Elizabeth stood beneath the darkening sky, staring upward with dull, lifeless eyes. Every so often her lips moved without her consent, loosing words that were not her own.
"Huh… why can I not move? I must go free Rethen!"
Each time the name of that vile being passed her mouth, a flicker of pure hatred sparked behind her gaze.
She fumbled in her sack, found one of the blue marbles, and swallowed it dry. Her mind cleared just a little. The scorched remnants of her arm prickled as the faintest healing trickled through burned flesh, so slow it was almost nothing, yet she felt the sharp pain that was like as a million tiny teeth biting at her skin.
Moments earlier, she had uncovered a hidden trait in the blue marbles. They did more than sustain her; they cut through a small part of the fog in her head, leaving her briefly clear-minded and full, and coaxing a thread of healing through bruised and burnt tissue. Outwardly, she looked like a corpse that refused to lie down, her skin looked bloodless and waxy, her hair limp and lifeless. But on the inside, her mind was a storm. Rage churned there, and a depth of hatred she had never known herself capable of burned at its center.
Before this day, Elizabeth had never hated anything like she hated Rethen.
She felt pathetic. Used. A tool that had not realized it was a tool until too late. But she had at least recognized her mistake. She had been ignorant. Arrogant. She had lowered her guard in a place where such weakness meant death. That, more than anything, stunned her.
'Why?' she wondered. 'Why did I let my guard down?'
At first she had turned the blame inward, carving into herself with it. But the longer she sifted through her memories, the stranger it all felt.
Carelessness was not like her. She was not one of those who walked into the nightmare Spell blind, never taught what its trials meant. She had always known its true horror. Her brother the one who she consider invincible, the one she thought could not fall had died in a nightmare. That fact had been seared into her.
'Rethen… just how long have you been playing with my mind?'
Something had been wrong from the moment she stepped into the city. She remembered hearing music then, the soft pluck of strings, and brushing it aside. Before she knew it, her feet had carried her toward the sound. She had found it odd yet she didn't act on it, it was as if her mind ignored the danger she was in.
In the tower, it had been the same, that maddening melody, the slipping of her thoughts, and how dazed she became every time she heard it.
Music, she realized, linked both moments, the city and the tower. She had heard the harp each time, just before her mind began to fray.
'Ah. So that is why he never stopped playing.'
It was not simple performance. The music was a tool, a channel. An artifact, most likely, crafted to twist the minds of those who listened.
She watched the sky darken by degrees, her eyes cooling with it.
'It is time.'
She had been shaping a plan ever since she had destroyed Koven's heart. It was not a good plan since they where too many unknowns, too many ways it could go wrong, but it was the only one she could think of.
"And Koven...." she thought, "you are going to help me."
She summoned a memory.
Memory: [The King's Glory]
Memory Rank: Supreme
Memory Tier: I
Memory Type: Weapon
Memory Description: [For his might shone brighter than most, for his courage was inspiring, for his fame was sung across the world, for his people he was a saint, for his enemies he was worse than a devil. Behold the king of the giants, the Guardian of Disaster.]
Memory Enchantments: [True Heart], [Titan]
Light coalesced into form. A bow settled into her hand, as tall as she was, its limbs pale as moonlight and its golden string shimmering with captured radiance. It was beautiful in a way that made her chest ache.
A shadow of grief crossed her face as she reread the description.
'Worry not, Koven. You can rest now. I will not forget. I will be eternally grateful.'
She had already spent time learning its weight, forcing herself to adapt to its size with only one arm since the other one was useless, testing what its enchantments could do. She had only dared to try [True Heart] once before nearly collapsing, not from physical fatigue, but from a deeper, inner depletion. Soul‑tired.
She dismissed the bow and pushed herself upright. Her plan pivoted on that bow's ability.
When she stood steady, she drew a dagger and flipped it into the air. She watched it fall, then held her palm open beneath it. The blade missed her hand by only a few inches, but that was enough. A shallow cut opened across her palm as the dagger bounced off the deck.
Its translucent metal scraped against the gold. The dagger left a thin mark on the ship.
She retrieved it, hissing as blood dripped freely, splattering across the golden hull. The ship responded at once, its glow flaring several times brighter.
She studied the dagger. She knew it was an artifact, but it had never become a memory when she seized it. Perhaps it lacked some crucial quality, some catalyst that allowed an artifact to be subsumed as a Memory. She did not know what that missing piece was. It did not matter.
She let out a slow breath and began to walk.
With each step toward Rethen's prison, she let another drop of blood fall. With each drop, the ship's glow intensified, bright veins of light racing along its surface.
Hours crawled by. She walked, and bled, and rehearsed the plan over and over in her mind, adjusting it, shoring up weak points, accepting the ones she could not fix. Failure meant more than death. It meant being consumed, and being lost forever.
At last, the crater's lip came into view.
She stepped into the clearing and looked down.
Rethen still sat at his harp, so still he could have been carved there. Stone fingers plucked at golden strings. When his eyes lifted and found her, the air itself seemed to tighten, an unknown pressure bearing down on her lungs. One glance told her something had changed about Rethen.
