Lance's Role

by Thrudgelmir2333

A 'shonen' fic that sequels Next Dimension and Lost Canvas. In 1960, the Pope of Athena receives three prophecies from an old enemy that irremediably set the course of his reign over Sanctuary's tragic history and almost two decades later a Saint of Pegasus finds himself put through the unfolding of a new age of violence caused by the Pope's actions. Please enjoy and review.

94. 3A: March of Destruction - Part 2

Notable OCs: Pegasus Lance's Saint Generation, Civil War Saint Generation, WWII Saint Generation, Hades' Dark Princes, the False Specters, Maidens of Athena, Priam's Black Saints; Cyrulian Refugees; Genbu Atlae; Patrician Mariners, Shamballa Muvians;

Notable Original Concepts: Mount Olympus Training Ground, Sanctuary Court, Teos Cloth, Athenian Empire mythology, Isle of Gardens, Stardust Prison, Hades' Dark Princes; Desert Beyond, Sanctuary Town Layout & Buildings; Kido Mount; Pact of Seven; DQI Geography; Shamballa;

Recurring/Cameo OCs of Jenny DeVic: Mrs. Schafurwatt, Cyrus

Recurring/Cameo Concepts of Jenny DeVic: Great Bodyguard Legend, Golden Line Heritage, Sanctuary Orphanages, Andromeda Island's Geography & Tests, Sanctuary Nobility, 88 Knights Festival

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Author Notes:

-This chapter has been betaread by EllyEpic;

-Once again, I've fallen behind on my goal to restore the fanart of the story into my profile. I have just been insanely busy and someone has suggested to me that I should also consider rebuilding the timeline too;

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1961 (13 Years Earlier),

Greece, Sanctuary,

Temple of Aries

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The sun was going down over the mountains after a long day of Sanctuary Town's big celebration. Street shops were being disassembled, visitors were returning to hostels or departing for Rodario before it got dark, and the inhabitants talked excitedly in the street about the future of Sanctuary. The soldiery was abuzz with activity, either taking the next phase of celebration to the bars or wrapping up all the security details. The Coliseum was hosting the last few games of the day, delighting the spectators with the fights between Bronze Saints, while the lake port was packed with travelers, visiting ships and the forum shoppers.

It was a time of excitement in Sanctuary, of optimism towards the future. They had, after all, finally gotten their first Aries Gold Saint since Shion the Survivor.

"Congratulations, Ace! Or should I say, Aries Antenor?" Kai shouted out, patting Azrael's back so hard that he nearly fell down the stairs, even with the armor on.

He was a very tall, vibrant young man with curly black hair and imposing musculature. While not as big a mountain of muscles as their friend Menelaus, Kai was still known to be pretty deep in the jock side of their gang, sporting thick shoulders, a strong chest, hardened forearms and the constant confidence of someone who could score a touchdown singlehandedly through a row of line backers charging at him.

The Leo Gold Saint was joined by his girlfriend, Aquila Partita Iraklidis, who smiled encouragingly as well. She was a good head shorter than Kai, but still a tall woman whose long, silvery hair draped down her back. Both her height and head color were known details of the line of Herakles Aguilon, but unlike the celebrated Coliseum champion and Silver Saint, Partita displayed little of the excessive gigantism of her father, if any.

The Leo held his chin studiously. "You're now officially part of the golden club! Look at you, Ace; all horned up and gilded. How do you feel being the first doorstop between the Zodiac and certain death in the Holy War?"

Azrael smirked grimly. "From the way you say it, that just describes being a Zodiac Knight, to be honest."

The black-haired Leo rolled eyes. "I had a feeling you'd downplay it. Even a stick-up-their-ass enthusiast like you has to be happy today, right? Come on, this is your dream come true."

"Kai, I'm sure Lord Aries is." Partita asserted to him, wishing her boyfriend would show a bit more tact. "Antenor is the first in a long time to hold the Gold Cloth of Aries, and for the Zodiac Knights, no less. Everyone in Sanctuary is talking about how the next holy wars are as good as won with the way everything is going."

The Leo Gold Saint groaned. "I know, I just wish this guy would show it."

"I am happy." Ace assured to them. He forced himself to smile, an admitted rarity for him, and gripped the Topaz Cloth Stone that had just returned from being bonded with the Aries Cloth. "I fought for this thing since the moment we all got to Greece. I am just tired from all the ceremonies that the Pope put us through today. But now I truly earn the codename 'Antenor'. This has all been a long time coming."

"Four years of training with the Zodiac Knights, correct, Lord Aries?" Partita asked, lacing her hands politely in front of her. "They must be very happy with you, as well? Right?"

The green-haired Gold Saint turned away with an irk. Saint Partita acting nice like she did wasn't going to change the fact Aquila shouldn't be there with them to begin with that day. She wasn't part of the group. Why did Kai always have to bring the Aquila Saintia everywhere, even to special occasions of their gang? This should be a time for the junkyard gang to celebrate, not their adjacencies.

His green eyes tensely slid away from the sight of her. "Yes, that's right, Saint Aquila."

The silver-haired woman's smile faltered. She even had made sure to keep her Aquila Cloth home, since she knew it would be a source of tension with Kai's friend, but he still seemed to be on his guard. "(I thought praising the Zodiac Knights would have been a good idea, but I guess not.)"

Kai put his hand on her shoulder comfortingly and mentally answered, "(Don't worry, you're doing great. He hasn't even scowled at you yet.)" and tried to move the conversation along. "How do you feel wearing that thing, by the way? Do you like the giant horns over the shoulders? I bet you're excited to show everyone back at the Knights your incredible new Cloth?"

Ace tucked his cuirass in. "Well, to us Knights, duty comes before everything else, so the Cloth must never be seen as a reward or medal, but as an object of responsibility."

Partita and Kai exchanged a worried look. Was Ace going to go on a gush tangent about the knights? Those could take hours.

The Gold Saint held chest proudly. "So we must never show off our Cloths, so to speak. Rather, the armor must be kept close to heart, in our cloth stones, and be a sign of virtue-"

"Ugh, that's exactly why I could never join up with them." Kai cut in, shaking his head. "Those stiff-ups you're with just don't know how to have fun. When I got Leo, the first thing I did was parade it in the Coliseum for old man Aguilon and his goons to see who the new Sanctuary Champion was!"

This time, it was Azrael and Partita shared a moment of emotional sync; one of exasperation.

"Yes, we all remembered when you and my dad got into a fight. Again." Partita tried to downplay.

"And besides, it's not like they'd let you join." Azrael reminded him, raising chin. "Unless you have the Light element, the best you can hope for is being an oathsworn foot soldier. If your terrible attitude and drinking doesn't get you kicked out first, that is."

Kai scoffed, unimpressed. "Whatever, I'll have you know that I could have made Castellan if I wanted to, just like Ace! I have incredible talent with pretty much every element, including Light!" He folded arms. "I just chose to pursue Lightning because I was up for the Unicorn Cloth, is all."

"Kai, didn't you say once it was because you wanted to prove not even the thunderbolts of Zeus himself would stop you from winning my heart?" Partita asked, giving him a dirty look.

The tall Leo Saint quivered, finding himself cornered from all sides. "I, um, well…Of course! The Unicorn Cloth was just my secondary reason, is all, honey…"

Her blue eyes narrowed like an eagle's on him. "We're discussing this later during sparring, alright?" Aquila Partita's silver hair swayed as she turned head to the Aries. "Don't listen to Saint Kai, Lord Aries. He's clearly just being his usual cock self. Everyone knows the Zodiac Knights are the best ideal of a Saint of Athena can be."

The Aries Saint exhaled harshly. He didn't recall asking her opinion. "This coming from a Saintia depriving us of one of our armors."

Kai frowned, noticing Ace's mood. He loved breaking Ace's balls, but he wished the guy wouldn't emotionally respond to it by giving Partita the 'snake glares'. This was his girlfriend after all. Ace just didn't like her because she wasn't part of the Junkyard Gang, so he automatically didn't trust her. In Kai's opinion, the whole excuse of 'her Saintia Cloth being claimed by the Knights' was just that; an excuse.

The couple shook his hand. "Anyway, Ace, congratulations. This is a big step forward to all of our group." Kai then accompanied Partita upwards. "We'll go say hi to Menelaus. That one is probably fuming that you've now passed ahead of them, too."

Ace waved politely, but still watched tensely as Partita was taken to the temples above. He tried to forget about it all, but he hated that Kai was inserting her into all of their circles. Why couldn't their gang just keep to themselves? They were better off that way. This was just like when Priam was cozying up to the Heinstein girl, Anesidora.

"You're still not a fan of hers, are you?"

Azrael turned and widened his eyes. "Helen!"

The Virgo Gold Saint laughed inside her mask. "Look at that tone shift in you. So to Partita you're all 'Mph', but to me you're all 'Oh, it's my bestest friend in the world!" She crossed her arms and shook her head. "You know, you never treated Akassius' wife like this."

The Aries Gold Saint sat on the stair steps. "That's different. Lady Cecilia is important to our goal. Her status with the aristocracy has helped us secure our position in Sanctuary. Meanwhile, that girl Partita has nothing to offer us."

The Virgo Gold Saint hummed reflectingly. Partita was Herakles Aguilon's daughter, wasn't she? Her family had its own sort of prestige. Wasn't this just because Ace always thought Kai was the irresponsible one compared to Akassius?

Better yet, "The two love each other, though. We should be happy for Kai, right?"

He felt her masked stare and looked away. "I thought you had stayed in Shamballa."

She widened her eyes inside her mask. "Don't be ridiculous, Ace. I came to watch your anointment ceremony with everyone else at the stands! I even saw when you got nervous with that first line of speech in front of everyone."

Azrael hummed. He supposed it was possible. The crowds were so big, after all. "Alright, I'm sorry, I was wrong. I'm glad you were there, Helen."

The girl beamed. It was so nice to catch a glimpse of this rara avis; the nice Azrael.

And then he darted his eyes away, flustered. "I wish you hadn't seen that bit, though…Paris has been laughing at me all day about it."

The gold-armored girl sat with him. She didn't have the heart to tell him his lack of public charisma was already all over the Sanctuary paper, too. "It's all part of it. When my turn came, I couldn't talk at all. I saw all those people looking at me, waiting for me to say something spiritually inspired… and I just froze up. Luckily, Patroclus was there to support me."

Something stung inside Azrael's chest. Patroclus was their Cancer candidate. Because of the nature of his training, he got to spend more time around Helen than Azrael did. One of the things Azrael did regret about his path as a Zodiac Knight was that it kept him away from his friends. If only Priam hadn't cowered out of the Order…

She scoffed lamentingly. "It's funny, isn't it? With all the powers we've gained, we could do amazing things, terrible things… and yet I still can't talk to a crowd. In that regard, you're way cooler than I am, Ace."

The green-haired Aries perked up. Maybe this was his chance to match Patroclus in support for her. "It's… not your fault, Helen. It's just everyone else and their expectations. We don't owe them anything, much less a shining speech of leadership and vision. I wish we could leave all of those to Akassius. If you ask me, it's good enough that we've gotten where we are and we vowed our lives to Athena and the world."

She tucked her armored legs in. "Thank you." Her mask sunk into her knees and huffed, humbled. "You know, Ace, I always loved you all for this."

He turned back. "For what?"

She laid her hand out. "Even way back then, you guys all always made sure I knew none of this was my fault. Even Paris. You never blamed me for, you know…" Her mask turned away. "Being a dumb person."

"Because you're not!" Azrael asserted. His emerald eyes softened. How could she possibly still think these things? "Helen, it's because of you we're all here."

Her head turned up. "You always say that, but-"

"Daniel was going to take only you. Remember?" He glanced upwards at the Taurus Temple. "He acts nice, but he was getting ready to leave the rest of us in the junk. But you said 'If I'm going to Sanctuary, all of my friends will, too'. And he could have left you there with us for that alone!"

Helen tucked her armored legs in. "He's my dad, Ace. I'm sure he wouldn't…"

The Aries Gold Saint grumbled. "No he isn't, he just adopted you because he wanted to use you for Sanctuary." He recalled. Unlike everyone else, he still didn't trust Daniel because of this. "My point is, what does it matter if you can't talk to strangers or,… or that you don't understand the way people think? You understood exactly what mattered, when it mattered! Not even Akassius would have done what you did."

Helen smiled inside her mask. She reached in and cleaned her eyes. Ace could be really sweet when someone dug it out of him. "Well… you know, that's only because I couldn't imagine living without you guys."

Azrael looked away, feeling his heart beat fast. Knowing how much of a piece of shit he was, Azrael deeply envied that capacity of hers to just toss away her actions as if it was no big deal to do such marvelous things. As if she could do it so easily, that her vow as a Saint to do well by Athena was just a formality to something Helen was already easily capable of.

Why wasn't Azrael himself like that? He couldn't even imagine what it looked like. Everything he did of good, he did it because he vowed to it as not just a mere Saint, but as a Zodiac Knight. Even his love for his friends was sealed by the vow they made to each other as such. How could there be people in the world that didn't need that framework to do the right thing? Without Athena's laws, without the enlightened social contracts of the Saints of Athena, Azrael could only picture the people with the power to use Cosmos falling into disorder and evil.

Back at the junkyard, if he had unlocked Cosmos before Helen, he would have done everything to get himself out of his miserable situation. He would have taken Daniel's offer whole-heartedly, even if meant leaving Helen, Akassius, Menelaus, Priam, Kai and everyone else back in the filth and violence. He would tell himself 'if I become a Saint, I can become powerful and come back later to help them'.

If they were still alive, that is.

That temptation didn't even seem to cross Helen's mind. Deep down, he tried to imagine having that capacity to put that much on the line for others. Unable to picture it, Azrael realized that his road to becoming a fully-fledged Gold Saint was probably only just beginning. A deep sensation of shame filled his stomach, making it sink his head down with the weight of it.

The amazon saw him look moody again. "Ace, you're doing that face you do when you're overthinking things."

"I'm just trying to decide how I'll fix the design of these stupid ram-horns." He lied, touching the massive pieces of gold curving over his shoulders.

"Right, I bet your Lightcraft skills are fantastic now." she played along. Helen clasped her hands. "Ace, show me what you can do now. It's been ages since you showed off in practice!"

He fidgeted nervously, but then focused his thoughts. Making his Topaz Cloth shine, his powers made his ram horns dispel into a shower of light fragments that flowed down to his hand like slithering serpents. They then coalesced, jutting a long edge out of his hand to form a sword.

The Virgo Saint gawked. It was full of detail, possessing handguards carved like Corvus' wings, runes of Zodiac Knight spells along the entire edge and even finely serrated beaks on the tip. "Ace, that's amazing!"

He stood up. "Watch this, then."

He then flicked his hand, causing the sword to brighten and then suddenly drop to the ground, cracking the step with the enormous battleaxe edge that it formed. He then took it and swung in the air, transforming into a sweeping halberd that could slice a powerful warrior right off a horse's back. Azrael then spun it around, posed it guardingly and swung it diagonally, shattering into a dozen daggers of light that flew off and struck one of the holding pillars of the Aries Temple, shaping a human silhouette.

Helen clapped, amazed. "That's incredible! You don't even look like you're thinking about it!"

Azrael took but one of the daggers off the pillar and all the others followed it by dispelling into light and reforming his Aries horns. "That's because I've practiced these shapes thousands of times. I really don't need to think about it anymore."

She touched her jaw. "Have you tried something… expressive?" It made Ace raise his brow, predictably. She scratched her white-haired head, wondering how to explain it to him. "You know, like a work of art? Can you draw an animal shape with it? Or clouds in the sky? Or is it just metalwork like the Muvians?"

Azrael hummed and turned away. "Uh, well…"

Did she ask something wrong? Maybe this was sacrilege among the knights. At Shamballa, there was a ton of things Helen had been taught a Zodiac Knight like Ace was not allowed to do with their powers. "I'm sorry, Ace', I didn't mean to-"

But with a bright flash, Azrael's hand thrust outwards and he cast his Lightcraft, releasing a huge curtain of light that projected a very human shape in front of him. In fact, not only did it seem human, but the light coalesced into the fine details of a face, then eyes, eye lashes, lips, ears, hair and then an armor.

The masked Virgo Saint gawked and her hair almost stood up, rattled by the frightening sight of two identical Azraels; the real one and one made of yellow light. "Ace… you…!"

He dispelled it, making it shattered. "I'm still working on this. I call it my Starlight Illusion." He turned away. "They're not real. Just tricks of remote-controlled light."

The Virgo Saint blinked. She reached in and touched it. Her eyes widened when she realized that, not only did it feel solid, but even the smooth texture of the replicated Aries Cloth was correct.

Even Helen, versed with the arts of Virgo, had to feel in awe. "Ace, you made yourself out of light. That's more than just a trick."

His arms crossed. He should have figured this would frighten her. He should probably not mention that he figured out how to make them move. "It's funny, isn't it? We're all developing these amazing abilities, but chances are our generation will not see a Holy War coming."

She paced around him, trying to get him to show his embarrassed eyes. "Well, I'd argue that's a good thing… and no reason to not become better Saints, right? Isn't that what you always tell Priam?"

Azrael scoffed. "He's different. He needs to hear it so his pacifism won't get the better of him."

"And you need to hear it so you'll know you're a better person than you think." Helen argued, making his eyes widen. Her mask turned away. "I need to hear it too, because even after all this time, I still feel so far behind all of you. I could never do what Kirin did, for example. She had the courage to say no to the mask. I did not."

