AN: Yes, this prompt is familiar. If you're a fan of this ship and haven't been living under a rock, you'll notice more than a few similarities with another entry on Ao3. It's called "Once And Future King" by TheBleachDoctor. It's really good, and the concept has really enamored me, as you can tell by the fact I'm trying my hand at the prompt.
Bottom line for the few that haven't read it, and even fewer that don't intend to, Seiba gets issekai'd into the future without any of the convenient grail knowledge.
Shoutout to MayaThePhoenix, my usual and bestest beta, for reality checking my characterizations and plot points. They played a huge part in getting my other fic off the ground and well into 100k words as well.
Summary (Can't fit it on )
Amidst the ashes of a fallen kingdom, it's final king laid to rest atop the smoldering corpses. One she'd lead to prosperity. One she'd cherish and protect. She had been mistaken. Mortally wounded, The Proud king makes a final plea to the world in a desperate attempt for a chance to set right what she had once wronged - and it listened.
Thrust into the unknown, among strangely-garbed people and bustling, glaring lights that blinded her addling vision. Lifeblood ebbing away, she'd resigned it all to a fantasy. A quaint, fevered dream from a dying woman, offered the pettiest of comforts in absurdity.
What was there to do when someone called out to her, speaking in strange tongues as her own failed her? When his panicked pleas - not unlike her own from what felt like a lifetime ago, she dazedly realized - fell on slowly deafening ears. Soothed by the knowledge she was being mourned, if only for this fleeting moment, and by a stranger no less, The King of Knights rested her eyes with all the grace she could muster for the last time in her short life.
Yet again, she had been wrong.
(Welcome to Fate/Stay Night, where everyone is self-destructive and some people take it a bit more literally than most.)
Debilitation. Disorientation. Wavering, waning strength. A king brought low by seven days of fierce, unending attrition. Among her people - no matter the coat of arms they wore, they were still her subjects. Even as they drew steel and twine and blood against the kingdom. Even as they cut down her forces - her court, her comrades.
Mordred had rallied the sorrowful and the mourning among the populace, turning their embitterment into rage against her rule. Her son's forces were ill-equipped, with more than a few wielding little but sharpened farming implements. A pitchfork sailed into the corner of her vision, batted away by Excalibur. She turned to her assailant, attempting to flee from her gaze. A shield struck the man across the face, felling him atop his bisected comrade. A great-shield of ugly, wrought-iron buried itself into his neck, robbing him of even a final breath.
Their armor was scavenged - dented plates and loose chainmail for the fortunate, in odd combinations and hastily and improperly fastened. It proved wanting against their capabilities, but what they lacked in skill was more than accommodated by willing flesh. A bold behemoth arced a greataxe above her head, intent to cut his king down. Her lance found the roof of his mouth. He twitched and coughed - fresh blood joining the grime of her helmless visage. The weapon clattered from his grasp, sinking into yet another corpse's bloody neck dague-first, a gruesome monument among hundreds recently made.
Sleep came slowly and left wanting for every single day that dragged on, interrupted by enemy harassment and dark dreams. Exhaustion, then strain, then agony crept up limbs, burning from the exertion. Artoria quietly cursed at her own dependence on the treasure stolen from her. Avalon was a potent tool, but its absence was more than simply felt. Her mind clouded in brief, crippling hazes. She attempted to blink back her own exhaustion and failed miserably, moving on towards the loathsome evening ongoing.
Few of her knights remained by the sixth dawn of their campaign. Soon it was only Gawain. Loyal Gawain, fighting to the bitter, wretched end. Brave Gawain, eviscerated by Mordred's Clarent, and the beautiful white-silver treasure speckled and stained with the blood of betrayal. Gawain died bravely - but he would never be brave again. He fell where he stood, once-shimmering armor sullied and marred, his body lost among the multitudes - no, the mounds - of fallen friends and foes alike.
But there was work to be done. Rhongomyniad seemed to meld into her grasp, anticipating. Against the maligned usurper who'd done this. Or rather, the pawn she'd left behind.
"Is King Arthur here?! Where is the King of Knights?!" A distant voice beckoned - no, roared. Challenging. Familiar. Artoria made her way up the mountain of corpses, paying little heed to the ghoulish squelching and thick warmth oozing up and past her steel sabatons, creeping into her worn greaves. She planted Rhongomyniad in the earth behind her, careful to avoid sullying her lance with viscera.
