The fiery explosion back at the bridge distracted Yuriko enough that one of the Weaver’s…er, tentacles, managed to smack her side. Her condensed Anima protected her from harm but did nearly nothing to ameliorate the force of the blow, causing her to skip over the water like a thrown rock before she managed to control her momentum by thrusting an Anima spike into an ice floe, using it to alter her trajectory.

She landed on the water’s surface, and her Anima, spread out like a disc at her feet, allowed her to stand. She adjusted to the eddies and currents of the river but otherwise maintained a stable stance.

The Weaver looked surprised at getting a hit in but no more than herself. She mentally berated herself for becoming distracted and avoided taking her eyes off her foe.

The Weaver of the Warp and Weft of the World stood out amongst the barbarians in every way. Where they were bulky and tall, he was slender and…well, normal-sized. He was clad in loose robes, and as the brief battle showed, filled with long strips of cloth that acted as weighted limbs that can both attack and defend. The Chaos Lord himself was a typical example of one, handsome and aesthetically pleasing. If not for the fact that he had four pupils inside each eye.

He also barely paid attention to Desire, giving Yuriko’s, er, childhood friend turned Chaos dweller, a single intense look that caused the petite girl to freeze. That must mean that the Weaver was higher on their hierarchy than Desire.

Over their five day journey from when Yuriko rescued the scouts and bound Desire, they had chatted about a lot of things. One of which was that, for creatures living in the Chaos Sea, they were oddly bound by the rules of their hierarchy and court. It was why, Desire revealed, she felt so subservient to Yuriko. Somehow or someway, probably through Fri’Avgi, now that Yuriko thought about it, Desire felt a connection with her. That connection was through Progenitor and Childe. The Seeker of Delights was her creator, and Yuriko somehow had his, or her, essence within herself.

Frankly, she thought that it probably had more to do with how the Seeker took on Yuriko’s form than anything else. And, like the other Chaos Lords she defeated, Seeker had been absorbed and repurposed by Fri’Avgi.

That wasn’t the most important thing though. Desire revealed that there were far more Chaos Barons than there should be. And now that Yuriko knew that humans could be turned into Chaos Lords…

The Weaver waved a limb and more of his robes unravelled, turning into long flailing tentacles. They lashed at the ice around him even as he stood upon the flowing water, held up by his own Protective Field.

Grinning, Yuriko gestured, and out of the water rose six sunshards tethered to her by her Animus. They drove towards the Chaos Lord and weaved around his defensive clothes. But just before a shard could touch him, he shifted. His body slid across the river by a couple of paces and the only thing the shards hit was water.

Fri’Avgi appeared in Yuriko’s hands and she spun the weapon into a guarded stance. The first dance in ascendance and the smooth movements of Flowing Water harmonised. Suddenly, she could feel a connection to the current beneath her. She could feel the chunks of ice going downstream, and as they came within reach, slowed and started to circle around her.

Another fiery explosion came from behind, and the two of them charged at each other. The Weaver gestured as soon as he came within half a dozen paces of her, and she felt the air around her shift. The next moment, the man was nowhere in sight, but then, he breached the light of her Anima from behind and she thickened her defences there even as she spun with her weapon.

Another shift, but this time, within the light of her Anima. She squeezed down on it instinctively and felt a horrific force pummel her. Sparkles of light crossed her vision and the next thing she knew, she was underneath the water.

She shaped her Anima to bring her back to the surface, and she came out within fifty paces of the bridge. The barbarians had managed to cross the gap, but a third of them lay dead. Some from her earlier ice pellet attacks, and the rest from burns, cuts, and stabs.

Behind a small barrier of ice, the freed prisoners and her scouts, along with Desire who sang a hymn in a voice that carried across the water, fended off a bit less than twice their number of barbarians. She spotted the leader, the young man who jabbered at her a while back. He looked somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t quite place who he was.

Nathan was the lynchpin of the defence, using his warscythe to fend off the assault. Lucinda’s fingers sprouted gouts of flame, reminding her of how Mikel, her childhood friend, fought. But with Lucinda, any barbarian that so much as touched the flames had their clothes and hair ignite. Already, a couple of men were rolling on the snow, but the fire wouldn’t go out. Three charred corpses lay on the banks.

But they were not without casualties, too. Yuriko couldn’t see where Gwendith was and she felt concern and worry seize her heart. One of the captives, a pink-haired woman named Elsie Morris, lay on her back, her eyes staring blankly up at the sun. Only the red snow beneath her told Yuriko of a wound hidden on her back. But she saw the faint stirrings of breath, and a cascade of ambient Chaos motes drawn from Desire’s song trying to keep her alive.

Sunshards darted out from her Anima and impaled half a dozen warriors, killing them outright as their hair and heads burst into flame. Ice pellets shot out at a couple more, one shattered a man’s shoulder while another tore off a knee. Both fell to the ground screaming while distracting the warriors around them. A plasma bolt from Sheamus, shaped more like a spike than a bolt, punctured a distracted warrior’s eye.

The water burst to the left and a tentacle of cloth wrapped around her and pulled tight. She jumped to avoid it, but that wrenching feeling reappeared and she found herself back in the middle of the cloth. It pressed down on her, squishing her Anima between its folds. Then, she was yanked back underneath the water.

The river was nearly five paces deep here. The Weaver floated a few inches from the riverbed, and as soon as she caught sight of him, he spun her around and around until she grew dizzy.

