Iola Brygos’ eyes snapped open just as the wild gust spun her around and around. The view around her was monotonously grey, which was the only reason she didn’t feel nauseated. Grimacing, she stretched her consciousness to reconnect with the borrowed battlewings and set it to hover.

She really wasn’t that used to flying, and she hated not having her feet planted on the earth, or anything solid, really. When she got her bearings, she couldn’t help but curse.

The Fysalli she was in was barren of anything but air! There wasn’t even a reflection of the Radiant Sun, though the place was illuminated by several orbs of greyish light in the distance. There was one in every cardinal direction, as well as one above and another below. Or was it really below? Strands of her hair bobbed up and down as if she was swimming, and the feedback she got from the battlewings had the relic lowering its lift to maintain her altitude. She stopped the wings for a moment, then got spun around as it stopped countering the gale-force winds.

“Rotter!” she yelled in frustration. So she wasn’t even sure where down or up was.

Ah, there was another problem. Her Crystal Domain was fluctuating wildly. She had to retract it closer to her body before it stabilised, giving only a third of its usual coverage. Even worse, her normal crystal golems would have trouble operating here.

She formed one experimentally, and as she expected, the winds spun it around and around, giving it no chance to orient itself. Without wings, or any kind of stabilizer, it couldn’t move and was just a useless chunk.

“Tsk.”

Clicking her tongue, she dissolved the golem and quickly devised one that could accommodate the environment as well as fight. She wound up with a falcon, about two-thirds of a pace long, with razor-sharp talons, beak, and wing tips.

Frowning, she sliced off slivers of her Intent and invested it into four falcons, hesitated a moment, then created another two, before sending all six towards the light sources. After they were on their way, she began building her crystal falcon golem army and wound up with five hundred by the time her scouts actually reached the orbs. The images they sent her had her cursing up another storm.

The light orbs were actually fortresses whose walls shed light. It was enormous, and actually, it was the same rotting thing. It was only one fortress! Her falcons met each other when she set them to check the perimeter.

“So, an omnidirectional state,” Iola muttered. The fortress was too bright to get a good look at, and when she sent one falcon closer, it was shot at with a beam of burning light. The crystalline structure of her golem meant that the light easily went below the surface. However, once they were inside, contrary to what light normally does, it instead dumped all of its energy within the falcon, bringing its internal temperature above what the golem could tolerate. The sliver of her Intent was obliterated along with the structure and sent a spike of pain that made her grimace.

“Swarm fodder,” she grumbled. Using the golems from too far away would only leave her vulnerable. The damage the sliver’s destruction caused wasn’t too bad and was easy to repair, so she got right to it. Her Domain shifted and drew in ambient Chaos. It changed to her Anima’s frequency and merged with the wound. A minute later, she was fully recovered.

She glanced at her flock of crystalline falcons then reached out and changed the tint of their bodies, turning it more reflective rather than their natural yellow hue. It was easy enough to do, and she extended the changes to the remaining five scouts. Then, she brought another one closer to the fortress while heading towards it in the meantime.

As soon as the beam struck the falcon, the light split and bounced away from the faceted surfaces. But only for a moment. Before she knew it, the beam somehow bypassed the reflective surface, changed to dump all of its heat inside the golem and melted it to sludge afterwards.

Iola received the feedback damage but barely paid attention to it. She was frowning as she reviewed what happened, going through every instant of what happened. The beam split, so it had been light in the beginning, but afterwards…

The falcon had been hit with something denser than light. Little particles? She felt it carve into the falcon until it bypassed the reflective surface then destroyed the entire thing.

She was honestly tempted to work through the puzzle, but time was of the essence. If clever tricks and techniques won’t work, then brute force will. She just needed to get closer so she didn’t have to sacrifice bits of her Intent to fight.

And it probably would take more than the five hundred falcons she had now. If only she could make them bigger they’d be able to take more damage…

Hmm, actually, why not?

As she flew, she designed a bigger golem that should be able to take the beam and shunt the heat outside before it destroyed it. The larger size meant she could add more tricks and complicated components inside. She ended up making a dozen big ’uns before she arrived near the fortress.

However, unlike with the scout falcons, the fortress immediately opened fire as soon as she came within a league of it. Several beams converged at her position and she quickly interposed her big falcons to block. As she expected, the big’un’s internals were more than capable of taking and venting the energy from a single beam, but a second one quickly pushed it to the limit. She alternated big ’uns when they came close to destruction and repaired them as she flew closer. Her Domain was small, just three hundred paces, so she needed to be close to attack. In exchange, however, was that her defences were solid and nearly impenetrable.

Well, not right now, hmph!

Three big falcons got wrecked before she got close enough to the fortress. But as soon as she got within the appropriate range, she let the five hundred falcons loose.

The fortress was a perfect sphere. She wasn’t sure what it was made of, but she couldn’t see inside because of the light it emitted. It was rather bright up close, so much so that she was thankful for her tinted headgear. The crystal armour she conjured did not have any opening for sight, but since it was her crystals, she could see through them anyway.

