Almost as if to mock her optimistic thoughts, a fresh wave of barbarians arrived on the plateau. There were still a handful of behemoths and, if the beasts had worked together instead of only defending themselves when attacked, then the Imperial forces would have had a harder fight.

‘No’, Yuriko thought, ‘we’ve suffered injuries aplenty, and lost one Colossus already. This is by no means easy.’

In her heart of hearts, though, she wondered why the Knights had so much trouble fighting Chaos barons when she herself had fought and bested more than a dozen or so easily.

The next twenty minutes of furious fighting told her why.

A stocky, purple-haired Decanus named Alec Corban had erected a barricade made of lightning and air. Every time one of the barbarians came close, lightning would zap out of it and strike. It wasn’t enough to kill or even heavily wound but more than enough to stun.

Then, there was Areena whose lightning bolts passed seamlessly through Alec’s barriers and leapt from one stunned barbarian to another, finishing the job. Another Centurion, a grey- and black-haired man that was just a bit shorter than Yuriko, used his customised Plasma Caster to spray metal pellets across a short cone. His Animus technique caused the attack to replicate over a broad front and it left dozens of barbarians blinded and sporting several dozen puncture wounds across their torsos.

Another Centurion, whose name escaped Yuriko at the moment, created hasty earthworks. A berm and a ditch spread out in a curved line from where he stood and served as cover and defence for the more offensively oriented Knights.

More and more it occurred to her that Agminis legionnaires were geared to fight relatively strong crowds rather than singularly powerful opponents, of which most of the barons were.

Having caught her breath and refilled her outer reserves, Yuriko returned her attention to the sortie’s objective. The behemoths must be slain. They were strong and accurate enough to lob boulders over the ten longstrides that separated the mountain plateau from the outpost, and their precision was such that each of their projectiles always hit the dome.

Yuriko knew that the Animus generator wasn’t that efficient when operating inside the boundaries of a plane, but she also knew that they were bolstered by Chaos shards and dust. The Wyldling Wave could dash itself against the walls forever and the outpost would never run out of denatured Animus to power the Carronades, the wall defences, and the Protective Dome. At least as long as the dust collectors worked. The added burden of defending against the boulders, which were laden with destructive Chaos, now that she had a closer look, strained the outpost’s, and Commander Perry’s resources.

The behemoths must be slain.

Gathering these things from the Chaos Sea wasn’t an easy thing according to Desire and this many would have taken Seasons of effort. As for her childhood friend turned Chaos Lord, she was spinning about behind the Agminis Knights, singing her spell of healing and strength.

Yuriko charged towards another behemoth, one that was unengaged and was still throwing boulders. This one was completely humanoid, or rather, looked like a human that was nearly eight paces tall, and was hairy and completely naked. The face was actually the most inhuman part of it, having a squashed look, no nose to speak of, and its mouth was bared in a rictus grin. Oh, and it had three eyes, one in the middle of its forehead. All three turned to stare at her as she approached and it quickly pivoted and threw its - his projectile at her.

Twack!

Fri’Avgi turned on her side, slapped the boulder over the cliff where it plummeted straight down. The force of Yuriko’s parry staggered her momentum and the behemoth took a large step forward and kicked her with his back leg. Yuriko’s Anima stabbed into the ground, bracing her against the impact and with the rest of her strength, stabbed at the incoming foot with her sunblade. The Radiant weapon sunk all the way inside without much resistance, and her fist slammed on the toes and stopped dead. The force of the kick travelled down her body and Anima and was shed onto the earth.

Boom!

A cloud of dust and snow erupted behind her and the earth and stone cratered. With the behemoth paused, Yuriko swung Fri’Avgi at its knee and severed the limb just below the kneecap. The creature howled in pain as it fell over. Yuriko hopped towards its head and beheaded it. A spray of bluish-red blood splattered across the ground and dribbled over her Anima. She flared it a bit and flung the fluids off.

How many behemoths left? There was another one close by but was already engaged against the Certus Colossi. The core pilots danced with the beast gracefully, slashing at overextended limbs while avoiding reprisals. Even as Yuriko watched, the Colossus cut off a clawed limb, then stabbed into its heart a moment later. They obviously didn’t need her help.

There were no more behemoths still attacking the outpost. Yuriko heaved a sigh of relief. They were no longer in danger…

Boom!

Yuriko’s head snapped towards the battle line and saw trees splintering and shattering. Most of the detritus stabbed into the berm or the lightning shields which sparked and sizzled. A moment later, a gigantic bicorn slammed into the barrier, appearing out of seemingly nothing, and shattered the defences after less than an instant. Yuriko paled as she saw one of the Knights, Areena, got skewered right in the middle. An inch of horn stuck out from behind her, barely missing her spine. The woman grabbed onto the horn, and lightning cascaded down it and electrocuted the bicorn, which was the only reason she wasn’t stuck all the way down. The base was thicker than her body and she would have been torn in two.

Yuriko’s scream of fear and anger was still in the air and she had barely taken a step towards the bicorn, the Iron Skin chief, when he swung his head in pain and flung the hapless Knight off. Areena flew several paces away, bounced off the snowy ground, then slammed into the base of a tree. She wasn’t moving.

