Spring and dash.

  Without hesitation, the foreigner lanced in a cyanic stride straight towards the colossus, fast. She immediately popped multiple shots towards its eye once in range. However, the first initial shots missed their marks, and the colossus quickly covered its eye as it ground to a halt.

  Shots wasted, she opted to conserve her three remaining shots. She descended upon it fast and circled around it as if a cyanic wisping fly, buzzing and buzzing yet with no sting.

  The colossus, however, did find itself disoriented as it tried to hold its targeting lock. Frustrated, it began to punch and smash its fists into the crystalline ground, scattering shards and creating a glittery plume; it was hardly trying to hit her as much as slow her down. Yet that fly remained evasively persistent in her buzzing, unhindered. Frustrated even more, the colossus ultimately bashed its fist so fiercely into the ground that it actually ended up…stuck.

  The foreigner immediately utilized this moment; hopping atop its stuck fist, she rapidly scaled up its arm and quickly reached its thick and bulky shoulder. There, she fired a single shot into its neck just to test the penetration from this point-blank range; the shot pierced, but…not deeply.

  However, the colossus finally dislodged its stuck fist and promptly began to swipe. Its hand slapped and swatted, yet the foreigner retained her frustratingly nimble advantage, more than capable of remaining on the move by climb-hopping and side-running across and around its upper-torso—almost ludicrously so. She tried to identify weak points; though, of course…there were none.

  The structural damage from both the mage’s and the wagoneer’s attacks had been largely repaired… Minus, that was, the missing eye…

  Indeed, there was still a noticeable opening where its other eye had been; the socket was scarred and damaged, exposing some kind of underlying skull structure as well as… Indeed, while most of it was exotic essence-synthesized composites, there was…something else there; it had to be connected to something important, maybe.

  Target selected, she thus tried get a good and close shot straight into that damaged socket.

  However, the colossus was only became more deranged and aggressive. It began to smash its fists into its own figure, even launching crystalline spikes and rods from the surrounding walls straight into itself; striking, shattering, and bursting. Each self-inflicted strike made it more difficult to cling and more unwieldy to climb, shards and pieces crumbling hazardously. The damage to itself, of course, was temporary; the crystalline armoring regrew and reforged, hardening and repairing.

  The foreigner was eventually forced back onto the ground, though continued buzzing around it faster and faster, in an ever more apparent snow-dusty cyanic trail of sparkly glimmer. She circled before reclimbing onto it, harassing as the colossus battered itself, forcing her back down. This repeated, over and over…

  Interim

  The priestess remained paralyzed and motionless against the crystalline wall, which itself was no safer than being right there, for the wall and it were one and the same… Yet… There was no logical to this terrible trembling fright.

  Paralyzed, her teeth chattered, her breaths shivering and cramping, as all she could do was watch the foreigner…struggle to engage that colossus… That stranger, a Copper of an adventurer, fearless in spite of the utter futility…

  The priestess was right about her, indeed… Yet all she herself could do was nothing but remain frozen at this spot, shaking profusely as she clenched her holy staff…

  Truly, what a coward she was; unforgivable to even Heaven above…

  Truly, to think she had thought herself brave and selfless, only wanting to spread Father’s light whilst helping the innocent…

  Yet, as soon as that moment had come, revelation by crystalline trial exposed her true colors. She had prayed away her second divine favor with such speed and precision, calling forth Heaven’s protective ward… Yet only because she was trying to just save herself and herself alone; the others were caught by pure chance.

  And when it came the time that they truly relied on her to act, to actually save them… Oh… How she had so fumbled…

  And now… This was to be her lastest of sight… Was it not? This tomb of profane crystal and fallen ambitions… Arrogance and greedy hubris…

  She was going to die, the priestess fully realized… It was only a matter of time.

  Yet, in this moment, a flow of memories came flowing out… Her whole life flashing before her sight, she so realized…

  Ah… In a way, she was always like this, was she not?

  Envious… So much envy was hidden behind the veil she had made; her soul…was one filled with such vindictive spite against those perceived as better… Her peers in the church, holier than thou and communed with angels, something she failed to aspire; her fellow adventurers, souls so brazen and hedonistic, filled with such desire and yearning, whilst she was a servant of Heaven, to whom she had sworn total reservation and abstinence… Or, at least, so she had believed; for, indeed…in the end, she was a deceptive hypocrite… While they were at least true to themselves.

