The next morning found Yuriko already working on a set of exercises to get used to wielding Fri'Avgi. She contained herself within a circle drawn on the dirt a couple of paces wide performed each of the sword dances in quick succession.
The sound of the weapon cutting through the air differed depending on which sword dance was active at the time. During the first dance, her Animus formed a subtle edge around the blade. When it grazed against a stone, it left a smooth cut incomparable to what she could manage with a plain Empowered Strike.
The second dance didn't create an edge at all. Instead, it created semi-invisible rays about as long as her forearm near the red gem. The rays moved independently but she couldn't quite test its usefulness since no one was attacking her.
When she used the third sword stance, the edge wasn't subtle. The aura around the blade's edge looked jaggedly vicious and any wounds it created wouldn't be clean cuts. When she tested it against a boulder, it left behind a wide gash that looked like something had taken a bite out of it.
"I can't get over how you're just waving that thing around as if it's made of cardboard," Krystal remarked.
The other girl was trying to cook breakfast but the lack of ingredients other than their rations put a damper on her efforts. They'd run out of smoked meat and vegetables the night before and they didn't have any time to forage or hunt.
"How much time do you think it'll take for us to get back to the lake?" Yuriko asked.
"Half a day, probably. Why?"
"I've a bad feeling."
"Which is?"
"That we should get back there as soon as possible?"
"Hmm, I agree," Orrin butted in as he crawled out of his bedroll.
"What? Agree with what?" Krystal asked.
"That we should return to the lake. I think Braden is headed there."
"How would you even know that?" Yuriko asked.
"Er, well, we've always been able to tell where the other was even when we were kids. That link improved after our Atavism Ritual. I can roughly tell which direction he's at, though I can't quite tell how far. He's that way." Orrin pointed south-southwest.
"Wouldn't that mean he's entered the forest too?" Krystal asked.
"I suppose," Orrin answered.
Heron and Mikel woke at about the same time, crawling out of their bedrolls quickly when they saw everyone else was already awake.
Yuriko stabbed Fri'Avgi into the ground and distributed the bowls filled with unappetizing porridge. She ate quickly, trying not to let the taste linger, and everybody seemed to have the same idea. An hour after sunrise, the five of them were on their way.
Krystal led the team down a trail. It was narrow and meandering and they went frustratingly slow. Yuriko could feel a sense of disquiet and anxiety building up inside her. Orrin seemed to be feeling much the same, except he had a greater cause to be agitated.
Heron, Mikel, and Krystal went at their usual pace, their countenance stoic. The forest sounds were louder up north with the swarmlings presumably too far away to affect the animals and insects. The relative peace abruptly changed between one moment and the next. The forest suddenly seemed…hostile. The bird song had a hard edge, the cicadas had stopped singing, and even the wind shook the leaves and branches hard enough to break twigs. The foliage darkened as though the sun was behind a thick cloud.
Krystal waited for them at a fork in the path.
"We went through here yesterday," she said. "I can see our tracks. We're close, but I don't like this."
The forest had gone silent again.
They pressed on grimly. Krystal didn't range too far ahead, always keeping within sight. Yuriko brought up the rear simply because carrying Fri'Avgi was hazardous to anyone behind her. She carried the weapon over her shoulder and with the lengthy blade sticking out, all it would take was a careless turn and she would end up braining whoever followed. As it was, the weapon was swatting bushes and leaves whenever there was a turn on the trail.
Krystal rounded a corner and froze. She took a step back, and raised her fist, pumping it in the air thrice. The four of them ran forward while Krystal made some room and when they burst into the clearing right around the turn, they surprised a Wanderer and a small group of swarmlings.
Orrin's Plasma Lancet burst out a small rain of bolts, focusing mostly on the swarmlings whose Protective Field barely did more than keep them alive in Rumiga. Heron positioned himself in front, giving Krystal, Mikel, and Orrin cover. Yuriko used his back as a springboard, Fri'Avgi radiant with her Animus as she slashed at the Wanderer.
The greatsword's golden alloy blade crushed the Wanderer's Protective Field as if it were a pile of kindling wood. It hit the Wyldling's waist, and in the next second, the force of her swing flung the creature's upper half across the clearing, trailing blue blood and guts unravelling in ropy strands.
