Yuriko ran towards the fight but the sounds and lights faded away even before she got halfway there. A purple light flared for a moment and she heaved a sigh of relief. Her brother was still there.

She didn’t slow down and she arrived there within a couple of minutes. The path up rock formation was littered with burned bodies. Barbarians, mostly, but she saw a few Wyldlings, too. Marron waved at her from behind the formation then motioned towards his right. When she got up there, she saw Sheamus nursing a broken arm. His Plasma Caster was bent out of shape too, though the beryl he used to contain his bound spirit was back on his pendant. Maru didn’t look hurt.

“What happened?” she blurted out.

“A bunch of them came out of the sudden darkness,” Marron said, his breath creating clouds of steam. His sandy brown hair had turned white from a dusting of snow. More had settled over his shoulders and he absently brushed them off.

“Sheamus.”

Yuriko hurried to the irregular scout, though she hesitated for a moment, her mind digging at the first aid techniques she learned in Reserve Officer Training. The man cradled his right forearm and his face was pale. He looked up at her with a quivering smile, his face waxy and pale.

“Miss Yuriko. It’s nothing but a scratch.” He grinned with obvious bravado. She wasn’t sure which bone was broken, but at least it hadn’t pierced his skin. There was swelling and bruising, however.

‘Hmmm, immobilize the limb,’ she thought. She drew on her Animus, causing the golden light to flare brighter. She held her hands around the break, materialised a rod as long as his forearm, then wove threads of Animus around it to secure it in place. By the time she was done a few minutes later, Marron had produced a sling and tied it around Sheamus’ neck.

“You’ll be fine once we get you to the healers,” he said affably. “The Caster would take more work, honestly.”

“Aye, I thought so.” Sheamus shrugged, then winced at the motion. Yuriko tutted at both of them.

“Stay still please.”

Her Animus construct would probably unravel in a couple of hours, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. It already took more effort to keep the Radiant energy from suffusing it, otherwise, the man’s arm would have burnt to ashes.

“Back to camp?” she asked.

Marron frowned at the stormy skies. The wind howled and bent the trees, and the softly falling snow had turned into a blizzard. “I don’t think we’ll make it. Not with Sheamus in that condition. We can build a quick shelter and leave as soon as the storm abates.”

“We should move though. The Chaos Lord knows we’re here.”

“Chaos Lord?” Marron yelped.

“Another one? You didn’t kill and devour it?” Sheamus asked.

“No, it–er, she–got away.” Yuriko shook her head. “Or rather, she left. She was strong.”

“Ran out of Chaos?” Marron asked.

“So she said. We still have to move.”

“Alright. I can keep up.” Sheamus gritted his teeth. “Ethan can help my arm heal, but it’s slow. He can numb the pain, though.”

“Alright.” Yuriko nodded.

Ethan was Sheamus’ bound spirit, though she had never seen or spoken with, er, him? She idly wondered if it could speak or just transmit emotions like Fri’Avgi did.

She shook her head, not wanting to delve into how weapon or artefact spirits gained sentience at the moment. The rock formation they were in was near the top of a hill, with sparse growth around it. It provided a natural wall but didn’t have a ceiling. She activated her Enhanced Sight, but couldn’t see a likely spot. If worse comes to worst, they could build an ice dome. Her kinesis could certainly speed up the process even if she couldn’t manipulate the ice directly. If Gwendith or Kalla had been with them then this would have been far simpler.

She mentioned as much and Marron nodded. “How about that grove where we hid a couple of longstrides back? We can build a shelter there and weather the storm.”

Not finding a reason to protest, the three of them went down the trail. The barbarian corpses had already been buried in the snow with only a hint of burgundy blood stains to show where they lay. In a few more minutes it would be gone.

It took three times as long to get to the grove as they otherwise would have. Once they were there, Yuriko dug into the ground while Marron and Sheamus made the packed snow walls. Sheamus’ techniques were a bit strange, Yuriko thought, he channelled everything through his bound spirit. The green gem on his pendant glowed while he managed some kind of kinesis that moved the ice and snow much like Gwendith and Kalla, however, he was much slower. Building the shelter took only an hour, and by the time it was finished, the blizzard was in full swing.

They huddled together underneath the dome. It was a good thing she decided to bring her backpack along, even if the fabric was now a bit burnt. The self-repair function ate up a lot of Animus and she even fed it a couple of Chaos Shards. Marron brought his camping gear too, but Sheamus didn’t. So, the two men shared a blanket instead.

“I can radiate heat, you know!” Yuriko protested.

“And you’ll melt the walls. It’s fine,” Marron insisted.

With little else to do while waiting for the storm to pass, Yuriko immersed herself with Radiant energy. Ah, they ate some of their rations, too, but she’d rather not think of the tasteless stuff. Her spice supply had run out already and there was none to be had in the camp.

She envisioned her core and observed the Radiant Essence spinning within. It was similar to the Radiant Sun, at least in outer appearance. The Essence was a ball of fire, white, gold, and a multitude of weaker hues. At the moment, it took in the ambient Chaos she breathed in, the ones left over from the Animus conversion done by her core. It swallowed the Chaos, and…what did it do? How did it convert ambient Chaos to Radiant energy?

