The flag on the pole portrayed a trio of lightning bolts grasped in the middle by an iron gauntlet. Yuriko could just see the details on the nearest ship, which was still several longstrides away. Enhanced Sight brought everything to a focus and she noted that even the smallest warship was at least twice as at least twice as long as the Wheelwright, but was much narrower. The impression she got was as though it were a blade cutting through the water. The ship was slowly moving southward, but almost as soon as she and the others spotted the ships, they were, in turn, detected.

“This is bad,” Captain Smolders muttered. Yuriko was on the deck while the captain was inside the bridge. Nevertheless, with her perception aura extended, she heard and saw most of the goings-on in the ship. Ah, she only made the mistake of expanding her aura into closed quarters once.

Edison was seated on a stool across from her. A square table had been set up under the shade of the awnings where they conversed and traded arcane knowledge. The older man was staring at some runescript lines she wrote down on a piece of paper. It was a simple campfire weaving but he’d been studying the details for more than an hour now.

“You think they’ll block us?” Yuriko asked as she pointed towards the ships.

Edison looked up, startled. Apparently, he hadn’t noticed. His face paled once he realised what was on the horizon.

“Oh no,” he muttered. “I didn’t think Richmond would project power into the Kamwick Sea so soon! What happened to the Norrinthian navy?”

The northern shore wasn’t that far away, but still out of easy sight. For some reason, Yuriko couldn’t see beyond a league even if she had an uninterrupted line of sight. She could only chalk it up to the quirks of this extremely large plane. Still, this morning, they had observed plumes of black smoke coming from the north.

“They’re already signalling us to stop and prepare to be boarded,” Edison's voice rose in panic, “Bloody luck! The Wheelwright’s running with cannon parts and ammunition! War materiel. They’ll board us and then sink us after finding those things. Then, we’ll be put in a prison camp. I…” He looked at Yuriko regretfully. “I’m sorry. It seems like I’ve brought you and your people into danger.”

“You didn’t think this would happen?”

“Not a full blockade like this! Where did they even get these many ships…? Wait…” He ran towards the railings, pulled out a spell card, created a circle with his forefinger and thumb, then looked through it. “Those markings…they’re captured Norrinth ships! Did the Norrinthian Empire surrender everything?” He cursed loudly.

Yuriko frowned as she observed the narrow ships turn and bear down on the Wheelwright. The merchant ship continued on its path, with the engines still running at full power. The captain was pacing on the bridge, gnawing on his fingernails and with sweat beading on his forehead. He looked reluctant, but then, the ship wasn’t armed with cannons. Those narrow ones had three large barrels sticking out of turrets.

And there were two of them, coming from either side. From their speed, they’d intercept the Wheelwright in half an hour at most.

“What do we do?” Edison moaned.

Yuriko sighed and shook her head. She stared up at the sun, which was just climbing up to its zenith, and at the ships. A Radiant Lance would just be enough to blow them off the water. However, the amount of Animus she would have to spend to make up for the missing ambient Chaos would probably be around two to three hundred lumens. At least.

Plain Radiant energy would disperse too quickly, but if she used her Animus and Anima, she could use those at a range of about thirty paces. Far too short.

“How far could those cannons reach?” Yuriko asked a passing sailor.

“We’re already within range, ma’am,” he answered politely, though his face had a fatalistic expression. “They can reach sixteen kilocubits, at least.”

They were at long range, but the enemy ships were closing in. Her eyes dropped towards the water, and an idea popped into her head.

“Edison! If we have fog cover, can we slip past them?”

“Eh? Where would fog even come from?” he retorted. “The sun’s too bright!”

“Answer my question,” Yuriko said flatly.

“Ah, maybe? They won’t know where to shoot, especially if Captain Smolders changes heading. The Daemon’s Passage is only sixteen kilocubits wide at its narrowest point. If fog covers all of that…” He turned towards her. “Can your techniques manage that?” He asked, hope blooming on his face.

“Maybe. Go talk to the captain.”

After Edison hurried to the bridge, Yuriko hurried to the stern where she knew Heron was doing his exercises. She found him hurrying towards the bow, and he spotted her immediately.

“What are we going to do?”

“Can you hold on to the winds?” Yuriko asked quickly.

“I guess,” he muttered. Heron had informed her about his nascent Ennoia, which was the only thing they could practice without severely depleting their Animus reserves. Using it without Animus backing limited its practical effects though. “How would you like me to hold on to it?”

“Hang on.”

Yuriko grabbed his wrist and dragged him towards the ship’s centre, where she knew Gwendith would emerge from belowdecks. Her friend spotted her immediately and asked the same thing Heron did.

Yuriko pulled them both towards the bow and when they were near the bowsprit, she said, “We’ll make a covering fog. I’ll create sunshards and hold them just below the surface, Gwen, you control the resulting steam and remove a bit of heat from it so it stays close to us, and Heron, make sure it thickens. Can both of you handle that?”

Heron frowned, but nodded. “I can try.”

“Same,” Gwendith said.

“There’s no time to lose, let’s begin,” Yuriko said.