"What good is it, Helen, when Kirin still has to hide who she really is anyway?" Azrael pointed out, his eyes lazing skeptically.

This seemed to give the Virgo Saint pause. "Mm, that's something for me to meditate over tonight, for sure. I still think Rin is so cool, though…" Helen herself felt she'd probably have a crush on 'Capricorn Achilles' in different circumstances. She knew their gender-bent friend had the hearts of half the women in Sanctuary Town. If only those poor ladies knew. "Speaking of the gang, are you joining us at the Libra Temple later, Ace?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't have much of a choice, do I? It's a feast in my honor, like the three others I had to attend today."

"Yes, but this one is for us. Our group and no one else. Even the Pope said he'd give us space." Helen reminded him. Not that she blamed him for resisting, with how hard the Knights seemed to drive Ace. Sometimes it felt like they thought her friend was the Order's salvation. "Just think of it, Ace, one day, the very last of us will host theirs, and we will all be Gold Saints. And then…"

The armored hands of the Aries Saint clenched, remembering the darkness and the filth of the junk. "And then we can flood the world with light. Together."

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1966

(Eight years before Talos' rampage)

Last Year of the Priam War

Siege of Bluegrad

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They were at the climax of the Priam War, the biggest internal conflict to afflict a generation of Gold Saints in centuries.

To many of them, it felt like the world was cold and full of darkness.

Such, however, was the climate of Bluegrad, especially in that terrible occasion. The fields surrounding the walled, black city were littered with war machines and soldiers in the snow. Lines of trenches surrounded Bluegrad, whose sapphire-colored gate stood tall and proud before the tired armies of Sanctuary. Many lights inside still shined, showing the hope of a proud people that would not let even the forces of Athena violate their city. Many weapons, and the men of Cosmos wielding them at the walls, silently warned any approaching phalanx or Saint to keep their distance.

Guarding these walls alongside a dedicated militia was the squadron known as the 'Blue Saints'. This was a small collective of Saints of Athena whose armors were kept in the vicinity or within Bluegrad territory, mainly Canis Major, Vulpecula, Lupes, Northern Crown and Cygnus, and so felt a great affiliation with the Siberian city that surpassed their loyalty to the Golden Zodiac. While Cygnus was famously still frozen inside a glacier (the mystery of Saint Hyoga of the Lost Canvas War notwithstanding) and Northern Crown was on lease to the Saintias, the remaining three were left to be the stalwart defenders of the city of Bluegrad. The three would guard it and its people from intrusion to their dying breaths.

Yet, the trenches flanking its walls from outside were many, long and deep. They were packed with footsoldiers hard at work, digging and shuffling, watching Bluegrad's walls for the slightest sign of weakness. And these were resolute men from all over Sanctuary's world, hardened by almost four years of harsh civil war with Sagittarius Priam, who knew victory was finally within grasp. They all knew Priam and Pisces Aeneas hid inside and would not go home without their heads.

Hovering over them, not too far back, was the flying battleship of the Mariners, the LPS Sea Dragon. With its large sails on masts and fins that swam through the air, it beheld the entire siege from a privileged position, but the threat of ballistae on Bluegrad's walls forced it to keep its distance. While the Sea Dragon was well armed and armored, if but one of those grapples fixed itself on the ship, the entire battleship could be pulled down to the floor and captured within minutes.

In its command bridge stood Admiral Vancouver, the new head of the Vancouver Household, masters of the Sea Horse Scale. "Peace is within grasp… Only those walls are keeping us from it."

"They won't go down without a great fight, dear friend." said Arthur Solo, heir to Julian Solo and captain of the Sons of Arion. After the victories on land at Almaty, he had converged with the mariner fleet and now took on an attaché role, since Priam's ground forces were all but finished. "Bluegradians are proud and stubborn, like unbreakable ice. They won't care that it's only Priam and Aeneas we are here for; those walls will stay up and that gate closed to anyone who brings arms to their land."

Vancouver smirked. "I'll take it as solid word, Arthur, considering you wedded one."

Arthur glanced at him, surprised. "Is that a crack at my expense I just heard?"

"Don't get used to it." Vancouver gritted his teeth, seeing the sapphire gate on their main monitor. Bluegrad would be sure to make them all pay their entry passes in blood. "If we really are to siege this city, there won't be moments of levity to come for a while."

Arthur couldn't agree more. "How long ago did Sanctuary send their man in?"

Vancouver took out his pocket watch. "Three hours ago. I don't like this, Arthur. He's supposed to be a Gold Saint. They are not known for requiring time with anything."

The blue-haired heir fidgeted in his seat uncomfortably. "… I'm sure he will carry back good news."

Ithaca, his star Son of Arion knight, nodded. "Lord Solo is right, Admiral. What is Bluegrad going to do, after all? All of Sanctuary's forces are converged here, and we have the Stardust Cannon on this battleship. Proud or not, Bluegrad would be insane to resist this kind of siege."

"Not all of their forces, knight." Vancouver revealed. "Sanctuary has taken a squadron to the Atlantic and another to the Pacific."

Arthur and Ithaca both widened their eyes.

Vancouver let out another rare smirk at them. "What? Did you two take Gemini Akassius for a fool? He knows Priam is already working on a way out of this place." His eyes fixed back on the black city. "This siege is only of a part of a grander operation to capture Priam once and for all. No matter what, one way or the other, Akassius is going to finish this war with this battle."

Ithaca shivered. "I wouldn't want to be Akassius' enemy, that's for sure. This whole war has been insane, yet that Gemini Saint has handled it like a Homeric king."

Arthur's eyes narrowed worriedly. "But will he give up his crown after the war, like Cincinnatus? Or cement it on his head, like Caesar?"

"How did he even track Priam and Aeneas down?" Ithaca asked. He scoffed, shaking his head at the years they spent combing steppes, deserts and jungles for clues of where Priam's army hid. "All this time I thought the big problem was that you couldn't easily corner fugitives who use lightspeed."

"Saint Odysseus of Aquarius found a way." Vancouver explained. "Something about clouds and the Gold Cloths' absorbing sunlight which I couldn't possibly replicate to you."

One of the operator's monitors bleeped. "Admiral, the envoy has returned."

Ithaca sighed happily. "Finally. Did he stop for drinks with the Bluegradians or something?"

"Let him through." Admiral Vancouver ordered. The operators nodded and began unlocking hatches and doors outside through their controls.

"Vancouver, what happens if our worst fears are realized?" Arthur asked. "What if Bluegrad says no?"

The teal-haired admiral gritted his teeth. He patted his command station, full of indicators about their guns. "That's what we are here for, isn't it, Arthur?"

Arthur saw where the console for the Stardust Cannon awaited and blessed himself. "Poseidon forgive us, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes right now, dear friend."

The main door to the bridge opened and the Mariner guards stepped aside, letting through the envoy. To their stunning, a stumbling figure came through, yet one dressed head to toe in golden armor.

His height was impressive at nearly seven feet tall, his hair was a paling black, long and curly, almost reaching down to his waist, his beard was unkept, his eyes were a striking blue, his biceps bulged like balloons and his steps sounded powerful and heavy on the metal flooring of the bridge. He also had a bottle of Cerulean Vodka in his hand, a Bluegrad specialty known for its high-alcohol content and bitter taste, and the man stanched of having taken drinks from it the whole way back from the city.

The Admiral immediately saluted. "Attention, men!"

The entire room, including Arthur and Ithaca, greeted the Gold Saint with a disciplined stand and salute. "Welcome aboard, Saint Kaiser II of Leo!"

Yet, the envoy only carelessly saluted back, barely making contact with his forehead. "Saint Leo, at your service or something. And don't call me Kaiser, for Athena's sake!" He walked over and sat, looking like he could barely stand in exhaustion. "It's just Kai. Unlike that fucker, Priam, I don't hide where I come from…"

Everyone in the room exchanged agape looks of surprise, curiosity and apprehension. What was going on? This was the Leo Saint? He looked like a vagrant, albeit a very muscled one. This was the guy sent to broker Priam's surrender with Bluegrad?

Arthur and Ithaca approached him. "Saint Leo, what is the status on the negotia-"

"Forget it. Vulpecula said there would be none." Kai cut. He took a big swig right in front of everyone and sighed out in satisfaction, his face turning red. "They're not handing Priam over. In fact, they insist they don't even know who Priam is...Which is funny because I could smell his guilt-ridden stench from the gate."

The agape Ithaca couldn't help but joke. "Maybe it's the vodka?"

Kai eyed him while taking another swig. "You're funny, Mariner. I like you." He listlessly said. He gestured to offer the bottle. "Wanna taste? Might be the last one made by the city for a while."

Ithaca faked an apologetic smile. "Perhaps off-duty, sir."

"Good soldier." Kai praised, taking a swig himself. He sighed out harshly. "In any case, I know the Vulpecula Saint personally. We used to hunt for Black Saints together in these parts, and he'd have no reason to act like this much of an asshole to me. Swear to fucking Ares, the more he said 'fuck off, I won't open this gate', the more it made me want to rip the damn thing out with my bare hands…"

Arthur Solo winced, knowing how powerful the half-drunk man sitting in front of him was. Kai, after all, was otherwise known as 'the Titanslayer', and that nickname didn't come about because of how nice he was in a fight. Arthur had to admit that keeping your gates closed to him was risking quite a lot for no apparent reason.

"Assaulting the city may prove to be an even graver decision, Saint Kai." Arthur reminded him. "Are we certain Saints Priam and Aeneas are inside Bluegrad?"

Kaiser, however, nodded firmly. "Dead certain." And then hiccupped. "Cause that nerd Malt-… Aquarius Odysseus is never wrong. Not about something as serious as this. If Odysseus says they're here, they're fucking here! And they're getting ready to slip away again, I promise you that! But I won't let that happen."

They all widened their eyes worried. "Sir?"

"Akassius wants this war over with… and by Athena, it will be over." Kai vowed, seemingly sobering up with the sheer fury suddenly coursing in his veins. "But I will not have more Sanctuary lives lost to this stupid fucking conflict just because Bluegrad's stupid Blue Saints don't care about everybody else's bloodshed!"

Vancouver gestured Ithaca and Arthur to relax and then conversed himself. "We're at Sanctuary's disposal, Saint Kai. What would you have us do?"

As Kai's pulse relaxed, his stumbling seemed to return. He sat back down. "The plan is the following; Priam won't attempt to leave the city for as long as he thinks it's safe, but he'll bolt away, quite literally, if something spooks him and take Aeneas with him. It's my intention, however, to take advantage of Priam's usual indecisiveness during crises. Saint Capricorn Achilles is standing outside just waiting for an opening into that city. That one can definitely corner Priam and Aeneas during a chaotic situation, but our assault needs to be instantaneous, even by Gold Saint standards."

This was a surprising amount of military discernment from a man who just swigged an entire bottle of Cerulean Vodka, Arthur thought. Then again, with his size, Saint Kai could probably absorb the alcohol better than most.

"For as long as those walls stand, I'm afraid Sagittarius Priam will have plenty of warning to whatever you toss at him, Saint Kais- Saint Kai."

Kaiser nodded. "That's right. But you guys have a cannon that can blow a hole right into that gate, don't you?" Immediately, the suggestion made the entire room tense up, at least the part that wasn't too boyish to understand the seriousness of firing the Stardust Cannon. "Well, the time has come to use it. Even Priam won't know what hit this city."

Arthur staggered. "The Stardust Cannon?! Lord Gold Saint, the blast will be too powerful! We'll risk killing… hundreds, perhaps thousands!"

Kai turned away, tensing. "I know."

Ithaca gasped, outraged. "What do you mean, 'you know'?! Are you really going to kill all those innocent people just to get a couple of guys?!"

The lion eyed him venomously. "Is that the concern, soldier? Innocent casualties?"

The three decorated men tensed, exchanging looks of concern. Did they poke the lion too far?

"I did not realize the cult of Poseidon, which prays for the flooding of the Earth, cared so much about collateral damage." Kaiser hissed. His height seemed terrible then as he stood tall to their accusations. "Perhaps because there's no sea water involved in my plan?"

Admiral Vancouver stepped up "Sir, we did not mean to offend. We are just… concerned about unnecessary killing. I'm sure a Saint of Athena would not like to stain his hands with such a sin?"

This only made the tall man narrow his blue eyes more. "Let me paint you a picture, then. Every day of this war, on average, twenty men and women faithful to Athena and aged twelve to forty have died fighting Priam and his traitors. Add that to the fact this war has been going on for almost a thousand days, and you get a number of dead that probably is double to that of all current living Mariners on the planet!"

Ithaca gulped, disarmed.

Arthur rose his hands amicably. "Saint Kai, all my underling meant to say is-"

"A sin would be to let this conflict go on for even one more second! THAT would stain my hands!" Kai roared.

The bridge went quiet. Many of the operators, all of them mariners, exchanged tense looks, feeling implicated. Admiral Vancouver eyed Arthur, silently urging him to dialogue with the Gold Saint.

The Leo Gold Saint folded his arms, sensing their apprehension. "Don't you lot worry. I will take Poseidon's displeasure for you all. You can tell your God in the abyss when you die that an evil Gold Saint made you fire your big gun at this innocent city."

Arthur tried to tentatively reason with him. "W-we understand, Saint Leo, but… perhaps with diplomacy…"

Kai gritted his teeth. They still wanted to argue about this?! All he could think about was death. Death and more death. And Partita's face the last time he saw her, turned into a skull.

"Diplomacy?! I was ready to give that city the whole damn world in exchange for Priam, and they STILL said no! I offered riches beyond even their wildest dreams, Coliseum games in honor of brave Bluegrad, even Athena's tits on a platter of gold!" With this last sacrilegious bit, Kai took a deep breath and calmed. "And still, they say no. Well, as the Goddess is my witness, I won't let some pale asshole in a fox suit with too much civic pride in his town prolong this war any further! It ends now!"

While Vancouver and Ithaca recoiled, Arthur could only falter, seeing the pain behind the anger in Kai's eyes. He thought of Atlae, the young boy he just rescued near Almaty. The last thing Arthur told him before departing back to the front was that he was going to 'stop the fighting'.

"So, to reiterate…I fucking know, alright? A lot of people will die!" As Kai's breath calmed, he then returned their looks right back at them. "But all you've done was build this weapon. I'm the one telling you to use it! I will walk into hell for you all for this, don't you worry!"

The crew turned to the admiral for orders. Vancouver at that moment felt the weight of what he was about to do threaten to crush his shoulders. The firm stare of the Gold Saint, however, seemed adamant in taking the terrible moral burden of firing the greatest weapon ever devised by Mariners on innocent people.

Vancouver turned to command the room. "Ready the battleship! We're charging the Stardust Cannon!"

The room scurried into activity, with the operators all rushing posts and beginning to click buttons.

"ALL HANDS ON DECK!" one announced to the PA system. "THE STARDUST CANNON WILL BEGIN CHARGING AND WILL FIRE IN T-300. EVERYONE NOT REQUIRED IN THE FIRING PROCESS MUST ASSUME IMMEDIATE SAFETY POSITIONS!"

Ithaca and Arthur quickly sat in two safety seats against the wall, belting themselves in. "Sir, I can't believe this! What is with that guy?! Why is he acting insane?! The cannon was made for… for if someone decides to fire an Athena Exclamation on us! Or if a Titan breaks loose from Tartarus! Or if Hades himself comes out of his hole and threatens to-"

"He lost his wife, Ithaca. The mother of his two children." Arthur cut him off. It made Ithaca swallow his breath. "Aquila Partita died taking Foal's Peak from the Zodiac Knights. They even took her armor. And this after Saint Kai endured the pain of his best friend leading this entire war against us!"

At last, Ithaca staggered. He looked again and saw the Gold Saint not even putting his safety belt on, like he didn't care that in a few minutes he would be sent flying headfirst into the command bridge by the firing recoil. Even with this new information in light, Ithaca still thought the guy was a disgrace, but…

Arthur sank his face into his hands. "When Seraphina gave us Marianne… she came so close to death. I felt like the Gods were punishing me for betraying the Gerasimov to be with her. I prayed to Poseidon day and night to spare my wife and daughter. I was granted the mercy of the two of them surviving. But Saint Kai, to have the woman he loved die in a ditch of a Zodiac Knight castle, to leave behind two children who know nothing of their mother…When I think of it, it's like a terrible nightmare I was ready to do everything in my power to prevent. Or avenge."

While a bit more collected about this, Ithaca still protested. "With all due respect, Lord Solo… what about the families we are about to hurt? We're about to spread that pain to them all."

Arthur shook his head powerlessly. Every path he foresaw involved piles of fresh bodies. "I don't know, Ithaca. Saint Kai is right about one thing; if Priam escapes, this war could go beyond for twice as long, at least." The heir of the Solos tugged his safety to make sure he was ready for the recoil, then sighed. "This is beyond me. I don't think even Gods would know a way out of this. Dragging it on for even longer will be to spit in the face of its survivors, people who just want to have a life."

Ithaca remembered what happened at Almaty with the little Muvian boy Lord Arthur adopted. "People like that boy Atlae, sir?"