  Her trembles slowed; her breaths wavered… As such thoughts and recalls flooded into her fracturing mind…

  She gazed up and glimpsed, eyes hollowing out… There impaled far above, blood dripping and dropping down and down, impaled and lifeless…

  That mage was a familiar soul even before now; they always talked and interacted in the hall. She was the one who had convinced her party to let the priestess accompany them despite her rank. That mage was a friend.

  But the priestess always hated how she was so free-spirited and unchained, unlike her; able to overcome her fear and do what was necessary.

  Her broken eyes fell from their gaze, drifting astray… Before, abruptly, they widened as she saw… A dismembered arm close and near, burnt and armored…with only a fragment of that broken shield accompanying. Such was one of many scattered bits and pieces of him whose blood still stained her hair and robes.

  That shield adventurer was a stranger but even she could see there was something brave and assertive in him; a leader, maybe… She trusted him.

  Yet she also detested his dismissive callous; his temperament and vulgar mouth…

  And the gunner too, whose body she could not fully see. His was a kind and respectable soul; handsome and noble… Yet she could not help but detest his charm, dangerous it was… It made her question her body’s fealty to Trinity and Heaven.

  Indeed, she realized… Deep down within, she had something she always hated about all of them—friends, party, fellows… But she hid such well; none knew the vile things her mind had conjured of them…

  None besides, of course, Father and Son…

  Ah… Maybe that was why her prayers had so fumbled. For a favor from above required not merely faith, but solemn and truest convictions in heart and soul… She had to believe in absolute fervor…that which she wanted.

  They wanted her to save them; such was the frame of her prayer… To shield them; to save them… But did she want to save them? Indeed, were her last two prayers…disingenuous?

  Maybe… Maybe not…

  Either way, everyone besides her was dead… Three whole parties…

  Mostly strangers, certainly, but still real people whose names and faces remained fresh in memory; who not but a day earlier were alive and breathing, laughing with passions and dreams… Cut and severed short…

  All because of…

  It.

  Her broken eyes just stared at it, widening… That colossus, trying to catch its next victim—that brave soul keeping it away from her… Not even Heaven knew what…horrible cruelest things it had planned.

  Cruelty and horror… Indeed, abruptly flashing into mind were all the horrid fates that had befallen her fellows, the mangled bodies of whom she could still see, distributed about… Each of their deaths were etched into heart…

  Dread and terror, she was petrified by that colossal atrocity; petrified of the same fate befalling her… Yet, even so, as she continued stare into that colossus, her mind…began to shift. She gritted her teeth, her lips twitching, as freezing fear thawed and melted afire, burning and burning as it became…an unbridled rage, filling her with only one…single vindictive desire: retribution.

  “How can something so…evil…be allowed to exist?” Her shivering breaths seethed as she gripped her holy staff, firmly; “I am…sick of…being useless!”

  Interim

  The colossus did not relent; in fact, it was only becoming relentless. Yet the foreigner continued her evasive buzzing, frustrating the colossus more and more as it became increasingly aggressive and more energic in its movements. This was despite the fact it had many opportunities to kill her—to overwhelm her with an inescapable and unavoidable barrage of crystalline fury.

  Yet it had not.

  Indeed… In spite of the frustration, in the most twistest of senses, it was…as if this towering golem was actually finding this dance to be…awfully thrilling—stimulating.

  It was obsessively adamant and utterly committed to catching that fly into its fist; to squeeze her dead.

  Yet abruptly within the motion, the colossus paused in place; its attention swapped focus, having noticed… Its eye lens focused.

  The foreigner too reactively skidded to an abrupt pause, nearly tripping though remained standing, as her attention too…gazed in the same direction in kind, seeing…

  “Audias precem meam, Pater in Caeli imperans! Audias precem meam, Rex Filius in Terra imperans!” The priestess’s eyes were wide open with such a glare as she marched forth, her holy staff pointed with accusation at that very colossus; her eyes conveyed a rage, her voice a vindictive spite. She hated that golem; she detested it and everything it had done; and she hid none of it, not even her own wicked hypocrisy. “Ego, servus vester impius, invoco nomina atque ignem sanctam ut animas meliores vindicetis illas, quae rapitae sunt ab hoc malo nefando!” A different prayer in almost song, with a different tone to match.

  ‘Holy’ wisps and sparkly dusts bled out from her aura and being, her eyes flickering into partial activation a bright yellow-white outline ignited around her irises; threads of heavenly essence, so obscure yet present, weaved and flowed into the chamber, slowly but faster, twirling and dancing as if responding to her song.

