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Lilian Rook     Scarcely but a week after the longest night of the year, still yet to head deeper into winter's embrace, one would rarely expect anything that would take so much time and energy and meticulous focus as a ritual to be done outside, under the open sky. The numbing tingle of the frozen air, even as perfectly still as it is, wouldn't take long to steal away the required dexterity for writing, and the fresh coat of glittering white snowfall affords no guarantee of any open space for long. It's barely after noon, but the stars are already faintly visible in the sky as it settles to deep, midnight blue, reflected in the layer of ice that traps the nearby barrier of water.

    That's just what goes on, however. Up on a high hill, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the loose band of a frozen lake, the ground is exposed by a plateau of dark stone where the snow doesn't seem to stick, seemingly natural and yet almost perfectly round. Faintly mottled by the repetition of the act over countless generations, the surface has been meticulously patterned with very old sigils and lines of sacred geometry for channeling power out of the Earth, or an object of sacrifice, and it's surrounded with columns of wind-smoothed rock that have been carved top to bottom with designs far too fine to have been done by hand, but far too old to have been done otherwise. The assembly overlooks their gigantic stone cousins, which breach out through the surface of the lake halfway to the horizon, spaced widely apart, as if meant to watch the other side. There would be thick tree cover here, in the summer. Flowers and ivy and thick leaves. The woods lower down, however, are host to only thorny vines, winter shadows, and odd tricks of the light. The sound of the ocean is audible, ever so faintly, yet too far away to see.

    The grail shard has of course been burnt out by the effort --little more than a meagre pile of black ash, without a breeze to blow it away. Making such an unreasonable request with only a single practitioner would of course make this the natural result. Surprisingly, they are no old druid or world-wise mage, nor some reclusive witch or holy priestess, but a young woman accompanied by a sword and satchel on one side, and an electronic device hanging from a barren branch to the other.

    She has long dark hair that goes straight to the middle of her back, part it of braided to a celtic knot at the back and the rest falling forward over her shoulders, and is wearing just a light, black dress meant for indoors, without even the benefit of sleeves. It exposes too much fair skin for the winter cold, which is currently extensively patterned with inky black lines of twisting, branching, semi-floral design, extending from her heart down to her fingers and up to her cheeks, clearly not any kind of physical tattoo.

    Waiting out in the cold, she clearly expects something to be happening. She stands ready, anticipatory, remaining open to some great revelation or surge of energy . . . and very gradually, bit by bit, her patience is slipping. She gives up on her 'inner eye' and opens her real ones, looking around to see if something has changed. The air still sizzles faintly with the sheer amount of magical power she'd both spent and drawn upon.
Tamamo     The power to perform miracles is, by definition, the power to perform the impossible. A wish is made upon an engine made to grant miracles, converted into a prayer and, impossibly, the prayer is heard. The listener is not here, or even "now," but the bridge between this world and another is, for the barest of moments, created. Something crosses over from there to here, the force of its passing breaking the bridge, again separating the here and now from that other place and time, leaving only an invisible thread that may as well be called "fate." Something powerful enough to perform miracles might tug on that thread and return this delivered figure to its origin, but that's not a story for this particular waning Winter day.

    The Sun should not be so strong here, but the arcane array of stones is at once bathed in light. Scorching winds follow, though these fade in intensity just after blasting the snow circle farther back, with traces of ash. The air is merely heated, then, a moment of beaming Summer in the depths of Winter, brought on by the pin-point sun that came across that bridge from elsewhere. Blinding light, painful to look upon directly, casts shadows far across the lake. Swiftly, the form resolves, gaining definition as a mostly-humanoid figure. This all takes an aggressively radioactively magical few moments to before dying down, as disruptive to anything sensitive to spirits as a nuclear blast is to radio, and for much the same reasons. After that, the perceivable situation returns to reasonable sanity. One would have to point their detection spells directly at the figure standing directly above where the grail's ash had been to again catch the esoteric energies leaking away from her physical form.

