Chapter C: Blackguard

The Revenge was fast — faster than anything that size and shape had any right to be in the air, unless it was falling — but the Hind, boosted and supported by Bellamy’s Whydah, was faster. We ate into Blackbeard’s lead like a starving man into one of Fugly Bob’s Challenger burgers, and the back end of his ship grew rapidly larger. It wasn’t long before I could even make out the lettering that stood in relief under the windows of the captain’s cabin: QUEEN ANNE’S REVENGE.

I had no idea of our exact speed. We had to be flying much, much faster than we’d been sailing, but it was hard to tell if the sky above us was moving by that fast because we were that fast or if the clouds were moving fast enough to make it seem that way. I didn’t notice the wind chill regardless — likely something to do with the Whydah and Bellamy, and the precise mechanics didn’t concern me right then.

We had a goddess to rescue and a Grail to secure.

Anne had not given up all the while, taking shots at Bellamy with every chance she got, and Arash responded by shooting them out of the air, foiling every single one of them. Even if Anne was an expert marksman, at the end of the day, her skill with a musket simply didn’t match Arash’s skill with his bow. If it was actually something she had to worry about conserving, it would have been nothing more than a waste of ammo.

Instead, it was a tense standoff. Anne might not be hitting anyone or anything with her bullets, but that didn’t matter. I knew enough to recognize that she only had to get lucky once. He couldn’t afford to screw up even a single time. Arash had to succeed every time.

It was a good thing I was confident he could do exactly that.

“So, what’s the plan for getting back our little songstress?” asked Drake.

“We board the ship and kill everyone else,” I said simply.

She hummed. “That easy, huh?”

“He can’t use his ship’s cannons, right now,” said Ritsuka. “That means that we don’t have to worry about him blowing up the Golden Hind and we can take the fight to him. Right, Senpai?”

“Exactly.”

The fact we had to rescue Euryale also put us in the position where we didn’t have much choice but to take the offense. That had some disadvantages, because it let him dictate the battlefield for one, but it wasn’t without its upsides, too.

“So who’s staying and who’s going?” asked Emiya.

“Sorry to say it, but I’ve gotta stay here and keep this ship afloat,” Bellamy said immediately. “Plus, I was never that much of a fighter, you know? Most of my career was spent doing whatever it took to make the other guy surrender without a fight.”

“I’m staying here, too!” Orion shouted from the doorway to the captain’s cabin. He pointed a paw at Artemis. “Take her! She might be useless at close range, but she can still fight with that bow!”

“Oh, Darling!” Artemis said. “I love how much confidence you have in me, but I don’t want to leave your side!”

“The sooner this nightmare is over, the sooner I can get out of this ridiculous body!” Orion went on like she hadn’t said anything.

I did a mental tally of everyone else and thought of their previous fights with Blackbeard’s Servants. The trouble was, no one had yet used a Noble Phantasm aside from Hektor and Blackbeard himself, so unless it was some sort of passive thing, Anne or Mary could pull one out the instant they felt pressured, and without much idea about who they were, there was no way of knowing just how bad it could be for us.

As for Alexander… That early into his legend, I didn’t think there was much he could have as a Noble Phantasm. Maybe something to do with taming his horse or his tutelage under Aristotle? I didn’t know how either of those would manifest, so it really wasn’t that much different from Anne and Mary.

My eyes narrowed on the Revenge. We didn’t have much time before having a plan was going to become very relevant.

“Arash.”

He shot down another bullet. “Yeah?”

“How tough are those phantoms serving on Blackbeard’s ship?”

Arash’s mouth drew into a line, and without answering verbally, he notched two more arrows on his bow and fired them in a single smooth motion. An instant later, two shouts of pain drifted on the winds from up ahead of us, followed shortly by cries of dismay from the rest of the ghostly crew.

“Sturdier than those ‘concepts’ of pirates, but not so sturdy that you can’t beat them with a good Gandr,” Arash said.

That was better news that I’d honestly been hoping for.

“Then we all go,” I said. “Mash, you’ll protect us while we pick off his phantom crew. Arash, handle Hektor. Emiya, Alexander. Bradamante and Artemis can take care of Anne and Mary —”

“And I’ll handle Blackbeard,” Drake interjected, grinning savagely. “I owe that asshole for all the damage he’s done to my poor ship, and I’m looking forward to shoving my pistol up his tailpipe!”

