The next few minutes flowed like mud. Krystal could barely keep sight of the monster. One moment, it was standing in the dark, the next, it was charging at them, hands tipped with razor-sharp claws extended to rip into flesh.
Krystal was the one closest to it with Heron just behind her. Animus flooded into her eyes, illuminating the creature's trail. While she couldn't see where it was, she could see where it had been.
"Ahhh!"
Her initial panicked scream was still hanging in the air, her hand reached to her waist where her Plasma Lancet was holstered. Her other handheld out in front of her, to ward off the inevitable blow. The gleaming claws came ever closer to her.
Wham! Krrrtk!
Heron's hardened air shield interposed between them and its claws skittered across it, creating a high pitched screech like nails scratching at glass. She backpedalled and bumped into Heron's broad chest. He grabbed her across the waist and twisted sideways, flinging her behind him.
Krystal barely managed to keep her balance.
A bolt of superheated plasma flung at the creature only for Heron's shield to block it. The glass-like construct shattered but the bolt's kinetic force had been spent. Two more bolts of plasma followed it, aimed squarely at the Hunter's torso.
It ducked out of the way, leaping back and towards the left-hand wall. Krystal managed to draw her Lancet, while her active Facet tracked where it went just a moment before, a silhouette shadowing its every move. She only had to aim a little bit ahead of it to hit!
"Peyton, forward!" Gwendith yelled.
The stocky boy muscled ahead, the buckler on his arm unfolding into a kite shield. His blue Animus glow, closer to green actually, covered the shield with the telltale glow of Empowered Strike.
Heron stayed close to Krystal, his own buckler unfolding to twice its size, and a short spear on hand. The two strikers of the team, Leland and a girl named Ebril, continued their barrage of bolts. The Plasma Lancets didn't pack too much of a punch but their Facet must have made up for it since it was slowly burning through the Hunter's Field.
"Where's Yuri when you need her?" Krystal muttered.
"Who knows?" Heron grunted. "She's probably with the other students."
"Keep it still for a moment!" Gwendith charged forward with a metal staff in hand. It glimmered with moisture. Krystal wondered what good it would do.
The Hunter growled and scratched at Peyton's shield but the other boy barely endured each blow, his boots skidding on the floor as he absorbed the force of each strike. Gwendith jabbed the Hunter with the tip of her staff which it deflected with its arm.
That was apparently enough to activate Gwendith's Facet.
"Graaah!"
The arm that touched the staff started freezing over and for a blink of an eye, the Hunter's movement stalled.
"Fire!"
Plasma bolts, Empowered spear stabs, and a blast of flame from Mikel who'd just managed to come forward flew at the Wyldling. But a Hunter wasn't as brainless as its lesser brethren. When bolts and Mikel's flame touched its Field, it retreated.
They could hear its angry growls for a few seconds, but afterwards, there was silence.
The minor Chaos spring crackled and popped, hissing as the air burned at its presence behind them. Krystal couldn't help but look at it. It was too small, she thought, to allow a Wyldling to enter. So where did the Hunter come from?
"Any word from Bellton?" Leland asked Gwendith.
The blonde girl shook her head, her eyes looking a little wild. "None. We should have had a response by now."
"What do we do then?"
"We can't leave the Chaos spring alone," Krystal said.
"We can't close it," Gwendith replied grimly. "We don't have the power to."
"Do we wait here?" Heron asked, his voice as steady as a mountain.
Krystal couldn't help but smile. Ah, memories. It's been barely a season since they'd fought with their lives on the line. The steadiness of veteran warriors suffused Heron and Mikel. Probably her, too. Danika was at the rear, watching the opposite way, her eyes glancing in their direction every now and then.
The city folk looked shaken, eyes darting about and weapons trembling in their tightfisted grip. Their leader was a bit calmer but not by much.
"I think we have two choices." Krystal looked at Gwendith, drawing the other girl's attention. "We stay here and wait for help, all the while fending off attacks from that Hunter. Those things won't just let us go. Or we could retreat. We have the coordinates for this place and staying here would only endanger us."
Gwendith hesitated. Krystal could see her desire to fight, for glory, in her eyes. But she took a deep breath and said, "We go back."
Krystal nodded. She kept her eyes trained at the direction the Hunter came from. She could still see its trail as a set of glowing footsteps on the floor and on the wall. They pointed away which told her the Hunter had definitely retreated. As long as she kept her Facet active, she would see its afterimage when it came back. Even if it activated its camouflage, she would still see it.
Problem was, she only had enough Animus to keep it up for eight minutes more, at most. And if she ran out, not only would she have nothing to fight back with but she'd probably faint too.