    The dress may be familiar, to one even slightly aware of Far Eastern Earth mystic fashion. The inhuman features are clearly identifiable as vulpine. Three bushy tails drift behind her in a renewed lack of wind, hard to miss for the fact that, though no longer blinding, they are quite obviously glowing down to the end of each hair, the same being less true of her tufted ears. The woman--again, this identification is obvious, and she posesses a kind of fairytale, impossible beauty to match her entrance--looks toward Lilian.

    The new entrant's golden eyes, at least, don't glow so much as to discourage staring into them. In fact, much the opposite. It may be a natural reaction to stare in this situation, but the magical effect of those eyes is, should one pick up on it, definitively unnatural, subtly encouraging a disarmed fascination from the viewer. The same magic weaves artfully into her voice. It's accented, formal and archaic, though not in a way that would be immediately familiar to most, while still coming across as perfectly understandable.

    "You are, then, the one whose prayers has been answered." The woman smiles, a paper fan half-hiding her expression a moment later, extended from her long sleeve. "Might you rejoice? The Sun has seen fit to descend, just for you. And She may even be grateful for this, as your call has allowed my arrival to this distant place. I do, indeed, thank you. For now, and until your troubles are mended, you have at your service this Tamamo no Mae." She finishes with a graceful bow made complicated by the degree of flowing cloth in her ensemble, incidentally revealing the massive, heavily ornamental mirror floating in the air just behind her.
Lilian Rook     There is a reason that Lilian had chosen this place, over a thousand years old yet seldom used by her family in modern days, instead the convenience and comfort of the household. Even without any experience with the Holy Grail and its iterations, she'd required only an hour of study to determine that the Shard she held days ago wasn't something stable nor suitable enough to utilize anywhere that collateral would be unacceptable. She had drawn her circle in the dark winter nowhere that her ancient forefathers had used, instead of used one of the more precise and available ones, because she had rightly considered a nuclear reaction.

    Well, less that she'd considered, and more that she'd 'felt' it. The potential and inevitability both kept in the black market artifact, the moment she'd held it in her hand.

    Shielding her eyes with her arm from the trascendental glare fading away from the center of the obsidian circle, Lilian blinks back dark spots popping into even her augmented vision. Her dress falls back into place untidily as the wind dies down, scarcely counting as one and a half layers, and having nowhere near the volume to resist the rogue summer gale. Even after the light fades and the wind dies, she keeps her arm raised as if half for balance and half as a ward, admirably standing fast against the less visible, but equally overwhelming, wash of residual magic that is the last thing to disappear.

    Finally, she remembers to breathe. It fogs, even in the temporarily sun warmed air. The fog gathers and hangs, until she breathes in once more, and then it dissipates all at once. Right about then, a breeze suddenly rolls across the hilltop. Frozen branches sway, snowdrifts ripple, the ice creaks and settles. The land remembers it can move.

    It does so a little faster than Lilian does. For a moment, the only thing that does are her eyes, bright green, and all over Tamamo the instant she materializes, up and down her from eartip to tailtip. Her complete stillness could fool most people for being unsurprised, or unimpressed, but to certain others, instantly exudes the unmistakable air of practised and perfected poise; it speaks of the courtly affectation of wearing a reflexive mask of neutrality when otherwise they might be seen overwhelmed or at a loss, hardly changed at all despite the vast gap in time. That alone is enough to put together about half the puzzle, when coupled with the extremely high amount of magic still streaming off of her like steam.

    "Might I?" she finally replies. Cool and officious, yet somehow vaguely intimate. "Since I no doubt couldn't *possibly* pass for a priestess at the moment, I won't make the effort to pretend to know." she says, pinching and picking up the sides of her skirt. It's black silk, far too expensive to be used for something so archaic and simple. "I believe I made a *wish* for . . . Well, no. That doesn't matter at the moment. What does matter is that your being here is clearly the result of what I set out to do. Since that means it worked, I'm sure it'll all make sense in a moment."
Lilian Rook     Seemingly having thought something all the way through to its conclusion, a few steps ahead of her own words, Lilian crosses her ankles and uses the lifted edges of her skirt to reply to Tamamo in kind, in western style. "First off, it's only polite that I introduce myself as Liliana Isabelle Rook~ Technically Dame Commander in service to the Unseen Scarlet Cross of the Ring of Solstice, but that won't mean much at the moment." She straightens up, then fetches the ring-shaped device off the branch, quickly looping it around her neck, and conjuring up a display a foot in front of her face. In seconds, she has a page up on Tamamo no Mae, the mythical figure, though it's backwards and unreadable from the actual Tamamo's side. A few more seconds of finger scrolling, and she utters an "I see . . ." and dismisses it with a waving gesture.

