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Leng, Fabled Plateau of Converging Dimensions

Summary:

After the events of Salem, Chaldea is carrying on in a gloomy limbo, with Ritsuka and the Servants trying to enjoy the last of their time together before it all gets shut down--but then Ritsuka disappears under inexplicable conditions just as Holmes is discovering that Raum's ritual had unexpected repercussions. In the confusion, some unlikely Servants become the heroes of the day, a mysterious traveler makes her return, and Chaldea itself becomes the site of a dimensional disaster to rival any Singularity.

(Tl;dr Salem sequel and Lovecraftverse crossover)

Notes:

I re-read the entire collected works of HP Lovecraft while I was waiting for Abby to come out and goddamn it I had to do something with all this useless Lovecraft passion. I'm not sure I can promise this is going to update on a schedule per se but I'm not the kind of person who likes to abandon projects so it'll probably go along at a slow but steady pace!!

Chapter 1: Dream-Memories of the Qliphoth

Notes:

4/6/2022 - added this fic to my main account. I had originally put it on a side account, but the more fic I write them more I want it all in one place so into the pile it goes

Chapter Text

Archer/Robin Hood

“Has anyone else been having really wacked-out dreams lately?”

Robin Hood let his breakfast tray drop unceremoniously onto the Chaldea cafeteria table, making his bacon and eggs—and the Servants sitting there—jump.

“Nothing any stranger than usual!” Mozart said serenely. “I even managed to come up with a new sonata while I was sleeping. I haven’t written it down yet, but maybe I can punch it up a little—”

“You haven’t even written it down yet?” Cu Chulainn said. “You’re bullshitting us.”

“Do I really have to hear language like this first thing in the morning?” Martha snapped, while Mozart grinned impishly. “...And no, Robin, I’ve been fine.”

“No, I sort of get what he means.” Cu scratched the back of his neck. “I just feel on edge lately, and I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s because we’re just waiting to get shut down at this point,” Martha sighed. Everyone murmured in agreement.

After a morose silence, Cu spoke up again. “It’s deeper than that, though.”

“Yeah, yeah!” Robin pointed his fork at him. “It’s like there’s some danger I haven’t put my finger on yet. Like being stalked through the woods.”

Martha and Mozart shrugged.

“Must be some man-of-the-woods thing. We wouldn’t know anything about something so brutish, right, Martha?” Mozart lifted his teacup to his lips with one pinky extended dramatically. Martha rolled her eyes.

“What about you, Baron?” Robin directed his question to the far end of the long table, where another Servant sat alone. “You haven’t said anything much.”

Baron Gilles de Rais—the Saber—sat away from everyone else, with nothing in front of him but a cup of coffee that was almost white with creamer. His gaze flickered across their faces, as if he was waiting for one of them to tell him to go away. Robin couldn’t bring himself to like the guy, but sometimes he did feel sorry for him.

“...It wouldn’t be anything new for me to have troubled dreams.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

They all ate in relative silence after that. Maybe it was because the last Rayshift had been hardly a week ago, and now it was only a matter of time before the end. What was there to talk about anymore?

Martha glanced at the clock hanging on the white cafeteria wall. “Almost time for daily Mass. Are you coming, Gilles?”

Gilles nodded, abandoning even the pretense of drinking his coffee. Mozart got up as well—Robin knew he always played the piano to add some music to their little services. It was something to give structure to the nightless and dayless Antarctic bastion of Chaldea. The divisions between churches had dissolved here, and whether they had been Catholics, Protestants, or something too early to have a name, all the good Christians here marked their mornings with a pious gathering. That dodgy Japanese kid rallied them all together into a meeting room and they did whatever Christians do, for about an hour, every morning they could manage.

It wasn’t Robin’s cup of tea, and he couldn’t pretend to trust it. He felt closer to the spirits or whatever sitting under a big yew tree than in a chapel full of folding chairs. Here in climate-controlled pristine white Chaldea he could hardly feel the breath of nature. Sure, they cultivated food in some really depressing agricultural chambers, but he could really use an honest-to-god forest right now.

The heebie-jeebies from last night’s dream wouldn’t leave him alone. When he rubbed his eyes, he could still almost see the nameless squirming forms, like something that had been born outside the sheltering arms of Earth’s ecosystem, coaxed into being by an alien god.

An alien god. Yeah, that was a good way to put it. It reminded him of what they had glimpsed in that courthouse in Salem. Maybe it was because he was a Servant—a protector of human existence—that he couldn’t forget about that thing.

