Chapter CIII: Enemy of My Enemy

The ship remained silent — this time, out of nerves — as the fleet approached us, coming closer as a long line instead of clustering together. I had to admit that even I was a little on edge, because the way the formation was set up, it would be very easy for them to simply surround us and bombard us from all sides. There wouldn't be much of anything we could do about it except kiss our asses goodbye.

Mash's Noble Phantasm was incredible, but somehow, I didn't think it would be able to protect us in that case.

The worst part about it was that we wouldn't know it was coming until it had already happened, because there was no indication at all whether or not this guy was peaceful or just biding his time. As much as I had told Bellamy that we probably didn't have anything to worry about, the fact of the matter was that my logic wasn't flawless. I could very easily have been mistaken.

Even if I wasn't, it might change when they found out we had a Grail. There were a lot of Heroic Spirits who would do quite a bit for the chance to use it — a pirate would simply have less qualms about doing whatever it took to get it, no matter how underhanded or selfish.

Our mystery Servant gave no sign of aggression as the ships approached, with a large galleon at the lead, sailing out in front of the rest. Even still, however, there wasn't any sign of the Servant either, and the ships themselves seemed to be entirely unmanned, like they were all being controlled by a master pulling the strings.

It was eerie, frankly. Not even the flagship had anyone on it. No one pulling the rigging, no one manning the wheel, no one at the guns, ready to blow us to smithereens. The ship was completely and utterly deserted.

"What the hell?" Drake murmured. "Where is everybody?"

Arash? I asked.

I don't see anyone either, Master, he replied.

"Guess that gives new meaning to a ghost ship," Rika muttered, but it lacked the usual energy, the flare I'd come to expect from her.

Be prepared, I told Arash, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily. Don't take any overtly offensive action, but just in case he's not friendly…

The flagship came close, keeping only enough distance to avoid getting entangled with the Hind or slapped by the Whydah's oars. It was close enough now that even in the dying sunlight, I could read the name printed across the side of its hull: Oxford. It wasn't a ship whose owner I immediately recognized.

As the flagship slowly passed us by, the rest of the fleet swerved around behind us and turned, swapping sides as they formed a kind of procession, like an honor guard — or a prisoner escort. I did my best to keep them in my peripheral vision, just in case, and had to swallow my own nerves.

We were being watched, I could feel it. Like the barrel of a gun pressing against the back of my head. Who, where, and why, I didn't know, but whoever was behind this, they were inspecting us. What they were expecting to find, I could only guess. What they would do if they didn't like it, well, that was significantly more problematic.

I hated situations like this, where I had so little control over the outcome, but we still didn't have the greatest options in front of us. The caldera wasn't out of the question, no, but the fact that the Argo came from a time before shipboard cannon emplacements did not change Herakles and Caenis or their lethality. Even if we could sink the ship, it wouldn't mean anything against the Servants aboard it.

Might even be worse for us, in point of fact. Sink the Argo, and the only place for the fight to go was the Hind, and that would put us at a massive disadvantage.

Mash suddenly gasped and spun about, hefting her shield reflexively. "Servant detected!"

And from somewhere in the formation of ships, one of them came close, opposite the flagship, and sailed up alongside us, creeping along the way our mysterious seaweed-haired friend had several days back. If they'd wanted to ambush us, they could have done it with frightening ease. We hadn't even noticed it until it was practically on top of us.

The "SATISFACTION" stenciled along its hull felt painfully ironic.

Different from the others, this ship wasn't completely unmanned. No, as it drew up side by side with the Hind, I could see a single person standing at the wheel, a tall figure with wavy black hair that fell to his shoulders, a thick mustache above his upper lip, and a neatly trimmed beard tracing the line of his jaw. He was adorned richly in buccaneer's clothes, black with gold hems, knee-high leather boots, a red sash tied around his waist holding together his red coat. Atop his head was a tricorn hat.

