Chapter CXX: Perils of Uncertainty
I was given as clean a bill of health as could be expected. Neither Romani nor Da Vinci could find anything wrong with me, nor any sign of the curse that had afflicted Ritsuka — not, as Da Vinci had grudgingly admitted, that it necessarily meant anything, considering how much trouble they were having figuring out what was going on with Ritsuka in the first place — so the best either of them could give me was a solid "maybe."
Unfortunately, it seemed like that would be the best I could expect anytime in the near future, so while it wasn't exactly a definitive answer, neither of them could find any reason why they should shack me up in Ritsuka's already crowded room like another patient in an epidemic. I was, for the moment, free to go about my day like normal and sleep in my own bed.
Privately, I thought half the reason they didn't want me in Ritsuka's room, sleeping on a spare mattress for the duration, was because they were worried I might bully Shakespeare into putting me into that prison the instant I had a minute alone with him. The frustrating thing was that they weren't entirely wrong to think so.
Arash had, though, been given a sternly worded command from Marie — backed up by Romani — to alert someone if it seemed like I, too, was falling victim to this curse in a more obvious manner.
I had to admit, I wasn't sure what "more obvious" looked like in this case, except with Ritsuka's current state as an example. Ritsuka had been acting a little bit weird in the waning hours of the night before this all happened, but looking back on it, nothing of it really jumped out as particularly unusual. It was all easily written off as fatigue, which was half the reason no one had caught this before it reached the point of actually snaring him.
So there wasn't much else for me to do. By the time I had been given a full and thorough look-over by both Romani and Da Vinci, the morning had waned, and so my first meal of the day was much more like an early lunch than it was a late breakfast.
Obviously, a lot of stuff remained on hold for the time being, too. Emiya continued to cook and serve us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but El-Melloi II's lessons, Aífe's lessons, and all of the daily things the twins got up to were still called off until Ritsuka was awake and cleared to return to normal activities. Even the investigation into the next Singularity had been put on the back burner while Da Vinci and Romani tried to puzzle out what was going on and how to fix it.
But as the day wore on, they didn't seem like they were having any better luck than they'd had yesterday. There was no notification to the whole facility that Ritsuka had awoken, no frantic Marie arriving to tell me that the situation was resolved (or on the flipside, worsening), and no Mash knocking on my door to let me know that everything was okay again.
Neither did I see any change watching through Muninn's eyes. Every time I checked in on him, the only thing that was ever different was the position of the people inside of the room, who was staying in the room with Rika — usually Mash, and almost always Da Vinci, since she didn't need to eat or sleep — and whether Rika herself had let go of Ritsuka's hand long enough to eat something or use the bathroom.
Unfortunately, another thing that hadn't changed was my inability to do anything about it. I was no less helpless to do something than I had been before — I could only, as Marie had said yesterday, wait and hope. She and Da Vinci were right: knowing that the one ultimately behind all of this was Edmond Dantès, the Count of Monte Cristo, hadn't made any difference whatsoever.
It wasn't the first time I'd faced an enemy like this, of course. I'd come up against more than one foe who liked to shift in and out of dimensions and across realities to either protect his one weakness or to avoid attacks altogether. Usually, however, there was still some kind of weakness to exploit, a chink in the metaphorical armor. Shadow Stalker being vulnerable to electric currents, for example, although they weren't all as easy to take advantage of as carrying around a taser.
The trouble with Dantès was that there didn't seem to be any weakness to his Noble Phantasm at all. Not one we could exploit from the outside, at least. It had become something of a refrain at this point, but it really did seem like the only way to beat it was for Ritsuka to conquer the challenges himself.
Worrying about that seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Ritsuka wasn't incompetent, but there was a difference between that and running a gauntlet of Servants with no one to fight beside you except a belligerent ally who hadn't earned your trust and the wolf in sheep's clothing who had trapped you there in the first place.
Things remained the same throughout the evening and into the night. By the time my energy started to flag and my usual bedtime snuck up on me, I'd spent the entire day waiting for something that never came, a moment that never arrived, and in the absence of anything else to do, the only thing left for me to do was to climb into bed and hope I woke up to either a better plan, or to find Ritsuka had broken the curse on his own.
Four Singularities, each one where I spent most of the time sitting in the back and tossing out orders, and never in all of that had I felt as useless and helpless as I did then. It stuck in my gut like poison, but the nature of helplessness meant that all I could do was lie there and stew in it until I fell into a restless sleep.
That night, there was no Birdcage to welcome me. No fruitless chase waiting for me. No having to sit and watch as my body was used to kill everyone I cared about even a little bit. If I dreamt of anything at all, then I couldn't remember it come the morning.
