[Hydrargyrum] Chapter 1

“So now the geas binds you…” leadingly said the paralyzed former magus, sitting in a wheelchair, clutching a wounded girl tightly against his chest.

“Yes, it is sealed. I can no longer kill you or Sola-Ui…” the tall man replied emotionlessly. He wore a trench coat over a rumpled dark suit and held a submachine gun loosely in his hands, its barrel pointed at the ground. After a brief pause, he added with the same indifference, “I can’t but…”

From the far side, a short burst of gunfire crackled, the echo reverberating through the inner courtyard of the abandoned factory. The magus—powerless, unable to walk, and long since resigned to abandoning his ambitions and the will to fight—slumped from his wheelchair onto the dirty concrete floor. Even after half a dozen bullets tore into his chest, he clung to life. To his own despair.

“Kill me… Kill me now…”

“Sorry, our pact forbids me to,” said the man, whose actions had brought about this ruin, his voice as flat as before.

The last thing the magus saw was the gleam of a beautifully radiant golden sword, as though pulled straight from the pages of a knightly legend.

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Kayneth Archibald, Lord El-Melloi, a ninth-generation magus and the youngest professor at the Clock Tower, snapped his eyes open. He bolted upright, tossing aside the thin blanket that tangled around him.

He blinked in confusion, taking in his surroundings. The dim evening light revealed a cramped, shabby room filled with narrow beds. The air reeked of medicine, bleach, and… bedbugs? It was a hospital. A mundane one, no doubt—judging by the faded, overwashed gray curtains, the grimy windows, and the scuffed floor covered in muddy footprints.

Kayneth wasn’t surprised. He’d always considered this country an uncultured backwater. But the English signs everywhere made him pause. Was he no longer in Japan?

Surely, much time must have passed. Surviving that cowardly betrayal—by a man who dared call himself a magus despite possessing no honor—was a miracle in itself. Someone from the Archibald family must have brought him back to England. But why had they sent him to this wretched place for treatment? The Holy Grail War had drained their finances, yes, but not so thoroughly that the head of the Archibald family would be dumped into a charity ward for beggars.

If I survived… could Sola have made it too?

A flicker of hope flared as Kayneth searched the room once more. Empty beds. Peeling paint. No one was here. He stood alone in the middle of the room. From somewhere distant came the low murmur of voices, the muffled hum of activity, and the relentless ticking of a clock on the wall.

“Standing?” he thought, his mind catching up to his body. How am I even…?

The absurdity of it all made him speak aloud. His gaze dropped to his bare feet planted firmly on the grimy, stained floor—filthy, yes, but suddenly the last thing on his mind.

Lord El-Melloi knew he would never walk again. The injuries that had obliterated his magic circuits had severed his nerves beyond repair.

And these legs weren’t his.

Neither were his hands—too small, too thin, too filthy. His right hand showed no trace of scars he remembered. His clothes were just as strange: only a ragged tank top and underwear, both worn and stained. The stitching was crude and amateurish. A month ago, he would have berated a servant for mopping the floor with rags like these.

Already dreading the answer, Kayneth shuffled to the cracked mirror hanging on the far wall. His reflection stared back at him—gray eyes, fair hair that hadn’t been washed in weeks, and a bruised, swollen face. He was a boy of about ten, with a nose that had once been broken and never properly set. His lips were split, fresh scratches lined his cheek, and the faint stink of chemicals clung to his skin.

Not me, Kayneth thought. Not even close.

He raised his hand and traced the rune for “Perthro,” then “Ehwaz.” The boy in the mirror mimicked him perfectly.

A lesser magus might have screamed in terror. A novice would have collapsed in panic.

Kayneth Archibald, next in line to head the Faculty of Spiritual Evocation, simply shrugged.

This wasn’t the first—or the hundredth—time he had inhabited another body. Control of familiars, spirit possession, and the repair of deep soul damage, all the things he’s done many times before, all required intimate knowledge of operating from within another form.

Nothing unusual, he mused. Not my body. Not my soul. Almost no trace of the boy’s spirit left.

Guiding the small, malnourished frame with ease, he crossed to the window. He braced his thin hands against the ledge—higher than he was used to, annoyingly so—and ignored the dust, cobwebs, and greenish stains.

He had bigger concerns.

Gray skies loomed over a bleak London courtyard. Dead leaves clung to the ground in patches of half-melted snow. A crooked oak tree rose near a rusting fence, its paint flaking away.

It all seemed familiar. But Kayneth couldn’t afford to dwell on scenery.

Two months ago, he had left the Clock Tower to compete in a deadly ritual held once every sixty years in the Far East. The prize? A relic capable of granting any wish.

The relic itself held little appeal. Kayneth had almost everything he could want.

No, three other reasons had drawn him in.

First, as a scholar of spiritual phenomena, he couldn’t resist a ritual that summoned not minor spirits but legendary heroes.

