When the golden light faded away, the Golems had been blown away from the portal gate. The Metal Golem, Fire Golem, and Ice Golem were past her perception range, but the mocking trail across the undergrowth told where they ended up. The Earth and Wood Golems were still in the clearing, but both were in bad shape. The portal arch was burned and had numerous scratches and fissures, that were slowly, but visibly widening. The gate, an opaque mix of greyish energies, suddenly had red, green, and violet colours swirling within.

Yuriko only hesitated for a moment, before she flung herself into the portal. Her sunblades were quickly shrunk and retracted into her coat, and her Anima condensed to as thick an armour as she could manage. In this state, it was as if she had a bubble of force around her that was nearly two paces wide and thick enough that even she couldn’t move. She could only propel herself with her Animakinesis at this rate, making her slower. As it were, she had to retract half of her Anima and left only eighty paces of reach outside. The portal groaned as she rammed into it, and it felt as if she was trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle. It was only when she adjusted the shape of her Anima to be more streamlined that she was able to slip in. She dared not retract everything, and instinct told her that to go through unprotected would have dire repercussions.

The passage through the portal reminded Yuriko of her journey towards Irvalla from Synkrasia. She couldn’t help but stare at the tunnel through the layers of reality, and the fractal patterns swirling across them accosted her mind.

“Ahh!”

She yelled as a sharp pain stabbed through her head. Her Anima trembled and was compressed even farther towards her skin. She couldn’t react, and her own Anima began to crush her body. If not for the fact that she was at Transformation, she might have died then and there, due to her own folly. As it were, it only took a moment, and a thought, to reduce the amount of reach she had condensed, but it also made the energy fractals…runescript fragments, and even stranger reddish squiggles that twisted and turned, altered and morphed, even as she watched. Every time they did, glimmers of understanding wormed their way into her mind, but it was not the benevolent insight of Ennoias. Instead, it was an insidious force that her entire being rejected!

“Argh!” She yelled as she released her control on her Radiant Essence. It flooded through her body, filling her Anima, and her mind. It clashed with the insidious reddish light, burned and consumed each other. She was surprised and frightened when she saw that the Radiance was unable to overcome it. No, it was as if each energy was of equal prominence, and the difference in potency was the source. In other words, her Radiance was slowly being eroded because she wasn’t strong enough.

The tunnel around her cleared for a moment, showing an empty void. A blink of an eye later and it was filled with streamers of virulent red, then green. Silver and gold, Luminescence and Radiance, from the Moon and the Sun, emerged every now and then, but those colours were unable to overcome the red and green. She swallowed and coughed, mouth completely dry, even as her body was suddenly covered in sweat.

A moment later, she glimpsed something in the distance. An enormous shape that slowly moved across the Void Ocean. It was too far away to make out, but she knew it would tower over the mountains if it stood on the planes. Her presence might have sparked something, because it stopped moving laterally, and slowly grew bigger. ‘It’s headed here…’ Yuriko’s thoughts were numbed, and she knew she should be alarmed. But apathy pressed down on her Anima now. She struggled, her Radiant energy struggled, but nothing.

And then, her Mishala Mien roared within. A different force pushed against the pressure, just long enough that the tunnel finally smoothed enough to push her through. And the next moment, she was back outside.

Something hit her bubble of Anima, but it easily deflected off. Yuriko shook her head, trying to get her bearings, to shake the red squiggles from her mind. Another strike at her Anima, and she felt minute fissures begin to form. She growled and released the rest of her reach, covering her surroundings, and extending her perception.

She wasn’t in the forest anymore and she felt herself within the material plane. She was back in Bresia, and rather far from the centre considering that the Kerromere Mountains were almost hidden in the Elemental mists. The Chaos Passage had been in twilight, but when she emerged, it was almost full darkness, save for the light of the stars above.

She checked her threads to the two girls and found that they were just northeast of her, and from the strength of the feedback, closer than a couple of longstrides.

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As for what hit her…

Ptang! Ptang! Ptang!

Bullets from firearms. But those should not have been strong enough to damage her Anima. Yuriko shook her head and released the tight bubble protection. When she felt the bullets enter her Anima, she slowed them down instead of directly stopping them. The shooters were nearly fifty paces away, behind spell-built defenses. Earth Wall and Stone Wall created passable battlements and a ditch. Not that it would have done much against her.

She growled and released her sunblades. She was annoyed enough that she decided not to spare the weak. Her Mien was still boiling with excitement and anxiety, bouncing between the two was making her head hurt worse than reading for an hour straight.

The sunblades sliced the shooters in twain, and there was silence. There weren’t any golems around this time, and Yuriko simply flew towards the two girls.

