Ending Maker: Fate Wizardry
Chapter Intro:
This fic's premise is inspired by the webtoon titled Ending Maker/엔딩메이커 by Chwiryong and their illustrator chyan. Please check them out.
Story Starts
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Ch. 5.1 - Dragon this Iron Away
From Dragon's Blood
(1 out of 3)
Flashback
Walking along the pavement, passing by a park, I spy the numbered cookie-cutter houses along the street of Privet Drive. Heading my way towards the 2nd house on the right side of the road I spy someone working hard on their lawn.
Yes, that day when I remembered everything one thing really stuck out, it wasn't the fact that a true magician has offered me apprenticeship, it wasn't the fact that we later found Shirou's previous family's estate at the boundary of the Fuyuki fire, it wasn't the fact that Shirou was actually from a long line of magi who lived unnoticed in my family's territory, nor was the fact that Zouken was a piece of shit creature that deserved being erased from the face of the Earth–
Standing right in front of #4 Privet Drive, right in front of a hedge of roses, where a teen seems to be crouching behind it as I hear the sound of stalks being snipped.
Squaring my shoulders, widening my stance a bit, a hand on my hip, and coughing at my closed fist.
"Ahem, people die when they are killed."
End Flashback
October 9, 2017 - 18:07
Clang. Clang. Ting. Ting. Clang!
Even from a distance, the rhythmic clash of metal rang out, and the closer I came, the hotter it grew.
Of course, I already know the source of this sound as I specially donned some overalls in preparation.
I'd dressed for this—overalls over my thin summer clothes—because I knew where I was headed: deep beneath Gringotts. Several kilometres below the surface, in fact. The goblin territory spread under almost the whole of London, and this wasn't even their deepest level.
Oddly enough, I felt fine. From what I'd learned in class, the deeper you went, the more the air pressure built. By rights, my lungs shouldn't have been able to push air out at all, never mind the other delightful hazards—decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity, bones cracking under pressure…
But magic made all of that irrelevant, as the goblin wards and enchantment woven into the walls and ceiling neutralised the effects entirely. Which was precisely why I wanted this whole dark lord mess dealt with quickly.
The heat wrapped around me like a physical weight—bearable, for now. At the anvil, two figures worked in perfect synchrony, hammer falls landing like a heartbeat amped up with too much adrenaline. The tall one was Harry—broad-shouldered, eyes locked on the task with that maddening, single-minded focus on the goal regardless of difficulty. The shorter was one of the goblin twins—Gorkk or Morkk, I'd long since stopped bothering to tell them apart.
That particular ability of his—to hyper-focus on a goal and pursue it to no end—could be both endearing and infuriating at times. Arturia and I could be standing naked a few metres in front of him, and he wouldn't register a thing outside of his current focus. Trust me, we've tried.
Back when we were studying English in our previous reality, we found his family's old house near the border of Fuyuki Park. It had remained untouched thanks to a bounded field. That's when we learned he was from the Muramasa line—a blacksmithing magus family of note, both in the normal world and the reverse side of the world, though they kept to themselves in pursuit of the perfect sword.
According to Shirou—after assimilating his family crest with the help of a crest tuner we'd hired via the Sajyou family—that particular pinnacle of swords they dreamed of could sever anything, even fate.
From the corner of my eye, I caught my goblin guide raising an eyebrow at my sudden pause. I shook off the distraction, followed him closer, and pulled up a chair—this was going to take a while.
Harry, standing near a roaring blast furnace, wore nothing but boxers, boots and a bandana to keep his hair out of his eyes
But I digress. Once he sank into the crest's history or started putting those techniques to use, the rest of the world might as well not exist. That was usually the point where he'd start with a family spell—something akin to Caster's Territory Creation—turning the immediate area into his forge before tracing the anvil he'd bought just before we began our travels around Japan.
Once, after hours of hammering away at his precious project, he finally looked up… only to find Arturia and me—completely naked—dozing in a tangled heap on a futon a few metres away. We'd had our own very productive session of 'forging'.
I thanked the goblin escort with a polite nod. With nothing else to do, I pulled out my book on magical theory, flipping to my bookmarked page—though I couldn't resist glancing at Harry first.
That Daniel guy—the actor from the films—who had been short and lean but undeniably handsome. And I'm sure Shirou had a thing for that Emma girl, too… hmph.
