Interlude: Argo
The roar of warring spears echoed across the deck of the Argo. Two streaks of red flashed as a maroon blur smashed against a white blur, and for a single moment as they collided, they resolved into two women, one of them in the roughspun cloth of a Celtic barbarian and the other in the finer wool of a Greek warrior. The barbarian wielded a spear made entirely of the same crimson material, with patterns of thorny vines along the shaft and an undulating blade. The Greek warrior’s spear also had a red shaft, but the blade was broad and blackened with a sharp, silvery edge.
They were a study in contrasts. The taller Greek warrior fought savagely with powerful, overwhelming strikes meant to defeat the enemy with a single blow. Her face was twisted into a furious snarl. She held nothing back. The shorter Celtic barbarian fought carefully with measured, precise strikes that would have been no less lethal than her opponent’s, designed to conserve as much energy as possible. A broad smile lit up her entire face, despite the fact that everyone knew she was inevitably going to lose.
No sooner had they stabilized into distinct, visible form than did they disappear and become blurs once more, racing across the Argo’s deck. For brief moments, mere fractions of a second, they slowed long enough to become visible again, before darting back off into pitched combat.
This pattern had been repeating for hours yet. Neither side had gained ground, for while the Greek warrior had many cuts and holes and scratches scored into her clothing and armor, her skin was entirely unblemished. Even if her opponent could get past her guard, her body was impenetrable, invulnerable, invincible, and she simply could not be harmed. The Celtic barbarian, by contrast, had suffered many fewer cuts and injuries, and yet they had healed almost as soon as they had been inflicted, leaving her just as pristine as the Greek.
And yet, despite the stalemate, only one of them had the support necessary to truly go on forever. The end result had already been predetermined from the beginning. What was happening now was nothing more than a waste of time and energy — time and energy that could be better spent on other, more important things, as far as one of those watching was concerned.
It pissed Jason off.
“Caenis!” he shouted at the Greek. “Stop playing around with her! Finish her off already!”
These words did little for the Greek warrior known as Caenis. She was already pissed off herself, and they only served to make her angrier. Jason’s cajoling accomplished nothing.
“The fuck do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Caenis bellowed back at him. “This bitch ain’t giving me any fucking openings! If you think you can do better, then get your ass over here and try!”
The difference in their skills was obvious, and that, too, only served to make Caenis even angrier. This was the truth of the matter: the living hero known alternately as Caenis and Caeneus had never been anything particularly special, possessing neither unusual strength nor exceptional martial prowess. It was only the blessing of Poseidon that now made her so formidable, only the things which she possessed as a Heroic Spirit that made her so powerful.
In contrast, the Celtic barbarian, Aífe, was a warrior who had dedicated her life to improving herself. She had honed her body into a weapon and mastered all the skills available to her during her training and adventures. She had well-earned everything in her arsenal, and there was nothing she wielded which had not been gained through her own efforts.
In that regard, although only one of them possessed any shred of Divinity in her Saint Graph, only one of them could truly have earned the moniker of a goddess. It was only natural, therefore, that even though Caenis could not be harmed by anything Aífe wielded, nothing which Caenis possessed was capable of matching Aífe either.
To have one’s own inadequacies thrown into her face, anger was the natural reaction.
“Urk!” Jason blanched, grimacing, for neither was he anything special as a warrior, but long practice with belligerent teammates let him recover quickly. “Don’t you think if I could do anything, then I would? Herakles would turn her into paste! But you had to get caught in that trick of hers and none of us can do anything but watch!”
Jason gestured to the hulking behemoth of muscle and power that was Herakles. He stood stoically at attention, watching everything without even the slightest inkling of what — if anything at all, given that he was a Berserker class Servant — might be going on inside of his head. As he was now, he wasn’t anything more than a bundle of instinct, ingrained fighting prowess, and a vague, inscrutable will.
Perhaps he obeyed Jason simply because there was no one else to give him orders. Whether it was a matter of personal loyalty or the influence of the Grail in Jason’s possession, the only one who could have said either way could not have communicated the answer in any coherent way.
“DON’T FUCKING REMIND ME!” Caenis roared.
