"I apologize."
As I fell, the golden figure of the lady floated next to me, but made no attempt to halt my infinite descent. She bowed her head slightly. Now that I had a good look at her, I saw that she was a little different from the cold, dreadful knight in black armor with corrupted veins from earlier.
The angry veins that had run all over her armor and weapon had disappeared, and the plating was no longer night black. Instead, her armor was replaced by a sky-blue dress with white lace and silver plating. It wasn't just a western style dress, but one that looked like it was lifted straight from a medieval fantasy manhua. The ones with European-inspired settings, I mean. Her tall figure was pretty gorgeous, and her long hair now hung loosely past her shoulders, the golden curls stretching all the way to her waist. Her eyes, which were previously hollow, were now a deep blue that reminded me of the unfathomable sea.
"When you purified me, our minds connected…and what you are seeing are my memories."
Now that she mentioned it, I could see images flashing across my surroundings, with legions of hi-tech knights gathering at her behest, and she commanding them from the front. Wielding her sword, she led them against alien armies. Columns of tanks not unlike those I saw in the Avalon Army, particularly a lot more superheavy tanks than what I saw in the current period, rolled behind her as she stood atop a hovercraft, pointing her sword at the Saurians.
The Saurian army, too, was far different from what I had imagined based on what I saw today. Cyborg dinosaurs – hybrid theropods with mechanized bionics and mounted weapons charged forward, accompanied by biologically engineered dragons. I recognized one of the smaller dragons as the one I had fought at the lake before vanquishing it fairly quickly.
Wait, that dragon was one of the small fries!? There were bigger and much more fearsome dragons!? Holy Terra…
"Your highness, Commander Vivian."
Aegis and Arondight were telepathically linked to me, and as such they had somehow wormed their way into my mental space, hovering on either side of me as a sword and shield. The blond lady who they had addressed as Vivian frowned as she stared at them. Then with a mischievous smirk, she snapped her fingers and they transformed.
"What?!"
I gaped at the two kids who were now beside me. One was a loli…I mean a young girl with long light blue hair and dressed in a stylish dress. She reminded me of a character from a certain Bilibili animation series. Okay, I had better stop here before I get into copyright trouble. The other was a shota…ahem, a young guy with dark black hair and dressed in an edgy attire – meaning a black leather jacket, ripped jeans, boots and chains. He looked like a rebellious teenager.
"Aegis and Arondight?"
"I've taken the liberty to give them human forms," Vivian said smugly. "They are more pleasing to the eye this way."
"…we don't need human forms," Aegis said monotonously. "We are devices."
"This is her highness, Commander Vivian, and she has a reputation for her swordsmanship and prowess in the battlefield, often leading her armies from the front," Arondight explained to me, ignoring the argument between Aegis and Vivian. I listened to him. "She once led a legion of several hundred thousand knights and liberated thirty systems within twelve years from the claws of the enemy. She is also known as the Blade Dance Princess."
"I was half expecting you to nickname her the War Song Princess."
"Um, we would be committing copyright infringement if I did that," Arondight said uncomfortably. So even he knew what a thin line we were threading on.
"My name is Vivian Nymanne Morgana."
"Huh? Aren't you Sandora Kelvie Eulasis?"
"What are you talking about?! Who the hell told you that? Of course not!"
Yeah, earlier I said that Vivian didn't resemble a certain Servant who was a gender bent King Arthur. That was because she looked more like the Warsong Princess from another web novel that now had an animation thanks to Bilibili.
"Anyway, can you stop making obscure references to other stories and focus on this chapter for now? We have more important things to talk about. Like my memories!"
"Sorry." I stopped making fourth wall jokes and concentrated on the images that were flashing past me. They flooded into my mind, and I found myself experiencing almost everything Vivian did in the past few years of her life before she was sealed within the lake. Well, the important bits, anyway.
The fall of the Holy Terran Empire…and its desperate attempts to stave off the extinction of humanity by dispatching its venerable commanders all over the galaxy to repel alien incursions. Vivian Nymanne Morgana was one of the commanders sent to remote sectors, leading her legion of knights known as the Celestial Corps. Achieving victory after victory, though interspersed with several defeats, Vivian and her troops protected billions of imperial citizens and drove off the alien enemies to the furthest reach of the galaxy, though sometimes she was forced to evacuate entire worlds when her armies weren't enough to defeat firmly rooted alien militaries and fleets.
Everything came to an end forty thousand years ago.
"I came to this world, Avalon, about forty thousand years ago, before the Breaking of the Empire," Vivian explained sadly, watching beside me as dropships crashed into the still primitive planet of Avalon, which had only been recently colonized then. The Saurian host had already come in force, with cyborg dinosaurs and dragons swelling their numbers to thousands.
There was an apocalyptic battle. Tanks dueled against dinosaurs, artillery blasted dragons apart from range before being torn apart by fire, fang and claw in close quarters. The knights of the Celestial Corps fought courageously, but though they slaughtered the great host with their hi-tech weapons, they took massive casualties. I watched the colossal conflict unfold across me on numerous battlefields, entire forests devastated and razed from the surface because of the sheer violence enacted by both sides.
