“You! Ancient. Aid me!”

Yuriko heard the voice, but only in her head. It was accompanied by a powerful urge to obey, one that her Anima instinctively rejected. She felt the voice fade, but the compulsion continued to push at her mind, growing stronger by the second. She could see the Avos struggling to escape, to retaliate, but its wounded form was too battered to do more than huddle.

Her eyes traced Zarek’s neck down to a strange dome-like body that was several stories tall. The last time she saw the Avos, she’d only seen its head and neck, which were sunk into the cavern wall at the time. Now, the body looked like it was made out of jagged stone, but was constantly being bombarded by the Primordial Spawn’s attack.s Even as she watched, a blazing beam that somehow conveyed kinetic force, not just fire, blasted a crater on the shell near the neck. Fragments of rock-shell fell towards the ground and Avos Zarek shuddered and roared.

Yuriko, still in the midst of fighting off the compulsion to obey, wondered what happened to the huge stonetoise. What attacked it, and what was powerful enough to do so? The only one that she figured had the power and the motive was the Chaos Duke. Which also meant that she couldn’t allow the arrogant Avos to succumb even if she was more than annoyed at the mental attack.

She wasn’t the only one affected either. Her companions weren’t even able to resist. They were moving towards the skellies, even Orrin and Asami who weren’t the best at melee combat. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the big skelly getting a hold of himself. He bowed towards the floating tentacled sphere, making clear his allegiance, before turning towards her and the others.

The big skelly had no skin or muscles on his face, but there was a layer of protective Animus, and she imagined that the movement across his bony face was one of glee. He started towards one of the explorers, but before he could attack, Lucian stepped in, fists glowing with Animus.

Yuriko wanted to put the big skelly down, but the mental strain of ignoring Zarek’s compulsion was too much! Her gaze was inevitably drawn to the two’s battle, and she took a step in their direction.

Zarek wasn’t moving more than its neck and head. Wasn’t it a stonetoise? Where were its legs? Yuriko couldn’t see them. In fact, the Avos looked more like a weird snail than a reptile at the moment. The tentacled sphere continued to blast the Avos, and Zarek finally decided that it was time to fight back. The gargantuan head pulled towards the shell, almost disappearing into it, before snapping out so fast that the air shook with the thunder of its passing. The huge beaked mouth slammed into the tentacled thing, but a thin layer of Animus prevented Zarek from making contact. The kinetic force still transferred to the sphere, and it bounced towards the ceiling and rebounded off.

The mental strain weakened and Yuriko struggled to push the rest of it off. She felt her Mien rebel at the touch, and she instinctively knew that it would fight against anything that wasn’t also from its own lineage.

Still, she felt the threads her Mien used to connect her to her friends. She felt the vague reflection of their own struggle, and at that, anger burned through the last vestiges of the mental domination. No one else can touch their Animas as she could!

…wait, else?

A pulse ran down the threads, all of the threads around her. There were more than she expected, but she had to push those aside. The big skelly and Lucian clashed, and the effects of their battle spread out amongst the explorers. More of the smaller skellies charged around the rubble, around corners and the explorers, even those who weren’t combatants, crashed against them.

Nearly a dozen were immediately cut down. Another dozen pulled those back and were wounded in turn. And by the third second, Yuriko screamed at Fri’Avgi to help. The artefact spirit belatedly sent the sunshards, while Yuriko stared back at the Avos and the tentacled sphere.

After the spawn rebounded from the ceiling, it fought back with renewed vengeance. Thicker and more intense beams flashed from the tips of its tentacles and eye stalks, and Zarek rocked back and forth, allowing the beams to strike its shell but not its head or neck. But the spawn targeted the base of the stonetoise’s neck, exactly where it couldn’t dodge well. In response, Zarek pulled the stones around and used them as shields.

Yuriko held out her hand and activated her Radiant Lance implement. The only thing that hurt that floaty thing back in during the True Refraction was her spell. Well, mostly because none of her other attacks could reach it.

From her right hand, the immaterial form of the Implement appeared, along with the varied runescript lines running up and down the haft and the spearhead. Yuriko's breathing took on the pattern for Radiant conversion, allowing the ambient Chaos she inhaled to convert to Radiant energy within her body before she exhaled it. Her Ennoia resonated with the ambient Radiance and she directed into her Implement and began her Sorcerous Working. The Implement drew in ambient Chaos as well, and the runescript lines served as the converted. It normally took a minute of focus to charge up the Implement, but Yuriko felt that as long as she kept to the breathing pattern, she could do other things while it charged up. To a point, anyway, such as defending herself from the suddenly berserk skellies that threw themselves at her.

She held her right hand still, while her left wielded Fri’Avgi. The artefact spirit continued to use the sunshards under her control to defend the explorers and her friends. Orrin and Asami looked like they’d woken up from Zarek’s unruly influence and both looked scared stiff. Orrin’s antennae were standing straight up and quivering.

“Argh!” Lucian flew backwards, his body bent around his middle.

