Contains spoilers for Lostbelt 6, part 3.
Yes. This soon.
(deja vu)
Disclaimer:
Fate/Grand Order and its related concepts and ideas are the intellectual properties of Kinoko Nasu, Type-MOON, Notes Ltd., Aniplex, DelightWorks, and other respective rights holders. This story is written solely for the purpose of entertainment, and not for any sort of monetary profit. If anything, consider this free advertising.
Lohengrina
—It was a thrust like divine judgment.
—It came from the heavens, was sent towards those very heavens, to punish that which came from the heavens that lay even beyond these very heavens.
Percival, knight-commander of the Round Table Army of Londinium, dashed across the deck of the in-flight Storm Border. Heedless of how violently his hair whipped in the high-altitude and high-speed wind, he plunged his lance—the Spear of Selection, Longinus—and paid the price to cast its holy light one final time, to plunge it into the foe afore it.
A Calamity.
The Calamity of Fire.
Albion.
A fragment and successor of Albion.
—Faerie Knight Lancelot.
...Melusine.
.......me.
An oddity occurs. Time slows. Time slows, but not in any way useful for me. My thoughts grow vivid, vivid enough for me to experience them anew and again, living them but unable to change what once happened long ago.
This is... This has to be what's referred to as “one's life flashing before one's eyes.”
The thing that happens right before a living being dies.
I see...
Also, do I see, an arena. A tournament. Faeries, some even with their personal humans in tow, from all over had gathered to witness it, when it had happened. Fierce battles fought by cunning warriors. Entertainment for all, fought for such grand import to Her Majesty.
Such close fight, between me and him. Yet, a victory won was a victory won, regardless of how narrow the margin for victory had been. Even though he was just a human. Even though he was a despicably weak human, he won.
For that, I put aside my personal feelings. Instead, I embraced different feelings.
I congratulated the winner. Earnestly, even. To see such a smile upon my face, bereft of resentment or regret...I didn't know which of us was more surprised.
So he refused to join Her Majesty's Knights? I was undeterred. In fact, his decision—it was irrelevant to me. My interest in him didn't stem from the notion we could've been comrades.
We met again. Not as opponents in the tourney. Not as fellow knights, as we could have been if he agreed to servitude under the queen. We met as persons.
What a curious feeling. What an enticing feeling. What a fulfilling feeling.
Yes, we had met again, and we would come to know each other. Just one meeting, but it was enough. Through that, I came to understand a great deal about him and myself.
I didn't understand. Not the value of humans. But, I did understand the value of him. So, too, did I understand that when we would part when it was all over, that if we ever meet again, we would next meet as enemies.
It was foolish to hope. To hope that he'd live peacefully, until his life inevitably expired at, at best, the age of thirty years—the limit of humans in this world. To hope that this natural warrior wouldn't be compelled to take up his spear, and against Her Majesty. To hope that we'd never battle. It was foolish—selfish to hope that he'd never use his strength, strength as dutiful and radiant as him that would inevitably bring him into conflict with us.
It was foolish to hope that the deposition and death of Her Majesty would enable us to meet again, work together in a reformed army, to reunite.
If this land wasn't besot with Calamities... If we weren't cursed... If we weren't sinful, then maybe such an improbable daydream could come to pass; a faerie tale ending for the knight and the.dragonknight
A miracle occurs; I exert my will over this bestial, calamitous fate. For a moment, clarity reigns over rage. In the face of the killing-blow, I jerk my body.
Not to dodge it—'twould be impossible. Never was there a truer blow in the history of this entire kingdom. No ploy of fate, nor my peerless speed would be enough to escape the lance's divine judgment.
No, I couldn't dodge it.
Rather, I didn't want to dodge it.
That the deathblow would land and be a deathblow sobered me. It calmed my calamitous rage for a moment. Without that, the miracle couldn't, wouldn't ever possibly occur.
—'In the face of the killing-blow, I jerk my body. For one of the last times, I am the fastest thing in this world. The light of the lance-head takes me. Longinus gouges Albion's flesh. The spear of thegouges the flesh of the fragment of the dragon from the heavens. The light roars, dissipates into the sky behind me, as if satisfied and leaves.EarthGaia
As he had done once before, Percival pierces Faerie Knight Lancelot.
It's painful. Crippling. Tears through needed muscle, clips enough of my wing to send me tumbling back down to this cursed land as I fall off the airship. Never again shall I oppose them, Chaldea. Not like this, me like this.
That is okay. It didn't pierce it. I couldn't possibly let him take on such a sin. Not when it was supposed to be us faeries who were the sinners. I would be the one to take on the responsibility.
———The threat of the Calamity of Fire has been neutralized.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
If the Calamity has been exorcised, if the Calamity is dead, then is that why I am alive?
What follows punishment is atonement?
