The darkness seemed to last forever, but Yuriko's timesense, even though it wasn't tethered to Imperial Standard, still told her that the trip across whatever it was took less than a minute. The Wind Darter moved across the threshold and picked up speed. It moved faster and faster until they practically shot out of the portal.
The sloop practically bounced off hardened Chaos waves and jolted Yuriko about until she used her Anima to cushion herself, then the others. The ship lost speed with every bounce, but it was hard to make anything out with the blending hues and shifting images. It took a few minutes, nearly a quarter hour, before they stopped bouncing and spinning. However, the sloop didn't stop moving even though the thrusters were powered off.
"Everyone…alright?" Yuriko groaned as she regained her bearings. She glared out into the Chaos Sea. The Firmament had turned placid, and the storm had disappeared. When she looked astern, there was no sign of the portal or any kind of folded space passage. In fact, if not for the fact that the sloop was being pushed by the Chaos current, she would have thought that they were near a plane.
"A little bruised," Gwendith complained, "but otherwise fine." The smaller girl climbed to her feet. She had been secured to the deck via frozen threads supported by silk rope.
"Alright down here," Heron said.
He and Yuriko's two handmaidens were in their quarters. Or were.
Ryoko, as soon as the ship had stopped swaying, had rushed to the galley. Yuriko winced when she saw the kitchen. Though they secured what could be held fast, one of the cabinets' locks had broken. Out spilled plates, bowls, and saucers, though mercifully, they were made from metal rather than glass or porcelain. One of the spice racks broke, too, and spilled powder all over the counter and floor. Now that one was truly a waste.
Ryoko wasted no time in cleaning, and curtly said, "I'm fine, young mistress."
Saki made her way to the Animus Engine room and inspected it for any sort of damage. One of the walls had sprung a leak and was letting in a trickle of Chaos. The room's stabilisers worked well and diverted the flow into the engine. However, the leak could widen and the engine's converters wouldn't be able to handle a much higher load.
Desire had collapsed on the deck, breathing heavily. Devotee, on the other hand, was struggling mightily to keep to his feet, despite the fact that a breeze could blow him over. It was kind of cute, the way he gritted his teeth and how his hands trembled against the railings.
Er, not the time for that!
Shaking her head, Yuriko spread her perception beyond the sloop. It was empty save for the Chaos. The current was wide too, all of the Chaos pushed them towards a single direction. There was nothing else within sight too.
Then she checked the Orb of Authority.
"Swarm fodder!" she yelled, startling everyone.
"What? Enemy attack?" Heron yelped from below deck even as he rushed out of the quarters.
"What did you see?" Gwendith gasped.
Desire raised her head, met Yuriko's eyes, then lay back down, trusting her to keep them safe. Devotee's head swivelled as he attempted to find the threat. Saki disappeared into the Shadows while Ryoko simply continued to clean.
"Yuri?" Gwendith called out.
"It's…" Yuriko swallowed convulsively, "Eli'Theria. I can finally determine how far we are from her again."
"...and?" Gwendith said quietly.
"Forty thousand days," Yuriko spat. "More than a hundred years away!"
"H-how? How could we have journeyed that far even though so little time passed?"
"The portal or folded space."
"Ancestors," Heron said as he emerged on deck. "The Chaos Sea certainly is illogical."
Yuriko grunted. She remembered Legate Jiro Segawa's story of why it took Vagaris so long to return to Rumiga.
"A temporal storm?"
"Or a displacement storm," Gwendith said grimly. "To go back…we either have to sail that long, or we'll have to find another way. Another portal. We…returned from Irvalla that way, didn't we? I think that place was just as distant from Rumiga as we are here."
"Oh, Ancestors." Yuriko groaned. "We're lost at Sea. Again!"
"Well, it certainly seems like a common adventure for you, dear." Heron chuckled as he patted her shoulder, "At least you're not alone."
"No, I guess not," Yuriko grumbled. "Fallen Sun!" She cursed once more, then sighed. Unless she could recreate that Chaos storm, it was impossible to go back the same way. "Let's get the Wind Darter back to order," she mumbled. So much for the Ambrosia Gathering Mission.
For the rest of that day, they simply let the sloop follow the current. It was bringing them farther away from Eli'Theria, she knew, but it wasn't as if heading directly back would help all that much. What they really needed to do was find a plane and search it for old portals. If they didn't find one in the closest plane, then they would search the next one, and the next, until they managed to return.
At the end of the day, nothing much had changed. The sloop remained at Equilibrium, which formed large waves as the differing density underneath it undulated. The presence of the waves and the current was certainly unusual, but many things were unique to the Chaos Sea. Several days later, they were still moving in the same direction, and that was an unusual thing.
Nothing changed.
And on the tenth day after they emerged in this strange part of the Chaos Sea, something else appeared in the distance.
"Is that…a mountain? Mountain range?" Desire muttered. The Chaos around them distorted anything too far away, but the sheer size of that thing, which spanned the entirety of what she could see in front of them.
"Those are waves, aren't they?" Yuriko muttered, seeing whitecaps close to the foothills.
"The Chaos Sea actually behaving like water?" Gwendith muttered.
"Strange."
Yuriko shivered. She couldn't help but feel a little bit of trepidation. And a moment later, she realised she couldn't see a hint of a planar Veil. When she said as much, the others turned to stare intently at the distant mountain range.
