The roaring clap of thunder and the blinding flash of lightning shot through the air as Nil’kin blasted an approaching wall of water with a fierce lightning strike. Sheer electrical voltage ripped through the water, searing the infected Bleeder that lingered within — allowing Sky and the Pyrotechnic Knight to rapidly heat the water into a steam explosion. As they did, two other infected Bleeders flew through the air, metallic claws outstretched as they attempted to latch onto the two Pyrotechnics, only for Gavon’s gravity to throw both of the corrupted Bleeders off course. Amidst that, Spike fabricated a small buckler and then chucked it through the air at the corrupted Bleeder that had been hiding in the water, successfully nailing them through the cloud of steam and cleaving their body in twain.

But as their broken and silver-scarred body fell to the ground, one of the other corrupted Bleeders leaped to their side and stooped down to grab the corpse with both hands. The moment they did, silvery goo surged across the Bleeder’s body to join with the corpse, rapidly merging the two corrupted into a large, mangled monster — a monster that immediately lunged to the left just in time to avoid being swallowed by a Chaos Void. Spike leaped forward, attempting to grapple with the monster to hold it down, but he was slapped out of the air by blocks of ice as two of the other Bleeders bounded forward with rocks, water, and ice flying about them. Before they could jump on top of Spike, however, Twy hit them both with an arrow each, and then followed with conjuring up a massive swell of water to try and drown the Bleeders. Rebehka quickly jumped in to freeze the wave through, locking the corrupted down — though with their own Hydro- and Cryotechnism, they rapidly worked to free themselves.

“…This isn’t working,” Rebehka muttered, backing up next to Nil’kin as she watched Gavon attempt to disrupt the corrupted Bleeders with his gravity manipulations. “It’s impossible for us to lock these infected down with the Chaotics we have, here.”

“I disagree with ‘impossible’. Don’t underestimate the Knights,” Nil’kin shot back, only to turn her attention back to the Bleeders trapped in the ice. The Void Chaostechnic Knight had taken the opportunity to try Voiding out the corrupted Bleeders, but the infected’s own Cryotechnism enabled them to practically “swim” through the ice fast enough to evade the black spheres of oblivion. “…Given enough time, we’ll take care of the corrupted, here, I’m certain of it,” Nil’kin declared. “But the problem is that girl you brought with you — she’s disappeared. That means there’s still a risk of a full-blown Critical Infection, and if that happens, then we’ll lose the islands — or worse!”

“I know…” Rebehka responded, scowling with frustration as she attempted to fight the corrupted’s own Cryotechnism to slow them down enough for everyone else to attack them. “…But we can’t spare anyone here. What’s worse, is that we’ve lingered long enough for Liask to have a massive head start. She could be anywhere, by now…”

“A problem we wouldn’t have if you had just killed her the moment she was infected,” Nil’kin insisted.

“She would’ve been fine if you hadn’t shown up,” Rebehka snapped, only to purse her lips, as if trying to rein herself in. “…We don’t have the time for arguments. We need a plan — or at least, someone to go after Liask, and stop her.”

“I can do it.”

“Huh…?” Rebehka and Nil’kin glanced to the side, just as Kestrel approached, carrying Phoenix, Conrad, and Pierce on the winds with her.

“I can do it,” Pierce reiterated, staring straight at Rebehka and Nil’kin as he did. “You need someone to go after Liask, right? That’s me.”

“Pierce…!” Phoenix muttered warily. “You can’t…!”

“What do you even know about the situation?” Nil’kin retorted. “The last I saw you, you had fallen to your emotions and gone Berserk. How do we know that won’t happen again?”

“Believe me, I’m still hella angry about everything that’s happened, here,” Pierce snapped, glancing to the side as Kestrel set everyone on the ground and then created a shield of wind around the group, just in time to deflect several incoming shards of ice. While she focused on protecting the group, Pierce turned back to glare at Nil’kin, continuing, “from what I’ve heard, you’re half the reason things went to shit, and I’m this close to trying to tear you apart for it!”

