Six Pearlescent Irons grunted in such dismay that the Songstress of Heartfelt Desire couldn’t help but look. The strange-looking woman, whose arms abruptly cut off just below the wrist, was the controller of the Chaos Interceptor Orb.

“What is it?” Desire asked.

Irons gestured with her arm, her control spheres, six metal orbs of differing metal and colour, bobbed and weaved with her boiling emotion.

“The intruder is strong enough to influence the Fysalli production.”

“Oh?”

“The horde has been separated into its component parts!” Irons yelled. “The weakest at the outskirts! If this goes on, all of our troops will be wiped out before the intruder reaches us!”

“Shouldn’t they be vulnerable to counter-Shaping?”

“The intruder isn’t Shaping,” Irons grumbled, “the resulting formation is what they naturally imposed on the Fysalli.”

“Troubling.” Desire nodded but didn’t say anything else. She wasn’t in tactical command after all. That burden belonged to the Crown Princess of Two Spears. Ah, here she was now.

Two Spears was a bulky and muscular woman, towering over the rest of them at two and a half paces. Her namesake spears floated behind her back, monstrosities of black iron. One was even tipped with Nyctferrum, one of the most lethal substances to a Chaos dweller. Desire wondered how the woman could bear to have that thing behind her back.

“We’ll have to send someone to deal with the intruder,” Two Spear’s voice was gravelly, sounding as if it had been created by manipulating the sound that came from rubbing two pieces of sharp metal together.

“Who?” Desire asked ingeniously. It would have to be the more martial minded of the pack.

“There’s another layer separating us from the intruder. We should Shape the area to our advantage,” Irons said.

“Huh, that means me, doesn’t it?” Desire sighed. Of the Chaos Barons, she was the most adept at creating a place hostile to planar lifeforms but also simultaneously advantageous for the dwellers.

“And your honour guard,” said a third Chaos Baron, Revered Guardian Rose, whose gender Desire couldn’t quite place. Of the four of them, Desire was the youngest, meaning that all three of her guards were quite powerful. Maybe as much as her creator, Seeker of Delights.

The Seeker had disappeared, Desire knew, but yet, there was a thread that connected her. It was tenuous and disappeared at times, but it was there. For that matter, she wasn’t even sure if it was really the Seeker at the other end. Some of the sensations that were transmitted were vague and sometimes contrary to what she expected.

“Well, the intruder isn’t going to get herself killed,” Desire muttered.

She looked at the Chaos skiffer downhill. None of the scouts was dead, but they were injured and probably running on fumes. There were still half a dozen Chaos lords waiting at the rise, and if they were commanded to, they would charge down and finish the job.

And probably half, if not all, of them would die. Without the backing of the veterans, they were just too new.

Two Spears knew that though, so she gave the command, “Remain distant unless all of the Wave is dead.”

The weaker Chaos lords bowed in supplication but Desire could see the fires of rebellion behind their eyes. It was hidden and quickly squelched, but it was there nonetheless.

The four of them left the inner Fysalli and transitioned to the next layer. They left the Interceptor behind since it couldn’t be moved without deactivating. Unlike planar natives, when they entered the next layer, it hadn’t formed into a specific terrain. Instead, it was a primordial Chaos soup ready to react to their merest whim. A Chaos dweller’s natural state was to live in the formless, even if they had already taken form. It was the paradox of their existence. The Unformed were the purest expression of the Chaos dweller, but they were so… vulnerable

Desire lifted a hand, though she didn’t really need to, and started to impose her Will into the Waypoint. It would not be something that was friendly to planars. Instead, it would be something that defied logic, and in turn, break Wills.

________

The Hunters scattered quickly but didn’t relent in attacking Yuriko. Most of them could only engage her in melee, and when they reached the threshold of her flared Anima, they were easily revealed. Not that she couldn’t see them with her eyes, really, but their camouflage was enough that it would have taken her a couple of seconds to determine their actual location.

The number of Hunters wasn’t enough that she could hit something by just flinging a sunshard in a random direction, so after her initial assault, Yuriko had the shards, six of them, circling around her body, and used the other six to attack anything that came at her from behind.

With a deft twist, and running the first dance and Flowing Water, Fri’Avgi’s Animus edge bisected a Hunter then she flowed into the next stance, twirling around as she did so. Droplets of water condensed around her, coating each sunshard. The small Radiant blades followed the pattern of the dance too, though she didn’t quite manage to use the movements of the Flowing Water Phase with it. Still, with her body doing it, the effects coalesced around the shards. The water droplets sizzled and boiled, but no sooner had they turned to steam than they condensed back into water. Whenever a shard penetrated a Wyldling, the incredibly hot water was left in the wounds, and the heat proceeded to cook them from the inside.

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Within her light, each of the Hunters’ movements were obvious and slow. She bisected one to her right, Fri’Avgi entered the torso and excited at the hip, then she kicked the knee of another that snuck up behind her. The leg gave a satisfying crunch and she used it as a springboard to hop forward by a dozen paces, away from the inevitable encirclement.

She swung her weapon in a wide arc, catching another two Wyldlings in the process. In the meantime, her circling shards had taken several lives while the other six she sent beyond the range of her flare in a different circling pattern. They didn’t catch any Hunters though, or maybe the things were too quick to get hit by a repeating path, so Yuriko called the rest of the shards back and used them as secondary attacks, which eventually killed more than when she used the sword.