In some ways, it was disappointing.
It made it easier to pull myself out of bed that morning, at least. There was no sweaty mess plastering my back to my mattress or horrifying images playing on repeat on the backs of my eyelids, so the only thing dogging my steps as I got ready to start my day was the same thing that had been on my mind the night previous.
So as I peeled off my pajamas and started to pull on something more appropriate for an early morning workout, I let my body move on autopilot and pushed my mind down the thread connecting me to Muninn's senses — only to find both El-Melloi II and Bradamante loitering about the room, speaking in hushed, quiet tones to Da Vinci. If that hadn't been enough on its own, the agitation in their postures and the undercurrent of urgency in their voices would have told me the tale.
Muninn's beak opened. "Again?"
The three of them stopped and turned to face Muninn, then each of them glanced in the direction of Ritsuka's bed, where a lightly snoring Rika was sprawled across the free space of his mattress, just like she had been for the last two days. I noted the greasy hair in a distant sort of clinical way — that she might have eaten and used the restroom as needed, but she hadn't taken the time or effort to keep up with her hygiene in other ways.
Losing him really would wreck her. More, I think, than losing Emiya a hundred times ever could.
"Yes," Da Vinci said, pitching her voice softly to avoid waking Rika. "It seems that Bradamante and El-Melloi II are the victims latest in line for this curse. They were just informing me about their experiences, and it appears to match up with what Emiya and Aífe reported yesterday."
"I'm sorry, Master," Bradamante said, just barely above a whisper. "I tried to resist it, I really did, but it was like someone else was in control of my body!"
El-Melloi II grunted. The stick of an already eaten lollipop sat between his fingers, thoroughly and disgustingly chewed, such that the paper was frayed and soggy and it was entirely possible that he'd swallowed some of it in the process.
"Same," he murmured sourly. "At least whatever was doing the controlling didn't have the finesse to make proper use of my Noble Phantasm. Small mercies."
Bradamante nodded. "Yes! It really was quite inelegant! In fact, it's quite embarrassing just thinking about how clumsy I was!"
So that brought it up to four. I noticed that Siegfried and Arash hadn't yet been amongst them — a coincidence, or did the fact that they were contracted solely to me have something to do with it? The part that muddled things on that front was the inclusion of Emiya, who was Rika's Servant, not Ritsuka's, so if it had anything to do with who was contracted to who, why had he been dragged into things first? Was this curse going to go through our entire roster one by one — or two by two, I guess — or was it just going to keep to Servants whose contracts were shared between the three of us?
God, I missed Lisa. She could at least have given me something to work off of. All of these uncertainties and guesswork were really starting to get under my skin.
"At least this confirms that Emiya and Aífe weren't outliers," said Da Vinci. "However the inner mechanisms work, Château d'If seems to prefer pulling from the Servants currently within Chaldea itself. It might be safe to assume that it either can't summon Servants of its own, or that doing so may be cost prohibitive."
It might be safe to assume that it had those sorts of limitations?
"You don't think the choices it's making have more to do with familiarity than with a limitation like that?"
"That's possible," said Da Vinci. "But in that case, it could make use of any of the Heroic Spirits the four of you encountered during your deployments, and we would have no way of knowing — except that we've established a measure of consistency now, haven't we? After all, this is the second time in a row that Servants within the facility were used, and that seems to be a pattern."
"So we just have to wait for everyone to finish doing their Mister Hyde cosplays?" a new voice interjected suddenly.
Da Vinci paused and took the time to turn and offer Rika an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, Rika, we were trying not to wake you."
"Yeah, sure, whatever." Rika didn't even take a second to appreciate the apology for what it was. "So is that it? This will all be over after Onii-chan and Jalter get through kicking out the…what, nine ghosts of Christmas past?"
I stopped for a second halfway through pulling on my shoes. Nine ghosts for nine Servants. Ten, if we included Mash, and eleven, if we added Da Vinci. Mash might not count since she was a Demi-Servant instead of a regular one, and Jeanne Alter was already with Ritsuka, which would neatly leave nine, if Da Vinci really did count.
Could it really be that simple, though?
"It's…a possibility," Da Vinci hedged.
El-Melloi II grunted. "That count referred to me as the fifth Lord of Judgment, for whatever that's worth. If we're right that it can't summon Servants independently and has to make use of the ones already here, then he's already made it about halfway through — and handled two of the more challenging opponents that could have been thrown at him, too."
But not all of them. Aífe and Emiya were one thing, because if you turned them into entirely different fighters, then a lot of the threat either of them posed disappeared. Siegfried, however? He didn't need any of his skills or his normal mindset to be a brick wall. Getting around his Noble Phantasm might wind up being the hardest part of Ritsuka's journey through Château d'If.
