The Quest for the Holy Grail: A Vision
AN:
seriously late, I don't expect anything out of this. Just taking advantage of the thread being seemingly forgotten to pass this one through the door despite being disqualified. Looking back now, I am also severely disappointed in my lack of subtlety and bluntly using violence to create horror instead of proper tension, even if there was a point, I have done better.
Anyway, I don't think there is usually much horror with Arthuriana, outside of Kieron Gillen's Once & Future
(go read it) and some creepy parts of A24's The Green Knight
(go watch it), so I thought I would try.
CW for gore
And so it befell that, after a month of travel and adventures, the white knight finally reached the last step of his journey, stepping foot onto the land of Listeneise, fief of the Maimed King, guardian of the Holy Grail and living in the Grail's castle of Corbenic.
The white knight disembarked from the enchanted ship, which had brought him to these shores by sailing itself, jumping from the railing onto the beach in one smooth movement. A grayish landscape of utter desolation greeted him, extending as far as the eye could see, giving truth to the claims of Listeneise having turned into a wasteland after its King was wounded. Nothing grew here, apart from the trees, who stood bare of leaves, beneath a pale white sun that seemed to barely pierced the cloudy gray veil. The air was silent, and everywhere the earth was cold, cold enough that blankets of mists rose off the ground. No road led to the castle, nor were there any traces of one that might have led to it at some time in the distant past.
It truly was
la terre foraine, the strange land beyond. But while the otherworldly atmosphere made the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, the white knight was not discouraged. He had faced other trials before in this quest, seemingly impossible tasks and near insurmountable obstacles, some more would not deter him. But Fortune's Wheel had seen fit for his fate to rise on it.
He held the title of greatest knight in the world after all.
He had his faithful sword and shield with him, his armor protecting his body, and his faith protecting the rest. He felt amply prepared to take on the final phase of his quest, and to prove his martial prowess and faith through trials to prove himself worthy of the Holy Chalice. And so he marched on, walking in no particular direction, confident that the Lord would guide his way, but still cautious of any danger that might come upon him. A bit cautious, but also a bit eager, his blood rushing in his febrile limbs, his heart pounding at the thought of proving his mettle once more against mighty foes.
But progressing through the fog, another feeling rose within him, though he was not able to put a name to it. It was difficult to say anything precise about this sudden mood that overcame him, because it seemed to belong to the gray emptiness of his surroundings as much as to himself. The more he tried to think of it, the more the thought felt insubstantial, like trying to touch the mist surrounding him, and eventually he stretched it out so much it shredded like spider web, and he forgot what he was thinking about as he kept walking.
It was not long before the knight came upon a body of water, its presence disturbing the desolate purity of the landscape surrounding it. Near the shore was a simple boat, carrying an old man who was busy fishing. Grateful for the first sign of human life in this gray and desolate country, he hailed the fisherman, and when the graybeard rowed his boat to shore, he offered him coin to transport him to the other shore of what he learned was a lake. Once they were agreed, the knight embarked onto a boat once more, albeit one guided by human hands, and the duo slowly made their way across the lake.
Unlike the gray desolation in the midst of which it stood, the lake was a dark, watery expanse, with milk-white mist suspended above its waters. Aside from the oars whipping the water to a sudsy froth, the lake was a perfectly flat dark glass, with no ripples disturbing its smooth surface. It uncomfortably reminded the knight of a cold night sky without stars, the black gaps between the fixed stars of the heavens, the brief glimpses of the dark void of the abyss they were suspended in that could fall and swallow the earth.
To turn his mind away from the dark ocean, he decided to engage his guide. "My good man," he said, "could you perhaps tell me where one might find the castle of Corbenic?"
"Ain't seen it no more, nun 'has in years," the old man answered in a gruff voice. "Castle's invisible to any 'un not worthy o' the sangreal." After a pause, the old man grumbled into his beard. "But ye be careful now, ye 'ear? Ye wanna steer clear o' 'im they call the Red Knight. Ye shall come to a nasty end nosin' 'bout that gent."
The knight found the advice touching but misplaced. It was all he had in him to not laugh in the face of the poor man. "Worry not, my good man. I am a Knight of the Round Table, there is no man too great for us to fight."
"The Round Table, eh?" the man said in a strange tone. "Well, dun say I didn' warn ye." The fisherman shrugged, made the sign warding against the evil eye and spat, and would say no more on the matter.
Once they came ashore on the other side and the knight disembarked, he watched as the old fisherman left and rowed back into the hazy void floating over the darker void, the mist thickening to pea soup and swallowing the little boat. Stepping foot onto the shore felt strange; it was not the frost-powdered earth of the gray and desolate landscape, hard and cold. Instead, the earth was unnaturally warm for the season. His sabatons made odd smooching sounds, as if the ground beneath his feet was growing soft.
