Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 13-10.1: Uprising

The slime creature closest to her lunged. It lost its humanoid shape, turned into a pillar of sludge and attempted to engulf her. Yuriko watched impassively as it splattered against her condensed aura, she released her control over her Radiant aspect. The sludge emitted a high-pitched squeal as it tried to escape, but Yuriko pressed down on it, even as she pushed it away from her. It bubbled and boiled, the steam vented through tiny passages she built, and it died, leaving behind a sliver of ...

CoESC Book 13-9.3: Festival of Joy

Yuriko twirled the festival mask around her fingers before she put it on her face. Her hair was back in its usual high ponytail, though she never bothered to use ribbons or string to keep it that way. It only took a little bit of focus to use her Animakinesis to keep her hairstyle neat after all, and ribbons had a distressing tendency to snap, burn, or melt whenever she got serious. 

She was wearing the sundress Ryoko left for her in the bathroom, a sky-blue affair that had ...

CoESC Book 13-9.2: Festival of Joy

Ryoko Mishala arrived in the city early that day, the 21st of Fire. The preparations for the festival had been going on for days already, and it was exciting to see all of it coming to fruition. The young mistress—well, not so young now, really, considering that she was of age in the truest sense—didn’t like exploring Virtalla. It was strange since Yuriko enjoyed going through practically every street, nook and cranny of Nirlith City but barely went past the arterial boulevards of Virta...

CoESC Book 13-9.1: Festival of Joy

Over the next few days, tension rose in the city of Virtalla. The Scions of Virtalla, the political group that the Minister of Commerce belonged to, had lost many of their positions in the city’s government after the elections. Yuriko was curious, since they held those positions over the years, why did they suddenly lose them? 

Her interest was just a minor diversion, however, as she continued to train, improve, and research the True Connection spell. Her efforts bore litt...

CoESC Book 13-8.3: An Insistent Offer

Unlike the graduation ball, Yuriko and the other two didn’t spend the night in the Bluebell Theater or the adjoining hotel a block away from it. By midnight, they boarded the carriage and were headed to the estate, a trip that was likely to take a couple of hours even if the traffic along the radial avenues was practically nonexistent by that time. 

Well, Sofia and Juliette took the carriage. Yuriko ignored the unspoken rules of the city and simply flew up into the sky. Wi...

CoESC Book 13-8.2: An Insistent Offer

There were a few boys less than the girls, so at least they weren’t paired off arbitrarily. Not that Yuriko would have allowed that anyway, but it was nice not to have to face something like that. 

The parade of debutantes made their way towards the cleared space in the middle of the ballroom. Yuriko expected a stage since the place was called a theatre, but where there should have been a raised platform on one side of the hall, it was instead a depressed area right in the mi...

CoESC Book 13-8.1: An Insistent Offer

Contrary to what Yuriko expected, the elections didn’t resolve into violence. Instead, there were crowds of people rushing to their voting precincts. The city was home to more than a million people, and from what Juliette told her, everyone within the Virtalla Province, which was the city itself, and the farms and lands outside of it within a ten-league radius, had to come in to vote. Despite the fact that there were as many people living outside the city as inside, they were forced to sque...

CoESC Book 13-7.3: Encounters

Heron carefully observed the five warriors standing amidst the corpses of dozens of Elementals. The glow of their Anima cast a lurid light against the charcoal-black landscape, and it was bright enough that it was difficult to make out their attire from a distance, but as he and Gwendith walked down the hillside, he saw that they were clad in body armour and their faces and heads were concealed behind sleek helmets. 

They had faceplates that covered everything, not even havi...

CoESC Book 13-7.2: Encounters

“What’s going on?” Yuriko muttered. She spread her perception aura, careful to keep it from directly touching anyone, and pushed all the way to her limits. But a hundred and seventy paces still put her reach into the midst of the crowd, so she couldn’t see anything. She heard murmurs about a ‘Scions of Virtalla’ as well as a rally, a meeting, a fight, and other things. 

“Looks like a political mess,” Juliette said. 

“It’s a scheduled ral...

CoESC Book 13-7.1: Encounters

“You know, it hasn’t occurred to me to ask, but what exactly is the Gala Presentacion?” Yuriko asked as she sipped a cup of breakfast tea. She and the others, including Ryoko, and the same maid who fetched her from the guest room for last night’s banquet, were serving breakfast in one of the Abad estate’s parlours. 

Sofia looked up from her own cup, then said, “Neither do I, come to think of it. Spill, Julie!”

“Julie?” Juliette mouthed with a frow...

