level_act34side_06_beg

Ugh, what a stench.

All these years and they still won't make better camouflage cream—it wouldn't do any harm for us to at least <i>smell</i> different from the Seaborn, you know.

Don't move so much, Shark. It'll only make the smell stronger.

When you smell this much like a Seaborn, I might hack at you on instinct.

The whole plateau is trembling... Those giant wormlike Seaborn are tunneling through the rock beneath us.

Stay concealed.

(Vacuole lightly trembles)

(Core shudders fiercely)

Look at those numbers. Honestly, between the currents and the Seaborn, who's carrying who?

They're flooding towards the frontline. I can't imagine...

Can't imagine what the soldiers there are fighting through.

Snap out of it, Skadi. You'll crush your hilt doing that.

We mourn those on the front best by completing our mission.

Thanks to the Legions' fleets containing the Seaborn swarm, we were able to slip in and plant this beacon deep in the nest.

Even a single plant could alert the Seaborn to us, if it happens to be assimilated. There is no room for negligence on our path forward.

The great bleached coral will cover us as we dive for the depths of the rift.

Yes, Captain.

Jordi, right? Fast learner.

A lot of students come here on work experience. With all the operation protocol, it never takes more than a day for them to slip up. You, though, picked it up just by watching for a little while.

You done this before?

Just a bit. I've done some work in an Iberian lighthouse. The beacons share a few principles with it, here and there.

I see, so you're into engineering. Explains a lot.

I've worked longest as a caregiver, though.

'Caregiver'? What kind of job's that?

Huh?

Ah, er, watching over the sick and elderly, taking care of their daily needs... Sorting out all the little things for them.

Gotcha. So it's like slapping Little Handy modules 153 and 274 in at the same time.

Um, but the Little Handy is impersonal... right?

That's correct.

You look taut as a wire, Jordi. This isn't an exam on Ægir general knowledge.

I just want to ask... if the Little Handy has no personality, how is it supposed to meet the emotional needs of its patients?

To care for people is to meet them in their weakest, most vulnerable moments, after all.

I'd say physical frailty doesn't particularly inspire emotional needs in us. And if we're headed for the grave, even with illness, we don't feel especially vulnerable, either.

We do let the old and sick request some final company before their euthanasia, though. Usually a leading philosopher will come in. Scholars from whatever field in general, really.

I-I know nothing about philosophy...

I just talk to them about the most banal things. Food, flowers, sunshine, and so on. But for some reason, they're always so happy to listen.

You're a great guy, Jordi.

That shows how keen you are at grasping people's moods. No promises, but something tells me you'd shine in the Institute of Development Planning or Institute of Incubation too.

C-Could I?

...Regardless, thank you so much! I've finished resetting the storage facilities here!

Wonderful work. Now, about—

Wait. Did you just see something zip past the hologram?

Wha—

INTRUDER—

You?

Young man, you saw none of this. You have no reason to complicate things.

Wait!

Shark's saw will be too loud. Skadi, you open the way.

Cut through this cluster, as quietly as you can.

Alright.

For but an instant, the invading Hunters are bathed in vivid color and indistinct light.

That which the Iberians call nethersea brand creeps across the coral layers, the spawn of the many lilting in their craggy nests.

Eggs are swept from this cliff face as the currents pass, metamorphosing as they spiral down, indescribable folds yet unfolding, until a Seaborn form emerges.

(Soft membrane stirs)

(Creased skin shudders)

The newborns silently gather together, their trembling bodies echoing all throughout the nest. Intertwining palps and feelers, they sweep each other off for far away.

They just keep on leaving the nest. Rushing... for the frontline.

Wait, don't you think something's off? How did that one turn into a whole bunch out of nowhere?

What is it doing? Multiplying? Splitting?

I've had this gnawing feeling ever since we bailed out the fleet. Swordfish, have these assholes evolved even more?

The Seaborn are forever evolving.

Skadi, can you remember the first Seaborn you ever killed?

Not really. Just that it had a lot of gross tentacles.

That's what I mean. Tentacles, stingers, chitinous shells... We could still discern the organs, identify their functions at a glance.

Prior to this, the Seaborn's only skill was to hijack whatever evolutionary progress other species had accrued over the epochs.

But now we've got <i>these</i> things...

I can't begin to tell what their organs are. If I didn't know better, I might not even think to connect them to the fodder we were slaughtering just three months ago.

...The Seaborn's needs have outgrown the evolutionary advancements. They've begun seeking their own answers.

Which means their evolutionary course now transcends our knowledge.

If we are unable to gloss their physical composition, unable to discern their organs' unique functions, unable to predict the direction they will evolve...

We won't know how to kill them.

We could fetch a specimen for Advisor Blandus, while we evacuate.

Still, the mission takes priority for now.

Skadi, you and I will find where the wall hasn't yet been branded, embed the beacon there, and activate it.

Laurentina, spot our surroundings. We withdraw as soon as it's planted, without delay.

Consul Clementia.;Madame Consul.

Greetings, Doctor of Rhodes Island, and well met in Milliarium. At long last, our first official conversation.

Well, Kal'tsit's the official Iberian envoy.

