rogue_2

Or...

Gladiia suddenly jumps into the water. A moment later, the Inquisitor reacts, ordering the fleet to follow the swift Abyssal Hunter.

The knight looks up at almost the exact same moment. A massive wave rises soundlessly from the horizon. Uttering a bizarre screech, the knight charges towards it, through it, and watches as the next wave roils towards him.

Gladiia realizes that she has been thinking a lot lately. Suddenly, it occurs to her that perhaps the Last Knight did not act according to any logic at all. Only the purest thoughts of obsession and struggle drive it to destroy everything on the sea.

Including her. Including the waves.

Gladiia has been thinking too much. She remembers Ulpianus's advice. For a Consul, it is an asset. For a soldier, it is a liability.

Gladiia attacks, framed by the light of the last embers of the setting sun, as if it is being extinguished beneath the waves.

Perhaps it is an image that her life has always lacked, but...

This man cannot be Seaborn.

Gladiia spends a few minutes confirming that she cannot swim anymore.

She sits calmly at the bottom of the sea, feeling the pressure press on her skin and the temperature caress it.

She recalls her hometown, the first nursing robot she saw when she was little, and the blurred outlines of her mother's face. She feels the voices leave her.

Ishar'mla's voice is gone. The long struggle, the question that had plagued Ægir for centuries, the existential threat that loomed over Terra—all vanished when that deplorable false god, her closest comrade, died.

Only the Consul is left, here and now.

At the last moment, Ulpianus had given up his chance at survival to his junior. How ironic. He was not the sort of person to flip through a Consul's personal files, and the two of them have never brought up seniority. Only now, with the long war finally over, does Gladiia start entertaining the idea of letting her guard down. 'Ah...' She realizes that perhaps she had never truly known Ulpianus.

No... that also includes Laurentina, Skadi, and everyone else. They had always treated each other as Ægir, as Abyssal Hunters, as kin, as comrades.

But their scent has vanished, lost to the sea along with the last fleet.

Gladiia smiles. She knows how this ends.

The song does not cease, even after destruction and sacrifice beyond reckoning. This is about more than one false god. The footsteps of doom have never slowed.

Ulpianus was right. Skadi may have tried to remind everyone of this at a time when their hearts had gone astray. But Gladiia feels surprisingly at peace. Value and meaning that she had never imagined creep into her mind. In a game where there could only be one result, she found a way to accept it all.

After a brief moment of rest, she tears off the flesh of a Sea Terror and covers her own bleeding wounds. Her body is now no different from We Many. She stands up. Bioluminescence illuminates the pitch-black ocean floor for her. In the nearby ocean currents, millions of Seaborn raise their bizarre limbs and watch her every movement intently. We Many beg her to submit, to abandon meaningless resistance, to forsake meaningless death.

She understands their intentions. She is made to. It is the very last thing distinguishing her from them.

She gazes at the resting place of Ishar'mla. She gazes at where the god awoke. Gladiia knows that when their kin ask, We Many always answer.

Therefore—

'How many are left?'

She asks.

Skadi floats to the surface.

She is followed by several Seaborn hatchlings.

They are not her offspring, but someone must care for them when their progenitors are still reproducing in the depths.

She has taken up the task as part of We Many.

Skadi's original species once inhabited massive underwater steel constructs.

The Ægir chose to become part of We Many after making contact with the Seaborn.

The signs of evolution are upon them, even if their forms have not yet changed.

Until now.

Skadi finds a suitable skerry and climbs up, sitting where sea meets land.

The hatchlings seem afraid to leave the water. Their immature anatomies find the dryness uncomfortable. After some trial and error, they choose to attach themselves to the rock wall, curiously scanning the world above the surface with their visual organs.

Skadi takes out a lyre, tunes it, and begins playing.

She sings.

It is a song that knows neither trouble nor sorrow.

It is full of love and kindness.

The hatchlings stretch out and sing along with their developing vocal organs.

Native Seaborns do not understand emotion, but some of them are able to recognize it and draw strength from it.

The Seaborn will come to understand that which does not belong to them, when they learn to make a song on their own and understand the power within.

