If the pressure Yuriko felt during the Chaos Storm, during that first instance when she was nearly crushed to the floor, felt bad, then the pressure she felt now was a hundred times worse. Fire burned her nerves, melted her skin, ignited her hair, and scorched her lungs. Lightning shot through her body, making her twitch and spasm. She felt as if a hundred Herons were sitting on her chest...as if she carried the weight of an entire Commuter Tram on her back.

She could barely see anything. Everything was awash with the vivid colours of the Chaos Stream. She could feel herself sinking even as her body slowly turned to dust.

No!

Her hands clenched around Fri’Avgi. The weight, the pressure was subsumed by the artefact, but in turn, a torrent of distilled Chaos poured into her body, into her Anima.

It was too much.

“Foolish girl. You cannot stay within the Chaos Sea,” the Seeker’s voice rang out.

Where was she? Yuriko couldn’t tell.

“Ah, I’m back home. Tsk. This storm’s annoying. Well, I have a hunt to finish.”

Some distance away, the Chaos Lord appeared. The wounds that Yuriko had painstakingly given were disappearing as Chaos remade her body. It made sense: the Chaos Lord was but a disembodied Anima clad in a body made from primordial Chaos.

“Your sorrows will be marked on my blade, girl. Worry not, your tale will not be lost.” The Seeker raised her blade and the Chaos around her swirled around the edge. “What? No!”

Yuriko’s Anima flared, creating a halo of golden flame that pushed the Chaos Streams away. The Seeker struggled against the sudden current but with nothing to anchor herself, she was eventually flung off. In the meantime, Fri’Avgi wiggled its way off Yuriko’s grip and floated within the light of her Anima.

Rest child. And next time you wake, you will be safe.

With the weight of the Chaos Sea pressing down on her to the point of creating cracks inside her body and her Anima, Yuriko struggled. Damien’s voice, her Ancestor who was normally so frivolous, now sounded as firm as bedrock.

Rest. You’ll only damage your Anima if you struggle. Let me take us to safety.

‘But…’

Don’t worry. It’s your body. I’m merely hitching a ride. Ah, of course, you don’t remember the last time I took control. The Seeker would have killed Shillogu if I hadn’t done so. As for you, you and your friends would have been dead. Don’t worry. Release control.

‘Why? How? Why am I here?’

You should never summon the Chaos without having a Spell shaped. Well, what’s done is done. We can’t go back through the same hole you made...unfortunate that. The Chaos Storm’s pushing us towards the Abyss. Now, give me control before we end up somewhere we shouldn’t be.

‘Teach me!’

Tsk, stubborn girl. Fine. Shape your loose Anima into a shell around you. Imagine it to the last mote. You must have a firm image, no half measures!

With a grunt, Yuriko tried to force her Anima to order. It was like suddenly having a tail and not knowing how to move it. Instincts and reflexes sufficed before but now, she needed to do what Damien asked, otherwise she would die. She could see flecks of skin drifting away from her hand even as the process was slowed by her flared Anima.

She struggled for several moments until she got the trick. Before, she’d managed to condense her Anima into clouds and this was similar enough. She just had to move it through the turbulence. Fri’Avgi helped too, acting as a breakwater against stormy seas. Soon, her Anima changed from flickering flames into a stable field.

‘What’s next?’

Next, you meditate. Distilled Chaos is accumulating inside you and you need to use it up.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

Recovery and Anima Refinement.

Yuriko positioned herself into a seated meditation pose, even though she was practically floating. She closed her eyes and cycled Recovery and Refinement. Hot and cold coursed through her physique and her Anima, and she lost herself to the rhythms of the cycle. Lost herself enough that she lost track of time, but in the Chaos Sea, the Radiant Sun didn’t define the passage of time, and who knew how long she floated, cast adrift?

Thoughts came and went. Worries, fears, and tears. But every ripple of emotion just made her focus waver. Her body was slowly breaking down, like a rock constantly bombarded by waves. But even as parts of her eroded, she was renewed by the very energy that was breaking her down. It was the same for her Anima. Her Animus reserve was constantly replenished from the Chaos Sea, a death sentence, normally, but Fri’Avgi filtered away the dross and left her with just what she needed.

She sank so deep into her meditations that she didn’t feel it when Damien took control of her body and then, she knew no more.

______

‘Finally.’ Damien muttered in his head.

The girl was too stubborn and while she was learning quickly, the Primordial Chaos was no place for a neophyte.

“Ah, old friend. To hold you again after so long,” he said, as he beckoned to Fri’Avgi.

The Anima Telum pulsed with pleasure and settled into his hand. Well, technically, it was still Yuriko’s hand. Her dainty fingers were so different from the tough and sinewy digits he had when he lived.

“Well, then, time to settle things. Hey, you! No need to hide!”

The Seeker appeared from a cloud of colours, looking at her warily. Seeing his current body’s image on another really brought home the fact that he wasn’t in his own body anymore.

“You…”

“Ah, you seek release, do you not? Release from the dreary existence of a thrall. Don’t worry, I shall grant you that release.”

The Seeker’s face twisted in anger, shame, and not a little bit of fear. It wouldn’t have been obvious but for how sharp Damien’s eyes were, and how versed he was in toying with his enemies.

“Treacherous Sun, you will not end me so easily!” The Seeker yelled even as she brandished her blade.

“On the contrary,” Damien smirked, “your kind is nothing more than sport to mine. Goodbye.”

Damien waved his hand casually but it was as if a giant boulder had been dropped into a pond. Water and mud splashed everywhere, even as a shard of radiant light shot out from his fingertip and buried itself into the Seeker’s forehead. She didn’t even have time to scream, or even grimace before her Corpus popped like a soap bubble. Her Anima spun into a screaming face before it was sucked into Fri’Avgi’s red gem.