This was not the only change, his surroundings had morphed too. Gone was the featureless country that extended so gray and so desolate on every side. Instead, everything was resplendent with the fireworks of a new autumn. The trees were no longer black and dead, but now an undulled abundant woods, their multicolored leaves softly glowing from the pale light of the sun shining through, scattering their spectral tints everywhere in a rainbow dyed with a harvest of hues: a spectacle of apple red, peach gold, and pumpkin orange, honey yellow and meady amber.
The white knight walked for a time in awe amongst the luminous trees, forgetting the too-warm earth beneath his feet. The ground eventually formed a path,which appeared to be of the blackest earth, of earth that had gone charred somewhere in its depths. The colorful leaves contrasted against the darker path, their luminous colors glowing against the dark earth, as the wind casted and splattered them upon the ground, the trees, and parts of the knight's attire, making his white armor seem red.
So absorbed was he in the spectacle of the season, he almost missed the figure at the end of the path, emerging out of the iridescent eve.
Before him stood the Red Knight.
True to his name, the Red Knight was dressed from head to toes in the peculiar color of his name. But his vestments themselves were strange: his head was crowned with a gleaming helmet with an intricate design and feathery crest, yet left most of his face exposed. His torso was encased in a series of interlocking plates, each reflecting light with a polished red finish, wrapping tightly around his form and his shoulders, but leaving his arms unprotected. And while his legs were shielded by robust coverings, his feet wore sturdy sandals instead of any protective gear.
This looked like the armor of no knights he knew. To him, the man, standing alone beneath trees whose colors shined upon him and stained his face with even more hues of red, seemed like a man out of time.
In his grip, he held a lance with a keen edge, its polished wood contrasting with the brilliant red of his attire. The lance was, outrageously, impossibly, bleeding, like a human would from a wound: it at first looked like it was simply marred in blood, but looking at it closely, dark red blood oozed and bubbled from its spearpoint before flowing in rivulets along its shaft, and continuously dropping drops of blood that the dark earth greedily drank.
Something about the Red Knight and his Bleeding Lance in the middle of the festival of colors hurt his brain. The sun shining through the leaves, just moments before reassuring, now seemed to be casting far too much light, hot and strange, the sweltering and blazing aura revealing the encroaching encrimsoning, that it was all a freakish spectacle painted with russet, rashy colors, colors that bled with a virulent intensity, so rich and vibrant that things engorged in ripeness. The gross palpability of the plague of colors made him feel like, should he cut a hole in the air, dark red blood would come pouring out of it.
There was a wild luminosity in the eyes of the Red Knight, a ruby-bright fever burning within him. The white knight could feel the same feverish intent erupting within him, coursing through his veins. His face reddened with the passion for violence and death. They were both being consumed by the feverish life of the earth, and they welcomed it. No words were exchanged as they fell upon one another.
Knights are men of blood and iron, and blood and iron they dealt, as they fought in the red light of the picturesque composition they were painted in, the shadows of devils hooked to their feet and capering across the black earth, as they stumbled over roots and rocks, with mud and rotting leaves slippery beneath their feet. But the battle, no matter how well fought, had a foregone conclusion.
The white knight was, after all, the greatest knight in the world.
After a long and arduous battle, in one swing the Red Knight was disarmed, and in another the white knight lopped off his sword arm. And when he beheaded his defeated foe, the blood sprayed from his neck with the force of a water current, drops of blood suspended in the air like red rain before falling and staining the luminous leaves in beautiful crimson as the headless corpse fell backward onto the dark earth. Laid on the ground, the headless body had fallen with its arms outstretched, in a grotesque mockery of the crucified Christ.
His first trial was done.
Breathing heavily out of exhaustion, the white knight put his sword back and looked around until his eyes fell on the discarded lance. When the Red Knight was disarmed, the Bleeding Lance had, by some act of Providence, landed point-first in the bark of a nearby tree. It was still pouring forth blood, making it look like the tree itself was hemorrhaging. When the knight made to pick up the Bleeding Lance, it vanished as his fingers brushed it, as if it had never existed. And when he looked back at the ground, he saw that the body of the Red Knight was also gone.
A chill spread throughout his body. He had been prepared for otherworldly occurrences on the quest, and he had seen plenty before, but he was still not used to it. No matter, he had to keep going. The knight pushed onwards, and left behind the garish woods and its chaotic infection of colors.
After a while, he found himself on the wasteland again, the featureless country extending so gray and so desolate on every side once more. Cold winds started blowing, cutting through his armor to cut his skin worse than any battle he had been in, and the ground also slowly started to slope upwards, each step up involving slowly increasing effort. The trees, dead and lifeless, at first were sparse, but as the walk went on, they increased in numbers and started to grow closer together in a dense, dark mass pressing him on all sides. He could barely see in front of him, and more than once did he stumble on gnarled roots protruding from the earth, like so much half-buried bones sinking into the abyssal womb beneath everything, everywhere.