And now, they are learning the meaning of learning.

Hear, hear, Skadi sings.

Ægir's Abyssal Hunter project ended when the last Hunter was assimilated.

The consuls voted unanimously to eliminate the mutants and reassess the response against the Seaborn.

But they did not know that the Hunters retained their free will.

Skadi swims towards the surface, surrounded by her kin.

They have lost their human forms and become Seaborn.

The curse binding them together by blood has shown its true face.

They can never go home. Ægir has sworn to destroy them.

They will not become part of We Many. They will not bow to the Seaborn, not even in death.

Thus, they have chosen self-exile. To where the ocean has not yet reached, in search of a hope that has almost faded.

In this journey towards despair, the Abyssal Hunters have been nearly hunted to extinction, both by the Seaborn and by Ægir.

A dozen vestiges of humanity swim towards land in silence.

They have lost their weapons, and their faith.

All they have left are their troubling husks, and their suffering souls.

Skadi wants to sing, but the song comes out of her vocal organs as an unfathomable growl.

Her song exists only in her mind now.

When death comes for her, there will be no one left to remember its beautiful melody.

Skadi works alone on the lights installed on the seabed, far away from the cities.

Thanks to the help of Ægir equipment, she is able to maintain the ones in this entire area by herself. As long as the reliable array remains undamaged, she can lie down in her mobile habitation unit, listening and singing along to her favorite song.

This leisurely life will last as long as she wants, as long as she submits regular reports on her weekly resupply trips back to the city.

Skadi does not think too much about anything else.

She does not have to worry about money, about socializing, about her health.

What is there to worry about?

That was what she thought, until she saw the monument.

Clearly non-Ægir in nature, the monument showed her terrible things.

She saw herself singing with creatures of the deep, the likes of which she had never seen.

She saw herself turn into a grotesque monster, swimming towards the surface with others like her.

She saw herself swim towards a monster the size of a city, alongside people she had never met, carrying a sword as tall as herself.

Skadi has no doubt that she is the subject of these fragments.

But the unfamiliar people, creatures, and acts fill her heart with fear.

She should not be involved with these things.

Skadi captures an image of the monument, then hurries back to her habitation unit to call her manager.

The monument is still trying to tell her something. It continues to play images, even though she has gone far away.

The Skadi carrying a great sword—Skadi, Leviathan Slayer—hides amongst the reefs at Ulpianus's orders.

She touches a broken monument.

She will see—

Be it the Corrupting Heart, the nevermelting glacier, or the creeping branch, none of Them still exist today.

The Primordial Lifespring has already lost control. After Ishar'mla and Mizuki were both injured, He devoured the Firstborn one by one, and became the sole 'Absolute'. He converts all lives into resources, faithfully regulating them and ensuring their comprehensiveness. All existence is ever so neatly ordered– for almost everything that refuses to be part of this order has been eradicated. Humans failed to even erect their last line of defense, the ocean submerging the land beneath their feet in an instant. Terra is now the ideal ecosystem for the Seaborn.

In a corner of this vast paradise, the Seaborns once known as Mizuki and the Doctor hide in a cave, avoiding being annexed by the order. In such an ecosystem, names are disorder, nostalgia is disorder, and sorrow is also disorder.

What about the others? Amiya and Kal'tsit... How about the other Rhodes Island friends? Are there any survivors? Even being able to squeeze out thoughts like those is a luxury. Perhaps the only time when thought is worthy of those precious extra nutrients is when feeding is taking place.

The 'Doctor' wordlessly gnaws at the appendage Mizuki has just cut from his own body. At first, it would shed tears, whimper, and sometimes even cry hysterically while feeding. But these emotions and behaviors were clearly maladaptive to survival, and though it took some time, it eventually got over it. Or perhaps, it was finally engulfed by the enclosed environment and protracted silence and numbness that it was thrust in.

