Book 5 Chapter 21 - Battle of Wills (notes)

The lady starts rambling about Jasmine needing to stay in containment and more servants try to restrain her. Itsuki raises his gun and tries to threaten the lady but he is captured by the amalgamations and is scanned too.

Itsuki is planned to be a military commander type unit, using his hallucinations as a weapon on the battlefield. Xant does his best to fight off the servants and Letu is cutting down as many as he can but they are simply overwhelmed.

The lady starts talking saying that shes just following instructions from The Lord Fourth’s emissary that she should be contained. she plays a hologram of a human. He is distressingly handsome with cold black eyes, dressed in a sleek nerve suit with more conventional human armour over the top. He is detailing an incident report with professional, passive-agressive frustration.

“The organic-stock designated F18(double check jasmines number) was improperly sedated during the environmental processing procedure. It was during the final stages of acclimatisation, specifically repressuring the eyeballs, that the nerve endings of the surgery amalgamation were connected to F18. The candidate produced a Frequency pulse that was violent and powerful enough to cascade through the entire nervous system of The Lady of the Arc. The Lady was unresponsive and inconsolable. I have put the lady and F18 into induced stasis and stealthed their location, I will be returning to Shambala and return to claim the Lady with a proper escort fleet-”

Until Rynard bursts through the doors and All hell breaks loose, since they felt jasmine distress they have been destroying everything they can get his claws on..

The lady’s laughing confused as to why ‘they are against her when she is only trying to help them,’ her human like thrawls attack the group, and they defend where they can, but they keep coming, they hear the commotion outside, the monsters have returned to attack their army outside.

The lady laughs that her supply of vassals is endless, she will wait until they are done. She summons more then a dozen human like vassals and they attack.

But there are hallucinations mixed in with the real vassals and they are on the back foot.

Suddenly the doors burst open and Aralukia, the humans and more pirates burst in to help with the fight.

During the fight, Xant notices where the Lady’s freq pulses are coming from. He runs to the spot near the bridge and puts his hands to the floor, he calls jasmine over, she and rynard rush over to him. Xant says he needs her sword, Jasmine hands over Letu’s sword, xant activates the plasma node on the sword and drives it straight into the floor. He cuts a piece of the floor out revealing the Lady’s Ship brain. He calls for Rynard to defend them, he offers Jasmine his hand, theyre going to take the fight ‘to her’.

Xant connects with Jasmine and the Rajavan Shipbrain.

Darkness.

Violent and silent darkness.

Xant is the connection between two powerful pressences, he does his best to bring them into one mind. He consentraits and when the darkness lifts, he is back at the black ocean beach.

Jasmine, with her long hair and power armour is lying beside her on the powdery sand.

The lady stands on the distant shore, the horrific collection of nerves and organs that make up her ‘real self’ and her ‘beautiful puppet’ self dangling like an angler fishes light in front. The lady crazy rambles about the nature of reality and lunges after both jasmine and Xant. the lady summons imaginary minions to attack the pair and dream logic means, they die in the dream they die in real life.

Xant tells jasmine to split up and run, jasmine refuses but xant insists that she trust him, Jasmine reluctantly listens. Xant disconnects Jasmine from the joint dream and stands to defend against the lady.

Xant lures the lady far out into the ocean, and when she is nearly on top of him, he manages to ‘break’ the water below them. They both fall rapidly into the ocean below, continuously falling into the darkness of the bottomless pit. The lady is heavier, screaming in fear as she is pulled into the depths. Xant accepts his fate, closing his eyes and letting his body drift into nothingness.

But something grabs him.

Jasmine, holding his wrist, swimming to the surface. Xant is confused but allows it to happen.

When he awakes it's a messy sight.

Jasmine's face is covered in blood, the metal connection on the side of her face torn off and his fingers cut open to allow a direct connection. She is holding his hand up to her face and crying while he wakes.