“I want to go with you,” Gwendith said to Yuriko as she returned to her room half an hour after the conference. Her outer reserves were once again filled to the brim, but her problem had shifted from a matter of supply to a matter of force. It was an odd conundrum, she felt, considering that for the past couple of years, she had struggled with how long she could keep her sword dances up, especially with Fri’Avgi in the mix.

She just stared for a moment at the shorter girl, eyes blank as she ruminated. Gwendith, for her part, fidgeted at Yuriko’s silence.

“Ah, the assault force only includes Knights and Colossi,” Yuriko said.

Desire stood up and walked to Yuriko’s side and said, “I will follow, Master.”

Gwendith shot the Chaos Lord a withering look. Yuriko shrugged. “Desire is a Chaos baron, so she’s strong enough.”

Yuriko rolled her shoulders uncomfortably when Gwendith transferred the glare to her. The other girl sighed.

“You’re right, but I don’t like it.” She grabbed Yuriko’s hand and held it in both of hers. “Please…”

“I can’t.” Yuriko said, “You’re not strong enough. I don’t want to…to risk you.”

“Oh.”

She could feel Gwendith’s pulse racing. She held the other’s shoulder in a firm grasp then murmured, “Don’t worry, I’ll destroy those threatening our safety.”

She needed to shed blood, but…the rabble was easy enough to defeat, but what about the chiefs?

After she left the conference room, she caught up with one of the Colossi pilots, Centurion Lleufer. The older woman said that the chiefs weren’t that strong before. So they could only have gained power through the ritual they had witnessed.

“Aye, that’s probably it,” Lleufer agreed. “When you mentioned it before, I didn’t know what to think. But,” she shook her head, “gaining power in such a manner isn’t without consequence. I just hope that whatever it was, it won’t be to our detriment.”

“Why, what do you think the side effects are?”

“Honestly? It looks like the sacrificed Chaos Lord became a power source, but I don’t think the  barbarians have the appropriate technique or tools to really break down a Chaos dweller’s essence. I suspect some bits of its Anima survive within, and it’s influencing the chiefs. They have never been this aggressive before. Ah,” She smacked her palm with her fist. “It’s also because Lady Kinnock isn’t here any more.”

“The Duchess?”

“Yes, she’s one of the strongest people in Rumiga City, and she’s a Knight-Commander.”

“Eh? Why didn’t she wipe out the barbarians then?” Yuriko frowned.

By herself, she could probably storm Ouera Bo and massacre any of the barbarians she came across and the only reason she didn’t was, well, who knew what traps they’ve laid down there, and how strong they really were? Knight-Commander had as big a power gap between Knight-Captain as Knight did to Novice.

“The same reason why we’re all stuck here in the outpost. There are leagues of tunnels in the fortress, and we don’t know what kind of trap they’ve prepared. We also don’t know their true strength, and even a powerful Knight-Commander can be worn down and drowned with numbers. While fewer can get to her in the tunnels, it’s also easier for them to collapse it on Lady Kinnock. Ah, she did slaughter any of them who ventured outside.”

So it was mostly wariness that had prevented the Knight-Commander from wiping out the barbarians.

Yuriko got jolted out of her wandering thoughts when Gwendith enfolded her in a tight hug. The action also brought the other within her Anima and firmly in perception range. Her heartbeat was fast and erratic, and she trembled ever so slightly. Gwendith was genuinely frightened for her, but was desperately controlling herself.

Yuriko reached around the smaller girl’s shoulders and patted her back a bit awkwardly. Of course, that was when Desire hugged her from behind, both girls sandwiching her.

“Come back to me, safe,” Gwendith said through gritted teeth.

“Ah, yeah,” Yuriko said. “I will.”

They stayed in the group embrace for a few minutes before Yuriko gently detached Gwendith’s arms off her. A few of the other’s tears had dripped on Yuriko’s bosom, but the waterproof fabric prevented the droplet from being absorbed. The beads rolled over the swell of her bosom and dripped down to the side.

Yuriko didn’t carry her backpack with her, and only brought her hip satchel. And her safe pouch, of course. The canister of Ambrosia, which contained about a Ren of liquid inside, minus nearly forty droplets, was kept secure in the satchel, and would become her emergency rations should she ran out. She had twenty ration bars there, as well as a smaller canteen, containing half a Ren of water. The canteen had runescript lines for condensing moisture from the air as well as a melter and filtering function.

She had her combat knife strapped to her belt and opposite that was her Plasma Lancet. While she had already developed an alternate ranged attack, it had been woefully inadequate against the barbarian chiefs. The few pebbles she threw, even though they had been invested with a dozen lumens of Animus, did nothing. They shattered on the hide and their own protective Animus countered hers.

Her sunshards were nearly useless too. They barely scratched the hides, and even if they were hot enough to ignite fur, they were too small to do anything. She was able to control them using Animus or shaped Anima tethers, which allowed her to deploy them more then three times the limit of her Anima flare, but that was its only advantage. Maybe if she could propel them to superspeed like her pebbles…?

Eh? Why not?

She ignored Gwendith weeping on her bosom and Desire rubbing her face on her back as the idea took hold.

How could she go about it? Creating a sunshard was expensive with regards to Animus lumens and Radiant energy motes. The latter she wasn’t even sure how to quantify. She had been measuring Radiant motes by how much her Facet could store, but she could no longer use that metric. For one thing, she no longer had a Facet in that sense. While she could still mimic it by approximating its shape with her Anima, the inlays and etchings were just gone after the World Trials.