In her fury, she lashed out with a particularly powerful blow, a swipe of her spear that would have easily sliced in half almost any Servant who had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of it, but Aífe contorted, ducked under it so that the black blade passed over her head by mere centimeters, and then retaliated with a powerful blow of her own. Reflex made Caenis flinch away from the strike that would have gouged out her eye and gored her brain, were it not for her impenetrable skin.
“BITCH!”
Her free hand balled up tightly, and her body twisted around to add force behind her blow as Caenis aimed a punch to avenge what the spear would have done to her — for Caenis’ body might have been uninjured, but her pride had been damaged mightily, and this was the greater insult of the two.
But Aífe retreated before Caenis’ fist could make contact, putting just enough distance between them to avoid any attack that might have followed. Contrary to Caenis, she still looked like she was having the time of her life, such was the expression of joy on her face.
“Come,” she taunted. “If that is the limit of what you can do, then I still have much to teach you and little time in which to teach it.”
Caenis snarled. “Then stand fucking still and let me hit you!”
These, however, were only compounding the origin of Caenis’ ire. Caenis was no stranger to combat, after all, and no stranger to worthy opponents or strong enemies. How could she be, when one of her own companions was the greatest hero Greece had ever produced, so famous that his name was remembered millennia after his bones had withered into dust?
No, mere competition could never have accomplished this, for it was too ordinary. What had truly aroused such fury within Caenis was that she had been tricked. She had been outwitted by her enemy, surprised first by an attack that had somehow managed to make it through her invincible body and then again by this nonsense that forced her to fight in a battle to the death in single combat. That this state of affairs kept highlighting her weaknesses and deficiencies as a warrior only served to stoke the flames of her rage, and when combined with her Madness Enhancement, there was no going back. She would continue raging until this battle ended, and she would not stop before then.
This was, for Jason, the worst outcome. It was not possible for him to move forward before this final foe had been vanquished, but there was nothing he could do to bring the fight to a swifter conclusion, for the Shoal of the Four Branches was inviolable, and so there was nothing for him to do except watch impatiently. Neither his emotional support nor his accusations would by miracle allow Caenis to match an enemy who was simply more skilled than her.
Why couldn’t everything just go according to plan, he wondered. Why were there these constant setbacks? He had the greatest hero in the world at his beck and call, there should be nothing at all that could hope to stand in his way. And yet, somehow, his ascendancy kept being delayed.
“Your impatience is indeed your worst trait,” Aífe said calmly as she dodged yet more attacks from Caenis. “You would be a much greater warrior, if only you could master your emotions and learn restraint.”
“SHUT UP!”
Caenis unleashed another flurry of blows so fast that even Jason’s eyes couldn’t keep up with them, and yet her opponent dodged around them so effortlessly that he was honestly a little jealous. Well, that was only natural. Jason had never had the same opportunities to become one of those bigshot heroes. He was sure, if he'd been given a chance to really show his stuff, then he would be the equal of names like Herakles. No, he would be better.
That was the whole point of this venture. Jason had never gotten the chance to realize his full potential, and now, with the Grail and with his plan to become a god king, his time would finally come. Once he had Euryale and the Ark, there would be no more obstacles on his path, and then everything would turn around.
This time, there would be nothing to sabotage him at the last second. After all, the Medea at his side now was too slavishly devoted to even think of doing the same thing her older counterpart had done to him in life. With her at his side and Herakles as his subordinate, his victory was nothing more than inevitable.
That was why…
“Just shut up and kill her already, Caenis!”
This was the absolute worst.
“RAH!”
Caenis did not respond with words, for she had gone beyond them. There was not enough space in her mind now to form a coherent thought, and all she could think of was the red haze that crept across her vision.
Truly, she was an irascible, uncontrollable Heroic Spirit.
Watching all of this, Medea could only sigh. Lacking any interest in the brutal melee and having no desire to watch the two warriors trade ineffective blows, she instead turned her eyes towards the sea and the sky and thought wistfully of home and of her life with her Lord Jason. If she strained, she thought she might have been able to see the shape of the coast that sat upon the edge of her native Colchis in the distance, hidden in the haze of the setting sun, just barely on the edge of sight.