Soon however, he began to hear distant clashing sounds, something which his trained ear recognized as the clashing of steel, the noise of a battle underway. With renewed vigor, he fought his way through the forested density, before stumbling out on a narrow clearing, his ears popping like he had come out of deep waters, and the sound rushed to his ears as he saw a battle unfolding in front of him.
In the clearing, two armies, some five hundred men at a glance, were fighting. On his right was an army of white knights, similarly to him clad all in white, their armors of white steel radiant even in the pale sun. They fought on the defensive, slowly pushed back as they protected people behind them, fearful women and children pressed against the dense trees of the dark forest. Their foes were black knights, clad in armor dark as the night, dark as the lake he had sailed on. Their armors were so black the light seemed strangely muted around it, like it couldn't reflect off of it, only be swallowed and disappear. They kicked up so much dust fighting, they looked like demons out of hell, stepping out of the steam and smoke of the eternal fire to prey upon the innocent. Behind them, he could see enchantresses and witches, clad in dark robes, waving their hands and fingers and moving their lips in silence, no doubt casting foul spells.
The knight did not hesitate, drew out his sword, and jumped into the fray, to help the weaker party and the innocents they protected. He saw his first foe, a black knight riding on a black horse, and smote down horse and man to the earth, in strangled cries of pain and terror.
He worked methodically and efficiently, fighting and striking down many knights to the earth, his sword waving around furiously as it sought to connect with warm meat. All those who saw him, even through the chaos of battle, marveled that just one man could do so many great deeds of arms.
He was, after all, the greatest warrior in the world.
He could feel the air crowding against his ears in soft, coagulating clots. Redness ate inward from the corners of his vision, reality crumpling and blooming like a burning paper, the narrow hole letting him see scenes unfolding bloodily. He drew his strength to do violence at some point just below the place where his conscious mind seemed able to go, the subconscious where the wild things grew.
A thousand fell at his side, ten thousand at his right hand.
The battle lasted long enough that he grew faint and weary, barely able to lift up his arms. But end it did, and as the red haze faded and he woke from his battle frenzy, he found himself standing alone, his red sword slick with blood, and an almost total silence having fallen around him, broken only by the moans and lamentations of the dying. Crows flew circling in droves overheard, cawing in delight at the magnificent feast. His foot almost slipped from under him, and he realized that it was because he was not standing on solid ground.
He was standing on a mountain of corpses.
As a knight, he was a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs, but even he had never seen anything like it. Myriads of dead bodies were strewn together in a forest of severed limbs and pools of blood. He could feel vertebrae, ribs, phalanges crunch beneath his feet, cold flesh and sightless eyeballs squelching every step. In the midst of blood and carnage, the air filled up with the odor of raw meat, a smell so overwhelming it was like the putrid flesh was on his tongue, like he could feel the meat masticated between his back teeth. The sound. The texture. The aftertaste.
The dead knights all looked to be black knights, but closer inspection showed a lot of them to actually be white knights, armors so splattered with mud and blood that the white looked all black now, and little distinction could be made between the two sides. And among the knights…
Among the knights lay the women and the children.
His heart pounded so loudly his limbs shook, as he regarded the innocents lay on their backs, their faces dirty with muck, turned to the pale sun above that their eyes could no longer see. Some of them had fallen protecting their children, lying protectively over them, but uselessly as both bodies were pierced through. Others had gore for hands and arms, hacked off as they had tried to defend themselves from the sword's swings. Most had a frozen look of terror on their face, none of the peace the dead were said to experience, their mouths frozen in silent screams and their eyes round in fear and horror. Children had dirty faces crisscrossed with streaks of clear skin where their tears had fallen.
He felt sick.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!"
A sudden scream made the knight suddenly turn around, and he only had time to see a disheveled woman, a crazed look in her eyes, rush towards him with a raised knife. He did not have time to think, and he did not have to: his sword did the thinking for him. The sword pierced the woman's midsection in a wet sound followed by a crunch, like someone had taken a bite out of a particularly ripe and juicy fruit, and eaten through the pit in the process. Carried forward by her momentum, the woman slid down the sword's length and hit the hilt, before her arm, more out of instinct than anything conscious, swung down the knife only for its blade to shatter uselessly against the armor.
She only made a gargled sound of surprise as blood dripped down her lips, and all expression left her face, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. All life left the broken puppet, and it slid off the blade of his sword to fall at his feet, another victory trophy joining the others.
He was, after all, the greatest killer in the world.
And he ran.
