Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Crossover
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh hey Vicky, what are you doing here?
Before getting into it I see you again are just not talking about how the fandom has the wrong idea of what and how it happened along with not being all Taylor as being important. I will also note Ziz did have move to influence it as right before it we see Cauldron using 2 of teachers pets to basically see Ziz what it's doing like reading a Ziz pov chapter which you initially think it is. In it it's mentioned Ziz did things like setting things up so Taylor and Lisa would be together for longer to make it unclear which it was following until they did their big split where it picked Lisa in part for the effect it would have on Taylor who immediately noted she felt disappointment when Ziz didn't follow her because at least then that would have been some way she was important and contributing which note she only tried it because she felt like that.
For the broader point it may help if I phrased it like this. There were 2 arguably 3 key choices Taylor made there first was the decision to attempt the corona altering, after getting it on mastering people she decided to go force people to fight and the one it's arguable if it counts is deciding to control and use Amy herself to alter her power herself.
I am broadly speaking fine with calling the mastering people the right choice, morality and if it was evil aside she went after groups like teacher and the yangban who were actively sabotaging the effort to fight scion along with cracking the birdcage before grabbing anyone else she could. She had a new needed edge that could give them a chance so I do agree with actually using it once she had it being necessary and really most of them kind of deserved it.
The choice to go through with getting her power altered can't really be called a good one though because it doesn't change that it was a stupid idea that really shouldn't have worked and was risking her life on a blind hope it might possibly do something. That means it wasn't a good or smart option to pick especially when I've gone over how there actually were things she could have still done to contribute to the fight. If I close my eyes and try walking across a motorway and miraculously make it across unharmed that doesn't make it a good or smart choice.
You are phrasing it as not doing it being giving up and allowing everyone to die without trying anything and everything that could feasibly do anything to help but the reality is that option was highly likely to kill her without doing anything when she had other options she could still try and ways she could contribute that weren't so risky so picking any other way to contribute would not have been giving up and would have been trying something less risky first. Heck given it's Taylor she arguably could have pushed for something like capturing capes to try it on. Arguably it could even be said that trying something so likely to kill her was her giving up
When we discuss whether it was a good or bad decision for her to make or if it was stupid or not you can't just ignore the chance of it working to say it worked. Taking this case to the extreme and just throwing on made up hypothetical numbers on it to see if it gets my point across. Let's say it had a 75 % chance of killing her, 20 % of weakening her and a 5 % of strengthening her then then you are saying it was the correct choice to take that huge risk on that tiny chance of gaining something from it but that doesn't change it was horribly unlikely to work.
Regardless I am not going to respond to this here after this as we have gone on about it enough when this isn't the thread for it if you want to continue this move it to an appropriate thread or pms.
You're going to have to explain how it wasn't a good choice though. What better option did she have?
None.
It was the best option she had.
Like what? She'd already tried everything in her power before that point, and none of it worked. Scion was taking out whatever he damn well felt like at the time, and nothing she could do as she was would help stop him in any way.
Well yeah, you have better options. She didn't.
EDIT:
I never said anything about whether is was a good or bad decision in isolation, I keep saying it was the best decision, and therefore the right one to make in those circumstances, that you can't tell the difference is not my fault.
That's not even getting into how it had the better chance to do something than just doing nothing would have.
If you want to believe that taking a risk that could have (and did) done something to help save all of humanity is somehow the evil or wrong choice to make, I can't stop you, but you can;t make me agree with something that deprived of intelligence or thought.
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Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Ah, so the entire preceding fight was Taylor frantically doing dailies to earn some currency for that pull. Makes sense.
Wow, um, I was not expecting to come back to this kind of debate. Okay, so, a few things, did a slight readover and apparently Taylor felt the feedback from the souls of the bugs being sucked out, so that was a misunderstanding on my part, even if I find it kinda odd that bugs would have souls, but as it's read, the bugs were judged unworthy and the connection to Taylor was not followed by the Ark.
Secondly, a point is made that Taylor could have made an effort to guard vital supplies and positions from enemy forces and that is true. It is not, however, directly contributing towards Scion's defeat, which at that point was DIRELY needed. It's been a while since I read Worm, but if I remember correctly, the PRT was all but gone, the Protectorate was stuck on frantic refugee direction, Cauldron had been completely gutted, and any other power that could direct the fight in anything approaching an effective manner was content to use the opportunity to expand their own domains and hope that Scion would just forget about them or that he wouldn't ACTUALLY destroy the Earth. Taylor decided to get her powers modded because she saw that things had fragmented to a point that seemed hopeless, and I cannot blame her for thinking that. In a choice between finding someway to keep things from getting worse on a small scale while Scion continues to exterminate the human race all but unopposed and betting her life on something that might actually help to beat the Great Golden Idiot, then she made the best decision she could with the information that she had.
I don't deny that people tend to overhype her a bit, and even Lisa points out that what she did was INCREDIBLY risky, but aside from the emotional impact on her friends-most of whom she hasn't had much interaction with in years-and the potential impact her base power could have had in the fight against Scion-negligible when taking his mobility and offensive options into account-even her failure and death would have had a negligible impact on the Golden Morning fight.
To make it simple: In the Worm-verse's fight for humanity's survival, the potential fallout of Taylor's death was far outweighed by the potential benefits that an unlimited Shard provided.
Afternote: reading through the preceding debate a bit more closely, I have to agree that Taylor DOES get overhyped a lot, and I have seen it done. I have not seen it as 'she knew what she needed to do to beat Scion' before, but I could definitely see it happening. To me that kinda diminishes the achievement in that it was a last-ditch Hail Mary, but then again, when I started to get interested in the wormfic community, I took the time to read the OG story first. I understand why others wouldn't, but it also means that there's several fanon tropes I am unaware of/never seen because the wormfics I read usually focus on the BB part and try to keep Taylor at least close to her canon characterization and I tend to avoid OP fics for reasons of boredom. Anyway, TLDR again, I think you guys might be arguing about different things, Yes, Taylor is Overhyped, but Also Yes, while not a smart decision, having Amy risk lobotomizing her was the best option she had to possibly help bring Gold Morning to a close with, as she saw it at the very least, negligible impact if she died.
Secondly, a point is made that Taylor could have made an effort to guard vital supplies and positions from enemy forces and that is true. It is not, however, directly contributing towards Scion's defeat, which at that point was DIRELY needed. It's been a while since I read Worm, but if I remember correctly, the PRT was all but gone, the Protectorate was stuck on frantic refugee direction, Cauldron had been completely gutted, and any other power that could direct the fight in anything approaching an effective manner was content to use the opportunity to expand their own domains and hope that Scion would just forget about them or that he wouldn't ACTUALLY destroy the Earth. Taylor decided to get her powers modded because she saw that things had fragmented to a point that seemed hopeless, and I cannot blame her for thinking that. In a choice between finding someway to keep things from getting worse on a small scale while Scion continues to exterminate the human race all but unopposed and betting her life on something that might actually help to beat the Great Golden Idiot, then she made the best decision she could with the information that she had.
I don't deny that people tend to overhype her a bit, and even Lisa points out that what she did was INCREDIBLY risky, but aside from the emotional impact on her friends-most of whom she hasn't had much interaction with in years-and the potential impact her base power could have had in the fight against Scion-negligible when taking his mobility and offensive options into account-even her failure and death would have had a negligible impact on the Golden Morning fight.
To make it simple: In the Worm-verse's fight for humanity's survival, the potential fallout of Taylor's death was far outweighed by the potential benefits that an unlimited Shard provided.
