A big portion of Northern Lindorn was burnt to the ground. After that first night attack, several more followed. At least, that’s what Yuriko later learned. At the moment, she had travelled to the Karcellian capital and was feeling out that bump of direction that Damien’s awakening had highlighted. Oh, she wasn’t alone, despite what she originally intended.

“You’re giving a lot of weight to these strange instincts of yours, aren’t you?” Heron chuckled and Yuriko just shrugged.

As she walked towards the locomotive station, she found him doing his morning exercises. Heron had immediately asked her where she was going, considering her attire: she was wearing her traveller’s gear after all. Er, she didn’t bring her Arclight Sword as that would only bring trouble, but then again, she was never unarmed.

“It’s brought us this far,” she finally said.

Heron chuckled. “To a Chaos-forsaken land with millions of people, yes.”

Yuriko flushed as she muttered, “It’s usually for our benefit.”

Heron shrugged. “I agree. Well, we’ve been on the edge for so long, then coming here…” He paused, then sighed. “Ever since I thought you were lost back in Rumiga, training had lost its appeal. I continued for so long since I didn’t want to weaken, but…” he smiled, “when you returned, it was as if what I did had meaning again.”

Yuriko coughed and looked away uncomfortably. “It’s my Mien, Heron. It…it affected you when we were all young and changed you…” Her voice turned to whispers in the end, but it seemed Heron heard her anyway.

“I know it did, but I don’t mind.” He smiled. “I’ve said it before and my feelings have not changed no matter what may have happened.”

Yuriko stared up at him and wondered when his black eyes had become so deep.

She stared at him for so long that he eventually turned completely red and coughed. “Anyway, where are we going?”

Yuriko let out a small giggle which only served to turn his ears redder, and said, “Well, it’s still south of here.”

They had just alighted from the railway station and were looking down into the city. Lindorn was separated into three districts, Northern, Central, and Southern. Central was in the big island in the middle of the Serenwa River, and well, honestly, it actually looked more like the river split in two and rejoined a few leagues east rather than it being an island. Central had six connecting bridges, which served pedestrians, cars, and locomotives at once.

She had initially thought that what Damien was looking for was in Lindorn, but from the feeling she currently had, it might be a bit south of it.

“Let’s go,” Yuriko said. The trams that serviced the city’s populace only moved within each district, so if they wanted to cross to Central, or move directly to Southern, they’d have to take the railways. The first time Douglas brought them to the underground station had been a few weeks ago, but the novelty had yet to fade. Seventh District Station was close enough to outbound railways that it was an easy five minute walk.

She’d kept her hair in a ponytail. It was nearing the end of the Season of Fire, Ignis as they called it here, and the Season of Air, Sylphied, was coming up in a couple of weeks. The Ignis heat was receding and cool air from the coast blew in. That made wearing her overcoat not so strange here. Still, her attire drew attention since her feminine figure, even dampened by the unbelted coat, was still discernible. A few men and women pointed at her, but she ignored them easily. Heron strode at her side, and since he was so tall, especially compared to the locals, he drew most of the eyes.

Once they were at the underground railway station, she let him pay for the tickets and they rode the locomotive across the city. All the while, she paid attention to that bump of direction. It shifted degrees, but mostly pointed southeast, and when they reached Southern Lindorn, she was now sure that it wasn’t in the city at all. Close, but not quite.

She would have hired a landcraft, but she didn’t know what she would find, and she wasn’t sure if there would be trouble. So the two of them walked. Farther south, the city turned to slums. Here were the people displaced by the fires and bombing, but Yuriko could see that only a few had given in to despair. Many were trying to live their lives, and almost all of the adult population worked at factories building war materiel.

There were posters exhorting the people to such efforts, with the prevailing one being, “Every little bit counts when fighting against the Tyrant!” It was accompanied by a caricature of an evil looking man in a military uniform brandishing a horse whip in one hand, while a Karcellian soldier tried to shoot him with a rifle.

With there being few people on the streets, the two of them increased their walking pace. They crossed several longstrides that way, until the slums gave way to rolling plains and hills. They followed the road southeast, which eventually led to a large estate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sign across the gate proclaimed, “Karcellian Mages’ Society”.

To be sure, Yuriko and Heron circled around the estate, but the feeling pointed straight towards the centre. Whatever Damien and her Anima wanted was right here.

“What secrets are they keeping?” Heron muttered. “What do you want to do? Go straight in, or wait until night and sneak in?”

“Hmmm,” Yuriko nibbled her lips.

If Saki were with them, she could have asked her handmaiden to investigate. But then again, Saki hadn’t perfected hiding her ambient Chaos, so she would have still been detectable. Well, better to approach directly first, right? She was just wondering what she should say. No doubt, there were several restricted areas within the KMS’ headquarters.

“You know, if what you’re looking for is so important, I don’t think they’d just give it to you for the asking,” Heron observed.

Yuriko frowned. “That’s true…but I don’t want to just grab it without giving anything back in return.”

Heron shrugged, “What is it you’re looking for? Do you think it’ll help us get back home? Help us protect Rumiga, and help us defeat the Chaos Duke?”

“I…” Yuriko bit her lips. “I don’t know. Only it’s something I have to get.”

“Why?”

“It will…I think it will strengthen me. That’s certainly what Da- er, what my Facet indicates.”

“Your Facet? I thought you discarded it when you used...?”

“I can still simulate it with my Anima...”

Heron shrugged. “All the more reason not to tip your hand, isn’t it? If your Facet is telling you to get whatever that is, chances are, they won’t surrender it to you. And if we try to ask for it, then it will only let them know to guard against us.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Let’s return tonight. You can feel it, right? As long as it doesn't move, we have time on our side. And…” He hesitated. “If you wish, I can try to scout.”