Even the nearly mindless swarmlings were stunned by Yuriko's horrific display but it didn't stop them for long. They acted even before Yuriko could recover as she didn't expect to finish it off in one blow. Her Animus had stopped circulation and only when the glow disappeared from her weapon did she react.
The second sword dance was the one she was most familiar with and she fell into it in the blink of an eye. Not in time to deflect the first couple of claws though. Light as Fri'Avgi was, it was still nearly a couple of paces long and manoeuvring it defensively was difficult.
She would have had a far easier time had she kept swinging and cutting down her foes, after all, they wouldn't be able to hurt her if they were dead. The rays produced by the red gem helped. She presented the broad side of her weapon to block a couple of swarmlings coming at her front. The four others spread out to flank her. Bolts of green and red plasma burned the nearest one, while Heron's spear impaled another. A stream of fire blossomed from Mikel's hands, taking the ones moving to her left.
In a way, Fri'Avgi served as a makeshift shield with the swarmlings' slashing claws hitting the broad side of the blade. One set tried to pull the weapon away while the other tried to reach under the weapon to swipe her legs. The rays blocked the lower set, draining a bit of her Animus as it did so. The one who tried to pull the weapon away simply couldn't wrest it from her.
With a deft twist, she smacked both with the side and they flew into the air, smashing into the trees and falling on the ground with broken bodies. Four more swarmlings were headed her way and she switched over back to the third stance. She swung in a wide horizontal arc. One swarmling tried to step back out of reach, another dived under, while a third was caught full on the front.
The one who backpedalled lunged as soon as the blade had passed while the one who dived under found itself with a huge chunk of its shoulder gone when her Animus touched it. It fell screaming in pain.
Unfortunately for the first one, Yuriko was easily able to arrest the blade's momentum and she crushed it with a backhanded swing. The fourth swarmling had gone for the others and ate a fan of flames for its troubles.
The only one left alive was just recovering from having a huge chunk of flesh missing from its shoulder when she stabbed it in the face. It didn't have time for another scream before it was snuffed.
The entire battle lasted all of thirty seconds.
A few moments later, green motes of light started to rise from the dead swarmlings but this time, instead of fading from sight, into thin air or the ground, the red gem on Fri'Avgi's cross-guard shone brightly. The motes of light rushed into the sword, entering through the dull blade and visibly moving towards the hilt. There was a rush of pleasure that was so great that Yuriko dropped to her knees and moaned.
Krystal rushed up to Yuriko and kept her from falling on her face. After the pleasure came pain, as though something was trying to rip her body apart. Blood seeped out of her like sweat.
"Ahhh!" This time, Krystal couldn't stop her from writhing on the ground.
"What's happening?" One of the boys yelled; Yuriko couldn't tell who. She could barely even make sense of her surroundings.
"Chaos poisoning…"
"Graaah!" she clawed at her throat. She could feel her veins bulging while all of her muscles clenched and spasmed.
"How? We're nowhere near the boundary!"
Her blood felt like it had been replaced by liquid flames.
"What do we do?"
Even her Anima felt like it was boiling. Her Animus core was a frozen sphere. In desperation, she reached for it. Her mind fumbling with it, the cold freezing her willpower. She was burning up, her core was frozen solid. And her body was slowly breaking apart.
Yet, some part of her held on. Her Facet flared to life and the Chaos she inadvertently absorbed calmed just enough that she was able to take hold of her Animus. She did the only thing she thought of that would help: she circulated it in the Golden Recovery pattern.
The Chaos subsided. The green motes of light diving deep inside, burrowing into her bones. Every complete circulation of the pattern saw the Chaos driven from her blood, with some of it consumed to repair the damage it did to her body.
"Wait, she looks better. Do that again!"
Yuriko felt a foreign Animus flowing into her Anima but all that did was muddle up her recovery process. She pushed off the hands on her shoulder.
"Give her room."
She recognized Krystal's voice. When Yuriko opened her eyes, she was staring up at all four of them.
Slow deep breaths. With a groan she sat up, her hand looking for Fri'Avgi. The artefact was a few paces away.