And if Da Vinci was thrown into the mess like I thought she might be… Well, I wasn't sure what that would look like. It wouldn't be easy for him, that was for sure.
"It was quite impressive!" said Bradamante. "He handled the battle against my, um, e-evil self? I-I'm not sure what to call it…"
"If ever there was an appropriate time to call something a shadow Servant," El-Melloi II said wryly, "this is probably it."
"Jung would have a field day," Da Vinci agreed.
"Ten," I said, dragging things back on track. "You're miscounting. Even if Ritsuka makes it through the rest of our team without getting hurt too badly, Dantès is still there at the very end. Whatever role he's playing, we can assume that he'll shed it once it's outlived its utility."
Da Vinci's mouth drew into a tight line. "Two Avenger class Servants clashing at the very end of this all… I suppose it's appropriate, when you consider that the both of them are constructed almost entirely of grudges." She sighed. "And I'm going to miss the chance to observe such a thing! How unfair is that?"
No more unfair than the fact that we had to sit on the sidelines like this.
"If we're right, then you'll at least get to see Dantès and what he's capable of," I told her. "Do you think you'll be able to keep your wits about you enough to look closer at things, if you do get snared at some point?"
"I'll do my best," Da Vinci promised, but she didn't sound particularly confident. "Depending on how it manifests me in his dream… Well, if I don't get pulled in until the exact moment it's time for Ritsuka to confront 'me' as one of these Lords of Judgment, I may not have time to do much observing. Less so if the fight begins immediately and I have to fend off two Servants simultaneously."
Somehow, I thought that she would still manage to catch more than all of the rest of our Servants had so far. That was Da Vinci for you.
"And in the meantime? Do we still intend to send someone in to rescue him if this goes on for much longer?" I had to ask.
"It may not be necessary," she said. "True, Ritsuka is still in very real danger, but if he continues at this pace, then it shouldn't take him more than another three days to reach the end of whatever game Edmond Dantès is playing with him. Provided everything works the way we're theorizing it does, and the more data points we receive from those caught up in its web, the more we can narrow everything down."
It took me a second to realize the spider pun hidden in her statement, and in the privacy of my room, where none of them could see my face or hear my voice unless I projected it through Muninn, I let my face fall into my hands and groaned softly. Was that on purpose, or had Rika just rubbed off on me so much that I was seeing the puns now, regardless of whether they were intentional or not?
"When," Rika began, "when will it be 'necessary,' Da Vinci?"
Da Vinci grimaced. "Romani will likely notice himself soon, but Ritsuka's body isn't just sleeping, it's slowed down all of its metabolic processes, almost like he's hibernating."
"Hibernating?" Bradamante asked, incredulous.
"Ritsuka isn't a bear, Da Vinci," El-Melloi II pointed out.
"He isn't," she agreed, "and we can help replenish his fluids to push things out even further and more safely, but at the rate he's going now, he could last the rest of the week before his physical health was in any danger of deteriorating."
"A week?" Rika squawked, her voice cracking.
"That's too long!" Bradamante agreed.
Romani had given it two days, not a week. There was no way I was going to agree to sitting on my hands doing nothing for another five days.
"Da Vinci —"
But she cut across me before I could finish.
"I know," she said, "no one likes that idea. Frankly, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's the best idea either. Having said that, we still don't know anywhere near as much as I'd like to about this curse and what Château d'If looks like on the inside — because I very much doubt it resembles the real thing in any way except superficially — so I'd like to give it one more day to see if the pattern holds."
In my real body, my lips pressed into a thin line. Muninn's beak clacked. "One more day?"
Da Vinci nodded. "So that we can see if another pair of our Servants is pulled into things. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern."
The version of that saying that I was familiar with called it "enemy action," but either fit here, I guess.
Marie and Romani would be happy about that, at least. Neither of them wanted to send anyone in after Ritsuka, so the longer the moment could be put off, the better.
"One more day?" Rika echoed me. "And then we can go in and get him?"
"If nothing changes?" said Da Vinci. "Yes. That's why, Rika, I need you to make sure you eat well and get a good night's sleep tonight. If it comes down to it and we have to send you in, you need to be at your best."
Rika's brow furrowed and her mouth drew into a tight line. She nodded. "Right!"
At that moment, the door chose to slide open, and Mash walked in, carrying a tray in her hands and a smile on her face. "Good morning, Senpai! I brought you some breakfast!"
And then, she saw El-Melloi II and Bradamante.
