There were roughly a dozen guardsmen scattered across the clearing, along with half the amount of carriages.

‘Most of them must have gone inside already.’ Yuriko thought, since those carriages could carry four people comfortably, or six to eight packed in. ‘How many did they abduct, and what does the Ishodir Empire stand to gain?’

Or perhaps they just wanted to cause trouble. Considering that they have an armed force in the bordering Elemental Conflux…

‘Are they going to invade?’ Yuriko couldn’t help but wonder. She glanced at the remnants of the Metal and Earth Golem, the latter with the pilot still inside. She should do something about that but her priorities lay with securing Ryoko, Juliette, and Sofia. She flew towards the guards still cowering in fear.

“You will go to the Abad Estate and explain your actions,” she said to the closest one, a middle-aged man with a scar across his cheek, something that should have been easily removed.

“And the rest of you, go to Virtalla’s city hall and surrender yourselves there,” Yuriko pressed their Anima with her Mien, allowing the latter to seep in and influence them. While she waited for that to happen, she cast a Sending spell tuned to Juan Carlos Abad.

“I’ve traced Juliette, Sofia, and Ryoko,” Yuriko said through the spell. “There’s a Chaos Fount Gate roughly an hour’s flight north-northeast of the city. I will enter the gate and rescue them.” She paused, then added, “Along with any other captives I find.”

The spell ended and she didn’t wait for the old man to cast a return Sending.

She released the guards from her kinesis they each gasped and shivered. One even lost control of his bladder and another, his bowels.

“Ugh.” Her perception caught everything.

Shaking her head, she took a moment to examine the fallen Earth Golem, then pushed her perception inside.

“Tsk.”

Of course, the pilot had the Earth Affinity, and of course, they had already escaped underground. The golem's body was filled with runescript formations, but she could tell that most of them were encrypted or obscured in some other way. Shaking her head, she walked towards the Chaos Fount’s portal, briefly examining the arch, shrugged, and walked through.

Of course, she had to retract all of her Anima to as close as she could to her body, before she could pass, and the moment she did, the portal…trembled. She watched with some concern as she felt time slow, and the passage between the material plane and the Chaos Fount revealed itself to her senses. It was not like this the last time she entered a Chaos Fount!

When she finally emerged, she felt the difference in time dilation between inside and out, and she stiffened when she felt that it was as much as five times. It had only been several hours since the overflow in Virtalla City, but here, it might have already been a day and a half.

She took in the terrain, noting that it was similar to the orchards outside, but the trees were much taller, and fuller. Plum blossoms fell from the trees, but upon a closer look, small details on the petals changed after every blink of an eye. Since she could perceive those details through her Anima perception, she saw how tiny bits of Elemental energy twisted and shifted along ingrained lines when she blinked. It was fascinating, actually, considering that it took an action on her part before the transformation shifted.

‘What am I doing?’ she muttered to herself. The Elemental energies swirling around her, though she couldn’t perceive the minute details, nor identify more than the basic elements, moved in a pattern that resonated with her Anima. It was subtle, and easily blocked if she so wished…and it also affected the light around her.

‘Focus.’

She didn’t see Minister Soria anywhere around, even though only five minutes had passed since he entered, probably. The ground was covered in grass, and there were clear tracks headed directly away from the gate clearing. There were also tracks behind the gate that led away. They were roughly fifty paces away and hidden behind the undergrowth, but they were there, and the earth between the gate and those tracks was immaculately clean.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Yuriko considered for a short moment, then sank into the dreamscape. Just like before, the world’s reflection inside that layer of reality, viewed while within a Chaos Fount was much like looking at a mirror. The mists were still there, but the reality layer felt much thinner. She didn't tarry and caught each of the girls’ threads, and swore loudly when she found that both paths were correct, and her students’ threads led towards the front, while Ryoko’s was to behind her.

So who should she go after first?

Hmm, Ryoko was quite lucid while the other two were not. It was evident who was more distressed, and she had felt the handmaiden’s confidence through their contact. Decision made, she flew towards the two girls. She ascended above the orchard, seeking to go past the canopy. The tree trunks were deceptively tall. The canopy, once she entered it, felt like it would go on forever. And even if she continued, she grumbled that she probably wouldn’t see her targets from above. Still, she suddenly caught something within her perception range. Branches intertwined as though they were roads. It had been years since she used an arboreal highway, and the threads seemed equally distant from up here compared to the forest floor.

She flew close to the branch, landed, and oriented herself towards the girls’ direction. She pushed off against the wood and assisted by her Animakinesis, she was faster compared to flying, especially since if she flew in the forest, she’d have to dodge around trunks and branches.

Heading straight towards them, she crossed large gaps simply by leaping across, or if the leaves and smaller branches were in the way, she flew under or over them as needed.