Mizuki cannot console the 'Doctor.' Of course, he knows that it is a bridge too far to offer his own flesh and blood to the Doctor so that it may live, but he is even less willing to accept the Doctor's death. Nevertheless, all the flowers, plants, mushrooms, and even the water source itself have been assimilated into components of the Lifespring, turned into shining specks of fluorescent light symbolic of the order He has woven, let alone the sea monsters that were once creatures. No longer is there any more 'normal' food. All of Terra has been absorbed into the glowing ocean itself. Mizuki is only barely able to decompose the special tissue he ingested into simple nutrients; that is to say, he may be the only 'safe' food remaining.

Mizuki does not expect the Doctor to accept his proposal at that time. Is it a result of survival instinct temporarily overwhelming the dignity of being human during extreme hunger? Is it because he does not want to die in front of Mizuki, to waste that which he snatched back from the jaws of death with his own life? No, the reason does not matter, as long as the Doctor can live on...

But for how long will these days continue, and for how long can they hold on? Mizuki smiles bitterly within his heart. He hopes that in a different time and a different place, the Doctor will not be reduced to this inevitable end with him.

He thinks, He has thought, He will continue to think. He will simultaneously receive several different answers at once, and receives His answer before they arrive. He has been sublimated, but only His body can be bound by the fetters of time, not His thought.

At some point, these thoughts arrive in Mizuki's mind in a stochastic state. It is as if He himself exists in flux at this moment.

If one could clearly know the answers pertaining to the future, that could indeed allow Him to make the correct decisions. But, as a lifeform bound to this dimension, His body and mind cannot transcend the fetters of time. For Mizuki, these hazy, probabilistic forks in the road manifest only after a decision is made, presenting themselves as possibilities in the form of memories. At that time, the option of choosing again will no longer exist, their presence bringing little more than regret or fortuity.

Mizuki rejects such regret and fortuity. He and His powers are nothing special, and from his current perspective, He is nothing more than one of many possibilities for the future, one that violates his original intentions– that obviously cannot be humanity's ideal ending.

However, the decisions that were made that gave rise to the possibility of His birth were presumably set in motion by some version of himself along with the Doctor, with some necessity or rationale in mind. As such, there is no need to treat each other with hostility rather than as friends who made different choices, always leaving each other with some vague ideas to think about afterwards. Mizuki even had a flash of inspiration while playing a game, deciding to give Him a name.

And when Mizuki mentions these things to the Doctor and is able to share the stories that have almost become reality, it has been many long years since they faced the problems that lay beyond the sea together.

On a Bolívarian shoreline unknown to man, two Sea Terrors that have difficulty identifying due to mimicry have affixed themselves to the surrounding reefs, letting the waves beat against them. They seem to harbor no hostility toward other creatures, simply anchored there like timeless statues.

Rhodes Island still has a few more stops around Columbia. In addition to wandering around cities to enjoy certain aspects of regional culture that can't be found on Rhodes Island, Mizuki, who has snuck out, occasionally comes to these remote locations, sitting on the reef while hugging his knees, listening to the sounds of the waves or the wordless whispers of the Sea Terrors.

Are you guys trying to assess the weather by observing the clouds? Mizuki can tell that the two of them are looking up at the sky in a certain way, but their visual organs are so delicate and unique as if capable of reaching far beyond the clouds. The purpose of them doing this is fascinating after all, as the Sea Terrors have little to do with the sky above. Though some Sea Terrors have already tried suspending themselves midair to swim through the aether, the flocks of soaring fowlbeasts are far from a rich source of nutrients for nurturing their kind, and the practice of looking downward is maladaptive to life within the ocean.

We do not care, about the weather. We are waiting. The two Sea Terrors remain motionless, just as they have for most of their lives. They neither possess nor need extra vocal organs. They have their own ways of transmitting the information they wish to convey to their kind.

What purpose drives some Sea Terrors to evolve into these rock-like forms to continually stand watch beneath the clouds? Mizuki immediately understands that the reason behind this weighty mission might not be something easily explained in a few words. He doesn't ask any more questions, and stands up to leave.

At that moment, a number of incomprehensible anomalies appear in the sky. Gaps rupturing in the sky, scintillating bursts of ionizing radiation, even never before seen–