Something tickled at my memory. It felt like recognition. I'd never seen the man before in my life — he was a Servant, and in those clothes, from the Golden Age of Piracy, so how could I have? Somehow, though, there was something about him that was very familiar. Like I had seen him before, somewhere, from afar but never up close. For the life of me, however, I couldn't figure out what made me feel that way. What about him triggered it.

And then he strode over to the side of his ship, planted one foot on the lip of the deck, and leaned forward to rest his elbow on his knee as his other hand fell to rest on his hip. I felt my eyes open wide.

No fucking way.

"Ahoy, there!" he said in a bright, jovial voice. "Now what brings you fine folk out here to this little stretch of Hell?"

Drake stepped over to the side of the ship and greeted him like an old friend. "Running from the same thing you were, I suspect! Got an angry demigod and a couple of his friends on our tail, and for some reason, why, they want a friend of ours!"

"Senpai," Ritsuka murmured to me, "that's not who I think it is, is it?"

"I…don't know."

A part of me dreaded the answer myself. On the one hand, yes, later perception of a Heroic Spirit could have drastic effects on their appearance, their Noble Phantasms, and maybe even their personality — Dracul had been an excellent lesson on exactly that. On the other hand, my credulity had been stretched one time too many in this Singularity, so I was hoping I was wrong.

"You don't say." The other pirate stroked his chin thoughtfully. "And which friend of yours is this, exactly? Only, it seems mighty convenient for you and me to have a common enemy, don't you think?"

"Mighty inconvenient, more like," Drake groused. "Pah! Bastards want our local songstress of a goddess, although what for, well, they weren't exactly in an explaining mood, you feel me?"

"A goddess, you say," the pirate said. "Got quite a few who might fit that one with you now, don't you? So, is it the busty one, the flat one, the one with the fancy shield, the elf girl, or the one with the big shield?"

Artemis squeaked and flung an arm over her chest, as though it would be enough to hide her cleavage, while Medea shrank away from the attention, the tips of her ears burning. Bradamante looked down at her shield and realized she was the one with the "fancy shield."

"And why should we tell you that?" Euryale snapped at him.

His eyes immediately turned to her. "That'll be you, then."

She snarled. "So?" she demanded. "Do you want something from me now, too? Going to kidnap me and try to do unspeakable things, just like those creeps?"

"Never much interested me, if I'm frank," said the pirate. "What about the rest of them there? And the fellow up in the crow's nest waiting for me to twitch the wrong direction?"

I took a step forward. "You'll forgive us if we're a little less forthcoming, considering the situation."

The pirate smiled tightly. "Might want to decide to be a little more forthcoming, lass. These're some high stakes we're playing with here, and I'm not the type to give people enough rope to hang themselves with. Prefer the pistol. Quicker, cleaner, less chance of me getting screwed over."

A threat. And if he had control over each of these ships simultaneously, not an idle one. He was willing enough to hear us out that he came himself, but he was also perfectly willing to blow us out of the water if things went south one way or the other. Unfortunately, it gave him a lot of control over the situation.

But there were more ways of controlling things than a monopoly on physical force. I'd learned that lesson more times in my career than any other — at the foot of the queen, if I was allowed to be a bit poetic about it.

"These sorts of things go both ways, Captain Morgan," I said evenly. "You're asking us to give you reasons to trust us, while you have a gun pointed to our heads."

The pirate's smile grew even tighter, confirming my suspicion. "Figured that one out, did you?"

Behind me, Ritsuka groaned softly as Mash gasped.

"Y-you're Sir Henry Morgan!" she exclaimed. "The famous privateer who used trickery and cunning to conquer a number of cities throughout the Spanish Main! The Terror who cut a path throughout the Caribbean one victory at a time, against odds that many said were impossible! The one who people said inherited the spirit and mantle of Francis Drake!"

"Inherited my what, now?" Drake asked. "Don't remember putting any of that in my inheritance, pittance that it is."

"Francis Drake?" Morgan said. He looked Drake up and down, bemused. "You don't look anything at all like how I imagined you would."

"Better in person, right?" Drake shot back, grinning.

"Most things are," Morgan replied. Drake's grin grew larger.

