Where stories and legends intersect, the eve of Nursery Rhymes is upon us

[Mariele von Einzbern]

//Day 0; 23:20 P.M. - Einzbern Castle, Outer Forest; Outskirts, Fuyuki//

The Workshop. A magus' home. The best place to perform magecraft. Saturated by ones prana. Built in such a manner as to provide the best possible conditions.

The Laboratory. A scientist's workshop. A place those of science feel most comfortable. A place where miracles of modern man occurs. A strict dress code of white coats exist here.

Maria had the best of both world in the once small room. What used to be just large enough for a small team to research, about the size of any magus' workshop, now had nearly tripled in size. Another block of ten meters had to be added to get the incubator. A wall was torn out so she could get that fume hood after becoming sick from inhaling chemicals in the poorly circulated space. A storage area had to be added to hold her excess equipment. A proper stand was added for her scrying sphere. A corner was expanded to hold her enchanting bench. Something akin to an entire wing was added to for her tomes of magic and knowledge. The latest addition was a space about the size of her old workshop. The walls were bare and actually made of stone unlike the rest of her workshop that took upon the laboratory appearance of plastic and metal walling. Candles lit the room giving it a gloomy glow. Magical artifacts stood upon pedestals filling the air with prana. A large sigil was inscribed upon the floor.

Maria thumbed a pen whose opposite end as she went over a few bits of paperwork on a clipboard. One was a list of "Events to prepare for our Special Guest" while another was a paper on quantum physics she had picked up on the internet and a theory on new methods on the invocation of spirits. After checking off the last item Maria placed the items aside as she waited for her little sister to come down. Though Alice wasn't her biological sister Maria felt like she was, and to the best of her knowledge she felt the same way.

Her hand relinquished a red stone from her lab coat pocket. It's blood red shine took in the light around it and released it in a scarlet display of luminescence. This artifact was something absolutely unique in the world. Perhaps the closest anyone had come to the true alchemy of the old ages. She hoped this artifact, coupled with her desires and alchemic prowess, would be enough to summon someone like Nicholas Flamel. However, she had no special catalyst prepared for any particular servant. It would be fun to see who might show up based on compatibility. Maria's mind wandered as her eyes stared upon the red stone. Images of the upcoming war filled her mind.

[Alice - Nursery Rhyme]

//Day 0; 23:28 P.M. - Einzbern Castle, Outer Forest; Outskirts, Fuyuki//

Alice looked at the clock as she tucked the rest of her toys in the box. It was nearly time and Alice was still cleaning up. She snatched up her favorite bear and skipped to the stairway leading to the basement lab. As she approached the stairway her imagination kicked in transforming the stairs from a safe passage to a treacherous trap. One wrong step would kill her, so she folded one leg neatly up and hopped down onto the first step. She was safe, but their still remained several more traps/steps. She continued this hopskotch like fashion dodging and hopping left and right until she hit the bottom step. As if a trigger had activated with that hop, the world seemed to shift back to reality, her game finished. She looked up at her sister, the ragged bear still in her frail doll like arms.

"So what are we doing, Onee-sama?" Alice inquired, her head tilted swaying her braids back and forth. She didn't let her big sister finish, she headed to the nearest chair and hopped up in it tucking her blue dress beneath her legs and laying the tattered bear across her lap.

[Mariele von Einzbern]

//Day 0; 23:29 P.M. - Einzbern Castle, Outer Forest; Outskirts, Fuyuki//

Maria was drawn out of her daze with the arrival of her sister. She approached with a child-like grace like she were skipping with every step. Her golden hues glowed with a youthful vigor that had long left Maria behind. Even though she appeared only sixteen she had already reached twenty-four years old. It was a pain sometimes if she went into Fuyuki City since she looked young enough to be a student. She rarely went into the city, and chose to go when classes were dismissed with Satoshi if she did. A small smile appeared on Maria's lips that mimicked the smile Alice had.

She took a seat almost immediately upon entering the room as if the long journey to Maria's Fortress of Solitude. Her blue dress required her to straighten it before she could comfortably seat herself. The lolita style dress was Alice's favorite type of fashion, and asked to have several similar copies created so that she could wear it all the time. Maria didn't mind and encouraged her to wear what she loved most, but Satoshi disapproved only when Alice wished to go to the city with them. Her elaborate dress would garner much more attention than any of them truly desired.

Alice's soft sweet voice rang out in the dungeon-like room asking what Maria wanted to do. Maria couldn't help, but return an amused expression at Alice's simple question. "Why, what we do every night Alice~ Magic with a hint of science~" Maria said in a sweet tone. Her amused smile never left her face as she walked into the larger room motioning for Alice to follow behind her.

