126: Madness
"You really mean what you said the other day?" Cu Chulainn asked, leaning against the ship's railing.
"Be more specific. I say a lot of random crap," Jason replied, glancing away from the rudder for a moment.
"Heracles. You really think the berserk me would stand the best chance?" The caster said.
"I mean, it's your strongest class, right?"
"Haaah… I wonder about that. If you're asking which one is the best to summon, it's Lancer, no questions asked," Cu Chulainn said. "Even putting aside the issues with his mana consumption, the berserk me is a good-for-nothing who can't tell enemy from friend. No, even worse than that, he hates both of them with all his heart. Don't really like hating people - makes me feel gross, you know?"
"...Yeah, I guess you are the light-hearted battle maniac type," Jason sighed. "But still… isn't [Riastrad] your strongest Noble Phantasm?"
"Nah, [Gae Bolg] is better nine times outta ten. It doesn't matter how strong I get if my spear can just instantly kill anyone in range. [Riastrad] is only better against enemies that can consistently get lucky enough to dodge an undodgeable blow, or enemies who don't die when they're killed."
"So enemies like Heracles, then."
"...Yeah."
A moment of silence followed, before Cu Chulainn finally spoke again.
"Master told you a bit about Fuyuki, but he didn't mention that I was originally part of that grail war," He said. "Actually, after everyone got corrupted, I was basically running around on my own for close to a month. So for me, Berserker - sorry, Heracles - is kind of like an old friend at this point."
"You were fighting him for a month and you think you're his friend!? You really are easygoing, huh!?" Jason blurted out.
The caster chuckled. "You said it yourself, right? [God Hand] was stored in his skin, and he lost both - but he had a full month, you know? He never regenerated his skin, or even repaired his eyes, even over an entire month?"
"...That's just like him," Jason said, smiling and shaking his head.
"The rest were the same. Whether it was Archer sitting around doing nothing unless I got close, or Rider charging clearly into an obvious trap and letting Berserker kill him… they were all restrained in some way or another. I don't think any of them were even aware of it, and maybe this is all just wishful thinking, but deep down it felt like… they were all cheering for me," Cu Chulainn said with a sigh. "So I got to thinking, a little bit before Chaldea arrived - if I forced a [Riastrad] with runes, could I finish the war? Everyone else had already shown me their worst, most loathsome sides - so what was I doing holding mine back?"
The runes on Cu Chulainn's body pulse as his form distorts. His muscles bulge, shuddering with the terrible sound of stretching skin as he hunches over like a beast. Fingers twist and melt together, wrapping around the split halves of his spear as his shoulder bones exit their joints with a horrific pop. His legs bulge as he rolls forward onto his tiptoes, the bones of his feet cracking as his feet extend into an animalistic lower leg.
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!" An unearthly howl wracks the man's throat as his jaw distends, unhinging like a snake, teeth sharpening against themselves with a sickening grinding noise. His veins bulge impossibly large, before being swallowed by even more distorted tendon and muscle, knitting itself outward in an impossible manner, flesh layering upon flesh until his head is covered, his displaced shoulder blades emerging to snap over his face like a helmet. His long blue locks snap free of the ponytail they were tied in, tendrils of hair writhing every which way, stabbing and scoring the deck of the ship as if they were made of iron.
Finally, the hideous transformation ends - and he explodes into motion.
The two copies of Alcides move to meet him as he thrusts his weapons towards them, one towards each. One flickers behind him as the other moves to block the obvious attack-
"[RIASTRAD]!"
With a gruesome snap, his arms grow extra joints, stretching around Alcides's defense and impaling him in a single blow as his writhing hair stabs towards the copy behind him-
-Alcides's blade shimmers, and the [Heavenly Sword] of Reid Astrea cleaves Cu Chulainn in half at the waist even as it cuts away the piercing hair.
But that will not be enough to slay the berserk Cu Chulainn.
"[RIASTRAD]!"
