Chapter Text
Chapter 34: The Sword
The Sephirot Keter, the Crown. This spell, accurately chosen by Merlin so that it paired perfectly with Excalibur’s magic, allowed the Knight King to weld whatever he touched as if he were a locksmith handling hot iron.
This way he was able to reattach his arm without any blood loss, and since the power was present also at a molecular level, he could solidify the flames from Uriel’s sword to parry it with Excalibur.
“Just like the old times, when thread and needle were enough to sew ears, arms, and legs back on his body!” sir Owain laughed coarsely, shocking Sir Galahad.
“I really don’t get what’s so funny, but… yes, since our King was aware of his invincibility, he was always in the front lines. No one could take him away from the leading edge.”
As they reminisced the long-gone times with a sad smile on the lips, sir Pellinore voiced everyone’s thoughts: “You’re thinking something’s off.”
The two young knights winced, differently from sir Lancelot, who frowned and answered: “But I can’t quite tell what.”
They looked back at the battlefield: “I mean, his battle style is the same, isn’t it? So his personality should also be-”
“Personality?” the old knight grunted. “He hasn’t uttered a word since the match started, and he hasn’t even taken off his helm. How can we be sure he’s the same as he’s always been?”
Those men were closer to Arthur than his family - the Knights of the Round Table. They’d known him by heart ever since he’d worn the British crown.
They could have named every single one of his deeds, told about his passionate behaviour and his naive, child-like heart. Sometimes he really resembled a kid, and Merlin his father or older brother, always there to guide him. It was almost laughable: although the wizard looked only a few years older than him, he acted like a mother worrying for her child.
Their arguments were often subject to the knights' laughter, and their jokes were always well-received by the king due to his sense of humour. There had been only one time where no one dared utter a word on a discussion between Merlin and Arthur.
It was that one time when the wall to their meeting room was abruptly kicked down, along with the renowned table. A young man got up from the rubble, wavy blond hair and a blue silk shirt, now stained with blood.
He wiped his mouth and spat red on the floor.
“You bastard!”
“Stop testing my patience, Arthur! I’m speaking seriously” A white-haired young man roared, dressed in a long bejeweled cloth. He was wielding his stick, and a little trail of smoke was coming out of the tip.
The knight had all backed off, witnessing the scene with a concern they’d never felt before.
Roaring, Arthur grabbed a sword from one of the exposed armours and swung it at Merlin. The sword and the stick crossed.
“You’re just a reckless kid if you think you can do whatever you want just because you’re the king!” the other screamed in his face.
“Oh yeah?! I should do whatever you say instead, because you’re… what?! The king of nothing?!”
“How dare you?! I made you into what you are now, or else you’d still be pickpocketing people in the streets, King Uther’s bastard son!”
After hearing what he’d just been called, Arthur’s eyes sharpened like those of a beast. He gave up the pressure on Merlin’s stick and attacked him with a shoulder shoved at the center of his chest. Then, riding the momentum, he grabbed him by the shoulders and fell on the ground with him, crushing him.
Caging him between his knees, he tried to punch him, but he was stopped.
“I-I…” his voice was shaky with effort.
“Because I’m a... bastard…!” One of his fists managed to meet Merlin’s face, making blood spurt from his broken nose.
The wizard had instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, but when he opened them he considered himself to be ready to strike back at full force. He didn’t.
“Because I’m a bastard…” He saw Arthur in tears above him: “I want to know true love, and love the woman who I truly love and who loves me back.”
The scream coming from the boy’s broken heart echoed in the room, vibrating in the brave knights’ heart, and in Merlin’s.
Arthur Pendragon, King Uther’s son, born from a married woman he wanted at all costs. Once he’d become king, he was forced to marry Guinevere for convenience. He didn’t love her at all.
He learnt that wars and battles, and the legend his sword Excalibur was helping him build, didn’t make him more heroic than a sad and lonely man. Until he met a woman he sincerely loved: lady Morgan.
Merlin had tried to warn him: his infallible prediction clearly said that, if Arthur were to unite with Morgan, that would mark the end of his kingdom and sentence him to disgrace and death.
