The trident and blade clashed again, sparks flying as sea spray erupted around them.
But then, everything slowed.
The ocean itself hushed, its waves falling eerily still while fight erupted on top of it.
Kadita remembers something that has long been forgotten by her.
Once Upon a Time…
A young woman walked along the shore, her laughter bright, her presence radiant. This was Kadita, once a mortal princess of the Sundanese lands. Loved by her people, adored for her kindness, envied for her beauty.
But envy, as the sea whispered, always dripped with venom. Not every kind and beautiful princess will be liked by everyone. The envy grew not only from the outside of the castle but also from the inside. The stepmother or more known as the Queen of Sundanese Kingdom at that time was jealous of her beauty and her position to inherit the throne from her father since she was a direct royal bloodline rather than the queen's son. So, the queen has hired a shaman and put a curse on the princess that makes her beautiful face disfigured with scabies and her skin felt like just being boiled in hot water. Her cries for mercy were drowned by the cruel laughter of those she once trusted.
The King tries to heal her but there is nothing that he has ever worked. So, the queen with the king's permission has exiled her from the castle with the reason that she might bring bad luck and shame the name of the royalty.
In a world where no one will ever hear her cry for mercy, especially with her disfigured face and body, she finds peace near the sea. The princess slowly hears something calling for her name from the deep sea. The sea water on the beach shore touched her legs as it wanted to calm her from her sadness.
She still walked slowly into the ocean until…
She fell and drowned into the deep sea.
But even in drowning, she doesn't feel the pain that the world gave her.
Kadita kept sinking deeper, her lungs filled with the saltwater. The sea, however, did not see her as an intruder but felt mercy toward her. It felt her sorrow, her betrayal. It cradled her body as though mourning with her. Then, a light bloomed within the abyss. The water healed her wounds, the creatures swam close, whispering their reverence.
From death, she rose again and transformed. No longer a discarded and disfigured princess, but a legend named Nyai Roro Kidul, the Queen of the Southern Seas. The ocean crowned her, its power flowing through her veins, her will forever tied to the tides.
The memories finally dissolved, and the present snapped back. The Savu Sea raging violently around them. Kadita's eyes glowed like emerald fire, her voice thundering across the arena.
"I was cast away by those people, buried in despair… but the sea feels pity on me and lifted me as its eternal queen. Betrayal could not drown me. Death could not bind me. I am the Southern Sea itself!"
The waves roared, rising high behind her like a wall of divine wrath.
Artemisia, jumping to one of the nearby ghostly ships, only smirked through the spray. "Then you know, Queen," she said, raising her blade, "that the sea respects strength… and also pitying the soul of sorrow. And today, it will decide which queen truly commands it."
And with that, their clash resumed fiercer than before.
The ghost fleet steadied itself, forming a grim wall across the waves as Artemisia stood on the prow of her phantom flagship, facing Kadita's towering water wall.
"You talk about the sea pitying, huh?" Artemisia spat, her voice sharp as steel. "Do you think you're the only one the sea ever listened to?"
The water rippled, and suddenly the Savu Sea itself seemed to remember.
Even the naval Queen starts to remember something while fighting.
Artemisia, much younger, dressed in white, standing over the body of her husband. His lifeless face lit by torches, his warriors murmuring prayers. She didn't cry in front of them. She couldn't. A commander never broke.
She has been named as the next ruler since her husband died and will become the Queen of Halicarnassus.
With more responsibility that she held, she never showed any emotion since it can disturb the mental and emotion of her army.
But later, under the cover of night, she walked barefoot into the shoreline of the Halicarnassus near the Aegean Sea. There, alone, where no one saw her, she fell to her knees. No one else was there to bear the weight of her grief, the weight of responsibility, no one else strong enough to let her rage pour free.
So she screamed not into the sky, not toward the men under her command, but into the sea itself. And the sea roared back.
