“What did you want to show me?” Yuriko asked, bemused.

Gwendith grinned and pulled her towards the backyard, though they went around the walkway at the side of the house and the perimeter fences rather than through the house. The planters were covered in snow, though the walkway had been swept clean. The garden was in a similar state, though there was one evergreen pine that still had its leaves at the corner. The rest of Rami’s vegetable garden was desolate, though that was only to be expected because of the sudden cold. What could be harvested had been, while the rest were allowed to wither.

She thought her younger brother would have done something about the dying plants but he just shrugged and said, “Such is the cycle of life.”

Speaking of her younger brother, he was in a seated meditation pose on the porch deck, next to a heater plate that was glowing with runescript and Animus. He was practicing his Animus control by adjusting the plate’s runescript lines and energy input.

He looked up when they entered the garden, waved hello at her, then glanced at Gwendith before hurriedly shifting his gaze even as his cheeks reddened. “Ah… he-hello, big sisters…”

Yuriko snorted in amusement while Gwendith gave Rami a bright smile, which only made him redden even further.

“Hi, Rami!” Gwendith said.

Finding herself in a teasing mood, Yuriko added, “Gwen’s going to show me something, do you want to watch, too?”

Rami’s eyes darted to her, and no doubt spotted her slight smirk. He pouted with a huff, and even though he was now taller than she was, he still had quite a bit of baby fat on his cheeks, which she suddenly wanted to pinch.

When he saw her hand twitch, he jumped to his feet and yelled, “No thanks, I’ll give you two privacy!”

He escaped into the house. Gwendith rolled her eyes and pinched Yuriko’s waist.

She only giggled and gestured to the porch deck. “So, what were you going to do?”

“Oh, ah, hold on a moment.” Gwendith settled on the corner opposite where Rami left his heater plate. The radiating heat from it already started to fade while his infused Animus ran out. Yuriko picked it up with her kinesis and pushed out his Animus from the runescript lines to turn it off before it could ignite the wood underneath it. She absorbed the lingering heat into her Anima and vented it into the air, which resulted in snowflakes turning to puffs of steam.

Drawing heat directly into her Anima…had not been something she was capable of when she was in Actualisation. Transformation did not only refer to being able to turn her body into a Radiant Energy form, nor was it only the ability to change her Ennoia energies to Animus and the other way around. There were more secrets to the Stage than she expected, though she had an inkling to a few. Peeking at her stored memories didn’t help, and she only got the impression that it was different for each Transformation Stage Ancient.

She refined her physique, her Anima, her Ennoia, and her Mien. The first three were what Damien told her were needed to advance, while the last one was entirely her choice. So did that mean she could transform her body, her Anima, her Ennoia energies, and her Mien?

Maybe.

Controlling heat didn’t come easy either, and she only managed it because heat was often the byproduct of her Radiance. She would have to explore and experiment to expand and grow her abilities. A seed of excitement was slowly growing within. At the same time, the melancholy that had plagued her for the past two Seasons was slowly receding. It was still there, of course, and she doubted it would ever disappear. Not until she found her brother, and maybe the other fragments holding Damien’s shattered Anima. She didn’t know where to begin, which was what made her funk so persistent in the first place.

That and she missed the perverted old man’s voice.

Sighing softly, she turned to Gwendith and waited.

For her part, Gwendith didn’t settle into a seated meditation pose but stood in a stable stance with her feet shoulder width apart. She held her hands to her sides and tilted her head slightly upwards, gazing at the clouds. Ambient Chaos swirled around her as she expelled Animus from her skin. Like Yuriko, her clothes weren’t thick or heavy, since neither of them were bothered by the cold. She wore a sleeveless blouse and tight-fitting pants that showed off the lovely shape of her thighs and calves. The pale pink Animus floated off from her bare skin, but didn’t escape past her Anima which flared to full reach at forty inches.

Gwendith had shown off her techniques and ideas before, and Yuriko recalled that the other woman turned her Animus to ice shards. The idea had been to do that, then cut off her connection to the Animus to allow her core to refill. The shards that remained within her aura was still hers, and the fact that it was ice kept it from tainting or denaturing.

Instead of the shards forming in the air around her, the Animus lumens were pulled back to her skin. They caused the light to reflect oddly against the covered skin, making Gwendith look like she was glittering. That effect only lasted for a while before it stopped when the Animus froze into a small pentagonal scale. Gwendith continued to expel Animus and condense them to scales until her wrists and part of her forearm were covered, then she stopped, panting heavily and face covered with sheen of sweat and steam.

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She shook her head and looked at Yuriko with a grin, “What do you think? They hold the excess Animus and act as protection too!”

Nodding, Yuriko pressed her perceptive aura against Gwendith’s Anima gently. The other girl giggled and let Yuriko’s perception through. Gwendith didn’t retract her aura but thinned it so much that it posed no impediment to hers.

After examining the scales for a moment, Yuriko asked, “May I test it?”

“Yup!”

Animakinesis pressed against the scales. The forceful push dispersed over every attached scale rather than the single one she hit. The skin along the edge depressed slightly when the kinetic ripple expanded beyond the scales, leaving a white line in its wake. Yuriko took Gwendith’s hand and rubbed her arm. Not quite a wound, but a strong enough strike would leave bruises. If the scales covered Gwendith’s entire body, or if she blunted the edges, she was in no danger of getting gashed.

