“Another failure.”

Edward hissed as the mass of blood and flesh slowly withered. Temporal acceleration, his favourite trick, had failed him this time, and he had missed the point of no return, when the varied cells and energies were about to coalesce into an Anima. Instead, the disparity between the level of the two donors, not just in Anima strength, but also in Affinity, caused a cascade of failures that destroyed his work of several weeks.

Ugh. He had first spliced, then combined his own blood and cells with the captured blood essence to create an entirely different and unique creature that might still resonate with the shard. He had been so careful in the insertion and combination of the materials, and he thought that it was succeeding. The combined blood had transmuted into a zygote and was slowly growing into an actual fetus.

Unfortunately, the balance tipped and the opposing forces tore the clump of cells apart. He had two blood droplets left. Two more tries to get it right. He only had a bit less than two decades left in his natural lifespan…

Slowed time, sped-up time, and any other temporal manipulations…they didn’t affect objective age when it comes to lifespan. Edward had lived longer than what his remaining vitality would indicate, but nothing could fool the Immutable Truths of Reality. It was a pity he had already chosen his path when he found out that other disciplines had longer lifespans or just plain unaging immortality…

They were called Ancients for a reason, and most were overbearingly arrogant, even those who had bound themselves willingly to placate the Firmament.

He resisted the urge to go on a ruinous rampage at the sight of the dead mass of cells. This failure brought him nothing of use, unlike the direct clone. He would have to try again, or perhaps command for more blood to be taken. But the woman would be on guard against it now.

Ah, no, she should have been on guard since the ambush… It was a pity he still couldn’t scry her. He could get an inking of her position if he widened the spell’s aperture, but lately, the pool only showed white clouds. Well, whatever. He would unlock the shard and find out its secrets. But who knew how long it would take him to incorporate what he’d learned and leverage it for his Ascension?

Time was ticking away, and unlike other endeavours, Breaking the World’s Chains could not be rushed and could last for years. It depended on what he wanted to be as well as what his path had been like…

He tossed the blood orb into the fireplace and burnt it to ashes. Then he headed to his vault to retrieve the next blood droplet but hesitated just before he touched the handle. His emotions were unstable, as was his mind. Whatever he needed to do, he must be calm and in control.

He shook his head and pulled away. He marched out of his laboratory, took the lift to the roof gardens and sat down on a reclining chair to stare at the stars. He hadn’t realised that it had already grown dark. The interior of his tower was always well-lit, and he barely bothered to stare out the windows.

Now, he sat under the Moon and the Stars. His closed-off Anima prevented him from feeling the movements of the divine, it was just as well. He didn’t need the attention, and the gods and goddesses were fickle and capricious. They would prod and prod and prod until one jumped in the direction they wanted, weaving Fate and Circumstance as bludgeons to force their Will.

It was why he was bent on Ascending. Not just for the extension of his lifespan, but also for the power to free himself from their attention. He impulsively conjured a hand mirror and stared at his reflection.

Oh, where had the handsome Magus gone? Only an old man, with more wrinkles than skin, stared back. The decline had been precipitous. Back when he first secured the shard, he had only looked above middle-aged, but now, he looked close to his deathbed. Which, to be honest, was somewhat true. He wasn’t about to go unresisting into the dark, so he would fight. Fight to live on, fight to survive, and fight to gain power.

And he would trample everything in his path if they obstructed him.

Several hours passed as he stared unblinking at the stars. What secrets do they hold, and how could one observe them? He tried, as any self-respecting Magus should, at least once in their lifetimes. A basic Farsight spell showed little, and even if he layered dissimilar spells to increase the potency of his sight, none showed more than a small point of light. More powerful spells, specialised tools, and sheer stubbornness eventually gave him some idea of what the stars were.

They were patterns created to cover the emptiness of the void above the Firmament. Pinholes in the fabric of reality, perhaps? Even the most powerful Sight enhancing spells and tools only doubled or tripled the apparent size of the anomalies. Perhaps if he studied and was more persistent, he would have unravelled more of their secrets, but the most frightening thing about the stars was that when one gazed too deeply at them, with the Intent to divine secrets…the stars stared right back.

Just as they did now when the world darkened as the Day of Transition happened.

_____________

The giant figures in the sky that looked at Yuriko on the Celestial Refraction spent a couple of seconds focused on her, or perhaps only seemingly focused on her before their gazes moved on. Yuriko felt sweat drip down her back as the sensation passed.

It was a penetrating gaze, though she felt that it was only superfluous and didn't really peer into her secret. She felt that if they extended the gaze, they would have. The weight of it pressed down on her Anima, but the most infuriating thing was that their gazes had turned dismissive at the end.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She felt slighted by that, and it was completely irrational. She was, by no means, equal in power to such powerful people, but she also felt that they weren’t as strong as the Damien in her memories.