"Careful, now," she said playfully. "Too much flattery and I might start thinking you're after something!"

Morgan laughed. "A famous privateer? After something? Perish the thought!" His smile fell away from his face, and from his sash, he pulled a pistol and cocked the hammer back, letting it hang threateningly towards his ship's deck. "But it's precisely because I am one that I have to ask what it is you're hoping to find in that archipelago."

"Hey, hey," said Drake, annoyed, "flattery'll get you plenty of places with me, but don't think it means I'm just gonna turn the other cheek when you start pulling out weapons!"

"Like I said," Morgan said bluntly, "lots at stake, here. Risks I'm not willing to take. Trust's a hard thing to come by, these days. Ain't something you can just give away for free. Seeing as I'm a reasonable man, however, I feel it only fair to give you another chance to answer: what is it you're looking for in that archipelago?"

He leveled a solemn glare at us all, radiating danger and menace in waves that washed over the ship and everyone on it, and several of Drake's crew, including Bellamy, shifted nervously, murmuring to each other. Worried this was going to devolve into a fight. None of them liked their chances, surrounded as we were by Morgan's fleet.

"Allies, Captain Morgan," I told him unflinchingly, like I wasn't at all worried about the swarm of ships just waiting for us to make one wrong move. "Allies against Jason and his Argonauts."

Morgan stared at me, searching my face, and then turned his look on Drake, and then again on each of the others, one by one, waiting for someone to crack and reveal the "truth." Several people shifted under the weight of his gaze, but no one suddenly broke out and said I was lying, so that moment never came.

"Well, alright, then," said Morgan. With a click, he uncocked his pistol, and then he pushed off and stood straight. He was actually pretty tall. "That, I think, we might be able to work out a deal on. Let's see what my friends happen to think of it first."

So there were more Servants than just him hiding out in the archipelago. I guess we would be finding out how many soon enough, and who else he had with him. Hippolyta, Atalanta, and King David — had they all made it down there together? Had they found any other Servants, aside from Captain Morgan?

Morgan turned away and strode back over to the Satisfaction's wheel. Over his shoulder, he threw out, "I'll be going on ahead of you. Make sure you follow, now! That archipelago's waters can get deceptively shallow. Don't want you to wind up running aground, now do we?"

"Thanks for the tip!" Drake said. "My poor ship here's been through some mighty nasty stuff lately!"

Morgan barked out a laugh. "I can tell! If you have that whelp's Noble Phantasm holding it together the way it is, the Hind must've faced some pretty stiff challenge!"

"But she's still trooping on!"

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Morgan's laughter echoed as the Satisfaction put on a spurt of speed and lurched ahead of us. One by one, the rest of his fleet began to vanish, and the weight of threat that they carried with them lifted from the crew's shoulders.

The instant Morgan was out of earshot, Drake heaved a gusty sigh. "Shit. That guy's the real deal, ain't he? Was like looking in the bleeding mirror, I'll tell you what!"

"C-Captain Morgan's famous for his cunning and ruthlessness," Mash told her.

"And for making a pretty good rum," Rika muttered, barely audible. It still lacked her usual flair.

I glanced at her, and when she noticed me looking, she tacked on a lame, mumbled, "Allegedly."

"It's how he was so successful," Mash went on, having apparently not heard Rika. "Even outmatched or outnumbered, his willingness to use unconventional tactics made it possible for him to win."

"I heard he once convinced a local governor to surrender," Bellamy added, "by sending a messenger with his gun and the message that he'd be back for it in a year's time."

Drake made a sound of interest in her throat. "No foolin'? Damn. I think I like this guy."

"Does that mean we're following him?" Bellamy asked.

Drake nodded. "Came this far, didn't we? Might as well go the rest of the way. Right?"

She turned to me. I nodded.

"Emiya and Asterios died so we could get this far," Ritsuka said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rika hunch further in on herself. "We can't turn around now."

"So we won't," I agreed.

