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When Furina heard what was in that bowl, her heart sank, but for the first time in so, so long, her mind cleared. As if centuries of fog had finally given way, and she could see clearly.
Primordial Seawater...
One touch and any Fontainian will disappear. Dead in all essence.
If Furina was the archon, what worry should she have faced with mere water?
But she wasn’t an archon. This was a fact only she knew for centuries. The fact that started to get suspected.
She wasn’t a completely normal human by any means. Her everlasting long age was a clear sign that there was something about her that made her live this long without any power whatsoever, the only clear sign for her that the person in the mirror that she saw once was not a dream after all.
But she didn’t truly know if her everlasting youth could make her survive the seawater. If she died here, what about Fontaine? What about the promised trial? Is this the trial or not? If this wasn’t the trial, then Fontaine would fall once her fake mask was torn from her face.
If Fontaine fell, what was the point of her sacrifice in the last five hundred years???
She didn’t play the role of an archon for this long just to reach a bad ending.
But if she didn’t prove herself...
Furina looked up at the determined and expressionless faces of her righteous opponents in this trial.
...if she didn’t prove herself, that was the same as admitting she wasn’t the Hydro Archon.
‘Ah, it’s a checkmate.’ Furina closed her eyes.
The determined and intense expressions on everyone’s faces turned blank, scratched off her mind, leaving nothing but a blank, torn mark. In this stage, she was the only one playing a role; then, may she play it till the end.
‘If I’m the real Hydro Archon, I will...’ Furina opened her eyes and smiled beautifully to the audience. She turned to meet Neuvillette's eyes and crinkled her eyes with boundless gentleness she had held back for over centuries. Neuvillette straightened, his eyes widened in shock.
Before anyone could react, she shoved her hand into the water, and the water claimed her back with a cold embrace of nothingness.
Focalors opened her eyes, and a single tear escaped down her cheek. Everything around her shattered. Her delicate control over Fontaine, the barrier she silently maintained to keep the beast of prophecy away, even the Oratrice, all went awry in the left of her broken heart.
Blinding light engulfed the Opera Epiclese as the giant Narwhal beast broke through the void of space. In the midst of panic and civilians frantically trying to save themselves.
She yearned and hated the spotlight. All her designations had decided for her to remain a silent role in the backstage because in her opinion, Furina deserved the spotlight she worked so hard for- even if she hated it.
Neuvillette, distraught by what just happened, couldn’t handle the Narwhal’s rampage properly and nearly failed to protect the civilians, but Childe managed to redirect the Narwhal and pushed it back into the void again, falling after it.
The blinding light disappeared, and Focalors stepped out from the oratrice, finally gaining eyes on her.
“F-Furina, you’re okay?!” The traveler shook himself out of his shock and astonishment.
“Lady Furina...” Everyone who remained in the Opera Epiclese felt the clenching pain in their chest suddenly relieved when they saw Focalors, but their breath hitched again when Focalors closed her eyes wistfully and spoke up with a voice nobody recognized.
“Five hundred years, it’s been quite a while.” Focalors knelt down by the basin of water that had tipped over in the chaos. “Must you really choose such a method for her end, o’ children of Fontaine?”
Neuvillette’s pupils shook. “Who are you...? You’re not Furina.” He clenched his hands tightly.
“I’m Focalors, your archon,” Focalors answered with a deep tone. “Did I not look the part?” she raised her eyes coldly.
‘Ah, it’s impossible, after all. Without my heart, I might end up as cold as the queen of Snezhnaya...’ Focalors lamented.
“You’re the archon?!” Paimon exclaimed. “Why do you look so much like Furina?! Wait—what does this mean, then?!”
“If you’re the lady Archon, then who’s Lady Furina?” Lyney asked, dread creeping in.
“My ideal. My spirit and body, the perfect ideal of humanity,” Focalors answered the question only Lyney dared to ask. “And she died because of it.”
“No...” Their faces became pale again, but Focalors held no feeling of compassion for them. Furina was gone because of them. Focalors lost her other half because of this farce.
