Yuriko sat in a meditative trance on her bed. Desire’s words had been surprising, but thinking things through, she realised that it wasn’t that surprising after all. For one thing, Desire herself had been human before. She was Ashley Gin, plus a few bits and pieces of other people. As grotesque as that was, it was how the Chaos Lord described herself.

The newborn part…that was the more disturbing aspect. Putting aside the fact that the nameless were more than capable of taking care of themselves, what Desire meant was that they were recently forged into being. No newborn Chaos Lord was allowed to leave their home court, not without learning court etiquette, combat, and survival training, as well as shaping. It had taken Desire many subjective years to do that.

Time passed strangely in the Fysallis and the court ruler could actively alter the flows. For Desire, she had been in the training area for years, but outside, only one had passed. So, why didn’t the court ruler take the time to train this bunch instead of throwing them directly out to battle?

After saying her piece, Desire said as she juggled the little amulets, “These things…stabilise them. If I hold on to this, I can feel a resonance. There’s a large group of them south, but they’re moving farther away.” She frowned. “Ah, they just left the range.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if they can sense these things, too, but I doubt it. They wouldn’t have the skills.”

Yuriko nodded. “You want to come and help find the source of this?”

Desire gave a slight smile and bowed. “Anything for my master.”

Yuriko sighed. “Go rest. And thank you.”

She had been sure she should volunteer for the hunt, but with Desire’s capabilities, it looked like she was the optimal choice. Only, Desire would stick out, too, from the populace. But then again, if these nameless were common, and that they come from the Federation…

Images of lines of civilians heading into the Chaos Sea, to give their meagre light to become a Chaos Lord haunted her imagination. Was the hatred between their two peoples that strong? What of the decades, centuries, of prosperous trade?

Hmmm, Faron’s Crossing was a rather recent town, so perhaps what struck the people of Federation was the animosity between Ivala and Rumiga City. Then again, farmsteads and hamlets had been founded by the Imperials decades earlier than Faron’s Crossing’s founding.

Thoughts swirled in her mind. Political considerations had never been part of her studies…

War is politics.

Damien saw fit to rouse himself from slumber.

‘Are you alright?’ Yuriko sent instead.

Silence.

Scratching the back of her head, Yuriko grumbled to herself in annoyance. But, since Damien didn’t even stir afterwards, she figured he was sleep-talking and only commented on whatever was of great interest. She hoped whatever it was that kept him in this state stops soon.

With her thoughts disrupted, she returned to her meditations. She had developed the habit of doing so once a day, just ruminating on her battles, her thoughts, and sometimes just letting her thoughts roam.

During the last battle, she had been trapped by suicidal troops and in future encounters, they could do so again and stop her from going after what she had to, or maybe it would delay her when she needed to escape. Their sacrifice allowed their leaders to escape, though Finan didn’t insist on Yuriko’s participation anyway.

Speaking of the prince, he seemed to have slid himself into the town’s leadership position so easily. The Alderman and the Temple’s Elder should have been nominally in charge, but she saw them deferring to Finan. He seemed to take to this position naturally as a duck to water. At least he wasn’t pushing his weight around and accepted the opinions of the others. Not that the Alderman and the Elder had taken leave of all leadership duties.

Ah, she got distracted.

Shaking her head, she thought about what she could do to counter a sacrificial assault against her. For one thing, she had frozen in shock for just a moment. That moment was enough for them to close in on her. Her perceptive aura was wide enough to warn her of such things, and she shouldn’t have hesitated.

She should have blasted them away with her kinesis, or better yet, she should have gotten out of the way instead. Her standing jump could propel her more than five paces straight up, and then she could have spread her kinesis to form wings.

She could have dashed forward, or sideways. Any movement could have been better than standing stock still.

So she rehearsed in her mind. Her instincts when enemies charged her were to defend, hold her ground, or attack. She included dodging out of the way and paying more attention to her footwork. She had an incredible advantage with her perceptive aura and she should remember to use it to its fullest.

After a while, she shifted and summoned Fri’Avgi to hand. She laid the greatsword across her lap and stared at its central gem. Fri’Avgi was a weapon, but also a powerful implement for Sorcerous Workings. In its implement mode, which split it into seven parts, each hovering blade was invested with runescript lines that denoted a particular spell.

However, when the Anima Telum all came back into her original form, the spells were wiped away. Or rather, they came back into a big block that lay just under the surface. Yuriko caressed Fri’Avgi’s body with her Anima, seeking to unlock her secrets. She was bonded with Fri’Avgi, but the knowledge locked within wasn’t easy to get to. Perhaps Damien…

But he never said anything. Perhaps he didn’t remember as his memories were fractured. She couldn’t help but think that was the reason for his lethargy. A part of the reason, anyway. Who knew?

Fri’Avgi’s animating spirit was still unresponsive. Ever since she triggered the implement mode, the artefact was less responsive to her thoughts. In battle, it didn’t matter much, but when she meditated, Fri’Avgi’s emotions were absent. When she envisioned herself within the blade, the only thing she could see was that within the red gem was a cocoon. It had begun as something small, something she couldn’t even see a year ago. But it grew as she continued to use the artefact, and it was from there that Fri’Avgi transmitted her feelings to Yuriko.

She fed Radiant energy to the cocoon, but what it really wanted seemed to be distilled Chaos. Yuriko could produce a droplet of it every minute if she focused and meditated. Or a droplet every five if she just did it absently. She had a process spun within her Anima, of runescript lines that absorbed ambient Chaos and distilled it, but it was slower than meditating. A droplet every quarter hour.

