‘Saki?’
Yuriko’s second attendant, a self-effacing woman who barely spoke and took Ryoko’s lead in most things. Why was she here? More importantly, she was a Knight, wasn’t she? How else could she have followed Yuriko so closely? No, wait, she was a…Shadow? Was she the one to deliver the note back in Aerule Garden? The hand that appeared out of a cloak of shadows?
Was she also the one who tried to abduct her? No, that didn’t make any sense. Not if she was here now, and not when she helped Yuriko fight against the Chaos Lord.
She let the smaller woman lead her away from the Weavers. The other two incarnations had immediately stopped their assault and rushed towards the sorrowful and bisected Weaver, grabbed both pieces and took some distance. Even now, Yuriko could see blue blood gushing out, but not as much as she expected. She also didn’t see guts or other organs falling out, apart from the severed bits of vertebrae. Even now, the sorrowful Weaver glared at her, and as they vanished in the mists, she saw him smile.
“Graaah!”
The bicorn man. The gigantic beast had been gutted by her sunshards, but it seemed she had only hurt his Geist manifestation. His form twitched and twisted, returning to his mortal form, looking entirely unharmed. The shadow of his Geist was extremely faded though and flickered like a candle flame in the wind.
Of course, he was completely naked, too, and his grotesquely swollen manhood stuck out of his body hair that was thick enough to seem like fur. She had to wrench her eyes away from the horrifying sight.
The man bared his teeth at her and growled but he didn’t engage. Instead, he backed away from her while keeping himself into a ready stance. A moment later, he spun around and ran back to Oeura Bo, occasionally glancing back and growling. His eyes had a strange bestial light that felt much different from how the other barbarians looked.
But now wasn’t the time to worry about a retreating enemy. All around her, the scent of blood permeated and the wails of the wounded and dying filled her ears. She saw Areena slumped against a small boulder, hands over the hole in her belly. Lightning crackled along the edges of the wound and her face was dreadfully pale. The lightning spat out and fried a barbarian that had tried to sneak up on her. A stomach wound wasn’t immediately fatal, Yuriko knew, as long as the spine wasn’t severed. But from the looks of it, Areena was crippled but very much alive. She wouldn’t stay that way if nobody helped her though.
The other three barbarian chieftains wreaked havoc amongst the remaining Knights and Colossi. Three of the giant armours were left in combat form, and one was engaged with a behemoth, slowly overpowering the Chaos beast that was more a siege engine than anything else.
“Young mistress, go! The battle is done!” Saki whispered.
“No, it’s not,” Yuriko said through gritted teeth, finally mustering the wits to respond. She dug in her heels and forced both of them to stop. “I don’t know why you’re here, or why you only revealed yourself now,” she said while glaring at the attendant who shrank away and whimpered, “but…” Yuriko looked away from the woman and surveyed the battlefield.
The last behemoth had been wrestled to the ground and was being stomped to mush. The objective of the sortie had been completed and the outpost was safe, now what needed to be done was to disengage and recover the wounded.
“Help me bring them back,” Yuriko said slowly, unsure and hesitant.
Her instincts told her to fight, to slaughter and end the barbarian threat now. But a single, well three incarnations of a Chaos Lord had stopped her dead. What was worse was that she knew the creature wasn’t that much stronger than her, but she had been remiss in her training. She had it too easy, with overwhelming power and nearly impregnable defence. Bitter bile rose up her throat. How many had died?
She saw piles of barbarian dead all over the place. She saw three Imperial Knights, forever laid to rest on the battlefield. She couldn’t see their faces, with two of those because they were missing their heads and the last one was face down on the snow. One of those was a Colossus Core Pilot, the distinctive piloting suit completely unsuited to melee combat.
“As you command,” Saki answered with a fist to her heart.
