Mum’s furious, desperate words slid away from Yuriko’s thoughts. She knew what Damien wanted, and she knew that the next thing that would happen would be darkness. She hoped that she would wake up with the plane intact, and her allies victorious…

Instead, something else happened.

Eli’Theria shuddered and dropped down to one knee as Fri’Avgi disengaged from her. The artefact greatsword was in her ignition mode, with six floating blades and the main one that looked more like a longsword than its normal form. The six blades moved out of the Colossus, and in the next moment, so did she.

The six blades spun around her body, moving in a complex pattern that she could barely decipher. It wasn’t too quick for the eye to behold, but the pattern itself blurred out of her consciousness, as though it was too soon for her to perceive. The main sword body floated above her head, pointing down as though ready to pierce her crown.

Her Anima flared to fullness, reaching two hundred paces and some change. Her reach had increased a little bit since she advanced, but the few inches seemed too minuscule compared to two hundred paces. It wasn’t, really, considering every inch of radius meant a much greater volume increase than every inch before.

Something…flowed from every particle of her Anima and her body. It wasn’t Radiant energy, nor was it her Animus. It was something that was both familiar yet also not. It was pure Radiance, she realised, but not Radiance aspected to her. It felt more like the Radiance she received from bathing in the light of the sun. Pure. Unadulterated. Power.

The pure Radiant energy gathered towards her core. Lines of light flashed across her Anima reach, and it felt as if every little bit of her body shed Radiant energy to do the same. Everything gathered just above her core, and the energy coalesced into a small octahedron, which spun and threw off glints of light.

The moment the octahedron came into existence everything around her was pulled towards it. Light, air, ambient Chaos, even the pillars of light that came from the planar core. Everything.

Even she felt the suction. Her body curled into a fetal position, though she was hovering over the ground. Torrents of ambient Chaos. Then, the fabric of the plane around her cracked.

Small rifts appeared, and from them, streams of Pure Chaos flowed into her. Deeper rifts formed, opening closer to the Abyss. Denser Chaos flowed out, and wrapped around her body like a cocoon.

‘What’s happening? Damien!’

The Divine Shard forms.

His voice was leaden and cold. Tinged with regret so deep she could taste it.

There was so much energy flowing inside her, that she wondered if her body could even take it. Her Anima began to crack, then compress. The area around her contained super dense Chaos that it turned from photonic, to gaseous, then liquid.

Liquid. Ambrosia.

All of that funneled into her body, towards the octahedron, the Divine Shard.

Power she couldn’t imagine was within her.

Too bad it wasn’t hers.

She could barely feel a connection to the shard, and within it, she could taste Damien’s flavour. It was his. It was him.

A lightning bolt illuminated her ignorance. The shard was Damien, but it, like the spheres she tried to capture in Karcellia, were mere fragments of what he is. What he was.

Knowledge and wisdom flowed into her mind, most fading away or dribbling out. She didn’t have the capacity to understand so she couldn’t hold it. But she knew, in the future, if she reached that level, she would know.

But now, she knew. She knew who Damien was. She knew what he was.

He was Damien, God Monarch. He was Damien, whose shadow became her Golden Silhouette. He was Damien, whose Anima had shattered and scattered throughout the entirety of the known and unknown cosmos. Fragments of being that imbedded into small lives.

She knew, too, that she held a fragment of his broken Anima when she was born. Reincarnated into her current form. But…Damien’s fragment was only a tiny, tiny bit of herself. A seed. She was not Damien reborn, and she was not Damien, no matter what her dreams revealed to her.

She had been moving towards that though, unknowingly. Half guided, and half stumbling into it. The Ancient’s Way.

But what she trod on was not the Path he walked. The beginning was the same, but the turns she took brought her farther away from…assimilation.

The truth of the matter became clear. The Damien inside her was a fragment that hoped to become whole. And she was his vessel to accomplish that.

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But…why?

Why would he suddenly turn from that path?

As sure as she was of that knowledge now, she knew. What he did over the past year, his guidance, pushed her away from that path. It was tantamount to him committing suicide, because as she walked the Ancient’s Way, using different roads than he originally took, it became impossible to assimilate. They could no longer be one.

Instead, the manifestation of his Divine Shard, in a body that was not compatible, in a body that could not be made compatible, meant that once it ran out of power…

He would die.

Yuriko swallowed convulsively. Death.

No, she…no, she asked for this. She asked if he could help them win.

As the Divine Shard continued to form, she was enveloped in a protective layer of Animus and Chaos. Her Anima had already crunched down inside her, so she couldn’t perceive anything outside. The layer was opaque, but she could see small ripples emerging every now and then. Attacks?

She shook her head. Why? Why would he do this?

Not just sacrificing himself, but…

He changed his goal in the middle. She felt a chill run down her spine. Her fate would have been much different if he hadn’t changed his mind.

So her intuition was right. She could not blindly follow. The Ancient’s Way must be traversed on her own for to follow another’s path was to subject herself to another’s Will. As the body and energy became interchangeable, whim, Will, and Intent could affect everything.

