10:45pm, Friday, The Alghul villa overlooking Athens
Aisha stood in the basement of her villa, which had long since been transformed into her workshop. The fairly large room was dimly lit by candles sitting on scattered desks, tables, and shelves. The floor was made of a worn but laminated wood, while the walls were made of stone bricks, roughly cut for aesthetic, giving the room the air of a dungeon, or the inside of a castle's tower.
She stood by the cellar door leading up to the main room, wearing a women's suit and leaning on her personal writing desk to the door's left. She watched as her reanimated skeletons, four in total, shuffled around the room. Two were drawing an intricate magic circle on the floor in chalk, while the others rearranged furniture to make room for the aforementioned two. Though the drawing skeletons had been programmed to perform their task, Aisha dictated the others' commands herself: she wanted to maintain the room's elegance.
She would tolerate no messes, especially not in her workspace.
There was a reason she had waited until tonight. A violent storm had been predicted and now arrived; the rain and thunder could be heard even in the basement. Storms were an aspect of nature, so magic that harnessed natural leylines tended to function better as the energy of the Earth interchanged between the sky and the ground, but there was also a certain relevance to it, a catalyst of sorts.
Given the unique nature of the land that allowed for this War, it wasn't much of a logical leap to presume that the land of Divine Spirits, the Reverse Side of the World, could be reached with the right methods. It was also generally assumed that any sentient being that lived, was recorded in history, and then died could be summoned as a Servant, their legend encoded forever as a Heroic Sprit in the Throne of Heroes.
Her catalyst stood in the center of the fresh chalk, a relic stolen from an old place of worship underneath the Athenian Acropolis. The old stone figure stared back at Aisha. It was no more than a hand tall: a small satyr with large horns, a flute, and a simply inappropriate depiction of the male genitalia between its goat legs: an old idol for the nature god Pan.
Pan was perhaps the only god in the Greek pantheon to have canonically "died", a fact which would hopefully lead to him being received into the Throne of Heroes from which Servants were summoned. That said, she did know from her research that the idea of Pan's death was likely a complicated misunderstanding related to the cult of a Babylonian demigod, and so, if Pan existed at all, he likely never died, and was instead able to travel to the Reverse Side of the World after the end of the Age of Gods like the other gods and spirits. However, the Throne based its Servants in accordance with recorded history as much as actual history, and so as long as a figure was said to have died, they should be able to be summoned, at least theoretically. But all that didn't matter, it was an ancient relic tied to the land, and so whatever Servant would be summoned should be powerful regardless.
That said, there was a significant part of her that wondered if she wouldn't be better off going for a more conventional servant like Hercules or Odysseus. Great heights tended to precede great falls, after all...
-But a god was still a god, and the other so-called "Masters" would be so unprepared that they would likely be utterly incapable of summoning a powerful Servant, certainly nothing as powerful as a genuine Divine Spirit, even a relatively minor one like Pan. There were still other innumerable problems that could arrive, from his personality, to his powers, his nature and so on, but she had considered as much as she possibly could, and there wasn't any point in acting on hypotheticals. One can only act on what she knows, and she wouldn't know anything until after her Servant was summoned.
This was trial and error, the essence of all science and magecraft, but she only had one attempt. That was the key problem, the fact that kept pressure on her chest when she was so close to her goal.
As the skeleton's drawing came to both a literal and proverbial close, she had one of the initial two go to the closet on the right side of the room and retrieve a bag of blood from the refrigerator inside. Within that closet and fridge were additional skeletons and flesh, some whole and others in pieces, to use in her magic. This "blood", for instance, was more accurately described as ex-flesh: blended and crushed into a gritty mush and stored in an IV bag. Taking a knife from a nearby table, the skeleton pierced the bag, dripping its contents onto the white chalk.
It was time.
Removing her journal from the desk behind her, she strut forward towards the circle, shooing her undead back into the closet from where they had initially emerged. Approaching the edge of the chalk, she stopped, pausing for a moment to let the zombie finish its bloodletting and remove itself like the others. She then flipped open the journal in her left hand to the bookmarked page, held it up and open so that she could read it while raising her right hand outstretched, as if reaching into the air in front of her.
Taking a deep breath, she began.
"Your essence is Ichor, and your body is my blood."
The circle began to glow with white light. Blue lightning flickered out and across the space.
"The Grail calls you,
mournful spectres who failed to obtain their desires,
who died in regret,
The answer you seek is here."
The light grew brighter, and a red light began to appear on the back of her right hand. Like the Northern Lights it shifted amorphous and without origin.
"Heed my call o heroes of old,
Hear my pleas o Throne,
My commands will make your being,
the stars align for our fateful meeting,"
Her emotions rose with the brightening light, the magical energy that filled the air.
FILL! FILL! FILL!"
As she concluded her rites, a bright flash of gold-white light filled the room with a soft but melodic and electric sound. She opened her eyes and stared ahead, marveling at the space in front of her, now filled with steam and dust. The smoke fell away and she stood in shock, as there, before her...
-Was nothing.
A pile of dust sat where the statue once stood, but the circle was otherwise undisturbed. On the verge of panic, she allowed her eyes to drift to the back of her right hand, where the red sigils she knew as Command Seals now laid. It was a strange mark, two lines on either side, curved and ending with an outward motion like a lyre, and a single, thin, diamond-shaped line bisecting the two halves. She tried desperately to process all of the things before her,
'How can this be?
