They crashed into the far wall, the palace trembling. Peggy cried out as her weakened body took the full brunt. She collapsed near the edge of the platform.
Glacius staggered, blood dripping from his mouth, but still rose-barely. He looked at Peggy with an unfamiliar urgency.
"Run," he said coldly. "You'll die here, and it'll be your own naivety."
Peggy, breathing hard, whispered, "Why do you care...?"
He didn't answer for a moment-his eyes shifted. Something unreadable in them.
"Just... run."
But that moment of distraction-
Electrica struck.
With a thunder spark, she pierced his side and sent him crashing into the wall, the ice behind him shattering. His body dropped, his breathing labored.
"GLACIUS!!" Peggy screamed, dragging herself toward him.
Electrica's fury was blinding. "For that betrayal-you'll suffer. You're no dream prince. You're filth."
Peggy crawled across the debris and finally reached Glacius, her hand trembling on his arm.
"...Did you really save me?" she asked, her voice soft, fragile.
Glacius winced. "...I avoided your vitals."
"What?"
"With calculated precision," he said through shallow breaths. "I impaled you in a way that would look fatal. But it wasn't. I also calculated the angle. The force. The water's flow direction."
Peggy's eyes widened.
"I made sure you'd land where the current would carry you. That island-the one we conquered with the aquatic neutrals-it would take you there. I... knew they'd heal you."
Peggy stared, heart twisting. "Why would you...?"
Glacius turned his eyes away. "Electrica was a real threat. From the moment I first saw her... I knew. Power level, behavior, unpredictability. She's chaos incarnate. I needed to end her-but I couldn't storm her palace outright."
He looked at Peggy then, voice colder again.
"So I played the role. The charming suitor. The fool. I gained her trust. I destroyed her defenses. I planned to kill her once I was inside."
Peggy swallowed hard, whispering, "So all along you were just..."
He nodded. "It was all... an act."
Peggy's lip trembled. "And... the way you held her... the way you smiled..."
"Manipulation," he said bluntly. "I'm good at it. Charming, deceiving-makes infiltration easier. Especially when someone's foolish enough to fall for it."
Peggy's heart clenched.
"And love?" Glacius added, almost disdainfully. "It's a weakness. I don't fall for anyone-especially not someone who thrives in chaos. Someone like Electrica. She can't ever align with my ideals."
Peggy was silent, barely breathing.
Glacius, injured but composed, finished, "I preserve. She destroys. There is no harmony in that."
Above them, Electrica's silhouette pulsed with wrath, lightning dancing violently across her outstretched arms as storm clouds spun like halos of fury.
"Then both of you," she snarled, her voice crackling with thunder, "will be eliminated-together!"
Just as the lightning bolt surged down-
Peggy acted.
With a desperate flutter of her wounded wings, she grabbed Glacius from behind, her body shivering with strain. She didn't think. She just moved-
dragging them both out of the line of death.
They crashed behind a broken pillar on the far side of the hall as Electrica's blast obliterated the marble floor they'd just been standing on.
Electrica blinked in disbelief.
They were gone.
Hidden behind the crumbled wall, Peggy's breaths came in shaky gasps. Her skin burned from residual static, her wings were torn and twitching. Glacius, pinned beneath her arm, shifted slightly, the chill of his aura less biting than usual.
"...You didn't have to do that," he muttered, eyes narrowed. "I can handle her. You're going to kill yourself at this rate."
Peggy didn't look at him-just leaned her forehead gently against his back.
"I know," she whispered, her voice tired but sincere.
"But I'm not here to be saved. Even if I'm weak... even if I'm not strong enough to fight at full power... I still have my sense of justice."
She tightened her hold just slightly, her warmth pressed against his cold.
"You preserve," she said softly.
"I protect. Isn't that the same thing in the end?"
For a fleeting moment, Glacius was silent. His eyes flickered with something unreadable. He could feel her heartbeat against his back, faint but persistent.
But before he could respond-
A scream tore through the air.
"STOP IGNORING ME!!" Electrica's voice roared like a tempest.
The sky cracked.
Suddenly, a barrage of amplified electric blasts rained down upon the palace, turning pillars to ash and walls to molten stone. Electrica descended like a goddess of wrath, her body glowing with energy beyond natural limits.
Glacius's eyes widened.
He quickly generated a shield of thick layered ice to block the incoming strikes-but the force behind them sent shockwaves through even his defenses.
"I miscalculated..." he muttered under his breath. "I completely miscalculated."
Peggy lifted her head weakly. "What do you mean?"
"She's... stronger than I ever imagined," Glacius admitted, his jaw tightening. "I've been measuring everyone's power by instinct since I was a child, but hers... I didn't take her rage into account."
He looked toward the storm of destruction she was unleashing, his eyes narrowing.
"This is what she becomes... when she's mad."
Lightning tore through the sky, spiraling wildly like a dragon unleashed. Electrica's voice echoed through the air, twisted with heartbreak and fury:
"You think you can play me?! You think you can betray me and run off with her?! I'll turn this whole island to a grave before I let that happen!"
She hurled another massive thunder blast down upon them.
Peggy gritted her teeth.
Glacius stood up, catching her as she staggered.
He looked down at her-bloodied, burnt, but still willing to stand beside him.
"...You really are insane," he muttered. "Helping someone who tried to kill you."
She coughed a breathless laugh. "You didn't kill me... not really. You made sure I lived."
Their eyes met-opposites in every way. Ice and light. Cold strategy and warm resolve.
And above them, chaos raged on.
Electrica was more than a villain now-
She was heartbreak, vengeance, and devastation made real.