Epilogue: First, We Need To Talk About Parallel Universes
One by one, the remaining Masters other than Kairi held the hands bearing their Command Seals up, with Trent coaching Charlie. As one, they chanted the same words, with only some minor differences in their wording.
"By the power of the Command Seal, I order you to incarnate. With the second Command Seal, I repeat my command, incarnate. I sacrifice the final Command Seal and enforce my will: incarnate upon this world in full."
One by one, the Seals erupted in crimson light before winking out, the Servants subjected to those orders finding their bodies turning to proper flesh and blood. All of them had differing responses, checking out their new bodies in different ways.
Astolfo rubbed his hands searchingly up and down his body, did a pirouette, and then launched onto Charlie in crushing embrace. "Lookit, Charlie, I'm a real boy now! But don't ask me to prove it to you out here, I'm not a weirdo-pervert like Roland who runs around outside all nudelike! I only do that with really pretty people who I wanna ride like the Hippogriff, or Bradamante, but don't tell her that, because she's married!"
Charlie, for his part, was caught between being red with embarrassment and grey with confusion. The homunculus found himself almost dizzy as he tried and failed to follow the eccentric Paladin's perpetually derailed train of thought.
Frankenstein's Monster, not truly feeling much of a difference, let out a low grunt of confusion. She then started to grab at her cheeks and pinch them, taking an odd enjoyment from the elasticity of her flesh. "Hmm, hmm." She hummed in satisfaction, before looking down at her legs and grunting in surprise upon noticing that she had retained the flesh that she'd had when she was Eve.
Promptly, Fran plopped down on the grass and started playing with her toes, humming in concentration as she examined the strange, stubby foot-fingers. Caules just let out a weak chuckle at the sight, finding it too cute to really protest.
Jekyll, for his part, glanced at his goddaughter and gave a small smile, before turning away from the group. He rolled up his sleeve, removed his glove, and focused intensely on his right hand. With a series of wet and meaty pops and the groan of stretching bone and sinew, a black-furred claw took the place of his hand.
After a moment, the good doctor winced, and allowed the partial transformation receded. He glanced at Johan as he righted his clothes. "It would seem," he said, pulling on his glove, "that incarnation has made Hyde fully a part of me once more. I seem to have far better control of the transformation than I did in life, however."
Johan cupped his chin in thought. "Well...I suppose that's a good thing, right?"
Jekyll gave a half-shrug. "I suppose; it will remain to be seen if I have cause to let Hyde out again…"
Trent just looked over to his own partner and asked, "So, you all good, Carmy?"
"I suppose," the silver-haired woman replied as she held her hands out in front of her and flexed her fingers, studying her nails. Giving a few more stretches and odd noises that caused the Canadian's eyebrows to quirk up. "Honestly, I can't help but dread the amount of maintenance I'll have to put in to keep looking as stunning as I do."
"Glad you got your priorities in order, Carmy," Trent remarked flatly, entirely unsurprised by her vanity.
The vampiress let out an airy laugh, "At least this time I won't be bleeding virgins dry."
"Yes, I'd heard that's so last century," the blond retorted dryly, causing his former partner to chuckle.
Off to the side, Fiore looked upon the proceedings with a melancholic smile. For a moment, she looked up to the stars, and her eyes fixed on a particular constellation, its bow drawn. Then the moment passed, as moments do, and Fiore walked down the hill to join her brother and his precocious charge.
Staring up at the glowing golden orb, Mordred let a savage grin cross her features, a gauntleted hand waving up at the Greater Grail. "There it is, the Grail! We got it, Master!"
"...Yeah. Yeah, we did," Kairi replied, far more subdued than Mordred had ever seen him. Before she even had time to comment, though, he visibly took a deep breath, stiffened his shoulders and looked up at the Grail. "Do you wanna go first, or should I?"
"Go ahead, Master!" the Saber declared loudly, planting her hands on her hips. "There should be lotsa people around to see my coronation!"