Muscle fibers shoot out of the severed halves of Cu Chulainn, catching each other and pulling him back together as his upper half whirls around in the air, stitching back to his body backwards to allow him to attack Alcides head on, his massive jaw lashing out and tearing the Archer's throat out.
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!" Another terrible howl rings out as he shudders, flesh rippling and hair peeling back - and a madly twitching eye opens on the back of his head to stare at the last, bow-wielding copy of Alcides as his foe finishes firing a rapid series of shots at the far away Archer who had interfered before.
Cu Chulainn moves again, splintering the deck of the Argo as he leaps towards Alcides, only for the latter to flicker away with the [Leaper's Talent], sailing away with a series of short-range teleports as he readies a new shot, this one slower than those preceding it.
-The [Heavenly Sword] is a way of moving, more than anything. A certain type of perfect motion that cuts down anything that needs to be cut, even if that thing is light, karma, or causality itself. There is nothing restricting its use to a 'sword' - indeed, Reid utilized a pair of chopsticks as a handicap.
And so, when Alcides fires his next shot, it is an arrow with the same strange 'motion' that cuts all things. A [Heavenly Arrow] cuts through the air to tear through Cu Chulainn's [Protection From Arrows] and Spirit Origin in a single shot.
However, the [Heavenly Sword] is also a 'technique'. In theory, any swordsman - or rather, any wielder of weapons - could learn it with enough talent and devotion to his weapon. There is nothing restricting its usage to Reid Astrea - indeed, by the end of the first day of their battle, Alcides had already mastered the technique, without ever yet acquiring the Gluttony Witch Factor.
When Cu Chulainn's torso twists around to face the right way, towards the oncoming arrow - his parry, guided purely by the mad instinct of a perfect killing machine, matches Alcides's [Heavenly Arrow] and cuts it down.
And Alcides, seeing this - cannot help the smile that's beginning to form on his face.
A moment later, with the sound of a cannon, the Argo explodes.
"Still not so sure that was a good idea, captain…" A faceless pirate says as the smoke from the cannons of the [Golden Hind] starts to clear.
"We had our orders," Sir Francis Drake replies dully.
The ordinary Francis Drake is a pirate. The freest of free spirits, who sank the eternal Spanish sun with nothing but her greed and willingness to do the impossible. A jolly spirit who moves wherever the wind takes her, because that is her heart's desire.
…But in truth, Sir Francis Drake was a soldier. She gave all she had and more to the crown, and sailed to her death simply at the request of her liege. This part of her is ordinarily suppressed - whether from the distortion of her legend, or her own desire to return to the carefree days of piracy rather than the bleak ordeals of war.
Her altered form is a soldier, who fought for her liege, died in her armor, and was buried at sea. That is all she is - a walking corpse that follows orders.
So she feels nothing as a cloud of steam, rising from an undersea form so hot it is boiling the water around it, approaches. She feels nothing as a still steaming mass of muscle and teeth and claws rips into the lower deck, and then through the midship, before finally exploding onto the upper deck and tearing her screaming crew to shreds.
"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!" A thrust of a broken spearhead with enough skill to kill even the light in its path goes unadmired, and Sir Francis Drake dies.
Arrows rain down as Mash Kyrielight sprints past falling trees towards the heart of the island, following a crying raven.
With a cry, she sprains her wrist deflecting one with her shield - and then the rain of arrows pauses for a moment.
"[Bayard]!" Georgios cries, suddenly materializing, and the wounded horse just barely hauls Mash out of the path of another all-piercing arrow. "It's just one right now, but I think I saw him make another three copies before the ship exploded-!" He shouts as the horse careens haphazardly down a forest trail, arrows raining down behind them.
Another pause from Alcides, and Georgios tenses up, ready to deflect it with all the strength his broken arms can muster, but- "[Hamesh Avanim]!" Another streak of light arcs overhead like a meteor, and he relaxes as his instincts tell him a sacrifice won't be necessary just yet.
