“Why did it leave?” Yuriko muttered, still somewhat stunned that the metal man had just up and left mid-battle. A seed of disappointment and wistfulness grew in her heart.

The creature had been able to weather her brother’s Knight level Facet with barely a scratch. Her condensed Anima would have broken at the second blow, had she been foolish enough to stand around like a target.

With all things being equal, a single lumen of Animus held in defence could cancel out one used to attack. That was without accounting for Animus density, and techniques which multiplied the effectiveness of each lumen used either way.

Each inch of flared aura that she condensed to a tenth of an inch cancelled out a single lumen from an attack, without her having to spend her Animus to protect herself. She could manage to compress her Anima to about a hundredth of an inch, but that didn’t increase the threshold by much, just double or so. It did allow her condensed aura to protect her against condensed Animus that came from Journeymen, Knights, and above. Otherwise, the denser Animus attack would cut through her aura like a hot knife through butter.

Marron’s crescent attack combined the force of five plasma bolts, each one invested with three lumens. For every bolt combined, it doubled the effective strike. So his attack had the force of forty-eight Knight level lumens, which required her to counter with forty-eight inches worth of Anima condensed to less than half an inch. If he added more lumens, say ten each, she’d need to compress all of her Anima to protect herself from the blast.

His Plasma Caster was rated to be able to fire bolts invested with twelve lumens at the highest setting, and that would break her condensed Anima.

The metal man withstood several such blows with nary a scratch. Combat wasn’t that simple, of course, but the creature’s toughness meant that she could have let loose. Its own attacks weren’t as powerful as hers, and much easier to withstand, so she could have fought for as long as she liked.

“Yuri!” Gwendith ran towards her, followed by Desire. Marron, Niamh, and Saki were warier, and her Shadow Guard faded back into invisibility. None of the others looked surprised at Saki’s appearance, but they knew she existed anyway. As for the caravan, they knew another Knight protected her in the Mishala’s name, but Saki had not reported or provided any details.

“I’m alright,” Yuriko assured her friend. Her Anima had cracks in them, the first time it had happened since the battle atop the plateau. It also meant that the metal man was stronger than the typical Knight, though she didn’t know if it was Chaos Viscount levels of power.

“This is troubling,” Marron muttered as he frowned. “It left when its eye lights changed colour. And the colour shift happened when you revealed Fri’Avgi.”

“You think it’s related?” Yuriko asked.

“Perhaps. More importantly, it was after Desire.” They all looked at the Chaos Lord who had a bewildered look on her face. She shook her head and shrugged.

“You think it's unrelated or you don’t know why it’s after you?” Marron asked.

“Both, really.” Desire replied succinctly.

“Huh,” Marron grunted.

“I don’t think it's coming back,” Yuriko said as she sheathed Fri’Avgi back into her Anima and commanded her to release a bit of distilled Chaos. She circulated Anima Refinement though she couldn’t really sit and meditate. The healing would take a few hours longer but it was better than just sitting around. “Let’s continue.”

“Aye.” Marron said.

As they headed towards the mountain, Gwendith sidled up next to her and touched Yuriko’s arm.

“Eh?”

”You’re not hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“I was useless. Again.”

“It was a foe beyond your Anima strength,” Yuriko said quickly.

“I know, but still.”

“There’s really no shortcut to this, Gwen.” Yuriko said firmly, “Attain power step by step, and soon, you’ll get there.”

Gwendith sniffed. “Easy for you to say, you reached Knight level in less than two years.”

Yuriko shrugged, “And it wasn’t given to me. I walked the Ancient’s Way one step at a time.” She muttered, “Granted, I got tossed into the Chaos Sea before I was ready, and I suspect without Fri’Avgi, I would have died.”

“Right. I just need to find a powerful artefact that would pave the road for me.” Gwendith laughed.

Yuriko giggled. “If only it was that easy. But for now, you need to continue training. You’ve only gone through one round of Body Forging. You need two more. The Chaos Baptism is only one step, next is you need to strengthen your Anima.” She paused, “That’s…uhm, we need to stress it. I think I can pressure your aura and that should do the trick…”

“I guess?” Gwendith shrugged. “At camp, tonight?”

