December 28, 2018
"Another Berserker incoming on the right," Mash called, from just ahead on Quetzalcoatl's pteranodon.
Ritsuka squinted through the twilight from his precarious perch and saw the clone appear. There was something viscerally disturbing about watching Ushiwakamaru's clones form out of the sludge beneath them, mud rising and whirling together to shape their black armor and their ashen, murderous faces. It was a hideous perversion of how he and Ushi met, a bastardized, body-horror summoning. My will creates your body, he remembered saying, over and over with every summoning ritual, and grimaced.
To say that Ritsuka was riding Maana, the Boat of Heaven, would imply that he had any kind of control whatsoever, or for that matter a place to sit. Instead, he clung to the frame of Ishtar's bow-slash-vehicle like he was hanging in the open door of a van barrelling through highway traffic. His elbow was hooked through the upper chain connecting the two hovering pieces of the divine weapon, and one foot was braced on each of the lower arms. Ishtar, drifting alongside, had to hold on to him every time aerobatics were required. Being repeatedly grabbed by a scantily-clad tsundere war goddess would probably make him anxious in other circumstances, but his anxiety had hit some sort of a cap hours ago and it barely registered.
They were flying on dinosaurs in pursuit of a kaiju mother-goddess over the corrupted Persian Gulf while fighting off tentacle monsters and a clone army of his crush's evil twin. He'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if he weren't in the middle of it trying to stave off the apocalypse. Being part of a badly-written disaster movie was much worse than it seemed from the other side of the screen.
Every time he looked ahead at Tiamat, he had to remind himself to breathe; something well below his conscious mind locked up in primal terror when he thought about her. She was still far ahead, marching toward Uruk, her ponderous dragon footsteps sounding like thunder from a distant storm. Black-limbed Lahmu flitted about her feet, cavorting grotesquely in the tarry ocean in her shadow. He'd seen what they'd done to the humans they'd caught. Seen what was left. It wasn't something he'd ever be able to unsee.
And then, there was Ushiwakamaru. Not his Ushi - if he could call her that - but King Gilgamesh's lost and corrupted Servant. She'd been an ally and a friend. Now, Tiamat's black Authority had transformed her into a Berserker, spawning and respawning from the cursed ocean. She wasn't the most terrible or the most awful of their many, many problems, but she was definitely the most agonizingly personal.
The clone's red eyes lifted to ward them, and she gave a grimly enthusiastic smile. That smile had been bright and familiar when they'd met in Uruk. "So Chaldea has already summoned me?" she'd said, as she and her Chaldean counterpart looked each other up and down. "Hah, I see that in both the past and the future, my name is well known! Excellent!"
This would be the fourth time today he'd have to kill her.
"Kiritsugu," he called, keeping his voice as steady as he could. "Ahead on the right. Take her out."
The red-swathed Assassin on the next pterosaur raised an arm with swift deliberation, pistol barrel pointing like an extended finger. There was a sharp report, and the clone stumbled and sank back into the mud without ever leaving the surface, scarlet eyes still staring at them.
Acid burned in the back of Ritsuka's throat. He was going to have nightmares about this, if he ever got to sleep again. Kiritsugu would've done it without his order, but how could he let himself shy away from what they were doing? He wouldn't pretend he wasn't part of this.
With a shout of alarm, Ishtar wrenched Maana to the side, nearly flinging him off. There was a black blur, and something whistled by his head, whipping his hair. When he'd straightened up, another Ushiwakamaru clone had landed atop Maana, She sneered at him and wound up for another swing with her free hand. He knew instinctively she'd cut at his neck. There was nowhere to dodge, so he did the only thing he could think of - he slipped his arm out of the chain and his feet off of the bars and let himself drop.
For a sickening moment, Ritsuka was in free-fall. The Berserker's strike rang discordantly off of Maana's arm above him; even the storied Usumidori couldn't dent the Boat of Heaven. Flailing for a grip, he caught Maana's lower chain as he fell. Something popped agonizingly in his wrist when he jerked to a halt, but he gritted his teeth and held on, dangling by his hand a hundred meters above the seething ocean. Leonidas' grip-strength exercises suddenly seemed entirely justified.
Hands raised in anger, Ishtar dropped to hover protectively between him and the Berserker. He wasn't sure how much she could do against someone standing on top of her weapon, but the jewels tucked between her fingers gleamed in the twilight, and he hoped it would be enough.
