Quote:Jorlem wrote:For my purposes, the fundamental blockage preventing Saber from attaining it in canon was her own lack of faith in her subjects' relationship with her - consider it along the lines of why Luke Skywalker couldn't lift his X-wing on Dagobah. It's an explanation that satisfies me, at least.
Her issues with the Round Table are the reason for her intended wish in F/SN, as what she saw of, and was told by, Rider, combined with her encounter with Lancelot at the end of F/Z, where she witnessed the hatred he held for her, led her to believe that anyone could have done a better job as king than she did.
But yeah, as you said, this is just a crack fic, and I probably shouldn't be devoting this much time thinking about it.
In the meantime, Santa!
The core of the ritual he had come to destroy, the Greater Grail and the mystic enchantments that empowered it, lay in a cavern, deep beneath the city of Fuyuki. Moisture dripped endlessly down the living stone walls, and the shadowed space was lit only by the scarlet light bleeding up from the intricate tracery of mystic sigils filling the entire floor. Ahead of him, a pale form, swathed in blackness, waited.
For a moment, under the calling to forgiveness he’d learned from God’s grace and the insight and faith of children all the way across the world, Nicholas of Myra felt the old, hungry, angry grin tug at his lips, the same expression that had led the pack of his cohorts as they fell upon their rivals in the streets of a long-vanished days.
It would be good to fight again.
The shell that the corruption was wearing had passed on to her reward long ago; he felt no compunction over the way its jaw shattered under his fist, no more than he was concerned by the wave of black mud that he had dashed past to land the blow.
The black oil began to spread across the cavern floor, limned in scarlet light and burning away with emerald fire where his feet fell, and in places it humped upwards, extending into wavering pseudopods that grew spindly, malformed limbs, clay golems of congealed evil like a toddler’s clumsy efforts to sculpt a human figure.
A casual swat dissolved the one in his way and let him lay hands on the core of the putrefaction again, burying one fist in its stomach and then seizing its long silver hair to drag its already ruined face into his striking knee.
He pulled the thing upright and drew back his free hand to strike it again, and then one of the slime-golems wrapped its gelatinous arms around the wrist and began pulling. Rider shook the thing off, only to find several more swarming him and giving his real enemy time to pull its shell free and disengage, leaving more rising lumps of filth with each step.
Clearly, he’d be unable to finish his target with its minions climbing all over them, and they were growing stronger with time.
Fortunately, he had an answer to that.
Out of the shadows faded twisted, ugly figures, hooved with leering faces and long, goatlike horns, and twisted, ugly staves in their clawed hands, which waded into the mud-creatures with gleeful cackles, diverting them as he struck the Grail’s core over the head with interlaced fists, driving it to the ground so that he could put the boot in.
Which he did as a chorus of splattering crunches rose from behind him - then shouted as it wrapped a slender, black-razored hand around one of his ankles and yanked it out from under him, tumbling him down into the mud in a splash of green fire.
It started to crawl over him, to try and sink its talons into, him but he kicked it away.
He heard one of his krampus begin to scream in pain as the mudmen pulled it down.
Something was wrong, he was missing something.
The Grail’s vessel pounced on him, eerily silent despite its mangled face and shattered ribs, and his coat tore as its hands clenched and ripped at him, driving him back.
How had it gotten so strong? What was driving its increasing resistance to his wrath? What fury of its own?
Abruptly, as though God had whispered the answer in his ear, he realized the trick of it, and it made him feel foolish.
Of course.
The corruption of this desperate effort to reach for the power of the divine had come from the avatar of all the evils of the world. Every sin, every unfed mouth, every weakness and every despair.
And every blow thrown. He could not defeat it with his fists, because to strike was, itself, an evil, even when a lesser one than letting wickedness go unopposed. His struggle against it only fed the monster as it tried to devour him.
But he had another answer within him, antithetical to its nature - and, he knew, the stronger. Nicholas relaxed, and closed his eyes, and let the rising mud take him.
For what was the spirit of Christmas but all the love in the world?
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."