As the Chaos flooded around Yuriko, she felt it invade her Anima. It was not the distilled Chaos she was used to handling, nor the rather tame ambient Chaos in the planes. It was the wild, primordial Chaos that was too volatile to exist anywhere else other than the Chaos Sea. It burned her skin, her Anima, and even began to erode and change the runescript mandala formed between Fri’Avgi’s six floating swords, which acted as both focus and anchor to the rifts.

The primordial Chaos was also easily influenced by Will, and it was the best sort of clay to mould and Shape. Her only spell was the Radiant Lance, but conjuring a simple attack like that wouldn’t suffice. She knew it had overwhelming power, but against several MiJins of rock and earth, it would simply vent all of its might there, leaving molten lava or ashes, and leave her original target untouched.

She knew that the tentacled beast was hidden somewhere. It might not even be near the ceiling, but towards the ground and behind several piles of rock. If it could curve its beams around, then nothing was stopping it from shooting up from behind a pillar and manoeuvring around other obstacles before emerging out in the open. Her only clue to its location was the swirling tempest of grey energy that was slowly corroding the ambient Chaos around the area. It was sure to be in its midst, though probably not at the obvious centre.

Hence, a single focused attack would be useless if it never got to hit its target in the first place. Her other idea was to create an explosion that covered as wide an area as she could, but then…that might bring the rest of the ceiling down on them, collapse the cavern, and maybe even affect Rumiga’s surface.

So what then? Her thoughts whirled as the Chaos gathered around her. She inhaled the primordial Chaos, struggled to convert it to Radiant energy, succeeding only because she brought it close to her Essence core and Ennoia, then breathed out the Radiant energy. She couldn’t convert all of the Chaos, not simply because there was too much primordial Chaos, but because she wouldn’t be able to Shape the Radiant. Not without greater mastery over it, anyway.

Well, if one big explosion would be too risky, what about multiple small ones that could cover the entirety of her target area and were contained enough not to destroy the cavern?

Whatever it was she decided to do, she’d better get on with it. She was on a strict time limit as she felt Fri’Avgi’s reserves were already down by a sixth. It wasn’t truly wasted as she needed that time to gather the Chaos to herself.

With another thread of consciousness, she observed the goings on around her. Zarek was painfully losing the fight for its life. The wisp-spawned, after several minutes of effort, had managed to dig deep enough into the Avos’ shell that they reached its actual body. The Stonetoise’s angry roars turned into high-pitched shrieks of pain. Yuriko winced as the sound rang in her ears. In the midst of Shaping, she could do little to alleviate its distress. Instead, she prodded her newfound connection through her Mien and sent an impression to Riley and the others to help the beleaguered Avos.

‘No.’

Yuriko paused. ‘Why not?’

‘It touched something it shouldn’t have.’ The tone came across as fiercely vindictive.

Yuriko frowned as their connection attenuated with Riley’s annoyance and the only thing she could do now was sigh. Then again, Zarek was so big that it shouldn’t perish that easily, and the tentacled Primordial Spawn was still focused on the Avos rather than reacting to her Shaping.

‘The Entropic energy must dull its senses,’ she thought absently.

Since Riley refused to do anything, the only thing she could do to help the Avos was to finish her Shaping as quickly as possible.

Perhaps blanketing the area with explosions wouldn’t be enough to destroy the spawn. She remembered striking it with the Radiant Lance during the True Refraction and that hadn’t been enough to defeat it. Maybe a couple more direct hits should do. There was also the matter of the Entropic energy that was multiplying at a steady rate. When her Radiant energy-filled sunshards struck at the big skelly, his grey Entropic energy sort of cancelled out the Radiant. There was a good chance that the Entropic energy around the spawn would do the same…actually, she was sure that was guaranteed. What separated Chaos from Entropic energy though?

Ah, it was actually glaringly obvious if she spent more than a moment thinking about it. Entropy reduced everything to ashes and dust, while Chaos transformed.

Chaos transformed into Radiant energy as she breathed life into her Working. Instead of a singular spear, she created bundles of arrows. Each one was imprinted with the need to explode, but only if they were within a set distance from each other. Anything less than five paces and they wouldn’t go off, and anything more than seven meant that they had to pull together.

How big was the volume she needed to cover? Numbers appeared in her head and almost immediately made her want to groan and drop. Forget specifics, she had a practically unlimited source of Chaos here so she’d rather build as many as she can. She wove five hundred arrows nearly simultaneously. Once she figured out what needed to go into each arrow, it was a simple matter to duplicate them. The single arrow became two, then two became four, and so on.

But the initial salvo wasn’t enough. The spawn would only take damage from one or two arrows, and then it would escape. The follow-up attack was crucial, but how could she ensure that the arrows or lances would strike where the spawn was? She spent a long moment trying to figure it out, quite sure that there was a way before she stopped herself.

“I’m wasting time!” She gritted her teeth. Instead, she formed several javelins that would shoot towards where she wanted them to, without the need to throw them physically. That used up perhaps half of the potential destructiveness but would save her the time it would take to launch them.