“Bellamy needs the Grail —”

“No, it’s fine,” Bellamy cut in. “My connection to Captain Drake isn’t so fragile as that. Right, Captain?”

Drake’s grin grew. “Knew I liked you!”

Fine. I didn’t like it, but there was still enough time to call on another Servant to even the playing field a little —

An animalistic roar shook the entire ship, and the Hind bobbed in the air — “Whoa!” Bellamy cried — as Asterios suddenly leapt from the deck and towards the Revenge. A spurt of red blood gushed from him midair when Anne tried to shoot him down, but it was like Drake’s shots back in the Labyrinth, and he ignored it just the same, landing on the Revenge with the same weight and force of a wrecking ball.

Shit.

“Even with as sorry a state as I’m in, I can at least heal a wound that minor,” Calliope rasped, chuckling lowly. I glanced back at her only long enough to see her leaning against the railing, still coated with blood but stable enough she seemed in no danger of disappearing.

I would have to worry about her later.

“No more time!” I said hurriedly. “We go! Now!”

Because Asterios had forced our hand.

“Hey, Sam!” Drake shouted, even though he was right next to us. “Give us a lift!”

“Aye, Captain!” Bellamy replied.

The Whydah Hind lurched again, and a sudden spurt jerked the whole thing higher into the sky, as though the ship itself had jumped. The crew cried out at the suddenness of it, clutching to the nearest solid object within reach.

And just like that, we were above the Revenge, and if we’d been any closer, we would have been skimming the sails. The rigging stretched out below us like a safety net, waiting for us to take the jump. Beyond it, Asterios fought wildly, swinging his halberds at everything he could reach and keeping himself from being swamped through sheer ferocity.

It wouldn’t last.

“Go!” I shouted.

And then I took a running leap, planted one foot atop the railing as though it was a stepping stone, and threw myself over the side. The wind that I had been protected from until then howled in my ears and threatened to toss me, but the jump was short and the gap between the Whydah’s protections and the ones that the Revenge must have had was small. The rigging bounced just the slightest.

For an instant, as I groped for a grip on the rigging, I felt like I was in a movie. Like if I looked to the side, there would be a startled enemy pirate next to me, and I had to kick him off and watch him fall to his death. Maybe put my Last Resort between my teeth and climb to the top of the mast.

But the instant passed, and Arash dropped down, skipping the rigging entirely. A brace of arrows left his bow — one each forced Blackbeard’s Servants to dodge, and another half a dozen at least made short work of some of the phantom crew.

“Geronimo!” Rika shouted, and a moment later, she bounced off of the rigging next to me, scrambling to wrap her arms around the nearest rung so that she didn’t fall off. Ritsuka, right behind her, landed with an “oomph!” below us, looking like the wind had been driven straight from his lungs.

“Why did I think that was a good idea?” he wheezed.

“Don’t look at me,” said Rika, “I was following Senpai!”

Bradamante, Emiya, and Mash all dropped next, landing with thuds down on the deck, followed shortly by Artemis.

“Why me-he-he-he-he?” I heard Orion cry as she passed us. I had to admit, if only in the privacy of my own head, I was wondering about that, too.

And the last of us to drop down, Drake, didn’t bother with aiming for the rigging and a softer landing, the way us Masters had. Instead, she landed atop one of the beams holding the sails, and she stepped swiftly down it with a surety of foot that I think a ballerina might have envied. I could only watch as she crossed near to the middle and leapt off of it, taking hold of one of the ropes that trailed down the center mast and sliding down it like a fireman down a pole.

She reached the deck and hit with a soft thump that I saw more than heard, and without pausing, she pulled out a pair of pistols and started shooting at the phantom pirates, abusing the unlimited ammo her Grail afforded her the entire time.

“Okay,” said Ritsuka, “even if she wasn’t already a total badass, that was really cool.”

“Not as cool as Best Buddy,” said his sister, “but yeah, that was totally awesome.”

This is no time to be gawking.

“Move,” I ordered them. “We’re vulnerable up here like this.”

Although with our Servants running a screen and handling a lot of it, that might not have been as true as it could have been.

The twins still jolted and started climbing down, and once there was enough clearance for it, so did I. It felt a little stifling, having to wait for there to be room, but that sort of feeling was familiar in its own ways, too, so I stamped down on it and focused on putting my feet and hands exactly where they needed to go.