  The foreigner stared, observing… Presently, her mind could not provide comment on what she was even seeing, her ears only somewhat understanding the words being uttered in quasi-song, for while the language was clearly related to her own, it was still distinct; the accent was apparent. She was too inhibited and detached to possibly care either way.

  Instead, seeing that the colossus was both stationary and rather distracted, she took the time to try repositioning herself in a way that provided for an optimal shot into that target onto which her mind was still auto-locked.

  Faint yet brightening weaving bands of heavenly dust and wisps continued pouring more and more into the crystalline chamber, as if leaking through every crevice and crack. The colossus could feel the emerging presence—the roots of her god’s stretching essence.

  “…promitto dare in morte vobis animam improbam ut iudicetis!” The aura field surrounding the priestess being flared into slight visibility as her eyes ignited fully, as if the Heaven’s gates were opening, out from which Trinity’s threads stitched into her own soul; her breaths steamed with righteous fury as her holy staff began to glow, the star-like cross heating with concentrating energy as if preparing to unleash. “O Pater Filiusque in Regno Caeli, quaeso, rogo, detis mihi ignem sanctam ut feria—”

  Jab.

  A single crystal spear came shooting out from nowhere, piercing straight into the priestess’s stomach mid-prayer, impaling her all the way back and straight into the crystalline wall behind.

  So abruptly did that radiating aura dissipated back into obscurity; so quickly did all of the accumulating essence, divine or not, fade and wither as if retracting away and out, diminishing.

  The priestess gagged and groan, her choking and bleeding breaths striking the foreigner’s ears…as she froze in sharp place…

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  ? Quid…? ? She stared…as if it were all finally…dawning on her…

  Ah… It happened again. None were left… She could not save a single one.

  Yet the foreigner was given little room to process, for so quickly after, did a colossal hand come lunging forth.

  Reprioritzing, she automatically dodged and rolled, narrowly evading; she immediately fired two shots towards the damaged eye socket and its exposed components, each doing nothing besides causing a humble spark. The colossus’s hand came swinging down; she dodged and evaded once again… Yet so staggered in clouded mind she was, she failed to recognize that such was merely a feint.

  Having witnessed enough of her patterns, awaiting for that precise dodge was its other hand, which so swiftly snatched… And thus, the foreigner found herself tightly within its clutch, her revolver having been dropped in the process… She was lifted upwards, towards that single contemptuous eye…the lens of which expanded and focused with such widened interest…

  At long last, the colossus had finally caught that most irritating little bug… Yet even in this moment, it still felt…terrified, in a way so strange; a sensation so frustrating yet…different than what it was used to. It could not understand why it was…so perturbed. The sense bleeding out from her aura screeched power and girth, yet this fly had not a single sting… So pathetic… So weak… To think it was actually expecting more from such a presence.

  Yet the foreigner’s mask-obscured eyes simply started into… Her posture was lose, relaxed and content… Her face, even if only half visible, was flat affect; neither a beg nor complaint to be found; no anger, no fear, no…anything at all…

  For reasons unknown, the nothingness of her expressions filled the colossus with such frustration… It wanted to her beg; to scream; to cry; or something—anything besides this smug…nothingness of a stare.

  Oh, indeed… It was going to take its time to make her squeal. Its grip thus slowly but surely began to squeeze.

  Interim

  The priestess’s raspy breaths were cramped and fading, her still ignited eyes slowly waning and dimming… Even though she could taste the blood, she felt no pain, the shock still numbing. Impaled and stuck to the wall, her vision was fuzzy, consciousness hard to maintain; her life was fleeing.

  That Copper-rank, that foreigner, was within that colossus’s clutches, she thus so weakly gazed and saw… It seemed that the threads of Fate had brought her here, only for the destined weave to be the same end…

  At least that Copper tried so hard to protect; to keep that thing at bay… Had the priestess been any better, she could have used that time to save the others…

  Truly, she felt so useless… Even in her redeeming act of retribution, when all her mind focused on that single true desire, she could not finish a single prayer…

  Yet even now, she could still feel it… That warm touch of a presence around; those lingering trails of Trinity’s spirit. She was still connected. She…could still make this right; she…could still at least…save that one soul, having failed the rest.

  Musturing all that she could into her last breaths, “Pater… Audiasne…clamorem meum?” she thus…began a plea; “Quaeso… Audias me, servum indignum… Ego…do tibi… Do…Caeli…animam meam…corpusque meum…” Yet her breaths weakened… “Ut vindicetis…nomen…sanctum… Quae..so… Spirtio ultimo…. Ut… Ut……” Her consciousness was fading… “Salve…salvetis…illam…ani…anim…a….” Final air expelled, fading and emptying…prayer yet again left unfinished… Useless, even in death…

  The priestess was gone.

