As I recovered my senses, I immediately started coughing water out of my lungs. I felt someone patting my back.
—There, there, get it all out —the voice I identified as Ghost's spoke, and as my coughing fit stopped, I finally was able to confirm she was indeed right next to me.
The last thing I remembered was Rider's ship suddenly sinking into the ocean. Now, we were on some sort of cave, sealed by every side but an entrance submerged in water, forming a lake in front of us. On it rested a gigantic beast, some sort of elongated whale with pincers and arthropod-like legs. It stood looking at us with curiosity, so I deduced that it wasn't our enemy.
—What happened? —I asked—, Caster and Rider had captured us and...
—He saved us —Ghost replied.
—I-I'm Livyatan of the Admirabilis —the beast spoke, in a rather childish voice, but without moving what I thought was its mouth—, it's a ples-pleasure meeting you, lustrous ones.
—An Admirabilis, like Ventricosus?
—Ah! yes... —the creature seemed a bit ashamed and even afraid, despite its monstrous size— W-we are sorry for what our king did, we are very sorry!
I closed my eyes for a moment.
—Don't worry, we aren't mad about it, on the contrary, I'm very thankful that you saved us —I said bowing my head towards her.
—N-no! This is the least I could do as a compensation for what our Ruler did.
—In any case, I'm really grateful that you were there to save us.
—About that... —she said, looking even more embarrassed, having to gather courage to keep talking— I had been following you since you entered the ocean!
—You were? Why?
Ghost tugged me from the shoulder and pointed towards my arm, the one that I had lost before and now was reattached to my body. There were also some shards of diamonds and others from a very familiar green gem, placed on a piece of red cloth that had been torn from my uniform.
—I found your arm while doing patrolling, and I took it to our king. She told me what she did to your people. I-I was overjoyed like the rest when our king and his brother returned, our kingdom has been only a shadow of its former glory after the Lunarians attacked us, and now we could prosper again. But I... I couldn't serve a king who would do such a thing. At least not until I repaid our debt towards us.
The Admirabilis told us that she left her home and went back to the ruins, searching all up until the winter for any gem shard hidden under the sand at the bottom of the sea. She then took them to our island, but when she got to the beach she was too scared to go outside of the water, thinking we would punish her. When she saw us entering the ocean she followed us from a safe distance, looking for a good moment to approach us.
I wasn't entirely sure how such massive creature could do that without us noticing, and I was very curious about her nature, but I had a more important question to ask.
—What happened with Caster, Rider, and the Lunarians that were attacking us?
—Livy blew the Sun spots by throwing streams of water against them, and damaged Rider's ship by pulling it underwater. It returned to the surface once she got us and we ran away, but the sails were pretty messed up. And about Caster...
The Admirabilis finally opened her mouth and from it Caster emerged, covered in saliva, and in utterly shock.
—Gross, gross, gross —she kept saying, until Livy took a sip of the water and shot a stream of it to wash her. Caster was less than grateful.
—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.