A figure laid Arthur down upon the rafters floating amongst the sea. She rested her hand upon his neck, her fingers cool and deliberate against his skin. She whispered in a low tone that carried centuries of authority beneath its softness.
"So these are the mortals you surround yourself with. How foolish."
Lucid's hand made its way up Arthur's wrist. She grinned beneath the mist that obscured the face she inhabited. The person dwelling within that body calculated the possibility with cold precision. She could end him. She could throw Lucid's own body into the rift as punishment for his attachment. He was nothing more than baggage, a plague upon her vessel.
She smiled wickedly. A sinister laugh echoed through her consciousness. She tried to hold it in, to suppress the excitement with a shaky breath. But the impulse was overwhelming.
"No," she decided, her mental voice dropping to something almost sultry. "I cannot do it yet. I must hold myself in restraint. His heart is too fragile. Breaking him completely would diminish what I have worked so carefully to cultivate."
She turned her head toward the individual who clutched the remnants of the chain around his throat, standing upright despite the catastrophic damage inflicted upon him. A dragon resurfaced from the water. Twenty-eight other ships closed in as the dragon regarded the figure with something approaching caution.
Ling Wei laughed. It was an unburdened laugh, the sound of someone who believed completely in his own superiority and strength. The figure stepped forward. A crack formed beneath the wooden rafters from the sheer weight of her presence alone.
She walked in slow measured steps. Most of the Illuminated Vestiges were gone now, either destroyed or too wounded to continue fighting. The soldiers lay scattered across what remained of the ship, evidence of the brutal battle Arthur had waged with every ounce of his capability. She regarded them all with eyes that glowed softly green, looking toward the ship's wreckage where a cowering individual watched everything unfold from the comparative safety below.
Ling Wei laughed again, the sound carrying absolute confidence mixed with something approaching hysteria.
"Aha! My fleet has arrived! You are finished!" He spoke with the formal precision of someone accustomed to command, each word delivered as if carved from stone and meant to ring eternal.
The figure in green aura walked forward in slow measured steps. When she looked upward at him, she spoke in a feminine voice that was soft and pleasing to the ear, yet carried undertones of something far older and vastly more dangerous.
"You are the one attempting to kill my vessel. You shall pay. Your blood will serve as a foundation toward our divine purpose."
The Enlightened commander regarded her with open confusion, his expression wavering between disbelief and something approaching primal fear.
"What sorcery is this!" he demanded, his voice cracking slightly despite his training.
The figure spoke as if in reverent acknowledgment, her tone almost euphoric and delighted. A feminine voice emerged so soft and pleading that it might have sounded gentle to someone who was not paying attention to the absolute certainty contained within it.
"I am the owner of this vessel."
He looked at her with confusion that transformed almost immediately into understanding.
The commander scoffed, his confidence attempting to reassert itself despite every warning signal his instincts were sending through his nervous system.
"You are outnumbered! Just give up!"
The individual raised their hand upward in what might have been interpreted as a divine gesture. The water started to ripple in expanding circles. Waves formed with deliberate precision. The rafters and remnants of the ship finally collided together with a force that sent tremors through the ocean itself.
A huge metallic scraping noise tore through the air, followed by crashes, bangs, and explosions. The Enlightened commander turned and looked toward the fleet. Twenty-eight ships remained. Each one was suddenly impaled by thick colossal chains that seemed to span endlessly through the air before falling down upon the vessels with the weight of absolute judgment. People could be heard screaming. Their voices carried across the water in a chorus of the dying and the desperate.
Alice smiled. Her eyes looked darkly at what she had created. The gap between them was not merely the difference between an initiate and a Primordial. It was the difference between a mortal and a god. It was the difference between someone who understood the rules of this reality and someone who had transcended them entirely.
Ling Wei focused his attention on her, sensing the danger in every aspect of her being. He saw that something was fundamentally wrong with this person. Everything about her existence violated the natural order. He summoned the dragon. He focused his fate essence and wore it like armor, enhancing his martial arts technique to their absolute peak capability. He yelled, and the dragon breathed fire toward Alice with the desperate fury of something that understood it was fighting for survival.
Alice summoned a long spear, something so big and so thick that it appeared almost dangerous merely by existing through the sheer weight of its materiality. It paled in comparison to her own size, which was itself impossible and unfathomable to mortal comprehension, it had its own distinct presence as red shards lighting surrounded it.