With a grunt, she forced down the bile going up her throat, flared her Anima and spiked herself onto the riverbed. It was muddy and didn’t give her much traction but it did slow down the spinning. It was at that point that she felt the water around her twisting, then there was a snap, and then there was a weighted cloth tentacle within inches of her middle. Fri’Avgi had fallen from her grip, but the sunshards were still connected with her Animus threads. She flung them at him then crossed her arms and layered Anima over them. The tentacle smashed into her, and there was force enough to knock her arms into her chest. The pain across her tender bosom shocked her and ignited a wave of anger.

The same twisting sensation, but this time, Yuriko flared her Anima as far as it could go and grabbed the water around her. There was the feeling as if someone tried to shove her, but since she was braced, instead of being knocked off balance, she absorbed the kinetic force and remained in position.

Instead, it was the Weaver who got knocked off balance.

“Fri’Avgi!” Yuriko shouted and the weapon flew into her hand. With her Anima keeping the water away, she shaped it into a wedge and propelled herself at him. The first dance and Flowing Water!

A slight movement of her wrist twisted Fri’Avgi’s blade enough to deflect a tentacle. Then she used the momentum to bring herself closer and closer. She parried and deflected more and more flailing cloth limbs, and in the process, manoeuvred herself into a confluence of his weapons, and then, with another deft twist, she managed to get them tangled into each other. The flow of the water around her nudged and swirled in time with her movements, and she could feel the resonance building between herself and her surroundings.

The Weaver hissed then flung the knotted ball at her. She swiped it away with her artefact, but the weight and momentum threw her off. Weaver flung himself up and away, and she was a heartbeat behind.

The man was stronger than anything she fought before. He was faster and tougher than the Seeker, but not quite as strong. They bobbed out of the water and once again stood on the river’s surface about a hundred paces downstream of the bridge.

“You fight well, for a child your age,” he grudgingly said.

Yuriko’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Your praise means nothing to me,” she said coldly.

Weaver sneered. “I’ve found out all I needed. Time to end things.”

Yuriko growled, annoyed beyond belief. He had the advantage earlier on because of his unorthodox skills but she’d gotten used to them. And she hadn’t needed to rely on Damien, either. Radiant energy leaked out of her body and suffused her Anima. Sparks came from the air around her and she saw the Weaver wince. Her sunshards fluttered around her then she created more through Fri’Avgi, until there was a score of them revolving around her body.

Her outer reserves were half full, but that only meant she had six hundred lumens to use. With a roar, she sent the sunshards out to surround him, then she commanded the little blades to fall upon the Weaver in waves of three shards each. The movement was still that of the first dance, and she forced the man to dodge and parry while herding him towards the area where her downwards slash laden with nearly fifty lumens and nearly a dozen motes of Radiant energy would land.

He saw the trap for what it was and he grinned. Then he used his ability on himself instead of Yuriko, and he reappeared outside of her attack zone.

That was when she burned half of her remaining reserves on the fourth dance. Time seemed to stop, but it was more that she moved herself outside of its flow. Rumiga resisted her movement, which was why it took so much Animus to do, and she forced herself to move five steps to the side, right where he was before she shifted the fourth dance to the third.

She saw his eyes widen in surprise and fear as Fri’Avgi’s edge cut into his shoulder. The Animus exploded and the Radiant dove into his body, burning it from within. From his centre, she saw something ignite.

With a high pitched scream, he tore himself in half, leaving the left side of his body to burn. Fri’Avgi greedily sucked at his Anima, but the Radiant burned the remnants too quickly.

The Weaver dove into the river, heading straight towards the Veil. Yuriko growled in annoyance and made to chase.

Your companions!

Damien’s voice brought her up short. She whirled around towards the opposite bank and found the battle there to be as heated as the one she went through. With a last glance and a soft curse from her lips, she ran towards the others.

About a third of the barbarians were left, with the rest wounded or dead. Perhaps that wasn’t so strange since there were five Knights on the Imperial side and only that singular powerful Chaos Lord on the barbarians. Of course, there was Desire, too. Yuriko heaved a sigh of relief. Other than the wounded Elsie, none of the others was gravely injured.

A miracle.

But, even as she watched, the cowardly Weaver emerged from the water and flung something at the scouts. It hit the ice barricade and tore it to pieces. With a roar of fury, Yuriko sent sunblades and ice pellets at both the Chaos Lord and the barbarians, killing a couple more while the rest retreated.

The snow exploded from beside the barbarian’s leader, and Gwendith careened out of the snow, slammed into the youth’s torso and knocked him into the river.

“Gwendith!” Yuriko yelled, propelling herself towards her friend.

Not a moment later, the girl popped out of the water, along with a block of ice. There was a fiercely triumphant grin on her face which was as red as a sunset. Steam rolled off Gwendith’s face and hair even as she and the ice block flowed down the river. Yuriko hurriedly grabbed her friend and lifted her out of the cold, flinching in surprise at how hot Gwendith’s skin was. She glanced at the block and found the barbarian frozen within, an expression of surprise locked in his face.

“I took all the heat out of the water around him,” Gwendith murmured feverishly. Then her eyes rolled up and she fainted.

The barbarians pulled back along with the Chaos Lord. Some of them ran downriver in an attempt to rescue the frozen boy. Yuriko sniped them down before they could get too far. As for the ice barbarian, well, he could go down the falls and shatter to bits for all she cared.