No, they felt weak, actually, yet incomparably strong. The Chaos Duke she faced was nothing compared to the giants, but they too, were nothing compared to Damien. Yet she was far beneath all of them. She was slowly climbing towards their level, but she didn’t know how long it would take. Just meeting the requirement of advancing her Colligia to Reperta was already daunting. The physical part of converting her Animus core completely into Radiant had barely progressed past what she already achieved with Ambrosia. And she wasn’t going to continue using that to advance. She was nearly oversaturated and she knew that without shoring up her weaknesses, she would not be able to progress to the next stage with any kind of ease. And if she insisted on taking the shorter, and easier path, her future path would be all that much harder.

So how long must she meditate and convert her Animus core and strengthen her Radiant Essence? Further, she had already tainted the purity of Radiance by adding another Ennoia.

She peered at her Essence Core in the midst of her meditations and observed it for as long as she could. The Animus core lay within the protective embrace of the Radiant Essence, but the golden light had streaks of metal grey to represent Flying Swords. There were hints of the four Elements, but they were so faint that they were hard to distinguish from the background golden light.

The Radiant light had barely seeped into the core beyond her Ambrosia-fueled progress. Memories told her that she needed to meditate to figure out what Radiance was. There were many aspects of it, and the ones she felt an instinctive connection to were Devour, Power, Illumination, and Revelation.

…Huh. She’d never thought about defining them like that. She’d instinctively felt it, but hadn’t quantified it. The very act of naming her interpretation…her Truth, pushed the Radiant light deeper into her core. She shivered and the world around her burst into Radiant Light.

This time, she attracted the attention of more giants, but the difference was that they couldn’t stare at her for too long lest they blind themselves. Hah.

The day passed with little else happening, and the first day of the new year, AF 3003 was met by a snowstorm. The clouds swept from the south, fueled by the Great Lake, then met with the cold air above the Kerromere Mountains, and resulted in snowfall and hail. Ah, the Bresians weren’t using the same year reference she was using, though the number was the same. The label was called AS for After Shattering, rather than After Founding. Why they would label their calendars from that catastrophe instead of something that had a positive meaning, eluded her. Ah, the other neighbouring countries use that calendar, too, according to the geopolitical books she forced herself to read.

Well, with the turning of the Season, it marked the end of the Trimester and the kids had a couple of weeks’ break before they returned to the grind. Well, most of them left before the Celestial Refraction, though Sofia and Juliette stayed on instead of heading home or back to the campus. It wasn’t so bad.

With the fortress snowed in, the three of them had gotten drunk again and she found herself in a cuddle pile with both girls. At least they stayed in Yuriko’s suite instead of somewhere more public. Well, they fooled around while inebriated, and she pretty much let them, but she refused to let them cross the line with her. Well, she could have burnt the alcohol from her body, but then, she’d be the only one sober and it would feel as if she took advantage of them.

Ah, one thing that thrilled her was that with her strengthened Mien, her Anima defences were more accepting of… affection. She didn't have to hold herself back so much since the Mien limited and altered the way her Anima functioned for exactly those instances. She couldn’t wait for her lover to return, and perhaps she’d give Gwendith a surprise. Heh. Well… only if the other woman was ready. Yuriko held herself still while being intimate because Gwendith still relived parts of that nightmare…

She regretted not exterminating the rest of those filth, but their circumstances just didn’t let them linger.

The storm lasted for several days. The fortress held a sense of relief, as though soldiers manning it felt as if the war would come to a break with the weather in eastern Bresia. The Virtalla Region was extreme when it came to opposing Seasons. The hot Season of Fire and the freezing Season of Water. No army could march through the frozen prairies in hip-deep snow.

Well, she would still need to scout. The Ib’honara were quite limited now, and she was the only one willing to fly around amongst the elites. Well, the same applied to the Ib’honara scouts of Ishodir too.

So imagine her surprise when she saw an army marching. The annoying thing was that it wasn’t Ishodir’s army that was tempting the Threads of Fate. No, it was Bresia’s. The council debate that had paralysed the machinery of War had finally come to a decision for a course of action. And instead of doing the sensible thing, they instead chose to march and attack the border forts to reclaim them.

Ah, they weren’t in eastern Bresia yet, and Yuriko saw them on the west side a couple of days march from the Greyith Fortress. Why didn’t they tell the base though?

Well, the even more important thing was that when they arrived in Greyith, they practically commandeered all of the elites to join, and since she was under contract, Yuriko was mustered up too.

Oh well. Freezing temperatures didn’t matter to her anyway.