A few minutes later…

“Swarm fodder,” she muttered as she felt the connection between herself and the two students grow obscured. They had left the Chaos Fount, and a moment later, the same thing happened to Ryoko’s thread. The handmaiden was bound to her at a deeper level, so not all of the sensations disappeared. Ryoko still felt calm, though was growing somewhat tense.

Yuriko dove back towards the forest floor and continued in the same direction. Half an hour later, she found another clearing, and within it was another portal gate. It wasn’t deserted, however, as there were five golems standing guard. It was a good thing she wasn’t flaring her full Anima and was instead using her perception aura. The rest of her Anima was tightly condensed around her body, and while she was glowing with golden light, the undergrowth and the trees were thick enough to mute her light.

Three of them were of similar design to the three she fought earlier, while the last two were dissimilar to the rest. One was shorter than the others by a dozen inches or so, and was coloured pale white with silver, whirling patterns around its limbs. The last one was dark forest green, almost the same shade as the leaves of the trees here, and brown veins wrapped around its entire body. It was slender and a bit taller than even the Fire Golem.

A moment after she arrived at the clearing, someone else burst into it. The Minister of Commerce, Hector Soria, landed with a stagger. The five Golems turned to him, though only the green one continued to pay attention. The rest of the Golems continued their vigil.

“We’re under attack,” Soria babbled as he staggered towards the golems.

The Green Golem nodded, then pointed towards the portal. A voice came from its face, and Yuriko wasn’t sure if it was masculine or feminine, mostly because it was garbled by whatever means it was using to speak. “Contact has been lost with the advance force. Retreat for now.”

“But…”

“We don’t go back on our words. Now go. The intruder is near.”

“Ah! Yes, yes, I will go.”

The minister slipped through the portal, while the golems remained vigilant. Yuriko observed them for a few moments, then decided that she didn’t want to waste too much time. She already had the measure of three of the golems, and they looked practically identical to the last three.

Sunblades gathered around her, and she launched them to attack, without moving from where she was. The Golems froze for a long moment but recovered quickly. Yuriko thought they would not have stood there without any defences, and she was right. The ground around the portal was all lit up with runescript spell circles. The markings on the Golems also lit up as they linked up to each of the circles on the ground.

Not all of the circles activated in time to counter her first wave of sunblades: ten for each golem. The Fire Golem’s trap exploded in a pillar of flames, but it wasn’t as if fire could put out fire, right? The sunblades passed through without issue and slammed into the golem before it could react, and after a couple of seconds, one of its arms had been sawed off. The other sunblades circled around it and stabbed towards where Yuriko remembered the escape hatch was, then the blades chopped brutally into it.

As for the other four Golems, the two she’d fought before were easy enough to counter, despite the boosted Elemental spell circles, none of it was fast, or strong enough to affect her sunblades, and even if they were, the flying swords were only Animus constructs, filled with Radiant energy, and controlled by tendrils of her Anima. Only the last one was really vulnerable to counterattack.

The White Golem’s spell circles produced cold and ice just like Gwendith did. The sight annoyed Yuriko so much she sent the entire second wave of attacks, twenty-five sunblades, at it. Each strike at its silvery body caused it to hiss and boil. And each sunblade that struck slowly lost its heat, as the Golem tried to neutralise it. But that was a foolish exchange, and by the time one of the sunblades had been depleted, the Golem’s ice body had already melted or boiled away, leaving only a metal skeleton inside. The chest compartment was solid metal and covered with runescript patterns glimmering with Elemental energy. It was already trying to recover its ice body, but at the rate it was going, the battle would be decided long before it could recover.

The Wood Golem was the troublesome one. Somehow, it managed to zero in on Yuriko’s Anima tendrils, even though they were gossamer thin. Vines erupted from the whorling patterns on its limbs and struck at each of the tendrils, even as the spell circle around its feet pulsed with Wood Elemental energy. That energy rushed into the Golem, and the vines multiplied tenfold.

When they struck her Anima tendrils, Yuriko felt the sting. One of the tendrils snapped, but that only meant that she lost manual control of the sunblade, which defaulted to the basics that the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords imparted. The freed sunblade swooshed and struck as though it were held by a fencer, and it aimed at the source of the vines. Each strike left burning stripes on the Golem’s skin, and Yuriko pulled away her Anima tendrils, leaving the independent sunblades to harry the Golem while she spun more into existence. Without her Anima sustaining the weapons, they would only for a few minutes, and since the Intent that kept the Radiant energy contained was no longer there, the Radiant energy flared out and began consuming the Elemental energies around it. Each sunblade gave out a blinding glow, and the minute amount of ambient Chaos present within the Chaos Fount was drawn in, which fueled the blaze, and accelerated the ruinous explosion.

The clearing turned into a brilliant golden sphere of Radiant light, and the Chaos Fount around her trembled and quaked.