Nil’kin glared back at him haughtily. “You’re certainly free to try.”

“Oh, I’d love to. But it has to wait.” Pierce looked back to Rebehka. “You need someone to find and stop Liask, right? Well, I’m a Velocitechnic, and I can sense the damn infection, too. If the goal is to find her fast, then I’m the only one who can do it!”

Rebehka gave him a doubtful look. “…Logically speaking, you might be right,” she eventually replied. “…But you do understand what we’d be asking you to do, right?”

Pierce averted his eyes, his right hand drifting to his torso. “…Yeah. You want me to… …Liask needs to be stopped.”

“I’ve been in your shoes, before,” Rebehka said. “This kind of thing is much easier said than done. Are you sure you can do this? Absolutely sure?”

“As much as the Knights might’ve fucked things up, I’m still half the reason Liask was infected in the first place,” Pierce replied. “…If she really can’t be saved, then someone needs to put her out of her misery, and that ‘someone’ might as well be me. Might just be the only way I can make it up to her, for putting her through so much shit…”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything,” Phoenix insisted. “This isn’t your responsibility alone to bear!”

“Maybe,” Pierce admitted, and then glanced back at the Dean. “But we don’t have much time. Right?”

“…That’s true…” Rebehka said. “Due to the spacetime maze that was present until just recently, it seems like the entire forest around here is dead, and the infection can’t perpetuate itself with long-dead organic matter. Not at this stage. It’s likely that the infection is using Liask to find the living portion of the forest, so it can rapidly multiply into a Critical Infection. And given how quickly things fell out of control, here…”

“If Liask reaches the living forest, then a Critical Infection is practically guaranteed…” Phoenix finished grimly.

“Well, I mean…” Conrad spoke up uneasily. “We’ve stopped Critical Infections before… right?”

“A Critical Infection on this scale would require the Fog Islands to be glassed,” Nil’kin declared. “And that carries its own risks.”

“An infection here could also have disastrous consequences elsewhere on the planet,” Rebehka said. “The infection is endemic to Relédiaka, and a Critical Infection incident here could rile up the infection in Relédiaka enough to cause a chain effect. That would be disastrous… So, as much as I hate to say it… Pierce, I think you’re right. You might be our only option, here.”

“Can you really handle this, though?” Phoenix interjected while passing Pierce an uneasy look. “This is… this is a lot to handle, Pierce! You’ve never even had to kill someone before, and now, we’re asking you to take Liask’s life! You realize that, right?”

“I know!” Pierce snapped. “…I know. But what other choice do we have?”

“Dean Densalin could come out here and actually lend a damn hand,” Nil’kin suggested.

“And if she does that, then Luke is as good as gone,” Pierce argued. “We’ve already lost Liask. There’s no point in losing someone else, not if we can help it!”

“I hate to say it… but I agree,” Phoenix admitted. “If Pierce really thinks that he can do this, then I think that he’s the best option. But we can’t argue for forever — we’ve been standing here for too long, already!”

“The best option is getting Dean Densalin to help,” Nil’kin said. “Your continued insistence on cures will be the doom of us all!”

“You—!” Rebehka began, her lip curled, only to stop herself and take a deep breath. She then turned to Pierce. “…Go. We’ll deal with the corrupted, here.”

“Got it.” Pierce nodded once, a solemn look on his face as he crouched down, in preparation to dash off. “…Don’t worry about me, I’ll stop Liask. Just watch out for yourselves! Overdrive: Speed Break!”

In the blink of an eye, he was gone, having disappeared into the fog around the outpost.

“Alright…!” Rebehka muttered, turning her attention back to the fighting — just as Spike crashed through Kestrel’s wind wall and tumbled to the ground at her feet, followed closely by one of the corrupted Bleeders. Ice and lightning both simultaneously struck the incoming corrupted, flinging them back through the air as Nil’kin lunged into the fray, with Rebehka shouting to everyone else, “do everything you can to stop the corrupted! Kill them if you can, but keep yourselves safe, above all else!”

