“After Founding 3000

5th Day of Water

Tribunus Agatha Seran Kaspar

Agminis Head Office

Rumiga City

Tribunus,

Allow me to restate the urgency of the need for Nyctferrum items. The Gemheart’s innerspace’s corruption has reached 10% of its surface area. The Nyctferrum nails and amulets you’ve sent have been helpful in delaying and destroying the corruption but I am fighting against a Chaos Duke, one who is a level higher than I. His persistence is maddening, and I cannot rest nor put any iota of focus away from fighting him.

I will need at least five Jin of Nyctferrum to purge the rest of the corruption, but only if I get it within the next two weeks. Otherwise, with the rate of the corruption’s growth, it would be insufficient by then. Destroying the Gemheart is our last resort, but I need not state how grave the matter is. Convey my request to the city council and request reinforcements to be sent to Western Rumiga. The last Gemheart must not fall or be tainted.

Regards,

Iola Melanthos Brygos

Legate, Legion Agminis”

__________

The Federation’s probing attacks continued for several days, nearly a week, actually.

Yuriko fought and had slain nearly a hundred Chaos Lords in that time, averaging ten to twenty a day. Not quite as much as the first day they attacked, mainly because the ones left were more wary of her and were better able to control themselves.

“You shouldn’t let them lead you by the nose,” Marron said after the first battle. “They will control you that way.” He sighed. “Why are you so bloodthirsty? What happened to my cute little sis?”

“What was that?” Yuriko blinked innocently, even though she heard his mutters.

“Ahahaha, nothing. Nothing,” Marron coughed.

Following his advice, she grew a bit more conscious of her distance from the walls. She kept her fights within a hundred paces of the wall, but that prompted a change in the enemy’s tactics.

More and more Chaos Lords joined the battle and the restraining effect of their numbers was one reason why she hadn’t been able to eliminate more of them. There was a core of them that conducted the flow of battle, keeping themselves far from her reach, and making sure that not all of the weaker, mindless Chaos barons died.

“They are nameless,” Desire said on the second day, her hand fiddling with a grey amulet with a half-lidded eye with strange pupils. She didn’t know where the other girl picked it up. “That’s why they act like that. They are barely worth being called Chaos barons. But this,” she indicated the amulet, “this is strange. Why do I feel so drawn and repulsed at the same time?” She shook her head. “Each of the nameless carry one of these in their Corpus. Perhaps I can figure out its secrets if you get more?”

Desire’s hopeful eyes tugged at Yuriko’s heart.

“Fine. I’ll see if I can get any,” Yuriko said. “But tell me what you discover.”

“Of course, master. Everything I do is for your benefit.” Desire bowed humbly. It was only when she left that it occurred to Yuriko that the Chaos Lord hadn’t asked to be fed in a while now.

As if to counter her thoughts, that night, Desire asked for Yuriko’s Animus to feed. She didn’t have much distilled Chaos to spare, so she merely gave Pure Animus to the Chaos Lord. Desire seemed to be in a nostalgic mood, though she accepted the Animus transfer by drinking it out of Yuriko’s palm.

“Yes, it tastes much better,” Desire murmured.

On the third day was when it grew more difficult to slay the Chaos barons. They were connected to each other with ethereal green tendrils. Neither Yuriko’s sunshards nor Fri’Avgi were able to sever the threads, and whenever she struck a baron, every one of them seemed affected. But where her strike would have bisected the Chaos Lord, only a gash would appear on each of their sides. Two dozen of them were connected to each other, and each of them attacked her in melee in groups of five or six.

The rest of them surrounded her from twenty or so paces away and blasted away with Chaos shrapnel.

At that time, Yuriko spun and danced with her swords. On one hand, the arming sword, and on the other, a sunblade. Fri’Avgi had been stabbed into one of the Chaos barons, draining her of Anima and Corpus. None of them dared touch the artefact, for even an accidental touch left a golden flame upon their flesh that slowly dissolved the creature. Yuriko’s perception aura had witnessed all of that happening behind her back, while she was busy deflecting or dodging attacks.

For all that though, she felt remarkably free and at ease while fighting. There was a strange sensation of someone staring at her intently, but since nothing else happened, she ignored it. The battle lasted for an hour, and she only slew a fraction of them.

That was how it went every day. Usually in the mornings. The Federation attacked, the Empire defended. Yuriko fought and killed Chaos Lords, but more and more of them appeared every time. By the sixth day, it was all she could do to fend them off. She wasn’t able to give them lasting harm. At that time, a hundred of them were leashed together with the tendrils, and her attacks dealt only a hundredth of its potency to each enemy. She tried to counter it by infusing more Animus, and Radiant energy into her attacks, and to some extent, it worked. With the Radiant, it halved the potency of her strikes. Only when she combined Fri’Avgi with Radiant infusion did she assure a fatal blow. But the limit was the hundred tethered. At that point, none of her strikes could kill in one go, and then her target would withdraw and recuperate out of her reach.

She hadn’t tried using her Radiant Lance yet, as summoning it in the midst of melee combat was simply asking to be beaten up. And the process wherein she summoned the Lance was obvious enough that everyone around her usually dove for cover.

Ah, she did recover those odd amulets and gave them to Desire. Her Chaos Lord thanked her and pocketed the amulets. Later on, Yuriko saw Desire studying them intently, mainly by sinking her aspected Chaos into the things.

