Laughter bubbled up from Zehrina, light and genuine, as she rode a current of black dust toward the fight. The sound was so out of place in the carnage that it drew Lady Brinevein's gaze for a fraction of a second. That was all the Presidroids needed.
"Truman, now," FDR commanded, his voice a flat line of tactical certainty.
A shift in the air, a sudden spike of raw power. Truman stood with his hand outstretched, palm open. Floating just above it, a sphere of pure, incandescent energy pulsed, dense and heavy as a dying star. Its light cast long, dancing shadows across the ruined chamber, illuminating the grim, determined faces of the three Presidroids.
"Fundamental Magic. Fission," Truman announced, his voice echoing with an almost religious reverence. "Fat Lady."
The bomb materialized, a silent, terrifying promise of annihilation. A moment later, FDR's gravity magic latched onto it, a shimmering, invisible tether. The sphere was no longer a conjured spell; it was a projectile.
A flicker of movement. JFK stepped forward, his own hands tracing intricate, unseen patterns in the air, ancient runes forming and dissipating around his fingertips in a silent, complex sequence. They were ready.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Then Zehrina re-entered the fray. She gathered every particle of the Navi'N, every mote of her swirling dust, and compressed it. The storm coalesced into a single, massive, spear-shaped object, its tip a needle-point of pure, solidified darkness. She lunged, thrusting the spear at Lady Brinevein with the full force of her remaining strength.
A contemptuous scoff. Lady Brinevein dodged with an almost lazy grace, her movement a fluid, dismissive backhand that sent Zehrina spinning across the chamber. So hard her weapon didn't even follow. "You really thought I would be distracted by such a childish display?" she sneered, not even bothering to watch Zehrina crash into a far wall. "I do not need to look at you to defeat you."
She turned her gaze back toward the Presidroids. The massive bomb, now fully formed and pulsing with an almost unbearable light, hovered before them.
For the very first time since the battle began, Lady Brinevein actually looked scared.
Panic flared in her eyes. She drained her sprites with a desperate, greedy gasp, ripping huge, shimmering clusters of blue and green from the very wood of the ship. The magical lights that had illuminated the chamber sputtered and died. The low, thrumming hum of the living vessel's systems halted, plunging the room into an eerie, oppressive silence. From outside, a sound like a great, collective scream echoed as she tore more sprites from the ocean itself, pulling them through the hull.
JFK stepped up, his hands now still, his gaze fixed and unwavering. His voice was a quiet, almost gentle, but utterly absolute, command. "Forgotten Scripts: Executive Privilege."
A three-dimensional orb of shimmering, golden runes formed around JFK. It launched from his hands, not as an attack, but as a judgment. It crossed the distance between them in an instant and silently encased Lady Brinevein in a cage of pure, undeniable law.
The sprites shielding her, the ones she had so desperately gathered, simply… dissipated. The fifteen rainbow sprites, the source of her amplified power, visibly, painfully, left her body, their light obscured as they were enveloped by the runic sphere. Her power dipped catastrophically. She was no longer a divine force. She was just a cornered, terrified elf.
"Those sprites," JFK stated, his voice devoid of all emotion, "you claim them as yours, but nothing stays chained forever. Be free, sprites."
She screamed, a raw, animal sound of pure terror, and tried to run. "No, no, no!" But she smashed into a solid wall of the Navi'N swarm as Zehrina, now recovered, stood before her, the disguised spear unfurling into a wide, impenetrable umbrella of shadow, blocking her only path of escape.
Fat Lady detonated.
The flash was blinding, a miniature sun born and dying in the heart of the throne room. All of the blast's apocalyptic force was contained, focused, and reflected inward by Truman's containment magic. The destructive power, with nowhere else to go, turned entirely on the single, trapped figure at its center, sparing the rest of the ship, and everyone else, from its incandescent wrath.
The light from the explosion died, leaving behind a ringing silence and the smell of ozone. Lady Brinevein's body, stripped of its divine glow, dropped from the sky like a fallen angel. A hard, wet smack echoed across the deck as she slammed into the living wood.
From the bridge, watching through the monitors, Roy let out a shaky, incredulous laugh. "That's what you guys were talking about? Me running into the wall? Nice job taking down the psycho queen, but did you really have to humiliate me in front of the worlds number one beauty!"
FDR's voice, calm and measured, crackled back over the comm. "I am quite sure it was intentional, Captain. No need for embarrassment. We were all well aware you hit that wall. On purpose."
Truman started to add, his voice full of mechanical sincerity, "Yes, that's absolutely—" but he was cut off by a sound that should have been impossible. A wild, guttural, and utterly delighted peal of laughter.
Lady Brinevein, bloodied but grinning, pushed herself up from the deck, her expression a mask of pure, ecstatic fury. "Do you have any idea how long it has been since I tasted the ground? Since I was forced down to the dirt?" She rose to her feet, her body a canvas of bruises and burns. "Aside from the Drowned King and that damned demon, none but my late father have ever brought me this low."
