Chapter CII: Strongest in the World

For the second time in less than ten minutes, I felt like the eye of God was staring down at me. The pressure of the new Servant’s attention was like a physical weight pressing on my skin, trying to force me down onto my knees. I could feel them shaking, and I didn’t dare take my eyes off of the new arrival long enough to check how badly.

The twins, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, didn’t seem to be faring much better.

Everything sharpened under that pressure. The world drew itself in stark relief, and every detail of the new Servant stood out like a beacon in the fog. The white hair, the bronze skin, the blue eyes filled with murderous intent, the white and black clothing, the sparse armor that seemed more for decoration than actual use. The very real anger etched into the lines of her face, like it was a physical force she was just barely containing.

“M-Master,” Mash gasped. “A Servant…!”

The new Servant — a Lancer, when I looked at her with my Master’s Clairvoyance — shifted her gaze, and it landed on Arash. Her scowl deepened, and in her grasp, his arrow snapped and dissipated into flecks of blue dust.

“Only seeing one Archer,” she said lowly, “so I guess that means it must’ve been you, right?”

“Th-this guy,” Rika stuttered, “he had…another Servant?”

“She feels…just like Herakles,” said Ritsuka.

She did. She had the same weight to her presence, the same raw power rolling off of her in waves. Was that Divinity of some kind? I hadn’t felt anything like it against Stheno and Euryale, and Romulus had been suppressing his, but for a powerful Heroic Spirit with a high level of Divinity…was this what that felt like?

“H-hey, Caenis!” said Jason. “Do you realize how close that was? Were you just going to let me die, you lazy jerk? If that arrow had actually hit me, you would’ve disappeared too, you know!”

My thoughts ground to a halt. Caenis.

“Shut up,” she told him, annoyed. “Stop stating the obvious. I got up, didn’t I? If I was gonna let you die, I would’ve just rolled over and gone back to sleep.”

In the story of the Argonauts, she was… Well, not a she, for starters, or at least not by the time she became one of them, but all things considered, that was the least important part of her legend. No, no, it was the events surrounding that which were more important, because of what it meant for her in terms of Noble Phantasms.

“C-Caenis?” Ritsuka asked. “I don’t recognize that name.”

“Caenis was another one of the Argonauts,” Mash explained quietly. “According to the legend, she was the loveliest woman in Thessaly, and Poseidon wanted her for his own. D-depending on which version of the story you read, either he negotiated with her for her body or, um, h-he raped her, and afterwards, he offered her one wish. She wished to be a man, so that she could never be violated ever again.”

“Damn,” said Rika. “I know that whole thing with Cú and Super Action Mom kinda slapped us in the face with it, but things really were different back then.”

“That’s a nice story and all, but it ain’t explaining what we’re seeing right here, Mash,” Drake said.

“What are you doing?” Jason demanded. “Are you just going to stand around, Caenis? I didn’t summon you so you could look pretty, you know!”

“Waiting,” said Caenis. “I’m waiting, that’s what I’m doing.”

“According to the myth, Poseidon was so pleased with her that he granted her wish,” Mash went on. “He transformed Caenis into a man, and she became the powerful warrior, the Argonaut, Caeneus, and he also granted her…”

Arash, I ordered silently, a volley, straight at her.

“Waiting?” said Jason. “Waiting for what? Hey, I didn’t summon you for that either!”

Arash drew back and fired off a volley of arrows so rapidly that they seemed to all leave his bow simultaneously, aimed straight for Caenis’ body. For a single instant, I held out a faint hope that it would really be that easy and we could just move on, that Caenis wouldn’t be as powerful as I feared she actually was.

And then she swept her arm out to the side, her spear manifesting midway through, and dashed most of the volley just like that. One or two arrows made it through, but they bounced off of her skin and shattered uselessly.

“…an impenetrable body,” Mash finished.

Caenis smirked. “For them to realize exactly how fucked they are.”