The Knight Of Treachery awaited her, panting over her blade. A corpse under the blade twitched and writhed for the briefest of moments, falling taut like a mangled puppet after the tainted Clarent had been pulled free of his backside. Her son turned to her, expectant. His arms stretched outward in derision - flecks of blood splattered from the tip of her stolen blade.
"Look!" he exclaimed. Artoria could feel the malicious grin snake under the horned helm. "How do you like it, King Arthur? Your precious country is finished!"
No. She wouldn't allow it. People needed her - depended on her. She would not fail them, even as they loathed her. Artoria remained silent.
"Face retribution for your refusal to relinquish the throne!"
Bitter laughter, perhaps, if she were Sir Tristan. A biting retort from Merlin, playful eyes promising consequences. Lancelot would likely dispatch him on the spot for the affront.
But she was Artoria Pendragon, King of Knights. Anger was beneath her - this was judgement to be levied. Nothing else. There was no satisfaction, standing atop the smoke and the ash and the cloying, festering remains of the people slain. No victory to be had - she had left that behind, shattered with Caliburn's remnants far too long ago.
She readied Excalibur.
Mordred huffed in frustration, disappointed by her stoicism. "Do you hate me? Do you have such a deep hatred of me, because I'm a child of a witch?"
Her mask faltered, for the briefest of moments. Pained, pervasive memories flooded into her mind, quelled into silence soon after, but not soon enough. The experience was damning to recall. She refused to grant it the privilege of a moment longer. "-nswer me, Arthur!"
Mordred charged, brandishing her blade. Excalibur raised to meet it. Anger ebbed, untamed. She let it overpower her own form, allowing Excalibur to clatter away.
"Never once have I harbored hatred toward you." Artoria said, voice earnest and distant. It was the truth - how could she? Mordred was a knight. Mordred had served her dutifully until her admiration yielded to malice. Mordred was her son. More importantly, Mordred was her subject. The responsibility fell on Artoria alone- there was simply no holding children responsible for such sins. But duty to her kingdom demanded to hold her accountable for her treachery. Mordred gasped at the revelation. Remorse, perhaps?
Pity. Artoria's hand gently grasped the handle she'd set behind her.
"The reason I did not relinquish the throne to you-"
She lunged, burying Rhongomyniad deep into her child's chest. Taken by surprise, a wet mumble bubbled from her son's lips, armor rended and insides mangled by the weapon.
"-was that you lacked the qualities required of a king."
She pushed her lance deeper. More pained gasps to be ignored by the oath-bound king. Mordred's mask shattered, failing it's promise of protection.
"F-Father..." crimson dribbled down her son's chin. Mordred reached for her hands, still clasped around the weapon that took her life. She winced in muted pain as the motion dug her wound deeper, but never yielded. He died reaching for his king's - no, his father's - hand, finding them unwaveringly distant, just as in life.
Pity.
She glanced at her child's eyes - bloodshot, trembling. It trickled down her tear-stained face, weeping blood.
And she swung - form poor and wild, but deadly nonetheless. The same slash that killed Gawain, intending to cut her in twain. Artoria lunged backwards, avoiding the first attack, failing at the second. Clarent buried itself into her abdomen, stymieing the bleeding in a brief reprieve from her own mortality. She would bleed and she would die. She was strong, of course, but the wound was mortal. Artoria would simply expire slowly, succumbing to it all.
The Knight of Treachery departed the world, staring at the king she'd betrayed even in death.
No. Not like this.
Artoria clutched at her wound, sunken just below her breastplate. Her gauntleted fist returned to her vision, stained scathing red between the links. It would be difficult to clean if - no, when - she managed to recover.
No, that was a lie. A pleasant hope, as well as an idle one. She would die as the last survivor of the battle of Camlann. A fallen king amidst the smoldering ash and bloated corpses. Flies buzzed and distorted within earshot, yet she could not find the strength to bat them aside. It was disheartening in the most aggravating of ways.
A stumbled step forward, tripping over a fallen soldier's warped chainmail. Her head struck a rigid shield standing proud, and her vision blurred and doubled. Warmth flowed down her head, matting dirtied blond with caked blood. The battle frenzy had worn off, and the silence and the hollow and the cold had seeped into her very being, urging her to rest. Close her eyes, for she'd earned a reprieve. All Artoria needed was one glance around her to remember she hadn't, and one glance at herself to know she never would.