How wonderful it would have been to return to those times and live in them forever. How terrible that they were long gone, lost to the fog of history.
Still, if she was allowed to dream and fantasize, to imagine what would bring her happiness… Maybe, that was what she conjured in her mind’s eye. A paradise where she could be alone with Lord Jason and they could enjoy each other’s company to the fullest, without interruption or care.
She was not unaware that there was something missing, although she could not have said what. Her memories were incomplete. There was something she knew should be there, some vital piece of information that would change so much of her existence, and yet it had all been ripped free, leaving only jagged edges in her mind. There were only gaping holes where they should have been, blank spots that left not even impressions.
There was nothing to be done about that, and so Medea didn’t concern herself with it. If it was missing, then it wasn’t truly important, and it was that line of thinking that let her focus more completely on the current circumstances. Her current objective and goals.
She, too, felt Lord Jason’s impatience, although not for quite the same reasons. There was instead the press of something urgent on the back of her mind, something with incredible weight that sat insistently upon her. She thought, perhaps, she understood the burden of Atlas, at least a little. Despite nothing physical pushing down on her shoulders, they ached with a phantom pain.
“I know,” she murmured to the air. “There have been far too many interruptions and impediments, haven’t there? It should not have been this difficult.”
Her task remained all the same.
She turned her eyes back to the fighting. Nothing of it had changed.
This was only a small stumble on the road to it. Both she and Lord Jason yet had parts to play.
“What was that?” Jason demanded.
Medea pasted a smile on her face. “Nothing at all, Lord Jason! Only that I, too, grow weary of these interruptions that keep getting in the way of our plans!”
Jason sneered at her. “Of course you do. This plan was partly yours, anyway, even if I made it better.” He turned to their last member. “And what about you? Aren’t you getting bored of this, too?”
Hektor only smiled lazily and shrugged. “This old man isn’t too bothered by any of this. Troy was sieged for ten years, remember? Patience was something I had to learn early on.”
He was the only oddity, and as far as Jason was concerned, the only one who wasn’t quite trustworthy. After all, the rest of their crew were Argonauts and had all served beside him — under him, as he was the captain — on their adventures. If they weren’t quite friends, they were at least comrades and people he had entrusted his back to, once upon a time.
Hektor was none of those things. He wasn’t even a Greek. Technically, he was even an enemy of the Greeks, although what bearing that had on things when the Trojan War was after the Argonauts had long since disbanded, there was no way to say. What stake he had in Jason’s plan, therefore, well, Jason didn’t really know, and that was why he didn’t trust Hektor. Herakles and Caenis were why he didn’t really need to.
He could at least admit that Hektor had wound up useful enough. That useless wretch, Blackbeard, had failed so miserably, so if nothing else, it was convenient that Hektor had been there to reclaim the Grail. What a nightmare it would have been to try and reclaim it if someone else had managed to steal it away.
“Tch.” Jason turned back to the fight, the flurry of two spears clashing against each other. Neither side had yet gained any ground. “How pathetic it is that the guy who isn’t even an Argonaut has done a better job of helping me than the actual Argonaut on my crew.”
Even, he was loath to admit, Herakles. Just how had the greatest hero of Greece let himself get suckered into that Archer’s stupid magic? Worse than that, how had he actually lost several lives to that weakling? Shouldn’t his instincts have been enough to warn him of the danger? Shouldn’t that have been enough to avoid it?
And if not him, then shouldn’t his expert mage have been able to pick up on what was happening sooner instead of way too late for anyone to do anything about it?
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hey, Medea!” he yelled, turning to the slavish little twit. “Just how was it you missed that guy’s incantation anyway? Shouldn’t you have known he was up to something? Just how incompetent a mage are you, anyway?”
Medea sighed pitifully. “I’m sorry, Lord Jason. It was my mistake not to realize he was incanting a spell sooner. I messed up.”
“Damn right, you did!” he berated her. “Someone who learned magic from the Goddess of Magic herself should’ve known better!”