Mash suddenly gasped and threw herself in front of the group, and it was only when her shield let out a resonating BONG that I even realized that Caenis had moved from her spot, that was how fast she was. I hadn’t even blinked, and she had simply materialized in front of our group as though she had teleported.

“Master!” Mash cried. “Stay back!”

Caenis clicked her tongue. “Thing’s stronger than it looks, huh? Well, that just means it’s gonna take more than a single strike to break it!”

She ignored another volley of arrows from Arash that broke against her skin and slammed her spear into Mash’s shield again, and another echoing BONG nearly made my teeth ache with its intensity. I scrambled back to put as much distance as I could between me and Caenis, but it wasn’t like there was much room for that on the Hind to begin with.

The twins did the same as me, but Rika stumbled halfway, gasping and clutching at the hand that bore her Command Spells. “Emiya!”

We were running out of time. Fighting one or the other was already a tall task, but having to fight both Caenis and Herakles at the same time would be impossible. Even with our full roster brought out all at once, I didn’t have high hopes of us winning that. Especially when they both had such powerful defensive Noble Phantasms.

I narrowed my gaze, refusing to blink as Caenis swung another powerful strike that threatened to buckle Mash’s knees.

But no Noble Phantasm was truly absolute. No, because absolutes like that were the domain of things like a god’s Authority, the power of true divinity — as true as any divinity could be, at any rate. The Noble Phantasm of a Heroic Spirit had to have limits, and if you knew what they were, you could exploit them.

Just as Herakles could be hurt and killed by anything that passed the threshold of Rank A and Siegfried had that linden leaf-shaped weak spot on his back, Caenis’ impenetrable skin had to have a limit, too, a way it could be beaten.

The first thing I was going to try was throwing a little more firepower at it, and for that, we needed enough room that we wouldn’t be caught up in the crossfire.

Bradamante, I started, and she startled, stumbling a step just as she was about to join the fighting, I need you to go over to the Argo and target Jason.

She frowned. Master, that’s…

Dishonorable, she was probably about to say. We need to force Caenis back over there, I told her. Once she is, I’m going to summon Aífe. At that point, I want you to use your Noble Phantasm, make Caenis trip up, so Aífe has an opening to exploit.

She didn’t look happy, but Bradamante still nodded. Got it, Master.

She turned on her heel suddenly and leapt over to the Argo, and as she came down, she aimed her tiny spear straight at Jason, who scrambled back as he realized he was in danger again. Caenis broke off midway through another swing at Mash, returning to the Argo in a blur of speed so she could place herself in front of Jason and block Bradamante’s attack. It was distressing how easy she made it look, frankly, like she was just toying with us and could kill us all whenever she pleased.

Unexpectedly, Asterios let out a roar of challenge and took off after her, donning his mask as he charged towards Caenis to help Bradamante. Despite his incredible strength, however, triple her own and enough that a single straight hit would have killed any of our own Servants when we fought him, even he wasn’t doing any noticeable damage to Caenis. His halberds forced her back a few feet with every swing, but left behind no visible sign they even tickled her.

It was enough breathing room. I took a breath, reached into my mystic code, and spun up one of the batteries. There was no Blackbeard or Anne to interrupt me, this time.

Lines of light lit up my body. A summoning circle bloomed on the deck, glowing.

“Come forth, Aífe!”

A shadow formed atop the summoning circle, cast in three dimensions, and then quickly filled in, taking on the familiar form of Aífe, down to the vicious red spear in her grip. She seemed somehow less substantial than the real thing, like she wasn’t wholly there, which I suppose made sense since she technically wasn’t. The body she was in was nothing more than a shade of a shade, so it wasn’t surprising that she seemed diminished like this.

“I’ve got the gist of the situation,” she said briskly. “What do you need of me?”

“Super Action Mom!” Rika cried, relieved.