But, now that the young man had used his teeth and claws to stand up against that certain fate, and now that he’d seen his sincere tears, the wizard could say he understood how he felt.
Far from the castle, in a place where he’d refused to live, in a house on the most lovely lake in Britain, his beloved was waiting for him. A woman whose mere name filled his nose with the sweetest scent, the scent of home.
-Nimue… you’d understand.- Along with Nimue he’d raised Arthur since he was a newborn, taken away from his father Uther, he too plagued by an unhappy fate. He knew she wanted him to be at peace too, and maybe that was the only way to save him from the misery of his soul.
The mage dropped his arms, surrendering. He let his adoptive son’s tears fall on his face and become his own.
Immersed in the memory, Merlin’s face had stiffened with an apathetic expression, his eyes completely devoid of the enthusiasm he showed moments earlier. Morgan breathed deeply with emotion beside him.
Below their eyes, the human crowd kept howling.
“You damned two-bit angel!” they yelled furiously, casting their rage and disgust on the unmoving foe, petrified after Arthur’s revelation.
“True angels should root for us humans! All of you gods, actually… you should love us as much as we loved you!” Tears were flowing on the grandstands. They came from hearts that had been betrayed by the faith they’d believed in for thousands, millions of years, just to find out their love was unrequited.
The ones they worshipped had been wishing for nothing other than their extinction. For nine long matches.
Masutatsu Oyama, Vlad, Dante, and Charlotte, who were looking at the scene with a frown, had been complicit in the gods’ destructive fury that befell them with the intent of permanently wiping them off.
“Love.” Uriel’s lips parted after a long silence.
Not a drop of sweat was to be seen on his body, and his voice wasn’t strained. It echoed in the arena, calm and monotone.
Humans instinctively retracted, and surprisingly the gods did too.
He slowly raised his hand in front of him and stretched his arm out towards his enemy.
“A God who promises love.. has never existed outside of your desperate imagination!”
He clenched his fist so violently it made the sound of two mountains being smashed into each other, generating a pressure that dislodged the ground.
“You don’t deserve love from anyone, yet you expect it like alms! Because you humans are… sinners.”
Uttering the last word he dashed towards Arthur, his wings spread. His gigantic shadow loomed over the knight, swallowing him and conveying a sense of dreadful oppression to the audience, as if they too could be executed in the bat of an eye.
Without losing his composure, Arthur got ready to resist the fastest attack his opponent had ever tried against him.
“Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath!”
However, whatever happened next definitely exceeded his predictions.
The first slash, almost invisible, he was impaled to the ground without even noticing. The second slash he parried sent him backward, or better, through the ground beneath him for various feet. The third hit was a lunge, and when he dodged it by getting up, the ground where he was laying was pierced who knows how deep. The fire sword was lifted for a fourth blow and the slash barely grazed Arthur’s helm and went up to the sky in a fire column.
When the Knight King saw his opponent do the last three slashes he understood there was no escape: they were so quick his eyes perceived them as if they happened simultaneously. Despite the high speed, they were so powerful they tore through his armour on the shoulders and the chest.
He raised his sword only after he was hit.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Uriel’s blows have landed!” the announcers belted out, but the archangel didn’t give them, nor the spectators, nor Arthur any time to catch their breath.
When his foe expected him to strike again, he batted his wings so violently the wind threw him backward.
“Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath!”
The lethal combination of blows was repeated after the knight had been thrown off balance by the sudden gush of wind.
The first hit, to everyone’s surprise, was parried.
“Go Arthur!” mankind cheered from the tribunes.
The second one was parried too, and the third was barely dodged.
“Arthur…” Charlotte murmured biting her bottom lip. She didn’t want to lose another companion.
The fourth time Arthur tried to cross swords with Uriel, but the flames suddenly raged, threatening to burn him, so he retreated.
Everyone was coming to terms with the fact that the divine fighter was revealing his true might in those brief glimpses, with those moves aimed to destroy his opponent.
