Not Long Earlier,
Yanni, deep inside his cavern, slammed his hands on the crystal ball atop the pedestal.
"Yes! Go my god!"
Drowning in glee, he looked up to the great marble statue of Heracles, adorned in silver and fruit, his handsome and beautiful body reflecting the warm light of the candles around him, making it seem as if he himself was radiating power. Though only a trick of the light, more of a moon than a sun, this sight reinvigorated him, and he returned to his crystal ball totally incensed.
Heracles, his god, was chasing the silver-armored Rider like a cat does a mouse. He pumped his fists and jumped up and down, his old age invoking a second childhood.
"Don't let him escape! Kill him! Kill him now!"
A moment later, nine strikes cleaved into open air- Rider dodged back in a burst of light.
"Dammit!"
He growled like an animal and searched his mind and globe for an answer. He was riding a rollercoaster of emotion as the tide of the battle ebbed and flowed; each slight victory brought a rush of elation and every whiff sunk his spirits. The battle against Rider was exhausting him, and that gave him an idea.
"Heracles! I beseech you! Ignore that silver mosquito! Attack the observers!"
He was never sure how his god heard him, but that question barely occurred to him at all; he was a god, after all. The bigger question was why he saw fit to heed Yanni Iole's commands. He couldn't answer, but the question filled his heart with a swelling pride, that he alone was fit for the role, and a mind-numbing anxiety, not knowing why or how he was fit. These feelings overtook him even as he watched his god prepare an attack against the flying ships.
-BOOM! CRACK! KAPOW!-
Though muffled through the crystal ball, sounding like it had been filtered through a gramophone, even he could make out the magnitude of the attack, though he had to linger on and wonder why his god had chosen to release all his attacks on only one of the enemy's ships. Nonetheless, he had faith that his god knew better-
The vision of the crystal ball could be moved, but was locked onto Heracles as its target. You could then imagine his shock as his musings were shattered by the sudden rushing and shaking of the point of view. When it did settle, he saw the man he called 'god' tumbling and turning on to his hands and feet.
"What?"
Heracles rushed forward, and Yanni's excitement rose. He had no idea what had happened, but he had no doubt-
In a burst of electric violet light, he saw his god rise into the air, his heart falling at the same time, and all the more so seeing the object of his faith slammed into the ground and subjected to a barrage of attacks from afar.
Tears stung his eyes, "No! No! No! Get up! Get up! Kill them! Kill them now! Give them everything you've got!"
He felt an electric tingle on his right hand, and found that one of the lines in the tattoo he'd received after calling his god, which looked to him like a fire made of polygons, had become little more than a red smear on his hand, like a marker that had mostly washed off, but retained a stain on his skin. He marveled at it, almost forgetting about the scene unfolding before him, and without the slightest understanding of what had occurred. He began to lose himself in his own bewilderment-
He then felt a prick at the back of his neck. For whatever reason, his elation, his excitement, dimmed immediately, as if someone had flicked a switch. He absentmindedly felt at the place and saw on his hands a thin trail of blood. Just a papercut, nothing to worry about...
"What..?"
His head became light, his legs wobbled and then broke out from underneath him, sending him directly to the floor. Through blurry vision and a stinging, straining pain pulling at his insides, his eyes locked onto a young man with shoulder-length blonde hair and a red sword. He was staring down at Yanni with no expression at all.
The Master of Berserker grit his teeth, frustration bubbling up through the thick fog that was creeping over his mind, "I...I knew it. I knew there was another... I always did."
His body was shaking. Though he couldn't see it, his assassin saw clearly the black curse polluting his blood and shook his head sadly.
"Sorry about this, but I didn't have a choice. You're free to hate me as much as you like. Whatever makes you feel better."
He looked down at his red sword with a somber expression before returning it to its sheath with a grim sobriety.
"No... you- you're a fool. My god will come. He'll save me- and you'll be subjected to a death so excruciating-"
He coughed and hacked, black-blotted blood pooling on the floor underneath him.
"No, he won't save you. He can't. Even if he got here in time, his attempts to kill me would likely catch you in the crossfire. Not to mention Rider, Archer and Caster- and the Command Seal you used will probably keep him busy regardless."
The assassin looked up towards the cave ceiling, wondering if death would swoop in from above in spite of his reasoning.
"The numbness should set in soon. I would recommend you just go to sleep. It'll be easier that way."
Yanni tried to retort, but found his throat and lungs clogged with his own blood, and all that came out was a pitiful gurgle and the slapping of flesh against wet stone as he lost the strength to hold up his head. The impact rocked his skull, but, as his assassin had warned him, he didn't feel a thing. The pain in his body had faded, leaving only the vague and uncomfortable feeling that his innards were tying into knots.
Through the shadowed veil that rose over his vision, his eyes managed to lock on the same tattoo on his hand. A reminder of all he had fought for, all his wasted time and effort, all he had ever wanted, achieved, and now died for.
Was it all a failure? Was it all pointless? Had he completely- totally- wasted his life? What had he been fighting for? Why?
Sorrow turned to despair turned to anger. He pushed these questions back into the shadows of his mind and managed to clench his fists, and, in the last light of his life, he said a prayer to his god. He prayed for vengeance. For victory. For all he had wished for to be achieved, and a second portion of his tattoo disappeared.
His vision faded totally, and he felt oddly comfortable, as if slipping into a gentle slumber. His own senses numbed into nothingness, what remained of him drifted across the void of his emptied mind like a single asteroid floating without aim into an endless abyss, doomed to venture silent and unknown into a vast and bottomless sea. In this place, before the clouds of dust could overtake him, he saw only a single, blue star, made all the brighter by his own darkness. He could feel the star, the Adonis, watching him, crying for him.