"You heard 'em, Sam," Drake told Bellamy. "Steady on. Let's see if this guy won't lead us to a few new friends."

"Aye, Captain."

The Whydah Hind lurched into motion, sailing after the retreating form of Morgan's Satisfaction, and we followed as he led us further along. Discreetly, I checked my map, just to make sure he wasn't leading us astray, but it turned out I didn't have anything to worry about, because the archipelago laid straight ahead of us and we were making a direct line for it.

That was about when my communicator decided to chime.

Beep-beep!

This time, when I answered it, I put it on video, and Marie's face appeared, intense and focused.

"Director."

"Hebert."

"Was there something you needed?"

She frowned and awkwardly said, "We've…been keeping an eye on the readings."

Ah.

"You saw, then."

"The readings taken by your Master's Clairvoyance, yes, as…well as Emiya's defeat." Under her breath, she added, "Who apparently had a Reality Marble, of all things, and didn't tell anyone about it!"

"Director Animusphere," Mash greeted.

"Mash, Ritsuka," Marie replied. "It's…good that neither of you were seriously hurt."

"Thanks to Emiya and Asterios," Ritsuka said.

Marie's lips drew tighter. "Of course."

"You saw the readings on Caenis and Herakles, then?" I asked.

She sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "Yes. As ridiculous as those two are. Of all the Heroic Spirits the enemy could have summoned, it had to be two of them that were so impressive. Just my luck!"

"Hey!" said Drake. "Don't go talking like it's a foregone conclusion that we're gonna lose!"

"I'm not!" Marie bit back. "B-but I have legitimate concerns about how we're going to defeat Servants of that level with Noble Phantasms that make them almost untouchable! I-it's not like we can just throw around A-Rank attacks whenever we want! That sort of thing normally takes magi up to a week to prepare ahead of time!"

"What about Caenis?" I asked.

Marie grimaced. "Yes, we saw her readings, too. Poseidon Blessing — that's just as unfair a Noble Phantasm as Herakles' Godhand! Ugh!"

"Drake managed to hurt her."

Marie's brow furrowed. "She did?"

"Damned if I know how," said Drake. "Didn't think this Grail of mine would let me hurt this supposedly immortal warrior. Not when she was shrugging off the sorts of things that make my poor pistols look like pea shooters."

"That…shouldn't be possible," said Marie. "Caenis' Noble Phantasm is supposed to make her invincible at sea. Your pistols shouldn't have even scratched her."

Drake shrugged helplessly. She didn't have any better answers than we did.

"Was there anything in the readings that might give us a hint as to how it happened?" I asked.

Marie's nose scrunched up. "You know as much as we know. Caenis' invulnerability is derived from her Noble Phantasm, Poseidon Blessing, like I said. Given how it works, it must come from the part of her legend where Poseidon blessed her with an impenetrable body. We can't confirm that it only works at sea, but…assuming that we're right about where it comes from, it makes sense that the blessing of a sea god wouldn't work on land."

"Could it have something to do with how Captain Drake defeated Poseidon when she attained her Grail?" Ritsuka suggested.

My brow knitted together as an idea occurred to me. Could it really be that simple?

"It doesn't work like that!" Marie insisted. "Captain Drake is still a living human! She doesn't get conceptual advantages against enemies because she hasn't become a Servant yet!"

I'd assumed earlier that it had something to do with the Grail itself, and I didn't think I was necessarily wrong, but I'd been going about it from the wrong angle. Because Drake's Grail wasn't just a Holy Grail, was it? That was the mistake I'd been making. It wasn't a wish-granting device she'd found in some treasure horde somewhere, left behind to be discovered by some intrepid adventurer.

"Captain Drake."

She'd ripped it out of Poseidon himself.

"You said you got that Grail by tearing it out of Poseidon's body, right?"

"Well," said Drake, nonplussed, "yeah! Coulda sworn I told you guys that already."

Marie took in a sharp breath. "It's not just a Holy Grail," she said, barely above a whisper, "it's a portion of Poseidon's Divine Core."

Mash gasped.

