The court of Calot... A place where I had found great comfort once. It's tapestries of grand quests and glory-filled tales. The knights that strode its halls and andered with the high-ladies of Britannia, all a symbol of the prestige she herself, as the King of Kings had amassed...
Now, it was but a desolate corpse of what once was. A burning reminder of what my life had been before my constant failures. Before the incineration of everything, before the very life of this planet had been snuffed by the unmitigated existential threat of ti itself.
If you were to ask what had caused this, I would scoff at you, ask you to look around only for you to find only standing there, cursed energy of a cursed King leaking out sombrely into the starkly grey space around myself. My inaction and lack of choice bound this world to the abandonnt of Divinity... The last and final judgent of God.
The downfall of this world began with the manifestation of a so-called 'holy grail', a chalice of potent magic power and so said divinity. It's existence was rumoured even in my court, the kingdoms and by word of mouth. My belief in such fairy tales was sceptical at best, downright unbelieving at worst... Yet, Lancelot wished to take off on a quest for this grail, to mould its power for Britannia's benefit.
The first step towards my path of constant indecision and failure. I bid him due, gave him only the smallest support I could... My opinion of this farcical story beyond derision, and sent him off personally. Months after his departure, my ears heard the windfall of his death, the proof of the Grail's existence and the warfare that was consuming entire countries near the Athenians. I had failed one of my own Knights out of my own prejudice.
Determined not to make the sa mistakes as I did previously, I convened the round table. Galahad, Gawain, Gareth, Percival and Tristan sat before and listened to the news of Lancelot's death, the massive warfare across Europa and my plan to take this Grail for Britannia. This was the second step.
My own round table attempted to dissuade from my quest to take the Grail in recompense for Lancelot's life. Yet I would bear no dissent for my plots, a faint flare of anger causing to lash out at them as I fled my own table... Arrogance, I could recognise amidst the ashes now. And thus, Britannia was split, the knights disagreeing with their king and swearing not to aid in my selfish quest for revenge. I was angered beyond belief. Revenge hot in my mind... Lancelot's death was my own fault, yet these 'people' seed not to care, was the thoughts that subrged my mind no matter how much I attempted to drain them away.
Doubting my own ntal stability, despite my better judgent, I visited the wise mage, rlin, seeking his wisdom in such matters. The third step was just taken. When I arrived at his tower the stench of blood and dilapidation of his abode set on edge imdiately. Entering I found only refuse and carrion, the body of rlin pulped and sared across the room, a single figure standing before with a floating grimoire present and a wicked grin along her face.
"Oh King of Kings... how fortuitous of us to et on the eve of such a grand quest?" She had crooned towards , her words buttery smooth and resembling the honeys found within oaken forests. She was the opposite to rlin, the one who wished to usurp Britannia in the past, Morgan Le Fay. I rose my trusty sword of Kings, pointing it at the vile woman as Excalibur humd at my side, in preparation for combat.
"Why so hasty? Are you so deluded as to think I am here in the intention of causing Britannia harm...?" She had been, the beginning of the fourth step being taken as I listened to her sweetened utterances, slowly being convinced that she was there to gain sothing from , once I got the grail. It made wonderful sense at the ti, she would aid to get the grail, through which I could bring back Lancelot and rlin... Potentially even use so of the spare power to bless Britannia for the rest of the world's existence.
I was a FOOL. So twisted by her words was I that I ignored that she had invaded my ally's abode and slaughtered him. So caught in the fluxing potential for power was I that I ignored my own assembled knights. Chained and shackled within the curse I did not yet know Morgan had placed upon , I was lulled towards taking the armies of Britannia to war... For sothing that had already lost and my kingdom it's knights and greatest Mage.
Step after step, I fell down the mountain-side of delusion... The magic of Morgan Le Fay creeping deeper into my mind, like a viper. Yet, I had the sense that this is what I secretly wished for... Power. Even now, in the ruins I could understand that my own ambition, my own need to protect those who were already satisfied, fuelled these violent and despotic actions. This culminated into the execution of each of my own Knights by the hand of Morgan herself, the enslavent of the Britannian people into conscripted armies. Armadas sent half way across the continent of Europa to fight for a 'divine' relic that couldn't bring peace.
Millions died in agony and bloodshed. Spears were wet with blood, maces thick in the viscous brain matter of enemy and friend alike, and arrows pock-marking the ground in a transformative downpour of focussed slaughter. My armour grew heavier with each maligned step forwards. Excalibur whined and scread in terror as I wielded it to commit atrocity after atrocity. Genocide flourished, the claim for such violence rely being the promised power of this sickly artefact.