Down the slope of the mountain of corpses he went, and through the forest he ran, no longer stumbling on roots, but on dead bodies and blood. Replacing the roots were limbs, stiff in dead, some of them extending towards the sky in supplication. His feet squelched as he ran on the mass graveyard the forest floor had turned into. All the while the knight, his armor no longer white, roared in rage and terror. 'What have I done?' he screamed, sometimes to himself, sometimes to the dead, sometimes to the Lord of the Hosts above. The pale sun, white as the dead, looked down upon the escape, its pale light filtered through the tangle of bare limbs that twisted overhead.
Sliding down the last slope, he eventually scapered out of the woods and out of the mountain of corpses, finding himself on the bone white beach of a very familiar sight, the pitch black lake. And the old fisherman was there, but not fishing, as if waiting for him.
"Climb up," he told him, and he complied without protesting. The old man rowed, and soon the dead were left behind in the mist.
Silence stretched on. The knight still shook, the dread seeping through like a cold wind. If he closed his eyes, he could only see the faces of the people he had cut down. He could even imagine seeing them in the lake's reflection, the dead floating to the surface.
He wanted to confess, to anyone, but while his tongue burned to admit his sins to the old fisherman, shame and fear burned deeper, eating away at his organs. Instead, he asked, "Do you know the name of the mountain I was on, back there?"
"The mountain with the two armies fighting?" he said, and the knight's throat closed up in fear, his heart beating quickly at the thought of the man knowing what he did. But that was not what he said next. He shrugged. "Name's Camlann."
The name sounded familiar, stirring something in his mind, but the thought fled as soon as he tried to recall it.
"Well, now 'tis Camlann, but name changes every few. Cooley. Badon Hill—
his mind once more briefly flashed an ember of recognition before it died out—Camlann. Roncevaux. Ravenna. Verona. Bairen. Hoy. Kulikovo. Matters not. Them knights do what they always do and only kill."
A small feeling of indignation temporarily rose over his guilt. "That is not what knights do, or at least good knights, my good man. We are protectors of the weak, defenders of women and the orphans. Not simple brutes!"
As soon as he said those words, the hypocrisy of them made bile rise in his throat.
"Seems what knights are," the old man said, shrugging. "Swearin' fealty to this or that lord, making one, two, three, more oaths. Goin' on adventures to kill these or those folks. Defend these folks, but not those folks, these are foes, anythin' yer lord, the law, or the church deem to be. Spillin' enough blood in any name to bind the knights closer than kin."
Even through his own increasing discomfort, dead faces of women in children in his mind, he felt he had to defend. "But my brethren, the Knights of the Round Table, aren't like that—"
"Ain't they?" he snorted. "They kill innocent girls by mistake, best friends fight each other to the death, a promise rashly given makes a knight behead his sister. Gawain, knight of maidens, follows this vow because he accidentally killed a lady, and the blood of his own cousin is still dryin' on his lance. Nothing makes the Round Table any different than what came before and what will come after: violent men giving themselves excuses to be violent. All because a boy drew a sword out of a stone—"
The insult lobbed at his king lit the flames of his anger, and the knight shot up from his seat, his fist clenching the pommel of his sword so hard it trembled. The boat rocked and tipped precariously to one side, the waves it created rippling the dark lake like a creature stirring itself awake.
"Watch your tongue, villain, before I cut it off!"
The old man only looked at him calmly. "Why? Are you going to cut me down too?"
He might as well have hit him, as all breath left his lungs in shocks. Face as pale as a corpse, the knight sank back onto the bench, the tension in his shoulders easing just slightly as the waves settled.
"How do you know?"
"Mayhaps it is in your nature," the old man mused, like he had not heard him. "The world and its design is one of arbitrary violence. Living beings are constantly fighting for life, with every breath, every motion bringing them one instant closer to death. So you are given honor or love or piety as excuses to exist in this violent world. You are told to fight honorably, but really meaning to always fight, because your blood, the blood of the killer ape in you, thrives on the violence that you say you can hardly endure. How, then, can you be expected to give up violence? How then can you have choices, free will? Are you even free?"
"I asked a question."
The old fisherman sighed. "Think you lived through these things in this land for no reason? There are no accidents around here. Time is round. Everything and everyone gets squished under the Wheel of Fortune."
"Who are you?"
The gaze he leveled at him couldn't have been cooler. "It is rude to ask the name of someone without giving yours first."
Now that he asked his name, the knight realized he had not known his own name, at least consciously, before this moment. But in answering his question, it instinctively came.
"Galahad," he said.
The old man watched him for a moment. "Well, Galahad, do you not recognize your liege?"