"That head of yours is truly an eyesore, Master of Chaldea." The Berserker scowled down at him, red veins across her face pulsing with sullen fire, an image of Ushi wrought in charcoal and magma. Even knowing it wasn't Ushi, the loathing on her face cut deeper than he expected. For a moment, he wanted to say something, to try to reach her somehow. He knew it would've been a fool's errand even if he hadn't already been dangling between his choice of ugly deaths, but…
"Why?" The words felt dragged out of him. He struggled to pull himself up and throw his arms over the chain. "Why would you want to kill humanity?"
The blackened Ushiwakamaru straightened up as if surprised, her eyes widening until the whites showed all around them. "Why, you ask…?" A sneer peeled the last veneer of composure from her face, leaving only scorn. "What about all of you? Why do you fight so hard to protect humanity? You claim the Lahmu are monsters, but the truth is, humans or Lahmu, there's no difference! One's as vile as the other!"
The Berserker tilted her head in a painfully familiar way, but with a sarcastic, mocking tinge to it. "Say there was a heroic deed performed in the face of tragedy. Say there was one person, amid all the selfish others, who set out to help the suffering and asked for nothing." She snorted in disdain. "Such a thing would only be taken advantage of, and then dishonored by the ones who couldn't match it! You humans are always like that!" Shaking with rage, she ranted on. "You all crowd around a miracle and mock it to cover up your own inadequacy! Why would I want to fight for such creatures? Why did we have to be killed!?" The last sentence burst out in a shout that seemed almost involuntary.
Shaken by her anguish as much as his danger, Ritsuka swallowed. "I'm sorry," he murmured, as she regained control of herself. It was the only answer he could give.
Of course he knew Ushi wasn't content with her life's story. How could she be? How could any of his comrades be? If there was one thing he'd learned personally in the last year and a half, it was that heroism always, always left scars. But the seething hatred the Berserker radiated was at the same time unexpected and sadly recognizable, like a part of Ushi he'd refused to see until it tried to murder him.
Ushiwakamaru made a tch sound. "It would be pointless to even try to correct you now. Just die. Die, all of you!" she snapped. Her eyes went half-lidded, and her voice softened to a croon with violence threaded through it. "Dying and starting again from scratch is the only path left for this world."
From the side came a furious cry of, "Shut your treacherous mouth!" Ushi - his Ushi - launched herself from the pterosaur she shared with the Jaguar Warrior and landed next to the Berserker, already swinging. Green and red sparks showered as their blades met. In the brief light Ritsuka could see a peculiar, focused hatred on Ushi's face. The pair whirled frantically about each other, blades flying almost in tandem as they pirouetted atop Maana. Only they could have found enough footing to fight atop a bow, he thought.
Ishtar let out an unladylike snarl and flicked her fingers to the side. Jewels flew like tiny comets, dazzlingly bright. They left colorful trails as they curved mid-flight and hit the side of Ushiwakamaru's head, where they detonated, one after another. Beneath the barrage, Ushiwakamaru staggered back with a cry, throwing her arms out for balance. Already at too-close quarters because of their perch atop Maana, Ushi stepped even farther into her reach, almost shoulder to chest. When she twisted her body, her sword came up beneath her opponent's outstretched arm and didn't stop there.
Still holding her copy of Usumidori, Ushiwakamaru's severed arm flew up and away, trailing a liquid that wasn't blood. The Berserker snarled in pain and rage and flipped backwards. Her foot came up in an impossibly vertical kick that caught Ushi under the chin. Ritsuka's heard Ushi let out a surprised yelp as she was knocked back and up a dozen meters, arcing out toward the open ocean, away from Maana and the pteranodon flight. With the momentum from the kick, the Berserker threw herself back to grab onto Maana again, this time clinging to the prow of the bow-boat with her good arm. "Come and join me!" she called to the falling Ushi, with a sick, anticipatory grin over her shoulder.
Ritsuka had a momentary vision of her sinking into the cursed mud, her skin running dark, veins of red growing across her skin as she choked. Almost without thinking, he snapped, "Ushi, with my first Command Seal, I order you: don't fall!"
The artificial miracle on his hand pulsed with red light. The same color shimmered around Ushi, who planted a foot in midair and stopped dead, holding a one-legged fighting stance balanced on nothing at all a dozen meters beneath them.
"You fool," the Berserker grated, turning to glare at Ritsuka across Maana's length, tarry blood dripping from the jewel wounds on her face. "I saw the way you looked at her in Uruk. You think you're saving her? Deep down, we're the same. She'd be happier like me -"
"I've had enough of you! Get off my ride!" Ishtar roared in outrage. A thunderous point-blank burst fired from Maana's prow. There was no way for her to miss. Arrows of white fire punched out of Ushiwakamaru's back, spraying thick black mud spraying from the gaping holes in her torso. The copy made no sound as she was blown from her perch. Her resentful glare never relented as she fell. Still poised there in midair, Ushi watched her counterpart fall, her expression wide-eyed with fury and something else, something Ritsuka couldn't name.
