The false ground gave way to Iola Brygos’ Domain. Eli’Theria and the two Legates landed on the true ground not a moment later, facing the odd gate that had stymied Yuriko’s scout sunblades. And it was a gate, taller than two Eli’Therias stacked together, and from the ornate patterns on its surface, was a complex piece of Animatech.

Yuriko wasn’t sure who built the gate, or if it was materialised by the planar core instead. She knew relatively little about planar cores, just information that seeped in from Damien’s memories, really.

Was the planar core similar to a person’s Animus core? That was something that existed half in the material reality, and half in the Anima. Which also begged the question, what was the dreamscape? It was something she named out of convenience, and Damien never told her if it had another name. It was the place where her Anima went during her Atavism Ritual…

A few memories flashed across her mind, reminding her of her first dreamwalking. She remembered seeing hundreds of silhouettes appear around her. Her Ancestors, she assumed, and Damien. For there was little doubt in her mind that the greatsword-wielding man who she glimpsed before the end was he. The end of that walk was blurry to her memories, and perhaps those were coloured by wishes and desires, so she couldn’t trust that they were unbiased facts. But then, was the dreamscape the layer of reality that the Anima dwelt in? It seemed so from all the evidence she’d encountered.

Certainly, it was her Anima that was pulled into the dreamscape to fight during the True Refraction, and it was only her Anima that fought to save Eli’Theria’s animating spirit. But she suspected the truth had far more layers than could be easily seen and she cautioned herself not to assume that what she saw was everything.

Heh, philosophy wasn’t really her strong point, but she found herself in self-reflection more often of late. It was no surprise, since proper self-reflection and meditation was a path to power, and the habit had helped her immensely.

As her second consciousness thread wound along with idle thoughts and rumination, her main focus was on breaching the gate. It was open, yes, but a barricade of diffused Chaos and Animus.

Legate Jiro Segawa stepped towards it warily and pressed an armoured finger against the barrier and winced when a spark of lightning bounced from the barrier to his finger, then across his metallic armour, before grounding on the stone.

Legate Brygos did the same and with predictably the same result. Yuriko prodded a sunblade at it, and she felt a repulsive force that grew stronger the closer the sword tip got until it took all of the might she could channel through her flying sword to barely get it to touch. And when the spark flew into the blade, it nearly disrupted the pattern holding it together. Motes of Radiant energy bled off the sunblade, as well as frayed Animus threads and the fusion between the two was forcibly cancelled.

Yuriko frowned. She could barely perceive the counterspell wave, but she couldn’t help but feel that it would be a potent weapon and defence should she learn how to utilise it. She wasn’t sure if what the duke did only applied to spells, but then again, other than her sunblades, none of her Animus techniques were external. She let the sunblade dissolve as forcing it to reintegrate would cost her more Radiant, Animus, and time as opposed to making a new one.

She noticed Mum making her own tests while Legate Jiro was muttering to himself. Yuriko continued to observe the interference wave while pressing more and more sunblades against the barrier. Since she had multiple hundred blades, she used half of them to probe the barrier. However, she was still unable to breach the chamber, even if the ripples of the wave created interesting and mesmerizing patterns.

A couple of minutes later, Legate Iola Brygos growled, “Overwhelm it. We’ve no choice. All three of us, with our strongest attacks. Yuriko, guard us.”

“Alright,” Yuriko answered.

“Agreed,” Legate Jiro said.

“Give me a moment,” Mum said as she spun a spell mandala. Unlike the ones she made before, this one was compact. It had nearly a dozen circles and the runescript lines crisscrossed in complicated patterns. Some of the lines had multiple inputs that altered every time Animus and ambient Chaos passed through. Then, Mum added some of her Ennoia energies, which was the first time Yuriko saw it. It was silver-tinged with gold. It wasn’t Luminous energy, but it definitely had hints of it. As soon as that bit combined with the mandala, the ambient Chaos surrounding them went wild and rushed into the mandala indiscriminately. Yuriko felt something tug at her emotions, and she saw Legate Brygos suddenly look glassy-eyed. Legate Segawa didn’t seem affected though.

The effect cut off almost immediately, and the mandala shrunk and wrapped around a green orb the size of Yuriko's fist. There was a corona of darkness around it, and it gave her a feeling of immense, heart-pounding danger.

“Ready.”

Shaking her head, Yuriko scattered her sunblades around them and got them ready to defend. She had enough blades to form barriers large enough to act as full-body shields for everyone, though she didn’t know how well they would stand up to a Chaos Duke’s force.

Legate Segawa held out a hand and compressed a blue orb above his palm, much like what he did during the battles outside of Rumiga. Legate Brygos conjured a crystalline spear and filled it with so much Animus and her Ennoia energies that it glowed as bright as the noonday sun.

“Strike!” Legate Brygos yelled, and all three of them unleashed their attacks. Yuriko kept a wary eye out, but nothing seemed to be coming. Ah, she noticed Legate Segawa glancing up, too.

The three orbs of great destruction slammed into the barrier and everything, including Yuriko’s perceptive aura, was pushed away. Eli’Theria stumbled back, and Yuriko’s condensed Anima started to crack as if faced immense pressure and heat. She wasn’t even the target! She couldn’t help but devote her entire attention to the spectacle, and she almost activated an Adamant Guardian Seal save for the fact that the explosive force was already weakening.