An eight pace tall stag charged into the clearing, its horns shattered the intervening trees, and it gored another Knight. Tried to, anyway. The Knight, Mitre Lacona of the Solace Shade Century and Areena’s Decanus, managed to deflect the branching horns with his spear. Bolts of superheated plasma shot from a couple dozen paces away, from another Decanus, which splattered across the stag’s flanks. Unlike the Chaos Lords and the behemoths, the barbarians didn’t have a Protective Field, and since the chieftain’s Geist didn’t seem focused on defence, the bolts burned into his transformed hide and melted it, revealing red muscles.

The stag screamed in pain then staggered back, reared on his hind legs then slammed down at Mitre, who barely managed another parry. Several points of the horn pierced his forceweave coat, and the hooves up front kicked at his chest, knocking him several steps back. That gave the man enough space to start striking with his spear. Each thrust seemed to multiply endlessly, and soon, scratches and cuts appeared on the stag's chest. Another Knight attacked the stag chieftain, using a concentrated blue flaming ball, that burst into a fiery blossom as soon as it struck. That one actually put the fur on fire.

“Graaah!”

A deep-throated roar came from the gigantic bear chief as he charged past the front lines and slammed into the Certus Colossi, who had just finished off a behemoth. It took the Certus by surprise and knocked it off its feet, and both of them slammed into the trees and the ground, producing a tremor that knocked dozens of barbarians off balance. Where was the last chieftain?

“Kyaaa!”

Almost too quick to notice, a wolf that was much smaller than the other beasts tore off the lightning barrier Knight’s left arm. Crackles of lightning clung to his snow-white fur, causing them to stick up poofily. The man’s high pitched scream cut off in a gurgle as he vomited from the shock. The earth manipulator Knight, a heavyset man, rushed towards the barrier Knight and, with a slap of his hand, created a dome of solid rock around the two of them. The wolf slammed its shoulder at the earthen dome, creating large cracks which healed over in the blink of an eye.

Paralysed with indecision, Yuriko saw the bicorn swing its head groggily, then it seemed to catch sight of her. A reddish haze appeared around his hide as he pawed the ground then charged.

Yuriko’s anger catalyzed and she returned a roar of her own, one that swept over the entire battlefield. She could feel her Anima pulsing and her Mien reacting to her desires. A reddish haze covered the edges of her flared Anima, and the sight of it caused the bicorn to flounder for a moment. Yuriko gathered all of her weapons, the sunshards, the sunblade, and Fri’Avgi to herself, and leapt.

The sunshards weren’t enough to pierce the beastly man’s hide, nor was Fri’Avgi, for that matter. The Iron Skin were known for their powerful defences but if a blade won’t pierce, then there were other ways to kill.

She slammed Fri’Avgi against the barbarian’s cheek, the flat of the blade gave a resounding smack as the entirety of Yuriko’s physical strength, supported by her Anima, was channelled into the blow. The head snapped to the side as Yuriko landed on the ground. She launched herself between the beast’s front legs and slammed the artefact at the back of his knee. Or was it an elbow?

She willed the sunshards to combine, and squeezed them all into one mass. The dozen small blades were then flung as her Anima contracted to power her kinesis. The shards poked into his belly, but none were able to penetrate more than a fraction of an inch. That was fine, as long as they stuck there.

Again, she slammed Fri’Avgi into the bicorn man, only this time the flat of the blade smashed on top of the sunshards, which drove them deep into his belly.

The pain must have been enough to knock him out of the stupor her Mien had dragged him into and he tried to trample her down. But, having learned her lesson from the earlier behemoth, Yuriko didn’t stick around. She leapt out from under him right after she struck with Fri’Avgi, but was careful to remain within the manipulation range of her shards. She could feel her Anima tethers still active and commanded the shards to wreak havoc within his innards.

The bicorn convulsed and dropped to the ground, wailing and howling in pain and anger. She slammed her weapon over his skull, knocking it into the ground where it bounced painfully back, right in time for another slam. This time, he tried to roll over to the side, but Yuriko was having none of it. She caught up easily, slamming the flat of the blade repeatedly on his head, letting Fri’Avgi’s weight and the momentum of her swings shatter bone and crush flesh. If the hide couldn’t be cut, then she could only batter him down.

The bicorn chief convulsed and foamy blood came out of his nose and mouth. Yuriko raised Fri’Avgi high and was about to slam the artefact down one last time to end the man’s filthy life when she felt the air around her shift.

Chaos boiled around her, the fabric of the plane started to tear, and before she could do anything other than condense her Anima to protect herself, she found herself more than a dozen paces from the bicorn.

Her initial reflexes had been wrong. She should have spread her Anima and caused it to grip the space around her instead of condensing. The creature responsible for saving the bicorn chief’s life materialised in front of her: The Weaver of the Warp and Weft of the World.

The Chaos Lord glared balefully at her, his face a mask of rage. It was so different from the expression he wore before that Yuriko grew unsure if he was really the Weaver. The next moment, another one of him appeared, this one with the genteel expression of before. Then, another copy appeared next to the genteel one, wearing a long-suffering expression on his face.

Then, all three grinned at her, savage, smooth, and sorrowed, and the world around her rippled as they sunk their mental claws into the plane.