Rhodri Bowen
???, Somewhere Far Outside The Bounds of Sion, Switzerland
(Yesterday)
It had taken a bit of time to find a proper spot for setting up the summoing ritual, but he'd take the chance while he had one at least. Summon well away from Sion, and then take the time to get to know his servant a little along the way. Get an idea of their mindset, their motives, their...desires, even. See if there was anything he needed to get along the way there. Etc. Such was the general plan he'd tossed together at any rate after entering the Swiss border proper. From what he had gathered of other 'subspecies Grail Wars', though, doing this would give him a chance at survival and to get started on a base of operations once they got there proper. No time wasted on other things, just getting to the bloody point of it all before it got dark outside and they had more than a few problems to watch out for at their doorstep potentially.
Still, it was a clear and beautiful day to be in the wilds of a fine mountainside, hmm? The air felt clearer up here than it normally would down below, where the impurities loved to settle as did humans, and yet to go too far up the mountains would be to court the dangers of the wilderness and ferocity of the thinning air as one's lungs sought to drag in what the body needed to survive. Ah. But he couldn't get too distracted in the heat of the moment either, now could he?
The crumpled and limp corpses of several small animals lied discarded into the brush nearby, already having been carefully used to form the proper ritual magic circle for the summoning on the cleared and compacted dirt of the ground lying before Rhodri. Stones marked out the outermost boundary just beyond the circle's edge, even, having been placed to help him mark out the space needed for preparing this summoning ritual. But...would the ritual, even with all of this effort, bear true fruit?
He had found evidence of wraiths appearing rather than proper heroic spirits, after all, shadows of heroes of old in imperfect recreations of the original ritual. Other rumors and details of his research had spoken of half-baked, weaker 'servants' whose power paled in comparison to other more successful endeavors...or had those claims been falsehoods to cover up the weakness of other magi who tried to enter this sort of thing? Perhaps he'd get unlucky enough that this ritual of the Nadekliss produced some kind of unstable visage before him at that. Ah, in any case he would gain something out of the endeavor. A nice compensation wraith to contain as a prize before returning home, an unstable mess he could try to use to his own ends, or perhaps...perhaps...even get his hands on a real heroic spirit of some sort to work along with for this 'war' he had become part of after those Command Seals had appeared on his hand.
The mage's lips pursed slightly as the edges of his mouth came up into a sort of amused expression, his gaze breifly taking note of the grudge-filled knife stabbed into the dead center of the magic circle before returning to the whole of the magic circle itself. There was only one way to find out in the end if this ritual was the 'real deal' or not, wasn't there?
Thus the right hand of the mage now came up as his palm opened and his hand was opened up while pointed at the ritual circle. Yet even as his left hand sat lazily in one pocket, the words of the incantation began to flow from his lips.
"Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Fill. Let each be turned over five times, simply breaking asunder the fulfilled time.
Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let my great master ■■■■■■■■ be the ancestor.
Raise a wall, against the wind that shall fall. Close the four cardinal gates. Come out from the crown. Rotate the three-branched road reaching the Kingdom.
I shall declare here. Your body shall serve under me. My fate shall be with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail. If you will submit to this will and this reason…… then answer!
An oath shall be sworn here! I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven. I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!
From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power, come forth from the ring of restraint, Protector of the Balance!"
What emerged, however, did not come in a great flash of light. There was no eruption of smoke and shock and awe before his eyes. Rather, mana surged from the earth, resembling a fog, thick and cold and yet in some capacity vaguely familiar to the Welshman. It hid everything emerging within it, however, even as he could sense and feel the small but growing concentration of pure magical energy at its center. Yet his Command Seals responded as it formed, forming a link to....something...or was it-
"Hmm?"He couldn't believe what stood before him to a certain extent, and yet a proper smile crept onto his face all the same. It wasn't overzealous a smile, nor was it an exclamation of joy. Neither was it a creepy thing that grinned down at the target. It was simply that: A basic, run-of-the-mill smile of the most average sort...but perhaps was ultimately tinted with the midlest of amusement all the same.
This...yes. This was going to be an interesting Holy Grail War indeed~
Mountainside Base, South of Sion, Switzerland
(Current Night)
They were a greater whole composed of many parts...parts that normally didn't form such a whole as
this was. A true miracle of the Nadelkiss' Holy Grail in this case indeed. Without a doubt it was an existence that was undeniably a 'servant' at a higher level of power and status, and yet at the same time was composed of things he was more than familiar with conceptually and in his line of 'work' as it were. Already it had him imagining ways to recreate such a thing, potentially, even as the one who chose to represent the whole spoke once more to him.
