“This isn't over yet,” the ice queen hissed. She inched closer to her teammate while keeping a wary eye on Yuriko.

For her part, Yuriko called the sunshards to her side. Only five were left, and the glow emanating from each was growing dim. The shards landed along Fri’Avgi’s blade and she felt them call to her, begging for more Radiant energy.

She had precious little to give.

Their initial formation had taken nearly three-quarters of her reserve and the cloudy skies covered the sun. She still felt a little bit trickle in through her exposed skin and, oddly enough, her hair. Aside from that, her Animus reserves were ticking down. At this point, she had a better idea of her consumption. The three combined dances ate up three lumens every minute while she cycled them through Fri’Avgi, and at this rate, she had less than twenty minutes left.

‘Maybe I should stick to just one dance...’

The moment she thought of it, she knew immediately that was untenable. Her favoured second dance barely had any offensive use and shifting out of it and into the first would take seconds. A clash could take the blink of an eye and the decisive moment, a mere heartbeat. Besides, the fourth dance needed her to have another dance combined with to maximise its use.

Her moment of introspection broke when the ice queen shifted her balance and started to conjure another ice spear. Yuriko hastily reformed the sunblade shards, drawing the Radiant energy from two and transferring it to the other three. She added a helping from her reserves and the three shards glowed with power.

“Urg!”

The fireboy staggered towards the ice queen, one hand clutching at the wounds on his forearm. His face was pale but his jaw was clenched.

“I’ll burn you to ashes!” he growled while sparks flew from his hair. They coalesced into balls of flame which started revolving around his head.

Yuriko’s eyes sought the Sorcerer and the tigerman Elder. Rhain was gone from the battlefield, though she wasn’t sure where he went. Haxe was nowhere in sight either.

Gouts of flame and a rain of needles fell upon the Vizugmon troops. Otlaca and Irseso were using the time she occupied the other Elders to rain devastation on the regulars.

“Don’t ignore me!” the ice queen yelled even as she lunged at Yuriko.

Hsst!

Fri’Avgi spun in Yuriko’s hands and created an arc of light. The woman leapt back just out of reach, but the sunshards made a beeline for her head. She spun her ice spear and tried to swat the shards away, but shards curved and danced to avoid the sweep. The woman’s ice mirrors interposed, and since she had three mirrors for three shards, Yuriko was unable to bypass it.

But it didn’t matter. Yuriko kicked off and cut, channelling the third dance. The extended Animus blade scraped against an ice mirror. Cracks formed but it didn’t shatter. Instead, the force of her blow caused the floating mirror to smash into the ice queen’s body, knocking her several paces back.

Fireboy tossed fireballs at her and they exploded before she could parry. The force of the explosion smashed into her Anima, knocking her off balance. It was less forceful than she expected and she only needed to take a couple of steps back to regain her footing. But fireboy wasn’t done.

“Hiyaaah!”

He drew an arming sword from his waist, and a parrying dagger. An explosion of flame erupted beneath his feet and it propelled him inside Fri’Avgi’s reach before she could react. The arming sword smashed against Fri’Avgi’s guard, and the dagger plunged towards Yuriko’s chest.

A frantic grab managed to catch the dagger before it touched her body, but she had caught it by the blade. His Animus blazed against hers and quickly eroded past her Anima shell. A dull, slick feeling came from her palm even as he pushed the weapon closer.

“Haa!” Yuriko yelled as she flung Fri’Avgi up and used her freed hand to punch the man on his nose.

Crack!

Her knuckles felt the cartilage on his nose break. Blood and tears covered his face as he yelled. Then Fri’Avgi landed on his shoulder, not the edge but the broadside.

“Urk!”

The unexpected weight brought him to his knees and then Yuriko’s knee smashed into his already broken nose. There was a wet thud, then a slurping sound. A moment later, the man fell on his face and didn’t move save for the twitching of his legs.

