act18d3

Skadi covertly applies her strength. Her puzzlement and irritation towards Gladiia pale completely to her present anger at the bishop.

Given one chance, this originator of evil will be shattered, flesh pasted.

Just one chance.

My sparing your life testified: you are that person, one and the same. I've already executed those not worth sparing.

As it's proven how you, them, and this experiment are all implicated, you need not be alive any longer.

The Church of the Deep... you're from the Church of the Deep.

Did I permit you to address me so?

You're far too good at hiding. Each one of you is unalike. You'll say anything and everything.

Was Specter also driven to derangement... by your indoctrination and torture?

Those people outside. You exploited them. Are they experiments to you too?

Have all the people cast into the sea... been sacrifices for your tests?

Impudent.

The bishop's figure seems to enlarge some. He may truly be angered.

The ocean's almsgiving is no manner of exploitation. It is salvation.

I could concern myself none with them, and they would die.

The ocean gives them food, gives those unwilling to live the freedom to live on in rebirth...

A cold shudder runs through Skadi. Sea Terrors. Sea Terrors. They become Sea Terrors.

How could you unhallowed things hope to understand...

Enough, bishop. Have I ever shown care for your objective before? If you remember anything false, I invite you to forget it immediately. Your disgraceful conduct defies description. The only thing I mind is how much further your toxin might drift.

This is far enough.

You believed bringing one more... would let you topple me with ease?

You and your kind alike are so self-confident—so stupid.

I know that some of you chose to become Sea Terrors already. I fear that won't serve as a trump card.

Even if you can become a Seaborn—

Skadi suddenly registers that the scent of a Seaborn has drawn near.

Moreover, it is not the bishop.

Captain!

Skadi leaps forward, but the Seaborn is already too close to Gladiia, much too close.

With her speed, Gladiia is able to dodge before the sound even crosses.

But before anything, it requires that Gladiia intend to dodge.

Gladiia had not even been aware...

Haugh, hgh-eugh... (Choking on her blood)

Gla-dia. His request was this. And so I did.

Rest.

Skadi, having witnessed the instant the monster impaled Gladiia, now watches as it extracts its limb and leaves Gladiia to crumple, ruined.

A trap. This was a trap. Skadi had long readied herself to confront a Seaborn... but why did Gladiia not notice it?

Did she allow herself to underestimate the enemy? Or did what happened to Specter destroy her calm?

Who is the hunter, and who is the hunted?

Moreover—how could—a Seaborn—

Ishar-mla.

(Why... why, why?)

Why did Gladiia choose to make a move here? She could've just said something to Skadi, and the two of them would've easily killed the bishop!

Can this bishop truly be not a monster? Was the scent she smelled the whole time this Seaborn, and not the bishop?

What is this thing in front of her? Is it a Sea Terror? The bishop's transformation? A Seaborn?

If it's one of her unendingly long-despised enemies, why can it talk?

Ishar-mla. I wanted to meet you.

Skadi does not speak. Her hand reaches for her case as she watches for the Seaborn's first move, its first possible movement.

Life and death are an instant apart. She wants the monster dead.

Countless years buoyant. Countless years roving. Countless lived and died.

*Spit*...

Idiotic unhallowed. If the herald did not request you, all you unholy things would have been dead on the beach long ago.

Bastard...

Herald, put an end to this problem. Watching these people encroach on our ocean has always sickened me.

Are you that eager to attack them?

How many of our own kind have these things killed, these mixed-breeds brought about by Ægir?

Could it be you are—not one.

Then I will finish asking this question first.

Ishar-mla, my sister.

What...?

Sister, right now, you are not coherent of where you came from.

I come from Ægir, monster... I am your natural enemy.

You are not coherent.

Then let me tell you the truth of things.

You are we.

What?

What?

No.

No.

What flows through you is our blood.

Skadi has wondered so many times. Skadi knew she had some connection to them, but she blamed every last part upon the scars the final battle left on her.

But she smells it. She knows it. She hears it. She recognizes it.

Liar!

Herald, you... what?

Ishar-mla. Your blood is our blood.

Your bodies were, and then our blood entered.

I have innumerous blood-kin. They meet you. They die.

They smell your scent. Just as you smell our scent.

They believe their fellow kin are trapped under your skins. They bite at your hide and flesh regardless of the danger, wishing to release their own kin from your vesicles.

They have not prepared themselves, and they have not at that point the organs to realize with.

You are not trapping kin within your bodies. You are our kin.

Ishar-mla. You are we.

It is as if the Seaborn's words carry some magical power. Skadi's cacophonous train of thought returns to the past, when she and the other hunters executed Sea Terrors together, and the thicker the stench of blood, the more excited they became, the fiercer their movements, their bodies responding.

To their same blood.

I will wake you. You will recall that sensation. Ægir bodies are frail, and things pass too quickly. I will help you seek it out.

Stop. Stop!

But yet, you wish to know. I know you wish to know.

Skadi wishes to know.

Skadi wishes to know just what she is in the end. She wishes to know why she must suffer so much misfortune.

You kill us Ægir... and now you intend on being related to me?!

My blood and your blood are identical.

You smell my scent, exactly as we smell your scent.

You find us, kill us...

When we do not understand, we kill you too.

We feed the ocean. Our bodies have provided for the ocean.

Ishar-mla, we possess the same home.

You killed my family. It was you who killed my mother, my grandmother, my little sister.

Skadi wishes to know.

No. We wouldn't.

We do not go to Ægir cities.

So many cities, all destroyed by you!