Four droplets, or motes as she sometimes referred to them, every hour was barely enough to repair her Anima from training. She needed to meditate for an hour every day, focused on harvesting distilled Chaos, to keep up. She needed to store some for Heron’s Chaos baptism, she needed to feed Fri’Avgi, feed Desire, and finally, for her own training. It was much faster to kill Chaos barons. Each Corpus of the nameless gave her five to twenty droplets. A proper baron would have given her nearly a thousand, an entire Ren worth of it.

How many Chaos barons did she kill on her trip to Rumiga? A dozen? Half of that had been consumed to empower herself and her artefact, and nearly a Ren, a thousand droplets, to manage Gwendith’s Chaos baptism. Most of what was left were consumed during that fight…

Well, there were a hundred nameless wandering the countryside and all of them would give her two Ren worth of distilled Chaos. It should be more than enough for Heron’s baptism.

Her thoughts shifted to her battles. Specifically, she focused on the perfected strike she used against Zagara. That miraculous feeling of knowing exactly how the other would move when she provided the stimulus, could only happen when she used the three dances together perfectly. While she had already fused the three–previously, she could only switch between each dance seamlessly–they were still separate. Now, she could use all three, and for every use, it consumed hundreds of lumens. Still, just one attack was a path leading to the Gate of Death.

To use that attack, the Gate of Death, properly, she had to either store more Animus or use it more efficiently. The first was problematic in the sense that she only had so much space within her outer Anima. Unless she wanted to glow like a bonfire all the time, she could only keep a thousand lumens. Within her was the human body’s limit of two hundred, although…

Radiant Body Refinement changed her body from the smallest bit. Perhaps it would allow her to store more? She didn’t notice her cap rising, so either she didn’t know the trick of it, or since the Refinement wasn’t complete, she couldn’t do it. At the moment, her Refinement had crossed fifty percent.

It would take a few more Seasons to get to ninety percent, and from there, Damien said that a bit of enlightenment was needed to get to a hundred. She didn’t know what he meant, but he did say she’d have to see more things, experience more battles, and whatnot, to get there. Oh well.

As for the Four Phases of the Sword, well, her efforts were slowly bearing fruit. With her sunshards and sunblades, she could actually express both the Four Phases and the sword dances with them as they flew in the air. Her crude attempts were by acting as if she held the weapons herself even if they were dozens of paces from her. That resulted in some odd and unnecessary movements, but if she actually reduced the movements to the bare minimum, she found that she could actually harness the ambient Chaos in the air to express elemental effects.

The next morning, she practiced melding the Four Phases and the sword dances using her sunshards. The former required specific movements while the latter required Intent and Animus patterns. Her fusion of the two wasn’t perfect yet, but her sunshards gained a sharper edge via windblades now. Fire wasn’t really needed, but Roaring Volcano’s explosiveness was useful.

The sunshard careened towards a stone target, and when it struck, rather than penetrating through, the shard exploded and shattered the target to bits.

With her perception aura, she saw the edges of the fragments were still gleaming red from the heat.

She continued to experiment and train for the rest of the morning, taking a break only for lunch. Gwendith joined her for some ration bar stew, and her friend asked her, “Word is that you’re going on a trip.”

“Hmmm, yeah. I think I’ll need to,” Yuriko explained about Desire’s findings and her thoughts on the matter.

“I see. I will join you.”

“Hmm, oh, you’re welcome to come with me,” Yuriko smiled.

Gwendith nodded sharply, “I’ve progressed a bit with my training, and I think I can be of great help.”

“Ah, yeah.” Yuriko chuckled. She didn't inspect her friend’s Anima reach, but she thought Gwen would have gotten to twenty inches by now.

They continued to chat about their day. Gwendith had wall patrol duty, along with her cousin and Heron. Nothing much happened, thankfully. The Dome was still set at low power mode, though it still kept the constant rain off the town. The river water level had risen by a pace or so, and had raised some alarm. But there was little they could do at the moment.

“There’s flooding in the fields up north,” Gwendith said. “The farmers are worried they won’t be able to start planting come the Season of Earth.”

“Yes. The rain hasn’t stopped since the turn of the Season of Water. Forty five days now,” Yuriko said worriedly. “You think we can ask Avos Shillogu to divert River Caradec? Or, you know, branch it out before it leaves his domain?”

“That’s a good idea,” Gwendith said. “Bring it up in the next Knight’s Council?”

“Ah, I will.” Yuriko agreed.

She did bring it up later that day, and Elder Ramus said he’d send a delegation. More importantly, the Knights have been divided into groups to conduct missions. The Kadracki must be chased away, and the village of Cierra must be scouted. And most importantly, the flow of the nameless must stop.

“Knight Davar, will you and your bound Chaos Lord go?” Tara Andersen asked.

“I will.”

“Adept Sheamus Dorn, you’re familiar with Federation culture?” she asked.

“A bit, yes. You must understand that the nation of Chelda is part of the Coalition, not the Federation. Although there are connections between all of the nations within the Coalition, Chelda is far from here. But I digress, I will join the young mistress.”

“We will need to set up a group, as well as an ostentatious reason and disguise for you, Yuriko. If not for your Desire, I actually wouldn’t want you to go.” Tara sighed.

“It’s fine. With Finan here and his entourage, Faron’s Crossing will be safe,” Yuriko said.

“Hmm,” Finan coughed. “Ah, I intend to come with you.”

“Eh?” Everyone gasped.

“Don't worry, I’ll leave the Implacable Jade and Swordmaster Kinohara behind. Cellion, too.”

“Absolutely not!” his Praetorian guard yelped.

Afterwards, a long debate between the prince’s group diverted the rest of the council meeting, and they still hadn’t concluded anything by the time evening came along.