A moment later, the shadows rose from her feet and concealed her figure. The woman was light enough on her feet that she didn’t leave any tracks in the snow, but Yuriko felt through her Anima, and an odd echoing connection through her Mien, that the woman was headed towards one of the chieftains battling a trio of Knights.
Taking a deep and long breath, Yuriko sheathed Fri’Avgi back inside her Anima and allowed it to release as much distilled Chaos as she could bear, which she fed into the conversion runescript lines she wove into her flared Anima. The brief battle had depleted half of her reserves, and she needed to spend most of what she had left to shore up the fissures and cracks, as well as to create more sunshards. She couldn’t stay still though.
A group of barbarians broke off from the mass and charged toward her, weapons raised overhead. Several pebbles took care of the problem even though a couple of them survived her barrage. Those she executed with the remaining sunshards.
The battle between the giant stag and three of the Knights culminated in another warrior getting skewered by the multi-pronged antlers and the chieftain getting hamstrung out of nowhere. Saki, of course.
“The behemoths have fallen! Pull back!” Veran yelled.
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The Knights struggled to disengage. Yuriko hurried towards Areena while she used her sunshards to fend off the barbarians.
“You…can you hold on?” She asked the stricken woman.
“Yeah…” Areena gasped. “Just…get me to camp. The healers will take care…of this.”
Yuriko scooped the woman into her arms, which jolted the wounds enough to reopen the cauterized arteries. Blood spurted out from the mangled flesh and Areena couldn’t stifle a pained moan.
Thinking quickly, Yuriko enveloped the woman in her Anima and used her kinesis to…pinch…the broken ends and apply pressure on the wound. There were too many broken vessels though, and she couldn’t split her focus enough to apply it precisely.
“Cauterise it,” the woman said.
Yuriko nodded and gave the woman her combat knife so she could bite down on the handle. Then, she used a sunshard to do it. Sweat ran down her face as Areena’s muscles spasmed. Her scream was muffled, but even then, it was still loud. By the time Yuriko finished, the woman had passed out.
Unfortunately, field dressing the wound meant that they were nearly left behind. Saki materialised out of the shadows as she killed a couple of barbarians, vanishing again as soon as she was done.
Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!
The Colossi lumbered away, one of them carrying the torso of a Koinos with another carrying the lower half. The surviving Knights shot elemental blasts, plasma bolts, and whatever else they had at the chieftains.
The three giant beasts weren’t about to let them go easily, of course, except that the stag was limping, the wolf’s lower jaw hung by torn ligaments, broken and crushed. The bear looked entirely unharmed though. Yuriko sent sunshards and Empowered pebbles at the thing, drawing its attention and giving the defending Knight, the spearmaster, Mitre Lacona, the chance to pull away. The bear roared in her direction, but she glared back with a burning gaze. Her Anima’s reddish tinge hadn’t disappeared and she could feel a smouldering rage lingering beneath.
Still, she was carrying a wounded woman and she was in no position to engage in melee. Step by step, she and the others retreated. The bear was the only chieftain to harry them, and he was restrained by the Certus Colossus, even though the war armour’s plating was broken in several places where denatured Animus leaked out. Yuriko flung pebbles, ice crystals, and sunshards at the thing, but kept well back.
It took an hour until they were far enough away that the barbarians didn’t follow and farther. The bear chieftain’s transformation time must have run out, too, since she could no longer see him. The Decanus Mitre took Areena from Yuriko’s hands, nodding his thanks as he did so. He held the smaller woman gently against his chest.
“Will you stay as a rearguard?” Veran asked as he walked up to her.
Yuriko nodded. She was the only one who could easily glide down back to camp. The others had to climb down.
Whoosh!
Thud.
The Koinos dropped the bisected Colossus down the cliff. Yuriko winced at the sound, wondering how much work the Runescribes would have to do to get the thing back in working order.
Following that, the rest of the Colossi, with the Knights hinging at the back on harnesses, climbed down. Yuriko felt something with her Anima, and a reflexive pulse of Radiant light revealed her attendant, who gave her a smirk.
