The days passed like water down the stream. If not for her innate time-sense, Yuriko would have lost count of the days after the third week. She finally managed to figure out the date when she saw a sliver of the Luminous Moon. It was far too faded and was easily concealed by a cloudy night. But since she carved a line on the bark of her treehouse, she managed to work out that she had arrived on this plane on the 50th Day of Water.

Which meant that she had been in the Chaos Sea for at least a week.

As things were, the days blended together. She spent most of her day foraging or hunting and spent her evenings in a light meditative trance. When she slept, she probably woke up every couple of hours or so, disturbed by the forest noises, the howling, growling, and roaring. The bony bear added his voice to the cacophony too and he was rotting noisy!

Several nights past she’d taken a rock and thrown it in his direction, but other than the first time, when he cut off in surprise, he only howled louder. Last week she actually marched over to his cave. Why was a bear howling like a wolf, anyway? When he saw her, he settled on haunches and just gave her a curious look.

“Pipe down, would you?” Yuriko said crossly.

He just tilted his head, howled a bit more then went back inside his cave. A minute later, he came back out with his front left paw glistening with something yellow dripping from his claws. He offered it to her.

Yuriko blinked in surprise. From the scent, it was honey. But she wasn’t about to take honey off a bear’s claws. So she shook her head, rolled her eyes and walked off. He continued howling until well past midnight.

Another time, he came over holding a fish in his jaws while she was cooking her stew. He dropped the fish, which was as long as her forearm, a few paces away from her and sauntered off.

“Strange bear.”

Well, waste not. She gutted and cleaned the fish, then spit-roasted it. She left it alone for a bit to fill her bucket with water and when she returned to the campfire, the bony bear was there munching on roasted fish. He licked his paws, sniffed at her, then wandered off, though not before going for the offal while she stared at him in stunned silence.

That wasn’t the first or only time it happened, which was honestly strange. The bear wasn’t acting aggressively or hostile, considering that she gave it a wound, now a scar, across its cheek.

That wasn’t the only time he did that, though the next time he visited her, he brought a honeycomb with bees the size of her little finger still buzzing about and trying to sting. He plopped it on the ground and left. The bees didn’t stop trying to sting the bear, and thus, left her with a chunk full of honey. She wasted no time in gobbling it down. She missed sweets.

Thankfully, he didn’t follow her around when she went hunting. After she made rope, she started leaving snares near a few burrows. She caught a few of the forest rodents, though one could only provide a single meal. No, the best food she caught were the wild boars and elk.

One time, while walking on the game trail, she was almost trampled when something large burst through the bushes. It was an elk, bleeding from several bites on its haunches and legs. Snake-wolves followed closely behind but a good number of them froze when they saw her. They must have thought she was easier prey; there were as at least half of the dozen wolves switched over from hunting the elk.

Grinning fiercely, Yuriko pummeled the one that tried to pounce her to death. The whole pack turned tail and ran. She followed the elk’s trail though and found the majestic animal collapsed on the bushes. She put it out of its misery.

She field dressed both animals and dragged them back home. She gave the bear the snake-wolf and smoked the elk carcass. Hopefully that would preserve the majority of the meat.

It continued to rain as the Season came to close. Most were the infrequent showers that she’d gotten used to, but one week, after the 70th, a storm hammered her with torrential rain and powerful winds. It was strong enough that her roof was blown away and the tree she lived in was bent nearly double. It survived the ordeal but her house didn’t. She spent the next couple of days rebuilding.

At that time, she made good use of her new technique. The Animus knife was strong and sharp enough to easily cut and shape the wood. A single swipe was often enough to denude it of its bark. Her blade had already grown nearly six inches long. Constant practice, and not a few bits of insight from staring at her combat knife, had allowed her to better shape the structure.

Blades bent, apparently, to absorb the force of a blow. Too rigid and her Animus blade shattered, though too flexible and it was hard to put her strength to a cut. The way she trained for it was rather simple. For one thing, she immersed the combat knife in her Animus, much like how she traced Fri’Avgi’s runescript lines over the semester. By running her Animus inside her combat knife, she was able to get a clear picture of its structure. In turn, the insight allowed her to better visualise the blade.

And, of course, repetition was the key to learning. She created and recreated the blade every day for an hour just before she slept. The constant study and practice bore fruit. By the end of the Season of Water, she managed to extend the Animus blade to nine inches long. Afterwards, however, she couldn’t extend it any further. And for that matter, whenever she contracted her Anima, the blade broke down and dissipated. Despite that, having a blade she could create with her Animus meant she didn't have to worry about breaking and losing her weapon.

As for Fri’Avgi, she still couldn’t summon it to her hand. Not without putting herself in danger of severe Chaos poisoning. The pollution in her Anima, despite the weeks that passed, didn’t diminish.

Give it time.

“How long?”

A few more weeks.

Well, it was almost the turn of the Season and still very little had been cleansed. Her Anima had grown a tiny bit though. From the initial nine inches, it was now at nine and a half. The ambient Chaos in the plane was much denser than Rumiga and she didn’t realise it until she noticed that her Anima strained and cracked while she practised with the blade.

Thankfully, she didn’t need to do the Chaos distilling exercise as she had ample Chaos in her system already. Fri’Avgi distilled it and her Anima absorbed it as soon as it became available. However, the ambient Chaos in the plane seeped into her without notice. It happened when she breathed, when she drank, and when she ate. But more seemed to come from the artefact itself than anything else.