The Unknown Soldier. The Unknown Soldier. It had come to make some greater sense to him sooner than alter, yes. Much as a certain 'round table' was the place around which heroes of fame and glory gathered in days of yore, and a Holy Grail was 'something which drew heroes toward it and generated miracles', so too was this name itself a 'place where others gathered'. Just not those of the famous, legendary kind. It was a title and a 'name' that, as he pondered it, was filled with the bodies of the forgotten and suffering of wars that once tore up the fabric of Europe, the vengeful, sorrowing, regretful, and other forms of wraiths of the dead whose anonymity likely ate away at them terribly. It was the title of those that were fogotten, yet remembered. Those that were honored, yet dealt death inglorious. Like a walking paradox, in a sense, that was yet still just as real as anything.
Ah! But he had found himself mulling about in his concealed tent, one set up to rest and live out of for now, after gathering enough grudges and doing his part in the setup of their base of operations. He had ideas for later, depending on what came into play tonight and the following day, but he had a plan for how long to mull about in the night before retiring from it all the same. For the last thirty minutes, he had been using his primary phone and doing a more normal bout of 'grudge gathering'....and making a few new accounts after a bit of experience with the good-old banhammer today as well. So, all in all, normal activity for the magus himself on the average in that sense.
But now? Now it was dark, truly and fully so, and the time for hunting and studying and such like was ready to begin.
Getting up from the padded matress-like setup underneath his sleeping bag, Rhodri would unzip the front of his tent, slip on his shoes, and would step out into the fresh night air of land to the south of Sion proper. From here, he'd try to find the nearest body of Archer's to talk to. Well, one that didn't seem too busy at least if he could help it. He'd already jotted down his familiar's observations on his phone and sent a copy to the backup, at least, now pulling out the former and flicking it on to scroll down to the information he had at hand as his right had now came to rest in his right-side pants pocket in a rather relaxed manner.
Sure he could have sent this via their link, but right now he wanted to get up out of the tent and get going down into town proper.
"Any updates on things getting set here? Are we good to go?
Ah, and I've already got the familiars put up for the night as well, though, so if any others get too close for comfort here you all know what to do."The mage took out his right hand and made a temporary finger gun with it, even winking as he did so, before letting it rest again in his pants pocket once more as if nothing had happened.
"I wanna' head into town, see if we can go visit a spot or two depending on what pops up down there. But I've also got some information of some locations to keep an eye on from here with some binoculars or such, aaaaand maybe some potential leads can be found in this to get us started tonight if nothing else. Maybe.
So I'll just hand you this phone to read it over, maybe get it jotted down or something, but I'll need it back before headin' out." Rhodri's eyebrows popped up, then, and he got a small grin on his face.
"Oh yeah, I'm thinkin' of getting some special big stew pot goin' tomorrow for you guys if we make it outta' tonight in one piece at least. Big one-pot stew type of thing from home depending on the stuff they sell around here, but cheap enough ta' pay for since its simple. Warm, good, fills the belly! All the good stuff. Buuut we'll have to get stuff for it from a few locations to avoid leaving hints for the competition out there, but once I get it we can get it cookin' here while I have the time to maybe get other important mage-y stuff done.
That sound good?"Sure it wasn't fancy, but it was food. Food that would feed him, and food that'd also at least be morale stuff for Archer simultaneously (he hoped). Feeding enough of those bodies though? Er, they'd have to negotiate how many were out here for the meal at a time. He'd paid for enough cigs to keep a steady supply for the coming few days as it was! That wasn't mentioning the wire he'd had to pay for either. But, well, it was trying to make compromises to keep them working well together, hmm? He was trying to work with them a bit and to have their back, and they worked with him in return and had his back, yeah? It was a mutual partnership of sorts, as well as being a game of give and take and the like just like anything else in some sense.
In that sense it'd all be worth it once they got things rolling, but they had to avoid blowing their cover and cards at the wrong time too. Sitting on their hands and doing nothing wasn't good either, but if they painted a target on their backs in a hurry it wasn't going to be a good thing either. Luckily, it seemed those leyline campers had done a bit of that on their own already in a basic sense~ Now all they needed was to be a good hunter and find the riiiiight spot to get things started, and he figured their first stop of the night would be a visit to somewhere and someone that would be plenty enough to at least get in a good spot to see things from....fairly so, of course, without getting shot at unless people wanted to make trouble for themselves out of it. Same went for them on that last part, though, so it was ultimately a two-way street of sorts there anyways.
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