“Yup.”

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. They marched up the foothills which, aside from the incline, became easier as the foliage thinned. They found another stream, its banks gently winding around the hills and followed the ravines. The water was crystal clear and she saw silvery dartlings flitting about in the shallows. The fish were barely five inches long and wasn’t really worth the effort to catch.

Ah, they did encounter a strange-looking critter with a flat bill and tail swimming along. It ducked under the water as soon as they came within sight, though it popped out curiously as they moved on.

There were no signs of Grunders now, and Yuriko hoped that the metal man had wiped out the nest and the colony. Less trouble for the caravan.

Speaking of…

“You think that thing could attack the camp?” Yuriko asked.

“They’d have moved several leagues south by now.”Marron said.

They made camp next to a river bend. For once the skies cleared of the light rain clouds though it was still deathly humid. Niamh wrote down runescript lines along the sandy earth, and somehow, it pushed the excess moisture away. She then dug a basin and furrow, which condensed the water and led it down towards the stream.

“There, that should hold until morning,” Niamh chuckled as she invested a few lumens of Animus into her work.

“You shouldn’t waste your reserves,” Marron said sternly.

“Oh pish posh, we’ve got a dozen full cartridges. There’s nowhere to deposit the excess, might as well use it.” Niamh shot back.

Yuriko wisely kept away from the couple’s argument and started Gwendith’s…training.

Saki, having revealed herself already, prepared their dinners and set up their camp. Desire simply asked for her meal, received it from Yuriko’s palm, then settled down to meditate. Gwendith was in a seated meditation pose mirrored by Yuriko. She spread her Anima around the other girl, shaped it so that Gwendith was in the centre, and she slowly and evenly pressed down on the blonde girl.

“Push against the pressure with your Anima,” Yuriko instructed.

Gwen grunted but kept her eyes shut. Yuriko’s Anima felt every inch of Gwendith’s aura, and the pressure she applied slowly pushed it back into the other girl’s skin. But this wasn’t enough. The Anima was pliable and normally existed just out of phase from the physical world. Gwendith would have to use her Will to align it. Once it was physical, it could be injured, recovered, and trained.

The bluish pink aura slowly sank into Gwendith’s body, and Yuriko didn’t even feel any kind of resistance. With a single thought, she could easily crush it down and invade the other’s core Anima, but that would have hurt Gwen rather than train her.

It took a while, nearly an hour before she felt the inkling of resistance. She kept up the pressure and cracks formed at the edges. Once she saw it, she immediately stopped and retracted her aura.

“You need to create distilled Chaos now.”

“Yes.” Gwendith’s voice was strained and sweat was pouring down her face. She blinked as it seeped into the corner of her eyes, then swiped it away with the back of her hand. Gwendith exuded Pure Animus above her palms ad let the ambient Chaos taint it. Well, she could do this exercise by herself.

Yuriko got up to grab dinner, but froze when she realised a few things. For one, the knowledge she had on Anima had not been taught at the Academy or by her parents. It had sprung whole from the depths of her mind. From Damien. She hadn’t even realised it.

For a moment, she felt as if she were two different people. One was her. A young woman at the cusp of womanhood, her long golden hair fluttered in the breeze. Another was a giant of a man, muscular and handsome. His pride towered over the myriad planes and his every whim was law.

The moment passed and she shuddered as both images became one.

‘What are you doing to me?’ she screamed internally.

Huh, what? Damien’s thoughts were sleepy. Did you say something?

Was it him? It didn’t sound like he did anything. She should have been more suspicious of a disembodied voice within her mind, but…she knew he couldn’t harm her, no more than she would harm herself. Unless she was careless or it was an accident.

She shivered at that. But she knew that there was no way of dislodging Damien…or she could just undo her Facet facsimile. The condensed Anima patterns in her mind and body were responsible for the Golden Silhouette and Damien. If she undid it, then both of them would disappear.

