The mistress’ battle dance was so mesmerising that she spent most of the battle hidden away watching. Her sole duty was to protect Lady Yuriko Mishala, and even if the warriors around her died in droves, as long as she lived and was whole, she wouldn’t interfere.

That’s what she told herself anyway. It was painful to watch those who had gotten close to the mistress get hurt or die.

No, no! Stand firm. Her life was for the mistress. If she hurt herself saving others then the mistress was put in a dangerous spot, she might not be able to intervene in time.

The mistress danced gracefully as she put down behemoth after behemoth. Of course, there were relatively young and immature specimens, and it must have taken weeks of travel through the Tidelands. Chaos dwellers didn’t belong in the planes, and the price of entering through the Tidelands was time. Going through the Channels was easier for them, but those were heavily defended. Or…at least they normally were.

The rumours she heard seemed to indicate otherwise, for this plane.

She clenched her fists, and her fingernails almost cut her palm when the barbarian chieftains, whose Geists had shifted into the Abomination levels, attacked. Many of the Knights would be crippled or killed, she knew, since the chiefs were stronger. Thankfully, there were only four of them.

She nearly shrieked in joy when she saw the young mistress nearly kill one, only for her expression to freeze. Chaos lord. Not a baron. A viscount!

_________

Only the genteel one charged straight at Yuriko, Chaos energy writhed along his long sleeves and his robe. The garment fluttered against the direction of the wind, and as soon as he closed, they shot towards her.

Yuriko danced back, the second dance in ascendance, with the beginning of Jade Mountain’s fifth form. Fri’Avgi’s crossguard gem put out rays of Radiant light, which moved on its own to protect her. Her sunshards were still in the guts of the bicorn, as was her sun blade.

Yet as the artefact’s light moved to deflect a flung sleeve, she felt the air around her twist. Her anima hastily flared to anchor her stance, and in so doing, the sleeve bypassed her first defence.

The flat of Fri’Avgi’s blade was wide enough to hide her if she stood slightly sideways, and she used the movement to deflect. The air shifted again, but not the one around her. Instead, the sleeve turned in the air, and only a hasty sidestep prevented her from being brained.

Weighted ropes, weaving shuttles, and folded fans flew across the air and struck. Each tool was heavy with invested Chaos. Yuriko parried and danced. Each of her steps was graceful and steady. Anima flared and then condensed, creating branching hooks to hold onto the air and the space around her. She could feel the pressure attempting to move her, and she shifted a fraction of an inch, but not enough to unbalance or leave an opening.

Fri’Avgi whirled in defence, either the rays or the blade itself blocked the attacks. Jade Mountain’s footwork ran a bit counter to how Yuriko normally expressed the second dance, which was filled with fluid movement. The Sword Phase relied more on steady footing, small shifts that were barely a single step, and angled deflection with weapon or shield. It also came with a considerable ability to sense via tremors on the ground, at a good range advantage over her own flared Anima. The range expanded steadily the longer she kept the stance going without interruption but practically, transitioning to another stance often reset the sense. At most, she could extend the vibration sense to five paces, seven if she performed the stance as slowly as she could.

With her Anima focused on resisting the spatial movement, the sense now helped her keep an eye on her back. The other two Weavers hadn’t closed in and were content to send their shaping techniques against her, while the one in assault kept his distance with his unorthodox weapons.

Still, she couldn’t allow this to go on.

With a fierce yell, she transitioned to the third dance but kept Jade Mountain. The strain of doing so, keeping two opposition Intents going, nearly broke her focus and made sweat bead on her forehead despite the freezing air. Actually, her sweat pretty much froze on her skin.

The forceful combination shifted the expression of the Sword Phase though, from the vibration sense to some kind of stone kinesis. The rocks and dirt around her rose and swirled, flowing with her attack.

