12:02am
Shenghuo entered the basement chamber of the old building. According to old local history, the chapel had once been a winery, but a drought had killed the plants and the industry moved along. The vineyard became a graveyard, and the farmhouse became a steeple, leaving only this cellar behind.
You could still make out the wooden supports in the walls where barrels once laid, but now there was more than enough to distract the eye, such that these remnants of the past faded into the background. Specifically, this was the front half of the long room which had been turned into his workshop.
While the typical "workshop" of a Mage was closer to a library or a study, filled with books, journals, and odd knick-knacks, forgetting the odd bubbling cauldron or mysterious vials, his was far closer to the layman's idea of the word. Against the wall was a long, wooden table adorned with, yes, mysterious vials and substances, but also tools, scrap metal, and half-complete projects so newborn that it wasn't yet clear what they would become. Around it, on both walls of the space, were metal lockers: two adjacent and thin, and two wide-built ones across the room.
Beyond these were the usual suspects for a Mage: circles drawn across the floor in chalk, especially in the unoccupied half, journals and pages, handwritten and acquired, and script teeming with magic better left unspoken. The only oddity that remained was his sister: bound in chains and hanging upside-down from the rafters like a butterfly in a spider's web.
She was blindfolded and gagged, and hung still as a corpse. Only the almost-invisible swaying of the chains proved she was still alive.
He pulled out the chair at his work table and wrapped his legs around it. Sitting with his chest against the back, he considered his prisoner. He marveled at her stillness: he hadn't been at all quiet or subtle, but she remained as she was. Perhaps she was unconscious, but she was a soldier trained in mystic arts and possessed such control of her body that even her blood flow was hers to will and bind as she pleased. It was more likely, he concluded, that she was choosing to remain still and to pretend she wasn't aware. He only wondered whether this was an act of rebellion, fear, or an attempt to lower his guard.
'Pitiful. Like a wounded animal.'
With a turned nose he stood straight and opened the locker immediately next to the table, pulling three objects from the perches and laying them on the table with a thunk, clatter, and tink respectively.
A voice echoed into his skull without warning, 'Master, Rider seems very insistent on Lancer, what should I do?'
"Exactly what we discussed: nothing. Don't imply that we know anything at all, and keep the conversation elsewhere when you can."
'But don't you think it's on purpose? I think they're trying to turn this alliance on us.'
"Of course they are: it's obvious. Lancer would've told them. Let them be as petty as they like; they still need us. We only need to keep things cordial temporarily before the war returns in full. Follow my orders, and all will be according to my plan. Asking questions only wastes time."
He had made a point of speaking out loud, but there was still no response from his prisoner.
With the ice of his patience becoming colder and thinner, he returned to his table.
Shenghuo had no fear of Caster. The strength of a Caster extended only as far as the boundaries of the territories they established. As magecraft revolved around the abuse and deliberate misreading of the universe's laws, the mystic boundaries that Caster-Class Servants and Mages could create, including their workshops, allowed them to bend and break these rules further and add new rules on top of old ones. This also meant that the true power of a Mage, and a Caster by extension, was limited heavily by location and terrain: things his Archer was not bound by.
Smart Mages focused on practical magecraft: prioritizing things like Magic Crests which allowed a mage's body to become a kind of bounded field, magic objects which augmented magecraft, and on building their own bodies to resist magecraft and move quickly. While the goal of typical magecraft was power, not for any purpose but in of itself, practical magecraft was measured by its ability to earn results.
It was also Shenghuo's specialty.
He was happy to let his father waste away in pursuit of the purely theoretical, and to dedicate his life to research for research's sake, the world needed people like that, but Shenghuo's eyes were made to lock onto what he could see, and to chart the most efficient course to that goal. Like his Servant's arrows, there was no escaping him once he'd chosen his target, and someone as stationary and predictable as Caster and his Master were no threat at all in his eyes.
It was the same with Lancer. So long as he had his hostage, there was nothing the pathetic pig could do.
