Fate/Apocrypha

Chapter 3

--- "Kindness, Humility, Honesty, Purity, Faith - the Maid's heart carried only these things and nothing else."

Place du Vieux Marché, Rouen

...Words of damnation came to her, like a melody from an infinitely distant country. She paid them little mind. It would be a lie to say that she was not in pain - but that was something she could endure.

She also had also little fear. Such emotions as disappointment and regret had been left behind from the moment she decided to fight. They would no longer find their way back to her.

She did not want to be dragged about, so she walked without a falter in her step. Unconsciously, she reached for her chest - but her cross had been taken from her. There was no longer anything to support her heart. For this, she felt some sadness.

Just as she realized this, an Englishman ran up to her and reverently held up a wooden cross that looked as though he had just fashioned it then and there. She quietly thanked the man as he knelt, tears streaming down his face. Among the condemnation, there were still those who would cry for her.

As damnation is like a melody from far-off countries, grief is like a mother's lullaby.

Her hands were tied to a tall wooden stake behind her - rather tightly, perhaps to remind her that there would be no reprieve. But what meaning is there to escape after having come all this way?

The priest completed the recitation of her final judgement and promptly threw a torch, which slowly began to burn below her feet. They believed that the loss of the flesh was the greatest of fears... To them, this was the cruellest punishment of all.

The flame burned her skin, scorched her flesh and charred her bones. Again and again, she spoke the name of the Lord and the Holy Mother.

...Your prayers were a lie.

They endlessly denounced her with their words of abuse. Yet she only found it strange... for a prayer can be neither false nor true. A prayer is simply that, nothing more. Its nature does not change based on who you pray to.

She wanted to tell this to them but no sounds came from her. Suddenly, the scene before her was one from the past. It was a rustic village... with an ordinary family. She saw herself, the fool who ran away and tossed all of that aside.

Yes... Perhaps she had been foolish. After all, she knew that it would end this way from the start. It was she herself who understood this fate better than any around her.

...Things would not have ended this way had you had simply turned away from it.

That was the truth. If she had just shut her ears from the voice and abandoned those soldiers to their lamentations - for what salvation could they possibly have? - she would have gone through her life, got married and lived with husband and child. It would only be natural. She knew that she once had such a future as well.

But she abandoned it in favor of pressing down a different path.

She chose to take up a sword, put on armor, raise a standard and mount a horse on the front line.

...Did you know that it would end this way?

Yes. Of course she did. She knew that as long as she fought on, this end would come to her. So of course, others would decry her for stupidity. However, she herself would never stoop to self-derision.

"There had still been lives that I saved... so it cannot have been a mistake to walk this path."

These images - of the past, of impossible futures, even of cruel reality - were meaningless before her prayers.