For the past several days, Gwendith had felt disquiet every time Yuriko set off on her patrols. She and the others were stationed in one of the forward outposts and with them were a couple of companies of infantry and field artillery. They held a commanding presence on a hilltop, with a clear view of the league around them. Up north was a tall cliff face, a mountain wall, really, except that there was a pass along the ridge that led to the interior. Douglas told her that the valley had been mined into shape, and before, it had been barely wide enough to walk through. Now, a tank could trundle through the pass.

She could see Yuriko in the air, roughly a couple or so leagues away. Since her beloved had taken to flying, and the fact that her golden light was bright whenever she flew, it was easy to track her progress. Gwendith raised the telescope up to her eye and focused it on Yuriko. The other girl was just drifting and had a faraway look on her face.

Was she daydreaming?

Gwendith chuckled. The campaign had gone on for a Season and there were talks of a ceasefire while they let the Season of Water pass. The ice and snow made it difficult for the tanks and trucks to travel, though the covering white made it easy to spot the blood-red apes. Well, if they didn’t conceal themselves using the six-legged lizards’ techniques.

The two species of daemon…this wasn’t their first appearance in the Irvalla Region. The Karcellian Mages, Douglas and the archons, in particular, had combed through their histories and records. They found an old book on myths and there had been drawings of the apes and the lizards, and a bit more of their capabilities had been discerned from research and experience.

The lizards may be invisible, but they always created a sound wherever they were. Crackling leaves, buzzing insects, and howling winds. As for the apes, they were tough and powerful, more than their size would indicate. They were also quite smart, but according to the books, while they were similar to humans, they were still markedly different, especially in the way they thought. Which probably explained why they always fought to the bitter end, Gwendith decided.

She gazed up at Yuriko, sighing. Gwendith was more than ready…but it was Yuriko who was still at the cusp. Every time she looked at her beloved, her heart twinged. She’d stolen a kiss or two, her fingers and hands lingered at places they shouldn’t have if Yuriko had not given her tacit approval.

Gwendith hugged herself and leaned against the watchtower walls. Daydreams and fantasies spun in her mind, and of late, they grew more and more involved. It was probably the Mien Yuriko always complained about, but Gwendith didn’t mind. As far as she could tell, it was like her beloved was complaining about the colour of her eyes or hair. It was simply a part of her.

She almost missed, and only the brief projection of confusion, shock, and anger jolted her out of her musings. The telescope went back up, but Yuriko had moved. And then, a blur sped across her vision, and when she caught sight of her friend, it was when the other was deflecting spears that came from the mountainside below. Then, Yuriko dove down, and was soon concealed from view.

Panic, fear, and anger washed through Gwendith’s mind as she leapt off the watchtower and screamed for the company commanders, Heron, Sheamus, and the Imperial marines.

“Yuriko’s under attack. It’s close, we have to help!”

It took a few minutes, but they scrambled into their tanks, cars, and trucks. Then, they were speeding off, with Gwendith hanging on the edge of her seat, while a Karcellian soldier drove the landcraft as fast as he could.

___________

The obsidian man was faster than the giant, and being of a size similar to hers, was agile enough that the first blow nearly danced past her defences. The Ender’s Waltz had been running at low power, draining away her formidable reserves. But even at that level of consumption, it was more than enough to save her life.

She saw an image of the man’s staff move ahead of the actual weapon. She saw it twist in response to her deflection, then saw it turn once more when she reacted to that. The waltz didn’t read the future, of that she was sure. Instead, it allowed her to piece together hundreds of clues, from how the muscle bunched up, how the Animus and Chaos flowed, to how the enemy’s gaze moved, to paint a picture of what could happen. The fact that her perception aura covered the entirety of the space was the only thing that allowed the waltz to be so effective. It was a mind enhancement technique, and aside from the absolute glut of Animus, prolonged use also made her head hurt.

But whatever she learned from the waltz stayed with her after she deactivated. Which was also the problem now. Her mind had built an image of how the titan fought, but the obsidian man moved differently. She had to fight off instinct and Animus ingrained reflexes.

The staff glanced against her shoulder, bounced up and nearly clipped her temple. Her condensed Anima kept the thing from hitting her, and the layered construction prevented the kinetic force from simply transferring over. Still, the blow knocked her off balance, and only the sunshards interposing themselves prevented the man from hitting her a second time.

Even as one end of the staff rebounded off the shards, the obsidian man, who had been holding on to the other end of the quarterstaff, stepped forward, shifted his stance and his grip, and whipped the other end towards her. Yuriko deflected the blow upwards with her left-hand sword, then stabbed with the right. At the same time, the sunshards struck at the back.

The staff shifted down and deflected her thrust. At the same time, he ignored the striking shards, which hit the sculpted musculature of his back, threw up sparks, and were deflected off, leaving only a few reddish marks behind. The heat easily radiated away from his body, leaving him none the worse for wear. His face was set in a rictus snarl as he kicked at her middle.

She spun around the kick and slashed with the sunblade. It scored against his forearm, and unlike the shards, actually cut a fraction of an inch into his skin. But it sunk no more than that, and when he twisted his arm sideways, the blade got caught and was wrenched from her hand.

