The bar was closed.
Karl did not close the bar for a day off. He needed silence.
He stood in the centre of the room, eyes closed, arms raised just enough. Faint lines of dark red marked the floor, walls, and ceiling. Not paint. Not chalk.
Blood.
His blood, specifically. Dried now. To most, just another stain. To anyone who knew better, something that should not exist.
Forty-third layer. Good.
He opened one eye. The array pulsed, then settled. No drama. No flash, no shaking walls. It simply became part of the building, like old foundations sinking into stone.
Lasombra shadows on the outside. Tremere lattice within. A ward against detection layered over it all. Anyone trying magic here will find it stops working. Or worse, rebounds.
He lowered his arms.
Three days of work. Worth it.
He had watched too many good places get flattened in someone else's war. He was not about to lose a new bar to some idiot with a grudge and a fireball.
He moved behind the counter, reached for a cloth out of habit. The bar was spotless.
The television he bought two days ago murmured in the background. He left it on for the noise. Six centuries of silence did strange things to a man's habits.
"...reports continue to emerge from Fuyuki City in Japan, where authorities are attributing the widespread destruction to what they are calling a gas explosion..."
He glanced up.
Aerial footage. City blocks. Fires everywhere. The sort of destruction a gas explosion might cause if you believed everything the authorities said.
That is not a gas explosion.
This was something else entirely.
Magic, not machinery. High yield. Whatever happened, it was not industrial.
He watched for another moment.
Not my problem.
He turned away.
The bell above the door rang.
Mandy stepped in, for once in civilian clothes. Dark jacket, tired eyes. The look of someone who had been awake far too long, making decisions she hated.
She pulled up a stool and sat down without a word.
Karl set a glass in front of her without being asked.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"Start with something strong", she said.
He poured. She drank the whole thing in one gulp. He waited.
She wore that look. The one people get when they're about to ask for something they know will be refused.
"...Are you watching the news?" she said eventually, nodding toward the television.
"I was."
"Fuyuki."
"I noticed."
She turned the glass slowly in her hands. "Japanese heroes reached out to SDN. Formally. They are asking for support because whatever happened there is outside their current experience. I volunteered."
"Mhm."
"I am leaving tomorrow morning."
"Have a safe trip", he said, already reaching for a bottle to refill her glass.
She gave him a flat look.
"I was not finished."
He set the bottle down.
"I want you to come with me."
Silence.
The television continued murmuring about gas.
I knew it.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I do not know what is in Fuyuki. Because whatever it is, it is clearly magical and significant, and you knew what it was the moment you saw it on screen, even though you said nothing." She looked at him directly. "And because you are frankly the most absurdly overpowered thing I have encountered since starting this job, and if something goes wrong, I would like you nearby."
Karl considered this.
She is not wrong about any of it.
I have also not left this city since waking up, and that is becoming a habit I should probably break.
Also, the Grail is an interesting toy.
"Fine", he said.
She blinked.
"...That was easier than I expected."
"Did you want me to refuse?"
"No. I just prepared a longer argument."
"Keep it. You may need it for something else." He set the cloth down. "When do we leave?"
"I have a car outside. Plane departs at seven."
He looked around the bar. The array in the walls. The stock behind the counter. No staff, no manager, no plan for what happened when he left.
Maybe I should hire someone.
Later.
"Give me five minutes to prepare for the date", he said, and disappeared into the back room. Completely ignoring her flustered expression at the last comment.
They drove through the early morning streets. Karl sat in the passenger seat, sunglasses on, a small bag in his lap. One change of clothes. A wine bottle that was not wine. No paperwork except the ID he had taken from hypnotized civil servants. Bare minimum.
Mandy drove and did not ask about the bottle.
Good woman.
The airport was busy in the way airports always are. Loud. Bright. People dragging too much luggage, arguing about check-in.
Karl moved through it unbothered. The crowd shifted around him rather than make contact.
Mandy noticed.