She pulled as much Radiant energy as she could and shaped them into several sunshards. She dunked them under the waves, just a couple of inches under the water. The area around the blades immediately began to sizzle and steam. She spread the blades around the bow, and soon enough, billowing clouds formed right in front.

Gwendith’s Anima expanded as wide as it could go, then she stretched and manipulated its shape so that it covered as much space as she could. The steam condensed back into water droplets at first, but with concerted effort, she adjusted the temperature so that the fog stayed just there.

Heron was having the worst results. What Yuriko asked him wasn’t something he’d trained for, but she could see his desperate focus. The winds around them stilled for a short moment, before returning to motion.

The fog spread, but it was too slow.

A flash of light. Splash! Booooom!

Water splashed not ten paces from the bow. A cannon shell from the lead enemy ship. Yuriko gritted her teeth, and channelled nearly two hundred lumens, carrying nearly all of her immediate Radiant energy reserve, and dumped them into the water. The Animus carried her Intent and Will. Turn to steam and fog!

Fwooosh!

The water surrounding the Wheelwright flashed into steam so quickly that the water created a trough underneath the keel.

Thud!

The Wheelwright dropped down and the engines stuttered. Gwendith’s face paled as she exerted her Will, trying to keep the steam from rising too high, but it was futile. The volume Yuriko produced was too much.

“Heron, spread it out!” Yuriko yelled, and the boy reversed his original intent.

The winds around him cycled and scattered the fog, which grew thick enough to obscure everything around them. Yuriko felt the ship list to the left, and the Wheelwright swung that way, just barely in time to avoid getting struck by a follow-up cannon shot.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The cannon shells hit beyond Yuriko’s aura perception range, but it was still uncomfortably close.

Boom! Whoosh!

“Adamant Guardian Seal!” Mandalas of Animus formed in front of Yuriko, borne by her Anima. The Cannon shell slammed into the Seal, flattened, then dropped to the water with a plop. A second shell struck the Seal’s edge and deflected away. A few seconds later, the Animus lights flickered and disappeared.

Yuriko gritted her teeth. Controlling the sunshards to remain under the surface was easy. Controlling how much heat it gave out was hard. Too much and the steam exploded underneath the waves and rose too high up to be of much use, and too little meant that the sea’s cool waters neutralized the heat and resulted in nothing more than a couple of bubbles. Gwendith was doing a splendid job of controlling the mists’ temperature, but prolonged exertion of Will wasn’t something she was used to. Heron had it comparatively easier as all he had to do was slow the winds when they grew too quick.

Boom! Booom!

The voices of the cannons grew fainter as they pulled away from the enemy ship. Then, new cannons spoke from where they were headed to. Thankfully, the shells overshot the Wheelwright. Yuriko, Gwendith, and Heron had spread the fog enough that it should encompass a larger area, which made it harder to hit them with the cannons. After ten minutes, Heron collapsed to his knees, his Will spent. Yuriko saw that he was barely conscious, but Asami had been by his side and kept him from dropping into a boneless heap. Gwendith wasn’t faring much better. Comparatively, Yuriko was doing just fine.

It wasn’t that her Will was that much stronger, but that her sunshards were a bearer of her Ennoia. Since it had structure and had consumed Animus in its formation, the weight her Will had to bear was practically a fraction of what the others had to do. Thankfully, the mists were thick enough that the steam that rose from the waves was instantly cooled and subsumed by the existing fog.

Edison appeared next to her, his face a mask of amazement. But he shook himself and said, “We’ll pass the blockade line in a few minutes. But the fog will hamper us afterwards. There are a lot of shoals near the shores, and the pass is only nine kilocubits wide at its narrowest. We need to be at least a kilocubit from the southern shore to be safe.”

“You want me to disperse the fog? Of course, just tell me when and I’ll stop making more,” Yuriko replied.

Edison gave her another incredulous look, then nodded. He carefully made his way towards the bridge, but not before he bumped into one sailors who had been staring at her with undisguised fear.

It was certainly a change from the usual lust that men looked at her with. Yuriko snorted as she returned her focus to the dangers ahead. With part of her focus, she created the Adamant Guardian Seal pattern in her Animus. Though she had two more patterns ready, from the rate at which the ship’s cannons fired, those weren’t enough.

A couple of hours went by. She had to deploy the seal a couple more times to block lucky shots. Thankfully, the reports from the cannons faded with distance. Another two hours later and Edison returned to tell her that they were probably out of immediate danger. Yuriko sighed. Her sunshards had to be remade every so often, and she was at the limits of her Animus reserves. It would take days to recover, but maybe she should take the chance now to modify her storage runescript and merge it with the regeneration part as she had intended before. She still clearly remembered the patterns she found in the obsidian towers and with some effort, she’d already made some preliminary progress.

Still, with the danger passed, she allowed the sunshards to dissipate. The fog didn’t immediately disappear, of course, and it was thick enough to linger, especially since it was already close to dusk. The Wheelwright pushed on, eager to escape the Kamwick Sea.

Yuriko returned to her cabin and struggled to enter a meditative trance. But the exertion of her Will, even though it was minimal due to the sunshards, proved too much. Fine control exhausted her mentally, and before she knew it, her head had already hit the pillows.