It wasn’t until the seventh day that she tossed the things into a pot and tried to burn them. Her face was contorted with pain and anger, and not a little bit of madness in her eyes.

“These are filth,” Desire hissed. “Taint and corruption. These have the Telurian’s touch. Please, destroy these with Radiant light,” she said hoarsely once she pulled back her power. The amulets were unharmed.

Wordlessly, Yuriko took the things, each was only a little bigger than a silver mark and focused Radiant energy into them. The things melted after she nearly emptied her reserves, and she flung the molten bits into the dirt, where they solidified into chunks of iron.

“What…what did it do to you?” Yuriko half-whispered.

“It…tempted me. A perversion of our bond,” Desire whispered back, “I feel…that this is connected to that foul one.” She shuddered delicately. “The one who made me.”

“Didn’t you say the Seeker…?”

“Not her. The hand holding her strings,” Desire said fiercely. “That one is connected to this, and to those nameless. I know it,” she said decisively, then grew furtive as she glanced about. The rain blanketed the night’s Chaos Streams so the backyard was nearly as dark as a cave, if not for Yuriko’s subtle golden light. “That one might be watching…”

A chill ran up Yuriko’s spine, and for a moment, that tentacled creature she fought in the dreamscape came to mind. But no, that wasn’t a Chaos Lord…

“Who?”

“The One Who Watches and Waits,” Desire said with a wince. “The leader of the Telurian Court.”

“You think the…er, Waiter?” Yuriko coughed. “Is the one allied with the Federation? What’s the goal?”

“I was merely another baron,” Desire admitted, “and his short title is Watcher.”

“Right.”

“And I don’t know his goals. But I don’t like these…totems.”

On the seventh morning, the fight against the Chaos Lords began as usual. This time, there were more than a hundred of them, and it took all she had to prevent them from tearing her to pieces. Of course, her skill with the sword grew, and her Anima reach expanded by another ten inches, reaching all the way to eight paces from her skin now. Every inch beyond the fifth pace gave her more compared to an inch before. And when she condensed all of it into her aura meant she was impregnable. However, that meant she didn’t have any spread out for light perception, and she’d grown used to being able to know what was happening around her in a sphere.

Either way, at this point, it was useless to fight the Chaos Lords alone anymore, so she planned to stop the next day. Afterwards, she’d have to ask the other Knights for help, or simply stay on the walls behind the protection of the Dome. The number of nameless barons was disquieting, and she wasn’t the only one bothered.

“How can they all stay here in the plane?” Constable Tara Andersen asked in disbelief after Yuriko came back. “That many of them here would have drained the ambient Chaos to the point where they’d cannibalize themselves to live.”

“The totems?” Yuriko guessed.

“And…these numbers are unnatural. None of the Chaos Courts should be able to provide these kinds of reinforcements. And if they’re still blockading the Chaos Channel, the question remains: where did they come from?”

The two of them were atop the wall, watching as the Federation bombarded the Dome. The cannon shells came from above, while Animus blasts came from the massed warriors and archers. The nameless barons had retreated.

“We’re being sucked dry,” Andersen continued worriedly. “Most of the populace can’t keep up their recovery of Animus. Most are at the borderline and a lumen less in their reserves would mean unconsciousness.”

“The Animus engine?”

“Running well, but can’t provide all we need.”

“So what must we do?” Yuriko asked.

Tara gave her a side eye and said, “Nothing but wait. I’ve sent for help, and that’s all we can do. Please,” she turned and slapped her hands on Yuriko’s shoulders, “don’t go off alone. We can’t afford to have our strongest Knight die or get captured. Please!”

“Ah…alright.”

Yuriko sighed. She supposed she could donate more Animus instead. Her reserves…if she flared out more of her Anima and wove more storage and gathering runescript, she could conceivably achieve a recovery rate of one or two per second rather than one every three seconds. Even at one iarvesh. Did that mean she’d have to stay near the charging station all day to provide enough Animus to keep the Dome going?

That wouldn’t work, really. Aside from the fact that it would be dreadfully boring, the Protective Dome isn’t perfect. An attack, singular or combined, that was strong enough could punch a hole through it. It happened a couple of times already in the past week, and only quick intervention by some of the Knights had prevented a greater massacre from happening. They already lost nearly three hundred reserve warriors and militia. A heartbreaking loss considering these people had been her neighbours for the past decade and a half.

On the eighth day, Yuriko didn’t respond to the challenge and stayed on top of the walls. And, she began to cast her Radiant Lance as soon as the Federation warriors stepped foot on the battlefield. That had the effect of them running back.

On the ninth day, she did the same. And on the tenth…

“Golden Terror! I challenge you to a duel!” a broad woman clad in metal armour shouted from across the field. Her head was bare, and revealed short cropped blonde hair, almost silver really, and piercing blue eyes. “Answer my challenge or forever bear the name of a coward!” Then the woman flared her Animus around her in a Protective Field, and from the strength and fluctuations…

“A Knight Captain level warrior,” Tara Andersen said. She looked at Yuriko with worried eyes, “Will you answer?”

“Er, was she talking about me?” Yuriko gaped. “Golden Terror?”

Andersen grinned, “Aren’t you?”

“No!”

Yuriko shook her head, then shouted back, “I accept!”