Something queer occurred about the cast of his features. The longer Galahad looked, the more things seemed to change. The color of his eyes shifted from gray to clear, wrinkles smoothed and then faded, his gray hair gained back the luster and color they had lost. Decades younger, the man's face was instantly recognizable to him.
"My King?" he softly said, almost reverently.
It was King Arthur Pendragon, master of Camelot, ruler of Logres, if he had aged decades in the time since he saw him, and left his crown for the humble occupation of a fisherman. The sight was as comforting as it was incomprehensible: his king was back in Camelot, miles from here, waiting for the safe return of his knights from the quest for the Holy Grail. And he certainly wasn't this old.
"But…how?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. I am bound by other forces to keep this mystery from you. Even if you will not remember this, there are certain things you are not meant to know. Just be assured that I am well in Camelot, even if I am also here." He gazed wistfully forward, and Galahad saw for the first time that the shore was fast approaching, faster than the boat should have moved from rowing.
"What I can tell you is this: the cycle is coming to an end. Fortune's Wheel is completing its revolution, and as it continues its descent, we are now helpless participants in an inevitable destiny we no longer have the will to resist. We all soon shall be crushed under it."
"What do you—"
"I should have never drawn the sword," he spat with sudden bitterness. "Or were I to draw anything, may it have been a banner or a shield instead! Whether the sword is called Excalibur, Joyeuse, Eckesachs, or Tizona, it matters little: a kingdom founded by the sword will live by the sword and die by the sword. Violence should never be mistaken as some kind of just act, I know that now."
With a gentle bump, the boat reached the sand and settled. The knight sat still for a moment, the weighty finality of his king's words lingering in his mind like the fading light of day.
"You can't believe that, my king," Galahad finally said, softly.
"I do," the old man replied. "You shall see for yourself soon enough. You still have one last stop on your quest."
Galahad stood slowly, then stepped onto the warm, gray sand. He had walked only a few paces ahead when, quietly, like the first snowfall, figures began to materialize just ahead of him. Women, as far as he could tell, draped in flowing black cloths, their faces obscured by delicate veils. Three, four, nine, more, they moved with an eerie grace, as if gliding over the sand, brushing past him without paying him any attention. When he realized they were headed for the boat, he turned, alarmed, and caught one of them by the arm. He had almost expected the arm to be insubstantial and fail to find purchase on air, but he instead held a delicate, dainty wrist.
"My king!" he exclaimed in a strangled cry.
"All is well, Galahad," he said soothingly. "Do not fear. They are here for me."
If the veiled maiden found his grip painful, she didn't show it. Instead, her head tilted, like she was looking at him quizzically. When he released her, she did not move, presence unsettling yet strangely serene, until suddenly one of her hands reached up and cold fingers brushed his face. He shivered, but for some reason unknown even to him, did not move.
"Iblis," his king said quietly.
The maiden let her hand fall, and silently rejoined her companions, who had reached the rowboat. They didn't speak, but there was an unspoken understanding among them as they climbed aboard.
"I cannot tell you who she is," Arthur said apologetically, answering his unspoken question. "You would have known each other on another spoke of the wheel, but not this one." As he spoke, the veiled maidens gently made him lie down on the boat, like they were tucking him to bed. As he closed his eyes, Galahad had to strain his ears to hear the last of his words. "You only have one heart, and it is no longer yours, isn't it? You have given it to someone else, so you cannot bestow it elsewhere."
The knight felt his breath catch at the words. His king said no more as his breathing slowed, and the boat full of maidens and his sleeping king glided across the lake without causing a ripple on the still water, disappearing into the mists.
When Galahad turned from the lake, he found that he could see a castle, far in the distance, its form unobstructed by the grayish landscape of utter desolation that surrounded the structure on all sides. If it was to be his last stop, he was certain which castle it was.
Corbenic.
From what he could see, the Grail Castle appeared to be a square tower of dark gray stone, flanked by two smaller towers, with arcades and a drawbridge. It was old, covered in vine and with masonry missing, exposing the rotten wooden skeleton beneath, reminding him of a corpse that hadn't quite begun to fester. He headed in its direction, but something strange was happening as he got closer. The castle seemed to shift and flicker in and out of existence, like a hazy mirage in a desert, or a wispy candlelight buffeted by wind. It seemed translucent at times, and he felt like he could see into its halls like one would through clear water, even though he shouldn't be able to see this far. He could see the throne room and the Maimed King, the hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones making up his body slumped on a throne. And beyond the corpse king and his cadaver council, the Holy Grail itself, resplendent on a silver table, with a priest next to it saying Mass.
But when he eventually reached where the castle should have been, there was nothing. No towers, no halls, no Grail. Only the gray expanse of the wasteland. And him, alone, once more frustrated in his quest, as had kept happening since he stepped foot in Listeneise.
Was that it? After all these trials, all this grief, was that all for nothing?