"Tsk." Krystal shook her head. "It's still headed away but I don't know how long it will stay away."
"I froze its arm," Gwendith declared, pride returning to her voice. "It'll stay frozen for an hour."
"That long then."
"Let's go. Column reverse."
"I'll stay at the rear," Krystal decided. "I can spot it if it tries to follow us."
"Go."
The next five minutes were tense with a feeling of impending doom hanging over their heads. The pressure bearing down on their Fields added to her stress and at times, her Animus was pressed almost at her skin. She could feel the hostility in the air, though it was oddly quiet.
Where their footsteps echoed before now it was only a muffled thud. Krystal walked backwards with Heron and Mikel guiding her. There was no sign of the Hunter, though that only served to make her more nervous. Where was it and why wasn't it coming for them?
When Krystal had about two-fifths of her reserves left, she released her Facet. The Hunter hadn't followed them though it was likely to do so once it recovered. She couldn't help but recall her previous encounters with them even if she knew she should focus on the now.
They were still too fast for her to keep track of but the current squad was enough to be a match. About half of them were already Apprentice and Gwendith had been one since before the first day of class. That was enough time to build up their strength. Though they were still physically outmatched, the gap between the monster and the cadets wasn't as wide as before.
They could survive this.
"Halt!" came Gwendith's hurried shout.
Krystal looked ahead and felt her blood drain from her face. The tunnel wasn't as empty as before and arrayed against them was a group of swarmlings that looked somewhat unsteady on their feet. She should have known. Where there was one Wyldling, there were more around the corner. The burning question was, where did they come from?
The passages leading to the planar barrier were blockaded by thick doors inscribed with protective runescript. The Chaos springs weren't really big enough yet to serve as a passage. There was only one way that Krystal could think of: there was a Chaos Lord leading the attack, and probably more than one considering the defensive strength of the Capital.
"We're fighting our way through," Gwendith said grimly.
______
Yuriko reacted to the sudden darkness by channelling Animus into the tip of her index finger. The sudden weight pressing down on her made it slightly difficult to push it out of her skin but it took only a slight focus to power through it. Her golden Animus radiated light enough to illuminate her and her immediate vicinity and revealed her fellow students either flat on their backs or their faces.
A moment later, she adjusted to the pressure and straightened her knees. The runescript around the room lit up, though they still flickered, and with the doors open, they wouldn't function properly.
"Close...the…door!" one of the girls repeated.
Yuriko nodded and hurried over, she was just about to pull them close when she felt a twinge at the back of her mind. Shaking her head, she pushed the thought aside and pulled the door close. As soon as she did, the glow from the runescript steadied and the pressure slowly subsided.
"What was that?" she asked the nearest girl. There were about fifty of them in the chamber, most of them were girls her age, though she wasn't sure if they were all from the Golden Willow.
"This seems strong for the storm," the girl answered.
Yuriko blinked as she realised that she recognised the one she spoke to, though she didn't know her name. They had been in the Sharom Elite trials together.
"How do you know?"
"I've lived in Rumiga City all my life," the girl with the honey-coloured twin tails said. "This isn't normal." She tilted her head to the side. "I know you. Ahh! The Sharom trials."
"I'm Yuriko Davar."
"Catherine Mayer."
The weight on her back was gone, and the light panels worked again. Yuriko pulled back the Animus from her fingertip back into her core but frowned when she realized that it had already been stained. She performed a quick squeeze and extracted a single mote of distilled Chaos.
"How do you figure?" she asked, paying half a mind to what Catherine said.
"The sudden increase in ambient Chaos is too much."
"Oh goodness, Ancestors help us," another girl murmured. "How long must we endure this?"
The murmuring of the women took on a panicked note.
"Calm down please, we're safe here," Yuriko said though she felt a bit discomfited since she didn't know if that was true. She could tell that the people around her realised that, too, and tension filled the air.
Yuriko searched faces around her, looking for her friends. She found Ishika and Maryn at the far corner and with a sigh of relief, she made her way towards them.
Ishika's face had a greenish tinge to it and Maryn's was pale.
"Are you…uhm, how can I help?" Yuriko asked.
"Water…"
"Right."
She reached for her backpack and pulled out a canteen, unstoppered it and offered it to Ishika. Maryn groped at her pack too, so Yuriko helped her find her supplies.
"What in Chaos was that?" Maryn managed to say after taking a hurried gulp of water.
"One of the locals said that it's worse than usual."
"Oh thank the Ancestors," Maryn gasped, "at least it's not the norm."
"Yeah, but anything unusual means trouble," Yuriko said grimly.
"Well, what can we do then?"