Nonetheless, the next time Arthur tried once again to block the foe’s sword with Excalibur to stop his charge. Once again, he failed.
At that point, Uriel, without losing the rhythm of his flaming dance, backed off enough to lunge forward. The lunge was weaker than the previous one, and when Arthur noticed he realized the moment had come to risk it all: he’d grab Uriel’s hand as he’d done before.
But when his brain registered the action he was about to do, he blacked out.
Uriel’s wings were open wide, blocking out the sunlight and casting a massive shadow over the knight’s large body.
Now that Arthur had seen the trap his enemy had set for him, he noticed he was hopelessly exposed to another attack. Nonetheless, he tried as quickly as possible to shield himself before Uriel struck again with another gush of wind.
The angel’s true plan could be carried out: after flying a bunch of feet off the ground with his wings outstretched, instead of batting them, he twirled. He landed a tremendous blow, enhanced by kinetic energy; not only did he overcome the human’s guard, but he broke it.
The sound of steel and breaking bones drowned the screams from both sides. Then the tribunes plunged into silence.
The humans looked with disbelief, their eyes wide with shock, at what was left of their vanguard’s arms: snapped branches, and the armour around it fell apart like a thin layer of shattered glass.
With even more horror and despair, they witnessed the darkest moment in the Ragnarok Tournament.
Fragments of steel and gold shone with grief as they fell to the ground.
“God created sin just to make humans the victims” Uriel sentenced.
His fire greatsword, his four stretched-out wings, his massive presence reflected on Excalibur’s blade, the legendary sword, now broken.
“And I was created to punish sinners! You humans only exist for me purge Creation of your sickly existence, at this very moment granted to me at the end of time!”
The announcers were baffled, and the audience was too. There was nothing they could add: they’d all witness the most terrifying show of might in the Tournament.
Adramelech glanced at his colleague, and he remembered a conversation they’d had before the ninth bout. It had been a warning rather than a simple chat between coworkers: he was told he’d soon figure out why Uriel was chosen among all angels, although he wasn’t famous for any special deed.
The Chancellor of Hell had asked for clarification, and he saw an anguishing memory surface back behind the other Chancellor’s eyes.
“Because actually…” he confided “Uriel has always been the mightiest angel.”
Who was chosen among the archangels to annihilate mankind?
Michael, the leader of the angelic army and prince of angels, who’d sent his brother Lucifer to hell? Or maybe Gabriel, whose name means God’s Strength, as he’d demonstrated by razing the city of Sodoma?
A little while before the Valhalla Tournament, St. Peter had been charged with the task of going to Highest Heaven and asking the archangels to participate.
“Ugh! These stairs!” he moaned, cursing his small wings, not fit for flight. “Wh-what?! No! I’m not actually cursing them!” he yelled, repudiating the sin.
Once he’d reached the highest floor the golden stairway could bring him to, he found a young man sat on a cloud, swinging his legs. Noticing him, he somersaulted and spread his three pairs of wings to meet him.
“Peter!” Raphael greeted him, radiant: the saint wasn’t someone to be seen often up there. He was the Archangel of Care, with a more innocent and childish appearance than the others. And, according to St. Peter, he was also a thousand times more pleasing to look at than those absurdities made of wings and eyes and wheels. They gave him the chills.
After explaining why he was visiting, the chancellor glanced at the angel waiting for a reaction.
“I already knew” he answered, to his surprise.
“Everyone here knows what’s about to happen. But I…” His face grew sad, and he looked away “...don't really want to tip the scale towards mankind’s extinction.”
Raphael had been closer to mankind, sharing his knowledge to heal them and help them reach the level of evolution they were at now.
“I know what you mean.” Although the young man had got goosebumps in fear that someone might have heard him, when he turned around he wasn’t met with a reproving look. Instead, he found a compassionate smile that bore the weight of great grief.
Michael, with his dazzling beauty, had his golden locks framed by a halo made of tiny shiny swords, just like the ones that decorated his golden armour. However, even if he was always in full battle dress ready to fight against evil, he didn’t look threatening or hostile.
