act18d3

Aside from her, anyone and everyone probably knew.

Sea monster.

And—she has already committed the gravest sin...

If she is a sea monster, if her brothers and sisters are here, then she...

She recalls that which did not resist.

She feels calls to mind its tentacles softly folding over its own skin.

I killed it.

I killed her.

I killed Him.

The bishop is in disarray, his questions now answered. His self-esteem and spite intermingle, yet he is unable to undo the truth that comes from the Seaborn's mouth.

...It cannot be...

Why did... we never before... why could we never before see it?! Why could we not find out?!

The wound that found its way through Gladiia's chest is still gurgling with fresh blood. But in spite of it, her heart has not yet stopped pulsing...

Ishar-mla. I have a question to ask, Ishar-mla. Lift your head up.

Mechanically, Skadi raises her face, and stares at the lifeform in front of her calling itself her own brother, her eyes vacant.

I killed it.

You did not.

I killed...

I killed their God.

I killed their genesezoic.

I killed our genesezoic.

I killed Him...

He did nothing, and I... I still...

Even my... my little sister... was... an Ægir... an Ægir...

All killed by the Ægir.

My sister, my mother, my grandmother...

All my years of revenge were mistaken, from the very beginning.

I never knew. All of this, everyone, killed by the Ægir. The Church of the Deep. The Ægir.

The Seaborn does not lie.

Sin?

My sin... I...

Ishar-mla, do not feel misgiving. We have no sin.

You only did what you were able to do, Ishar-mla. We kin act without sin.

But I acted for Ægir... We killed so many...

The stench of blood gushes against the throat.

Is it a sense of guilt? Not at all.

Skadi is simply at a loss. She suddenly realizes. The force that supported her for all these years, the impetus that led her to assume such vast suffering... has disappeared.

All she has done, empty, void.

For all of Ægir? Skadi certainly isn't one to present so loftily. Finding a justification for herself is little else but consolation.

Ægir... How did Ægir even look upon the Abyssal Hunters?

Just what 'am I'? What exactly have I lived? All of everything, and the reckless, death-defying me of back then—how are they even related?

'What—am I even doing?'

The Seaborn's unmatured words pull her back to reality, if such violent vertigo and profound anxiety can amount to 'reality'...

You believe you are an Ægir, so you are right to kill.

You regard the others as your blood-kin, so you do so, we do not know, and when we attack you and you do so, you are right.

Why?

—Ishar-mla.

Only Ægir, the scaleless, the finless, your language contains 'sin.'

To do to survive, is always right.

So...

You have no wrong. So you can speak of anything you know. We have no want or will, only speak and do not speak.

I may ask questions. Speak.

In the end, this question has come.

Skadi does not want to speak. But in her flows Seaborn blood... flows the truth.

Could Ægir be ignorant of who it was that murdered all of her family?

If there truly are Seaborn that enter cities... could it really have been only her family who were hurt?

Ishar-mla. Under your attack, we lost our contact with it, our ever close contact. We can only sense its pulse, we cannot hear its voice.

The last time you swam together, the last time you attacked together, was then.

Yes. She knows it clearly herself. Yes.

In the end, only she alone was left.

They tore the monstrous many to shreds. Opened up the sky. Charged into the dark.

All the Abyssal Hunters came out at full force. All her colleagues' lives were bled off under the soles of her feet. All the battles were fought for that one instant.

The instant she staked life, and stabbed.

The sea monsters and the hunters' blood almost led the ocean to rot, death settling to a point where no life could ever be born anew.

She saw... she saw Him sink under.

Before that, she saw that colossal eyeball staring straight at her. She felt something had connected with her own consciousness. She sensed her skin so tart, her vision ear-splitting, and she smelt pain, and she so much as felt she had already gone mad.

But she was so lucid. To live is lucid.

Because He 'began to speak.'

And so...

When it once again sunk into sleep before you, did you—

Hear it as it spoke?

Skadi's blood is already near the point of burning away in her body.

Skadi knows the answer.

She knows. She planned to leave this secret lie until her death—

But yet—

He—

He spoke—

The hardship we suffer is ever present.

Skadi is not in time to say these words.

The last fiber of resistance in Skadi's heart drives her to blink incessantly.

She sees one glimpse of Gladiia clambering up from her pool of blood.

You?! Herald!

Ah. Only next time...

Gladiia knows she should've dodged the last. Gladiia did not act to dodge it.

(His bodily fluids audibly clog.)

Gla-dia...

(It comes in a voice just like a whimper.) ...You are so sturdy, Gla-dia.

Trash. (Ægirian) I won't give you a single scrap of courtesy.

(Ægirian) The hunted should behave... and scream wretched in their traps. You are the hunted here, trash.

The lance slides once again, in a single instant cutting a great wound open upon the Seaborn's body. Its fluids dribble out, corroding Gladiia's arm... but her wounds likewise heal rapidly, extremely so.

Sister... your signal's transmission... so dense.

Emotion. Hatred. How could the hunted understand?

Love. Hate. Pain. Sorrow. Joy. Contentment. All are worthless in your eyes. You think these are dregs... that they are unnecessary, superfluous, don't you?

We have none of what you speak of.

Then you have even less hope of understanding, trash. We would rather the superfluous within us and want to live on that way. We are not you.

Gla-dia. Emotion. Truly such strong emotion.

You can't even hope to sing. Die now.

Why—How could this be?

Why was her body able to recover from such grievous injury?!

With force, Gladiia pulls her lance from the Seaborn's body, leaps to Skadi's front, landing as though floating.