Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 12-3.2: Squires

Gwendith examined her Animus scales. They’d crept almost all the way up her biceps though not quite reaching her shoulders. A hundred lumens worth of scales covered half of her forearm and she was close to reaching a thousand total. Her internal reserves had been humming at two hundred for quite a while now, and it had been absurdly easy to get it to that point. While her Animus density had only been cloudy at Apprentice rather than misty at Journeyman’s end, Ancient Animus reserves remai...

CoESC Book 12-3.1: Squires

Separating Ender’s Waltz from the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords was harder than Yuriko expected. She still managed it after a couple of minutes, and when she engaged it, images that foreshadowed her target’s movements appeared in her vision.

Her Animus drained away at ten lumens per second, and if it weren’t for her Transformation ability, she would have been drained dry in a couple of minutes. She hadn’t actually expanded her reserves by much and had simply created reserves f...

CoESC Book 12-2.3: New Faron's Crossing

The blizzard lasted for several days and piled on several paces of snowfall. Yuriko’s house was practically buried to the rafters. And it wasn’t powdery snow, but wet, Chaos-laden ice. It had been a Chaos Storm and nobody realised in Faron’s Crossing since that kind of inclement weather rarely crossed the Zarek Mountains. Now that those mountains had been levelled, they lost at least three longstrides of height and, owing to the fact that the plane was less than a third of its original ...

CoESC Book 12-2.2: New Faron's Crossing

“Hi, Heron!” Yuriko said with a bright smile that made his heart rate nearly double and his hands clenched. Only when he heard the canvas stretch underneath his fingers did he start. His easel, paints, brushes, and palette were placed carefully across the low table and he had been preparing the canvas when she arrived.

“Yuri.” He coughed. His control over his Anima had never extended to thinning it out to make an effective perception aura, so he mostly kept it condensed against ...

CoESC Book 12-2.1: New Faron's Crossing

The next day, after doing her morning ablutions and training, Yuriko headed towards the other side of town. Waiting for the Circuit Tram was a bother, so she simply walked. Well, she actually glided along the street, her boots not quite touching the cobblestones while every step crossed five paces or so. As a result, she zoomed across town while looking like she was on a stroll.

Her Mien flared every now and then, but it did not result in hordes of beguiled men and women following her w...

CoESC Book 12-1.3: Wanderings

“What did you want to show me?” Yuriko asked, bemused.

Gwendith grinned and pulled her towards the backyard, though they went around the walkway at the side of the house and the perimeter fences rather than through the house. The planters were covered in snow, though the walkway had been swept clean. The garden was in a similar state, though there was one evergreen pine that still had its leaves at the corner. The rest of Rami’s vegetable garden was desolate, though that was only ...

CoESC Book 12-1.2: Wandering

A day after the memorial, Yuriko found herself going through her new routine.

After years of constant battle, exploration, and missions, the past couple of Seasons had been quite soothing. It was now the 6th Day of Earth, AF 3002, and today she was due at Faron’s Crossing’s new academy.

Her brother Rami should have enrolled in one of the central academies a couple of years back, but since the war escalated between Imperial Rumiga and the Federation, as well as the fact that th...

CoESC Book 12-1.1: Wandering

Inside a box wagon, floating in the depths of Chaos, lay several unconscious bodies. The wagon, a cage really, drifted peacefully, though every now and then, the wards inscribed on its walls flared as a crosscurrent nudged it, imposing heavier pressure than the wooden construct could have taken. But the runescript weaving repaired any damage to the material, even while it fed on and converted ambient Chaos to protect it against the outside forces.

One of the unconscious bodies started...

CoESC Book 11-23.3: Shattered Dream

‘Damien!’ Yuriko yelled while panicking. The core fragmented and was about to shatter. She could see the cracks crawl around the broken sphere, and they were widening. She had a sudden sense of the entirety of the plane doing the same thing! She didn’t know if what she intuited was real, but she knew it was happening. And from what Mum and the Legates said, the integrity of the plane was tied to the core.

“Calm, child. This is a necessary process. The Chaos cretin had corrupted ...

CoESC Book 11-23.2: Shattered Dream

Each and every crevice, every inch of space, in the planar core chamber, was covered in sunblades. Not only the open space either. The vanguard incarnations…each of them skewered by nearly a hundred blades each. The sunblades simply materialised into their bodies.

The sheer impossibility of that feat boggled her mind. How did Damien manage it?

Uh, well, the simple answer was the Divine Shard.

She knew it was the absolute ruler of this space. She could feel it. It wasn’t ...