Maria glanced around the small chamber whose walls were of stone. Her various artifacts lay in different areas of the room radiating prana creating a thick atmosphere. Directly across from her rested a smaller than average broadsword tip first in the ground. She knelt down next to the sigil engraved upon the floor. She relinquished a test tube full of quicksilver from her pocket, and poured its contents into the sigil. It should not have been able to fill the entire sigil, but it defied the laws that prevented it from doing so. The liquid metal moved through every crevice creating a magical base for the summoning.

She smiled at the accomplishment obviously pleased with the results. A hand touched her chest where she felt for the cross that rested around her neck. With a a scientist's steadiness she gracefully removed the necklace. The simple metal symbol whose form and composition was no different from any other piece of metal in the world was a channel for storage of much more magic than Maria could comprehend. She held the necklace in one hand and gripped the blood red stone in the other. Her fingers slowly lifted one by one loosening their grip upon the stone. When freed the crimson stone floated gently through the air and stopped in the center above the sigil.

Maria had created an incredibly prana-rich environment in which to summon her Servant for the Holy Grail War. Normally all of this prana, built up over what would be lifetimes for other magus, would be expended the moment the Heroic Spirit entered the world. However, Maria refused to lose all of these resources for the sake of a single war asset, but she too refused to waste the opportunity to give her Servant the best advantage possible. That is why she created this on this exact point, created such an environment, and used her Philosopher's Stone as the central matrix to this whole system. The details were not worth discussing, but the stone would react to both the leylines, the incredible amounts of prana being expelled, and even Alice's own prana supply. Thus in a matter of three days her artifacts would be returned to the state they were before the summoning and Maria would have a Servant to assist her in the war.

Her right hand extended toward Alice offering a place for her own hand to rest. Maria needed direct contact with Alice to perform the contract in the way in which she wanted to. The scientist herself would be in control of the command seals while her sister would be the supplier of prana. Her unlimited prana supply would benefit any servant summoned greatly. Plus Maria liked to make things complicated for the sake of complexity. She took a deep breath as signs that she was ready to begin.

"Ye first, O silver, O iron.

The calm voice was cool enough to reduce the temperature of boiling mercury. The commanding tone seemed to cause the air itself to become still by her call alone. The room's atmosphere tensed in anticipation.

"O stone of the foundation, O Archduke of the Contract. Hear me in the name of our great teacher, the Archmagus Schweinorg." Prana flowed wildly through the room. From the artifacts, from Maria, from Alice. It was all being taken away and filled the air. Even breathing became difficult as if the prana was overwhelming the basic oxygen required for respiration. Still Maria continued, "Let the descending winds be as a wall. Let the gates in all directions be shut, rising above the crown, and let the three-forked roads to the Kingdom revolve. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Five perfections for each repetition. And now, let the filled sigils be annihilated in my stead! Set. Let thy body rest under my dominion, let my fate rest in thy blade. If thou submittest to my calling and if thou wilt obey this mind, this reason, then thou shalt respond."

A breeze blew through the room causing the candles to extinguish. Despite no access to the air outside a noticeable draft had begun to stir the room. Maria's lab coat and Alice's dress swayed in the wind. The candles had gone dark, but the stone's blood red luminescence replaced it. All the prana seemed to be gathering within the stone as if preparing dump it all into the sigil below it.

"I make my oath here. I am that person who is to become the virtue of all Heavens. I am that person who is covered with the evil of all Hades. Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words, come past thy restraining rings." Her conviction remained strong. Her incantation was almost complete. Her hand tightened around Alice's finger in anticipation.

"And be thou the hands that protect the balance-!"

Immediately after the final syllable was pronounced the light dimmed significantly. The stone's surface glowed brightly, but no light seemed to be given off. The phenomenon lasted but a few seconds. Like a nuclear explosion the prana burst forth creating a blind light and thick smoke. Maria stood strong waiting for the room to clear of debris. She could not see what had transpired, but her senses told her that a very strong concentration of prana existed in this room. A great burning caused her wince. Her hand glowed with a crimson light. A smile existed beyond the pain.

"All according to plan."

[Alice - Nursery Rhyme]

//Day 0; 23:31 P.M. - Einzbern Castle, Outer Forest; Outskirts, Fuyuki//

"Why, what we do every night Alice~ Magic with a hint of science~"

Alice giggled at her sister as she left the room. She turned only to beckon Alice to follow her so Alice jumped up, hugging the tattered toy as she moved after her bigger sister.

Maria walked into the larger room off the lab. It was messily decorated with strange artifacts of all types, but Alice's attention was drawn to center of the room where there lay a sigil. Maria was pouring the pretty silver stuff in it and it quickly filled the whole of the sigil. Maria then touched her necklace and withdrew her red stone. She released her grip from it and it flew through the air and hovered above the sigil. Maria then reach out her hand and signaled Alice to take it. Alice stepped forward and placed her right hand on Maria's, and with her left hand kept a tight grip on her bear.