Plasma the temperature of stars scorched grassy plains black and glassed the soil. Flames from dragons reduced trees to ashes and left charred stumps in their wakes. Cyborg dinosaurs left a sea of blood in their rampages, while husks of mauled tanks lay entwined with half-organic carcasses in mutual annihilation.
"It was a costly war, but we eventually won," Vivian continued wistfully. "However, though we drove the majority of the Saurian off world, several of their offspring remained…hiding in forests and developing into apex predators as part of the natural ecosystem. Even so, we were confident that we would be able to purge all of them with time. Unfortunately, we were naïve. Both us and the Saurians."
"Say what?" I stared at her incredulously.
"The real threat wasn't the aliens. The biggest threat to the Holy Terran Empire was the Abyss."
At a wave of her hand, she switched the memory-shaped landscape, and we were suddenly shifted to a new location that I didn't recognize. Initially, I thought we were on another planet, but then I recognized the forest as one of Avalon's. Twisted, with the plant life and vegetation mutated almost beyond recognition, great beasts roamed within the dense foliage. I caught a glimpse of a monstrous dragon, far more formidable than the little one I had slain with Aegis and Arondight earlier. Transformed by something, the dinosaurs and dragons had turned into true monsters.
"The Abyss?"
"I…don't know how to explain it." Vivian was hesitant and she turned away. "I can only describe it as an extradimensional universe that does not exist in the same material plane as ours. The closest I can come to comprehending it is that it is made of unknown energy that fluctuates wildly based on emotions. There are…sentient entities dwelling within that can only be described as gods, each of their aspects broken down into millions of extradimensional creatures that assume the shape of the things that we living organisms in this universe fear the most. Some might call the Abyss hell…the afterlife, or the underworld. They have likened the non-sentient creatures inhabiting it – the servants of these godlike entities that we can never understand – demons."
I nodded, trying not to remark that I was pretty sure I had heard all this somewhere before. Like my favorite tabletop wargaming hobby, for example.
"These foul energies are also capable of tainting not just the material objects of our universe – such as entire planets and environments – but infecting living organisms and transforming them."
"Like those mutant dinosaurs and dragons in your memories."
"Correct." Vivian took a deep breath. "Many of these mutations seem random and spontaneous. As are the…extradimensional incursions. I would venture as far as say that the Abyss is the very embodiment of Chaos itself."
Yeah, definitely ripped off from my favorite tabletop wargaming hobby. I could only hope Games Workshop didn't send us a cease and desist.
"Um, and you got infected by these…Abyssal energies?" I asked.
"That's right." Vivian nodded, looking a little embarrassed. She waved her hand to skip to a bunch of memories. "When I realized what the Abyss was doing to the population here and my people, I decided to go to the source myself and seal it. A Holy Terran Empire commander has far more resistance to the corruption of Abyss than most people…but unfortunately, we are still not totally immune to it."
I watched in dismay as Vivian sacrificed herself to save her legion and her people. wielding her golden sword in determination, she stepped into the hellish portal that opened a pathway between our dimension and the Abyss, slaying as many cackling demons and insane fiends as she cut a route into its heart to destroy the source that forced open the rift between our dimensions.
However, with each step she took, she found herself increasingly weighed down by the abyssal energies that saturated her environment. Red veins began spreading across her pale skin, reaching to her once beautiful face. Her lovely dress and armor warped and hardened, taking on an ominous and dreadful appearance.
Even so, with the last of her resolve, she smashed the portal and sealed herself in the lake, keeping herself in stasis for the next forty thousand years even as she left behind the population and her army. Bereft of their leader, the Celestial Corps settled down on Avalon and helped to modernize it, their descendants forming the bulk of the colonists and leaving countless generations behind as they expanded across the surface of the world their beloved commander had sacrificed herself to save. Determined to repay her, they built up a formidable military and kept its defenses ready, for the day their respected commander returned and lead them once more.
"I'm…sorry."
"Don't be. In fact, I should be grateful." Vivian hesitated. "To be honest, I woke up recently, perhaps before the Saurian fleet arrived in our system. I don't know why, but I felt a beacon…and deep within my subconscious, I must have realized that my only hope of salvation had arrived. I sensed your presence even from afar, and I inadvertently called out to you."
That explained the telepathic messages that the psychics of Avalon received this entire time. My arrival in Carmarthen and the discovery of the quantum communication device in Lionel Johansson and the Order's base must have triggered her awakening.
"I'm glad I could help."
"Thank you very much." To my surprise, Vivian leaned forward and embraced me tightly, tears rolling down her face. "Really. I was living an existence worse than death. If it weren't for you, I might continue to be trapped here for eternity."
"Uh…not at all, it's just a trivial matter. Really." I couldn't help but be embarrassed. It wasn't everyday I was hugged by a girl. Maybe by close female friends who I had hung out with in high school, but this was a beautiful lady I had met for the first time today.
"Even so, I still need to ask you for a favor." Vivian finally pulled away and stared at me seriously. I raised an eyebrow.
"What is it?"
"Please take me with you. Away from this planet and back to your world."