“Where are the doorknobs?” Saki suddenly asked, prompting Yuriko to take a quick look at the building doors and entrances.

The one right next to the district entrance was a three-storey affair, with rows of rectangular windows along every floor and a front lawn. A curved path led from the street towards the double doors, but Saki was right. She couldn’t see door knobs or handles, or anything else, for that matter. The doors were simply flat, and no indicators on how to unlock, or open them. Unless they were unlocked and meant to be pushed?

The buildings in the previous place certainly had them, right? Or was she assuming things? When they entered the city, they had gone straight down the boulevard rather than explore the nearby buildings. But she was sure she saw a door handle then. It was a brass lever, curved and etched decoratively. All of the doors she’d seen along the main boulevard had fancy doors, windows, and facades really.

Yuriko’s curiosity was piqued, so she was just about to walk up to the door when Edmund Sevier said, “Oh, none of the buildings and dwellings here have door knobs.”

“How do they open, then?” Marron asked. “Do people have to be let in by those inside?”

Obviously, that couldn’t happen now. Were the doors locked? Saki answered that question by pushing the door, and it turned out that no, the doors couldn’t be pushed open.

“We don’t know how they functioned when people actually lived here.” Edmund shrugged. “But the doors now need to be accessed by deciphering and solving a runescript passcode, or by expressing a particular Animus pattern.” He laughed. “Each building has a different code, and the few that we managed to open gave us little in return. Aside from some public buildings, all of the dwellings are Animus locked.”

“Fascinating,” Yuriko murmured.

Gwendith tapped her shoulder. “Not the time,” she said simply.

“Ah, right,” Yuriko muttered. They weren’t in the clear. In fact, she could hear the tapping of the Warforged marching. So did Edmund and he nudged them around the building’s corner and out of immediate sight.

The alley went through the block. On the opposite side was an identical apartment building, but the structure was mirrored rather than reversed. Yuriko kept her aura close to her body, not wanting to give them away with her light. Willing her aura to dim was much more doable than banishing the light entirely, though it made her feel a bit off. Either way, in this state, the amount of Animus she could store in her outer reserves was drastically cut though, with each weave able to hold ten rather than a hundred lumens. An extra hundred was better than nothing, however. No time to test if letting her aura flare to its normal brightness would also restore the previous limits or if she’d have to redo the weaving.

Thankfully, the Warforged patrol had bypassed them and they were free to proceed to the maintenance building.

Once inside, they descended into the sewers again and followed Edmund. Their path was relatively straightforward and they soon ascended another set of stairs. When they exited the building, Yuriko observed that they were quite far from the city’s centre, and were practically next to the cavern wall.

“We can take it easy now. There are no Warforged patrols within a hundred paces of here,” Edmund said with a sigh.

“Thank you,” all of them murmured.

“We’re not quite there yet, but close,” Edmund chuckled.

They went down one boulevard, which always led to the interior, and through avenues, which ran parallel to the cavern wall. Eventually, they left the Crafter’s District, though Yuriko only realised since the buildings were no longer apartments but walled compounds.

The walls grew taller and taller until they were practically in the shadows. The noonday sun was long past and it was closer to evening than anything else. Yuriko looked up on occasion and she quickly spotted what looked like caster towers. Long barrels similar to the shooter drones stuck out from a dome. She stared at it nervously and yelped when the thing swivelled and focused on them.

“Watch out!” she yelled as she drew Fri’Avgi to her hand. But the caster tower didn’t spew a hail of bullets. In fact, it didn’t do anything other than point at them.

“Don’t worry,” Edmund said. “As long as you don’t try to breach the walls, they won’t fire.” He gestured further along. “The gate’s this way.”

Nothing actually distinguished the gate from the rest of the wall, not even the hinges or the seams. One moment, there was nothing there, except for a turret not quite directly up. The next, Edmund flattened his hand against the wall and he projected Animus into it. There must be a specific pattern to how he determined it, or…

Yuriko activated her Chaos Sight, and sure enough, the wall lit up with lines. Nothing runescript at all, but just lines. Painted in Chaos. There was a hexagon around Edmund’s hand actually, the only one along the entire length, so that was the indicator. His monocle had a subtle glow, too, and was probably his bonded spirit.

Not a minute later, the wall simply unfolded and swung inwards.

“After you.” Edmund grinned and bowed in her direction.

“I think he likes you,” Gwendith murmured into Yuriko’s ear, suppressed mirth in her voice.

Yuriko rolled her eyes and strode inside. She wasn’t quite sure what she expected. Probably more of the same in the Crafter’s District. Perhaps fertile fields of grain, a watercourse, and several apartment buildings.

But what she saw was a palace. From the gate, there was a wide road with palm trees on either side. This led to a roundabout with a fountain in the centre. The marble edifice sprayed water from a couple of statues, which were of a scantily clad man and woman. Beyond the fountain was a palatial building, with wide stairs and massive pillars. From the looks of the tall windows, the structure had two storeys but each floor was probably two times as tall as a standardised one.

Rows of smaller, but no less luxurious cabins were just beyond the trees. There were tables shaded by umbrellas, beautifully kept lawns, and a sandy area at the edges. Was that water she saw?

There were people mingling in a clearing to the left. Long tables were laden with food, and stranger beings served the waiting humans. The servitors were similar to the Warforged, metallic in nature, though these ones were humanoid. There was no mistaking them for the Athrodius though. Their bodies were sleek and mostly non-threatening. They had no weapons and moved slowly, yet gracefully.

