To Yuriko’s sight, the Sorcerer’s Animus was made of thin threads that spread out like a spider’s web. They connected to leaves, twigs, grass, and a few vines. The leaves created an edge; though those were made of ambient Chaos she knew they were no less sharp. Worse, the first leaf that hit her condensed Anima left a small crack.

The man’s grin widened and he gestured with his fingers. Unlike the Vizugmonian Elders, he had no qualms using his men to harry her.

Yuriko hissed as she spun away from a sword, then had to jump awkwardly when a vine nearly entangled her ankle. A razor leaf bounced off her Anima, leaving a small crack. Another razor leaf struck the same spot and widened the crack.

She slashed at the next three leaves, then jolted when she realized one of the warriors had gotten close and was swinging an axe at her side while another had stabbed a spear on the opposite side. She pirouetted on the tips of her toes, barely managing to avoid both strikes. She retaliated on the axe-wielder with a vicious slash at his neck. He made the mistake of trying to block.

Ptang!

The sunblade sheared the wooden haft, heated the metal shoulder to a brilliant red, and cut into the Tigris man’s neck. He jerked back and wound up with scorched flesh instead of a severed windpipe. The axehead spun in the air, in the direction of her swing. A quick tap before it spun out of reach redirected the impromptu projectile towards the Sorcerer, who dodged out of the way.

His control of the razor leaves didn't falter, however, and they didn’t let up in the assault. Pairs and trios of warriors took turns against her, often retreating as soon as they delivered a blow, regardless of the result. A wide circle had formed around her and moved as she did.

Still, they weren’t faster than her. Yuriko’s eyes narrowed and she charged past the line, heedless of the blows that bounced off her Anima.

The Sorcerer yelled and sent a veritable wall of leaves at her. They each glowed with Animus and ambient Chaos. Gritting her teeth, she ploughed through the wall of leaves. Cracks formed on her Animus, and a moment later, they were big enough to let leaves through! Pain wracked her mind, but she bit her lip and forced herself to move. The leaves slashed her dougi and hakama, cutting it into ribbons. Her skin, toughened by Body Forging, blunted the edge of the projectiles, but it still drew blood.

But she was through. The Sorcerer’s eyes widened in both surprise and fear, even as she thrust the sunblade at his torso. A swirl of leaves spun around him and concentrated around her weapon, but they burned away a hair’s breadth from touching the solidified Animus.

With a desperate twist, the Sorcerer managed to avoid getting his heart skewered. Blood bubbled into smoke from a gash over his shoulder, and he rolled on the ground wailing. It would have been the best time to kill him, but Yuriko fell to her knees. The cracks in her Anima sent shocks of pain to her mind, as though a needle jabbed into her fingertips, except it was all over her body, and much worse from the inside of her skull.

She barely reacted when one of the Vizugmonian’s smashed her side with an axe, though the blade was stopped by the remnants of her Anima shell. That jolted her out of her stupor though.

She leapt to her feet and cut the Iona clanner down. Her eyes sought the Sorcerer but he was nowhere in sight. Ah, a clump of warriors were retreating. There!

She lunged at them, laying about with her weapon, all traces of grace gone from her movements. The sword dances wouldn’t activate, and every time she tried, a shock of pain seized her mind and the flows faltered. Still, her natural strength and speed were more than enough.

She blew through a screen of warriors, cutting their pikes and poleaxes in twain even as she kicked, punched, or stabbed them in the gut.

“Burning Moon!” She swore when she reached the clump and it turned out to be a decoy. The cats backed away from her, no, they turned tail and ran. She wasn’t feeling all that good either, and the battle was chaotic enough that she didn’t know what was happening. She was in the midst of the enemy, but they wanted no part of her. They kept a healthy distance, though they sometimes shot her with a crossbow bolt, or threw a javelin. She knocked them off the air with lazy swipes of the sunblade. She had to. Her Anima was flickering and every time something hit it, she felt it. That couldn’t be good. But on the other hand, once she recovered from the strain, her Anima would be strengthened considerably.

Yes, but don’t overdo it. If your Anima breaks, you die. Or at least turned into a lunatic.

Anyway, she was safer in their midst. They couldn’t launch volleys of bolts at her that way, not without endangering everyone around her.

She drew her Anima closer to her skin, toughening it further. Keeping it that close to her skin, less than an inch, took far more of her concentration than she liked, but if she focused on defense and escape, she should manage. She refrained from trying to reactivate the sword dances as that was sure to ruin her focus.

It took a few minutes to move back towards the Lucentian side of the battlefield. At some point, the stalemate had broken between the two forces. The reptilians were being pressed backwards with the felinekin’s greater numbers even though they couldn’t really bring those numbers to bear. It allowed them to rotate their worn warriors from the front while letting fresher ones take up the slack.

Yuriko crashed into one such formation and disrupted it enough to give the Lucentians a breather. The battle between the four Elders was still going on, though it looked like they were running out of Animus.

Otlaca relied more on his weapon, an arming sword and buckler, than his snake-breath attacks. Going toe to toe with a melee specialist wasn’t the best of ideas though. The snakeman was looking quite ragged, with patches of scale torn from his face, arms, and neck. Red blood dripped from the open wounds but he still looked as fierce as ever. As for his opponent, Haxe’s leather and chainmail armour had practically disintegrated. He barely wore enough to preserve his dignity, though his fur would have done it for him.

