Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 9-23.3: All the Way Through

“Why is it so empty?” Yuriko asked as she exited the tunnel. Avos Zarek’s path led to the rather familiar outskirts of Synkrasia. The ceiling perfectly reflected the outside skies, with the Luminous Moon setting, and the Radiant Sun just about to peek from the Eastern Veil. The past few days, and the foray into the Chaos lake had clearly played havoc with her timesense since she thought it was closer to midday rather than nearly dawn. None of her companions complained, or even put up mu...

CoESC Book 9-23.2: All the Way Through

Vindictive pleasure suffused Yuriko as she saw her Radiant Barrage drive the Primordial Spawn out of its hiding place. The explosions covered her view, so she activated Enhanced Sight. A moment later, she changed to Chaos Sight, then huffed with annoyance when both techniques weren’t able to penetrate the bright lights and smoke.

“Huh?”

Dumbfounded, she saw a strange spike of energy careen from within the cloud and it struck Avos Zarek. She could only gape in astonishment as...

CoESC Book 9-23.1: All the Way Through

As the Chaos flooded around Yuriko, she felt it invade her Anima. It was not the distilled Chaos she was used to handling, nor the rather tame ambient Chaos in the planes. It was the wild, primordial Chaos that was too volatile to exist anywhere else other than the Chaos Sea. It burned her skin, her Anima, and even began to erode and change the runescript mandala formed between Fri’Avgi’s six floating swords, which acted as both focus and anchor to the rifts.

The primordial Chaos wa...

CoESC Book 9-22.3: Dissolution

Even as Yuriko fought against the big skelly, now humongous skelly, she was painfully aware of the deaths of several of her allies. Most of the casualties were from the Federation explorers simply from the fact that there were nearly five times more of them than her group, but the battlefield was no place for invalids. Faeril had awakened from his unnatural slumber, but the other one had not, and in the initial havoc, no one had been able to stop the skinless humanoids from dealing a fatal bl...

CoESC Book 9-22.2: Dissolution

When the Avos was revealed, and was the probable…well, almost certainly the source of the mental influence, Riley felt both angry and afraid in an unwholesome mix. That his mind had been violated so blatantly, and the aftereffects were rather obvious, and upon introspection, were still occurring, was maddening.

“This against all treaties agreed upon by the Empire and the varied Avos of the planes.” Aunt Layla muttered angrily. “Why did it do this?”

It became apparent aft...

CoESC Book 9-22.1: Dissolution

The Knight of the Abyss winced when he heard his master’s invocation. He could feel his connection to him grow tenuous as more threads than Lord Qatir was capable of holding bound to his Anima. At the same time, the Knight’s vision recognised the wisps that materialised all over the place.

Anima fragments. Bits and pieces of self worn away by time and Chaos. These were the fragments that never made it into the cycle of reincarnation, who were trapped in the Pure Lands or were consum...

CoESC Book 9-21.3: Primordial Battle

“You! Ancient. Aid me!”

Yuriko heard the voice, but only in her head. It was accompanied by a powerful urge to obey, one that her Anima instinctively rejected. She felt the voice fade, but the compulsion continued to push at her mind, growing stronger by the second. She could see the Avos struggling to escape, to retaliate, but its wounded form was too battered to do more than huddle.

Her eyes traced Zarek’s neck down to a strange dome-like body tha...

CoESC Book 9-21.2: Primordial Battle

Aidan fought through the mists within his mind. But even as his internal self struggled against unseen chains, his body continued to fight. It was as if his mind was split in twain, with the true him only able to watch the false self pilot his body. He could see and feel everything, but his questioning thoughts were always pushed aside and overridden. Two Aidans were within his body, and the true self could only scream in defiance.

Plasma orbs circled around his body before careening to...

CoESC Book 9-21.1: Primordial Battle

The moment Yuriko’s eyes met the large skelly, she felt the wave of revulsion, anger, and hostility. The creature was head and shoulders larger than the common kind, and its armour, even encased in red mud, showed ominous details. Where most of the skelly’s armour was sleekly designed, even if parts were rusted through, that one was somewhat…spikier. The helm alone had a couple of large horns sticking out in a row from the forehead. There were spikes on the pauldrons too, although how i...