Ten minutes later and she was sure all of the Hunters were dead. Blue blood pooled under dozens of bodies, and the stench was horrific. It had been a while since she smelled Wyldling blood, but it was acrid and left a metallic tang just behind her throat. Oddly enough, the stench wasn’t as bad with the swarmlings and Wanderers even if, objectively, they had far more blood than a human-sized Hunter. Still, she needed to gather the Chaos shards. Another few minutes work and she had nearly a single Jin work of shards, which, if she sold them back in Coltherstone, would give her three golden crowns.

A bit of blue blood stuck to Fri’Avgi’s body so she flicked it away by waving the greatsword around. Her Anima perception revealed a few stubborn flecks, and she didn’t want to sheathe the blade into her Anima with filth on it. So she used her Anima manipulation…

Animakinesis is the correct term, or just plain kinesis. Telekinesis would be appropriate, too, I guess, but that’s a different ability altogether. Still, it will look like telekinesis to anyone who watches you. Damien said idly.

Kinesis, then. Yuriko used her kinesis to remove the flecks she could observe until the artefact was spotless before she sheathed it back inside her. She took control of the sun shards though and kept them rotating around her, letting go of the two shards that were too much for her to hold without Fri’Avgi.

A quick survey of the surroundings assured her that everything was barren and that there were no more enemies so she made her way towards the inner Veil. She wondered what she would find past it. When she came near, she observed the barrier. It was oddly colourless. There were still flows she could see, but they were muted.

Shrugging to herself, she touched it and was drawn inside.

Cold. That was the first impression.

Empty. There was nothing around her, not even air!

The breath she held pressed against her chest. It was freezing, but instead of that, her body felt boiling hot! There was nothing to see.

Where was she? How did she come to this place? She couldn’t breathe, and when she opened her mouth, air rushed out of her lungs. There wasn’t any sound, but she could still feel the beating of her heart, frantic and quick.

Chaos. Where was it? The particles that had infinite potential? She could take hold of it and create air to breathe, land to walk on, and a place to steady herself. Chaos!

There was nothing there, or if there were, they were too sparse for her to grasp. Where? The edges of her vision started to fade away. There were no Chaos particles within her Anima… except for the ones that were within Fri’Avgi. The artefact had a store of distilled Chaos!

Desperately, she grabbed at it and poured her Will into the particles. Air! More than anything else, she needed to breathe.

The motes shimmered then popped, then it was as if a storm pushed her back then sent her spinning. She tried to anchor herself to prevent her from being flung away, but as there was nothing around her, her Anima simply flailed.

It was then that she felt it. A foreign Will attempting to impose itself into her. Not into her mind, but her very self. It was…trying to change her? Turn her into what? She couldn’t really tell since it couldn’t get any purchase at her Anima. Indeed, the Radiant energy just swimming inside her seemed to resist the foreign Will, and when she focused on it, she batted it away.

It recoiled for a moment, then several more tendrils of Will, that she couldn’t see or feel, but could nonetheless intuit, attempted to enter her Anima, only to flinch as they touched a wandering Radiant mote.

The single full breath she had taken wouldn’t last forever. The single mote of distilled Chaos wasn’t enough to fill the empty space. Instinctively, she knew she would have to wrest control over the Waypoint from these… things.

What were they? Chaos lords?

She had only fought a Chaos Lord thrice, and in two of those, it was Damien who defeated the Seeker of Delight both times, and the one she encountered in the tunnels underneath Rumiga City she had to run from.

Of course, she had been a Novice and Apprentice during those times. She was now a Knight… er, on the Actualisation Stage. She should be on the same level, she can fight this.

She extended her Will, through the medium of her Anima. But her Anima couldn’t stretch more than three paces away from herself. The Waypoint was much wider. She could affect what was around her, but she would have to stretch beyond to affect everything else.

Something about that, reaching beyond her Anima, rang alarm bells in her mind. She would be vulnerable…

No, no, shape the area around her first and create a bastion. She had Fri’Avgi release more motes of distilled Chaos and seized them with her Intent and Anima. Air, earth, and a barrier to hold it all in.

The initial transformation failed. Clumps of earth floated away, the air scattered, and the barrier didn’t hold. The foreign Wills tore apart her creation and at the same time, attempted to latch on her.

Her second attempt resulted in the same thing, and she groaned in annoyance at herself. Of course, everything would turn out the same, she did the same set of actions after all! Huh, they weren’t able to alter her Shaping. No, no, focus!

She had another breath and she could take her time. How much distilled Chaos did Fri’Avgi have anyway?

Better not put that to the test.

If a barrier didn’t work, maybe… huh, one of the twins, Braden, had a Facet that pulled things towards him. Could she mimic that somehow? The process eluded her but maybe sheer Intent and a bucketload of Animus and distilled Chaos would do.

She had Fri’Avgi expel as much distilled Chaos as she could then Yuriko imparted her Intent borne by her Will. A disc of stone, similar to the ones she formed in the Chaos Sea, and a hemisphere of air. All of it pulled towards her feet.

And just like that, she was safe. Her Anima glow protected that little patch, and she could see the Veil in the distance. She could see a few figures too, hidden by the darkness. They slipped through the Veil when they saw that they couldn’t harm her. Clenching her jaw in anger, Yuriko moved her platform towards the Veil.

The moment she touched it, she was drawn into the inner Waypoint, and into a warzone.