“You look a mess,” Krystal said again. “You’ve got blue ick all over you.”

Yuriko shrugged. “I’ll wash up when we find a stream. It shouldn’t be too far.” The stench was getting to her though.

“Uhm,” Orrin walked up to them. “I think I can help.” He held out a finger, the tip of which was glowing a dim red. “May I?”

“Go ahead,” Yuriko said, bewildered.

His fingers touched her cheek and felt her skin tingle as something seemed to crawl away from where his fingers touched. Orrin had the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his lip in an expression of sublime concentration.

Plink, plink.

Droplets of blue blood flew away from her cheek. Orrin then traced his fingers over her cheek, crossing over her forehead, and to her other cheek. His fingers were soft and gentle as he touched her nose and lips.

“Ahem.” Krystal coughed. Orrin’s face coloured faintly and he moved a bit faster, but no less gently. Orrin was sweating by the time he finished. He ended up tracing his fingers until her collar bone; the intimate touch had made her a bit uncomfortable but there was no denying that being clean felt great. She held out her hands, too, and he used his Facet to make her skin repel the blood.

“Thank you,” Yuriko beamed and Orrin blushed and stuttered.

“You’re welcome.”

“I wonder who should be thanking who,” Krystal muttered under her breath but Yuriko heard her anyway.

Her forceweave jacket and pants also had some spatter but it only took a few shakes for the blood to dribble off; the liquid didn’t even stain it. They gathered their things not even bothering to erase their tracks or hide the Wyldling’s corpse. There was no denying something had happened there. Luckily, the stone outcropping that sheltered them didn’t collapse when it landed on it. But judging from the cracks and the fragments falling from underneath, it was only a matter of time.

They found another willow tree whose boughs nearly reached the ground. They settled under it with Yuriko preparing herself for her watch while the others settled down to sleep. She was comfortably seated, thinking about how things went. From the shifting in the bedrolls, she actually doubted that the other four found sleep easy. She still had trouble processing it all herself.

They had actually come within an inch of disaster. She shuddered. Her eyes watered and she felt a single tear roll off her eye. She blinked her tears away. They came close to dying, she told herself, but they came out unscathed. What went wrong? She wasn’t accurate enough? Was she too careless? If Heron hadn’t blocked for her, if Orrin didn’t push the monster away from her twice, she would have been injured. And from there, it was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed.

A part of her wondered at her arrogance to think that she was the lynchpin of her team but another part of her told her that she undoubtedly was. And if the lynchpin fails, everything comes tumbling down.

She continued to tremble while she watched the surroundings. The moon was near full, bathing the sky in its soft, silvery light. The Chaos Streams above were drowned out by the moonlight, showing nought but the westward currents. On a Half-moon night, the skies would have been coloured equally with soft, silver moonlight, and the multi-hued glimmering streams of the Chaos. And of course, the sun drowned out the Chaos and left only the blue skies.

After a while, staring at the moon calmed her down. And since she couldn’t meditate or activate her Facet during watch, she ended up doing some light stretches. She paced around outside the willow tree camp, listening to the forest’s nocturnal noises. She even saw a fox crossing the hilltop at a distance. Or maybe a wolf, but she couldn’t really tell. Wild animals stayed away from Faron’s Crossing and the surrounding farmlands, and her Da hadn’t taught her to hunt anything other than the Wyldlings.

When her watch ended she woke up Mikel and, from how he quickly sat up, she suspected that he hadn’t been asleep at all.

She wasn’t quite sleepy when she lay down. She closed her eyes though and activated her Facet. Her Animus separated into eight streams, entered each of the sun rays and made its way to the empty circle in the middle. This was pretty much automatic now but Yuriko felt that learning how to further subdivide her control would be a good idea.

The golden silhouette demonstrated for her the same three forms. Only, the intent was the same but the movements were different. It almost looked like the silhouette was fighting a shadow while it performed the dance and, from the angle of its blades, it was something much bigger than its form. Like the Wanderer that towered over Yuriko. Dart in and out of the opponent’s reach. Use the opponent’s size against it by forcing its attacking limbs in the way of its next attack. Force it to open up a weak point and punish it for its mistakes.

Use its own force against it, use its attacks to open up its weaknesses. Nothing can attack and defend at the same time.

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Yuriko grimaced as the last statement rang false to her. The silhouette grinned at her, its mouth a void against its golden light.

Few can attack and defend at the same time.

The streams of Animus dancing in the silhouette’s body seemed to change but Yuriko couldn’t quite make it out. It moved too fast for her to see clearly. Eventually, the sword dance ended, and the silhouette took a seated meditation pose while it demonstrated its form of Recovery.

Yuriko was far from mastering the movements. While she could use it well enough in battle, when she watched the silhouette do it, she could only shake her head. Perhaps she had a basic mastery but that was less than a tenth of the silhouette’s skill. The only way to get better is to keep practising.

She needed to use it more in battle, she abruptly realised. When she fought the Wanderer, she could see her flaws. Flaws that weren’t apparent when she practised on her own. Well, this wasn’t really the place to do so, but as soon as they returned to the outpost, she’d seek to spar more often.

When the golden silhouette faded away, she cast Golden Recovery, as she dubbed the technique. The strands of Animus seemed to linger around her legs and her core this time around. She might have micro-injuries, muscle tears, that hadn’t hurt yet but would make her pay tomorrow if she did nothing now. Her bruised shoulder received attention, too, and the stiffness that she didn’t realise was there slowly melted away. She felt her body relax and, soon after, she fell asleep, the worries of the day fading away only to be revisited in her dreams.