"Oh," Artemis said. "Well, that changes things, doesn't it? Who knew there was a human around who could do something like that to a god as hardy as Poseidon was!"

"Guess dear old Dad wasn't as tough as he pretended to be," Orion said dryly.

Drake retrieved her Grail, looking at it dubiously. "This thing? A, uh, watchamacallit… Divine Core? That important, somehow?"

"No, no, this makes perfect sense," Marie said. "Taylor… That's genius."

If it was so genius, why had it taken me so long to figure it out? We wouldn't have even needed to run away if I'd realized this was all it took to get past Caenis' defense.

"Yes, Ritsuka," I said, answering his earlier question. "It turns out it does have something to do with how Captain Drake defeated Poseidon when she acquired that Grail."

"Good thinking, Master!" Mash said brightly.

Ritsuka smiled bashfully, his cheeks a little pink.

"Someone want to fill us meathead pirates in?" Bellamy asked, jumping into the conversation. "I think I might get it, but on the other hand, maybe not."

"Caenis' Noble Phantasm is a blessing from Poseidon," I explained simply. "Someone holding onto Poseidon's Divine Core — Captain Drake's Holy Grail — is able to pierce that blessing using Poseidon's power."

"And that's how Captain Drake was able to hurt Caenis with her pistol," Mash concluded. "Th-that means…we have a way to defeat her!"

"That's nice and all," said Drake, "but she'll be expecting it now, won't she? I'm great and all, but there ain't no way in Hell I can hit her if she's moving fast enough to dodge every shot, and I guarantee you she'll be watching out for it."

There was an easy solution to that, though.

"That's why it won't be you." I looked up towards the crow's nest, where Arash was still on lookout. "It'll be someone she already thinks can't hurt her."

And to really sell it, Arash would fire his first few volleys without the Grail at all, luring her into a false sense of invincibility. Once she was absolutely sure nothing he did could hurt her, only then would he attack with Drake's Grail, and thinking it wouldn't do anything, she wouldn't dodge, so she'd take the full force of every arrow. Even if she was hardy enough to survive, she would almost certainly be critically wounded and therefore unable to fight.

Medea chuckled, low and dark. "That…just might work."

Any problems with that? I asked Arash silently.

None, he replied. It's a sound strategy. Even Servants of that caliber can get complacent, when they're used to being invulnerable.

"Forgive me for interrupting, Master," said Bradamante, "but how will we go about defeating Herakles, in that case? If our attacks must be a minimum of Rank A…"

"Between us three Masters, we still have plenty of charges for summoning Shadow Servants," I reasoned. "Emiya was able to take at least a few —"

Marie's gusty sigh cut me off. "That's not going to work," she said, sounding annoyed. "Unfortunately, the Servant you summon with that function has to have an active Saint Graph in the FATE System. Although his Saint Graph has been recorded for later restoration, right now, you can't summon Emiya, no matter how much you might want to. It's an oversight in Da Vinci's design," she added. "She forgot to account for the possibility that we might…lose a Servant during deployments, because she only meant for it to be used to summon Servants that weren't already in the Singularity with you."

"Well, damn," said Drake. "Guess there goes my meal ticket for the rest of your stay here, don't it?"

"Emiya was more than a meal ticket!" Rika burst out, standing suddenly. "He w-wasn't just some…some tool we could use whenever we needed good food or a laugh or…or…"

"I know that, girl," Drake said, surprisingly soft. She sighed. "Ah, geez. Didn't mean to upset you none or nothing like that."

Rika deflated, sagging back against the wooden wall again, and she dropped her face into her hands and took a long, shuddering breath.

"Emiya isn't our only option," I picked up, attempting to move the conversation along. "Aífe and Siegfried also provide us with at least another two ways of killing Herakles, maybe more, depending on whether or not Siegfried can take more than one life with Balmung."

"It might be best to assume he can't," Marie said grimly. "Against a Noble Phantasm like that, it's better to be conservative. Whatever it is that means each method grows less effective after it works the first time, we should go into this working under the idea that each method only works once."

