When Yuriko woke up, it was to the gentle sway of the waves. The porthole above her head showed a false dawn, as well as an endless stretch of blue water. Gwendith was in the other bunk, which was a narrow strip barely wide enough for a single person to use. Asami and Desire were assigned to the top bunks, but only the Chaos Lord was there, sleeping to conserve her meagre energies.

Yuriko rolled into a seated meditative pose and sank into a self-reflective fugue. Her Ennoia’s lattice had improved, covering just a bit more of her core. She wasn’t quite sure if the Ennoia was supposed to cover the entire thing before she could advance to the Transformation Stage, or if it needed to advance to the next step of enlightenment, which was called Colligia.

Where Ennoias touched upon a concept, the Colligia embodied it. Whatever that should mean was something that she had to discover for herself, according to both Damien and Fri’Avgi. Being told the form of her own Colligia by someone else risked tainting her enlightenment, which would then cripple her progress. Unless she managed to remove the taint, but accordingly, it was as difficult as removing a drop of ink in a glass of water.

Of course, exchanging with others at the same level could broaden her perspective, but then again, it could also skew it. That was probably why few people talked about Ennoias in the Empire.

Her Animus reserves had barely recovered a hundred lumens during her sleep. She undid some of her earlier storage weaving and created new ones intertwined with regeneration weavings. Now, the latter would activate when the former was emptied and would deactivate once the storage was full. She also experimented with funnelling the excess income into creating distilled Chaos, and hopefully, the process would work without her focus or meditation. Back in Rumiga, she had already made something like that, but in the Irvalla Region, the weaving just didn’t work. The density was too low to even start the process.

She didn’t have any success by the time the call for breakfast came, so she shelved that project and wandered out of the officers’ quarters and into the mess hall.

Once there, the somewhat noisy chamber turned to silence so thick she could cut it with a butter knife. She ignored the unruly stares, ate her fill of hardtack and beans, which was somehow just a bit better than ration bars in terms of taste, if not of nutrition, and left. Gwendith was still snoring when she peeked into the room, but the humidity was already starting to bother her, so she made for the deck.

There, she noticed that they were now headed due northwest and that there was a hint of land to the east. There were other ships in the distance, but she could only see the tops of their funnels.

Most of the crew avoided coming near her, though most stared at her when her back was turned. She saw Edison was near the bowsprit, gazing out at sea with a blank expression on his face.

He glanced back when he heard her footsteps and nodded when he saw her.

“Thank you,” he said softly once she was next to the railings. “They won’t say it, but you saved their liberty. Lives, even.”

“Oh?”

“The Confederates might have just sunk the Wheelwright once they saw the cargo, after stealing it, of course.”

“I see.”

“That…was an impressive bit of magery,” he finally said. “I…I didn’t expect all of you to have that kind of power.”

Yuriko just snorted. “That wasn’t Sorcery,” she used the Verdanian word for it, since Old Imperial didn’t have such a word, and the closest one was Shaping. When she saw his confusion, she clarified, “I don’t know your word for it, anyway, what we did was a simple expression of our Ennoias.”

“Ennoia? Enlightenment?” He tilted his head in question.

“Quite.” Yuriko chuckled. “Were you able to measure how much Animus…occult resonance we used for that?”

“Not at all. It was too blinding.” He chuckled. “But even for hours after you stopped, occult resonance lingered there. Thankfully, we’re on a moving ship, otherwise the Confederate’s Warlocks would have tracked us down already.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t yet,” Yuriko remarked.

“The Inner Ocean is vast,” Edison said sagely. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. As long as none of you flares up your occult resonance for hours on end, we should be fine. It’ll be another couple of weeks before we reach Lindorn’s docks.”

“And nothing to do, huh,” Yuriko muttered.

“We’re on short rations though. We can’t stop for supplies, and the last stop we could have taken before we left the Kamwick Sea…well, you know.”

“Not enough food?” Yuriko asked in confusion. She pointed down to the waves. Schools of fish were flitting about near the hull. “What about those?”

“Food isn’t the problem,” Edison chuckled, “but water.”

“Oh. That we have a solution for.” Yuriko tapped her hip and pulled out her condenser canteen from her satchel. “Needs Animus to work, but this produces a Ren of water an hour.”

“Ah! You’ve never shown me that!” he protested.

“Ehehehe, I forgot.” Yuriko stuck out the tip of her tongue. “Besides, condenser canteens have more complicated runescript patterns than what I’ve shown you, and it guzzles more Animus.”

“Well, I guess the only thing left is to wait,” Edison said. “I’ll go tell the quartermaster. Excuse me.”

Yuriko nodded and watched him go. Two weeks, huh? It would be the midst of the Season of Fire by the time they were back on shore, and who knew how long before she could return to Rumiga.

Ah! She missed Rami’s Atavism Ritual!

Wiping the sudden tears welling up in her eyes, Yuriko went back to the mess hall to look for a bit of ale or beer she could drink to his name. She still didn’t like the bitterness, but it was better than nothing.