Is the Grail forever out of my reach? he thought in despair.
He could feel the panic surge within him, constricting his heart in dread, and the pale faces of the dead rose to the surface of his mind, their sightless eyes watching him in accusation. But another memory was also dredged up, something the fisher—his king Arthur had said: the castle is invisible. It was not gone, his eyes just couldn't see it.
It was a tiny hope, but the small flame kept him going. He began to walk, fingertips outstretched, brushing against the air to try and touch something solid. He moved slowly, inching forward, stepping closer to where he thought the castle might be, his fingers grazing the space where he envisioned the stony castle walls to be. His eyes were closed, hoping it would help him focus better without being distracted by the absence of an actual castle in front of him.
He stumbled, something hard hitting him mid-thigh. But when he opened his eyes, he did not see a castle. His leg had hit something solidly visible, a fairly large rock, standing upright and strangely polished, as if by human hands. It was in the middle of the field, yet he had not seen it walking in. Peering past the stone, he saw a fairly deep dug up hole behind it, the gaping maw dark and foreboding.
Skirting around the stone, he peered down at it. The depth of the hole was unsettling; it seemed to swallow the light around, a yawning abyss waiting to consume anything that dared to venture too close. A starless night sky peering down into the depths of the earth. It took him a moment to realize the hole was not any hole: this was an open grave. And the stone that flanked it was its tombstone.
Something moved him to get closer, and reach out to touch the cool, rough surface of the tombstone. His fingers traced the letters carved into the stone, obscured by years of moss and wear. Galahad leaned closer, straining to read what was etched there. Set in its center was a cross whose intersection of the arms and stem was surrounded by a circle. The Celtic Cross of the Christians of Britain.
Below the cross, it read, in golden letters:
HERE WILL LIE LANCELOT OF THE LAKE, SON OF KING BAN
The world tilted on its axis, the ground beneath him seemed to shift, and he felt himself fall, fall so far down, and so far away. A feeling he couldn't put a name to, a thought as insubstantial as silky gossamer spider web, seemed to snap back into place, the air seeming to solidify into a wall he had just crashed into. He fell to his knees, shock rendering him motionless. Tears began to well in his eyes, blurring the edges of his vision.
Someone walked up next to the tombstone, and he looked up. It was a knight, wearing all white, an armor of white steel adorned with a white ermine cape, and wielding a white shield with a red cross. He looked just like him, as he had been decades earlier when he was barely a man grown leaving the lake.
"Father," Galahad said.
"Galahad," Lancelot answered, his throat choked in sobs.
Galahad, the son he never knew, bearing his birth name, his baptismal name, the name he lost.
Lancelot looked at the sky. The heavens were still overcast, the gray clouds of this gray land hiding the sun from view, leaving behind only a miserable reflection. A cold wind blew, and he shivered, with a slight tingling sensation in his hands, as if tiny ants were marching across his skin.
"I was never going to achieve the Grail, was I?" he asked the white knight.
His son looked down at him, compassion and sadness warring on his face. "No," he answered honestly. "You have sinned so much that the fiend has consumed much of your fruit and leaves. The Lord does not want the dry husk that is left."
"Was it because of Guin—my impurity?" he asked, catching himself. Even here, even now, he couldn't bring himself to say ir aloud. He absently rubbed his hands out of shame.
"The adultery does not help," he agreed. "But, had you sought forgiveness, you would have been pardoned. No, the issue is much more fundamental." Galahad's lips thinned into a fine line and he fixed him with a hard stare, though he could still see the empathy in his eyes. "You are a man of war and blood. As long as you are a knight of earthly knighthood, that is all you will be, and no knight of earthly knighthood is worthy of the Holy Grail. Our forebear, King David, beloved of God, a man after His own heart, could not build His temple because he was a warrior and had shed blood; what makes you think
you would be allowed to touch a mere cup?"
"But…I am a Christian," Lancelot weakly protested. "I have always…I have always
tried to faithfully follow our Lord." He felt hot, this armor feeling suddenly suffocating. His gauntlets especially felt like they tightened around his hands, the itching now a burning sensation.
"Have you?" Galahad challenged. "It is said that the wise man will wage just wars, but it is not so: a Christian must
never become a soldier. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries. For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword, so saith the Lord." Galahad shook his head, like he was shaking cobwebs from his hair. "It is not just the Scriptures, Father, look at how it shapes and distorts your mind. You immediately attacked the Red Knight without even trying to defuse the situation or talk to him to try and get him to let you pass. Or even find an alternative path, despite being warned to steer clear of him! Violence has become your first resort, not your last."
"I may have failed there," Lancelot admitted, trying to hold back tears. "But I have not always acted violently, our vows engage us to use our might to protect the innocents. You can't say it is all sinful!"
