Chaos gushed through the tear in the fabric of reality. At least, that’s what Yuriko assumed would happen. Not that she was wrong, just that Chaos wasn’t the only thing that seeped through.
In the Myriad Planes, Chaos was everywhere. It was unlike here in the Arcadia Region, and probably the Greater World, as it was referred to in the books she struggled through, where Elemental energies dominated the surroundings. Reading about Cosmology had been more than enlightening, though she wondered if the authors were limited in understanding and perspective, too.
For one thing, they claimed that living in the Chaos Sea, which they called the Shattered Realm, would be impossible in the long term without expensive defenses that must be renewed every Season, which expended rare reagents, and required exquisite expertise. Any mortal exposed to the Chaos, even if they resided in the Bastions of Calm, which Yuriko recognised as Fysallis, would eventually succumb to Chaos poisoning.
Well, of course, they would, Yuriko thought then. Fysallis weren’t meant for mortals to live in. Anyone under Knight who tried to travel or live in the Chaos Sea without protection would either die or be changed irrevocably.
But then she realised that, without an Animus core, humanoids really wouldn’t be able to live in the Chaos Sea and the Myriad Planes. But she was certain that the Elemental Hearts people cultivated in this region could also adapt to Chaos. Eventually, she supposed.
But no one in Bresia, and she supposed that in the neighbouring regions and nations, few attempted to venture deep into the Chaos Sea. Hmm, or was it because…even though they travelled on the Chaos ship for days, they didn’t find any Fysallis before they arrived on the Arcadian shores?
Were there no planes near the edge? It would take more than a century of continuous travel to reach Rumiga from where the Chaos rift dumped them…were the distances to the nearest stable plane from the edge of the Sea just as far? It was a sobering thought and probably why these people never truly ventured out into their so-called Shattered realm.
As far as she knew, there were three other layers, or canvases, underneath the current layer of reality before it became Chaos. She read an interesting book about it in Greyith Fortress’ library and it solved some of the mysteries she found when she ventured into the dreamscape. The three layers underneath the Material were called the Realms of Thought, Ideals, and Desires. Unfortunately, the author of the book couldn’t offer more than speculation and basic observations on what differentiated the three from each other, but Yuriko knew it was the Realm of Thought that she accessed when she entered the dreamscape.
Fri’Avgi tore through all three layers with her slice and ruptured the fabric to create a rift into Pure Chaos.
But there was another place in the in-between. The Void Ocean which also suffused the gaps between the material, the other layers, and the Realm of Pure Chaos that underpinned everything.
And part of that void, an inky blackness that she recognised from her travels through the portal, seeped in along with the gushing stream of Chaos, and the fragments of the other realms that she couldn’t differentiate.
The Pure Chaos flooded the crater, then the surroundings, covering everything within a longstride with it. The Guardian didn’t even have time to blink before he was enveloped. The Chaos didn’t stop him from speaking…or rather, cursing. Though it was in a different language than what Yuriko knew, the intonation and the clear irritation on his face revealed the intention.
To Yuriko, the Chaos felt like a hot bath after trudging in the snow for days. Well, if she actually felt cold anyway. Ah, she still appreciated a nice long bath after a day of training, and this felt just like that. Her breath refilled her Animus core with ease, and the Radiant energy cores within every particle of her being intensified from their previously dulled glow.
Her vision was coloured by the multiple hues and it drowned out the tepid light of the Moon. She could feel the edges of the Chaos Lake as the Luminous Light tried to burn it away. She could feel the world around her shake. The rupture on the fabric of creation tried to stitch itself back together, but Yuriko jammed Fri’Avgi into the gap.
There wasn’t enough Chaos yet.
“You fool! You doom this land!” The Guardian howled and Yuriko actually saw the edges of his Storm Domain. It was highlighted by the thick Chaos that warded away the natural Lighting, Wind, and Water Elemental energies that comprised the Storm Domain. What was there struggled under the Chaos pressure, and the Domain shrunk to within a couple of dozen paces from the beastman.
But she could see that it was already adapting. The Domain was expanding once again, and she only had a few moments to capitalise on his weakness.
But the Chaos wasn’t enough. She didn’t really know what she was trying to do by calling Chaos here only a vague instinct that told her having it around was to her advantage. But she could see the very earth start to morph. The fabric of reality tried to close the rift, but since Fri’Avgi was in the way, the canvas of the world attempted to create a pocket around the rift and contain it so that the rest of the surroundings weren’t contaminated.
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It was a marked difference in what happened when she accidentally blew a hole through the fabric of reality back in Rumiga. Then, it created a Chaos Fortress that the Chaos Lords and other dwellers used to bypass the Veil.
But…there was no Veil around Arcadia. She didn’t encounter one when she and the others entered the Great Continent. Instead, they climbed up the shore, then up a slope, until they emerged in the barren area that buffered Bresia from the Shattered Realm.
The images clashed in her mind painfully, and she felt a headache begin to pound her mind. She pushed that aside and focused. No more than a second had passed since she jammed Fri’Avgi into the hole, and the Guardian’s Domain recovered by a couple of paces.