CoESC Book 13-6.3: Virtalla City

The welcome banquet was quite elaborate, and Juliette later revealed to Yuriko that it was because she was visiting that it happened. An eighteen-year-old True Magus was rare, practically unique, after all. Yuriko briefly thought to ask the girl and her family to avoid spreading that fact out, but then again, what did it really matter? She could hardly avoid attention and even if she kept her Mien at Tranquility, there were more than a few instances where she slipped her mental control and de...

CoESC Book 13-6.2: Virtalla City

The air of the Outlands sang to Nathan Quint. His Anima was flared as far as it could go, and while it allowed him to resonate with the Elemental Truths, it also made him vulnerable to attack. His Circle’s mission was simple but challenging for a group of initiates at the 2nd Growth Stage. All they needed to do was endure, persevere, and walk. 

The Ash Elemental was a mix of Earth and Fire, but so was the Lava Elemental. Nathan’s Metal Affinity was sandwiched between the tw...

CoESC Book 13-6.1: Virtalla City

Ryoko gave Yuriko such a knowing look when she got home that she was compelled to give an explanation. 

“Booze and card games.”

“Ah.” Ryoko smirked, then leaned towards Yuriko and breathed deeply. She clicked her tongue, though, and muttered, “It seems we have to wait for their return, but good job unwinding, young mistress.” There was a slight emphasis on the young part and Yuriko rolled her eyes. 

“Breakfast in ten minutes, mistres...

CoESC Book 13-5.3: Circles

Yuriko startled awake and felt her head pounding and her mouth tasted as if something had crawled in and died on her tongue. She blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling for a long moment, before her Radiant energy, which had been completely restrained into her core last night, flared up and washed across her body, consuming the remnant alcohol and restoring her to her norms. She blinked as her perception showed her an…unusual scene. 

Her memories were a bit foggy, but the mists ...

CoESC Book 13-5.2: Circles

Almost as soon as Yuriko exited the Elemental Conflux, she cast the True Connection spell targeting Gwendith. She wove the vocal and somatic components with runescript drawn with her Anima and waited in anticipation for it to connect. 

But a moment later, she frowned when she felt the spell fizzle out. The spell had different sensations for failure and she was thankful that it wasn’t the dead stop that happened when the spell couldn’t find the target. But then again, she...

CoESC Book 13-5.1: Circles

Gwendith, Heron, and Saki made their careful way across the volcanic terrain. Well, it wasn’t that bad yet, but steam hissed out of holes in the ground every so often. Heat was more than prevalent in the surroundings, accompanied by Fire elemental energies. Gwendith pulled the heat surrounding her, and focused it on one hand. 

A curious effect of her Ennoia was that as she gathered heat, it produced two opposing elemental energies, Fire and Ice. Or perhaps Cold? It varied ...

CoESC Book 13-4.3: Rampage

Yuriko’s Anima greedily absorbed the Radiant energy that the Earthen Bear exploded with. Its Elemental Core had been completely devoured and converted to Radiance, and since the beast had no capability with the Primordial Element, it lost complete control of all its energies and failed to keep it contained. That resulted in the incredible self-detonation, as well as the flood of Radiance. 

Fluffington!

Yuriko sighed in relief when she realised that she had instin...

CoESC Book 13-4.2: Rampage

“By the Gods!” Sofia cursed when the Earthen Bear emerged with a roar so loud that it made the ground shake. Julliete caught her arm but that was only because the brunette lost her footing, too. But together, they prevented each other from falling over. 

The two Casters in their impromptu team didn’t fare as well, though. All four of their teammates were boys. Alonso and Jorge, the Casters, looked like a typical member of their job: thin as a rail and fragile as a flow...

CoESC Book 13-4.1: Rampage

The elemental beast that rose from the hillside resembled a bear more than anything else. Yuriko watched it with keen interest, felt her heart begin to race and her Anima flare as she was more than ready to fight. There was no way that thing was weak enough for the students to fight, so it was up to her and the other professors. 

“Fluffington! Stay here!” she yelled at her familiar, who whined in response.

Yuriko compressed her Anima, pulled all of the sunblade...

CoESC Book 13-3.3: Final Exams

The final exams had begun. Yuriko, who was not in charge of any particular group of students, was instead on the rapid response team. The difficulty of flight spells was quite apparent from the sheer amount of cursing and sweaty Magi faces. The dean had arrived, too, and Yuriko noted that even a Domain had trouble counteracting the Conflux’s imposed Laws. 

Fluffington followed behind her, running as quickly as she flew. Over the past week, she trained his stamina and Anima re...

