Yuriko struggled during the run along the path to the plateau. It wasn’t that she wasn’t fast enough, but that she was too fast. Of the eight of them, only Aidan could match her pace and when she ran full tilt, he rebuked her for her haste.

Everyone else ran at a respectable clip, but Yuriko thought even Krystal could run faster than Reinhardt and Shara. The prince and his attendant suffered the exercise with ill grace. Reinhardt’s face was soon dripping in sweat as if he had dumped a water canteen over his head. Hmm, maybe he had, actually. Shara, on the other hand, was red in the face and panting like a dog. A faint sheen of sweat covered her forehead, and it would have dripped down to her chin if she hadn’t wiped it off with a blue kerchief every now and then.

The ground shook and pebbles fell from the clifftop, striking down at the path like raindrops. Yuriko’s condensed Anima protected her from the small missiles, but she could see her companions wincing when some of it hit skin and left welts.

Thud!

A body fell. It bounced from the rocks before landing across the road. Red and whitish fluid pooled on the stone beneath him. Yuriko noted the Lignoculi’s inhuman features as it struggled feebly. She stomped on its face, crushing it to pulp as she passed by, both to eliminate a possible threat and to put it out of its misery. Her Anima kept the blood and viscera from clinging to her sandal.

The battle raged above, though she could only hear it now. The Chaos ships had drifted out of sight. A sense of urgency, of need, pounded in her chest. She needed to get up there, and needed to fight. If the pirates had their way, she would be stranded again, and this time, she didn’t know how to leave.

A couple of minutes later, and about three switchbacks, they finally reached the top.

“Swarm fodder!” Riley cursed as he caught his breath. He made to raise his Plasma Caster, but Aidan grabbed his arm and nodded towards the side.

The glacier ship was down, and through the broken hull, dozens of the tree-human hybrids were pouring out. The other three ships hovered only a couple of paces from the ground, with their holds open and disgorging troops. She couldn’t see the Ebon Horizon from where they were.

“Where?”

Riley frowned as his gaze swept the plateau. The entire space was around a couple of longstrides wide, and about half that long. There were several outcroppings but the rest of the space was relatively even. Beyond, the mountain rose up higher into the sky, and she could see the wooden pillar just beyond a crest.

There were several hundred of the tree-human hybrids and they were all headed over to the far outcropping. But that wasn’t all. Her enhanced sight picked up blood warriors battling the tree-humans in small clumps. For the most part, the Lignoculi ignored the assailants unless they got physically in the way, but their disregard was answered by the blood warriors’ powerful attacks.

“There!” Yuriko said at the same time Aidan did.

Wordlessly, she summoned her sunblade, again noting that her Radiant energy reserves were higher than she expected. She glanced at the night sky, at the blood red moon. She could feel a bit of Radiant energy trickling into her Anima, so maybe it really came from there, as illogical as that may seem to her. The Luminous Moon gave out a silvery light, while the Radiant gave out golden white. How would Luminous light fill her Radiant reserves? Well, best not to question now. The fact of the matter was, she was grateful that she didn’t have to dole out Radiant energy.

“Follow my lead.” Aidan said grimly as he moved to the left instead of heading straight. A bright flash of light caught Yuriko’s eye, and she looked just in time to see an explosion that tore apart a single Lignoculi. The rest of the creatures ignored it, and the body was soon hidden beneath their heels.

They ran for a couple of hundred paces before the Lignoculi inexplicably all turned towards them. Yuriko froze in mid step and Reinhardt ran into her back. He bounced off while she took a step forward to keep her balance.

“What!” he yelped, but swallowed his tongue when he saw them.

Her Anima flared and she spun to the side, her sunblade slashing in an arc, and cut the ice boulder in twain. Her Animus circulated with the second dance in ascendance, and it pulled at her body in different directions. Each tug made her aware of a threat, and how to avoid it. Another icicle flashed, this one nearly a pace in width.

Whoosh!

Riley’s shot drilled into it, and somehow made it burst from the inside, showering them in a flurry of snow. Beyond, she saw the floating island, just in time to see it launch an even bigger boulder.

Yuriko threw her sunblade, and it sheared the boulder in half, with each side carving a furrow to the right and left. Somebody grabbed her arm and yanked her away. She grunted in surprise as her feet left the ground. Aidan dragged her behind him, at least until she regained her footing. Right where she had been, a ball of flame splashed down, showering her Anima with embers.

The other ship, the one that looked like a river barge, flung balls of flame at them. Riley shot down the balls, but they came too fast for him to keep up.

“Hurry,” Aidan yelled, “Towards those things!”

“No, we need to take cover!” Reinhardt yelled. “There!”

He pointed towards a few boulders and rock formations that would get them out of direct line of sight from a couple of Chaos ships but the third would still be able to shoot them.

“No, we’ll just get cornered there!” Riley yelled.

“But we’ll be ground to pieces if we go on!”

“Shelter is that way!” Yuriko pointed at the outcropping. On a closer look, the stone looked too uniform to be natural, Aunt Layla must have raised it.

“And I’m telling you we’ll be cut to pieces before we even get there!” Reinhardt pointed at Tiernan, “Devion can’t fight and carry Tiernan Hersal at the same time. Please! Unless you want to abandon him here?”

Yuriko and Riley exchanged glances, then she spun and threw her sunblade at another boulder. The ships fired at an interval of five to ten seconds each. The longer interval meant a bigger projectile, or more of them.

