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Gladiia spends a few minutes confirming that she cannot swim anymore.
She sits calmly at the bottom of the sea, feeling the pressure press on her skin and the temperature caress it.
She recalls her hometown, the first nursing robot she saw when she was little, and the blurred outlines of her mother's face. She feels the voices leave her.
Ishar'mla's voice is gone. The long struggle, the question that had plagued Ægir for centuries, the existential threat that loomed over Terra—all vanished when that deplorable false god, her closest comrade, died.
Only the Consul is left, here and now.
At the last moment, Ulpianus had given up his chance at survival to his junior. How ironic. He was not the sort of person to flip through a Consul's personal files, and the two of them have never brought up seniority. Only now, with the long war finally over, does Gladiia start entertaining the idea of letting her guard down. 'Ah...' She realizes that perhaps she had never truly known Ulpianus.
No... that also includes Laurentina, Skadi, and everyone else. They had always treated each other as Ægir, as Abyssal Hunters, as kin, as comrades.
But their scent has vanished, lost to the sea along with the last fleet.
Gladiia smiles. She knows how this ends.
The song does not cease, even after destruction and sacrifice beyond reckoning. This is about more than one false god. The footsteps of doom have never slowed.
Ulpianus was right. Skadi may have tried to remind everyone of this at a time when their hearts had gone astray. But Gladiia feels surprisingly at peace. Value and meaning that she had never imagined creep into her mind. In a game where there could only be one result, she found a way to accept it all.
After a brief moment of rest, she tears off the flesh of a Sea Terror and covers her own bleeding wounds. Her body is now no different from We Many. She stands up. Bioluminescence illuminates the pitch-black ocean floor for her. In the nearby ocean currents, millions of Seaborn raise their bizarre limbs and watch her every movement intently. We Many beg her to submit, to abandon meaningless resistance, to forsake meaningless death.
She understands their intentions. She is made to. It is the very last thing distinguishing her from them.
She gazes at the resting place of Ishar'mla. She gazes at where the god awoke. Gladiia knows that when their kin ask, We Many always answer.
Therefore—
'How many are left?'
She asks.