CoESC Book 13-3.2: Final Exams

Over the next few days, Yuriko and Duke Fluffington, Paragon of Fluffiness, First of His Name, went as far north into the Elemental Conflux as they could. She brought along a backpack full of supplies, dried meats, hardtack, and spices, no Imperial ration bars, while the wolf pup was unencumbered, but his galloping speed was barely fast enough to match Yuriko’s jog. 

His boosted speed was much faster, of course, and almost exceeded hers if she pushed herself, but he gr...

CoESC Book 13-3.1: Final Exams

Yuriko’s Anima took the brunt of the attack. She grunted as she felt her condensed aura crack, but that was it. The attacker was stopped cold on its feet, and while it may have surprised her by moving so fast, it was only because she had most of her Anima on restriction mode that allowed it to approach so closely. Otherwise, her Animakinesis would have been enough to hold it back from a hundred paces away. 

Now, when she unfurled her Anima completely, in a fit of pique, sh...

CoESC Book 13-2.3: Golden Fields

Blood and viscera splattered across Yuriko’s body, held fast from staining her clothes and skin through her condensed aura. Not that she couldn’t feel the slimy ickiness, quite the contrary, rather. She could feel and even taste every particle as they sloughed towards the ground, and it was only the fact that she was able to mute the sensations that prevented her from getting sick right then and there. Of course, she could isolate the senses her Anima emulated, but the default was always ...

CoESC Book 13-2.2: Golden Fields

The elemental mists billowed and converged upon Yuriko as she barreled through the air and entered the Elemental Conflux called the Golden Fields. They crashed against her Anima, pressed down upon it, and acted as a heavy weight that pushed her towards the ground. She frowned and pushed back, noting the strain. It wasn’t something she couldn’t endure, but it would weary her as time progressed.

Hmmm, it would be a good resistance training method. For now, she allowed herself t...

CoESC Book 13-2.1: Golden Fields

Yuriko sighed while her body moved with the sway of the Steeld carriage. It's been hours already and she was sure she could have flown the hundred longstrides in a couple of hours. The ride would take the entire day, and they'd stay overnight in the nearby village before they would even enter the Chaos Fount.

The carriage was roughly twelve paces long and five wide. It wasn’t pulled by a separate Steeld but was a Steeld itself. It reminded Yuriko of landcraft back home, and...

CoESC Book 13-1.3: Council Politics

Gwendith chewed on the end of a stalk of grass as she lounged on the balcony of the residence that the Braxxonian residents had given her group. It was a simple two-storey affair, with a couple of bedrooms, a kitchen and living room, and the balcony. She and Saki shared a bedroom while Heron stayed in the other one.

Braxxon City held hidden depths, and it didn’t take long for her and the others to realise that what the Xothan said when they first arrived, was duplicitous at best, and ...

CoESC Book 13-1.2: Council Politics

“So, if the other city counsellors have to be elected, but the seats for the academic deans are not,” Yuriko said as they climbed towards the cable carriage. “Would that not skew the weight of power towards the academies?”

Blanca grinned. “Yes.”

Yuriko hummed. “Ah.”

Giggling, Blanca added, “It’s not that simple, though. Bresia Republic’s history is quite speckled. The original reason the nation came together was two-fold. The Shattered Realm, and mutual...

CoESC Book 13-1.1: Council Politics

The rain that had been threatening all morning finally broke over Nirlith City, drenching the streets and everyone unfortunate enough to be far from shelter. Dozens dashed into covered doorways, squeezing in as best as they could, even if errant raindrops splashed onto sleeves and skirts. The droplets bounced off the cobblestones and soaked leather shoes and sandals alike.

Yuriko sighed as her Anima prevented so much as a drop from touching her hair. Perhaps sitting in the al fresco are...

CoESC Book 12-23.3: Conflict

The planting had been done, and all the farmers, ranchers, and fruit growers were at liberty. A fine time too, since the elections for Virtalla City’s Counselor were less than a Season away. The air was filled with floating blossoms shed from the cherry trees, and at the corner of Victory Square, there were pink piles taller than a man.

The podium at the middle of the square, next to the marble fountain that spewed out crystal clear water, was occupied by a group of a dozen well-dress...

CoESC Book 12-23.2: Conflict

The flight back to Nirlith City took twice as long, but dawn was still a few hours from coming. Yuriko, clad in her hastily made Animus dress, was deep in thought. Monica had taken Cillian back in her arms when she was able to cast her flight spell. The older woman kept glancing at her every few minutes. Yuriko was tempted to ask, but the winds of their passage made it a bit inconvenient to converse.

Nirlith City had a few lights visible from above. There was a long strip along the side...