Anyway, the body Shirou was currently occupying? Taller, broader, all lean muscle—190 centimetres of distraction. Every bead of sweat caught the forge's glow like it wa—
"...!"
I tore my eyes away, cleared my throat, and casually wiped the corner of my mouth before anyone noticed.
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October 9, 2017 - 18:55
Well, I may have underestimated how long they'd stay in the zone. The near-molten slab they'd been hammering still didn't look remotely like a blade, yet.
Last week, Shirou—or rather Harry—showed me a vial of liquid and asked me to run structural analysis on it. The result? Dragon's blood. Specifically, from a Common Welsh Green
Structural analysis even gives you the name. The name! How does that even work—how does a word we made up end up stitched into a thing's concept?
Anyway, the point was that Harry's planning to break Sirius our of that hellhole. He doesn't even know the man personally—obviously—just his story. And in the books, that story was particularly tragic.
Betrayed and abandoned by friends and family. Locked away without due process, forced to relive his worst memories day after day. Broke out only to protect his last link to his dead best friend, then spen the rest of his life as a fugitive—never tasting true freedom—only to die trying to save his godson from terrorists.
And really, it's obvious why Harry—filtered through Shirou's ridiculous hero complex—would care. I should probably stop treating them as if they're two separate people. They're the same dumb, stubborn idiot.
"Baka."
Anyway, of course, he wants to break Sirius out. Andromeda, Ted, and even Moody agreed—the Minister's basically a puppet for a terrorist, and their cronies are dug into every level of government. Legal absolution? Not happening. Not in Wizarding Britain, at least.
So now we're trying another angle. Andromeda shot down his 'sneak into the most secure prison in the country' plan immediately. She and Ted also insist we keep Moody out of it until we've handled one last step—even if Harry pulled it off, his magic would be like leaving his autograph at the scene.
They might not identify Harry right away, but once his magical signature is on record, it's only a matter of time.
Odds are we'll break him out—unless by some miracle we convince Harry to wait for the third-year event. Not that I'd recommend it. Two years is plenty of time for our meddling to scramble the timeline, and by then Sirius will have been rotting in Azkaban for almost two decades. We don't even know how much the Dementors have damaged him already.
Anyway, he's already sketching a plan—with my help, of course.
Well, technically, it's more of a rough draft. Still, he's working on a workaround for the magical signature problem, using Muramasa techniques drawn from the family crest that, somehow, made the jump through time and space into our new bodies.
Which is why, when he handed me a vial of what turned out to be dragon's blood—one of the peak phantasmal materials in our old reality—and my analysis showed it was nearly fifty per cent alloy, because of course it was.
According to a bestiary I've thumbed through, dragons operate on a combination of a magical mechanism that lowers the melting point of their blood's metallic content, paired with an internal temperature high enough to keep it liquid. This heat is contained by sequential layers of insulation: epidermis, adipose tissue, and dermal armour.
Haemometallic circulation passes through a specialised organ, where it's superheated before being expelled as molten breath. Metals play a significant role in a dragon's diet, helping to maintain its chemical balance.
This could well be the origin of those old tales about dragons hoarding treasure.
Which brings me to the vial—enchanted specifically to prevent any liquid from undergoing a phase change—
"Ahem."
I looked up. Harry—trousers on, still no shirt—stood beside one of the goblin twins, the two of them flanking a katana stabbed point-first into the stone floor. No tsuba, no wrapping—just the blade, catching the forge's glow.
My circuits hummed as I felt the prana in the air coalesce into the blade's form.
"So… you finally made one you didn't snap in half? I half-teased. The past week's six-to-twelve-hour forging marathons had left a trail of shattered swords in their wake—Harry refused to keep anything that wasn't perfect. The goblins had long since stopped reacting to the sound of breaking steel—though they were able to save a few.
He wiped down with a towel while the goblin lit a smoke, looking entirely unbothered.
Harry gulped water from a tumbler, setting it down with a faint clink.
"Yeah," he said, voice still dry. "Now I just need to learn how to forge one without leaning on my magic—especially structural analysis—otherwise the blade will carry my magical signature. Still, proof of concept, and thanks for the help with the runi array."
I waved him off as it were nothing, glancing at my watch. "We've got about an hour and a half before meeting the Black patriarch. You might want to shower first."
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END