He looked more human. The harsh lines of his statue‑like body had softened, flesh rounding stone. His presence pressed harder against her senses, heavy and almost suffocating. The golden chain at his throat, the seal she had already broken, was gone.
And yet.
Under the bluster of his aura, she felt it. There was a hollowness, a weakness he could not quite hide. His power had grown since she freed him from one seal, but the wounds he must have likely suffered when clashing with Koven still persisted in unseen places.
"Strange."
She flinched, expecting his voice to crash directly through her mind.
Instead, she heard it with her ears.
"Strange indeed," Rethen went on. "I thought your mind was under my control. Why are you here?"
Something was off. Why was it speaking instead of assaulting her mind immediately? Was it truly that weakened?
She did not know how much her blood had cost him; the restoration of the goddess's sorcery must have weakened him a great deal. She had also noticed, as she walked here, that her mouth had gone quiet. After the first few hours her lips had stopped forming words she did not choose.
Still, she did not dare open the link between her mind again. Not yet.
And he had not only fought Koven. He had fought Koven while bound and weak. Even with one seal gone, the damage from that clash still lingered.
'He is stalling, and gathering energy' she realized.
'Fine. Let him.'
If he wanted to buy time, she was not going to complain. Every second gave her more space to act.
When she did not answer, Rethen laughed.
"Oh, I see," he murmured. "I see. Truly, you creatures favored by my mother are always lucky. But are you certain you don't want to free me? I promise you a land of silver and gold, power beyond your feeble mortal grasp. I will conquer the realms and set you above them all. I will even grant you a share of my mother's dominion. Listen to me. Listen. LISTEN TO ME. WHY WILL YOU NOT LISTEN, CHILD OF THE SEA?"
Elizabeth ignored the rising hysteria and summoned the silver bow.
The shouting died at once.
"…Oh, Mother," Rethen whispered. "Why do you hate me so…"
She still did not respond. She studied the bow as it formed, then planted its lower limb against the ground and braced it with her foot, it was hard to balance it but she managed. With her single hand she called forth one of Rethen's own swords, settled the blade's handle against the string like an arrow, and drew.
Rethen watched her, it's expression flattening into disdain.
"You intend to use my artifacts against me, child?" he asked. "How arrogant. Did you not see what happened when you used it last time?"
Her fingers faltered slightly.
The sword flared, light rushing along the edge. A torrent of images of what had happen in the tower crashed into her. Far away, Rethen began to chant in a language her ears could not follow.
She gritted her teeth, shoved the visions aside, and pulled the string back farther.
Rethen went very still. it's eyes widened as it looked at the sword.
"Why can I not unmake my artifact?" it whispered. "…What is that stench?....Child of the sea, why do you reek of a daemon?"
Elizabeth did not so much as glance at him. She set her stance, lifted the bow with her leg, and took aim.
"It does not matter," Rethen said sharply. "Begone, child."
He plucked a single note.
The sound speared through her mind. The devouring fog rushed back in, and she felt as if the world tilted, sliding sideways. Pain bloomed behind her eyes, it was sharp, but nothing like the annihilating agony from before. Through it, she managed a thin, bitter smile. Dispite the lack of control she had over her mouth, her other half seemed to understand her.
'Too late, you bastard.'
She had known it was delaying, trying to to get used to its regained power, and trying to pull enough strength together for one decisive blow. Her silence had unnerved him. Since it's attempt to buy time failed, Now, cornered, he had struck even though it knew it would most likely drain whatever leftover energy it had to do so.
It knew that if the sword reached it, even if it didn't kill it, it would wound it severely.
'I curse you, Giant king,' Rethen thought bitterly it's soul had been heavily injured by Koven in there fight for control over Elizabeth. 'If my soul were not strangled by these chains, if I could call upon my full strength, a supreme soul would have shattered like glass in my grasp. And destroying the mortal mind of the child of the sea would not have been something I needed to bat an eye at.Yet here I am.'
"Oh, Mother. Why do you hate me so?" It whispered.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was oblivious to the internal struggle Rethen was facing. She was unaware of how truly weakened it was, not that it made a difference.
Her fingers loosed the arrow at the same instant her consciousness began to slide away.
The sword‑arrow leaped from the string and whipped across the crater. On its own momentum, it would never have reached its mark, she had never expected it to do so, with the way she shot it. It would have fallen short, clattering harmlessly to the ground.
With any ordinary bow, that would have been the end of it.
But not this one.
Power drained out of her. The bow in her hand shone faintly as her mind finally slipped under Rethen's full control. Only a sliver of her will clung on.
She had already triggered the memory enchantment [True Heart].
She knew exactly what it did. Her earlier test had taught her that much. The enchantment guided the shot to whatever her heart most desired to strike, regardless of distance or angle of the shot.
Mid‑flight, the sword halted midair. It hung in the air for a moment, then pivoted, it's point swinging on an invisible hinge. With renewed speed, it shot toward—
The harp.
Rethen watched it come, it watched the sword tear through the air.
At first it was confused, then it was horrified.