The three figures hovering in front of her looked like her but were different, even from each other. For one thing, the duplicate Yurikos looked a bit more mature, though not by much. Probably what she’d look like in a couple of years?

The first one had a warm smile and was clad in flowing robes that concealed much of her body. The second one had eyes tinged with red, was clad in form-fitting clothes and showed off a well-toned physique. The third one…

Yuriko felt her cheeks redden.

The third one was dressed scantily, showing off far more skin, and what clothes she wore emphasised her bosom. The expression on that one’s face was a smirk and a lidded, smouldering look. It reminded her of Miya while she ravished Jon’s mouth that night of the party.

Before she could do anything though, the leftmost one was suddenly in front of her, and at her touch, the dreamscape dissolved.

______

Yuriko blinked, trying to clear away momentary confusion. Her Actualisation? That had been years ago. Why has the memory surfaced now? She wanted to delve a bit further into it but now wasn’t the time.

She stood at the precipice of Chaos and before her swirled Primordial forces that needed to be tamed. She pulled her robes closer to her body, letting it sit within the reach of her Anima. Thick strands of Animus layered around her, formed into runescript lines that made it much easier to hold vast amounts of personal Animus. That, she needed in great numbers, for it always took too many when she forced the Chaos to bend to her Will.

Behind her, an honour guard consisting of a full cohort, a thousand warriors strong, held steady as they waited. Expanding the planes always provoked retaliation and more often than not, they lost people to the Chaos dwellers. She flared her Anima, enfolding them in its comfortable embrace. Once, it was a struggle to exclude her perception from her Anima, but long practice helped. Now, her Anima didn’t show her every detail, from the condition of someone’s skin, how one man struggled with his arousal while watching her back, and how another was so nervous that sweat and stink welled up in their clothes. Alright, she sometimes slipped.

Her Mien enfolded them too, giving them courage and comfort. She was here. She would not let any come to harm. Trust her.

Raising a hand, she pressed it against the planar Veil, and with a twist of her Will, called the Chaos to her.

Earth. She needed a place to stand. Shed all other potential and become the bedrock that would support everything.

Veil. To hold everything in and to prevent the Chaos from returning everything to itself. She tugged at the planar Veil, so thin here at the edges. Veils were usually at least a longstride thick, and once entered from inside the plane, it was impossible to turn back. Unless one was a Sorceress, that is.

More than the fixed Workings that most Jade tier Sorcerers used, a true Sorcerer could work beyond the frameworks. That involved dividing her focus several dozens of times to hold all of the details together, but that was a rather easy matter for Yuriko.

A dozen strands of thought held together the idea of earth, another dozen cajoled the Veil to expand and encompass the new land.

What else was needed? Air, of course. Breathable atmosphere. Water, bringer of life. And of course, life itself. Ambient Chaos that fueled everything.

She didn’t have to align the extra space to receive the blessings of the Radiant and the Luminous. The invisible Laws took care of that. Though if she carved out a space in the middle of the Chaos Sea rather than as an extension of this frontier plane, that would be a different matter.

Still, her current goal was to expand the borders of the plane by an entire square league. Not as a square though, but as a strip of land a longstride wide, and twenty-five in length. It took the better part of an hour to push the land that far, but with her Anima flared, it encompassed the entirety of it easily. So it was that she felt the retaliation she’d long come to expect.

The Veil was still thin, hence the Chaos could pierce it rather easily.

One. Two. Three. Oh, five. Chaos dwellers. Lords? From the density of their Protective Fields, they couldn’t be more than barons. Brave beyond belief.

Before they could even take another step into the land she just made, her Anima condensed and applied tremendous pressure down on the barons. Their Protective Fields cracked, then shattered. A moment later, their corpus was dust, and their Animas struggled to escape her grip.

With a lazy wave, she pulled the disembodied Chaos Lords and stuffed them into a jade container hanging on her belt, to join the hundreds she’s kept there but hadn’t had a chance to process into anything useful. She supposed she could just feed them to Fri’Avgi, but her artefact’s animating spirit had long turned into a chubby ball of flab from overeating.

That wasn’t the end of it, of course. Lesser Wyldlings rushed through the proto-Veil. Cute little swarmlings that took less than a thought to squash, Wanderers and Hunters that provided little meat to the bone, and a couple of proto-lords, Chevaliers. She snuffed those two out, but left the rest to her honour guard. Killing the Wyldling Wave was easy but it would distract her from her purpose.

The Veil needed to be reinforced, especially since it had been artificially stretched. She wove runescript lines from her Animus, and used different lines to recover what she spent from the gushing ambient Chaos. It took half an hour before the Veil was secure, and when she looked, the ground in front of her was littered with corpses.

Her guard stood strong, but there were a few, a dozen or so, who were new. They trembled in their boots, having fought against a sudden horde was disturbing. Yuriko caressed them with her Mien, bolstering their courage. With some effort, she prevented them from forming obsessions towards her, but that aspect was tiring. Ah. She slipped. Swarm fodder, five more of them showed signs of Aspiration. Oh well. She’d deal with it if it became too much for them.

They moved north, up another longstride, where she expanded the land then culled the Chaos dwellers who entered through the momentary weakness. It took her nearly the rest of the day before she finished the entire five leagues of the border and they returned to the closest town, the name of which she didn’t bother to remember. She would only stay for the night anyway before they continued on. Maybe a couple of nights.

