The blizzard lasted for several days and piled on several paces of snowfall. Yuriko’s house was practically buried to the rafters. And it wasn’t powdery snow, but wet, Chaos-laden ice. It had been a Chaos Storm and nobody realised in Faron’s Crossing since that kind of inclement weather rarely crossed the Zarek Mountains. Now that those mountains had been levelled, they lost at least three longstrides of height and, owing to the fact that the plane was less than a third of its original size, the Chaos Storm swept in unimpeded.

The storm also tore at the recovering planar Veil. Yuriko could feel the ground shudder as a result. The tears allowed more of the Chaos to seep into the plane, which only worsened the storm even further. Not that it was allowed to continue much longer.

Legate Iola Brygos was still recovering from losing her heart and parts of her lungs. Elemental form allowed her to live, but keeping it up for so long slowed down her recovery, too. As far as Yuriko knew, the plucky Legate had remained in seclusion until now.

There was no use trying to disperse the storm from the outside, so militia and legionaries were dispatched to the boundaries to try and contain the seeping Chaos before they could shatter the Veil. Yuriko volunteered, of course. Variety was the spice of life and her routine had been a bit too bland for weeks now.

Not that she went alone. She’d gotten the news late so her area at the northern end of the plane already had a few others.

The northern border had cut off two-thirds of Shillogu Woods. The Avos had resided in the southern part though, so he was still here in Rumiga. The same could not be said for the remaining Avos. Well, she wasn’t sure who remained as Shillogu had only retained a little bit of strength when his domain shattered. He was currently hibernating in his hidden lair.

The woods cut off abruptly and the trees that were too near the new Veil died off. There was a barren strip of land fifty paces wide just at the edge.

Flying through the blizzard had been a pain, but it was better than walking or taking a landcraft. None of the roads were fit to travel in, and using a Flying Shuttle was slow. And while she could emit heat with her Radiant energy, it would only evaporate the snow from within a hundred fifty-five paces away. The entire plane was covered by the blizzard, it looked like. Still, it wasn’t that difficult to head directly north, and she could simply move along the Veil to find a spot with no defenders.

Soon enough she found herself near the northern Veil. She actually wasn’t sure if the storm was coming by the east where it traditionally would have. The view she could see outside the Veil was blurred and the flows looked like they were spinning widdershins and a bit downwards. When she landed on the barren strip, she almost tripped. The earth was shaking. Hmm, it wasn’t that bad, though, just startling.

A gout of flame blasted towards the Veil from her right, just past her perception range. It melted a path through the snowfall and spread out against the Chaos seeping through the cracks. The greenish hues changed to red, then burst aflame, dropping embers towards the ground and melting some of the fallen snow.

To her right, plasma bolts shot towards targets, turning Chaos seepage into white-hot plasma. She saw droplets coming through the Veil so she shot a Radiant beam at it. Her target ignited into a scintillating ball of golden light, then faded away a second later.

Her perceptive aura tracked a dozen seeping droplets which she blasted with Radiant beams. Hmmm, maybe using a sunblade would be better? Ah, but Radiant beams cost her nothing. It was really just a bit of Radiant energy as a catalyst. The ambient Chaos along the path of the beam fueled the reaction, and it had a range of about a couple of hundred paces before attenuating. And the energy she used was just what she normally shed. It didn’t cost her any Intent, and she only needed to aim. Ah, and she could fire them off from her eyes too! Saves having to aim, hie hie!

Well, blasting the Chaos seepage so that it didn’t add to the problem was just treating the symptoms. The Veil wasn’t getting any better, but at least it wouldn’t get worse. She had no idea how to seal it, and her Mum told her not to try. Veils were a product of the planar core, so until whatever Damien did to the remnants was resolved, there was no helping it.

She was sure that the layer around the core that Damien extracted from the Watcher was all that was keeping it from crumbling. Mum had been spending several weeks observing it. Ah… her baby bump wasn’t showing yet so Yuriko wondered when her new baby sib would be born. Not sure what gender yet, and Mum refused to say.

Idle thoughts while doing something that barely needed any focus. Parts of her consciousness returned to Heron’s paintings. He’d done another of her yesterday. He still refused to come upstairs. Annoying. The outside was too distracting and meditating in her bedroom was the most comfortable.

Hmmm. Oh.

He didn’t want to come to her bedroom. Hmmm, was he afraid of her Da? It wasn’t as if anything would happen. He was still in the age of minority even if he was technically older than she was. Ah, his eighteenth would be on the 23rd Day of Water.

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She felt her cheeks heat up. Did she want to do something? Hmmm.

What about Gwendith? Her birthday was also coming up in a few weeks. Oh. Both would probably reach Actualisation before then, so perhaps it would be moot.

Well, she’d decide then if she felt like it. Her moods were rather mercurial nowadays.

“Haaah…” She sighed.

Maybe it was because of what happened, or she was still feeling down because of Damien’s dissolution. Or maybe it was because Mum forced her to stop using the Mishala fertility control. It wasn’t good to keep that on for too long, and Yuriko had not let up on that since Realmheart.

So here she was, down from the battle, then having to deal with menstrual cramps that seemed like they were making up for lost time. Argh!

“Only use if when you’re anticipating sexual relations,” Mum said. “It’s effective as soon as you anchor the runescript pattern. Ah, and during a crisis or a war, of course. If you have it on for long, say a year or so, you’ll get exaggerated effects when you remove it. More than a year of constant use can affect your mind in strange ways.”

