It only took killing ants for a couple of blocks for Yuriko to realise that she was wasting her time. She didn’t need to kill every last antman. She needed to catch up to the ants that had captured her friends. How long had it taken Heron to get to them? Ten minutes? Maybe half an hour? The city was nearly a league across, but Heron said that they had been carried by a flying ant. Definitely, she wouldn’t find them on the street level.

The antman burst into smithereens as the liquid inside them superheated into steam. Her condensed Anima protected her from the blood spatter as she dashed past the creature. Her reach was at nine paces. Three hundred sixty-two inches by her count. A tenth of that was reserved for her perception aura, which allowed her limited senses to her maximum reach. A hundred was used as condensed armour, while the remaining two hundred plus were used for her kinesis or physical boosting. The entirety of the streets and a good bit of its length were under her purview. And the density of ants was growing at an exponential rate. Somehow, the creatures were able to signal their compatriots from farther away than she could see or sense.

She pushed off against the street and landed on a building’s roof. Her golden glow was brighter than the faux Radiant Sun above, and she also noticed that the mundane Femorants turned slightly sluggish under her light. However, even if she flared to full light, it only seemed to discomfit them.

But what if she released motes of Radiant energy from her body and kept them hovering around her? It was easy enough to accomplish using a strand of consciousness. She kept most of her focus looking around. There were flying ants in the distance, nearly a couple of longstrides ahead. But the uneven heights of the buildings and the cavern floor meant that she could only see the areas near the ceiling. Her gaze wandered over to the tallest buildings near her and she leapt across the sloped rooftops in mighty bounds.

Before she managed to cross a dozen roofs, the ants had already started to swarm. They had little trouble clinging to the vertical surfaces which made her wonder why they didn’t do so before. Anyway, they threw their bodies at her but her shards killed them before they could even come close.

And when a few slipped through the intentional gaps, she allowed them to touch the Radiant motes.

Skiraaaah!

Carapace melted and holes formed in their bodies, but that was really it. Oh, some of them, if they touched too many of the motes, collapsed. The problem with the method was that the Radiant motes were also consumed in the process. It was still more efficient to rely on the sunshards, even if the number of ants exceeded the number of shards by a hundredfold.

Even if it took a second for each shard to kill an ant, she could only kill thirty-six of them at a time. Three seconds to kill a hundred, but she had the sneaking suspicion that more than that came towards her in the same amount of time. Perhaps if she used her Radiant Lance instead?

And maybe bring the ceiling down on them, yeah. So. No Sorcery. She could barely regulate the Radiant Spear’s might, much less try to Free Shape here. Besides, even if she could, it would be too late then.

She scaled the tall building, which was at least five storeys tall and was also located on a hilltop. Clutching at a spire with her Animakinesis, she swept her gaze northeast, towards the Femorant swarm’s centre. The flying dots became visible, and as she focused her Enhanced Sight, she finally saw them. A larger flying ant carrying a bundle underneath. A bundle covered with white threads.

The bundle wasn’t moving.

“Rotting ants!” she growled and leapt away from the building. She spread her Anima to create gliding wings and hoped to the Ancestors she could reach them soon. The carrier ant was nearly past the central pillar, and it was headed towards the place represented by the ragged circle in the crystal display.

Twaaaang!

Threads of ambient Chaos coalesced around her. Red threads. Burning threads.

Her Anima fought off the heat, but it was also a sticky kind of thread, and her speed slowed to a standstill. What in Chaos was this?

The red threads came from the ground, free-flowing in the air. No, it came from the ants. The ones walking in the runescript pattern across the entire city.

Her Anima could barely find enough leverage to push away from the threads, which seemed to grow thicker the farther she was from the ground. She formed an orb of Animus above her and flung them away, moving herself using the counterforce. She landed on the ground, and the resistance faded away.

The ants she found herself surrounded with all turned to her and charged. Many spat burning gobs of fluid from their mandibles or abdomens. Her condensed Anima was tough enough not to be damaged by it though, thankfully. It was the work of moments to clear her space.

Since she couldn’t take to the air, she had little choice but to use the ground. She left a charnel heap behind her as she pushed towards the centre, frantic at the passage of time.

The smaller antmen, the workers, she assumed, since she often spotted them carrying something while headed towards the centre, started to thin out and the bulkier, warrior ants became more prevalent. These ones took a little more effort to kill than the workers, if hitting them with two shards to kill them counted. Well, it doubled the difficulty.

Well, if she couldn’t glide through the air, she could certainly use the rooftops instead. Even if the ants swarmed up here, she could still avoid the circuitous and meandering streets. Every now and then, she jumped up to the highest point and tracked the flying ant. But it was pulling away from her. And another half hour later, she could no longer see it.

Amidst a circle of blood, chitin, and exploded guts, Yuriko stopped to catch her breath. Her Animus reserves were still full, having used little of it during the battle. Her Anima was still robust, undamaged even from the multitudes of strikes it took. Asami and Orrin…how much time did they have left?

