The Veil of a Waypoint pulsed in front of Yuriko while she stared at it with some trepidation. Should she go through it or should she try to avoid it? Using Intent and Need to find a way through the Chaos Sea was erratic at best. She knew that she’d have to keep going straight no matter what was in front of her. The Chaos would shift around her instead and lead her to where she wanted to go.

That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be any danger though. Her lessons on Chaos Sea navigation were admittedly lacking. Either way, she was pretty sure that she shouldn’t take any detours since if she did, the path would be broken and she’d either wind up where she didn’t intend to go, and she’d have to pathfind again.

She wouldn’t have hesitated in entering before, but now that she looked at the Veil, she wondered if she should. She could see a little bit past it and all she could see was white. Now, it was either snow and ice, or maybe another free-fall through a well-lit place. With a sigh, she pushed her hand through the boundary and was duly sucked inside.

Into a freezing world.

Her Anima flared and she spun her Animus around her body and activated the pockets of Radiant energy within. She had to slow down and stop, however, since the ice started to melt where she stood. And she didn’t know how thick the ice and snow were. For all she knew, she’d sink right down in the middle of a frozen sea and then she’d be stuck in the cold and in water.

Bah! She should just move.

She marched forward, adjusting her Anima and the Radiant energy to just enough so she wouldn’t melt ice and barely to what she was comfortable with. She could stand the heat but cold weather wasn’t something she liked. It reminded her too much of the Storm that took her away from Rumiga and the frantic battles she fought in the Frozen North.

Come to think of it, how was Gwendith Sharine?

If she focused, she could barely bring to mind that girl’s corkscrew curls and her cold eyes. Hmm, they had their differences but it wasn’t as if they were enemies. In fact, Gwendith had done her best to help Yuriko against the huge barbarians.

She had been swept away but what happened to that girl? With a sinking feeling, she remembered what the fortress commander said about women and the barbarians.

They abducted women to make more barbarians. It didn’t take much imagination to know what that meant. She had been lucky to have been swept away, but what of Gwendith? That girl was quite pretty and…oh, Ancestors! A fate just as bad as death. And Yuriko didn’t know how to help. For that matter, she hoped Gwendith's friend, Ella-Mai, was safe, too.

Lost in thought, Yuriko plodded across the icescape. Her only distractions were when she had to adjust her Radiant energy release. The sweet spot kept fluctuating, but Yuriko thought that had more to do with the outside temperature than anything else. Every now and then, a blizzard would sweep in, staying for a couple of hours before leaving. She pressed on, her gaze unerringly towards the west. Nearly a day later, she was at the Veil and she exited the Waypoint happily.

The Chaos streams outside were stronger than she expected and it almost dissolved her walking blocks before she firmed up her Will. She probably needed to rest at the next Waypoint. The previous one didn’t have any creatures but she didn’t trust herself not to freeze to death if she just lay down. She didn’t know how to find shelter and warmth there. Even now, in the Chaos, she felt cold and shivered.

The next Waypoint was much more reasonable. It was back at sea, but at least this time she appeared on an island instead of in the water. The island was just about twenty paces wide, and she could see a chain of islets she could follow to the other side. Good thing too, as she didn’t want to go into the water this time. It was crimson, like blood. It didn’t smell like blood though, and there was that ever-present salty scent, with just a hint of rotting fish.

Yawning, Yuriko set up camp and arranged her alarm stones, pulled out her bedroll and blanket from her backpack and slept. A few hours later, she was awoken by the blaring of her alarm stones. She flared her Anima, catching sight of an odd creature that crawled out of the surf. It looked like it was made of seaweed but in humanoid form. The tendrils had crossed her alarm boundary but it didn’t look like they had detected her yet. It seemed harmless, at least until it picked up her stone and attempted to eat it. Those things took her a day to inscribe properly!

Fri’Avgi and the third dance made short work of the creature. It didn’t have a shard so it was more a nuisance than anything else. Yuriko tried to go back to sleep but more of them came up.

More than a bit annoyed, Yuriko formed a couple of sunshards and shot them at the creatures. The seaweed fronds that made up their body melted at the sunshard’s mere touch, but the creatures let out a high pitched squeak as they died. The sea bubbled then more of them appeared.

Giving up sleep for a lost cause, Yuriko packed up her gear while she killed any of the dwellers that came close. Once she was ready, she backed up a bit, then took a running leap towards the nearest islet thirty paces away. Her Anima formed glider wings at her back, looking similar to the Battlewings Mum wore in the Pure Lands, except these were made out of golden flames and were a bit shorter.

She overshot her target but it was easy enough to compensate by adjusting the wings to drop her to the ground. Then she took another running leap to the next one. She kept this up for hours until she reached the other side nearly fifteen hours later.

The Chaos was even stranger outside now. The Chaos streams flowed in a singular direction rather than all over the place. Coincidentally, the flows ran parallel to her path. Or perhaps it wasn't a coincidence at all. Delovine was straight up above. A broad Veil that stretched throughout the entirety of her sight. The Veil was opaque from here, but she was sure it was impossible to enter from the bottom even if she found a Channel… oh, there was one. Where did that lead to, she wondered. A cavern? A tunnel network running through the entirety of the plane? Well, she wasn’t going to enter through there.

