The feel of the dreamscape was unmistakable, even if she wasn’t lingering in the uppermost layers. Yuriko’s Anima spread, but of course, there was nothing to see. Other than the threads connecting her to Fate and to those she knew and was entangled with.

She had a moment of confusion. Why was she here? What was her purpose, and what was she to fight? A glimmer of silvery light drew her eye. It came from the depths below, and with a silent push, her dream body sank downwards into the roiling sea of fog.

She didn’t know how long she descended, but she knew that the iarvesh levels were horrifically dense. She passed by ten iarvesh within minutes of descending, but her body barely even felt the difference, a product of her Radiant Body Refinement, she assumed. Well, that and her Anima reach was already beyond thirty paces. She noticed a minute increase almost as soon as she left the Richmond Confederacy, just a couple of inches since then. Her condensed aura naturally protected her.

Hmm, if she wasn’t in her real body, then why did Radiant Body Refinement help? Perhaps it was more a matter of her Anima than anything else? She could feel Radiant energy motes flowing within her dream body, much like it did in her real one.

In fact, the Radiant light glowed brighter here…and continued to brighten. It was nearly imperceptible, but as she went deeper, it was as if the Radiant energy fought back against the pressure…

What felt like half an hour later, she finally descended into something more than clouds and mists. Her feet thumped down on solid ground, or perhaps Chaos was so dense that it solidified? The misty gas was pushed away by her Anima when she spread her perception. There was nothing within five paces of her, except for the super dense Chaos underneath, but at ten paces, she noticed dozens of objects. Metal pipes and bars twisted into grotesque forms, and oozing some black substance.

Eli’Theria’s voice had faded away during her descent, but she intuited that it came from somewhere ahead. As she spread her perception farther, she felt something push back. And a moment later, she felt the same pushback from all around her. Five of them.

Her Anima perception touched their auras, but aside from a blob roughly three paces wide, there was nothing else she could garner. She did feel hostility, so she created a couple of sunblades, letting them float around her while she created a larger sunblade, roughly the same shape as Fri’Avgi. She couldn’t bring the artefact out here, so she created the closest thing that would suffice.

The void in her perception soon revealed itself, and she held herself in a ready stance. The creatures…all five of them were different, but each was humanoid, though their proportions were odd. One’s arms were longer than its legs, its knuckles nearly brushing against the ground. It was taller than she was, by half a pace, and its body looked to be made of wires and lightning wrapped in a semi-coherent whole. Its head was a bulbous shape, but its eyes were unmistakable, glowing yellow. Well, there were three pairs of them, each set facing a different direction.

The second one looked to be made of mud and greyish-black grease, roughly shaped into a humanoid form. Slivers of something solid and dark surfaced from its body, whatever passed for its skin. Its proportions were the most human of the lot.

The third one was made out of shards of glass. The light refracted from the fragments so badly that she could only make out its form through her perception. Its eyes were a rainbow hue, and it seemed to have vestigial wings rather than arms. They were tipped with razor-sharp talons, however. Its legs were digitigrade, like a wolf’s, or Roland in hybrid wolf form.

The fourth looked to be made out of metal, but she knew it wasn’t a construct like the Warforged. Instead, it was as though a block of iron, probably a couple of MiJin heavy, had animated itself. It was the largest of the bunch, standing twice as tall as she, and when it opened its maw, it was as though it had a furnace within.

The fifth and last one looked to be made of living quicksilver. It was a bit smaller than she was, but it expanded and contracted rhythmically. Its limbs formed solid shapes, talons, swords, axes… Its eyes were blue gemstones set on top of its torso. Sometimes, the eyes moved into a bulbous impression of a head, but just as quickly, it shrank back into its body.

Wires and lightning. Mud and grease. Broken glass. Iron furnace. Quicksilver.

With unspoken unison, Broken Glass charged forward along with the Furnace. Greaseman collapsed into a puddle which quickly spread across the surface, while Quicksilver kept its distance while one limb elongated into a three-pace long whip. Wires stood where it was and brought its hands together where lightning gathered and crackled with potent rage.

Yuriko lunged to meet the Furnace’s charge, her great sunblade poised over her shoulder. Left sunblade went for Grease Man, forcing it to return to humanoid form. It swung a limb against the sunblade but the weapon simply sliced through it. The right sunblade stabbed straight into Quicksilver. A dozen sunshards formed behind her, but she had to hold it back when the greatsword simply bounced off Furnace’s shoulder after she slammed it down. The greyish metal reddened slightly before the heat was pulled inside of it. Furnace ignored the attack and slammed a fist towards her head. She tilted to the right and layered Anima shields in between. The appendage slammed into her Anima and deflected off to the left, but the shield carried the kinetic force and slammed into her body. Even though her Anima shield seemed detached from her, it was still connected via her Anima, though at least the shock was distributed evenly across her body and the rest of her Anima.

Even so, she felt a jolt and nearly staggered. Such strength managed to reach her despite her protections! It was nearly as strong as the Remnant! And there were four others like it?