The Weaver managed to dodge Fri’Avgi’s blow, but the rocks struck his arms. Of course, they bounced off uselessly, though it did manage to distract him for a split second, just enough time for her to redirect her momentum, switch to the fourth stance, drain a hundred lumens from her outer reserves, and catch him across the chest with a vicious swat that propelled him to one of his incarnations. The sorrowful Weaver gestured with his fingers and shifted himself by a pace.

The genteel Weaver landed on his hands and knees, pushed himself to his feet then staggered unsteadily and fell back on his knees. Yuriko reverted her dance to the first, and moved to Flowing Water’s first stance, resetting her mind and recovering from the strain of the fourth dance. Where before the fourth dance nearly emptied her reserves, she could use it now without running dry. The realisation that she had so much more Animus available now rather than before was liberating. A part of her had locked away the fourth dance in combat simply because using it for more than defence was such a big risk. If she ran out in the middle of a fight, she would be defeated without the enemy doing anything else. But now…

A couple of breaths was all she had time for. The genteel Weaver didn’t recover, but there were two others. The raging Weaver pulled a scabbarded scimitar from underneath his robes and drew the weapon from its sheath. She half expected him to throw away the scabbard, but instead, he held it in a reversed grip.

He dashed towards her, weapon slashing at her face. Yuriko leaned back to avoid the cut, spinning Fri’Avgi to strike, but the rager grinned fiercely, pulled back his feint, spun under her attack and slammed the scabbard at her side, which was stopped by her condensed Anima. It wasn’t made out of plain wood, as Yuriko thought, but was capped with silvery metal on both ends with strange runescript patterns that she didn’t recognize. They gleamed with Chaos.

The two of them danced, blades awhirl. The raging Weaver wasn’t reckless at all, each of his blows was either vicious attacks aimed at her vital points or cleverly concealed feints. With the second dance, Yuriko was barely able to distinguish the real from the false.

After a dozen exchanges though, she knew that the Chaos Lord was the better swordsman. Only the fact that she had Fri’Avgi’s defensive rays and her condensed Anima to protect her from her mistakes let her hold her own.

The attacks were like striking serpents and she couldn’t ignore the scabbard either. She could feel how powerful the blows were when they hit her Anima, and if she didn’t shore up the cracks, she felt that the Weaver could eventually shatter her protections.

She deflected a scabbard slam, pushing it off to the side, and with the same twist, avoided a scraping slash from the scimitar. The Weaver was faster and more skilled, but she was just as strong, close enough in speed, agility, and flexibility to keep up, and more importantly, her artefact could kill him. His blows could be endured, weathered against, but she only had to hit him once or twice, and his Anima would be devoured by Fri’Avgi, and his being burnt to ashes.

By now, her Anima hooks, spread out in the space around her, were firm enough to prevent the other two Weavers from moving her against her Will. After a few minutes, she had gotten used to his speed and managed to dodge and parry all of his attacks without resorting to her kinesis or just taking the blow.

Then, he flung his scimitar at her and when she sidestepped, the weapon swerved in the air and slashed at her neck. She ducked down and felt the metal swish above her head and felt a light tug on her scalp. Bits of her hair fluttered down in front of her face.

“You… Dare…”

The edges of her vision tinged red, and with a roar, she unhooked parts of her Anima from the space around her and lunged at the raging Weaver. The man cooly dodged her frenzied blows even as she felt herself moved by the other Weavers. The shifting was slight, but it was enough to make dodging Fri’Avgi easier. With a growl, she called for her sunshards and sunblade.

Riiiip!

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shards blast out of the bicorn man’s abdomen with a spray of noxious smoke, blood, and chunks of cauterised flesh. The sunblade spun around Yuriko once, then shot out towards the raging Weaver. She sent the shards towards the other two, heedless of whether they hit or not, hoping to distract the incarnations for enough time to get a hit in.

Once she stopped getting interrupted in midswing, the pressure she put on the Weaver should hopefully be enough to let her win. She extended tendrils of her Anima, condensed to pack a punch, and attempted to disrupt his movements. He dodged and danced around those, too, but with Fri’Avgi, the sunblade, and her two tendrils, it was a lot easier now to poke him around.