She continued her journey and entered another Waypoint. This one was another jungle. She walked halfway through it, slaying dwellers that looked like giant fleas by the hundreds. Some of them emitted Chaos dust, and she almost left them behind since she didn’t have an apparatus to collect it. However, by using her Anima, she had actually been able to extract the dust.

Er, she still didn’t have a place to put them in. It wasn’t as if glass vials were a regular part of an explorer’s supply kit. Or maybe…

She rummaged through her backpack and found an enclosed section that had a couple of empty vials as well as a simple dust collecting apparatus within. The collector had low efficiency and would have wasted nearly all of the dust while trying to collect but it was a good thing she didn’t need to use it. She shoved the dust into one of the vials and placed it in a padded section of her hip satchel, which apparently also had an empty glass vial. Huh.

She climbed up a tree and settled on a broad branch to take her rest. She wasn’t bothered this time and felt quite refreshed the next day. After she exited this Waypoint, her path subtly curved upwards such that she almost didn’t notice that Delovine was now behind her. Good. Now all she needed to do was get to Rumiga.

The Chaos streams were still flowing in a uniform direction, but it wasn’t headed where Yuriko was facing. It was more to the north? She was heading relatively west, right? So if the flows were towards her right, then that was north. It was hard to tell since she couldn’t feel the touch of the Radiant Sun or the Luminous Moon.

Wait! If headed directly west, she was likely to run into the Waypoints that were in the warzone! She wondered briefly if that was fine but ultimately decided that it ran counter to her goal of reaching Rumiga. South would lead to Federation territory while heading north would lead towards the barbarians. With Gwendith’s fate in mind, she followed the direction of the streams now, noting ironically that they matched her path again.

The first Waypoint deposited her into a cavern tunnel. The centre of which had a river of molten rock that gave off a harsh orange light. The heat didn’t bother her too much, even if it was hot enough that any sweat she shed almost instantly evaporated. She followed the twisty tunnels and fought off the molten earth creatures that came out of the river.

She dispersed them by flinging pebbles with her Anima. As long as she used her full force at them, each one was able to shatter the core of the things. Good thing that worked, honestly, since her sunshards were nearly useless and she didn’t want to expose Fri’Avgi to the extreme heat. The artefact would have probably been fine, but she didn’t want the risk.

The second Waypoint deposited her in the midst of a mountain pass and the fallen snow came all the way up to her chest. At least she had secure footing here. But the powerful winds and the cold made it somewhat difficult to breathe. There were no dwellers here, oddly enough, or they weren’t on the pass. Perhaps they lived in the caves high up on the mountainside?

Either way, by the time she reached the other side, nothing had attacked. She took shelter in one of the nearby caves and rested there. When she woke, she left the Waypoint.

Again the Chaos streams were strange. They swept towards Rumiga now, towards her left. She was still several Waypoints away, perhaps three or four more? She knew that there were five Waypoints between Rumiga and Delovine, or rather, there were five fortified Waypoints. The regular Waypoints varied. So, uh, she was probably more than four away.

The next couple of Waypoints were problematic in the sense that they were filled with dwellers. Nothing she couldn’t handle though, it was just tedious. One was actually a swarmling nest! She harvested quite a bit of dust from there before the critters ran at the sight of her.

She was well-rested when she came out of the latest Waypoint, having managed to sleep after the swarmlings were effectively wiped out. The Chaos streams were converging some distance away. It didn’t feel like a Chaos Storm though, thank the Ancestors. But it looked like the hostiles that attacked Witton Hold were probably nearby.

Foolish of her to think she could avoid them so easily. She eyed the surroundings warily, and suddenly, she felt a tingle at the back of her neck. Something was looking at her.

She half made to draw Fri’Avgi, but hesitated. The artefact, as long as she was placed in Yuriko’s Anima, swallowed and converted whatever motes of Chaos managed to bypass her flared Anima. If she took the weapon out, she might accumulate enough Chaos within to poison herself. No, it was much safer if she used the artefact in a Waypoint or a plane. So instead, she materialized a sunblade and half a dozen sunshards. She could actively maintain the weapons as long as she fed it both Animus and Radiant energy. She had more than enough of both to last several hours. More than enough to reach the next Waypoint, certainly.

The Chaos around her swirled oddly as if they were avoiding the Radiant weapons but couldn’t quite do so. Strangely enough, as the flows touched the weapons, bright spots of light popped across her vision. The Radiant weapons glowed ever so slightly brighter every time. Huh.

As interesting as the phenomenon was, she needed to get moving. She created her walking blocks, Intent on reaching Rumiga. However, the path started to curve towards the streams’ nexus. When she noticed it, she tried to move away, but… other than heading directly back, any attempt inevitably wound up leading her there.

Frowning, Yuriko had a decision to make. One, she could turn back and try another path, or two, she could confront whatever this was. She didn’t want to run away.

So she charged ahead.