When we were close enough to the deck that I was more comfortable about trusting Da Vinci’s “soft fall” function, I swung myself around to the inside of the rigging and let myself drop. My stomach shot up into my throat, and a thrill of instinctive fear zigzagged through my insides, but as expected, right before I landed, my body slowed almost to a stop and I touched down gently.

The twins weren’t far behind me, and as I stepped forward, turning my magic circuits on with the snap of a spider’s thread, I took a brief moment to sweep my gaze around the battlefield. Arash was knife-fighting with Hektor, forcing him on the defensive with an arrow he wielded like a dagger, and Hektor’s spear — retracted into a sword once more — had difficulty keeping up just by virtue of the lack of room.

Good. Better if we could kill him, but as long as Hektor was otherwise occupied, that was what I cared about. After all, if the other Servants were, as they had implied earlier, summoned by Blackbeard’s Grail, then if he was defeated, wouldn’t they all disappear, too?

I wasn’t counting on it, but I had my hopes. Worst case scenario, we took them out one by one, starting with the easiest and then overwhelming the strongest with sheer numbers.

A large space on the foremost deck had been cleared for Anne and Mary to fight Bradamante and Artemis, an even matchup if ever there was one. Artemis and Anne were as far from each other as they could be, with Anne behind Mary and Artemis on the rearmost deck, sniping at each other and risking a shot or two to support their ally here and there. They were also stalemating, although that, too, might change the instant a Noble Phantasm got pulled out.

After we got Blackbeard, they might be the best bet. Forget about the easiest first. They were actually team fighters instead of just a ragtag group thrown together by a common master.

Emiya had cornered Alexander, and that one was going a lot more in Emiya’s favor than the other two fights were. However good he would be in the future, the Alexander of his youth was still growing, so he was technically the weakest he would ever be right now. Even if he was holding on and still smiling, the momentum was very obviously against him, and that was only a matter of time.

Mash had taken a defensive posture, waiting on us and blocking whatever came her way. Anyone who got too aggressive and tried to get close was bashed with “the back side of her shield,” as she had put it, which wasn’t enough to kill them but more than enough to put them down for at least a few seconds.

There was no sign of Euryale, not anywhere on the deck with us. She had probably been tied up and locked in the brig or something inside, and if we had someone else we could afford to send, I would have sent them to look. For now, though, we’d have to come back to it and look for her once this was all over.

Worst case scenario? She fell out when Blackbeard died and the ship vanished, and we could safely fish her out of the sea, if she didn’t just turn into spirit form and float back to the Hind on her own.

As for Blackbeard…

“Whoop!”

He skirted to the side, and one of Asterios’ massive halberds slammed into the deck.

“Whoo!”

When Asterios swung the other around to chop off his head, Blackbeard instead ducked under it, avoiding the blade so narrowly that a couple of his fuses got ripped straight out of his hair. He grinned and aimed a finger gun at Asterios.

“Close shave!” he said.

“Stand still!” Drake snarled. With a crack of ignited gunpowder, she aimed a shot his way.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He bent backwards like something out of a movie and dodged the shot. “Missed me! Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo!”

“Oh my god,” Rika groaned. “He just ruined The Matrix for me!”

Drake, frustrated, turned her second pistol on a nearby phantom and shot him dead. He collapsed to the deck and vanished into sparkling dust. Blackbeard clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“What did he ever do to you, Old Hag?”

“He’s one of your crew,” Drake bit back. “Ain’t that enough?”

“For shame,” said Blackbeard. “Haven’t you heard that it’s innocent until proven guilty these days? For all you know, he was an innocent bystander caught up in my mad schemes!”

I’d seen enough to get my bearings, so I started towards Drake’s fight, picking off Blackbeard’s phantoms as the opportunity arose — and there really wasn’t much. Between Arash’s opening salvo and Drake shooting her way through, most of them were either dead and gone or wisely staying out of the way.

The twins picked up the idea quickly and followed on my heels, taking their own shots of opportunity, and Mash hurried to put herself in a position in front of us to act as a sort of vanguard so she could deflect stray shots or phantoms that thought they saw a moment of weakness.

We reached the fight just in time for Asterios to rip his halberd free of Blackbeard’s ship, and he roared as he swung wildly, rattling the Revenge with every blow. Blackbeard dodged out of the way of each by what looked like the skin of his teeth, making cartoonish sounds and poses every time, like this was some sort of giant game to him. Asterios got angrier and angrier with each miss, and that seemed to only make him stronger even as it made him sloppier.