Then, this is no new miracle, but the result and continuation of said atonement, a miracle extended.
For a faerie to lose purpose is to be punished—to become a Mors. To me, I ended up something even greater, even worse—a Calamity. A Calamity—no greater punishment.
Then, what can override such a punishment? What is atonement that surpasses even a death most necessary for that?
—I understand.
No longer am I Faerie Knight Lancelot.
No longer am I Melusine.
No longer am I even the Calamity of Fire.
I...am Albion. I am just Albion, a dragon unable to return to faerie form.
Or, rather, I am not just Albion.
This new knowledge, this new purpose stirs my broken body. I awaken in a Hell greater than the previous Hell the world had been.
The very land is broken, disappearing. It is pulled up, and falls into the bottomeless pit that is the gaping void-mouth of the Abyssal Moth.
I understand, now, that it is not just purpose that drives me. The purpose is what drives me, but what fuels that vehicle is...
...this is the flight or fight response, isn't it?
The Abyssal Moth: It is a name I knew not beforehand, but what came to me upon seeing it. Information informed by instinct, as if by the world itself. To see the end, and know it for what it is. This entire world, built upon sin, must pay; the remuneration, total eradication.
The entire world, sans me, for I have already been judged, and already punished.
Yet, the yawning maw consumes heedlessly, uncaring of what I've undergone. For it does not alone punish, it consumes entirely. It shines not with radiant, divine judgment. It is a gargantuan lump of squirming, flapping, endlessly writhing and hungering malice. It is a hunger that being fed won't fix, and it wields it as its fangs.
—and I am already caught within its inexorable gravitational pull.
My hope burns in the hopeless situation.
It burns, unlike the destruction wrought by Albion's flames, as fuel.
My dragon heart flares up as a reactor once more. My body—battered, but not broken. My body moves.
My engine roars to life, sputters, spits, complains.
My engine roars to life, for I was once surely dead. I was dead enough for the Calamity that I was to cease to be.
The wound that Percival's Longinus inflicted aches, burns, leaks the fuel. Fiery blood rich with mana spills into the Abyss. The heat has yet to cauterize it.
With half-broken jet engines, and wings spread, I blast off.
—and, it is too late. It was always too late.
I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly and I fly—
but I do not and cannot reach the light of freedom.
The event horizon is long gone. Escape cannot be.
The dragon of the horizon, bested by a different horizon.
It seems as if my atonement was not enough.
It seems as if nothing—and nothingess—will/won't be satisfied until the last sinful remnant of this world has been reduced into nothing, become part of said very demanding nothingness.
What good is purpose if the world itself rejects it? What good is drive if it will take you nowhere?
Despite it, I cannot use that newfound purpose to do anything in my power to help. Thus, in turn, I cannot fulfill that purpose.
There is no longer a Faerie Britain to turn me into a cursed Mors for the forgetting of or inability to fulfill my purpose. Ergo, there is nothing left for the dragon to do but to end itself and its line, right here in the Great Pit manifested.
Tears of futility and acceptance well in my eyes, as I close them for the final time...
Then, a vision. Nothing I know, or could ever possibly know. Of a me that is not me. In a place unrecognizable. In the presence of the foreign magus from Chaldea, and another, unrecognized human.
What is this?
Another miracle?
A karmic tie?
A result of even time and space being rendered fragile, fodder, within the infinitely-spiraling gullet of the Abyss? Fate can reach even within these deeps?
“So,” she says to the other human. “You're El-Melloi II, the one who's apparently quite knowledgeable of the Mysteries of Britain within Pan-Human History.”
The human takes a pull of his lit cigarette, as if to mentally prepare himself. “Guilty as charged. I take it you're here to shake me down for some answers about what's what.”
The me that is not me nods, enthused that this exchange is so straightforward and fruitful. “Alright, tell me! In this history, what's Albion like?”
"I can do that. But," he dons an expression of stolid solidarity. "Lemme tell you right now—it's a sad tale. Even though such tragedy involves a 'you', are you certain you wanna hear about it?"
She nods. Of course. She has to know. It's important.
He tells the me that is not me. Of futile escape. Of almost-there. Of Albion's grand purpose in the role of modern magi organization. Even though it is a sad tale, he willingly tells me, even though the me that is not me had sought him out and put him on the spot in the first place. Even though it is a sad tale, the me that is not me listens intently, respectfully. The foreign magus stands nearby, in what is doubtlessly support. The enemy of what once was our land, and yet she places so much stock in them...
”As you said, it really is a sad tale. Even so, I truly thank you for that.”
With the end of that interlude, I now see it.
I am not Albion anymore, am I? I haven't been Albion for a long time. I cannot be Albion—I mustn't be Albion. I am not Melusine, either, anymore. I cannot be Melusine anymore, since I've become such a different existence. No longer am I a Calamity; the Calamity of Fire, Albion.
