The end of our noble dream

It was coming apart.
The collapse of Ten no Sakazuki was now inevitable.
The 1000 year quest of the Einzbern.
The 500 year long dream of the Makiri.

A world that continued on end without haltering, without change, without achievement, was now coming to a conclusion.

"O, oooooooooooo."

And, in the midst of that ruin, it still possessed a mind.
I don't want to die

Its body was now nothing more than a mass of dark red flesh, one without even a trace of humanity.
A horde of worms that infested the depths.
Even gathering them all into one ball of flesh would not let it sustain the shape of a human being.

"Oooo,oo,o,ooo"

What was tossing in pain was a "moving" clump of flesh that did nothing but move.
But even still, it was alive.
Cursing its disintigrating self, the soul of that thing thought,

I don't want to die

That obsession alone was enough to keep it in this world.

"Oooooooo, ooooooo"

It crawled past the ground.
Makiri Zouken. With his main body that binded him on this plane of existence crushed, the elder magus remained just by obsession.

But it would be only some time before he would perish.

Despite shoving his decaying soul into hastily prepared worms, the wounds he bore once more were those that could never be healed again.

I don't want to die
The ball of flesh that was the elder magus at the end of all of his suffering was giving his final breaths.
Rotting until the very end, fading with regret.

And then, right before him.
Gazing at the realization of eternity, what he had continued to search for ages, what ought to have been within his grasp by just one more step...

"Ooooooooo, ooooo"

Were his death throes filled with agony or were they filled with regret?

I don't want to die.

He didn't want to die.
How can he pass on into the abyss like this?
500 years.
The result of suffering for 500 years; why did he have to die when what ought to have been his reward was right before his eyes?

"Oooooo, ooooo"

Recalling it gave him nothing but pain.
The dream of the Makiri
A reknowned house of the way of the arcane that drifted onto a land in the far east after being chased out of their homeland.
Unable to adapt to the laws of that country, they went into decline.

But that wasn't what actually happened.
Had that been the case, they wouldn't have been damned.
If their bloodline was dying out for those reasons, they would have meekly accepted their destruction.

I don't want to die.

But the truth was different.
It wasn't because the soil of Japan wasn't suitable for them.
The Makiri hadn't ended because of an external factor of that sort.
They had simply fallen.

300 years since the adventuring ancestor of the Makiri.
Those 300 years had been the limits of their lineage.
The Makiri magus had already fallen by Zouken's time.
The pain began from that point on, and the old man had done nothing but deny it.

He was faced with the fact that the clan of Makiri had come to that insignificant conclusion. He rebelled against that, desperately trying to hide it. That was the life of the man named Matou Zouken.

I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, Idontwantodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodieidontwanttodie...!!!

"O, oo, ooooooooo.......!!!!"

Yes, he musn't die. He loathed his decaying body. The pain is maddening. Anyways, the pain is maddening. Five hundred years of only pain. A life of only pain. What was wrong with seeking immortality? He suffered, he suffered, he suffered without achieving anything, how could he disappear without a trace, how could he die while still suffering, the Holy Grail was open right before him, so ask for his wishes, and he will answer you if asked, he wishes not to die, his wish will be granted as long as he passes that cliff, yet his body can't go that far even when his wishes would be granted, it's only that far, a distance equivalent to a flea compared to these 500 hundred years, but why, why must it be that far!!!!!

"O, oo, o, ooooo"

The ball of flesh splattered its way across.
Such obsession.
It couldn't move, no it shouldn't have the bodily capacity to move. But it moved onward just through anger.

A mass of thought that became a beast of pure obsession.
Not hearing the sound of collapse, it moved onward with only the Holy Grail in its eyes.
And to that unworldly monstrosity,

"So you have warped yourself that much, Makiri."

Was the commander of a beautiful voice, like the sound of a bell, that called out to him.

"Wha-t?"

It raised its eyes.

And in the midst of that shaking world
Was one sole girl.

"...."

The ball of flesh stopped.
It looked at the girl as if in a trance.
...What the old magus saw was not a girl.
What it saw was a woman of times long passed. The one that never faded from its heart.
The golden holy maiden of the Einzbern.
-200 years ago.
His comrade, the former Heaven's Feel, offered herself as a sacrifice to construct the greater Holy Grail.

