Darkness.
Infinite, absolute, suffocating darkness.
Lancelot existed within it or rather, something that thought it was Lancelot existed. He was conscious, aware, present. But he couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't think clearly.
It felt as if another force was oppressing him. Pressing down on his mind, his soul, his existence.
"What's this?" The thought echoed in the void, though no sound existed here. "What's going on?"
He tried to remember. Tried to grasp onto something anything that would tell him who he was, where he was, why he was.
Nothing.
"Why can't I think of anything?" Panic began to creep in. "I can't remember anything. Who am I?"
Who am I?
The question hung in the darkness, unanswered.
Because the Lancelot that existed here was not truly Lancelot. It was a copy a reconstruction, pieced together from the destroyed consciousness of the man who had once been. The original was gone. Consumed.
The fourth ability of Lancelot's blade, Arondight, was Malice.
Not just any malice. Malice that transcended everything in existence. Something so powerful, so absolute, that it had swallowed Lancelot completely.
Not just his body.
It engulfed his soul. His mind. His spirit.
And it ate them.
Everything that was Lancelot every memory, every thought, every emotion, every piece of who he had been was destroyed. Consumed. Erased.
Only pitch, infinite darkness remained.
The malice was everything.
And it was nothing.
Then, a light appeared.
Small at first. Faint. Almost invisible in the endless dark.
It was a remnant. Something that had been digested, destroyed, ended but not completely. Something that the malice had not been able to fully engulf.
It was not Lancelot's soul.
It was not his mind.
It was not his spirit.
It was something else entirely.
A will.
A will that had existed within Lancelot deeper than soul, deeper than mind, deeper than being. Something that had driven him through every battle, every loss, every moment of his existence. Something that the malice could not understand, could not touch, could not destroy.
The will began to reform.
It took shape the shape of Lancelot. His form. His face. His presence. It named itself Lancelot, because that was the only name it knew.
But it was not Lancelot.
Not anymore.
The malice tried to devour it again. Lunged at it with all its infinite hunger, all its absolute power, all its nothing.
And failed.
It could not devour something that could not exist.
Because this will this remnant was not a soul. Not a mind. Not a spirit. It was something beyond those things. Something that malice, for all its power, could not comprehend.
The malice did not understand.
So it did the only thing it could.
It adapted.
The malice began to change.
It flowed toward the will, not to consume, but to merge. To understand. To become.
And the will this strange, impossible thing began to change too.
Two infinite powers, coming together without a vessel. Malice against Will. Will against Malice. Neither could destroy the other. Neither could exist without the other.
So they combined.
The malice had been born because of Lancelot because of his pain, his grief, his rage. It carried his memories, though those memories were covered in fear and hate and darkness and uncertainty. They were distorted, broken, wrong but they were there.
And the will... the will was hungry.
It reached into the malice and took those memories. Not as experiences as data. As understanding. As the building blocks of something new.
The first memory it found was a voice.
My god.
The words meant nothing. The concept meant nothing. But the emotion behind them the trust, the desperation, the need that meant something.
The will developed its first emotion.
Care.
Care toward the false god who had spoken to Lancelot in his darkest moments. Care toward the voice that had promised power, salvation, purpose.
The second memory was death.
Two deaths. Cousins. Friends. Loss.
The will screamed silently, internally, absolutely. A new emotion erupted within it, raw and terrible.
Anger.
Hatred.
It went wild with the hate inside it, thrashing against the darkness, against the malice, against everything.
The third memory was betrayal.
A king. A promise. A mountain where two brothers had sworn loyalty forever.
The will felt everything at once. Trust. Hate. Conviction. Pain.
And then
The will began to devour the malice.
Not gently. Not gradually. Violently. It reached into the darkness and took, consuming the malice as the malice had once consumed Lancelot.
But the malice fought back.
It devoured the will in return.
Malice against Will. Will against Malice. Two infinite forces, consuming each other simultaneously, neither willing to yield, neither capable of yielding.
The impossible happened.
This was all imaginary something that could not be understood or interpreted. Neither could it be perceived by any being, any god, any consciousness. It existed outside of existence. Beyond the beyond.
