After nearly a week of travelling and training, Yuriko noticed that Heron’s Anima reach had exceeded the First Growth stage. Ten inches from his skin. The azure light was quite catchy, although if seen during the day, was sometimes hard to see. It was actually the colour of the clear skies during the day, and if he stood skylined, his expanded Anima blended in completely.

Unlike Gwendith’s Anima, Heron was able to compress it and use it as armour. Going further, he was able to coat his weapon with it, or his shield, and it had the same effect. His condensed aura was as tough as hers, if matched with the same volume and the same compression technique. Interesting.

Unlike Gwendith and herself though, Heron couldn’t use Animakinesis at all. He’d tried so hard the past few days, spending hours in a meditative pose, with a couple of pebbles on his lap. For the life of him, he couldn’t manipulate, nudge, or even crush the pebbles. They bounced off his Anima when he condensed it, but that seemed to be the extent of his Anima manipulation abilities.

Gwendith was able to use Animakinesis but was unable to condense armour. Heron was exactly the opposite. While Yuriko could do both equally well. At the moment, she was much more agile with using Animakinesis than Gwendith and, of course, her condensed aura was tougher than Heron, but she could attribute that as a result of her long practice. If they trained up, they may match, or even surpass her ability. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Balance is key, Damien said.

‘Yeah! If you’re equally good at everything, you can easily exploit your enemies’ weaknesses!’ Fri’Avgi echoed.

“Huh,” Yuriko huffed. She still wasn’t convinced. But anything other than being completely in harmony with her body and Anima felt off to her, so she would maintain her current path.

A week of travelling while their supplies dwindled. Water was never a problem, but her people resorted to hunting and eating whatever they could find in the desert. One evening, dinner was grilled scorpions, lizards, and snakes. They were surprisingly good with a bit of salt. She missed having bread though, even the super sweet Wayfarer’s bread had to be rationed. Most of them were fed to the horses, too.

Sometimes, she wondered if the caravan was better off pulling the wagons themselves. The horses would have to be butchered or released in that case. The former was more likely, and she caught some of the beastkin salivating when they stared at the animals. They were the most efficient hunters too, able to pinpoint a tasty snake or lizard even if the critter hid inside a crevice.

Just like the first oasis they stopped at, the one they finally arrived in was deserted. It was still within the rocky wasteland rather than the sandy dunes, and it was right in the middle of a ravine. The water came from cracks on the wall and pooled into a depression that was about four paces wide. It wasn’t that deep, but the walls surrounding it wasn’t stone, but hard earth. Clay, if she identified it correctly, which meant that there were a few plants growing around it. Date trees, and some kind of edible weeds.

It was enough for Sam Milton and his fellow farmers to use their Animus techniques to grow more food. The grass, or grains, were a welcome relief as that meant that they could feed those to the beasts of burden rather than their bread.

“Give us a couple of weeks and we’ll have enough food to sustain us,” Sam said confidently.

“We can’t,” Yuriko answered bluntly. “I need to head east soon. Uhm…you’re welcome to stay here if you prefer…”

“Not at all,” Sam interjected and the other three nodded with him. “We will follow you, as we’ve sworn.”

There were a few huts scattered around the oasis from the previous occupants. There were leftover belongings, too, but they were covered in dust. The occupants had long evacuated or been kidnapped.

A gruesome fate. Her people felt that keenly, too. But they would stay here for the meantime. She and select others would range towards Uaran City’s territory and raid the logistics supply dump, and hopefully come back with enough rations to last the group for the rest of the year and back.

A person could consume a piece of Wayfarer’s Bread twice a day and be sated, while a single ration bar was enough for most people. Barely, however. With Gwendith and Heron gorging themselves to build up their physiques, they’d need five to ten pieces each. The horse could eat the same amount as Heron per day and there were a dozen horses. There were eighty five of the Federation, nine of them from the Empire, and thirteen beastkin, for a grand total of…

“How many are we?” Yuriko muttered. “And how much Wayfarer’s Bread do we need per week?”

“Two thousand four hundred fifty pieces a week,” Braden answered near instantly. “That’s twenty four and a half Jin of bread. We need one thousand two hundred seventy four Jin for a year’s supply, but really, we only need a Season’s worth to be safe. Three hundred eighteen and a half Jin of bread.”

“Ah. That’s not so bad,” Yuriko muttered. She could carry that weight easily.

Like a ration bar, a piece of Wayfarer’s Bread was small and compact. It was the length of her finger and about as wide as three of them put together. Two inches by two and a half. It was also about a fifth of an inch thick. Er…she might be able to carry them but she’d need several bags to get enough leverage. Or she could use her Animakinesis. Yeah.

The entire Imperial team would go with her, as well as Kassy and Roland. They all insisted, but Yuriko was somewhat worried about those who’d be left behind. She considered bringing some of the guards with her, but Asami convinced her otherwise.