Eyes wide in surprise, Yuriko leapt back, but he followed her with a lunge. The sunblade popped off the wound, and the edge looked chipped. Animus and Radiant energy smoked out of the break in its matrix, and the Animus construct grew wobbly and unstable. A hasty application of her Will rebuilt the weapon and pulled it back to her hand.

She dodged the follow-up strikes, returned a few, but to no good effect. Finally, she landed a kick on his shin, pushing more of her power into the blow. That, more than her blades, had an effect.

The man staggered as he struggled to regain his balance, but Yuriko ducked into his space and rammed an Animus and Radiant energy-coated elbow into his gut. The ground beneath her feet shattered as she pushed against it, and her foe was knocked flying. He was much lighter than the titan's body, after all.

Her Animakinetic punches slid off his obsidian skin, finding no purchase there. Frowning, Yuriko closed in and tried to kick, punch, and stab. The enemy deflected her blows but met one of her elbow strikes head-on. It was like hitting a boulder back before she awakened.

Pain radiated from her limb, then numbness. She leapt back, but not before she noticed a few cracks where their blows had met. His angry expression turned to shock, before returning to impassivity.

His eyes, which burned with green fire, narrowed as he squinted at her. He lowered his staff slightly, though it was still ready to return to a battle stance and a wordless question of a momentary truce. Yuriko stared at him for a long moment, then released her hold on her swords, and on the waltz, allowing her strained runescript weavings to regenerate her reserves. A strand of consciousness pondered why her sunblades couldn’t penetrate his skin, and she thought that it was because it wasn’t dense enough, and that it didn’t have enough Radiant energy. Behind her back, she drew upon her liquid Animus reserves and spun a sunblade into being, filling it with Radiant energy as dense as she could pack it. But unlike Animus, Radiant energy refused to be moulded like clay, and it resisted her attempts.

The rest of her focus was on the obsidian man, who began to speak in Old Imperial.

“You are not as I remember, Ancient.”

Yuriko tilted her head, and answered, “I do not recall ever meeting you…”

Her words cut off as a memory surfaced from Damien. It was fragmentary and only consisted of a few instants, wherein he stood upon a red mountain. He had his weapon, not Fri’Avgi but an Animus construct blade that looked like it was ten longstrides long, stabbed into the mountain’s core. He was grinning as he manipulated the hilt, causing the blade to swirl around and obliterate several MiJins of whatever that was into nothingness. All that while accompanied by a heartrending scream.

None of that actually showed the obsidian man anywhere in it, but she knew instinctively that her foe was what came of Damien’s actions.

“You would malign me so?” The obsidian man lamented with a dour voice, “You, who has slain my progenitor.”

Yuriko’s eyes narrowed in anger. “I’ve never killed your progenitor, and I’m only sixteen years old. Who in the Abyss would I have done that?” It was Damien, of course, but that was her Ancestor, not her.

“Your body may be young, but I recognise your stink, even masked. You are the Lord of the Dawn, and I will slay you in Belzarius’ name!”

Words spat out of Yuriko’s lips without thought, and without volition, “In the name of the dead? No vengeance will bring It back.” A sneer formed on her lips even as she growled in her head. ‘Stop it Damien!’

But all she got were sleepy murmurs, and with a start, she realised that no, he wasn’t possessing her body or speaking through her. It was her.

She blinked in confusion, but then, the obsidian man raised his staff and charged at her. “I, the remnant of the Lord of Dark Terrors, shall slay you in turn!” he howled.

Things clicked in her mind. This must be the Living Monument that the runescript circles spoke of. The daemons had succeeded in their summons, and it now fell to her to destroy him. Let loose amongst the mortals of this plane, and the remnant would flatten everything. He’d depopulate the islands and the mainland, probably, and unlike a Chaos Lord, he was not constrained by the lack of ambient Chaos or the low iarvesh levels. The ambient Chaos levels were rising as a result of their battle, and perhaps then he could unleash more of his power.

Yuriko met him blade to staff. All the while her superdense sunblade was still forming behind her. The Radiant energy wouldn’t compress, and if nothing changed, she’d wind up with a blade that was off balance. Radiant and Animus must be built and infused in equal measure otherwise the sunblade wouldn’t be a sunblade, but simply an Animus construct sword. The last time she wielded such a thing was back in Kogasi, and, simply stated, they weren’t good enough. Not for a challenge of this calibre.

Stubborn Radiant energy! She growled in her mind, taking the chance to glare at the latticework of her Essence. Only to find that it was thick enough to nearly cover the entire surface area of her core. Radiant energy shed from the Ennoia, and danced inside her veins. Mostly uncontrolled, though a good fraction of it merged with her bones, muscles, and organs in accordance with Radiant Body Refinement.

Her Ennoia was at the cusp, but she didn’t know what step to take. No flash of enlightenment showed her the way, and she gritted her teeth.

The sunblades she was using cracked and splintered with the Remnant’s blows. His quarterstaff was now coated with a dark substance, though it glittered with white pinpricks of light. The sight of it made her shiver, and when Radiant energy collided with it, both disappeared with an audible pop.

She pulled some distance from the Remnant, blasting him with several sunshards. Though the small blades couldn’t penetrate his skin, they still imparted kinetic force. She threw most of the strength of her Animakinesis behind the shards, and that seemed to work in throwing the man off balance.

But they were now in a stalemate, and from the destruction wrought by their battle, if this went on any longer, there wouldn’t be any highlands left.