“We need to defeat Caenis as quickly as possible,” I told Aífe shortly. “Emiya is holding off Herakles, and there’s no way we can beat them both at once.”

“Her skin’s impenetrable,” Ritsuka added. “You can’t afford to hold back.”

Aífe’s lips quirked into a smirk. “Got it.”

She disappeared in a spurt of speed and was suddenly up in the air, arm cocked back. Gáe Bolg flew as a streak of red, and Caenis stepped out of the way, letting it sail past her and thunk into the Argo’s deck.

“Damnit,” said Drake. “Don’t I feel fucking useless. All I get to do now is stand here and watch others fight my battles for me!”

Orion patted her leg sympathetically. “I know the feeling.”

Over to the side, Artemis paused, looking like she was going to say something, and her brow furrowed for a second, then the moment passed and she pulled back on her bowstring. She joined Arash in firing volleys of arrows at Caenis, but they turned out to be about as effective, which I really should have been expecting.

A bright light lit up across the Argo’s deck, shining like a newborn star.

“Bouclier,” Bradamante’s voice rang out, “d’Atlante!”

And she flew across the Argo like she was being reeled in by a line. Caenis turned to face her at the last second, giving Asterios the time and room to get out of the way, but whether out of arrogance or inability, she didn’t dodge, and Bradamante collided with her, then raced past. Caenis, momentarily stunned, stumbled, but otherwise seemed entirely unharmed.

So even Bradamante’s Noble Phantasm wasn’t enough to hurt her. Would Balmung have been just as ineffective?

Now, Aífe! I ordered.

Aífe took the opening for what it was, racing towards Caenis as she gathered power in her fist. Whether she’d seen Bradamante’s Noble Phantasm fail and decided not to try her own or simply thought this would be a stronger attack, I didn’t know, but I recognized the way the entire world seemed to compress down into a point clutched in her hand.

“Torannchless!”

Right before the punch struck, Caenis seemed to recover her wits, and she threw up her arms to block the blow as though that would save her from its full power.

BOOM was the sound of the eponymous Thunder Feat. The air shook, the ship rocked, the sea itself sloshed and churned as all of that imparted force and power hit and vibrated through everything around it, and against all expectations Caenis…slid back almost a dozen feet, without even a bruise to show for it. The armor on her forearm hadn’t even bent.

She looked up from behind her crossed arms and smirked.

“That it?”

My stomach clenched.

“No way,” Rika breathed. “That attack took out the tentacle monster no problem…and she just tanked it like it was nothing!”

Worse, it had taken out that same tentacle monster while it was empowered by a Holy Grail, gifted with near limitless regeneration and a body that lacked any and all forms of standard biology. It had been powerful enough to blast a hole in the wall behind it, too, and keep going. For that matter, if she’d managed to get enough time and space to wind up for it, she might have taken out Altera in one blow.

Caenis looked like she’d barely even felt it.

Jason cackled. “Was that supposed to do something? Ha! Don’t you losers know? Caenis here was blessed by Poseidon —” as though the name itself infuriated her, Caenis’ smirk turned into a thunderous scowl — “which means as long as she’s out here on the sea, nothing you throw at her is even gonna leave a dent! Haven’t you figured it out yet? The Argonauts are the greatest heroes in the world!”

Medea — our Medea — stepped back. “No… I got this far, only to…”

I latched onto that phrasing. At sea. As long as we were at sea, Caenis was invincible. Did that mean that the instant she set foot on land, she wouldn’t be? Was that the weakness in her Noble Phantasm I’d been looking for?

Some part of me wanted to believe it, but I couldn’t say for sure just on Jason’s boasting alone. There was no way to test it here and now, not when we were hours or days away from the nearest island, depending entirely on how long Bellamy could hold out.

Rika suddenly gasped again, grasping tightly at her Command Spells. I knew what it meant. Emiya was struggling. We were running out of time, and just as quickly, we were running out of options, because brute force obviously wasn’t going to be enough.