Afternote: reading through the preceding debate a bit more closely, I have to agree that Taylor DOES get overhyped a lot, and I have seen it done. I have not seen it as 'she knew what she needed to do to beat Scion' before, but I could definitely see it happening. To me that kinda diminishes the achievement in that it was a last-ditch Hail Mary, but then again, when I started to get interested in the wormfic community, I took the time to read the OG story first. I understand why others wouldn't, but it also means that there's several fanon tropes I am unaware of/never seen because the wormfics I read usually focus on the BB part and try to keep Taylor at least close to her canon characterization and I tend to avoid OP fics for reasons of boredom. Anyway, TLDR again, I think you guys might be arguing about different things, Yes, Taylor is Overhyped, but Also Yes, while not a smart decision, having Amy risk lobotomizing her was the best option she had to possibly help bring Gold Morning to a close with, as she saw it at the very least, negligible impact if she died.
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James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Funnily enough, I only realized after coming up with it exactly how eerily it mirrored Vicky's powers.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly some of the more weird side powers of Worm seem like some Nasuverse BS. Like Taylor's basically unlimited multitasking near the end of Worm really makes me think of Hassan of the Hundred Faces and how one consciousness can be spread so far.
rafuki22
Anti-nihilist(maybe).
- Location
- Earth/Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
More like Atlas alchemy to me.
What's that?
Magi from the Atlas Institute are taught how to run their thoughts in parallel, letting them think more things at a time basically
- Location
- United States
To be honest, it does make sense why the distrust for Jalter exists at the moment. It's a case of her being summoned earlier than she should have curtesy of the Throne being outside of Time and not concerned with Spoilers.
In FGO proper, there was an Arc that led up to her summoning in Chaldea. Starting with Jeanne proper. Her Interlude centers around Jalter solidifying her existence and succeeding in the very end and by tiniest of margins. Then the Da Vinci counterfeit event continued from here with her desperately trying to not disappear. While she still does, she does impart herself into FATE and then she was summoned to Chaldea. Taylor did an any% on her arc and skipped the cutscenes to get the 5star reward at the end. So now she has no context. So of course Chaldea wouldn't trust her, she only has Orleans to go on. We do this in game all the time.
That said, I do hope Jalter gets her Arc here also. If only because it really does make her likable.
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- Location
- Roanoke
I finally got Jalter's interlude done a few weeks ago, so I'm aware of her story.
I'm not saying the distrust is unwarranted at this stage, I'm just wanting to see Jalter in action. Taylor's noted for doing incredibly risky, suicidal gambles in her original story, and with Heracles incoming, Emiya down, and her "go-to" big gun already fired holding off Caenis, this is exactly the type of situation that would warrant summoning Jalter.
- Location
- United States
Technically, it's Jeanne Ruler's Interlude, that's the starting point. But your point still stands.I finally got Jalter's interlude done a few weeks ago, so I'm aware of her story.
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
No rush 5 years?
Racking up achievements and all that
Chapter CIV: Covenant
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
This story and this chapter brought to you by my wonderful supporters, whose kindness and generosity have made it possible to devote so much of my time and attention to writing, especially Eric, s22132, AbyssalApsu, Mark, and Alias 2v10. You guys are absolute legends. To show my gratitude, they had the chance to read this and upcoming chapters before the public release. You can find out more HERE.
And now that the shameless plugging is out of the way...
Chapter CIV: Covenant
It felt almost like being in a pirate movie, and yet also almost like being at home, when we stepped off of the Hind and onto the docks. For an instant, as I looked down the pier and towards the bustling town filled with ghosts, I saw the Boardwalk instead, sitting at the height of its glory and decadence in the days before Leviathan struck the city. Shops and food stands and tourist traps and all, exactly as it had all been for most of my life.
But the moment passed as quickly as it came, and I was left with only the hollow feeling of nostalgia for a life that hadn't been mine in nearly half a decade.
"Senpai?" Ritsuka asked.
"It's nothing."
The wooden boards thunked and echoed under our footsteps as our merry band followed Morgan into the city, transitioning to something softer when we stepped onto the first terrace. He seemed in his element, completely comfortable with the town, and he moved with a familiarity that spoke of experience.
I guess that made sense, since this was his Noble Phantasm. It was only natural that he would know his way around the place. Doubly so, considering the amount of his life he spent at the original Port Royal.
Bellamy was the last of us to disembark, leaving the Golden Hind to return to its own natural form as the Whydah Gally evaporated off of it like a cloud of steam. It was pitted and battle-scarred, riddled with all sorts of damage that it had taken from our battles against Blackbeard and his allies, but still seaworthy. I wasn't sure how much more it could stand before that changed.
Up onto the next terrace we went, and then up again, climbing the stairs each time set into the side of the wall, and then into the town proper, where the most of the phantoms milled about. They were little more than silhouettes with vague, undefined features, possessing only the suggestion of details that spoke of their role in the city and things like the shape of the nose or the style of the clothes. Out of the corner of my eye, I hardly noticed, but the instant I looked at them properly, it was hard to ignore.
My bugs couldn't touch them at all. That was probably what made them creepiest. Just…the inability to know they were there until I actually saw them with my own eyes.
Ritsuka, Mash, and even Drake seemed as spooked out as I was. Unnerved. I couldn't blame them. I was just better at hiding it.
"Man, I was in Port Royal before a few times back when I was alive," Bellamy said quietly, "and sure, I can see some of it here now, but…it really looks different."
"I imagine it would look a lot more familiar if it wasn't spread out across multiple islands," Arash commented.
"Probably," Bellamy agreed. "Just a bit weird, is all, seeing it like this instead."
I'd said before that the fort was situated higher than the rest of town so that it could look over and out at the sea, but that didn't actually explain much about its position. Most of the town — befitting a coastal city built on an isthmus — sat close to the edge of the island, which left the fort more to the back of a strip of buildings that stretched up and down the coastline and therefore well inside my range. Most of the town was, for that matter, except for the furthest edges farther along.
I almost missed a step as I used my bugs to get a closer look at the other Servants we were going to meet, because one of them happened to be fairly familiar. A little bit different than I remembered her, dressed in an actual dress instead of furs and lacking the boar's head attached at the shoulder, but there could only be so many Heroic Spirits with cat ears, of all things.
"I-incredible," Mash murmured. "Even if the layout is different, it really does seem like the historical Port Royal! It's even got, um, p-people here."
Ahead of us, Morgan laughed gregariously. "A city is nothing without its people, my dear! Brick and mortar, wood and stone — those are what a city is made of, how it's built. But its people, now, its people are the city. They give it its spirit and identity, its soul, its essence — the parts that make it alive."
Ritsuka looked dubiously at the phantoms strutting about, ignoring us almost as though we were the ghosts. It was entirely possible that they didn't even have enough consciousness and higher thought to even realize we were there, so for all intents and purposes, for them, we probably were. As tangible as the autumn wind and gone just as quickly.
A group of the ghosts, paying us no mind at all, walked through us on their way across the street, and as they did, a chill washed over my body and a shiver passed down my spine as the hairs on the skin of my prosthetic stood on end. From the grimace on the faces of the others, they felt much the same as I did, and were equally as uncomfortable.
"Don't look particularly alive to me," Drake said. "Walked right through us and everything."
Morgan sighed. "Yes, well, if you had seen it in its heyday…"
As we approached the fort, the familiar cat-eared woman stepped through the heavy doors at the front and pointed her bow — arrow nocked on the string — our way. Mash, Arash, and Bradamante all stiffened, preparing to leap to our defense.
"Stop right there!" she called down at us. "Morgan, why would you bring these strangers straight to us like this?"
"No need for that, Atalanta!" Morgan said, waving her down. His words confirmed what I'd suspected about her identity — there really weren't that many archers tied to legends about boars. "These fine folk here are allies of ours against Jason's crew! They had a nasty run-in with some of his lackeys a little while ago, and from the sounds of things, they met the man in all his illustrious glory — complete with a few of his new friends, it seems."
"I see." Atalanta slowly eased the tension of her bowstring, frowning. "It's as I suspected, then. So he used that Grail to summon more allies to his cause?"
"Caenis," I told her, pitching my voice to carry, "and Herakles."
Her eyes went wide. "Both of them? How in the gods' names did you manage to escape?"
Rika's head drooped as Ritsuka and Mash both looked away. "We…had to leave a few people behind," Ritsuka said.