She bowed her head contritely, accepting blame, and the fire left Jason immediately. It was hard to get really angry at someone who didn’t even fight back. At least if she’d tried to deny it, he could have yelled at her some more, but someone who just meekly took it and didn’t even tear up a little? That just left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Ugh! Why couldn’t we have had someone more experienced on this ship?”
Circe was a crazy bitch who probably would’ve turned him into a pig out of some misguided attempt at revenge for what Medea had done to herself, but at least she would have realized what that Archer was doing fast enough to actually stop it.
“Seems like a bit of an oversight,” Hektor commented mildly. “Maybe it really would have been a good idea to have more than one mage onboard at a time, huh?”
“Shut up,” said Jason, annoyed. “It’s not a matter of skill, it’s experience. Damn it, it’s convenient to have a version of Medea that doesn’t want to kill me on sight, but couldn’t I have gotten one from a little further along in our journey?”
“Kill you on sight, Lord Jason?” Medea asked, aghast. “Why ever would I want to do something like that? Lord Jason, I would never! I’m your faithful wife, and that’s never going to change!”
She couldn’t even imagine the idea that she could ever want to kill him. He was Lord Jason. He was everything to her. Sure, he wasn’t always nice to her, but when he was mean, it was usually because she deserved it, and when she didn’t, he didn’t mean it.
Jason grunted and looked away, and Hektor’s face fell with pity.
“She really doesn’t know, huh?”
“Shut up,” Jason said again. “Isn’t it obvious? When that bitch took off, she took Medea’s memories of her future, too. As far as this Medea is concerned, she hasn’t been on any of the adventures we went on yet, so she has no idea what happened later on in our legend. Even if you told her, I doubt she’d believe any of it for a second.”
“That so?” said Hektor, sounding like he actually did pity her.
What was there to pity? As far as Jason was concerned, Medea was the best off of their whole group, because she was still stuck in her happiest moments. Frankly, Jason would’ve liked to not remember any of the bad stuff that happened to him later on, too. In fact, he would’ve preferred for his memories of his life to stop in the middle of their journey, before the tragedies started to fall on his head, back when it was as simple as returning home to claim his prize and his throne.
Compared to Herakles, who couldn’t even think straight, and Caenis, who had been summoned in the form of the woman she was before Poseidon had his way with her? Medea’s situation was a blessing. She had none of the baggage that was weighing the rest of them down.
The little twit probably didn’t even understand the reason why Jason wanted to become a god king, even if the only thing he wound up ruling over was this godforsaken ocean. It was something he wanted, so she was going to make sure he got it, whatever the reason. She didn’t need anything more than that to convince her.
Maybe that really was something to pity after all.
“So she doesn’t even remember what happened to her brother?”
Medea blinked at him and tilted her head with a confused smile. What did Absyrtus have to do with anything? “My brother, Lord Hektor? Did something untoward occur? Well, he’s a bit headstrong, so if he got on some poor maiden’s nerves, he has only himself to blame.”
Really, he was so hopeless, she thought. The later events of his life must have been among the memories that were missing, but she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he offended a visiting princess and got himself in trouble with her father.
Hektor just gave her that pitying look again, for some reason. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, something like that happened, I guess you could say.”
Medea sighed. Good grief. Of course it had. Absyrtus really was so hopeless. He’d have lost his head a dozen times over if it wasn’t attached to his neck.
“Like I said,” Jason told him. “It’s no use. Her head is too empty to even consider the idea.”
“My head isn’t empty, Lord Jason,” Medea said, giggling a little. “It’s filled with thoughts of you!”
Jason arched an eyebrow at Hektor meaningfully, and Hektor only sighed. “Yeah,” he said morosely, “I think I get it now.”
BOOM
The entire ship seemed to rattle at once, and the main mast quivered and shook as Caenis slammed into it at speed. Had it been an ordinary boat, made of ordinary wood, it would undoubtedly have snapped straight in half, and then Caenis would have gone on to plow through much of the rest of it. It was only the fact that the Argo was a Noble Phantasm with thousands of years of mystery behind it that kept the whole thing intact.