She couldn’t see the process just that the Chaos particles were drawn into the centre of the orb and then nothing. The Essence itself was like a miniature sun, it just gave out constant Radiant light.

Shifting her focus, she observed where the excess energy went. It circulated around her Anima-body then phased into her physical self. There, it fused with her flesh, organs, and bones. Rather, that’s what she assumed it did. She didn’t have an internal physical vision, even if she could observe the flow of Animus and Radiant energy within.

Both kinds of energy followed a path around her physical body. It wasn’t as extensive as her circulatory system, the specifics of which they had touched upon in the Natural Sciences. She had also stared at the illustrations in her textbooks, even if she had trouble reading the words, the images were no problem.

Anyway, the Radiant mostly followed her Animus channels but would diverge every so often. Those motes disappeared into her body and didn’t return to the cycle. She estimated that about half of the Radiant energy the Essence produced was absorbed in this way.

As for the excess, they stayed in the reserve in her Anima, located around her core. Actually, didn’t the motes that circulated around her physical body originate from the reserve? What about the motes in her Anima?

There were no pathways in the Anima-body. Animus and Radiant energy freely moved around there, though when she flared her Anima neither kind of energy seeped out. Interesting. If she moved Radiant energy outside of her Anima-body and then into her outer Anima, er Anima-aura, or maybe just Aura for short, what would happen?

Oh, she already did that! When she materialised her sunblade and other Radiant weaponry, she extruded Radiant energy to her Aura and shaped it there. What if she just extruded it outside and gave it no purpose?

She did so, and sparkles of Radiant light popped into existence then denatured into ambient Chaos.

‘Let’s do that again,’ She thought as she released more undirected Radiant energy in front of her. She kept her Chaos Sight active this time.

The motes of Radiant energy gave off sunlight for a few moments, then…the surrounding Chaos particles melded into the motes and combined within, turning the motes into particles similar to every other mote of ambient Chaos in the air. Her eyes tracked the combined motes for a moment or two, but whatever made them special quickly became inert, and when she blinked, she couldn’t distinguish the former Radiant energy motes from the rest.

The Chaos had the potential to be anything. That was part of Damien’s knowledge as well as part of Sharom’s teachings. It was just that excavating that potential from any old particle took time, effort, and Animus. Sometimes, the resulting form didn’t make the effort worth it.

She repeated the process, and this time, after it had become inert, she drew that particular mote back inside her and directed it to her Essence. There, it was subsumed by the Essence core and became Radiant energy. An endless cycle.

Radiant. Endless. Cycles.

Her mind spun round and round while her heartbeat slowed as she sunk deeper into her reverie. Radiant. Life-giving light.

It degraded into Chaos particles upon meeting more of the same but was also burned or purified back into itself when brought into Radiant Essence. Or maybe…the Radiant energy was simple normal Chaos particles given something within the Essence that turned it into Radiant motes? When that something ran out, the motes returned to normal particles?

Which was it? Normal Chaos particles are given something special that turned them into Radiant energy or was the particle changed into Radiant motes? Something intrinsic to the particles was brought to the forefront to turn them into motes?

If so, what part of the particle caused it to become Radiant energy?

But the existence of the Radiant Sun! Almost all Radiant energy came from the celestial body, except for the motes created by her Essence. Is the Sun a giant Essence or is what she had now merely the infant form? Would her core become akin to the Radiant Sun once she grew strong enough?

A pulse of excitement shot up from the depths of her being. There was something quite attractive about that notion. She was an infant Sun? She felt herself shiver. Then, as long as she fed the Essence, made it grow and grow, but kept it contained within her Anima, what heights of power would she reach?

She pondered those thoughts, but she reached no conclusions by the time she felt drowsy enough to sleep.

The next morning, after breaking their fast with more ration bars, the three of them peeked out of their shelter and found the landscape covered entirely with snow. The drifts were nearly five paces high, but the Radiant Sun had returned to the skies.

As before, it was easy enough for them to walk on the fluffy snow, the two men with their footwear while Yuriko used her Anima. The glare from the reflected light didn’t bother Yuriko, but Marron and Sheamus squinted and cursed under their breaths.

By the time noon arrived, they reached the first campsite. Contrary to what Yuriko expected, the Imperials were still in the process of moving. The troop transports had their fronts fitted with some kind of earthen wedge that pushed the high snow drifts to a side. The lead transport was only a longstride away, its normal pace halved from pushing. Several hundred legionnaires were in the process of dismantling the walls and covering up the ditches. A few people whose Facets involved manipulating earth, water, or snow were using their techniques to cover the camp’s traces.

The three of them weren’t the only ambushers returning at this hour. She saw a ragged group coming in from directly east, with more than a dozen wounded. She hoped the people lying on stretchers weren’t dead.

Almost as soon as she stepped foot in camp than a missile called Desire barrelled into her, squealing, “Master!”

Patting the Chaos Lord’s head, Yuriko chuckled and carried her along. She spotted Gwendith and Kalla helping with the snow. She waved at her friend, who gave back a bright smile, but otherwise focused on her task. Either way, it looked as if the barbarians and Chaos Lords didn’t find the camp, and hopefully, it would stay that way until they returned to Imperial territory.