And thus, she realised what part of her had to grow stronger before she could progress. To fail at that tempering would leave her weak. And that process could not be rushed. She knew she would linger in this stage for years. Maybe decades, who knew?

But again, why did he choose this?

‘Why?’ she finally asked Damien.

She felt the weight of his regard, and he said in a flippant tone, No offense, but I’d rather stay a man.

Eh?

You, as a descendant of the Primordial of Lust, your body, mind, and Anima, are practically sculpted for that purpose. He snorted, And I’d rather not be the one pursued, but the one pursuing. So, hmmm, yeah, I’d rather not switch things around.

‘But…weren’t you planning that before? You already…” Yuriko couldn’t quite articulate what she felt. Annoyance, for sure. But relief, too.

Well, I wasn’t in my right mind then. She felt him shrug, And now, I’ve reconsidered. Besides, you will do well, on your own. It has been a pleasure.

‘Damien…’

Enough. Attend. I will not submerge your consciousness. This is your chance. How many people would kill to experience what it would be like to wield the power of a God Monarch? Watch. Learn. I hope you will use this as a light to illuminate your path.

She felt his mind take control of her body and the nascent Divine Shard. Her mind was pushed back, but it was not smothered. She could see, she could feel. But she couldn’t move. Even her Anima was immobile.

But it was not her Anima that flared out of her body now.

Transformation.

Every single mote of her being transformed to Radiant light. Body, Anima, mind. All were pulled into the Divine Shard, and from there, Anima, Animus, and Chaos spilled out. The mixture swirled around the shard, like clay or putty, forming into a body. She half expected it to be Damien’s, but instead, it was still her form. Like the Golden Silhouette her old Facet created.

Her pilot’s uniform had been pulled into her Anima and stored into the Orb of Authority. New clothing formed from Chaos and Radiant energy, though these were in Damien’s style rather than hers. Palazzo pants, made from a material smoother and softer than silk. Pale white with a tinge of blue. Petals falling softly at the hems formed a distinct and pleasing pattern. Damien’s style was usually to go bare chested, but he created a soft band to cover her modesty. Her hair flared out and danced to Animus winds instead of being controlled into a ponytail.

Uh, that was it. No underwear or shoes. The pants were also sheer enough that if the light hit it wrong, the silhouette of her legs would be quite visible.

She felt no shame though. Instead, it was pride. Her body was sculpted for battle, and was more than aesthetically pleasing.

Ah, she was not this narcissistic! It was Damien’s hubris here! She felt her cheeks flush, but that faded away quickly.

Her body now, that was only a temporary thing. If it was wounded, her real one would be safe. Or as real as anything?

This body, that body… they were all her bodies. She could create another one and she would be able to move it as her own with little trouble. All was connected to the Divine Shard, which was the one thing that bound it all together.

That was it, wasn’t it? The Divine Shard that distinguished a mortal from a God Monarch?

It is the best path. There are others, such as the one that foolish cretin is using. There are many advantages and disadvantages to every path, but the Divine Shard doctrine that the Ancient’s Way leads to gives the best balance and the most freedom.

Taking his lecture with a little bit of doubt, Yuriko just mentally nodded. She felt Damien take active control of her body, and the protective shell around them slowly lost cohesion. It opened to reveal a frantic scene of the Legate Jiro Segawa frantically protecting the heavily wounded Legate Brygos and an immobile Eli’Theria.

Spell mandalas wove around the Colossus as Mum protected herself and tried to counter attack. The incarnations of the Watcher harassed the Legates with beams of condensed Chaos, flame, and lightning, while three vanguard incarnations attacked the Eli’Theria up close.

Several beams were headed her way too. Flung offhandedly to distract the others instead of a concerted effort to pierce the shell.

When she emerged, it was as if the others didn’t even notice. She could hear Mum mumbling to herself, “Yuri…baby…oh, no, help…Yuri!”

She didn’t have her Anima reach expanded for perception. Instead, it was just her normal senses. But, how could she hear Mum from inside Eli’Theria’s pilot core? The chambers were noisy beyond belief, with bursts of energies, the clashing of weapons, and yells of anger and pain echoing against the hard surfaces.

She could still hear her Mum. She could hear every noise in the chamber, from the beating of each and everyone’s hearts, to the grinding screech of Legate Jiro’s metal sabatons against the stone. She could hear the Chaos Duke’s incarnations’ pulse racing, though the one in the middle of the core was not breathing. It was still very much alive, but it was sustained by the power of the planar core.

For a long moment, they didn’t realise she was free. And the next, she made them aware of her presence.

The ambient Chaos flows stopped dead, and every condensed Chaos beam, every Animus technique, every spell, froze then withered.

This was her territory. Her rules. Her Law.

She felt Damien smirk, You love using those sunblades don’t you? Let me show you its full potential.

Her hand rose and every gaze followed it. And above her palm, a single blade spun into existence.

Her hand closed, and then she snapped her fingers.

And the chamber was filled with a million sunblades.