'No... don't cry for me. There's no point. I'm not someone worth crying over. But you,' He reached out, 'You're free now. Leave your chains behind. Be free. Be yourself. This world, this life, is for you. It always was.'
...
The Servant Assassin kept a grave eye on the man called Yanni Iole, monitoring him until there was no more room for doubt: Yanni Iole, the Master of Berserker, the cultist of Heracles and runaway Archaeologist, was dead. Even the crystal ball, detached from its Master's mana, dimmed into nothing more than an empty glass orb, and Berserker himself shouldn't have been far behind, but Assassin couldn't feel secure in his victory. Before he died, Yanni had consumed two Command Seals, and, having been made incapable of speech by the same death curse which took his life, Assassin had no way of knowing what Yanni had ordered with his final thoughts. He kept a hand on his right sword, the silver blade, just in case.
A second later his paranoia was rewarded. from the corpse of the Master rose a black cloud of magical energy, itself crackling with blue lightning from within. Though only a vapor, it gave off the presence of a powerful phantasmal, and he himself, having looked lords of fae in the eye and called them his equals, felt his heart seize even at the sight of this phantom; this sliver of a shadow cast by a far more powerful creature.
Two blue orbs locked on him from within the cloud.
His grip tightened on the hilt of his blade; he barely managed to speak through the cold sweat that had overtaken him, "Come to avenge your Master, have you?"
The phantom looked down on his dead Master, "It is an unfortunate truth that all fools are destined to die alone and in agony. My Master was no different."
"You call your Master a fool?"
"My Master confused a mere man for a god- for an idol. Some would call that the definition of foolishness. So, in a word, yes: Yanni Iole was a fool. And yet, even as a fool, and even as your enemy, you chose to stay by his side and attempt to comfort him in your own way. You are a good man. Even if I wanted to bring you to justice, to let you live and allow the guilt of killing a harmless and pitiful old fool to eat you away would be a far more brutal and fitting punishment."
"Bold claims for a man you hardly know."
"Hardly known, yes, but known nonetheless. I know you by the blade you used to kill my Master, Prince of Dyfed. The Sword of the Uncivil Fae, Hafgan. It inflicts a powerful curse of death on any it cuts, provided that it be the first strike to draw blood in the combat, and that neither opponent lands a strike on the other afterwards. That means, Prince of the Otherworld, that if you had run after landing your first strike, you would have guaranteed your victory. You could have killed him easily even without your Noble Phantasm by little more than a swift strike to the heart or head; he was a mere man, after all. But you stayed. You practically invited him to break free of the curse you yourself placed.
"Tell me, was it because you wished to comfort him? Did you want him to deny your curse? Or did you want me to kill you first?"
A single tear ran down the cheeks of the Prince, and the grip on his blade loosened, "I didn't ask to be summoned as an Assassin. I could've been a Saber or a Rider, you know. I don't normally... do things like this."
"I know. Maybe someday we could meet in your preferred state."
"What will you do now, if you're not going to avenge your Master? I know he used the last of his Command Seals to give you orders before he died."
"You are mistaken, Assassin. I will avenge my Master, not by killing you-"
The black cloud began to fade away, each black particle seeming to individually blink out of existence and eating away at the shadow's shape.
"-But by killing the one who commands you, and doing it as myself, free of my chains, just as my Master ordered."
The blue eyes disappeared, and what remained of the energy soon followed.
The Prince of Dyfed took a deep breath, "Good luck, Champion of Light. I know you can win this battle, too."
With his final prayer, Assassin disappeared into blue ether, leaving Yanni's corpse alone in the dank and stuffy silence of the cavern, allowing him to rest as he lived: alone, underground and comforted only by his empty idol. The statue dedicated to the young Heracles was surrounded by magics that preserved the offerings dedicated to him, and so his body would lay, unrotting and fresh, decaying only when the statue would centuries later, when an earthquake buried them both with finality.
...
A column of white light exploded into the sky from where the colossus stood.
The sound and energy in the air disappeared into the column like a vortex, the clouds swirling to make room overhead. The column and its thunder came to shrink and slim until it left entirely, leaving a lone figure standing among scorched earth.
He had the body of an Adonis, muscular and firm, with a face both sharp and square, intelligent yet strong, courageous yet thoughtful. His hair folded back into a mane of electric blue ribbons, and his sharp eyes glowed with the same light. His skin was as black and smooth as ebony and was etched with glowing tattoos that curved up his torso like an arrow in flight. Like the colossus before him, his shoulder blades, white like marble, emerged from his back as if to curve around shoulders far larger than his own. Below the elbow his hands, whether they were gauntlets or his natural body it wasn't clear, transformed into massive ivory claws, while black and gold blades emerged from the elbow itself. Similar marblesque armor covered his legs, though hidden underneath a similarly colored skirt with gold hems and a black stone belt. Most worrying to the onlookers was his massive sword, as large as himself or even larger, primarily black with a golden edge and carved as if to resemble a lion's claw; unsheathed and ready to tear his prey into bloody ribbons.
His presence, and the thunder that emanated him, seemed muted, not because they were any less, but because they were, instead of radiating outward in undisguised and undirected hostility, focused wholly onto a single target, the Champion of Light, The Rider Class Servant, Lugh. Ironically enough, this targeted rage made all but the target himself tremble in quiet terror.
Rider, without the hint of hesitation, approached the Adonis.
...