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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!

Those cities are on our territory.

Keh! Even in the hinterland cities of Ægir, you still hunt people!

No... No.

We would not do that. Those who die in the cities are unable to provide for the many.

The Ægir attack us, we attack the Ægir. There is no difference.

Those in your territory die, by those in your territory's doing.

Lies!

Lies? I wish to know what lies means. 'Liar,' too, you said earlier. I wish to know.

Skadi is unable to move.

Skadi seems to have touched upon the Seaborn's thought.

The Seaborn's message flows directly from its scent into the waters of her mind.

She may do this. Of course... she...

No, no...!

Ishar-mla, the barrier between you and we is too strong. You have no way to pass on your ideas to we.

For you to know what we think, that is enough.

My body has grown, is able to speak, is able to communicate with you.

Language is bloated, not easy to use. I can only talk this way, but this way you are able to tell me.

Ishar-mla, I came to meet you.

Skadi knows. From every part of the sum of all of it, Skadi knows—

The Seaborn would not lie.

I and you... are not...

You often feel, the creatures around you, are unfamiliar to you.

When you travel, you are able to sense the direction of seawater, and know much of what happens in the unlit ocean.

At some times you sleep, you feel you are swimming with we many.

Skadi's blood is already boiling.

How could this be? How could this... be?

Skadi understands.

Skadi sympathizes.

Skadi and the other hunters whisper.

Skadi and the other hunters are all monsters.

Why did you have to tell me this? Why did you have to say this?

She is a monster.

She murders her own kind.

She for her own kind murders her own kind.

She by her own kind murders her own kind.

The eyes of the people in the streets are filled with warmth. They don't know anything.

The eyes from the research institutes and in the tents are filled with ice.

When the hunters sleep, there are patrollers guarding. No. Those aren't guards. That night patrol doesn't serve the hunters.

The patrollers are waiting for the hunters to become monsters.

And, she sees... she has seen...

That sister of hers ate Ægir, chewing the bones, corners of her mouth torn, up until the Captain had her killed.

'Her nerves have been infected by Sea Terrors. It may be that some kind of Sea Terror has become a part of her body. We can't save her.'

No, no.

That was because she no longer regarded Ægir as her kin. She returned to her home.

You have remembered.

Skadi is sunken in a black, still sea.

Her escape and defense were all meaningless.

Her past and future were all meaningless.

She is a sea monster.

Sea Terror. Seaborn.