The archipelago. That was going to be our saving grace.

I said the only thing I could say in that situation. “We need to retreat.”

Every unoccupied head turned immediately in my direction. “What?” Drake squawked. “You, too? But they’re right fucking in front of us! This thing’s so close to over I can taste the celebratory rum!”

“No,” said Ritsuka immediately, “Senpai’s right. This is too much. We don’t have a plan for Caenis. If we just keep throwing whatever we have at her and hoping it’ll stick, then all it’ll mean is we’re all tired when she kills us.”

“Damn,” said Orion, “that’s dark.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“A-and Emiya,” Rika managed to groan out, “c-can’t keep this up for much longer! Me, either! I now know what a garden hose feels like with the water turned up full blast!”

Drake snarled. “Damn it! Damn it all! Fuck! Sam!”

“Aye, Captain?” Bellamy said.

“Turn this tub around and get us out of here!” she ordered.

“Aye!” Bellamy replied. “Where are we headed?”

Drake turned to me expectantly.

“Back to the archipelago,” I told them both.

Drake turned back to Bellamy and barked, “You heard her! The archipelago, and be quick about it! We need to be out of here yesterday!”

“Aye, Captain!”

Bellamy spun the wheel, and the Whydah Hind lurched into motion as the oars pushed us away from the Argo. Even with them propelling us, it felt like forever for the ship to swing around and back towards the way we came.

“Isn’t there a hostile fleet at the archipelago?” Euryale asked pointedly. “Are we leaving one disaster and racing headlong into another?”

“At worst, neutral,” I said. “We never met the owner. Blackbeard interrupted us before we could try negotiating.”

“Maybe…the Servant down there will have something we can use to defeat Caenis,” Ritsuka suggested.

I wasn’t going to bank on it, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. It would be incredibly convenient if they did. Frustrating, as it always was dealing with precogs, if the Counter Force had stuck the Servant we needed to defeat Caenis at the last island we were going to visit because it knew we were going to wind up there, but convenient.

Bradamante, I sent down my link to her, break off and come back. We’re retreating. Let Asterios know.

Understood! Bradamante replied dutifully.

Aífe, I ordered next, keep Caenis occupied for as long as you can. Buy us time to retreat.

Aífe’s mental acknowledgement carried a kind of grim acceptance. I don’t know how long this form will last, but I’ll wring out every second I possibly can.

I just had to hope it would be enough.

“Hey!” Jason called after us. “Who said you could run away, you cowards!”

Drake gritted her teeth and whirled about, sprinting to the very back of the ship.

“Captain Drake!” Mash called. “Wait! Where are you going?”

Drake ignored her, leaned against the railing, and pulled out one of her pistols to take aim. The hammer clicked as she cocked it back. “FUCK YOU!”

“Master!” the younger Medea cried. “Don’t let that hit you! She has the Grail!”

BANG was the sound of Drake firing, and Jason recoiled more on reflex it seemed than anything else.

But as I expected, Caenis broke off her fight with our other Servants and raced to his defense, reaching out with one hand to pluck the bullet out of the air. It would have been nice if it could have been that easy to take out Jason, but of course it wasn’t.

And then the bullet did something unexpected: it punched straight through Caenis’ hand in a spurt of red, kept going, and bounced off of her cheekbone, drawing a line of blood across her face. Caenis looked as stunned as the rest of us.

“What the hell…” Drake whispered.

“How…” I began.

“…did you just do that?” Ritsuka asked.

Was it…something to do with the Grail, or…maybe Drake herself? If Caenis was supposed to be invincible on the sea, then how was it that Drake’s bullet — empowered by a Holy Grail or not — had managed to do anything to her at all?

Caenis’ surprise quickly transformed into rage. “You…! I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!”