"What about Jeanne Alter?" Ritsuka asked. "Her Noble Phantasm was recorded at A+, right? That should be able to kill Herakles at least once."

Marie looked at me, and all I could offer her was a tightening of my lips. It was true that we couldn't be sure we could trust Jeanne Alter yet, but unless the others in the archipelago had more options, we didn't have many available ourselves.

"It may be that we're that desperate," Marie admitted with great reluctance. It looked like the words physically pained her to say. "So if you make that decision, I…can't stop you."

No matter how much I might want to, I heard, even if she didn't actually say the words.

Beep-beep! Something chimed on her end, and Marie turned away to look. "The sensors are picking up a magical energy response," she said, "directly ahead of you. It looks like…Oh."

Oh?

I looked past her and into the distance, ahead of the ship, ahead of Captain Morgan's Satisfaction, and there, resolving into greater detail, was…

Oh.

"Is that…a city?" Mash asked.

"I'll be damned," said Drake.

"Hang on," said Bellamy. "If he's Captain Morgan, then that's gotta be Port Royal!"

And as those had been the keywords I needed to hear, under my Master's Clairvoyance, it clicked into place. Port Royal, Captain Morgan's Fortified Redoubt. The fortress city where Henry Morgan served as governor, whose prominence in the Caribbean had been bolstered by his efforts to make it a holdfast against a naval siege. A safe haven for pirates and privateers.

Except, as we drew closer, it wasn't quite a city, or at least not one as we would have recognized it, and I suspected not at all as it was when he was alive. At the outer edges were wooden docks, leading up to a stone terrace, and atop the terrace were single story, old style buildings that looked like they came directly out of a historical movie or a documentary. There were even phantoms, barely there, going about their work and their daily lives as though nothing had interrupted them.

And then beyond that, situated at the top and overlooking the townhouses, was a fort, a towering structure made entirely of weathered stone, with recesses cut into the walls whose shadows hid cannons — defensive emplacements designed to fend off an enemy fleet. Just from the ones I could see, there were enough to put up a good fight against half the fleet Captain Morgan had surrounded us with.

It didn't end with a single island, however, or a single fort. Across the shallows from one island, there was another small town, similar to the first and yet also different, this one also protected by a towering stone fort with cannons aimed outwards, and then even further out, in the distance, another small town with a matching fort, and another, for a grand total of five, spread out across different islands. They formed a rough square, with the largest and most impressive fort situated in the middle of the other four.

Captain Morgan led us in on the eastern side of the archipelago, where there was the largest gap between the islands, big enough for maybe four or five large galleons to safely sail through side by side, but not much more than that. More than enough clearance for the Whydah Hind to get in without any trouble.

And as we came upon it, the local fauna began to come under my control, and I could use them to explore this strange rendition of Port Royal in ways the human eye simply couldn't. It was, in fact, even stranger than it looked, because while each of the forts had different sections of a town situated around them, the town itself was remarkably complete, with everything from granaries to smithies to taverns, all of them populated with ghostly shadows of the people who worked them.

It was a literal ghost town.

"Incredible," Marie breathed. "These readings… No, can it really be self-sustaining? A Noble Phantasm of that scale? Even if he tapped into the ley line, providing the magical energy for something of that size shouldn't be something a Rider Servant is capable of!"

"What about that large reading Da Vinci mentioned earlier?" I asked. "The one that wasn't a Grail, but she couldn't be sure what it actually was?"

"It's…clearer now, and it's…" Marie's brow furrowed. "Not…the city? The source of the reading is almost certainly a Noble Phantasm, but it's located within the city, in the central fort. A…core?" She chewed on her thumbnail thoughtfully. "Could it be…the source of his Noble Phantasm? A magical energy reactor of some kind meant to support the structure of the main body?"

Since we seemed to be headed that way, I was sure we were going to find out, one way or the other. At this point, I was fairly sure that Morgan wasn't an enemy, even if we couldn't quite call him an ally yet, because he'd had ample opportunity to try and kill us all and hadn't taken advantage of it even once.

