FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 103: The Lion Without Pride

...

"Go!"

Heracles's booming voice echoed across the empty plains, inspiring fear even when the words were meant to bring comfort. Geryon's heart rattled, his mind threatened to tear apart, but was brought back together by the flick of Caster's wrist.

Saber dashed in a blur of white light, barely escaping the vines that had appeared to entrap him, his wings and feet both moving as fast as they could go while his mana propelled him even further, his speed bringing him off the ground in a take-off as another arrow collided into the place where he had just been standing.

He sped off towards the city, a flurry of dark-fire-ravens chasing after him, leaving the demigod half-brothers alone, Heracles drunk on poison and bound with vines, and Dionysus finally touching the ground to look his victim in the eye.

"Fufufu... My, oh my, how the mighty have fallen, brother."

Heracles spat on the ground, "I knew you hated me, but I never expected you to be so petty."

"There's nothing pettier than a god. I thought of all people you would understand that."

"What did I do then? What small slight merits such hatred as this?"

"Ha! Unfortunately I was already a god when we met, so if you ever pissed me off, I wouldn't even remember. No-" He gripped the Adonis by his perfect chin, "I hate you because they love you. You! Caenus! Ganymede! Psyche! I had to scrounge and scheme all my life, and even then only achieved godhood by a hair. But you- they- were handed it over on a silver platter!"

He struggled to breathe, "If you think my path was easy... I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken. I was everyone's enemy. Monsters, the gods, and my fellow men-"

He struck the mighty hero across the face with his staff- his thyrsus- but it made no clear impact, "What 'fellow men'!? You were a monster yourself! To be human is to be weak, to be a victim to the movements of the world! You complain of mere creatures, but I, from my very conception, was at odds with the whole universe!"

He took a deep breath, and composed himself with a wicked grin, "Tell me, have you ever considered what it was like to be truly human? To be weak? To kneel before the mercy of the gods?"

Heracles went to respond, but all that came from his throat was a pained gasp.

"You're about to find out."

There in his chest, piercing his heart, was a blade which held its own wielder by the hand with a slate hilt that was neither stone nor metal. Its edge was made of bone, with the flat made from a spine, and one could make out red and violet veins etched into it, pulsing with horror. Caster- Dionysus- twisted the blade with a malicious satisfaction, watching with glee as the greatest hero his homeland had ever known squirmed and gasped under his thumb- under a weapon made by a mage- a mere human.

The hide of the Nemean Lion could expel the attacks of any weapon made by man, so how could this simple shortsword pierce his iron skin? It didn't. Like oil poured into water, the spiritrons, the energy, that made up the poor Servant's body were displaced and pushed aside, forming a hole where his heart should've been. A Servant's body was information. Disrupting the flow of information was fatal, especially where the heart and the head, the energy's core and processor, were concerned.

This hero had half-a-dozen skills, not including his Noble Phantasm, that he could employ to survive fatal wounds. Each of them, of their own accord, responded to his pain and the hole in his core, rushing to restore him, to heal him, but none could. The blade remained in his chest, unable to be touched by any of his defenses. The mighty Heracles- the monstrous Berserker- was trapped in a state between life and death; his heart cleaved in two, and his many heroic exploits keeping him alive regardless. He grit his teeth. More than the pain of the wound in his chest was the adrenaline running through his body, the Monstrous Strength, the Battle Continuation, the Valor, all of them running through his muscles, searing his skin and blood with such intensity that his veins bulged through even his seemingly immovable, metallic skin, and steam- real steam- rose from his body as his sweat evaporated through his pores. He felt that he had the strength of a hundred-thousand men, of a true monster, a true god, enough to smite the one in front of him like an ant, and yet he couldn't, even as the vines which bound him threatened to snap. This strength was not being drawn out of him by his own will, it was his body's natural response, and he couldn't control it. Whether it was the divine wine, designed to bring even the great and mighty king of the gods into an impossible stupor, or the disruption of his own spiritrons, it took everything he had just to hold himself together; to keep his whole existence from self-destruction either by burning in a flash of what was left of his mana, or by physically tearing his sinews apart from his bone.