With the completion of her Radiant Body Refinement, and the creation of her Radiant Essence, the energy was either inside her core, along with her internal Animus storage, or scattered all over her physical and Anima body. The only ones she could freely use was the one in her core, which were also motes that spilled out of her Radiant Essence. It was much less than what she could store in her Facet, but it also refilled quickly, and was no longer dependent on whether she bathed in the Radiant Sun’s light.

She could still stock up from that source even if those motes never fueled her Essence. Anyway, before it took roughly a quarter of her reserves to form a sun blade and since the shards were essentially mini-swords, they needed just a quarter of that quarter, or just above five percent. Er, was her arithmetic correct?

Now, she needed about a third to form a sunblade and about a tenth of the reserve to form a sunshard. The fraction was higher since her overall reserve was smaller. However, as long as she had distilled Chaos to spare, her reserve filled up in less than a minute. Ten heartbeats, to be exact, and since her heart rate fluctuated, the speed varied by a lot, too.

Huh, strange. How did she know that? Damien? She felt a vague assent from within her mind.

Anyway, since she could form ten sunshards at once, she could probably make them projectiles as well, right? How much did each of them weigh? The sun blades weren’t weightless by any means, but since she never handled the sunshards by hand, she had no idea on the weight. She was quite tempted to make one now, but since the two girls were too close to her, they might get scared. Or worse, hurt. So, for now, she refrained.

Instead, she gently disengaged from Gwendith and nudged Desire to let go.

“I have to go now,” she said.

Gwendith, eyes somewhat red and puffy, swiped her nose with the back of her hand, then grimaced when she realised that there was a string of snot between her nose and her hand.

“Pfff!” Yuriko quickly squelched her chuckles.

Gwendith deliberately took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at Yuriko’s overcoat, which was also covered in tears and snot, before she cleaned herself.

“Good fortune.”

“Thanks.”

Yuriko and Desire hurried out of the barracks and assembled with the rest of the assault force in the courtyard near the north gate. The noise of the  constant bombardment had simply become something to ignore, but coming out into the open brought it back to the forefront.

A Certus Colossus and four Koinos Colossi were on standby, kneeling with their core pilots making last minute preparations. A plethora of support staff carried jade cartridges, and supply bags, as well as a multitude of Colossus sized weapons. They gave the supplies to the co-pilot, while the weapons were attached to the Colossi’s back and waist.

Their armaments mostly consisted of mattocks or mauls, with a couple of Koinos bearing resonating bucklers. Backup weapons included combat knives and side-blades, though the Certus had a war axe holstered to its side.

Along with the Colossi, there were nearly a dozen Knights, legionnaire infantry. She recognized Centurions Veran and Areena amongst the party. As well as someone she certainly didn’t expect.

“Miss Davar,” Sheamus Dorn said, waving enthusiastically in greeting.

“Sheamus!” Yuriko smiled in return.

While the two of them had gotten off the wrong foot the first time around, his apologies and subsequent performance while they were in danger had more than made up for it. She had said that she wouldn’t forgive him, but now she realised that he had more than earned it.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I reckon I’d come along to help teach those rotters a lesson, eh?” He grunted. “Besides, I think I’ll be of much better help to you than by remaining back here.”

“Oh, I see.” Yuriko stared at his rather earnest eyes. Hmmm, as long as he stayed sober, he wasn’t bad company. “Thank you, and er, I forgive you. From back then.”

“Oh! Thank you, then! That gets a load off.”

Yuriko reached up and patted his shoulder, “Let’s make sure we return unharmed then.”

“Right!”

Commander Perry arrived soon after. “You’ll be heading to the west for a league, then you'll have no choice but to scale the cliffside. It would take more than a day to arrive at the slope and by then it would be too late.” Even as she spoke, the number of boulders falling increased. “Go! Centurion Veran Jake, you have nominal command.”

“Aye, ma’am.” Veran snapped a salute. “Let’s go!”

The five Colossi and the dozen Knights, and the only Chaos Lord, ran out of the door. The swarmlings were still outside and were subsequently mowed down. Yuriko wasn’t at the forefront and was actually near the rear. Areena matched her pace, which was light enough that talking wasn’t an issue.

They angled northwest and reached the border of the clearing in less than a minute. While they ran, Yuriko’s thoughts returned to her idea. Nowadays, she’d practised making the sunshards and sunblade enough times that she didn’t need to focus to do so, though it still took a few seconds to form anyway. A sunshard materialised above her palm and she willed it to drop to her hand.

It was hot, of course, but her Anima and the fact that it was made out of her Animus and Radiant energy meant that it couldn’t harm her. It was also unexpectedly heavy, considering its size, at a full Jin. That wasn’t too bad since she could accelerate it to around four hundred paces a second.

However, when she tried it, it was as if she was holding air or water. Her kinesis couldn’t get a good grasp of it and when she forced the issue and managed to propel it away, it lost all of its speed as soon as it exceeded thirty paces away. The tether also still existed, even in a diminished capacity and she couldn’t undo it without unravelling the entire thing.

So much for an easy and powerful weapon. Yuriko sighed. Perhaps she would eventually manage it but it would take trial and error, and much more time than she had to spend now.

Ten minutes after they left the outpost, they finally arrived at the cliffside. The Colossi dug their hands into the rockface and started to climb. As for the rest of them, a few clung to a Colossus’ back, while others climbed on their own.

As for Yuriko, she used her kinesis to make the climb, leaving her hands and feet free.