Aífe’s fist slamming into her face stopped her from charging immediately after us, and although Caenis went down and hit the Argo’s deck so hard she bounced, she was back up again in a flash, just as furious and just as uninjured as she had been from every other one of Aífe’s attacks. So whatever it was, it had something to do with Drake and it wasn’t some sort of time limit or threshold of accumulated damage or something.

Rika let out another groan. Later. We could brainstorm later.

“Double time it, Sam!” I shouted to Bellamy.

“YOU’RE NOT GETTING AWAY!” Caenis roared.

“Caenis of the Argonauts!” Aífe shouted. At her feet, she quickly sketched a set of runes, four in total, and although they were too far away for me to make out, they glowed so brightly they would have been blinding up close. “I challenge thee! A duel between warriors, one on one, to the death!”

My eyes went wide. I recognized that. It was the curse Cúchulainn had used in Fuyuki to force the corrupted Emiya into a straight fight.

And Caenis, bound by that curse the same way, had to abort her jump right as she was about to chase after us.

“DAMN IT!” she howled. “DAMN YOU, YOU MEDDLING BITCH!”

“Bradamante, Minotaur!” Aífe called. Even from this distance, I could see the way Asterios stiffened. “Leave now, while I have her attention in full! Our Masters will need your aid for the battle to come!”

“Yes, Queen Aífe!” Bradamante said, and she took the opportunity to retreat, leaping off of the Argo and disappearing in midair. She reappeared a moment later with us, a little worse for the wear but not seriously hurt.

Asterios hesitated a moment longer. His head swiveled back and forth between Aífe and Caenis, who was slowly reining her anger in enough to do more than rage and scream. What was going through his head, I didn’t know.

“Come on, Asterios!” Euryale called over to him. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

His head dipped. And then, he turned to look at Jason — who was, I just realized, entirely defenseless. The only one standing between him and us now was the younger Medea, who wasn’t a frontline fighter to begin with and only had half of her power.

Jason seemed to realize the same thing a bare second later. He started to back away from Asterios.

I threw myself against the railing, and as loud as I could, I shouted over to him, “Asterios! There’s nothing in the way! Take the Grail!”

“No!” Medea shouted. “Hektor!”

The dots connected. Shit. Hektor had slunk around in the background so much that I’d forgotten he was even there, but now that he’d been brought back to my attention, my eyes zeroed in on him, stalking forward from behind the other Medea. His spear was drawn, ready to be used, and while Asterios had a lot on him in terms of raw physical might, I hadn’t forgotten how easily Hektor had held his own while wedged between him and two other Servants.

My mouth opened to call for him to forget about it and retreat —

Only for Rika to suddenly gasp and let out a choked sob. “No…!”

At the same moment, the space above the Argo’s deck twisted, and a mass of leaden skin and bulging muscle was deposited on the wooden planks with a thud that shook the whole ship.

Herakles.

He was riddled with maybe a dozen different swords, all of them jutting out from his torso and limbs like some kind of demented porcupine and all of them deep enough to have hit something important. Blood ran in rivers down from the wounds, and his entire body seemed to be drenched in it, as though he’d decided to bathe in a slaughterhouse. How much of it was his was impossible to say.

There was no sign of Emiya.

“Oh no,” Mash gasped softly.

Rika just sobbed, clutching at her Command Spells like they were the only thing tethering her to the ship. I didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what had happened.

“Herakles!” Jason cried, relieved. “What took you so long, you lazy oaf? Don’t tell me that weakling actually managed to kill you a few times!”

Herakles did not reply with words, but he stood as though unbothered by his injuries, and a moment later, all of the weapons sticking out of him vanished into glittering dust that was carried away on the wind. We were too far away to see properly, but I had the sense that his wounds were healing rapidly, because I could see the steam that rose from his body, billowing out of the rents in his flesh.

“Damn,” Arash muttered. “That guy… He really is as strong as they say he is.”

Asterios, back on the Argo, looked at Herakles, at how he seemed none the worse for wear, and in that moment, made a decision. I recognized the slant of his shoulders for what it was. Had seen it more than my fair share, especially at Endbringer battles.

