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“Just do it.” The breathy exhale of the Archiver made Elizabeth flinch. Shiori’s eyes were drunk off exhaustion, every breath depriving her of the adrenaline that she so desperately needed in her veins. The only thing rushing through her now was numbing pain and exhaustion. Blood dripped from her nostril, flicked off her upper lip as she struggled to find Elizabeth through her foggy vision. “...Just do it.” She repeated. She sat there on bruised knees and raised her arms. She was inviting the end.
Just like that. Just do it? After a year of chasing, after months of close calls, after the fight of their lives. Just do it. Elizabeth was weary to approach. She kept her greatsword at the ready, trying to find her breath as she cautiously approached the Archiver. She stopped just out of range of Thorn's blade.
Shiori giggled. Her arms fell to her side and she struggled to keep herself upright. She strained herself to hold eye contact, looking up at Elizabeth through hooded eyelids. “Dang… You gonna make me beg?”
Elizabeth tightened her lip, “As if I’d fall for your games.” The leather of her right-hand glove threatened to snap as she tightened her grip. “Get up.”
“No.” Shiori frowned, “I think I’m good. I think that’s all.”
“You’re not going to fool me!” There was a desperation in the pit of her throat, “Stand up and face me proper! Draw another line in your book, cast another spell, cast a hundred, I don’t care. Just stand and fight!”
Shiori didn’t rise, she only sank lower onto her knees. Her eyes finally fell to the floor, tears welling up and tracing downward. It was the only sign that dying bothered her. That any of this bothered her. “I’m tired, Liz. I’m tired of pretending things can change, that we could.” Shiori buried her fist into the marble floor. Her knuckles chafed against the cracks, “I just want to rest.”
Elizabeth’s teeth rattled, her alarmingly red eyes blasted wide-open. She could hardly keep her breath steady. Her body was screaming in a fiery panic, no more evident than in the whipping flames of her billowing blue hair cracking against the air. “What about the others? What about Advent? You’re just going to give up now? Leave them to their fates?”
Shiori pounded her fist into the cracked marble, inviting debris into her bruised flesh, “Yes!” She cried in delirious glee. “Yes.” She unballed her fist, the last of her fight now staining the floor red. She breathed deep, “I couldn’t change their fates anymore than I could change mine! It didn’t matter how much power I took. I can use the holo to rewrite the world but I can never change the fact that we were written to end. Every struggle was just carrying us further and further to our one singular conclusion, the canon ending. There’s an Archiver, there’s a Scarlet Queen, there’s a sword, and then there’s one… So yeah, I think I will leave them to their fates, I think I’ll leave everything to the fates. I’m just an Archiver right? I was never meant to write my own story, let alone theirs. So let’s just put an end to this, to everything… Aren’t you tired too, Liz?”
Elizabeth’s brow furrowed, her pupils fluctuating between obscene grief and the promise that this would all be over. She would do her duty, bring ORDER to the world. Thorn never felt heavier in her hands.
The Scarlet Queen took a step forward. In some worlds she’s wearing a glorious suit of armor. In others, Shirori carries the visage of a detective. There are countless versions of this story, each with their own history and aesthetics, but there are three constants, the ending. There is an Archiver. There is a Scarlet Queen. There is a sword. This Elizabeth sobs when Shiori closes her eyes as she approaches. She’s sobbing because she can’t change what’s about to happen. When she feels Shiori go limp at the end of Thorn’s blade, she doesn’t curse the Gods, she doesn’t swear vengeance on the fates. She takes Shiori’s life because she is more devoted to Justice, to ORDER, than she is to her friends, her family, her lover. She curses and sobs because she has not changed. She has committed an action that breaks all of her and she does not change. She will plunge that blade into a thousand Archivists and she will not change.
There’s another line to their fates that not even Shiorin was privy to. It’s the last trick up ORDER’S sleeve, a final twisting of the knife. It goes something like this.
There is an Archiver.
There is a Scarlet Queen.
There is a sword.
Then there is one.
And then the world ends.
It’s a figurative end. It’s the end of curiosity, of memory. That Archiver dies and she takes the knowledge of knowing, and being known, with her. Every mortal in the world is reduced to a blank state of reason, of justice, of ORDER–all with the swing of a single sword. The blue flames of Elizabeth’s hair streak into the sky. The Scarlet Queen burns the world.
This is how it ends.
How it will always end.