“Since when are humans the evil we angels have to eliminate? It’s a contradiction, something that goes against our duty since they were created…” Puzzled, he looked at St. Peter searching for answers, although he was only a chancellor.
“But you will do it” a third voice finished. It was an angel sitting aside, his arms resting on his broad knees. “Because we’ve been called to end their lives.”
The archangel Gabriel sounded detached, or desensitized on the topic, as his misty eyes showed.
“The Divine Council doesn’t take a no for an answer. I’ve heard they called even people who were never part of their environment, like Enkidu, Baphomet, and Sun Wukong. And if we refuse… well, I think they’d be willing to send Fenrir up here to fetch us.”
Michael gave him a scolding glance, offended by his hypothesis, which implied the Ragnarok Wolf would be any trouble for him.
“But someone did stand up against them!” Raphael exclaimed. “That’s why we’re having this discussion! It’s a member of the Divine Council, that Merlin…”
“So? Are you saying we should join him?” the prince of angels inquired, with no irony in his voice. He saw Gabriel’s dark facade break into a small smile.
“Well, then… you know how I’m the par-excellence messenger…”
“Quit boasting, you vainglorious!” Raphael retorted, almost making the other answer back.
“So… I discovered that a lot of the gods, also in the pantheons that sent in their fighters, actually side with Merlin. I’m talking about Ishtar, Phobetor, Ammit, Prometheus - who is a fighter -, and even one of the Presidents, Ptah... and many more.”
“W-Wait, what are you-” St. Peter stuttered, shocked to be part of that conversation even if he was being ignored.
The Archangel of Care squealed happily: “So we’re not the only ones who’ve had this idea!”
Michael was more thoughtful before speaking: “Or maybe there’s something behind Merlin’s actions that goes beyond saving mankind.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow: “You sure became more skeptical since you sent Lucifer to the depths of the Earth.”
“Just because the evil is underground doesn’t mean it can’t be close to the sky.” Despite the veil of unrest surrounding the prince of angels, he banished every doubt from his mind and proclaimed:
“Okay. We’ll go talk to Merlin to figure out his true intentions. Then we’ll decide which side we’re on!”
There was no time for Rapahel’s celebrations, nor Gabriel’s badly expressed joy. There wasn’t even time to put that idea into action, because before they could notice the three archangels had become four.
“So it’s like this?” Pressure like a thousand voices in unison exploded in Highest Heaven, petrifying the air and making it heavy.
Even the Prince of Angels and the Angel of Strength widened their eyes, feeling the presence beside them become massive and obscure the light of God himself.
“For mankind, you show… compassion.” Uriel stepped towards Raphael, who was now curled up in a corner with his head between his hands.
“You want to… save them.” He leaned over his bowed head, brushing his hair with his voice.
“It’s your fault if we turned into what they want us to be.” He snapped his fingers. Abruptly, like a soldier, he sprung on his feet and flew away, coming back hurriedly after a few seconds.
“They think we’re their protectors, their servants” he went on, as the armour was fastened on his body. Then he pointed somewhere, and the two most feared archangels disappeared with pale faces.
“Flammescat igne caritas… let charity burn with fire, huh?” He was brought his longsword in its sheath, so massive and heavy it had to be held by both Gabriel and Michael with great effort.
St. Peter was witnessing an illusion shattering before his eyes.
He thought that if only humans knew what archangels actually were - Uriel’s slaves -, they’d never believe it. Because the Archangel of Flames had never appeared in any relevant legend or myth.
“Humans don’t need our pity and we don’t need their plies. Because even a fool can understand that the plies of those powerless weaklings must be stopped by downing a sword on their heads, not by listening to them!”
Or, as he realized at that moment, he’d chosen not to appear to keep his unbridgeable distance from them, like the distance between Earth and Heaven.
“We are the executioners of sin. Mankind IS SIN.”
The longsword was unsheathed and the fire raged.
“It’s been a while since I last unleashed my power… and this time I won’t have to borrow your names.”
Without a word, after destroying any choice for his brothers, he went to fulfill his duty.
“Praise me, sinner! Pray for your end to come soon!”