Arthur's hands clenched. "Like him, like Marianne, like Seraphina…like everyone I care about!" He breathed out to dispel his darker thoughts. "Ithaca, you've become my most trusted knight in this war, but the war isn't quite over yet, even if we take Bluegrad. I'm afraid I need to ask you something terrible. Something I can't trust even my father to do. If something is to happen to me, I want you to… keep an eye on my family. Including Atlae."

Ithaca didn't even hesitate. The man asking him this was his hero, after all. "Of course, my lord."

The ship began shaking slightly. Then, monitors began showing the flank diagram of the battleship, specifically how the hot engine in its core was beginning to route power towards the bow. Outside, they could hear the dragonhead-shaped bow open its jaw to reveal the long barrel of a cannon aimed right at Bluegrad's sapphire doors. It started whirring, first softy, then gradually louder.

The ship itself became warm, making the crew sweat. Some of them could feel heat cables deep underneath the metal paneling growing hot. Those with the 7th sense, like Arthur, Ithaca, Vancouver and Kai, could feel a mass of energy that looked like the sun coursing its rays towards the front of the ship. It was focusing a power many of them had only seen coming off the hands of extremely powerful Gold Saints. Said power was going to be used to detonate the charge on an enormous bullet, which would then travel with such force that it would turn into plasma before even leaving the barrel. After leaving it, though, it would be nothing but pure energy, like an atomic disintegration.

Such accumulation of power was closed off from outside reading by the ship's stardust-enforced armoring. This meant any Gold Saint inside Bluegrad, such as Pisces Aeneas and Sagittarius Priam, wouldn't be warned of what was about to happen, even if they were awake and actively scoping their surroundings with the 7th sense. Once the gate was blown through, Capricorn Achilles and Leo Kai' would charge in and deal with the rest before Aeneas and Priam could even say 'we're under attack'.

"Stardust Cannon ready to fire, sir!" an operator announced, seeing the monitor indicate one hundred percent charging.

A console popped up in front of Admiral Vancouver. It was shaped like a joystick Arthur had seen in one of those arcade machines in city malls, but the red button on top was under a safety blocker made of plastic. He saw his old friend pop the blocker open and hover his thumb over the trigger. A monitor turned on in the control station, showing the fields ahead of the Sea Dragon they were about to fire over.

"Activating all safety shutters." Another announced, flipping switches that made steel encasements lower down on all windows. A red light came over the room and warning sirens began to sound. Everyone started putting on their safety belts. A minor alarm went off at this. "Safeties engaged…. except one, Admiral."

Vancouver turned his teal-haired head at Kai.

The Leo Saint raised his nearly empty bottle. "Don't mind me… I'll just let the recoil do its work. A toast to my fucking sins and whatnot. Hip-hip!" And drank down the very last few drops.

Vancouver and Arthur saw the crew nervous about this, but the admiral nodded along. If this was the first payment tranche Kaiser wished to make to the Gods for this terrible sin, then so be it.

Hesitantly, the mariners carried on, flipping the final switches. "Energy condensers charged and hot. Disengaging gravity breaks in 3…2…1…"

Vancouver's hand thrust out dramatically. "Stardust Cannon, FIRE!" and his other pressed the trigger with his thumb.

The loud whirring outside turned into a deafening blare, the monitor went full white and the entire battleship shook, recoiling back. Saint Kai was immediately tossed out of his seat and painfully slammed into the steel wall.

Nearly a thousand would die instantly. Two thousand more would succumb to burns, rubble injuries and the ensuing chaos. All this before the Gold Saints and their soldiers stormed the city proper.

This penultimate event of the Priam War, which would culminate in the fabled duel between Capricorn Achilles and Pisces Aeneas, became known as the 'Battle of Bluegrad'.

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Chapter 94

Third Arc

Episode 21

The March of Destruction – Part 2

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Present

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Tibet,

Muvian Colonies

150 Miles from Shamballa

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The night's darkness was now firmly over the vast, rocky fields of the Tibetan Plateau. Normally, this would be the time when the disparate Muvian settlers in the area would retreat to their homes and shut off as many lights as possible to avoid drawing unwanted satellite attention to their villages. This obscurity was necessary to protect them not only from the national superpowers in the region, but from any rogue group of Black Saints using Central Asia to stay away from Sanctuary's eye. With the Summer Festival in full force, however, many homes even in these small villages away from Shamballa were decorated with orange lamps, usually on brass phoenixes, that added to the burden of ensuring total black out.

That night, however, the inhabitants brought their lights out and peered out into their villages, horrified.

They watched it march across their horizon; the enormous creature with armored wings, tail, jagged teeth, cuirassed body and hissing, heavy breath. It was so big, every step it took seemed to cover half a mile, quaking the valley with thunderous, earthshaking drops of its feet. It's long, spiked tail dragged in the ground, cratering it deeper, while its body burned with a faint aura that awakened fires through where it marched. Large flocks of night birds startled by its passage flew up and disappeared into the darkness of its size, even as groups, before fleeing into the skies.

"Mommy, daddy, what is that?!" children cried, pointing their small fingers.

"Suzaku save us! It's a giant dragon!" one elderly Muvian panicked.

"But it has legs and arms! And a face!"

They saw it stomp and burn through the woods, uncaring. "It's setting the sacred forest on fire!"

Female Muvian guards posted to the area held the small crowds away from the lower fields Talos marched through. "E-everyone, please follow our instructions! We need to move to a shelter!"

Another guided them away to the fortified homes of local Sanctuary nobles. "Please head for the manor! The Saints of Athena are surely already on their way!"

Meanwhile, Talos marched on, breaking through fields and forests, its blue light eyes fixed to the east. It could only think of finding the source of the pulling it felt. Far, far ahead of it, the lifeforce of the one who rung the Genbu Bell to begin with was felt.

"I must find him." it thought, crushing another paved road under its feet. "I know I must."

"With him, I'll stay awake." it thought again, smashing through another series of trees with its clawed hands. "With him, I won't collapse."

It slowed down and held its helmeted head, wheezing. "But I know that energy. I know it!" it swore to itself, trying to find the memory of that particular Chi deep within. Talos remembered a small, excited creature jumping up and down, asking to join him on a horse ride. "I felt it long ago!"

It gathered its breath. "It doesn't matter." With great force Talos pushed down its memory and pushed itself to carry on, clawing its large hands into a steep terrain rise at the end of the valley to cross through the mountainous barriers. "Know it or not, I must have that Muvian! Or… Or…"

As it reached the top of the rise, it paused and panted. "Or I won't get what I want! Which was… it was…!" It shook its enormous head, resisting the powerful presence in its body trying to control its mind. "To destroy!" The blue light in its dark sockets expanded, picturing the woman of the pale blue hair in its mind. "Destroy HER!"

It reached on a giant boulder ahead of it to pull itself up over the mountain curve. "No, forget her! Destroy everything!" Talos asserted to itself, closing its hand and shattering the enormous rock to pieces. Its palm burned with blue power, surrounding the large pieces of stone, each one still easily the size of a house, with energy. Talos then roared out and tossed the rocks, which shot into the new valley ahead of it like a rain of cerulean meteors. "DESTROY EVERYONE! TITANOMACH CRASH!"

The attack showered on the Muvian lands, impacting throughout the valley and erupting into enormous, fiery explosions that turned night into day for a moment. The earth cracked, fissuring through the impact points, causing geysers of energy to erupt, while the sound of the shockwaves echoed deeply into the Himalayas, shaking trees, rocks, houses and bodies. Terrified Muvians from surrounding villages screamed, animals from the forests dashed away and birds from the mountain tops took flight, escaping the destruction, while Talos roared out to the moon, triumphant over its weak host.

All the while, terrified onlookers prayed for Athena, for her Gold Saints to finally come.

Dashing at the speed of light not too far behind Talos, the Bronze Knight, Serpens Azrael, arrived like a beam at another vantage point overlooking the giant's destructive march. He saw it leap into the air then drop unto the valley, cracking an enormous new scar into the terrain and raising enormous clouds of dust into the boxed in fields, filling everything up to its waist in rock dust.

"Look at the spectacle you've wrought, Azrael."

"It is a necessary massacre." The green-haired, emerald-eyed man argued to his Cloth, holding on to a boulder while Talos' continued march shook the ground more and more. "Better this extinct race of dotted alchemists than the billions of innocent humans that could die in the Holy War."

"How sacrificial. So it's actually a good thing you're doing all of this? And has this catastrophe earned you what you wanted back?"

"Not yet, but the body piling will start soon." Azrael admitted. "For now, Talos has plenty of space to thrash around like the rabid animal he is, but when he gets to Shamballa? Arles will realize the destruction set loose on his people's lands. His High Elder friend will weep to him how he failed her and he will understand that an important Gold Cloth like Aries can't remain in the hands of a child like Mu."

"You speak as if you see much further than I can." Serpens mocked. "But haven't you lost sight of what you were after to begin with? That friend you left back in Kailash…"

"Kirin will live. She is strong. And now when she awakens, she will be the first to join me in arguing for my Cloth to be returned." A sudden fear then did grip him, having suffered disappointments before. "And if she doesn't, she's a bigger fool than I thought."

"Do you think I meant her well-being? I was speaking of her realization about you." Serpens explained, triggering a stiffening in Azrael's posture. It made the armor laugh. "You still feel her sneer, don't you? Her speech about the lost 'you'? The look in her eyes when she realized how obsessed with Aries you still were was especially... penetrating."

The Bronze Knight's gauntlet clenched hard and his eyes narrowed, feeling the memory of her accusation ring in his mind.

"A Knight of Envy you've become, Azrael. Everyone can see that now." Serpens compared, sounding a chuckle in his mind. "Endlessly trapped in your prison of resentment, watching all your friends who didn't betray Sanctuary find happiness beyond the death of your… what did you call it? Your common dream? Tell me, Azrael, will the shine of the Cloth of Aries distract your friends from how much of a monster you've becom-"

"If I am a monster, as you say, why do you let me wear you still?" Azrael reminded it, sick of its hypocritical hisses. His green orbs sharpened "All you Cloths are the same; you judge your owners, endlessly imply we have failed you and try to turn us against our friends, just like you did with Patroclus! But the reality is; you couldn't care less of the choices we make, could you?"

Serpens' voice ceased.

The Bronze Knight laid out his hands, beholding his own armor. "I murdered countless of my own. I cut them down one by one with all the power of my Gold Cloth, over the course of weeks! Just one of those murders would have damned my soul for eternity to Athena! And yet, not for one second did Aries slow my slashes, or teleport me away from the Zodiac Knights or even used its power to save the children everyone reminds me I have massacred!" He then closed them tightly, remembering that night with the Pope at Serpent's Rock. "It was only when I relented in my conviction and turned my anger to the Pope as well that Aries abandoned me! Isn't that the truth?!"

"Who knows? I was not there." Serpens reminded him. "And I do not presume to guess at the thoughts of a higher Cloth than me."

Azrael chuckled harrowingly. "So suddenly your mighty sight fails you? Convenient. Then let me illuminate you on their thoughts; the Gold Cloths of Athena see the world no differently from that monster over there!" Azrael argued, watching Talos cry out and smash through another mountain path. "They are weapons! The arms forged for the heroic! Had I kept my head bowed to the Pope and accepted his demands, the Topaz Cloth Stone would still be mine to this day, just like Kirin and her Capricorn! All Aries cares is that its owners don't show weakness of spirit as Saints. It wasn't my 'evil' that turned Aries away from me, Serpens! It was my faltering! Because I thought everything I had sacrificed had been enough! But I am still a Saint of Athena, and I won't make the same mistake again!"

The shouting stopped. Azrael awaited for whatever moral counterargument Serpens could pull to demonize him.

"Very well. But remember, Azrael, Ithaca did not bring himself to Talos. You did." Serpens hissed. "And no amount of rationalization about the evil of Mariners will change that."

The last of the Zodiac Knights exhaled dismissively. As if he cared what fate someone who worshipped an enemy of Athena suffered.

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Shamballa

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The long, deep sounds of the alarm sirens shook the air over and over, their pitch going up and down in long intervals. The streets of the city were awash with people getting into rows and guided out to shelters or the castle gate, from where they would then be taken to the Mariners of Captain Josef's ship.

"Excuse me! Excuse me." Krishna pardoned himself over and over, moving between the countless people. His eyes darted left and right, looking for the head of blonde in a Maiden cowl. "Where am I going to find miss Daisy? There's too much movement! Maybe I should try the streets by the human cemetery?"

As he tried to turn the alley, though, a guard spotted him and blocked his path with her hands. "Sir, I'm sorry, but you must go back to the shelters!"

"I'm looking for a friend. She's a head shorter than me, blonde, green-eyed and is wearing an Athenian Maiden robe." Krishna begged her. "Have you seen anyone like that?"

She shook head firmly. "Sir, no, I haven't seen anyone like that. I can't help you."

The captain gritted his teeth. The subtle panic in the guard's voice only made him worry even more. "At least tell me what's happening! Why is everyone getting evacuated out of the city in the middle of a big festival?!"

The young guard hesitated, flustered. "Please, move back towards the gates. If you don't-"

Before the inexperienced guard threw out some unconvincing threat, Krishna raised his hands to acquiesce and moved back. Frustrated as he was, he should follow along for the moment. The guard didn't seem like she had any idea what was happening either and insisting would only get him in trouble.

On the way back, he tried to convince himself that she was okay. "She must be with the rest of her mission friends. I'm sure of it. I should just go back and make sure Caça and Atlae aren't at each other's throats while VADM Marianne is out there, fighting." Still, seeing the isolated, fortified city moving all of its people out all around him sounded all kinds of alarms to Krishna. "What could be out there anyway? Well, whatever it is, I'm sure the Sea Dragon can handle it. It's the ship that fought in the Civil War against Priam, the traitor Sagittarius."

As Krishna was about to head for the main gates, a tall man in a black gown was seen by him searching the streets, looking distraught and interrogating people.

Krishna widened his eyes. Maybe he knew where miss Daisy was? "Sir! You're… a Sanctuary Catholic, are you not?"

The Father turned to him. "Yes, I am! H-have you seen my friend?"

It was then he realized the man's face was covered in bandages. "Oh, a burn victim?!" The man's unfortunate visage then triggered recognition in Krishna. "Wait, you're the one miss Daisy went with earlier! You don't know where she is?!"

The priest hesitated; words seemingly lost in his mouth. He looked pensive for an instant.

"I lost sight of her, yes. I was about to head out of the city, when all these sirens sounded." He explained. "I thought she might have gone to see the friends she made on her trip here."

Krishna held his chin. "Did we miss eachother? No, I would have seen her out the gate, for sure!" A lady in that western religious black gown would have been tough not to spot among the Muvians, who preferred lightweight clothes of bright colors and Buddhist togas.

"I'm guessing from the look on you that I was wrong." The priest asked, receiving then a worried nod from Krishna. "She's not in the shelters, and if you didn't see her on your way in, then chances are she's not on that enormous ship either."

"Where could she be, then?! Why would she be anywhere but in the evacuation lines?!" Krishna asked.

The priest widened his blue eyes, startled by his urgency.

The captain took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for that outburst. Please, I know she is a lady of your goddess, but I've come to really care for her. My men are currently being taken to the warship in the lake for safety, so, if possible, I'd like to help you find her."

The priest lips circled silently. Priam wondered if this Mariner was the member of the group Daese was in that she kissed. If so, he seemed like a good man and had the right to be reassured. What could he say, though, that didn't imply Daese was actually much stronger than she let on? That she might, in fact, be a knighted Saint of Athena?

"She must have rushed out, but unfortunately, I couldn't imagine to where. Not in a moment like this." Priam confessed. He crossed his arms. "Knowing her, Daisy is likely trying to help the most vulnerable be carried into the ship. I suggest you and I join forces and start there."

The Mariner held his chest and breathed out. "Thank you. My name is Krishna Chola, um…"

"You can call me Father Kyosuke." Priam offered. He smiled gently. "It's nice to meet you."

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Skyes of Tibet

100 Miles from Shamballa

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The massive, dragon-bowed ship cruised eastwards through the thick clouds, remaining out of sight of the threat it headed towards. It's engine, powered by an orichalcum rock, displaced the many tons of steel the vessel was made of from the pull of gravity, allowing it to move ahead with just the push of its large rear thrusters and the gentle, stabilizing steering of its fins.

Its large masts were withdrawn into the innards of the ship, leaving it only with the battle stations and main guns above deck. Unlike the Ship of Hope used in the Lost Canvas War, the Sea Dragon did not depend on them to capture the "winds of the Anemoi". The sails were only part of the ship to disguise it among regular vessels on how it moved without oil and turbines and were actually a big hindrance whenever it took flight, since it left its equilibrium exposed to powerful air currents.

Inside its main bridge, operators worked tirelessly to give the officers and the Vice-Admiral aboard accurate information on their mission. They all sat in front of monitors which, while simple compared to those of the Kraken's fancy futuristic bridge, still were capable of all the critical readings of modern sailing and flying. This included sonars, radars, air pressure readers, orientation tellers, speed monitors, fire control systems, microphones, cameras and even a catapult control.

One such monitor off to the side of Marianne's command seat searched tirelessly for their target, radiating pulses outwards of the ship. It denounced a series of readings eastwards, all of them very tiny but still indicative of rampant destruction.

"The target is approximately 17 clicks ahead, Vice-Admiral." The operator, dressed in a radio headset, a mariner sailing uniform of blue and white and a sea dragon pin announced.