"Ye first, O silver, O iron."

Silence. It was if the whole world had stopped for this one moment, anticipation thick in the very air.

"O stone of the foundation, O Archduke of the Contract. Hear me in the name of our great teacher, the Archmagus Schweinorg." Prana suddenly began to dance wildly through the air. The grip Alice had on both Maria and her broken stuffed toy tightened. The air seemed to thicken as Maria continued, "Let the descending winds be as a wall. Let the gates in all directions be shut, rising above the crown, and let the three-forked roads to the Kingdom revolve. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Five perfections for each repetition. And now, let the filled sigils be annihilated in my stead! Set. Let thy body rest under my dominion, let my fate rest in thy blade. If thou submittest to my calling and if thou wilt obey this mind, this reason, then thou shalt respond."

The wind seemed to blow fiercely taken the light of the candles with it, but the pretty stone in the middle quickly lit the room in red light. The prana seemed to flow straight into the red stone, the wind seemed to flow into it as well.

"I make my oath here. I am that person who is to become the virtue of all Heavens. I am that person who is covered with the evil of all Hades. Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words, come past thy restraining rings." This time Maria's grip on Alice tightened. Alice gave a squeeze back reassuring her.

"And be thou the hands that protect the balance-!"

As Maria finished the light dimmed. but the pretty stone seemed to glow. Only a moment later a large explosion went off, light and dust and smoke filled the room. Alice was blinded for the moment, but she could feel a link. Something was drawing on her near limitless prana supply.

"All according to plan."

Alice whipped the dust from her eyes and blinked looking at the space in the middle of the sigil. Alice only saw a pair of eyes lock onto her, then a swirling mass formed around those very eye's and Alice found herself looking in a mirror. Or atleast that was her first guest. In front of Alice stood a girl identical in every aspect minus her choice of clothing. In place of Alice's blue dress and cap was an identical black set.

"Are you my master?" asked the twin.

[Mariele von Einzbern]

//Day 0; 23:34 P.M. - Einzbern Castle, Outer Forest; Outskirts, Fuyuki//

The smoke took time to clear in the deep underground room. Without proper ventilation the dust would only collect upon the ground causing it to be stirred up if disturbed plus counting how long that may take. Still because of its magical origins it seemed that it defied what one would normally expect and seemed to simply dissolve into the air. Maria wasn't surprised in the least. That's how magic worked. She didn't have to explain it if she didn't want to.

Maria stumbled mentally upon seeing her Servant. She expected Nicholas Flamel or Faust or something alchemy-related. Even if she had failed at calling them forth she had thought she would get someone more heroic looking. Instead she was looking at a gothic version of little Alice. Maria performed a few quick glances between the two girls who looked upon one another now. Alice too seemed aware that the Servant before her appeared almost identical.

It took no more than a few seconds for Maria to figure up a reason as to why the Servant appeared identical to her sister. These Servants were all capable of great things far beyond even what current Magecraft was capable of so assuming that this Servant was of the Caster class or at least had skills in magic it wouldn't be farfetched to think that she might have a Shapeshifting ability. The reason she hadn't changed into Maria instead of Alice must have been that Alice was her prana source and thus was more inclined to turn into her rather than Maria who only held the Command Seals. Content with her hypothesis and proud of her quick mental leaps Maria crossed her arms under her chest as she awaited the question.

"Are you my master?"

Maria gave a smirk as the question appeared just as she had predicted it would. It seemed that the stories were true that Servants were required to ask those who summoned them if they were the ones who had done so, much like a new-borne chick. She saw the necessity in doing so and had no complaints in indulging the Heroic Spirit.

"Why yes we are," Maria made sure to put emphasis on the 'we' so that their Servant would understand the situation, "I am Mariele Clarisviel von Einzbern, the holder of the Command Seals. This is Alice von Einzbern, the supplier of prana. We are your Masters this Holy Grail War. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

With their own introductions out of the way Maria hoped that their Servant would follow suit and introduce herself to her Masters. Maria was piqued with scientific curiosity at the phenomenon that stood before them. Something else threatened to steal Maria's attention away from the current situation. The crystal ball in her lab joined with this archaic room let out a soft alarm to let her know that something had triggered the bounded field that surrounded her manor and the forest. Alice and all other members of the manor would feel a subconscious trigger as well alerting them of the intrusion. Perhaps even the Servant would notice it given her connection to Alice. Maria looked over her shoulder, but dismissed it for now.

"Please ignore that for the time being. We can give our visitor our full attention after we have finished greeting one another here." Maria had a smug expression as she told the occupants of the room that those who had triggered the alarm were not worth their attention at the moment. Little did she know of the life or death situation that one of the closest people was caught up in.

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