The sea on the shoreline gently hit her hand that was lying on the sand. It was like the sea touched her hand to let her know that the sea heard her cry. Suddenly a small hard wave came crashing toward the shoreline in the direction of her. The waves splash into her face wipe away the tears on her cheeks.
It swallowed her tears, carried her fury, echoed her defiance. Each wave that struck the shore was like the sea telling her,
"You are not broken. If something disrupts your mind, let it out on me."
The vision surged onward, her aboard warships, leading fleets against enemies far stronger, turning battles with tactics no man would dare. The Persian King, Xerxes I himself admires her wit, trusting her counsel, entrusting her command.
Back in the present, Artemisia's eyes blazed with the same fury that had once poured into the waves. She pointed her blade at Kadita.
"When my husband died, no man stood with me. No city, no crown, no priest. Only the sea bore my grief. Only the sea heard my rage. And it made me stronger."
The ghost ships roared, their phantom cannons booming as if echoing her words.
"I became queen not by kindness," she snarled, leaping from ship to ship toward Kadita, "but by will! And the sea knows my will is endless!"
The next clash exploded phantom steel against the living tide, grief-forged rage against betrayal-born power. The arena itself seemed to tremble as two queens, both blessed and cursed by the ocean, tried to drown each other's legend.
The waves rose like walls, the ghost fleet screamed across the horizon but in the center of the Savu Sea, it became personal. Kadita's spear of living water clashed against Artemisia's blood-stained blade. Sparks flew, not from steel, but from the weight of their wills colliding.
Artemisia closed the gap with startling speed, her phantom ships serving only as stepping stones until she finally leapt straight onto the surface itself. The sea beneath her seemed to hold her steady, acknowledging her fury as much as it did Kadita's divinity.
Their weapons crashed again, but this time Artemisia didn't pull back. She dropped her sword, lunged forward, and her hands closed on Kadita's wrist like an iron shackle. The Sea Queen's eyes widened, and the fight became a hand-to-hand combat.
A brutal knee slammed into Kadita's stomach, forcing air and water alike to ripple out. She staggered, but Artemisia didn't relent.
"You call yourself a queen of the sea," Artemisia hissed, locking Kadita's arm and twisting her shoulder back. "But have you ever fought like a woman abandoned by the world, left to claw her way up alone?"
Kadita snarled, striking with her free hand, summoning whips of water to coil around Artemisia's ribs. But the commander tore through the torrent, dragging Kadita into a vicious elbow strike across the jaw. The sea itself gasped, its ripples surging outward.
The audience above, floating on their sky-stands, held their breath as the divine queen of the Southern Sea was forced back, her pristine figure now blotched with red across her temple, her arms, her flowing robes. The water clung to her wounds, staining them as though the sea itself wept blood.
Kadita's body trembled, her lips parting in disbelief. No one, no monster, no sailor, no kingdom had ever pushed her this far, this close.
Artemisia's voice was ragged but unyielding as she pressed forward, her forehead nearly colliding with Kadita's as their locked arms shook with strain.
"Queens don't beg for respect," Artemisia spat through gritted teeth. "We take it. With blood, with pain!" She shoved Kadita back, fists raining down with soldier's precision, each strike snapping with the weight of war survived.
Kadita staggered, her body marked by crimson streaks where the phantom commander's blows landed. Her once serene elegance was breaking, her chest heaving, her divine image flickering with each strike.
Still, she did not fall.
And in her burning eyes, as blood ran down her cheek into the waves, she whispered back, low but unshaken.
"Then watch closely… because a queen of the sea does not drown."
Kadita threw away her elegance, she then hit her head toward the temple of the naval commander. Both of their heads bleed flowing down through their face. The headbutt then replied with a punch by Artemisia. And Kadita gave one back to Artemisia.
All the spectators, shocked in silence including both VIPs, saw both queens beat each other up not through beauty and elegance but by bloody hand-to-hand combat.
