The first thing I noticed when we arrived at our destination was that the place looked dilapidated, and abandoned. The sort of place you'd look at once and decide to avoid forever for fear of it being either haunted, or more likely, a crackhouse, which was arguably worse depending on where you were.
It was a two-storey mansion, built in that old fashioned way with high pillars connected to a sloped roof lined with tall trees, except vines coiled around the pillars too from lack of management. The windows were cracked but the security bars were still intact, and thickets of bramble possessively covered the walls. Weather and time had washed away the paints, and ivy sprouted through the cracks in the structure.
I was confident I could run headfirst at any point in the wall and it would collapse under my weight. A thin brick wall enclosed the compound, and the only entrance was a rusted gate that kept creaking with the wind. It'd probably give me some disease if I touched it.
"It needs a bit of a touch up but I think someone could live here." Yvette poked her chin.
I wasn't so inclined to agree. To either side of us was empty countryside, and the city was a distant dream on the horizon. Countryside meant copious amounts of bugs. I would rather not wake up with a spider in my pants. Opening my phone revealed that cell service quality was pretty dubious too.
"I can see Svin liking this place." I said, considering my options.
"Ooh, definitely. Broody and away from people, he'd love it."
The job's details were that the self-defense mechanisms of the workshop had gone haywire and killed the owner as well as his heir. After that, everyone else decided that it just wasn't worth the resources and no other magus outside the family could stake a claim on the property. The payment was also modest... but modest meant a lot if you were dead broke like I was at the moment.
Unceremoniously, I walked up to the gate and kicked it. The kick tore it off at the hinges and sent it flying into a crumbling fountain. The moment we stepped past the property's threshold the air shifted. It felt different somehow... but I couldn't place just what it was. Yvette seemed to notice too. She squirmed uncomfortably and let her one eye wander.
"I just realised... it shouldn't look like this at all." She murmured. "Not this old."
Her words clicked instantly.
"...Yeah."
The incident wasn-... couldn't be old enough to cause this level of 'decay' to the estate. Certainly, we'd stepped past some kind of bounded field and its exact mechanisms would be easy enough to decipher once I removed my aviators. Still, it left one to wonder just what exactly had transpired here.
Shadows crept in the corner of my eyes, disappearing when I turned to face them. The wind from earlier had come to an abrupt still and the chirping of birds was fully gone. It was incredibly ominous and that... that was so terribly exciting.
Reinforcing my fists, I whirred around to find that the gate I'd kicked over was back in place. The damage to the fountain it caused was gone as well. When I tried to push it open again, it refused to budge even under the strength of a not-so-insignificant reinforcement spell. I even inserted chaos which I knew to disturb bounded fields for a certainty, but it simply fixed itself faster than I could ever hope to move.
"A temporal dislocation is out of the question. No one should be able to do that." Yvette said again, trying to parse the situation.
"I wouldn't be so sure."
I'd watched Fate/Zero and could most definitely recall a magus whose whole shtick had to do with speeding up or slowing down time, albeit at a smaller level. But, it was completely improbable that he had a role to play here, in this backwater place.
What else, then?
I removed my glasses and cast another glance at our surroundings. Much like Gurdoa's workshop, mana coursed through every inch of the place, supplied by something under the ground that I couldn't see. My eyes didn't exactly give me X-Ray vision. The bounded field all over the estate did exactly what I presumed.
A repulsion spell to drive away lesser minds, and one that made time flow faster inside. It was absurd and raised a few alarms. The Bounded Field didn't explain how the gate fixed itself, or why I wasn't able to push it open. There was no extra spell on it.
"Well, let's dive deeper, I guess." I shrugged my hands. "No point in standing around."
Yvette nodded, closing the distance between us slightly. Curious and somewhat off-put, we rounded the path around the crumbling fountain. I saw a veranda where the wood had rotted and collapsed onto itself. Still, there was nothing to be found there so we pressed on. The next change happened when we entered the mansion itself.
The entrance was grand, as expected of rich folk. Two rounding stairways led to the upper floor with dark double doors at their feet. There were two more, smaller doors on either side of us as well. And one under the right staircase. A massive chandelier hung loose from three thick wire, leaning on one side.