"I see." Atalanta's lips pulled tight. "My condolences."
"They bought us as much time as they could," I said, "but Jason won't be more than a couple hours behind us. We need to talk strategy."
And see if maybe these guys didn't have a few more options for how to deal with Herakles. We didn't know for sure exactly how many lives Emiya had managed to shave off, so the larger our margin of error, the better.
Atalanta nodded. "Understood. The others are waiting inside. Come, and we can discuss how we might foil Jason's mad plan to end the world."
What?
"End the world?" Mash echoed, horrified, because I wasn't the only one surprised. "He wants to end the world?"
Atalanta's brow furrowed. "You've come this far and you don't even know that much?"
"He's an enemy standing in the way of our mission to correct this Singularity," I said matter-of-factly. "His motives weren't as much a concern as simply eliminating him and securing his Grail."
"I see," she said for the third time, nodding. She glanced at Medea briefly, which told me a lot more than she likely meant to. "Yes, in that case, it might make sense that you wouldn't have heard what it is he's planning. Very well. We can cover that as well."
She turned back towards the fort, and over her shoulder, she said again, "Come."
She stepped inside without another word.
"Er, Boss?" Bombe said hesitantly. "What about us? Don't rightly know what use a bunch of thick-headed buccaneers will be to this strategy meeting of yours."
Drake snorted, eyeing the ghosts still going about their lives uninterrupted. "A lot more than this lively bunch, that's for sure!"
"Don't underestimate them simply because they don't seem like much," Morgan said. "Hm, I saw the sorry state of that ship of yours, she needs some repairs, doesn't she? Mayhaps a few of my shipwrights and builders could be of assistance in getting the old gal back onto her feet in the proper way."
"Well, if you're offering, I'd be a fool to turn ya down!" Drake said. To Bombe, she added, "Send off a few of the lads to get that all squared away, nice and proper like, and then see about finding someplace with enough space to settle in for the night, Bombe. Don't go putting down roots, though, just in case we have to ditch this place in a hurry."
"Aye, Boss!" Bombe said, and then he turned to the rest of the crew. "You heard her, you louts! Rogers, get the rest of your shift and go make sure the Hind is still in one piece come the morning! The rest of you, let's find us a place to sit awhile! But if I find anyone with any moss growing on his beard, there'll be hell to pay!"
The crew made noises of agreement, lacking some of their usual spirit, and then the whole lot of them dispersed, walking off to follow their orders, and once they were gone, it was just us Masters, Drake, and the Servants. Drake grinned, but there was something a little hollow in it, and it didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Guess that leaves us to take care of business, eh?"
"Heh. Of a sort," said Morgan. "Just be careful where you utter that particular word, Captain Drake, or more to the point, in front of whom."
"Oh?" Drake's grin became a little more genuine. "Color me curious, Morgan!"
Morgan grinned back. "You'll find out shortly, although you might regret it soon after."
He climbed up the steps and walked through the front door. Drake looked after him and shrugged. "No sense in dawdling anymore, right? Sooner we get this plan hashed out, sooner we're ready for that dandy and his flunkies."
The mental image of Jason in a canary yellow suit with his hair slicked back into a pompadour briefly flitted across my mind, complete with a cane, a top hat, and a pair of pink-lensed sunglasses, and I made sure no sign of it showed on my face.
"Right."
With Drake in the lead, we filled into the fort to find a surprisingly normal-looking interior. I'd already mapped out most of it with my bugs, of course, but there was something to be said for seeing it with entirely human eyes that saw different ranges of color and different levels of detail. The walls, naturally, were hewn stone and mortar, but the furniture was all wood, and the tapestries and rugs throughout — all done in bright primary colors — gave it the feel of a place that had been first built to last, and then fitted with furnishings to live in.
Morgan led the way down a hallway and we followed, our footsteps echoing off the walls, to the thick, wooden door fitted with crude iron fastenings nonetheless probably designed to keep the entire door from splintering if an enemy were to attempt breaking through any given part of it. Beyond, I knew, there was a kind of conference room, so I was the only one who wasn't surprised to find Atalanta and the other two Servants awaiting us inside of it.
"Hey," said the taller of the two, a young-looking man who couldn't have been older than maybe twenty. "We've been waiting for you guys to show up for a long time."
I stilled, and Mash and Ritsuka both stiffened, neither of them any more sure of how they were supposed to take that than I was. Waiting for us to show up for a long time? How on Earth would he have known to expect us?
The shorter of the two, a petite woman with dark red hair done up in a fancy bun, sighed. "King David, please refrain from saying such ominous things. It will only serve to confuse them and make them wary."
The man, King David, because there really couldn't have been anyone else he could be, laughed awkwardly. "Right, sorry, I guess that came out kind of weird."
"Pay him no mind," said Atalanta. "It was not you, specifically, who we've been waiting for, but rather allies sent by the world to help us defeat Jason and the others."
That…made a bit more sense. A quick check with Master's Clairvoyance showed no sign of a Clairvoyance skill on any of these three, so how they would've known to expect us specifically wouldn't have had any good answers. It would almost certainly have meant we'd walked into a trap of some kind, although one that felt very convoluted, considering the advantages they'd had over us since the moment we got here.
"First and foremost," Atalanta went on, "I think we should get introductions out of the way — you've already heard, but I am Atalanta, of the Calydonian Boar hunt. We've actually met before, but at the time, I was afflicted with the Dragon Witch's Madness Enhancement, so I was not in my right mind."
So I was right about that. The boar-head thing and the fur, those must have been some other Noble Phantasm. The pelt of the Calydonian Boar allowing her to take on its properties? Not the most farfetched thing I'd heard.
"W-we did?" Mash asked, confused.
"Right before Fafnir showed up," I clarified for her. "She was that Archer. Siegfried and Emiya defeated her."
"Oh," said Mash. "Yes, I remember now." She bowed shortly to Atalanta. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Mash Kyrielight, Shielder class Servant."
"Well met," said Atalanta. She gestured to the young man, King David. "This, as you might have guessed, is King David."
"Yes, that King David," he interrupted. "King of Israel, in the old days. Nice to meet you all."
By process of elimination, that meant the young woman who looked even younger than him could only be…
"And this," Atalanta went on as though King David hadn't spoken, "is Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons."
Hippolyta offered us a polite smile. "Pleased to meet all of you."
"You, too," Ritsuka replied just as politely.
Atalanta nodded to Morgan. "You've already met Captain Henry Morgan."
Morgan smirked and gave us a lazy wave.
"We have," I said, taking charge. "My name is Taylor Hebert. Mash has already introduced herself. With her are Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru. Our Servants are Arash Kamangir —"
He gave them a smile and a nod.
"Bradamante —"
Bradamante sank into a brief, courtly bow.
"Samuel Bellamy —"
Bellamy sent them a jaunty wave and a wide grin.
"Euryale —"
Euryale merely sniffed, looking imperiously down her nose. A feat, given how much shorter than everyone else she was.
"Medea —"
Medea favored them with a stiff nod and a tight-lipped grimace.
"— and Artemis."
"Yoohoo!" Artemis said brightly as she peeked out from behind the rest of the group. "Nice to see you again, Atalanta! You look very cute in that dress! Oh, and those cat ears, too!"
Atalanta staggered, stumbling back and nearly collapsing on the large table in the center of the room. She stared back at Artemis with wide eyes and an expression of utter horror.
"A-Artemis?" Atalanta said faintly. "I-it can't be! Artemis is a goddess! There's no way she could be summoned as a Servant!"
Artemis pouted. "Oh! Darling!" She grabbed Orion, who squawked an ineffective protest, and brought him up. "She doesn't believe me! What's so hard to believe about this? Look, Atalanta, it's Orion! Isn't he so cute like this?"
She squished Orion's stuffed body against her cheek. Atalanta did not look at all comforted by this; in fact, she looked even more disturbed, like she was looking at something that terrified her utterly and completely. Or perhaps like her understanding of the world had just been turned on its head and she didn't know how to cope with it.