"Ah!" she said. "El-Melloi II! Bradamante! G-good morning to you, too! Was…there something you needed from Senpai or Miss Da Vinci?"
Da Vinci sighed again and smiled a lopsided little smile. "Good morning, Mash. They were just here to tell me about the little jaunt the two of them took last night."
Mash gasped. "They were forced to fight Senpai, too?"
"Yes," said Da Vinci. "It seems they had a similar experience to Emiya and Aífe. It's looking like it may be how this curse Ritsuka is under functions."
"Mash!" Rika said, holding out her hands. "Food!"
Mash blinked, and then hurried over to her. "R-right! Here you go, Senpai!"
She presented the tray with its breakfast platter, and Rika almost ripped it right out of her hands, setting it across her lap and digging into the meal laid out on it with gusto. Mash watched it, bewildered, because she hadn't been privy to the rest of the conversation that had just taken place.
On her shoulder, the little gremlin's ears twitched like a rabbit listening for a predator, and its head turned almost a full hundred-twenty degrees to pin Muninn with a beady-eyed stare.
Fuck you, too, I thought irritably as my stomach rumbled. An inconvenient time for Muninn's senses to be so close to the human norm.
"Da Vinci," I said, "I'll bring the Director up to speed and leave Romani to you."
"Of course," she agreed.
And I withdrew from Muninn, leaving her on autopilot as I put her in the back of my mind. Dressed and shoes neatly tied, I stood up from my bed, walked over to the door, and left.
After smelling the food Mash had brought for Rika, it was tempting to head straight for the cafeteria and eat a meal of my own, but I'd just a moment ago promised to let Marie know what was going on, so I headed that direction instead. Despite my stomach's opinion on the matter, food could wait a little while.
When I got there and explained the situation, Marie was happy to hear the news and also very much not.
"Two more Servants were trapped by this curse, at least for the duration of their role in it," she murmured thoughtfully. She had taken up her standard thinking pose, one arm cradling the elbow of the other as she held a hand up to her chin. Her urge to chew on her thumbnail was almost palpable. "Da Vinci thinks another two might become wrapped up in this tonight?"
"She wants to see if it happens," I said. "If it becomes a pattern, then that might tell us more about how Château d'If works. If it needs specifically to draw on our roster of Servants or if it's just coincidence that four of ours were already pulled into it."
"And if it goes through our entire roster, she thinks it might be broken after that." Marie hummed. "It's…not an unsound theory. But without more to go on, it's going to be hard to prove even if things play out like she expects them to."
Again, to have someone with a power like Lisa's on hand… I'd groaned to myself at the idea of Sherlock Holmes, but he might have been incredibly useful, just then. Da Vinci was a genius, but that could only carry you so far in a field that you had no training in. Hand her a wrench and a technical problem and I'd bet on her any day. Hand her a mystery and I wasn't quite so confident.
"Which is why she's committed to sending someone in tomorrow."
Marie grunted, and her nose wrinkled and her brow furrowed as she grimaced. "Yes, there's that, too, isn't there? Honestly, I don't know what she's thinking!"
"We can't afford to put it off forever," I told her. "Sitting around and twiddling our thumbs while Ritsuka fights for his life doesn't sit well with any of us, and the only one who believes unconditionally that Ritsuka will pull this off on his own is Mash."
"I know that!" Marie snapped. "But we've already gone over the risks involved, and while I can acknowledge that we might not wind up with any other choice, you understand why I don't want to take risks like that, don't you?"
Because you're a decent person, I thought, and I'd thought so before, that if she wasn't, the person standing across from her might have been an entirely different Taylor Hebert.
"And our normal Rayshifts aren't just as dangerous every time we get sent into a Singularity?" I asked pointedly.
"It's different," she insisted. "At least then, we know something about what we're sending you into! This… If it even is Château d'If, then we don't have the first clue what it looks like or how it works, just that it attacks the mind and soul and can conscript our Servants for whatever it does. I can't accept sending anyone into that completely blind!"
"Anyone," I said, "or just me?"
Her brow furrowed. "Anyone. As the Director of Chaldea, you're all my responsibility, which means if something happens and we send you into a trap, it's my fault first and foremost!"
"Except this really isn't all that different from those Singularities, is it?" I said. "We know that this curse plays on karma and sins and punishes your regrets, and that's already more than we know about any situation we Rayshift into normally. We didn't know Drake was a part of Okeanos or that she had her own Grail until we met her ourselves, we didn't know that Jason was the one behind everything — and Forneus was pulling the strings on him — and we didn't know Davy Jones was involved either."
Marie winced with every point I brought up.