If it had been anyone but Caenis, it wouldn’t have been inaccurate to say that she had suffered the greater damage, but even the blow that had knocked her back so effectively wasn’t enough to make it past her invulnerability. The only thing of Caenis’ that had been injured now was her pride.
“Ah.” Aífe sighed, grimacing down at her extended fist. “It seems as though that’s the limit of this form. I’ve exhausted everything I can do now.”
Caenis roared as she took off like a rocket, and she swung her spear with enough force that she might even have cracked the ship itself if she made a direct impact, only for the black blade with its silvery edge to pass straight through Aífe’s body. The Celtic barbarian was already fading away, her body evaporating like so much steam on a hot day.
Her voice carried on the wind. “It’s too bad. I was actually starting to enjoy myself. I would have liked to keep going just a little while longer.”
And by the time Caenis whirled back around, she was gone entirely, leaving no trace of her behind.
“Finally!” Jason cried, throwing his hands up in the air.
“Where did she go?” Caenis demanded furiously. “Where did that bitch get off to? Huh?”
“She’s vanished, Lord Caeneus,” Medea said helpfully. “It seems she ran out of magical energy and disappeared.”
Caenis spun about, snarling, “What?”
“Yeah, she’s gone,” said Jason. “It took you, like, six hours, but one way or another, you finally wore her down. Couldn’t you have managed that a few hours ago? Those bastards are long gone now!”
“Shut up!” said Caenis. She punched the main mast so hard that it shook and shivered again, but not so hard that it splintered. “That bitch! She couldn’t even lose! She had to go and run out of energy!”
Of all the rotten, worthless ways to win a fight, thought Caenis, your opponent just running out of energy was the most bullshit. Because in every way that mattered, you hadn’t actually won. It wasn’t even a contest of endurance, the way it would have been when they were alive, it was just a matter of who had the better supply of magical energy to keep them going.
Fucking bullshit.
“Not to worry, Lord Jason,” Medea chimed in brightly. “Even if I might not be at my best, I can still track them down and follow the trail of their magical energy. I know exactly where they’ve gone!”
“Yeah?” said Jason, sneering. “You’re finally useful for once, huh? Well, let’s hear it! Where did those rats scurry off to with that goddess?”
Medea smiled, happy she could do at least this much. “It’s good news, actually! It seems that group went down and joined up with Atalanta and King David! Not only are they all in the same place, but the Ark we need should be there as well!”
Jason blinked. “Seriously?” Was his luck finally starting to turn around? “They actually went off to that archipelago with the Queen of Losers, that miserly king, and the traitor?”
Herakles let out a rumbling growl, but what he was reacting to and what he was trying to say, no one there had the slightest clue. Maybe that was for the better, though. As formidable as Herakles would have been with all his wits about him, Jason wasn’t entirely sure Herakles in his right might would have approved of everything Jason was doing. That pipsqueak goddess might have punched one of those traumas related to his kids.
“Yes.” Medea nodded. “It seems they’ve all gathered together. This could be our chance, Lord Jason! With everything we need in one place, we won’t even have to go anywhere else. We can simply sacrifice Euryale to the Ark where it is!”
“That does sound convenient,” said Hektor. “A little too convenient for this old man. You sure it’s a good idea to walk into that?”
“You spent too much time hiding behind walls,” Jason said dismissively. He patted one of Herakles’ thick forearms, because he was too short to reach a shoulder. “With this guy here, we have nothing to worry about! It doesn’t matter who or what they throw against us, Herakles can’t be beaten!”
Hektor sighed and shrugged.
“You sure you want to go chasing after them so soon, though?” he asked instead. He looked pointedly up at the sky, which had faded to a dark gray as the last shards of daylight slowly followed the sun and fell behind the horizon. “Even with the big guy there to provide cover, fighting all of them at once in the dark sounds like a bad idea to me. Much harder to see an ambush coming.”
He slid a glance over at Jason.
“If one of them sneaks up on us while Herakles is distracted fighting, then even I might not see it coming in time to stop it, and they have your ex on their side, don’t they? Someone like her could definitely do that.”
“Urk.”
