Chapter 271: R'lyeh, Cthulhu Calls You to Dream
Eighteenth century France was, without question, a land of chaos and upheaval.
New ideas had risen like a tidal wave, crashing against the aristocratic powers of the old world. Yet the old nobility had never lacked methods of preserving themselves.
Among those beheaded by Charles Henri Sanson, the executioner, there had never been any shortage of scapegoats.
Those were substitutes prepared in advance by the great feudal nobles to face disaster. A puppet would be shaped, taught, dressed, and made to believe that he truly was the noble he imitated. Then, when the crisis came, that puppet would be pushed onto the scaffold while the real noble fled into the shadows.
"But this is the fifteenth century, and this is not an execution ground at all."
Mozart immediately refuted him, as if the crisis before them had ceased to exist.
"Do you really think the one who created this Singularity would need to deal with danger in such a way?"
"That is hard to say."
Charles remained unconvinced.
"One must prepare for danger even in times of peace. That is a saying I once heard from a magus of the East."
"No, no, no. It must be a clone."
"It is a puppet."
"A clone."
"A puppet."
"…"
Even Jeanne d'Arc herself found herself speechless.
Are these truly the heroes of later France?
She looked at Rowe, who stood before her, only to find Queen Marie looking back at her at the same time.
Marie pressed a hand lightly to her forehead and sighed.
"Forgive me. Just a moment."
"They are always like this."
Rowe waved a hand.
"It is fine. It is rather entertaining, is it not?"
"Hmm?"
Marie tilted her head, then smiled.
"Ah, yes. I suppose it is."
In truth, Marie quite liked the two men beside her. The sort of liking one reserved for old friends.
She knew both of them admired her. As a queen, she had long since given each of them a clear answer. But the bond they had shared since childhood was not something Marie Antoinette could cast aside, no matter the circumstances.
Perhaps this endless bickering was not so bad.
If only they could have grown old while arguing like this.
"Sorry, I lost focus for a moment."
Marie drew herself back to the present and looked at the pure and solemn Jeanne standing behind Rowe.
"You are Jeanne d'Arc herself, are you not?"
"An aura this pure. I should have realized it sooner."
Unlike Mozart and Charles, whose thoughts had run off into absurd directions, Marie had seen the truth the moment the Dragon Witch appeared.
The girl before her was not the witch.
She was the true savior of France.
The heroine whom all French people of later generations admired.
It was something Marie had not grasped before, but the moment the Witch and the Saint were placed side by side, the difference became too obvious to ignore.
If one were a puppet or a duplicate, then the two should not have felt so fundamentally different.
That was the truth.
Compared to the Saint before her, the Dragon Witch's aura was deeper, darker, and more burdened.
"That is exactly what I have been saying. You people are far too rude."
The voice that cut through the room was sharp enough to scrape the nerves.
The moment the Dragon Witch descended, both Mozart and Charles, still arguing with each other, froze in place. Marie, Rowe, and Jeanne all turned to look.
At the rear of the court hall, atop the stairs, the black clad girl stood glaring at them.
It was clear.
She thought she had been ignored.
Jeanne d'Arc gave a small start.
Had she noticed after all?
As expected of her other self.
Then Black Jeanne narrowed her eyes and sneered.
"I am the Dragon Witch, Jeanne d'Arc, the one who has come carrying resentment and wrath."
Jeanne's expression grew complicated.
So she had noticed.
Then again, that was only natural.
She was, after all, another Jeanne d'Arc.
And then Jeanne said quietly, almost helplessly, "Hmm. Well… she is certainly not as pure and beautiful…"
"…"
That was too much.
Far too much.
The anger in the Witch's expression instantly sharpened.
"You…"
At that instant, an enormous surge of magical energy erupted from Black Jeanne's body.
The magical energy she possessed was terrifying, enough to place her among the highest tier of Heroic Spirits. Her very existence had been woven from Gilles de Rais' wish to the Holy Grail.
The Grail's immense magical energy had formed her Spirit Origin.
And the incomplete workings of the Third Magic had shaped her soul.
The air distorted all around her.
The radiant court of France blackened, scorched by the image of furious flames. Mozart's forehead was slick with sweat. Charles gripped his executioner's blade tightly. Queen Marie let out a slow breath.
"So this is the inverted Jeanne d'Arc…"
Her eyes never left Rowe and Jeanne.
A Saint and a Holy Maiden.
Jeanne summoned her own fleur de lis banner into her hand. Looking at the other self before her, filled with resentment, her expression became even more complicated.
"I told you already."
Rowe knew exactly what Jeanne was thinking.
"This is your duty."
"It is yours to resolve. I will not interfere."
"Thank you for your kindness."
"This is not kindness."
Rowe smiled and reached out, ruffling Jeanne's hair. Jeanne's blue eyes narrowed slightly, and for a brief instant she seemed to return to long ago, to the little church in the countryside where a village girl had once prayed and received her first revelation from God.
She lowered her head, listening.
"Everyone has their own role to play. That one is not the real you, but she exists because of you. Dragon Witch Jeanne should be resolved by Saint Jeanne d'Arc."
"As for me, I have another duty."
He withdrew his hand.
Jeanne inhaled deeply.
Power stirred within her.
This was revelation from God.
And it was also the power of Saint Jeanne d'Arc herself.
"I understand."
"You truly are all underestimating me."
Black Jeanne's voice rang out again.
Her teeth were bared in frustration, like a child who had been deliberately denied attention.
She was a witch, not a saint. She did not possess the perceptive clarity of Jeanne d'Arc, so she still had not realized Rowe's true identity. But that only made her more irritated.
That man was not even looking at her properly.
He was treating her like an afterthought.
It made her furious.