And so would her guide to power. It was a conundrum she didn’t wish to tackle at the moment, and well, memories and knowledge were useful. Hopefully, she didn’t inherit his proclivities too. But in the depths of her heart, she knew that her desire and enjoyment of battle could be attributed to him. She hadn’t been this aggressive when she was younger… or had she? She couldn’t remember.

“Young mistress? Is something wrong? You’ve been standing there for a while now.” Saki shook Yuriko’s shoulder and successfully brought her out of her reverie.

The attendant presented her a bowl of ration bar stew, and Yuriko gracefully accepted.

Her thoughts and dreams were troubled that night, but there wasn’t much she could do right now.

The next day they reached the foothills, and the day after that, they finally reached the mountain range’s foot. The rest of the trip towards the treeline took another couple of days.

It was much more peaceful up here, and when she looked towards the east, she could see the lay of the land for leagues. She could even make out the northern plateau, and the remnants of the Frozen Camp, though it was nothing more than a smudge in the distant hills. More importantly, she could see the Chaos Fortress in the south.

She had somewhat expected to see dark clouds covering a castle with spiky towers. Well, there were towers, nearly a dozen of them arranged in a circle. Those looked high. Probably as high as the Watchtower back in Faron’s Crossing. At least a hundred paces up. They were made of something white, probably marble. They probably shaped it out of the Chaos. It was dozens of leagues away, but once they were past the tree line, it was an unimpeded view.

The slope was still gentle enough that they weren’t forced to climb the cliff face, but that point was only a few hundred paces away. The ground was hard rocks covered with pebbles. Treacherous footing, but there was a series of ledges and small mesas and plateaus that they had stuck to. Now that they were here, Niamh could finally start the ritual to call, or rather, to attract the Avos.

The ritual was simple, really, if expensive. Niamh wrote a runescript line into a circle a pace across. Yuriko recognised most of the words, most being a repeat of a couple of phrases. Roughly, it said, ‘Come forth, with due respect, we offer tribute and ask for guidance.’

“That means Zarek,” Niamh said when Yuriko pointed at a phrase that didn’t make much sense. She had translated it to ‘stone eat spirit’. So it was the Avos’ name.

At the centre of the circle was a pile of Chaos Shards. Most of the shards were tetrahedrons, polished so that each side shone, while a few were prisms. The tetrahedrons came from Wanderers, mostly, while the prisms were from Hunters. Chaos Lords didn’t produce any kind of Chaos Shard, at least not the corpus left behind. All of their power was contained in the Anima, much like humans do.

After she was done laying the ritual circle, Niamh lit it up with her Animus. Nothing much happened through normal vision, but Chaos Sight revealed that the circle let out pulses of Chaos. The waves sank into the ground and were mostly directed towards the mountains.

“Now, we wait,” Niamh said.

This high up, it was no longer as muggy. Instead, the cold had returned with a vengeance. At least it wasn’t snowing.

They were prepared to wait for days, but it didn’t take more than an afternoon for something to happen. The earth rumbled and boulders tumbled away from the cliffside. A large opening burst open, and a gargantuan creature emerged.

What emerged was a Stonetoise, similar in appearance to the ones that had attacked the mining camp many Seasons ago when she first rode on the Commuter Tram from Faron’s Crossing towards Rumiga City. Except this one was much bigger. It was at least ten paces tall, from toes to the crest of its shell.

“Avos Zarek?” Yuriko gasped. Avos Shillogu had nothing on this one.

The Avos’ face, at the end of a long neck that was nearly two paces long, swung towards them. The head was as tall as Gwendith was.

“I am not,” the Stonetoise said in a low, rumbly voice. Yuriko could feel her bones shake at his speech. “My grandfather is busy,” he continued. “What do you Imperials want?”

Grandfather? How big was the Avos Zarek when this one was merely a grandchild?

“We seek an audience and ask for a boon,” Marron said after an overlong silence.

“Very well,” the giant Stonetoise said. “Follow me.”

Then, he backed into the cavern, and the mountain shook with his footsteps.