The bright light hampered vision and she was still blinking away spots in her vision when the light finally receded. The barrier was gone. But almost as soon as it broke…

Whoosh! Blam!

“Ahhh!” Legate Segawa grunted as a pillar of light slammed into him, and flung him towards the wall. Yuriko swept her sunblades into a blocking pattern and interposed them against the narrow beam. The green light split against her sunblades but almost immediately corroded them to ashes.

Beyond the gate was a grand chamber. One bordered with multi-hued stones. It was spherical, and right in the middle was Rumiga’s core.

Or rather, parts of it.

The core would have been a large gemstone sphere, cut in a multitude of facets so fine that it was impossible to parse it with the naked eye. It would have been three paces across, and hovering in the middle of the chamber, the locus and source of the ambient Chaos paths throughout the plane.

Right now, the gem was fading, half translucent, and the figure of the Chaos Duke, The One Who Watches and Waits, was interposed within it. One of the Chaos Duke’s incarnations anyway.

Surrounding the floating core were a dozen humanoid incarnations, each with a different face, men and women, but all with the crescent moon and empty circle on their cheeks. Eight held out their hands towards the core, a tether of Chaos connected from their palms to the incarnation within. Sparks flew from where the tethers touched the facets, and they were noticeably thinner once they passed the threshold.

Four stood in a row between the gathering and the gate, and one had a hand raised, unleashing a beam of green light that was currently destroying her sunblades.

No matter. She had hundreds more!

Yuriko attacked. Five hundred sunblades guided by the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords struck at a single incarnation. She had no hope of fighting more than one, and it was quite evident she was completely outmatched.

Just like when she fought him in Fri’Avgi’s tomb, the Chaos Duke danced circles around her sunblades, almost as if he knew exactly what she was going to do. So it was quite apparent that he was a master of the sword, too, with access to the Ennoia, and probably with a more profound understanding of it.

It mattered not. Yuriko could not retreat. She would not surrender, and she would not let her presence here be in vain. If a single pair of blades wasn’t enough, then double it. Double it again and again until he was drowned in Radiant light! Skill will come with time, and right now, she has little to none.

The four vanguard incarnations split to fight them one on one. Well, two-headed towards Eli’Theria, though the one Yuriko targeted was held back.

After blasting Legate Segawa, that incarnation simply continued to shoot pillars of green light. Each blast was straightforward, and the Legate was barely holding his own. Segawa’s barriers broke almost as soon as the lights hit them, and it was only because he hastily replaced them that he was able to persevere.

Legate Brygos was yelling and swearing loudly while she hurled spear after spear of yellow crystals at her foe, but that incarnation was as slippery as a snake, twisting and bending out of the way, and even when the Legate caused the spears to explode, the Watcher simply flicked a finger and made a small barrier that somehow deflected the force away from him.

The third Watcher closed in on Eli’Theria and slammed an axe conjured from Chaos against the orichalcum armour. Mum cast her mandalas, but if the man didn’t dodge out of the way, he used those dispelling ripples to destroy her spells.

But whenever he got too close, Mum would yell, “Stop!”

And for a short moment, he would. Sadeen was barely able to take advantage of the openings, and the split-second freeze wasn’t enough to bring her powerful Sorcery to bear.

Yuriko tried to seize the gaps, but her sunblades were just as easily blocked or dispelled. The rippling waves were far more potent up close, and she’d already lost several blades. With her split thoughts, she conjured more.

She made Trinity blades and held them ready while she accumulated her maximum output. And when she got the dozen, she flung them at her target, spaced evenly so that no matter where he moved, he would get engulfed by the destruction sphere!

And just as she hoped, the incarnation she fought was caught by exactly one of the blasts. The incarnation leapt away with an annoyed hiss. His left side was charred, and parts of his bicep showed wounds straight to the bone. But that result was far below what Yuriko hoped for, though it was just as she expected.

Each incarnation was at least at the level of a Knight Dominus. That meant that they were protected by a layer of their Domain. She couldn’t identify what it was he held dominion over, but he was covered by a shimmering field of varied hues. That field protected him from being hurt, and the man was surprised at how her Trinity blade was actually able to penetrate it, despite the two-level gap between them.

Seeing the wounds gave her a bit of hope, but she knew that unless she managed to hit him directly, or with more than one Trinity blade, she stood little chance.

And she couldn’t forget…there were nine of them left!

She took a chance and flung several Trinity blades against the circle and the core assimilating clone. The one she was fighting broke off and interposed himself between her blades and his incarnations. He flung up a hand and the floor erupted with an earthen wall, fast enough that they hit the sunblades as they were passing by. A second wall appeared just in front of the ensuing explosion, blocking the shockwaves from striking the circle.

Even though the attack failed, Yuriko couldn’t help but grin. After all, she didn’t have to stick to attacking the one in front of her.

She readied another dozen Trinity blades, spending her Will and Intent recklessly. Then, she flung all of them, along with five hundred sunblades at the circle and core.