The shift in the air was subtle this time, but carried with it a distant ever-present thrum like the pulse of a living creature. Something growled and Yvette leapt to the side with a squeak, practically ripping off her eyepatch. Like a fucking Uchiha she pulled the iolite gemstone from her eye with her bare fingers and shoved a ruby (from her pocket) into the empty socket, smiling all the way.
This girl was creepy as shit sometimes, honestly.
My mind didn't linger on her for long though. Some disgusting black sludge dripped onto my shoulder, marring my cardigan. Admittedly, I shivered and jumped away long before I ever looked up and found the whole ceiling boiling with the rotting stuff. Before I could even comment, Yvette tugged on my shirt, pointing at something.
I followed her gaze without a word.
There was some sort of shadow walking down the stairs... or well, it had been walking. Now, it was looking at us with two beady red eyes that seemed to gleam in the dim lighting. A thin line formed under the eyes, then curved into a jagged smile of sorts before it screeched.
All hell broke loose then. The doors swung open with a loud thud and dozens of similar spirits came screeching down the hallways. They didn't seem like Gurdoa's phantasmal familiars, no, they felt more 'real' in a way. More grounded. And much, more sinister. Those had been animals... These were more deliberate.
I couldn't help but recall Waver's lesson on the reinforcement spell as they rushed at us with hands that were too big.
It did what it said... but what it also did was tack on a metaphysical weight to the object under it at the higher levels. This metaphysical 'weight' allowed said object to then interact with things of similar nature... aka, spirits.
I hoped it would work as I ripped off a bar from the window behind me, reinforcing it to the utmost, far beyond what even Luviagelita had shown me. With my asshole puckered and my lips pressed, I stepped forward in front of Yvette and smashed the first 'spirit' that came near across its cheek. The creature howled and dissipated into the air. I changed the direction of the bar midswing and brought it back, blowing through another.
"Fucking bitch."
Unfortunately, I couldn't stop the third from dragging its hand across my chest. I backed off quickly enough, but the glancing blow tore my clothes and left a small gash on my tits like some kind of angry raccoon. Warm blood trickled down across my belly, and the cuts burned something nasty.
"Burn."
A fourth would have gotten me too, if not for Yvette glaring at them and setting almost half a dozen aflame almost immediately. Her ruby eye shimmered as more and more caught fire and I was forced to realise the difference between generations of research and... two weeks.
Yeah, I didn't feel all that bad about being outdone considering that particular bit of context.
Still, there were hordes of the damn things. They showed no real sign of slowing down either. It was time to make like Joestar and run the fuck awa-...er... make a bit of tactical retreat.
Grabbing Yvette's arm, I channelled Gurdoa's spells. The lightning stored under my eye came dancing down my shoulder before I willed it to the tip of my two fingers. It shot forth, but not at the spirits or whatever the hell they were. No, it arched out and struck the massive chandelier hanging loose... specifically, the wires.
The chandelier came tumbling through the air, momentarily halting the onslaught. I didn't wait to see if it did any actual damage and ran away with Yvette in tow. I rushed through the door to the right and slammed it shut behind me. They didn't follow... and that would have to be enough. Just as a precaution however, I cast a lightning barrier on the doorway.
"That was exciting." I whispered to myself.
"It really was! This is turning out to be quite the adventure."
Admittedly, I didn't expect her to agree... but I should have, she was a total wacko. The girl held her dainty fingers to my injuries. She stopped just shy of actually making contact and gave a pitiful look.
"This is not very fun, though... I'm sorry for dragging you into something like this." Her words were earnest, and her eyes avoided mine. "Maybe you'd not be hurt if I didn't insist on following you."
I craned my neck, scratching the back of it... I really wasn't good at this sappy stuff... as William or Henry. I tended to avoid it like the plague. All I could offer her was an unapologetic grin and a hand that ruffled her hair.
"Well, if you didn't burn a bunch of those things, maybe I'd be worse off. Besides, your crazy shit kind of mellows out just how dreary this place is."
She mumbled something inaudible, looking around bashfully before she gave me a big smile.
"Yeah! I'm definitely a blessing!"
"Okay let's not go that far."
"But you said you liked me being around! Most people don't find me as endearing as I am, you see."
I sighed.
"I definitely see."
Hopefully, this wasn't going to be some weird attachment bs.
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Hope you enjoyed. Comment your thoughts on the chap.
You can find a couple chapters ahead at patre0n/com/Bleap
They're chonky bois but I reccommend waiting till I have a few more than right now.