There were a few men near the gate when they entered, nearly all of them froze and stared at her. Yuriko sighed.

“Verdanian legionnaires!” the nearest one shouted, face contorting in anger. “Don’t let them escape!’

“Huh?”

“Wait, stop!” Edmund tried to say, but it was too late. The man who shouted charged, his body growing more muscular and bigger with every step. He threw a right straight punch, right at Marron, who blinked in surprise and confusion.

She wouldn’t let him.

Yuriko snapped her fist and deflected the man’s arm. It was harder than she thought and the rebound sent her back a single step. The man’s head snapped towards her, a rictus grimace on his face that softened slightly when he met her eyes. But his eyes hardened almost immediately afterwards, and his next blow was towards her.

The man was slightly taller than she was, about three inches or so, in the beginning, but his power swelled his body another dozen inches. His blond hair whipped wildly as though affected by a strong gust, and his eyes were a green flame. His arms practically bulged with veins and muscles and the sleeves of his tunic tore as they failed to contain giant muscles and greying skin.

His punch was swift and fierce, and the wind of its passage sharp enough to cut. Condensed Anima protected her from it, but the kinetic force imparted shook her to her bones when she blocked by crossing her arms.

Hissing in both anger and pain, Yuriko ducked the haymaker he threw afterwards. Then, seeing the opening, she drove a fist into his side. His abdominal muscles were harder than steel, and they reflected the force of her punch back at her. She ameliorated it with her Anima and was gratified to see him stagger back after her blow. His eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Verdanian scum,” he hissed.

“Who in the Abyss are you?” she growled back.

“Your end!” he yelled as though he were a child playing Knights and Wyldlings. He punched at her body with one hand, while his other grasped at her hair.

She slapped his punch downwards, ducked and drove forward, not minding his grasping hand at all. When his fingers closed around her ponytail, she undid the kinesis she kept active to keep her hair in place. She slipped past his grasp, her hair flowing through his hands like water, leaving nothing in his grasp a moment later. The surprise on his face changed to a grunt and a grimace as her fist struck straight at his guts, angled upwards underneath his ribcage. She drove her feet down into the ground, Anima spread to provide the stablest footing and then forced her blow as far up as it would go.

“Puah!” he gasped as he jumped up and away, his back slammed against a tree trunk which rose straight up into the air several paces without branching out. Spittle hung in the air, and Yuriko flinched. Blood from her enemies was fine, but disgusting things from that man’s mouth, no thank you.

“Lucian, you daft pig! Stop it this instant!” Edmund shrieked, but the man, Lucian, wasn’t about to be swayed. He launched himself at her, and for a moment, Yuriko debated taking out Fri’Avgi and ending this rotter’s life, but…

Neither he nor his henchmen drew the knives on their belts. She glanced back at her brother and the other girls. Another man had thrown a punch at her brother, but he was handling it easily enough. Gwendith, Saki, and Desire were hedged by nearly half a dozen men, though they hadn’t made any aggressive moves. From the storm on Gwendith’s face, that wouldn’t last.

She took that in just a single glance, but the distraction cost her. Lucian’s arms were either longer than she thought or it was able to stretch due to some aspect of his power. His hands caught her wrist, and before she could twist away, he yanked her forward.

She countered with a fist to his nose, but he tucked his chin down and her knuckles smashed into his forehead. Only her condensed Anima prevented her from breaking a knuckle from how hard his skull was and how strong she was. Still, it only made her flinch.

In the blink of an eye, he had shuffled beyond her and twisted her arm behind, pushing it into a joint lock. Her shoulder socket joint and tendons were both tougher and more flexible than normal, so it wasn’t painful. She twisted in an attempt to get loose, and pushed with her kinesis, prying his grip off her arm, but he simply changed his hold, with a beefy arm going around her middle and the hand grabbing her shoulder.

“Ow!” She yelped when his biceps pressed against her bosom painfully.

She heard him snort in derision.

“Let go!” she yelled as she applied the full force of her kinesis to push his fingers away. Nearly a MiJin of force applied to a small point made him grunt but he powered through it. Afterwards, his arm snaked up to her neck and applied pressure there.

“You’ve lost, Verdanian!” His spittle splattered on her ear, making her squick and flinch. And made her even angrier. Her legs were still free.

She flung her leg out, curled it, and then stomped, using her perception to precisely target his crotch.

Crunch!

“Aaaah!”

That made him let go.

She spun around and delivered another punch to his gut, then she rammed the heel of her palm up his chin, then a kick to the side of the knee. She spun around and struck the small of his back, then a stomp to the back of the knee. He was face down on the road, and she stepped on his shoulder blade, grinding down with the heel of her boot.

The other men rushed at her, but she stopped them cold from the simple expedient of the sunblade suddenly materialising in her hand, with the tip a fraction of an inch from the back of Lucian’s head.

For a moment she thought that they would still attack, but the next moment, something else happened.

Vines, roots, leaves, and branches erupted from the ground. They entangled her hands and her waist, then yanked her away from Lucian. The same thing happened around Marron, separating both pugilists. Lucian was suddenly bound by two dozen vines and grasses, while the other men were entangled by the grasses.

“What’s going on here?” a cold voice asked.

When she looked at the source, it was to see an elderly man stomping towards them with a gnarled wooden staff in hand. He wore an open vest that revealed his chiseled physique, and his hair was silvery grey. His face was lined, but his green eyes were still strong. And his ears stuck out from the sides of his head like narrow triangles pierced with half a dozen earrings each.

Chaos-touched?