The edges of the Chaos lake encountered stiff resistance from the World, and she could see a membrane form around the edges. And now that she could see it in action, she was sure that it was a Veil similar to what protected Rumiga and other planes from the Chaos Sea. Except it was inverted here, of course.
The rest of her hastily made plan was illuminated by an idea. One that might kill her, though she might have better odds of survival than her enemy. She wasn’t sure if they were still within Bresia proper or if they’d already strayed into the Sodden Plains. Probably the former from the absence of a thick layer of ice over the shallow lake. And, she could only apologise to the nation in her head. She certainly wasn’t going to take sole responsibility for what could happen since it wasn’t she who started this whole mess.
She didn’t ask to be targeted by so many powerful foes…
Oh wait, she kind of did wish it by seeking challenges, right? Ehehehe.
The Guardian’s Domain continued to recover, but from how the reverse Veil moved, it would enclose the space before he finished. The rift gushed Pure Chaos, and the iarvesh level had already exceeded ten.
The Radiant energy seeping out of her body reacted to the thick density, causing sparks and mini-explosions around her body.
The sound was masked by the rushing energies however, or perhaps the Guardian was too preoccupied to notice. Yuriko gathered her Radiant energy into an orb above her palm. She pulled at the flowing Pure Chaos and fed it to the orb. The amount of Radiance produced quickly eclipsed what she held within her body and hair, but her grasp on it was firm enough that the orb didn’t expand.
It did pulse like a beating heart, especially after it received enough Chaos and Radiance to sustain itself. The orb grew brighter and brighter, and the heat it emitted would have evaporated a lake if she had let it loose. As it were, she absorbed the bits she could hold into the orb as it reached the saturated point. Now she could either enlarge to accommodate more Radiant energy, or she could simply stop feeding it. She had to make the thing collapse and explode manually, however, as at the point of self-sufficiency, it would just keep sucking in Chaos.
Hmmm, if the rift wasn’t open, the orb would have been a good choice to clean up the space. She was sure it would draw all of the Chaos in. At this point, all the rift was doing was to feed her Radiant Orb. Ah, it and her body and Anima were fully saturated.
Since the Chaos stopped spreading, the reverse Veil finished forming. The world around her shuddered and they were abruptly cut off from the material plane. Guardian’s Domain had recovered to two-thirds and she hoped that what she was about to do would be enough.
To kill him, hopefully, but she kind of doubted it would be that easy. Maiming him would be enough, heh.
“Oi!” Yuriko yelled, then mimicked the rotter’s taunting tone, “Bye bye~”
She crushed the Radiant Orb with her fingers and disrupted its equilibrium with her Intent. Then she threw it towards the beastman, though she didn’t intend for it to hit him directly.
“You…” The Guardian flared at her, all playfulness gone from his demeanour. Yuriko smirked as she saw his eyes focus on the Orb, then they widened with trepidation.
Wsssssst!
“Ah!”
Radiant energy exploded, consumed, propagated…devoured, propagated…and the cycle repeated…again, and again…until everything within range was Radiant Light.
Everything.
Yuriko didn’t stick around. While her body was filled with Radiant energy, and she could turn into a Radiant Elemental for half a second or so, she knew she could not endure the power of an uncontrolled Radiant energy burst.
So she left.
She pushed towards Fri’Avgi and went right through the rift, knowing that her chances of survival and escape were far higher there than remaining in a nascent, but unstable and suddenly exploding, Chaos Fount.
As soon as she was through, she sheathed Fri’Avgi into her Anima and propelled herself away from the rift. It began to close, but before it could do so completely, the Radiant burst shot right through it, turned into a beam from the small aperture, and ignited everything in its path.
She was probably in the Realm of Primordial Chaos, but the introduction of Radiant energy within it agitated it so much that the only coherent thing she could sense was expanding and exploding. Again and again. Waves that pushed against her body and Anima, eroded her defences, igniting her senses, and battering her body. She was propelled away from the Radiant beam, but thankfully, the weight of the Chaos was too much for the relatively minuscule amount of Radiant energy, and the reaction eventually stopped.
But then, Yuriko sensed impending danger. The weight of severe gazes started to turn towards her direction, not to mention the physical weight of the Chaos itself.
She had to leave. Now.
Fri’Avgi returned to her hand, and she blindly swung. The cost of creating a rift from the wrong side of the layer caused the artefact to suffer tremendously, but Yuriko enveloped and infused her with Anima and Will.
Instinctively, she reached out for the Threads connected to her, and she seized the brightest thread and fused her Intent and the desire to reach it.
The rift opened with her swing, and she pushed herself through.
Her bones creaked and her Anima was filled with cracks. She hastily returned her artefact to her Anima. There were cracks across the blade…
She landed on the snow, which immediately hissed into steam as she shed a tremendous amount of heat.
“Ugh…”
She moaned and tried to stand. Her body and Anima were frazzled to the point that she could barely move. And where was she?
“Yuri?” Gwendith’s voice. And then she was enveloped in a fierce yet gentle hug.
“Gwen…”