With a long-suffering sigh, Sadeen knuckled her back as she pushed away from the ritual surfaces. It had taken a few days but it was finally complete. She cast a critical eye over the runescript lines in the chamber, then split off parts of her consciousness to double-check the rest of the lines that occupied the rest of the Watchtower as well as several hundred cubic paces underneath the earth. The ambient Chaos flows that had been disturbed by the Haveenians and Chaos dwellers had been straightened out thanks to the efforts of her darling baby daughter, the Warforged units, as well as the local militia.

She inspected every line and annotated which ones needed to be adjusted. She found many little mistakes that irritated the perfectionist within her, but the realist chalked up which mistakes could be endured and which ones must be corrected lest they cause a cascade of failures.

As soon as she was done with the first outside section, she sent her cousin, Kiyo, to fix the errors. She was more than capable of handling this responsibility, and it wasn’t as if Sadeen wasn’t going to double-check afterwards. The second section, the one which the local militia was mostly responsible for, had far too many errors. She scribbled furiously on her notes, then stopped with an annoyed sniff. It would be faster if she corrected that section by herself. The third section was etched by the resident Spellweavers and their accuracy and precision were more than adequate. She only had a few nitpicks but those errors could be endured.

Finished with her preliminaries, she moved to the militia section and spent the rest of the day fixing it. She skipped lunch, dinner, and her nightly lovemaking session with her beloved just to finish this rotting ritual as soon as possible.

She went through another check of the ritual lines and found fewer mistakes this time, but those could not be helped as they were the results of the first adjustment. They went through a second, then a third revision until any divergent lines would only result in lowering the Animus efficiency and not into a cascade of failures. The fourth and final check took another day, just to make sure that she was satisfied with all of it. Afterwards, she took a break and jumped Virgil, dragging him back to the Silver Tiger and their quarters.

Afterwards, both sweaty and glowing with satisfaction, Sadeen asked, “I don’t sense Eli’Theria nearby. Where’s Yuri?”

“She went across the Imperial Pass to talk to the Agminis Legate,” Virgil said while he pulled her into a closer embrace. “I haven’t heard any news either.”

“Hmmm, once we bring Jiro and the others the Tiger will cross the mountain and look for her.”

“And the Legate?”

“The planar core is underneath the mountain range, she’s already in position.”

“I see.”

Sadeen nuzzled Virgil’s neck and sighed. Tomorrow, the beacon will be lit.

_____________

The Trinity Cycle, jump-started by the prodigious Radiant energy within the sunblade, ignited into an all-devouring sphere. The Chaos swordsman managed to deflect the Trinity blade, but that didn’t matter much since it ignited using the Animus construct anyway.

The initial Destruction sphere hit the Chaos Lord’s armoured side, siphoned the metal into the sphere, converted it into energy and fed it back to the Destruction cycle, which in turn expanded the sphere by a few inches, and took whatever was there as fuel.

Though it seemed most of the sphere hit nothing, the air itself was used as fuel, as well as the ample ambient Chaos. The Radiant spark imparted in the Cycle allowed it to combust efficiently, such that it gave out more power than it initially consumed. It would remain a self-sufficient reaction as long as Radiant energy was supplied into the process.

That point of the Trinity Cycle had not been something Yuriko realised until much later. She found the runescript patterns embedded within the portals, but of course, that had been incomplete. If she had executed the cycle without infusing Radiance, then it would actually still be incredibly destructive, but would not perpetuate forever. As it were, she could only limit the cycle by limiting the Radiant-infused Animus.

That did mean that there was a natural limit to the cycle and it wouldn’t just gobble up and destroy everything. That was a relief and she felt more than a little bit foolish coming to the first conclusion. If it had been otherwise, perhaps the Chaos Sea would have already turned into a desolate desert…

Unless part of that caused the Shattering?

Yuriko swallowed nervously and waited for Damien to chime in, but frustratingly, he didn’t.

Shaking her head, she returned part of her focus to the Chaos swordsman. The Destruction sphere had eaten half of his body before he managed to escape its ambit. If he had not been a Chaos dweller, he would definitely have died considering he was missing his right arm, shoulder, and most of his right side ribs, his hip, and part of his thigh. His lower leg was only connected to his upper thigh by a thin string of muscle and sinew since his bone had broken too. Bluish blood spurted from the cavity as he staggered away. His floating hands were safe, however, and he only lost one of his swords.

Clang!

Or not. The weapon bounced off the ground looking none the worse for wear. Huh. it must be artefact level or made out of materials resistant to the Trinity Cycle. That was actually worrying.

Even as he tried to disengage, there were still the forty blades harassing him. And now that he was lacking a weapon, because she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to reclaim it easily, more of her strikes hit home.

Most of the forty were on Ennoia control, but Yuriko decided to take up a couple to direct by herself. His defences were still brilliant as the remaining five blades wove a net that soon became impenetrable. He hadn’t spoken anything again, and his face was a mask of utter concentration.

