A hundred paces. Two hundred. Three. Four. Five hundred paces from the ground.

Yuriko struggled fiercely against the Skybeast’s grip. It was already a miracle that her backpack wasn’t torn to shreds. Her flared Anima didn’t do anything either since the edge of it didn’t cover the entire backpack.

Yuriko felt dizzy at the height.

The highest she’d ever flown was on the flying shuttle, and that thing could barely rise above ten paces. The Watchtower was a hundred paces tall but she’d only even been to the midpoint battlements. Fifty paces high. That was the highest she’d ever been.

The desert spread out from underneath her and she could suddenly see the grasslands in one direction. She could see the mountains in another. The spire was in that direction, too. Oh, there’s the desert again…

The thunderous sound of the Skybeast’s wings flapping shook her out of her stunned state. For a moment, she didn’t know what to do.

What would happen if she managed to get free? She’d plummet five hundred paces down! She didn’t have the confidence to survive a fall like that, at least not if she was constantly disturbed. She could probably use her Anima somehow…

“Urp!” Bile rose up to her throat. She’s never been this high up…!

Swoosh!

Yuriko was frozen stiff. The Skybeast didn’t do anything other than carry her along but after a while, it shifted its grip on her backpack, jostling her again.

“Ahhh!”

Yuriko flailed wildly. Her Animus blade had dissipated earlier but it quickly reformed. Her wild movements showed none of the grace it normally did, mainly because she barely had a coherent thought in her mind.

“I have to get loose. I’ll fall if I do. I have to get loose. I’ll fall…”

The tip of her blade grazed against a scale on the Skybeast’s chin.

Hsss!

Smoke and blood.

Rahhh!

The Skybeast abruptly roared. And just like that. Yuriko tumbled through the air.

“Ahhhh!”

The sky and the earth, clouds, trees, hills, desert. All of these sights crossed her eyes as she spun.

“No!”

Focus!

It was as if lightning struck her mind. Her panicked thoughts ceased and Yuriko spread her arms and legs, filling the space between with her flared Anima. With a desperate thought, she squeezed her Anima until it condensed from light to a gaseous state. It was just barely enough.

“HAAAAaaaah?”

Her body was flying? She was flying? Her falling speed had reduced, transferred into forward momentum as her spread Anima caught the winds.

“Ahahaha…”

Swoosh!

“Urk!”

Yuriko grunted as large claws snatched her out of the air. It squeezed her middle and drove the air out of her lungs. The Skybeast’s large slit-pupiled eyes stared mockingly down at her, and it actually smirked!

Yuriko grabbed a claw with each hand and wrenched it open. Well, she tried to anyway. Her strength was barely enough to move the claw, but before she could get much progress, the Skybeast tossed her to its other hand!

Afterwards, if she even moved a tiny bit, she got juggled between its paws like a hot potato! Worse, Yuriko wouldn’t even be bothered by holding a hot potato. Well, she might squish it if she wasn’t careful. This thing bounced her around like a toy!

The desert below turned into a blur. The wind buffeted Yuriko’s flared Anima, completely unable to affect her within. Even the Skybeast’s claws only depressed her Anima close to her skin, but since the gap was too narrow, there was no way for her to wiggle out. Plus, she got tossed to the other paw regularly. The rotting beast even made sure to impart a spin when it tossed and Yuriko was rapidly reaching the threshold.

“Blarg!”

Nauseated beyond endurance, she hurled bile out of her mouth and coated the beast’s claws with her vomit.

The Skybeast’s expression changed into one of disgust. It tossed Yuriko to its other paw, holding her by one leg so that she dangled upside down. The stress was too much. A strap broke from her backpack, though it wasn’t the main strap, thankfully. Her Plasma Caster, unfortunately, was flung away, spinning uncontrollably before it disappeared in the sands. Yuriko barely noticed it disappear.

After an hour, Yuriko barely managed to regain her equilibrium. She was still upside down, though the Skybeast no longer tossed her about. It hadn’t harmed her at all.

Oh, it was a he, Yuriko realized.

With a grunt, the Skybeast tossed her again though this time, not to its other paw. She was no longer in the desert, and she could see a large…pit? And she was headed directly for it.

She flared her Anima into webbing, slowing her descent to something manageable. She tried to steer herself away from the pit, but a powerful gust of wind sent her tumbling. Before she could blink, she was already inside. It was incredibly wide, maybe a longstride across. It was a sinkhole?

The light from the Radiant Sun didn’t reach too far inside. She aimed her body towards a wall, seeking to cling on to it and climb out. But even as she tried, another gust of wind blew her away. Soon, only the light of her Anima illuminated the darkness. She fell deeper inside, maybe a couple hundred paces down, before she saw the bottom. It was another hundred paces deeper.

Ten paces up, she dropped herself down and landed with a thump. The floor wasn’t earth or mud, but level stone. She looked up, and saw the Skybeast perched on the lip of the sinkhole, eyes staring straight at her. He snorted plumes of steam, then lowered his head on his crossed front paws and closed his eyes.

“I’m going to get back up there and kill you,” Yuriko growled.

The Skybeast heard her and opened its eyes again, only to snort derisively. Then he went to sleep. That’s what the snoring indicated anyway.

Shaking her head, Yuriko took stock of her situation.

“My Caster…” she moaned with a pained voice. If she still had it she would have shot that swarm fodder’s grin off! She’d also lost half of her bamboo containers, though she still retained her condenser canteen. From how the runescript activated, it didn’t look like she would die of thirst anytime soon.