Focalors ignored them all. In the scale of things, they’re meaningless. She instead looked at Neuvillette. “Why?” Focalors questioned. “Why did you use true primordial sea water?” She closed her eyes, grieving.
Neuvillette couldn’t answer that. Seeing his partner of nearly five hundred years disperse nothing and then suddenly having a similar pair of eyes staring down at him was enough to make an average man pass out.
Focalors shook her head. “What to do now...” she lay down on the spilled water, willing it to return her heart to her, but she knew it was useless. She had no authority to command the primordial seawater. Not even her predecessor could do it safely. “My plan... How could you be so reckless...”
“If you’re the archon, why did you only come out now?” Neuvillette asked, holding back the rage that threatened to swallow him whole. The rage wasn’t for Focalors, but with Focalors’ appearance, it found a target to erupt on. “Why did you deceive us?”
Focalors lowered her head. “It’s for the prophecy. I did not intend to deceive anyone, but I must. It’s for the sake of deceiving the above.” She trembled, like invisible eyes gazing upon her, but she snapped back coldly, releasing herself from the pressure of fate. “I’m the second Hydro Archon, Focalors. Egeria’s successor. My one and only mission in life is to avoid the outcome of the prophecy.”
“I deployed Furina as my acting archon. For five hundred years, she held on so well for a human in the seat of Archon.” She gazed at them, confused, hateful, resentful, and desperate. “Why did you kill her?!”
Focalors touched the puddle of water that was the Primordial Sea Water in the basin earlier.
“Five hundred years! Five hundred years of sacrifice! So close... Why couldn’t you all be good children and listen to your archon!?” Focalors lashed out. “The prophecy must pass. It will pass. Regardless of whether you tried to change and avoid it, it will meet you on another path. It will come. The only thing that can be changed is the outcome.”
“Am I... late...?” Freminet stepped into the courtroom, gazing at the destruction inside the Opera with a wary look, not even the sight of safe Lyney and Lynette could make him relax.
Focalors’ eyes shifted to the boy. “You came to deliver the missing part of the prophecy, right?”
“H-how do you know...?” Freminet straightened. He fumbled and showed them what he found. “This... is the missing part.”
Everyone pieced together all the parts, finally getting a good, full look at the prophecy in the race against time. Freminet added his finding, and Neuvillette stepped back.
“We’re... following the prophecy?” The Traveler covered his mouth with a gasp; his flying companion gasped along beside him.
“A trial...” Neuvillette looked up sharply. “Furina always said that she was awaiting a trial. Was this—”
“We’ve been acting on the prophecy step by step?!” Navia exclaimed, horrified.
Focalors gazed coldly at them. “Because it cannot be avoided. Not even by the outsider outside the fate,” she mocked.
Aether and Paimon flinched. The traveler clenched his hands in disbelief.
“Now, it’s all futile. Nobody else can be the archon to weep in that throne... Why.... why... why did you kill her?!” she shouted.
Absolute silence fell after her earth-shattering cry.
“My plan... it was so close...” Focalors looked at her own hands and clenched them. “Five hundred years of dual sacrifice. Five hundred years! Is that not enough for you to have faith in me!” she slapped her chest.
Her wrath shook the Oratrice, and as a result, the whole Fontaine that the Oratrice was connected to. Everyone, sans Neuvillette, knelt down on instinct, their faces as pale as a sheet of paper.
“Have faith in me, your archon! In her, your archon! Children, how could you all—” Focalors cut herself and dropped her head in lament. “What a fool I am...”
Focalors stood up and raised her hands. The oratrice broke down, and a swipe of energy that could make the earth tremble suddenly spread out across Fontaine and even beyond borders.
In other nations, all of the archons straightened up and looked towards Fontaine in sync. Alarmed.
The Blade of Indemnitium appeared.
“O’ Hydro Dragon Sovereign,” Focalors murmured, smiling thinly at Neuvillette, who gazed at her in shock. “Let’s cut to the chase. I’m returning your power to you. Beware of the repeat of this prophecy in the future, for I’ve failed to crack it.”