It was like watching a Looney Tunes skit, with Blackbeard taking the place of Bugs Bunny. The only sort of insanity he wasn’t doing was the utterly ridiculous, like pulling himself out of the way of an attack by yanking on the back of his own coat.

I admit, I almost fell for it myself. If Bellamy hadn’t told us exactly how clever Blackbeard actually was, even I wouldn’t have been able to tell that the act was intentional and probably intended to do exactly what it was doing: pissing everyone off.

“Stop moving and let me hit you, you bastard!” Drake snarled.

BANG, and he slipped out of the way of her shot like an eel.

“Contrariwise, it seems to me —” Blackbeard dodged another swing — “that would be quite the detriment to my health, wouldn’t it? Whoo!”

BANG, BANG, BANG went Drake’s pistols, but Blackbead kept dodging, somehow managing to stay out of the way of both her shots and Asterios’ halberds. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t also a little frustrating.

Some part of me wanted Mash to get in there and help, but there wasn’t much room for it. The fighting was tightly packed, with each battle taking place in its own little section, and it was something of a minor miracle as it was that none of them were spilling over into the others. If Mash tried to insert herself into things like that, she was liable to hit one of our allies as much as she was our enemies, because there just wasn’t enough space for her to swing that massive shield around.

It was the exact same reason it was hard for me to squeeze in a Gandr shot at anyone aside from the phantoms. Against Blackbeard especially, I was more likely to hit Asterios than Blackbeard himself.

“Damn it,” Ritsuka muttered. “I can’t get a clear shot at Blackbeard.”

“Me either,” Rika agreed. “He’s like a wet noodle, and the Big Floof keeps getting in the way!”

“Then wait for the right moment,” I told them both. “A well-timed Momentary Reinforcement or Emergency Evasion is going to be more impactful here than our Gandr will.”

They weren’t any happier about it than I was, but without enough bugs in range to form a suitable distraction — because if the Hind was implausibly clean, then the Revenge was outright immaculate — that was the best we could do right then. Watch, and wait for a moment where we could turn the tide of the fight.

Magical energy suddenly surged, more than enough for a Noble Phantasm, and nearly everyone turned towards the source — just in time to watch Emiya bury one of his swords in Alexander’s gut.

Blood splattered across the deck, and Alexander choked on whatever he’d been in the middle of saying as more surged up his throat and out of his mouth, flowing down his chin in rivulets. Savagely, Emiya ripped his sword free, and Alexander stumbled backwards as his sword fell from his fingers and clattered to the deck.

“Ah,” he said weakly into the thunderous silence. “Guess…this is it, then. Sorry, Mister Blackbeard, looks like I screwed up.”

And then, bizarrely, he smiled. “It wasn’t the Okeanos I dreamed of seeing in my lifetime…but I’m glad I got to see this beautiful ocean.”

He burst apart into glittering dust, and then even that faded away into nothingness.

“Well,” said Blackbeard, “I guess it’s time I start taking things a little more —”

BANG went one of Drake’s pistols, and more blood flew as a hole bored itself into Blackbeard’s shoulder. He staggered back, clutching at the wound.

“Shit,” said Drake. “My aim was off. Meant to hit his black little heart.”

“Hey!” Blackbeard squawked. “Foul play! I call foul! Red card, ref! Don’t you know the bad guy is supposed to get the chance to reveal he’s not left-handed before you get back into the fight?”

“I don’t give a fuck!” Drake snapped back. “I’m a fucking pirate!”

Asterios roared and swung out at Blackbeard as though to punctuate her statement, and this time, there were no theatrics when Blackbeard leapt out of the way, no witty one-liners or mocking, cartoonish shouts. Instead, Blackbeard just pulled out a pistol of his own and shot Asterios directly in the chest.

Asterios ignored it entirely, much the way he had Drake’s shots back in the Labyrinth. “Give…back…Euryale!” he thundered in that rumbling voice of his.

He lifted both of his halberds at once, and then, with all of his strength, he slammed them down into the deck. The wood beneath them splintered and cracked, and the whole ship shook beneath us, threatening to knock everyone over, and as the twins gripped each other to stay standing, Blackbeard was thrown up into the air. Face entirely solemn and serious for the first time I could remember, he took aim with both pistols and fired off a pair of shots.