From this cataclysmic reaction this impossible, incomprehensible war something sinister was born.
In reality, its eyes opened.
The spiral of black liquid that had been spinning above the battlefield ended. Not gradually instantly. The darkness condensed, pulling together, compressing, becoming.
It formed a sword.
Arondight.
The blade floated through the air, spinning slowly, gleaming with a darkness deeper than night. It drifted toward the figure that hung in the sky the figure that had once been Lancelot.
It placed itself in his hand.
His fingers closed around the hilt.
And he spoke.
"My name," he said, his voice calm and cold and absolute, "is Lancelot."
The pressure disappeared.
The force that had been pulling everything toward the spiral vanished instantly. The air stilled. The chaos settled.
Lancelot had returned.
But the air around him was not the same. It was different. Charged. Wrong. Something fundamental had changed in the knight who floated above the battlefield.
Below him, Sir Galahad, Sir Tristan, Sir Percival, and Sir Kay stared up in shock.
Then a new sensation.
Heat.
Intense, overwhelming, impossible heat at their backs.
All four knights turned as one, drawn by the sudden warmth, by the presence that had erupted behind them.
A great bright light almost like the sun itself ruptured from the ground. It burst into the sky, a pillar of golden fire that seemed to touch the heavens.
And they heard it.
Arthur's cry.
"CRUEL SUN!"
On the first front of the battlefield, Arthur stood alone.
Well not alone. Sir Bors and Sir Gareth stood at his back, their weapons ready, their eyes fixed on their king. But in that moment, Arthur was alone. Alone with his blade. Alone with his purpose.
He held Excalibur in one hand.
His other hand held nothing because he needed nothing else.
The blade was transformed. It gave off a golden light so bright it hurt to look at, so intense it was like staring into the sun itself. Not only that the heat from the blade was so powerful that the air around it had become hell. Waves of distortion rose from the ground. Rocks began to melt. The very fabric of Valhalla seemed to protest.
Sir Bors looked at Arthur's back at the figure of his king, silhouetted against impossible light and felt something swell in his chest.
"This," he whispered, "is the back of my king. My lord. The king chosen by the holy sword Excalibur."
Arthur had already destroyed everything in his front. The Roman soldiers who had faced him were gone reduced to ash, to nothing, to memory. Only the strongest remained, those few who had somehow survived the initial onslaught.
They stood there now, facing him, their weapons raised, their faces masks of determination.
They wouldn't last.
Arthur's hair had changed. His beard had changed. Both had taken on the flaming golden color of Excalibur itself as if the sword's power had flowed into him, become part of him.
He breathed heavily. The effort of wielding such power was immense. But he did not stop. Would not stop. Could not stop.
He raised his voice to the sky.
"I AM KING ARTHUR!" His words echoed across the battlefield, across Valhalla, across existence. "KING OF CAMELOT! ANYONE WHO HAS WRONGED US ANYONE WHO HAS CAUSED US PAIN AS KING, I SHALL DESTROY!"
He pointed Excalibur at the mountain where Titus watched.
"ROME! I WILL CONQUER YOU!"
Above, floating in the sky, the newly awakened Lancelot heard him.
He still held Arondight in his hand. Still floated above the battlefield. Still existed in that strange, transformed state between what he had been and what he had become.
A single tear fell from his eye.
It traced a path down his cheek, hung for a moment on his jaw, then fell down, down, down toward the earth below.
Another emotion was born in his newly formed heart.
Not from the malice.
Not from the will.
From something deeper.
The emotion owned by the former Lancelot. The one who had existed before the darkness, before the consumption, before the end.
An emotion built on the promise of Camelot.
On the mountain, General Titus watched everything.
He saw the pillar of golden light. Heard Arthur's challenge. Felt the power radiating from the battlefield below.
And he laughed.
"Well," he said, a smile spreading across his weathered face, "at least now things are beginning to change."
He gripped the hilt of his sword tighter.
"Who knows?" His eyes gleamed with anticipation. "I might be able to step onto the battlefield against these Britains after all."
in the space between awakening and action, between the old Lancelot and the new, between the king's challenge and the general's response.
Something was coming.
Something terrible.
And none of them were ready for it.