“Eoghan!” the ice queen yelled as she rammed her spear into Yuriko’s side.

A desperate twist had the weapon glance off her hip instead of piercing. A palm presented itself to Yuriko’s face and a frozen tulip formed. Then exploded.

Lines of pain cut into Yuriko’s hastily raised arm.

“Argh!”

The woman yelled as sunshards smashed her back. At the same time, Yuriko trapped the spear at the crook of her arm, and with a savage twist, broke it in twain. Her Anima fluttered with the cold but ultimately held. Then she grabbed the broken piece and stabbed it into the woman’s guts.

The ice queen interposed an ice mirror but it shattered. The ice spear’s tip shattered, too, so only the blunted end hit her. It was enough to throw her back, and she doubled over in pain.

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“Die!” Haxe roared as he burst from the shadows, claws coated in Animus and longer than a knife. Yuriko’s eyes widened as he careened towards her and she could only bring her arms up to block.

The Animus claws cut through her Anima shell with ease, and they sunk into her forearms. Her fingers and hands turned numb but her feet were still fine. She lashed out and struck his chin with the ball of her foot.

“Gark!”

Blood spurted from his lips and it looked like he managed to bite his tongue.

Her momentary triumph was nothing. She felt a burst of Animus that rose into a pillar from within the Vizugmon army. The shaft of light fractured and sprayed, falling to the ground. But none of it touched the warriors. Instead, they splashed into the mangrove trees in the swamp.

A moment later, the trees, they started to move!

Yuriko could only gape in surprise as the branches and roots whipped and struck the reptilians, killing some instantly while binding the others. The Sorcerer hadn’t been incapacitated.

With blood dripping from her hands, Yuriko called Fri’Avgi to her hand. The greatsword rose off the fireboy’s body and it looked like he was still breathing. She raised her weapon to give him the coup de grace, but before she could do so, vines shot towards her.

“Tsk!”

She clicked her tongue and jumped out of the way, though not before she sent a sunshard into his guts. He didn’t move even when the shard stabbed into the middle of his gut and sprayed blood.

“Urg!” The ice queen moaned as she got back to her feet, then her eyes bulged when she saw what happened. “Chaos burn you!”

But Yuriko couldn’t spare more than a passing glance. There were dozens of awakened mangrove trees, and not even Otlaca and Irseso could hamper their killing. She had to help!

“Fall back!”

“Retreat!”

Cries from both sides of the conflict. At least, that’s what Yuriko thought they said since they started to back away. Slowly and organised first, then a bit more panicked when the branches and vines didn’t stop. Yuriko sent a couple of shards to cut down a tree and the third had dissipated already.

She slashed and bashed with her weapon, downing a moving tree one moment, then fending off roots as they tried to trip her up.

The blood had stopped dripping from her wounds, but what remained of her dougi’s white sleeves had turned crimson. She felt dizzy and faint, and when the attacks stopped, she stabbed Fri’Avgi into the ground and used her as a crutch.

All of her strength had drained away. She and the rest of the Lucentians had managed to retreat into the trenches. She watched fitfully as the Vizugmonians and Tiathans gathered just a few hundred paces away.

Bodies, of the dead and the wounded, littered the no man’s land between their forces. A glance at the sun confirmed what her time sense told her. It had only been a couple of hours since the start of the battle, and it wasn’t even noon. It felt like she’d been fighting for days.

“Elder!”

A scream from behind her. She turned to look and saw. An animated tree had cut a large part of its branches and formed it into a javelin, which was now careening towards her.

She somehow managed to squeeze out enough strength to swing her blade, just in time to knock it off its path. The tree pulled back and formed another javelin. It was too far away and she couldn’t hope to reach it before it managed to throw, but just as it reared back, a bolt of purple superheated plasma smashed into the branches, igniting its leaves and trunk. A second bolt smashed into the trunk, then a veritable fusillade shot at the nearby animated trees.