CoESC Book 11-23.1: Shattered Dream

Mum’s furious, desperate words slid away from Yuriko’s thoughts. She knew what Damien wanted, and she knew that the next thing that would happen would be darkness. She hoped that she would wake up with the plane intact, and her allies victorious…

Instead, something else happened.

Eli’Theria shuddered and dropped down to one knee as Fri’Avgi disengaged from her. The artefact greatsword was in her ignition mode, with six floating blades and the main one that looked more li...

CoESC Book 11-22.3: Truth and Lies

Twelve Trinity sunblades, five hundred normal sunblades. Yuriko targeted the eight incarnations surrounding the planar core. She didn’t know how her Trinity sunblades would affect the core, and she feared that if they hit, she would doom the plane to complete destruction. The core was what kept the plane together. It was the source of the Veil, it was also what kept the land compressed against itself and what armoured it against Chaos’ corrosive tides. If the core broke, so would Rumiga.<...

CoESC Book 11-22.2: Truth and Lies

The false ground gave way to Iola Brygos’ Domain. Eli’Theria and the two Legates landed on the true ground not a moment later, facing the odd gate that had stymied Yuriko’s scout sunblades. And it was a gate, taller than two Eli’Therias stacked together, and from the ornate patterns on its surface, was a complex piece of Animatech.

Yuriko wasn’t sure who built the gate, or if it was materialised by the planar core instead. She knew relatively little about planar cores, just in...

CoESC Book 11-22.1: Truth and Lies

Every moment, every pace Eli’Theria moved closer to the mining pit, the resistance grew stiffer. After a while, multiples of the Chaos Lords appeared, forsaking the barons and doubling the viscounts. The singular earl became twins and the barrage of Chaos energies grew too much.

Mum silently expanded her Domain. She didn’t try to command the Chaos Lords, knowing that it would only sap her Will. The basic ability of a Domain was to control her surroundings and she was able to weaken ...

CoESC Book 11-21.3: Into the Breach

The Fysalli dumped Yuriko and Sadeen at the edge of the city, which had transformed greatly even after her last visit. Gone were the neat and tidy buildings, and gone were the fruiting trees. Instead, only rubble remained where the outskirts were.

The wall containing the inner city was intact but she couldn’t see beyond it. The mining pit at the edge of that wall was glowing with green light. And it was imminently clear where the light pillars came from when the pit suddenly burst wit...

CoESC Book 11-21.2: Into the Breach

Iola Brygos’ eyes snapped open just as the wild gust spun her around and around. The view around her was monotonously grey, which was the only reason she didn’t feel nauseated. Grimacing, she stretched her consciousness to reconnect with the borrowed battlewings and set it to hover.

She really wasn’t that used to flying, and she hated not having her feet planted on the earth, or anything solid, really. When she got her bearings, she couldn’t help but curse.

The Fysalli she...

CoESC Book 11-21.1: Into the Breach

‘That was a strange set of runescript lines you used on your Animus constructs,’ Legate Segawa commented idly as they pushed their way against the darkness. ‘It cut through Domain barriers like they weren’t even there.’

‘Isn’t it?” Sadeen said proudly. ‘Yuri’s an exceptionally gifted Sorceress! She figured out the combination after observing it in natural phenomena!’

Yuriko had told her Mum of her experiences, and the Trinity Cycle had been part of it. She ha...

CoESC Book 11-20.3: A Shattering

‘Baby, you didn’t tell me you advanced!’ Mum pouted as she spoke. Both of them had entered Eli’Theria’s core and Sadeen piped up as soon as the hatch closed. ‘Hie hie! Knight Captain at seventeen! I knew you had it in you!’

‘Er, I just advanced, Mum,’ Yuriko responded as she stretched her Anima to link up with Eli’Theria’s Vasi-level body. The amplification she expected had not happened. Instead, she could stretch her Anima to almost a longstride ...

CoESC Book 11-20.2: A Shattering

“What do you mean?” Yuriko asked Finan. The young man sighed and nodded for her to come closer.

His hands were flat on the Gemheart and a deep green Animus flowed from his fingers into the artefact. He had his head turned rather uncomfortably in order to talk to her so she went around the room until he was across from her.

“I am…merely about to fulfil my purpose,” he said softly. “And afterwards…well, nothing.”

“You…?” Yuriko gasped, not quite sure if w...

CoESC Book 11-20.1: A Shattering

For a long moment, Yuriko could do nothing but gape at the breaking skies. The Chaos flows that were normally outshone by the Radiant Sun, began to seep through the cracks. Thick, viscous droplets of multihued, liquid Chaos, almost akin to distilled Chaos droplets but a thousandfold higher in volume, slowly dribbled from the crack, until that one droplet broke free from the rest of the seepage and crashed towards the ground.

The droplet struck a portion of the Shillogu Woods, and before...