“…Right!” Phoenix and Conrad acknowledged as they uneasily joined Kestrel in fighting back the corrupted Bleeders.

---

*

Silence filled the air, itself stagnant as heavy fog laid low to the ground, masking the dirt and dead trees that blanketed the Fog Islands. Even the bright sun above, newly able to shine down on the full extent of the islands, had yet to dispel the fog… leaving one lone man to dash and leap through the low-lying clouds, brow furrowed as he focused on the task in front of him.

Not much time had passed since Pierce had set out from the outpost, but his supersonic speed allowed him to cross massive amounts of land regardless. Uneasy knots twisted in his stomach as he continued to sense the infected Bleeders back at the outpost, but he could feel a smaller tickle urging him towards his true quarry, far to the north.

Liask… The name raced through his mind, and along with it, the image of a young woman with naturally tan skin, shoulder-length black hair, and a prominent scar stretching from just above the left corner of her mouth, down her neck, and disappearing below the collar of her shirt. She seemed to smile at Pierce, before she turned around and ran off, disappearing into the darkness… which was quickly replaced by the sight of a singular, feral, wolf-like beast with silvery, metallic rashes covering its body. It snarled, and then lunged at him—

“Fuck…!” Pierce swore in frustration, stopping in the branches of a dead tree in an effort to clear his thoughts. That damn vision… I can’t believe it came true, after all! Damn it…!

A dull throb shot through Pierce’s torso, prompting him to reflexively clutch at the faint scar he had received on that fateful night on Ainminthalus. But a second later, he forced the pain out of mind and leaped from the tree, sailing through the air over the fog and into the distance.

I need to focus, he thought bitterly. I need to focus on finding Liask. I can’t let things get any further out of control. I can’t let anyone else die…!

 .

“You’ve never even had to kill someone before, and now, we’re asking you to take Liask’s life! You realize that, right?”

 .

“When you got yourself captured, Liask was the one who pushed for us to rescue you.”

.

“…So this is the infection, huh? I guess… I should’ve took Trenon’s advice…”

 .

“Here… Use this! It’ll protect you from more harm!”

“What—? Forget me, protect yourself—!”

“You’re wounded, you need it more than I do!”

 .

“You’ll regret everythin’ you’ve done against Rokres, soon, outsider.”

 .

“WAIT!! You just wanted me, right?!”

“Pierce, what are you—?!”

“If you leave them alone, I’ll come with you, alright?”

 .

“Even Rokres once appreciated the threat you two were to the Bleeders… and now, you let them walk all over you, even usin’ their names to cover your own misdeeds!”

“One more chance, Garkam.”

“…You’ll regret this, all of you! Rokres won’t take this challenge lying down! Compound Tresnon may be the biggest Compound, but you’re still nothin’ to Rokres!”

 .

“The plan all along was to kill Chief Kores, but once I heard that you outsiders were here… well, let’s just say that the opportunity to pin the death of Rokres’s leader on Compound Tresnon and the Earthians is an opportunity that I can’t ignore!”

 .

“And if there’s a trail to find in Rokres, then we’ll find it. Believe it or not, I’m not just here for shits and giggles. I want to find Minilas just as much as you do.”

“Thanks for that, Pierce.”

“Ever the altruist. Now let’s just hope that things go as smoothly as you seem to think they will…”

 .

“But we still can’t really go anywhere if we don’t know where to go. We still need some kinda lead… something, anything…”

“There’s one I can think of. It’s a place I wanted to check out, anyways.

“Rokres.”

 

Damn it all…! Pierce shook his head vigorously in an attempt to shake the thoughts that bombarded his mind. If only I hadn’t suggested Rokres… if only I’d been stronger, faster, so that I didn’t have to give myself up to them! Then we wouldn’t…! Fucking, damn it…!

