Chapter 272: My Lord Is Here
Long, long ago, before humanity had even been born, the universe belonged to the Great Old Ones.
At that time, darkness covered the face of creation. The abyss was black as seawater, and within that endless void drifted chaotic, unspeakable bodies that illuminated the cosmos in their own terrible way.
Each Great Old One claimed a star as its own and built upon it a palace befitting an ancient god.
Among them was the city called R'lyeh.
It had been created by Cthulhu, the Sleeping Lord among the Great Old Ones, and it was his eternal dwelling.
When the era of the Great Old Ones passed, the abyss receded and the universe was remade. That palace of the ancient gods did not truly vanish.
It merely sank into the deepest sea, a place even primordial beings could scarcely reach.
And now, in this Singularity, the black abyss had appeared once more.
The magnificent palace, veiled in mist, rose from the depths of the sea and spread its shadow across all of France.
It was already night, yet the darkness now was not the darkness of ordinary evening.
Water vapor filled the world like a rising tide. A pressure vast enough to crush the earth echoed between heaven and sky, and an unbearable screech like claws raking across a steel helm tore at the ears of all who heard it.
Cities, roads, villages, fields.
From beneath the ground, countless writhing figures crawled upward.
Their bodies were covered in dense scales. Their claws and teeth were sharp, their faces split with fish like gills that opened and closed with wet, flapping sounds.
They climbed.
They writhed.
They crawled.
Webbed hands pressed against the earth, leaving behind cold, wet tracks. Their heads were oversized and piscine, or else shaped like grotesque octopi with spread and writhing flesh. Crimson eyes glimmered in the dark, while blue green streams of light flickered across their bodies.
"What are those things...?"
Countless people stopped in shock.
And then the slaughter began.
In Orléans, where the villages lay amid fields and irrigation ditches, a young man had his arm torn clean off before he even understood what he was looking at. A fleeing woman stumbled and fell, only to be trampled beneath a tide of flapping feet.
The peace of the night shattered in an instant.
Order collapsed at once.
An old man with a failing body fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Before him stood one of the cold skinned fish men, its claws already stretching toward him.
He was too old to run.
So the old man closed his eyes and prayed for the Lord's salvation.
This was the Middle Ages, after all. Faith covered the age like air, and nowhere more so than here in France.
Yet in the next moment, a low voice sounded through the darkness beyond his shut eyes.
"Elder, are you alright?"
The old man opened his eyes.
The monster before him had already been cut in two.
A silver haired man in silver armor stood there with a greatsword in hand, shaking pale blue blood from the blade. Behind him were more split corpses.
The old man's lips trembled.
You are...?
"My name is Siegfried."
The Dragon Slayer raised his sword again, his gaze already fixed on the horrifying sight in the distance, his brow drawn tight.
What in the world is that...?
He did not know.
But merely looking toward Paris, even from this distance, filled him with an overpowering sense of chaos and madness.
Do not look directly at it.
Do not look directly at chaos.
Do not look directly at madness.
The warning surged through his mind like a blow. Siegfried immediately turned his eyes away, yet even that brief glance had made his skull throb.
"I will trouble you to lead everyone to a safe place."
"Roar!"
A deafening roar followed his words, and only then did the old man notice the huge evil dragon behind him.
But after witnessing the events of the day, after seeing Saint Jeanne ride an evil dragon through the city, the old man no longer panicked. On the contrary, he calmed down.
"Are you one of Lady Jeanne's companions?"
"Yes."
Siegfried did not deny it.
He knew that in times like this, the name Jeanne alone was enough to steady the hearts of the people.
Behind him, Fafnir spread his wings.
He was a cursed evil dragon, but he had once been human. His existence still extended from humanity, and so when necessary, he was not stingy about sheltering mortals.
There is never absolute good or evil in this world.
At the right moment, even evil can stand on the side of good.
Especially when confronted by something still more hideous.
"Senpai, what are those things?"
"Doctor Roman, Doctor Roman... no, the signal cut out again!"
Fujimaru Ritsuka and Mash ran through the dense mist. Mash raised her shield and smashed one aquatic monster after another aside, the strength of her Servant frame fully manifesting.
Her short pink hair fluttered in the turbulent air, and Ritsuka's red hair clung to her face with damp.
Inside Chaldea, Romani Archaman and Da Vinci wore equally grim expressions. The communication had been severed again, and on Chaldea's observation systems, the Singularity was now entirely buried beneath a vortex of chaos.
The anomaly had descended.
And it was still spreading.
This was already far beyond the disaster the Incineration of Humanity should have produced, and far beyond what the human order foundation of the French Singularity should have allowed.
"Vlad III..."
A low voice sounded, and countless blood red stakes erupted from the earth, skewering the attacking aquatic monsters where they stood.
White hair swayed in the wind. The elderly man in the heavy black coat gripped his long spear as he stared toward Paris, his expression dark.
It was obvious enough.
This was not the Dragon Witch's doing.
This was Gilles de Rais.
"Originally, I had planned to retake the city occupied by the enemy, form a reverse encirclement, and establish a portion of..."
The Romanian Grand Duke, the only one here who had been seriously trying to wage proper war with proper tactics, pressed his fingers to his brow.
He felt a headache coming on.
"Oh, battle! Battle!"
Beowulf, who had arrived alongside Vlad, plunged into the monsters like a madman, his fists smashing them apart one after another.
Queen Marie's Reality Marble had already broken entirely, and what lay outside it was once again the wilderness of Orléans. Grass rippled in the wind. The sky was swallowed by a dark vortex. Endless streams of water rose between earth and heaven.
