Yuriko’s reaction was immediate. Her Anima flared to its full might, and she activated all of her sword dances and prepared to use the Ender’s Waltz. Free Shaping had been denied easy use, but her Implement and Sorcery were still very much in play. Radiant energy vented out of her Essence, through her body, and blasted out through her long, golden hair.

However, engaging her Sorcerous Implement took much of her concentration, though only if she wanted the spell to form in a minute rather than an hour or so. Either way, she gathered the requisite Radiant energy and struggled to convert the ambient Chaos into Radiant energy while she charged towards Orrin and Asami, sending sunshards to clear the way.

The Femorant Queen reared back, seemingly surprised at Yuriko’s ferocity. Her sunshards struck the worker and warrior ants, but she only managed to strike once before her targets were pulled back. The Queen ant, whose humanoid body was even larger than Heron’s, gestured with her clawed hands. Animus and Chaos swirled out of her digits and materialised into tiny orbs which struck at the shards and deflected them.

Gritting her teeth, Yuriko activated the Ender’s Waltz, but almost as soon as she did, she felt a wrenching pain between her eyes. The waltz showed her that anything she did with her sunshards or Fri’Avgi alone, with the goal of defeating the Femorant Queen, would be doomed to failure…

No, not a complete failure. If she struck from all sides, she could distract the queen long enough to form the lance or take her friends away. Launching Fri’Avgi at the queen would distract her enough to give her a sliver more time to escape, and imploding Radiant Lance would give her the cover she needed. She wouldn’t have enough time to form the spell at all.

All that flashed through her mind in less than a second that Ender’s Waltz was active, then, the technique sputtered to a halt and the golden threads spinning out of her Anima snapped. For a moment, she could see into the dreamscape, and the threads there were in flux. The course of action she determined with the waltz was quickly becoming useless and she only had a couple of seconds to begin otherwise it would no longer be valid.

With a roar, she flung Fri’Avgi at the queen. The artefact spun end over end while she heard the animating spirit squeal in glee. Half of the sunshards struck at the ants around the queen, while a couple of sets severed the tendrils attached to both of her friends. Another set cut into their bindings, and Yuriko’s Animakinesis grabbed them as soon as she got near.

The queen attempted to smack Fri’Avgi out of the air, but the artefact’s momentum and true weight was greater than the Femorant expected. Her hand and arm collapsed into her torso and she was pushed back several paces.

The sunshards killed the workers and warriors while distracting the variants. Yuriko’s Radiant energy vortex coalesced over her hand while she reversed directions, pulling her friends, Faeril, and the last Hollower along.

The Femorant Queen’s antennae flailed about, each one was nearly as long as Yuriko’s hand. The ants went into a frenzy and surged around their ruler. The Femorant tried to grasp the artefact, but Yuriko tugged at her connection with Fri’Avgi, and the greatsword appeared in her hands.

Enraged, the Queen gathered her Animus orbs together, and they fused and changed. Even as Yuriko ran for the tunnels, she was taken aback by the creature’s technique.

The equivalent rank of an Ancient to a Knight Commander was called Manifestation, and what the queen did hint at that level’s secrets. The Animus gathering was imparted with Will and visibly changed into ants. Mundane ants that were about a fingernail’s length. Mundane, if the manifestations weren’t coloured blue, or the fact that they floated in the air. Or how they shot away from the queen by the hundreds of thousands and chased after Yuriko. Of how they avoided the sunshards even when they were no longer within sight of the queen.

The first of the flying ants reached her, and she struck them down with a barrage of sunshards. The first one tried to manoeuvre out of the way, but Yuriko blocked all the paths it could take to reach her, so it was struck down. The Animus ant took five sunshard blows before it dispersed, and the fragments only fell back from her reach before they were reconstituted. It was only then that Yuriko remembered she still had her Radiant Lance being shaped. It was still a bit from being able to form, but the Radiant energy was more than enough to explode.

She twisted the runescript lines close, stopped up the formation of the lance, and flung the resulting mass of Radiant energy towards the swarm. At the same time, she dove into the tunnel and deployed her Adamant Guardian Seal, which activated just as the proto-lance exploded.

The chamber shuddered, and the very air screamed as intense heat and concussive force erupted from the spell form. The Adamant Guardian Seal blocked the tunnel and reflected the heat and force back into the chamber, and the next thing Yuriko knew, the world around her turned white, and even though the Adamant Guardian Seal, she could feel how strong the eruption was. Added to the fact that they were in an enclosed space, the force was channelled and reflected against the walls and floor.

She secured the four people with ropes built hastily out of Animus, and Yuriko prayed to the Ancestors that the constructs would hold. Her Animakinesis could lift them off the ground easily, but moving them was another matter entirely. Of the lot, Faeril was the heaviest, but the other Hollower was lightest as he barely had any muscles left. Orrin was still covered in some threads that would have taken her more effort to remove than she had the luxury for, but Asami looked untouched.