  Yet even as coldness filled the hollowed shell, that hallowed stream…persisted, despite the cessation. In fact, it only grew.

  Her eyes remained partially ignited; oddly, her essence had yet to sever itself, to detach, from its deceased host… ‘Flickering’, those partially ignited…lifeless eyes, in fact, brightened…as if responding; as if receiving; integrating and synchronizing further and further… Her nerves began to twitch ever-slightly, as if…reanimating or rather…being taken over.

  Indeed, in the end, that priestess was still a mortal servant of her god; and to strike down such a steward in the midst of forming an intimate connection with reciprocal feedback…carried with it, thus, additional risks.

  For, while most gods cared little, there were still some that were rather…vindictive.

  “Preces accepta, servus dimittendus.”

  Interim

  The colossus’s crystalline tint reddened more as its brightening lens staring into that foreigner whose own eyes it lamentingly could not see…

  Its squeeze slowly but surely tightened harsher and harsher, hoping for at least a scream.

  Yet the foreigner merely stared, so flat and hollow…

  Ah… She could feel the pressure of this squeeze, tightening and crushing, squishing her insides as if they were going to pop… It was becoming harder to breathe, her ribs on the verge of cracking if that had not already…

  Pain…

  Right… She could feel pain. For whatever reason, she had to remind herself of that fact… That she could feel this pain… And truly, she was in…so much pain. Though, in a way, she had always been…for such a long-long time. Yet always contained behind the walls of her mind’s shadow, never allowed to breathe.

  Yet from the squeeze of this grip, cracking at her bones and ribs… Thus too began to crack those very walls within, as drip by drip, came leaking out...so much.

  Ah… She failed; she had so utterly failed.

  Yet… Truly, what was she expecting? Failure and loss… Such was merely the bell that rang on and on…repeating over and far beyond.

  Failure and loss. Failure and loss. Delaying and delaying… Running and being chased…

  Until there was nothing left…

  They had failed; they had lost. Replaced and usurped; betrayed…

  Yet they continued to persist; she continued to persist… Lingering relics and shadows… Remnants lost time.

  Yet…

  Ah… She recognized…

  This was it… Was it not?

  Ah… Indeed…

  This was it.

  Finally…

  After all this excruciating time, unrelenting…

  Finally…

  It was… over; it was…all over.

  This was it.

  She did what she could; she failed; she continued to fight; she lost. This thing finally caught her; it won… This thing had won… And now all it had to do…was finish it.

  She would perish by its hand; perish in duty… Her service would be over…

  It would all…finally…

  End.

  As it should have all those eons ago…

  Heh… Why…did it feel as though…this was exactly the outcome…she was hoping for?

  The colossus’s grip tightened, the pressure increasing more and more, cracking and squeezing… It hoped to see something… Before, abruptly, a rapturing wheeze; blood came coughing out from her mouth, dripping…

  Sparkly and glimmery, the colossus’s eye thus saw… Its lens focused as if surprised…

  Cyanic and radiant, her fresh blood glowed alien and strange, dimming and darkening from exposure.

  Truly, indeed… So many automated encoded commands, functions, protocols, and tasks were being enacted by her essence, always running in the background of her existence… Such a myriad of exotic cells, enzymes, proteins, and synthesized composites so thoroughly stuffed her veins that even her very blood…bled in radiant cyanic filled glow, with only traces of the expected hemoglobin red.

  Similar her blood was, indeed, to that of monsters.

  Yet as the colossus’s grip continued tightening, now clearly doing damage to her insides as she coughed more of this…glowing cyanic blood, all the foreigner could do…

  Was smile.

  Indeed, out of all expressions…she was smiling…

  A smile true and genuine yet outside of her own awareness… A smile so awful and twisted, broken and eager… And in this moment, so conveniently did the strap of her masquerade snap loose, her mask dangling from her face, exposing her exhausted ignited eyes that looked into it…as if the greatest of favors was being given.

  The colossus just stared, something…occurring within. Its pulsating veins of essence shifted, its glowing heart brightening differently… The redness of its crystalline tint began to return to its prior blueness… Its tight grip loosened, the squeeze stopping to her hidden dismay. It just stared into her as she stared into it…

  Thus, two rotting souls interlocked their sight

  One robbed of life and body, entombed forever within a crystal coffin.