He landed a few paces from where she stood, and somehow managed to use his momentum to roll over his shoulder and got his feet under him. His hands clutched at his stomach which had a chunk cut out of it. Yuriko noted that it was only the skin, but whatever the big skelly did, his abdominal muscles were exposed and slowly crumbled to dust. She noticed the grey motes of decay clinging to the edges of his wounds, and they were slowly penetrating into his body.

Lucian groaned, and motes of a different hue, still greyish, but closer to brown, seeped out of his body and melded with the grey-decay. But it took several brown motes to negate a single grey, and his wound was worsening.

The big skelly had his fiery eyes trained on her, and he rushed past Lucian’s position. Unlike before, he made no attempt to go for the other explorers and headed straight at her. That was fine.

With a savage grin, Yuriko swung Fri’Avgi at him and at the apex of her swing, released an arclight filled with Radiant energy. The projectile careened towards the big skelly, who swung his halberd at it, edge glowing with grey light. The arclight and the halberd’s edge struck, and with a blinding flash of light and a concussive force, explosively negated each other.

“Ack!”

“What the–?!”

“Eek!”

Yuriko dug her heels into the ground but she still skidded back by a couple of paces. The big skelly got the worst of the blast, being nearer the impact point as well as his size catching more of the shockwave. All the while, she kept her breathing pattern even, and the Sorcerous Implement continued to channel Radiant energy, Animus, and ambient Chaos into the spell.

“Stop her!”

The words were shrieked at the big skelly and came from the tentacled sphere. Yuriko glared back at the creature, finding it glaring back at her, using eyes at the tip of its tentacles. Eyes that could fire…beams…?

Yuriko dodged barely out of the way of a fiery line that penetrated through her perceptive aura and left a burning afterimage. She felt her Anima stinging, and she hissed in pain and anger. She felt another beam enter her aura, and it was too fast to react to. Her condensed aura and her Animus Armour took the blow on her shoulder, negating most of the damage, but she could still feel the heat.

While she was distracted, the big skelly entered her perception range again, keeping low on the ground with his weapon laid flat. The next moment, he leapt over a wall, gave out a wordless roar, and ate a dozen sunshards to the helm as Fri’Avgi counter the attack before it got too near. Yuriko ducked away from more eyebeams, and dove for cover.

“Filthy scavenger! Die!” Zarek roared and the earth around them shook.

Spikes of granite shot out of the ground, displacing the rubble, and flew towards the tentacled sphere. The creature tucked its limbs close and spun to its left, avoiding the attack by a hair’s breadth. The big eye looked bloodshot, and the ambient Chaos around it was so thick that it was visible even without Chaos Sight.

The Sorcerous Implement was nearly done. Just a few more seconds…!

The big skelly rushed through the intervening sunshards and slammed just a couple of paces from Yuriko’s position, his halberd already swinging sideways. Yuriko cursed as she leaned back and backflipped out of the way. Then, she felt a spike of pain, and then a cold sensation shot up her head. As she landed, she noticed several strands of hair drifting in the air. Golden hair. Hers.

The edges of her sight turned red in anger and she almost lost control of her Implement. She caught herself before it could unravel completely. She gritted her teeth and spun with Fri’Avgi in hand, clashing with the big skelly’s halberd. The Radiant energy on the artefact’s edge ate into the bone weapon, and with her Anima boosting her physique and strength, the clash ended in her favour. The big skelly staggered back, and Yuriko used this momentary imbalance to send several sunshards into his armour. The shards perforated the breastplate, and he screamed in pain and rage. The next moment, he retreated out of the way, and Yuriko was back to dodging eyebeams.

Through her perception aura, she examined her cut hair, sighing in relief when she found only the tip of her ponytail had been caught. She lost a few inches off it, and the severed ends shed Radiant energy. Eh? Her reserves don’t seem affected though.

The motes of Radiant energy lingered in the air, but soon enough, her hair normalised and even seemed to grow back. She returned her attention to her Implement and found it just about ready. With a final act of Will, she galvanised the process, and the Implement returned to her Anima and in its place, was a fully realised Radiant Lance.

She aimed only for a moment, then threw it with all of her might. The lance flashed through the air, leaving motes of light. It drew the attention of everyone in the cavern city, and the tentacled horror howled as it sheared through its side, severing three limbs and leaving a burning gash along its central sphere.

“Swarm fodder!” she yelped. She missed.

The lance struck the ceiling and exploded, sending MiJins of rock and earth falling down on Zarek. The tentacled horror screamed in rage, and suddenly, its words stilled the very fabric of the plane.

“In the name of DELGORA, I curse you! Your dead will never rest until there is nothing left to kill. Suffer. Anguish. Know nothing but war and pain! Restless Underworld!”

Yuriko felt the plane shudder and she felt the Veil begin to tear. And then, from the very earth and air that they needed to live, thin wisps of something, coated in the same grey light as the entropic power the big skelly had,

The wisps thickened, then suddenly disappeared, and in their place, were horrific creatures, humanoids with grey, stony skin, blood-red eyes with no irises, and razor-sharp teeth. And there was enough of them to cover every surface of the city.