Lucian’s group had roughly the same numbers as Yuriko’s, so there were twenty-one of them travelling down the narrow, debris-filled mess. But, every now and then, members of the Federation expedition joined them. Haggard and wounded, sometimes even half dead and with missing limbs, they came towards them as though seeing an oasis in the desert while dying of thirst. But the sight of Yuriko’s glowing Anima made them hesitate, as though wondering if they were a mirage instead.

Lucian beckoned them over, shouting for them to hurry. At the same time, Yuriko and the others walked several paces ahead, clearing the path by destroying the skellies.

They’d slowed down enough that Yuriko noticed how the skellies degraded and faded to dust, which somewhat explained why they weren’t drowning in corpses by now, at least considering what Lucian said.

“We’ve been fighting them for days,” the muscle-bound man said while taking a breather next to her. Yuriko’s sunshards were far more efficient in reaping the skellies as she didn’t even have to engage them in melee. She wanted to, however, considering that the things were unexpectedly skilled with the blade. Well, some of them anyway. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, though honestly, any port in a storm, eh?”

Yuriko snorted and gave him a side-eye. He reared back, holding his hands out placatingly.

“Woah, woah! You’re as feisty as ever. We’ve had our differences a few months ago, but…” His unexpected jovial expression soured and lines formed across his forehead, “Things are happening that I didn’t expect. Treachery…foolishness and greed.”

“You didn’t know?”

“That a Chaos cult had infiltrated the upper echelons of the Federation? No, of course not,” he growled. “I mean, the Ivalans had always been rabid against your city in the northeast, but the rest of us simply wish to live according to our wishes. I would have thought King Garamus wouldn’t fall in line like that, considering how he prefers the martial way, but those cretins must have wormed into his graces.” He spat to the side and Yuriko flinched since she felt it through her perception aura, which was currently heightened in sensitivity. She thinned it back down to only register movement and unusual things.

“You didn’t know,” Yuriko repeated, “about how your leaders are sacrificing your disenfranchised and your commons to the Chaos Courts to create Chaos lords?”

It wasn’t only Lucian who stiffened, but everyone from the Federation expedition force who was within earshot.

“Lies!” one of the others shouted, and his expression turned livid. “How could they even do that? She lies!”

“Calm down, Ralph,” another man said. “My farmer cousins disappeared a few weeks ago when I went home. I thought they evacuated but when I couldn’t find them in Garamus…” the man muttered.

“No, that can’t be right!” Ralph said as he shook his head and glared at Yuriko’s back. His face twisted in hatred, but he didn’t do anything else, especially when she didn’t even turn to acknowledge his words.

“I’ve rescued a caravan of prisoners whose only crime was being in the wrong time and place. One of Orrin’s friends had been picked up and transported after joining a protest in Haveena.” Yuriko said firmly as she met Lucian’s gaze. He looked troubled, but not especially surprised.

“I didn’t think the king would stoop so low,” he admitted. “But greed and fear do odd things to people. I…I know, I’ve been guilty of such before.”

Yuriko raised an eyebrow. Did that mean he saw something to change his mind?

“What happened to you?”

He’d been much cheekier and more hostile during their encounter in Synkrasia, so much so that she couldn’t quite reconcile that he was who he said he was. He looked the same, of course, which was the reason she wasn’t doubting her memories now.

He glanced at her for a moment then muttered, “Many things. Including touching upon an Ennoia.”

“Oh. Congratulations.”

“Yes, well, the touch revealed to me how…foolish and dishonourable I had been, in my actions and thoughts, back in Synkrasia. It also revealed how much of a superior fighter you are compared to myself…and,” he shrugged, “then that slimy weasel joined the expedition, and then…” He growled, “He abandoned the expedition when these…things…started appearing, taking with him many of the guards and warriors. That rotter Salter Blume.” He spat to the side again. “After everything he said, he did this? Burn him to ashes and drop them in a midden heap!”

Yuriko startled at the vile oath, then shook her head and chuckled uncomfortably. Words like that would have Da scrubbing her mouth if she so much as uttered them.

“I see,” she said noncommitally.

“I don’t even know what his goals were here,” Lucian continued, “although he said he wanted to get to Synkrasia to delve for more treasures, he barely even looked in this city when we managed here.”

“Oh. I saw your expedition arrive in the Valley. I assume the path underneath the obsidian tower was blocked, too?” Yuriko asked.

“Ah, you saw us? You were in that accursed forest?” Lucian chuckled sourly. “If only it weren’t so difficult to bring a large party here. We would have brought more. Those Crystal Wasps grew much more agitated than we expected and we lost cargo and several good men and women to their attacks.”

Lucian continued talking, though Yuriko tuned him out. His voice had a droning quality that made her attention wander, so she only devoted a single strand of consciousness to parse through his words, while she kept the rest on her sunshards and on killing the skellies.

When their group had reached almost fifty strong, the noise they made, even inadvertently, was loud enough that it drew the wandering skellies like flies to honey. It was coming to a point wherein it took her several seconds to wipe out an incoming group. Eventually, the numbers petered out, much to her relief, and they closed in on the city’s perimeter wall. They had missed the city entrance tunnel though, mostly because the roads were impossible to follow at this point. Still, Yuriko knew they could scale up the wall and use them as an easy path outside.