She…how could she even find them?

She choked on her helplessness. She didn’t have a tracking technique…

Wait.

Braden. She recalled that the twins were somewhat able to sense where the other was. She could either rush towards the nest, possibly fight through thousands of ants, or she could go look for the other twin and hopefully, he could lead her to the other. If they had time…

Or…

They could already be dead…

She didn’t think so…

Why?

She felt it. Orrin was still alive. Still alive…connected…to her Mien.

Time was of the essence. She sank into a meditative trance while setting her sunshards spinning around her defensively. She pushed herself into the dreamscape and demanded her Mien show her the threads that bound her to other people.

She found herself in a seated meditation pose, hanging within the mists. Golden threads sprang into existence, appearing only because she wanted to see. Several thick threads originated from her core and spread out into the mists. But which one was Orrin’s?

Her touch on the threads caused them to flicker. Radiant energy and her Animus flowed through even without her Will. She pulled away in alarm. The threads flickered between strings and chains, and she felt that if she took hold too long, the transformation would quicken. Touching that first thread let her know who it was connected to.

Out of instinct, she had touched the thickest one, and soon realised it was Gwendith’s. The second thickest she only brushed with her fingertips, and it revealed Heron’s. The next was Desire’s. Those three had the sturdiest threads, ones she felt that she couldn’t break even if she wanted to, simply because her past actions had solidified them.

She brushed other threads hastily. Saki’s. Ryoko. Da’s.

That one was thin and faded, yet still exuded permanence. She was tempted to follow the thread, to find out where he was, but…she could do that later.

She moved on to other threads and finally found the twins. Both were robust still, assuring her of their lives. Braden’s was tinged with black and Orrin’s, red. The colour of their Animus.

What’s this? Asami’s thread?

Why was she entangled too? Yuriko frowned and touched Gwendith’s cousin’s thread. It attenuated with her touch, but she felt a jolt of emotion coming from the other side. Fear? No, not at all. It was actually apathy. An absence of care. Yuriko felt a chill run down her spine. She didn’t think Asami was one to give up so easily, so why was she like that now?

Orrin was the same, she abruptly realised. His mind seemed to be still. Either that or he had fallen unconscious. She couldn’t really differentiate the two feelings.

More importantly, though was that she managed to get a direction. Distance, not so much, but perhaps if worse comes to worst, she and Braden could determine distance by triangulating.

Orrin and Asami still felt as if they were getting farther and farther away. She felt the difference in how thin the threads were growing. Or they were getting weaker. She had a direction already, so she shouldn’t tarry in the dreamscape.

Except when she left the dreamscape, so did the sense of direction. She had subconsciously oriented her body towards them though, and hopeful that should be enough. She faced the jagged circle in the map, and also a bit downwards.

A quick glance at her surroundings showed even more carnage. There was practically a wall of bodies a few paces away from her, and some were even on fire. The acrid stench of the Femorant’s burning flesh made her scrunch her nose.

She leapt over the corpses and onto the next roof. The siege of Femorants hadn’t quite stopped, but with most of the workers around her dead, a gap within their runescript formation appeared. Chaos Sight showed her that the reddish threads were absent within a hundred paces of her, so she launched herself across the rooftops and landed after crossing half a dozen blocks.

The Femorants down here were back on the street level, but as soon as they detected her light, they swarmed up the walls again. Sunshards slaughtered them where they stood since she could reach them even from five storeys up. Fri’Avgi was in her hand, while she already sheathed her Arclight Sword. She needed the artefact to increase her sunshard limit. Hmmm, or was this her limit?

She formed another dozen and found that she could easily control them too. A fifth set of twelve seemed to be her limit though, as she felt a fraying in her connection with them. Sixty shards were far more efficient than thirty-six, so she swept away the ants as she crossed the streets and districts. The endless tides didn’t ebb, and more and more of the critters came out of the buildings, and underneath the streets.

There had been more than was readily apparent. She worried that she’d eventually meet a Femorant warrior that was as strong as a Knight-Captain, however, as that would stop her advance cold. But that didn’t happen.

The combination of her speed and the range of her sunshards was more than enough to counter their numbers or even their formation. At the edges, anyway.

As she got closer to the shelter, she increasingly felt as if the very air around her was thicker. First, as if she was wading through knee-high water, then waist-high, and eventually, as if she were trying to walk across the bottom of a lake.

And finally, as she climbed a ridge, it was as if the world around her were mud. Her flared Anima was the only thing allowing her to move, as well as her continued slaughter. But something else changed once she got on top of the ridge, which she supposed was the edge of the jagged circle. All of the buildings ended there, and the earth formed a crater of sorts.

But just a couple of paces beyond the crest was a pale barrier that was barely visible. And beyond it was…

Chaos.