CoESC Book 11-19.3: Break

Staring blankly at the Obsidian Titan’s corpse, Yuriko pursed her lips in deep thought. She flew closer to the head, having an inkling of what she would find. And sure enough, carved on either cheek were the symbols of the Chaos Duke, an empty circle and a crescent moon. The markings didn’t glow with power, though that was likely because the creature was dead. Or as dead as a pile of volcanic rock animated by Will and Intent could be. The symbols had not been visible from afar, though it ...

CoESC Book 11-19.2: Break

“This is not what I expected when told to expect trouble!” Virgil growled as he sighted down his Plasma Caster. He was stationed at the Watchtower’s peak and had been watching the Ritual’s progress when the earth shook and rumbled. Some instinct had him turn around and it was all he could do not to gape at the massive avalanche that nearly buried the village of Horswick at the foot of the Imperial Pass.

He watched in horror as their Protective Dome went up, then subsequently fli...

CoESC Book 11-19.1: Break

Yuriko was exhausted. Advancing to Transformation, bringing hundreds of barbarian prisoners out, destroying the Chaos Fortress and finding out that she had been part of the reason for its existence, and most importantly, not finding her brother or his fiance. If not for her triumphs, she would have been moping and crying by now.

As it were, she wanted to find a place to hole up in and pass out. She couldn’t though. Not yet. Tribunus Kaspas ordered quite a few subordinates, Centurions,...

CoESC Book 11-18.3: The Next Step

The ritual chamber lit with Animus fires as Sadeen activated the beacon by investing her Animus, as well as nearly half of the Watchtower’s reserves into the pattern. The lights traced the lines, spiralling out from the chamber, into the hallways, and then out onto the surface, and deep into the tunnels. The natural ambient Chaos flows were drawn in by the current, diverting their normal path to the Luminous Sorceress’ desire.

Light green Animus light, silvery Luminous energy, and n...

CoESC Book 11-18.2: The Next Step

With a long-suffering sigh, Sadeen knuckled her back as she pushed away from the ritual surfaces. It had taken a few days but it was finally complete. She cast a critical eye over the runescript lines in the chamber, then split off parts of her consciousness to double-check the rest of the lines that occupied the rest of the Watchtower as well as several hundred cubic paces underneath the earth. The ambient Chaos flows that had been disturbed by the Haveenians and Chaos dwellers had been stra...

CoESC Book 11-18.1: The Next Step

Yuriko felt her body disintegrate. The feeling should have frightened her but Damien’s knowledge and wisdom won the day. It was the beginning of Transformation and it was…unexpectedly nice.

It was as if she got a full body massage, soaked in a hot spring for hours, then got another luxurious body treatment, all while enjoying chocolates by the dozen. Ahn…so good.

Shivering in pleasure, she stretched and was abruptly reminded that while her body was turning into Radiant energ...

CoESC Book 11-17.3: Tempered

It suddenly occurred to Yuriko why she had such trouble imitating the swordsman’s waveform attack. While she had used consecutive strikes, and she infused each one with Empowered Strike, she realised that she had infused an equal number of lumens to each blade and that she did little to make the blades resonate with each other. The idea that she could infuse an increasing amount of lumens into the sunblades was so compelling that she immediately tried it out.

However, she didn’t hav...

CoESC Book 11-17.2: Tempered

Yuriko crossed the distance between the wall and the struggling barbarian woman in less than a blink of an eye. The wind of her passage blew the women’s hair all over the place, but they showed no more reaction to it than her presence, which was none at all. Except for the struggling woman anyway.

Her eyes widened in surprise and sudden hope. Her face contorted even more, but no words escaped her lips. Her eyes darted to the right, though it looked more like she was trying to look beh...

CoESC Book 11-17.1: Tempered

The Chaos swordsman's waveform attack struck again. It was nearly an hour after the first time Yuriko faced it, and while the damage to Eli’Theria’s thigh had been patched over, it was nowhere near closed. However, the damage affected their mobility far less than what could be inferred. Yuriko simply used her Animakinesis to move them rather than the Colossus’ and her body’s sympathetic resonance.

Over the past hour, Yuriko and the Chaos Lord simply exchanged blows. Eighteen sun...

CoESC Book 11-16.3: Swordmaster

Resisting the compulsion, and it was a deliberate effect, was simply a matter of using her Will to do so. No one, especially not an enemy, was going to tell her, compel her, to do anything! Yuriko shook her head and felt more than a bit annoyed. Once she examined all of the possibilities, her irritation grew to anger.

She was in a Colossus, and there was nothing the swordsman could do to harm her. He could scratch at Eli’Theria’s outer armour, but at the rate he was going, it would ...