Perhaps if she used her energy body to ameliorate the effects? No, that only lasted for a second at her current ability. How would she go about extending the usage though? Practice?

“Yuri!”

Mikel and Krystal had been the ones to her right after all. Yuriko waved at them, though she wasn’t sure if Mikel saw through the snowstorm. Krystal’s Heritage and Facet easily allowed her to penetrate past the obstruction. Yuriko walked towards them until they fell within her perception range. She paused as something occurred to her.

She knew Krystal’s Ennoia had something to do with prediction and foresight. How did that hold up against her Ender’s Waltz? While that technique got folded into her Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords it wasn’t as if she couldn’t use it by itself.

“What’re you thinking of?” Krystal asked with an amused grin. “Hmmm, I heard that someone tried to invite someone else to their room, hmmm hhmm hmmm?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Your handmaidens are hopeless gossips,” Krystal smirked.

“Huh.” Yuriko shrugged. “Either Saki’s getting better at hiding or Ryoko’s got sharp ears.” Then again, she hadn’t been trying to hide.

“Aieeee!” Krystal squealed, “Finally?”

Yuriko rolled her eyes. “We’ll see.”

While Krystal had been squealing, Mikel had not stopped shooting fire embers at the Chaos droplets. Her best friend raised her Plasma Lancet and shot it backwards over her shoulder. Her plasma bolt hit one of the seeping Chaos droplets just as it came into the plane. The droplet transformed to superheated plasma and merely dribbled towards the ground, though by then, all of its energy had been sapped away by the snowstorm.

“It’s been a week, hasn’t it?” Yuriko asked.

“Hmm, yeah,” Krystal answered as she turned her attention back to the Veil. The two of them had been stationed close by actually, at a freshly built outpost at the edge of the woods.

“Cold?”

“Not at all.” Krystal glanced at Mikel and smirked, who, for his part, snorted and threw out his chest proudly.

“Ah, of course.” Yuriko grinned.

They continued striking at the leakage. The blizzard continued howling, but at least it stopped getting worse.

“Have you found your Ennoia’s name yet?” Yuriko asked idly, though she was sure Krystal had not yet. There was just this feeling around her…

“No,” Krystal said, more than a hint of frustration leaking out. Mikel patted her shoulder comfortingly.

“Hmmm, I've got an idea.”

Krystal gave her the side-eye. “What, train to exhaustion several days in a row?”

Yuriko giggled, “If it works, it works. But that’s not what I was going for.”

“Oh?”

“I have a technique called the Ender’s Waltz. It’s uhm, a predictive sword fighting style which forces my enemies to move to their end, both by adapting to their movements and limiting their choices.”

“Interesting. But my combat application isn’t quite like that,” Krystal protested. “It’s more like I can feel where to attack, where to dodge, or what to defend without anything giving me a clue to what it was that led that on.”

“Nothing at all?” Yuriko repeated.

“Nope.”

“Ah. hmmm. I would suggest we spar.”

Again, Krystal gave Yuriko the side-eye again. “Really?”

“Uh, I’ll match your pace?”

Krystal rolled her eyes and muttered, “If we weren’t friends, that’s so annoying.”

“Sorry.”

“And your super eavesdropping, too!”

“I can’t help that! Always be aware!”

While the two of them bickered, Mikel suddenly laughed out loud. Which caused both of them to round on him. “What?” Krystal snapped.

“Nothing, ehehe,” Mikel chortled. “I missed this,” he murmured.

The past couple of Seasons had been a frenetic mix of keeping things together, after all.

“Hmmm,” Yuriko said after a moment. “Heron’s discovered a new ability. He can paint Ennoia energies even if he couldn’t normally see them.”

“And so you want him to paint us when we use our abilities?” Krystal posited.

“Or just you using it.”

“Without an opposing force, it would be difficult.”

“So a spar is needed, after all.” Yuriko grinned.

“Hmph! As long as you hold back!”

“Alright!”

And that was how, a few days later, right after the Chaos Storm subsided, she found herself and her childhood friends, sparring in the gymnasium. Heron had set up his paints and easel in a corner, while Yuriko and Krystal faced each other a few paces away. Both of them were using wooden training swords.

Yuriko closed her eyes and focused on recalling how she used Ender’s Waltz. Since it had been subsumed by the Ennoia, using it now felt like a very crude and clumsy attempt at mimicking the Radiant Flying Sword. The Animus consumption was still enormous, but at her current Stage, she didn’t actually have to worry about it. She could transform Radiant energy to Animus, or draw it directly from the ambient Chaos. Her only limitation is how fast she could do the transformation, or maybe if she ran out of source energies.

She hadn’t reached the upper limit of that transformation speed simply because she didn’t have any techniques that required that much. Adamant Guardian Seal was an Animus guzzler but she hadn't encountered an attack to push her to the limit. Even blocking the light pillar didn’t really drain her. She should look for her limits eventually, otherwise, how would she learn how to surpass them? But she’d have to invent a technique that needed it.

Ender’s Waltz was such a technique, as well as the fourth sword dance. Both had been subsumed by the Ennoia, meaning she could get that effect whenever she used it. It drew harder on her Intent, though, which was a more limited resource.

Huh. So that meant if she stuck to the normal Animus version, she’d save up on weakening her Intent? Makes sense and is something to consider.

Well, for now, it was time to fight.