level_act18d3_st01

Now quick, come in, come in. I knew that you would make it here.

How?

What can I say...?

Hmph. No need.

Do you carry that case everywhere you go, wandering singer?

Yes.

Then would you mind if I asked another question?

Go ahead.

What is inside this case?

A saxophone.

Ah, very well, a saxophone... a wind instrument. Quite good.

May I have the fortune to hear it? Music... this city has not heard music for a swathe of years.

Oh, no, beg pardon... I realize asudden that a wandering singer takes coin for her song.

This does stump me. You see, I fear I cannot proffer much tip to speak of.

Yet look at this old building. Humph, taking care of it is quite the challenging task, when currency stands for little here, none will collect it, and none will use it.

But I can spare energy to prepare you a luncheon. Wandering singer, what say you? Would you will to perform a little something or other?

It is in my power, at least, to invite you to eat your fill, though it may not be any gourmet delicacy...

I see you are fallen silent... Ah, might I guess: you prefer dance, rather than song?

You see, you are wearing a dancer's dress... you are talented. It has been too long since last we had a friend with such brilliant luster as you.

(...Sickening.)

If you want to listen to something, you can let me sing for now.

I came to ask a question. The person standing by you probably knows. I don't think you can escape the issue anymore.

Were my—people, here, and you, once familiar?

We naturally were.

I was not asking you.

Gladiia turns her head away, and does not speak further.

We aren't.

Oh...?

Because I have no idea now if this person is the one I originally knew.

Oh, oh...

This, too, is normal. All people may change. Seawater beats against dry land, and can turn the coast into sand, given time.

So. Your arrival, was it not her who willed it?

—Wasn't it you who wanted me to come?

Were it merely my bidding, you would not show here, correct? I am only a stranger.

I simply ask; did she will you to come, or not?

She didn't. I came on my own.

Hmm, you are not lying. I can hear when lies are told... but you are honest.

You keep asking, and I still haven't even said anything. How can you be this obnoxious?

Be calm, be calm, singer. It was not my intention. A little prudence does us all good.

Then my turn to ask.

This city's people all have great trust in you, but what happens on the seashore—

—is absolutely not normal.

Scrap-begging. Sea Terrors. The ocean.

Where are you from? You know something, don't you? What have you and her hidden from me?

Ah, hah-hah. Yes, indeed, I know a good deal more than others.

Indeed, I know of one who wants to meet you.

Meet me? Since I'm a wandering singer?

The one who cares for music is me.

Though it may invite some disbelief, the one wanting to meet you is not me.

It is a friend of mine. I bid you here on his request.

Who? He wants to meet me?

Come with me. You shall know when you see him.

After all... you have a friend here too.

'You wish to meet her, do you not?'

The bishop's tone makes light of it, but Skadi remains calm.

The hunter secretly grips the case's handle tight. Only fruits of progress in material science and Rhodes Island earnestly investing vast funds are to thank right now, that she does not crush the handle of this specialized 'saxophone case' apart.

Please, in here.

As for you.

Come too. The time for your reward, too, is come.

Skadi glances at Gladiia briefly, and does not say much.

Skadi follows over to the figure of the bishop. Unsure as to why, she's felt the whole time that the bishop has a very odd gait. Like his legs are lame, or his joints are missing.

The three descend the stairs. Shockingly, below the chapel's graves lies a cave, the staircase winding downwards by its wall, circling and circling, as if walking into some colossus's esophagus. Without a ray of light, they feel through the path on pure sense, at risk of falling into the abyss at any time.

Regretfully, I will not light a lamp, but this should pose you no trouble, should it?

I have heard wandering singers to be quite agile by and large. Neither city nor barrens are too friendly, and those going afar easily come to suffer. One must learn the basics of protecting themselves.

Wealth cannot buy music, yet music can serve as wealth. So long as a fine song is sung, one will not starve wherever they go...

I used to yearn greatly for that sort of life, likely because I am no good at what it demands... Once I set down roots somewhere, it is very hard for me to up and leave again.

The bishop seems to talk in soliloquy, because the two others utter not a word while descending.

We are here.

Don't tell me we're...

Correct. On the seafloor.

Led deep and deeper by the staircase, they finally set foot on flat ground. Even Skadi feels challenged to breathe in the sealed-off damp, until they emerge into a shaft of light, and the open scene before them reinvigorates the hunters.

The massive karst cave is filled with twisted equipment. From a hidden place above, daylight illuminates as it penetrates the ocean, permeates the cave, the faint blue making where it lies clear.

That's—!

How could this be.

Specter's body floats in a vat of water, as if dead, or perhaps sound asleep.

Untold thoughts flash through Skadi's head.

Why is she here? Did Gladiia do this? What if Specter is dead? How could Gladiia allow Specter to die?! Could she truly be—

And that is your friend, isn't it?

You are called Skadi? I have not been the one following your affairs. They have handled you very well...

Especially the ones by your side. They have handled it all well, letting you uphold your mental state under such emotions.

Skadi's eyes open wide.

What?

They have had no time to attend to you lately, but by the humble grace of your leader here, you have come, practically as a gift to me.

Skadi turns in anger to Gladiia, but finds no one behind her.

Gladiia is already pacing for the bishop, her step free of concern in its lightness. The speed she takes pride in, the speed rumored amongst the Abyssal Hunters... seems to be in this silent, single step.

I am surprised you step forth first... and not that minstrel. What are you waiting for? Why did you not kill me before?

Would you be so stupid?

You unhallowed things, and your eternal condition... Your fine sense of ego, expressed without meaning. Would you be just as unconcerned if this experiment, her life, vanished here?

Confirming your results gave you confidence. Your satisfaction grinned in your words, yet you wouldn't let me see where you took her. I imagine you cannot let her die yet.

Out of us few, I'm sure her life is the one you place most importance on.

I've destroyed your experiment grounds—

To little surprise, it was your doing.

—Specter is highly valuable. Out of all the Originium infection tests you've conducted on the Abyssal Hunters, only this one specimen tells the tale.

The original sin of terrestrial lowlife beasts can be effected upon those unholy bodies of yours. Is it not so very interesting?

The looks on Skadi and Gladiia's faces both change.

Although... I must say, you have wrought too much damage on the site we three are in. Having committed so much refined, liquefied Originium, having applied Ægir technology... all of it, never to be seen again.

She is highly valuable indeed. My one mystery is how she fends against an Originium infection of such scope... Her spinal cord, diluted, would be enough to infect a small country.

Things have changed now. Thank you for placing her in my hands, unhallowed thing. I will lead the other two... I will discover all your final secrets.

I will prove my own success. My research. Our enemy's secrets. As well as weaknesses...

You will lead off by dying here.

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!

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.

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.

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.