"You're right, there's nothing I can see," Gwendith muttered. "How long do you think it would take to get there?"
"A few days, maybe?" Heron said.
Yuriko sighed. The connections within her dreamscape body were tenuous now, owing to the distance, perhaps. She could still feel her family, except for Kato, whose thread remained severed. She could also feel millions of thin, whisper-thin threads that weren't quite attached to her body, but lingered around her Anima reach. Those, she knew, came from Irvalla. And it was the tenuousness of those threads that told her that she wasn't anywhere near that place.
Strangely enough, it took less than a day before they reached the foothills. Or rather, the shore. Chaos breakers washed over the sands or a long, long beach, and the mountains turned out to have gentle slopes that seemed to go on and on forever.
The sloop was stuck some distance away from the shore, pushed by waves, but held back by the counterflow. The Animus engine powered the ship's thrusters and repulsion field, allowing the Wind Darter to fly above the waves. They careened towards the shore, and Yuriko aimed the sloop to continue flying, wishing to cross the foothills, then the slope, then eventually, up and over the mountain.
Except as soon as the sloop passed the point where the Chaos Sea was, the Animus engines stuttered and they nearly crashed.
"Rotter!" Heron yelled as the jolt nearly knocked him off his feet. Yuriko inspected the control panels and found that Animus production by the engine had dropped nearly by half. Ambient Chaos density had been cut by that much too, showing at 0.5 iarvesh.
The Protective Sphere flickered as the regulators couldn't determine whether to keep powering that, the thrusters, or the repulsion field that kept them aloft. Priority was supposed to go to the Sphere, but the instruments indicated that the danger level from the Chaos Sea was dropping.
Yuriko overcame the ship's control conundrum when she infused more Animus into the capacitors, which allowed the Wind Darter to hover, fly, and keep the shield up. They moved away from the Chaos Sea, and in practically no time, they were at least a league away already. They passed the edge of the sandy shore and were hovering above the barren rock of the foothills.
"Desire, can you check the outside?" Yuriko requested her bound Chaos Lord, who nodded and jumped over the railings. The Protective Sphere did not hamper her passage.
Yuriko's perceptive aura was out in force, too. She penetrated the ground, but other than rock, there was nothing underneath them for more than fifteen paces. The rock was denser than she expected too.
A few minutes later, Desire knocked on the Sphere and Yuriko opened a bubble for her to enter.
"It's safe. It doesn't feel like the Sea," Desire said, though her forehead was scrunched up in thought. "It's weird. The iarvesh level is low, and it should be siphoning out my Chaos Well. But nothing's happening."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Yuriko asked.
"It is, but it's still quite unusual."
"And what's strange could be dangerous," Heron interjected.
"Right," Desire answered.
"Do you think we can lower the Protective Sphere?" Gwendith asked. "Just so Yuri doesn't have to keep pouring Animus into the ship."
"We should ask Ryoko if she's willing to take the chance," Desire said.
Gwendith gave the Chaos Lord a side eye. "You know she'd say yes to anything Yuri asks."
"Which means it should be you asking."
"It still doesn't change the fact that powering the ship inconveniences her mistress."
"Well…"
"Ladies," Yuriko interrupted. "We'll hold the Protective Sphere for now, then let Ryoko out for a little bit at a time. See if she can take it."
They did just that, with Yuriko hovering around her handmaiden, ready to enfold Ryoko with her Anima at the slightest sign of discomfort. When the older woman set foot on the slope, her frown nearly triggered Yuriko's protectiveness.
"It's alright," Ryoko said. "It feels…normal? Like back in Realmheart? Or Rumiga, yeah. Hmm, I don't feel much oppressiveness from the Chaos."
"I guess we can shelve the Protective Sphere then," Yuriko said.
The Wind Darter's Sphere faded away and the sloop settled just a pace above the rock. It was quite a bit more stable and the drain on the capacitors had reached parity with Animus regeneration. Ryoko got back on board and they continued away from the Sea. This time, everyone remained on deck.
A couple of hours later they were suddenly confronted with the mountain crest. It had appeared seemingly from nowhere, and a glance astern told her that the beach was no longer visible. It was as if everything was concealed in mists, except the fog couldn't be seen either.
Trouble came almost as soon as they went over the crest. The Wind Darter shuddered, and the ambient Chaos reading went almost down to zero. Yuriko had to flush hundreds of lumens into the capacitors to keep the sloop afloat and had to force it to a level space and land.
"What happened?" Gwendith asked.
Yuriko pointed at the control panel readouts and Gwendith gasped. "0.01 iarvesh?"
"Worse than Irvalla," Heron muttered.
And, as expected, the sloop's Animus production had dropped almost to zero, completely unable to regenerate enough Animus to even keep the repulsion field up, much less the thrusters. The Chaos collecting sail drooped, not even fluttering from the wind.
"Young mistress, do you really think we'll find a portal in this Chaos-forsaken place?" Ryoko asked plaintively.
"Who knows?" Yuriko shrugged. "We can only keep looking."
This was a new and strange place. And while she had been more than a bit put off from getting diverted from her mission, this was actually turning out to be interesting. She looked at Desire and Devotee and found their faces unstrained. There was barely any ambient Chaos in this place, yet why was it that the Chaos Lords were unaffected?
Past the crest, was a long and gentle slope. She couldn't see much farther as there was a strange mist that blocked distant vision. But she could see a line of something moving across their view.
It was as good a place as any to investigate.