Renault is unfazed by Chloe’s declaration. Then he shakes his head. “I was afraid that words alone would be unable to sway you.”“Sway me?” Chloe asks. “Why would I want to work with someone like you? I don’t even know what my father saw in such a contemptible… I don’t want to even call you a man after everything you’ve done, you monster!”
“Monster. Maybe so. Maybe what this world now needs is a few monsters to keep the peace.”
“Wait,” I say. “Before we do this, I want to ask Seraphina one thing.”
“What is it?” she asks.
“What do you want out of all of this? I can’t imagine that you really and truly want to rule as some sort of dictator.” My hand moves to my heart. “It’s just… It feels so at odds with what I would want if I were in your position, and since you and I are both Seraphina, I thought you might be the same.”
“Well, Renny says that this is the best way to fulfill the goal of overcoming the System.”
“And what about all the people you killed?” Chloe asks. “That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would help you with that. Especially–”
“Oh, well, they kept trying to kill us, so obviously I’m going to fight back. I guess I might have overdone it just a bit.”
It takes everything I have not to facepalm at such a declaration. Her personality is just so similar to the original Seraphina— naive, innocent to a fault, completely unaware of her power or the effect on her surroundings. Which leads me to ask.
“Have you been around for a long time?”
“How long is a long time?”
“Long enough to see the snow fall and many seasons of cold and ice? To see Christmases, and to celebrate your birthday?”
“Snow? I know what that is, yes. But does it ever get cold enough to snow? I thought it had to get really cold, colder than it ever got here at night.”
“How terrible,” Chloe messages. “But I guess she really was born too recently to have experienced all this. Though, it’s strange. [Life Sense] is picking up some amount of life force coming from her, but… it’s not nearly enough to explain the amount of Ether you were sensing from her. It’s like she only has enough life force equal to that of a child not integrated, or a wild animal.”
“Still sensing a colossal amount of Ether. Even more than before, though not much more.”
“Miss Mortensen, Miss Jacobs,” Nicholas says. “May I please speak with that other Seraphina?”
“Seraphina?” I ask. “There’s someone who would like to talk with you before we get started.”
“That’s enough, Sera.” Renault says, his gauntleted hand on the hilt of his black blade. “The time for talk is–”
“But Renny! I want to know what he has to say first.”
“Seraphina, don’t you want to get to the fighting now?” Renault says. “I promise you can have an extra large bowl of spicy fried rice when you finish here.”
“I wanna talk to the other guy first! Don’t you want to listen to what he has to say?”
“I–” Renault sighs. “Very well, Seraphina. But let’s make this quick, already.”
“Yay!” Seraphina, for all her decor as a dark angel— a getup I very much appreciate— looks far too whimsical and unserious for the gravity of the day’s events.
Nicholas’ [Mental Link] reaches out from my own mind and taps on the other Seraphina’s mind. She again tilts her head in that quizzical fashion, not moving until I let her know about Nicholas and his telepathic abilities.
“Greetings, Seraphina,” he says. “My name is Nicholas Richardson. I’m a Major working in the United States army, and the executive officer overseeing this mission.”
“Oh, executive officer? Like, a really strong guy? Are you going to fight against me?”
“No. While I do have some strength of my own, my class is all about communication, thinking more and more effectively, and coordinating Skills, buffs, and battle tactics among a large number of people. If you still want to fight, it will be against Miss Mortensen and Miss Jacobs there.”
“Miss Mortensen and Miss Jacobs? You mean Sera and Chloe? Sera’s just like me!”
“Yes, and I suspect the three others with you know more about how and why that is than I do. What I would like to ask you is if you would like to come work with me. I could–”
“Enough of this!” Renault shouts through the connection, loud enough that I cover my ears in instinct. “It’s bad enough you’re throwing all these lives away, and now you are trying to take my daughter from me? Do you have no sense of shame?”
“Do you not have any sense of shame yourself, sending in your own daughter to fight these battles?”
“He doesn’t see you as a daughter,” Chloe says. “Just a tool to be used for his own ends.”
“How dare–” Renault starts, but Chloe continues, cutting off his indignant speech before it can begin.
I still have no idea how Renault was able to hijack the [Mental Link]; it didn’t seem like Nicholas wanted to talk with both of them. Maybe he and that Seraphina share something like Chloe’s and my [Angelic Bond]? It’s the best-slash-only explanation that comes to mind.
“While we were in a dungeon a couple of weeks ago, we fought against a creature called Hive Queen Apocrites. The details of that encounter aren’t too important, but the end result was a fight against a giant bee woman who fought alongside thousands of little drones that she called her ‘children’. But they were nothing of the sort in the end. She threw them away like pieces of trash, letting them all die just so she could survive–”
“I have had enough of this!” Renault swipes toward Chloe, only for both me and the other Seraphina to block the attack.
