Even with the gaping hole in the floor, Fuyuki theatre seemed oddly peaceful in the light radiating from the grail. A warm and golden glow that sank into the dark wood and conjured warmth from the black cushioning. Complimented the crimson curtains with it's tones and brought the brass and bronze of the fixtures forth as highlights to the whole ensemble.
Even through the motes of dust floating in the air and the glowing portals marring the display with their ugly swirls of white gold energy... In any other place they would have been mesmerizingly beautiful all of their own accord, but here and now before the light of the holy grail they seemed out of place, blotches upon an otherwise unsullied cloth.
"Now, give me your response."
That voice too... Even the arrogant Archer could look striking in the glow of the chalice behind him, yet that tone – sureness of superiority dripping from each and every word – shattered whatever beauty he might have possessed even in that light.
"I refuse! I'd never-" She hadn't even seen it move but suddenly an axe was there, sinking through the steel of her fauld and biting into her thigh, cutting her denial off with a cry of pain.
"Are you too embarrassed to accept? That's fine."
Arturia glared down at the archer, her teeth gritted. So close, she was so close!
"You may give the wrong answer as many times as you like."
She just needed a chance, one chance.
"In order to learn the joy of serving me."
She was only half listening, her tactician's mind plotting moves, envisioning a thousand scenarios, searching for the one that would bring success. That would bring her to the grail, and end this once and for all.
"You must first learn pain..."
Green eyes widened, her attention coming back to her opponent before they narrowed. She grit her teeth. She couldn't dodge without a head start, and with a sword still in her leg she would never get that-.
Movement.
On the other side of the hall, a figure stepped from the shadows, raising one hand marked with an emblem of a crimson cross. Emiya's command seal. "Kiritsugu..."
This was it, her chance. He would order her to grasp the grail, and her failing physical form would cease to matter. She would have it at last. The chalice, the holy cup, her one wish.
The seals shone red and she pulled the blade out of her leg, ignoring the pain as she hauled herself to her feet. "So you've finally made your decision" Archer drawled, but she looked past him, looked into her Master's eyes.
"By the name of Emiya Kiritsugu, I order you with my command spell."
His voice was focused. Low, yet growing stronger as her heart leapt.
Give me the Holy Grail! A single order, that was all it would take to bring her to the cup. To break through-!
"Saber, Use your Noble Phantasm to destroy the Grail."
What?!
She could barely put the shocked exclamation into words before Excalibur flared bright golden white in her hands, washing out the gentle warmth of the Grail's glow. "Impossible... What are you doing Saber!" She could hear Archer shouting yet it was as though from underwater or far away as the command gripped her, shunting everything else to the back of her mind, catching her off guard as she felt her mana rise and surge. Her arms moved automatically even as she threw her everything into denying the compulsion, mind racing. "Why Kiritsugu!? You of all people-!" Her arms trembled, muscles fighting their own motions every step of the way as she raised the blade high. He raised his hand again, third and final command seal glowing in preparation for use, but it was not necessary.
"NO!"
She screamed, railing in futility against the command, scrabbling to hold back, to turn the blow, to reject the order, yet the Seal's authority was absolute. The will behind it ironclad.
The sword came down, and the golden light
surged. It was weaker than it could have been, and it wavered at the edges, destructive power crackling outwards, turning the single beam of focused annihilation into a wave. Yet it was enough for the task at hand.
Tears slid down her cheeks as Arturia watched in horror.
How could I have understood him if three Command Seals were all that existed between us?
I couldn't even comprehend the hearts of those who served by my side...
The stage shook, Kiritsugu screamed in pain, but through it all, Arturia heard only the ringing chime of the Grail shattering under the blow.
Perhaps this is all a punishment for the king that could not understand others...
Then the shockwave picked her up like a windblown leaf and hurled her backwards as the sun rose early in downtown Fuyuki city...
========
Arturia opened her eyes...
She could feel it immediately. The contract was gone, yet she remained. The Dragon's heart inside her already beginning the slow task of replenishing her massively depleted mana reserves,
but he never used the third seal... How-?
"Saber!"
The air was thick with smoke and dust and the stench of some form of decay as she looked up into the face of Kiritsugu Emiya. Harried and broken, with an emptiness she hadn't seen before in his eyes.
His right arm was a charred stump, caught by the edge of Excalibur's destructive force. The command seals obliterated by edge of the same blow that had shattered her hope for redemption.
"You... How are you..." His voice cracked, his eyes empty as he stared down at her, seeming to barely comprehend what he was seeing.
"You did this..." Her normally clear and bright voice came out as a low hiss as fury crept up. Excalibur was there by her hand and she ignored him as she scooped it up and pulled herself to her feet, menace clear in her eyes.
"I thought... The Seals... The Noble Phantasm..."
This man... This man had denied her everything. The chance to make everything right, to rewrite her legend, to give her bygone kingdom the ruler it had deserved.
The chance to right her every wrong and erase her misbegotten tale from history's pages once and for all.
And he had taken it from her.
"You BASTARD!"
The words tore themselves from her throat in a ragged scream as she lunged, barely even thinking. She looked at this man who'd taken her wish from her, who'd taken Irisviel from her, and in that instant, Arturia Pendragon knew the breadth and depth of rage. Even wounded and near death, she was still a servant, and he was still a man. Both had been exhausted by their respective battles.