With a graceful movement, she threw it at the dragon.
The impact was instantaneous and absolute.
The dragon disintegrated into nothing but scattered particles of yellow energy that dissipated into the atmosphere like ash in wind.
Alice leaped forward in an elegant step and appeared directly before the Enlightened person. She took his throat in her hand. She looked at his bleeding eyes with something approaching curiosity mixed with something far more sinister. She twisted.
The motion was simple and fluid. His neck snapped with a sound like wood breaking under pressure. She ripped his head from his body in a single motion that took less than a second. Blood sprayed outward, coating her hand and the air around her in crimson. The body collapsed to the water's surface.
She held the head of her fallen adversary, examining it with the detachment of someone studying an artifact in a museum. She rotated it slowly, looking at the expression frozen upon the face. The eyes were still open, still wide with the shock of sudden death.
"You see this, Lucid?" she whispered, her voice carrying an almost reverent quality as if she were speaking in a sacred temple. "I did this for you. Can you feel this? Oh, the sight of it. The absolute perfection of his end. The way his life simply ceased to matter in the space between one moment and the next."
She held the head at arm's length, examining it with something that bordered on sensual appreciation. She looked down at the body, with a contempt grin.
She felt her stomach contract with something approaching pleasure. She smiled, running her hand through the fog surrounding the body, a gesture almost dismissive.
"Your form," she observed, speaking to Lucid though addressing the body she inhabited as if it were a separate entity. "You have not been eating well. The body is deteriorating. I can feel it. The weakness underneath the strength I grant you."
She looked toward her feet, where the water continued to swirl and move in response to her presence. An urgency had begun to build within her consciousness, a desire to exterminate every single thing that moved on the water and in the air.
She knew she could easily kill Arthur. That would send Lucid into a deep state of despair, one she might later exploit for purposes of deeper control and manipulation in the future.
But the girl. The girl she seemed to be the source of the rift itself.
Alice did not know what tier of rift this actually was, though she suspected it was at least Beta-class based on the variety of opponents present and the resistance she had encountered. But more importantly, the girl's presence felt like an anchor. Like a thread tying this entire space to something external. Removing that thread would collapse the entire structure.
She walked toward where Aurelia had taken refuge, her footsteps silent upon the water's surface. Her movements were unhurried and deliberate, the way a predator might approach prey it had already claimed. The only difference was the absolute certainty that resistance was futile.
Aurelia pressed herself against the highest remaining piece of the ship's structure. Her eyes were wide, her body trembling with the understanding that death was walking toward her with measured inevitability. She had nowhere to run. The water was rising around her in response to Alice's approach, forming walls that boxed her in completely.
"You are the conduit," Alice stated simply, her voice carrying the tone of someone announcing a well-known fact. "You are the thread of fate that conducts this rift. You are the anchor point. I can feel it in the way the space bends around you. I can sense it in the way the fate essence flows through you like water through a broken vessel."
"I'm sorry," Aurelia whispered, her voice barely audible above the sound of the water moving. "I didn't mean to—"
"Intention is irrelevant," Alice interrupted, tilting her head slightly. "The girl is simply an illusion in the rift. You are a construct designed to maintain this space. Accept your edge. Accept the inevitable conclusion of your existence."
Aurelia bolted.
She ran toward the top of the ship, her feet scraping against the wooden surface, drawing blood with each desperate movement. The ginger scraped raw from her exertion. She had no hope. There was nowhere left to do. No escape route that led to anything other than death or the water below that would drown her just as surely as Alice's power would.
When all hope was lost, when every avenue of escape had been closed, she did the only thing she could do.
She fell to her knees.
She prayed.
Her lips moved silently, the words of her prayer lost in the sound of the water and the wind. Her hands pressed together in front of her chest, her body shaking with sobs that came from somewhere deeper than fear. She prayed to whatever gods might listen, to whatever divine forces might intervene, to whatever miracle might still exist in a world.
Alice noticed.
She stopped walking. Her head tilted slightly as she regarded the girl on her knees. Something in the gesture of prayer triggered a response in her consciousness that had nothing to do with divine mercy or compassion.
She looked at the girl with genuine interest for the first time.
"How delightful," she whispered, her voice carrying a quality that was almost sensual. "The prey offers prayer. The condemned seeks salvation from forces she knows cannot save her. The futility of it. The exquisite pathetic nature of her hope. And blind faith."