Fri’Avgi caught something in the Chaos Sea and she’s using it to empower you. Damien said when she pressed. That’s actually what’s taking so long. But don’t worry, you’ll advance to second stage Growth soon.

“You said that several weeks ago. What’s your definition of soon anyway?” she asked waspishly.

Between a day and a century.

“Are you making fun of me?”

What? NO, no.

She heard him snort in laughter though.

“Urg!”

Well, in this case, it’s a matter of weeks. It won’t be more than another Season. If you keep straining your Anima, it should suffice.

So she kept at it.

Flaring her Anima caused strain after she kept it up for an hour or so. It varied with the ambient Chaos’ density. At her treehouse, it wasn’t that bad, but there were pockets where the density was more than three times that of Rumiga’s.

A nearly forgotten technique was what allowed her to see the ambient Chaos levels. It was the one she used to decipher the reading lock on the Treatise of Chaos and Will. Ironically, despite Ella-Mai saying that most textbooks had that protection, Yuriko didn’t have to use it for reading other books.

The trick of it was to start Enhanced Sight’s pattern, then twist it into something else. Afterwards, she could see the pale green motes hanging in the air. Their presence was thicker near the forest floor, and around depressions in the ground. The bony bear’s cave was particularly thick with it.

She also finally had cause to use Master Kiyo Alfein’s technique when one day, her middle cramped up and she started to bleed. It was the worst cycle she’d had. The technique didn’t work if she was already in that stage, unfortunately, so she had to wait until the bleeding was done. It was three days of lying down in a fetal position while she was so nauseated she couldn’t keep anything down.

The technique itself was simple. She had to send a single strand of Animus below her navel and form it into a runescript pattern. She thought it meant freeze or something similar. Either way, she had to keep the strand there permanently which ate up a couple of lumens off her Animus reserve. But as long as she didn’t have to experience those dreadful cramping, it was well worth it.

Also, having the scent of blood wafting about drew predators like bears to honey. To her surprise, bony bear occupied the clearing around her treehouse and fended off any of the snake-wolves that came sniffing. She repaid him with a few haunches of pork as thanks.

“Ah, I should have been back at Sharom by now,” Yuriko sighed one evening.

If things had gone as scheduled, her Internship would have finished on the 56th and she should have returned on campus by the 63rd to continue with the second semester.

She wondered if Heron and the twins were able to return safely. The northern barbarians killed any men they fought, though since they were stationed at an actual border camp rather than a mining settlement, they should have had a better chance.

She hoped Gwendith and Ella-Mai had made it back safely. She had taken risks to make sure they escaped, after all. For that matter, what were the chances that the Empire would send a rescue team her way?

Low. The Chaos Storm swept us far from Rumiga. I’m not even sure where we are.

There’s that. Now, both she and her Da were lost to the Chaos Sea.

Huh. She hadn’t spared a thought for Da ever since she woke up here. He had a better chance for survival and escape. Maybe he would get word of her trouble and come looking. Still, chances were slim. She didn’t even know if there was civilisation in this plane. If it did, then her chances of making it home on her own were quite high.

Her Chaos pollution and her lack of potent weapons were keeping her here at the outskirts of the plane. She supposed she could head to the giant pillar once she felt she was strong enough. It was the only landmark that was visible from here.

She was right at the edge where the jungle turned into a forest. The dense undergrowth near the coast had given way to larger trees. It meant that she shouldn't get lost that easily. Well, if she did, she just needed to rebuild her house and replenish her supplies.

Days and weeks of hiking, climbing, and hunting had made her lose some weight. Either that or her body used all of the food to make her grow. Her slacks showed a bit of ankle by now, which meant she’d grown another inch taller. Heh, she probably overshot Heron again.

Her boots were feeling a bit tight too but they weren’t that uncomfortable. Not yet anyway.

“Yet another thing to worry about,” she muttered.

Near the end of the Season, on the 90th Day of Water, something strange happened. Yuriko was in the middle of her evening meditations when she felt an odd pressure on her skin. It felt so much like a Chaos Storm that she hurried outside and stared at the skies. There were no signs of it.

She gnawed on her bottom lip, too nervous to settle back down. When she engaged her Chaos sight, the density of the ambient Chaos was so high that it almost blinded her.

“What’s going on?”

Graaah! Awooo! Hauuuu!

Howls, roaring, and growls. Yuriko peered over the edge of her wooden platform. Bony bear had wandered out of his cave and was…walking? Why were his legs so stiff and why were his jaws bared into a rictus snarl?

“Hey!” she yelled, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He kept moving stiffly and would soon be out of sight.

Worried, she hurled herself down the tree, landing with a soft thud as her bent knees easily absorbed the momentum of her fall. The bear was no longer in view so she ran. He was headed towards the west, she thought. What’s there?

Soon enough, she found the bear on an animal trail but he wasn’t the only one there. And he wasn’t the only one acting oddly.

A pack of snake-wolves were loping behind him, though they weren’t stiff legged. Still, bony bear didn’t attack them and they didn’t attack him either. Then, a herd of elk trotted next to them, coming from a different branch of the trail. The bony bear and the snake-wolves ignored them too.

Curious, Yuriko followed behind them, though she kept her distance. A snake-wolf growled when she had come too near. They walked for hours. Yuriko was too keyed up to feel sleepy, though the monotony of the trek wearied her.

The next thing she knew, the Radiant Sun had risen and they had left the forest and were in some sort of grassy plains. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of beasts were there, and they all turned to look at her when her foot stepped out of the tree line. Pupils narrowed and mouths salivated, and the next moment, the beasts roared and charged at her.