With a snarl, she unleashed hell.
Tens of thousands of sprites tore upward from the very core of the ship in dense, screaming swarms. They shredded the upper decks of her own vessel with a horrifying, unraveling energy. There were no splinters, no explosions. The wood and rigging simply... ceased to exist, erased by a storm of pure, magical carnage.
She floated high above the chaos, arms raised, a dark goddess presiding over her own self-destruction. With an explosive pulse of raw power, she forcibly reclaimed the fifteen rainbow sprites JFK had freed. They slammed back into her body like ethereal bullets, her aura flaring with a renewed, terrifying brilliance. Then, with a single, imperious gesture, she drew even more sprites from the ocean for miles in every direction. The sea itself seemed to boil as blue, brown, and green lights streamed towards her, a river of raw, elemental power.
Her laughter, raw and ugly, echoed over the water. She began shoving them together, dozens at a time, her hands trembling, her voice cracking with a demented glee as she tried to force the sprites to fuse.
"You will all die screaming," she muttered to herself, the sound a low, intimate promise of pain. "Slowly. I want it to last. I really, really do…"
Below, Zehrina staggered to her feet, the Navi'N swirling to her aid. "I can hold her," she gasped, her voice tight with desperation. "I'll trap her with me. FDR, when I grab her, hit us with all the gravity magic you can manage you have. Bury us both at the bottom of the ocean."
A new voice, smooth and theatrical, boomed over the Nightshatter's loudspeakers, cutting through the chaos. "Now wait just one second, dears! Let's begin the second, and final, portion of the show!"
The entire battlefield seemed to freeze. Lady Brinevein, her face a mask of furious confusion, turned. "What?"
"Hey, gorgeous," Roy's voice purred, dripping with a confidence he didn't feel. "I don't normally give out kisses for free, you know. But for you? I can make an exception."
She spun, her burning gaze locking onto the distant bridge of the Nightshatter.
The Nightshatter's railgun slammed a solid tungsten slug straight into her face.
Roy's voice, deadpan and cold, echoed over the now-silent sea. "Five percent arcane load, bitch. How does that feel?"
The impact folded her backwards, her head snapping back with such force it nearly touched her own tailbone. She dropped, a silent, ungraceful plummet, utterly out cold.
Her unstable, half-fused cluster of sprites, now without a guiding consciousness, began to tear itself apart. Sprites shot out in every direction at terrifying speeds, some piercing the ancient wood of her own ship, others launching skyward like comets. One red sprite punched straight for the stars. Another, a searing ball of white-hot energy, collided with the Nightshatter's hull, leaving a deep, molten indentation.
Roy's voice boomed again. "We have a problem! Somebody kill that thing before it blows us all to hell!"
"No!" FDR shouted. "JFK, release them!"
JFK's eyes shone with a cold, clear light. "Forgotten Scripts: Executive Privilege!" A three-dimensional cage of golden runes surrounded the chaotic, self-destructing ball of fused sprites, giving them a single, absolute command: be free. Instantly, the sprites broke formation, scattering into the wind, their chaotic energy dissolving as each returned to its natural element.
Disaster, for the moment, was averted.
"Presidroids, sweep the ship for loot," Roy ordered. Warrex, limping but refusing to be left behind, joined them. They hauled out piles of gold and strange, shimmering artifacts, loading them onto the Nightshatter with practiced efficiency. Lady Brinevein, now completely wrapped in a tight cocoon of Zehrina's Navi'N swarm, her face the only part left exposed, was unceremoniously hauled aboard.
On the deck, some of the Presidroids were already poking through the piles of treasure. Presidroid James Buchanan, having found a particularly opulent collection of priceless, ancient necklaces, draped them over his shoulders and began to strut around the deck in a ridiculous parody of nobility, waving at everyone like he was the belle of some grand, forgotten ball.
Lady Brinevein's eyes, fluttering open, locked on the scene. Her expression fractured, pure, mute outrage and disbelief warring on her beautiful, bruised features.
She tried to spit her usual venom. "Sure, you got the cheap trinkets, but you will never breach the arcane lock I placed on my finest...of...." She cut off, her teeth grinding as Presidroid William R. King, now inexplicably wearing a spectral wedding dress and veil, curtsied gracefully before Roy.
"Aunt Fancy and Miss Nancy out here looking good!" Andrew Jackson joked from a nearby console.
Lady Brinevein lost it. She began screaming, a raw, incoherent sound of pure, impotent fury, thrashing against her bonds. A moment later, Zehrina calmly slapped a final layer of dust over her mouth, and the screaming stopped. Peace and quiet, at last, were restored.
With Lady Brinevein in custody and the ship fully looted, the crew blasted what remained of her fleet to splinters with a final, contemptuous barrage of missiles. The Nightshatter pulled away, leaving a wreckage-strewn, and blessedly silent, sea behind.