"We didn't know Aífe and Lancelot were in Septem," I went on. "We didn't know Romulus had created his United Empire in opposition to Nero's Rome. We didn't know we were going to land so off course that we wound up on the other side of the continent. We didn't know Stheno had been summoned as a kind of botched response to Romulus suppressing his own Divinity.
"In fact," I concluded, "we know more about what's going on inside Château d'If than we did any of the Singularities we were sent to before."
"I get it," she said sourly. "I get your point. The difference is, the things we do know are just more reasons we should be really cautious about this. This is a trap, not a Singularity we're going in to solve, and we've already discussed the reason why you should be the last person who takes any risks on it. And Rika and Ritsuka's contract with Mash is just as important. In fact…" She looked like the very idea frightened her. "M-maybe the person who should be sent in to help him…should be me."
With how much guilt she was carrying around about what happened to Mash? With how much she still blamed herself for the sabotage, as though she should have read Lev's mind and realized he had been possessed by one of these Demon Gods? With how harshly she judged herself for every tiny mistake she made? Now I was the one who refused to let that happen. Not as a matter of competency, but just because her personality would make it all the harder for her to face the sins she carried, real, imagined, or exaggerated.
Besides, there were several very good reasons why that idea had originally been shot down before anyone could even suggest it. Those hadn't magically vanished in the past two days.
"We'll figure it out when the time comes," I promised her.
She didn't look reassured. I didn't think she would be until this entire thing was over.
A part of me wanted to stay and make sure she was okay, just keep an eye out on her, but as I'd said before, being so blatant about it would just make her withdraw and try to hide her problems, so the best thing I could do was to go about my day and offer her support more blatantly when it looked like she desperately needed it. To that end, I left her office once everything had been covered, with the promise that I would be back with breakfast after my morning workout.
Arash? I asked as the door whooshed shut behind me.
You don't even need to ask, he told me. I'll stick around and keep my eye on her.
I wondered if it said something that I'd gotten so used to having him in my metaphorical — and maybe literal — shadow that I didn't even bat an eye at the idea he had been hanging around enough to know what I wanted before I could even finish asking for it. Rika might not have been the only one who had gotten too used to the idea of having her Servant around to help out.
The gym was the first place I went after Marie's office, and I made sure to go through my morning workout at a normal pace. After that, I took a quick shower, dried my hair, got dressed in something a little more workplace friendly, and made my way down to the cafeteria, where Emiya was once more serving breakfast.
"Two, again," I told him as I approached the counter.
"Two it is," he agreed, and he stacked the trays up again as he started to prepare a pair of plates. "I'm assuming you're the one most in the loop about what's going on, so… Any news on Ritsuka?"
"El-Melloi II and Bradamante were drawn in," I said without ceremony.
He paused for a second, then continued dishing up food.
"The way I was?"
"Yeah. Da Vinci thinks we should expect it to go through our entire roster before this is all over."
He hummed. "Our entire roster, huh? Well, thankfully, it's already gone through the two scariest Servants in the facility, although I do worry a little bit about what happens when they have to face Siegfried. If they have to face Siegfried. That guy…he just doesn't have a mean bone in his body."
That didn't mean that Château d'If couldn't give him one, at least for the duration of his stay in it.
"If it comes down to it, Jeanne Alter isn't a proper hero, so her Noble Phantasm should be more effective against his Armor of Fafnir," I said. "Dantès isn't either, so that puts them at something of an advantage."
Which wasn't at all the same as saying they wouldn't have any trouble, but if they had to face him before we could mount a rescue, that was all I could hang my hat on.
Emiya grimaced. "I guess hoping it works out in their favor is all we can do for now. It's tempting to go to Shakespeare and have him put me back in, but… Well, I'm not in a rush to let that curse do what it did to me a second time. I don't imagine Aífe is either. There are some things that give even fearless Heroic Spirits pause."
It must have been really bad to make even Emiya hesitate like that. If it was anything like that nightmare of mine, then it would have been its own unique kind of torture.
When he was done loading up the plates, he pushed the tray over my way and smirked. "Compliments of the chef."
I looked down at his apron. 'I AM THE LADLE OF MY SOUP,' it said in big, bold letters. Given it seemed to be a pun on the incantation he'd used when he fought Herakles, it was all but certain now that he was making these himself. I made sure my face told him exactly how unimpressed I was.
"If you're fishing, you'll have better luck casting your line in a different pond."
He chuckled and shook his head, shrugging. "Can you blame me? With everything that's been going on, my poor master has been neglecting me. At this rate, what little pride I have will wither away from lack of attention." Almost immediately, he sobered and heaved out a sigh. "And with this happening so soon after everything else, I haven't had the time or the chance to patch things up with her. What rotten luck."
