Fri’Avgi. 

 

That was the name of the weapon, the Anima Telum that Yuriko held. Knowledge flowed into her head, most of it incomprehensible, though she caught a few words every now and then. Enough to realize that the knowledge was couched in an older form of the Verdanian language. Old Imperial?

 

Her Facet was glowing steadily while she held Fri’Avgi and she soon realized that the glow was slowly growing stronger, to the point that a new pattern was starting to form.

 

Yuriko knew she should feel alarmed at this but she wasn’t. The truth was, she wasn’t feeling much of anything nor, she found, could she do much of anything. Though nothing was physically stopping her from dropping the sword, she realised she couldn’t command her fingers to unclench and her hand remained firmly around the sword’s hilt.

 

Worse, her Animus was flowing into the artefact, cycling back into her Facet after a few seconds. All of this without her Intent or even permission.

 

The process persisted even as her mind remained in a lucid dreaming state. Minutes passed and whatever had been keeping her in place faded away but so did whatever had dampened her emotions. The flow of her Animus cut off but she felt as if her reserves had diminished. 

 

“Chaos!” she swore loudly and jumped away from the pedestal. Fri’Avgi remained there but Yuriko could feel it. If she closed her eyes and spun around in a circle, she could point to a direction and be confident that it was there. The weapon felt both strange and familiar as if she had already seen it before. The sensation was the only thing stopping her from fleeing.

 

Salvation. Power.

 

Words whispered in her mind. What was happening to her? She shook her head, rubbed her eyesand pinched her side. The pain convinced her that this was all too real.

 

“Alright, Yuri, think!” she muttered out loud.

 

The last thing she knew was that she was cuddling her blankets. Obviously, she sleepwalked but one doesn’t just sleepwalk into a tomb and somehow make an ancient weapon acknowledge her as its owner. 

 

“The Golden Silhouette?” 

 

It was the only thing she could think of. But how? Wasn’t he just part of her Facet? How could this even happen? Could that thing control her body whenever it wanted to? Did whatever she learned merely be a prepping technique so that he could puppeteer her body? The circulation pattern nudged her to action during battle and sometimes, she even felt like something was moving her limbs for her.

 

She backed herself up into a corner and was huddling and shivering in terror while her mind ran in circles. Why couldn’t she have inherited the Davar Heritage instead? Things would have been far better! She had her life planned out already and the Atavism Ritual had run roughshod over her path. Even now her Facet was glowing without her input, sending waves of heat down her Anima which eventually bled through her physical body.

 

Stop, stop. Stop!

 

Her Facet obediently fell dormant and the chamber was plunged into darkness. The only source of light left was Fri’Avgi. A red, fist-sized gem was embedded in the crossguard and there was a smouldering light deep inside it. 

 

Hic! Sniff.

 

Her eyes were wet, leaking tears down her cheek. She sniffled while her nose became stuffed.

 

“I…I need to calm down,” she said to herself. “Why am I even here?” She had sought a way to end the Wave from the Avos. And here it was. 

 

Fri’Avgi. The ancient weapon could stop the Wyldlings, she knew. But at what cost? She wondered. There was nothing for free in this reality. 

 

She forcefully controlled her raging emotions. That she could still feel panic through the cracks of her concentration was of no matter. She got up and walked up to the weapon, nearly tripping over the debris. When she grasped the hilt, the gem and the entire blade flared with golden light.

 

How would she even wield this giant thing anyway? It probably weighed as much as she did, if not more.

 

She pulled at the handle experimentally. Fri’Avgi shifted easily and started toppling when she didn’t support it. With a panicked yell, she tried to push the huge sword back on the pedestal only for the entire thing to fall the other way. If not for her reflexes, Yuriko would have fallen over when the expected resistance was far less than the strength she used to push.

 

Yuriko ended up supporting at least half of Fri’Avgi’s weight, which was no more than her Plasma Caster. In frank disbelief, she raised the weapon over her head and swung horizontally. The whooshing air was all the proof she needed that she wasn’t hallucinating. 

 

A bit of the knowledge unfolded from her Facet and she knew that the Fri’Avgi did weigh more than Yuriko did except to its bonded owner. For her, it was quite light and as easy to wield as if it were made of bamboo. Of course, from the mass and length, wielding it in battle wouldn’t be easy either.

 

Yuriko started making her way back up the passage. At first, she tried carrying the artefact as she would with any kind of two-handed weapon but she kept hitting the tip or the sides on the stone. She ended up resting it over her shoulders and it only took a few broken stalactites before she got the angle right. 

 

The door at the cliffside opened easily and it revealed all four members of her team trying to batter the door down. Mikel was just about to release a fireblast when the door swung open and he choked when he saw her.

 

“Chaos!” Krystal exclaimed, “what were you thinking? And what’s that?”

 

“The artefact weapon,” Yuriko said tersely. “I’m a bit tired, can this wait in the morning?”

 

Krystal looked into her eyes for a long moment. “No.”

 

Yuriko sighed. 

 

They gathered at the campsite. Mikel built up the fire until it was large enough to cover the cliff face in dancing shadows. Fri’Avgi was by her feet, resting in the dirt. 

 

“So,” Heron began, “What’s that again?”