Or they could just climb through the gap right in front of them. The wall a hundred paces or so ahead had collapsed into a heap and provided a convenient ramp over the ruins.

It looked suspiciously clear, too. Considering that across the wall would be a rather deep moat, Yuriko debated with herself whether it would be better to head towards the gate tunnel rather than risk a crossing here. However, wasn’t that a tunnel leading away from the city just across the wall?

She hurried to the wall, accompanied by her Imperial group. The other two men carried Faeril and the other Hollower, and Faline had regained consciousness and was able to walk. They trailed behind her and eyed the Federation group warily.

Before she could climb up the ramp, dozens of skellies registered against her perception aura. They were clinging to the walls and were climbing up from the moat. She could hear the swift flow of water underneath it.

“Skellies!” She yelled in warning as she pulled back. Sunshards struck them and they fell like leaves.

Splash! Sploosh!

Many fell back into the moat, which was part of an underground river, apparently. But even as she struck, more of the things crawled out of the depths. Their eyes glowed malevolently as they stared at her Radiant light, and she felt a chill run down her spine.

“Attack!” Lucian yelled at his men who hesitated for a rather long moment before they followed behind him. He slammed into an armoured skelly, crushed its helm and threw it against a wall. Orrin’s red lightning bolts did little to directly harm the skellies but he pushed them off balance with perfect timing for another ally to strike. Together with the scout legionnaires, he managed to down half a dozen in the next five minutes.

Impressive work considering he didn’t have the chance to practice with the others. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but his antennae twitched and pointed expressively, which might have helped to clue in Seran and the others. Asami’s third Facet technique, Wind Cutter, was ineffective at destroying the skellies. Even if the tiny wind-borne blades slipped past the armour, the creatures just didn’t have vulnerable flesh to cut, or blood to bleed out. It did fracture their bones and scoured away the Animus that held the bones and their core together, but not quickly enough to prevent it from regenerating.

Still, her cutters slowed the skellies down, too, and made their leg bones fragile enough that when Orrin pushed at the right angle, they’d snap.

The Federation expedition members were fighting with a desperate edge. Most of them were wounded and in the process of healing, which also meant that their Animus reserves weren’t at their peak. They also lost weapons and equipment to the quake, so many were fighting by using spirit-bound gear that wasn’t meant for that purpose. Not all of them were warriors, Yuriko realised. Most were logistics staff, and not a few were researchers like that professor from Ekelus she met in Sorren’s Hollow. That lot was practically wasting their Animus by blasting them out at the skellies, without any kind of structure to enhance efficiency and efficacy. Indeed, they were panting with exhaustion and on the verge of passing out within the first five minutes of the fight.

But, being so close to where the skellies were coming from, even Yuriko couldn’t kill… destroy them all before they got reinforced.

“Incoming from the back, left and right,” Asami’s Wind Whisper informed Yuriko.

“Swarm fodder!” Yuriko cursed. They couldn’t afford to be surrounded. Pushing ahead seemed foolish, so she asked Seran, “Which direction is the gate?”

“There!” Seran pointed towards the right, and also where the skellies’ reinforcements were the heaviest. Still, moving there would bring them away from the source.

“Lucian, move!” Yuriko yelled as she broke towards the gate. Her flurry of sunshards reaped the skellies and tore them apart as she focused her attacks towards where she was heading. But that also meant that the pressure she was exerting towards the wall breach disappeared and the skellies poured right in.

“Following!” Lucian yelled back, but he actually stood his ground and mauled the incoming skellies with his fists. Gleaming Animus covered his hands, increasing the impact of his blows. In fact, each punch crumpled a skelly’s breastplate, collapsing it all the way to its spine and crushing its ribs in the process. For some reason, that wasn’t enough to destroy them outright, but it sort of crippled their movement as Yuriko sensed that their Animus flows slowed down.

He didn’t move from his position until most of the expedition members pass by. Since he was already out of Yuriko’s perception aura by then, she had to verify his movements by looking back. Not that it hampered her fight, she realised. Her perception aura allowed her a full range of detection, which was enough to allow her to target with the sunshards. Their movements might not be as precise, but perhaps a bit more practice and training should answer that need.

It took the better part of an hour to reach the gate tunnel, and in the process, even more expeditionists were wounded, with a couple killed when a skelly attacked from cover and outside of Yuriko’s perception. She was hesitant to walk backwards to keep watch over the group since some of the skellies actually had a ranged attack. Did they fling sharpened bone fragments, or perhaps finger bones? Either way, the projectiles fractured into smaller bits when they struck her protections, and there was one victim who got pierced. The shattering fragments made mincemeat out of her insides and only the fact that it struck her guts allowed her to survive long enough to recover with healing talismans.

The gate tunnel had collapsed. Thankfully, so did most of the wall around it such that they could simply climb over it and access the bridge to the tunnel. That one was also crawling with skellies, but with the narrow bridge, it was actually easier to defend against them.

The bridge was suspended over the moat, so the skellies could only access through the ends. And, now that she had a better look, there were no skellies in the tunnel. She let the others cross first, holding the line while slaughtering every single skelly that came close. While she did so, she looked at the ruined city, her vantage point and the fact that the quake had collapsed many of the buildings allowed her to see quite far.

And what she saw were the Femorants amassing in the centre, and already beginning their giant runescript formation.