The humidity made sweat cling to Yuriko's skin as she waited behind a few trees. She had flown nearly fifty leagues east of the strip, on her first mission outside of sitting and waiting. After the last false alarm, she marched up to the fortress's leadership council and demanded they give her a mission to break from the monotony.
The beach on the lake was great, as was the service and beverages, but there was only so much laziness that she could take. And the fortress didn't have an extensive spell library either, though she could barely believe that she craved reading books now. Spellbooks and grimoires were different though since they were often written in Old Imperial instead of the Bresian variant of Wojan. After talking and listening to them, she realised that the languages of Bresia, Ishodir, and according to Gwendith, Xotha, all of their national languages were dialects of the trade tongue.
Hidden behind the trees, she extended her Anima perception, as thin as she could, such that she barely perceived anything other than presences. In return, her touch couldn't barely be perceived in turn. Arcadians were oddly sensitive to Anima, as she discovered earlier in the year, so if she wanted to conceal her presence, she needed to be behind cover. If she wanted to see, she had to be as subtle as possible.
Her mission today was not to engage carelessly but to scout. Ib'honara scouts existed on both sides, and we're close to even in number. They fought in the skies and were conscious of the tricks each side used to prevent detection from above. Forests meant that the aerial scouts had trouble staying stealthy. The flapping of their wings was quite loud, after all.
Most of the terrain was covered by forests, and only fields near communities were cleared. That left plenty of routes for logistic lines and scouting. Northeast of the Great Erithmus Lake was a mix of marshlands and jungles, which eventually reached the edge of the Sodden Plains Conflux. One of the Bresian border forts was within this area and was occupied by the Ishodirians. She was also tasked to check up on that border fortification and see if she could spit any weaknesses to exploit, or if she could strike to whittle down enemy forces. Well, the last bit wasn't really part of the mission but something she decided she'd do if she could.
And the chance came up now. A patrol group of about two hundred soldiers were escorting supplies. She had yet to determine where they were going and she'd been following them into the marshland over the past few hours. Maybe they were headed into a secret staging ground? She hoped so anyway, but she was also growing a bit impatient.
So she was wondering if she should work on strengthening her Terror Mien now rather than on her stealth skills…
The escort companies were on foot, carried firearms, sideswords, as well as a small pistol. Since the area they were travelling in was not paved with roads, their supplies were carried on their backs in the form of overly large backpacks that had spatial expansion spell circles stitched into the fabric. She estimated that the companies were carrying a thousand cubic paces worth of materiel on their backs.
Now she was wondering if she should follow them to their destination, rob and frighten them so much they'd quit the war. In the first case, she'd gain valuable intelligence, but it could also be outdated knowledge. After, there were hundreds of Ib'honara scouts. In the second case, she'd gain loot and salvage that could be directly converted to gold and war merits, the latter could be exchanged for favours, knowledge, and the chance to access the reagents needed to open the Bresian Portal.
Well, considering she didn't want to spend too much time out in the wilds, and it was probably better to actively damage the Ishodirian supply lines, she was better off defeating them now rather than wasting time. After all, she could always return and ask if they'd found a gathering spot, and if they didn't know, it was just as easy and faster for her to search by flying around.
Mind made up, Yuriko began conjuring her sunblades. There were two hundred soldiers so she made the same number of blades, which took less than a couple of minutes. Afterwards, she simply flew in, ignoring the shouts of alarm, and sent her weapons to strike as soon as she got within range.
Golden blades rushed towards the soldiers. Screams of surprise and fear filled the air, quieting the bird and insect calls. The abrupt, staccato sound of firearms went off, though the bullets bounced off the blades. A few struck her defences, but her layered aura simply leeches the kinetic energy from the projectiles. Soon enough, the bullets hung in the air in front of her, whole and undeformed. A soldier in Greyith told her that spent bullet casings, as well as the slugs themselves, could be reused or melted down. It was easy enough for her to collect them without wasting any time, and every little bit helped anyway.
The sunblades flipped around moments from impact, and it was the sharp tip, and the Radiant-infused edges that struck her foes. Instead, it was the relatively benign pommels that did. Even her flying swords, though she rarely held them, had hilts, guards, and pommels, that were shaped so that the heat within the weapons would not transfer through.
Every pommel struck her target, though not all were hit on the head. Some managed to throw up their arms, rifles, or swords to interpose. Arms broke, rifle barrels cracked, and swords snapped off. Those she hit on the head fell with a groan, though she held off enough not to kill them.
In a single moment, she downed the two hundred men and women. Then, she allowed her Terror Mien to slip free from its leash. Her golden aura tinged with red, and her lips stretched into a smirk. Her Animakinesis manifested as golden-red hands and ripped the backpacks and main weapons out of their possession.