  While the other…

  Entombed within her own unageing body, becoming her eternal coffin.

  Burning within the cold emptiness,

  A realization so sparked its unbeating heart…

  This towering monstrosity and this little fly…

  Were reflections of the same condemnation

  Fallen embers abandoned by their gods.

  So abruptly, however, both snapped out of this apparent trance as their heads swung their gaze, both having noticed…

  An emergence.

  The priestess, that shell and corpse; yet it almost seemed like those lifeless partially ignited eyes were staring… Cracks emerged within the crystalline wall into which the body was impaled, weaving and threading through which was that grand yellow-whitish radiance, as if Heaven was entering and surrounding. Twitching and convulsing, the body began to move and vibrate, muscles cramping as bones cracked and bent…as if a puppet on divine strings.

  In a flash, the dead priestess’s stubborn essence fully ignited, as that sigil of alignment fluoresced into activation, expanding and twinkling. Glowing radiance filled all the nerves of her body, sizzling wispy dust flaking out from every pore as if being stripped… Accumulating and surrounding… Before, all so abruptly, the priestess’s aura ignited into flaring yet vague visibility, as the priestess’s own essence engulfed her whole body.

  Such heavenly radiance flowed as the corpse became more of a glowing silhouette, essence…synthesizing with its own dead host, chewing and assimilating as ignited nerves throbbed, veiny-like expansions threading and stitching; the renegade aura pulsed as if becoming an emerging field that surrounded, pouring into which was more and more streamy radiance from something else.

  Before, so spontaneously, that impaling lance dissolved away as the growing field collapsed onto the glowing silhouette, entrapping as if a radiant shell. This practical puffball of that yellowish-white was immediately ripped out from the wall, taking with it chunks of crystalline compounds, assimilating. Held to the strings of that heavenly presence, it ‘floated’ higher and higher, backward and forward, before…being held in place, intensifying.

  Quickly, the colossus placed the squeezed foreigner down onto the ground, gently. It then stomped forward, staring this ‘holy’ ball down…its lens expanding and brightening alongside flaring roots of tormented essence… Angered and eager, it despised what it saw, for it knew, for it could feel its chamber was being violated by a god…

  Chunk after chunk of crystalline material was torn from the ground and walls, resynthesized into a legion of spiraling projectiles that throbbed and steamed; they were swiftly unleashed in an unrelenting maelstrom of crystalline fury…

  Only for each and every one of those projectiles to be absorbed and dissolved into that intensifying ball…as if such was only adding to it.

  Yet the colossus did not relent; it only intensified its attacks. Its eye expanded and remodulated, the lens brightening before unleashing ripping beam after tearing beam…

  Only for each to be once again absorbed by the ball…empowering it further.

  The foreigner stood there, dazed and heavy breathed… She clenched her sides, the pain strong but tolerable… Her ribs and…insides felt broken; something was probably bleeding internally… However, cyanic snow-dusty flakes wisped off from her being, ever-faint; she should be…mostly healed…eventually.

  She could only wonder, indeed, why that colossus did not finish her… Why it had plopped her down so gently… Was it for some reason protecting her now? Was she its exclusive kill to claim? She did not know nor she did she care to know. Her mind was incapable of analyzing…anything.

  Identifying that glowing anomaly, however, she nevertheless began to distance herself from both…that ball of hyper-concentrating essence and the colossus… For, indeed, even in this state, she knew exactly what was happening within that cocoon.

  Synthesis, materialization, fabrication… Alterations and fundamental restructuring… The heavenly ball flared and pulsated, becoming more energized and volatile, concentrated and condensing… Before, it rapidly imploded inwards in a dissipating poof that left behind only a sparkly fog of wispy smoke and dusty glitter, revealing…that which was forged and reborn.

  Biological and mechanical, synthetic yet organic. Feminine in shape but taller than the origin, a torso of skin and exposed belly yet limbs artificial—refined and angular, divine and heavenly colored. A soft and familiar face, eyes alive and ignited, yet clearly hybridized between cybernetic and cellular. Mechanical avian-like wings protruded out from the back, radiant and wispy… Held tightly within its synthetic hands was a strange polearm of the same synthesized matter and glimmery heavenly color.

  It was difficult to ascertain how much of the former person was still there, both on the outside and on the inside…

  Either way, the priestess had ceased to exist.

  Floating in place was a biosynthetic mechanical ‘angel’, a golem forged from the priestess’s essence by Trinity’s commanding will, fueled by Heaven’s vindictive wrath.