“We’re going on a raid, not a siege. Or even a pitched battle. We need speed more than anything else. Kassy and Roland would serve as excellent scouts since Miss Saki isn’t here,” Asami argued, and after some thought Yuriko agreed.

It took a day to run down south, through ravines, canyons, and small hills. But by dawn the next day, they were well within Uaran territory. Now all they had to do was sneak into one of the supply points and make off with a MiJin of bread.

_____________

They had miscalculated. Yuriko grumbled under her breath as she stared at the army forward camp. It was only a few leagues south of the desert, and was on the highway that connected the city states together. It wasn’t heavily guarded as they expected, but was manned mostly by administrative staff and warriors on the way to the battlefront. It also wasn’t a stockpile of supplies that they expected.

Instead, if she counted it right, the commissary didn’t even have enough food to last their meagre staff a week. They were resupplied every Firstday, and since today was already Sixthday, even that bounty was slim. If they raided this bunch, the most they’d get was a couple of KiJin worth of Wayfarer’s bread. Barely enough for her group to last a day.

“If it’s like this here, I think it's safe to say that all of the forward camps would be the same,” Orrin said. “They would only stockpile their food near the battlefront rather than spread out here.”

“Then what are our choices?” Yuriko asked.

The twins exchanged glances then turned to Sheamus. The older man shrugged and said, “I was never in the army. I’ve been an adventurer all my life.”

“Right,” Heron muttered. “I would think that the supplies would come from the city instead. But that would make raiding harder.”

“Do we even have to steal it?” Braden suddenly asked. “Why don’t we just buy the food in the city and be done with it.”

“Wouldn’t that just draw more attention?” Asami frowned. “And I would think their government would limit access to that much army supply.”

“We could either scout out the other camps or we could head to the city and be certain to come back with something,” Braden pointed out. “Also, how much would it cost to buy that much bread in the first place?”

He started muttering under his breath though he was perfectly audible to Yuriko, and by the expression on her face, to Asami also.

“It’s a Shekel a piece, and we need one thousand plus Jin of bread. Each Jin is about a hundred pieces, so a hundred Shekels per Jin? A hundred thousand plus Shekels? Do we even have that much?” He looked at her, “How many coins do we have?”

Yuriko shrugged. “I’ve less than ten thousand Shekels left.”

“Besides,” Orrin interrupted, “a transaction of that size will stand out. We either buy piecemeal, liberate it, or bargain with the farmers for the grain and bake the bread ourselves…”

Gwendith poked Orrin’s side.“Do you even know how to bake bread?”

“Of course, I do!” Orrin grumbled while he rubbed his side.

“And you know the recipe for Wayfarer’s Bread?” Gwendith persisted.

“Er…no.”

“Then we have to get the finished product,” she huffed. “If only we could make ration bars instead. It would be so much simpler.”

“How are they made anyway?” Yuriko asked curiously.

“Dunno,” Gwendith shook her head, “probably with an artefact or relic. All ration bars come from the city and are traded for raw goods.”

Huh. That was right, Yuriko recalled. Every Season of Fire, after the harvest festival, hundreds of MiJin of wheat and other produce were transported to Rumiga City. Ration bars could only be purchased from the Watchtower, the town hall, or the temple. They were much cheaper than Wayfarer’s Bread though.

The ten of them moved away from the forward camp and walked towards the highway to Uaran. Yuriko pulled her hood over her head, and made sure her golden hair was kept out of sight. The problem of supply gnawed at her thoughts and dozens of options kept swimming in her mind. Steal it? Attack their warehouses? Buy it? With whose coin? There wasn’t enough left to buy, and as Orrin said, they were likely to draw more attention that way. A thousand plus Jin of bread wasn’t easy to buy in one go, and even harder to transport without notice. Each of them could easily carry a hundred Jin each, she could probably carry all of it herself with her kinesis, and from how strong Heron was now, he could probably do the same. But it all boiled down to how they were going to get it in the first place.

They couldn’t run all the way now as there were other travellers on the road. She gazed out onto the fields. Terrain around Uaran City was full of rolling hills and the farmers had built terraces along the sides. What kind of grain were they cultivating anyway? It certainly wasn’t wheat?

She could see farmers plowing the fields, and some were already sowing the seeds. Oddly enough, she saw several plots filled with bamboo shoots. There were several plots of that, with progressively shorter shoots until the last one was bare.

She also saw several orchards with large oval fruits hanging from the branches. The fruits were brown and grew in clumps. They weren’t being harvested yet, but the farmers were careful to inspect each one. Strangely enough, those orchards were bordered by tall fences and there were guard towers in the perimeter.

It took them a couple of more days before they reached the vicinity of Uaran City. They spent the night in a traveller’s inn, and had been forced to sleep in the common room since everything else was full.

The breeze smelled odd, and it took Yuriko a moment to realise that what she was smelling was salt water. The lullaby of the crashing waves soon covered the air, and the city looked like a perfectly idyllic paradise.