The Savu Sea had grown eerily still. No waves, no phantom ships creaking across the horizon, no roars of Kadita's beasts. Only the two queens, kneeling across from each other, bloodied and gasping.
Artemisia spat red into the water, clutching her ribs. Kadita's hands trembled, pressing against the water made floor for balance, her divine glow dimmed but not extinguished. For a long, unbearable silence, they simply breathed, broken warriors staring across a sea that had stopped moving for them.
Then, it came.
A laugh.
First Artemisia, low and cracked. Then Kadita, soft at first, until it rippled into something wild, uncontrolled. Soon both of them were laughing, their voices carried by the still air, echoing across the arena.
The spectators froze, unsure if this was madness or revelation. Rumpelstiltskin's voice cracked in disbelief,
"T-They're… laughing? After that carnage?!"
Even Hans Grimm blinked, his mocking grin faltering. Leo's sharp eyes narrowed, sensing something deeper.
For the first time, both queens smiled, bloodied teeth, bruised cheeks, swollen lips, and yet there was beauty in it. Not the beauty of elegance, but of truth.
Because in that shared smile, they both realized it: they were nothing more than sad queens whom the sea had chosen to pity. Two rulers abandoned by love, betrayed by fate, bound only by the sympathy of the endless ocean.
Kadita let out a heavy sigh with slight chuckle,
"Hey queen, your name is Artemisia, right? Meeting you might be one of the greatest things that have happened to me in these recent years.
Artemisia first felt shocked but then let out a smile,
"Yeah… and you know what's funny? We are both queens with our own tragedy and both of us have the sea to calm our sadness. It is like…"
Suddenly they both say the same line,
"As the sea feels pity toward us"
They both smile towards each other despite the bruises, the blood and the broken bones. Both queens find comfort that they both have hidden for years.
Suddenly…
The air cracked like a drum.
Leo Grimm rose from his throne, stretching out his hand.
"I call for the golden sphere, and end this fight!"
The golden sphere above the arena responded to his call, splitting open and pouring its dust downward in a radiant stream. The sea itself shimmered with golden light, resonating with Kadita's battered heart.
The Queen of the Southern Sea stood tall again. Her broken body drank in the light, her blood washing into the waves and transforming into threads of gold. Her spear twisted into a radiant trident of water and starlight. Behind her, towering waves rose like thrones, crowned with the glitter of the golden sphere.
Rumpelstiltskin screeched from his balloon:
"A-And there it is! The ultimate move of Queen Kadita, resonating with the very heart of the ocean!!!"
But across the human side, seeing the transformation of Kadita as she is about to ready his sphere advantage of an ultimate one time used attack, Lucianne panic turned to Noah sharply.
"Noah! Call for the golden sphere! We can't let her have the advantage!"
Noah didn't move. His eyes were heavy, guilt-ridden even though from the outside he looked calm. He still looking at the arena below without turning to Lucianne at all.
"Sorry… I can't."
Lucianne froze.
"What do you mean you can't? Are you waiting for the right time?"
Noah shook his head, slowly, painfully.
"I can't because, I already used it."
The words struck her harder than any wave. "W-What?! When did you use it?!?"
Suddenly, she remembered that before the round started Noah met with Artemisia at the entrance tunnel for the humanity side.
"Wait, did you use it… BEFORE THE ROUND STARTS?!"
Noah still focusing on the battle below, not turning a single bit, simply nod
Lucianne's voice was shrill with disbelief. "That was reckless! Insane! Why would you waste-"
Noah immediately cuts her off and says.
"It was her request to use the golden sphere before the match began. At first I hesitated because the golden sphere resonates power from the will of heart of the champion and can create three things: Ultimate move, Match Buff or Weapon upgrade. It has a 33.3% chance for your golden sphere to become either category unless you are very very confident about what your heart feels about. But…"
Noah's eyes dropped to Artemisia, still kneeling in the water, coughing blood but staring up at Kadita's glowing figure with eyes that burned with unbroken resolve.