Title: Requiem at Dawn
Fandom: Vagrant Story
Rating: G
Length: 340 words
Author's notes: The setting of this game is practically a character in the story... Which ends at daybreak after a very difficult night.
Summary: She whom they seek to conquer will not allow herself to be taken.

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She had been an object of desire for many a man, and not a few women, nearly since her conception. All who looked upon her marveled at her beauty; some, who discerned the truth she kept hidden, lusted as well after the power she bestowed upon those whom she favored. Yes, she left in her wake a long procession of jilted would-be consorts, driven off by those who cared for her, rather than her beauty or her power. Those who had loved her mother, those who were her brothers and sisters and children, those who had sworn to protect her.

Even in her final days, when time and cruelty and greed had brought her low, when tremors shook her relentlessly, when she was humbled and nearly forgotten by much of the world, there were still those who sought to lay claim - and those who served as her caretakers. They guarded her with their very lives; they called her beautiful still. Never would they leave her unprotected against those who would mistreat her.

Yet it was the way of all things in the physical realm to wither, to pass away, and she heard the truth in the armored footfalls of the knights as they trod upon her, abusing her, despoiling her. Darkness fell. Her time had come. She would not be conquered; her guardians need not sacrifice themselves on her behalf any longer.

Her mother had perished in the flames, but this was not to be her end. As day broke over the eastern sea, the ground beneath her trembled, and her finery gleamed in the light of dawn for the last time. Heedless of those mortals who sought to flee to the cliffs beyond the straits, of the panic of the eldritch creatures who had been her company after humanity had abandoned her, her ancient, broken body shuddered with the earth, down to the very bone and marrow - and with the sun's rising, she slipped with her secrets beneath the waves, where they might peacefully slumber beyond man's reach evermore.