The Story Comes to Fruition

...

Fooou.

Huh? I...I don't understand! What do you mean "the story is complete"!?

Very well, my one miscast... Now that everything has concluded, I shall tell you.

It's very simple. In brief...

I created Agartha by having my Noble Phantasmmy storieserode the real world.

Put differently, you have all been inside my One Thousand and One Nights this entire time.

What...!?

But...that doesn't make any sense.

The One Thousand and One Nights does have a story set in an underground world, but it's nothing like this.

And needless to say, they definitely don't include Ys, the Nightless City, El Dorado, the Peach Garden, or the Dragon Palace.

That may be... But I never told the tales of Aladdin or Ali Baba when I was alive either.

!?

...Now I see. The One Thousand and One Nights as we know them now contain a number of parts that were added over the course of various retellings.

But if she's able to use them all without any issue...

...it may be that she gets to decide what the One Thousand and One Nights are.

Indeed. Stories I learned through books...stories I improvised myself...

Stories that came after my time, but that I could have plausibly told...

The One Thousand and One Nights were never a fixed set, but a malleable collective that grew over time.

As such, it only makes sense that I would have a right to choose what goes into them...

...Now that you point that out, I can see the connection between this world and your Noble Phantasm.

Fictional or not, everything here is part of a story. I might have realized it sooner if I'd paid more attention to that.

Then again...maybe I didn't realize it because there's still something I can't quite believe:

...the sheer scale and rigidity of this world.

This is on a whole other level from the monsters Shakespeare wrote into existence in Shinjuku.

Here, it's more like the rules of this worldrather, that this entire Singularity is itself a story.

That's the equivalent of eroding...no, rewriting reality.

That would have to be an incredibly powerful spell: something on par with a Reality Marble! I guess it could be possible for a Demon God Pillar, but still...

Hmm, I suspected as much.

All stories, whether they be fiction or nonfiction, have an element of inauthenticity.

？！

Of course. After all, when one is describing events as a story...

...by definition, those events are not taking place in reality.

Okaaay... English, please! What's that all mean?

It means the evidence was in plain sight from the beginning.

Every Servant here has had some manner of inauthenticity to them.

That is the proof that this has all been a story.

...What do you mean by that, Holmes?

This underground domain has blended together story and reality to an even greater degree than Shinjuku.

In Shinjuku, that blend merely occurred as a result of Bael's choice to use Phantom Spirits...

...but in Agartha, I sense it to be a deliberate choice.

Once this unnatural underground space was created, Heroic Spirits were summoned to it, but with significant alterations made to them.

Some reactions were all but inevitable in such a process. In this case, I believe they were the story each Servant was made to perform.

？！

I did indeed. Let us begin with the most obvious examples. Surely there was something that struck you as inauthentic about them?

...Christopher Columbus had amnesia.

Heracles was Heracles Megalos, an enormous, mindless beast in a constant berserk state.

？！

...Hehe. Those are certainly the clearest examples. But I'm afraid I had no other choice.

After all, Pirate Princess Dahut, the ruler of Ys...

...was simply impossible to summon as a Servant.

I see. That puts one in mind of Phantom Spirits.

...Yeah. To be honest, Wu Zetian and the Nightless City have been nagging at me for a while now.

What do you mean...?

They're from entirely different periods. Wu Zetian is from the Tang dynasty, while the Nightless City is from the Han.

I let it pass me by at first since they both come from China...

But when you think about it, it makes no sense for Wu Zetian to be the ruler of the Nightless City.

They have no connection other than their country, and they're hundreds of years apart historically.

Assuming that was indeed Wu Zetian's inauthenticity, the final piece is the Amazons, the most elementary of all these errors.

They fall into much the same category as Wu Zetian, in that their historical domain differed greatly from the land they controlled here.

？！

Precisely.

Those who lived in the jungles of South America, the ones who protected El Dorado...

...are entirely different from the warrior women of Greek mythology.

Some believe that the tribe of women who lived in the jungle only came to be associated due to their similarities to the myth...

...and that that is why the river and surrounding area came to be known as the Amazon.

In essence, the Greek figures were no more than the model for those in the story of El Dorado.

And so the fact that Penthesilea lived in El Dorado was itself another inauthenticity.

And then...

There's me...the fledgling warrior. The Fergus who's nothing like the Fergus you all know.

Scheherazade...you said I was your one miscast. What did you mean by that?

...Fergus mac Róich. Your intended role was to stir up Agartha, though in a different way than Heracles.

I had read that you were the embodiment of male sexuality, that you required seven women every night just to satisfy your lust.

...

I thought you would be even lustier if I summoned you in your youth, but you ended up being TOO young.

I could not have imagined that you would appear as a boy uncomfortable around women, to the point that you could not even raise a hand against one. You are by far my greatest miscalculation.

A miscalculation...? So I'm only here because of a mistake.

I'm a pointless side character. A half-baked extra. I hate to admit it, but that makes a lot of sense.

I haven't been of any help in a single battle so far. It didn't matter whether I was there or not.

(But...that's only true for the audience. For me, this adventure has been)

Fergus...

Yes, Master Fergus's inauthenticity is his youth. Essentially, everything we see before us now.

One might go so far as to assert that every other Servant who may have been summoned here and eliminated prior to our meeting them would have had some inauthentic characteristic about them.

Then, the Noble Phantasm you have been using before us all this time: Alf Layla Wa-Laylathe One Thousand and One Nights...

...that is what you used to create this world, and to summon twisted forms of Servants to fill it.

I only have one question. Why would you do such a thing?

...You really have to ask? I thought my desire had been made quite clear.

I have certainly voiced it often enough...

Then...your objective is to live a long life?

No, no, I never said anything like that.

All I want...is to not die.

？！

Not in the slightest. As long as you are alive, you will one day have to die.

Uh... 'Scuse me, but you DO know that we're all Servants, right?

What difference does that make? To exist now inevitably means dying later. It's the same thing.

In the end, we Servants are nothing more than familiars. Once our task is finished, we disappear.

That, too, is death. It holds the same chill, solitude, misery...the same terrifying intercourse with nothingness as when you cease to exist!

I can't stand it. I spent every one of those thousand and one nights wishing for nothing more than to not die. Every fiber of my being is terrified of death!

And, as a Heroic Spirit, the only way for me to ever avoid dying...

...is to destroy the world. The man who summoned me taught me that.

A man, hmm? I believe we have just found our Demon God Pillar collaborator!

...When she first showed up, I of course scanned her for the Demon God Pillar's signal.

If she really is the one who's been working with him, then how did they avoid detection!?

Let's not forget that other little, tiny thing she brought up. Did you say "destroy the world"?

？！

Agartha's story is one in which related stories, and those of Servants summoned here, mingle and fight...

...and ultimately comes to fruition once they disappear.

My Noble Phantasm gives stories form. His power made them real.

Very soon, my storythe story of Agarthawill assume the form it was always meant to take!

？！

No, it's not that! I...I can't believe it! Your Z-axis coordinates are rising rapidly!

The ground is moving; the sky is splitting... It's like the entire space is moving upward!

Fooou!?

Wh-what the...? There's a real sky instead of a rocky ceiling now!

Impossible. You mean to tell me we're flying!?

This is Agartha's final form come to life...another story all its own.

It is now the floating city of Laputa!

I offered up everything I had to that king in order to not die. Not only my stories...but my body as well.

As such, there can be no more fitting name for the finale than "Laputa"the "whore"!

Rise, Laputa! Gaze down upon the earth, and plummet towards it! You shall be the last of the mythical cities, the destroyer of the world's natural laws!