The boulders slammed onto the field north of the outpost and did more damage to the swarmlings than the walls. That’s what Yuriko thought anyway, since she was on the southern wall. She leapt down to the courtyard and ran towards the north, and leapt up on the wall instead of taking the stairs. The battlements were crowded and she had to curtail her leap, using her Animakinesis to support herself on the edge of the crenelations.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

Five boulders marched across the field, coming closer and closer to the walls. The nearest one had fallen over a hundred paces away though. There weren’t any swarmlings killed simply because there weren’t any.

Goggling, Yuriko looked around and found them towards either side, attempting to clamber up the wall. A few were digging into the dirt, but they were quickly killed by suppressive fire.

A few minutes later, a new set of boulders flew from the plateau, striking the ground successively closer to the walls. Yuriko activated Enhanced Sight, but the base of the mountain was more than two leagues away, not to mention the plateau was more than seven hundred paces above that. She thought she saw a few silhouettes, but couldn’t see anything more distinct.

“Yuri!” Gwendith elbowed her way to Yuriko's side and stood gasping. She stared out at the field, zeroing in on the boulders, the nearest one now about seventy paces away. “Boulders? Catapults?” Then she shook her head and muttered, “Do they even have the expertise to build any?”

“Those are ranging shots,” Yuriko affirmed.

“No, it can’t be,” Gwendith muttered. “The range of a catapult is a hundred paces or so. Even accounting for elevation, they can’t reach that far. It’s two leagues from the mountain, ten thousand paces away. Unless they’ve got trebuchets?”

Gwendith’s mutterings softened until Yuriko couldn’t understand what she said. Anyway, did it matter? The proof of range was right there.

Another couple of minutes passed and more boulders came flying. Yuriko noted that the angle was slightly different, meaning that there was more than one thing flinging the boulders out.

The fifth boulder slammed into the base of the wall and bounced away. Yuriko looked at the impact point, worried that it would cause the wall to crumble. There were a few cracks. However, the wall was several paces thick, so just one boulder the size of a man wouldn’t be enough to topple it. Hundreds of boulders though…

Five to ten minutes seemed to be the interval between shots. The next set of five boulders all struck the wall, giving it a few more cracks. Some of the hard-packed earth started to flake off too.

While Yuriko thought furiously of what she could do, the cracks started to glow and shed Animus light, a mixture of greens and browns. The cracks visibly receded within the next few minutes and even when another set of boulders struck, those cracks started to mend too.

A quick glance down the wall showed Yuriko a couple of men glowing with Animus, palms pressed against the inside wall and eyes closed. Even as she watched, the glows faded away and they staggered back, clearly winded. The wall was good as new, but that didn’t really mean much when more boulders could come crashing down any minute.

The next set came and smashed into the walls, and a feeling of helplessness grew within. They were well out of easy reach. Of course, she could rush towards the plateau, climb the cliffside and destroy whatever was throwing the stones. Huh, why doesn’t she?

“Wait.” Gwendith grabbed Yuriko’s arm. “You look like you wanna rush. Don’t. Please.”

“Oh, uhm.”

“At least talk to the commander first before you go haring off.” Gwendith pleaded.

“Oh, right. Yes, of course,” Yuriko stuttered. Why was her instinctive reaction to a challenge to use the quickest path to meet it?

Ehehehe.

Damien.

Yuriko rubbed her temple with an annoyed finger. Of course it was him. His memories and proclivities had been leaching into her subconscious for quite a while now. And…she didn’t really know how to deal with it. The trouble was that they weren’t invasive at all. Not at all like what she experienced back in the Pure Lands, or even during the Harvest Festival during Alderman Rivos’ speech.

No, it felt as if those memories and instincts were like those of her incarnations during the Trials…

Thud! Thud! Boom! Boom! Thud!

The sound of explosions brought her out of her sudden reverie. Someone had fired a Plasma Carronade at one of the boulders falling from the plateau, and unsurprisingly, did little more than scorch the surface. She could even hear someone berating the operator.

“Why in the Abyss didn’t you alter the bolt composition, you rotter! Even if you can melt a boulder, the only thing that’ll happen is we get rained on by lava! Change to a kinetic bolt!”

The next bolt from the carronade was nearly colourless and when it struck a boulder, it deflected it slightly and it landed on a few swarmlings to the west. One of the boulders overshot the wall and would have slammed onto the roof of the western barracks, but a dome, a Protective Sphere materialised from the tower keep. It stayed long enough for the boulder to impact and bounce off to the side before the dome disappeared.

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The boulders were coming faster, now that they had the range. About half of the volley slammed into the wall, while the other half made it over into the camp proper. Was this range their maximum or could they target all of the camp? Either way, the dome appeared and deflected any that came across.

Soon enough, all of the boulders were aimed at the dome instead of the walls. It held strong, but Yuriko wondered how much Animus it took to keep it up.

“This can’t be sustainable,” Gwendith worried.

“It will last long enough, ma’am,” one of the legionnaires nearby said, glancing at the two of them and doing a double-take. “Ah, the Animus Engine can keep up from this level of depletion,” he continued.

“You sure?” Yuriko asked. The dome seemed a bit less solid after the last bombardment.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No, you dolt,” another said, “the engine can’t keep that up forever. Maybe a day of continuous operation, but no more before the cartridges run dry and the engine can’t fill them up fast enough.”

