Orrin’s consciousness swam between waking and sleeping. For the moment, he didn’t remember that they had been ambushed. He didn’t remember that he and his brother were underground, looking for a strange city that should have the key to victory in the current war. He didn’t remember that he was following Yuriko.

No, at the moment, he was stuck in a nightmare. Or a dream, he wasn’t quite sure. Terror filled him at times, while at others, he was wrapped in a comforting cocoon. He was safe here, and the terrors and woes of life were far from him.

The stress of being in a treasonous family sloughed away. The stress of being near the girl he loved but couldn’t touch, faded to the back of his mind. The stress of needing to learn all he could about runescript and how to progress as a Rune Scrivener, even though he no longer had the resources of the Academy at his beck and call…

Beyond his attraction to Yuriko, his goal of becoming a Rune Scrivener was written into his bones. The Foster family was one of merchants, and the twins had long decided their role and path to prosperity. Animatech and Runescrivening were intrinsically linked, and both were the key to wealth. Braden was the consummate trader, while Orrin would be the one to produce their goods. He would be the edge that gave their Emporium the advantage.

Those goals and needs were what had driven the both of them for most of their lives. It was only when they had fallen for Yuriko that everything else took a backseat.

Now, however, he found something strange. His obsessions were falling. He was floating, and everything else was being left behind. He could feel connections to his Anima. There were two, and the stronger one was to his twin. The other one was his connection with Yuriko and he marvelled at the fact that it actually wasn’t that much weaker than his thread to Braden. Actually, he thought he could feel Yuriko through the connection…

But things were changing now. He could feel the threads slowly unravelling as something else took their place.

He felt his surroundings begin to shudder. He could feel…what was it? Green tendrils dug around at the edges of his consciousness. They burrowed into his body, but he tried to fight them off. They felt wrong…

But no matter what he did, everything the green tendrils touched was slowly tainted with its hue. He could feel himself…change. He fought it off. He didn’t want it! NO! Let go!

The tendrils touched and slowly receded. Leaving greenish hues on his Anima. Those hues slowly spread out, and where they did, Orrin felt numb. Then, he felt something even worse. He felt…pleasure. It felt good, yet, at the same time, he knew how wrong that feeling was.

In the haze of his mind, he knew that Chaos invading his Anima wasn’t good news. It was deadly. If enough of his was tainted, he would die. No!

Even as he struggled to fight, he knew it was pointless. He didn’t have the strength of Will and Anima to fight it off. He could only delay the inevitable.

“Braden…Yuriko…” he muttered. “I guess…this is goodbye…”

Tears welled out of the corner of his eyes and he wept. His body couldn’t move, only the representation of himself and his Anima. But he knew that he was slowly being overwhelmed, and only regret filled him. He wasn’t even sixteen yet. He hadn’t truly lived. He regretted hiding behind his books. Regretted being so passive in life. But it was too late now.

Then, just before he felt he would succumb, he felt something enter his body. He felt something pierce his abdomen and felt something enter, and the moment it did, it siphoned the Chaos already present within him. His Anima returned to its normal hue, but the Chaos had already left its touch. He didn’t know what changed within him, but at least he was alive.

The thing injected into him…what was it?

A little orb? He could just feel it at the edge of his consciousness.

Eh? Why were little tendrils growing out of it? It was slowly spreading across his body, and unlike the Chaos, what he felt now was pain. As if he was being torn apart and rebuilt, all with his nerves burning bright.

Ancestors take him now!

Then, blessedly, perhaps because the Ancestors answered his desperate plea, he fell completely unconscious.

___________

After she slew the three variant Femorants, Yuriko didn’t waste any more time. She ran towards the cavern’s opposite side and went through the tunnel she found there. However, she barely made it to the next connecting chamber when she was once again beset by more variant Femorants.

The group was of similar composition to the one she killed earlier. A huge brute, a sly striker, and a ranged flier. There were minor differences in their features, she was sure, but they looked similar enough to the first three that she would have a tough time recalling their differences later.

She fought them quickly, spending as much Animus as she needed to so that she could get past them quickly. And in the end, it took her nearly a hundred lumens worth of running the sword dances to do it. She was down to five hundred lumens in her external storage while her internal reserves were still full. While running, she pulled at the ambient Chaos, fighting off the terrible resistance by insulating them within her Anima light, and activated the gathering runescript weaving. She managed five lumens after a minute’s focus, but she’d inevitably slowed down and lost focus.

Cursing under her breath, she felt time running out, and she decided to find Orrin and Asami first before worrying about her reserves, though she knew that if she ran out, she’d be no help either way.

So, she fought as efficiently as she could. The variants appeared in the big chambers, so maybe she shouldn’t travel through it? But then again, she felt that she needed to cross such chambers otherwise she’d never reach her friends.

Deciding that she had to risk it, she fought off another five groups of the variants before she burst into a larger, spherical chamber, and frowned at what she saw inside.