Second, he craved a worthy challenge. The duels of the Clock Tower had grown stale, with no opponents left to truly test his mettle. The Grail War offered the chance to battle magi to the death.

And third? He wanted to show off. His fiancee needed to see what he could do in combat, after all.

Winning the Grail? A gift for her.

But the Grail War had gone wrong from the start.

A witless student had stolen his catalyst, forcing him to buy a replacement for an obscene price, and even that was unreliable. His Servant, a useless poser, had thrown his entire strategy into disarray. Then a cowardly ambush cost him his resources, artifacts, and safe house.

His attempt to uphold the dignity of the Tower ended with a knife in the back and loss of magic.

Sola had fought on in his place—but without his experience or talent, disaster was inevitable.

And disaster had come.

A spray of bullets to his chest.

A final blow from a sword.

Few men could say they’d been beheaded by Excalibur.

But none of that answered the main question—why was he here?

“James! James Victor Murphy, would you care to explain what in the devil’s name you’re doing out of bed, you little pest?!” a raspy, almost growling voice snapped from behind.

The odd combination of vulgar scolding and a thin veneer of politeness left Kayneth momentarily at a loss—no one had ever addressed him in such a manner. Still, he had to remember that the angry tirade wasn’t aimed at him, but at the brat whose body he currently occupied. He turned toward the door and beheld something truly remarkable—in the worst possible way.

A tall, gaunt woman with a sickly gray complexion stood there, draped in ancient, shapeless rags that hung on her like a sack. Her lifeless eyes and sallow face made Kayneth think he’d seen more charming ghouls and reanimated deads (1) than this creature. To top it all off, her unkempt hair was dyed a faded, pale lilac for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

And then, in that moment of grotesque revelation, Kayneth Archibald remembered everything.

He realized where he was.

“I... I think I’ve managed to replicate True Magic. The Einzberns will die of envy when they find out...”

“What nonsense are you muttering, you parasite? Hit your head harder than usual, did you?” the growling voice came again.

“No, ma’am. I apologize, ma’am. I just wanted to see if I could stand, ma’am,” Kayneth said, his words half-truth. Now that he had confirmed his need to buy time, he decided to avoid drawing attention to himself. He would play the part of the terrified, downtrodden orphan—a cowering wretch bullied by teachers and caretakers. It was a humiliating act, but he conjured the memory of the stern tutors who had drilled the basics of magecraft into him twenty-five years ago. Keeping his eyes locked in a “submissive” stare, he sidled backward toward his cot.

“You watch yourself, you little wretch,” the woman snarled. “If that bump on your head’s not bad enough, I’ll give you another—harder. Crawl out of bed again, and you won’t see summer before you’re walking straight. You’ve got a real habit of testing my patience...”

“M-m-ma’am,” Kayneth stammered, injecting as much simpering obsequiousness into his voice as he could manage, “please forgive my questions, but could you tell me what happened to me? I can’t seem to remember anything...”

“You fell down the stairs. Head first. By the time Stevenson found you, you’d been lying there for hours. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t die on the spot.”

Liar.

Now that his shock was receding, Kayneth could fully feel the injuries in this body. The pattern of bruises, the loose teeth, the hematomas—even what felt like a cracked rib—pointed to something far more deliberate than a simple fall. Someone had beaten the boy senseless. Incompetently, perhaps, but with brutal enthusiasm. Even without a diagnostic spell, Kayneth could tell. Not that he cared much about the plight of battered orphans.

This place—some municipal orphanage named for Saint Barbara or Agnes (he was never good with religious trivia)—had been selected by him years ago. Back then, he had just become a lecturer in Spiritual Evocation, gaining access to its archives and the latest research. Among the materials he had unearthed was a ritual to create a "beacon," a construct of energy that could guide a magus’ soul to the nearest suitable body if forcibly ejected. Since summoning often required sharing one’s body with volatile spirits, precautions like these were only prudent.

Having prepared the reagents and studied the theory, Kayneth had instructed one of the Archibald family servants to take him to a squalid orphanage across London’s slums—a place where no one would think to look for him, and where the fate of the local children was of no consequence. He had remembered the decrepit building well: a relic from the Victorian era that looked more like a pigsty. He had never seen a pigsty, but he imagined this was what one would look like.

It was here, while cloaked in invisibility and warding the area with a repellent barrier, that he had first laid eyes on the shrieking, cadaverous woman with the violet hair. She had been berating a group of malnourished, ragged children, no older than toddlers. Her visage was unforgettable.

But that was the least of his concerns now. The key point was this: whether his physical body was still lying in some abandoned factory in the Japanese countryside or not, his soul and consciousness had survived. A feat previously thought possible only through the Third True Magic—the long-lost art of the Einzberns.

Moreover, Archibald familiars kept watch over the orphanage. They would have relayed his soul’s reattachment. His family would surely come to retrieve him soon enough.