She was right smack in the middle of the sinkhole and it soon became apparent that she wasn’t alone. The light of her Anima was a beacon, and creatures soon came to it. Her light illuminated the space about twenty to thirty paces around her. And since she was the light source, she had no shadow.

Click click.

A creature that looked remarkably like a giant, bipedal ant walked into her light zone. It had black carapace, multi-faceted eyes, and grasper claws on its foremost set of legs. It walked on two pairs of hind legs, she realised, so it wasn’t bipedal at all. But it kept it’s thorax upright like a human being and its grasper hands actually carried a crude wooden club.

Then more of the things came into view. Their mandibles clacked, and their antennae quivered. Upright, they stood just a few inches shorter than Yuriko. Maybe they weren’t hostile?

With a wave of its forelimbs, the lead ant led a charge before Yuriko could even say anything. They hadn’t surrounded her and came only from the front and to her left. Yuriko briefly entertained the notion to run but she was in a hole, she’d eventually get cornered. So, she grit her teeth, summoned her Animus blades, circulated her sword dance and met their assault.

The ant swung its club from left to right, aiming to strike her shoulder. Yuriko leaned back and let it pass just in front of her before she stepped in and dismembered its arm. It squealed with a high pitched voice, ichor bursting from the stump. The limb was just as thick as a human arm, and Yuriko could see some kind of internal skeleton within.

‘So it had an exoskeleton and an internal structure,’ she thought.

The ant had screamed but that blow wasn’t enough to deter it. It clawed at her with its remaining limb, even as the ants on either side stepped in to swing their weapons at her. She didn’t see any kind of Animus reinforcement on any of their blows.

Acting on instinct, she let them strike her without moving. Their weapons, the clubs and the claws, touched her Anima, sunk in by a couple of inches, then stopped dead. The ants stared at her dumbfounded.

“And that’s why Empowered Strike is so important,” Yuriko said to herself.

She shrugged and walked forward, ignoring the ants as they struck at her Anima. None of them managed to penetrate more than a couple of inches inside, and even those that tried to bodily block her, were pushed away when they touched her light. Since she didn’t want them to touch her, her Anima had acted to block them.

‘Just like a Wyldling’s Protective Field.’ She thought.

She was completely surrounded now, with every giant humanoid ant trying to smash past her Anima.They couldn’t touch her, but it was still annoying. This close, she could see the little hairs that grew on their carapace. It wasn’t uniformly black, either. There were patches of brown, and red on some of them.

“Enough!”

She growled, then she kicked the one in front of her that was trying to grapple her. The creature flew off, bowling over a dozen ants behind it. They were helpless.

Until one brawnier individual struck at her, and this time, its weapon was coated with red Animus. Yuriko’s eyes widened as the weapon cleaved into her Anima, parting it like water on a puddle. The blow struck her directly on her bare shoulder. Even now, she was only wearing a breast band.

“Ow!”

She felt a bruise start to form there.

“Grr!”

A quick slice sent that ant’s head flying. Nothing really distinguished it from the other ants, other than the stockier build. Was it a unique individual?

No, it wasn’t. She could see several more with weapons starting to glow with Animus. The regular ants threw themselves at her, seeking to immobilize her. Through her Anima, she could still feel their weight and the pressure they exerted. “Get off!” She yelled as she kicked and swung her blades.

She leapt over the ants, using their heads as stepping stones. Then she briefly activated Boost and propelled herself farther away, just beyond the ant encirclement. Then she ran for the walls. There was no merit in a massacre and they barely provided a challenge. She was much faster, but with her light, it was unlikely for them to lose her.

Soon enough she arrived at the wall. As she half-expected, there were several tunnels there. Some were at floor level while others were much higher up. There were no walkways in the tunnel though and she supposed ants could easily cling on the walls. In fact, there were dozens of them now, walking up and down the wall as far as her light could reach.

She dashed into a tunnel that looked empty. At least that way, the light from her Anima wouldn’t reach too far. The tunnel curved almost immediately, then curved the opposite way. It was barely tall enough for her to walk upright in. In fact, her hair brushed the top and sometimes snagged on protrusions. The strands easily flowed around them after a moment, so it wasn’t as if she was bothered by it.

She’d kept her Anima flared for the greater part of the day already. It had withstood the Skybeast’s claws, the ants’ strikes, and the dense ambient Chaos. She could feel the cracks inside forming. The tunnel was still empty, so after a few more twists and turns, she retracted her Anima back inside her body. She felt a wave of relaxation akin to a muscle knot finally unravelling.

Well, she needed to do Anima Refining to properly recover. With the absence of her bright light, darkness covered her. It wasn’t absolute though. Even as her eyes adjusted, bioluminescent moss gave out light that was just faint enough to banish the absolute dark.

She continued down the tunnel, though this time at a rather cautious pace. With the moss, she could see how the tunnel twisted and turned, but she didn’t trust it. She wouldn’t see a pitfall until it was too late, and it suddenly occurred to her that if there was a branching tunnel that didn’t have the moss, she wouldn’t see it.

“Better recover first.”

She leaned on a wall, sliding down to the floor until she was seated. She fished out the alarm stones and fed them enough Animus to keep them active for four hours then tossed them to either side. They landed ten paces from her.

There was more than enough distilled Chaos in her Anima to heal the cracks, it just needed the technique to speed it up. She settled into a meditative pose and began the circulation pattern. Just as she sunk into it, she wondered what in Chaos that Skybeast intended by dropping her here. She was somewhat grateful that it didn’t try to eat her, but the answer to why it didn’t eluded her. And she hated mysteries.