It was at that point that the others burst in, all of them seriously out of breath from having scrambled to reach the chamber of the Greater Grail. Trent held up a hand weakly as he coughed, "W-wait, we wanna see this shit! It'll be the third and fourth actual successful wishes made upon winning a Grail War. We didn't even really see Billy make his wish, so does it even count…"
Johan nodded. "It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call this occasion monumental." He then scratched the back of his head and hefted his grimoire. "Plus, if the notes in
this are any indication, even being able to study what's left after the Grail is activated would be
incredibly useful."
After the disastrous duo made their entrance, the other survivors of this mess of a war piled into the room one after the other. Astolfo, of course, was immediately drawn to the shiniest thing in the room: the Greater Grail. However, when he got too close, Mordred let out a growl.
The moon-brained man then showed a frankly astonishing amount of common sense, backing up away from the Grail with a nervous chuckle and both hands raised in surrender. Charlie sighed, and led his wayward partner by the hand over to the side of the chamber.
Fiore, Caules, and Fran were next to file in, and took their places next to Charlie and Astolfo with far less fanfare and tomfoolery than the Paladin (who was even now rocking back and forth on his heels, a giddy grin on his face) had.
Carmilla strolled leisurely in behind them, a self-assured strut causing her hips to sway back and forth, enjoying the weight behind every step. Had they been in public, she'd probably have caused people to walk into various obstacles, but they were lucky that was not the case.
Bringing up the rear was an amusing sight: the homunculus that Fiore had mentioned earlier, Toole, had hefted the considerable girth of Gordes over her shoulder like he was nothing more than a sack of clothes. Behind her, Jekyll completed the bizarre parade, a bemused expression on his face.
Kairi tilted his shades down to regard each of the Masters in turn—or rather,
former Masters, as evidenced by the patches of unblemished skin where each of their sets of Command Seals had once been. "...If you've gotta watch, at least keep it quiet." He reached into his jacket and retrieved a worn, faded photograph, before walking forward to place his hand on the Grail.
None present but he could see the conversation he had with the consciousness sealed within the Grail, but within moments, a golden, pure light filled the room. After it faded, those who looked on could see that Kairi was kneeling. In his arms was a slight girl swaddled in his heavy leather jacket, having been hastily covered before the light had faded.
On the other hand, as Mordred grinned up at the grail, golden light flittered down from it to forge a path. At the end of the gilded walkway was a simple glade, surrounded by trees; the only thing it contained was a sword, stabbed into a block of white stone that rested in the very center.
Her armour faded off her form as she confidently strode toward the block, her red loincloth fluttering around behind her. Standing before it, her smile was almost bright enough to eclipse the sun as she walked around it to face them, ensuring that all of them could see her.
With poise, elegance, pomp and circumstance that the others didn't know she had, Mordred gently wrapped her right hand around Caliburn's hilt. She pulled gently, and the blade came free with no noise as she flipped it upright.
She frowned at the blade and loudly remarked, "The hell? It's way too light…"
It was at that point there was a rush of air, and the blade literally deflated like the balloon it was.
Staring at the balloon, the girl's mouth moved up and down as the scene broke down into pink petals. Her head whipped around, and her face was warped between burning rage and soul-crushing sadness, the fake weapon still gripped tightly in her hand.
Nobody said anything.
Nobody
could say anything.
Some of them were mortified, some of them were stupefied, while Carmilla looked like she was about to burst out laughing.
There was a high-pitched animal's cry and a grunt of pain as a whiteclad man fell out from behind a pillar rubbing at a newly forming bruise. "Curse you, Cath Palug! Have you no sense of gravitas and mystique?"
The man himself was a tall, fair-skinned man with white hair and an easy smile on his face. He wore white and pink robes, with baby blue accents, over top of a pair of billowing black pants and a set of sturdy black boots. He offered them an enchanting smile as he greeted them, "Yo everybody, think my set up would work for Punk'd?"