“Ma’am,” he ventured, “please forgive the questions, but—how long have I been here? When did I... fall? What’s the date today?”

“Two days,” she grunted, jabbing a grimy, blackened nail at a garish bit of cardboard in the corner. A calendar, Kayneth realized, which he hadn’t noticed before. “You fell on the evening of the eleventh. Today’s the thirteenth. Any more dumb questions, James?”

“No... ma’am. I understand perfectly, ma’am. Thank you for your kindness... ma’am.”

“Stay in bed till the nurse comes by, or I’ll tie you down, you little freak,” she threatened before slamming the ancient door shut with a creak.

“James Murphy” remained obediently in place, eyes fixed on the calendar.

The year read March 1992.

When Kayneth Archibald, Lord El-Melloi, had arrived in Japan just days earlier to participate in the Grail War, he had registered at a luxury hotel on March 6th, 1994.

Kayneth could barely sit still, vibrating with anticipation as he waited for someone—anyone—from the Archibald family’s servants to appear. The thrill that had seized him upon realizing the two-year gap between this time and the Grail War was almost too much to contain.

The possibilities raced through his mind. He could prevent the entire nightmare from unfolding—warn his past self about everything that would happen, convince or compel himself to take proper precautions. He would never bring Sola-Ui into that bloodbath. He could challenge that upstart Velvet to a duel beforehand and carve him into pieces, ensuring the thief would never dream of stealing from his professor. He could prepare for not only fair combat but also the underhanded tricks of bombs and guns.

His mind raced with strategies and contingencies, a long list of everything he had to tell his past self growing by the second. So caught up was he in his plans that he didn’t even notice how much time had passed—nor that no one had come for him before darkness fell.

The beacon’s malfunction—possibly a side effect of the strange temporal shift—meant the ritual’s signaling circuit may not have worked. And from inside the orphanage, he was in no condition to sense its activation.

But there were other ways to get a message out.

All he needed to do was sneak out of the infirmary after dark, skulk (a humiliating necessity) through the dilapidated corridors, and find the ancient rotary telephone by the hallway. From there, he would simply call his own estate.

Kayneth, despite his disdain for modern technology, appreciated its convenience and comfort. His home did have a phone. However, when he dialed the number, the voice that answered belonged not to a servant but to a bleary pizza parlor worker, who indignantly demanded to know why some lunatic was ordering food at two in the morning.

Were he not inhabiting the malnourished frame of a starving child, Kayneth would have crushed the receiver in his fist.

Convinced he had merely misremembered the digits—or that some idiot servant had pulled a malicious prank—he began cycling through other numbers: several magi who embraced modern conveniences, half a dozen Clock Tower contact lines for interfacing with mundane authorities or the Church, a couple of numbers directly linked to the Church’s overseers, and even the home number of his would-be father-in-law, Professor Nuada-Re.

All of it was in vain. Some numbers were disconnected. Strangers answered others. One line belonged to some “Auror’s office”, where a polite receptionist asked him to state his business.

Already feeling the ground slipping away beneath his feet, the former Lord El-Melloi dashed out into the orphanage courtyard, barely clothed. He couldn’t even remember how he had unlocked the door—just a vague recollection of the recoil from a weak magical pulse lingered in his mind. Finding the right spot wasn’t difficult. Years ago, he had circled this decrepit shack several times, carefully selecting the best location to place his beacon.

Dropping to his knees, Kayneth began clawing at the icy, mud-slicked ground with his bare hands, the earth still mixed with patches of melting snow. He strained every ounce of his now-feeble magical power, desperately seeking the traces of his ritual and the energy structure buried a meter beneath the surface.

But it was all in vain. He could barely sense the natural magical background, faint as a whisper, and only marginally stronger was the distant hum of the city’s leyline, miles away. The beacon—meant to resonate with the power he had infused into it years before—was silent. Completely, utterly gone.

No repelling enchantments to keep animals at bay. No wards to divert prying eyes. No signal arrays, no central structure to the spell. Nothing remained. On this spot, where even an ordinary person should have felt an inexplicable, subconscious unease from lingering magic, there was nothing but cold, unfeeling soil.

The conclusion was undeniable—this was a different world.

A world where he had never performed that ritual in these slums.
A world where Kayneth Archibald, ninth head of a venerable family of magi, respected lecturer, and renowned researcher, did not exist.
A world without Sola-Ui Nuada-Re, his fiancee and the daughter of the head of the Third Faculty of the Clock Tower.
A world where neither the Clock Tower nor the Mage’s Association existed in the form he knew.

And that meant…

It had all been for nothing.
There was nothing to reclaim.
And nothing to fix.

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Author is aware that orphanages were phased out in the UK after WW2 but if Rowling’s universe doesn’t have child protective services that would check on Harry, then it is quite possible that orphanages didn’t get shut down either.

(1) The proper term for “zombies” in Fate/Zero universe