Funnily enough, it felt familiar to me. So much had happened so quickly in my career that it was the downtime that threw me off the most.
"You can't put it off forever," I told him, "but you're right to leave it alone for now. I don't think Rika's in the right headspace to try and deal with that, too."
"Exactly my thinking," he agreed. "So I guess, for now, I'm just Chaldea's humble chef." He tapped his apron. "I'll take what I can get until that changes."
I guess I couldn't blame him for that.
Tray in hand and food in tow, I made my way back to Marie's office and saw myself in. Marie didn't quite salivate when she saw what I brought back with me, but it was far closer a thing that she would ever have liked to admit.
Nothing to report, Arash told me as I set her food down at her desk. This time, she was fine on her own.
A slight pause was the only sign to give away that I'd heard him at all, and once I was sure that Marie was comfortably distracted with her breakfast, I replied, Good. Thanks for keeping an eye on her again.
Even though that might have made her sound more like an unruly toddler than a grown woman. There wasn't much of a better way to put it, though.
No trouble, said Arash. I'd rather be doing something useful than twiddling my thumbs and staring at the wall.
He really was my compatibility summon, wasn't he?
The rest of the day meandered on. Morning passed, lunch was eaten, then the afternoon crawled by like a snail. Every time I checked in on Ritsuka's room, it was to find that the only thing that had changed was the people inside or the positions they took. Romani came and went, stopping in a few times throughout to check in on them the same way I was with Muninn, but with Da Vinci snugly ensconced in her chair and the situation as firmly in hand as it could be, considering the circumstances, he had other responsibilities to see to in the meantime.
When I saw him at dinner, he looked tired and sluggish, like he was carrying an extra weight on his shoulders. He was practically slumped over his plate, and by the way he was playing with his food, he didn't seem to have much of an appetite.
Physician, heal thyself, indeed.
Evening drew out into night, and after another long day of waiting and hoping and sitting around doing nothing, nothing had changed. There were no updates from Da Vinci and no reason to suspect anything had gone awry, but also no reason to believe anything would be any different tomorrow either. By the time I was ready to climb into bed, there was an air of surrender about the whole thing, like everyone had resigned themselves to the reality that the only thing we could do was take our chances on a rescue mission.
Da Vinci's almost omnipresent smile had fallen into grim acceptance. Whatever hope she might have harbored that this would resolve itself without interference seemed to have died a slow and terrible death.
Before I went to bed, I practiced a few arguments in my head. Reasons why it should be me who was sent in and not Rika. Counterpoints to the issues that had been brought up before and which I knew would be brought up again the instant I offered to be the one to go in. The hardest one to convince was going to be Marie, and even the couple of things I had reluctantly chosen to hammer at her weak points might only wind up strengthening her resolve, but that was a chance I had to take.
I went to sleep determined to face whatever Château d'If could throw at me. I was going to rescue Ritsuka no matter what it cost me. If I had to face down specters of my regrets and put them all in the grave, then I would just have to harden my heart and do it.
The next morning, Ritsuka woke up.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Prison Tower - Part Four
Jeanne's words — the original Jeanne, who had somehow reached out to him here in this place, however she'd accomplished it — stuck with Ritsuka for a long while afterwards. They stuck with him when he "woke up" in his prison cell and was greeted by kind words from Mercédès and sarcasm from Jeanne Alter, when Avenger came back and somewhat tersely insisted that it was time to face the next Lord of Judgment, and all throughout the walk to the next Hall.
They even stuck with him through the next fight, who turned out to be El-Melloi II, ranting and raving something about a king. It was good, then, that Jeanne Alter was so competent and was fighting the enemy more than his orders now, because Ritsuka's head wasn't in the game as much as he thought it should have been, although the fact that the enemy was El-Melloi II might have had something to do with it, too.
It was a bit of a relief, and also kind of a let down, actually. Emiya and Aífe had both been incredibly tough fights, and it had taken a lot of energy and effort to bring them down. El-Melloi II wasn't weak…
Well, no. In a head to head fight, he was terrible. Those spells and the tricks he pulled would have been more than enough to trip up a regular human, Ritsuka thought, but for Avenger and Jeanne Alter, it was easy enough to take him down and deliver a fatal blow.
Avenger. Or rather, Edmond Dantès. An ordinary man whose tale was etched into history because of a great betrayal, and whose story of revenge lived on even centuries later. The Count of Monte Cristo. The resident of Chateau d'If who had escaped after fourteen years of suffering and torture and inflicted despair on those who had done him wrong.