    "I hope you won't take it as an insult when I say that it wasn't my intention to summon you here. I wasn't even aware it was a possibility, after all. Rather, I suppose I'm merely surprised and impressed. I would ask, but you've already answered --that 'the sun' is involved." She proceeds slowly and cautiously, without using a name, but her finger and thumb are already thoughtfully raised to her lips, and her eyes are already back from looking at the moving mirror to examining Tamamo herself, unable to glance away it seems. "And you're here to . . . help me you say? But you're not one of those Servants, are you?" She quickly examines the back of her hand, then looks away again. "No you're far too . . . radiant, for that. Of course I couldn't have fallen so short. A prayer, right?"

    "So you're here to give me power?"
Tamamo     From what this warmly glowing fox has said, from her name and a few other words, guessing the name of who sent her should take little enough effort, assuming that Lilian's wiki-search isn't hitting an Earth with an entirely different timeline. Given that grail magic is involved, there's no way of knowing how just far she traveled to get here. Tamamo no Mae, as she introduced herself, merely assumes that no more need be said directly of that capital-S "She," and straightens, ready to continue on to the next topic.

    "No priestess, no, but a supplicant, and your courtesy is gracious, Liliana Isabelle Rook." Tamamo's head tilts, her paper fan still spread, and one ear twitches. It certainly looked like a natural tell, and not a piece of courtly machination. "Although, perhaps, you were unaware of this. To not know of that to which you made your wish does... conveniently explain matters." Those golden eyes move away for the first time, sliding over the landscape beyond Lilian, looking past her, snapping to the sword laying nearby, and then back to Lilian.

    "'Those servants'?" There's no apparent recognition of a Significant Capital Letter. "Hmm." She takes a moment to compose her answer, before snapping the fan shut and gesturing widely, as if taking in the full situation in her response. "You called for aid, to drive away the creatures of the dark. Is this not so? Then, I shall do so on your behalf, as surely and as easily as dawn banishes night. Your prayer answered, the future past this point is... dependent upon fate, whether given or created. My services are yours until you see the dawn for which you prayed. Of course, so are the blessings I have carried from that distant place to this cold land. Does this answer please you, Dame Commander? You did ask for power, but there is... a certain scent nearby, as of something old, of spirits that should be rotting. A scent not unlike that of which I came here to fight. It is the sort of scent that brings to mind the greed of those who reached endlessly above themselves."

    Tamamo remains standing where she is, with a certain lightness to her manner that doesn't match the topic. The snow has, though slowly, continued to retreat at the edges of the circle. She crosses her arms over the wide obi at her waist, fan snapped shut and almost hanging from her fingers. Her eyes grow a little brighter, magic again flowing through them, the effect of her spell still likely unnoticeable to most competent mages even should they look for it, but the effect reasonably clear: Trust me. I'm on your side. There's no reason to hold back.

    "I pose this question, to she of the Unseen Scarlet Cross, of the Ring of Solstice, to one who does wield power, and here is set a trial." The magic in her eyes is, necessarily, less subtle the more strongly it flows. It draws in the viewer, but it can't hide the fact that it draws one in. "For how much power do you wish?"
Lilian Rook     "I . . . did, I suppose." Lilian hesitantly replies, less out of caution, and more out of immediately being set to diligently scouring for any sign of a monkey's paw. ". . . I suppose I can't ask for a certain level of specificity from a mere shard of the whole thing, after all. No, if you're who you say you are --and I have little reason to doubt that at this point-- then that is . . . technically, a means of fulfilling that wish." The corner of her lower lip is pinched by her teeth, while she stares at nothing in particular, still thinking.