He constantly glanced at the surrounding sunblades, which numbered another forty, and sweat visibly poured from his brow. The wounds on his side slowly closed as he used his Chaos to knit his flesh back together, and even the nearly detached leg was now secured by a Chaos-woven cast. Impressive.

He glared at the blades, and towards a direction Yuriko couldn’t see the point of until she realised he didn’t know where she was. She was more than a longstride away after all. In the meantime, the other sunblades swept the rest of the maze around her, and the scout blades she sent ahead reached the limit of her range without even leaving the tunnel. It looked like she had to come closer if she wanted to proceed.

She briefly debated confronting the man directly, but if he couldn’t even fight past her flying swords, how could she let him get a crack at her? It was pretty clear that he was not a viscount, but a Chaos Earl. He would have died already otherwise.

After a full minute of weathering her blows, his closed wounds slowly regenerated the flesh and bones he lost. At the same time, he continued defending against her attacks perfectly. Actually, the longer they fought, the easier he managed to defend. Especially against the Ennoia-controlled blades. Her manual control hadn’t done much at this point, and she noticed that his smirk was back.

She briefly thought about sending another Trinity sunblade but figured that he would be ready for it then. The range of the initial Destroyer sphere wasn’t much, just ten inches across. She supposed she could increase that if she fiddled with the runescript patterns, or if she adjusted the efficiency…well, too many things to do in the middle of battle.

She took direct control over more sunblades, reaching up to a dozen. She activated the Ender’s Waltz and struck with a combination of blows that eventually gave her an opening. However… just before that last strike could connect, the vision the Waltz gave her suddenly shifted and he managed to protect himself.

Shaking her head, she dropped the Waltz and considered what she knew and what she suspected.

One, he was a holder of an Ennoia of Swords. And two, he was being given the same bumps of intuition that she was, effectively cancelling out whatever advantage the Ennoia gave her. They were probably at the same level of Ennoia otherwise, he would have overpowered her. Frustrating. Just when she thought she had an advantage, it turned out that she merely countered him.

But there was one thing that she overwhelmed him at, and it was the sheer number of sunblades she could bring to bear. Before, she could not have brought a thousand out at once. She wouldn’t have the lumens nor the ability to control them. The Ennoia and the fact that the sunblades were now conjured using Radiant-infused Animus rather than Animus built to contain Radiant energy was the difference. She could conjure a hundred at a time with her reserves, and after regenerating Animus, continue the effort. The sunblades also lasted much longer now. A couple of hours each rather than fifteen minutes or so. The only real limit imposed on her was that her Anima reach weakened with every blade exceeding her range.

Then the question now is, can five curved swords defend against two hundred sunblades? And if he could, can he defend against three hundred? Five hundred? All one thousand? Time to find out.

She brought sixty new blades to the battleground and set them loose. His eyes widened in alarm and his smirk disappeared and changed into a frown.

And it turned out that a hundred sunblades can be defended against. The pattern of attack was too repetitive, especially considering how crowded it was. So she grabbed a firm hold on each blade, positioned them around him, and stabbed down all at once.

Oh, wow. He managed to slip through the gaps. More blades!

Two hundred. They chased him down the tunnel and Yuriko flew closer to keep him in range. Once they were in position, she did the same thing. He blocked three-fourths of the sunblades. The rest, fifty swords all told, stabbed into his body.

He screamed in pain even as his Corpus was set alight. A moment later, the sunblades he defended against slammed into his body. Two hundred blades. Only the hilts were visible afterwards.

The man fell on his knees, though the limbs wouldn’t bend properly. “Ahhh…grrglll…”

As his flesh burned and melted away, Yuriko kept her even stride. While she somewhat wanted to feed the Chaos Lord to Fri’Avgi, the artefact was almost full, and she didn’t know what tricks the creature still had. Better to be sure of his death. Or his Corpus’ dissolution anyway. She wasn’t sure if his Anima could escape the baptism of Radiance, but she’d settle for getting him out of the way so she could finish exploring and destroying the Chaos Fortress. He turned to ashes just as she reached the tunnel.

“So it ended.” Yuriko sighed, feeling a bit disappointed. She flexed her biceps and felt her muscles tighten wonderfully. She felt much stronger, in fact, but had no way to measure how much her physique improved. She could feel Radiant energy as well as the new Ennoia suffused throughout her body and mind, as well as her Anima, but everything was too new and shiny. At the very least, she quickly found the Ennoia’s weakness. She would endeavour to learn what it could impart, then…well, she’ll figure it out. She also instinctively knew that this Ennoia would not progress in the same manner as the Radiance. That one was a Primordial force, while the sword was a bit more modern and operated on a different track. When she reached the Chaos Lord’s position, there was nought but ashes. And she soon found that her sunblades finally left the tunnel.

But it wasn’t to a secret or central area of the Chaos Fortress. Instead, it led back into Rumiga.