Heroes fell in the arms of their loved ones. Demi-Gods wept as their empires, kingdoms or loved ones were struck down before their very eyes, Excalibur tearing itself apart at the sight of such tornt. I was tearing myself apart as I had identified that I was controlled... Hate flowed through like a tempest, and yet I could not break free of the witch's tainted magics, her commands growingly desperate.
Most of my army layed dead at my feet before the glowing chalice of godly golden light, piles of armoured kinsn implanted upon pikes or slowly dying from suffocation. Then, her hold over snapped, my will shining back through at the exact mont her sickly hands landed upon the chalice. Excalibur purred into action at the instant I awoke, yet it was too late... My failure to resist her will, my lack of caring to actually attempt to... Had cursed the world to the fate I now am solely alive to experience forever.
"FINALLY! I CAN GET RID OF THE GNATS!" Morgan's voice echoed over the mountain tops as golden-red light exploded around her and up into the sky. Mana was being sequestered away from the hands of mortals at her wishes, her goal was to strip mana from every being until only she had it... Gods, she disdained them...
The final step of my self-defeating, apocalyptic campaign was taken as I surged towards the grail and split it in half... The wish dispersing upon the winds of the spiritual world, magical world and real world, only for my own wish for death to seep into the VERY real holy grail... The one created by 'God'.
Ti unravelled in seconds as mana was flushed from everything. Darkness took over the sky as orange-gold light split the sky into infinitely expanding crevices of, sothing. Morgan, the witch who was now covered with hundreds of different versions of herself gasped for breath. Every living being on the battlefield mimicked her gasps, n and won falling over or onto their knees as the very existence of 'them' was eradicated.
Lucid entangled images sheathed every living thing as the life of the entire planet was snuffed, the chalice floating upwards into the sky and rotating as it's inner size spilled out into real space. Blood flowed from the inside over the world, drowning everyone with mine and Morgan's wish.
Doom was brought low upon us, our follies given form to punish us... in the visage of ti dying. Air was swept from my lungs as I collapsed onto my stomach, pain being a trifling descriptor for what this equated to. Consciousness faded from as I felt the entire world roar out in pain, like an entity that had been immune to pain experiencing it for the first ti. The final words that I ever heard from soone was akin to a small child's weeping, sobbing, cries.
"W-why did you have to destroy my creation...?"
...
And now I stood, alone. Excalibur barely alive as it most likely expended the majority of its divinity to ensure my survival, the cracks through my tiline barely held together with the divine energy granted to by God himself through Excalibur's powers.
My mind replayed each mont before that final child's crying query, a curse of a destroyed world of my own making. Yet, the hope that I would have been able to change sothing had I soone close to , lingered, hauntingly... The final ever dreary thought, query, question of the last living being, creature, on the planet.
'If only I had soone... to talk to... To be with... To take comfort within their embrace. To have been able to stop from dooming an entire world to death.'
I wandered around the decimated corpse of Earth, looking at the empty husks of Empires, Kingdoms, Republics, Cities, Villages, Towns and even military camps. Watching as the only thing that now dripped from the sky was a musky ash of oblivion, the void coming ever closer to this world, a hole of the most dull Onyx slowly gathering in what once could be described as the sky.
A super massive chalice standing by my side, collapsed and empty. It's size equivalent to the alps of Europa. Now bereft of all holiness and divinity, a scorched mory of what was and could have been should I not have had interfered. Tears would have slipped down my face had I not already shed every single ounce of water within ...
"Kill . End . God." I spoke, but there was no one to listen, the presence of God having already faded away from this world.
I dropped to my knees and stared at the ashen dirt below , all grass having faded away by this point of apocalyptic ending. My hopes, held preciously like a baby within the arms of a mother, slowly began to snuff out as the weight of my part in this took the borders of my will to survive.
Months, minutes, seconds... Ti was inconsequential now... But it felt like each of them had passed since I sat here. Looking up, the void was closer now. That wasn't what had awoken however. Sothing was calling to .
A bright figure of pure radiance and brightness, not unlike the God or Gods that had been ruling over her ruined world. Its hand reached forwards, as if asking to stand once again. To rise. Hesitation took for instants but sothing with stirred and forced to take that hand.
And there, for the first ti in forever, I saw a living being... A woman of such divine radiance that I found myself speechless at her beauty. 'Was this my soone...?'
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