“I got careless,” Krystal said ruefully while she held a bloodied hand on her side.

Yuriko found her friend next to the encampment’s assembly field, next to the other wounded. And dead.

Yuriko’s perception aura examined Krystal’s injury. Aside from a stab to her right hip that skipped along the hip bone, the other girl also had several bruises down her right arm and side. Her face was pale and she was shivering from the cold rain. Other than that, she was healthy.

“What happened?” Yuriko asked, heart pounding with dread. Even if her preliminary observation told her that Krystal’s wounds weren’t that serious, she didn’t study how the human body worked beyond the few classes in Natural Sciences.

“Got careless, I said.” Krystal winced. “Some rotter blindsided me after busting Heron’s shield guard. Managed to stab ‘em in the eye, but he knocked me over. I’m fine. Nothing a bit of Recovery and a trip to the healers won’t fix.”

“Yes. Then let’s get you to the healers,” Mikel grunted. He had a couple of scratches too, and his uniform was burnt, of all things. Did he lose control of his own flames? She didn’t ask though.

Instead, Yuriko’s gaze returned to the row of bodies. Their faces were covered with their coats, to keep the rain off, but that meant she couldn’t examine if any of her friends were there, unless she came closer.

“We’re fine. All alive,” Krystal insisted as she grabbed Yuriko’s wrist.

“Oh. Good…good.” Yuriko muttered, then sighed. “Let’s go back to the town.”

Just as she was about to offer to carry her friend, Finan yelled though the flower.

“Alert! Enemy reinforcements. To the east. They’ll hit us in five minutes.”

Yuriko stiffened then growled. “There’s more of them.”

“Fallen Sun!” Mikel and Krystal swore.

“Oi! Heron!” Mikel yelled as he waved down the side. Yuriko's gaze followed and she found him carrying someone towards the triage area. A healer attendant was making the roads, but as far as Yuriko could tell, the man was simply bandaging wounds and splinting breaks.

“Captain Andreas, orient Plasma Carronades to the east, target incoming hostiles. Blast when ready. Knight Jake, prepare to intercept. Better to move back to Faron’s Crossing where the walls still stand. Swordmaster Kinohara, don’t disengage! Keep them contained while we take care of…” Finan’s voice faded away when he cut the connection to Yuriko’s flower communicator.

It looked like he had everything well in hand, but Yuriko wasn’t going to be complacent. The wounded and the dead were arrayed within the assembly point. The Federation had taken as much of their wounded with them, but Yuriko could see a few lumps on the ground in Federation colours shifting about. She couldn’t just leave them right? Then again, the ones coming by were their own allies, and they could get the medical care they needed from there. Of course, if the Empire beat them back, then they would be left neglected until they expired or the town mustered up enough energy to care.

Still, worry about her own, for now.

Krystal and Mikel hobbled towards the town, following the crowd. Those who couldn’t walk were either thrown over someone’s shoulder or dragged on makeshift skids. She lifted a dozen with her kinesis then ran ahead. Five minutes. She could run to town and back twice in that time, but realistically, just there and back.

Her charges were cocooned by her Anima and looked distinctly green around the ears and she ran as fast as she could. She jumped over the walls, the gate being a bit towards the left and would have taken her extra time to get to. She released them near the barracks and called for the reservists to bring them to the centre. Then, she was back towards the encampment.

To her left, she could see gouts of blue plasma slamming into an enemy formation, but the blasts were blocked or intercepted. She actually saw an arrow of green flame intercepting a Plasma Carronade’s bolt. The arrow sunk into the larger orb and burst it from within.

Twoom! Whoosh! Thud!

The solid shells that came from the tubular structures weren’t something a mere Animus-conjured arrow could intercept though. A fountain of earth, stone, blood, gore, and metal erupted from the impact zone. But the Chaos Ship could shoot those in close succession, it seemed.

By the time Yuriko landed on the muddy ground, she’d lost sight of the army, but she estimated she saw around five hundred Kadracki Rangers on their land raptors. Their mounts' taloned feet sank into the mud and clumps of it flew as they ran. That slowed them down somewhat, but they were still fast.

She could see that the retreating militia would be intercepted out in the open if nothing changed so she altered her trajectory to intercept the Kadracki before they could engage.

Sunshards spun around her as she called Fri’Avgi to hand. With a roar, she launched herself off the mud, using her kinesis to steady her footing, and spread out her wings to let her glide. Creating footholds in the air strained her Anima too much, but the last time she tried something like that was back when her reach was only five paces. Now that it was eight, her kinesis and Anima should be stronger and hopefully resilient enough to support her. Besides, fighting with a height disadvantage wasn’t pleasant at all.

The Kadracki spotted her easily enough even as her Mien reached out to terrorize them. She tried to focus it on the mounts, hoping to startle them into bucking their riders, but even though the land raptors slowed, they didn’t act wildly. Then again, the harnesses and the saddles afforded the rangers more control, or they bonded with the creatures, too.

A group of them broke away from the main force and galloped towards her. Yuriko slowed to set herself, raising both Fri’Avgi and her Arclight blade high. But fifty paces from her, they split on either side of her and began shooting at her with crossbows, horsebows, and smaller steam hand cannons.