In frustration, Pierce turned his gaze skyward, looking up at the blue skies above as he leaped over the fog below. Bright sunlight and billowing clouds filled the sky, almost seeming to taunt him in what felt like his darkest hour. But the weather was ultimately unimportant; what mattered was finding Liask. And in service of that goal, Pierce turned his attention northward — where he spotted a couple of mountains peeking up through the fog, their stony peaks towering over everything around.

.

“…It’s a little embarassin’ to say,” Liask commented, adopting a bashful smile as she continued, “but my namesake is in Nimaliaka. Mount Liask, the tallest mountain on the planet… I always wanted to visit.”

.

A deep scowl spread across Pierce’s face, the image of Liask’s smile almost seeming to infect his thoughts. Nevertheless, he quickly turned toward the distant mountains and launched himself towards them, hoping that peering out over the islands from their peaks would help him pinpoint Liask’s current location. He had no idea how large the islands actually were, after all, and also no idea where the line between dead forest and living forest began — with any luck, the sight lines from the mountain peaks would answer all of his questions.

With Pierce’s Overdrive-boosted supersonic speed, he reached the mountains within a mere few seconds, leaping his way from cliff to cliff to rapidly reach the peak. As he jumped, he could feel the air cooling around him, sending an involuntary shiver down his spine — but he couldn’t afford to be worried about temperature, of all things. Putting the cool air out of mind, he soon reached a tall cliff, stopping to finally look over the Fog Islands. Vast swathes of fog, like a sea of clouds, appeared to stretch in all directions, with only a handful of mountains and their valleys extending up out of them. No where could the coast or ocean beyond the islands be seen… though if Pierce squinted, he could barely — just barely — make out the green of live trees in the distance, muted by gray fog.

His entire body grew tense; the living part of the forest was just on the horizon. If Liask had already reached it, then the situation could be far out of control already — but Pierce had a feeling that she hadn’t. A knotted, twisted feeling in the pit of his stomach, accompanied by slight nausea that compelled him to cautiously inspect the cliffside. A slow step here, a wary step there… eventually, Pierce rounded a small outcropping, only to be met with a familiar sight. The sight of a young woman with naturally tan skin, shoulder-length black hair, and a prominent silver scar stretching from just above the left corner of her mouth, down her neck… and joining with a mass of silver that covered her chest, arms, and legs.

“Liask…!” Pierce muttered, his gaze lingering on the metallic silver that covered her entire body — as well as a number of monstrous additions, including long, silvery claws; four long, bladed tails; and the upper body of the Velocitechnic Knight, attached to Liask’s back through the corruption that had clearly overtaken her. The Knight’s armor also appeared to have melded with Liask’s body, as her arms wrapped around Liask’s chest, as if to further secure herself against her host… leaving two heads to stare back at Pierce.

Shit… Pierce uneasily summoned his Ayas Weapon — a blue, black and silver hilt in his left hand; a silver blade with a short handle in his right; both connected by a long blue energy tether — and gripped it tightly. He slowly looked over Liask’s new monstrous form, only for his gaze to return to her face, seemingly unmarred by the infection — if not for her newly silvered scar. But more than that, as she looked back at him… for a moment, just a moment, Pierce thought that he could see her eyes glisten with recognition and fear.

 .

“If… if you ever see Liask… tell her… tell her that I… …that I…”

.

One more memory shot through Pierce’s mind, one that almost sent him reeling. But in its wake, he furrowed his brow, and tightened his grip on his weapon as he adopted a battle-ready stance. In that moment, the emotion he thought he had seen on Liask’s face was wiped clear by a sort of bestial fury as she turned to snarl at him — a snarl echoed by the Knight’s head as ice and stone began to appear and circle her body. “Don’t worry, Trenon, Liask…” Pierce muttered to himself, and then lunged forward, steeling himself for a stressful battle. “…I’ll remember you both!”