Resignation like that was for people who knew they weren’t coming back.

“We waiting for the big guy or what?” Bellamy asked.

“Get us out of here,” I said.

“No!” Euryale raced towards the side of the ship. “Asterios! Asterios, what are you doing? Come back!”

He didn’t. He looked our way one last time, lingering for just a moment, like he was etching her face into his mind one last time, and then he walked over and put himself between Herakles and us. He brandished those two halberds of his, growled so low and loud that even so far away, it shook my bones, and then, without an ounce of hesitation in his body, he leapt into action and threw himself against the mountain that was Greece’s greatest hero. There was no way he didn’t already know the outcome.

Jason’s cackle echoed.

“ASTERIOS!” Euryale screamed at him.

She looked ready to fling herself overboard and go to him, but Artemis swooped down and scooped her up in a moment of surprising tenderness, like an older sister comforting her sibling.

“Damn,” Orion said. “Never would’ve expected that outta him. That guy really was a big softie in the end, wasn’t he?”

“Shut up!” Euryale snarled. “He’s not dead! We have to go back!”

“Don’t spit on his sacrifice like that!” Drake barked at her. “Can’t you see he’s doing this so you can escape? Respect his decision and run away so you can avenge him later!”

Euryale’s face screwed up into a complicated expression, and she pounded her fist against Artemis’ arms furiously. “Damn it!”

And then, she wriggled out of Artemis’ grip and raced up to the very back of the ship. She leaned against the railing, cupped her hands around her mouth, and yelled, “ASTERIOS! THANK YOU! FOR EVERYTHING!”

An earthshaking roar was the only reply offered, but she didn’t seem to have been expecting anything else or anything more coherent. She lingered only for a moment, fingers digging into the railing with deceptive strength for her size, but she didn’t stay and watch as her…friend, or whatever it was he had become to her, died for her sake.

Instead, Euryale took a step back, squaring her posture like an opera singer preparing for the biggest, most important song of her performance, and then she sucked in a deep breath, lifted her arms like she was offering supplication to the air, and started to sing.

From out of her mouth came a slow, mournful song, one I didn’t recognize for the lyrics or melody, but whose echoing, haunting quality was familiar in a way that made my chest ache and a very old wound throb. The song didn’t much resemble anything modern, but it had a solemn, sad lilt that also sounded resolute and final that anyone who had ever lost someone would know well.

It was a dirge. A funeral song, sung now for someone whose death and suffering had never before been mourned, only celebrated. A goodbye not to the monstrous Minotaur, but to Asterios, who had given his life for another. For a friend.

Whether or not he heard it… I didn’t know. But some part of me hoped he did.

“Beautiful,” Ritsuka whispered.

“And…sad,” Mash added mournfully. “Not only Asterios, but Emiya, too…”

Rika choked on another sob. She curled in on herself, clutching her Command Spells to her chest like they were the only thing she had left of him. For a moment, I considered reminding her that we could summon him back using the FATE System as soon as we got back to Chaldea, so there wasn’t technically anything to mourn, but it felt too callous, so I swallowed the words before they could even reach my tongue.

“Oh dear,” said Artemis. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you to be summoned, Darling! What would I have done if you were one of the ones who died?”

“Read the room!” Orion hissed back at her.

I left them to it and took a few steps over to Bellamy. Quietly, so as not to interrupt the others, I said to him, “As quick as you can. Asterios and Aífe will buy us as much time as they can, but we won’t have a huge head start.”

“You’re sure about the archipelago?” he asked me just as quietly. “Euryale had a point about how it wasn’t exactly the most welcoming place.”

“If they wanted us dead, they wouldn’t have missed that first shot,” I reasoned. “No. Whoever is down there is cautious, likely protecting something. Atalanta, Hippolyta, and King David — if they’re all still around, it’s likely they’re hiding in the archipelago and probably found another ally.”