Swoosh! Crunch, crunch, crunch!

The crystal falcon golems pierced the walls as though they were paper and she finally saw what was inside. Iola scowled. It was simply a runescript array that gathered light and shot it out. Perhaps it was those patterns that allowed it to change the way the attack behaved, but she had no patience or time to decipher it. And at the very middle of the sphere was the Fysalli’s exit. The falcon golems rampaged across the interior space, destroying everything within.

Afterwards, she stepped through the exit. She was more than a bit upset. The entire thing had been set up as a trap to waste time!

_________

Almost as soon as Eli’Theria touched the barrier, Yuriko felt something trying to pull them apart. There were two people in the Colossus, though it was four entities if she considered the animating spirits to count against whatever the Fysalli was trying to do. She felt the barrier trying to rip apart her connection with the Colossus, but of course, she held an Orb of Authority and her Fri’Avgi was slotted inside Eli’Theria as the key.

The ripping force was ultimately too weak, and the four of them entered a chamber with a minimum of fuss. But what she saw only made her scowl.

‘Troublesome,’ Mum said.

‘Yeah.’

They were in a cavern and the place didn’t look much different from the tunnel they were flying through. Except the cavern wasn’t that much bigger than Eli’Theria and the tunnels leading out of it were barely large enough for people to walk through. In fact, with Yuriko’s height, she would probably scrape her head on the ceiling.

There was nothing else in the cavern, save for milky white water droplets coming down a single stalactite, which splashed against the matching stalagmite. Around the bottom was a shallow pool of water. Yuriko’s perception aura observed everything she could, and she even drove it past the thick stone above, below, and around them.

It was all earth and stone, actually. She could probably dig through using Eli’Theria, but she wasn’t sure where to go. And the earth and stone extended past where she could observe. But then again, didn’t she use her sunblades to scout the entire labyrinth in the Chaos Fortress? She could do the same here.

‘The ambient Chaos here is stubborn,’ Mum complained. ‘It’s like trying to mould steel by hand.’

‘What were you trying to do, Mum?’

‘A scouting spell. Earth pulse. It maps out tunnels, chambers, and notable resources within a radius dependent on how much of my Will and Animus I infuse into it.’

‘That sounds handy,’ Yuriko said idly, though she realised her perception aura did the same thing already.

‘Uh huh, then it creates a physical representation of the map.’ Sadeen said with no small amount of amusement since she probably sensed Yuriko’s thoughts.

More interested now, Yuriko asked, ‘Can you teach it to me?’

‘Of course my dear, but I think you’re only lacking the writing process anyway.’ Then Mum’s voice turned sly, ‘You’ve already got the best voyeur’s tool, hie hie.’

Feeling her cheeks redden, and in consequence, Eli’Theria’s from the resonance, and Mum’s from feedback, Sadeen roared out in laughter.

However, she never stopped trying to cast her spell even while she teased her daughter.

‘Tsk, this will take a while.’

‘Mum, I can scout,’ Yuriko interrupted as she materialised her sunblades. The ones she had before entering the Fysalli couldn’t enter or were dispersed. That was an annoyance. Perhaps if she was physically holding them? Hmm, was this a normal trait of Fysallis or was it unique in this instance?

Mum didn’t stop casting but said, ‘Do what you have to.’

Nodding, Yuriko sent her sunblades down the single tunnel. She first wanted to find out where it led, but she also didn’t want to waste time by searching the surroundings only after the tunnels, so she continued conjuring sunblades and had them carve a path through the walls. Mum hummed in appreciation.

A minute later, Yuriko reached the limit of her range in the tunnel. Ten longstrides and it was nothing but twists and turns. No branches or split paths either. Her digging revealed nothing either.

Another minute of waiting and Sadeen’s spell finally activated. A pulse of energy spread out from the cavern and went through the rock. Mum’s focus was entirely on the spell so Yuriko kept hers to their surroundings.

A couple of minutes later, Mum swore and shook her head. ‘It’s just one long tunnel to the exit. Ten leagues away!’

An orb of light appeared in front of Eli’Theria, which then turned transparent. A model of the entire Fysalli came into being. It was a sphere, of course, and they were in the very centre. The path wound around but ultimately headed only towards a point at the edge. There were no loopbacks or spirals, just a long twisty tunnel. There were several points where going through the walls could save some time, but there were only five spots where that was possible.

‘We’ll either have to disembark or tunnel our way through.’ Sadeen muttered. She knew that Yuriko could carry Eli’Theria within her Anima since she wasn’t foolish enough to withhold that bit of information.

‘It’s faster if we fly without Eli,” Yuriko answered.

‘Then let’s not waste time.’

They popped out of Eli’Theria, then Yuriko stowed the Colossus in her Anima. They flew down the tunnels as fast as they could, and she drilled through the corridor walls that could accommodate shortcuts with her sunblades. It took nearly five minutes of flight before they arrived at the exit, and when they did, it was back into Rumiga and into a cavern holding a very familiar city.

Synkrasia.