"How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"That. Nobody bumps into you. Nobody even looks at you directly."
"Old habit", he said simply.
Technically, it was a subtle pulse of Presence Concealment. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to make eyes slide past. Like a lamppost, people walk around without ever seeing.
At the gate, she bought coffee. He declined. She bought a bottle of water. He looked at it with mild curiosity.
"Do you actually need to drink anything?" she asked.
"Not water."
"Right." She sipped her coffee. "So this is just a... social comfort thing."
"I enjoy the smell of coffee", he said. "It is one of the better things your era has produced."
She stared at him over the rim of her cup.
"...Your era."
"Mhm."
She decided not to pursue it.
They boarded. Business class, courtesy of Mandy's SDN expense account and Karl's quiet comment that he did not fit in economy. She agreed, but did not look pleased.
Several hours into the flight, somewhere over the Pacific, she fell asleep.
Karl looked out the window at the dark water below.
Fuyuki. A conflict, obviously. Large-scale magic. The kind of thing that draws in the heavyweights.
What exactly is a Holy Grail doing in Japan? Ah, right laylines. Good thing I can connect to my descendants. They know a lot of things.
He was quiet for a long time after that.
Far below and several thousand kilometres behind them, a woman walked.
She had been walking for quite some time now.
Ishtar, goddess of Venus, war, beauty, harvests, antediluvian, toreador, and several other things she could not currently remember, as her memory was still rebooting, had been walking for about four hours.
This was not how she had imagined her return to the mortal world would go.
She had imagined something more dramatic. Moonlight. Presence. People looking up from their windows, sensing something magnificent had arrived.
Reality: she emerged from the ocean cold, soaked, and broke.
The taxi driver she had attempted to negotiate with had not been receptive to her offer of divine blessings in exchange for transport.
He said blessings did not pay for petrol. The audacity.
She had been walking since.
At least her coat was dry now. Small mercies.
The city glimmered ahead. She felt it. That thread. The ancient pull she woke to. The source of all vampire blood, the progenitor, the one who by rights should be—
She stopped.
She looked up.
A light in the sky. Moving fast. East. Very fast.
An aeroplane or whatever they call it these days.
She stared at it.
It crossed overhead and continued, shrinking toward the horizon.
She continued to stare at the horizon where it had disappeared.
Her divine senses, limited as they were, caught something in that plane. A presence. Old. Ancient. Familiar, the way gravity is familiar, woven into existence so long even a goddess recognises it.
It was him.
It was absolutely him.
And he was going in the exact opposite direction from where she was standing.
Ishtar stared at the empty sky for a very long time.
A passing cat looked at her.
"I walked for NINE HOURS. In wet shoes. Do you understand what that means? Do you understand what WET SHOES do to a goddess of my standing?"
The cat continued looking at her without visible sympathy and then sat down and began grooming itself.
Ishtar pointed at the sky where the plane had been.
"That man. That ancient, impossible, oblivious man. I walked here on FOOT because I had no money and my powers are still recovering. And he just—" She made a gesture that expressed the full scope of her feelings. "He just FLIES AWAY. On a MACHINE. While I am standing here soaking wet, having been awake for four hours, having already had to explain to a TAXI DRIVER why divine blessings are actually very valuable. HHHHHAAAAAA!!!"
She stopped.
Took a breath.
Looked down at her shoes.
Looked back at the horizon.
I still have no money.
I also do not know which direction he is travelling.
I am a goddess of the sky, and I do not know which direction because I have been at the bottom of the ocean for several centuries, and I no longer have magic powers.
She looked at the cat.
"...Do you know if there is a bus anywhere around?"
The cat left.
Ishtar stood on the pavement in the early morning quiet and, for the first time since returning, seriously considered that this might be much harder than she planned.
She straightened her coat.
Alright.
New plan.
First: money.
Second: Let's go where he was before leaving.
Third: Once he comes back, a very long, very specific complaint, delivered directly to his face, about what the past hours have been like.
She began walking again.