“Leo is nearly eighteen,” Izna Weyr said. Braden and Orrin nodded along while Yuriko poked at her dinner. “That he awakened now…” Izna stared at her and pursed his lips. “Yours?”

“By accident,” Yuriko admitted. “You saw how he was shocked…but that may only be the final push.”

Most of the unawakened joined her in morning training, though they didn’t attend every day. They couldn’t cycle Recovery after all and needed two or three days of proper rest to progress.

“Training under your light can awaken people?” Orrin guessed. “After some time, I guess. And they’d need a push afterwards? Er, are you going to shock every one of them?”

“No!” Yuriko yelped. “I said it was an accident.”

She looked across the clearing where the older boy released a bit more Animus onto his palm and was playing with it. It was only two or three lumens, but unawakened were unable to release any Animus without the use of tools. Not without extensive training, anyway.

“Hmmm, but he didn’t awaken using the Imperial method, does he use the one you, Heron, and Gwendith are using?” Orrin asked.

“No,” Yuriko answered.

Her perception aura kept track of Leo’s Animus play, and it was quite apparent that what happened to him after getting shocked was that he was finally able to access and use his Animus. Without a lineage, he wouldn’t be able to grow stronger.

“Will you teach him the Imperial path or the Ancient’s Way?” Heron asked.

Yuriko shook her head. “Giving him a Chaos Baptism would kill him. He needs to train in some other path first. And,” she frowned, “the Ancient’s Way is a difficult road, I’m not sure if he can walk it.”

For that matter, how did Damien and his contemporaries begin their training? Embarking on the Ancient’s Way needed a strong body and Anima.

Ah, but didn’t Avos Shillogu refer to her as an Ancient the first time they met in the forest? The memory was vague, but she was sure of that. And, she hadn’t done much other than use the Golden Silhouette’s sword dances, Recovery, and Strengthen Physique…

So was that the start? Did she even walk the Imperial Path in truth before she spilled over? She inlaid her Facet which gave her the Golden Silhouette, which then gave her the preliminary methods that eventually led her to the Ancient’s Way.

How would she lead others there? And more to the point, was it really a viable thing? There must be a reason why there are no more Ancients running around today, right? Damien? Fri’Avgi?

‘Talent. You need talent to begin the Way,’ Fri’Avgi answered. ‘And the stubborn Will to weather through the pain and suffering while reforging the body. That boy may not have the strength of Anima and body to even find the Ancient’s Way, and even if you forcibly bring him along, it would consume far too much resources for too little gain.’

‘Is there no way?’

‘The armsman’s Body Forging,’ Fri’Avgi shrugged.

Oh, that’s right. You found a Forging Chamber in Synkrasia. You can bring that boy there and it would start his journey properly. Damien said, for now, he should just strengthen his body. Now that he is able to use his Animus freely, he can do the basic Strengthen Physique and Recovery.

‘What about Animus training?’ Yuriko asked.

Don’t need it. Not beyond using it for Recovery.

‘Any way to awaken the rest?’

You’re already doing it.

“I’ll train him in the basics,” Yuriko said after her mental conversation. With a start, her timesense told her that she’d been silent for several minutes and that she’d dropped the conversation midway. Orrin started when she spoke, and blushed for it.

“That’s good, I guess,” Izna sighed. “He’s already an adult, and only now did he awaken. If only he’d met you even three years ago.”

“Oh, why?” Braden asked curiously, and Izna gave him an incredulous stare. The Haveenian chuckled after a moment.

“Ah, you Imperials are forcibly awakened at thirteen, yeah? Best time. Being on the cusp or already in puberty means that the Animus cap grows faster and the body is more used to channeling prodigious amounts of Animus. We’re taught in Haveena that if we don’t awaken before sixteen or seventeen, then it's unlikely we’ll even do. And even with the odd awakenings, they never grow to the same heights as those that did when younger.” He gave Yuriko a pointed look, “It’s one of the points of contention between your nation and mine. The Empire wouldn’t share their methods.” He ended with a sarcastic laugh. “Not that I blame them. Who’d give away their advantage to a foreign nation?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

That pretty much ended the discourse, and they continued with their routines. After dinner, Yuriko spent some time in the bathhouse, soaking in the springs. She relaxed there until the women’s hour was done, and then she headed to bed. Her body was sore after the lightning tempering, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit her bedroll. She barely noticed Gwendith and Desire cuddled up to her then.

The next day, the entire camp readied to go. Yuriko forewent the morning exercises and helped with packing up. About a third of the forcibly grown crops had been scoured by the sandstorm, but thanks to the Wayfarer’s Bread, they still had more than enough supply to last them a year.

An hour after dawn, they left the oasis and headed east southeast. The Zarek Mountains loomed in the distance, and she wasn’t sure if there was a pass that they could go through. She wondered if she could contact the Avos for passage, but… well, no Chaos shards to sell for it. There was a small dip in the mountains, and she hoped it was passable. Worse comes to worst and they’d have to abandon the wagons and proceed on foot.

For the next couple of days, she and her little council made plans while they walked or rode the wagons.

