The sight of Yuriko levitating near the cliff wall, and pretty much climbing with barely any effort, shouldn’t have surprised Sheamus. She was a Knight and, of the other ten Knights with them, three others used their techniques to climb rather than their limbs.

Centurion Areena Henry stuck to the back of one of the Colossi, somehow using streaks of blue lightning to stick to the wooden armour instead of her hands. Another Knight, a Decanus from her insignia, straight out flew. Gusts of wind surrounded her body and lifted her off the ground. The Decanus, Kanna Tarisa, if Sheamus recalled her name correctly, didn’t stay close to the cliff, keeping about ten paces away.

Most of the others clung to harnesses attached to the Colossi’s chassis, and well, that actually included him. Sheamus put his foot into the silk loop while he hung on with the opposite hand. He caressed his amulet with his fingers and hesitated. If he kept Ethan, his bonded Spirit, in his amulet form, it was much easier to form a Protective Field and keep himself safe. If he transferred him to a weapon, then Sheamus’ offensive techniques would be greatly augmented. Somewhere in the vicinity of four to six times more potent. His defences would shrink by a similar degree though.

He would never move the spirit to another vessel unless he was assured of his safety, and this sortie was anything but safe.

He looked towards Yuriko who looked to be deep in thought. Every now and then, she conjured a blazingly bright knife which floated above the palm of her hand. It was…both terrifying and exciting.

While he had been initially attracted to her, after he found out how old she was or rather, how young, his infatuation had changed to admiration instead. So young and yet so powerful. He was more than twice her age and yet she was already stronger. If it had been any of his adventurer contemporaries, he would have felt jealous of their power, but with Yuriko, there was no sense to it. She was just that strong.

Over the past couple of weeks in the outpost, he’d been keeping a surreptitious eye on her. She spent most of her time on the wall, either watching or killing swarmlings. The rest of the time, she gave the legionnaires and militiamen swordsmanship lessons. Well, she was focused more on her friend than the others.

Sheamus had tried to learn, too, but he knew he was no swordsman. Still, he had found himself with modest improvement, and the next time he attached Ethan to a blade, he would be much more dangerous.

A strange sentiment had grown in his heart. He hadn’t realised it at first. All he really wanted was to return to his carefree life but having been conscripted, he was honour-bound to fulfill the terms he agreed to. Yes, he had been pressed to service, but after taking a look at the contract, he now knew that he would earn more coin by seeing this through. That and he genuinely enjoyed working for Yuriko now. Odd, wasn’t it?

Since the mission now was to destroy whatever was tossing those boulders over the outpost, he supposed he was much better off focusing on the attack. And from what the young lady was doing, he thought she was trying to figure that out too.

The battle with the giant beasts had shown the girl her limitations, which were mostly because she was so new at being a Knight. Ethan concurred. His bonded spirit said that Yuriko’s techniques weren’t quite as sophisticated as they could be. She had a lot of strength and finesse, but any Knight had that in spades. What she needed was probably a force multiplier. A powerful technique that combined all of her strengths into an overwhelming blow.

Of course, he didn’t know how to help. Sheamus had mostly focused on flexibility. He wasn’t really a scout and he wasn’t a warrior beholden to his nation either. He was a self-sufficient warrior and his specialty was his ability to shift his bonded spirit’s focus. Put Ehan in an amulet and his ability to create Animus defenses skyrocketed. Into a weapon and it became much more potent. Into armour or his clothing and he would be able to weather physical assaults more easily. If he put Ethan into a scouting glass, then he’d be able to see farther and also distinguish more details.

Mind made up, he tugged at the beryl that contained his spirit and pressed it into his Plasma Caster’s stock. The gem merged easily with the weapon and he could feel a tenuous connection form. Now, all he needed to do was meditate on it. He should be done by the time they reach the plateau.

And, that was when they got attacked. Figures.

______

“Look out!”

The shout jolted Yuriko out of her trance and she looked up just in time to see a boulder coming from the east, and headed straight at them. A green-haired woman, the very one who shouted in warning, flew towards the incoming projectile.

Wait, flew?

The woman, a Decanus by the rank insignia on her sleeve, had strong winds surrounding her, visible by the flurry of snowflakes that had been caught by the current, and the rapid movement of the ambient Chaos that had grown thick enough to be somewhat visible even without Chaos Sight active.

The Decanus waved a hand and a pulse, a ball actually, of condensed wind flew from her and struck the boulder at an angle which was enough to deflect it towards the open air. Yuriko, seeing that the attack had been thwarted, activated Enhanced Sight and focused towards the plateau.

A giant…thing, standing at the edge just under a longstride away, picked up another boulder and flung it towards them. The creature looked strange to her eyes, and she could feel herself tearing up at the assault to her sensibilities. It was huge, that was for sure, though not as big as the giant bear that attacked them a while back. On one side of its torso was a muscular limb that looked thicker than its torso, while its right side had nearly a dozen misshapen limbs waving around. Some of those limbs ended with hands, while others had pincers, claws, or just plain hooks and stumps. She also couldn’t see where its head was.

The airborne woman deflected the next boulder, and the one after that. The Colossi picked up the pace, but they were only halfway up, with another four hundred paces to go. At the rate they were going, it would take another ten minutes to get to the top!

She was much faster though. With her kinesis propelling her upwards, she could reach the plateau in a couple of minutes at most. From the strained expression on the Decanus’ face, she couldn’t keep up the defence for long.