"Are you feeling better?" Krystal asked, her eyes wet.
"I...What happened?"
"You just collapsed. Is this going to be a routine with you? Since when did you have seizures?" Krystal jested but the tone of concern was thick in her voice.
"I'm fine," Yuriko said as she got up. Her hands were streaked with red but there were no open wounds. As Recovery continued to cycle, she felt better and better. The deep-seated ache slowly disappeared like mist. "We...we should continue."
"Maybe we should take a break?" Mikel asked.
"NO! No. I'm fine," Yuriko insisted. "We have to go." The need to return to the lake grew stronger with every minute.
The ground shuddered and she almost lost her balance. Krystal wasn't so lucky and fell on her bottom. Heron weathered the trembling with stoic ease while Mikel fell on his knees. Orrin fell against a tree trunk.
The shaking passed quickly but no sooner had they regained their balance than another tremor, stronger than the last knocked all of them off their feet. Leaves and twigs rained down from the treetop, as did feathers, caterpillars, and assorted insects.
This was followed by a third tremor. The trunks swayed so much that Yuriko thought they would break and fall but thankfully didn't.
Crack!
A thick branch cracked and snapped under its own weight, and crashed on the clearing just a couple of paces from crushing Orrin.
They crawled to the centre hoping that nothing would fall on them. They waited, huddled together, shivering in fear. A fourth tremor didn't come.
Caw, caw!
Birds scattered from the foliage, hawks flying next to sparrows, in an effort to escape. Yuriko got to her feet and picked up Fri'Avgi.
"Which way?" she asked grimly.
Krystal pointed numbly.
Nodding, Yuriko started off only to stop when Orrin grabbed her legs.
"Wait, wait!" he cried. "Are you really going there? Shillogu's probably fighting something fierce!"
"Get off!" she growled irritably. "Yes, I'm going there. I have Fri'Avgi and if Shillogu's fighting that hard then it's probably the Will of the Wave! This is our chance!"
"Oh."
"Wait for us," Heron said while he got to his feet.
Yuriko nodded impatiently. Once the others had settled their nerves they hurried down another path. A few minutes later they ran into another group of Wyldlings, this time more than a dozen swarmlings.
Half a minute later they were but dust in the wind. Fri'Avgi absorbed the Chaos dust drifting off the corpses, transferring a good bit of it to Yuriko but, forewarned, she kept Recovery going. She only felt a rush of pleasure this time.
"Why's your face so red?" Krystal asked.
Yuriko just shook her head and staggered off.
"Ancestors!" Orrin suddenly exclaimed.
"What?"
"We forgot to take the Wanderer's shard!"
Heron smacked him upside his head. "Not the time!"
"Oh, right."
They ran into several more Wyldling bands. At Orrin's insistence, they harvested the shards of any Wanderers they came across.
"We need a breather every now and then. No sense arriving at a battle exhausted."
"Our people could be dying," Yuriko said.
"Just give us a minute's rest every now and then," Orrin insisted.
"Fine." Yuriko sighed. Yet she fidgeted every second they delayed. She could feel it in her bones. The Will of the Wave was there and she needed to destroy it.
They reached the top of a hill and followed a stream that would eventually lead to the lake. There were more and more swarmlings and Wanderers in the forest. They fought the groups that were small enough that they could take them on. Mikel, Krystal, Orrin, and Heron's Animus reserves fell, and they had to rely on Yuriko to cut them a path. It didn't take much of Yuriko's Animus to keep the sword dances going and Fri'Avgi crushed every Protective Field it came up against.
The lake was soon in sight. The banks were filled with Wyldlings of all three tiers. And there, at the banks near the ruined village, were a bunch of men and women fighting off the horde.
Shillogu trampled the area just outside, trying to gore a figure moving so fast that it was barely a blur. Whatever it was, it wielded a rapier wreathed in rosy flames. The Avos was covered in cauterized wounds and even as they watched, the figure stabbed Shillogu's flank, withdrawing before the giant boar wheeled to gore it.
"Braden!" Orrin shouted, pointing at the village. Yuriko could see the other boy along with their instructors. She also saw the Hunter creeping over them in the upper branches, about to leap down and reap their lives.