FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 15: The Boy From the Black Lagoon

2:10 am, The backstreets of Glyfada

The one called Chrysaor pulled Monica gently from the creek. She was breathing heavily and irregularly, just barely restraining the panic rising in her chest. She had lost track of reality long before now, and there seemed to be no sign of things returning to anything that could be called 'normal'. Thoughts didn't even move in her mind: the only thing she was aware of was the man- or was it a boy?- in front of her. His features were impossible to make out in the dark, but he appeared youthful, certainly no older than 21, with an athletic, if slightly feminine, build.

She was shaking all over, trembling from both cold and shock. Her hand gripped down hard on her arm, which was still bleeding and especially sore, where the strange sigil had appeared. It hurt, but somehow the pain kept her grounded- it was the most real thing about the current situation.

"Here, let me-"

He gently touched her arm just below where she held it- she instinctively flinched and pulled back.

He gave her a warm smile, eyes filled with pity, "It's okay."

She took a deep breath and did her best to relax. If she couldn't trust him, the one who had just saved her life, then who could she trust? So she offered her arm, and Chrysaor responded in kind. He gently and carefully placed his hand over the wound and focused: a light golden mist seemed to emerge from his hand, and she could feel warmth spreading through her arm.

When he finally removed his hand, the scratches were completely gone, with only the faint color of dried blood left behind. Her arm was still sore, but the pain was severely lessened. In fact, her arm and wrist even felt refreshed, almost rubbery. It did tingle slightly, but it was bearable, even oddly comforting in the way it seemed to physically highlight her arm from the inside. Troubling, though not terribly surprising, was the fact that the red tattoo remained. Even in her addled state she could still guess with some certainty that it was linked to the person now in front of her.

Her voice trembled along with her body, "W-what's going on?"

He scratched the back of his head once more, "Heh- well- I could ask you that question." He looked at the corpses littering the ground, "This is certainly unusual."

The panic that she's struggled to hold seemed to break from her chest all at once, "What's going on!? Why are there zombies!? Who are you!?"

"Oh." He sighed, contemplating what he would say next. "Alright- uh- let's go through this one-by-one." He leaned down and pinched some of the zombies' blood between his fingers, "Zombies aren't real, at least, not in the way that you think of them. But, if they did exist, this would be it."

He gestured, black blood still between his fingers. "Their blood is basically a... potion. Its main purpose is transmuting- transforming other liquids into itself, but it's also laced with necromantic properties. So, what the creature does is get its blood into its victim. The blood in the victim's body is transformed into black ooze, killing them, and then the second property of the blood kicks in, bringing them back to life as one of these." He gestured widely across the various bodies. "I can only guess that they're the work of any enemy mage, or a Caster-class Servant."

He knelt there for a few moments, like a teacher waiting for a student's response. Monica, meanwhile, was far too confused to even formulate a question. More than that, she was scared.

"....Does that mean I'm still going to turn into one of them?"

"No, no, I just took care of that, there's no need to worry."

Monica looked down at the ground, half-relieved but still worried and completely lost.

His lips pursed, "...Maybe I started with the wrong question. Do you know what a Holy Grail War is?"