*-*-*

Kale Oona Kinnock yawned as he scrubbed his hand over his short-cropped silver hair. Night patrol was tedious at best, mind-numbingly boring most of the time. Thankfully, he and Rorke were assigned on the perimeter walls for the next week and they didn’t have to do night patrols out in the field.

His service program at the Watchtower would last until school term starts, then it would be back to Agaza Academy of Rumiga City for the two of them. He wasn’t quite sure how many others were on the program and it wasn’t like a lot of the students would choose to go to a posting so far away from civilization for a season or so, but his father had insisted. Besides, it wasn’t as if the place had no perks. He didn’t expect to find a budding flower with a potentially powerful bloodline here, of all places.

Agaza was Rumiga City’s centre for martial arts and military sciences. Though the enemies of the Empire were legion, the most common were other land-hungry nations, the next were the denizens of the Chaos Sea. On this plane, the Watchtower at Faron’s Crossing had the most contact.

“Accursed cold.” Rorke shivered.

Kale couldn’t help but nod. It wasn’t supposed to be cold; the Season of Fire was already in its third week. It should have been a sweltering night. Not that last night was anything but pleasant in the tower’s climate-controlled interior.

Kale fingered the hilt of the massive two-handed sword on his back. The weapon was taller than he was but it was the required implement of his Facet. There was something off about tonight, he just couldn’t put a finger on it.

The night sky was its normal soft, silver glow and the moon was almost full but not quite.

“Anything interesting happened lately?” Rorke asked.

“Not that I know of. Commander Davar still isn’t back and I still don’t know my schedule next week.” Kale shrugged. “I want to hunt some Wyldlings actually.”

“Why? You could just buy shards.”

“Some theories say harvesting a shard fresh has its benefits.”

“Unsubstantiated theories.”

“Good practice anyway.”

The walk around the perimeter wall was about two longstrides, broken every five hundred paces with an artillery tower. They were supposed to make one full round every hour, but that meant going at a leisurely pace. Several pairs of night watchers were spaced evenly on the walls, and there was a pair every fifty paces or so. The pair in front of Kale and Rorke had just entered the artillery tower.

The chill breeze was coming from the border, Kale realized. The colour of the air above the border seemed washed out against the moonlight but Kale could make out the swirls and whorls even as far away as he was.

He had been staring at the Tidelands border for a while now that he missed a step when the wall changed elevation. The heart-stopping feeling of stepping and not feeling anything under his feet nearly made him screech.

“Ancestors!” he gasped.

Rorke snorted in laughter, “Serves you right. Watch your feet, boy!”

“Shut it, you!”

A few minutes later, they arrived at the artillery tower. It was about a dozen paces higher than the rest of the wall and housed a couple of plasma carronades. Those were powered by Animus stored in green jade, which was the only variety that could store Animus for any significant length of time. More advanced plasma artillery was powered by imperial jadeite instead which preserved both the Animus and its Intent. The carronades here were on a swivel that allowed them nearly ninety degrees of movement--more than enough to cover the field around the wall.

Kale and Rorke tapped their fists to their hearts as a salute to the officers manning the siege weapons. They returned the salute but one of them yawned. Kale frowned, though he only did so out once he was out of sight.

“Discipline’s getting a bit loose,” he remarked.

“Feels fine to me.” Rorke shrugged.

Halfway down to the next artillery tower, both of them froze when they felt a strong wind blast.

“What the...:?”

If Rorke said anything, Kale couldn’t hear it from the strong winds battering them. He almost lost his footing but his friend grabbed his arm. The wind had come from the border and when they looked, Kale’s jaw went slack.

The air above the border should have been a multi-hued banner spanning the entire sky. Now, it was a uniform green. Not even the green of leaves but a pale, sickly green that gave Kale the shivers.

“What in Chaos?!” Rorke shouted above the wind. Though mid shout, the buffeting winds cut off as if they never were and his voice shattered the sudden silence.

Reddening, Rorke glared at the border and then he gasped.

Kale squinted as he tried to make out what Rorke had seen. His senses weren’t as sharp nor did he focus on any enhanced sense technique. Still, it didn’t take long for him to see a line of darkness from the border. It was moving towards them, undulating strangely as it covered the uneven ground. Bigger blobs were scattered along the line, towering over whatever it was that they were looking at.

“Swarmlings!” someone shouted.

“Ancestors!” Rorke breathed.

“All of those?” Kale gasped.

Swarmlings were significantly smaller than Wanderers. They were about the size of a large dog, at least. Older or stronger ones eventually grew as big as a person.

‘How many thousands are there?’ Kale wondered and, for a moment, he thought of how much wealth those things represented, at a few GiJin of dust in each one. Then, the abrupt realization that there probably weren’t enough people at the Watchtower to kill all them before they were overrun.

“To arms!” someone shouted. A wailing cry rose from the Watchtower, something quite impossible to ignore.

His training reasserted itself and Kale headed off to find his commanding officer. Heart heavy and shoulders threatening to slump, he wondered if he would even make it back to the Academy after the Harvest Festival.

Rorke laughed as he clapped a hand on Kale’s shoulder, “Come brother, it's time to earn our keep.”