    "If the word isn't familiar, then that answers the question. Apologies." Lilian waves off the matter of Servants with a gesture. "That makes things simpler and easier, don't worry. Though . . hmmm. If . . ."

    "Oh." That's what she says the instant Tamamo mentions the sword, even in the most roundabout possible manner. It confirms that the Shard picked up on and conveyed the 'textual content' of her desire as well. "Gosh this is . . . very difficult to explain. Oh where do I even begin." she continues, rubbing her temple with fingertips that should have been frozen before now. It'll remain a vague mystery for now, without any special information telling Tamamo what the designs on the circle mean.

    "I hadn't made a wish because I was 'afraid'. You won't have to protect me while I hide behind you or anything like that. Rather, until the new year, and until these markings go away-" Lilian briefly turns the back of her arm towards Tamamo. The gracefully yet maddeningly curled and forked designs are halfway between flowering knots and tracery of meridians. "Three creatures of the deep winter --beings of night and of death-- are allowed into the world to avenge their long-dead kin. Sealed here ages ago, a bargain of such a sort allows them to roam free enough to defend this part of the land, but a piece of the deal struck is that any member of my line who takes up the title of knight and picks up the old sword that slaughtered their Court and drove them underground, is a valid target to avenge themselves upon, on the year of their twentieth. It's difficult to explain without getting into a great many other things, but . . ."

    Lilian steps to the side, nudges the tip of the sheathed blade in the snow with her sandal, and grasps the hilt pushed upright. The second her fingers make contact, the glamer of steel and leather falls away like a summer mirage. The weapon is like black iron or polished lodestone, yet with the texture of glass. Designs exactly like those on her skin are etched all across the metal, which light up red as if warming to her touch. The thing gives off an air uncanny and surreal, as well as undoubtedly thirsty for blood and wrath. Yet, at the same time, Tamamo can feel that the second part isn't the same of the first. The sword itself is no doubt an artifact hammered from wicked base material, but the unearthly ire smouldering within it is distinctly human, and the malice of the steel is suppressed and drowned out as it awakens.

    "They want this. I won't give it to them. It's the chief relic of our founding ancestor, and it has been sharpened on the bones of the unholy for centuries. It is absolutely necessary that I keep this blade if I'm going to fully become a real knight, until the end of winter. I *will not* fail something like this. Rallying up your forces and tapping into your resources is the natural thing to do when faced with a powerful enemy, right? It's just sensible to make sure you have every possible advantage before facing down the dark. If that comes in the form of, well, you, then . . ."
Lilian Rook     Her eyes flick up and down Tamamo one last time, and then, finally, the girl smiles. She doesn't even seem to feel the surreal bloodlust smouldering within the sword. It seems she's finally decided to be cautiously excited, rather than disappointed. "Tamamo no Mae, hm?" She repeats the name with a certain amount of pleasure, tinged with both self-satisfaction and expectation. "Who could complain about that? No, if you're willing to come all this way to answer my request personally, then why would I possibly decline?"

    Then, in response to Tamamo's final question, without so much as a blink, she presses her hand to her chest and replies with such sincere earnestness that it is almost jarring. "As much as it takes, of course! I don't know how much exactly that is, but it has to be enough. I'm going to be *the* greatest knight that has *ever* existed --not just in the Ring of Solstice, but ever! King Arthur is going to take second place to me! Those 'things' out there --all of them-- are going to hide in terror at the mention of my name! I'm going to purge every last trace of them from Earth! I'll kill a thousand of them for every single human life they've taken, and then we can go wherever we choose and live however we please! I'll be compared to Gilgamesh as humanity's *last* and greatest hero, and then . . ."

    Lilian suddenly cuts off, then folds her arms, turning aside. "Something really bad is going to happen. I don't know when, but soon. If you're really a goddess, or even part of one, I ask that you keep all of this to yourself . . . but lately, I can't help but feel like I should take all the help that I can get."
Tamamo     "The manner in which a prayer is answered is something to be left to faith," Tamamo says quietly, before beginning to listen to Lilian's explanation, from the sword and back around to her present issue. She listens with somber attention, her fan again hidden and her hands having come to rest together. She shows no particular reaction, certainly no overt one, right up through to the end.