Her loyal servant, and sometimes confidant, Ryoko, attended to her needs after dinner. Her husband was several planes away from her but she didn’t let him touch her anyway, not after the birth of their son. Well, Ryoko was more than enough.

Sometimes, at night, she wondered what would have happened if she had continued with her plans. But, well, such was life now. She would have been a Luminous Sorceress, just like her mother, but her path to power, the Ancient’s Way, was something that was incompatible with Imperial methods. But Chaos Shaping was so much easier instead. For all intents and purposes, she was considered a Sorceress, just not one in good standing with the Empire.

Well, after she finishes expanding the plane, she would be free of her duties. Idly, she reminisced of her childhood and the adventures she had. She thought fondly of her childhood friends, but as always, she felt a twinge of pain and anger. They were gone and she didn’t even know until years after the fact.

The next day, she and her honour guard arrived at the border, and she once again began her labours. Only this time, there was something waiting for her.

A powerful being crossed the threshold. She could feel the strength of it, by how pushed against her Anima. It was accompanied by hundreds, no, thousands of Wyldlings, and not a few barons. Its Protective Field covered the weaker lords and was strong enough that Yuriko couldn’t simply crush it from the pressure. No matter.

Radiant energy emerged from her body, mixing in with the Animus she summoned. Sun shards formed around her, hundreds. A thousand. She couldn’t control each one as it would take all of her focus, but she didn’t need to. She linked four shards to a leader shard, then linked those to a higher authority, much like how the legions were structured. Until her thousand sun shards were a cohort of their own.

They flew towards the Chaos Lord, a Marquis if she read its Anima strength correctly. Maybe a weak Duke. Once a Chaos Lord reached two levels above baron, to Earl, their control over Chaos was strong enough to resist Domains. Yuriko’s Anima was like a Domain, but at the same time, not. She didn’t have total control over an Ennoia, but her ability to manipulate and affect things with her Anima was almost the same. The only difference was that her Anima was showy and nearly impossible to hide when it was flared.

The Marquis’ Domain was over flames. Which aspect of it, Yuriko couldn’t tell, but it was currently using tentacles to fend off the sun shards. Huh, if it was occupied like that then…

Snikt!

The barons were dead, shot to bits and burnt to ashes. The remnant Animas took shelter under the Marquis’ flames before Yuriko could capture them. Oh, there were more Wyldlings than her guard could easily defend against. She sent a dozen sun shard squads to wipe out the swarmlings and Wanderers that got too near.

What use were the guards if they were too weak to even help? Well, they carried her luggage, and most of them were eye candy. That didn’t factor into who she accepted into her guard. Nope, not at all. Quite a few had strong hands and were excellent masseurs though.

Idle thoughts aside, she should really focus on killing these vermin. As soon as the lesser Chaos Lords and Wyldlings were done, she sent her entire cohort against the Marquis, having them attack in continuous waves.

It struggled to advance, sending waves of black flames to counter the Radiant shards. That was futile actually, and even worse for it, the shards ate the black flames and burned all the stronger. When the first shard pierced its Protective Field and proceeded to poke holes in its body, the Chaos Lord awoke to fear. It started to back away, but its earlier belligerence worked against it. It was only half a longstride away and had an equal amount of distance to cover whether it decided to go after Yuriko or retreat. Can’t have it escaping, though.

The shards circled behind the creature and now, Yuriko attacked it from four directions. A powerful roar shot out towards her, but the shards formed a wall just in front of her, blocking the Animus and spreading it out into the air. Then, the counterattack.

In the end, it was just too weak. Yuriko didn’t even have to create a Null Chaos Zone. But then again, her Radiant Essence was more than enough for these creatures.

All in a day’s work. When she finished all twenty-five longstrides of expansion, she and her honour guard retired to a nearby village. This one didn’t even have an inn. Oh well.

She lay on her tummy over a mattress, naked and exposed save for a towel covering her bottom while Ryoko massaged her back with aromatic oils. The life she lived now was monotonous. A far cry from the adventures of her youth. It had its perks, of course, but still, she found herself hungering for something. Change.

“My lady!”

One of her guards barged into her bedroom, but he froze and turned beet red at the sight of her nudity. She stared at him with a languid eye, arching an eyebrow.

“Er…news from Realmheart. Urgent news!”

“What is it?”

“War and rebellion! Your husband dared to raise the banner of independence and is holding Sarizio plane. The tethers are half broken and will soon be free!”

“And what does the Empress want me to do about it?”

The guard swallowed, then proffered a letter. Yuriko sighed and sat up, unmindful of her nudity. The man, no boy, turned even redder and his feet half moved to spin around. Ryoko laid a robe over her shoulders then moved to receive the letter.

“You may go,” Yuriko said. The boy peeked at her for a moment before running off.

She opened the letter, skimming the contents. Then she burnt it with her Anima, commanding the ambient Chaos to turn to flames and consume the paper.

“My lady?” Ryoko asked politely.

“I don’t think I’ll obey.” Yuriko sighed. “He has our son with him. But I won’t join him either.”

“Then what now?”

“Nothing.” Yuriko shrugged. “Hmm, or rather, I think it’s time to carve out a new plane from the Chaos Sea. Make preparations.”

“By your will.”