“Indeed, Albion died within this world,” I tell myself. “The dragon from the stars who can never see those stars again, who dies in every single possible human history; this Albion will fly forever in the Sea of Nothingness, in the gullet of the Abyssal Worm, until she's wasted away.”
But, if I'm not Albion anymore, then what am I?
“I...”
Names.
They have power.
I know as much.
Aurora—she gave my name, after all. The one I once had, "Melusine."
“I...”
'That which is called a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,' is it? Then, why do names even have power to begin with?
“I...”
Faerie Knight Gawain, always hungry for stories, for honor, and the means to take inspiration from and to maintain that. I recall a tale from Pan-Human History, told to her by the Queen, that I happened to be present for one time.
It was, as it turned out, a tale that involved him.
Him, the one oh-so important to me, now moreso than ever before.
“I am...”
A rose is a rose. But, until a rose is known as a rose, it lacks a crucial element.
“I am!......”
...I am a rose.
“—I am Lohengrina!!!”
The red and black body of the dragon known as Albion is shed, like snake skin. Albion explodes with power like a bomb, shoots me forth like a cannon. The strongest dragon, the fastest dragon, is not fast enough to escape the all-consuming and all-encompassing hole of the Abyssal Moth that erases even the very land of Faerie Britain itself.
Albion hadn't died truly yet. Rather, Albion hasn't died truly enough, yet.
Until now.
She doesn't have to be. Not through her own power alone. The outburst of magical energy, the physicality of the velocity, and the potency of the concepts that fuel the very ritual-of-sorts propels her past the impossible-to-crest boundary of the Abyssal Moth's mouth, pierces right into the wall of light that surrounds the Lostbelt-turned-Lostworld-turned-Singularity.
It is not enough.
“It's not enough? It's not enough!?” The wall of light serves as solid of a barrier as ever, even destabilized as it is following the death of the Winter Queen and the absolute destruction of the British Island that served as its foundations. “Like Hell it's not enough! It's time to go! This is no place to live!
“This is...no place...!” I scream, each yelled syllable another outburst from my dragon heart of burnt mana enough to fuel the cities of my former homeland for a year straight. “...no place...TO RAISE A CHILD—!!!!!!”
By now, I understand well.
I know what the real miracle is.
The real miracle, that which enabled this to happen to me, was that conception. The first proper conception that this world has seen since its inception.
It's a true impossibility that never should have happened, but it did so.
That's it. That's the final rejection. That's the final goodbye. The land's potential for change has been realized, nascent a realization and microcosmic though it may be. It's a small hope, and proof.
The white dragon—white again, like before; indicative of a new beginning—penetrates the wall of light and emerges into an equally white world.
A bleached-white dragon arrives in a bleached-white world.
Pan-Human History—empty as it is via the machinations of the Alien God—awaits.
The white dragon, newborn but pregnant, is battered as can be. Her flight, fast as usual, is insistent but unsteady. She's dipping, losing altitude. She can barely keep her eyes open.
And so, she crash lands safely, carving a deep scar into the whitened soil, crashes gently into a grouping of twisted ruins. Twisted by the powers that cleansed the planet of everything, and twisted even moreso by her impact. A cloud of white dust is kicked up in her wake, settles softly and slowly afterwards, dusting the dragon with a blanket of particulate.
“I couldn't make it to the South American Lostbelt, huh...?” I say, aloud, perhaps moreso to hear my voice, to affirm my life, my living. “That's...fine. I couldn't make it through it, anyway... Probably, I think...” Mustering all of the strength that I can, I roll over. From my back onto my belly. The task is arduous. Even for me. “I...I know...what I said. But, it's not like this place is much better—”
As if. There's nothing in this world. But, it's a different kind of nothingness compared to what I escaped from. It's not a nothingness, so much as it is blankness. There isn't a thing that can happen here, but that also means that there isn't a thing that can happen to me, or it, either.
It's safe.
The white dragon, smaller than before, but still a comparatively dragon-sized dragon, runs a clawed palm akin to a hand over her abdomen—right above her womb. Like her Pan-Human History counterpart. Just like her Pan-Human History counterpart, “Melusine” is en-route to mother a notable bloodline.
Although, nothing is guaranteed. Even so, the potential remains. Is that not enough to try?
“It was hard enough coming up with a name for myself...” my eyes slowly close as I talk. This time, not to myself. “Whatever on Earth will I name you, little one?”
I'll think about it later, when I wake up.
For now, I'll sleep. I'll sleep. I'll sleep for a long time.
END
- - - Updated - - -
A/N: If something isn't clear, I'll take questions.
To be updated with an actual proper A/N afterword once I'm not sleepy/lazy.
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Originally Posted by kinlyki