____________

“That energy signature is familiar,” Edward Turner muttered. He was staring at the scrying pool, though he honestly had little interest in watching his grandson play. He’d caved at the boy’s incessant pleading, especially since the only thing Roland asked was a little bit of security so that the plot to weaken and conquer the Republic would succeed. Well, either they won, or they triggered a civil war. Both scenarios were advantageous to the Empire he had inadvertently found so many centuries back.

So, he had sent a clone incarnation with the infiltrators. The body was stationed inside a country estate that was the headquarters of the rebels. Well, Edward thought that it was an open secret as the Scions’ leadership had been in contact with both his empire as well as those thorny vixens in the south. Of the two nations, Bresia or Xotha, the former was much easier to annex, and much more rewarding. Not that it mattered much to him, especially since as far as he could tell, Roland’s government was already having trouble managing the vast imperial territory. But children needed to spread their wings. Besides, conquest was a good way to stave off internal unrest.

The Arcana Weaving to create a clone of his body was long, arduous, and expensive in terms of reagents and materials to make the body itself. Not unless he was willing to grow one that would take years. The spell to control the clone, should he leave it mindless, had a limited range, and were it not for his personal Truths, nearly impossible to do while occupied with anything else. So what he did was slice off a sliver of his future self, multiple slivers across multiple futures, grafted them together, and infused a portion of his true self, then left it in control. Then, he would use a spell to look in on the clone, and sometimes, puppeteer it. The power was limited, two steps below his current potency, but as he was an Archmagus, it was more than enough to handle even power combatants.

It was the insurance he gave to his grandson, even if Roland wasn't actually at the front lines. Edward snorted.

He did build an alarm function for the clone, in case it encountered something new, unique, or troublesome. Since it was parts of himself across time, the clone knew what he was interested in, so there would be no false alarms.

'Oh?'

He frowned as he focused the scrying target at the energy source, only to feel some kind of interference. It wasn't the same feel as another's Domain, but it was close, and as he initially thought, somewhat familiar.

His eyes widened in realisation.

"Those cloistered Conclave Ancients!" It felt like them but was also vastly different. He bit the inside of his cheek in worry. Ancients were trouble, but as long as he gave them a wide berth, they shouldn't trouble him in turn.

But what were they doing near the Shattered Realm? He knew it was forbidden for them to come here. It was the reason he liked staying here after all, as it was away from their self-righteous meddling.

Maybe it wasn't an Ancient? It was a familiar energy, but something else tickled his mind. Something far more important than the Conclave.

He stared at the pool. It didn't show the target, but it did show the area around them.

What was his grandson's scheme? He paused to let his mind wander into his memory palace, then perused the information he retrieved.

Work with the local dissidents called the Scions of Virtalla. The long-term plan had been to win the elections and secede from the republic, but fighting against an entrenched power was difficult, and unsurprisingly, they failed.

So the next step was to incite the beginnings of a civil war, then step in, declaring that the empire was there to quell the troubles that threatened the borders, and basically occupy the territory.

The hasty plan called for abducting and coercing the progeny of the entrenched politicians, and that had been in progress now.

Roland was rearing to join the fight, so he should be near the borders, but definitely not within foreign soil.

The scene finally revealed itself to him. Insurgent soldiers were shooting their firearms at the intruder, and possibly rescuer. And in turn, they were cut down without mercy.

"That's an interesting spel," he muttered as his scrying revealed projectiles that looked like single-edged swords. He nodded in appreciation when the swords turned out to fly independently and weren't just thrown. He became even more impressed when he discerned that they were infused with a personal Truth. However, he didn't recognise the affinity, which further tweaked his interest.

"That really is familiar." He muttered as he stared at them with increasing interest. "Where have I…"

He idly scratched his chin, then tapped his fingers on his armchair. Frustrated at the continued blankness in his memories, he began casting a Memory Recall spell, and when it failed to glean information, he added a pattern recognition booster, then finally, frustrated beyond belief, he cast one of his signature spells that involved his personal Truth. Visions of the Past.

He was pretty sure what he wanted to see wasn't too far back, within the last century, certainly, but he needed to make sure. He combed through everything, every moment in time, while his thoughts were accelerated so that practically no time had passed.

He finally saw it and then wondered why he had forgotten when it had been central to his current project.

The Shard he procured from those unfortunate delvers. He had little progress deciphering its secrets and here he was, confronted by a near-identical energy signature. If he had that, he could easily cross reference and finally crack the code, which would finally allow his to ascend!

More than a bit excited, ecstatic even, he sent the command to his clone incarnation.

Search and capture.