The fact we were on speaking terms was already a good sign about how successful any negotiations might go.

"What about the Servants?" I asked. "The readings from before — are they more defined now that we're closer?"

"Three more," Marie said crisply. "Four, if you count Henry Morgan. Until you can achieve visual confirmation, I can't tell you anything else, but…"

Yeah. We were expecting Hippolyta, King David, and Atalanta.

"Uh," Orion began nervously, "maybe Artemis and I should…go somewhere else, while you meet up with those other Servants."

"What?" said Mash. "But why? Do you have a bad relationship with one of them or something?"

"Not something that simple!" Orion laughed awkwardly. "But things might get a little strange if she happens to see us, especially together!"

Mash's brow furrowed, confused. "She?"

Oh.

"Atalanta."

Who happened to belong to a cult that was devoted to the idea of a pure, virgin goddess, untainted by such things as desire for a man — the radical feminists of ancient Greece. I wondered what they might have thought of Lustrum.

"Oh!" said Artemis, delighted. "I completely forgot about her! Hehehe, it'll be good to see her again!"

"A-are you really so sure we should do that?" Orion asked desperately.

"Hm?" Artemis blinked at him, bemused. "Well, of course! Why wouldn't I? She's a huntress who worships me! Or would that be worshiped, now that she's a Heroic Spirit? In any case, I need to give her my blessing!"

"For what?" Marie blurted out incredulously.

"To find love, of course!" Artemis replied brightly. "She's a pure maiden who has never known what the real thing feels like, so she's stiff and uptight and doesn't know how to relax. What she needs to do is find a man who can make her happy!"

Or a woman, I almost said, like some kind of reflex. I wasn't sure where it came from.

Marie's face had settled into a complicated expression, some Frankenstein combination of disgust, disbelief, and resignation, like she couldn't believe that what she'd just heard had come out of Artemis' mouth, but she'd come to accept that this sort of thing was going to be happening with more regularity from now on. I could relate.

The further into the archipelago we got, the more of it fell under the range of my powers, and the more of Captain Morgan's city I could reach, and it was about then, as the subject of Atalanta came up, that I found our other three Servants hiding out in the central fort. Waiting, apparently, for Morgan to return with news about who had come seeking them out and what for.

That was also when I discovered it.

It was situated in the center of the center keep, kept well away from both prying eyes and wandering hands, like it was some great treasure that needed to be hidden as far from sight as possible. Whatever it was, it was vaguely box-shaped, although I didn't have a clear enough image to say exactly what it looked like, so I sent out some feelers to get a handle on exactly what I was working with.

The instant they touched it, whatever it was, the bugs I was using to feel it out started to die, dropping dead suddenly, and I couldn't stop myself from recoiling at the feedback of the absolutely bizarre sensation of having my soul ripped out of my body.

Fuck.

"Taylor!" Marie called, worried, at the same time as Ritsuka said, "Senpai!"

"What's happening?" Marie demanded. "An attack? From where? There's nothing on the sensors —"

"I think," I began, and they both fell silent, "I just found whatever it was you've been detecting in this archipelago, Director."

And whatever it was, it really didn't like me touching it, even with my bugs. I doubted I would fare any better if I tried using my own hands. It probably worked on some sort of permission based concept, a trait you had to possess in order to handle it safely, like some kind of biometric lock. If Tinkertech could do it, why not a Noble Phantasm?

A thought occurred to me then. A possibility I hadn't considered when we were assuming that whatever the source of the reading was happened to be some kind of Noble Phantasm, and a particularly powerful one at that.

What if we were more right than we realized?

"And I think," I went on slowly, "that the reason Captain Morgan and the others are here is that they're hiding it."

"Hiding it?" Marie asked skeptically. "From Jason? Hiding what?"

Ahead of us, the Satisfaction began to slow as it drifted towards the docks of the center island and its fort. Inside, perhaps detecting his and our approaching presences, the waiting Servants stirred and started to move in our direction.

"That is what we're about to find out."