 

“The weapon Shillogu promised to trade the location for.”

 

“A dull greatsword? Aside from the fancy decor, it doesn’t even look like it could cut anything.”

 

“Maybe bludgeon things to death?” MIkel suggested. “How did you even manage to carry this thing?” He tried to touch the hilt and when nothing happened, he tried to lift it. It didn’t shift an inch but mostly because he wasn’t really trying.

 

“You think you can lift something heavy positioned like that?” Yuriko asked drily. 

 

“Hmph!” Heron snorted. “Let me try.” He walked up to her, bent his knees, grabbed hold of the hilt with both hands and tried to deadlift Fri’Avgi.

 

“Don’t throw out your back or something,” Mikel snarked while Heron managed to lift the weapon off the ground by a few inches.

 

“How could you carry this as if it weighed nothing?” Heron muttered after he dropped it.

 

Yuriko shrugged. “Part of its power, I think.” She picked up the artifact with a single hand and waved it easily over her head.

 

“Wow. But, erm, how exactly is this thing going to end the Wave?” Orrin yawned. “Are you supposed to use it against the, uhm, what did Shillogu say? The Will of the Wave?”

“If it’s that light and it's dull to boot, how exactly will this help?” Heron continued the thought. 

 

Yuriko sighed. “I’m not sure. Just touching Fri’Avgi sent a lot of into my head. Other than the name and the fact that it somehow bonded to me, I’m not sure what it can do.”

Krystal mused. “Well, what do other artefacts do? The Gemheart attracts and controls Wyldlings and the Faron’s Crossing’s temple core makes the Atavism Ritual possible or maybe easier.” 

 

“This one is clearly a weapon,” Yuriko said, “but I think I have to study it a bit to unlock its power.” She yawned. “Why don’t we turn in. How did I end up in the tomb anyway? I don’t really remember.”

 

“You just got up,” Heron said. “I thought you needed to uh, relieve yourself or something. When you didn’t return after a few minutes I tried to look for you.”

 

“Good thing I woke up or he would have left the watch,” Krystal grumbled. “We saw you just as you entered the gate and it shut right after.”

 

“Well, now that we have the artefact, we’re returning to the lake?” Orrin asked. “It’s really the best place to stay.”

 

“Yes. I need to learn how to use this too,” Yuriko muttered. 

 

Mikel had the watch at this hour so he remained awake as the others tried to settle back to sleep. Yuriko stared at Fri’Avgi. The firelight reflected off the golden sheen of its blade while the red gem glimmered. 

 

With a sigh, she crawled into her bedroll. The thought of activating her Facet right now was frightening. A part of her that she so wanted to have, a part that was integral to her life and survival, had betrayed her. Utterly inconceivable yet terrifying once the possibility was considered. If they didn’t need the artefact to stop the Wave, she would have thrown it into a river or left it to be buried. 

 

But was it really an artefact? Was it really the key to victory? She wasn’t convinced that it was. Truthfully, she knew that they were grasping at straws when Shillogu offered the quest. The fact that they succeeded so easily…

 

She shook her head and groaned. She wasn’t like this at all. She must have been more spooked than she could account for. 

 

“Better to find out now,” she suddenly decided. 

 

Yuriko closed her eyes and channelled her Animus into her Facet. The world faded away and the Golden Silhouette appeared.

 

It was the masculine one who appeared instead of the figure that looked like her. He stared at her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. He frowned then shook his head. When he opened his mouth, she could see through him. No words came out.

 

“Why did you take me to the weapon? How did you move my body?”

 

The silhouette stared at her for several minutes but eventually shook his head. He stepped back, held out a hand and somehow, Fri’Avgi was in his hands. His body shrunk down to a facsimile of hers and then started performing a different dance. 

 

It was the first, second, and third sword dances, altered for wielding a single large blade but the intent of each was the same. Create an opening, protect yourself, and smash through with power. Yet the greatest difference was that the Animus strands cycled into Fri’Avgi while the silhouette performed.

 

The flow looked so natural that Yuriko couldn’t help but think that Fri’Avgi belonged to the Golden Silhouette. And she remembered: the image of a man wielding a greatsword, the exact likeness of Fri’Avgi, moving and striking, cutting down his foes. It was a vision she saw just a few weeks ago. A lifetime ago, when her dreams were unbroken. 

 

“You’re my Ancestor?” she whispered. “My Heritage?” 

 

The Golden Silhouette smiled as she danced. A smile that hid more than it revealed. The silhouette didn’t acknowledge Yuriko’s words but didn’t deny it either. 

 

How did one of her ancestors get a hold of an artefact weapon and, more importantly, how long ago did he die? Faron’s Crossing was only twenty years old, while Rumiga City had only existed for three hundred years. The Plane of Rumiga had been discovered by the Empire at that time. The indigenous barbarians preceded the Empire and the Confederation of Free-City States were founded in the past two hundred years. Did the tomb exist before the presence of the Empire? Did her ancestor precede the Shattering more than three thousand years ago, even before the Empire was founded? 

 

Yuriko felt so small against the backdrop of ages. 

While her mind churned, her Anima remembered the circulation pattern. It wasn’t really that different from what she did before and, hopefully, it would be enough.