Then she spoke, trying to deepen her voice and make it more threatening, "Run home."
There was a moment of frozen silence, then a scream, followed by more. Those at the back simply spun on their heels and ran, while those closer to her fainted instead.
Yuriko gathered all of the salvage with her kinesis, then simply flew away as fast as she could. Laden down with the backpacks and rifles, she wasn't quite as fast as she could be, but she still reached Greyith Strip before the Radiant Sun sank below the horizon, and an hour later, she dumped the bags in front of the quartermaster as well as the mission checkers. She's gone through some of the backpacks and found only some clothes, rations, ammunition, and other odds and ends. She walked away with a hefty sum of gold. The war merits would take a bit longer to be awarded, but all in all, it wasn't a bad haul for a day's work.
________________
It had been a week since Gwendith and the others returned to Braxxon Ruins, and things had gone a bit strange. As they had observed upon arriving, most of the Ishodirians had disappeared. Apparently, they all purchased their exit tokens and left weeks ago, while the Xothans remained.
The Conclavist Ancients set up their residence a few doors away from the trio and were often on the walls. Heron did the same, while Saki lurked in the battlefield, and was trying to track down where the Elementals came from. It was rather obvious that the volcano their two groups hunted in had not been the source.
But after a week, Saki was no closer to finding it than when they started out. "The Ashen Elementals just appear out of seams in the ground," the Shadow Guard said.
"From where?" Gwendith asked.
"All over," Saki sighed, "they do converge somewhere in the southeast. A deep valley, almost a sinkhole, I think. The smoke and ash cloud seep there and the Ashen Elementals take corporeal form. But that's not the only place they're coming from. There are other gathering spots scattered across the landscape."
"Ancestors! When will this Elemental Tide end?" Gwendith complained. "I'm sick of waiting. I want to go home."
Gwendith sighed at her words. Those had been repeated far too often, but they were the truth. There was little she could do, however. Other than to keep fighting and slaughtering the Ashen Elementals.
And so the week went, and by the start of the next, despite how many elemental cores they gathered, the merit exchange only had necessities and weapons available. Exit tokens, Tower Entry Tokens, and even the Truth Fragments were withheld. Those sly rotters.
Gwendith stood on the battlements, raining shards of ice and balls of flame down at the elementals. The fireballs actually hurt them even if the heat does not. The explosion scatters their Ashen bodies and exposes their Elemental cores to direct attack. Striking the cores shattered them but she would get a fraction of the merits if she brought the fragments to the exchange. She and the others had run up quite a bit of merit from the fragments alone.
The siege came in waves. The elementals all struck the walls at the same time but drew back after an hour. Then, another hour would pass before they attacked again, giving the defenders a bit of breathing room. But the waves never ceased, and it was slowly wearing away at people's morale and energy.
That particular day, after the elementals pulled back, Gwendith had been staring out at the distance. The monotony of the cracked ground blended with the smoke and fog, making everything hazy. But she blinked at seeing a glimmer of gold.
The colour, she associated with Yuriko so much that her heart skipped a beat, but logically, she knew her lover wouldn't be able to arrive here anytime soon. Besides, she'd already told Yuriko not to try. She might collapse the Chaos Founts after all.
Snorting in morbid amusement, she stared at the place she saw the golden light come from only to realise that it was slowly growing and that there was a body underneath it. Not a dead body, and of course, but there was only one person she knew who sported that kind of hairstyle. She leapt off the wall, heedless of the scattered elementals, and arrived in front of Devotee a few moments later. Her face split into a wide grin.
"You're here! Finally!"
Devotee nodded, though his face was a bit impassive. The Chaos Viscount was bound to Yuriko after all, not to Gwendith.
"Of course. Where else would I go?" Devotee grinned.
"Wherever Yuri demanded," Gwendith teased.
"True enough," Devotee admitted. "So what's keeping you here? Master was a bit vague."
Gwendith turned around and started walking back to the wall. "It's those statues. They won't release the stuff we want. And I did tell Yuri the problem."
Devotee nodded and shrugged as he followed behind her. "Er, I guess she might have mentioned it, but I forgot. Anyway," he continued hastily, "she told me to help you get back to her."
Gwendith felt more than happy to hear that. Even though she had little cause to complain…not being with Yuriko had made her a bit depressed.
"It's simple enough, really. The Elementals are keeping us here simply because the denizens won't give us what we want. So we need to stop the Tide…"
Devotee nodded as Gwendith summarised their need, then he said, "no need to bring me inside the walls. I'll find out which cranny they came from." He spun on his heels and marched away.
Gwendith shrugged and returned to the ruined city. A couple of days later, while she and the others were breaking their fast, she received a message spell from the Chaos Lord
"I've found it."