Saber and Assassin were hardly noteworthy either. If they were, then Caster's Master would have sided with Rider and postponed the meeting. The fact that she didn't meant they had little to contribute, meaning he had little to fear. They would remain separated from the true war of four and would be picked off by Archer's all-seeing eyes once those four were reduced to one.
Only Rider had earned his worry. His speed and reaction time were problematic in-particular. Other than Berserker, Rider was the only one who could match Archer in combat, and not in the least because of his ability to close the distance. The only guaranteed victory was if he and his Master could be separated, which was far from easy considering Rider's literal light-speed. Perhaps if Archer could use his Noble Phantasm as a bomb and catch both in the blast: that would be the best-case-scenario. It certainly seemed as if their rivalry was leading to some grand climax, but that only gave Shenghuo all the more reason to want to cut off the vine before it bore fruit.
If not for the truce, it might've even been today. All their plans had to be cut short after Rider was spotted in the sky that afternoon, and it was a shame that nothing seemed to come of it. No real information that could be used against them, except a potential hostage.
However, if Rider and his Master were as invested in his sister as they seemed to be, perhaps that could be used against them as easily as it would against Lancer. But, with all that in mind, these options only made him want to make a contract with Lancer all the more: as useless as the pitiful creature was, those chains of his were perhaps the best weapon against Rider's speed.
But what was the best weapon against Lancer?
He picked up the first tool. It was a cleaver with a smooth black handle that edged up the back of the head; a heavy, clay-colored blade. Various engravings both decorative and practical cut across the blade itself as well as the flat of the head. He ran a short current of mana through it and watched as the clay brown rose to a vibrant orange-red in less than a second. The blade could heat up to three-thousand degrees Celsius, and the runes across the back kept the intense heat magically bound to the blade itself, which intensified it even further. He ran a finger down these runes and, sure enough, everything beyond the blade's head had remained at room temperature.
This cleaver was designed for amputation: the intense heat cauterized the wound instantly, preventing any blood from flowing, while the heavy blade hacked through flesh and bone with ease. Now, cauterizing hardly counted as first aid. The severe burns guaranteed infection and gangrene, but this was not a negative for someone like himself. Firstly, preventing blood loss prevented evidence, and secrecy was key to magecraft. Secondly, making sure the stump healed correctly required only simple magecraft, and was hardly an issue provided the time and circumstances to do so. Thirdly, the second point made it easier to keep prisoners, and to prevent escape. Finally, as a weapon itself, it would melt any blade it parried, and a single blow to an important organ or artery meant assured death. A weapon which fulfilled multiple goals with efficiency, just as he liked it.
He had already prepared runes to transfer Heping's Command Seals to himself. It was a simple issue which could be made all the easier by severing the hand first. He would gain three new Command Seals, giving him five total with the one he'd used, and severing her connection would lure Lancer in, thinking his Master had been killed. However, this was far from guaranteed, and if Lancer took the opportunity to make a contract with someone else in the meantime, then it was for naught. The added headaches of performing the amputation on an unwilling prisoner, as well as managing the injury to keep it fatal but stable for her value as a hostage made this option unappealing. If, however, Lancer were somehow defeated, cutting off the hand and transferring the seals would be the first logical course of action.
In fact, given her Martial Arts, perhaps removing both hands would be prudent. Her ankles were also prime targets.
He gave the cleaver a swing, and another for the sake of practice, before running another mana current to deactivate the weapon and setting it back on the table once the red glow had faded away.
The second tool resembled a shortsword at first glance: a leather grip folded out into a crescent moon guard encircling a back metal blade with a lacerated silver edge. Closer inspection showed that the edge curled around the blade itself, revealing a second set of teeth. It was only then that the viewer would realize that the blade was thinnest when connecting to the hilt. With a little mana, the lacerated blades began to spin around the center with a metallic whirr. This weapon was designed solely to rip and tear through flesh, wood, and similar, soft materials. It even came with a second setting that allowed the blade to be overhauled by additional mana flow.