'Are relics normally destroyed? No, they shouldn't be!
'If there's no Servant, then how can I have Command Seals!?'
Tears of frustration began to touch the corners of her eyes when alarms rang through her head.
Being both a Master and a Necromancer, it was imperative that she be able to locate phantasmal beings; enemy servants, familiars sent by rival mages, and especially the ghosts which often found themselves drawn to necromantic magecraft like moths to a flame, and so she had protected her property with magecraft that would alert her to the presence and location of these entities.
There was a spirit upstairs. It had to be the Servant she summoned; there were no other possibilities.
Taken by anger, not directed at anything in particular besides her own misfortune, and riddled by the anticipation and anxiety of the past moments, she rushed up the stairs, corpses emerging from their storage as bodyguards. They were programmed to do this in response to the magic tripwire, and she had neither the care nor peace of mind necessary to deactivate this protocol; she didn't even notice.
She threw open the cellar door and desperately scoured the room with her gaze, abled by the lamps scattered across the open floor. Her eyes darted like a madman's, first to the patio on her right, the normally beautiful view obscured by rain and darkness, then to the sitting area in the room's center, then to the upstairs balcony over said sitting area, and then to the kitchenette to her left. But when she turned her gaze, it was as if, for only a moment, less than a blink, black tendrils were reaching out across the walls and floor. In this moment, brief as it was, fear gripped her heart, such that she was nearly unable to continue looking where she knew she would find their source. As this moment faded into the past, so did fear give way to confusion as she saw the man in her kitchen, currently studying a wine bottle he had taken from the rack in the wall.
From behind the bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the central space, the man oddly resembled a bartender. A black suit vest and pants with a white undershirt but no tie; a purple handkerchief sat in his breast pocket like a wine stain. His hair was dark, nearly black but vaguely violet, transitioning into gold at the edge of his curls. His features were long and angular, and a goatee sat at the base of his chin, highlighting his golden eyes that seemed to glow eerily in the low lamplight. His body, from what she could see through his tightly fit clothing, was well toned but slender and not especially masculine. It was the body of an artisan, one who never or only rarely did hard labor, but was nonetheless fit. Ethnically, he appeared to be Greek, though there were traces of other groups as well, perhaps some Middle Eastern, or even Eastern European?
His sly and glimmering eyes moved to her, his head remaining still except for a slight raise of the chin. He smirked without mercy as clattering bones emerged from the stairs behind, and Aisha Alghul, still in shock and unaware of their presence, was pushed out of the way. The skeletons raised their arms like claws and rushed towards their supposed prey.
Recovering both mentally and in posture, Aisha stood straight up, raising her chin and snapping her fingers, her frustration rising ever-higher-
"متوقف کردن!"
A wave of magic energy shot forth from her form, spreading through the room like smoke. As the wave reached the zombies, they each stopped in turn, as if paused in time.
Sighing, she scowled, looking at the floor, and commanded them in her native Turkish, "Return to your room!"
One by one the skeletons twitched out of their stasis and began to shuffle back down into the cellar, returning to the closet with the other bodies.
Aisha, thoroughly embarrassed by this point, raised her eyes to the man in the kitchen. He had since sat the wine onto the bar and was currently leaning forward, head resting in his hand.
"So-"
With the first word he spoke, he immediately earned the woman's ire. His voice was smooth, and slightly deeper than one would expect, but this alone wouldn't have been any issue. No, it was the tone with which he spoke, a tone that oozed sarcasm and arrogance, a dislike of authority and a carefree, anything-goes attitude. Her face immediately returned to her scowl as her heart fell into a bottomless well of black hatred for the man in front of her, a hatred tainted by disappointment.
"-did I do something wrong, or were they just happy to see me?"
"They wouldn't have attacked, but you set off an intruder alert." She spoke quickly, as if to make up for time lost in all the confusion.
He pouted childishly, "I thought you were expecting me?"
Her hands began to straighten her clothes, as if on their own. "I was expecting you. I was expecting you to appear in the circle, but you manifested here instead, so I couldn't grant you your permissions."
She spoke with obvious disdain, her scowl still disturbing her otherwise beautiful, rounded features. If it hadn't been clear before, it certainly was now: he was mocking her. It seemed perfectly obvious that, not only had he appeared up here on purpose, but he also likely set off the alarms just as intentionally, and only to irritate her, only to make an entrance.
"Permissions, eh? Apologies, dear, these things happen you know."
He stood and began to make his way through the kitchen cabinets behind him before finding the wine glasses he was looking for, a murderous gaze meeting his turned head all the while. As he set two glasses on the bar next to the wine, he looked up, his golden eyes staring into hers with an eerie confidence.
He suddenly went alight with mock realization, netting his long fingers, "Ah, yes, introductions. You still don't know anything about me, do you?"
Her expression softened somewhat, seeing as he finally got to the damned point.
"Come," he continued, "sit, let's have a drink."
He uncorked the bottle and poured it into the glasses as Aisha began to walk, maintaining both caution and elegance, towards the bar. She took a seat in one of the raised chairs on the outside of the bar before accepting the glass she was offered.
He met her eyes just like before. "I'm the servant Caster," he paused here, watching the wine he swirled in his glass for a moment before returning to the necromancer before him, "and I suppose that you're my Master."
His smirk never left his face through this entire exchange, and neither did her frown.
....