"...."

She hasn't lost her beauty since that day.
The woman of the Holy Grail, with the same eyes from the days that he had longed for her,

"I ask of you, my sworn enemy. For what reason did you not want to die?"

Spoke to him, only once, with the voice of days gone.

"....."

That pure question brought an end to the thoughts of pain.
Why.
Why.
Why.
Now that she mentioned it, it was odd.
Why did he not want to die?
Why couldn't he afford to die?
He would have been freed from all of this pain should he have perished, and yet, he clung to life, embracing all of that pain. Why?

"O...ooo, oooooooo"

I remember

Yes, at first there had been a noble objective.
To obtain all creation.
To know all truths.
To go where no one has gone before.

To surpass the limit that is called the flesh, to reach the infinity that is called the soul.

The species called homo sapiens.
To bring what circulated inside the predefined limit of the spiral that is the brain, to the outer world.

To heal and erase all evil, all pain.

I remember.

After he had wailed when he learned that there was no Eden.
He garnered together the strength of will to embark on a journey to a place where it was possible, if it could not be found in this world, if it could not even be built with a body of flesh.

He would not create a new world. He would change oneself, he would change mankind into a new existence.

"O.....o."

....Yes.

To go to that sky, to go to the ends of what he had only been looking at,
To be reborn, onto a horizon that no one can envision,
He will reach that unimaginable paradise.

And to accomplish that.

He desired the Holy Grail.
He desired a miracle beyond him.
Until he reached that point, he couldn't vanish.
Crushed again and again and knowing well that it lay out of his reaches, he could not give up as long as he was still alive.

Yes, there was only one thing I saw in my dreams.
The obliteration of all evil.
We wagered our lives on this impossible utopia.

"....O"

That's why he stayed behind.
After all of his sworn enemies were gone, he kept striving after it, despite knowing how meaningless it was.
He believed there was meaning to it and knew that this would one day shape those who came after him.

That's why he kept living.
Despite knowing how painful it would be, he could not die.
Even if he would remake himself, he wanted to overcome that naive lament he saw in his youth.

Wasn't that the way he had chosen to live, wasn't that the answer that he had found in living?

.....Yes.
Even if what lay ahead of him went unrewarded.

"O....oo, o......!"

That was his original wish.
That agony.
Compared to the challenge of continuing to strive towards an unrealizable desire, how insignificant the desire to not die was....!

"....Yes, that was how it was, wasn't it, Justica"

....He gazed up at the world.
Half of the great hollow cavern was collapsing.

Matou Sakura was liberated and was already been taken away from this world.
The mistaken result of their quest, Angra Mainyu flared like a heat haze.

All of that.
Was accepted by the old magus to be out of his hands.

"So this is the end. My dream, my agony, the mission of the Makiri....all of it ends here."

This was fate.
The journey of the Makiri, no matter how far they tried to go, would in the end cease here.

"Ha, haha, hahahah"

But.
It was in no way the miserable conclusion of decades of pain.

This was surely only the start.
Their trial, their journey had only just begun.

Five hundred years was laughable.
How could one go that far with just that amount of time?

What we desired was far more brilliant, far more revered, and far more distant.
The growth of the human race would be gotten at the end of a thousand, no ten-thousand years to come.

Their trifles were only an insignificant factor, but without question one with meaning, to mark the beginning of this.

Their dream would not end by the likes of this.

The journey was just beginning.
From here on to eternity. Our history, heading towards the far distant boundaries, will cycle together with the end of the dream.

"But alas, such regret. I was so close."

The words of defeat belonged to the old magus.
No matter what kind of light he had sought, he strayed off the path of righteousness and used evil as a means to reach an end.
And without hiding that, he ceased his obsession towards life.

The last of the seekers had left.
One of the greatest of the miracle hunting magi, the observer that had remained a lingering principle player, crumbled apart.

"500 years, ha. How short a dream it was ."

The ball of flesh was swallowed up by the falling cavern walls, gone without a trace.

One who lived through alteration.
The magus, together with the end of his noble dream, was completely annihilated from this world.