Faline Millet eased herself on the tree branch thirty paces above the ground. She clutched her spyglass tightly, wary of dropping the instrument and breaking it. The strange beam of light came from the Zarek Mountains, near the pass between the Imperial territories. She didn’t know what manner of weapon the Imperials had unleashed, but she had to find out.

As soon as she found an unimpeded view, she pushed herself up and used the glass. It wasn’t one with a spirit bound to her, but she’d mastered her fair share of Animus sight enhancement techniques. There was farsight, dark vision, and even thermal vision, though the latter two were almost exclusively used underground. She activated farsight now, spending her Animus by feeding her bound spirit, Champa, who then helped her weave the proper runescript weavings. She laid the lattice behind her eyes and waited. Once she felt the technique take hold, she moved the spyglass in the direction of the beam of light and focused.

The mountainside was several dozen leagues away, but the lingering afterimage was just enough to keep the area illuminated. Despite the cool Seasonal air, she felt herself break out in a sweat.

That was an army, wasn’t it? Silhouettes of hundreds of warriors, and numerous vehicles were on the plateau. The light slowly faded away, though it was a matter of minutes rather than instants. But she had caught a good enough look. The Verdanians had reinforcements coming in.

She put away the spyglass and shimmied down the tree.

___________

“What do you mean the Commuter Tram isn’t running?” Yuriko asked the man sweeping the sidewalk in front of the station. A quick look was more than enough to tell her that something was wrong, but she’d wanted to be certain anyway.

“That’s right, Miss. The Trams haven’t run since last year. If you want to go anyway, you’ll either have to walk or take your own landcrafter.” He tipped his hat at her and proceeded to sweep the dust and leaves off the pavement.

The town of Horswick was as sleepy as she remembered, though now there was a nervous energy in the air.

The caravan had swept into town, and the militia and legionnaires had descended en masse to the pubs and inns, drinking up every last drop of ale and emptying the pantries. Yuriko and the others had headed straight to the Tram station. They’d hoped to catch a ride towards Faron’s Crossing rather than having to walk the twenty or so leagues along the road. Unfortunately…

Yuriko spun on her heels to stalk away, or at least, she tried to. She tripped on her feet and almost fell on her face if not for her Anima flaring out to catch her and steady her against a lamppost. The sweeper gawked at the sudden display of golden light, and back away slowly while Yuriko grumbled under her breath.

Of course, she hadn’t suddenly become so clumsy as to trip, no. The reason was that her Anima was currently working against her own body as a form of resistance training, and the annoyance of the Commuter Tram station being closed had made her forget.

She adjusted her light back to a non-visible spectrum and allowed her Anima to cloak her body and resist her every movement. Honestly, it felt like she was walking underwater, or that she had a heavy weight on her back, to the tune of a couple of hundred Jin.

This all started that very night when she became unconscious after converting the ambient Chaos particles into Radiant light. Damien had drawn her into the dreamscape and both of them sat staring at each other while Yuriko’s Radiant light infused their surroundings.

“Congratulations again, child,” Damien said with a smile. “You’ve finally touched upon the Radiant Ennoia, and a good start, too. Now we can finally advance again.”

“Uh, thanks,” Yuriko murmured, mind still in a daze after the monumental task of preventing the Radiant fires from burning her companions.

“Now, then, since you’ve finally touched on the Ennoia on your own, it’s time to work on your Radiant Body Refinement.”

“Uhm…”

“First, you’ll need to stress your body again via physical training, and then, when you use your Recovery technique to repair your body, you’ll need to integrate Radiant energy into your body. There are already pockets of Radiant energy all over your physique, but those are crude and serve only as emergency supplies for when your caloric intake is insufficient to fuel your needs…”

Damien droned on and on, and if Yuriko wasn’t already unconscious in the physical world, she would have fallen asleep.

“Wait…” she said, but Damien acted as though he didn’t hear.

“...Grind down the Radiant energy and use it to rebuild your body, from the marrow, to the bones, to the muscles, and organs. Once you’ve transformed at least 10% of your body into Radiant energy, then you’ve taken the first step to Transformation. Also, going further along that path will refine your Radiant Ennoia into the Radiant Aspect, the next step you need to go beyond the Transformation stage…”

“Damien!” Yuriko yelled, finally pushing through the man’s flood of words.

“Eh, what?’

“I…uh, how do I stress my body? I can barely work up a sweat now.”

“What do you mean? Use your Anima, of course.”

And then, he launched into an explanation on how to use the Anima both as a protection and training device. At her level, normal weight and endurance training would require ridiculous and cumbersome weights to be effective, not to mention it would prove detrimental to her agility and flexibility training.

“So I use my aura to hold myself back?”

“Exactly. Then you simply go about your usual activities and you’re practically training every moment of every day instead of just a few hours. Of course, you’ll have to release the resistance when you go into battle, but you see the advantages, right?’

“Right…but, the light from my aura would be noticeable, wouldn’t it?”

Damien rolled his eyes. “Then simply thin it out until the light isn’t visible.”

“Eh?”

“Child, you condense your Anima to provide protection, you can do the opposite and expand it. It lowers your perceptive acuity, but you won’t be a bright and distracting beacon. When you condense your Anima, you can also shift it so that the light turns inwards rather than radiating outwards. Though that probably means your terrifying countenance in battle wouldn’t be effective.”