And damn is the attack forceful. His [Speed], unlike that of my counterpart, isn’t overly impressive by the standards of our current levels, but his [Strength] is absolutely insane. If I’d tried to block it myself, I’m not sure if the force of impact wouldn’t have split right through Filia’s shaft, then bisected me vertically all without so much as being slowed down. As it is, I’m still left shaken for long enough that his follow-up strike would have dealt serious damage, if not killed me outright.
“But Renny, we were still talking!”
“Seraphina, listen to me. That man, Nicholas, wants to kill both of us.”
“I said no such thing,” Nicholas says.
“So you say,” Renault says. “You’ll couch it in kind words about ‘bringing me to justice’ or ‘restoring order to the nation and the world. But it’s all just platitudes. Seraphina, I promise you,” he says to the other Seraphina. “If we don’t work together to fight these people who are trying to kill us, well, they’re going to succeed. These two girls in particular are incredibly powerful. Far more than should be the case for most; Sera here I understand, but Chloe…”
He freezes as he stares into Chloe’s resolute gaze. “So that’s it.” He chuckles. “Hank has the gall to call himself morally superior in any way when he conducted illegal and unethical experiments on his own daughter? Truly, your hypocrisy knows no bounds.”
“What he did to me was wrong,” Chloe says. “And yet, when I think about all that’s happened and all that is still to come, I can no longer find it in myself to be angry with him.” She points [Aria]’s blade at Renault. “He did evil, yes, but he did so with good intent. And, now that I understand what he did and why, I’m grateful to be here, given a chance to put my fate in my own hands rather than another’s.”
“Well spoken, indeed. And I am the same!” Renault cackles, pointing his blade against [Aria]’s edge. “Good, evil? It doesn’t matter. In this world, what matters is having the strength to carry out your vision for the future. And my vision for the future is one where we band together under the mantle of the strong, in order to protect the weak. Democracy is a fragile system ill-equipped to meet the challenges of this new world. So let us dispense with these conversations and let our strengths determine who shall prevail on this day.”
“Are you of the same mind, Seraphina?” Chloe asks the not-me Seraphina.
“Well, Renny does make a good point, and I do want to fight the strongest of them all, which I think is the two of you.”
“Can you buy just a few more seconds?” Nicholas asks, though I sense he’s withdrawn his presence from the other Seraphina.
“We’ll fight you, if that’s what you really want,” I say. “But I want you to know that your decisions are yours to make. No one is allowed to decide what you want to do but yourself. Not me, not Nicholas, not even Renault.”
“Are we fucking done yet?” Renault says. “It’s a damn shame your father isn’t here to join us. Then we could settle all these grudges once and for all and lay all these matters to rest already!”
“Oh, right!” Seraphina— the other one— manifests a colossally-oversized greataxe with a shaft a good eight feet long and a head stretching roughly four feet in diameter. The massive weapon must weigh a good hundred pounds, maybe more, and yet she moves it about with the same ease as flicking a toothpick. “Alright, Sera! Let’s see how you handle this!”
Even with Chloe’s spell enhancing my parameters and [Morningstar’s Triumph] sending my stats yet higher, I’m still only barely able to follow her movements. Her attack is a simple downward thrust, but with that much speed and mass, whatever it hits is going to be crushed. By what can only be described as pure dumb luck— a rarity for me— or more likely an act of mercy on Seraphina’s part, the attack misses by the breadth of a hair and slams into the concrete at our feet.
The single blow is strong enough to register a quake that sends birds scattering for miles. The rumble of buildings is soon joined by a bellow of footsteps and war cries from the south. Then, matching the ferocity of the soldiers fighting alongside us, Legion forces rise up in comparable number and fighting potential.
Kristil is among the vanguard, her blazing violet form unmistakable even in the brightness of the midmorning sky. Her form meets up with two spheres from the Legion side, one of crimson, the other of a deep cerulean which does not blend into the daytime in the slightest.
I’m expecting an aerial assault, but it doesn’t seem those fighter planes have been sortied for this battle; considering how quick the thousands of combatants are moving on both sides, friendly fire would be less a possibility and more a certainty. Even Hank and his shadow-wing jet hasn’t made an appearance. I worry for him, wherever he’s wandered off to.
But I can spare no more thought for anyone not directly in the fight. Seraphina— the other one— charges at me again, this time even faster than before. Though Chloe tries to intercept with a [Scouring Light] to at least daze my counterpart, Renault is there, using his glistening onyx blade to deflect her attack upward into the sky.
I can’t block this attack, but I can impart just a little bit of momentum with a well-angled [Repulsion] barrier, forcing the attack off course and grazing just past my left shoulder. Another catastrophic impact, this one sending chunks of concrete, dirt, gravel, and sand flying into the air, leaving a crater that stretches a good twenty feet in diameter and six feet deep.
I’m able to backflip out of the way of the debris, though I receive no quarter before Seraphina and Renault attack us, this time in unison. Right now, though, I have no idea how we’re going to survive, let alone triumph.
Chapter 371: [367] 4.88 The Second American Civil War VI
10 min read