“We’ll need to scout ahead,” Asami insisted. “We don’t want to be lost in those mountains without a pass. We’ll either get stuck or lost.”

“Well, I can always jump up really high to check the paths,” Yuriko said.

“Right, and you’ve got an ironclad sense of direction,” Asami teased.

“I could always bring you with me.” Yuriko arched an eyebrow. “Wanna do it now?”

“Er, no thanks.” Asami wilted back to Gwendith’s laughter.

“Ah, cousin, don’t you trust our fearless leader?”

“I don’t like heights,” Asami muttered under her breath.

“Hmm, right.” Gwendith giggled, then she said, “By the way, Yuri, isn’t your birthday in a few days?”

“On the twentieth,” Heron answered for Yuriko.

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right,” Yuriko muttered. “I lost track. Hmm, on my fourteenth, I was lost in Kogasi, and last year it was in Realmheart. And now, we’re in the desert.”

“At least we’re here for you,” Heron said.

“Yes, but my brothers and Da missed it,” Yuriko said softly.

Well, that actually killed the conversation. But Heron awkwardly patted her shoulder and it looked like he wanted to give her a hug but couldn’t figure out how without being even more awkward. She squeezed his hand appreciatively though, recalling that his father was in the same mess Da was in.

The impulse to go into the Chaos Sea and look for her Da rose up, and was quickly squashed down. She had the feeling that he was fine, especially if Mum was already on her way. With the way the Chaos Sea messed up the passage of time, she wasn’t sure if they’re already together or if Mum’s still travelling. Hopefully they’d found each other along with Heron, Krystal, and Mikel’s parents and that they were on the way back.

Oh! Rumiga was blockaded, wasn’t it? But Finan managed to slip in. Er, through his Chaos warship, anyway. She didn’t know if Da and the others even had a Chaos Ship. They were only supposed to explore the Tidelands and see if they could stop the Wyldling Wave early.

Well, musing over the past wasn’t really making the longstrides pass faster. Conversation helped, and she spent the day chatting with her friends, with Sheamus, and sometimes, with the Kassy.

The wolfkin man, Rolland, often accompanied the wild cat-kin, but he remained stoic and silent. She noticed him looking at her when her eyes weren’t directed at him, but she didn’t really mind. He had a rugged handsomeness to him, too, although in her opinion, Heron looked better.

The first evening on their travels, she began meditating again. And it was only then that she felt an odd sensation lingering in her Anima. The lighting snakes. They were still within her. Well, tiny, baby snakes that darted around her Anima, crossing into the dreamscape, or played hide and seek in her body. They didn’t harm or even hurt one bit, though their passage left tingles running down her limbs. The sparkles even lingered around her Radiant Ennoia, dancing between the lattice, and filling up the open space.

When she used her Animus to prod at the snakes, they absorbed it and then split into two. Though only if she fed a particular sparkle ten or so lumens.

Ah, she couldn’t control them, either. Though she found that if she laid out an Animus path, the lightning snakes would follow it to its end. The lack of control didn’t bother her simply because she knew that she could snuff them out with a simple thought, but they did increase the progress of her Radiant Body Refinement.

She wasn’t sure if the things were sentient. They might just flit about randomly within. Well, they were useful, especially since it seemed to help awaken those who were already past their prime. Aside from Leo Antos, a couple of ex-guards, Laya Steinholm, and Malto Brine, managed to awaken their inert Animus reserves.

A dozen had volunteered to get shocked by the remnant lightning within Yuriko, but only two were able to succeed. Both were in their twenties already, and she didn’t know if they would still be able to adapt to Animus usage. All three of the new awakened quickly devoted themselves to training, doubling or even tripling their efforts. She used up a lot of the lightning sparks for each one that volunteered though, nearly depleting what was caught in her Anima. Only by feeding the remnants nearly a thousand lumens worth of Animus did the lightning sparks recover in number.

Yesterday, they even managed to use Yuriko’s version of Recovery, despite the fact that dynamic inlays were much more difficult to use than static ones. Their Animus pools were too small to support static Recovery, since if they did, they wouldn’t have any left over.

The rest of the way to Zarek took another five days, for a total of a week. They pushed harder than before, mainly because they weren’t travelling over loose sand dunes but hard stone. Even with the ravines, gullies, and small canyons, they still made excellent time. And just before the 20th Day of Earth, they arrived near the foothills, and were well outside the desert proper. Not that this area was much better anyway. The Zarek Mountains reached up to the skies like a wall, except it was nearly a couple of leagues high. The part they targeted to reach was only eight or so longstrides high, and it looked as if the slope was gentler.

The mountains here in the south were taller and more jagged, at least compared to the ones near home. The Rumiga road that passed through the mountain certainly didn’t encounter heights like these. And there were no settlements here either.

By evening, they made camp next to an outcropping shaped like an arch. It was sheltered from view, and by now, the elevation allowed Yuriko to see all the way to the end of the desert. She couldn’t quite see the city of Uaran, or the tent city of Kadrac from the sand and grit floating in the air.

For all that though, she didn’t spot Saki until her attendant Shadow Guard came within her perceptive aura.