Unlike the others, this chamber wasn’t made out of stone and dirt. Instead, it was coated in some manner of wax that made every sharp protrusion into gentle bumps. From the ceiling, which was no more than three paces, four at some points, high, came tendrils of flesh. The base was in the middle of the chamber, coming out from a hole completely filled with the stuff, and they connected from there to large spheres of thread.

The nearest one was just within her perception aura, though she was admittedly warier of the other creatures inside. There was a gamut of larger worker ants tending to the spheres, or pupae, she supposed.

She barely had an instant to note everything she could as the ants turned as one when she came close to the chamber. Then, as if her very presence was unbearable, their antennae stiffened up and they charged at her.

The larger workers were barely better than the warrior ants, just on par when it came to brute strength. They were a bit more agile though, but nowhere near as tough. She killed the maddened ants in less than a minute before the area was clear.

Her perception sank into the pupae, out of curiosity, and she was rewarded with the view of a liquified creature, with bits and bobs of organs and other ick. Gagging, Yuriko pulled back her perception and sought to move on. There was another tunnel beyond, and she carefully avoided the tendrils that looked like they were feeding the pupae.

The next few chambers were the same, and the distance to her friends shrank steadily, if slowly. The powerful Will she encountered when she first entered the space wasn’t focused on her now, and she wondered what entered the place to draw its attention.

Hmmm.

These pupae chambers…she felt that there was a big chance that Orrin and Asami would have been brought to a similar place. The farther she pushed, the smaller and more delicate the orbs became. Until they turned into small eggs. Well, small compared to the Femorants. They were still the size of her head though.

Tempted as she was to destroy the eggs then and there, she restrained herself. The Will behind the Chaos lake worried her, and now wasn’t the time to be reckless.

But her resolve was tested when she came into the next chamber.

Instead of pupae, the chamber had nooks filled with…bodies. And she wasn’t sure if they were still alive. She didn’t recognise them, or rather, she couldn’t since their features were completely gaunt. The tendrils were pierced into their bindings, with the pulsation moving upwards and away rather than towards the cocoons.

There were fewer workers here and, just when she was about to step into the chamber, she froze. Her perception aura caught something above. Right over the entrance, near the ceiling, and if she hadn’t checked, the variant Femorant would have landed right at her back.

With a feral grin, she sent her sunshards careening into the chamber, reversed, and then directly at the creature.

Puchii!

Blood dribbled down the entrance, followed a moment later by the body. She stepped past the guard, or perhaps assassin, and neared the cocoons. She could see a dozen of the things, and upon closer look, not all of them were human. Some were iron-furred wolves, and there was even a Gale Jaguar there. Those creatures were in their last legs and she wondered if they had been deliberately sustained at that point.

Feeling dread welling up within her, she hastily checked the rest of the cocoons and heaved a sigh of relief when she didn’t see Orrin or Asami there.

She hurried on to the next chamber, and the next, slaying variant ants, warrior ants, and workers when they got in her way. The feeling of dread returned after she returned from a brief foray into the dreamscape and felt her connection with Orrin fading. Asami’s was at the same strength still.

There were countless chambers of the captured and fed upon. And more than once, she suspected the Chaos lake to loop her around as some of those chambers looked suspiciously familiar. She felt the touch of the lake’s Will a few times and sensed something akin to amusement. There was a worrying undertone of malice though, especially when she used her sunshards to kill.

The Femorants were weak to Radiant, she supposed, but then again, every opponent she had used it against practically melted from the heat anyway. Er, except for the chain man who used to lead the prison caravan.

And then, she arrived at a chamber that was different and contained someone that she recognised.

Faeril Trafarren Sorren’ir. The young man she met in Sorren’s Hollow, and the grandson of that place’s leader. He was wrapped up in silvery threads and was clearly unconscious. There was a tendril attached to his body, which was thinner than she expected. All of his muscle definition was gone, and most of the fat, too. His long ears drooped to his shoulders and his hair was more white than silver.

The tendril was draining the young Sha’ledras tribesman and she cut it off in the blink of an eye. Then, the next moment, she released him from the cocoon, wrenched away the thing that was plugged into his abdomen, and cauterised the wound after her perception aura ascertained that there wasn’t anything left of the tendrils.

Faeril’s body was barely covered in rags, and Yuriko regretted not bringing her backpack along. They were only supposed to scout the pillar, after all. Her hip satchel only contained her canteen of Ambrosia, as well as a bunch of ration bars, and did have some cloth. But she hardly thought a handkerchief or two would save his modesty. She used her kinesis to bunch up a bit of the silky threads and used it to patch up his pants.

Just when she was about to leave, the chamber quaked, and she felt the full weight of the foreign Will on her. She gritted her teeth and flared her Anima to its full might, allowing her Radiant energy to suffuse her aura. The chamber trembled again, then ceased. However, the Will was still focused on her.