Radiant energy filled the grains of sand, each one heated to such an extreme point that they should have liquified and then boiled off, but they didn’t. The substance remained solid, and firmly in Yuriko’s control, which incidentally gave her another method of attack. It was rather crude and brutal compared to using swords or shards, but it was one that she could spread out into a fine mist, a sand storm, that melted through anything not protected by potent Animus.

Of course, it had taken several days, a couple of weeks actually, to get to this point, but Yuriko was glad she actually decided to explore what her Radiant kinesis could do.

The very first time she did this in practice resulted in more of a disaster than anything else. She had infused her Radiant energy into the sand grains around her, mimicking what she did against Master Crow’s chains.

The thing she didn’t realise, although in hindsight it was pretty obvious, was that sand wasn’t really stuck together. Each individual grain was its own thing, and it took merely a single mote of Radiant energy to turn a grain into liquid, and then into a puff of smoke. A single mote. Actually, not even one mote as she hadn’t even managed to stuff that one into the grain before it puffed away. Now, spread out amongst the nearly hundred motes she infused into the surrounding sand and she got acrid smoke, molten sand, and obsidian shards at the edges.

When she tried again, over a different patch of sand, what happened was more of the same. The heat from the Radiant motes was more than enough to melt, then boil the sand, which also simultaneously drained the Radiant energy, leaving her nothing but a sodden mess.

She shifted track and infused a stone the size of her fist with Radiant energy, and while it lasted a minute, it was practically molten rock after a dozen seconds. She had a harder time manipulating the lava as opposed to the solid stone.

She must have spent hours going from one piece of stone to another, melting things and spending Radiant energy like water. Not that she had any kind of shortage in that respect. After a while, she took a break and practised her sword arts instead.

The village practically bustled with activity. The unawakened ex-guards drilled with their spears and shields, while the awakened practised with their bound spirits. She saw Dominic Hurin, the ex-guard Adept, leading the others in training. He used a round shield and an arming sword, displaying acceptable technique. The Jade Mountain Style of the Four Phases used sword and shield most often, though there were some who practised with a single tower shield or a single tower shield and a spear. The most common, according to Swordmaster Kinohara, was Dominic’s preference.

As she watched him perform, she overlaid Jade Mountain’s stances to his, and while he didn’t quite follow every stance, his techniques were close. However, he wasn’t able to summon an elemental shroud without spending Animus. She felt like it would be worthwhile to spar with him, though she refrained for the moment.

She noticed Heron and the twins sparring in a secluded corner. She only saw them when she hopped on top of a roof. Well, sparring wasn’t the right term, actually. She frowned as she watched, since Heron was shirtless, had his arms held out to his sides while Braden and Orrin blasted his midriff with lightning bolts. He wasn’t using his hardened air shields, and he was resisting the Animus technique through sheer grit…

The punishing blows lasted for about a dozen seconds, then Heron doubled over himself, smoke rising from his body. He went into a meditative pose and went into Recovery.

He’s really working on his Body Forging. Such dedication. Damien whispered.

Yuriko could only agree. Ah, and while he was around she asked him why she was having trouble with Radiant kinesis.

You’re only controlling the Radiant energy, but not the others associated with it. Go ask your girlfriend how to control heat and cold.

Yuriko rolled her eyes and muttered, ‘Not my girlfriend.’

Hah.

That evening, she did ask Gwendith about it and the other girl was glad to help. The next day. Gwendith watched her as she tried to infuse Radiant energy into the sands. After melting everything into a puddle and letting it reform into glass, both of them tried again.

The two of them sat facing each other, with about ten inches between their knees. Yuriko held a handful of sand with her Animakinesis, then began to infuse it with Radiant. Gwendith, for her part, held out her hands and spread her Anima over the sand.

For a brief moment, their auras clashed, with Yuriko’s the stronger by far. But Gwendith’s suddenly opened up and turned docile, accepting her dominion of the space. A moment later, Yuriko regained control of her Anima expansion and allowed Gwendith’s to coexist within the same area. As the sands absorbed the Radiant energy, and as heat built up and threatened to spill, Gwendith took the heat and dispersed it.

That wasn’t what they wanted to do though.

“You need to contain the heat,” Gwendith said. “I can’t do it since it’s your Ennoia.”

“How do you do it?” Yuriko asked curiously.

Gwendith shrugged. “I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like holding your breath, but instead of air in the lungs, it's heat? It's really just something I can touch because of my Ennoia. But I think the first step you should aim for is recognising and being able to touch heat. Here, let me demonstrate.”

Yuriko covered the other girl with her full perceptive aura and watched as Gwendith did…something. She could perceive heat…right? Was it the hazy air around the Radiant energy? It was definitely something like that when she infused it into the sand grains, right? Whatever it was that Gwendith did, that hazy thing streamed away from the grain which remained solid. Of course, the mote of Radiant energy still dimmed and dissipated, but this time, without affecting the grain much.

Venting the heat away simply made the Radiant kinesis ineffective. So the goal should be to contain the heat, but not let it melt the substance? That’s quite difficult, isn’t it?

Perhaps if she coated the Radiant with an Animus membrane?

