Between one blink and the next, Yuriko’s bedroom had disappeared. Now, she was floating over a void, Chaos streams swirling violently around her.

“What…” Yuriko gasped but calmed herself once she realised that there was a familiar feel to the place. “The dreamscape?” she murmured. How did she get here?

She looked around her, then attempted to awaken. However, it felt as if she ran into a wall. A soft and yielding one that absorbed all of her momentum and threw her back.

“How?”

That was the better question. She looked over at herself and realised she was in her pyjamas. Her Anima stretched out around her and struggled against the Chaos flows. There was nothing around her.

Ah. Since this was the dreamscape…

Her thin night clothes turned into her usual traveller’s gear. The forceweave fabric might not really give her much protection, but it was reassuring anyway. Ah! Where was her Animus Armour set? She tried to envision them to exist, but nothing happened. Or rather, there was a slight feel of resistance, but after being rebuffed, nothing.

Fri’Avgi?

The Anima Telum flickered into existence, but she flickered on and off. Yuriko could feel Animus from her reserve draining as she struggled to call her artefact, and in less than a minute, she was down to half. With great reluctance, Yuriko desisted.

‘Why am I here?’ She thought to Damien.

“...”

‘Damien?’

No answer.

She shivered. Was this like the World Trials? But…

“Ack!” She gasped as her tummy lurched. “Wha-?”

She was sinking. She didn’t notice it at first, but she’d been falling for quite a while now, and the only reason she noticed was that one, she suddenly sped up, and two, she saw something beneath her that was quickly growing larger and larger.

She spread her Anima out to create wings, but that didn’t help at all! The greyish thing grew bigger and bigger, until she could no longer see the edges. It had turned into an expansive land and she landed right smack in the middle.

As soon as her feet touched down on the dirt, her Anima spun around in full perception mode. The dirt, the air, the moisture, and the ambient Chaos were all measured until she was sure of her safety. Normal, mostly, except for the ambient Chaos, which was at ten iarvesh. The pressure should have pushed her to her knees, but against her Anima, it felt as if it was nothing more than a gentle breeze.

Oh. There were micro fissures forming at the edges, but they healed over so quickly that she had to focus to even notice them.

She looked around. She was in the middle of a depression and the tops of the ridges were nearly two hundred paces away. The ground was cracked as if parched for water, and her footsteps made dust rise up like a cloud. For some reason…this place reminded her of the Pure Lands.

She shivered in trepidation. Mum mentioned that she fought a minor Primordial Incarnation or something like that, and she almost didn’t make it back. Was something similar here?

Her hands clenched convulsively, and she wished she had Fri’Avgi with her. Instead, she manifested a sunblade.

Radiant energy spread out from her body, and it wove itself into her sword. The comforting warmth banished the chill, which had gone unnoticed until then. Ah, her breath should have misted from the cold, but it was so dry out that whatever moisture came out of her was immediately whisked away by the air.

But…wasn’t she in the dreamscape? Why did it feel as solid and real as the physical realm?

Her timesense was gone, too. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been airborne and how long it took her to manifest her sunblade.

She was tempted to create sunshards too, but with no hostile in sight, she’d rather save the Animus and Radiant energy.

Speaking of Animus…her outer reserves were empty. The runescript weaving to hold it was simply gone. She hastily recreated it, and as soon as a single line was done, nearly a hundred lumens rushed in to fill it.

It didn’t take much longer to finish, and then, she started working on her Adamant Guardian Seals. Three Seals readied was her limit, so she did just that. Now, she felt much more secure. A quick check on her Radiant Essence told her that there were none to be had in this place. The only Radiant energy she’d be able to use was what her Essence produced.

She reached out towards the nearby motes of ambient Chaos and twisted them, but it was much more difficult to produce Radiant energy here too. It was as if something actively resisted it.

Well, she wasn’t going to get anywhere if she just stood still here. The thought of just waiting it out occurred to her, but she dismissed it out of hand. Better to search actively.

“Maybe I’ll be able to return after the Refraction?”

This happened as soon as the Celestial Refraction started, and the connection was obvious. But nothing like this had ever happened to her in all of her fifteen years of life! What changed? It couldn’t be the Ancient’s Way. So it must be her Actualisation?

Where was Damien? His wisdom and knowledge would be extremely useful just about now!

Shuddering, she remembered him being absent during her World Trials, too. For that matter, was this another Trial? She had a feeling it was, but her intuition wasn’t exactly all that accurate.

She picked a random direction. Without the Radiant Sun or the Luminous Moon, there was no way to tell anyway.

She condensed her Anima around herself and wove several layers of defence. Nothing should get through it without at least a thousand lumens backing it up.

Eh?

Her Anima reach…was growing. It already had by a tiny fraction of an inch!

In this desolate land, it could only mean one thing. The danger here was so great that her Anima and the Ancient’s Way were reacting to strengthen her.

As soon as she reached the ridge, but just before her head or hair could crest, she dropped to her hands and knees, then down to her belly, and crawled. She was glad she did.

The terrain beyond the depression was still rolling hills mixed with flat land. But they weren’t empty. She was sure she didn’t see them from the skies…

All across the land were people. Blood warriors. The very same creatures that attacked her and her cousins while they were in the Pure Lands. And like there, they were battling and swallowing each other.