  The injured foreigner…gazed at it… Ah… Thus, one of those atrocity’s of existence, then? She could not even be bothered to cogitate or ask. She simply continued to step herself away and off to the side, needing to her body repair itself… She did not trust that thing to be friendly, for it certainly did not look so.

  The mechanical angel floated downwards; its glowing eyes staring into the colossus whose brightening lens stared it down in kind as it stood its ground, fists clenching.

  “Heros caducus, proditus perditusque a deis tuis mendacibus, iram invocavisti Coeli Regni.” Thus spoke two voices at once, one familiar and the other menacingly alien.

  Crystalline spikes and spears immediately began to fire from the chamber’s walls, yet an exotic barrier shielded the mechanical angel, absorbing the impacts. Unphased, it merely gravitated closer as the colossus stepped itself back… The tip of its heavenly polearm changed, becoming less a spearhead and more a…cannon; it began to energize, intensifying and brightening as it aimed right at the colossus.

  “Liberet te hoc lumen Coeli sanctum de adflictione aeterna, heros caducus, et ducat ad pacem ultime.” Words spoken, a thin yet highly concentrated piercing lance discharged, tearing straight through the colossus’s heart-core; shattering, dissolving, and destroying…

  The guardian colossus’s dimming eye flickered, the lens dilating as the pinkish glow faded away; it came tumbling down…as if falling apart. Immediately, cracks and distortions began to form all throughout the chamber as the pinkish ignited veins pulsed and throbbed, dimming and withering, shrinking and shriveling…dying away. Crystalline rocks and exotic composites began to fall and break, as dust and wisp began to flake and dissolve.

  The colossus was dead, its stretched and threaded essence now slowly but surely…decaying. This unraveling chamber lost its light and life, destined…to eventually collapse.

  The foreigner stared, processing…all of it… Breaths breathing from lungs in pain… Aching… Insides aching… Everything…aching…

  …so, it was all…over then? Just like that? Finished…?

  But… She was still here…

  Ah… Of course… She was the only one left alive…yet again…

  The foreigner, however, was quickly pierced by such a sense. Indeed, she shifted her sight and saw…

  That mechanical angel had shifted its casting glare straight to her, fixated. Without hesitation, its polearm’s muzzle-like tip came pointing, aiming…

  She…began to back away, as fast as…she could in her state… Ah, indeed…thus, that thing was not friendly…

  “Advena…cerneris.” Such a cold voice began to speak with curiosity, now far more mellow and hollow; “…quid sis, ignoramus. Sed mortalis non est. Hostis aut amicus, ignoramus. Nubes illa te circumdat. Incognitus periculosus.”

  It was viewing her as a threat, she understood… That was not good; she needed to withdraw quickly…

  “Gaudeas,” yet it proceeded to lower its exotic polearm, “advena incognita. Nam promisimus ut parcamus.” Only for it to repoint its polearm straight at her; “At cave ac caveto: ne obstes Coelum. Terra mundi per nos…pertinet.” Thus, it warned.

  Do not stand in the way of Heaven.

  With these last words, the mechanical angel hovered high before flying through one of opening holes of this decaying chamber, leaving behind a sparkle-glimmery trail.

  The foreigner blankly stared, her half-mask still dangling from her face… Ah, well that…probably was not good…at all… Though, she was unable to really process…any of it. She clenched her abdomen, breaths tightening…as she struggled to stand or move. Her eyes shifted to that now destroyed colossus, witnessing the damage…

  Truly, if only she had that abominable biosynth’s firepower, then she could have…

  Wait… The foreigner abruptly froze in utter place…

  Firepower…

  Wait…

  Wait, wait, wait!

  So fast and rapid, her attention swung down and to her hip, seeing…that which was and had been still affixed… Her cyanic eyes immediately widened, everything within emptying and blanking… She just stared, as if sinking…

  This entire time…she had her rapier, her arcane conduit… This whole time, she had it on her… And this entire environment was composed of essence-synthesized and imbued composites…

  Ah… This entire time…she had the means to win this fight… To end it decisively… Yet, for some reason, it did not occurred to her…to use it; it had…escaped her mind completely… Or, rather…

  ? …ah… ? The foreigner remained frozen with an expression most awful even if still so hollow, as the implications sunk deep…deep within…

  Ah…

  Truly, time rots and withers…

  Yet you remain those same souls…

  Saving them was never the goal, was it?

  You were trying to perish in their defense.

  There lies, thus, the answer indeed…

  The question asked of your pretense.