Whether or not they’d be willing to help us… Well, that was another question. Medea said they’d left Jason out of disgust for his plans, but that didn’t automatically mean that they would be willing to fight against him. King David and Hippolyta wouldn’t have any real connection to stop them, but Atalanta might have a more complicated relationship with the idea of fighting an old friend. Two or four, even, depending on how close she’d been with the others.

For that matter, whoever they found might have his own opinions on taking the offense against Jason and Medea. Ironically, if he did, playing this defensively might be the only real way to defeat someone as strong as Herakles.

“Alright,” said Bellamy. “Archipelago it is. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Making friends is the one thing I’m really good at!”

Euryale continued singing as we sailed away, and she kept singing even as we left the Argo far behind us and Asterios’ ears were too far away for her words to reach, and only once she had decided that she had sung a much as she wanted to sing did she let her song die down and her voice trail off. For once, there was no applause greeting her, only solemn silence, because they might have been a bunch of irreverent treasure hunters, but the rest of Drake’s crew recognized what had been lost. Some of them had even hung their heads and pressed their hands to their hearts as though they were attending an actual funeral, and considering how life at sea was, maybe this was the closest thing to one they ever got.

The mood remained dour and downtrodden as our journey continued, and the crew went about their usual work — as much as they needed to, with Bellamy’s Whydah still supporting the Hind — quiet and subdued. Arash returned to the crow’s nest so he could keep a lookout and make sure we weren’t taken by surprise, and Bradamante, as our sole remaining dedicated frontline fighter, stood sentinel over the team. Soon enough, there was nothing in any direction except more sea, and the storm where the Argo was hiding faded into the horizon.

Our retreat wasn’t quite as frantic as our chase of Hektor had been, but we were still making far better time than the Hind would have on its own. Periodically, I made sure to check my map, so I wouldn’t be surprised when we ran into that mystery Servant’s fleet again.

“What are we going to do?” Mash asked Ritsuka quietly. “Master, against an enemy like Herakles…w-without E-Emiya there to help us…”

Rika’s shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t reply, not even to offer some witticism or make a reference that only her brother understood, as sure a sign as any that what had happened hit her hard.

“I don’t know,” Ritsuka replied. “If it was just Herakles…but with Caenis there, too, things aren’t so clear.”

“Somehow, Captain Drake was able to hurt Caenis, though,” Mash said, and both she and Ritsuka looked at Drake as though Drake would be able to tell them how. As I expected, Drake could only offer them a shrug.

“Got me,” she told them glumly. “Not like I did anything special or something. Just squeezed off a shot at that wanker and she hopped in the way.”

“It can’t be anything about you specifically,” I chimed in. She cocked her head at me.

“How d’you figure that?”

“You’re a living human,” was my blunt answer. “You’re not a Heroic Spirit, so you don’t have conceptual advantages based upon your legend, you just have the stuff you have on you and the Grail.”

Could it have been the combination? If Caenis’ impenetrable body only worked against the weapons of Antiquity, then something like a spear or a sword or even arrows would just bounce right off of her. It would neatly let something like a bullet or a musket ball get through her defenses, since they were too far removed from the sorts of things that existed back in her era. Too modern.

That didn’t quite feel right, though. A Heroic Spirit like Caenis should definitely be aware of a weakness like that in her Noble Phantasm and therefore know to avoid giving us the opportunity to exploit it — or even letting us know it was something to be exploited.

“Ain’t like the pistols are all that special,” Drake said, gesturing at one. She reached for her chest and pulled out the Grail, scrutinizing it thoughtfully. “You think this here bauble might have something to do with it?”

Considering the options? Probably. The question was how. If it was something that only applied to Drake, like it was based upon her wish or something asinine like that, then we would be stuck trying to find the right opportunity for Drake to get in a killing blow against Caenis, which was already a difficult proposition before we started talking about Herakles being there, too.