Er, except for the fact that most of it was burnt.

Bulging muscles that rivalled Armsmaster Byrne at his best, coupled with razor-sharp claws, allowed the Tigris Elder to retain his edge. But even he was running on the dregs of his reserves. His Animus silhouette had faded to near invisibility.

As for Elders Irseso and the Kutin one, she couldn’t see them. Well, she still had enough to intervene. Her reserves were nearly at half.

Yuriko attempted to activate her blade dances but winced and stopped. No use. It hurts too much.

With a shout, she leapt for Haxe, who jumped and dodged her blow. He hissed and tried to counterattack, but Otlaca took advantage of his distraction and mustered up enough Animus to materialize a snake head and blast him with a ball of frozen water. Haxe grunted as he was punted across the road, but he tumbled to his feet and panted while glaring.

“Withdraw!” Otlaca yelled.

Yuriko thought she heard sighs of relief from both sides of the battlefield. The Lucentians started to back away, while the Vizugmonians seemed content to let them go. Perhaps the sight of her and the absence of the Sorcerer kept them from pursuing.

Elder Irseso joined them a minute later, arm limp and bleeding from a wound on her tricep. Her left eye was crusted with blood and she spat out a gobbet of flesh. Her teeth were bloody when she grinned viciously.

“Return to our Matahil encampment,” Otlaca said quietly to Rhox when the woman approached them.

Akko and the others on Yuriko’s guard were nearly immaculate, though their quivers were empty. Rhox sent a runner with Otlaca’s command. Elder Irseso gave a similar order to her aide.

The battle, the second one of the day, took a couple of hours, but for Yuriko, it felt as if it had taken the entire day. The canopy shaded the ground, but enough beams of sunlight penetrated that she could tell it was just past noon. Her internal time sense seemed to agree.

They skirted past the ruined fortifications while the rearguard kept their eye on the enemy. The Vizugmonians moved towards the hilltop.

The retreat, er, withdrawal, proceeded peacefully.

Yuriko remained on guard for a renewed assault. A few of the felinekin raised their crossbows, but the Lucentian rearguard did the same. Soon enough, their forces were far enough from each others’ reach that the warriors inevitably relaxed. They reached their camp an hour later, though this time they avoided going into the swamp waters.

Inside, the mood in the camp was as if they’d lost outright instead of grinding out a draw. Yuriko retired to her tent and changed out of her torn clothing. Someone brought over a washbasin with clean water to her tent and she used a rag to wipe the blood off her body. Her clothes were ruined but she had another set to replace them.

After she was done, she settled into a meditative trance and envisioned her Anima. What greeted her were black cracks throughout her dreamscape, though she could see distilled Chaos already melting into the damage. Fri’Avgi was right at the centre and the artefact constantly released a couple of motes every minute.

She channelled her Animus into Anima Refinement. Warmth encompassed her body where the strands passed but they were mostly drowned out by searing and blinding pain when she moved her Animus. It still increased the recovery speed of her Anima though, so she gritted her teeth and continued. She could only keep it up for less than a minute before she had to stop and let the heat fade away.

Then she continued. At some point, her sunblade dissipated, which reminded her that she still had some Radiant energy stored in the middle of her Facet. An impulse seized her and she pulled a bit of the Radiant energy and merged it with her Animus before she circulated the Anima Refinement pattern. The pain seemed a bit less, though that might only be her wishful thinking.

Either way, the Radiant energy, Animus, and distilled Chaos all merged into the cracks of her Anima without issue. Before she noticed it, it was already evening and Rhox called out from outside her tent.

“Elder Yuriko, Elder Otlaca and Irseso invite you to dinner.”

“Ah, I’ll be outside in a minute.”

“I’ll wait, Elder.”

Yuriko finished the circulation pattern and got to her feet. She wrapped a light green scarf around her neck and exited, lacing the tent flap close once she was outside. Rhox nodded in greeting then led her to the conference tent.

Inside, Otlaca and Irseso were covered in bandages. The snakeman Elder raised an eyebrow at her appearance. She had channelled Recovery enough that any open wound had closed.

“Greetings, Elder Yuriko,” Otlaca said. “I am glad that all three of us survived.”

“I must thank you for your aid, Elder Yuriko,” Elder Irseso added, her voice a sibilant hiss. “Without you that Sorcerer would have made short work of us.”

“You’re welcome,” Yuriko said simply. “What now though?”

“Hur hur hur,” Otlaca chuckled. “So impatient, Elder Yuriko, is this your first major conflict?”

“Ah, yes.” Yuriko said evenly, “I’ve mostly been involved with conflicts of a smaller scale.”

“I see,” Otlaca said. He paused when several of his men walked in with platters of food. Their dinner was simple, relatively. A bowl of rice, a platter of roasted meat slices, and some stir-fried greens. Otlaca continued when the servers left, “Now we play the long game.”

“That’s if Vizugmon doesn’t bring in more people,” Irseso said sourly.

Yuriko nodded, but in her mind, she wondered if she should just leave. But then again, it wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go to. There wouldn’t be a merchant ship until the turn of the year and she still couldn’t traverse the Chaos Sea on her own.

So she ate and listened to Otlaca and Irseso making their plans. And from what she heard, they planned on tying down the Vizugmon army for as long as they could.