Yeah, I knew how that felt, too.
"Oh dear," said Hippolyta, looking over at Atalanta with concern. "I don't think she was expecting something like that. Perhaps I should take over from here…?"
"N-no," Atalanta said shakily, "I-I'm fine. I j-just…need a moment to adjust, th-that's all. S-something like this…is nowhere near enough to break me!"
It would have been more convincing if she didn't look like she was ready to keel over in a stiff breeze.
"Trust me," Ritsuka said sympathetically, "this is nowhere near as bad as it could be."
"That doesn't make me feel any better!" Atalanta snapped at him.
"How do you think I feel?" Orion demanded sourly. He crossed his arms, which only made him look more ridiculous, dangling as he was from Artemis' hands and pressed up against her cheek. "Being stuffed into this ridiculous body while she hijacks my Saint Graph — I got turned into a mascot character!"
Fou appeared on Mash's shoulder. "Fou-fou kyuu-fou!"
Orion gestured at him. "And they already have one!"
"A problem that will be taken care of once Jason's Grail has been retrieved and this Singularity is resolved," I cut in, keeping a close eye on the reactions of these new Servants. "That is our job as Masters of the Chaldea Security Organization." I waved a hand in Drake's direction. "Captain Drake was kind enough to ferry us across this ocean so that we could do that."
"Kind enough to ferry 'em, she says," Drake muttered under her breath.
"You're after his Holy Grail?" Hippolyta asked immediately, suspicious.
"It's what caused this Singularity to form in the first place," Mash answered for me. "If it's recovered and removed to our custody, this era will correct itself automatically from there."
"This is our fourth Singularity," Ritsuka added. "That's how it worked with the other three."
"Fourth?" Atalanta asked sharply. "There were three others, not just France?"
"One centered around the city of Fuyuki, Japan," I said, "one centered around Orléans, France, where we fought you, once centered around the early Roman Empire, and now this one. We still have another four to resolve after this."
A ripple of shock spread amongst the others, and even Morgan looked disturbed to hear it.
"Four?" Atalanta whispered, horrified. "You're not even halfway finished?"
"No."
Immediately, Atalanta whipped around towards Medea, and waspishly, she demanded, "And you didn't think to tell them what they're up against and why?"
Medea sneered. "Would it have changed anything? Their goals and objectives remain the same either way. If things had been handled properly —"
"They would have known better than to take a goddess within spitting distance of Jason, to start!" Atalanta snarled.
"That is something we haven't been clear on," I said. "Blackbeard was upfront about what he wanted Euryale for, but Jason never said."
Deliberately, I avoided looking at Medea, because it was now apparent that she hadn't either.
"I think it's time we all received a proper explanation," Hippolyta said. "Medea, as you are the only one who knows in full what your younger self and Jason are planning, perhaps you should tell the tale."
Although it was worded like a suggestion, her tone of voice said that it was much more like an order, and Medea didn't take kindly to it. She scowled and looked ready to dig in her heels, until Hippolyta added, "If you leave it to one of us, then I'm afraid we can only explain the parts we know personally, and therefore any details that might be vital will be missed."
Medea's scowl deepened. "Fine," she bit out. "Since you insist so vigorously, I'll explain the situation as it stands now."
Are you happy? I heard in her tone, although she didn't say the words out loud.
"That will be much appreciated, thank you," Hippolyta said, ignoring the subtext completely.
Medea took a deep breath and heaved out a frustrated sigh. "To begin with, neither my foolish younger self nor that fop are in complete control of the situation. She was summoned and subjugated by a greater power, one with which I myself am unfamiliar, and she in turn summoned Jason under its orders to act as a patsy."
A shiver traveled down my spine. "A greater power?"
There were only so many things that could be considered that way to a mage who had learned from the Goddess of Magic herself.
"It called itself Forneus," Medea said sourly, confirming my worst suspicions. "Whatever it was, it possessed enough power to defeat my younger self utterly and completely. Even as much of a fool as she is, she should still have been able to match any ordinary Caster class Servant, so whatever it is, it's far beyond that."
Mash gasped. "Forneus…another one of the seventy-two Demon Gods!"
"Oh dear," said King David. "That's not good at all."
That cinched it, then. It wasn't just Flauros in Septem, it wasn't just Lev, there was a whole organization of some kind behind it. A team, a gang, presumably a leader in whoever the mysterious "King" happened to be. A conspiracy of some kind to destroy the world, although we still had no idea why or what motives were behind it.
"Their goal is to use the Holy Grail, the Ark, and a goddess to destroy this era utterly," Medea went on, "although my younger self has Jason fooled into thinking it will make him a god-king instead. The stupid bastard doesn't have the slightest clue that he's being led around by the nose, or even that my younger self has been bound to this 'demon god's' will. He's completely clueless, and he wouldn't listen even if you tried to tell him otherwise."
That sounded about right. Jason hadn't struck me as a particularly reasonable person. Even if we tried to negotiate and tell him the truth, he would probably think it was some kind of ploy to save our own skins from Herakles and Caenis and wouldn't listen to a thing we said.
"Hang on," said Arash. "The Ark? As in, the Ark of the Covenant, from the story of Moses? The one that killed whoever touched it?"
I glanced at him, a little surprised he was familiar with it — but then, as a Heroic Spirit, the Throne would have provided him with knowledge about that sort of thing, wouldn't it? Even if the legend was recorded long after his own era.
King David laughed awkwardly. "Ahahaha… Yeah. That's the one."
I turned to look his way and pinned him with a stare. "You know where it is."
"You…could say that," he said evasively. "It's my Noble Phantasm, after all, even if it's an unwieldy, mostly useless thing that's almost impossible to move. It…would definitely work the way she's saying, if you were to sacrifice a goddess to it. In a world as unstable as this…Singularity, you called it? That would destroy this entire place in one go."
"The gods of the old world were essentially systems of rules," Medea added helpfully. "Embodiments of the laws of nature. Were one to be sacrificed to an artifact that guaranteed death, no matter who or what it touched, it wouldn't be all that dissimilar from sacrificing the World itself."
King David sighed. "Ordinarily, the world's robust enough to weather something like that. The destruction would be localized. Just Jason and the Argo would go up, you know? But like I said, in a Singularity, things are just too unstable. This entire ocean — and everything in it —"
He mimed an explosion with his hands.
Presumably, that would also mean us from Chaldea and Captain Drake, too, and if this Singularity were to detonate… Well, if it was Forneus' plan, then we had to assume it would accomplish the same thing as leaving the Singularity to fester.
"This Ark," I began, "you wouldn't happen to be storing it in the center of the keep, would you?"
The other Servants stiffened, and their heads all whipped around towards me. "You know where it is?" King David asked, somewhere between surprise and alarm.
To demonstrate my point, I brought the nearest butterfly over — a species I didn't recognize on sight — from out of its hiding place in the corner and had it land atop an outstretched finger. It fluttered its wings to punctuate my point.
"Yes," I said simply. I pretended not to notice Morgan cocking his pistol behind his back.
Hippolyta's eyes narrowed on me. "How much of this fort can you see?"
"Enough to know that the Ark does exactly what you say it does."
King David sighed and sagged. "Ah. You types with your extra senses really are the worst. Planning around that sort of thing is such a pain."
As opposed to dealing with Servants, who could outright ignore most of the things I could do? Of the two of us, I thought I still had more right to complain about unfairness than him.
"So their plan is to use the Ark, which is being hidden inside this fort, to sacrifice Euryale and destroy the world?" Mash sighed. "The only trouble is, now that we know what they're after, how do we stop them? Even if E-Emiya managed to take a few of Herakles' lives, we still don't know how to finish off the rest of them."
"Emiya?" asked Atalanta. Her eyes scanned our group again, and I could see the moment when she came to the right conclusion. "Ah."
"Wait," said Ritsuka. "If the Ark kills anything it touches…would that be enough to finish off Herakles?"
