Normal POV
A hoarse cough escaped from my mouth as I regained consciousness.
"Hah I-I am still alive...wait where's Flat?!" I wildly looked around only to freeze.
Whereas I had fallen into unconsciousness at the park, I was now in the middle of an open dessert like plain.
Yet what caused me to freeze where the countless bodies of dead men in various armor.
Swords, spears, arrows, knives, and just about very conceivable weapon littered the sand like the remains of a shattered armory.
They were embedded in bodies, half-buried in the ground, and snapped in half from impacts I couldn't even begin to imagine.
Armor from dozens of eras lay scattered everywhere.
Rusted chainmail fused to bone, polished plate cracked clean through, and ceremonial cuirasses split as if they were made of clay.
Some corpses were ancient and desiccated, little more than mummified husks clinging to metal.
Others looked... fresh.
Too fresh in fact.
The air was dry, suffocating, and heavy with the metallic tang of blood that never quite faded no matter how long ago it had been spilled. A hot wind swept across the plain, kicking up sand and ash that scraped against my skin like fine glass.
My throat tightened.
This was a graveyard.
"No... no, no, no," I muttered hoarsely, pushing myself up onto my elbows.
I was completely alone.
There was no Flat, Waver, or even Gray in sight.
Only this endless desert stretching to the horizon, painted in shades of red, gold, and black.
I forced myself to stand, legs unsteady. As I did, my boot nudged something half-buried in the sand.
A helmet.
I stared at it.
It was split clean down the middle, edges warped inward as if crushed by overwhelming force. Inside, I could see the faint outline of a skull, shattered beyond recognition.
My breath hitched.
"What the hell... is this place?" I whispered trying to think of where I suddenly ended up.
The only place I could even recall ever looking like this from my memories as James is the place where Artoria died and EMIYA's reality marble.
"If this is battlefield where Saber died. Then what the hell am I here for?" I murmured.
Unsure of what else I could do around here I began walking around maybe I could find someone who was alive or something.
Each step crunched softly beneath my shoes as sand shifted over bone and broken steel. No matter where I looked, the scenery refused to change. The same ruined horizon, same sea of corpses, and same weapons jutting out of the earth at awkward angles.
Minutes passed.
Or maybe hours I didn't know.
"Of course," I muttered bitterly, wiping sweat from my brow. "of course, first I end up having to die 40 times in all the worst possible ways. An additional 5 if we include the first time, I activated my authority. Now yet again I've ended up in the middle of fuck nowhere!" I exclaimed kicking at discarded helmet with all of my pent-up frustration.
"F....FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!!!!" I roared dropping to my knees.
My scream tore out of me raw and ugly as I slammed my fist into the sand, pain flaring up my arm and grounding me just enough to stop my vision from swimming. My chest heaved, lungs burning as if the desert itself was trying to suffocate me out of spite.
When I finally dragged myself back to my feet, nothing had changed.
I started walking again but everything remained the same as always.
Then I noticed something about the newer corpses I came across.
Coming to a stop, I approached one half-buried body jutting out of the sand at an awkward angle. The man's armor was cracked open like an eggshell and his face frozen in an expression of pure, animal terror, mouth stretched open mid-scream.
But I could tell it wasn't bloodless that had killed him.
Black-purple crystal spikes had erupted straight through his torso.
Nearby some of the other bodies were pierced with the same material only they were shaped like weapons instead.
Some were long and spear-like, others curved and barbed, others shaped like swords, and some like axes. They shimmered faintly in the desert light, refracting it into sickening hues of violet and oil-slick black.
I felt my stomach churn.
At this rate I think this might be a frequent thing for me.
"Oh... oh that's not good," I muttered, taking an involuntary step back.
The sand around the corpse was glassed, half-melted into rough crystalline patches as if reality itself had been poisoned where the body fell. Nearby, in the far distance were more corpses in similar states. Knights all impaled mid-stride, others kneeling, and others collapsed as if they'd tried to crawl away.
Some weren't even fully flesh anymore.
Their skin had crystallized mid-transformation, faces half-human and half-gemstone.
A wave of nausea slammed into me.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, gagging "Jesus Christ what kind of sick shit is this?" I rasped.
My heart pounded harder the longer I stared.
There was something about the crystals.
Something familiar to the side of me that was Rigel before he merged with James. Although there was confusion as to how they felt familiar when he had never once encountered anything like this.
I was starting to see a pattern now.
First when I was talking with Waver I had started hearing and seeing things that I thought to be delusions.
Then the second time when I was about to give up. The voice of that woman helped me strengthen my resolve to keep fighting and not abandon Flat.
Could it be that maybe it's not that I've gone insane but rather I have a third soul merged with me that hasn't yet assimilated with me?
In the end I was only half-guessing with this and forced myself to look away from the scene.
When I saw it.
One of the crystal weapons laying impaled in the sand, separated from a victim.
It was shaped like a short spear or lance, its surface smooth and evenly shaped. Black veins pulsed faintly beneath the purple sheen, like something alive but only just dormant.
My instincts screamed at me to back away.
Yet my curiosity decided to punch those instincts in the face.
"Well, it's not like I have anything better to do," I muttered.
I hesitated, hand hovering inches from the crystal shaft.
"Hey," a voice cut through the desert like a knife.
I froze.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
"Yeah," the voice continued, casual and almost amused "I wouldn't touch one of those if I were you, pal. Unless you're really into the idea of turning into a crystal statue."
I snapped my head up, heart hammering violently as I spun toward the sound.
My hand jerked back from the weapon as if burned.
"Who said that?!" I shouted, scanning the battlefield wildly.
"Over here," the voice replied.
Following the sound my eyes locked over to a nearby hill.
A figure that I had seen once before sat on top of a hill of corpses.
He lifts a single arm up giving a lazy wave "yo, nice to meet ya pal," the mysterious man greeted.
"Who the hell are you?" is all I can say.
-end of chapter fifteen-
So the MC will get some answers to certain things, but not all things.
Wouldn't be fun to just give everything away in a single chapter when you can just space it out for an extra five or ten chapters or more.
Anywho apologies for the short chapter it's only at 1280 words minus the Author's note