Oh, Butterfly, Which One Is The Dream?
It’s night when it dawns on her that Bedivere is not coming back.
There is no no trigger to that realization, no dramatic epiphany. She opens her eyes, vision still blurred by dreams, and thinks: ah. He left for good.
Her body aches. Her soul aches. The pain pulses through her whole being like a heartbeat of its own.
She tries to get up, but she finds that she cannot move. The blood has dried into a thick crush jamming her joints. It takes her an eternity to flex her fingers. She tries to move an arm next, but something is holding her back. Something is wrapped around her flesh. There are roots around her flesh. How long has she been here?
Her memory is failing. It was night when she realized that Bedivere would not be coming back. How long since that epiphany? How long since Bedivere left at all?
She pulls with all her might. The roots tear and break under the strain. Some remain in the intersection between her armor and her skin. She does not have the strength to take them out, so they remain here.
It’s exhausting. She’s so tired. Just breathing fills her lungs with pain. She pulls with her other arm. Again. And again. And again. That single effort is enough to get her panting. She blinks, and-
-she’s standing on a bridge in a city she has never seen before. She’s not clad in armor. She’s wearing casual clothes foreign to Camelot. There is a boy with her. He is yelling.
She yells back. This idiot, this hypocrite- how dare he, how dare he ask her to give up on Britain, when hecan’t even cherish his own life? The boy screams and she bites, an anger unlike anything she has ever felt before twisting her guts. He storms off in rage. She watches him walk away, becoming smaller and smaller, until she is alone. At loss as to what to do, she blinks, and-
-she’s crawling through bodies. Her legs won’t keep her upright, but she has to move regardless. She has to get to Camelot. She has to get to Camelot. She has to get to Camelot.
Her hands sink deep in the rotting flesh. The flesh of her men. Of Mordred’s men. The flesh of the men of Britain. People she had sworn to protect, people she had failed.
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but she has to keep going. There is still something she can save. There is still something she can do. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. She closes her eyes, just for a second-
-she’s fighting an archer dressed in red. He’s sneering at her. Insulting her wish. Insulting her ideals. She should be offended, but she only finds it terribly sad. This broken man is raging and spitting, miserable beyond word, and she has nothing to give him other than her pity.
The boy is here too. He argues with the archer. The two of them will exchange blows soon. They each have an ideal to defend. She wipes the sweat off her brow-
(Which one is the dream? She cannot tell. Which one is the dream? She cannot remember. Camlann or this boy? Camelot or that archer? Which one? Which one?)
She reaches the castle at last. The white walls are stained in blood. There is no one left alive here. Her knights are gone. Her people have run away. Her country is crumbling.
She stumbles into the treasury. Quite a lot of her riches are missing. Good. Maybe they will keep someone alive out there.
She leans against the wall for support. The lance, the lance. She needs the lance. Her gaze wander across the room, and she blinks-
-mud, mud everywhere, around her ankles in her lungs something terrible seeping in her marrow. She opens her mouth to scream, but the sound is drowned by that dark flow. Finally, that divine darkness reaches her eyes, and-
-her hands close around Rhongomyniad.
The first change is her body. The light seeps beneath her skin like water, washing away her pains and injuries. Her cuts mend themselves. Her burns heal. In the span of a few seconds, a decade worth of growth hit her; her bones elongate, her muscles grow, the simple right to grow old given back to her.
The second change is her-
The boy is begging her to be a person for once-
The second change is-
The second change-
Mud, mud, all around her inside of her twisting her into something else-
Fear seizes her. The light is everywhere. The light is choking her. It’s in her lungs, in her marrow, the lights is everywhere and she knows the feeling of divinity forcing itself upon her, warping everything until she fit its mold, it may be light but it can’t possibly be any better than darkness it’s going to change her it’s going to make her into a god it’s going to make her into someone harmful for Britain it’s going to
No.
She refuses. She won’t. This is her country. If the dragon is a threat to Britain, then she simply has to remove it. Even if, especially if, that dragon is herself.
The light is flooding the back of her mouth. She only has but a moment. And so she does the only thing she can do.
The King of Knights falls asleep, and Artoria Pendragon wakes up in a sea of mud.
KaosPrime: God damn that was a good read. It was really interesting reading as she's flashing between past/present/future and not being able to tell which is her actual place in time.
ankia: this is a nice read, for the king who is supposed to be not humane to reject the divinity and still stubbornly fights for the country that is already in ruins...thank you for writing this
AmorousNinja: Iiiiiiiinteresting! I like this take on Lancer Alter. And well-written! I found it easy to follow despite how dreamlike and nonlinear Artoria's visions are.
anta_permana: verse holy fuck you have way with words please the weave of emotions here is delicious and aishbebrbbd lartoria