When the whole magic generator of Chaldea was shut down, and he was returned to the Throne, where would those memories go? Would those festering half-imagined outer Things stay in his mind and remain part of his Spirit Origin forever?

He hoped not. The idea of it felt unclean somehow.

Put off by the thought, Robin picked at his bacon noncommittally until the clawed red hands of a certain passing oni tried to swipe it off his plate and he had to fight to defend his hard-earned food, finally forcing himself to finish it.

Just when he was clearing his plate away, Mash trotted in, her hands drawn into tight nervous fists close to her chest.

“What’s up, lassie?” Cu asked, although everyone in the room could already tell.

“Looking for Master?” Tamamo asked brightly from the other side of the room. “Let me text Kiyohii~ She’ll know where she is!”

Cu barked out a laugh at the expression on Robin’s face.

While Mash waited, she shifted her weight back in forth in a kind of nervous hopping dance. It wasn’t like he paid a huge amount of attention to it, but Robin was observant by nature—Mash and Master had been even closer than usual lately, practically inseparable, like they were clinging together. He didn’t blame them, either. What would happen to the two of them when this whole thing ended? Mash had only seen the outside world in crumbling dystopias and distorted histories, and might not even live to be twenty without a Heroic Spirit’s powers. Master was a normal girl who had missed out on two years of normal life. What did they have outside Chaldea’s walls?

Nothing. Only each other. He could understand clinging to someone like that. Mash hovered around the cafeteria, too distracted to make conversation with any of the other diners.

Robin’s eyelids drooped, though he tried not to let them. He didn’t want to fall back asleep, not today. The weird vibes this morning must be messing with his internal clock. This should be just after peak breakfast time, but he felt like there were too few Servants milling around today, almost as if something was keeping them busy, like something was going on. Maybe there’s something wrong with me...I should ask the other guys who went to Salem if they’ve been feeling screwy too...though that doesn’t explain Cu...fuck it. I’ll take a cold shower and start this whole weird morning over again…

A cutesy jingle rang out through the cafeteria and Tamamo elegantly put down her green tea to pick up her phone. She looked at it, tilted her head, and frowned.

“Kiyohii doesn’t know where Master is.”


Da Vinci presided over an uneasy crowd in the Command Room, a tightly packed gathering of what had to be every Servant in Chaldea, as well as the actual human staff. Robin had found himself between Nitocris and Astolfo, who insisted on bouncing in his seat and humming to himself despite the tenseness of the situation.

“So let me get this straight,” Da Vinci was saying to the three women standing at the center of the room. “None of you have been able to ascertain Ritsuka’s location this morning?”

Kiyohime, the Hassan of Serenity, and Minamoto-no-Raikou all shook their heads glumly. Poor Serenity was trembling—Robin had always kind of liked her, as a fellow poisoning aficionado.

“I brought her some warm milk and offered to sing her a lullaby last night, but she refused again,” Raikou said with a hint of wistful sadness. “So I waited outside her door in case she needed me in the night…and then she never came out of her bedroom in the morning!”

“I settled down to sleep under Master’s bed at exactly 10:25pm,” Kiyohime said. “And by 11:01 the gentle sound of her breathing had lulled me to sleep as well…”

“I watched over Master under the cover of darkness for the entire night,” Serenity said. “But…” She seemed afraid to go on.

“Huh?!” A puff of smoke burst out of Kiyohime’s mouth. “Wait, what do you know? Withholding Master-related info is against the terms of our truce!”

“I’m sorry!” Serenity protested. “I would have told everyone! But I didn’t want to make a report until I had more information, and even then I…” She bowed her head. “I still don’t know what happened to Master last night...The Great Founder will surely take my head for my inexcusable failure!”

Da Vinci tried to quell the uproar, finally giving up until it ended on its own when a bang like a matchlock pistol going off resounded through the air.

“Serenity. What do you even mean you ‘don’t know’?” one of the Elizabeth Bathories asked with an indignant huff.

“Excuse me, Elizabeth, I’m asking the questions here,” Da Vinci said. “Serenity! What do you even mean you ‘don’t know’?”

“I couldn’t wrap my head around where she went! It was like one moment she was laying there asleep in bed, and the next, she was no longer in the room. As if it were some kind of illusion or magecraft...but she was gone so completely I couldn’t even feel our bond anymore.”

In the next quiet moment, Nitocris gasped. And then Robin felt it too, like once someone pointed it out, it suddenly became so obvious.

Of course he had been uneasy this morning, of course everything had felt off, of course so many people’s routines had been diverted away from the cafeteria—

Fujimaru Ritsuka was gone.