"What about the battlefield, then? The white knights were fighting to protect the women and the children, not for glory. You could have used their stand to get the people to safety, guide them to a safe haven far from the battle. But that is not what you did, and look at what happened. And what about the enchantresses? Is it fine to protect some women, but not those others, simply because they practice magic? Are you the judge of all sinning women too?"
"That is unfair!" Lancelot roared. "They were using their sorcery to try and harm innocents!"
"That is true," Galahad conceded. "But herein lies the paradox of knighthood: you are told to protect, but what you really do is discriminate, pick and choose whom you should protect and whom you should kill. And war forces you to choose even more harshly, to decide to label one another enemies, to exchange one life for another as if they have more worth. But there is no inherent "worth", killing people is horrible regardless of whether or not they deserve it. It can sometimes be the only solution or even necessary, but it should never be mistaken as some kind of just act."
The cold wind picked up, becoming a sharper gust that cut through everything, Lancelot feeling a thousand cuts prickling his skin. His hands especially felt like fire creeping through his fingers. "Knighthood, chivalry, it is a monstrosity," Galahad continued, "a fifth monstrous Gospel justifying butchering in the name of pretty words or heroic motivations. When they made you the greatest knight in the world, Father, what they really did was make you the most violent warrior on earth, and its greatest murderer."
He paused, and Lancelot noticed for the first time that his big eyes were watery, full of unshed tears. "If Heaven is promised to the poor and earth to peacemakers," he asked, his voice trembling, "then what is left for soldiers?"
The pain had become unbearable, and, as if possessed, Lancelot took off his gauntlets, tossing them aside as he gritted his teeth against the discomfort.
The moment his skin was exposed, he froze. Horror washed over him as he stared at his hands, and he could smell a rusty odor on the air, on his tongue. His hands, from his nails to his wrists, were an angry, violent red, the color of dried blood.
He screamed.
The wind reached its paroxysm, and a great tearing sound was heard, as if a great veil had been torn. Above the knights, the gray clouds parted, and, in a discordant music reminiscent of a war horn blown from far, far away, taking shape as the light peeled away around them, angels came down.
Two flaps of a pale cloak or pair of wings falling to either side of body frames that, from what little could be seen, seemed, impossibly, made of wheels turning into and against each other. Veiled, almost featureless faces with blazing white eyes, many of them wearing flaming red swords. There were so many, so massive, their forms blocked most of the sky. They flew down in almost complete silence, gliding on sun rays, heading towards them.
In a panic, Lancelot forgot his red hands and gripped his sword, his warrior soul reacting faster than his common sense, his palms slick with blood struggling to hold the pommel properly.
"All is well, Father," Galahad said soothingly. "Do not fear. They are here for you."
Faster than he could realize, a flaming sword struck his hand still on the pommel. But the blade did not sear nor slice his flesh; instead, the fire softened it. The stink of burnt flesh filled his nose. His skin blistered, gurgled and fell away, the metal of the pommel screeching as it runneled down like wax, as the fire melted and fused flesh and metal together, charred black.
Tears blinded him as his sword hand became one in truth, he screamed, trying to force his fingers apart, but only managing add more pain. Some of the angels took hold of him, diaphanous hands passing through his armor and his clothes to touch his skin, grab his shoulders, his arms, his neck, his head, his hair. They pulled upwards, and he felt himself lifted off the earth.
Be not afraid, he thought incoherently, uselessly, even as he shivered in terror, wanting to vomit himself hollow.
But his feet did not lift off the ground. They were still pressed to the cold earth, and an odd sensation tingled beneath his feet, as if the ground was slowly growing warmer, as if alive, pulsing gently like a heartbeat and making queer smooching sounds, like it was bubbling. The angels kept pulling, but he stayed in place, as if stuck in a web.
The pulsing intensified, the soil trembling violently. Before he could process it, the ground erupted underneath him with a deafening roar. Multiple decomposed hands and arms burst forth, clawing at the air with urgency. The fingers were skeletal, blood red, and covered in decaying flesh charred to a crisp, grasping at nothing and everything. The scent of rot and cooked flesh filled his nostrils, overwhelming and sickening.
Hell, rising on a bubbling rush. Agony and wickedness grasping with famished glee.
A wave of fresh horror washed over him as the hands reached out and grabbed his ankles, desperately trying to pull him down into the depths of the earth, to the everlasting fire.
"Do not fear, Father" Galahad repeated, softly. "They are here for you, too. All your dead."
"No! No!" Lancelot screamed, but the ground quaked, and more arms shot up to grab him. As more of the ground fissured, he could catch a glimpse of what laid beneath: a veritable mountain of corpses, reaching down from Hades up to the earth, up to him. All the people he killed, piled up on top of each other, a flesh and blood Tower of Babel reaching to the god who had cast them down.