    It's only when her final question is answered that she smiles. Happily. Cheerfully. Merrily, even. Lilian's final comment does nothing to alter this good mood. Tamamo finally takes a step, then another, removing herself from the center of the ritual site, and approaching Lilian on sandals that must be adding more than six inches to her height. She might be less imposing up close, if the constant magical emanations also ceased. To a certain extent, they are. There's less of a burning glow, but here in the winter air, closer proximity balances out to keep the divine fox's presence a noticeably warm one.

    "Fate," she begins, "is a thing that can be made. I expect, now, that yours and mine will be bound for more than the remaining days of your trial. I understand your wishes now, oh aspirant." Tamamo extends her hand and, should Lilian take it, she'll see those emanations begin to fade. The glow dimming, the magic compacting, nothing really disappearing but merely becoming hidden, properly contained within the clearly flesh-and-blood body in front of her. She could easily still be called a heavenly beauty, but figuratively, rather than literally. What you could not call her is "sun-kissed." At least her complexion isn't out of keeping for the climate.

    "I hope you will forgive my ignorance of this country's traditions, my knight. You may call my name, simply, 'Tamamo,' if you wish. Shall I call you 'Rook'?" How ignorant she is is made less clear by the fact that a hand clasp shouldn't be part of courtly etiquette from her era, should Lilian guess at that. Tamamo isn't just clearly happier than she was before the questions and answers, formal as her tone remains, but her posture has relaxed in a dozen barely noticeable ways. She is, very probably, no longer even using her charm magic on her. Whatever she had previously been judging with that unreadable expression, Lilian must have passed. "Let us have a close and fruitful relationship in these coming days, and good fortune will follow."
Lilian Rook     Though an incarnation of divinity she may be, Lilian seems to find nothing distressing about Tamamo's approach. She'd taken no steps to bind or contain the circle; there are no wards nor safeties, and so the time to be concerned would have been long ago. She must exert visible effort to remain put in the face of the sunlit aura that is palpably exuded from the fox woman's mere silhouette, as if forcing herself to remain near the invisible heat of a stove burning too high for the comfort of sensitive skin, but as the last of that dies down, she breathes a sigh of relief, a brief, embarrassed smile flashes on her lips, and then she reaches out to take Tamamo's hand in turn.

    "I am extremely relieved to hear that. I have no idea what I'd do if upset you with all of this instead. I realize it's hardly the most informative or ideal way you could be here, but I hope you'll be patient with me while I sort everything out." She laughs a little, finally, surprisingly unguarded, almost tinkling. "No, no, Rook is my family name. Please, Lilian is fine. I'm the one who should be concerned about cultural differences in etiquette. A goddess certainly ranks higher, right? I should be honoured to have you here."

    She pauses a moment, squeezing the woman's fingers for a second of rapid, intense introspection. "Mmm, this may be difficult to explain to her at first, but . . . it'll be no problem, I'm sure of it. I've brought home surprises before. Of course I can't just leave you out here in the cold. This may be sacred land for us, specifically, but it's still miles out in the wilderness. It'd be unreasonable not to."

    She clasps her hands together, saying "It's settled then. I'll show you to somewhere more suitable than this place. Further away from the Border. By the sea, even. That should be familiar to you, right? It's only courteous, after all."

    "Besides, I happen to like good fortune~ I wasn't sure at first, but I think that out of all the sun blessings I could have gotten, I'm certainly very fortunate to have gotten you~ So let's do as the portents say, hm?"
Tamamo     Accepting it as time to move on, and as welcome to get out of this place as any, Tamamo does continue to speak. "You may be at ease, Lilian." She even sounds happy saying the same name, but why her mood lifted, exactly, isn't something she's explaining. "I cannot say the same of other gods... should you ever meet Her, for that matter, and somehow avoid being incinerated," her tone doesn't make this sound too serious, "you should definitely prostrate yourself immediately, but I am a very special case. A deity, yes, but one to make allowances, as one must, to live among humanity." Pondering, "I know that you know of me, but not how the legends remembered me. I shall be curious to see that."