"Theoretically," said Medea. "Good luck getting him to touch it, though. Herakles might be addled by Madness Enhancement as a Berserker, but his instincts remain sharp. Tricking him into touching the Ark would be a task in and of itself."
"We can call that Plan B," I said. Or Z. The idea had merit, but making it work might require too much to pull off. "If we have other, simpler options, it would be better to make use of those, first." I turned to Atalanta. "Your Noble Phantasm?"
She shook her head. "It's only B-Rank. Were I to draw my bow to its maximum, I might be able to pierce his skin, but he would surely see it coming and avoid it accordingly."
"Don't look at me, either," said King David. "The Ark is my strongest Noble Phantasm, and it would definitely do the job. Anything else I have, though, he'd just shrug it off. Sorry."
My lips pursed. "And you?" I asked Hippolyta.
Briefly, she touched the ornate sash that wrapped up and over her right shoulder, and she frowned. "It's possible I might be able to take one or two lives from him, but truly not much more than that. Unfortunately, as someone who died to him, I am more than aware that he is a far greater warrior than I, and while it is not impossible that I could, perhaps, push beyond those limitations…"
She sighed. "It would be counterproductive."
Lastly, I turned to Morgan, and before I could even ask, he grinned and shrugged gregariously. "Well, it's not out of the question. There isn't much, I find, that survives a barrage of cannonfire, if you have enough cannons and enough fire. Rather unfortunately, the best I can promise is a single of his lives. Anything more than that, well, I was always better with guile and trickery than brute force."
In my head, I tallied it up. Assuming one life each from Morgan and Hippolyta, one life taken by Siegfried, one life taken by Aífe, and maybe, if we got lucky, one life by Atalanta's arrows, that still only got us about halfway. If we risked Jeanne Alter, that would put us at an even half dozen, and while that was impressive, if Emiya managed to take anything less than the same number, we would still have to contend with Herakles after all of that.
"That's only five," Ritsuka murmured. Who he wasn't counting, I wasn't sure.
It looked like the Ark was going to have to be our main plan after all. We could put our best effort into taking Herakles out with the rest of the team, but if that failed, we were going to have to move immediately to implementing the Ark as a contingency.
"Then this is how we'll do it," I said. "However smart and confident he is, Jason isn't likely to attempt a sneak attack at night, just because it'll be harder for him to see an ambush in the dark. Since he's the most vulnerable member of his current team, he won't want to risk it, especially with five Archers on our side. Instead, he'll probably aim for an early morning attack, not long after dawn, when he expects us to be just waking up."
Medea chuckled lowly. "That sounds like him. Too much of a coward to risk his own life."
"When he does attack," I went on, "we'll deal with Caenis first and make sure she's neutralized. Arash will handle that, using Drake's Grail to get through her invincibility. Once Caenis is down, we'll put on a show of attempting to kill Herakles and take as many of his lives as we feasibly can, and if we don't manage to take them all, we'll perform a fighting retreat and lure him towards the Ark. Even if it doesn't kill him outright, it should still drain him dry of any energy, and then it won't matter how many lives he has left."
Even a Servant like Herakles couldn't continue without magical energy to support him. If he was sucked dry in an instant, then it wouldn't matter whether Jason's Grail was supplying him with power or not.
"Oh my," said King David. "So you even saw through it to that extent, did you? Very impressive, Miss."
"And with Herakles and Caenis both taken down…" Ritsuka began.
I nodded. "Jason will be vulnerable. With only Hektor left to defend him, we have enough numbers and firepower to overwhelm them and take the Grail."
"And this Singularity will be resolved," Mash finished.
Leaving us to return to Chaldea, so we could prepare for the next one and bring Emiya back. Rika's continued uncharacteristic silence had not gone unnoticed.
"Anyone have any concerns they need addressed?" I asked, looking over the room. No one spoke up, and everyone whose eyes I met had the confidence of someone with a solid plan they had faith in.
Since there were no objections forthcoming, I nodded again. "Then we'll take the night to prepare. We Masters need to eat and sleep, and it's been a long day. Captain Drake, we'll need your Grail."
"Aye," Drake said grimly. "The boys'll likely have picked out a spot by now, and we have some unfinished business to attend to, don't we?"
I had an idea what that might be, but before that, I had some things of my own to take care of.
Next — Chapter CV: Parting Glass
And now that the shameless plugging is out of the way...
Chapter CIV: Covenant
It felt almost like being in a pirate movie, and yet also almost like being at home, when we stepped off of the Hind and onto the docks. For an instant, as I looked down the pier and towards the bustling town filled with ghosts, I saw the Boardwalk instead, sitting at the height of its glory and decadence in the days before Leviathan struck the city. Shops and food stands and tourist traps and all, exactly as it had all been for most of my life.
But the moment passed as quickly as it came, and I was left with only the hollow feeling of nostalgia for a life that hadn't been mine in nearly half a decade.
"Senpai?" Ritsuka asked.
"It's nothing."
The wooden boards thunked and echoed under our footsteps as our merry band followed Morgan into the city, transitioning to something softer when we stepped onto the first terrace. He seemed in his element, completely comfortable with the town, and he moved with a familiarity that spoke of experience.
I guess that made sense, since this was his Noble Phantasm. It was only natural that he would know his way around the place. Doubly so, considering the amount of his life he spent at the original Port Royal.
Bellamy was the last of us to disembark, leaving the Golden Hind to return to its own natural form as the Whydah Gally evaporated off of it like a cloud of steam. It was pitted and battle-scarred, riddled with all sorts of damage that it had taken from our battles against Blackbeard and his allies, but still seaworthy. I wasn't sure how much more it could stand before that changed.
Up onto the next terrace we went, and then up again, climbing the stairs each time set into the side of the wall, and then into the town proper, where the most of the phantoms milled about. They were little more than silhouettes with vague, undefined features, possessing only the suggestion of details that spoke of their role in the city and things like the shape of the nose or the style of the clothes. Out of the corner of my eye, I hardly noticed, but the instant I looked at them properly, it was hard to ignore.
My bugs couldn't touch them at all. That was probably what made them creepiest. Just…the inability to know they were there until I actually saw them with my own eyes.
Ritsuka, Mash, and even Drake seemed as spooked out as I was. Unnerved. I couldn't blame them. I was just better at hiding it.
"Man, I was in Port Royal before a few times back when I was alive," Bellamy said quietly, "and sure, I can see some of it here now, but…it really looks different."
"I imagine it would look a lot more familiar if it wasn't spread out across multiple islands," Arash commented.
"Probably," Bellamy agreed. "Just a bit weird, is all, seeing it like this instead."
I'd said before that the fort was situated higher than the rest of town so that it could look over and out at the sea, but that didn't actually explain much about its position. Most of the town — befitting a coastal city built on an isthmus — sat close to the edge of the island, which left the fort more to the back of a strip of buildings that stretched up and down the coastline and therefore well inside my range. Most of the town was, for that matter, except for the furthest edges farther along.
I almost missed a step as I used my bugs to get a closer look at the other Servants we were going to meet, because one of them happened to be fairly familiar. A little bit different than I remembered her, dressed in an actual dress instead of furs and lacking the boar's head attached at the shoulder, but there could only be so many Heroic Spirits with cat ears, of all things.
"I-incredible," Mash murmured. "Even if the layout is different, it really does seem like the historical Port Royal! It's even got, um, p-people here."
Ahead of us, Morgan laughed gregariously. "A city is nothing without its people, my dear! Brick and mortar, wood and stone — those are what a city is made of, how it's built. But its people, now, its people are the city. They give it its spirit and identity, its soul, its essence — the parts that make it alive."
Ritsuka looked dubiously at the phantoms strutting about, ignoring us almost as though we were the ghosts. It was entirely possible that they didn't even have enough consciousness and higher thought to even realize we were there, so for all intents and purposes, for them, we probably were. As tangible as the autumn wind and gone just as quickly.
