As Yuriko wandered aboard the Silver Tiger, she soon realised that many of the areas previously restricted to her were now open. She found herself in a dimly-lit room, filled with cosy booths, upbeat music, and a bar on one side. She saw Miya and Kiyo on the barstool, sipping a brightly-coloured drink, while nodding in time with the rhythm.

Those already inside glanced at her when she entered, but soon returned to their own leisure. Kiyo waved beckoning while Miya simply sniffed. The purple drink she was nursing was quickly drained, however.

“Nice place,” Yuriko muttered as she took a seat next to her aunt.

Kiyo smirked and said, “You weren’t old enough last time, heh.”

Nodding in understanding, she turned to Miya and asked idly, “You’ve reached Knight?”

Her cousin shook her head, “I’m at the threshold.”

“Ah.” Miya should already be eighteen by this point, although the temporal instability of travelling through the Chaos Sea, not to mention Irvalla, she wasn’t actually that sure. Come to think of it, how did the Empire keep track of temporal anomalies? She was sure the Chaos Channels between the planes kept them synchronised. But what about Chaos ships? What about fleets? Wouldn’t each ship travelling be affected differently?

When she posed the question, Kiyo answered, “Animus Engines have that built-in function. It stabilises temporal distortions to within ten to twenty percent forward and back.”

“That means the trip is either that much shorter or longer?” Yuriko asked.

“Yup. Longer is what usually happens though,” Kiyo said. “Each Chaos ship in a fleet links up to the flagship so they experience the same temporal distortion.”

“Didn’t you learn this in Sharom?” Miya asked.

“I only took one year,” Yuriko admitted. “And another semester in the Academy at Realmheart. The subject hadn’t been covered.”

“The gaps in your education are appalling,” Miya grumbled. “The perils of advancing too quickly. You’re in the graduate program, aren't you? Ah, but then you ran away,” she added with a smirk.

Yuriko sniffed and ignored her cranky cousin. Instead, she looked for the bartender, but there was actually no one behind the counter, except for a…construct?

Aunt Kiyo tapped the counter in front of Yuriko and it opened up to reveal a crystal screen. Yuriko hadn’t seen it with her perception since she was keeping her aura close, and of course, the material was resistant to perceptive penetration.

The crystal screen lit up and a list of drinks and snacks appeared. Yuriko selected something called honey mead, as well as a plate of potato crisps. It took only a minute for her meal to appear. The mead was sweet and filled her with warmth. The alcohol wasn’t enough to make her tipsy, though, so she ordered one of the stronger drinks after she finished the mead.

Miya and Kiyo stared at her as she finished off her tenth drink. Ah, there was that pleasant buzz.

“Drunkard, too,” Miya muttered.

Yuriko sniffed. “The alcohol doesn’t affect me much.”

“Tell that to your red face,” Miya snarked back.

“Oh, and aren’t you flushed, too?”

“Am not!” But Miya hastily pulled out a pocket mirror and gasped. She must have been drinking for longer than Yuriko thought.

Her unexpected exile must have hit harder than Yuriko thought.

“Hit her that hard?” she whispered to Aunt Kiyo who giggled and rolled her eyes at Miya.

“It’s more the fact that she doesn’t have anyone to spend the night with. Most everyone aboard is a relative. Ah! You brought fresh meat though, hie hie.”

“You’re right, she did,” Miya muttered. “But nearly all of them’s entangled with your Mien!” Miya said angrily. “Or Lady Sadeen’s!”

“Eh? That isn’t my intention!” Yuriko protested.

“Oh, then you don’t mind if I…?”

Yuriko shook her head. “Their choices are their own.”

Miya smirked. “Even those boys hanging around you like eager puppies?”

Yuriko felt a spike of annoyance and she said through gritted teeth, “Leave them alone. Don’t play your games with them.”

“Alright, so they’re yours then,” Miya said, infuriatingly smug. “You have to make your territory clear, dear cousin, so that the rest of us don’t trespass.” She got up, patted Yuriko’s shoulder and traipsed away, her mood certainly uplifted.

“Well, I guess she’ll be busy feeding her appetites,” Kiyo sighed. “Woe is me, my little nieces have theirs while I don’t. Heh.”

On second thought, it looked like Aunti Kiyo had taken too much wine. Yuriko shook her head, returned the mugs and plates to the bussing area and made her way back to her quarters.

Yuriko found Desire outside her door. The Chaos Lord had recovered fully after the half year of deprivation, and it looked like her body had adapted to low Chaos environments well. Desire gave Yuriko a hug, but didn’t ask for any distilled Chaos. Instead, she was more than content to sing her hymns to help Yuriko’s focus.

She spent half the day going through the Orb of Authority’s interior layers. The puzzles were an excellent method of refining her runescript weaving as well as her Animus control, Anima perception, and critical thinking skills. Since she had already unlocked up to the third layer, she was free to revisit all of it as much as she wanted without triggering a collapse. Of course, she still had to go through the entire thing and not just the third layer. Still, it was gruelling work, but fruitful. Already, she could feel the speed, accuracy, and precision of her Shaping improve. She tested using her Implement and found that she could probably summon the Lance in less than a minute now.

Afterwards, she worked on her physical training. She had no need to visit the gymnasium to use the facilities there because her Anima provided all the resistance training she could want. And with her Anima reach outstripping the strength of her body, it would remain a viable method until she finished the refinement. Desire’s songs helped keep the dreariness away, and the two of them practised Animus finesse techniques together too. Later that afternoon, Gwendith joined in on their training, but Heron was curiously absent.

The next day, Mum finally sent her the spell guide that Yuriko asked for. Aunt Kiyo was the one who presented it as apparently, Mum was busy reading correspondence from Aerule Garden.