But no. It couldn't be - The King Of Knights had failed. Artoria Pendragon had fallen long before she'd died.
Where had it all gone wrong - why hadn't she seen it. Why had she allowed it?
She pleaded. To anyone. Everyone. Who would listen. Who might listen. Her pride be damned.
Better that then the kingdom in cinders. Then the subjects she'd slaughtered to protect the ones she hadn't. A pointless, painful tragedy - it ought to have been her fate alone.
A haunting song swept into her mind, understanding ebbing into her being alongside the jagged instrumental. Akin the silent, meaningful glances and gestures she'd shared with her own court of knights when Artoria knew words would fail her, everything came quickly and implicitly. Despair dragging nails across her enfeebled heart, crushing the final, desperate breaths in her lungs. Diminishing the little strength she had left, insistent on little beyond the undivided attention of the felled King of Knights.
A debt for a debt. A meaningless, fading life for the thousands she'd spent - no, wasted. An eternity in service - no different from her own rule in anything but length. It called out to her. It beckoned with its rancid, merciless allure. Another chance amidst the countless ones she'd squandered.
It came with servitude. It was degrading, but acceptable. Who was she, weighed against the scale of the tragedy? One she'd molded, no less, despite her every intention.
The song warped, distorted. Dissonance retched and rolled, losing itself in conflict that went beyond her understanding, but not her comprehension. Artoria screamed in agony as the sour note contorted her mind. Memories turned into fantasies, and fantasies faded into nothingness. Then they returned, and repeated, for an incomprehensible eternity. A battle. Something was fighting the promise maker. It was a stalemate, and she was their battlegrounds. Her mind was crushed, reformed, splattered, forced back into shape until her screeching voice cracked and failed and caught in her desiccated throat. Mercifully, the King of Knights faded from her world, blinking back pointless tears.
Lights. Such wonderful lights.
Warm, like hearths. High above the ground, atop metal lamps. Untended by flames - they were so gentle. Artoria willed her body to move, and it groaned in protest of the exertion, and she collapsed yet again. Something soft creased and crumpled beneath her. Only then did the scent of her surroundings pervade her thoughts - of rot and refuse. Scraps of decayed meat. Burnt clothing. Another material she couldn't quite identify - acrid and sulfurous, somewhere out of view. She craned her neck to see, and her body finally yielded its last dredges of strength. A dull edge - an errant scabbard, likely - dug painfully into her back. She rocked her figure gently in a fruitless attempt to alleviate the intrusion, to little avail, and she accepted the discomfort in her final moments.
A corpse pile.
What else could it be? Everything smelled of the sweet, sickening rot. Lined in alien receptacles - black and thin and sorted into tied, uneven piles. Not even large ones - even Artoria's svelt figure couldn't fit into such a place with any semblance of decorum. She'd need to curl up into a ball to simply fit such a cramped container. A macabre thought passed her mind - had the fallen been mutilated to fit such spaces properly? Perhaps it had been for the best she hadn't been granted their twisted funeral rites.
She'd been stripped of her few valuables. Excalibur's reassuring weight no longer rested on her person. Rhongomyniad had been embedded in Mordred's torso - someone had likely pried the holy relic off his corpse. Artoria spoke her late son's name, a bitter lament at what had happened. How it ended. And again, now a frail whisper. The indignity would have made her blood boil if it hadn't been already, leaving her feverish yet wracked with shuddering chills. Avalon had been stolen away from her long before. Even her armor had been taken - gauntlets and graves stripped by scavengers. The breastplate that did little against her mortal wounding had been pried off what they'd thought to be her corpse. They weren't wrong for thinking that - it was simply a matter of time for the late king.
The little dignity they'd afforded was leaving her torn gambeson, but even that was more likely than not mere and familiar pragmatism. Armor could be repaired. Weapons could be sold. There was no use for blood-clotted clothing, even if it came from a fallen king. She tried to move again, barely making out the tell-tale sound of crusted, brittle blood crumbling from the motion. It was no use - it took all composure she could muster merely not to whimper.
She had died. It was just a matter of waiting for her body to realize that. The moon was rather pretty, though.