There, it would eventually turn into fertiliser to make sure that this little girl eventually grew into a strong tree. One whose branches would cover the length and breadth of the Chaos and bring everything back to Order.

Damien snorted and nodded to himself. Now, he had to bring them out of the Sea. But where was close enough for the limited time he had? After all, Radiant Essence wasn’t easily collected and stored and every moment he dallied was a moment he lost. Ah, there. That land was close enough to where they were.

Speaking of where, how far had they gone from her home plane? Damien looked around, but even he couldn’t see where Rumiga was. Because there wasn’t a point of reference, it was easy to lose track of how fast they were going. But, oh well, he was sure Yuriko would be able to return. Well, it might take a few years, hehehe.

With a thought, he sent their body flying. He didn’t force himself against the current, instead, he made use of it to go where he needed to. And in a few minutes, he could see the planar barrier. His eyes tracked an isolated beachhead, it wouldn’t do to die while the girl was unconscious after all. And with a last spurt of power, he sent them careening into the planar bubble, and they passed through it with barely a whisper.

________

“Why am I only getting this communique now?” Commander Adeline Perry demanded to her aide-de-camp. “The attack was yesterday morning!”

“Ye-yes, ma’am,” the Decanus stammered. She took a deep breath before continuing, “reports state that the relay spires had been cut down.”

Adeline frowned. “All twenty of them? Across the entire border?”

“No, ma’am, fifty were cut down across the border. None of the messenger cranes made it through the damage. Only when the relief squads were sent this morning did they discover the spent cranes a couple of leagues from Camp 3-4.”

“Well, what news then?”

“There hasn’t been a follow-up report since then.”

“How long?”

“I hurried to give you the report as soon as we got it, ma’am.”

Adeline leaned back against her seat and scratched the corner of her eye, where an old scar ran down from her hairline to her cheek. It was an old wound, one normally concealed by make-up, but it was early and she was just getting through her morning ablutions when Decanus Dumont ran into her quarters with the news.

Camp 3-4 was only a couple of hours' travel from Fort Aegermonth. The distance between Camp 3-4 and 2-4 was only a couple of leagues. Another two leagues separated that camp from the frontline camp too. It wouldn’t have taken her legionnaires more than ten minutes to go between camps.

They would have sent a relay though, so that should explain the delay. But of course, the question of who cut the spires was the one that needed an answer. It couldn’t have been the barbarians, right? In the decades that they’ve crashed against the wall of legionnaires, they always charged in from the front.

Every year in the Season of Water, they struck. Adeline had observed enough times that the raids were premeditated as a coming of age ritual for their youth. Most of the barbarians who attacked were boys barely into their teens.

Adeline and her predecessors have captured enough of them to know. She fought the urge to spit on the floor. Those swarm fodder brutes attacked because they wanted to get laid! The Empire had lost enough men and women that an unspoken protocol in the north was to limit the number of female legionnaires and militia posted in those camps. The nearest village was about five leagues to the south of Fort Aegermonth too.

If she had her way, the Legion Agminis would have swept those barbarians out of the tundra ages ago, except Legate Brygos told her that it was an impossible task.

The Frozen North had a land area that was at least three or four times larger than what the Empire held in Rumiga. Not to mention that the temperature there rarely rose above freezing.

The tribes were all nomadic too. There were fixed camping sites though, such as the oft used T’Pyun that the Iron Skin Tribe lived in during their profane ceremonies and rituals. That one was almost fifty leagues away from the front line.

No, no, the barbarians exhibited unusual behaviour before. Most times they crashed into the front line camps then retreated after all the surviving teens were blooded, but a few times, they sneaked across the front and hit the rear. There was even a time when they bypassed the entirety of the battle line and charged towards Aegermonth. That year, none of the attackers returned.

And always the barbarians did that when Chaos Lord activity was strong. The Asheron Court had been active last Season, attacking into the depths of the City in the middle of a Chaos Storm. A couple of days ago, a natural blizzard occurred. Did the barbarians strike then?

This was more serious than she first thought. There was probably a Chaos Lord mucking about, and none of the camp commanders was stronger than Knight, with just one Knight-Captain in the lot.

“The forward camp!”

Those greedy swarm fodder back in the capital had found a new jadeite mine in Cinderfield Hills. That camp was even beyond the current battle line. But the barbarian presence in the hills was sporadic.

There had been no communication from Camp Cinderfield either.

“Muster the Koinos squads,” she commanded Decanus Dumont. “Hurry. Send one squad each to every Camp, and two squads to Cinderfield.”

Decanus Murrie Dumont gaped at the order, and with good reason. There were only twenty squads of Koinos Colossi in Aegermonth, each squad having a couple of Colossi and a support crew of six Rune Scribes and Spellweavers. Sending seventeen squads would leave three to protect Aegermonth.

“Do it!” Adeline tossed her sigil ring as authentication. “I want them mustered in fifteen, no ten minutes!”

“Yes, ma’am!” Decanus Dumont squealed.

Ten minutes later, she was at the marshalling yard addressing the Colossi Core Pilots.

“...something strange is going on with the barbarians. Head to your designated target as fast as you can. Ensure the camp is safe then harry the rotting scum back to where they came from! Glory to the Empire!”

“Glory to the Empire!” Each of the Cores yelled, along with their support teams. They rushed to the Colossi hangars, boarded the war machines and lumbered out to battle.

Adeline only hoped that they were in time to make a difference. If the barbarians wiped out the camps, the loss of life would be enough for her to face court-martial and disgrace. Even if she survived the censure, the Houses back in Rumiga City would not take the loss of scions well.

“I should have just sent them home!” Adeline growled. She could only hope they were alive.