One struck Asterios in the head, ricocheting off his skull as blood flew from the wound, and the other landed somewhere I couldn’t see from behind him. Chest, most likely. Asterios flinched from the first, head jerking from the bullet, but completely ignored the second. His halberds remained stuck for a moment, but after a brief struggle, they came free in a shower of wooden shards. Like a wild animal, Asterios let out a furious roar.

Blackbeard’s lip curled as he landed. “Tch. Bullet to the heart ain’t enough to do you in, is it, beastie? Well, with Alex gone, I guess I have enough for —”

BANG

More blood splattered across the deck, and Blackbeard recoiled as another hole opened in his chest. The first had already closed — slower than Altera’s had, because he was doing so much more with his Grail, but still fast enough that a single shot likely wouldn’t be enough. We were either going to have to deal a lot more damage all at once or fill him with holes faster than he could plug them.

“Would you quit doing that, you old hag?” Blackbeard snapped. “I’m trying to have a suitably impressive badass moment, here!”

“Fuck you!” was Drake’s eloquent response.

Blackbeard grinned nastily. “You’d have to pay me, first!”

“Not even if you were the last man on Earth!” Drake snarled at him.

“Anne!” Mary cried suddenly, and when I turned to glance at what was happening, it was to see Anne stumbling back, a slash across her gut from one of Emiya’s blades.

A moment later, an arrow sank into her chest, courtesy of Artemis, and against all reason, Mary stumbled, too, clutching at her chest as though she was the one who had been hit. The two of them reached out to one another across the distance, as though they could grasp each other’s hands from so far away, even as Anne tried to hold her gut wound closed with her other arm and blood poured down her front, soaking her already red coat.

And then another arrow landed in Mary’s back, and she jerked from the blow. She didn’t even have time to fall before both she and Anne vanished, exploding into flickering golden dust. It, too, was gone before it could even land on the deck.

“Damn it!” Blackbeard cursed. “Why does everyone keep killing my underlings? They don’t grow on trees, you know! I actually have to summon them with —”

Asterios brought one of his halberds around, and Blackbeard dodged around it again, then dodged another shot from Drake’s pistols. He spun one of his own pistols around and put another round in Asterios, but just like all of the others, Asterios ignored it and kept going.

“And you!” said Blackbeard. “Ugh, why did you have to show up? Can’t you take the hint and just die already? I can’t even have any witty banter with you, because all you shout about is —”

“Euryale!” Asterios roared. “Give…back…!”

“Exactly!” Blackbeard said. “Exactly that! You won’t shut up about Euryale-chan! I’m not going to give her back just because you keep howling her name, you know! Can’t you add some flair? Maybe curse my name a time or two? You know, really ham it up so this feels like a proper final battle?”

Asterios’ response was to swing his halberds again, and Blackbeard clicked his tongue as he leapt out of the way of them. He glanced back over his shoulder and must’ve seen Emiya and Bradamante preparing to join the fight, because he clicked his tongue and scowled.

“Whatever. Guess there’s no more time to fuck around, is there? Things are looking pretty dire, so if I want to come out of this on top, then I’ve gotta get serious, don’t I?”

Phantasmal cannons began appearing in the air behind him, growing more solid by the moment as magical energy surged into them, and they all swiveled in our direction, aiming to blow both us and Asterios away.

“Mash!” I shouted.

“Captain Drake, get back!” said Rika.

“Get ready to use your Noble Phantasm!” Ritsuka ordered.

Mash planted her shield on the deck. “Yes!”

“Eye,” a voice called, “of the Euryale!”

An arrow sprouted from Blackbeard’s chest, right in his heart, and he gasped, stumbling, and looked down at it dumbly.

“Nani the what?” he babbled.

When I turned to look, a familiar goddess stood in the door leading down into the ship, a small bow held in one hand and the other poised as though she had just loosed that arrow. A thunderous scowl marred her face, and her red eyes looked more inhuman than I had ever seen them before.

“Fuck,” she said slowly and deliberately, “you.”

A moment later, an equally familiar teddy bear stumbled out from behind her and proudly proclaimed, “I found her! She was tied up in a dark room, and I’m just not into that stuff, so I managed to get her loose with these stubby paws!”

“Euryale-chan,” Blackbeard moaned, “why would you do this to me?”

“You even need to ask me that?” she spat at him. “You trussed me up in your room and left me there so you could do unspeakable things to me later, and you’re wondering why I would shoot you with my Noble Phantasm?”

“Nooooo!” Blackbeard wailed. “I just wanted to love you long time! Why wouldn’t you let me love you? Euryale-chan!”

