Deep within the grey stone, something shifted. Something awoke. Water. Life.

_________

Yuriko woke up a tiny bit earlier than she intended to, feeling a burst of trepidation. Her mind groped in the darkness, feeling for the link to her alarm stones. None of the five had tripped, and their runescript lines just had enough Animus that they would have emptied in a few minutes, thereby setting off the empty alert function that Layla had helped her construct.

She spread her Anima as far as it would go, jolting in pleasant surprise when it had expanded another inch. Now she needed only eight more to reach the threshold, then she would only have to fulfil a couple of hidden requirements to advance. She was sure Damien would tell her by then, or if not, then her Aunt and cousins would. How helpful could they be though, she wondered. They practised a different method than hers. All they needed to do was complete their Facets and they would advance.

Her Animus Reserves weren’t at Sollus yet. She still had no idea how much she had in her reserves in terms of lumens. While Damien had taught her how to quantify her Animus, she had neglected practising it. Between training her Anima, her Animus manipulation, her physical training, and Radiant refinement, she just couldn’t fit it in her training schedule.

Alright, fine, she just forgot to include it.

Well, now wasn’t the time for that.

She got to her feet, startling Tiernan out of his light doze. He jumped up and looked around so quickly that the hood of his robe got flung off his head. He scrambled to put it back on, even as he winced at the Chaos pressed down on his scalp and face. “What?” He yelped.

“You fell asleep again,” Yuriko smiled coldly.

The blood ran out of Tiernan’s face so quickly that he looked as pallid as a corpse.

“I…my apologies,” he whispered. “I’m not used to standing watch for so long.”

“Excuses,” she harrumphed. “You could have woken me instead.”

“Sorry.”

Yuriko sniffed, though she only had half of her attention on him. Her Anima revealed that nothing was going on around her, but the area her entire flared Anima covered barely covered a couple of paces. The ground beneath was completely dry, and a quick check revealed her condenser canteen was already full. So was Tiernan’s, for that matter, but the two canisters couldn’t have contained all of the water created. Or converted, since it came from a mote of distilled Chaos.

Ostensibly, nothing had changed, but she couldn’t shake the strange feeling crawling up her spine.

“Let’s go,” she muttered. Staying put was counterproductive.

They gathered their things, which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot. Or nothing, really. Just the knapsack of rations that Tiernan picked up.

“Let’s leave the road.”

“Yes.” Tiernan accepted her decision, though he did hesitate for a moment.

Yuriko was half afraid of something happening, perhaps more of those grey stone monsters popping out of the ground, or maybe those humanoid plants, the Lignoculi, would appear out from behind the mountains, followed closely by the pirate Chaos ships.

Nothing happened for the next couple of hours, and she found her mind wandering from staring at the monotonous landscape. She tried to rein it in, of course, but there was nothing to see. For some reason, after they got past a couple of leagues beyond Euphoril, the mountain disappeared from view. Everywhere she looked was a flat plain. There was no vegetation, no outcroppings of rock, no sign of any other living thing.

Just the unending grey.

Her Anima continued to crack and heal at a visible pace. She hadn’t noticed the day before while she kept Tiernan within her protection. Motes of distilled Chaos seeped out of Fri’Avgi’s red gem from within her Facet, which sought out the cracks and filled them in.

She had a feeling that if she stayed in the Purelands for a couple more days, her Anima would expand another inch. As for the ambient Chaos, it was so thick that extruding a single strand of Pure Animus took only a blink of an eye to taint green. From there, distilling the Chaos was just a matter of squishing it out of the strand. Not that she needed to do that too much since her artefact was still filled to the brim with it.

She also figured out how much Animus she had. She tried to divide her Animus reserve in two. One side was already measured and quantified. On the other side was the rest. It took all morning, and she had to redo it more times than she cared to count since any kind of distraction made her lose her place. Anyway, she had nearly a hundred and forty lumens worth of Animus within. A slow rise, honestly, since she hadn’t been able to drink any of the Academy’s Zoi Elixirs, and maybe the increase was due to the Ambrosia she’d already partaken in.

Anyway, it meant she was about ten lumens short of the Sollus state. All that without using the technique Damien taught her. She had a canister of Ambrosia and she could always drink that instead of practising. That should make it faster. Ah, she could almost hear Damien screaming for her not to. Heh heh.

Well, it wouldn’t matter until her Anima expanded to a pace beyond her skin, but at the rate things were going, it wouldn’t take her more than a few weeks. But that’s only if she maintained the rate of growth.

But the farther her Anima stretched out, the more resilient it became. Perhaps tomorrow, the cracks would stop forming because she’d already acclimated. In that case, only laborious training would help her.

She wasn’t looking at the sky, but nonetheless, it was impossible to ignore. A flash of colour in a plane that was completely grey drew the eye, and hers zeroed in on it.

“What’s that?” Tiernan gasped.

Directly in front of them, and above, the Chaos streams that had been woefully colourless, suddenly burst in bright hues of red, green, blues, and yellow. Then, something streaked from the sky, leaving a trail of colour that painted the grey clouds. It fell nearly halfway to the ground, before splitting apart. Most of the fragments flew far enough away that they soon disappeared from her view, but a couple fell down to the ground not a couple of longstrides away.

Yuriko exchanged glances with Tiernan and the both of them started to run. While she didn’t see how she ended up on this plane, it was probably similar to what just happened. The two of them had been caught in a violent Chaos Stream after all.