It was a true vision of the end.
And it was something the Dragon Witch had never expected.
"Gilles... what has that fool done?"
The black clad witch stood with her evil dragon banner in hand, golden eyes narrowed in open irritation.
She was angry.
Gilles de Rais.
What exactly had he done behind her back?
"I leave this to you."
"Leave it to me, Your Grace."
Rowe's gaze fell on Jeanne.
Jeanne's expression turned solemn at once, the fleur de lis banner in her hand beginning to glow in the darkness.
Rowe looked upward.
He bent his knees slightly.
Then, with a faint tremor underfoot and a violent burst of force from the ground, he shot into the heavens. His target was the palace above, and the colossal figure enthroned within it.
Cthulhu.
One of the Great Old Ones.
The Sleeping Lord of the Abyss.
That was his opponent.
That was the true enemy he had to face.
"Don't go!"
Though she did not understand what Gilles de Rais was trying to do, the Dragon Witch still regarded everyone before her as enemies. Especially Rowe.
For reasons even she herself could not fully explain, she felt an intense interest in that man she had never met before.
Thus her magic surged. The evil dragon banner in her hand snapped wildly. Behind her, the former Fafnir roared toward the sky.
It wanted to fly after Rowe.
It wanted to stop him from leaving.
But in the next instant, an unbroken flood of holy light fell above its head like a direct manifestation of divine authority. Fafnir slammed into it and ripples spread across the barrier, but it did not break.
The Dragon Witch bared her teeth and sneered at the sight.
Across the desolate fields, Saint Jeanne d'Arc lifted the banner in her hand and said, "Your opponent is me."
The Witch looked behind Jeanne.
There was nothing there.
No one.
Marie, Mozart, and Charles had all withdrawn the instant Rowe rose into the sky.
The exchange had been completed in a single moment.
The Witch would be left to Jeanne d'Arc.
"Queen Marie, are you truly alright with this?"
Within the mist shrouded world, Mozart's voice held concern as he looked back toward the radiant curtain formed by the unfurled fleur de lis.
Marie pressed her lips together.
"Do not worry."
"She is..."
"Our Saint of National Salvation."
"Saint of National Salvation? The saint who saved France? What a joke."
Behind Jeanne, Fafnir had already descended to the earth again. The Witch's golden eyes only grew colder. She looked at the young girl before her, or rather at the fleur de lis banner in her hand, and let out a mocking laugh.
The fleur de lis was the emblem of France, and the banner Jeanne had once carried across the battlefield had become, in this age, a symbol of victory, glory, and miracle.
But to the Witch, it was nothing but ridicule.
"Your victories only delivered this country back into their hands. Your glory was never yours."
"You were betrayed, sold, judged, and finally burned alive."
"What did you gain?"
The sharp words poured from her mouth.
She was not the real Jeanne d'Arc, but she had been shaped by the Grail from Gilles de Rais' wish, from the image of the Saint he had desired after her resurrection.
As a result, she possessed all of Jeanne's memories.
She knew Jeanne's life.
She knew Jeanne's suffering.
And above all, she knew the torment, loneliness, and resentment Jeanne had once felt in her cage while awaiting judgment.
The bribed archbishop had called her a witch rather than a saint.
Countless people had feared her.
Countless people had looked upon her with disgust.
And among them were Frenchmen.
French nobles.
People she had saved.
Resentment was only natural.
Jeanne d'Arc could not deny that.
"I did resent them."
Jeanne gripped her banner more tightly, her clear voice carrying through the storm and mist.
"In the final moments of my life, after being betrayed, I truly resented them."
Jeanne d'Arc, called a saint by the world, beloved by God, was still only a young girl in the end.
She was very young.
No matter how resolute she was, she could never become some emotionless still water.
Such things do not exist.
Calmness only belongs to those who have never yet been wounded where they cared most.
And being betrayed by the very people she had fought to protect was, at that time, exactly such a wound.
She had given everything.
And what had she received in return?
Chains.
A trial.
A pyre.
Even a saint could not face such things without pain.
That, perhaps, was why Gilles de Rais had been able to summon the Dragon Witch at all.
Because Jeanne d'Arc truly had once carried resentment within her.
"However... when I stood upon the execution platform, when the flames rose around me, when I looked back at the nobles in their fine clothes watching me burn, and when I looked beyond them toward this homeland, toward my home..."
"I understood something."
Her voice remained gentle.
It did not waver beneath the Witch's cutting words, nor collapse beneath the weight of old pain.
"I had not been betrayed."
The Witch froze.
"What I protected was never those richly dressed nobles. What I wished to protect was never the self righteous people who stood above others and gave orders."
For perhaps the first time, words far sharper than Jeanne's usual nature emerged from her lips.
And yet the smile on her face remained soft.
"France does not belong to the nobles."
"It belongs to those ordinary people no one cared about. The people who had no voice, who were not even treated as human beings in truth."
"That is the France I wished to protect."
"That is the France in my heart."
"Even if the end of that path was death..."
"I still do not regret what I did."
"Because it was my own will."
"And because the Lord allowed me to know it."
The fleur de lis unfurled freely, radiant in the dark. A responding light seemed to bloom in the heavens themselves.
Saint Jeanne d'Arc's words struck the Witch head on.
Her eyes widened slightly.
For an instant, her mind seemed to go blank.
Behind her, the former Fafnir continued roaring, but she could no longer hear it.
In that moment, she heard only solemn music.
And the voice of the Saint.
"No matter the past."
"No matter the present."
"No matter the future."
"Where this banner stands..."
"My Lord is here."