Jason’s face pulled into an ugly grimace as his skin paled. Maybe that was a good point after all. Even if she was just the castoff half of the Medea with him now, the older version was still conniving and clever enough to do just that. If she was half as diminished as his version was, then they wouldn’t even be able to sense her coming until she was right on top of them.
And Jason wasn’t fool enough to underestimate the bitch’s spite. The last time he did that, it had cost him what little he’d had left, and the end result was him sitting under the rotting remnants of his prized Argo, only to be crushed when the keel finally gave out and fell on him. That was a mistake he wouldn’t be making a second time.
“Lord Jason??” Medea began, eyeing the mist that was slowly starting to crawl up the sides of the ship.
“Y-yeah, you actually have a good point there. I guess there’s a good reason the Grail made you one of my Servants!” Jason crossed his arms, trying to put on a brave face. “Fighting in the dark has too many risks, even with the sort of firepower we have on our side. As incredible as we all are, that bitch is really good at sneaking around. Even a hero as great as Herakles was brought down from the angle he least expected!”
“I see.” Hektor sighed again, sounding relieved this time. Maybe he was scared to fight in the dark. Ha. Who would have thought? The great hero of the Trojan War, scared of the dark. “When should we attack then?”
“Lord Jason,” Medea tried again as the mist grew thicker.
“Right after dawn, of course,” Jason said. “Some of those guys were ordinary humans, and they’ll have to sleep, won’t they? So the instant there’s enough light to see an ambush coming, we’ll storm the archipelago while they’re half asleep and rout the whole lot of them! They’ll never see it coming!”
“A raid at dawn, huh?” Hektor mused. “So we’ll attack then and try to catch them off guard. Works for me, Master.”
“Lord Jason!” Medea said urgently.
“Ugh!” Jason whirled about to face her. “What do you want now? Can’t you see we’re busy planning how we’re going to win?”
“I think…we’re under attack,” she told him.
“What?”
Something tickled along his shins, and that was about when Jason realized there was mist all over the ship, blanketing the deck in a glittering, gray fog. The stormy clouds above suddenly opened up and let loose a torrential downpour, soaking Jason from head to toe in short order.
“What?” He turned to the last Servant in their group. “Caenis, what are you doing? Stop fooling around!”
She sneered. “Ain’t me. This is something else.” Her lips curled into a nasty smile. “Someone else that thinks they can play at being a sea god.”
Herakles let out a low, rumbling growl as though to agree with her.
“Oh,” Hektor mumbled. “This guy’s back.”
Jason turned to him. “You know what’s going on?”
Hektor nodded. “Met him once or twice while I was going around with that loudmouth, Blackbeard. He shows up like this, all spooky and mysterious like, and then, when you’re sufficiently freaked out and wondering just what the hell is going on, he’ll pop up out of the woodwork and ask —”
“Jason of the Argonauts, do you covet the Holy Grail?”
Jason did not squawk and squeak like a little girl when he whirled around to face the new voice, he very much did not, thank you, nor did he find the desiccated corpse that shambled out of the mist in any way intimidating, no, not at all. Why would he, when he had Herakles and Caenis there to protect him? He was the safest person in the history of history. There was nothing at all for him to be afraid of.
“Just who the hell are you supposed to be, old timer?”
“I have many names,” the corpse burbled. “None that matter to you, I would think, and none that matter now. I ask you again. Do you covet the Holy Grail?”
“Covet it?” Jason sneered. “Why would I covet something that’s already mine? Get out of here! I’m not in the mood for playing games with a jumped up phantom playing psychopomp!”
The corpse stilled, and its milky white eyes turned on him with sudden intensity, unblinking.
“I see. So then, you are the one who is responsible for this era and its corruption. Were you to be slain…”
And in Jason’s ear, the voice whispered, “Then this distortion would be corrected.”
Jason was suddenly flying, held protectively in a pair of strong arms as the world blurred around him. A fraction of a second later, he came to a stop, carried aloft in Herakles’ surprisingly gentle grip, and he was all the way on the other side of the Argo.
What?