What would she have to do? Calling Fri’Avgi wouldn’t be ideal in these circumstances. Yes, she’d probably be able to defend all of them more easily, or cut down the horde in front. But she’d run out of Animus quickly, and then what?

No, unless there was no choice, she didn’t intend to wield Fri’Avgi.

Boom! Thud! Crack!

The boulders and icicles crashed into the ground near them which shattered the stone and sent fragments at them. Yuriko’s Anima easily deflected the shrapnel, but soon enough, the Isgeri’s clothing grew damp with blood. Tiernan’s still form was untouched. Devion shielded him with his body.

The ships’ projectiles no longer targeted them directly but always smashed down the path, repeating the shrapnel attack. Riley managed to shoot down some, but he couldn’t shoot down everything. He could only fire one bolt at a time, and there were three ships. Yuriko interposed herself between the shrapnel and Tiernan. Well, she also shielded Reinhardt and Shara.

Fifty paces. It was how far they got before all three Imperials changed their minds and rushed towards some cover.

The nearest one was a small pile up of boulders that was about waist high to Yuriko. They dove behind it while she deflected the attacks and from the barge-shaped Chaos ship. The fireballs from that one were somehow easier to defend against than the solid projectiles from the other two. It lacked the impact to create shrapnel and her sunblade easily dissipated the attack simply by touching it.

“What now?” she asked through gritted teeth.

A few minutes of that and the ship seemed to have given up on attacking. She peeked at the other two and saw that they were bombarding the blood warriors. The impacts flung the blood puddles far enough that it couldn’t invade the Lignoculi.

“It wouldn’t matter anyway.” Riley said when she muttered her concerns. “The Lignoculi are puppets, they don’t have their own Anima.”

“Looks like the ships’ attention moved elsewhere.” Reinhardt said softly.

“That’s not good at all,” Riley hissed. “They’re headed towards the Ebon Horizon!”

Every now and then, a brilliant ball of plasma flew over Aunt Layla’s ramparts and crashed into the mass of treemen. Then, streaks of lightning and fire from an archer, Zoey, took out any that came too close. But after a quick barrage, the attacks from the Horizon paused, and the archer jumped behind the battlements, waiting until the pirates’ counterattack finished.

“They’re focused there now,” Aidan said. “Time to move!”

Aidan made a beeline for the next set of boulders, a smaller pile that would require them to get on their hands and knees in order to be usable as cover. But it was better than nothing.

Swish! Thump!

The Lignoculi’s head bounced several paces away after Yuriko beheaded it. A group of the fodder was in the way. She took care of a couple while Aidan polished off the rest. Riley kept his Caster trained towards the ships, but they didn’t attack by the time they reached the boulders.

They crossed the plateau in such a manner, going from cover to cover. Sometimes, the gap between the boulders was too wide and took too long to get to. Then, fire and ice would rain down on them.

Yuriko fell into a pattern. She ran, she parried, then she blocked. She cut down the Lignoculi that were in the way, kicked away the blood warriors who happened to materialize near them. Then they caught their breaths while hiding behind some boulders, a fold in the ground, or even a small gully or trench.

All the while she anxiously wanted to run straight towards the Ebon Horizon, cutting down any who blocked her path. She gritted her teeth and followed behind her cousins.

They were halfway to the next clump of rocks when Aidan came to a sudden halt. Yuriko sidestepped and pirouetted to bleed off her momentum while her gaze whipped about to catch whatever it was that startled him. She found it immediately.

Lignoculi soared in the air after a blood warrior, the empowered kind, swept them away with his polearm. A few paces away, a bunch of the treemen jumped into a pile, and writhing vines burst out of their torsos to bind them all together. Ah, there were nearly a dozen of the mounds.

Eh? Colossi?

Yuriko couldn’t help but stare. But, no, it wasn’t an Imperial Colossi. It was identical to the giant that Rhain Hervard summoned during their last battle, but here, they were formed from the Lignoculi combining together. Even as she watched, the completed giant kicked the blood warrior in the guts, and sent the thing soaring in the air even as it dissolved into a crimson spray.

Then the thing caught a Plasma Carronade ball between its arms, squeezed, and made it burst. The fiery contents splashed harmlessly over its hardwood body. Then, with the same eerie silence, it let an arrow strike uselessly at its chest. Yuriko was close enough now to use Enhanced Sight to identify the archer, and Zoey’s face was aghast.

Moments later, the rest of the Lignoculi mounds had successfully turned into Colossi. Now there was none of the smaller swarm fodder. All throughout the plateau, circular patches of soot were all that remained of the Lignoculi that didn’t merge, burned down by the Horizon’s carronades or shot to pieces by Zoey. There were only a dozen left of the blood warriors, but from how they felt, Yuriko knew those were the ones who had killed and devoured their fellows. She shuddered when she looked at them, and her hand tightened on the hilt of the sunblade.

The Chaos ships had inexplicably stopped firing.

“Huh, I didn’t expect the way to clear like this,” Riley muttered.

“Then let’s hurry to your ship!” Reinhardt said. “They’re waiting for you, right? Let’s stop giving your captain a reason to stay grounded.”

Aidan shook his head and Riley spat on the ground.

“The Horizon’s damaged. It can’t fly right now.” Riley said angrily.

“Eh, then what?” Reinhardt’s gaze moved from the Colossi to the rampart.

“Then, we only have to destroy them.” Yuriko said grimly. Fri’Avgi appeared in her hand and she joined the sunblade with it, causing it to turn into seven sunshards. There was no sense in waiting or holding back now.