"She almost had you, you idiot!" Ishtar bobbed gracefully down, wrapped an arm around his waist, and hauled him back aboard Maana with more than human strength. "Be more careful next time!"
"Uh, I'll try. Thanks," he managed, settling his feet back atop Maana's bow-arms. Ishtar's scowl briefly turned to a smile, but he had no attention to pay. Blood dripped into his eye and he reached up to find a clean, shallow cut above one eye, running into his hair. He shuddered once, violently. That had been closer than he'd thought. Once he noticed it, he could feel the cold burn of the cut; another couple of centimeters closer and it would have opened his skull; a bit lower, and it would've taken his eye.
Below them, Another mud-draped Berserker began to rise out of the ocean, and another, and another, loping after their flight group like wolves on the hunt.
As Ritsuka might have expected from him, Benkei returned to his lord just in time to die.
Another fruitless half hour of skirmish and pursuit had brought them no closer to finding a way to break past Ushiwakamaru's endless clones, until he'd arrived, somehow running pell-mell over the black mud without harm. It couldn't seem to get a grip on him, though it slopped around his bare feet in a way that looked almost angry. It had been extremely impressive, until he'd wrapped the nearest clone up in a bear hug and been immediately skewered by all the rest for his trouble.
Not that it seemed likely to kill him anytime soon, Ritsuka thought. But as Ushiwakamaru recriminated him and Benkei apologized for his failures and so-called cowardice, he wasn't sure what good it would do, either. If his team tried to make a break for it, they'd just draw most of the clones after them.
"Let's just shoot them both and have done with it," Ishtar muttered as they circled above the confrontation. Behind her, Kiritsugu somehow implied low-grade agreement without moving or speaking. Quetzalcoatl frowned in displeasure, but didn't disagree. Mash looked pained.
Ritsuka hesitated. He wouldn't normally consider something like that, but it seemed like what Benkei was aiming for.
"No," Ushi said from her pteranodon, sounding almost strangled. A glance showed that her eyes were closed and her mouth was drawn into a thin line. "If he thinks he will accomplish something this way… Let him try. She is owed that much.""
Wearily, Ritsuka nodded. "If anyone has a better idea than this to get those Berserkers out of our way… speak up."
No one spoke up.
"Then… let's let this play out. When he's gone, though, try to ki…" Ritsuka swallowed the word. "Try to get them out of the way as fast as we can and we'll make a break for Tiamat." It was the best idea he had, which wasn't saying much.
"Lord Ushiwakamaru. That hatred of yours does not come from Tiamat! It was something that was always buried within you, pointed at all humans," Benkei cried out below them, raising his voice so that the Chaldeans could hear. . "That was something I couldn't bear." He shook his great head slowly. "I never imagined you were alone to the very end. Even if he couldn't save your heart, Benkei must not have wanted to leave you alone. For you to be consumed with such anger… I couldn't stand it."
That only seemed to make an already furious Ushiwakamaru even angrier. A few of her twisted their blades, making Benkei groan. "Shut up! After we chop you up, what'll be the use of a monk's lecture?"
Benkei chuckled painfully against the swords. "You mustn't speak lightly of lectures. After all, with mastery, one can even do something like this." His free hand made an open-handed mudra before his face. "Namu Myouhou Renge Kyou. The great mandala shall manifest."
With the sound of a hundred temple bells, golden light crashed into existence around them, coalescing into a shimmering design behind Benkei, a wide, cascading field of mandalas within mandalas that radiated Peace and Emptiness from the Buddha-shaped figure at the center. It was almost too bright to look at, but somehow, Ritsuka could still see them, at the center of the holy presence. Benkei stood even straighter, but all of Ushiwakamaru's instances trembled in the light. The one he was grappling screamed, disbelieving. "What is this? What are you doing to me, you fool!?"
"I am only doing as Benkei does!" he roared, his tattered shugenja's outfit whipping as if in a whirlwind. "This time, my lord, I shall be with you 'till the end! If our opponent is the Primordial Sea… then let this existence be of some small assistance to you at last! Now, let us burn all our sins in the Western Paradise! Pilgrimage of the Five Hundred Arhat!"
