"When we last joined our heroes, they were attempting to recover their young companion, Asterios. But during their heroic rescue attempt, a dastardly beast of evil and shadow sought to prevent them from rescuing their quarry. Luckily, after some setbacks, the Rot Iron hero defeated the beast with a single shot from his bow! Now we shall focus on our intrepid adventurers as they rest and assess their situation."
"Hey you, I'm the narrator; stop butting in!"
"I'm sorry, I just wanted to add more presence to the beginning of this chapter of our lives!"
"Leonidas, I know you've been watching a lot of TV, but you're not allowed to break the fourth wall!"
"What fourth wall? Did someone say something?"
"Ahem." Anyway, after Emiya's activation of Caladbolg 2 and the defeat of another spider butterfly boss monster, the group collectively collapsed in exhaustion. The only ones who weren't exhausted were Stheno and Euryale. The rest were basically dead tired, even Izuku, who had just been directing Bob on where to shoot, was mentally drained. This didn't mean they let their guard down, as they collectively backed away from the still-persistent pool of shadow at the center of the room. Eventually, after they had all vacated the premises and closed the door behind them, the group collapsed in the hallway.
A tired chuckle echoed through the hallway. "We did it! We got Asterios out of there!" Mordred shouted in excitement and exhaustion. Bob, sitting on the ground next to her, started laughing. "Ha! Did you all see the look on that beastie's face when Emiy pulled out that big sword? It was like, 'Oh no, don't shoot me!' Ha ha!" Medusa, still in the form of a Pegasus, snorted merrily as her sisters, still mounted on her back, fussed over the almost infant-looking Asterios.
Izuku, wanting to keep the mood light, joined in on the conversation. "Remember when Mordred did that super cool discharge attack? Clarent Blood Discharge! Are you going to come up with more cool finishers, Mordred?" Mordred thought about it for a while before nodding her head. "Probably! I can't really think of any off the top of my head right now, but maybe something like, Clarent Blood Axe Kick!" The group giggled. It wasn't a great name, but it wasn't bad. "Oh, or what about Clarent Blood Head Butt?" This drew a playful groan of annoyance and a hearty laugh from Bob.
"By the way, earlier when Leonidas's platform disappeared and I started falling toward the shadow, I suddenly began floating in mid-air. Does anyone know why that happened?" Collectively, the smartest people in the group looked at Nana. She was the only one who could possibly have done this, being the only person with a quirk that could make people float.
"I think I did that? But I'm not quite sure how I did it." Izuku's nerdy brain began offering up some suggestions. "It could be a quirk evolution, but that seems unlikely. Maybe an application of your quirk you've never had a reason to use—possible, but not plausible. My only guess is that it probably has something to do with that OFA you mentioned one time."
Nana froze; she had hoped they had forgotten about that. But could that be the answer? Had One For All changed her quirk somehow, or was it something else related to it?
"It doesn't matter right now! We should focus on getting those other two keys. Does anyone know where they might be?" Emiya gave her that familiar look of "we'll talk about this later" before answering her question. "More than likely, one of the keys is in that room. The other, I don't know. We're going to have to search—maybe have Bob ask some of the fragments some questions." The group all made noises of agreement before they started to get up.
"Can someone please tell me why Asterios isn't waking up?" Stheno shouted. Nana remembered that she was the only one who had successfully woken up any of the altars. So she slowly trudged forward and placed her hand on the shoulder of little Asterios.
Looking down, she got her first good look at him. Instead of resembling a half-man, half-bull as she had expected from the legendary Minotaur, he looked like a smaller, white-haired Izuku. There were some slight differences: his skin was more tan, his hair was snow white, and his eyes were red with black sclera. How did she know his eyes were like that? Well, that's because he just opened them. Nana watched as the innocent eyes of a very small child stared up at her. It stirred the last remnants of her maternal instinct—a little bit of herself she had refused to let go of after she had separated from her own child.
Before Nana had any time to comprehend the emotions swelling within her, she was quickly shoved out of the way by two very doting older sisters. "Oh, little Aster! We were so worried about you! Don't let a big scary monster hide under your bed ever again!"
Asterios stared up at Stheno and Euryale in confusion. "There was a monster under my bed?" he asked, innocent curiosity dripping from his tone. Of course, he would be a little confused. All the monsters he had met wandered around the inside of his hedge maze; "scary monsters" wasn't exactly a concept he understood.
"It's okay, big sisters, monsters aren't scary," Asterios said with a genuine smile. But before their conversation could continue, Mordred decided to chime in with a question she had since meeting the three sisters. "Wait, how does he know you three? And how do you know him?"
The identical pair ignored her, but the currently equestrian Medusa decided to respond. "Well, whenever you all find yourselves in a situation where little Aster could cause problems if he emerged, you suppress him and keep him from coming out."
Mordred nodded, already aware of this. "Well, what do you think happens when you do that?"
Mordred froze for a second before saying, "I always thought he went to sleep or something?"
Medusa nodded. "Sometimes he does, but the majority of the time, he wakes up here with us. And let's just say he's endeared himself to my sisters, and now they're very attached to him."
"Okay, I'm going to look for that key. Does anyone want to join me?" Emiya asked. Bob raised his hand, and Izuku, who was still riding on his shoulders, shrugged and raised his hand as well. Nana decided she would join them, just in case the key was floating above the pit of shadows seeping into the ground.
Emiya slowly opened the door as the group of four crept into the room. Since the key hadn't shown up yet, they were expecting some sort of attack from smaller monsters, or perhaps the boss monster wasn't truly dead yet. But as they approached the pool of pitch darkness at the other end of the room, small dots of light began to twinkle into existence. It was like stars being born in the sky, supernovae exploding as new galaxies formed in the inky darkness below their feet.
After a light show of constellations dancing in the pool of shadows, they all began to spin and turn as the shadows swirled into an inky black hole. Slowly, the stars were drawn in, pulled in by the gravity of whatever was being born at the center of it all. Finally, after the shadows had all disappeared and the sparkles were gone, a pitch-black key appeared in the center of the room.
Just like last time, Nana stepped forward and extended her arm. As the key disappeared, a new tattoo appeared on her body.
== authors note
OK! chapter done. I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.