Yuriko followed the trajectory with her eyes and found a trio of figures standing on a rise a couple of longstrides away. Her Enhanced Sight wasn’t quite well enough to make out their features but one of them raised a hand and waved.

The rest of the withdrawal proceeded without issue. The animated trees were eventually put down, but not before they claimed hundreds of casualties. The combined forces of Vizugmon and Tiath moved out of the isthmus though they left several cohorts to keep watch.

It was a bedraggled army that returned to the fortifications. Otlaca had a bloodsoaked uniform while Irseso’s tail had been severed.

Yuriko dressed her wounds inside her tent and struggled to reach a meditative state. Her mind roiled with the day’s events and she couldn’t remove the images of the dead and dying from flashing in front of her eyes. She felt she should be crying, but her eyes were dry. She didn’t know if that was better or worse.

____

“I wasn’t dreaming right?” Riley breathed. “What we saw was real, right?!”

“Yes, it was,” Layla growled. “We saw a girl, supposedly only at the Apprentice level, beat the ever living crap out four Knight-level opponents, one of whom was a Sorcerer. Even accounting for the Anima Telum she’s got bound, that shouldn’t have been possible.”

She shook her head.

“Well, it looks like you’re no longer the youngest to achieve Knight,” Aidan joked.

“I’m not,” Riley muttered. “I’m far from the youngest.”

“Amongst our family, anyway,” Aidan ammended. “That was a nice shot.”

Riley shrugged uncomfortably while he patted his Plasma Caster. That was too far a shot and he wasn’t used to long ranges. In fact, he’d spent too much Animus empowering the shot to make sure it reached that far and he was feeling an ache behind his eyes.

The three of them got off the rise and slowly made their way to the Lucentian fort. It was a roughly made fortification, barely worth the effort. Those palisades would be easy to set aflame with an errant plasma blast. A moot point since they didn’t have advanced Animatech weaponry anyway.

It didn’t take long for the outlying warriors to notice them. They hissed and growled, then presented weapons and pointed crossbow bolts at them. Riley scoffed.

Layla raised a hand, pointedly waving Riley and Aidan down. Riley returned his Plasma Caster to his back.

“We come in peace. We come from Viterra City, from the merchant ship Ebon Horizon. We’re here for Yuriko Mishala Davar.”

One of the warriors, a lizard man, came towards them.

“You say you’re from the Ebon Horizon? Why are you looking for Elder Yuriko?”

“Elder?” Riley whispered.

Layla smiled. “We were told that she seeks passage and came to get her.”

The lizardman frowned. “I find it unlikely that you’d spend all this time coming here.”

His aunt’s face stiffened but her smile didn’t falter.

“I believe this is a matter to be discussed between Yuriko and us, or your superiors.”

She was obviously annoyed.

The lizardman grunted. “You will have to surrender your weapons at the gate.”

“No,” Riley and Aidan said in unison.

The lizardman and the others gathering around them reared in surprise.

“No?”

“We will not disarm in the midst of a battlefield,” Aidan said firmly. “Either let us through or bring Yuriko Davar here so we may speak.” He smirked. “Don’t spend too much time thinking.”

His Protective Field materialised around him, showing to the others quite clearly that they were ‘Elders’ in their own right.

The lizardman gulped then said, “Please give us a minute.”

He spun on his clawed feet and dashed inside.

“No need to be so hostile,” Layla said in Verdanian.

Riley snorted and exchanged a glance with his brother. “We can’t disarm.”

Layla nodded.

It took a few minutes but the lizardman soon came back and beckoned them inside.

The inside of the fort was shabby, and most of the shelters were tents rather than anything more substantial. Nothing quite screamed temporary and hasty than tents in the middle of a palisade. They were led to the biggest one and inside, they saw the other two Lucentians and the girl.

Yuriko looked up from the table and stared at them, confusion writ large on her face.

“Ma…Maru?”

Riley smirked while Aidan laughed.

“You don’t look much like a Davar, cousin.”