“So better they don’t hit, I guess?” Yuriko said.

“Of course, ma’am. A blast from the carronade consumes less Animus than sustaining the dome against five of those.”

Nodding, Yuriko returned her attention to the plateau, barely paying attention to a few Decani and Centurions yelling at their men to vacate the battlements. There was hardly a need for more than the original rotation since the swarmlings had abandoned the field.

This also meant that the Wyldlings and the barbarians really were coordinating in some way. How they bypassed the distance, she didn’t know, unless they did so using the Chaos Sea.

Still, there was no way to validate either theory and there was no use worrying over something she had no means to affect.

On the northern wall, there were two carronades, one on either corner, and a third to the left of the north gate. All three fired kinetic bolts at the corresponding boulders, leaving two to smash into the dome.

Yuriko wondered if the outpost Animus engine was similar to the Ebon Horizon’s. Aunt Layla had explained to her a bit how it worked. The engine drew in ambient Chaos and converted it to denatured Animus, though that explanation was overly simplistic. There were other things to it, of course, but an engine of that calibre was more than enough to power the ship, the carronades, and the Protective Sphere. However, as revealed by the battle with the privateers, the amount used up by the Protective Sphere varied depending on what it stopped and how much Animus each attack was invested with.

From how the outpost’s dome flickered on and off, Yuriko assumed that it drew heavily on the engine’s reserves.

Of the three bolts, one failed to divert the boulder enough to miss the dome. On the next volley, all six of the carronades shot bolts, two to a boulder. All three were deflected.

Yuriko shot a pebble at one of the other boulders, but as she pretty much expected, it did nothing more than bounce off. She added a charge of Animus into the pebble and the results were different. The pebble pierced the boulder but otherwise didn’t do anything.

She spent the rest of the day trying to figure out a way to deflect the boulders with her pebbles. She tried shaping the Animus into a wedge to break them open, but while she did manage to fracture one, its trajectory was not altered significantly enough to miss the dome.

The bombardment continued on through the night. The next morning, Yuriko was called to a meeting with the rest of the Knights. Unlike before, they didn’t meet in a conference room but had to make the climb up the top of the keep’s highest tower. Commander Perry’s office felt cramped with nearly two dozen of them there.

Looking at the insignias, Yuriko realised that only the Knights that held a leadership rank were present. Centurions for both Infantry and Colossi Cores, for example, although there were a few she didn’t recognise the insignias of.

“The Animus engine can hold,” Commander Perry said. She had bags under her bloodshot eyes, “but I’m more worried about troop morale. I also can’t keep focus on the dome by myself and request volunteers to take a rotation with me. Four-hour shifts should do.”

Quite a few raised hands and the commander’s aide-de-camp took notes. Yuriko didn’t volunteer, having little desire to watch a control orb for hours on end.

“We can endure the bombardment as long as we can, but supplies are still an issue. The continued Wyldling Wave is also worrying, but I’d rather not weaken the outpost’s defences by sending out too many sorties,” Commander Perry said.

“Agminis protects,” Centurion Veren said. “We are the wall that breaks the tide. As long as we manage our defences well, there is no reason for risk.”

“Slow and steady wins,” Centurion Areena added.

“Any objections to holding the fort down?” the commander asked. When no one said anything she nodded. “Meeting adjourned then. I will need the relief controllers to take over for now.”

Yuriko left the office deep in thought.

Defence was the Legion Agminis’ speciality and with all the tools the outpost had, it was the best, and safest choice. But…she recalled her Shatran matches with Finan. Defence had its place but if that’s the only thing she did, she would be hard-pressed to win. Not unless the opponent got impatient or reckless with the long slog.

Of far greater import was how long she was willing to wait here rather than head back home to Faron’s Crossing and seeing her brothers. Marron should be on his way back, but she also worried that he would be delayed by the Wave. She also worried that he could get hurt, or worse, killed. He wasn’t that tough…

She felt slightly guilty for wanting to leave the camp to their own devices, but then again, there were nearly sixty Knights, not to mention fifteen Colossi, twelve Koinos that elevated a Journeyman to the strength of a Knight, and three Certus class which allowed a low tier Knight the strength of a high tier one. Not quite Knight-Captain level, but close enough. What was one of her compared to all of them?

Perhaps she should offer to take the freed women and Gwendith, and probably Niamh as well, to Rumiga City? Surely they needed to recuperate from being held captive for so long? Unless they wanted to get back at the barbarians?

However, there was a pang of subtle guilt lingering at the corners of her mind at the thought of abandoning her post, which was frankly ridiculous since she wasn’t even part of the legion or militia. There was that slight pressure…

Almost as soon as she recognised it, her Anima churned and Radiant energy washed over her entirety. A moment later, that pressure was gone, and so was any guilt. She shook her head wondering where the attempted influence came from. She didn’t think the commander had such an ability.

Either way, waiting around seemed the best choice anyway since she was sure to miss Marron if she attempted to travel south. Then again, if she led a large enough group it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to miss them.

She was halfway through her breakfast, with a sleepy Gwendith and perky Desire sharing her table, when she abruptly realised that the sound of the boulders smashing into the dome had been more than ten minutes ago.