"Reduce speed to slow ahead." she commanded, triggering an immediate reduction of the noise of thrusters outside and a reduction in movement. "Let's not ram ourselves into a complete surprise."

Sorrento Weyprecht, her XO, hummed, observing the operator's readings. "These are powerful instruments we use. They operate on stardust, which reacts to Cosmos. We're getting flares of all the destruction whatever we're after is causing, but not the assailant itself. Shouldn't our instruments be picking up the enemy's flame?"

She rested her jaw on her laced fingers worriedly. If Atlae had taught her something, it was that not all the powers of the world were just one kind. "Not if the enemy isn't burning a significant Cosmos."

The XO laughed incredulously. "I am so relieved, VADM. So, it's just the Chinese Red Army that is attacking the Muvians?" He smirked confidently, picturing tanks trying to shoot holes in their thick ship armor. "Isn't it… politically dangerous to use a ship like this against a mortal force? Or at the least unfair?"

Marianne saw a myriad of look exchanges, overconfident smirks and otherwise dull reactions at the problem from the entire bridge staff. Her jaw tensed, wishing they'd take this all more seriously, but chances were they all saw it as a big waste of firepower to pander to their new Muvian friends, didn't they?

She had no choice but to warn them. "I will inform you all ahead of time, this is not an army we are dealing with." Marianne announced. "It's a Cloth."

They all blinked, especially Sorrento. "A… Cloth, Vice-Admiral?"

"Correct, one with a power that likely rivals a Gold Saint." She made clear. "We will be facing a major threat to both the Muvians and ourselves; any mistake from our part could cost thousands of innocent lives tonight. With that in mind, we will show the Muvians, the Pact of Seven AND Sanctuary that Mariners protect their friends and keep to their word. And that the Sea Dragon can do more far more than just cruise around the clouds looking pretty."

This, coming from the daughter of Arthur Solo, known for her seriousness towards all of her responsibilities, was difficult to ignore. The operators all quit their smug talk and focused on their work.

Sorrento manifested their hidden question. "VADM, we are fighting a Cloth?"

She grimaced constrainedly. Marianne had to inform them correctly on the threat, but telling them that it was Talos, the Colossus of Crete, coming to life straight from the mariner fairy tale books about the Myth Age? That might make them lose the little respect they had for her and turn the ship right back.

The XO frowned worriedly, leaned in and whispered "Miss Marianne, you know me, I am not as, um, intransigent as some in our class. That being said, many aboard this ship are." He shifted his magenta eyes at the worried operators. Sorrento couldn't even picture what the gun crews and the engineers below deck were thinking. "Sending us on a mission to protect those they might call, I quote, 'dotted freaks' is already a challenging proposition to them. But to not know the nature of what you call a 'Gold Saint level threat'?"

If they were this tense about it now, Marianne could frankly wait till Poseidon sunk all evil to see how they'd react once they saw what the threat actually was.

"I am almost as much in the dark as you all are, XO. What matters is that we investigate the threat to Shamballa and neutralize it. We can settle Shamballa's debt to us later, with interest. Until then, Poseidon's Creed mandates we return the Muvians the kindnesses they've offered us these past three years. It's our duty as Mariners." Her hands gripped her command chair arms tensely. "I just have to get through this until the Gold Saints show up. Fire from a distance to keep Talos in one place and prevent it from causing casualties. There's no need to put any of my men directly at risk. Until then… at least Atlae is in safe hands."

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Valley to Shamballa (50 miles from Shamballa)

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The two supersonic beams of green and pale-blue light coming down from the plateau entered the sparse forests, taking cover from the chaos ahead. Atlae and Caça took position at the edge and went up a tree, standing on the tall branches to look out to the field.

The Cabral struggled to lift himself over the branches. "AGH! I hate nature! Do you want us to get lost in these mountains or something, Atlae?! How far are we going?!"

The Muvian helped him up. "Just until we see what's attacking the area and Marianne is safe, I promise."

"You promise?! We shouldn't even be here to begin with!" The Mariner finally managed to put his feet over the high-up branches and dusted himself from all the sawdust. "What are we looking for anyway?! Some 'roided up band of Black Saints?"

Atlae pushed the leaves ahead of them out of the way to get a clear picture. "No, the Chi I'm feeling is right ahead and it's way too big. It's massive even! I shouldn't be feeling it from so far away to begin with, which means something is seriously wrong, Caça."

Caça threw his arms up. "All the more reason for us to go back, then! Just let the gold rankers dea-"

His screaming was cut short when Atlae pushed away the last big branches, giving them both clear sight over the entire valley What they saw struck both of them speechless.

Stumbling ahead step by step, leaving behind craters of burning cosmos in the shape of its feet, the colossal mass of flesh, armor and dark bones towered over the terrain, raising its bright blue lights in its eye sockets to spot the large warship ahead of it.

Its clawed jaws growled at the distant ship, casting an echo that made Atlae's heart quake from across the wide valley.

{======================|A3|======================}

Sea Dragon

{======================|A3|======================}

Far above, the flagship of the Mariner navy descended softly through the clouds, entering the rocky valley.

The crew of the Sea Dragon stirred, getting the first video feeds of their target. Even Marianne reeled in her chair, beholding its size, monstrous shape and the trail of ruin it was leaving in its wake. The massive ship they sailed on was, easily, only as big as its armored chest. For a second, many of them thought this had to be a mistake, that some undisciplined sailor with a sick sense of humor had snuck a tape of a Japanese monster flick into their players.

It was real, though. It was breathing slowly but surely, eyeing their ship with its two blue lights. It was staring at them dead on, like they were its next target.

Even in their world of Cosmos and flying ships, it was an existence that made no sense. And it was sending a primitive terror right into the hearts of every crewman looking at the screens and through the deck windows.

Sorrento felt his chest bereft of air and remembered to inhale. "M-Ma'am?!"

Marianne nodded, trying to keep her heart still. "I know, XO. Everyone stay calm! Activate the vertical gravity brakes to keep the current safety position."

The Sea Dragon came to a halt, directing its Orichalcum engine's power to stay at a high altitude by exclusively feeding the gravity displacement, and not any of the thrusters.

Talos, however, seemed to take the ship's appearance immediately as a challenge, sucking in air before releasing a loud, threatening screech of a roar at it. The crew staggered, feeling their battleship quake slightly with the vibration in the air. Even the lights went on and off briefly.

Sorrento held on to a chair, his body rattled. "C-Captain, orders?!"

Marianne gripped her seat tightly as the ship shook. "Initiate full target analysis! I want to know every weak point it has! And send the order to man the battle stations!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Caça brought his hands to his ears as the creature roared at the arriving Sea Dragon. "N-no! No, no, no! NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!" Caça harshly grabbed Atlae and pointed him at the giant. "WHAT! THE FUCK! IS THAT THING?!"

Atlae beheld it, half-terrified, half in awe. "I… I don't know!" He saw Marianne's battleship high in the air. "Mari' is going to have to fight that?!"

"IT'S FUCKING GIGANTIC! I can't be seeing this!" Caça screamed, tossing his arms up. He saw the heavy metal plates, the feet the size of hamlets and the gigantic trail dragging through the flames its' march left behind. "That's NOT a Black Saint army, that's GODZILLA IN A CLOTH! WHERE THE HELL DID IT COME FROM?!"

Atlae held his head, thinking of Mari' in that ship above them. "I don't k-know!"

Caça crossed his arms in utter rejection. "FORGET IT! WE'RE NOT DOING THIS! Even my idol Marianne isn't worth THIS risk!" He grabbed Atlae and pulled to go. "COME ON! We're going back to Sh-"

But the Muvian resisted. He saw the Sea Dragon's big battery guns twist, turn and take aim. "NO, I'm staying!"

Caça blinked. He tugged again. "Atlae, for Poseidon's sake, don't you fucking do this!"

"I told you, y-you can go, Caça." Atlae muttered, eyes fixed on the creature ahead. "I'm stayi-"

"NO, YOU'RE NOT!" Caça shouted. "ATLAE, this isn't a Specter, or a Black Saint, or even freaking Baian! Look at it! JUST FUCKING LOOK AT IT!" the mariner pointed up at how tall the approaching monstrosity was. "It's… it's some kind of fucked up thing from the Myth Age, clearly! IT DOESN'T EVEN LOOK HUMAN! What are you gonna do it?! Punt its toe with your dumb Black Hole Kick?!"

And then, as if to drive his point home, the monster gathered its breath and roared out, unleashing a piercing, thick boom of sound like the scream of a thousand beasts. In this display, it erected its enormous shell halves on its back like a monstrous bird's threat, showcasing their large width and thick protective girth. The force of it shook the very air, rattling the Sea Dragon battle ship and making even the far-off forest Atlae and Caça were in rustle violently.

The Mariner almost fell off the tree with the fear this struck in him. "D-Did you see that?! If we stay here, we'll get eaten alive, or burned alive, or stomped alive, or some combination of all three! WE HAVE to GO!"

"STOP IT! I CAN'T DO THAT, CAÇA! I'M NOT LIKE YOU!" Atlae roared out, startling him almost as much as the monster's roar. He stared hard at him, already sort of having expected this from Caça, which was why Atlae didn't want him to come. "I have no idea how you can stand to abandon people that you care about being in danger, but I can't do that! Not here, not in Death Queen Island, not anywhere! Don't you see that?!"

The mariner folded his arms spitefully. "RIGHT, you're such a freaking Saint! Nothing to do with the fact your girlfriend is about to fight that thing, right?!"

Atlae staggered. Suddenly, the words failed to go up his throat.

Caça pushed his chest, nearly knocking Atlae off the branch. "ADMIT IT! This is what I hate about you and the captain! Both of you act like you're so much better than me, but you just do these things because of your own selfish reasons, too! If Mari' wasn't up there, we'd be on Josef's submarine right now! GO AHEAD, ATLAE! TELL ME I'M WRONG!"

The Muvian quivered, unsure. He tried to think of the scenario, if he really would be coming down here if it had been Josef sent to battle this giant. Was Caça right?

No matter how Atlae shook it, he realized there was only one answer. "Maybe you're right… but so w-what?!" He shut his eyes closed to try to ignore the terror in his heart about the colossal problem in front of them. "I don't know what's going on, why this is happening, or what that thing is, but I don't want Mari' to die! Is that so hard to believe?!"

"Who says she will?! She's on the goddamn Sea Dragon!" Caça reminded him, exasperatedly waving hands at the huge battleship in the sky. "Do you know what's in that ship's bow?! That Stardust Cannon could kill a Gold Saint if it hit one right! Meanwhile that giant thing doesn't even have Cosmos that I can sense!"

The mariner's argument made perfect sense, but Atlae's sense of Chi told him something else. As he gazed at the monstrosity, he felt something none of the 7th sensers could; a mass of lifeforce so gigantic, that even Atlae's own Chi felt like a mere ember of life next to a colossal bonfire of vitality standing in the middle of the valley. It was so strong that rather than gently wave in Atlae's direction, its breath of life hit at him, like successive explosion pulses. It was as if Atlae was standing before an enormous heart, whose muscles pumped with such force, the air itself quaked and shook.

Though he had an incomplete frame of reference for these strange sensations, Atlae was sure this armored monster could not just survive, but perhaps even survive a shot as powerful as that legendary Athena Exclamation technique Master once told him about. He was sure it was incapable of being destroyed, instead only causing destruction, such was the raw strength it emanated.

He hugged himself, feeling cold. "I have a terrible feeling that it's not that simple, Caça."

"What feeling?! Listen, Atlae, that thing flying above us is the ultimate Mariner weapon!" Caça shouted. "I don't care how thick that thing's armor is; the stardust cannon fires shells at the speed of freaking light! It's so strong it could put a crack in the Main Breadwinner! It might as well hurl the thunders of Zeus itself! What more analogies do you want for how out of our depth we are?!"

In normal circumstances, Atlae would find it all amazing. In fact, he kind of wondered why Marianne didn't tell him her ship was that cool, especially when he first saw it in Sanctuary Town. Yet, as the monster took another step towards the ship, shaking the valley, Atlae felt its strength resonate all the way to his bones. Wasn't Caça feeling it as well? Didn't he see how unsure it made you that it could be slowed down, much less stopped?

Caça shrugged. "And if it doesn't kill that overgrown iguana… what the hell are we gonna do?! We're just a couple of Mach-Three-ers, at best, taking up space! If you ask me, Atlae, this is just your martial artist ego telling you that you SHOULD be here."

The Muvian tried to breathe calmly. "Like I said, maybe you're right." Atlae eyed him pleadingly. "All I ask, is to let me make sure of it with my own eyes. Please. We'll stay at a safe distance if it makes you feel better."

The Mariner stood there looking unconvinced. He tried to think if he could get out of this by himself, but the captain's threats could be as scary as the monster in front of them.

The Muvian could feel his thoughts in Caça's face and took a risk; appeal to Caça's good side. "I'll…I'll throw in a good word to Mari' about you. She would be super impressed if you-"

"Ugh, fine!" Caça cut off with his hand. He sat down cross-legged. "But once it fires, we're leaving, got it?!"

Atlae nodded and smiled humbly. "Thank you, Caça. I don't care what anyone says, you're a good friend."

{======================|A3|======================}

LPS Sea Dragon Bridge

{======================|A3|======================}

"Analysis complete, VADM!" The operator read it out loud as it came out in the form of a long file of paper with results on them. "Accounting with the armor plating, the instruments read… 90 feet tall and 900,000 pounds. And growing, ma'am."

Sorrento's magenta eyes widened. "Wait, it's five hundred tons as is and its getting bigger?!"

The operator ripped the rest off the printer and read the calculation. "According to the mass displacement we are reading off of it, it is, sir. By a factor of approximately 0.005% per second, at least currently."

The cyan-haired officer wiped a sweat with his tissue. "It's hard to imagine it's still having a growth spurt. Vice-Admiral, perhaps we should cut it short?"

The quip failed to register with the Vice-Admiral. Marianne gulped, stunned by the figures the operator read out. What was going on? How was this possible?! This was Talos? A walking, breathing, ungodly monster just sprout out of nowhere that threatened to destroy all of Shamballa? Right on that night?!

"We have quite the horror in our hands, don't we?" Sorrento queried to try to get her attention. He beheld the screen readings. "If this thing were to approach the city, its careless stumbling alone could kill countless."

She shook her head to get a hold of herself. Truth as it was, she had to keep a cool head, like the Aquarius she was. "What's the status on its armor analysis?"

An operator ripped a reading out of a printer slot. "Scanners read a thick alloy of 95% stardust, copper and tin, with the remaining 5% being an assortment typically associated with traditional Muvian armor craft."

"Its body is just like a Bronze Cloth, then!" Delphinus Marianne realized to herself, glancing at the one on her own arms, chest and shoulders. Then perhaps penetrating its defenses, while impossible to ordinary ordinance, would be child's play to their main weapon, depending on the amount of metal they had to punch through. "And the thickness?"

"Distribution readings indicate the average measurement is currently of 56, Ma'am."

Sorrento widened his eyes along with the Vice-Admiral. "It's almost 60 millimeters?! The average Bronze Cloth is a mere fraction of that!"

The operator sweated and turned his head to him. "No, XO. 60 centimeters."

A quiet shock came over the room. All heads turned to the camera showing the enormous mass of heat marching towards them. If the stardust ratio was the same as Marianne's Delphinus Cloth, they could likely punch Talos through with a Gold Saint's fist into its dark-green scales and still not reach the other end of its armoring without going shoulder deep into it.

"That's not just its armor on it, then. That's its skin." Sorrento realized. "And a thick one at that."

"Keep the ship at a steady safety radius, even if we have to surrender ground. I want a minimum safe distance from our target of five kilometers kept!" Marianne ordered. "In the meantime, use the computer to calculate targets on the unarmored parts of its body, take aim with the main batteries and fire the mid-caliber barrages, once every minute. I want the target engaged until we're ready to kill it with a single, critical shot."

"Yes, Ma'am!" the operators obeyed, directing the vessel to her specifications through the engine buttons, fire control systems and thrust controllers. "Loading armor-piercing cartridges into the main batteries!"

While the room went into a flurry of activity, Sorrento addressed her. "Ma'am, considering its hefty mass, our main guns will do little more than keep its attention on us, so I take it from that order that when you said we'd kill it 'in a single shot' you meant?"

She nodded. "That's right, XO. We're going to charge the 'Stardust Cannon'!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Valley Forest

{======================|A3|======================}

Still in their positions, the duo from the Chrysaor watched as the large gun batteries on the airship's deck took movement, clanking into position. Each trio of barrels aimed slightly upwards in the monster's direction. Seeing the ship in movement, the monster growled and stepped towards it, its clawed fingers clenching.

Then, a deafening cacophony sounded! From the mounted batteries sprayed massive flames and a cascade of huge cartridges jetted through the air, booming the atmosphere and striking the giant from top to bottom, all within a few seconds. The impacts rocked the mass of armored flesh visibly, exploding on impact and smoke-screening it, while screams were heard and burning blood splashed down on the ground, scalding the fields.

Atlae guarded himself from the flashes and sound. "U-Ugh, it's starting!"

"Ah! How do you like that?! That big wholly mammoth just felt the power of a Mariner airship in action!" Caça bragged, raising fist.

Atlae paid attention to the sounds. "Don't you hear that?"

"Hear what? Its lament of defeat?!" Caça mocked.