CoESC Book 9-20.3: Confrontation

Qatir, Spawn of Delgora, Primordial of Curiosity and Vengeance floated in the plane’s single ocean while letting his tentacles and eyestalks sway with the current. The tips of the tentacles and eyes were embedded into the mirror realm, or dreamscape, as the locals called it. He watched with no small amount of amusement as the tainted reflection of reality grew increasingly turbulent as several powerful perceptions focused on it.

His imprint wasn’t so light so the others also saw his...

CoESC Book 9-20.2: Confrontation

Riley’s head snapped up as the strange otherness and cobwebs filling his mind pulled taut…then snapped.

“Huh, what…?” He looked around, finding himself in the middle of their campgrounds. But the more important question was, which camp was it now?

His memories were hazy ever since they arrived in this underground city. There were Chaos dwellers who followed them inside, and they subsequently fought off. They had also sent out scouting groups to find a way to the surface,...

CoESC Book 9-20.1: Confrontation

“What happened here?” Yuriko gasped. She had expected a city much like Cerkala. Well, probably more like the previous one, but this?

The tunnel opened up into a cavern, except that the middle of it…well, collapsed. There was a giant mound, and from the centre, she could see more dirt dribbling down. Slow and steady. Inevitable. Dirt, sand, rocks, and water, would eventually cover the entire underground city, and then nothing of this place would be left.

The tunnel opened up ...

CoESC Book 9-19.3: Knight of the Abyss

For a very long moment, Yuriko was tempted to begin Spell Shaping. Not by using the Radiant Lance implement but by going through all of the steps of proper Shaping. The results would have been magnitudes greater and the destruction would have been complete. Why, she was sure a full Radiant Lance would melt right through the Chaos lake, and would probably burn the pure Chaos to fuel it and make it that much more powerful.

And it would also bring down the cavern. Probably.

And, with...

CoESC Book 9-19.2: Knight of the Abyss

“Chaos… take… you…”

The man spat at the Knight of the Abyss even as he bled out on the pavement. This one had struggled harder than the others and the Knight had to liberate his limbs in order to subdue him. The rest of his comrades were scattered in pieces inside their makeshift camp.

Dying in agony was the best way to ensure the formation of a restless Anima, the Knight found. One of the few he knew how, and the only one that could be done quickly and somewhat reliably...

CoESC Book 9-19.1: Knight of the Abyss

“Leave with your loyal warriors and make your way to the depths. Find it and slay it. It needs to die so that I may use this plane for my purposes.”

Salter Bloom jolted out of his daze. The temporary camp by the Garamus expedition was quiet, with most of the members hoping to catch a couple of hours of sleep. The constant fighting against the Revenants had been tiring, and more than one warrior had succumbed to fatigue and been killed. With Chaos Sight active, he even saw t...

CoESC Book 9-18.3: Unlikely Allies

Lucian’s group had roughly the same numbers as Yuriko’s, so there were twenty-one of them travelling down the narrow, debris-filled mess. But, every now and then, members of the Federation expedition joined them. Haggard and wounded, sometimes even half dead and with missing limbs, they came towards them as though seeing an oasis in the desert while dying of thirst. But the sight of Yuriko’s glowing Anima made them hesitate, as though wondering if they were a mirage instead.

Lucia...

CoESC Book 9-18.2: Unlikely Allies

Stones the size of her fist, head, and even a couple that were more than three paces wide, fell from cracks in the ceiling. The reflection of the night sky, with the Chaos flows and the Waning Moon, persisted even as stones dropped through them, giving Yuriko the notion that the illusion was projected from the rock rather than painted on, or something like that.

Boom! Crash! Bam!

Her eyes immediately went to her friends, as well as the two unconscious people. Asami was tr...

CoESC Book 9-18.1: Unlikely Allies

 “I saw someone, across the road.” Yuriko said as she returned to where the others were hiding. “Ah, and a bunch of skeletons in armour are fighting the Femorants. They’re winning, I think, since they’re pushing back the ants.”

“Skeletons?” Asami frowned. “From Uaran?”

“Yes, the same,” Yuriko said. “I’m not sure how they got here though.”

“Wait, you saw someone? Who?” Orrin asked.

“I don’t know. Someone who isn’t part of our...