Frowning in annoyance, Yuriko let the projectiles strike her condensed Anima while she lunged at the southern group. She flung her sunshards, then grasped a ball bearing and shot it out as fast as possible, which caused it to shatter as the air disintegrated it. The shockwave and the loud bang succeeded in startling the land raptors and the riders. Actually, half of them toppled over, blood dripping out of their noses and ears, effectively bringing them out of the fight. She duplicated the shockwave with another ball bearing, but this time, the Kadracki focused protective Animus over their ears and negated it.

That still gave her time to close in. She bypassed the fallen, shot shards at the ones behind them, and then rushed towards the main group.

The Implacable Jade continued blasting superheated plasma and solid shells at that group, but the Adept or Master protecting them negated much of the siege-level attacks.

Another group of riders headed straight at her and encircled her. Flashes of light reflected off their sabres as they tried to put Yuriko down, but she danced between the blows and countered with quick and vicious stabs of her own. With Fri’Avgi in hand, she bisected a land raptor along with its rider before she spun around and did the same to another that was trying to stab her in the back.

Blood clung to her condensed Anima and dripped down into the mud. The brown earth had turned reddish as more and more life spilt on it. She slaughtered a dozen rangers before they pulled back, but only to unleash a volley of crossbow bolts. The projectiles were laden with Animus, far more than what was usual, and it corroded into her Anima, melting nearly a couple of inches worth.

Yuriko winced. She’d take days to gather enough distilled Chaos to repair that properly!

She continued to fend them off and then devoted a bit of her attention to channelling Radiant energy and ambient Chaos into her Radiant Lance. The sight of the materialising spell sent the rangers into a panic, and another squad harried her.

Lips set in a grim line, Yuriko let them strike her condensed Anima, and let them know how futile it was for the weak to challenge her. Her Mien pulsed, and for the first time, the brave warriors were affected. But it wasn’t pure terror this time.

Somehow, a bit of her usual Charm had made its way to the surface and the conflicting feelings of both terror and lust painted the Kadracki’s faces.

“Tsk.”

Yuriko struggled to rein in her Mien, but doing so diverted too much attention from her Implement, which started to destabilise and wobble. Left with little choice, she let it be. They ran away no matter what, anyway.

A minute later, the Radiant Lance was ready and she leapt straight up. She managed a dozen paces which gave her a good enough vantage point to launch the lance at the dense grouping that was funneling to the old encampment.

Wheeeeee! Whomf! Booom!

The lance detonated at the point she wanted it to, and an expanding orb of Radiant light covered nearly twenty paces across. When the light faded away, the mud had turned into parched earth, and nothing but an ash silhouette was left of the Kadracki and their land raptors.

When she landed back on the ground, she felt a bit lightheaded, which caused her to stagger. Which in turn, signalled to her assailants that now was the best time to attack. Since none of their strikes penetrated her shield, they must have decided to try neutralising her by dogpiling on her. As the land raptors careened to her side, the riders all leapt off their saddles and attempted to land on top of her.

Surprised at their self-destructive behaviour, and her burgeoning headache, Yuriko froze for an instant, which was enough for the first one to land over her. She stood stock still, her condensed Anima prevented the man from actually touching her body. She was just about to stab the guy with her Arclight blade, but another body landed on her opposite side. The third one, she managed to avoid by jumping directly away, but a fourth was already there. She landed on Yuriko’s back and attempted a grapple.

Shocked and annoyed, Yuriko flared her condensed Anima to push them away, but that was the wrong move. Helpless, she saw more coming over to pile on. Gritting her teeth, she braced herself and pushed against them, keeping to her feet while more and more weight pressed down.

Then, she commanded her sunshards to perforate the rotters. Blood and the stench of burning flesh filled her nostrils and Yuriko swung around in an attempt to throw them off. She saw more and more from around her perception field, and there was already an even dozen rangers in the pile.

“Get off me!” she yelled and flung shards of Radiant light from her skin.

It worked and killed them, but only some. The press of their bodies kept the dead ones from slipping off. She could feel the strain now, but it was far from making her despair. If they kept at this, then she would be in the midst of a burial mound. But she would make sure she was the only one alive!

Sunshards, Radiant beams, Arclight crescents, punches, and kicks. She didn’t know how long it took, but in the end, she did wind up in the midst of a pile of corpses.

“Yuri! Where are you?”

“Under here,” she muttered as she pushed the bodies off her. She glanced around and saw that the main Kadracki force had already begun to retreat. What had they been after?

“Finan?”

“Are you safe?”

“Of course. What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m glad you’re safe. The riders have merged with the remnants of their forces here and are retreating to their other forts. Take a breather. We’ll attack them in a couple of hours.”

“What of the wounded?”

“See for yourself.” Yuriko spotted Finan walking over the hill, and with him were the wounded militia and reservists. Smoke and flames rose from the camp and many of them were stained with soot.

She quickly spotted her friends and heaved a sigh of relief. At least one camp was gone, and they were one step closer to victory.