Mudman’s limb simply parted from the sunblade slash, connecting right after the blade passed, with a clearance of a fraction of an inch. But Yuriko relaxed her control over the sunblade and allowed the Radiant light’s heat to permeate farther than the blade. The mud around the glowing sword immediately dried up, turning to clay, then the grease ignited into roaring flames, turning most of the limb into dried, and cracking mud. Mudman hissed and jolted away, detaching the dried-up limb before the flames could leap into its body. The amputated mud dropped to the ground with a loud plop, and scattered into dust.

Broken Glass leapt over Furnace and its shards turned orange with heat. Yuriko blasted it away with her Animakinesis, and she hissed in pain as the sharp glass tore into her aura. The heat she simply ignored, and it got subsumed into her Radiant energy.

Quicksilver’s whip spun around the right-hand sunblade, attempting to ensnare it. Yuriko allowed the contact, and the Radiant heat boiled the semi-liquid metal, eliciting a squeal of dismay. Iron Furnace fell upon her like an avalanche, but she slipped out of his attack zone simply by pushing away from the ground using her Anima. She floated serenely backwards, just fast enough to avoid the shoulder slam by a hair’s breadth. As soon as the Furnace was out of position, she reversed direction and slammed it with the pommel of her great sunblade. The transfer of kinetic force wasn’t quite perfect, but it still got the job done.

However, there was no flesh, bones or organs within the creature to jolt, and it simply pushed against the downward force. Yuriko slipped to the side, pursing her lips in thought.

However, the next moment, a bright flash came from Wires. A scintillating ball of lightning careened towards her. Yuriko smirked. Heavenly lightning had done nothing to her Anima, and something created by such a creature wouldn’t even tickle. She wasn’t entirely right, as bolts of electricity wormed their way towards her body, even as they scarred her Anima. That was fine though, there was more than enough distilled Chaos to repair and strengthen herself.

She finished forming the sunshards and blasted them towards Greaseman. The Mud and oil body attempted to avoid the shards, but they were far too agile for it. The shards plunged into its centre mass even as it tried to melt away from it. A strand of Yuriko’s attention focused on keeping the shards within, and in a couple of seconds, the grease caught fire again, and the mud boiled.

The Broken Glass screeched and shattered into little pieces, but each one flew under its own power and surrounded her, before simultaneously striking. At the same moment, Quicksilver slithered past the sunblade and lashed at her foot. Furnace blasted the ground away, somehow creating a tiny crater in the process, and tried a spear tackle.

Yuriko bent back, moved her body laterally under the Furnace and pulled herself towards the Quicksilver. Broken Glass’ shards slammed into Furnace’s back, shattering into tinier pieces. Her movement, which seemingly defied momentum, but was entirely borne from her Animakinesis, allowed her to slither underneath the Furnace, and just as she came near centre mass, she dropped the greatsword, sent it flying towards Wires, braced against the ground with her kinesis, and slammed her palms into the metallic monster. The force of her blow, aided by both kinesis and physical reinforcement, threw the creature several paces into the air.

Then, she grabbed Quicksilver with her kinesis, enfolding its entirety with her aura, and threw it towards the flying Furnace. The semi-liquid thing slammed against the superheated iron body and began to boil, while she noted the Furnace’s heat was siphoned away from its interior.

She returned to an upright position a moment later and punched right as the Furnace fell back downwards. Her fist protected by her Anima, she created a wedge of condensed aura around her arm, which then slammed into the Furnace’s shoulder. The metal its body was made of caved in, and she dug at least six inches into the body before the force of her blow and its weight pushed it back. At the same time, she used her kinesis to slap it sideways, altering its trajectory so that it struck Wires even as that creature attempted to gather another blast of power.

Booom!

The four creatures fell in a heap. Greaseman completely boiled away at this point, and apparently, that was enough to extinguish whatever semblance of life it had. Broken Glass’s body had turned to dust, but she still detected that it clung to life. Her perception could still detect its aura, weakened as it were. It fled her, however, flying faster than most unawakened could run.

Wires had been flattened, but it was slowly reforming back. Furnace was doing the same. The attacks she made against it weren’t too effective. Whatever it was that kept them animated, sheer force or Radiant energy wasn’t quite enough.

Well, maybe if she upped the amount of Radiant energy she could burn them to their constituent parts. However, she didn’t want to Free Shape or use her Radiant Lance right now. Instead, she decided to try something she’d just learned the past couple of days.

As the creatures were in the process of untangling themselves, she drew strands of Animus from her core. She kept it as pure as she could and spun them into threads, which formed into a mandala.

Destroy. Harvest. Channel.

Three runescript concepts spun into a cycle. She anchored the effect into a freshly formed sunshard, intuiting that using the pattern by itself wouldn’t work. And then, she flung the shard into the Furnaceman.

At first, she thought she might have failed. The sunshard stabbed into the metal skin but stayed stuck there. But then, a few seconds later, even as the creature ignored it, the mandala transferred over to the contact point. And then…whatever it touched, and whatever was connected to it, slowly, oh so slowly, began to turn to dust.