CHASING WORLDS | honkai star rail

v.

"err...excuse me...if i may interrupt..." a soft voice came from the audience. "is...the trial still going?"

"freminet! you finally made it. i assume this means you've completed your mission?" lyney asked, smiling.

"mhm. any mission "father" assigns to me will always be top priority." with the help of some other members of the fatui, freminet brought a large stone slate to the stage.

"is that the first prophecy slate?" paimon questioned. "huh, so the knave privately arranged for freminet to try and find the missing slate."

"i looked everywhere, and finally found it at the bottom of the sea. it took me a long time to get around some dangerous stretches of water...but...has the trial already concluded? then...does that mean i've come too late? oh no, "father" will be disappointed in me..."

"don't worry. the mystery hasn't been resolved yet," lumine answered.

neuvillette cleared his throat, gathering the attention. "thank you for your hard work, mr. freminet. please allow me to review the record left on the slate."

after several moments of silence and neuvillette touching the stone slate, he looked towards lumine. "lumine, i believe that you have also already seen the other existing slates. i would like you to also come here and confirm their contents."

"this looks like...the previous hydro archon releasing her divine power..."

"i believe i have now made sense of the hydro archon's crime. it has to do with fontaine's lost history."

"huh? isn't the hydro archon guilty of deceiving her people...wait, no, that's furina, and we've already proven that she's not the hydro archon...so when you say "hydro archon," do you mean the real hydro archon we've been kind of talking about?"

"in truth, everything that you've encountered in fontaine up until this point can be traced back to the contents of these stone slates. however, i am uncertain as to how much sense they currently make to you."

the three discussed for a few moments more before silence fell over the opera epiclese. after several minutes of this, painon spoke up, the floating fae sounding anxious, "we're going to have to share some truly shocking revelations."

"let's hear them."

"all fontainians were originally created by the late previous hydro archon, with oceanids as their basis. the evidence for that can be found in...how only fontainians could dissolve in primordial sea water, and how all the girls vacher dissolved were also turned into oceanids. oh, and according to navia, when she was about to get dissolved, she also saw everyone gathered around for a trial, all of them in the shape of oceanids..."

"indeed."

"the second slate reveals that..."

"yeah, and it follows from the content of the first slate that she probably angered celestia by creating humans without prior permission. that could also explain why the oratrice judged the hydro archon to be guilty—it's to account for that ancient "sin.""

"and yet, after many hundreds of years, the hydro archon's creations have turned around to try to judge the archon within the opera epiclese. the twists of history are often the most unexpected of all."

"as for the third slate..."

"yeah, isn't the image here just like when navia fell into the sea? so, wouldn't it be trying to show the image of the hydro archon also falling into to the sea once the prophecy has been fulfilled in the fourth slate?

"in the end, the people will all be dissolved into the waters, and only the hydro archon will remain, weeping on her throne...only then will the sins of the people of fontaine be washed away. did paimon get all that right?"