The Muvian nodded, but not for the same reason. "It's in pain." In fact, added to the Chi he felt off it and the sight of the burning pool of blood flooding the foot of all the smoke, a terrifying realization came over Atlae. "Whatever it is, it's a living creature, not a golem like the one Mister Crysanthos showed us."

"Who cares?! Look at the damage it was causing! It's a giant freak!" The Cabral heir smirked maliciously. "But I bet that shooting alone ripped a hole in it. Good show!"

While Caça was just gloating, Atlae did feel that something was torn in the creature. He sensed it in its Chi, which shaped its muscles and breath to Atlae, even it's heartbeat. Somewhere in it, Atlae swore he recognized something; a heartbeat that he had felt against him before.

{======================|A3|======================}

Ithaca held him close on the saddle as he made Lord Arthur's horse prance. Atlae threw his arms up in joy! "Yay!"

"Don't fidget too much, Atlae, you'll knock both of us off!" Ithaca joked, making the horse move in circles. "Well, at least you're not smacking the horses in the head anymore."

"Do the prancing again, Ithaca! It's so cool!" young Atlae begged.

The nervous Mariner shook head. "Oh no, no, no! Lord Arthur will kill me if you get hurt." He pointed to the edge of the ranch, where the wooden palisades were. "But here, let's jump over that fence!"

The Muvian boy swooned as the black horse charged and took them into the air. "WHOO-HOO!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Caça glowered, seeing him wince. "What the hell is wrong with you now?"

The next memory came to him suddenly. Atlae winced.

{======================|A3|======================}

Ithaca rode their horse next to the two beautiful girls. "Why hello, there, ladies."

Seraphina laughed at the sight of the smudged Muvian boy sitting on the saddle with Ithaca. "Oh, you look so cute, Atlae! Stay right there, I'm going to get Arthur's camera."

Marianne put her hands on her hips. "Mom, don't! Dad will get upset they took one of his horses off the ranch! Guys, you should take it back now."

Atlae frowned. "Oh, but Mari'…Come on, please."

Ithaca ruffled the horse's neck mane, making it neigh. "Yeah, what good is a beast like this all cooked up in a barn? You can't stop us from our quest to slay dragons, Mari'!"

Seraphina approached it and gently petted the horse's head. "Wait, no, Ithaca, you should take this one back. It's one of Arthur's favorites." She smiled warmly. "I remember now he once rode it to my house in Bluegrad and he asked me to jump off my window to his arms. Ha, ha, I called him insane! And so did my father."

"Whow!" Atlae thought it was a fun exercise to jump off windows. He should try it later to strengthen his leg muscles. "Did you do it, Lady Seraphina?"

The woman gasped. "Oh, of course not! Bluegradian hamlets can be quite tall! He was just trying to be romantic." She smiled nostalgically. It had crossed her mind to do it. "Anyway, Arthur wouldn't take no for an answer, so he got on the top of this horse and stretched his arms out to me to pick me up and carry me down, and when I-"

Young Marianne flushed. "Mom, stop, that's such an embarrassing story!" It ended with half of Bluegrad seeing her mother's skirt flying right up when they both fell off the horse. "Please don't go around telling it so publicly. Adriana will laugh at me for years on end."

Atlae looked up. "Hey, Ithaca, are you okay?"

The bodyguard snapped his attention from his distracted daze to him. "Oh, umm, yes, Atlae. Why?"

Atlae rose a brow. "Are you sure? I suddenly felt your breath get really fast." It was right when Lady Seraphina got close and talked about the story, too. It was like Ithaca energy went all in a flurry. Was he worried they got hurt in the end? "Ithaca, Lord Arthur is super strong and smart! He wouldn't drop her. I'm sure Lord Arthur and Seraphina were okay in the end."

Ithaca turned away, looking terribly sad for a brief moment, but then patted Atlae's small shoulders comfortingly. "Me too, kid… Don't worry."

{======================|A3|======================}

And then it was gone. He remembered it was one of the earliest moments of him realizing he sensed people's lifeforce, probably the first since the day his parents died. Atlae stared at the diminishing smokescreen in befuddlement, trying to decipher the meaning of these sudden sensations.

He leaped off the tree. "Stay here, Caça! I'm going to get closer!"

"What?!" Caça panicked and followed to grab him. "STOP IT! We're STAYING HIDDEN! In the trees where it's safe!"

But before the Muvian could resist, the smoke cleared, revealing a roaring monster still very much alive from the barrage. In fact, it seemed angrier by the assault than anything else, with the bleeding from its wounds drying up and the craters in its chest and legs closing like cracks in hot steel bonding together.

Caça staggered, watching the wounds disappear into burning sizzles. "W-What the hell?! On top of being this big, it took those shots AND it healed?! Are you sure this isn't like those creepy golems?!"

While Atlae had to admit it behaved a lot like one, he also distinctively remembered that mister Crysanthos' golems had no Chi at all. Yet, he recognized the way it healed itself. "It looks like a Cloth…"

The mariner by him blinked. "What do you mean?"

He scratched his head. "Many times I've seen Saints bring Cloths to Shamballa for minor repairs they didn't want to go all the way to Jamir to fix. Saint Peacock and Lotus, for example." He even remembered they'd voice their requests in rhyme, like they did everything else. "I got to watch the alchemy labs do it a couple of times. That's when I learned Cloths needed the user blood to heal. Those cracks in that monster sealed up just like it!"

The pale lizard face in Caça cringed. "What the heck are you saying?! That that thing is an armor? Don't be ridic-"

The monstrosity then took its enormous armored hands to the sky and hammered them down like a big metal anvil, smashing the ground. A massive shockwave ensued that rocked the air, shaking the Sea Dragon, while Atlae and Caça screamed, knocked into the floor. Firing its auxiliary engines, the Sea Dragon attempted to stabilize itself and keep its distance.

"F-fuck, if it's a Cloth, it's strong as SHIT!" Caça panicked, guarding himself with his arm. He saw trees all throughout the valley had been knocked as well. "Atlae, if we stay here, it's going to kill us without even realizing it-"

A second roar followed and the colossus spun its gigantic body over, swinging its deceptively long tail up in the air!

Atlae screamed in terror, "MARI'!" watching Marianne's ship take a reckless action to avoid the swing by firing its rearing thrusts full force to put some distance back. Still, while the air displacement still rocked the armored airship, it seemed to stabilize itself again. Atlae held his chest. "T-Thank Genbu, they're okay! Caça, we need to do something!"

"Do what?! I may not have your weird sense, but I can see the heat coming off that thing!" Caça whined. "I bet that breath of it could melt a real Cloth!"

Atlae, on the other hand, noticed something else, particularly a slight diminishing of the bright bonfire of life ahead of him. "It healed earlier, but its Chi went down a bit!"

"What?"

The Muvian turned to him. "Caça, I think that it's using its Chi to heal itself! So, if it keeps getting damaged, it will eventually run out of healing! It might even die."

"Well… good! Then let the battleship handle it! Bomb that thing to shit until this nightmare's over!" Caça concluded, dragging him back down. "In the meantime, you and I are staying in cover, got it?! Or do you want Marianne pissed at you, like Josef said?!"

Atlae winced, but nodded. So long as Mari was okay, he supposed Caça was right. Still, he observed the engagement worriedly.

{======================|A3|======================}

The bridge of the battleship winced and held on as the ship stabilized.

"I-IS everyone alright?! Status report!" Marianne demanded.

"The ship is intact, but some reports of injuries in the crew are coming in!" an operator announced. He listened to his earbuds of the engineers shouting about plates of steel coming off the walls. "There's also minor damage on the inside of the finned areas of the ship."

"T-The way we just rocked, I'm surprised no one banged their heads on the roof." Sorrento commented, getting up.

"Now's not the time for jokes, XO!" Marianne ordered. "What's the status on the Stardust cannon charging?!"

"Engines are diverting only partial output to it, Ma'am." An operator reading an image of the cannon said. "The rest is supporting our evasive actions."

Sorrento clicked his tongue. "Isn't life just about trade-offs? We can sit still and charge it quickly, or we can get out of the way of that thing's attacks and stay charging it all day."

Seeing Talos beginning to shine like it was gathering some cosmos-like energy, Marianne tensed, realizing they might not have time for either option.

"Preparations are currently at 37%, Ma'am!" the operator explained. "The stardust slug is loaded and primed, but the heating concentration i-."

"INCOMING!" another screamed as his monitor went red.

The entire battleship suddenly shook violently, struck harshly by something ahead of them. Everyone felt their seatbelts constrict their bodies painfully and many of the screens went static for an instant. Shouts from lower compartments were heard and objects flung off the walls. One of the extinguishers outside even went off.

"W-What in the abyss was that?!" Sorrento asked, dazzled and searching for his dropped flute.

As the ship recovered its balance, one of the camera operators saw a mass of boulder fall down to the valley below through the cameras along with audio reports of the injured. "I think… I believe it just tossed a giant rock at us, XO! We're reporting cracks on the left outer armor layer near the bow! Chief Engineer Korinthos has been wounded, too!"

"Energy readings are also rising in the target." Another operator spoke, watching the heat mass in the thermal readers ahead of them get redder and redder. "We're detecting a Celsius swelling up its stomach, chest and neck areas!"

"Restore visuals! Now!" Marianne ordered. She bit her lip. "It's getting more aggressive, as if it's a living thing instead of a Cloth! Is it… the person wearing it?"

The crew hurried to work, reconnecting their main monitor to their bow cameras. It popped up the image of the grinning Talos, staring dead at them. Its mouth breathed out thicker and thicker clouds of blue plasma, as if its lungs were turning into sheer fire inside, while the scaling in its wings brimmed with light.

"It's preparing some kind of breath attack! Is that the same that caused the quakes we felt in Shamballa?!" Marianne concluded. "Prepare for evasive action. What's the reading on the energy rise level?"

A crewman operating a reading turned head, looking terrified. "Ma'am…I…I'm detecting a reading on the energy spike…" He gulped, struggling to stay professional, and showed the readings indicating error messages. "It's breaking the scale! It's… an Exclamation-Class."

A cold silence came over the bridge for a moment.

Sorrento took his hand to head. "An… Exclamation-class attack?!"

Marianne also had to inhale. "Forget our ship, that's… That's enough to destroy the valley ten times over! What has the Elder gotten us into?!"

"T-That can't be! What are you saying?!" a terrified crewman sitting aside the first one muttered. "That this monster can blow up the planet?! Read that again!"

Seeing the terror fill the bridge, Marianne banged her hands on her command desk. "Everyone stay calm! Give me a time-to-charge on the Stardust Cannon!"

"At least five more minutes, ma'am!" A crewman notified, clicking buttons to trigger the next phase. "We are arming the bow into firing position now! But if we don't keep the ship stable…"

"We don't have a minute, much less five! That thing looks like it can't wait to shoot us out of the sky!" Marianne realized, cursing the Gods. Her chest compressed with the cold realization that followed in her mind. "We need to keep it from leaving the valley or attack this ship and the only way to do that is…"

"VADM, what are your orders?!" Sorrento begged, sweating.

"Open the bow hatch for the Cannon. Then activate the mortars as well and fire the chaff grenades! I want the target blinded for our next step!" she ordered. At the very least, it energized the crew out of their terror and into action, commanding the ship's top guns. She stood up. "Then ready the depth charge launcher!"

They turned. Did she mean the weapon made to attack submarines? "Vice-Admiral?!"

Marianne tightened her Bronze Cloth's gauntlets and eyed the creature with a grit of teeth. "You heard me! I'm going to stall the target myself!"

{======================|A3|======================}

In the forest grounds below, Atlae and Caça beheld the skirmishing between the giant and the Sea Dragon. They saw the battleship raise its altitude higher, putting the rockets in full throttle, then reducing power in the fin-side thrusters slightly so as to make the ship tilt its bow slightly downwards at the monster.

Caça widened his eyes, seeing the mouth of the dragonhead on the airship opened up. He grabbed Atlae and pointed up "LOOK, LOOK, it's the Stardust Cannon!"

Atlae stared, seeing a long cannon adorned with orichalcum peek out of the dragonhead's mouth, aimed straight at the giant. It sizzled and whirred loudly, forming particles of light all around its tip that danced and gathered into a growing ball of light.

"Ah-ah, no way that big fat thing is going to dodge that! They might as well fire an Athena Exclamation!" Caça celebrated. "That bipedal slug is as good as dead!"

Atlae blinked. He saw the impressive guns whirring, but not doing anything. "Why isn't it firing yet? That monster is going to recover any minute now." Atlae breathed heavily, watching the blue light in the monster's mouth grow and grow, "It's going to attack the ship! MARI!"

"CLOSE YOUR EYES, STUPID!" Caça screamed, keeping his head down.

Too late; the mortars at the ship's top deck popped lights into the sky above, which then burst like fireworks into blinding flashes! Atlae screamed, feeling his orbs in pain like fire.

They heard the monster roar as well! With the pain in its eyes, it shut its jaw and swallowed the mass of energy filling in its throat, causing the brightness accumulating in its neck veins and chest to flow back downwards and burst inside its chest, delaying whatever it was about to do. It screamed out, collapsing into its hands. A large smokescreen then filled the air, utterly blinding and confusing Talos.

Atlae winced, his eyes all red.. "O-OW, my eyes! I can't see anything!"

Caça pulled Atlae up. "I told you to close them! Listen to me, goddamn it!"

Atlae rubbed them and blinked. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't know it was going to do that!"

The pale Mariner irked and saw the big yellow lights in the mouth of the Sea Dragon still whirring. "They must need time to charge the cannon. Crap! What are they going to do now?!"

But just as Atlae recovered his sight, a compartment on the top deck of the battleship opened up from within. Machines were heard whirring and a large platform was lifted from the battleship's stomach to the open air. It carried what looked like a big, aimable rail; a ballista without any bow arc. The steel engine in it cocked loudly and dropped the angle of the rail towards the struggling Talos.

Atlae widened his eyes, feeling a familiar Chi jumping on it. "It's Marianne! She's on that catapult!"

{======================|A3|======================}

A large gear in the black catapult's joint turned, slowly rotating its firing angle downwards. Delphinus Marianne placed her back on the rail's rest so as to load herself on it, feeling her heart beat fast as her sight was set by its aiming on the struggling Talos. Her Cloth burned in her body as her cosmos ignited, immersing her in an aquamarine aura of energy.

This was suicide. What was she thinking?!

Usually, this weapon was used to launch depth charges into the water. However, unless she learned to fly with the Cosmos, she had no other way to approach this monster with a directed attack. Her lightspeed was strong, but it wasn't on a Gold Saint's level that it could just rocket you at things. The only choice, then, was to get herself tossed unto Talos.

The microphone her crew fixed into her dolphin headpiece spoke. "Catapult aiming locked, Vice-Admiral. Ready to launch you on command!" It paused. "VADM… are you absolutely certain about this?"

She held her chest, feeling her heart beat fast. Marianne guessed only her first blow, using the element of surprise and the force of her launch, would do any lasting damage. The rest would be a fight for survival to distract the colossus until the battleship's bow weapon was ready.

"Now we'll see how much of a Saint's mettle a Mariner has, Marianne." Delphinus whispered into her ear. "Be brave. Athena will protect you. Just as Poseidon would."

The girl nodded, reassured. "Thank you, Delphinus Cloth." Then she focused her cosmos all ahead of her before giving her order. "Go ahead, launch me!"

The battleship sounded its depth charge signal and Marianne felt the rest in the catapult suddenly push with all its force! Once tossed out the Sea Dragon, her body reeled with the sudden air resistance and her aura of cosmos ignited, shielding her from the force and giving her body the superhuman strength she'd require. She arced over the battlefield, getting Talos' attention on her bright flare of blue Cosmos, then twisted her body to point her feet at her target.

For a small moment, she was alike a sapphire meteor. The force was too much for her to steer herself! Then the arc was completed and she began descending on Talos at full speed. Marianne braced herself, knowing she was highly likely about to turn herself into a red splatter on the giant's dark-green armoring. She saw it recover from the chaff grenade and spot her! It roared its jagged-toothed mouth in her direction.

Burning her cosmos past her usual breaking point, Marianne was able to twist her body and finally aim herself, pointing her foot at the beast. "ABYSSAL CRASH!" The element of water burned in her cosmos, forming a layer on her foot with the force of the depths of the ocean's deepest trenches, while the stars of the Delphinus Constellation shined in the nightsky.

The blow collided with Talos' mask of bone right on the forehead, cracking its surface inwards! Her foot sunk in and and the pinpoint force made the giant stagger back, screaming. Marianne held on as it shook its face back and forth, feeling herself roller-coasted dozens of yards left and right. She turned and screamed, seeing Talos's palm swinging right at her as if he tried to swat a insect after its painful bite. Dislodging her metal boot, she jumped through the needle hole between its huge fingers, escaping the crushing strength of the colossus!

{======================|A3|======================}

Atlae cheered, raising her fist. "LOOK AT THAT! She did it!"

Caça covered his eyes. "AGH! I CAN'T WATCH!"

{======================|A3|======================}

The Delphinus Saint descended, landing her screeching heels down Talos' other arm and holding on to the jagged plates of its armoring.

She breathed deeply, seeing the beast squirm from her kick and trying to not get sent flying by its careless movements. "I h-hit it! I'm alive!" She turned and saw the ship still needed charging. "I have to keep fighting! Even if to just distract it!"