“You can do that without being seen?”

“My Ennoia.” Heron admitted. “I’ve been training with Asami on how to project and gather information from the winds.”

“Alright. Uhm, be careful as any use of Animus might tip them off.”

She realised that she agreed with Heron’s opinion. Whatever it was, it felt powerful enough to be a key aspect of the nation’s strength. But then again, if they had access to such a thing, why would their Animus techniques be so weak? She felt that things weren’t as simple as they are on the surface, and perhaps doing things not in plain sight would be better.

Having decided on a course of action, and conveniently ignoring the fact that she had a class to teach tomorrow, the two of them snuck into a grove that was a few dozen paces from the estate’s border. Well, they moved directly away first, owing to the fact that the gate guard had seen them linger on the road. Perhaps the game was already up just from that fact alone, but trying wouldn’t hurt. And if they got caught, she could always use her Mien to make the sentry forget about them.

They circled around a pasture, making sure that a hill or trees was always between them and the estate. The area was mostly rolling hills and farms, though in the south, she could see buildings and aircraft. The grove they settled in was an apple orchard. The fruits were growing on the branches, but they were far from being ripe. Heron sat in the shade of the trees while she settled down where the sun could shine on her. She shed her overcoat too, and rolled up her sleeves. Then spent the rest of the morning and afternoon in meditation.

Most of this region’s runescript patterns were geared towards efficiency and minimal consumption, but it was often in exchange for power. In Rumiga or the Chaos Sea, efficiency didn’t matter as much as power, especially as the iarvesh levels increased. However, she didn’t feel it was a waste of time, after all if she could squeeze out as much power as she could from a limited resource, then simply increased the scale, then wouldn’t that mean she’d be able to output more from less?

It wasn’t that simple, but she had an almost intuitive feel for deriving and combining runescript weaving. It was actually enjoyable work and a good alternative to physical training. She just had to tweak a few of her Animus storage and regeneration weavings to optimise the entire thing. It was passable now, but she felt it could still be improved. As it were, her storage was at one thousand six hundred lumens, and she recovered a lumen every two and a half minutes here. If she were in Rumiga, that would be one and a half seconds per lumen.

She got up and walked towards Heron, who was still in meditation. She sat against his back and looked at the setting sun. The clouds were painted red and orange.

They sat like that for a couple more hours until the night covered everything. The estate was dark, but there were a few windows with lights coming out of them.

“I’ve mapped out a possible route,” Heron said. “But the innermost parts were warded.”

Yuriko nodded. “Well, let’s go.”

She retracted her Anima as close to her body as possible, and thinned it where she could. One inch radiating out from her skin was where all of the storage and regeneration weaving was located, and where before, she couldn’t pull her Anima back inside without undoing the runescript weavings, now, she could do so, but only if she emptied her reserves. Working with only two hundred lumens was dangerous, but she had several lumens of liquid Animus inside her, too, which she could evaporate to fill her reserves. Venting more than a thousand lumens out at once would have been noticeable, so she’d done so throughout the day, and compressed the remainder.

Without her condensed Anima and her perception aura, she felt vulnerable, and she couldn’t help but stay close to Heron, whose condensed Anima didn’t give out much light. Still, there was a tiny bit of illumination, so he had to retract his, too.

Afterwards, they headed straight towards the estate. Heron guided both of them inside, and through the rather sparse patrol. The only time she used her Anima was to unlatch a window from the inside. Thankfully, none of the outer walls had runescript wards.

They walked confidently, yet silently through the hallways while Yuriko paid attention to her goal. It wasn’t in the exact centre, but off to the southern wing. Not in any of the upper levels either, but actually, in the basement.

The ominous feeling only intensified as they went down the spiral staircase and into the narrow underground passages. The walls were covered in large stones, and while the air wasn’t musty, the floor was covered in dust. And they were leaving a clear trail behind. Still, nothing to be done about it now. She could see and feel numerous runescript formations within the tunnels, though none of them were against intruders. Rather…

“Those are storage and regeneration patterns,” she muttered. It was much more complex than what she could manage within her Anima, but then again, these weren’t limited by space. “I think we’re close.”

Sure enough, there was an iron door at the end of the tunnel, and this one was covered with runescript wards. Yuriko extended her Animaperception now, and examined the runescript lines underneath the material.

“Surprisingly simple,” she muttered. But then again, few people could actually reach through solid iron to fiddle with the weaving. She disabled a key node by the simple expedient of diverting the passing Animus out of it. And once that powered down, there was a cascading failure that affected the entire door. Repairing this would be as simple and undoing her sabotage and the Animus flowing through it would repair everything. Ah, she unbolted the door latch, too, from the inside.

Too late, she realised what was wrong. She had opened and pushed open the door before it occurred to her that a door bolted from the inside without an outside key meant that there was someone on the other side.

With a sigh, both of them entered. The chamber was big, roughly twenty paces to a side. It was spherical too, though the floor was level. And within the chamber was a man floating in a meditative pose, in front of the largest Chaos shard she’d ever seen.

The man turned around to face them, his expression a cold mask. Yuriko had never met him before, but she’d seen his picture in the university archons’ office. This was the First Archon, a man that looked to be in the prime of his life despite being older than the white haired Second Archon.

Yuriko’s instincts flared and she spread her Anima perception. As soon as her light touched the First Archon, there was a sizzling sound, and then…

The man’s face melted off, and was replaced by another. Long black ears sprang up from the top of his skull, and dark fur covered his face. The eyes and pupils shifted, turning larger and rounded. The shift was instantaneous, and the man, who suddenly looked like a humanoid hare, sighed.

“You just had to come here and ruin everything.”