Killing her outright was a waste. Threatening to kill her: that would be more effective. But a bluff was only as persuasive as the truth behind it, and if he were to make that wager, he would need to also possess the willingness to follow through with his promise. In this sense, making vague threats with her out of sight was better than, say, walking out with a chainsaw to her throat. Concrete threats made it easier to weigh options: it was better instead to keep things nondescript and thereby maximize anxiety among her allies. The fact still remained that this hostage situation required a firm understanding of her true value, as well as the value of his goals. For example: if he were forced to choose, would it be better to kill Lancer and save her, or to keep Lancer and kill her?
For the moment, he decided to side with his rational mind and trust in her long-term investment, rather than the pig's short-term assistance. After all, of the two, only she could provide value that wasn't wholly contingent on her consent. That would make negotiations harder in a way, but also easier. This way at least, he could carry out his threats earnestly, and, once his honesty had been made clear, her rescuers would hesitate before calling his bluff a second time.
He shut the blade off and set it back down, cast a look to see if the prisoner had stirred at all, and picked up the final tool.
This was the simplest of the three. From hilt to end it was as long and thin as a ruler and about as wide as a fingernail. It's soft, cushioned grip ensured that the blade would sooner break before being ripped from the wielder's hand; the razor's edge was flexible, and a simple, rectangular guard protected the hands as he activated the tool, lighting the edges with a low-burning fire.
This was a torture device, plain and simple. While his parents and their coconspirators among the Chinese government had much better and more effective methods and tools, this was of his own design: made with nothing but his own magecraft, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't been waiting to test it. It's thin and pliable make would allow it to cut and pry into any of the body's many painful crevices. It's shallow cuts hurt more than they bled, and the fire was hot enough to burn without exceeding the second degree. It was harmless as a weapon, but ought to be very effective as a means to an end.
All of the above and a little creativity would be enough to earn the allegiance of any normal man. Unfortunately, he was dealing with his sister instead. She had been trained as a soldier, which meant trained against even the most brutal torture methods. What's more, cutting and burning were old friends to her, and would only be half as effective as anything else. Removing fingernails and targeting nerve endings and otherwise sensitive areas would still find their purchase, but not as much as it would with electro-shock or even bitter cold.
Besides all that, he was an amateur, and an ill-prepared amateur at that. Back at home, a mix of torture both physical and mental, traditional and magical could be arranged. Even if she could not be persuaded to assent, her mind could be broken until assent was all she was capable of- or until her mind was abolished altogether. By himself, he would likely only damage her body- which was her primary asset- and with little to no guarantee of return. What's more is that she was smart enough to know his limits, and strong enough to last until the limit was reached.
It seemed more and more like the smartest plan was the first one: to remove the Command Seals and send her back home to be reeducated. It was far from the most ideal of all possible futures, true, but it seemed to come with the least risk.
A myriad of paths opened before him, networks of cause, effect, and probability as his mind did everything it could to track his options, before these strands were cut by another sense: a twinge at the edge of his psyche.
An enemy Servant had appeared out in the churchyard.
"Archer. We're under attack."
He delivered the news with all the passion of a thesaurus, leaving room for pause.
'Do you need me there?'
"Unsure. If it's who I think it is, then no. Prepare to run just in case."
'Understood,'
He slammed the knife back on the table and keyed into the network of spells he'd painstakingly infused into each corner of the old stone; activating all his defense protocols. He wasn't afraid, but he did need some time to prepare. The spells he'd put in place, in addition to the caution Lancer would need to avoid killing his Master by mistake, should be enough- or so he had thought.
Without enough time to second-guess his assumptions, there was the sound of falling stone: an artificial landslide that fell beyond his view, followed suit by the explosive whoosh of flame as embers fell through the floorboards overhead.
He imagined a projectile bursting in the front door like a cannonball, tearing through stone like paper to trigger the defense measures in the kitchen, but only a second proved it was wrong. Between the flashing of spells and the mental calculations, he detected a second presence.
"Archer. There's two of them. Get here, now."
'On my way.'
....