It seemed to help, at least when she infused her Animus with the intent to hold in the heat. The Radiant energy spread into the surrounding sand, with each mote able to gain control of dozens of grains. Yuriko didn’t know how many motes she had in her core, simply because there were too many. The motes tended to clump and merge together too, and only when she drew them out was she able to separate them into singular motes. However, she somewhat felt that she could still divide the mote into smaller units…

Anyway, her Essence easily regenerated the motes she took out. Perhaps a mote of Radiant energy wasn’t equivalent to a lumen of Animus, and she hadn’t quite practised or explored the differences. She’d mostly been focused on other things, ehehe. Well, she had time now. Her path, the Ancient’s Way, was bottlenecked by her Anima reach and her Radiant Body Refinement. Both just needed time. She noticed that her reach increased faster when she fought challenging battles, but it also expanded faster right after she went south with her team. Experiencing the world was what Damien had said, so she supposed that was what she’d do.

As for her swordplay, she needed Swordmaster Kinohara if she wanted to progress faster. However, focusing on the basics was fine too, so that’s what she did. Every day she practised the Four Phases and the sword dances, and other than the ease of her performance, nothing much changed. Aside from her perfected strike, the Ender’s Waltz. She changed the name of that technique after a bit of thinking, from Gate of Death. Mainly when some memories seeped in from Damien and that’s what he called it.

A rhythm of war wherein only death and destruction are the conclusion. Three beats, three dances, but it was the fourth dance, the hidden melody, that truly tied it all together. And also why it drained her of all her Animus. Using the Ender’s Waltz without engaging the fourth dance was possible, but it wasn’t perfect. Still, it was a powerful fusion of the three dances, something she thought she had mastered a couple of years back, in the tunnels under Rumiga City. A foolish notion. She’d merely touched upon it, yet she thought she had achieved mastery? Heh.

Fusing her Animus, which was the bearer of her Will, into the motes of Radiant energy, seemed a bit redundant considering the motes that came from her core and Ennoia already bore her mark. It was a crutch she needed though, to quickly get a feel for using Radiant. Her usage before was mainly in creating her sunblade and shards, and of course, her Sorcerous Implement and the free-shaped spell she used in the beginning. And with some practice, she slowly was able to control her Radiant motes without adding Animus to them. It was a lot harder, but it also meant she wouldn’t have to spend her limited Animus.

While she trained with the sword, Gwendith came up to her and asked, “Shouldn’t you focus on one thing at a time? Your Radiant Ennoia?’

“Everything I do is infused with Radiant energy now,” Yuriko said simply.

Gwendith stared at the sand thoughtfully. “Ah. I see.”

As the days went by, the withered crops were revived and harvested, the fruiting trees all flowered and bore fruits. The refugees harvested and stored them in the wagons.

The beastkin grew restless. Kassy lingered around Yuriko while she trained or meditated, and eventually asked her when they were going to leave the oasis.

“Once all the supplies are gathered,” Yuriko answered easily, “then, we’ll move towards the east, towards the Zarek Mountains.”

Kassy and the other beastkin were an odd bunch. Yuriko chatted with them a few days ago, though it was mostly Kassy and her…uh, husband? Roland was the wolfkin who growled at her in Kadrac, but then again, she had been rude by staring. He was rather taciturn, though his nose wiggled often when he was around her. Ah, Kassy and the rescued beastkin, Tuska, too.

“You smell nice,” was what Kassy said when Yuriko asked, and the answer made her blush. She hadn’t taken a proper bath since Haveena!

She watched them practice a few times, too. They shifted into a hybrid form, where their bodies grew bigger and more like their beast traits. Claws, fangs, digitigrade legs. They were remarkably agile too. She itched to spar with them, but the one time they did, it devolved into a grappling match with Kassy being so slippery and flexible that Yuriko’s head spun. It would have been easy to repel the catkin woman with her Anima, but that wouldn’t be sparing. Anyway, she did manage to overpower Kassy in that match, much to the other’s consternation. They seem to be proud of their strength, but Yuriko thought they were on par with Heron at most. Ah, not that she and Heron had any kind of grappling match.

Anyway, it was only after nearly ten days that she figured out how to keep the sand from melting and boiling while she used Radiant kinesis on it. It involved using her Animakinesis too. It worked by using her Animakinesis to apply pressure to the grains, thus preventing them from liquifying. It wasn’t much different from controlling liquids with Animakinesis, which was to say, annoying, but doing so allowed her to weaponize the Radiant energy’s heat over a long time. And when she withdrew her Radiant infusion, the sand turned to obsidian as long as they were clumped in a certain way.

Just in time for the crops to finish growing and the hasty harvesting to be done. Yuriko jumped up as high as she could and saw the next oasis somewhere to the southeast. It looked really far though, maybe another twenty leagues? That was roughly five days of travel if nothing went wrong.

The Zarek Mountains loomed in the distance, and Yuriko felt her intuition pulling her there. She looked to the west and found the desert’s edge nearly twenty-five leagues away. She didn’t see any large groups of warriors, but there was a steady stream of travellers heading south. And Kadrac City lay just beyond the desert dunes.

By midday, they’d left the oasis village of Purebowl, and hopefully, to a better and safer place.