled within each other, the runes scrawled throughout like ornate teeth on rim of gears, and the six outlining triangles harboring reservoirs of arcane power, all with a stem spiraling round towards the center of the circle where the servant suit lay.
Yet what hovered in the center of these triangles was equally fantastical, diamonds made purely of ice that contained within the speciality of the Tovesky family: liquid distillations of magecraft that after much in the same way of the jewels of a long forgotten family. This would be the base of the magical power necessary for the summoning servant, carefully titrated by precise control of the rate at which their icy prisons melted.
The only thing it was missing was a catalyst and should it have been any other moment, Kari would have stressed over the particular era or class that would be ideal for her mission. It was just something that seemed like it was already taken care of, be it something her father had stashed within the workshop or the brief feeling of connection Kari had with him as she made and admired the summoning circle. It was more than anything else, a gut feeling.
It really was a thing of wonder and Kari doubted she could ever make something as perfect again. She could only hope a fraction of its beauty would survive the procedure. Taking a glance at the device on her wrist, Kari drew her attention back towards the ritual at hand.
TIME: 01:58:29
HEART RATE: WITHIN NORMAL BOUNDS
CIRCUIT COOLING EFFICIENCY: 89%
ATMOSPHERIC MANA DENSITY: HIGH
There were a few more readings but none that were particularly noteworthy to the ritual as far as she was concerned. But there was one more thing she had to check before she could begin. Taking off one of her fine leather gloves, she wetted her finger and held it up. Almost instantly, she could feel a familiar chill coat the tip of her finger even as there was no breeze.
“Cold but not freezing, perfect, already feels like home again…” she said before donning her glove again and taking several deep breaths. There were no windows in the workshop but she could imagine the moon above, glistening in its bright and full splendor. It was time to begin.
“Let silver and iron wind to the base, let stone and the Archduke of Contracts be the foundation…” already she could feel the air begin to shift and grow more dense as the mana began to fall down downwards the circle. “For the ancestor, let my great master Adelwhein take his stead…”
“Fill, fill, fill, fill fill. Let each be spun five times, dissipating into the aether at the end,” Now the ice began to melt, releasing a drop of the compact on each word she spoke, tracing the lines with a shimmering purple luster. The further in they wound, the bluer the liquid turned and the more bright it became.
“Raise a wall against the falling wind, close the four cardinal gates against their cry, come forth from the crown and follow the thrice forked road to the kingdom,” now an icy mist began to precipitate from the very air around the circle, turning the roof above into an ethereal sky enchanted with stars already long gone and yet to exist… “Heed my words. My will creates your fortress bound and your lance summons my fate destined. If you answer the grail’s call and echo my will and reason, then answer me…”
“I herein vow that I will embody all the good in the world and stamp down all that evil that resides upon it. Oh seven heavens, clad in the three words of power, bring forth from the circle of deterrence, the Guardian of the Scales!” The second the last word rolled off her tongue, all six paths of mana converged upon the suit and not only flushed the room with a white-blue light but also let loose a high pitched whine. Whatever would come next would be in the hands of fate but irregardles of its form, it would be the last gift of a long gone father to his only daughter...