"Nothing, I suppose. Our only choice is to wait it out. Only…" Yuriko paused. "I've got a bad feeling."
"When have you ever paid attention to your hunches?" Maryn asked crossly. "And when has it ever been right?"
Yuriko gave the other girl a sidelong glance but didn't reply. Ishika grabbed Maryn's arm and shook her head.
"Urk!" Ishika's cheeks puffed up as she clapped her hands over her mouth. She managed to control herself though, thankfully.
The chamber was quite spacious even with all the people inside. She soon spotted the lavatories and she was about to bring Ishika over there when the other girl shook her head again.
Settling down, Yuriko sat in a meditative pose. She didn't know what was happening outside, but Master Alfein said that she should perform her Animus manipulation exercises during the storm.
Except…the ambient Chaos was thick enough that she barely spent maybe a couple of lumens to distil Chaos. Maybe she should focus on that instead. But, what about Chaos poisoning? When she envisioned her Anima, her supply of distilled Chaos was about eighteen motes. How many would it take before Chaos poisoning started?
Wait, she'd experienced it before. Her memories were hazy during those last hours before she fought the Chaos Lord back in Shillogu Woods but she remembered Fri'Avgi had channelled a large amount of green light--distilled Chaos motes--into her. When that happened, did she use Recovery to flush them out?
No, that wasn't what happened. She remembered the lights drilling into her bones and muscles.
"You need to feed ambient Chaos into your Anima to strengthen it after training." Damien had said. But those lights didn't go into her Anima. Did it also help with her physique? For that matter…was that what Strengthen Physique needed to work?
She felt a twinge of excitement at the thought. She could grow stronger again! But not right now. No, she couldn't afford to drain away all of her Animus reserves during the Chaos storm. Well, she could gather more distilled Chaos, maybe round out her collection to an even twenty?
She started her practice, spinning her Animus into a disc behind her back. She was at it for a couple of minutes before she was interrupted.
"What are you doing?" Maryn asked.
"Huh? Training." Yuriko answered easily. The Pure Animus had already been stained, so she distilled the Chaos into motes. There, she had twenty-one motes.
"This isn't the time for that!"
Yuriko shrugged. "Yes it is. That's what our advisor said."
Maryn exchanged glances with Ishika, then shrugged.
"Well, I'm done now," Yuriko sighed.
'Sorry," Maryn said after Ishika nudged her with an elbow.
"No need." Yuriko smiled. Then she frowned. The persistent itch in the back of her mind wouldn't let her relax. Then she suddenly remembered the last time she felt such a thing. The night before they travelled through the Zarek Mountains and they encountered those monsters.
However, she couldn't just do what she felt like and disregard everything else. With a heavy sigh, she settled on training her Animus manipulation exercises. She started with creating a quintuple strand braided cord with the central one focused on balance and control while the other two were on heat and cold.
She spun it around her Anima to warm up, though controlling just one cord was exceedingly simple. The difficulty was the same as just guiding a single strand. She moved it out of her body and attempted to push it away, while simultaneously keeping control of it. She managed about ten inches away before her control became…tenuous.
Frowning, she pushed it further until she felt a…strain…as if something would snap if she forced it. Gritting her teeth, she persisted for a while until the feeling grew too great and she pulled it back to her palm. Sweat ran down her cheeks. She didn't even perspire as much as this when she ran.
"Hey, hey, are you just going to train all the time?" Ishika asked.
"Why not? We've got nothing else to do."
"I don't know!" Ishika muttered. "Why don't we chat or something?"
"Well," Yuriko tilted her head, "what did you want to talk about?"
Ishika and Maryn exchanged glances then both rolled their eyes. "Nevermind."
"Well, I'll go back to training." Yuriko smiled.
She ended up spending a few hours working on the manipulation exercise. She didn't make much progress, just a tenth of an inch further. But the sensation of strain was there, so maybe she was headed in the right direction. A mote of distilled Chaos disappeared from her Anima while she rested and that was when she managed to extend her reach.
Some of the girls had already started cooking lunch at the kitchenette using induction stoves powered by the ambient Chaos and triggered by their Animus.
Grrrgl!
"Hungry."
Yuriko fished out a ration bar from her pack and a bottle of Rumiga City blend spice. Ishika and Maryn had moved somewhere else since Yuriko had been too focused on her training. With a shrug, she tore open the paper wrapping, sprinkling a bit of spice and bit off a piece.
"Huh, that's pretty good," she muttered.
She was just about to finish the rest of the bar when the door to their shelter was yanked open. She and everyone else turned to look.
"Wah...Wyldling…" the boy in Agaza's uniform said. His arm was limp and blood dripped down his fingers.