The crack in Talos' face healed, sealing in the fractures, and the beast squinted at her. "She… she hurt me!" Its clawed hand reached in to grab her!

Marianne gasped, realizing it was about to crush her! With a burst of cosmos, Marianne manifested her two elements; water and fire. "FEEL THE HEAT OF MY COSMOS!"

Its second voice roared in its mind. "I'll kill HER!"

"TIDAL MAELSTORM!" She pulled herself up from her grip on the sharp wrist plate with superhuman strength, launching herself at Talos' reaching hand, and raised her legs high, swerving the air with a sharp kick of boiling water that hit Talos' ring finger with a torrent of condensed, burning steam! It struck so deeply and powerfully with the jet of burning blue cosmos that it severed the whole pillar of flesh right off, letting her flying body escape right through the gap.

Landing on Talos' back palm, Marianne breathed in relief. She looked down and saw the finger she sliced off crash in the ground, raising clouds of dust.

"That attack obliterated Jellyfish Wolff, but to this thing it just sliced its smallest finger! Hey…" To her surprise, it began rotting away immediately, disintegrating into hot metallic sludge. She turned up curiously, seeing Talos gawk at her angrily, and pressed her mic. "XO, analyze the target's hand I just sliced, particularly it's healing, over!"

"Right away, Ma'am. Charging of the cannon is at 74%, by the way. Over."

"Darn it!" she cursed. Seeing Talos already trying to grab her again, she sped up his enormous arm, dodging another swing of its fingers.

"Are we looking for anything in particular?"

Jumping high towards Talos' face, the Delphinus Saintia charged cosmos into both hands and fired them off as beams, striking the creature's eyes. Talos screamed madly, blinded.

She landed on its thick shoulder pad. "Y-YES! I think it's using some kind of central system to repair itself. I need you to pick up the pattern of its healing! There must be an organ or component inside of it fueling the regeneration." Gripping the spikes on the pad tightly, she screamed and held on to dear life when Talos turned his massive body over and around to try to swat her out like a fly. "USE THE RESULTS TO TARGET THE CANNON WHEN ITS READY! AND H-HURRY UP!"

"Yes, VADM. Just a couple more minutes."

The blue-haired Delphinus screamed and flew, finally thrown off the shoulder by the force of its swerving. She widened her eyes, seeing Talos' hands coalesce around her! The large fingers closed and caught Marianne, capturing her entire world.

{======================|A3|======================}

Atlae brought his hands to head. "Oh NO! It got her!"

Caça saw the beast raise Marianne in its tight hand grip. "He's gonna EAT HER!"

The Muvian didn't even hesitate, jumping off and rushing down the valley. "MARI'!"

{======================|A3|======================}

At the LPS Sea Dragon, the bridge operators worked full speed to detect Talos' weakness and charge their main gun.

Camera footage then showed Marianne getting caught by Talos! The colossal fingers squeezed, arresting her entire body and threatening to crush her lungs in. Marianne struggled to breathe, feeling the enormous, warm walls of flesh all around her. Struggling to look up, she saw the smoke in its eyes clear away, revealing two bloody sockets of bone with the light of life in them restored.

"It has the Vice-Admiral!" one operator gasped.

"Everyone stay calm!" Sorrento urged. "Do a comparative analysis between the wounds we've inflicted on it!"

One screen showed camera footage of the disintegrated finger on the ground. "XO, the computer indicates a highly unstable metal composed the severed organ. It's breaking apart at rapid speed, unlike the main body. It seems the creature is dependent on its circulatory system to keep its body mass growing and cohesive!"

Another reading an audio mapping screen gave a different report. "We also detect strong pulsations in its chest, even scaled to its size. The creature's bursts of healing are patterned after its massive heartbeat."

Sorrento held his chin pensively. "So its heart is also its self-repair organ? That makes things easier."

The cameras showed the Vice-Admiral struggle against Talos grip with her arms and legs. They caved in, letting him clench its clawed fingers around her tightly. Marianne screamed as tiny cracks in her Bronze Cloth formed. "G-GAAH! S-SORRENTO!"

The XO reached into the microphone "Ma'am! You were correct, the healing stems from contact with the creature's blood, like a Cloth!" Sorrento celebrated. "Preventing this massive body from delivering it should-"

"THE CANNON, SORRENTO! HOW C-CHARGED IS THE CANNON?!" she desperately screamed into her microphone, feeling Talos' fingers tighten.

"U-uum!" He turned at the operator, who showed him the number on the screen. "O-only 87%! M-Ma'am, it's not at full power yet! What are your orders?!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Her head slumped, feeling completely arrested. Marianne felt that even an ounce more pressure could slap her in half! Even the body heat of the fingers was suffocating. If she ordered the firing now, she could potentially injure the creature and save herself, but not only did an incomplete charge risk damaging the ship, but it would send all the hard work of stalling Talos straight into the trash.

"MA'AM!" Sorrento screamed in her earpiece.

"I can't give up! No!" Marianne urged herself. She tried to think of getting back to Atlae, of seeing his sweet face again. Her eyes teared, but cosmos in her began burning brighter, easing the pressure on her. "S… Sorrento… g-get ready to fire the cannon once it reaches 100%!"

"B-But Ma'am, that will give the creature time to crush you!"

The mariner tried to focus. She remembered every lesson she ever had on how to fuel the cosmos. Everyone knew strong emotional attachments were the best, most stable source of Cosmos. She focused on those she loved. Atlae, her dad, Adriana, mom…

Feeling the girl weaken, Talos seized his chance, tightening his fingers so hard the girl howled. "YES, I HAVE HER! I'll CRUSH HER!"

Talos felt her blue flame fight his fingers resisting him. "She's so s-strong! Like a Gold Saint!" It tried to finish her off, but the harder it squeezed, the more a painful memory flashed in its head. His fingers relented, relieving Marianne. "I.. I know this strength!"

{======================|A3|======================}

"Ithaca, will you practice with me again?" the little blue-haired girl begged, bringing him her wooden sword. "Please?"

{======================|A3|======================}

"She's just an enemy!" Talos reasserted to itself. It closed its fingers tightly again. Marianne gasped out loud, feeling the force threaten to pincer her chest in. "She attacked me! Blinded me! She's standing in the way of finding my stabilizer!"

{======================|A3|======================}

The distraught Arthur uncovered the young girl's blanket in the bed, showing her feverish face. "Ithaca, please, I need your help. The Gerasimov tried to kill her. One of their assassins poisoned her food at school. I need you to find an antidote. If she… if Marianne dies…" he sunk face into hands. "I don't know what we'll do!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Again, Talos' fingers weakened, letting air back into Marianne's lungs. "N-NO!"

Meanwhile, Marianne breathed in harshly, staring at the beast gripping her in confusion. What was going on?! Why was it crushing her back and forth? Was it trying to torture her?!

Talos' head sunk and the light in its eyes weakened. "I know who this is! I swore I'd…"

Marianne stared, seeing the sudden weakness in Talos. What miracle was this?

"VADM! What are your orders?! The Stardust Cannon is 95% charged!"

Marianne looked up. She saw the dragon-head bow of the battleship brimming with golden light. She held on to her headpiece. "G-Get ready to fire it! Use the targeting calculated by the scanning to aim at its healing organ!"

There was a pause of Sorrento getting the resulting firing path from the operators on his end. "But Ma'am, that puts you right in the path of the shot!" Sorrento warned her. "If the beamed projectile doesn't hit you, the impact and explosion surely will!"

She gritted her teeth, knowing this. Poseidon save her. "It doesn't MATTER! We have to stop this thing! If we don't-"

Then, as the giant gasped out in its struggle, between the gaps in Talos's segmented helmet over its long-jawed face, Marianne's eyes saw familiar, enlarged strands of blue hair. They were massive, scaled up to match the size of the creature's head, and she hadn't noticed them while they were being squeezed by the helmet. They were so sapphire-like, they could only belong to a descendant of the people of Poseidon.

This could only mean one thing, and her eyes turned to pale-blue plates. "A… A Mariner?!" Her brain then reached the only possible conclusion, which made her heart skip a beat entirely. "The Elder said this is a Cloth, didn't she?! Then… the person who must be wearing it is-"

"I swore nothing!" Talos reaffirmed, lifting its face and reigniting the flare in its dark sockets.

Marianne screamed, feeling his fingers shut again suddenly over her, harder than ever. Her muscles burned in pain and her skeleton felt tightened against herself. What in Poseidon's name had triggered this in the bastard monster?!

"I am Talos, the Cloth of Destruction!" it hissed to itself, pressing its fingers closer and closer together. "My only oath… is to that!"

{======================|A3|======================}

She held her stomach, disgusted. Her eyes shook in anger at him. "Ithaca, HOW COULD YOU! You traitor! PIG!"

{======================|A3|======================}

"She looks like that evil woman! The one who hurt me!" Talos added in, trying to control its body. It gripped her tightly, intending on crushing her. "So she will join the burning of the furnace of the GODS along with HER!"

The Delphinus Saintia screamed out. "S-SORRENTO! FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS, FIRE! FIRE NOW!"

{======================|A3|======================}

Watching the confrontation from afar, Azrael cursed his luck. Even if Marianne was about to be crushed, she was clearly causing confusion in Ithaca, not to mention leaving him exposed to that battleship's so-called Stardust Cannon. Serpens Azrael risked having Talos run completely out of control or, worse, get stalled in that meaningless battlefield and surrounded by the rest of the Gold Saints before ever so much laying eyes on Shamballa.

He gripped his broadsword over his back. "Blasted Mariner girl. Who would have thought you and your ship would delay Talos so much? I almost regret not taking Gerasimov's offer now." Azrael admitted, cautiously unsheathing the blade. "Perhaps I should do Ithaca a kindness and rid him of the source of his confusion. The girl fought hard. She will be welcomed into her evil God's twisted paradise-"

"MARI'!" someone suddenly screamed near him.

Startled and sheathing the sword back down, Azrael sprung back like a spring, retreating into the shadows of the woods.

Looking ahead, he saw two young men rushing across the battlefield like maniacs. Azrael gawked. "What in the name of Athena?!"

"ATLAE, FOR THE LOVE OF OLYMPUS, STOP!" the pale mariner farther behind begged, arms flailing in the air panickily.

The Muvian boy just rushed ahead at Talos' massive feet and charged his cosmos, igniting an aura of dark green cosmos. "LET HER GO, YOU MONSTER!"

Jumping high in the air, Atlae gathered his Darkness and Earth elements around his foot, forming a vortex of swirling blackness and then swung and slammed it on the back of Talos' powerful leg as hard as he could!

{======================|A3|======================}

"Crush her, crush her, CRUSH HER!" Talos urged itself, squeezing more and more. "CRUSH HER NOW!"

Marianne burned her cosmos as high as she could, empowering her limbs to push the fingers around her off, but they pressed in like steel machinery, threatening to turn her into paste within seconds! The Mariner screamed, feeling her arms and legs being pressed into her! Her whole body rung and threatened to crack under pressure like a walnut, while her Delphinus Cloth's beautiful metal began creaking.

"BLACK HOLE KICK!"

A resounding bam was heard, like a wrecking ball crashing into a massive support pillar, and Talos's long mouth screamed out, feeling its leg struck by a massive force far below them! Marianne gasped, feeling the trunk-like fingers suddenly release pressure around her and drop her weakened body.

Then, seizing their chance, thunderous batteries fired off from the Sea Dragon, striking it from head to toe with its explosive ammunition, further injuring and smoke screening the beast. She fell through Talos' palms, her body too weakened to resist, as the giant writhed in pain and dropped to its knee. Darkness encroached her sight as the stress of resisting the crushing caught up with her.

As she dropped from the air, someone leaped in from far below and tackled her body, seizing her. "MARI'!"

Her half-awake eyes were in a daze of disbelief, seeing the blond Muvian's face. "A… Atlae?!"

The Muvian descended from his jump, landing softly in the rocky fields with her on a small vantage point. He rested Marianne down on her feet and held her up, worried. "Are you okay?! Mari', please say something!"

Caça also arrived on the scene, running up from the fields "YOU IDIOT! NOW THEY KNOW WE'RE HERE!"

The Mariner-Saintia's eyes darted between the two, bewildered. Was she seeing right? Or had the giant crushed her and she was dreaming? Her hand reached up and touched Atlae's face to confirm it wasn't a dream.

He held her fingers gently. The sight of her scared face made his head hot in anger. "A-Are you okay?"

She nodded. "I'm…I-I'm rattled, but I think I am." She tried to put her feet down and flashes of pain coursed through her. "AGH!"

Atlae caught her. "Let me help." Holding her up, Atlae saw her bruised body and cracked armor.

But her fist suddenly socked his stomach in, punching the air out of his lungs. "Y-YOU IDIOT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!"

Caça winced, seeing Atlae collapse. That looked like it hurt a lot.

"I TOLD YOU TO STAY IN SHAMBALLA!" the Mariner girl screamed, her eyes tearing. Seeing him get back up with a wince, she wished she could kick him over the mountains. "W-WHY DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN TO PEOPLE, A-ATLAE?! NOT EVEN ON THIS ONE THING?!"

The Muvian teenager shook head. "I k-know. M-Mari'."

"You KNOW?!" she gawked. Her fingers tensed in the air like claws. Marianne wanted to scream more at him, but the words died in her throat. "Then why are you here?!"

His eyes darted away. "I promised your dad I'd keep you safe, even if it cost my life." His eyes hardened. "I'm only sorry I got here so late."

Before this, the rage in Marianne's suddenly face collapsed. Her fingers clenched his Gi. "N-No, you're just in time." and she leaned head into his chest, relieved it was all real. "Thank the gods, you're just in time."

"Vice-Admiral! Are you there?!" her headpiece sounded. Sorrento's voice crackled with the damage done to her headpiece. "The engines are overheating. The ship could sustain catastrophic damage if we delay the firing any longer!"

She snapped up. "Oh no! A-Atlae, Caça, we need to get away! It's the Stardust Cannon! When the ship fires, this whole battlefield will be destroyed!"

Atlae looked up. He saw the big flying airship shining like a star and leaning its mouth towards the giant, which still struggled with the wounds inflicted on it. Talos roared and got on its hands to lift itself up, its eyes frantically searching through the clouds of smoke while fountains of blood dropped from its chest wounds.

Seeing the ship shining, Talos, too, began to glow. "Destroy it! DESTROY IT!" Blue light began enflaming its chest and spine, coursing up towards its throat, then forming a bonfire inside its mouth. "Send that ship to HELL!"

"Sorrento, you have my permission! Fire the Stardust Cannon! NOW!" Marianne ordered. Tightening her arms around her lover's neck, Marianne let him jump away with her.

Atlae irked frightenedly and picked up Marianne, startling her. "Hold on to me, Mari'! CAÇA, let's get away!"

"FINALLY, SOME FUCKING SENSE!" and the Cabral immediately ran to the hills.

{======================|A3|======================}

At the bridge of the battleship, Sorrento nodded. "You heard the Vice-Admiral, everyone! Disengage horizontal gravity breaks!"

An operator in flight control began flipping switches, causing the ship's position to unlock so they would be pushed back from the explosion instead of resisting it. "Breaks disengaged!"

Another pushed a button, causing every window and port in the ship to close and shields to descend on them. Emergency red lights came on as power routed from every corner of the ship to the main bow. "Shields down, sir!"

A screen flipped on, revealing camera footage of Talos, whose flame in its mouth grew bigger and brighter. Numbers began coursing through it. "The target is preparing a counterattack, sir! We won't be able to evade!"

"Ignore it! Focus the targeting on its healing organ!" Sorrento reinforced. The ship began tilting down to aim its bow at Talos' chest. The cyan-haired young officer sweated. "If we don't kill it with this attack, it won't matter what we do afterwards anyway."

Then, on Marianne's command desk, a console controller popped up and unlocked its large, red trigger button.

Sorrento gripped it and let the ship's aim stabilize on Talos' chest. "STARDUST CANNON, FIRE!" His thumb then pressed the button.

{======================|A3|======================}

Atlae and Caça rushed into the depths of the far-away forest, taking Marianne deep into the safety of its trunks. The large whirring sound of the battleship's bow filled the valley as the big sun forming in front of its dragon mouth grew as large as a house, turning night into day. Simultaneously, Talos' whole body became ignited with blue flames as its own attack reached its peak charging.

Summoning his powers, Atlae rose a blanket of darkness over himself. "GET IN!" And held his two dear friends close before lowering it, creating a protective shell of shadows.

Atlae wanted to turn and look through the penumbra but Marianne pushed his face away from scene. Caça simply dropped to the ground and held his head down. The three braced themselves, awaiting the inevitable destruction about to be unleashed.

Then, all sound vanished. From the rustling of the trees, to the fleeing of the animals and birds. The wind went quiet, their breaths disappeared and the whirring of battleship stopped. Talos' thrashing and burning became mute and even sizzling of its mouth was gone.

…

At first there was a slight vibration. A mere rustle of dust in the ground around them.

Then, there was the deaf, blunt shockwave! Without a sound, trees, rocks, bushes and even pieces of the ground all around them ripped straight off, as if a god's invisible hand had swiped at them. Facing away from the blasts, they saw objects as far flung as charred pieces of armored meat fly over their heads, but also familiar metal plates. Marianne froze, seeing pieces of the Sea Dragon's fins in the midst.

Then, travelling through time, the sound of what happened finally caught up with the three of them. They heard Talos' roar that fired its mouth blast, but they also heard the release of the Stardust Cannon, which tore the air with the force of its accelerated mass projectile. They heard the blue and golden beams collide in mid-air and threaten to deafen the three of them with the sheer violence of its shock's sound. It was like being in the middle of two stars colliding; a sound that made your very body want to burst out of your skin.

Finally, worst of all, was the shockwave itself, whose sound now reached them. It was unspeakably strong, as if a million thunderbolts had struck the same spot simultaneously, echoing the deep screams of Talos, the metallic bursting of Sea Dragon's seams, the ripping of gigantic flesh, the tearing of entire stretches of ground, the slicing of armor and the breaking of the air itself all at once. Then came the destruction in each and every direction that followed it. Like a supernova, the scarring of the valley and subsequent scorching of virgin land occurred omnidirectionally and instantaneously, damaging everything within sight and irreparably cratering the Himalayan valley. Without contemplating any of it, they felt the obliteration of everything around Talos and the Sea Dragon splashing the very face of the Earth, uncaring and without prejudice. It was pure hell in their ears.

And this hell came before the burning. Not of flames directly hitting them, but of the heated air washing over Atlae's protective blanket like a tidal wave of fire. It went on and on and on, for an eternity, where they felt life all around them be eradicated by a cleansing wash.

Feeling the burning subside, Atlae slowly rose, dispelling his barrier cloak of shades. What would they see, as they turned around to give sight to such sounds?

Caça lost the little color in his face. "F-Fuck me!"

Marianne's eyes teared. Her knees dropped to the ground. "N-No!"

Atlae's jaw dropped. The valley was now an inferno. It was a painting alike those he had seen at the Sun Temple, when speaking of the six hells of Buddhism. Fields of grass and rock curving towards the Himalayan peaks were now burning black lands. Smoke emanated from every mound, hole and plain, blockading the light of the stars and moon. Rivers of scorching blood from Talos coursed between the rocks, all coming from a collapsed, gigantic body fallen to the ground, its chest blown open. The light was gone from Talos' eyes, but his whole body was illuminated by the surrounding destruction.

Little respite was taken from this, as the sight of the Sea Dragon burning in the air took their attention. The three saw the beautiful armored ship stripped of its metallic skin and fins. Much of its interior frame was ripped away as well, revealing entire sectors of crewmen now either falling off or holding to burning machinery. The thrusters in the rear smoked dangerously, indicating they would soon explode, while the top deck of the battle ship was bent, ripped and distorted. The main guns were all either missing, twisted into shape or scorched, while the bridge, radar tower, the depth charge catapult and even the loading deck were full of flames and holes.

The only intact piece was the bow weapon, shielded by its own beam's firing force. And the entire ship was slowly falling.

"My… my CREW!" Marianne stuttered. She held on to her mic and ran in. "XO! SORRENTO! PLEASE RESPOND!"

Atlae followed. "Wait!" He sensed the chis on the ship above all going out, like a strong wind whisking the flames away from a table of candles. "MARI, NO, it's dangerous!"

There were sizzling sounds on her microphone as she jumped across a burning trench. "V-Vice Admiral!"

Reaching the edge of crater Talos lied on, she froze, hearing the weakness of his voice. "W-What happened?!"

"*sizzle* -oth beams c-collided. There was an explosion. I… I d-don't know if we hit the target." There was a short pause, where Sorrento likely surveyed the bridge. "T-There's no one conscious on the bridge. Officer Elis has a steel beam through his chest. I… I think we have near critical casualty levels, Ma'am!"

"SORRENTO, ESCAPE THE SHIP, NOW!" Marianne screamed. She saw the thrusters in the back, connected to the engine, smoke more and more. "Do you hear me?!" Take anyone you can and load them into the escap-"

There was another deaf shockwave and the large thrusters in the dropping ship suddenly burst into flames, knocking her down! The Sea Dragon burned even more and began falling faster, tilting its head down almost entirely. Down at her!

Rushing in, Atlae grabbed the paralyzed Marianne and fled off with her, letting the ship collapse bow-first where she had stood. Crushed in, the flying infrastructure split in half and collapsed aside, crushing its entire starboard under its weight. A third explosion occurred, this time in its engine, blowing the rest of its integrity to pieces. Large pieces flew as high as Talos' armored wings before raining down around them.

Shaking in Atlae's arms, Delphinus Marianne saw the LPS Sea Dragon, the battleship in her command, pride of all Mariners, peak of their technology and vessel of all their hopes, go up in a huge fireball. The girl screamed and sunk her face into Atlae's shoulder, unable to bear the horrific sight of the collapsing steel and flames trapping in hundreds of her men.

Atlae and Caça could not fault her. It was a sight they were sure all three would carry for the rest of their lives.

The straw-haired Muvian felt Marianne sob into his shoulder. He held her tightly, kissing her head, and his green eyes teared. He felt his body shake with her sorrow, wondering how this could have happened.

Then, as he turned inward, he widened his eyes as he sensed a warmth in the ship. Not one of the flames, but of life!

Gently setting Marianne down, he rushed towards the burning wreck. Atlae heard her and Caça cry out his name. Leaping high off their vantage point, he let himself dive foot first into the Sea Dragon's collapsed middle of its top deck, where the ruined bridge and radar tower arose.

{======================|A3|======================}

Flames surrounded him from all sides, making him sweat and cough. He powered through and headed for the main superstructure. Burning his cosmos, Atlae shoved his fingers deep into a crack of the armor and, with a great grunt of effort, ripped it open, unleashing a metal-tearing creak. With a passage into the structure made, he dropped straight in, finding metal stairs, computers and walls all turned to the side. Walking through hot monitors, windows and smoke, he sought the faint heat he sensed in what would be the main bridge room ahead.

Through it, he found what was left of Marianne's crew. Dead mariners covered in blood and injuries littered the compartments. One looked like he had tried to hold on during the blast to a safety seat and got crushed by the collapsing equipment. Another dangled dead over the metal stairs leading 'upstairs', now sideways, his blood dripping just over Atlae's head. Others merely burned, caught by the flames, filling the ruins with a sick barbecue stench.

Finding a damaged bulkhead, Atlae tried to turn it as fast as he could, but the mechanism was jammed by the crushed outline it fit into. Gathering his strength and shining with green cosmos, Atlae slammed it with his body, but it did nothing. He gritted his teeth, realizing the bulkheads were likely reinforced with stardust in the event of the ship being boarded, or to prevent ruptures and sinking during important battles.

He took a deep breath to relax, even though the smoke made it difficult. His body began brimming, reinforcing his cosmos with his lifeforce, making it shine a brighter shade of green and making the metal resonate around him as his Earth element echoed with Atlae's heart beat. His muscles bulged and his fingers tightened on the bulkhead's frame. Then, with a great push, he forced the metal object in, pushing it off its reinforced hinges and making it drop into the room ahead.

Atlae jumped in, landing into the collapsed bridge. Again, bodies littered the area. Many of them wore microphones around their jaws and Atlae imagined these were the people who communicated with Mari' on her headpiece. All of their Chis were extinguished. He found a pile of rubble ahead around the only living flame and began tearing away at it more and more, pulling beams over head, plates of steel aside and even an entire command desk over the person he sensed in.

Finally finding him, he reached in with his hand. "Sorrento, it's me! G-Grab my hand!"

Sorrento shook, looking up. "Y-you… Atlae…"

The ship shook from another thruster exploding! Atlae gasped and reached in deeper. "Come on! Quick!"

Wondering if Poseidon has granted him a miracle, Sorrento reached out and grasped the Muvian's fingers tightly, then felt his body pulled out of the rubble by Atlae.

{======================|A3|======================}

Mari saw the third thruster blow up and gasped. "A-ATLAE! NO!"

Caça saw her stumble forwards and grabbed her. "D-Don't go in! Are you crazy?! That thing is going to blow up!"

"BUT HE'S INSIDE!" she cried out, fighting Caça's grip.

The mariner awed at the injured girl's strength as he tried to keep her from sheer suicide. "AND WE WILL BE TOO WHEN IT BLOWS UP IF YOU JUST RUS-"

A bright flare went off in the fourth, final thruster and the stardust engine deep within finally exploded, triggering a massive fireball that knocked them back and shook the air. The two froze, seeing the orange flames rise up higher than Talos' collapsed body.

Yet, a figure landed from a jump out of it, covered in a veil of shielding darkness cosmos. Carrying Sorrento's collapsed body, Atlae rested him down at their feet. "I'm back!"

"A-ATLAE!" Marianne rushed in, grabbing him. She slammed her fists into his chest. "Dear Gods, don't ever do THAT again! W-What are you trying to do to me?!"

Helping Sorrento rest on the ground, Atlae slumped his head. "I'm sorry, Mari'. I sensed someone alive inside and I couldn't just leave them in."

"You went inside just to get this jerk back?!" Caça protested, realizing now that there were no depths to the Muvian's foolishness. "Are you for fucking real?! You could have turned into mincemeat if the ship blew up a second earlier!"

The mariner girl covered her crying face at the idea of it. Between him saving Sorrento's life and the risk he just took, her heart was split between gratitude and outrage. "I…I don't… Atlae, how could you?! Y-you could have died and it would be… it would be all my fault! I don't know…. what I'd do w-without you!"

Atlae held her close. "I'm sorry…" He felt her head sink into his shoulder and frowned, wishing he could have done more. He saw the person he just rescued wince. "Sorrento, are you okay?"

"I am… alive." The young officer's pink eyes shook at the sight of the burning ship. "Why did you come get me?"

"Good question!" Caça reinforced. He shoved Atlae's arm. "You do realize, Atlae, that just because he said some nice things to you earlier today, this guy doesn't like you anymore than Baian does, right?!"

Atlae shook his head. "It doesn't matter." And just held Mari' tighter until her sobbing calmed itself.

Sorrento tried to get up, but his whole body hurt. He contended himself with just sitting on a rock and faced the Muvian. "I owe you one, Atlae. I will never forget that."

"No, you don't." Atlae assured. His eyes slid away. "You're a friend of Marianne. And I swore I would serve her family."

Hearing this, the Solo heiress looked him in amazement. Even though she had told him to stay in Shamballa, not only did Atlae come to save her anyway, but he rescued Sorrento as well, risking his life. Even though she hated that he had ignored her and, worse, risked his life getting inside the ship, there was no doubt in her heart from all of this that Atlae had nothing but her well-being in mind.

And it all came at the cost of her… entire crew. A crushing feeling of failure overcame Marianne. Compared to her, Atlae was a champion of his people.

Her eyes teared again in utter shame at her realisation. "I… I did this. I failed my men." She imagined the terror in them as the ship began falling and burning, while she was hunkered down with Caça inside Atlae's barrier. "The Sea Dragon has sunk under my command.., and all of the lives that were in it are lost."

Atlae held her shoulders. "Marianne, don't say that! I saw you fighting that monster myself! So did Caça!"

"NO!" Marianne screamed, sinking her face into hands. "I failed! I failed them all! I failed my father, the mariners, the fleet, the admiral! E-Everyone!"

"At the risk of facing insubordination charges, Vice-Admiral." Sorrento spoke up. "you're wrong."

Her teary eyes turned to her one surviving underling. He was alive, but clearly injured, covered in soot and blood. "S-Sorrento, I am so sorry, I-"

"Y-you did not fail anyone, ma'am. You should know that when we saw how bravely you resisted that monster's grip, everyone fought extra hard to get the cannon charged." The XO recounted. "Your battling also kept it from attacking the ship, allowing us to fire it in the first place. No one on the Sea Dragon had any hesitation in doing what we did. We paid a heavy cost, yes, but much heavier would be the one if this monstrosity had been allowed to march on to Shamballa."

The mariner girl felt like she could collapse with these words. How could everyone still support her, even then? Even Sorrento, who stayed on the ship on her orders and almost paid the ultimate price for her weakness, was showing no hesitation in his voice in telling her she did her best. The Delphinus Saintia wept, overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, Atlae paled. "Wait, Shamballa? So that's where it was heading?!" He looked up at the collapsed, bleeding colossus. Even then, its enormous mass made them feel like insects. "Where did it come from?! Why did this happen?!"

Sorrento shook his head. "We don't know, Atlae. But it doesn't matter." He stood up with much effort. "What matters is that we've done our duty. Now all of Mu will know Mariners are warriors of their word. The sacrifice of these men will not be wasted, I assure you. Shamballa is saved."

Marianne's head sunk, humbled. With officers like Sorrento, she did not deserve to be the leader of such a battleship. She suddenly felt so incredibly small when surrounded by such kind people. And Caça.

"Well… what the hell do we do now?!" Caça asked. He waved his hands at the colossal mess ahead of them. "We lost the freaking Sea Dragon, everyone's dead and we have a giant monster carcass in the middle of the Muvians lands! Who the hell is going to clean this mess up?!"

Sorrento turned to Marianne. "Captain? Your orders."

The Delphinus Saintia tensed, feeling her sense of duty demanding action. "We'll report back to the High Elder and… await Sanctuary's response. I am sure, after all, the Gold Saints are on their way. They will know what to do. Then we will contact my father and ask to summon the households. The Sea Dragon and its crew will be a hard loss to replace and… I am sure I'll have to prepare myself for the trial."

Sorrento's bloodied lips smiled, seeing brightness return to his leader. "Yes, Ma'am."

"Trial?" Atlae wondered.

Marianne nodded. "Yes, Atlae. The Sea Dragon was important to the Mariners. I will have to answer to Mariner justice for my mistakes."

"But you did NOTHING WRONG!" he protested. "You saved my people's city!"

Though she wasn't in agreement about this, she shook her head and held his shoulder. "Don't worry. It's going to be alright."

Caça slumped, gritting his teeth. "Unbelievable! What a waste of my time. Everyone is just going to carry on like nothing happened, right? I might as well have stayed at Shamballa." He walked off from the group before those two displayed more sickening romance between them.

Meanwhile, Atlae approached the edge of the vantage point, beholding Talos. "So, this is the giant of my people's myth?"

"That's what your teacher told me, yes." Marianne confirmed. The blue hair she saw peeking between its gigantic helmet and shoulder pads still worried her. She pointed at the hole blown in its chest from where blood flowed. "We discovered that its blood pumping was how it kept up its rapid healing, like a Cloth with its own heart. That's what the Sea Dragon fired at."

Atlae studied it, horrified. It was difficult to take it in without commenting on its size. Even dropped to his knees and slumped in with a massive, bleeding hole in its body, Talos looked like a horror from some kind of impossible world, an organic machine of destruction that Mother Nature itself could not possible birth. He had to stare high up to find the pointy horns in its helmet, and the armored wings over its back were like mountainous blankets of dark green scales and spikes.

Everything in Atlae reeled at the sight of Talos. How did this thing breathe? How did it move? How did it exist in the same world as theirs without violating some kind of scientific principle? Atlae had the feeling for the first time he met Lord Arthur that his entire life had been turned upside down and that his understanding of the world was going to change forever.

Marianne sensed the confusion in him. "Your Master called it a Cloth. Our ship's instruments seemed to agree. They even detected an alchemic make-up that seems similar to that of a Bronze Cloth."

"But how could someone wear this?!" Atlae questioned, looking it up and down again. He turned to compare it to Marianne's Delphinus visually. "It's… it's as big as a mountain! And seems to have a body of its own inside all that armoring! It has flesh! And blood!"

The injured girl shrugged her shoulders defeatedly. "I… I don't know, Atlae. I've never even read about anything like this in our world. All I know is that it was supposed to be asleep and…"

"And what?!" Atlae demanded to know. Who would set loose just a horrible cause of pain? "What the heck woke it up?!"

She froze, remembering Yuzuriha's words. "It was… you, Atlae!" But dared not give voice to it. This would be an even more crushing truth to her lover than the fact she lost the Sea Dragon was to herself. Her head shook. "No one knows…But it doesn't matter, because it was inside the mountain and wouldn't have gone out until someone bonded with it."

Atlae then saw her slump away. Poor Marianne. She had just gone through something horrible. Atlae was so glad he was at least able to protect her.

Still, Josef's words from when he left Shamballa resonated in his mind.

Putting yourself in danger and forcing the Vice-Admiral to protect you will be nothing but pure selfishness in the end, understood? You will not be forgiven by her for this.

Atlae's green eyes saddened, wondering if she would still hold him so gently once everything was over. He could have, after all, very easily joined the pile of corpses, especially when he rescued Sorrento, and added to her suffering.

The confused Muvian turned back to Talos, wishing he could decipher this mystery just by staring at it. The most frightening part had to be how human it still looked. Despite the long jaw, the bone mask clearly was a facsimile of a human skull. Despite the wings and the tail, Talos had proportioned legs, arms, fingers and a torso. Atlae could almost imagine the human or Muvian that might be inside it, supposedly 'wearing' this Cloth, their shape projected into Talos' colossal biology.

"Perhaps… we don't know what forms a Cloth can have?" Marianne suggested. "Perhaps Talos is something that has always been possible, but just never done?"

Sorrento joined them. "I am a poor Mariner for confessing this, but it is said Muvian technology from the Myth Age surpasses everything and anything we can imagine nowadays. Everyone knows that when the Myth Age came to a close and their continent sunk, a lot of technology was lost. We are, to an effect, in a long-lasting Muvian Dark Age."

Marianne hummed. "Then, perhaps, our understanding of what a Cloth is, is actually really limited?" She beheld her cracked armor gloves. "Maybe my own Cloth is just a glimpse of the things Atlae's people were able to create that long ago? Creations now lost forever?"

Sorrento nodded, reminded from her rapid conclusions why she always beat him in class. "It sounds likely, Ma'am."

"A Muvian Dark Age." Atlae repeated to himself. His thoughts were lost in the ether, realizing for the first time the depth, and weight, of his people's heritage. His people were capable of things like this monster? He stared into its dead eye sockets, seeing nothing but darkness in them. Fortunately, the massive Chi signature he felt off it was gone, withdrawn deeply into the hole the mariners blew in it. "There was a time, when Muvians built things like... this? Things that did nothing but destroy? A time before their continent sunk?"

Suddenly, Death Queen Island, the place that all that was left of that continent, came to mind.

Marianne widened her eyes at him approaching the edge of the rock peak, remembering Yuzuriha's warnings. "Wait, Atlae, don't get too close to it!"

Atlae widened his eyes, remembering that moment he ran into Guifi and that girlfriend of his on it. The moment the hot needle struck him! The seal Noah placed on his forehead shined brightly, trying to contain the flood of visions that then ensued.

{======================|A3|======================}

The red-eyed Queen chuckled playfully in the sinking darkness.

Atlae breathed in shock, finding himself standing in a pedestal of marble. The woman in front of him brimmed like a sanctified figure. Her orange hair was a waving dress of flames, while her crown of gold, silver and rubies, her glowing bracelets and the washing of crimson over her tanned skin was all she wore. Her hands laid out, presenting Atlae the altar between them.

He looked down, seeing a bare Marianne strapped to it by thick chains, gagged and shaking in terror. Her eyes teared and stared at him, begging mercy with muffled screams. Rhythmic chanting surrounded them.

All around him, hands in the darkness went up and down on a floor of corpses, praising their site of sacrifice. Buildings surrounding these were filled with bodies and dripping blood. Slaves, traitors and heathens hanged by the neck from verandas. Children without dots on their heads were chained to their mother's corpses, crying, while fathers branded by hot metal were dragged away into strange, bright doorways shining with flames. Orange lamps like those of Shamballa's Summer Festival also filled the buildings, giving praise to the Queen and her burning glory.

Atlae wanted to scream! The Queen put her finger to her lip in a hushing gesture and winked complicitly. She then gently took his hand. In its palm, she placed the big knife she had. It was filthy with blood marks, but otherwise a Muvian work of art covered in runes celebrating her majesty's undying glory, her gift of immortality.

Welcoming him with her blood-soaked arms into her naked chest, she turned him to Marianne, delicately guiding his hand above her chest. Atlae saw Marianne heave, thrash and breathe in panic, screaming again and again into her gag.

Feeling his resistance, the Queen kissed his ear to appease him. "It's alright, Atlae. Look at her." And her fiery sight rested on Marianne. "There's no dots. She's just a dumb animal, like any other."

The terror in Marianne looked to reach new heights as his knife dangled over her. His hand struggled yet against the Queen's. The chanting all around them got louder.

The Queen's fingers slithered around his grip on the knife and on his naked chest, covering him in blood. "This is what we must do to survive, Atlae." Gripping him fiercely to the point of sinking her nails into him, she made his hand come down. "This is what we must do to prosper."

He felt her voice deepen into an ungodly tremor that penetrated the walls around his heart, commanding him to finish his act. Atlae shoved back and forth, but his body refused to budge even slightly. The chanting in the darkness got louder and louder.

She was… just an animal?

The Queen's lips smiled and whispered into his ear. "That's right."

The Muvian winced, his mind rushing. None of this made any sense! Why did he feel his heart beat for this woman, then?

"Because you're such a kind boy." The Queen elated, sweetly sinking her lips against his neck. The touch of her lips was pure pain, a mixture of branding fire and a sharp peck, yet it enflamed his senses like a shot of boiling lava through his veins. "Yet, she's going to die such a long time before you. So fragile…And so pathetic, as well, disappointing her family and her friends. Letting them control her heart. She is so lucky you love her, isn't she? Who else would?"

A kindness? The resistance in Atlae's hand weakened, making the knife lower more and more over between Marianne's chests. He was doing a kindness to her, yes.

"So why not hurt her? Why not kill her? Rip her beautiful heart right out into your hand!" The Queen's body burned into bright flames that illuminated the continent's capital, revealing thousands and thousands of dead covering the streets. Her joyful laughter echoed out. "She owes that pleasure to you, doesn't she?! Let's do it, Atlae! Let's take everything from her! And make Mu flood the world with my light!"

Fire took over the blood in Atlae's veins and the knife descended on the screaming Marianne. Atlae screamed and shut eyes to it all, but the orange light that then erupted out of his lover invaded even the darkness of his mind!

{======================|A3|======================}

"ATLAE!" Marianne screamed, rushing at the collapsed Muvian.

Atlae winced, feeling his Muvian dots burn. "M-Mari, n-no!"

She held his face, panicked. "Atlae, I'm here, what's wrong?! Tell me!"

"NO! G-GET AWAY!"

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Screaming, he pushed the knife into her stomach with all his force again! He saw the strapped blue haired girl scream against her gag and tear up, her eyes bulging with the pain and shock. The Queen her held her own cheeks in elations, feeling the blood splash her.

The Muvian repeated the gesture, taking the knife out and lunging again, carving flesh between the girl's chests! He held her down as she thrashed on the altar, refusing to give her pause.

"Hurt her again!" the Queen commanded. She watched his knife go up and down. "Again!" It happened again, making her heart jump with joy! "AGAIN!"

Over and over, the Muvian struck the stupid mortal animal with the knife, exposing flesh, blood, scratched bones and severed organs. The screams and the thrashing only got worse and worse the more he did, though! He struck harder to make her stop, really digging the blade until it couldn't cut deeper into Marianne, but she refused to die.

She only screamed and stared with her crying eyes, burning the image of her pain deep into his mind, deep into every blood-splashed cell of his skin. There was no end to it. Marianne's blood just kept pooling the altar, filling her rest, then the floor at Atlae's feet and then cascading down the steps like crimson rapids. Her screams, even gagged, just got louder. Her tears got thicker. Her stare for mercy only more unbearable and her breath only quicker, harsher and more desperate.

With a new dig of the knife, his blade suddenly snapped, shattering its metal on the strong stone beneath Marianne's body, and Atlae dropped it, stumbling back in terror. He saw his victim practically reduced to two halves of carved flesh from all the vicious stabbing. The heart was bare, with all the flesh previously around it removed by his knife.

It still beat!

Horror filled his throat and he step back to escape it, right over the edge of the altar-

The Queen caught him before he fell down the steps. She held his naked body up, embracing him, and let his eyes lose themselves on her burning, hungry smile.

"You did it, Atlae…"

Her hand took the heart from the altar. "You did it."

She held it to his mouth. "You killed that stupid, ephemeral animal."

She watched in delight as his eyes stared hungrily. "Now you can own her heart, all for yourself."

Her smile twisted upwards as his lips approached the beating mass in her hand. "Don't you want it to live on?"

Her voice sung in his ear, making him hungrier and hungrier. "Don't you want it to not leave you behind? Ever?!"

{======================|A3|======================}

He gasped, awake. "N-NO!" He looked around, finding himself out of his vision. Marianne was holding him tight. "M-Mari? W… What happened?"

She pulled him close protectively, looking off to the distance, pale like she's seen a ghost.

The Muvian turned and saw who stood before them. The most frightening man he'd ever met in his life. Clad in an armor of Bronze shaped like the skeleton of a ram, yet carrying the hissing essence of a slithering serpent. His hair was dark green like algae and grew down to his shoulders. His eyes were slitted orbs of emerald, while the cheeks beneath them were painted with red triangles. His muscled arms and legs were locked inside a black shirt underneath the metal grey armor of slithering shapes while a broadsword rested around his back, decorated with a handguard shaped like two crow wings around a ram head. In his hand he carried a full-head helmet with thick, round ram horns.

His eyes lazed down on them like a snake that trapped a pair of rats, ready to lunge.

Marianne shook. "S… Serpens Azrael?! Why are you…?!"

Sorrento rushed in, seeing the threat to his Vice-Admiral. "MA'AM!" he took out his flute baton and blew air into it. "DEAD END SYMPHO-"

Before any of them could so much as blink, the stranger's hand thrust in Sorrento's direction, firing a gigantic blast of golden light that struck the young officer and sent him flying into the rocks, exploding into smoke, shattering rock and flashes.

"S-SORRENTO!" Mari' screamed, setting Atlae down and igniting her cosmos.

The Muvian gasped, trying to move. He saw the man approach Marianne and make his hand shine. "MARIANNE, N-NO!"

Swirls of boiling water formed around her, readying her technique. Her teeth snarled warningly at Azrael. "It was YOU, wasn't it?! YOU DID ALL OF THIS!"

Azrael, however, took a second sword he had brought with him and tossed it at her feet, letting it clank softly on the rocks.

Marianne beheld it, seeing it was Ithaca's sword. She recognized every inch of it, including that one mark she had managed to land on it during practice, years ago. "N… No! It wasn't him! It WASN'T!"

"I told the Pope. Countless times." Azrael hissed, watching the girl shake in denial. "That you Mariners were all nothing but a pack of conniving cultists! That you were no better than the damn Specters, just waiting for your chance to stab Sanctuary in the back!"

"IT'S NOT TRUE!" she screamed, making her aura burst. The fury in her made it sizzle like a geyser and project the stars of Delphinus, yet her legs shook with the horrible proof brought to her. "I-IT'S NOT HIM IN THAT THING! YOU'RE LYING!"

Seeing the horror fill Marianne's face, Atlae tried to get up. "MARI, STAY AWAY FROM HIM!" But a flash of exhaustion and pain went through him from the earlier visions, making him collapse powerlessly. "N-NO, MARI', DON'T!"

His body brimmed with yellow light, countering her sapphire glow. "But I will show your father, Marianne Solo, that your people's stupid, ugly schemes for power are NOTHING before the burning justice of the Saints of Athena!"

"ATLAE, RUN! RUN AWAY FROM HERE!" she shouted at the Muvian, pushing her cosmos to the max. Unsheathing her own officer sword, she charged, swinging her blade and creating a hurricane of scalding water. "TIDAL MAELSTROM!"

Azrael raised two of his fingers, each turned into a small sun of cosmos, and lunged them like the swing of a battery ram "COLCHIAN DISASTER!"

And then all was but light.

Time seemed to stop, or perhaps skip ahead. Not possessing the 7th sense, Atlae was unable to understand or perceive correctly exactly what had happened after Azrael pointed his fingers at Marianne. It was all in a flash, a photography being taken of everything around them, but in that moment of infinite actions taking place in an infinitely small fraction of a second, everything had transpired.

Azrael reappeared past Marianne, ending his lightspeed lunge. "Let the brilliance of the golden ram annihilate you…"

Atlae heard Marianne scream, but by the time he did, the entire battle had come to an end. He saw the boiling water Cosmos of her technique being blasted away, but by that point, her Tidal Maelstrom had been countered in every microliter of its wrapping energies by millions of rays of force. He beheld her Delphinus Cloth being smashed to bits, reduced to shattering remnants of its glorious self.

"M… MARIANNE!" he screamed, watching her crash into the ground. He tossed himself off the ground to reach her.

Azrael's foot slammed his chest, pinning him back against the ground. "Where do you think you're going, Muvian?"

"L-let go of me!" Atlae cursed, fighting his foot. The Saint's strength, however, seemed unsurmountable, only crushing him harder the more he struggled. "W-WHO ARE YOU?! Why did you hurt her?!"

"I merely gave her the honor of a clean defeat. She should be proud. The 'Colchian Disaster' was invented by the current Pope as a tribute to the power of the Aries Gold Cloth." His emerald eyes narrowed. "As for why I'm doing this? You're really going to act like you don't know? That attack you inflicted on Talos, your so-called Black Hole Kick? You're the one who rung the Bell of Genbu, aren't you?"

The Muvian staggered. What?! How did he know? Why was he attacking them?! Why did Marianne and Sorrento have to get hurt?! And what did the bell had to do with anything?

The Bronze Saint recoiled. Atlae's dumbfounded reaction told Azrael everything he needed. "Dear Goddess, you're dumb for a Muvian. You don't know anything, do you?"

"KNOW WHAT?!" Atlae cried out, desperate.

He leaned in on him as if to whisper, pressing even more weight on Atlae "That all of this is because of you."

The blonde Muvian gawked. He looked at the down colossus, who laid there, seemingly unconscious and bleeding profusely. He looked at the burning wreckage of the Sea Dragon, at the ruins Sorrento was fired into and Marianne's fallen body.

His green eyes shook, weeping. All of this was happening because of him?! That was nonsense and even he knew it! "N-No! You're lying! You're lying, whoever you ARE!"

The Serpens Saint unsheathed his broadsword with a metal hiss and hovered its tip over him. "Talos won't keep going towards Shamballa, now that you're here next to him, is he?" Azrael's body shone with charging cosmos that sharpened his sword, turning it into an instrument that would cut through the densest of darkness cosmos layers. "Which means that if I want him to keep going, I must eliminate you. I can then easily guide him with my shaped clones."

Atlae widened his eyes, seeing the moonlight sparkle in the edge. He was going to die. "J-Just, who are you?!"

"I am Serpens Azrael, Saint of Athena, last of the Zodiac Knights and member of the Pact of Seven!" he declared. "And for the crimes your mariner friends committed against humanity, and for the sake of the world Athena envisions, I will send all of you to Hades!"

Atlae struggled, trying to push Azrael's boot off. "NO! I w-won't let you hurt them!" his cosmos and Chi shined in unison, empowering him in an attempt to dislodge the man. "S-STOP IT!"

The entire area turned into a hurricane from the updraft of heat created by the explosion of Azrael's cosmos, who brought down his blade.

Atlae shut his eyes tight and burned his cosmos, thinking of Marianne!

The draft of air around them suddenly broke and the sound of metal grinding against metal was heard! The tip if Azrael's sword carved deeply where it struck and a clashing shockwave battered Atlae.

His eyes opened fearfully. Then, upon seeing the golden locks of hair and the blue armor, he widened them like plates.

Standing over him and parrying Azrael's sword was a woman completely clad in blue armor of white outlines. It had double shoulder pads, round cuirass bumps, a fault fused into her belt and gloves tightened around her palms with silver-enforced knuckles. Her eyes were green and her blonde curls reached down her back, while in her hand a sword of blinding light and eagle-winged hand guard blocked Azrael's attack. Around her neck was a pendant of a diamond gem that shined as white as the sun and the woman looked like she had just swooped in to stop the sword thrust in the last second.

It was a woman Atlae recognized. "Miss… Miss D-DAISY?!"

Azrael, too, stood in shock, recognizing the armor on her. An armor he thought he had lost forever. "The… Aquila Cloth?!"

With a martial shout, Aquila Daese pushed her sword up, bashing Azrael's away from Atlae, and kicked the man's stomach as hard as she could, sending him flying back. Her aura of white then exploded and the sword in her hand turned into a flare of cosmos, which she took to two hands and swung. "DIAMOND BEAK SLASH!"

The swings fired off a series of massive waves of destructive light, all that zeroed in on Azrael. The Bronze Saint barely had time to look up and realize he stood in their path before he was struck and smashed down by dozens of gigantic slash blasts that exploded over him one after the other, drowning the man in an ever growing geyser of light.

Atlae lied in awe, seeing the woman he travelled with backgrounded by the destructive spectacle of cosmos.

She turned to him as the light died down. "My name isn't Daisy, Atlae. It's Aquila Daese Heloise." she revealed to him. "And I am the last of the Zodiac Knights."

{======================|A3|======================}

Chapter End

{======================|A3|======================}

Next Chapter: Chapter 95 – 3rd Arc – Episode 21: The Cloth of Destruction – Part 3

Release Date: April 25th

Description: With the help of Aquila Daese, Atlae and his friends escape back to Shamballa, but the Zodiac Knight gets locked into battle with Serpens Azrael, the man who slaughtered her people. Yuzuriha laments the loss of the Mariners who defended her city, but breathes a sigh of relief when Atlae tells her the Sea Dragon's sacrifice wasn't for naught in its battle against Talos.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Cloth of Destruction has not yet completed its march.

Author's Comments:

Unfortunately this time around I don't have much to comment on. I'm probably going to downscale this section of the chapter moving forward since, with my new writing schedule, by the time I'm ready to publish a chapter, I'll have forgotten most of what went into its production. This time around I don't even have any particular character whose etymology I'd like to talk about, which isn't a bad thing per se, just a sign we are finally wrapping up this Atlae flashback story.

I guess I can talk about that a bit; I'm a bit tired of this flashback. I'm in the process of concluding the March of Destruction storyline, the next chapter is already being beta-read by Jenny DeVic, but I would be lying if I said I'm not looking forward to zipping it all up and take us back to Andromeda Island in the present. If you feel things are therefore a bit rushed in the coming chapters, I hope you forgive me.

I guess there's also the fanart and timeline thing. Currently my energies are invested into a secret project for this story that's been dragging for the better part of a year. That might explain why I haven't taken too much time to work on that stuff. Its going to be a while before I can talk about what it is because there's so much left to do on it with my limited skill.

Anyway, be sure to leave a review or share the story if you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know your thoughts, whatever they are.

See you a month from now.