It was almost impossible… No, the problem was the exact opposite. It was far too easy to see that man in Avenger. He was composed and even-tempered most of the time, but when he was moved to anger or his temper frayed, he became a demon of vengeance. How horrible it must have been to be trapped in the worst days of your life, and worse, to be forced to relive the pain you suffered through for fourteen long years.
It was no wonder Avenger was the way he was.
"Hey."
A finger prodded Ritsuka, and he realized they'd been walking back to the cell while he thought.
"You done spacing out?" Jeanne Alter asked him. "What, wasn't that nap earlier enough for you? If you fall asleep and break your neck on the floor, don't come crying my way."
"I'm fine," Ritsuka said, offering her a small smile. It didn't seem to convince her. "Just… Can you dream within a dream?"
The lack of an Inception joke immediately afterwards made Ritsuka's stomach clench.
"What?" Jeanne Alter asked, sneering. "Is that some kind of joke? What, like one of those ridiculous proverbs that everyone pretends is hot shit and means some super important thing or whatever?"
"No, just…"
Ritsuka's eyes found Avenger's back. There was more than one reason not to explain everything, wasn't there? Avenger probably wouldn't appreciate it, and Jeanne Alter would probably be livid if he said her "real" self had talked to him while he was sleeping earlier.
"Nevermind. It was nothing."
Jeanne Alter scoffed. "If you say so. Dweeb."
Ritsuka laughed a little. "I'm going to hazard a guess and say you learned that one from Rika."
"What," she said, "like I couldn't learn it on my own? Who knows, Master, maybe I got it from that orientation package thing when I was first summoned. It's common slang, isn't it?"
Maybe in middle school. Ritsuka wisely chose not to say that either.
The door to his cell came into sight, and Avenger opened it without prompting or hesitation.
"Welcome back," Mercédès greeted them as they entered. Avenger ignored her entirely.
"Do you need to rest again, Master?" he asked instead.
Ritsuka blinked at the abruptness, but shook his head. "I'm fine. That last fight didn't take much, so I'm good to keep going. The faster we get this done, the faster I can go back to Chaldea, right?"
"Then we shall waste not a second longer," said Avenger, and less than a minute after they'd made it back to the cell, he turned around and left again. "Come. The sixth Lord awaits."
Ritsuka shot Mercédès an apologetic look, but she waved it off, seeming just as surprised as he was, and he had to jog to catch up so that Avenger didn't leave him behind. Avenger didn't seem to notice or care either way.
"He's sure in a fucking rush," Jeanne Alter muttered to him.
"Yeah."
He had no idea why, though. Nothing El-Melloi II had said seemed to have affected Avenger while they were fighting. Was he still upset about whatever had bothered him earlier, or was he just anxious to finally get things over and done with?
Ritsuka could definitely understand the latter. Even if, in the grand scheme of things, he hadn't actually been there that long, his time in the prison felt much longer. Every battle wore away at him in some way, although it wasn't nearly as bad as it probably could have been. Especially if they'd had to fight all the Lords at their best instead of their worst.
Whatever the case was, Avenger didn't say. In fact, he was downright silent as he led them through the hallways of the prison, saying nothing at all and simply marching towards the end destination. As before, of course, it looked all the same to Ritsuka, but he trusted Avenger not to lead them astray. It wasn't like he hadn't had plenty of opportunities to do it before, after all, so why would he bother to do it now?
"What you have faced up to this point is five Lords of Judgment," Avenger finally said, brusque and humorless. "The Envious Phantom, the Slothful Gilles de Rais, the Greedy Emiya, the Gluttonous Aífe, and the Lustful El-Melloi II. What awaits you now is the avatar of Wrath, the most powerful emotion."
Most powerful? Ritsuka eyed Avenger. Well, considering who he was and what class he'd been summoned into, maybe that made sense.
They'd never actually faced Phantom, though. Avenger must have been making a rhetorical point, so that probably didn't matter.
"It can be a private rage carried within," Avenger went on, "or an outward fury that scorns the entire world. Righteous fury — justified or not — draws in the most people. Stories of wrongs corrected, even outside the system of justice, are praised and lauded by the masses, even if they bring about great tragedies. Even if the target is nothing more than a scapegoat."
At last, he looked back at Ritsuka over his shoulder.
"Such a thing still exists in living memory for you, does it not?" He glanced meaningfully at Jeanne Alter, too. "And you have a personal example following you around like a lost puppy."
"Fuck you, too," Jeanne Alter sneered. "You gonna get to the point anytime soon, or are you just flapping those gums of yours for the fun of it?"
"The point," said Avenger. "Indeed! The point! The point is, Master, you must take care against the avatar of Wrath, for their fury makes them the most dangerous foe in this prison! If you let your guard down…"
The door to the next Hall loomed.