“Huh?”

“Your light. If it isn’t visible to your enemies, you won’t frighten them at all.”

“No, I mean… uh, what?”

Damien sighed. “I suppose I’ve said too much already. When you wake, take a hundred drops of Ambrosia and solidify the Ennoia forming around your Essence and Core. Focus only on reinforcing your Essence and your connection to the Radiant. You can do that much, right?  You’ll waste the Ambrosia otherwise, on things that can be trained for.”

“Alright.”

“Then go back to sleep.”

When she woke up, the first thing Yuriko did was to envision her Anima. She zeroed in immediately on the Radiant Essence sitting next to her Animus core, and the changes to both were easily apparent.

Her Radiant Essence had grown larger, and more importantly, there was a tracery of silvery lines around its exterior that hadn’t been there before. The Radiant Essence beat and pulsed like a heart, contracting and expanding, and in the process, shed Radiant energy which either melded with her Anima or faded away. The silver tracery caught about a tenth of the errant motes and funnelled it back to the Essence. The expansion and contraction of the Essence were also limited by the tracery, though she somehow knew that it would grow in size as the Essence did.

Her core, on the other hand, had changed again. At first, her core was a bonfire, then it changed into embers along a sphere, now, it was a perfect golden sphere, with traces of Radiant light mixed in with her Animus.

“Yuri!”

A hand shook her shoulder and she opened her eyes. Gwendith looked down at her with worry.

“Uh, good morning?”

The other girl rolled her eyes but smiled back. “Yes, it is. Are you alright? What was that, last night?”

Yuriko shrugged and covered her yawn with a fist. “Radiant energy. I… uh, I figured out how to produce it from ambient Chaos.”

“Oh…? Uh, sure,” Gwendith nodded, “but what was that beam of light?’

“Rogue Radiant energy.” Yuriko sighed. “There was too much and I couldn’t control it, so I had to vent it away or it would have hurt you. Oh! What happened to the tent?”

She was in a different tent, she knew, since none of her personal gear was within her perception range.

“We’re in your brother’s tent,” Gwendith said, “and you ruined the other one.”

“Eh?”

“Yes, the burning light overwhelmed the runescript weaving,” Gwendith said drily. “The tent was scrapped for parts since all of the weaving was burnt.”

“Ah, ehehehe,” Yuriko chuckled.

“So, what was that? How did you make Radiant energy that way, hmmm? Ah!” Gwendith gasped. “Wait, is that your…”

“An Ennoia,” Yuriko said. “Da… er, I’ve gotten it.”

“So an Ennoia is about being able to bring forth your element from the ambient Chaos?” Gwendith murmured as she sat on her heels. “Interesting. No, no, that’s the way isn’t it?”

“Gwen?” Yuriko was about to reach over when Damien interrupted her.

It looks like your girlfriend’s about to solidify her Ennoia. Leave her alone for now.

‘Alright.’

She left Gwendith in the tent. The caravan was already in the process of packing up, and a quick glance at the skies told her that it was barely past dawn. She found her brother in one of the mess areas, polishing off his breakfast. Marron nodded at her as she sat across from him.

“We’ll reach Horswick today, and from there, we can take the Commuter Tram to Faron’s Crossing.” He said after their good mornings.

“Yup. I miss home,” she said softly. They chatted while eating, with Yuriko repeating the explanation she gave to Gwendith.

“Huh, I guess that’s good, yeah? Tsk, you’re getting farther and farther from me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you and Niamh,” Yuriko said cheekily.

“Brat,” Marron grunted and chuckled.

Later, when Gwendith came out of the tent, she had a wide smile on her face. She held out a palm and a moment later, a swirl of cold air formed and created flurries of snow. “I’ve done it too!” She said happily.

“Congratulations!” Yuriko said.

“Ah, I reached ten inches as well. But nothing much happened.”

“That’s the way of it.” Yuriko replied, “Hmm, one pace is the next milestone, plus a thousand lumens. Ah! And Essence, but since you have an Ennoia, that one shouldn’t be trouble.”

“Oh!”

As for the ruined tent, the quartermaster replaced the broken one without any kind of fuss. Yuriko was quite apologetic but the man just waved her off.

During the walk toward Horswick, Yuriko applied what Damien told her to do. First was that she swallowed the hundred drops of Ambrosia and focused on the Radiant. The silver lattice around her Essence grew until it covered twice as much surface area as before. There were tendrils from it that grew towards her core, which looked more like roots than anything else, but they didn’t connect quite yet. She felt little difference with the additional latticework, but then, she’d barely explored the extent of her powers.

Afterwards, she used her condensed aura to begin resistance training, running a low-power variant of Recovery at the same time. And for the first time since she Actualised, she actually felt her body strain to move. Only the slow pace of the caravan allowed her to keep up with them while struggling against herself.

Finally, it was easy enough to implement her Anima expansion so that the light wasn’t glaring. She condensed all but two inches of her aura to protect and train, while the last two inches she stretched out to the extremes of her range. That was now a hundred and eighty inches from her skin, four and a half paces. Of course, that left her skin glowing gold, but she couldn’t quite get the hang of suppressing the glow yet.

And so, when they arrived at Horswick and found the Commuter Trams not running, she and her group had little choice but to walk. It was roughly twenty or so leagues from here to Faron’s Crossing.

It wouldn’t take more than a couple of days to get there.