Save your modesty. Dr. Kal'tsit's awe-inspiring knowledge transcends the boundaries of space and time.

So for her to be keeping you up her sleeve, the depths you hide must be deeper still.

Whether you come to me in doubt, or with conclusions of your own to share, I am prepared to listen.

You sent the Hunters into a literal nest of danger.;You're endangering three of our operators.

Much like Dr. Kal'tsit, you have misgivings about this decision.

Yet I had no choice but to order them to meet death in the eye once more; my hand was forced. Only they can break our present impasse.

Rational. Maybe a little too rational?

The Legions are deployed to capacity. The Abyssal Hunters must assume combat duties, even having recently returned to Ægir. You suspect this situation was deliberately engineered.

I gather you return from the city with findings of your own.

The beacon-weapon link was tampered with.

Little Handy, priority order. Contact the supervisors for the beacon and Class IV weapons R&D.

And notify all Legion commanders: leave enough of your fleets at the front to curb the Seaborn and assist the Hunters. The rest should withdraw in order and return to the city. The Sea Patrol will seize the beacon tower right away.

You have our gratitude for informing us, Doctor.

(Nod in silence)

I know I owe the two of you an explanation for how I have deployed the Abyssal Hunters.

We don't hold you accountable on a tactical level. You know their prowess against the Seaborn better than us.

I can only say this. Your powers of observation would not have missed the scales on Gladiia's neck.

We can assume the Hunters will have no trouble seeing this assignment through, but what was your guarantee they would be spared from mutating while in the nest?

The word of Advisor Blandus, and nothing more?

Advisor Blandus's statement at the tribunal served to strengthen Milliarium's confidence in the Abyssal Hunters.

I confess, though, it failed to even ease my mind.

I take it the Hunters still weigh heavily on your thoughts.

...Ægir never truly wound down the Abyssal Hunter project, following the strike on the Firstborn.

I've not been involved, but my countrymen have every right to interrogate me for my awareness of it alone.

For a short time after the Firstborn died, the project went through major upheavals. Anomalies plagued the experiments, and the Church grew only more fixated on the Hunters.

This suggests there are urgent, hidden truths about the Hunters yet to be found. Yet it also proves that the project can no longer run publicly.

To this day, it still operates in secret. But even now, Ægir has only three Hunters including Gladiia... No, four.

For how constantly we iterate on our technology, we have never succeeded in making another Abyssal Hunter.

No matter how stable the subjects' signs and psychological indicators are, they lose their reason the moment they awaken, immediately corrupting into Seaborn.

They don't even make it out of the chamber, let alone to the ocean proper.

'Abyssal Hunters are bound by blood.' We forgot...

What IS this blood binding them?

We don't know.

We still don't know why Gladiia's group have kept their reason intact.

Sounds like they're your key to solving this.

Yet you chose to send them to the front.

...Indeed. For Gladiia, Laurentina, Skadi, and all the participants, it was an irresponsible act.

But the front lies at Milliarium now.

We made it in time to cut off the Seaborn tide as it laps at dry land, but Milliarium is far from impregnable. If we fail to open the Waterway now, it is only a matter of time before the city is lost.

The Seaborn have organized to seize that Waterway by the throat. Storming them head-on will invite a large-scale counterattack.

At which point, I fear none will survive.

Is risking the Hunters a necessary cost here?

The Hunters may well give their lives. They may well transform. But right now, they are our greatest hope.

Gladiia has always been skeptical of the Waterway Program's feasibility. It was for that exact reason that she did not hesitate to serve as a link in its chain.

Your doubts and struggles may differ, but all roads lead to the same place in the end. That seems to be an unspoken yet shared understanding among the Ægir.

...One not without its sorrows.

Upon the bricks of the Sophontheatrum entrance, the architect Mártus left this maxim: 'There is no justice here, only the path ahead.'

In later generations, some criticized Mártus as being overly fixated on material value, squandering his energy on comparing worth against worth.

But ultimately, all that mattered to him was Ægir's path forward. Justice was merely a value cherished by the masses; and he preferred to apply his thought elsewhere.

Perhaps Gladiia and I have been acting on his philosophy without realizing it.

Dr. Kal'tsit, everything you have said rings all too true. I am bound in the end to carry 'Ægir's arrogance' with me, and nothing will change that.

I would like to amend that wording. 'Arrogance' as a word seems insufficient to describe Ægir.

You respect equally the humanity of your every citizen. To realize each individual's worth is the guiding star for your entire society's development.

Yet at the same time, you are capable of making the cruelest judgments, and calmly accepting them, for the sake of Ægir's survival as a whole.

'Calmly'... you say?

We Ægir are not cold-blooded. Whenever you would feel wrath, our own hearts are far from unstirring.

These are feelings I had wished to convey to Gladiia, once upon a time, but I realized I had no right to.

Every decision I made for her, I based in pure rationality. How natural, then, that I lost that right. How dare I ask for an emotional pardon.

The same is true, even now.

And so, 'calmly,' I accept my own judgment.

The designated individual has been contacted. Advisor Blandus did not pick up.

Dr. Kal'tsit, Doctor. I am deeply sorry I could not give you an appropriate answer.

But right now, I ask that you permit me to carry out my duty.