A group of the ghosts, paying us no mind at all, walked through us on their way across the street, and as they did, a chill washed over my body and a shiver passed down my spine as the hairs on the skin of my prosthetic stood on end. From the grimace on the faces of the others, they felt much the same as I did, and were equally as uncomfortable.
"Don't look particularly alive to me," Drake said. "Walked right through us and everything."
Morgan sighed. "Yes, well, if you had seen it in its heyday…"
As we approached the fort, the familiar cat-eared woman stepped through the heavy doors at the front and pointed her bow — arrow nocked on the string — our way. Mash, Arash, and Bradamante all stiffened, preparing to leap to our defense.
"Stop right there!" she called down at us. "Morgan, why would you bring these strangers straight to us like this?"
"No need for that, Atalanta!" Morgan said, waving her down. His words confirmed what I'd suspected about her identity — there really weren't that many archers tied to legends about boars. "These fine folk here are allies of ours against Jason's crew! They had a nasty run-in with some of his lackeys a little while ago, and from the sounds of things, they met the man in all his illustrious glory — complete with a few of his new friends, it seems."
"I see." Atalanta slowly eased the tension of her bowstring, frowning. "It's as I suspected, then. So he used that Grail to summon more allies to his cause?"
"Caenis," I told her, pitching my voice to carry, "and Herakles."
Her eyes went wide. "Both of them? How in the gods' names did you manage to escape?"
Rika's head drooped as Ritsuka and Mash both looked away. "We…had to leave a few people behind," Ritsuka said.
"I see." Atalanta's lips pulled tight. "My condolences."
"They bought us as much time as they could," I said, "but Jason won't be more than a couple hours behind us. We need to talk strategy."
And see if maybe these guys didn't have a few more options for how to deal with Herakles. We didn't know for sure exactly how many lives Emiya had managed to shave off, so the larger our margin of error, the better.
Atalanta nodded. "Understood. The others are waiting inside. Come, and we can discuss how we might foil Jason's mad plan to end the world."
What?
"End the world?" Mash echoed, horrified, because I wasn't the only one surprised. "He wants to end the world?"
Atalanta's brow furrowed. "You've come this far and you don't even know that much?"
"He's an enemy standing in the way of our mission to correct this Singularity," I said matter-of-factly. "His motives weren't as much a concern as simply eliminating him and securing his Grail."
"I see," she said for the third time, nodding. She glanced at Medea briefly, which told me a lot more than she likely meant to. "Yes, in that case, it might make sense that you wouldn't have heard what it is he's planning. Very well. We can cover that as well."
She turned back towards the fort, and over her shoulder, she said again, "Come."
She stepped inside without another word.
"Er, Boss?" Bombe said hesitantly. "What about us? Don't rightly know what use a bunch of thick-headed buccaneers will be to this strategy meeting of yours."
Drake snorted, eyeing the ghosts still going about their lives uninterrupted. "A lot more than this lively bunch, that's for sure!"
"Don't underestimate them simply because they don't seem like much," Morgan said. "Hm, I saw the sorry state of that ship of yours, she needs some repairs, doesn't she? Mayhaps a few of my shipwrights and builders could be of assistance in getting the old gal back onto her feet in the proper way."
"Well, if you're offering, I'd be a fool to turn ya down!" Drake said. To Bombe, she added, "Send off a few of the lads to get that all squared away, nice and proper like, and then see about finding someplace with enough space to settle in for the night, Bombe. Don't go putting down roots, though, just in case we have to ditch this place in a hurry."
"Aye, Boss!" Bombe said, and then he turned to the rest of the crew. "You heard her, you louts! Rogers, get the rest of your shift and go make sure the Hind is still in one piece come the morning! The rest of you, let's find us a place to sit awhile! But if I find anyone with any moss growing on his beard, there'll be hell to pay!"
The crew made noises of agreement, lacking some of their usual spirit, and then the whole lot of them dispersed, walking off to follow their orders, and once they were gone, it was just us Masters, Drake, and the Servants. Drake grinned, but there was something a little hollow in it, and it didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Guess that leaves us to take care of business, eh?"
"Heh. Of a sort," said Morgan. "Just be careful where you utter that particular word, Captain Drake, or more to the point, in front of whom."
"Oh?" Drake's grin became a little more genuine. "Color me curious, Morgan!"
Morgan grinned back. "You'll find out shortly, although you might regret it soon after."
He climbed up the steps and walked through the front door. Drake looked after him and shrugged. "No sense in dawdling anymore, right? Sooner we get this plan hashed out, sooner we're ready for that dandy and his flunkies."
The mental image of Jason in a canary yellow suit with his hair slicked back into a pompadour briefly flitted across my mind, complete with a cane, a top hat, and a pair of pink-lensed sunglasses, and I made sure no sign of it showed on my face.
"Right."
With Drake in the lead, we filled into the fort to find a surprisingly normal-looking interior. I'd already mapped out most of it with my bugs, of course, but there was something to be said for seeing it with entirely human eyes that saw different ranges of color and different levels of detail. The walls, naturally, were hewn stone and mortar, but the furniture was all wood, and the tapestries and rugs throughout — all done in bright primary colors — gave it the feel of a place that had been first built to last, and then fitted with furnishings to live in.
Morgan led the way down a hallway and we followed, our footsteps echoing off the walls, to the thick, wooden door fitted with crude iron fastenings nonetheless probably designed to keep the entire door from splintering if an enemy were to attempt breaking through any given part of it. Beyond, I knew, there was a kind of conference room, so I was the only one who wasn't surprised to find Atalanta and the other two Servants awaiting us inside of it.
"Hey," said the taller of the two, a young-looking man who couldn't have been older than maybe twenty. "We've been waiting for you guys to show up for a long time."
I stilled, and Mash and Ritsuka both stiffened, neither of them any more sure of how they were supposed to take that than I was. Waiting for us to show up for a long time? How on Earth would he have known to expect us?
The shorter of the two, a petite woman with dark red hair done up in a fancy bun, sighed. "King David, please refrain from saying such ominous things. It will only serve to confuse them and make them wary."
The man, King David, because there really couldn't have been anyone else he could be, laughed awkwardly. "Right, sorry, I guess that came out kind of weird."
"Pay him no mind," said Atalanta. "It was not you, specifically, who we've been waiting for, but rather allies sent by the world to help us defeat Jason and the others."
That…made a bit more sense. A quick check with Master's Clairvoyance showed no sign of a Clairvoyance skill on any of these three, so how they would've known to expect us specifically wouldn't have had any good answers. It would almost certainly have meant we'd walked into a trap of some kind, although one that felt very convoluted, considering the advantages they'd had over us since the moment we got here.
"First and foremost," Atalanta went on, "I think we should get introductions out of the way — you've already heard, but I am Atalanta, of the Calydonian Boar hunt. We've actually met before, but at the time, I was afflicted with the Dragon Witch's Madness Enhancement, so I was not in my right mind."
So I was right about that. The boar-head thing and the fur, those must have been some other Noble Phantasm. The pelt of the Calydonian Boar allowing her to take on its properties? Not the most farfetched thing I'd heard.
"W-we did?" Mash asked, confused.
"Right before Fafnir showed up," I clarified for her. "She was that Archer. Siegfried and Emiya defeated her."
"Oh," said Mash. "Yes, I remember now." She bowed shortly to Atalanta. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Mash Kyrielight, Shielder class Servant."
"Well met," said Atalanta. She gestured to the young man, King David. "This, as you might have guessed, is King David."
"Yes, that King David," he interrupted. "King of Israel, in the old days. Nice to meet you all."
By process of elimination, that meant the young woman who looked even younger than him could only be…
"And this," Atalanta went on as though King David hadn't spoken, "is Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons."
Hippolyta offered us a polite smile. "Pleased to meet all of you."
"You, too," Ritsuka replied just as politely.
Atalanta nodded to Morgan. "You've already met Captain Henry Morgan."
Morgan smirked and gave us a lazy wave.