Medea, too, had squeaked and leapt away, only she was slower than Herakles, and so she only escaped the specter’s sword by virtue of the fact that he had been aiming for Jason to begin with. If Herakles hadn’t swept him up, that pitted, rusty blade would have gone straight through his heart, and there were a lot of things Medea could fix, but she couldn’t perform true miracles. She was not, after all, Lord Hades or Lady Persephone. She didn’t have the power to resurrect the dead.
Caenis broke out into laughter. “Know what? Fuck it! Yeah, I could use someone to beat up on for a little while!”
She leapt across the deck at blinding speed, blood pounding eagerly in her ears, and when the specter put up a meager defense with his sword, she smashed right through it — and him — like there was nothing even there. There was a spurt of water from the ghastly wound that nearly cut him in half, and then he vanished like any other Servant would have.
Her mouth curled into a mad grin. There was no way that was all there was to him.
And with a splash, she was proven right, and the corpse reemerged on the deck, completely uninjured.
“Caenis of the Argonauts. If you interfere with the justice I must mete out, then you too shall be condemned.”
Caenis cackled. “I’m gonna enjoy seeing you try!”
She threw herself back at the specter, and she could feel him struggle to keep from buckling under the strength of her blow as the pitted steel of his sword whined and groaned against the blade of her spear.
He wasn’t as strong as that Celtic bitch who made her waste so much time, but that was just fine, because he also wasn’t anywhere near as skilled as she was. That meant he couldn’t jerk her around for six hours like she was a dog being led around by the nose.
The instant her feet touched back down on the deck, Caenis unleashed a flurry of blows with her spear, and fuck if it wasn’t gratifying to watch the fucker struggle to deal with each and every one of them. She was faster and stronger than him, more skilled with her spear than he was his sword, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop her from slicing into him like he was some kind of prize hog.
“Justice, my ass!” Caenis laughed. “You’re going to mete out justice? Like that? Get lost! I don’t know what kiddy pool you’ve been playing in up until now, but you’re not gonna mete out anything if this is all you have!”
Her spear rained down on him like a torrential storm, blasting past his guard with all the force of a typhoon and rending flesh with every strike. Water flew from his accumulating wounds like blood, splattering wetly across the deck and indistinguishable from the fat raindrops pouring down from the sky.
She had to be careful, though. If she let her excitement run away from her, then this guy would die too soon and her fun would be over.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than did the corpse try a clever disarming move, only instead of pushing her spear away and wrenching it out of her hand, it redirected the black blade directly into his chest. Caenis’ excitement soured in her belly.
“Damn it.”
She yanked her spear free in a shower of more water. It splashed across the deck as though it was blood, soaking through the corpse’s ripped clothing and making it even darker.
“Just when it was getting good, too.”
“Do you think,” the specter said ominously, “it is so easy to kill the sea?”
He burst apart into glittering mist, and at the same moment, something massive breached the surface of the ocean a scant dozen meters or so from the Argo like a whale. Glowing, covered in ghostly algae and seaweed, crewed by droning phantoms who went about their jobs monotonously, it was a ship, a literal ghost ship, with its cannons pointed right at the Argo with obvious intent.
“What the fuck is that?” Jason yelped.
Herakles growled, low and loud, like a tiger whose territory had just been encroached upon. She paid neither of them any mind.
“That’s more like it!” Caenis cackled.
And at the helm of the ship, manning the wheel, why, there was the corpse himself, hale and whole, as though Caenis had not just stabbed a massive hole through his chest. He didn’t even have the cuts she’d carved into his limbs during their brief exchange of blows.
She grinned. “Kill the sea?”
She spun her spear around, whirling it about as though striking an invisible enemy, and around the Argo, the waves churned and roiled. Every swing agitated them more and more, and then, when they were all nice and riled up and she was sure everything was right where she needed it to be —
“I am the sea!”
— she swung her spear in a brutal uppercut, and the water between their ships surged, rising up in a gigantic wall that easily dwarfed the enemy’s ship. It grew and grew and grew, gaining more water, more mass, more power behind it until a veritable mountain of water separated them, enough to capsize a whole fleet of warships built for the most rugged of seas.
“So fuck off! Poseidon Maelstrom!”
And the gigantic wall of water came down on that ghost ship like the fist of an angry god.