The angels kept pulling up, the damned kept pulling down, both with great force. Lancelot made inhuman noises as his straining body began to stretch, elongating far more than any human body should, suspended between above and below. The angels were unmoved by his pleas, and he felt his arms being ripped out of their sockets. The damned ignored his cries, and he felt the bones of his legs break, bone splits tearing like a knife through the muscles and tendons, puncturing the arteries. They were pulling his outside through his inside, inverting and exposing, baring his every tenderness to the world, to fire.
And he could do nothing to stop it. He was, after all, only the greatest knight on
this world.
There was no describing the horror.
Something snapped. Blood oozed from gashes grew longer and longer along his upper body, until there was a terrible, roaring sound like an old tree cracking apart, and all tore open. His entire thorax ripped open in a rain of blood, and emptied of everything soft, everything from esophagus to guts, rib cage like blood-streaked fingers sticking rigid out of sagging skin.
The angels carried the upper body still in its armor, still holding its sword fused to its hand, up to the heavens. The lower body and legs crashed to the ground, the still smoking entrails falling and dampening the earth, and the hands of the damned dragged organs and everything from the waist down below with them.
Only his heart remained, hitting the ground with a fleshy thud, like a rotten apple dropping from a tree into wet mud. Still madly beating, the organ slowly rolled across the earth in a bumpy, lopsided fashion with a purposeful, animated movement as it writhed and crawled like a living thing. It fell into the open maw of the grave, the hole left for the greatest knight in the world.
Quietly, muffled by the earthen walls, the thing in the hole began to weep.
And so it befell that, after half a year of travel and adventures, the white knight finally reached the last step of his journey, stepping foot onto the land of Listeneise, fief of the Maimed King, guardian of the Holy Grail and living in the Grail's castle of Corbenic.
He was finally back in his birthplace and homeland.
Galahad disembarked from the Ship of Solomon, the enchanted ship of his forefather which could magically sail itself and had brought him to these shores. He jumped from the railing onto the beach in one smooth movement, and patted the hull in silent thanks, treating the ship like a living creature. He could swear its wood groaned in satisfaction.
He waited a moment, but when no one else came down, he turned to the ship, puzzled.
"Are you not coming, Father?"
Another, older knight came to the railing, and his father looked down at him with a small smile. There was no denying their shared blood when they looked so much like each other. Lancelot of the Lake looked just like Galahad, if decades older, with a beard and some salt-and-pepper in his hair. That said, despite his age, the Knight of the Cart still looked handsome, as evinced when Galahad saw multiple women, not all of them maidens, and even some men, flock to his father during their six months questing together.
But this morning, deep seated dark circles beneath his eyes marred his face. Galahad frowned in concern: had he slept well last night?
"I will not follow you on your quest, Galahad," his father said, his voice sounding strange to his ears. His smile turned sad. "I have already failed once, the Grail is no longer for me to gain."
Galahad felt a pang of sadness in his chest. He had spent the last six months together with this man, this former stranger, the father he had never known. Learned about him, grew to care for him, and grew to love him. They made a good team, and he had hoped…he had prayed to find the Holy Grail together with his father, for them both to achieve this monumental task as a family. And, perhaps, if he could admit to this selfish part of him, to make him proud of him.
He had known the quest was closed off to Lancelot, but he had hoped their adventures would have changed his mind (whether he meant his father or the Father, even he was not fully sure). But it had been too foolish a hope.
"I…I understand, Father," he forced out through gritted teeth. "I wish you safe travels to Camelot then. Farewell." He quickly turned so he would not be seen crying.
"Galahad."
He stopped. He almost wished to turn back.
"Know that I am proud of you. That I will
always be proud of you. And…that I love you."
A calm, soft breeze blew, fluttering his hair on his wet cheeks. Galahad was reminded of the prophet Elijah being told of a sign to come out and meet God, ignoring a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire, and only coming out to meet his God when a gentle breeze blew. Galahad looked up at the sky, and the wide expanse of clear blue as the wind caressed his face. It calmed his heart.
Without turning, he addressed his father. "I love you too."
On those words, the knight of heavenly adventures adjusted his shield, and went forth to meet his destiny. He did not know this yet, but this would be the last time the two men saw each other alive.
Behind him, the knight of earthly knighthood heard the sound of a great wheel turn in his head, and sighed out of deep, dark exhaustion, his mind still full of the phantasms of last night. He sat at the helm, and the ship silently left the shore and headed back to sea, back to home. Back to Camelot.
Back to where Sir Lancelot of the Lake had the greatest name of any knight of the world, and where he was most honored high and low.
And Sir Lancelot of the Lake wept, like a child who had been beaten.