Finally, the horse exits into a wide clearing, half tumbling over as Mash dismounts and sprints forward, wholly ignoring an ornate golden box and a horrifically wounded green-haired man whirling a sling in favor of hurling Cu Chulainn's staff with all her might into the center of what she knows to be the leyline.
For a moment, nothing happens - and then, in a burst of flame, a human figure made of wood grows out of the staff, winding itself together, until finally skin and clothing materializes over the all-too-familiar form of-
"Cu Chulainn!?" Mash shouts, pointing at the newly formed man.
The Caster grins as he puts a strip of cloth to his bleeding eye. "Call me Grimr now. I shed just about all of 'Cu Chulainn' except my consciousness, after all. It's a trick Pseudo-Servants can do when things get tough - well, normally it'd reduce your Spirit Origin to less than half strength, but since I'm Odin, 'sacrificing' myself just makes me stronger."
"That- no, that's not important right now! Hurry up and perform your ritual, please!" Mash says.
"I'd love to, but… we've been had," Grimr sighs. "The second Leyline we went to, the one with no guardians? It was a fake. Someone disguised a minor font as a greater one, probably to hide the real deal."
"No…" Mash slumps against her shield. "I-isn't there anything you can do?"
"Revealing the real Leyline won't be too hard now that we've got three," He says.
"-But getting there will be another matter. Did anyone happen to see where Jason ended up?" Georgios asks.
"Without his boat, he's useless anyway," says Grimr. "But we've got comms up, and leyline access, so-"
There's a beep from Mash's wrist as a hologram of Olga Marie Animusphere appears. "I'm already preparing Assassin for rayshift - but at this rate, we're going to run out of power before he can get there. Between supporting three servants, and how many times your other half is firing off his Noble Phantasm, we're practically on reserve power as it is. We can still rayshift you out, since it's less costly, at least where Servants are concerned, but we'll need to get two of you back here before we can power another rayshift to the singularity, and that window is closing."
"I know you missed the details, but I've gotta be here to activate the ritual," the Caster says.
"I'm not talking about you. We're supporting two more Servants out there, after all."
"...Director, I'm not drawing any power, since I'm a Demi-Servant," Mash says. "If you're saying there's one more apart from Cu Chulainn and Georgios, then does that mean…?"
"Let go, dammit!" A sopping wet Jason shouts as strangely familiar squat figures, clad in leaves and wooden tribal masks haul him deeper into the seaside cave, and into a gloomy shrine.
Within the darkness, lit only by candles, he can only make out the silhouette of another one of the strange short creatures behind a curtain. Finally, one of his captors speaks, and he understands the horrible truth of what creatures lie behind these masks.
"Nob. Nob nob nobbu."
"If they establish a breeding population-"
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," The Rider groans.
"Nob bu bu bu! Nobbu nob nobbunob! Nobunaga nob, nob nobbu. Nob bu bu!" The figure behind the curtain says with as much imperiousness as its squeaky voice can convey.
…
"Why does this kind of thing always happen to me..?" Jason mumbles after a moment of silence.
"Nobbu nob!" The Mini-Nobbu behind the curtain cries, and his captors drag him away into the darkness, heedless of his screams.
Jason is still screaming when the Mini-Nobbus shove him into a crude bamboo cage and slam the door shut. "You can't do this to me! I'm your captain, goddammit! Well, maybe not yours, but I commanded your parents!"
"Hey, you. You're finally awake," says a gravelly voice in the back of the cell.
"Shut the hell up, Blackbeard!" Jason whirls to point at his cellmate.
"Jeez, you're not even surprised to see me-?" The pirate mumbles.
"I'm in a permanent state of surprise right now, nothing else could possibly-!"
He cuts himself off in utter speechlessness as he finally locks eyes with the third person in his cell. Or at least, what's left of them.
"So, let's talk about my missing body!" Says Oda Nobunaga's severed head.