"We have," I said, taking charge. "My name is Taylor Hebert. Mash has already introduced herself. With her are Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru. Our Servants are Arash Kamangir —"
He gave them a smile and a nod.
"Bradamante —"
Bradamante sank into a brief, courtly bow.
"Samuel Bellamy —"
Bellamy sent them a jaunty wave and a wide grin.
"Euryale —"
Euryale merely sniffed, looking imperiously down her nose. A feat, given how much shorter than everyone else she was.
"Medea —"
Medea favored them with a stiff nod and a tight-lipped grimace.
"— and Artemis."
"Yoohoo!" Artemis said brightly as she peeked out from behind the rest of the group. "Nice to see you again, Atalanta! You look very cute in that dress! Oh, and those cat ears, too!"
Atalanta staggered, stumbling back and nearly collapsing on the large table in the center of the room. She stared back at Artemis with wide eyes and an expression of utter horror.
"A-Artemis?" Atalanta said faintly. "I-it can't be! Artemis is a goddess! There's no way she could be summoned as a Servant!"
Artemis pouted. "Oh! Darling!" She grabbed Orion, who squawked an ineffective protest, and brought him up. "She doesn't believe me! What's so hard to believe about this? Look, Atalanta, it's Orion! Isn't he so cute like this?"
She squished Orion's stuffed body against her cheek. Atalanta did not look at all comforted by this; in fact, she looked even more disturbed, like she was looking at something that terrified her utterly and completely. Or perhaps like her understanding of the world had just been turned on its head and she didn't know how to cope with it.
Yeah, I knew how that felt, too.
"Oh dear," said Hippolyta, looking over at Atalanta with concern. "I don't think she was expecting something like that. Perhaps I should take over from here…?"
"N-no," Atalanta said shakily, "I-I'm fine. I j-just…need a moment to adjust, th-that's all. S-something like this…is nowhere near enough to break me!"
It would have been more convincing if she didn't look like she was ready to keel over in a stiff breeze.
"Trust me," Ritsuka said sympathetically, "this is nowhere near as bad as it could be."
"That doesn't make me feel any better!" Atalanta snapped at him.
"How do you think I feel?" Orion demanded sourly. He crossed his arms, which only made him look more ridiculous, dangling as he was from Artemis' hands and pressed up against her cheek. "Being stuffed into this ridiculous body while she hijacks my Saint Graph — I got turned into a mascot character!"
Fou appeared on Mash's shoulder. "Fou-fou kyuu-fou!"
Orion gestured at him. "And they already have one!"
"A problem that will be taken care of once Jason's Grail has been retrieved and this Singularity is resolved," I cut in, keeping a close eye on the reactions of these new Servants. "That is our job as Masters of the Chaldea Security Organization." I waved a hand in Drake's direction. "Captain Drake was kind enough to ferry us across this ocean so that we could do that."
"Kind enough to ferry 'em, she says," Drake muttered under her breath.
"You're after his Holy Grail?" Hippolyta asked immediately, suspicious.
"It's what caused this Singularity to form in the first place," Mash answered for me. "If it's recovered and removed to our custody, this era will correct itself automatically from there."
"This is our fourth Singularity," Ritsuka added. "That's how it worked with the other three."
"Fourth?" Atalanta asked sharply. "There were three others, not just France?"
"One centered around the city of Fuyuki, Japan," I said, "one centered around Orléans, France, where we fought you, once centered around the early Roman Empire, and now this one. We still have another four to resolve after this."
A ripple of shock spread amongst the others, and even Morgan looked disturbed to hear it.
"Four?" Atalanta whispered, horrified. "You're not even halfway finished?"
"No."
Immediately, Atalanta whipped around towards Medea, and waspishly, she demanded, "And you didn't think to tell them what they're up against and why?"
Medea sneered. "Would it have changed anything? Their goals and objectives remain the same either way. If things had been handled properly —"
"They would have known better than to take a goddess within spitting distance of Jason, to start!" Atalanta snarled.
"That is something we haven't been clear on," I said. "Blackbeard was upfront about what he wanted Euryale for, but Jason never said."
Deliberately, I avoided looking at Medea, because it was now apparent that she hadn't either.
"I think it's time we all received a proper explanation," Hippolyta said. "Medea, as you are the only one who knows in full what your younger self and Jason are planning, perhaps you should tell the tale."
Although it was worded like a suggestion, her tone of voice said that it was much more like an order, and Medea didn't take kindly to it. She scowled and looked ready to dig in her heels, until Hippolyta added, "If you leave it to one of us, then I'm afraid we can only explain the parts we know personally, and therefore any details that might be vital will be missed."
Medea's scowl deepened. "Fine," she bit out. "Since you insist so vigorously, I'll explain the situation as it stands now."
Are you happy? I heard in her tone, although she didn't say the words out loud.
"That will be much appreciated, thank you," Hippolyta said, ignoring the subtext completely.
Medea took a deep breath and heaved out a frustrated sigh. "To begin with, neither my foolish younger self nor that fop are in complete control of the situation. She was summoned and subjugated by a greater power, one with which I myself am unfamiliar, and she in turn summoned Jason under its orders to act as a patsy."
A shiver traveled down my spine. "A greater power?"
There were only so many things that could be considered that way to a mage who had learned from the Goddess of Magic herself.
"It called itself Forneus," Medea said sourly, confirming my worst suspicions. "Whatever it was, it possessed enough power to defeat my younger self utterly and completely. Even as much of a fool as she is, she should still have been able to match any ordinary Caster class Servant, so whatever it is, it's far beyond that."
Mash gasped. "Forneus…another one of the seventy-two Demon Gods!"
"Oh dear," said King David. "That's not good at all."
That cinched it, then. It wasn't just Flauros in Septem, it wasn't just Lev, there was a whole organization of some kind behind it. A team, a gang, presumably a leader in whoever the mysterious "King" happened to be. A conspiracy of some kind to destroy the world, although we still had no idea why or what motives were behind it.
"Their goal is to use the Holy Grail, the Ark, and a goddess to destroy this era utterly," Medea went on, "although my younger self has Jason fooled into thinking it will make him a god-king instead. The stupid bastard doesn't have the slightest clue that he's being led around by the nose, or even that my younger self has been bound to this 'demon god's' will. He's completely clueless, and he wouldn't listen even if you tried to tell him otherwise."
That sounded about right. Jason hadn't struck me as a particularly reasonable person. Even if we tried to negotiate and tell him the truth, he would probably think it was some kind of ploy to save our own skins from Herakles and Caenis and wouldn't listen to a thing we said.
"Hang on," said Arash. "The Ark? As in, the Ark of the Covenant, from the story of Moses? The one that killed whoever touched it?"
I glanced at him, a little surprised he was familiar with it — but then, as a Heroic Spirit, the Throne would have provided him with knowledge about that sort of thing, wouldn't it? Even if the legend was recorded long after his own era.
King David laughed awkwardly. "Ahahaha… Yeah. That's the one."
I turned to look his way and pinned him with a stare. "You know where it is."
"You…could say that," he said evasively. "It's my Noble Phantasm, after all, even if it's an unwieldy, mostly useless thing that's almost impossible to move. It…would definitely work the way she's saying, if you were to sacrifice a goddess to it. In a world as unstable as this…Singularity, you called it? That would destroy this entire place in one go."
"The gods of the old world were essentially systems of rules," Medea added helpfully. "Embodiments of the laws of nature. Were one to be sacrificed to an artifact that guaranteed death, no matter who or what it touched, it wouldn't be all that dissimilar from sacrificing the World itself."
King David sighed. "Ordinarily, the world's robust enough to weather something like that. The destruction would be localized. Just Jason and the Argo would go up, you know? But like I said, in a Singularity, things are just too unstable. This entire ocean — and everything in it —"
He mimed an explosion with his hands.
Presumably, that would also mean us from Chaldea and Captain Drake, too, and if this Singularity were to detonate… Well, if it was Forneus' plan, then we had to assume it would accomplish the same thing as leaving the Singularity to fester.