"You shitty bastard! How dare you embarrass me like that!" Mordred roared, her cheeks flushing red as Clarent replaced the fake Merlin had prepared. "I'll kill you for this!"
"Now, now, Mordred, I did that for your own good," the Magus of Flowers replied, his smile staying in place despite his grip tightening on his staff. "The course of Camelot
needs to happen, despite our own wants and desires."
"Huh?! I'd be a way better king, then father was! This was my chance to prove that! To prove that I'm worthy!" the preteen cried, tears actually starting to build up in the corners of her eyes.
Merlin just sighed as he strolled forward, Cath Palug nipping at his heels and kicking him. "We both know that you're not admitting the truth of your feelings on the matter, Sir Mordred. You want Arturia's acknowledgment, and believe that becoming king would earn that recognition. That won't happen, for one simple reason. Arturia came to see herself as unworthy, and basing your reason for being worthy as your being her child…"
"Shut up!" Mordred roared as she brought her sword down, crimson lightning sweeping out toward the half-incubus but breaking just before him, where a small carpet of flowers had started to bloom.
The former court wizard of Camelot sighed again as he strode forward, his hand coming down to rest on the Saber's head. "Take my advice, Mordred: live a little in this modern world, maybe learn some of the lessons that Arturia once did." As he said that, he offered a wink to the dimensionally displaced pair. "Let that Kairi fellow help you understand some of the things that Morgan kept you from learning, along with the rest of these… colourful characters."
Despite the gravity of his words, Cath Palug did an uppercut to his knee, forcing him to balance on one foot.
As Mordred let out a grunt and tried to stab Merlin, who simply flickered out of existence to allow it to pass through the space he had occupied. The small blonde huffed, "Fine…"
Before anyone could interject, the Grail gleamed with unspent energy. This time, though, the light that emitted was anything but pure. As a malicious, abyssal unlight swathed the room, space itself bent, groaned, then
tore.
The world shrieked in agony as speed itself took form and ripped into existence, a vast void coloured by an inexplicable wash of un-colour left in its wake. A thick, bushy moustache was perched over a slavering maw, its eyes, beady though they were, pulsed with eldritch might and hellish lust.
Astolfo cried in recognition, "Ah! That's the Wahoo-Monster that I slammed through when I tried to get into the naked-Roland-Adam-man's zone!"
The demon's arm shot out, but before it could capture anyone, a wall of pink petals shot into existence between it and the majority of the group. Still, that left Trent, Johan, Charlie, and Astolfo in the monstrosity's immediate range.
While they would have loved to be paralyzed, they couldn't allow that to happen in the face of such a threat. With their backs against the proverbial wall, a yawning maelstrom of interdimensional confluence and energies thrashing behind them and the malevolent beast in front of them, they had few options.
"Guys, I say we try and jump backwards," Astolfo advised, his expression unusually serious as he stared down the monster before them. "We can't go forwards, and our only escape…"
"Is behind us," Trent finished, the bottom of his stomach feeling like it had dropped out. "All together?"
Johan swallowed heavily, and clutched his tome to his chest. "I-I don't like it, but what else is there?"
Charlie nodded firmly, a desperate fire in his eyes. He had the look of someone who'd finally had their life in their own hands, only to have it endangered immediately. "Let's go."
As one, they lept backwards. Time lost all meaning as they were swallowed by a vortex of sheer energy, and the world they had come to know was seemingly erased from existence.
The last thing they saw before their vision faded, was an immense tornado of fur, fang, and claw meeting the demon and shearing through it.
The final sound to ring out in their ears could only be the horror's death
rattle.
AN: And so, our "heroes'" journey in the Great Holy Grail War comes to a close. But do not cry; their dubious adventure will soon continue in…
"It's Always Horny On Main (In Kuoh)"
