Chapitre 2: Carnival
Tabula rasa is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception.
A clean slate, if you will.
With that, a memory becomes more prominent the younger someone is - it's why I valued Fiore's childhood more than my own. When one is 1 year old, their entire life comprises that one year; when one turns 5 years old, that single year becomes 20% of one's life; come 20 years, and that year is only 5%.
Add in the fact that practically anyone can recall their most valuable memories better than other trivia, and you get the reason why many people can remember their childhood better.
I'm mentally 25 at this point, and I just have too much pride to pretend to be a child for a few more years, no matter the memories that were missing from my mind.
Where was I going with this? Well, being cooped up in a castle can grate on someone's nerves after the awe died down, and I could clearly tell after the MANY(read: 'bout 3 or 4) years that the feeling was getting to Fiore as well.
Hence, why I was bringing my sister and I to the annual town fair just a 15 minute walk away.
Now, as most people just regard our humble, stony abode as just that random 'haunted house on the hill', not many people really visit all that much, so our unfamiliar yet unimportant faces simply just blended into the crowd of people coming and going.
Not that I'd blame them. The numerous guard spirits and malicious bounded field was enough to deter any passerby or visitor from being exposed to anything too Mysterious.
Father permitted us as long as we got back before dusk - subsequently leaving us to do whatever, while he goes to do more experiments in his workshop(as all Magi do). And if push comes to shove, I was well-versed enough in [Hypnosis] to steer off any mundane trouble, not to mention that I was making steady progress on [Self-Reinforcement] over the 2 years I had to practice. In fact, I only broke 2 bones last month, instead of popping a major blood vessel and temporarily paralyzing my arm.
…I was very lucky that healing was a relatively inexpensive Magecraft. Root knows how much resources it takes to even practice the arcane.
The distinct owl Familiar following us wasn't exactly subtle about its spying, but it was good to know that father cared enough to keep a bird's eye view(pun totally intended) of his children.
And so,
Fun was fanned.
Snacks were snacked upon.
Pockets were picked for some small change.
A dog plush was won with some sly use of [Reinforcement](seriously, the game owner purposely blunted the darts. How could I NOT rise to the challenge?).
And…
"This is…a horse tornado?" Clear blue eyes looked to me in confusion.
I took a moment and just stared at the mechanical ride in front of me, failing to stifle a snort at the question.
"That is a carousel, yes."
She was staring at the spinning carnival attraction with rapt attention, and perhaps just a smidge of sadness(or maybe it's jealousy? I was never that great with reading emotions) at the parents accompanying their children on the ride.
Now who was I to deny her this?
"Do you want to go for a ride?" I interrupted whatever was on her mind, pointing at the 'horse tornado'.
Fiore spluttered, "H-huh!? Ye- I mean, I'd like to, but um…"
"What? Don't worry, nobody's going to steal the wheelchair. And if they did, I'd just carry the both of us back home and make a new one."
I even had my own Familiars just in case something like that happened. Whoever actually tried it was going to get hell from me since father would just steal it back without making a public fuss.
"…can we?"
"Will we?" I nudged her just a bit, finally recieving an excited nod in response.
Without insinuation, Fiore was actually a bit large for her age, and I had to instinctively use some minor reinforcement on my body to keep me from tripping, blowing away the curly strands of pastel brown hair out of my face as I gave her a piggy back ride.
The next batch of parents and children were called upon, and I paid the conductor(or owner, I don't know the proper term for the person who owns the thing) the small handful of coins I permanently borrowed from some of my earlier pickpocket victims.
The rising and falling of the ceramic horses was not so violent that I would get sick, but between keeping a periodic eye on the empty wheelchair and keeping ahold of my now bright eyed sister unintentionally strangling me with an arm around my neck, it was a bit hard to multitask.
While any primary details were still lost to me, I vaguely remember a few, or even more than several, hazy conversations where the person would lament about missing the good ol' days and reminiscing times when things were simpler - when responsibilities were lighter than they were.
I think I just felt… indifferent to such statements.
Sure, things seemed simpler during that objective 'back then', but I wouldn't trade experience and wisdom for anything, especially in my position. There were events to plan for, Magi to associate with(or eliminate), and cool ass magical things to do. I had time on my side, but without the knowledge of a timeline and the general crash course I had on the Nasuverse, I think I'd just stagnate like my 'canon' counterpart and just try to live a carefree life with magic on the side.
Mentioning any significant foreknowledge to anyone in the know(or even out of the know), even when I'm older, would probably either result in being waved off as a lunatic, or being slapped with a Sealing Designation and getting magically mindfucked for information. Call me paranoid, but even an orthodox Magus like father had accused for less when given the chance.
The White Titan was the cause for the end of the Age of Gods.
Shirou Kotomine is an independent Servant wanting Salvation.
The world was probably going to 'end' in 2015, (or was it 2017?) if this was one of those specific timelines.
Darnic may be the old man with a plan, but he wasn't the one that was planning to make a wish that would inevitably destroy this entire worldline - precisely the thing that I would try - AM trying - to prevent.
I had time; I had resources(meager as they were); and I had an elder sister to take care of.
Right now, though? I could just sit back, enjoy re-life, and keep quiet as I got strangled by tiny arms.
…
I swiftly tapped on Fiore's arm, "Ca-can't breathe!"
"Oh, sorry!"
-0-0-0-
Making our way back to the castle on the hill - imagine the Ed Sheeran joke I could've made with that if I had the expected vocabulary to show it to my family - I was busy counting all the earnings of the day as Fiore happily hummed with Mr. Scruffles - the dog plush - on her lap.
On a sufficiently elevated position on the hill, I took the time to clean my glasses.
I had no actual degenerative eye condition, nor did I have any special Mystic Eyes that would level an unfair playing field.
I did, however, have a relatively sensitive magical synesthesia linked to my eyes, as well as a weak one with my skin. This would usually appear in only one of the five senses, but I had the (subjective)fortune of having two - with my eyes being particularly stronger than the norm, enough to irritate me in my daily life.
Anything magical related would appear as a sort of wispy aura in some color, and with what I could currently observe, no single pattern or signature was the same even when my sister and I casted the same spells - barring some minute differences. With my skin, there was a medium threshold with the level of prana and/or Mystery I could detect, feeling like a tiny tingling feeling at its weakest and a mild static shock at its strongest - well, as strong as Fiore can manage; I'm not the one with high-rate circuits here.
Thus, with a bit of trial and error, I got the runic sequence to block eye related Magecraft from and towards me - carved into the frame of the glasses I was holding.
The many spirits guarding our home were highlighted like candles and campfires within my sight, the bounded field's boundary line was akin to a blue flame, and Fiore, even as passive her circuits currently were, was leaving 'faint' traces bright enough to make me slightly squint my eyes.
I finished wiping the lenses, putting back the handkerchief in my pocket and catching the small bag of mundane metal trinkets before they fell out of the bag of goodies.
Putting it back over my eyes, I resolved to get thicker temple tips to better secure it to my face,
But not before catching the unfamiliar glimpse of a whispy black, quadrupedal figure from afar.
-0-0-0-
AN: Bit of an interlude before we get to the first case, which will still give even more worldbuilding…oh, and gore in the next few chapters, definitely some gore. Just a warning.
Dear Kinoko Nasu, I love your world building, but man am I struggling to fit this into my amateur work.
Also, I was really tempted to try to write fluff, since we only got a bare bones backstory for the Forvedge sibs in the anime(I still haven't gotten that far into the manga and LN); I don't know how good I made it.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone