Rubble shifted. From the wreckage of the throne room, Zehrina rose, her movements fluid despite the chaos surrounding her. She brushed a piece of splintered wood from her shoulder, her gaze fixed on Lady Brinevein, who was still casually berating the three Presidroids.
A quiet click in her earpiece. Roy's voice, tight but steady, came through. "The evac team is clear. Takara and Warrex are back on the Nightshatter."
A slow breath left Zehrina's lips, a whisper of relief. The weight of protecting the injured crew lifted from her shoulders, leaving only the cold, hard calculus of the fight ahead. She faced Lady Brinevein, and for the first time since the battle began, a genuine, dangerous smile touched her face. The black dust that had been a defensive shell now tightened around her, coiling like a predator.
"Now that everyone is out of the way," Zehrina called out, her voice ringing with a new, sharp confidence, "and the only ones left can take it—let's really turn this up, shall we?"
On the Nightshatter's bridge, a sudden alarm blared. Tranquility's calm, melodic voice cut through the noise, laced with an uncharacteristic urgency. "Captain! Roy! Zehrina's power output is spiking! Your personal mana reserves just dropped from ninety-three percent to seventy-six! It's still falling!"
Roy staggered, leaning a hand against the console as a wave of vertigo washed over him. He felt the drain, a sudden, violent siphon that was a hundred times more intense than Vol's had been. "Zehrina, wh-what… what are you doing?" he stammered into the comm.
Her voice came back, steady and resonant, a lecture delivered in the heart of a storm. "Eryndra could only decipher a fragment of the text on her containment unit. That's how she unlocked her Apparition Mode. I, however, can read far more of my own." The dust around her pulsed, swirling faster, thicker. "This isn't dust, Captain. The only piece of its true name I can decipher is 'Navi'N'. They are beings of which this world knows nothing, even I still don't understand most of it.. This is a small taste of their true capabilities. This is the Squall of the Navi'N."
The purple-veined dust tightened further, the drain on Roy's mana spiking again before settling into a steady, voracious pull. Tranquility's voice was a grim monotone. "Mana at fifty-six percent and holding, Captain."
Zehrina's form became a silhouette within a storm of her own making. "Squall of the Navi'N," she commanded, her voice a low, resonant hum, "go. Slaughter your target."
Violet arcs of pure, untamed energy jumped between the swirling particles. The living deck of the elven dreadnought began to vibrate, groaning under the sheer pressure of the unleashed power.
Lady Brinevein paused mid-stride. She turned, and for the first time, her mask of bored indifference cracked. Her eyes widened, just a fraction. It wasn't fear. Not yet. It was something slightly less telling. Concern.
A sudden, absolute stillness fell over the ruined chamber. The sprites around Brinevein hovered, their playful flickers frozen. The three Presidroids, their tactical analysis momentarily scrambled by the new variable, set their stances. The corridor held its breath.
The dust around Zehrina thickened with a sound like crackling, superheated glass. Lady Brinevein turned her full attention away from the Presidroids, her focus now entirely on the elf who was not an elf. With a sharp, almost violent gesture, she ripped a mass of green sprites from the very wood of the ship's deck. The entire vessel seemed to go still, its faint, living pulse momentarily silenced.
"Looking at your face," Lady Brinevein said, her voice a low, analytical hiss, "I can tell you are not of the true elven line. Yet you wear our shape. What are you?"
"I do not know," Zehrina replied simply, her voice calm. "I just came in a box."
"A box?" Brinevein's lip curled in a sneer of pure, aristocratic disgust. "How absurd. I will give you one more chance to answer me honestly." She took a step forward. "You remind me of someone I have been searching for. An elf that is not an elf. The partner of… him."
Zehrina opened her mouth to reply, but Brinevein cut her off, her patience clearly gone. "We should sit. Talk. I will have my chefs prepare a meal. Or," she added, her smile turning cruel, "feel free to decline. I would much prefer to kill you anyway."
The answer came in the form of hostile action. "Pyrotic Spire."
Rings of Navi'N dust shot out, encircling Lady Brinevein's feet. They spun, friction heating the air until it shimmered. The dust erupted upward in a searing, incandescent column. Blue sprites flared to life around Brinevein, their combined energy barely holding against the heat, as a single, powerful white sprite blasted her clear of the inferno just as it peaked.