Her passive perception twinged, and she rolled to her right, just fast enough to avoid a spear. She quickly got to her feet and called the sunblade to hand.

A blood warrior, face changing with every blink of an eye, but whose expression was the same rictus snarl, pulled its weapon from the ground and stabbed at Yuriko. She slapped it away with her kinesis and threw the sunblade. The Radiant energy-filled weapon sheared through the creature’s body like a hot knife through butter, and as it collapsed into a puddle of blood, the heat evaporated it away. It left a fingernail-sized crystal, which was oddly translucent. In fact, if she didn’t have her perception aura, she probably would not have seen it at all. She used her kinesis to bring it to her hand, and as soon as it touched her skin, it melted.

Somehow, that didn’t really surprise her considering the last time she encountered these things. Unlike that time, nothing attacked her through her Anima.

She didn’t have much time to wait, since the moment she killed the blood warrior and picked up the crystal, nearly every other warrior within sight turned towards her and attacked. Yuriko created her sunshards right then and there and fought back. Slaughtered, really.

Most of them were quite skilled, but her baseline speed and strength was much higher than theirs. It was like fighting someone who deliberately slowed their movements down to a third of what they could normally achieve. That, and the few blows that did manage to reach her, were easily deflected or absorbed by her condensed aura.

Soon enough, puddles of boiling blood were all that remained. However, if she didn’t take the crystals, the blood warriors would combine and become stronger and faster versions of themselves. She would have welcomed the challenge any other time, but the situation was odd enough as it was.

It must have taken a few minutes or maybe an hour, she really wasn’t sure. On one hand, it felt quick, and on the other, she felt as if she’d been fighting for so long. She wasn’t tired though.

Finally, there were no blood warriors left.

Then, the ground beneath her disappeared and she fell through the void.

She landed after a few moments, on a small parcel of land that was barely a couple of paces across. Her sunblade and sunshards were still around, but nothing else was.

Darkness spread out across her entire vision, and the monotony of the nothingness, which seemed to last for hours, yet simultaneously feel like no time had passed at all, nearly drove her to tears.

Then, she saw an island in the distance. No…a bridge? A stone, arc bridge that crossed nothing. It was five paces across, and the stones were arranged in a circular pattern. As soon as her land touched the edge, it began to disintegrate, prompting her to step over.

As soon as she did, she heard…shuffling. Feet dragging across the stone, off in the distance. She shivered and took a step forward. Then another. Until, after a dozen steps, she just suddenly…couldn’t. An invisible barrier?

She pulled back and looked around her wearily.

A moment later, whatever made the shuffling sound appeared.

The beast was over four paces tall, humanoid in shape, but with a comparatively small head. It was almost as wide as the bridge, its arms were so long that its knuckles dragged on the ground, which was what made the sound she heard. Its body was covered in dull red scales, and its legs were short and stumpy.

In shock, Yuriko could only look at the thing, wondering if it was some kind of Wyldling.

The beast saw her at the same time. Its beady dark eyes narrowed to slits, and it opened its maw to roar. Its mouth nearly split its head in two and revealed three rows of razor-sharp teeth. It bounded towards her and swiped with its extra long arm. A set of razor-sharp claws popped out of its stubby fingers and added nearly six inches of reach.

Yuriko snapped out of her daze and ducked under the blow. She stepped in, sending her sunshards preemptively at the beast’s faces, while she slashed with her blade at the overly long arm.

Ptang, ptang!

The shards ricocheted off the hard scales, leaving nothing but whitish marks. The sunblade fared better and managed to score an inch-deep gash. Yuriko’s perception captured clearly the beast’s movements, and she sidestepped a downwards smash. Afterwards, she jammed her blade into the creature’s elbow, and put all of her enhanced strength behind it. The Radiant blade sank all the way to the hilt, and the beast roared in pain and fury.

Her perception registered another attack, coming from between its legs, and she spun to avoid the spearing tail, leaving her sunblade embedded in the process. She sent the sunshards to strike at its eyes and ear holes. In the meantime, she gathered Radiant energy from her core and shaped it into another blade.

The beast swiped at her a couple more times, and when she easily avoided it, coupled with the fact that she was so close to its body, it decided to topple over and crush her.

With a grunt, she shoved the freshly materialised sunblade into its torso, using its own weight against it. The blade sank in, but she must have missed the heart. At the same time, she used her kinesis and her shoulder to bear its weight.

The stones beneath her feet cracked, but she held on. Then, with a growl, she slammed her fist into its gut, and the beast’s body bounced up a couple of inches, hanging in the air for a second. She used the time to spring out from underneath it.

It caught itself before it could fall on its face, but at the same time, Yuriko chopped at the back of its neck with her hand and decapitated it.

Sludgy black blood oozed out of its severed head and neck. The body convulsed for a couple of seconds, then stilled.

Sighing, Yuriko looked back to where she came from and jolted in surprise to see a rift where the edge of the bridge was. She couldn’t see what was past it, but she had a hunch it would lead her back to the surface.

Shriikk, thikk.

More shuffling sounds. In the distance, she could see another of the beasts coming down the bridge.

It was a relatively easy fight, and Yuriko knew she could keep this up as long as she needed to. And of course, that was when things began to get worse.

Starting with the corpse underneath her exploding to bits.