“You can descend on your own?” Yuriko sighed.
“Yes, young mistress.”
“Very well, go with them please.”
“I cannot. My duty is to remain close and protect you.”
Yuriko stared at the woman in silence before she said, “I don’t need it.”
“Nevertheless…”
“Saki.”
“Yes, young mistress?” The woman gulped.
“Go with them now. We’ll talk in the outpost.”
Saki knelt down on one knee, bowed her head and pressed her right fist on her heart.
“By your command.” Then she stepped out of Yuriko’s light and concealed herself back in the shadows.
After a moment, Yuriko realised that without being able to detect the woman, she had no way to know if Saki followed her orders. Still, there was that thread…
Shaking her head, she forced herself to focus. She was still in hostile territory. No barbarians or Chaos Lords came close, however, so she hoped they were clear.
She glanced down the cliff, enhancing her Sight as she did so. The Colossi were near the bottom, just fifty or so paces from the foothills. It was enough. She flared her Anima and shaped them into wings. She could jump down now and angle herself towards the outpost but that would mean leaving the others behind. She took a deep breath, took a step over the yawning abyss and held. Something made her look back. An ill feeling, a premonition…
The Veil. Green covered the entirety of it, spanning from the base of the plateau all the way to the heavens. Green ripples and white flame.
A massive claw pierced the Veil near the Tidelands, and a behemoth arrived. It was a saurian creature, with massive jaws, horns around its eyes, and a flat skull. A being wreathed in flames stood just above its eyes. A Chaos Lord. The behemoth took a step into Rumiga, and the earth shuddered in passing.
Gravity took hold of Yuriko, her step over the empty air pulling her towards the ground. The Chaos Lord on top of the behemoth looked towards her, and their eyes met. The creature’s face was impassive but there was a glimmer of interest. Yuriko wondered if another battle would be joined. But no, it, and the behemoth, turned towards Ouera Bo’s plateau entrance, and they lumbered away. Yuriko fell back, falling towards the ground. A bitter thought permeated her mind. Futile. The Chaos Lords would bring as many behemoths into Rumiga as was needed, and in time, they would overwhelm the Empire’s defences. A part of her quivered in terror. But another part…
Another part welcomed the challenge.
_______
Marron Mishala Davar carefully hid himself behind a ridge. His sight didn’t need to be enhanced to see the troubling sight. He had spent weeks walking in the cold, seeking to return to Aegermonth and find answers to why the supply transports had stopped coming. Several hundred longstrides traversed while blizzards, barbarians, and Wyldlings roamed the land.
There was a Tidelands between Aegermonth and the Northern Outpost, but it was easy enough to bypass. If a Wave appeared, then that would explain the disrupted supply lines, but even so, word should have reached them. Why was there nothing?
Well, now he knows.
Over the ridge and right smack in the middle of a valley, north of the Cinderfield Hills where a deposit of Jade had been found and where a dozen mining camps had sprouted, a strange fortress appeared looking like it had grown out of the earth. Obsidian growths created the walls, the towers, and the keep. The ambient Chaos was dense here, far higher than what it should have been by at least twofold.
He could see figures walking on the walls. He could see Wyldlings patrolling the valley. And worse, he could see the cracks in Rumiga’s space. Minute fractures in the air above, giving him a glimpse of the Chaos Sea beyond.
The fortress and the valley hadn’t been there before. It should have been a flat tundra! The hillsides were jagged granite, and the ground was covered with ashes.
He pondered his choices. On the one hand, he was sure that the Empire would have scouted this region already, even if only because the logistics transports would have had to return. Then, his duty was clear. He had to go back north, and warn the outpost 8. They had been cut off from the rest of the Empire, and if they didn’t do anything, it would be lost.
He turned around and crawled down the hillside until he was no longer in view. Then he ran.
End of Book 6