An ignominious death for a failure of a king - Artoria would take any comfort she could, no matter how pointless the measure it offered. She lost herself to the comforting moonlight - back in more pleasant times. Before she'd needed all of her contingencies. When her knights hadn't looked at her in judging disgust, or worse, forlorn resignation. Simpler times, with Caliburn in her grasp. When chivalry was a way of life to her, and not a convenience to be discarded like her broken blade. The original Sword of Promised Victory - the triumphs after it shattered always seemed so Pyrrhic in comparison.
A voice. Calling out.
Artoria blinked out of her hazy musings.
Young. Desperate.
A true voice - unlike the intrusive experience she'd idly recalled happening before. It echoed in her ears rather than reverberating through her skull. It didn't hurt in the least. Token comforts, but welcome regardless. He spoke frantically, in a strange tongue. Perhaps one of the residents of the odd village she'd been deposited in... somewhere she hadn't known before. Artoria glanced about, looking for the mysterious voice. Her eye caught glimmering, shattered glass for a moment - a boy sprinting past in the reflection. Perhaps the age she'd have been, had Caliburn and eventually Avalon not succeeded in their duties. A mop of red, unkempt hair. Strange apparel - clean and neat, far too thin to be wool. It might have been silk - he must have been wealthy indeed. Sweat beaded on his forehead - dark eyes pained, frantic. He stood atop her limp, undignified form, streaming unknown words at a breakneck pace.
Questions, most likely. Ones she couldn't answer, even if she could understood a damnable word of what he said. He knelt before her, hand reaching for the mortal wound. She swatted a fist at the motion, listlessly striking another bagged body to her left. It shattered from the impact, and Artoria hissed in muffed pain.
The boy stopped. His panicked eyes sank further into miserable anguish.
Was he... crying?
She couldn't hear it - and had resigned herself to the realization she never would, anything, ever again. Wetness streaked down his face. Clear as a river, unlike her son's bloodshot weeping. Shedding honest tears for a dying stranger.
It was... welcome. Though she wouldn't have preferred this outcome - the boy seemed wracked in helplessness she wouldn't wish on anyone - being mourned was consoling. Even if it be as a stranger, and not a king. As a stranger, and not a comrade. It was a true comfort she desperately needed in her waning hour of life - more than the moon and the memories had granted her. She'd wished she could bequeath the boy something for his unfiltered kindness. Anything of value, equal to the solace he'd provided.
But there was nothing on hand. Even if there was, Artoria doubted she could give it, in the wretched state she was in. She would make due.
The King of Knights smiled at the boy, fighting to keep it from turning into a grimace. Smiling for your people was often all that could be done, in trying times like this. He deserved some measure of assurance. Thick warmth trickled down her lips, tasting of bitter iron. She felt it stain her teeth - blood. Artoria coughed and hacked, scarlet flecks staining the pit she would die in. A stubborn, bloody globule clung to her cheek, staining her weathered visage even more.
Her attempts at comfort had been a failure, as expected but hoped against despite that. Unfortunate.
Another failure tallied amidst her growing list, coming to a perhaps merciful close to the hollow, defeated king of a kingdom torched to cinders.
Artoria Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, King of Knights, Ruler of fallen Britannia, rested. Her weary eyes yielded to an eternal slumber.
She had never imagined death came so warmly - a gentle embrace as the world drifted into distance.
Dague - the top part of a battleaxe. The spiky bit.
Sabatons - the part under the greaves. Where knights would wear shoes... if they weren't wearing sabatons.
Rewatching the Apocrypha fight scene, and just realized she pulled her spear outta nowhere. Didn't know she had an armory NP. Rewatched the original fight scene, was wondering why she was dual wielding them. Made the best compromise I could given the intended tone of this story.
I'll make a point not to borrow dialogue anymore, but this scene kind of worked well with what I had in mind. Gives me some semblance of structure to integrate.
Also, I've got a habit of utilizing limited POVs to showcase perspective. Mordred is a she, but not from Artoria's viewpoint. You'll encounter a lot of objectively questionable things from this limitation, but I feel that it enriches the contained narrative enough to justify it.
So, my warped headcanon for Mordred's conception comes from "Contractual Obligations". Probably the best time travel to Britain fate fic I've ever read, though updates are kinda... not, anymore. Been 2 years, but quality holds up amazingly. This kinda explains her difficult response in the show, being less shame and more forced silence. It's on .
Hope you had fun reading this. This was a nice project to start on again, now that the Fate hype is back.