One of the tendrils she used to deflect and knock away the floating scimitar, or the scabbard when he switched it up. The other one she aimed at his legs while the sunblade went for his torso. Fri’Avgi she aimed at his centre of mass, aiming to cut him in twain or simply to crush him with the blade’s weight.

A moment later, the sorrowful Weaver pounced, fists blazing with dark flames. Those flames…they made her spine shiver in dread. She knocked a grasping hand away with a couple of sunshards, and the flames transferred over. She could feel her Animus construct start to unravel even as the Radiant energy invested into them burned away the corruption.

She knew that the shard would unravel in a few minutes at most, or a few seconds if the Weaver hit it with more of his corrupting flame. What it would do to her if it struck, she didn’t know, but at the very least, it would deplete her Radiant energy and Animus. So she sent the burning shard at him, and a couple more.

Three of them now. The genteel Weaver kept within his range, flinging his sleeves, weighted ropes, and paper fans at her. The raging Weaver circled around to her left, menacing her with the blade and dancing scabbard, while the sorrowful one pressed as close to her as he could get away with. Too many, from all directions!

She avoided a slice, only for a burning claw to cut into her Anima. From the intent and angle, that had been his purpose in the first place. The black flame burst, but before it could catch and spread, she flooded the portion with Animus and Radiant, snuffing it out.

She leapt away from the Weavers, landing on top of a boulder, and from there, leapt towards a nearby grove of pines. With her kinesis, she grabbed a bunch of snow and flung it at the sorrowful one. Since she didn’t condense it, the snow burst into a cloud. At least he swiped at it reflexively with his hands, though he retained enough wherewithal to avoid Fri’Avgi. The edge of the Animus edge sliced into his chest, just below the ribs, but it was too light. His robe was cut and revealed his chiselled physique.

That was the closest she got to hurting him. Just a slice at his clothes. Back when they first fought, she had driven him off, but now? There were three of them, and they were pushing her back.

The stalemate continued, but she knew it wasn’t enough. She hoped that by keeping the Chaos Lord occupied, the rest of the Knights and Colossi could finish off the remaining behemoths. But there were the barbarian chieftains. A quick glance showed her that they were struggling just as much as she did. Another Colossus had been gravely damaged, enough that the pilots had to initiate a destruction sequence lest the barbarians or the Chaos Lords salvage and use the remnants.

How many Knights left? And how many behemoths remained? She thought that they had downed all of the creatures but out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw another boulder flying overhead.

Her distraction almost cost her an eye when the scimitar slashed at her face, only a quick jerk saved her. The condensed Anima was filled with cracks and fissures and a dull ache permeated her body. Distilled Chaos welled out from Fri’Avgi, and Radiant energy melded into the cracks. If she survived this battle, her Anima strength would grow.

If.

In between the trees, the limited space gave her a bit of a reprieve. Then, the sorrowful Weaver set the trees around them aflame. The black fire didn’t burn the pines, it withered them. In less than a minute, the trees looked like all of the water had been wrung from them.

Yuriko gritted her teeth and swung Fri’Avgi at the sorrowful Weaver’s chest, fully expecting him to dodge. But at the last moment, something else happened.

From the shadows, a hand appeared, holding a combat knife. Dark Animus cut into the Weaver’s Field but was deflected off his back. But at that moment, he couldn’t dodge. Fri’Avgi cut into his waist, tore through his flesh and cleaved his spine. The top half of his body fell off and his legs collapsed, while his face had a comical look of surprise.

The burst of Chaos from his body stripped away the shadows that concealed, revealing a dark-cloaked woman.

“Sa…Saki?” Yuriko gasped.

Her attendant gave her a fierce grin but had to duck and roll away from the other Weavers who attacked furiously. The smaller woman lunged and grabbed Yuriko’s wrist.

“Let’s go, mistress! We have to retreat!”