Whoosh! Pew!

One of the Centurions hanging off the back of a Koinos shot a plasma bolt at the creature. The greenish bolt was bigger than the usual projectile and it curved towards the creature rather than firing straight. The bolt smashed into the wrist just as it was about to fling a boulder. The disruption changed the boulder’s trajectory enough that it flew wide and crashed into the forest below.

Instead of following her instinct of rushing ahead, Yuriko pulled at a chunk of rock disturbed by a Colossus’ handhold, infused it with Animus and fired a ranging shot at the creature. Unfortunately, her attack fell far short since she had to use more than a bit of her Anima to keep hold of the cliff.

With a click of her tongue, she moved towards the east, interposing herself between the rest of the assault group and the thing. Thankfully, it seemed to have had enough of getting shot at. It moved away from the edge and out of sight.

The rest of the climb was tense, but they made it over to the plateau with no more attacks. But she wasn’t relieved by much. The creature’s attack meant that whoever was up there knew they were coming.

Sure enough, she could see the creatures. They were nearly a league away, but they towered over the short evergreens. She could also see the boulders they threw towards the camp every couple of minutes or so.

“Behemoths,” Centurion Veran said grimly.

“What are they?” Yuriko asked.

“Chaos dwellers,” Sheamus answered. “An unnatural creature made from a composite of different Wyldlings and other beings.” He shuddered. “At least four of them. We’ve got our work cut out for us. Not only do we have to fight those, but we have to tangle with their handlers, too.”

“We’ve already wasted a couple of hours,” Centurion Veran continued over Sheamus’ answer. “We attack. Now!”

He waved at the Colossi. The Certus nodded and charged. Though it, and the others, had a lumbering gait, it devoured nearly five paces a step. The other Knights jogged after them, with the green haired Decanus floating a dozen paces above.

Yuriko formed a sunblade and sunshards, then summoned Fri’Avgi from her Anima. She held the artefact in her right hand and the sunblade on her left. The shards circled protectively around her.

Before they crossed a couple of longstrides, Chaos Lords came out of the groves, already flinging attacks at them. They ignored the Colossi and charged towards the infantry. Yuriko gritted her teeth and veered towards the nearest one.

A bolt of purple plasma shot over her shoulder and drilled into a Chaos Lord, who deflected it with a curved blade. More attacks were exchanged as they closed the distance. As for Yuriko, none of the varied types of energy could penetrate past her Anima. As soon as she came close enough to one of them, she blasted them with her sunshards. The Chaos Lord, a baron probably, tried to dodge past, but Yuriko easily curved the projectiles around and they stabbed the baron on the back.

Wailing in pain, the baron’s clothes burst to flame and he tried to roll on the snow to put it out. Fri’Avgi crushed his head and slurped up his Anima. But there were more.

A glimmer out of the corner of her eye was the only warning she had when a Hunter stabbed at her neck. She twisted and flung her sunblade at it, which stabbed straight into its heart, and out its back. The cavity burned outwards as flesh melted or turned to ash. The creature collapsed to the ground and lay there twitching for a few moments.

She paid it no mind and cleaved her artefact into another while she called the sunblade back to her hand. All the while, her sunshards struck down more and more of the creatures.

A bolt of blue lighting shot past her to the right. A baron’s Protective Field absorbed the lightning. It growled and shot towards Areena, blasting at the Centurion with bolts of green light. The woman doubled down on her attack, and the lightning blast resembled a thick rope as the other sought to overcome the baron’s protections. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. The baron barrelled towards Knight, and it was only because of a Decanus wielding a resonating buckler that interposed himself between them that the Centurion remained unharmed.

Another Centurion, this one with a snub-nosed Plasma Caster, unleashed a fusillade of plasma. It looked more like a cone of flame than anything else. That, and the continued lightning barrage finally overwhelmed the baron’s defenses and turned him to ashes.

Towards Yuriko’s left, Veran dueled with another Chaos Lord, a baroness, with glaive against spear. The muscular Centurion batted the spear aside and attempted to decapitate the baron, but was blocked by the spearhaft. Then, the spear thrust suddenly curved around Veran’s block and stabbed into his shoulder. He screamed in both surprise and pain as the baroness angled her attack and drove him to his knees.

Swunk!

Yuriko’s sunshards stabbed into the Chaos Lord’s eyes and out the back of her head. The creature collapsed and Veran staggered back as he grasped the spear and pulled it out of his wound. A spurt of blood sprayed out but quickly ceased as the flesh around it sealed. Veran’s face was pale, but remained determined.

The battles between the Knights and the barons continued, and Yuriko was bewildered when she saw how much her side struggled. And here she was with already half a dozen kills. She quickly sent her sunshards to aid those who were having trouble, and then went for those who were outnumbered.

She flung her pebbles, used her sunshards, and even threw her sunblade to the aid of her comrades, but the barons had them outnumbered nearly two to one. At the end of the skirmish, many of the Knights were wounded, but Yuriko had acted quickly enough that nobody had died.

It took a couple of minutes to catch their breaths, and the look on their eyes when they stared at her had changed. But there was no time to dawdle. Even now she could hear the titanic clash between the Colossi and the behemoths, and Ancestors forbid that the chieftains would join the fray.

“Let’s hurry!” Veran said through gritted teeth, then looked at her. Yuriko nodded back, and then, they ran towards another battle.