The tunnel was different than she remembered, but then again, the chambers and passages were so identical that it was hard to distinguish them. As it were, she only had a feeling it was different, but that was enough to make her even more anxious. With the swarm of intelligent Animus constructs behind her, she didn’t have enough leeway to be picky with her path. As long as there was a path away from the frighteningly powerful creature, then she was fine with it.

The tunnel went on and on for far longer than anticipated, but thankfully, there were no ants to intercept her. The flying swarm was still behind her, though they were more than fifty paces back, the last time she managed to look over her shoulder.

They’re leading us somewhere. Damien said.

‘Yeah, I think so, too,’ Yuriko answered grimly. She could feel the edges of this place’s Will, but the Radiant energy she kept in her Anima reach warded it away.

The question is, where is it leading us to? An ambush?

‘Dunno,’ Yuriko muttered. ‘But what was with that Femorant Queen? She’s on the Knight Commander level, isn’t she?’

Barely. Damien snorted. In her place of power, yes. And this is a broad lair. Hrmm, but since you’re not in her presence, she can’t do much more. You noticed she didn’t move much?

Yuriko nodded. Even when she launched Fri’Avgi, the queen didn’t dodge.

‘That was fun!’ Fri’Avgi gushed. ‘Do that again next fight!’

‘Alright.’ Yuriko chuckled as the childish spirit’s glee was infectious. Her heart still pounded furiously, but it was settling down. A run like this was nothing to her general training after all.

An abrupt turn in the tunnel forced her to slow down, which was fortunate because just past the turn was the Veil.

Yuriko skidded to a halt, but a quick glance back showed her the flying swarm gaining on her with every second. She didn’t hesitate for long and plunged through, and emerged back in the city. She pushed off away from the bottom of the crater, heaving a sigh of relief at the sight of the…ruined…buildings?

Eyes widening in surprise and not a little bit of fear, Yuriko looked back and found that she exited the Chaos lake through a tunnel at the bottom of a much smaller crater, and the street around her contained houses that were in much worse repair than Cerkala. And even more concerning, there were fewer pillars though they looked thicker, and the sky-reflecting ceiling was in even worse shape. She and the others weren’t in Cerkala!

She started when a dozen of the Animus flying ants exited the Chaos lake and shot towards her. She pushed the others away and used sunshards and Fri’Avgi to block, but a couple managed to slip past her guard and bit at her Anima.

Crack!

The ant bit off a fist-sized chunk of her Anima and a burst of pain nearly paralyzed her. Yuriko groaned, and slammed Fri’Avgi into the offending ants, shattering them to bits. She jumped out of the way immediately and was relieved to note that the shattered fragments of the Animus constructs faded away rather than reforming.

Still, staying near the tunnel wasn’t safe. She channelled distilled Chaos into the fractured bits, hoping to patch it up, but knew that she’d have to meditate using Anima Refinement to properly heal it over. That required a safe place though, and most of the buildings looked like they would fall over after getting hit by a stiff breeze.

She found a relatively intact house a few blocks away. It had four walls, at least, even if two of those were crumpled over leaving only the bottom half intact. And of course, there was only a third of the roof left. It was the most intact building she could find, however, and to be safe, she laid down her four rescues away from the overhanging roof or the slanted wall.

A cursory check on Faeril showed her that the Sha’ledras had lost several Jin of weight. His muscular physique now looked like an empty sack, with the skin on his arms and thighs stretchy and loose. He had a slight fever too. His lips were dry and chapped, so she dribbled a bit of water on her fingers and rubbed it on his lower lip. He reflexively licked it up.

The other young man from Sorren’s Hollow was the one she was most worried about. If Faeril had lost a lot of weight, this boy looked more like a skeleton covered with skin. His pulse was weak, and she could barely feel his breath when she placed her finger underneath his nostril. He would die soon if she did nothing, and even if she tried, she wondered if she could actually save the boy, or if it was better to let nature take its course and let him pass on. But then, why would she have bothered to bring him out of that Abyss?

Her hands drifted towards her hip satchel, to her canteen of Ambrosia. That was probably their only hope, and a single droplet each should be enough to save their lives. Ambrosia that could be used to help create a seed for her friends’ Body Forging. Ambrosia that could be used to strengthen her Essence and Ennoias.

She only hesitated for a moment. She’d lost more Ambrosia than she had on hand, and she didn’t mind that much. If anything, she could probably find more of the stuff if she explored more ruins. Right.

Sighing, she carefully took a droplet and infused it with her Will, leaving the Intent to heal and regenerate inside, then fed each drop to Faeril and the other boy. Almost as soon as the droplets touched their lips, a golden hue covered their bodies and their ravaged bodies began to heal. It actually looked more as if time wound back and they returned to before they had been captured by the Femorants. It wasn’t an instant thing though, and the rejuvenation happened slowly.

She moved over to Orrin and Asami and cleared off the gunk that they’d been covered with.

“Orrin…” she gasped.

Since when did he have antennae?