"This Ark," I began, "you wouldn't happen to be storing it in the center of the keep, would you?"
The other Servants stiffened, and their heads all whipped around towards me. "You know where it is?" King David asked, somewhere between surprise and alarm.
To demonstrate my point, I brought the nearest butterfly over — a species I didn't recognize on sight — from out of its hiding place in the corner and had it land atop an outstretched finger. It fluttered its wings to punctuate my point.
"Yes," I said simply. I pretended not to notice Morgan cocking his pistol behind his back.
Hippolyta's eyes narrowed on me. "How much of this fort can you see?"
"Enough to know that the Ark does exactly what you say it does."
King David sighed and sagged. "Ah. You types with your extra senses really are the worst. Planning around that sort of thing is such a pain."
As opposed to dealing with Servants, who could outright ignore most of the things I could do? Of the two of us, I thought I still had more right to complain about unfairness than him.
"So their plan is to use the Ark, which is being hidden inside this fort, to sacrifice Euryale and destroy the world?" Mash sighed. "The only trouble is, now that we know what they're after, how do we stop them? Even if E-Emiya managed to take a few of Herakles' lives, we still don't know how to finish off the rest of them."
"Emiya?" asked Atalanta. Her eyes scanned our group again, and I could see the moment when she came to the right conclusion. "Ah."
"Wait," said Ritsuka. "If the Ark kills anything it touches…would that be enough to finish off Herakles?"
"Theoretically," said Medea. "Good luck getting him to touch it, though. Herakles might be addled by Madness Enhancement as a Berserker, but his instincts remain sharp. Tricking him into touching the Ark would be a task in and of itself."
"We can call that Plan B," I said. Or Z. The idea had merit, but making it work might require too much to pull off. "If we have other, simpler options, it would be better to make use of those, first." I turned to Atalanta. "Your Noble Phantasm?"
She shook her head. "It's only B-Rank. Were I to draw my bow to its maximum, I might be able to pierce his skin, but he would surely see it coming and avoid it accordingly."
"Don't look at me, either," said King David. "The Ark is my strongest Noble Phantasm, and it would definitely do the job. Anything else I have, though, he'd just shrug it off. Sorry."
My lips pursed. "And you?" I asked Hippolyta.
Briefly, she touched the ornate sash that wrapped up and over her right shoulder, and she frowned. "It's possible I might be able to take one or two lives from him, but truly not much more than that. Unfortunately, as someone who died to him, I am more than aware that he is a far greater warrior than I, and while it is not impossible that I could, perhaps, push beyond those limitations…"
She sighed. "It would be counterproductive."
Lastly, I turned to Morgan, and before I could even ask, he grinned and shrugged gregariously. "Well, it's not out of the question. There isn't much, I find, that survives a barrage of cannonfire, if you have enough cannons and enough fire. Rather unfortunately, the best I can promise is a single of his lives. Anything more than that, well, I was always better with guile and trickery than brute force."
In my head, I tallied it up. Assuming one life each from Morgan and Hippolyta, one life taken by Siegfried, one life taken by Aífe, and maybe, if we got lucky, one life by Atalanta's arrows, that still only got us about halfway. If we risked Jeanne Alter, that would put us at an even half dozen, and while that was impressive, if Emiya managed to take anything less than the same number, we would still have to contend with Herakles after all of that.
"That's only five," Ritsuka murmured. Who he wasn't counting, I wasn't sure.
It looked like the Ark was going to have to be our main plan after all. We could put our best effort into taking Herakles out with the rest of the team, but if that failed, we were going to have to move immediately to implementing the Ark as a contingency.
"Then this is how we'll do it," I said. "However smart and confident he is, Jason isn't likely to attempt a sneak attack at night, just because it'll be harder for him to see an ambush in the dark. Since he's the most vulnerable member of his current team, he won't want to risk it, especially with five Archers on our side. Instead, he'll probably aim for an early morning attack, not long after dawn, when he expects us to be just waking up."
Medea chuckled lowly. "That sounds like him. Too much of a coward to risk his own life."
"When he does attack," I went on, "we'll deal with Caenis first and make sure she's neutralized. Arash will handle that, using Drake's Grail to get through her invincibility. Once Caenis is down, we'll put on a show of attempting to kill Herakles and take as many of his lives as we feasibly can, and if we don't manage to take them all, we'll perform a fighting retreat and lure him towards the Ark. Even if it doesn't kill him outright, it should still drain him dry of any energy, and then it won't matter how many lives he has left."
Even a Servant like Herakles couldn't continue without magical energy to support him. If he was sucked dry in an instant, then it wouldn't matter whether Jason's Grail was supplying him with power or not.
"Oh my," said King David. "So you even saw through it to that extent, did you? Very impressive, Miss."
"And with Herakles and Caenis both taken down…" Ritsuka began.
I nodded. "Jason will be vulnerable. With only Hektor left to defend him, we have enough numbers and firepower to overwhelm them and take the Grail."
"And this Singularity will be resolved," Mash finished.
Leaving us to return to Chaldea, so we could prepare for the next one and bring Emiya back. Rika's continued uncharacteristic silence had not gone unnoticed.
"Anyone have any concerns they need addressed?" I asked, looking over the room. No one spoke up, and everyone whose eyes I met had the confidence of someone with a solid plan they had faith in.
Since there were no objections forthcoming, I nodded again. "Then we'll take the night to prepare. We Masters need to eat and sleep, and it's been a long day. Captain Drake, we'll need your Grail."
"Aye," Drake said grimly. "The boys'll likely have picked out a spot by now, and we have some unfinished business to attend to, don't we?"
I had an idea what that might be, but before that, I had some things of my own to take care of.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The planning commences.
This went on for longer than I expected it to, to the point where I had to cut the second half off because it was going to double the size of this chapter and make it balloon — past 10K, based upon the individual word counts of each one.
You may recognize shades of the canon dialogue in this part. It couldn't be helped. I really wanted it to come down to everyone teaming up and bringing down Herk by working together to each take at least one life, but Taylor realized the exact same thing I did: even with all of that, the numbers weren't really going to add up.
So like I said. It couldn't be helped.
This went on for longer than I expected it to, to the point where I had to cut the second half off because it was going to double the size of this chapter and make it balloon — past 10K, based upon the individual word counts of each one.
You may recognize shades of the canon dialogue in this part. It couldn't be helped. I really wanted it to come down to everyone teaming up and bringing down Herk by working together to each take at least one life, but Taylor realized the exact same thing I did: even with all of that, the numbers weren't really going to add up.
So like I said. It couldn't be helped.
Axel
Tenno Wax
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- He
No, he is summoned as Heroic Spirit, he is different from Herakles Divine Spirit, just like Artemis getting sacrificed would do nothing here
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That's not actually true. David does have another NP, Sacrifice: Flames Upon the Altar. Rank A, Anti-Army. Takes the form of an incense burner when not in use; when David uses it to burn incense, God rains down fiery death upon up to 600 of David's enemies. Assuming David didn't use it already, it'll definitely be enough to take at least one of Heracles' lives.
Rem
fite me
Isn't David's sling Noble Phantasm specialized for stunning a single larger and stronger enemy so they can be finished off?
Is he keeping that a secret so he can come in clutch at the most unexpected, dramatic moment, when all seems lost, scoring Chaldea the win?
See David this is why your kid doesn't talk to you.
If there's one thing I love the most about this story which I think this chapter showcased, is Taylor just being able to take charge. It takes a special kind of person to be in these circumstances and be able to not only make a plan, but take command of all these larger than life personalities. Love the way this story is developing so far
- Location
- Argentina
He is a fabrication and not fully a god, only half. He is ls less "Solid" so I give it a maybe.
QuietlyObserving
The Railgun That Walks Like a Bear
- Location
- Here.
From what I can see, it requires him to specifically burn ketoret, which Google tells me is an extremely specific blend of incense.
It almost sounds D&D-esque, that it requires a material component with prep time. So maybe he can't use it right now?