“Haaah, I really hate early morning send offs!” Kato yawned.

Yuriko yawned in sympathy, though she had ample sleep time yesterday. “Thank…thanks for being here.”

“Like I’d let my little sis leave without a proper goodbye,” he scoffed.

Yuriko held a smile. It was nearly an hour before dawn and they were waiting in front of Vinze Hall’s grand entrance. In the gathering of students, only she and her friends Heron, Braden, and Orrin, were first years. Most of the nearly two dozen students were second or third years. No fourth or fifth years.

Heron looked just as sleepy as Kato but Orrin was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Seniors Kale and Rorke were seated on the steps, eyes closed in meditation.

“Well, I’ll see you in five weeks, eh?” Kato said. “You take care now, and come back safe.”

“I will.” Yuriko hugged Kato and squeezed, though she took care not to overdo it this time. She still didn’t have full control and didn’t want to injure him. “Any advice?”

“Yes, keep your nose clean, don’t freeze your feet off, and follow orders.” Kato looked furtively around then continued in a low whisper. “But don’t follow orders that are clearly stupid. The north isn’t safe, especially now. Most of the Northern Barbarian tribes tend to raid at this time. Try to stay in Aegermonth. It’s relatively safe there.”

“Alright.”

The rumbling of wheels against the cobblestone road caught their attention. It was a couple of troop transports. The landcraft were identical to the ones that took them to Shillogu Woods outpost that fateful day last year. They looked like heavy haulers converted to personnel transports. Yuriko frowned. Honestly, she had expected to take a Commuter Tram.

“Ooh!”

Another voice came from the opposite direction. Yuriko looked back and saw Gwendith Sharine hurrying up to the building with a duffle bag and a backpack, along with an assortment of weapons. Ella-Mai was hurrying a step behind.

“Chaos, we’re barely on time!” she yelped.

Yuriko saw Ella-Mai roll her eyes at the blonde girl’s tirade but wisely kept silent. Gwendith caught sight of Yuriko and Kato. Her eyes widened and a bit of red suffused her cheeks.

“Oh, Senior Kato, are you joining the mission?”

Kato gestured at himself. He clearly wasn’t dressed in militia green and he had no luggage with him. Gwendith apparently realised it too since her cheeks, ears, and neck reddened completely and sputtered.

“Ah, right...uh, yes.”

“Bye, Kato!” Yuriko waved.

“Huh, yeah. Bye, stay safe Yuri!”

With that, he spun on his heels, gave the boys a pointed stare and left. Yuriko chuckled and moved a smidgen closer to the sidewalk as the troop transports pulled up against the curb. From the pilot’s cabin, a couple of legionnaires with Agminis sigils hopped down and walked towards the gathered volunteers and started calling out names. Yuriko and the others approached, waited in line and followed the legionnaire’s instructions.

The first years were all boarded on the first troop transport. The passenger cabin was about two paces above the road and she had to climb up a ladder to get in. Two long rows of seats were along each side, each could seat nine people comfortably and was tall enough that Yuriko could stretch her hands up to reach the ceiling. She spotted a compartment above each seat for luggage. There was a holder on either side of a chair to hold long weapons. She headed for an open seat and shunted her gear up the compartment, slotted her Caster in the holder, and her side-blade on the other side.

By the time she finished, the rear doors were closed and the pilot spoke through a small window between the front cabin and the passengers’ area.

“Departure in five minutes. Make sure you’re all seated and strapped in.”

Yuriko took her seat and glanced curiously around her. While the troop transport they used in the Watchtower was austere, this one had quite the creature comforts. Their seats were comfortably padded, could recline, and could swivel to face front. The upper half of the sides were transparent. Some sections had varied degrees of opacity though and by coincidence, hers was in a translucent state that only let in a bit of light. Most of the students were sleepy-eyed, so there was barely any protest when they were told to sit and strap in. Though, there was someone who stuck out like a sore thumb.

Right next to the rear entrance was a boy who wasn’t wearing the Reserve Officer’s uniform. The slender boy was just about as tall as she was, though he was thin. He had scruffy bluish hair, grey eyes, and a pointed chin with a few whiskers. He looked oddly familiar.

And it looked like he recognised her because when their eyes met, he nodded at her.

Who was he?

She nodded back but looked away right after. She swivelled her chair to face front, stretching her legs. Precisely five minutes after the pilot warned them, the troop transport’s Animatech engines came to life and they pulled away from Vinze Hall.

They trundled down the Academic Roundabout, to the Learner’s Pass and then out into the city. Their route took them out of the city to the east, and then on the circumferential road that eventually led them to the north.

“Six days of this?” she heard Gwendith mutter. The other blonde girl with the corkscrew curls was seated right behind Yuriko.

“Do you travel much?” Yuriko couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes. But not on something like this,” Gwendith grumbled.

“Where have you been, Miss Sharine?” Yuriko swivelled her chair sideways so they could converse in greater comfort.

Gwendith eyed her haughtily, sniffed, then said, “Call me Gwendith, or Gwen if you must.”

“Then please call me Yuri.”

“Right. And I’ve been south to Ivala; nice place but weird people. And I travel mostly by personal landcrafter.”

“Oh, you’ve been to the Federation? Oh, I haven’t even been to the city-state near us.”

“It was no tour,” she grunted. “Ivala and the Empire are in a state of war. There has never been a ceasefire, armistice, or peace treaty. Only a lessening of hostilities.”

“Er yeah, I heard in History class,” Yuriko said.