Blood shimmered in mid-air as she drove the still-hidden sword through his stomach.
"S... Saber..."
She pulled back and stabbed again, higher, transfixing the heart on the blade, feeling the hilt twitch in her hands as the muscle tried to beat around the metal impaling it.
"Saber... I..." "RrraaaaAAAAHHHHH!"
Again.
"S-saber..."
Again.
"A-aahh..."
Green eyes shone with fury as she pulled the blade free. Could she not even have a moment of vengeance? How could he survive this? Wound after wound, the first enough to cripple any man, every one after enough to kill in a single blow, and yet he still stood... Swaying but alive, still trying to
talk to her.
...She understood...
Kiritsugu was rallying now as she lunged again, but the sword held low was a feint, unimportant as her left hand reached for the centre of his chest. The scabbard, the stolen artefact with the power that could deny death itself, the Avalon that was forever separated from her by treachery at her kingdom's fall.
He held it within him, clinging to it's power, and yet, between the two, her original ownership was the greater call, and golden light began to gather around that outstretched palm.
As it began to materialize, Kiritsugu seemed to realize what was happening. He grabbed at her wrist, struggling to fight back, but while his speed had always been greater, he strength was nothing before her grip. The physical form of Avalon was already taking shape, and as it entered the real world she locked her fingers around it, tearing it away from him in a spray of blood-flecked gold as the sword came back around.
This time a single thrust was enough to end it.
Kiritsugu Emiya fell, his blood soaking the dust-stained carpet nearly black as it spread from his body.
Archer had vanished somewhere in the chaos. He had been near the epicentre of the explosion, and where he had stood was buried under the roiling mud that had burst forth from the Holy Grail's destruction.
A last bitter thought as she hoped he was dead.
Walking on shaky legs, Arturia, the King of Knights, stumbled out into the chaos of flame that now made up this night.
========
Destruction all around... Just like before.
Screams of the dying as flames engulfed the city. Cobble or concrete, what difference did it make? This was another land burning. Another land she should never have even been responsible for. Another failure.
She wished that she could be angry, and yet after killing Emiya. After feeling the life leave him through the blade she sank into his heart, she felt... Drained...
Hollow.
Just another failure... A
pointless failure. A defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.
It made her sick to her stomach.
She moved without purpose or direction, wandering the broken streets. She could feel the dragon's heart beating in her chest to generate fresh mana, and with every passing second, she considered turning it off. Letting herself drain to nothingness and fall away.
Why not? There was nothing left for her here after all was there?
She kept walking.
She debated casting away Avalon and falling upon Excalibur. It would be simple enough to dismiss her armor, to return to that hill in a more fittingly violent way to reflect her sin.
Why not? There was no reason to stay in this hell right?
She kept walking.
Here and there she saw bodies poking from the rubble. At first she reached out for them with her senses only to find them dead. Crushed or burned or impaled.
She stopped reaching out to sense the bodies.
She kept walking.
She didn't know why she stopped when she did.
It was just another body, a young boy with a shock of orange hair. Arturia had barely even noticed him despite that he lay clear of any rubble until she was almost on top of him, and then she had stopped. His eyes stared blankly up at the sky, his arms limp by his sides.
His chest shifted...
Arturia's knees gave out as realization struck her like a thunderbolt. Not a corpse, a living child. Barely breathing, lying there, so close to death, and yet... Not quite crossed over.
Not yet...
Another soul who'd lost everything then.
Another failure...
No.
Another sin...
Stop this.
Excalibur clattered to the ground, and Arturia raised it's scabbard.
You can save him...
She knew that, she knew she could, but did he really deserve a saviour such as her? A twice-failure of a king?
If not you then who else?
Avalon began to pulse with light, weak and wavering as it fell into time with the boy's heatbeat as the scabbard began resonate with him, slowly strengthening as it began to merge with him. So many deaths on Emiya's hands. On
her hands, and no single life saved could possibly balance that scale.
Yet at the same time could she really turn her back on him?
The glow brightened and Avalon began to sink into the boys body but she could not simply give him the scabbard. He was too young to have been here alone. She could save his life, but then what would come next? What chance did he have with no family? With no one left? Arturia felt her eyes prick with tears again.
I cannot simply leave him to his fate. His misfortune had been done by her hand, and being the only survivor she had found, he was the only one she could give back to.
Her only chance to redeem any part of this disaster she had wrought.
The breathing was coming stronger now, a little life coming back into those dull brown eyes before they closed, unconsciousness carrying him down into a healing slumber.
Arturia's armour misted off her, dissolving back into it's component mana as she brought her arms under his tiny form and lifted him up. Even brutalized and battered as she was he weighed almost nothing against Servant level strength. So small and fragile as she tucked him against her chest.
Then she turned and step-by-step began to walk once more. Her face set in a determined mask as she put one foot in front of the other, making for the edge of the destruction, the only token of atonement she could still give cradled in her arms.
=End Chapter One=
Thanks to
@TheBleachDoctor for help proofreading this little slice of too many ideas and too little sleep. Watch this space for further chapters as the story goes forth!
OH GOD THE HORROR!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!