Bells tolled again, and brilliant sparks surrounded by more mandalas streamed out of the grand design. They passed around and through the grappling figures in a great, curling stream towards the setting sun and purification, each one intoning mantras as it flew. The Ushiwakamaru-body Benkei held shuddered each time one touched her, the fire fading from the red veins that covered her. She struggled and thrashed, but Benkei's grip was unbreakable. Gradually, the red vanished from her skin, until all that was left looked like a dead campfire, grey and ashen. One by one, the clones around Benkei slumped back into frothing black mud and came apart, leaving only two figures standing there.
"Lord Yoshitsune." Somehow, the ringing bells and echoing mantras didn't drown him out. A trickle of blood emerged from Benkei's mouth, but there was no pain in his voice at all, only apology. "Please forgive me for my long absence..." Both of them began to fray at the edges, spilling golden motes.
"You fool…" Ushiwakamaru's hand trembled, then grasped Benkei's shoulder. "Always worried about such petty things. There's no joy in taking the life of a coward like you." Her head dropped down to rest against Benkei's broad chest, and the scowl on her face faded to something like amusement. "To think they called you a sage. Bah, a fool will always be a fool…" Her grip tightened on his arm.
Amid the light of Benkei's Noble Phantasm, Lord and retainer came apart in a shower of brilliant sparks that added their glow to the mandala's bright glory. For a brief moment, in that tiny part of the vast sea of filth, purest gold drowned out the blackness.
Then the light was gone. When Ritsuka blinked away the afterimages, the only traces left of Babylonia's Ushiwakamaru and Benkei were a few fading motes of golden light.
"…Confirming the disappearance of both Benkei and Ushiwakamaru's Spirit Origins," Mash said quietly, sounding a little shaken. "Tiamat's guardians are gone…"
The world should have stopped to pay tribute to what had just happened, Ritsuka felt. But of course it didn't. The black ocean continued to boil beneath the night sky. In the background, Tiamat's footsteps continued to shake the earth and sky, a drum beating out the time until the end of the world.
He gave himself and everyone else the space of a long breath to compose himself, then another, and another. Then, wordlessly, he tapped Ishtar on the shoulder and nodded towards Ushi.
"Really, don't we have more important things to worry about?" It was only a halfhearted complaint, and Ishtar was already easing Maana in the direction he'd indicated.
Ushi was still staring down at the black ocean where the two of them had disappeared. "Ushi," he called, as softly as the wind of their passage allowed, "are you okay?" There must have been a better way to say it, a better question to ask, but he was too weary to figure it out on the fly and too anxious to wait.
Ushi stared down at the black ocean for what seemed like minutes before she responded. "I do not like heights, my lord," she finally said. "There is always a fall eventually." When she looked up, she looked distressed when she saw his bloody face, then composed herself. Her hand was relaxed upon Usumidori's hilt, her expression stoic and attentive. She was the very picture of a samurai, poised and ready for anything. She met his eyes and gave him a firm nod.
She wasn't fooling him. She wasn't even trying to. But if she didn't want to speak about it, he wouldn't make her, and if she could keep moving forward, he couldn't do less. They had only hours to stop Tiamat. If she reached Uruk, the world ended. No one had time for his sentimentality.
Not trusting his words to be able to do justice to the situation, he simply nodded back. To the group, he said, "Okay. We've got a clear path to Tiamat now. Quetzalcoatl… You're up."
"Si! Ready to go!" Quetzalcoatl gave a sun-bright grin over her shoulder to him and shouted to her pterosaur minions. The whole group surged forward in a flurry of leathery wings.
Ritsuka turned his eyes ahead, and steeled himself to kill a goddess
Author's Notes:
Sorry this took so long. Real life has been just absurdly stressful and I haven't had the time, attention, or energy to finish this chapter until now. Not sure what sort of schedule I'll end up with, because it's not like life stops; you just get used to the new, crazy normal.
The original plan was to skip this chapter completely and just deal with the aftermath, or handle it in flashbacks. I've been trying to avoid reiterating game events where possible. Still, if there's a moment that's all about Ushi's trauma, the Chaos Tide is it. Glossing over it completely would be kind of a disservice to the premise of taking her seriously. Thank goodness for the story transcripts at . I cut the dialogue down, but I'd never have pulled this off if I'd had to page through the FGO game records over and over to get the original. I know the flow between sections in this chapter is awkward, though.
The theme for this chapter is 'Starwatcher', by The Decemberists.
There's a rider on the road
There's calamity a-waiting to unfold
There is poison in the well
There's the augur of a distant ringing bell, it says
Hold,
Hold,
Hold your ground