“I could teach you a few spells too, you know,” Kiyo offered.

“Oh, uhm, thank you!” Yuriko said.

“Well, my arsenal includes…” Aunt Kiyo begins talking as the two of them got comfortable on the armchairs of Yuriko’s suite. The suite had two main areas, the bedroom and the living room. There was an attached bathroom with a tub too, which she greatly appreciated.

“Cirrus Skiff Dancing on the Clouds. Iron Body Arsenal. Flight of the Burning Falcon. And of course, Jade Unshaping,” Kiyo said.

Yuriko blinked at the spell names. They sounded so grandiose! And quite a mouthful. “What do they do?”

Kiyo answered, “Cirrus Skiff creates a cloud I can ride. It flies pretty quickly. Iron Body Arsenal is a better version of Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, allowing me to create weapons such as claws and talons. Burning Falcon creates a…well, a falcon made out of fire, which flies towards the target point and explodes. Jade Unshaping cancels out any Jade Circle spells, which are what most Sorceresses are capable of casting.”

“Oh.” Yuriko took the jade tablet which contained Mum’s spell. “What about this one?”

“Oh, that’s Calling the Azure Carriage. It calls a horse-drawn carriage from the dreamscape to carry whatever you need to wherever you want. Limited only on a plane, however.”

“Hmmm, I already have an active Sorcerous Implement and Mum says I can only attach attack spells to it.”

“You can also modify it to include new spells,” Kiyo said. “Your Mum’s forgotten a lot of Jade circle knowledge simply because her Implements are all at the Luminous level. Implements. She could afford to keep hers pure,” Kiyo smirked, “and not all spells need Implements, you know that. In fact, Iron Body Arsenal and Cirrus Skiff are better off Free Shaped.”

“Why?”

“Iron Body lasts for a long time. You aren’t supposed to cast it mid-battle. Cirrus Skiff is a long-distance transport,” Kiyo pointed out.

“I don’t think I need either,” Yuriko said. “My condensed aura is good enough and I can easily create Animus constructs as weapons. I can also fly without aid.”

“You can?” Kiyo gasped in surprise. “Ah, well, at least learn Jade Unshaping. It’s the one spell that all proper Sorceresses know.”

“Alright. Uhm,” Yuriko suddenly thought of something, “Does the Burning Falcon thing track enemies?”

“Yes. As long as you designate them, the spell will track them.”

“How far can it reach?”

“As long as you can see them.”

Suddenly very much interested, Yuriko said, “I think I want to learn that spell. Hmm, I wonder if I can add that homing feature to my Radiant Lance.”

“Your spell? Tell me about it.”

“It’s rather simple,” Yuriko confessed. “It simply creates a lance, although I throw it rather than use it like a spear, but Radiant Javelin doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as Radiant Lance does…”

“Now who’s being gaudy?” Kiyo smirked and Yuriko rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, I create a lance made from Animus, Chaos, and Radiant energy…”

“Radiant energy?!” Kiyo exclaimed, “You can’t be a Radiant circle Sorceress!”

“...It’s my Ennoia.”

“Oh. That makes more sense. Not any less incredible, but more sense,” Kiyo babbled. “A-anyway, I’ll teach you Flight of the Burning Falcon and Jade Unshaping, the latter one first as it's much simpler. At its essence, Sorcery is simply Shaping Chaos, but within a plane rather than out in the Chaos Sea, hence, access to as pure a Chaos source as possible makes the act easier. Implements are necessary for speeding up the collection of that source, but even so, the Chaos must be expelled into the environment before it can be shaped. Using an Implement builds up a sort of spell scaffolding that one only has to fill, and herein lies the key to Jade Unshaping.”

“It’s to disrupt the scaffolding,” Yuriko guessed.

“Right! That’s one way, anyway. Another is to remove the Chaos source, another is to disrupt the Sorceress’ concentration. The Implement for Jade Unshaping cuts another’s Implement before it could complete the spell, but even without it, you can simply throw packets of your Will and Intent at the spell. It had a lower range, and a bit less effective, and the most it can do is slow the Shaping drastically, but knowing you, that’s more than enough. Observe.”

Aunt Kiyo held up a hand and shaped her Animus into a pattern that was somewhat reminiscent of the Destroy runescript pattern. It was much simpler actually, as though the Destroy pattern and this one, were part of the same progression. Only the pattern for Unshaping was roughly a tenth less complex? So much so that Yuriko only took a few seconds to memorise and understand it. She demonstrated it by forming the pattern using Animus threads, and at Kiyo’s incredulous stare, Yuriko explained, “I know a pattern similar to it.”

“Oh. I see, well, that explains it. Alright, here’s how I usually deploy it.”

Kiyo then demonstrated by grabbing a loose collection of Animus and ambient Chaos, then spraying them out into a cone pattern. Kiyo weakened it, of course, and shrunk it so that it would actually fit the room, “The more Animus and ambient Chaos you put it, the longer the range, but would also take longer to form.”

The two of them kept practising, and eventually, Yuriko showed Kiyo her Implement. Her aunt was suitably impressed but said that without Radiant energy, the spell’s impact would be drastically lowered. Afterwards, Yuriko studied the two other spells, the falcon one, and the carriage. These ones took far longer to get even the first part right.

Days passed into weeks while the Silver Tiger crossed the near unimaginable distance between the Siderious and Rumiga. They could have taken the portal, but Yuriko was wary of being diverted again, even with Fri’Avgi as a failsafe. Then again, Eli’Theria wouldn’t fit in the portal space.

Two weeks and her birthday later, they neared Rumiga plane, and things stopped being so simple.