But before they could travel more than a longstride, the ground around them started to undulate. The movement of the ground, a precursor for the stone creatures to come out, ran parallel to their path. And worse, more undulations were happening around them. Before long, less than a minute since she noticed them, the creatures emerged from the ground, and nearly as one, they noticed her and Tiernan.

“Chaos!” Yuriko cursed even as she condensed her Anima around her limbs.

Her clenched fist met a monster’s forehead, a bull that looked much like the Stone Auroch in the Labyrinth. She angled her blow downwards, such that the beast’s chin smashed into the hard ground and created a furrow behind it even as she leapt over its huge body.

“Ahhh!” Tiernan screamed as another stone beast, a fire hound the size of a…well, a regular hound, jumped at his throat. He ducked under the lunge and scrambled on his hands and feet.

“Tsk!” Yuriko clicked her tongue. Her punch didn’t do anything other than knock the auroch down. It had already scrambled to its feet, snorting grey smoke and orange flame.

Fri’Avgi materialised in her hands and smashed into the creature’s body. This time it shattered.

She knew it would reform, so she headed towards Tiernan’s assailant, catching it in mid-leap with a horizontal sweep that sent it careening into another stone critter. Both shattered to bits.

“Stay near me,” Yuriko yelled.

A snake that was as thick as her thigh darted from the ground from underneath her feet. She felt its movement with her Anima and she condensed a shield to deflect it off. She followed it with a decapitating slash, clicking her tongue when the severed halves easily reconnected. A moment later, it was whole again and lunged at her.

At the same time, a stone critter in the shape of a giant cat pounced from her other side, while an insect-shaped construct with sickles instead of legs, struck at her back. Tiernan squealed and shot at the cat, but the Plasma Lancet barely left a mark.

The fourth dance coupled with the third gave her the speed and perception to intercept all three, and a moment later, they had crumbled to dust. Only to melt back to the ground and reform after creating more undulations in the earth.

“Chaos burn these beasts!” Yuriko bit off every word as she smashed each of them to bits.

There was no end to them, and she felt as if she could keep smashing them to bits without end. She could keep this up for hours, probably, but she would eventually tire and fail. Also, Fri’Avgi consumed thrice the amount of Animus compared to fighting with a lesser blade, or even with her Animus blades.

Every breath she took drew in ambient Chaos, which slowly converted to Animus. Right after the Atavism Ritual, it would take a complete eight-hour rest before her reserves refilled, but with her increase in skill and strength, and the thickness of the ambient Chaos, she could refill in just an hour. If she sat still and meditated. In the midst of battle, Animus drained out of her faster than she could replenish it. The rate she was going, her reserves would last twenty minutes. If she was lucky.

She swept the snake out of the way for the third time, then grabbed Tiernan by the back of his robes and dragged him away. Wielding Fri’Avgi one-handed was awkward, but the stone creatures didn’t have the finesse to dodge her clumsy swings anyway.

A few minutes later, they were in the clear. The lights were still shining from a longstride away, too bright to make out what they covered. But if her guess was correct, they should be people who were swept into a Chaos storm and wound up here. That, or intentional travellers. Either way, she could help someone in distress or gain more information.

A minute of running later and they came into pandemonium. A trio of warriors was in a circle, protecting two others cowering on the ground. A veritable tide of stone creatures besieged them and even as she watched, a creature that stood head and shoulders above the others smashed past a warrior’s guard and clobbered his head.

The glow of Animus covered the people. All human as far as she could see, but they didn’t wield the plasma weaponry of the Empire. Instead, they used tough melee weapons, large swords and polearms, to fend their enemies off.

Like those she’d fought, any creature that was laid low merely sank back into the earth and reformed. What were those fools doing? Why didn’t they run?

“Over here!” she yelled as she charged through the throng. Her every swing shattered living stone, and scattered their fragments far and wide, buying her enough time to move before they reformed. “Don’t just stand there!”

The warrior that got hit struggled to his feet even as bright red blood dripped from his scalp down his chin. Crimson droplets, so bright and vivid compared to the dull grey, glistened as they fell to the ground. When it did, the stone creatures turned to frenzy.

He roared at his fellows and pushed them towards Yuriko, even as he jumped and blocked the creatures trying to get at his blood. They ignored the others and dogpiled on him.

One of the other warriors screamed and tried to get his friend out of the pile, but the last warrior swore and dragged him away.

“Chaos!” Yuriko yelled as she channelled the fourth dance into Fri’Avgi. Her perception sped up until everything moved at a crawl. She swung with all her might, channelling as much Animus as she could into the blade, needing it to shatter stone. A gleaming crescent of Animus shot out of Fri’Avgi’s body and shattered the stone creatures, including the ones on top of the warrior. He looked about in a daze until his fellows dragged him by the arms out of there.

Panting in exhaustion, Yuriko fended off as many of the creatures as she could. Tiernan was still safely behind her, and the small group caught up to them. There were five of them, two women, and three men. One of the warriors was female. The woman gave her a grateful nod.

“Run!” Yuriko yelled and they followed. The stone creatures reformed and chased after them. She shattered those that came too close but soon enough ran out of the creature’s range.

The six of them, Tiernan included, collapsed in a heap. Yuriko sighed, feeling the rush leaving her veins.

She glanced around them, but it looked like they were in the clear, so she focused on her rescues. Hmmm, their clothes didn’t look like Imperial fashion at all. So where did they come from?