A young mage discovers a few truths about the world.
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
And so it came to pass that Viveca Hua, age ten, asked her mother: “How do I participate in a Grail War?”
Elizaveta Hua, the warlock of her era, paused for several moments. “Ah.” She eyed the colorful posters hanging on Viveca’s bedroom wall grimly. “That.”
Little Viveca tapped her foot. She was not a child inclined to patience. “Yes, Mother? I’m not participating right this minute, of course, maybe when I’m sixteen. I’m very reasonable.”
Standing behind their mother in the corridor, Olesya was trying to control her expression. Her face was crinkling in a manner indicative of, perhaps, restraining howling laughter.
Somehow sensing that, Elizaveta gave her firstborn a scowl over her shoulder before turning back to address her secondborn. “We need to have a talk, Viveca.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
A while ago, Elizaveta explained, a group of mages had the bright idea that it would benefit their society as a whole to communicate to outsiders that the average mage was much deadlier than they really were. The actuality—that some practitioners were just unusually good gardeners or tailors—being far less glamorous, and it had been thought that keeping non-practitioners fearful would promote the overall safety and health of mages (infighting, assassination contracts, and duels aside).
“So—” The warlock of her age glanced at Viveca’s collection of posters and blurays, her mouth thinned with distaste. “They came up with that, or at any rate commissioned some fool to come up with that. Now, my girl, I haven’t much interest in telling you what you can and can’t watch, though I really don’t think that part is child-appropriate and if it were up to me—”
“One of the episodes has a little mage girl going on an adventure,” Olesya offered, deadpan and unhelpful. “Makes it practically a children’s cartoon.”
“It’s animation,” hissed little Viveca, “not a cartoon.”
“—and in any case,” Elizaveta went on, “you’ve both seen worse in real life. Olesya, don’t think I am not aware you watched this thing too. You surely know better.”
The firstborn shrugged. “It was fun. But I knew it was fictional. Can I watch Heaven’s Feel?”
“Not until you’re much older!” The warlock sighed. “The point, Viveca, is that these cartoons—animation—are not documentaries. They’re propaganda. Of the most ludicrous sort in how little they have to do with reality. I am not calling you ludicrous; I am calling the people involved in producing this ludicrous.” She knew making her children feel ridiculed was bad parenting. She read that somewhere in one of those manuals to prepare you to be a good mother, and Viveca was at a sensitive age.
Viveca frowned. “So there are no Grail Wars?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“And no wish-granting devices?” The child seemed a little devastated.
“I think if there was, we’d have been wiped out a long time ago. Some thaumaturge or another would’ve wished for a mass extinction event.”
“Like Emiya Kiritsugu.” The girl paused. “I’m kind of glad he never actually existed. I figured if it’s a documentary, they’d have fictionalized him a little—fudged the name—but him not existing is best of all.”
“Probably,” offered Olesya, “he’s based on someone’s ex-husband. I mean, he’s got to be, considering.”
“All right. But there must be some kind of ritual to summon heroes of past ages to fight on your behalf?” Viveca looked to her mother, negotiating. “You’d know about summoning rituals? I want to summon King Arthur. Or possibly Medusa, or…”
“Well, seeing that neither has ever existed, even a necromancer wouldn’t be able to drag their souls out of wherever…” For a second time, Elizaveta sighed. “But perhaps these shows have motivated you to study harder so that one day, you too may obtain untold power?” Then at least she could think of it as edutainment, and would not have to visit the mages responsible to have a word. And by having a word, the warlock meant scaring them straight with the amassed forces of hell.
The little girl thought for a time. Then, “I think I’m going to summon demons and make them fight in a Grail War for my entertainment.”
#
It is more than a decade later, and Viveca Hua is no longer ten. She is leafing through one of her tomes, a simple bestiary of infernal and otherworldly beings; grimoires are to be kept locked up rather than leafed through when one is bored. Those she treats with proper respect.
Her newly bound demon, Yves, is a semi-corporeal mass that has taken up a spot at the window. Gazing out at the arctic waste, perhaps contemplating their fresh pact.
“Yves,” says Viveca, putting the book aside, “did you ever know my mother?”
The shadow does not quite coalesce, but the demon does not require a corporeal mouth and vocal cords to speak. “Not personally, Ms. Hua. Of course your family is notorious among our kind.”
It is said with such precise politeness there’s no way to tell whether she is being mocked. But Viveca is secure in herself; she does not care to demand her demons be obsequious. Let lesser warlocks be brittle. “I’m genuinely curious—what do you say about us?”
A glint of gold flashes inside the mass. “The idle gossip of lesser demons is irrelevant; I do not trouble myself with it, and I doubt you will either. The most important piece of information I have on your family is generations old, and it is not my tale to tell.”
The warlock chuckles. “That sounds like some heinous secret.”
“Not precisely.” Yves ripples. “You could compel it out of me, if you wish.”
“Oh, I prefer to convince it out of you, bit by bit. Who knows? I might hear something really interesting that isn’t in our family annals, and I’m confident of my charms. I’d rather use the pact to compel you to do something else, if it came to that.”
The demon, she thinks, startles. A full weight of attention; the gold becomes two eyes, focused on her. “Such as?”
She misses her mother terribly, but one is not supposed to share that with a summoned demon: exposing any vulnerability, however passing, is a good way for the creature to turn the pact against you. “I’m not being serious. It’s a silly joke I made when I was very young. Say, do you want to watch a few shows together?”