___________

Two weeks at sea passed by in a monotonous blur. The sailors and the ship’s officers avoided interacting with Yuriko and Gwendith, though oddly enough, not Heron. The marines not only remained cordial but had actively formed friendships with the sailors. Well, except for the women marines, anyway. They were as much shunned, and ogled, as Yuriko.

She spent most of her time on deck, soaking in the rays of the Radiant Sun. It had taken a long while, but she finally detected a bit of Radiant energy from above. The amount was even more minuscule than the ambient Chaos, but it was there. More importantly, she could finally gather an unaspected source to feed to Damien, and hopefully, awaken him.

Her Anima reach was close to ten paces, and she spent most of her time figuring out how to push it to that limit. As far as she could tell, she probably needed a veritable lake of distilled Chaos to do it, or if her Radiant Body Refinement reached the nineties and she moved on to Radiant Anima Refinement. Doing the latter was far easier so she shifted her focus, bearing down on her body restriction so much that she could barely move. Maintaining her balance in the rocking ship had truly become a challenge then, and on one occasion when they were beset by a passing squall, she got swept overboard. She returned on board before anyone noticed, face flushed and all, but it seemed that somebody noticed and was just poised to tease her at the right moment. It was Saki, of course, and from the way Gwendith giggled whenever her back was turned, her treacherous handmaiden had gossiped.

She helped with the fishing efforts too. Every day, one or two sailors got out a fishing rod, baited it with some cut-up fish, and tossed it in the drink, and hung around for an hour or so until they caught something. Wasn’t that a bit inefficient? Yuriko simply dipped her Animakinesis into the waves, caught a few fish and pulled it up. She could catch enough fish to feed all of them in a quarter-hour.

So, that’s how she got relegated to fishing duty. Well, Gwendith, too. At one point, Yuriko saw a fish that was even bigger than she was. She caught it, of course, and the cook was immensely happy and provided a feast. Her casual display of power only served to alienate her more, however. It wasn’t too bad.

Two weeks. And then, on the fifteenth day after their escape from the Richmond Confederacy’s blockade, Yuriko saw land ahead. To the east were parts of the Norrinth Empire, and separated from the mainland were the Karcellian Isles. The channel was filled with battleships and the roar of cannons carried across the waves. There was a battle between the Karcellians and the Confederacy, but it was really too far away to make out, especially since their ship was already moving away.

Soon enough, they rounded towards the west and entered a bay. It took another couple of hours to finally reach the port, but then, they had to wait until near nightfall to disembark. The port town, practically named Westport, was crammed full of merchant vessels. Yuriko could see crates being offloaded, and there were at least a dozen ships to go before they would be allowed to disembark. But then, that’s only for the cargo. The captain sent a dinghy to the port master’s office to get permission for them so they wouldn’t have to wait a few days before exiting the ship. It took several hours, and by dusk, they were given permission.

Beyond the docks were low structures built of grey bricks, as well as taller warehouses. Sailors of shore leave looked like they were headed towards a certain festive part of town, and it only took an accidental look using her Enhanced Sight to tell her that she wanted no part of that. Well, once they disembarked on the docks, their party stood out. They weren’t sailors, after all. The majority of those on shore leave were men…or more accurately, it seemed that there were no female sailors at all.

Edison ushered them away from the docks, flagged down some kind of black landcraft…car, and had them brought to an inn in the decent part of town.

Yuriko’s first exposure to the Commonwealth wasn’t a very good one. After they arrived at the inn, they were forced to stay there for another couple of days while Edison sent messages to the capital, which was about a couple of hundred longstrides east if she flew straight. Since there were mountains in the way, the route would probably extend to two hundred and fifty. A few days walk, Yuriko supposed, and she was somewhat eager to have that exchange of ideas with their academy of mages. Afterwards, she planned to leave for the battlefront and look for whatever it was that was pulling at her. It was almost directly east, she thought. The obfuscation sometimes slipped and she could get a basic direction every now and then. That it changed from northwest to east probably meant that it was still back on the mainland.

The inn’s food was bland if it wasn’t greasy. Slices of fish dipped in batter and fried in hot oil, served with strange sticks of some vegetable that were fried in the same oil. Potatoes, as far as she could tell when she peeked in the kitchen with her aura. It was actually quite tasty if she ate it while drinking ale at the same time.

On the morning of the third day, Edison came up to her, grumbling and irritated. “I’ve been ordered to bring your group to Lindorn. Both Parliament and the Admiralty Board wish to speak with you.”

“Alright,” Yuriko agreed. “And then what?”

“I guess it depends on what you agree on,” Edison said shiftily.

“What of the terms we discussed?”

“I’m sorry!” he said abruptly as he bowed. “Circumstances changed in the mainland and my bosses said they want to renegotiate the terms of the agreement!”

Yuriko raised an eyebrow. It was annoying, having them change the terms, but then again, it wasn’t that much of a bother. If they don't come to an agreement, she and the others will just leave. “We’ll see what happens then,” she answered curtly.

Outside was a caravan of black landcraft…cars which were supposed to take them to Lindorn. It would probably take the rest of the day. Yuriko sighed. Well, at least she had ample time to work on her runescript weavings.