Once the particulars were set, she had less than a fifth of Fri’Avgi’s reserves left, and all of the Chaos had been Shaped. The arrows gleamed with Radiant energy, and the follow-up javelins were ready too. She took a deep breath, then closed the rifts and forced the mandala to shut down. She made to dampen Fri’Avgi back to normal, but the artefact spirit yelled at her.

‘If you do that, you’ll lose control!’

The distilled Chaos burned away and she had ten seconds left. She spread her Anima into wings and launched herself up. At fifty paces above the ground, she unleashed the arrows.

Wssst! Wssssst! Wsssssst!

The bundle shot directly into the Entropic zone and was scattered to saturate the entire field. She could feel the fabric of the spell beginning to fizzle out as the Entropic energy ate away at the bindings, but they lasted long enough.

Brakkooooooooooooooooooom!

Hundreds of explosions blossomed in the air, and it drowned out whatever pained noises the spawn made.

Then, Yuriko pinpointed its location and launched the dozen Radiant Lances at it. Maybe now it would die.

__________

The moment Qatir felt the Knight of the Abyss’ destruction, he couldn’t help but curse. “Useless wretch! He couldn’t even stop the Ancient for more than a few minutes!”

He could only spare a little bit of attention as most of his focus was towards the tiny portal that opened to the depths of the Abyss. His master, Delgora, was on the other side. The portal was too small and flimsy, and the planar Veil too stiff, to allow Delgora’s true consciousness to pass through, but then again, given the state of the Primordial Creators and Fatespinners, perhaps his master wasn’t even really awake at this point.

A Primordial was a complex being beyond mortal belief. Truthfully, they were often beyond immortal understanding either. Even their progeny, a spawn such as Qatir, could barely glimpse the labyrinthian minds behind the Name. Unlike their Avatars and Inner Hearts, spawn were so divorced from the Primordial beings that they were practically creatures unto their own. Qatir’s dearest ambition was to become part of the unity, and in the process, expand his scope of existence.

And the way to become unified was to gain power for his Lord. The planar core was a prize well worth spilling blood for, and the only thing that stood between it and himself was this half-dead Avos. Soon to be completely dead from the feedback he got from his attacks.

The Restless Underworld continued to churn, drawing wretched spirits from the Pure Lands and from Delgora’s domain. The wisps created bodies of their own, patterned after the war machines of the battle long past, using the very fabric of the plane to weave them. That and the bodies of the dead. Those that the wisp-born slew would soon become materials for more fighters. Even as the mortals left their dead, the wisps dove into the abandoned bodies, subsumed the remnant Animas and crafted them into new flesh.

Qatir took a long moment to admire the wisps. They were beings hand-crafted by his Lord to turn the enemy’s strength to their own. They weren’t much use against the Ancient God-Monarchs, of course, but they were quite handy against their mortal armsmen.

Then, he turned his attention to his Knight’s remnant wisp. His large eye squinted as he searched for the fragment. Having been invaded by the other wisps, the primary consciousness should have returned to his tentacles as soon as its vessel was destroyed. But he could feel through his tether that the remnant had taken shelter deep into the ground rather than come to him.

“Foolish wretch. Cowardly spirit!” he cursed. “Come to me and fulfil your duty!” He could feel the mass of confusion that was the primary consciousness, and for a moment, he regretted allowing the Restless Underworld to overtake his Knight. Yes, it empowered him greatly, but he realised that against a canny foe, power without finesse was useless. “Come to me!” he yelled.

But just before the spirit could move, he finally noticed the other open rift.

“Accursed Radiance!” The Ancient! Where was she? Ah!

Qatir quivered in fear, but it was too late. He’d been so focused on bringing the guardian down that he forgot. The Ancient was the greater threat even if she didn’t look one!

Then, his world was consumed in Radiant fires as the entirety of the Restless Underworld mandala was consumed by Radiant explosions.

“Arghh!!!”

His body flailed as he tried to put out the fires, but his rubbery skin, which had just been healed from the horrendous burns the woman had inflicted on him, had begun to melt again.

And he could only watch in mounting horror, as a dozen golden lances swerved through the air, all aimed at his body and his eyes. The Entropic energy called up by the Restless Underworld had been burned away by the earlier explosions, and even though they were starting to rally back to his call, they were too slow.

As the first lance struck and melted a hole through his body, he wrenched open a rift, the Veil already weakened by his actions and slipped through.

But then, he was bounced out of the Chaos. A creature was there, waiting for the rift to open. A man with silver hair, green eyes, and tanned skin, with a crescent and an empty circle etched on his left cheek.

The man…the Chaos Lord grinned and hissed, “You think you were going to steal my prey? Foolish puppet.” And with a casual gesture, he sent an arrow of scintillating energy, which threaded around the Radiant explosions, and stabbed straight into the guardian’s forehead, and into his brain, and probably, the seat of its consciousness. The gigantic Stonetoise reared back, but the light of life in its eyes was already fading.

The Chaos Lord waved casually at Qatir and said, “Thank you for opening the way. Now, goodbye.”

The rift closed, and with it, Qatir’s last hope of survival. The next moment, the rest of the Radiant lances struck his body, and the burning rays of the Radiant Sun turned him to ashes.