Land of the Blades

21. Livy

—You foul creature! How dare you treat me like that?! —she yelled, and the Admirabilis retreated in cowardly. Caster seemed full of herself until she heard me stepping forth.

Ghost seemed a bit worried as she had lost her sickle, moreover I apparently hadn't been carrying my swords since we entered the ocean. She tried to hand me the red spear of Lancer, which had been brought along by Livy, but I insisted on her keeping it.

Despite the appearances, I had my swords with me, or better said within me. The pieces of obsidian started to flow out of my body and get in place, being keep together by my liquid metal. Unlike when I fought Lancer, I reinforced the blade with "magic", a little trick I had been practicing while I recovered.

Caster looked back at us and immediately jumped frightened, but tried to recover her composure and act haughty and fearless.

—You did well by capturing and isolating me, but you are too naive if you think you have me against the corner, for I am the strongest among all of the summoned servants! Drop your weapons right now and I might consider being merciful towards you two.

—If you were so powerful you would have escaped from Livy's mouth easily —Ghost said, pointing the spear towards Caster.

—That's...That's just because I didn't wanted to hurt such a majestic beast —she said, but it was pretty obvious she was lying.

I give a step ahead raising my blades, and she broke down, getting on her knees and covering her head.

—I'M SORRY, I LIED, I SURRENDER, PLEASE DON'T KILL ME, I DON'T WANT TO DIE!

I retracted my swords.

—Get up. To begin with, I didn't had any intention to kill any of you, you were the ones that attacked us —I finally said, sitting on a rock.

Caster raised her head, her eyes still bawling tears.

—Shero... you are so merciful, as expected of my fiancé!

She tried to approach me, but Ghost put the pointy tip of the spear on her way.

—I didn't said I trusted you.

In exchange for letting her live I told her she had to give us information, starting with why they were attacking us on the first place.

—That's due to Franny's plan. That fool woman wants to recreate the Holy Grail War ritual, despite my plan being better.

—The holy grail war? —for some reason, those words sounded familiar to me, and the image of a woman carrying a sword came to my mind for a second.

According to Caster, the ritual was about summoning seven famous spirits from the past to create Servants, and then make them fight to the death until only one of them was alive, and the winner would get a wish granted by the grail. However, the Lunarians and Franny were unable to summon proper spirits from "the throne of heroes" and had to use a damaged alternate source, a black box they found on one of their moons. Because of this, each Servant was made up of several pieces of different original individuals.

—Lancer had the traits of a famous Irish warrior and his immortal teacher, while Rider has a famous pirate and a snake woman inside of her. I am both a powerful witch and an even more powerful and wiser goddess —she pretentiously said— I don't know much about the others.

—If that's the case, why are you so weak? —Ghost said, not showing any mercy towards Caster's ego. By the slightly change of her posture and tone of voice, I thought this was her "other self" speaking.

—I'm not weak! I wasn't just bragging when I said I was the strongest of all! —she replied with frustration on her face. She took a moment to regain her composure after that outburst—, but I was the third one being summoned and they hadn't refined all the details. I... don't remember how to use my magic...

Caster proceeded to told us some other things about the grail, the other servants, that person called "Franny", and even about the Lunarians, but she was lacking on the details. When I confronted her about this, she told us she had been kept confined most of her time on the moon to a room, so her information was very limited. She had only interacted with Rider and Lancer as they were her roommates, so she didn't knew much about the other servants. She had only seen Lunarians from a distance through a window or down from her balcony. And about Franny, she only told us to never trust or even listen to her words. Something that Caster had told us was bothering me, but I was trying to ignore it. Even when Ghost noticed and asked me if I wanted to talk about it, I told her I was fine. On this travel I had get to know her well enough, but if there was someone I could trust to talk about this, it had to be Phos.

After all that, it was decided we would take Caster back home, where we would see what to do with her, and asked Livy to take us there. The Admirabilis agreed, saying that she would follow us until she had repaid the debt her race inflicted upon us, although I repeated that it wasn't necessary. Caster seemed a bit more than distraught to have to travel again inside Livy's mouth, but as I, she couldn't hold her breath like the other gems. Ghost was the only one who could ride on her back while underwater, though she was also the only one who didn't mind getting slimy with Livy's saliva.

Rider had moved us quite a while when we had been on her boat, and Livy had moved even further to avoid her and get to her "secret hiding place", so it took us some time to get back, more when we were actively trying to avoid meeting with Rider. I think Livy actually got lost at some point, but we eventually returned home. We arrived at the beach where the fight against Lancer had started, and by coincidence, we found Rutile looking among the minerals spread on the sand. Her face when she saw us emerge from the mouth of Livy was priceless.

As we step on dry land and explained what had happened to her, the body of the Admirabilis started to evaporate, quickly leaving only bones that became dust with the breeze. From the sea, a tiny slug with pincers appeared.

—I-I'm ready to go —Livy's voice came from the tiny creature, and I extended my hand so that she could climb to it.

—Wait, did that thing spoke? —Rutile asked, as if that was weird at all.