Yuriko formed an Animus knife then pressed the tip against the edge. She applied an escalating amount of force, and focused it on the tip. With the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords’ guidance, she adjusted the angle of the point and moved it until it hit the edge of the scale. She accurately got the tip into the slight gap, and with a bit more force, managed to pierce through. She stopped right before it hit Gwendith’s skin. The scale was less than a hundredth of an inch thick.

“Not bad,” Yuriko said. “You need to cover your entire body…” She repeated her observations then asked, “How will you replenish them? Will you have to expel Animus everytime?” That would be inefficient and costly in terms of time and focus.

“Nope,” Gwendith said. “I imbued the frozen Animus to attract ambient Chaos and convert them. Er, it’s slow, but entirely autonomous. Each scale holds a lumen.”

A quick count told Yuriko that Gwendith had a hundred scales on either arm. The scales should cover her up to her shoulders to complete the eight hundred external Animus requirement.

“How long?”

“A minute on each side. So two a minute,” Gwendith replied, “but the more scales there are, the faster it grows back. It’s at one percent per minute.”

“Oh, alright.”

“I’ll just need to tweak it a bit…” Gwendith muttered, “then I should be ready for Actualisation in a few days.”

“I see.”

“Uhm…” Gwendith pressed the tips of her fingers together while looking down. Her face reddened slightly. “Will you…be with me then?”

“Oh, I will,” Yuriko said.

“I mean…after?”

Yuriko blinked and tilted her head. Gwendith peered at her eyes for a moment, then looked down again. Slowly, Yuriko nodded. “Sure.”

With a delighted squeal, Gwendith hugged Yuriko tightly. “Thank you…”

Yuriko rolled her eyes and patted Gwendith’s back, then whispered in her ear, “You’re my friend. No thanks needed.”

“Alright!” After giving Yuriko a squeeze, Gwendith released her and then continued to practice. The scales glimmered with infused Animus. Bits of frozen ambient Chaos appeared just above the scales. They moved towards the edges and slowly transformed.

It was slower than Yuriko’s regeneration runescript lines, but it served a nice dual purpose anyway. Besides, it also looked like Gwendith could cover her entire body with the scales and she’d be able to store and regenerate far more Animus than Yuriko managed at the same Anima strength. Grinning proudly, she left her friend to her practice and headed inside for a snack.

__________

Ultra dense Chaos flooded into the wagon and Kato screamed in fear. The others barely stirred from their stupor. He threw himself over Caera, hoping to save her from death, even if only for a few seconds. Futile, it felt.

But as the wave of Chaos washed over them, the imagined pain did not happen. Or rather, it wasn’t the brief, overwhelming flash that he expected, but a slight, lingering itch. The Chaos spread across his skin, worming its way in. His Heritage and Knighthood protected his Anima, to a point, but the density was so high that they seeped in him anyway.

As for the rest…the weakest, a boy who was only an Apprentice, started to disintegrate. Skin flaked off his arms while he stared at it blankly. He shifted his arm, which spread the flakes around, then leaned back with a sigh. He didn’t move afterwards.

The Journeymen weren’t as affected, but the Chaos still seeped into their bodies. It had not been as quick as Kato thought, but no less deadly. The only saving grace was that they were not tormented.

But…he seemed to have forgotten something…

When the first figures stomped into the wagon, he couldn’t help but stare. A short man with pink, spiky hair was in the lead. He was clad in a leather vest and trousers, with calf high boots. There were bands of metal around his biceps, glimmering with Animus. He also wore a silver bracer across his left forearm. Oh, and his ears jutted out of the side of his face, was at least three inches long, and came to a point.

There were several people behind him, but in the darkness, Kato wasn’t able to make out any features. They varied in size and stature though. Long Ears swept his gaze across them, grunted, then beckoned to his fellows, who rushed inside. Each one carried the same silvery bracer aside from the one they wore. Long ears walked over to him, spoked a few words in a language he didn’t know, then frowned when Kato didn’t respond.

“Sorry, I don’t understand you,” Kato said to the man’s impatient foot tapping. He struggled to his feet, but Long Ears grabbed his shoulder and kept him from standing.

He took something from a satchel hanging from his waist, another silver bracer, then held it out. He tried a few more words, in varying languages, Kato thought, then finally spoke in Wojan, the trade tongue.

“What is that?” Kato said in the same language. He was fluent in Wojan, though Long Ears had a strange accent.

“I said. Put this on if you want to live.”

Kato hesitated for a long moment, but then thought he’d be dead either way. So he held out his left forearm and the man snapped it on. Almost at once, the prickly sensation disappeared. As for the others, their body degradation stopped and there were signs of healing.

“Good. You have to pay for the debt, and work until you do,” Long Ears said evenly, then he pulled him off Caera, who stared up at Long Ears with no little amount of trepidation.

“Welcome to Ra’Sera, the City at the Borderlands,” Long Ears continued. “You’ll be here a while.”

Kato barely heard the words. He pushed past their rescuers and looked outside. There was a vast and dark land stretching out as far as he could see, but when he looked up, there was only darkness.