“Okay,” said Ritsuka, “now this is just getting kind of sad.”

“Yeah,” Rika agreed. “I mean, it sucks when you don’t get enough relationship points for the route you want, but he was tripping all the flags for a bad end from the beginning. I think it’s time for his game over.”

Not the way I would have put it, but yeah. This nonsense had gone on for long enough.

“I-I have to admit, I never imagined the famous Blackbeard would be so…” Mash trailed off, grimacing, like she couldn’t quite find the words. I didn’t blame her.

“Asterios,” I began, “if you would.”

Asterios grunted and hefted one of his halberds with lethal intent.

“Fuck that,” said Drake. She lined up one of her pistols for a shot, aiming straight at his head. “Sorry about this, big guy, but this bastard has been a pain in my ass for too long. I’ll be the one to take his head.”

Asterios glanced at her, then bowed his head and backed away. As coherent an agreement as he could explicitly give her.

“Euryale-chan!” Blackbeard moaned again, clutching at the arrow in his chest. There must have been some kind of Master effect in that arrow, because he wasn’t even reacting as Drake pulled back on the hammer of her pistol.

Master! Arash said urgently. Look out! Hektor’s —

Blood spurted, splattering over the deck, and I stumbled back as the twins gasped, shocked.

“Hektor!” Mash said, just as surprised.

“Geh!” Blackbeard gurgled, back arching. It only made his wound worse as the blade of Hektor’s spear sawed through his chest. “H-Hektor, you b-bastard…”

“Sorry about this, Captain,” Hektor said genially, like he was apologizing for stepping on Blackbeard’s foot. “Master’s orders, you know? That’s just the way things are, sometimes.”

“This whole time…” Blackbeard gasped. “So that’s…how it is, huh? I knew you weren’t…exactly how you appeared, but… You managed…to pull the wool over my eyes?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Hektor said conversationally. “You didn’t give me that many opportunities. The fact you always kept your guard up, even around your comrades? Man, I thought I’d never get the chance. But…”

He looked past Blackbeard and stared straight into my eyes.

“These Chaldea folk, they gave me the opening I was looking for. How kind of them to do me a favor like that.” He smiled wryly. “Too bad I can’t afford to let them take your Holy Grail, Captain Blackbeard.”

He twisted his sword, then yanked it free and shoved his free hand into the wound.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rika mumbled.

A moment later, he pulled his hand free, and in his grip, he held a glittering, golden chalice. The Holy Grail.

“I’ll just be taking this, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“Stop him!” I shouted.

Emiya appeared from above, dropping down to deliver a double blow from his swords, and Bradamante rushed in to pincer Hektor between them. A brace of arrows came from both Arash and Artemis, as though to pin him in for the other two to take out.

But the Grail in his grasp glowed, and Hektor moved, vanishing from sight as he leapt out of the way of all of those attacks at once. The arrows sank into the Revenge’s deck, and Emiya and Bradamante nearly collided with each other without their target to hit. They had to awkwardly dance around one another just to keep from hurting the other by accident.

As though he had teleported, Hektor reappeared next to Artemis, who gasped and stumbled away from him. “That was a close one. Even making use of this Holy Grail, an old man like me just can’t do something as ridiculous as fight off five Servants at once. Without my Disengage skill, that would’ve been the end of me, right there.”

BANG

Hektor moved his spear, putting the flat of the blade in front of his head in enough time to deflect the bullet. He frowned at Blackbeard, the one who had shot at him.

“Still holding on, Captain? I gotta admit, that’s kind of impressive. Even for a pirate, that’s some pretty serious tenacity.”

“Fuck you, Hektor,” Blackbeard panted. One hand was pressed against his wound, but it wasn’t doing anything to stop the blood from flowing down his chest. He grinned. “My love can’t be stopped that easily…is what I want to say, but even spite can only take a guy so far. You got me good, you bastard.”

Hektor hummed. “Well, there’s no reason for me to stick around, and I’ve got a delivery to make, so…”

Rika gasped. “The Grail!”

But Hektor was already gone, leaping over the side of the Revenge, and I raced after him, crossing the deck — unobstructed, now, because somewhere between getting shot by Euryale and stabbed by Hektor, the remaining phantoms had disappeared — towards the spot where he jumped down. When I leaned over the side, bracing myself against the railing…

“A dinghy?” Ritsuka said from beside me.

