act18d3

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.

Gladiia has struggled free, or perhaps she knows that if she didn't, the Seaborn would have crushed her in the next second, no matter its intent.

Violently, she draws her lance horizontal. Though the Seaborn doesn't wish to, the bishop surely wants to kill Skadi. And she, Gladiia, an Abyssal Hunter Captain, has a duty to protect her own hunters.

Well, it doesn't matter that she's not part of her own company.

In the sea of her mind, a breadth of thoughts fly past like lightning, yet not one considers her own injured state.

Because it is entirely enough now. This body's current condition suffices for her to kill off anyone.

The Seaborn's body is jerking, convulsing, his regenerating flesh bracing his frame.

Blood constantly pours fresh from Gladiia's wound. Skadi's veins and arteries bulge from her head to toe—she cannot break free of the awareness, and the tremendous nervous signals that the Seaborn brought to her.

The ocean is serenely wide and vast, its sons and daughters delighting in both the roles of hunter and hunted.