"…you will most certainly die."
Avenger reached for the handle and threw the door open wide, revealing another room much like all of the rest they'd fought in before. The same layout, the same shape, the same brickwork on the floor and walls, and the same torches lighting it all. Like before, the only difference was the person inside, and standing there —
"You!" Avenger snarled.
— was Bradamante.
"Hello, Avenger," she said, and it was her voice and her face, but the tone and the diction were someone entirely different. "Or should I say, hello, Edmond Dantès."
"That's not my name!" Avenger roared furiously. "What are you doing, you useless holy maiden? You unnatural wretch! You would stoop so low, just for your chance to spout your nonsense to my face?!"
Bradamante nodded. "It's true, this is a bit of a stretch for me. I'll have to apologize to Bradamante the next time I have the chance for using her Spirit Origin in this way. She deserves that much for helping me to defend France in its hour of need."
Wait. Defend France?
"Jeanne?" Ritsuka asked tentatively.
"Say fucking what?" Jeanne Alter snapped. "That bitch is in there?"
"That's right! Jeanne d'Arc is the avatar of Wrath!" said Avenger. "Look at how she has debased herself, Master! She has even stolen the form of another Servant so that she could appear before you! Make no mistake, though, she is still a Lord of Judgment! Which means —"
"If we want outta here, we have to kill her," Jeanne Alter concluded, grinning a vicious, bloodthirsty grin. "Fine by me! Hell, first time you and I are agreeing on something!"
"I'm glad to see you have a second chance," Bradamante said to Jeanne Alter. "It does my heart good to look at you and see you thriving and happy…even if it's in a strange and unusual way."
"I don't need your fucking approval!" Jeanne Alter barked.
Bradamante nodded. "No, you don't. I just wanted to say it, while I had the chance." She closed her eyes briefly, and when they opened again, they were fierce and determined. "But I'm not here for you. I'm here for him!"
She pointed her small lance at Avenger. Avenger only laughed.
"Are you here to offer me salvation?" he mocked. "You, who were denied it at the very last! You, who should be equally as consumed by the black flames of hatred as I am! You, who were abandoned and betrayed and cast aside by those you trusted, just the same as I was! You unnatural wretch, who still stands there so serenely!"
"Indeed, for those were all the things I had to give up in order to save my country," said Bradamante. Jeanne? Was she really Jeanne in there? "I could not be vengeful, I could not be wrathful, and that is why I've come here to save you. To rescue you from your hatred, Edmond."
"That's not my name!" Avenger said again furiously. "That man is a man who has already lived and died! That is the name of a man who has already been saved! I am an Avenger, fueled by my rage and hatred, bound by my thirst for vengeance! I exist beyond the horizon of love and hate, a creature of killing and violence, far from the tender mercy of even the most merciful God! There is no beloved Haydée or noble Abbé Faria to offer balm to my soul! The only person I could ever be is the Count of Monte Cristo!"
His hands glowed with a black light, the curse of his fury made manifest.
"Master!" said Avenger. "Let's go! I shall rip apart this false saint and tear her kindness to shreds! Her salvation is meaningless to me — and useless to you, for she is one of the last things standing in your way to escaping this place!"
"Like hell!" Jeanne Alter bit at him. "If that bitch really is in there, then you better get in the fucking line, pal, because I'm gonna be the one to put her down!"
Ritsuka looked back and forth between the two of them. "Guys…"
What? What was he supposed to do? If Avenger was right, then they really didn't have a choice, did they?
Bradamante took it out of his hands. "It seems you refuse to resolve this with words. Fine." She brandished her lance. "Then if violence is the only path forward, violence is the path we'll take!"
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
NOTES
I got so caught up in Da Vinci's theory that I actually forgot what the original structure was supposed to be for a minute.
The last few chapters have obviously felt a bit interminable to a lot of you, especially everyone who isn't on SV or SB, where I could post the sidestories without having to either smush them onto the end of another chapter or put them in their own listing. That feeling was a bit intentional, but I didn't think as much as I probably should have how this would feel stretched out over weeks. It'll be easier, I imagine, reading it all in one go, though.
The editor smiled at that one joke and laughed at the end, so everything came out the way I wanted it to.
This story and this chapter brought to you by my wonderful supporters, whose kindness and generosity have made it possible to devote so much of my time and attention to writing, especially Eric, s22132, AbyssalApsu, and Alias 2v10. You guys are absolute legends. To show my gratitude, they had the chance to read this and upcoming chapters before the public release. You can find out more:
James_D_Fawkes (P a treon)
As always, read, review, and enjoy.
Next — Chapter CXXI: No Worse for Wear