"She will turn all of fate's misfortune to nothing.
She will flood the earth with magic,
and take all of humankind into her play.
A moving stage construction."
Turning her back on the world that she had failed, Homura Akemi placed one hand on the buckler suspended from her left arm and prepared the magic that would send her back to a time when things were simple and the burden of being a magical girl had yet to leave her jaded and cold. Despite her best efforts, many had died and the girl who had become her her entire world now stood in the city's bay, stripped of her humanity and cloaked in eldritch darkness.
But as Homura slipped into the time stream in a haze of temporal magic, time in the world she had left behind marched forward, unburdened by her absence. In the skies above hovered the massive nameless witch inscribed by mortal tongues with the title of Walpurgisnacht. A creature formed of the accursed souls of a thousand dead witches, she was an existence who embodied the very concept of destruction. Under her care, the destructive impulse of the dead would soon be turned against those who had wronged them, reducing the city below to nothing more then a sea of dilapidated concrete and steel.
Below the Stagecraft Witch lay a black pillar of pure malice. Once human, the entity known as Kriemhild Gretchen grasped for the sky above as if reaching for something that lay just out reach. Bearing the title of Witch of Salvation, her alien mind desired to bring to others that which had been denied to her by a girl whom she had once called her best friend. The only true happiness, the witch reasoned, lay in death. Living was painful and fraught with uncertainty, death was eternal and unchanging. Salvation, she thought, lay in the grave's cold embrace. To this end she would destroy everything and bring eternal peace to humanity once and for all.
Even though humanity's lay just within reach, a hole still dwelt within the witch's distorted heart. Before her humanity had melted away, leaving only the darkness of her soul in its place, her heart had been filled with the joy of being with her beloved best friend. Those times would never come again, however, as she had been abandoned and left to rot in darkness while her duplicate in another time line was given the chance at a real and lasting happiness. Nothing could ever filled the void that Homura Akemi had left in her heart, but that would not stop her her from trying.
Reaching ever higher into the deep blue sky above, Gretchen's hands seemed poised to grasp onto anything that may happen by. Anything to fill the void at the core of her pitch black soul. Unseen by the eyes of mortals, there was only one in all the world that could answer the Witch of Salvation's desperate call.
"If everything is a play, no unhappy things will exist.
It may be a tragedy, but it'll all be part of the script."
The Stagecraft Witch cocked her head to the side as she gazed at Gretchen from above. Confused by her actions, Walpurgisnacht hovered effortlessly over the black pillar of a witch and extended the sleeve of her dress to the witch waiting below for an answer from the heavens above. Her mind a gestalt of the angry thoughts of many a fallen witch, she had no really thoughts of her own, being at most nothing more then a vessel for destructive impulses. But something about Gretchen, as she flailed at the sky like a small child reaching for her mother, intrigued the witch enough to halt her advance, even if just for a moment.
Walpurgisnacht's massive sleeve wafted in the wind just above Gretchen's head. Blocking out the sun for a moment, the Witch of Salvation's eyes lay transfixed upon the elegant garment. Her mind filled with wonder, Gretchen grasped at the sleeve and pulled herself to the Stagecraft Witch's level. Coming face-to-face with her fellow witch, a great warmth raced through her hand and then throughout the rest of her immense body. Like the inner fire of innumerable suffering souls, it was enough to still even Gretchen's dark heart.
Coming face-to-face with Walpurgisnacht's ever-smiling and eyeless face, Gretchen gazed at her counter part, drinking in the malice, rage, hatred that lay seething under the surface of her regally attired form. Within the turning gears and lace of Walpurgisnacht's chimeric form she had found a kindred soul, one whose existence was just as attuned to the extinction of the human race as was her own.
Moving her other hand to grasp for the witch's other sleeve, the pair resembled an hourglass as their immense forms became entwined, a timepiece that counted not hours or minutes but rather the meager time left between the current moment and the day in the near future when the Earth would be purified within the cleansing darkness of a witch's barrier.
As gears turned overhead, grinding in a symphony of cacophonous noise that could have driven mortals mad, Gretchen closed the distance between herself and the Stagecraft Witch until mere inches stood between their inhuman forms. Planting what would pass as a kiss among humans upon Walpurgisnacht's eternally smiling face, the two formed a twisted mockery of human affection for all of the Stagecraft Witch's familiars to see. While Gretchen placed all of the passion she had once reserved for her fellow magical girl into the embrace, her partner hovered silentlty, seemingly unmoved by the experience. No matter how much raw emotion the Witch of Salvation offered, Walpurgisnacht would never answer. Her love was wasted on the chimeric witch, but Gretchen didn't care. This was all she had, she thought as she kissed her unmoving partner once more.
"The play stops on Walpurgisnacht,
and the earth does not turn even once more.
The story will not change.
Tomorrow, and the day after, is the night of Walpurgis."
For ten days the pair sat in emotionless congress as the world around them collapsed under the weight the ever expanding field of their combined barrier. For ten days Gretchen had attempted to to elicit some response from her beloved partner, but such action never came. For ten days she silently wept, wishing for nothing more then for the Stagecraft Witch to wipe the mocking smile from her creepy face. For ten days she wished for the end, for her own salvation and an end to the one-sided love she had thought could take the place of the girl she loved most. On the tenth day her wish was answered, the whole of human history had come to an end, there was no more suffering in the world, no more hatred, and no more sorrow... save for her own.