“Huh, yeah. Well, there’s no quick route to Ivala. I went down there with Grandpa on a diplomatic mission, along with my folks.”

She looked out through the transparent window, adjusting the opacity with a finger touching the control panel at the base. She made it so that the dawning sun could stream its light on her.

With Gwendith’s taciturn mood, Yuriko moved to adjust her seat back to forward position, but her eyes swept to the familiar boy at the back. He was wide eyed with curiosity though hints of strange emotion crossed his face now and then.

As for her friends, Heron was already asleep, lightly snoring. Braden was similarly indisposed, while Orrin had started reading a book: “Advance Runescript for the Neophyte Scribe”. Well, it would be a long six days, so Yuriko fished out the book Master Alfein gave her and started reading. She had to take a break every fifteen minutes, of course, when her eyes swam and the motion of the transport made her dizzy. During those times she meditated instead, releasing a bit of her Anima and compressing it to a gaseous state.

Damien warned her not to show off with her Anima, grumbling about hiding until she was strong enough. For what, he never said, but she followed his advice. Unless he wanted her to do something perverted.

Ugh.

“...Spellweaving is the natural progression from Rune Scribing. Where the latter is the creation of patterns with minimal Intent from the author, the former is shaping Animus into patterns filled mostly with Intent. Two sides of the same coin, weaving and scribing can enhance wards, triggers, channels, and other applications of ambient Chaos beyond what any one discipline can do. However, no Spellweaver is made without a foundation of runescript knowledge…”

Yuriko put the book down, her eyes watering. The book contained knowledge that she could barely understand. The words were easy enough to read but the comprehension of what the author wanted to say was an entirely different challenge. For now, she would just read, and try to remember.

_____

Gwendith Devi Sharine held in a yawn. Despite the privacy curtains that made sure nobody would see her gaffe, she tried to uphold herself to her family’s exacting standards. She couldn’t help but crane her neck over the backrest of the seat in front of her, where the Davar girl, Yuriko, sat reading a book.

Every now and then the girl would put down the book and start glowing. It was subtle, but Gwendith could easily read the difference in temperature around Yuriko and the rest of the transport. She watched the glowing flame-like Field condense closer to the girl’s alabaster skin. The graceful curve of Yuriko’s neck was quite pleasant to behold, Gwendith decided.

She did wonder if Yuriko and Senior Kato were really related, considering how different they looked. Kato had that rugged handsomeness, with lean musculature and an intense stare, while Yuriko had wonderfully delicate features tempered by the willful and determined look in her eyes.

Gwendith sighed and closed her eyes to meditate. She’d recently advanced to High Apprentice; her Animus reserves finally hit Sollus a couple of weeks ago. What she needed now was to consolidate her current Facet and get ready to expand it.

An unbidden image surfaced in her thoughts before she managed to shake it off. Smooth skin flushed red, slick with sweat. Gwendith swallowed and desperately tried to divert her thoughts.

Six days on the transport, heading to a place she honestly didn’t want to be in. Grandfather had given the order though. Not that she was the only one of House Sharine to venture north, seeking to claim a share of the find. Imperial Jadeite was the reason why the Empire pushed into Rumiga after all, but since the veins beneath the city had long since dried up, support from the centre had been…sparse.

Oh, the Arkships still came regularly, once every other week, bearing supplies and materials that the province couldn’t create on their own. Food was plentiful, with so much farmland converted from primordial forests. Wealth in the form of Chaos shards and dust from the Wyldlings. But other than that, Rumiga was quite the wasteland when it came to Anima-reactive materials. The ink that they used to scribe messenger cranes had a component that must be imported from Delovine.

Well, one of her duties was to aid the dukeling, Kale Kinnock. His mother was likely to become the next Kinnock Duchess, which meant that he would be groomed to be the next Duke in the coming decades. While he was currently studying in Agaza now, nothing stopped him from taking administration courses in Aneurin, even after he’d already graduated. From there, he only had to build up enough merits, pass the Imperial Exams, and get enfeoffed.

Gwendith was on the same track too, actually. Except she wouldn’t end up as manager of a city, she’d end up governing a town down south, near the Sharine Manor, and guarding the southern border against aggression from the Ivalans.

Sharine was nominally allied with the Kinnock, which was why she and the rest of the students here were either in that faction or neutral. It looked like Yuriko was still neutral, though the same couldn’t be said for her friends. Those cute little twins looked like they weren’t part of the city’s politics but the other boy, Heron, had family in the Esras camp.

It was clear as day that all three of them were hopelessly besotted with the girl, and if Yuriko sided with the Kinnock, it was likely those three would join her, even Heron. Hmmm. Gwendith knew that the Kinnock was somewhat determined to bring her into the fold, why, she wasn’t sure.

Emyr Kinnock was quite sleazy, Gwendith snorted derisively, so it’s probably Kale that they wanted to use to pair with Yuriko. But, Gwendith thought, Kale was probably too cold and calculating to form a proper bond with the girl. Was it Gwendith’s duty to facilitate some kind of relationship? Sure, she liked Kato ever since she saw him in the wargames, but…

She glanced at Yuriko again. The other girl had finished her meditations and was back to reading. Surreptitious use of her Facet formed a small circle of ice right where it would reflect the girl’s face. Yuriko’s lips were pursed as she squinted down the tiny text. Gwendith’s heart hammered in her chest as she dispelled the mirror back into mist.

Yuriko was too good for Kale. Gwendith thought with a decisive nod. Now the question was how to forge bonds without having to risk life and limb.