“Wait,” Neuvillette seemed to have an idea what she was trying to do. “Focalors, you haven’t explained anything!”
“There’s no time,” Focalors said. She was at her wits’ end. But feeling generous and pity, she formed a bubble of water in her hand and tossed it to Neuvillette, who caught it. The water dispersed into memory that entered Neuvillette’s mind for him to see later. “And there’s no meaning for me to stall.”
Furina was gone. No one else may play the archon. Focalors sure as hell couldn’t. Without her final sacrifice, the power of Hydro Dragon Sovereign may not return, which would cause a real demise of the entire Fontaine.
Focalors looked upwards beyond the sword hanging above her head, to the fake sky she held in contempt. Without Furina, the prophecy of the archon weeping on her throne couldn’t be fulfilled. There was a risk of the prophecy repeating. But she couldn’t find any other way to reverse this at this time.
“Neuvillette. Please save Fontaine.” Focalors mustered up a smile through pain. “That’s what she would want.”
Focalors bowed with a light smile, even though she wanted to howl madly in laughter.
After the Blade of Indemnitium fell. She would cease to exist.
In the end... There would be no trace of either Focalors and Furina in this world again. Furina was erased by the Primordial Sea Water, and she would be erased by the Blade of Indemnitium. Primordial Sea Water was their origin, and the Blade of Indemnitium was the faith of Fontaine.
How ironic.
In the end, the things that made them would take them.
"Fontaine, I hope Furina will be the last one. Please learn this lesson," Focalors said.
“WAIT!” The traveler yelled. “You can’t do that! Tell me how to fix this! You must know, right?!” he clutched his chest. The gnawing guilt and horror of seeing a whole human being dissolve right in front of him made him desperate for a way to reverse everything.
Focalors didn’t deign the outsider a response.
The Blade of Indemnitium shone, and everyone in the vicinity was thrown away with its sheer power. The blade suspended on top of the Hydro Archon finally fell.
Focalors closed her eyes.
When the blade executed her, she dissolved into water, forever leaving no mark for her existence. Not even someone to say goodbye to.
"I still didn't expect Lady Furina to depart from this world like that."
"I heard the fake issues about her being a fake archon before the flood. What the hell was even that?" A foreign tourist asked the tour guide.
"Sssh! Saying that is taboo! And you know it's fake lies, anyway! Everyone had testified that Lady Furina was our archon. She was so heartbroken because of the trial and Fontaine's wavering faith that her protection over the whole nation faltered and caused a giant beast to break into the courtroom! To save the whole nation, she sacrificed herself, using up all of her power as an archon to make us immune to primordial seawater, a heavy price for us mortals."
"She's truly our kind and benevolent goddess!":
"Even though those people unfairly persecuted her!"
"Well, it has passed."
"What will happen to Fontaine now that you don't have an archon anymore?"
"Oh, you don't know? On the day of prophecy, a roar of a dragon could be heard everywhere in Fontaine! The Hydro Dragon had awakened. It was said he had sworn his life to Lady Furina before, but fell into a deep sleep. After her passing, he finally woke up, and we experienced divine retribution in the form of rain for a whole month. After a lot of worship, the rain finally calmed down a little. The Palais had announced that in the unfortunate absence of Lady Furina, Fontaine will be protected by the Hydro Dragon Sovereign from now on."
"Wow, that's so amazing! Lucky! At least Fontaine has a guardian!"
"Can we meet the Hydro Dragon Sovereign?"
"Unfortunately, no. No Fontainians ever see him beyond his first appearance when he flew above the cloud. But with such power, I believe he's the true Hydro Dragon Sovereign."
"Where are you bringing these baskets of flowers?"
"This? Naturally, it's to honor Lady Furina. We throw flowers into the Fountain of Lucine and pray for her at the beginning of every month. The Hydro Dragon Sovereign dictated it." The tour guide grinned. "The Hydro Dragon Sovereign clearly loved our beloved Lady Furina so much."