“Almost certainly.”

On the other hand, if it was something to do with the mere possession of the Grail, an advantage or ability afforded to anyone who held it, then that opened up a number of other avenues for us to attack Caenis from. We wouldn’t have to rely on Drake — still an otherwise ordinary human — managing to score a fatal blow with her pistols, or something equally ridiculous, like making sure her hand was on whatever weapon we decided to use to kill Caenis.

I wanted to have a better theory about how it worked before we started making any plans, though. Marie might have a few ideas that could help. As much as I’d tried to cram into my head over the last two years, the fact of the matter remained that she still had a more robust knowledge base to work from.

“I don’t understand how that’s possible, though,” Mash said softly. “Even with the Holy Grail, Caenis’ Noble Phantasm should still protect her as long as she’s on the sea, shouldn’t it?”

“I got a look at it during the fighting,” Ritsuka said. “That’s exactly how it works. Nothing we used against her should have worked at all.”

Hence our current conundrum.

“The Director or Da Vinci may have some idea,” I said. “They might have gotten a better reading with Chaldea’s sensor suite.”

And even if they didn’t…maybe it really would be as simple as fighting her on an island. It would really depend on what her Noble Phantasm conceptually counted as “being at sea.” It was entirely possible that the size of the island mattered.

We lapsed into silence after that. The whole ship was quiet, a silence broken only by the splash of the waves against the hull, the slosh of the sea, the creaking of the ship beneath us, and the oars slapping the water. I kept checking the map and kept one eye behind us, waiting for the Argo to give chase, even though Arash had it covered and had better eyesight besides.

We were down an Archer. In a very real sense, we were half blind, and there was no swarm half a million strong giving me a picture of everything within half a mile to compensate.

The hours passed like that. Conversations were sparse and quiet, and when they happened at all, it was usually about the maintenance of the ship or a few murmurs between the crew. Even Rika remained withdrawn; she retreated to the wall near Drake’s cabin, sat down with her back against it, and spent almost the entire time staring down at her Command Spells.

I could imagine the thoughts that were swirling through her head. The blame she was probably loading onto her own shoulders, like it was her fault Herakles was so powerful that Emiya had died against him or that Caenis had woken up to save Jason or that Asterios had been forced to stay behind to hold off Herakles.

There wasn’t much I could say to her to ease that burden. When something went wrong, it was far too easy to blame yourself, and logic tended to take the backseat. Later, when she was ready to listen, I decided I would take her aside and tell her why it wasn’t her fault and there was nothing else she could have done.

It was my plan anyway. If it was anyone’s fault that it hadn’t gone off right, it was mine, and even then, I’d done my best with the information I had. There were just some things you couldn’t account for. Herakles and Caenis were just that sort of complication.

That didn’t mean I was going to let Asterios and Emiya’s sacrifices be for nothing.

The day drew long, and the sun was dipping below the horizon when Arash gave me a gentle mental prod. Master.

I looked up, then out towards the front of the ship, where, in the distance, the fleet from before had materialized again. They were waiting for us. Whether they’d been there the entire time and never moved or if the Servant behind them had sensed us coming somehow, there was no way to know.

Quietly, I made my way back over to Bellamy, and to him, I murmured, “Ease up a little. Bring us in slow, so they know we aren’t here for a fight.”

“Yeah,” he said back. “Probably don’t recognize us, huh? Last time, it was just the Hind.”

It depended on how good a look they’d gotten at our chasing after Blackbeard. It was entirely possible they’d seen the whole thing and kept an eye on the fighting until we were out of range, in which case they knew exactly what the Hind merged with the Whydah looked like.

The fact they weren’t firing on us was a good sign, at least. A good start. Easier to negotiate with someone that wasn’t trying to kill you. Easier still if you happened to have a common enemy, although experience had taught me that it didn’t always work out that cleanly.

Now we just had to convince them to help us kill the strongest hero in the world half a dozen times.