"Today, not one of you will leave this place alive."
The jet black banner in her hand rose high.
Her cloak whipped violently in the magical storm.
A flood of mana tore through the Reality Marble and reached beyond it, and behind her a colossal shadow began to take shape.
It was not Fafnir, who had already been subdued by Rowe.
It was another dragon.
An entirely different, chaotic, evil dragon.
The Dragon Witch herself was not of draconic blood. Unlike King Arthur, she possessed no dragon core and no inherited connection to dragonkind.
But perhaps because she had been created by the Holy Grail as an inverted reflection of Jeanne d'Arc, some element of the saintly authority of figures like Martha and Saint George had been twisted within her.
The result was the authority to command evil aligned dragons.
The inverse of Saint Martha.
The inverse of Saint George.
The massive dragon behind her unfurled wings covered in black scales like those of Fafnir. Its shadow swallowed the ceiling of the palace whole, and a crushing Dragon's Might descended with it.
Mozart and Charles both felt their breathing seize.
The Dragon Witch, through the power to command dragonkind alone, was enough to contend with several powerful Servants at once.
And now she meant to settle everything here.
Including that other self of hers.
All enemies.
Queen Marie's Reality Marble had already been shattered. Naturally, the manifestation of another evil dragon could no longer be hidden from those outside.
Siegfried rose to his feet almost at once.
Fafnir too lifted his vast and ferocious head.
"That is…"
"The previous Fafnir?"
The cursed dragon line of Fafnir had never belonged to one individual alone.
The Dragon Slayer was fated to inherit the dragon's curse. From the very beginning, Fafnir had been less a single being than a recurring name.
The one Siegfried had slain had been the final Fafnir.
But the Dragon Witch's authority had not only called upon him.
It had called upon all the Fafnirs that had come before.
"An evil dragon, huh…"
Siegfried tightened his grip on the greatsword in his hand.
His first instinct was to rush toward the source of that draconic aura.
But before he could move, his steps stopped.
Fafnir's cold golden eyes rotated as well, turning toward a point even farther away.
In the courtyard, Fujimaru Ritsuka sprang upright in bed, already pulling on her white Chaldea combat uniform.
"Mash, is it an enemy attack?"
She looked toward Mash, who stood by the window in her tight black armor, the suit tracing the curve of her body.
Mash did not answer immediately.
She only held her shield tighter, pink hair stirring lightly as she stared into the distant sky.
Her eyes widened.
Her lips parted.
It was as though she had seen something impossible.
Ritsuka was startled and rushed to the window as well.
And then she saw it.
The sky.
Night still stretched above them, but the stars were gone.
Over the heart of France, where Paris stood, vast water vapor gathered into a magnificent mist like a sea suspended in the heavens. Countless streams of water rose from the earth itself, linking heaven and ground, like pillars upholding the dome of a colossal palace.
No.
Not like a palace.
It was a palace.
Because beneath it, seated as though upon a throne in the void, was a colossal being. Tentacles extended in every direction, lashing and striking the watery expanse, each impact sounding like the measured beat of a royal drum.
What was that?
What in the world was that?
Queen Marie's ruined palace court continued to dissolve into light.
All the Servants present fell grave in the same instant.
They felt it.
A pressure more terrible than before.
A threat on an entirely different level.
Even the Dragon Witch did.
Roar.
The earlier Fafnir behind her raised its head and screamed toward the heavens.
It was not the proud cry of a dragon asserting dominance.
It was the shrill warning of a beast that had sensed something it should never have faced.
Black Jeanne also looked upward.
She watched the falling tentacles sweep through the sky, raising a violent storm.
She watched endless water vapor pour down as if the sea itself were descending upon the world.
What was this?
The Dragon Witch could not understand.
The others understood even less.
Only Rowe smiled.
"I said it already."
"Everyone has their own duty."
"And that thing…"
"is mine."
His voice echoed throughout the world.
In Paris itself, atop the grand castle and above the palace roofs, there was another figure who held a book bound in human skin high over his head.
"Sleeping God, Lord of R'lyeh…"
"Please awaken."
Gilles de Rais' face was ecstatic with fanatic joy.
He had grown even thinner than before. His eyes bulged nearly from their sockets, and the veins around them writhed like worms. His hands, raised in prayer, were little more than skin stretched over tendon and bone, like dead wood ready to snap.
He looked weak.
Ancient.
Nearly broken.
And yet his spirit blazed with impossible excitement.
Because he had seen it.
Once, he had been a devout Catholic.
Once, he had prayed to the Lord without ceasing.
But he had never received an answer.
Now, at last, he had truly seen a god.
An existence from the ultimate abyss of the cosmos.
He had seen…
"The Great Old Ones."
"Oh eternal existence…"
"Bestow your mercy upon your believers."
"Shelter us."
"Cleanse this filthy world."
The enormous figure seated above the impossible palace flicked its tentacles, and the drumming sound stopped.
Then came tremors.
Shudders.
The world itself seemed ready to split open.
Two lights slowly opened above that vast shape.
Eyes.
And yet they resembled nothing so much as the whirlpools hidden in the deepest seabed vents.
They carried an endless chill.
An endless chaos.
An endless terror that made the heart tremble.
The night went completely black.
A monstrous malice spread across the land in an instant.
Countless people shook themselves awake from confusion, only to find bronze architecture rising all around them.
Then came the tolling of bells.
Deep, ancient bells.
The sound seemed to come from the end of time itself.
The people stood amid that pealing resonance and felt a single terrible impulse.
To kneel.
To kneel before the figure seated upon the throne in the void.
To kneel before the presence enthroned at the center of that impossible palace.
The great being had awakened here.
R'lyeh, long hidden beneath the sea, had risen.