…to find Hektor falling towards the ocean below in a small, wooden rowboat. It must have been enchanted or something, because there was no way it would survive hitting the water otherwise.

“What?” Drake demanded as she came up behind us.

“Has that been there the entire time?” Rika asked a little hysterically. “How? When? Where? I have so many questions!”

Blackbeard laughed, stumbled backwards until he collapsed against the mast. “That complete shit! He’s been planning this from the beginning!”

He flickered, like static on an old TV, and the Revenge shook threateningly, like it was about to fall apart at the seams. We weren’t safe there. The instant Blackbeard died, his ship would vanish, too, and even if one of his skills let him hang on while mortally wounded, that couldn’t last forever. He was going to disappear sooner rather than later.

Chasing Hektor could wait until we weren’t in danger of dropping down into the ocean.

“Back to the Hind!” I shouted. “Go, go!”

“OI, SAM!” Drake hollered. “BRING HER ABOUT! WE NEED OUR TICKET OUTTA HERE!”

“AYE, CAPTAIN!” Bellamy yelled back.

The Hind suddenly sank, dipping down from its position above the Revenge until they were side by side, and then down a few feet more. I took a running start, jumped high enough to put my foot on the railing — as I had when I was doing this the other way around — and leapt back onto the Hind. My landing was just as soft now as it had been before.

A few seconds later, the twins followed behind me, although they stumbled a little as their feet found the deck, with Drake shortly behind them and much more surefooted, and then the Servants came. First Mash, then Bradamante, then Emiya, Arash, Asterios with Euryale in his arms, and finally, Artemis, with Orion tucked under one arm like he really was a stuffed animal. He landed limply when she let him go and flopped down onto the deck.

“Whew,” said Orion, haunted. “For a second there, I really thought you were going to leave me behind!”

“Oh, Darling!” said Artemis. “I could never!”

I didn’t waste any time, and I made immediately for the wheel, where Bellamy was still standing. He grinned as I approached. “Ahoy, there! I see you managed to rescue our wayward goddess!”

“Hektor stole the Grail,” I said shortly. “He’s escaping on a ship he prepared —”

The Revenge suddenly shuddered again, like it was shaking itself apart, and then it wavered around the edges, turned ghostly and translucent, and finally, it faded away into nothing like a mirage, as though it had never really been there in the first place. I caught a glimpse of golden dust glittering, but it was carried away on the wind and disappeared as well. Any sign of Blackbeard ever existing in this Singularity was gone.

Rika, in something like solidarity, gave the empty space a brief salute.

“Sam!” Drake shouted as she made her way up to the wheel, too. The twins and Mash scrambled to follow her. “Sam!”

“Aye, Captain?” Bellamy replied.

Drake pointed down towards the ocean, where a tiny little boat was vaguely visible against the surface, not much more than a dark shard against the deep blue. “That old bastard’s getting away! He’s got that shiny little bauble everyone’s fighting over!”

“He’s got the Grail? We’re chasing him?” asked Bellamy.

“Goddamn right, we are!” Drake barked. “Even if my friends here didn’t need that thing to put this screwy place back to rights, there’s no way I’m letting that wanker get away with fucking everyone over like that!”

“Aye, Captain!” Bellamy spun the wheel, and the ship turned and began to descend, the bow pointing down at a shallow angle like a diving submarine. “Everyone, hold onto something! If we’re chasing after that guy, there’s no time to be gentle! We’ll hit the water pretty hard! That alright with you, Captain?”

“Long as you don’t break my goddamn ship!” said Drake.

Bellamy grinned, savage and fierce. “Aye, aye, Captain!”

We continued to dive, and the near weightlessness sent my guts into uncomfortable flips and squirming, like that feeling you got on a swing right before you hit the bottom of the arc. My stomach seemed caught somewhere between my diaphragm and its proper place in my body, as much in freefall as the rest of me was.

And as the ocean below grew larger and larger and the horizon in the distance slowly climbed, so too did Hektor in his little dinghy, never quite resolving into something clear and crisp but getting more so with every second. If I squinted, I imagined I could almost see the glint of the Grail he had stolen from Blackbeard — to take back to his mysterious Master, whoever that wound up being. Almost certainly no one good.

I took a deep, calming breath. It did little to settle my belly.

It was almost over, I consoled myself. We just needed to catch up to Hektor, secure the Grail, and then it wouldn’t matter who his Master was. This Singularity would be resolved. We could go back to Chaldea, rest, and start preparing for the next one.

Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be that simple.