A furious screech of raw energy filled the chamber. Three blue sprites, two green, one red, and a single white one fused together, their colors bleeding and swirling until they conjured a massive, glowing red, heat-wreathed, translucent root. It branched, hundreds of smaller, vine-like tendrils lashing out towards Zehrina.
A storm of spikes burst from the Navi'N swarm in response, shattering every single vine.
FDR, seeing the opening, leaped onto Lady Brinevein's back, his movements silent and precise. "Do not forget about me, oh pure one," he said, his voice a low monotone, as he poured a torrent of gravity magic directly into her. He dragged her down, her body forced to one knee, before a group of sprites broke his hold and knocked him loose.
The Navi'N swarm, as if enraged by the vine attack on its master, exploded outward. Vicious, violet arcs of energy lashed through the air, carving huge, smoking gouges out of the ship's walls, floor, and ceiling. Zehrina set one arm forward, one back, and spun once. The dust around her formed a razor-thin accretion disc of pure, cutting force. It fired. The line of purple energy cleaved the ship horizontally, shearing through bulkheads and support structures, and tagged Lady Brinevein directly across the stomach.
Smoke and dust lifted, revealing a scene of utter devastation. Parts of the ceiling collapsed, raining down splinters and debris. From the wreckage, Brinevein's voice, unharmed and utterly indifferent, drifted out. "Where are my slippers? And I do hope my new dress is ready for collection." She rose, a living mockery of consequence, and rushed Zehrina, abandoning spellwork entirely.
Her fists hammered against the swirling shield of the Navi'N swarm, each blow a thunderclap. She broke through, grabbing Zehrina and rag-dolling her across the chamber. Zehrina, though outmatched physically, kept her focus, answering with faster, sharper Navi'N blades that appeared between the blows, forcing Brinevein to disengage.
"What is wrong?" Brinevein taunted, her voice a singsong of cruel amusement. "Come now. What do the savage ilk of humankind say? 'Fight me like a man'? Yes, that is it. Fight me like a man."
Zehrina landed lightly on her feet, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across her face. "Not really my style. But… Eryndra might scold me if I don't give it a shot."
A sheath of the Navi'N clad her upper body in a suit of sleek, black armor. She met Brinevein's next charge, trading blows. She was immediately outclassed. Every feint, every block, was turned into an agony of bruising and jarring impacts by Lady Brinevein's centuries of practiced, brutal martial arts.
With each step Lady Brinevein took, the floor cracked beneath her feet. FDR's gravity magic was still layered on, a constant, crushing weight.
"I have grown tired of this weight," Brinevein announced. She called a single, shimmering magenta sprite to her hand, crushed it, and smeared its dissipated energy across her own body. The gravity field vanished. Her movements spiked to a speed that was far faster than before.
She dove through a gap in the oscillating ring of Navi'N blades, merging a white, a light blue, and a brown sprite in her fist. She punched Zehrina clean off the ship, sending her hurtling towards the dark water below. But a platform of Navi'N dust formed instantly beneath her, allowing her to slide across the surface of the water before rocketing back up to re-engage.
Truman, seeing his chance, began to rapid-prep his Little Girls. FDR took each one as it formed, cocking his arm back like a star quarterback, and hurled them with a gravity-amped throw that made Truman's own look like softballs by comparison.
A rain of electric light blue sprites sweeped past the bombs and caused them to prematurely explode. A green and brown sprite combined, forming a hard funnel of living wood. Following that, a red, blue, and white sprite fired a focused a jet of boiling, superheated water through the funnel.
FDR and Truman dodged, their movements almost perfectly synchronized, their shared prediction algorithm running at full capacity. The stream of water cut deep into the ship and the faint screams of unsuspecting elven pirates rang out.
On the bridge, Roy noted, with a flicker of concern, "Their synergy seems just a fraction slower than when Washington was present... I hope they can manage.
As Zehrina closed in again, FDR shouted, his voice a sharp, clear command. "Zehrina! Three nights ago, approximately five-thirty, what did Roy run into in the corridor? Flip it!"
A genuine, unrestrained laugh broke through Zehrina's serious expression as she rode a wave of dust in for another attack.
Roy slapped on the comm button, "what the hell are you guys even talking about?" He felt a familiar, frustrating pang of being on the outside of an inside joke. And he was fairly certain the joke was on him.