CoESC Book 9-17.3: Familiar Foes

Worryingly, Faeril and the other man were still unconscious by the time morning came along. Yuriko, Asami, and Orrin prepared breakfast. While the porridge was cooking, Yuriko relented and used her Anima perception to get a better look at the two.

Faeril’s body, though it had recovered some weight and muscle mass, was still looking slightly withered. As for the other, Yuriko didn’t see much improvement, and they needed more food and drink, both of which she had no idea how to give t...

CoESC Book 9-17.2: Familiar Foes

Orrin’s antennae were laid flat against the top of his head, and if it weren’t for Yuriko’s perception aura, she would have missed it within the tangled mop of blonde hair. As it were, she only saw them after she cleared the gunk off his head. Feeling more than a little trepidation, she cleared off the rest of it from his body and found that small parts of his skin across his arms and legs had turned to chitin.

They looked like scabs, actually, and she couldn’t help picking on t...

Health Break

We'll be taking a health break next week, from March 20, to 24.

Posting will resume March 27, 2023!

CoESC Book 9-17.1: Familiar Foes

Yuriko’s reaction was immediate. Her Anima flared to its full might, and she activated all of her sword dances and prepared to use the Ender’s Waltz. Free Shaping had been denied easy use, but her Implement and Sorcery were still very much in play. Radiant energy vented out of her Essence, through her body, and blasted out through her long, golden hair.

However, engaging her Sorcerous Implement took much of her concentration, though only if she wanted the spell to form in a minute r...

CoESC Book 9-16.3: Femorant Queen

The oppressive feeling lightened when Yuriko pushed against it with her Anima, but the weight of attention grew instead. It continued for several eternal moments before parts of her Anima cracked and blood seeped out of the corner of her lips. Then, she felt the Will’s condescension, and dismissal, before the pressure disappeared.

“Rotter,” Yuriko muttered as anger and shame filled her heart.

It dared to dismiss her? To condescend to her? An Ancient in Actualisation? Her cor...

CoESC Book 9-16.2: Femorant Queen

Orrin’s consciousness swam between waking and sleeping. For the moment, he didn’t remember that they had been ambushed. He didn’t remember that he and his brother were underground, looking for a strange city that should have the key to victory in the current war. He didn’t remember that he was following Yuriko.

No, at the moment, he was stuck in a nightmare. Or a dream, he wasn’t quite sure. Terror filled him at times, while at others, he was wrapped in a comforting cocoon. He...

CoESC Book 9-16.1: Femorant Queen

Sunshards didn’t cost Animus to use, but manipulating the shards without the sword dances activated made the movements feel hollow. Yuriko defaulted to expressing the Four Phases of the Sword with them, and instinctively grouped them into four instead of three, with a shard using a Phase.

Fri’Avgi was summoned back to her hand, but she only used the artefact to control the shards rather than using it as a blade. Instead, she used the Arclight Sword to attack any who managed to come ...

CoESC Book 9-15.3: Extermination

Even though Rumiga had a single ocean as its southern border, that didn’t mean that there weren’t any under its surface. For the Knight of the Abyss, the moment he found the underground bays and rivers, was the moment he could send his Revenants across the entirety of the plane.

Weeks of languishing under the waves had let him ruminate on his absent memories. Some of the Revenants, when their minds connected with his when they reported, revealed that they remembered bits and pieces ...

CoESC Book 9-15.2: Extermination

It only took killing ants for a couple of blocks for Yuriko to realise that she was wasting her time. She didn’t need to kill every last antman. She needed to catch up to the ants that had captured her friends. How long had it taken Heron to get to them? Ten minutes? Maybe half an hour? The city was nearly a league across, but Heron said that they had been carried by a flying ant. Definitely, she wouldn’t find them on the street level.

The antman burst into smithereens as the liquid...

CoESC Book 9-15.1: Extermination

A purple plasma bolt drilled into the creature, a Wyldling of some sort, Riley thought, though they were stronger than swarmlings but weaker than the individual Wanderers. The bolt barely did anything more than melt its outer rocky carapace, however, so he had to follow it up with another bolt, which hit the thing directly at the same spot. This time, his attack penetrated and burned its insides and the creature dropped to the ground.

These things were bipedal and barely as tall as a ma...

CoESC Book 9-14.3: Intrusion

Heron carefully positioned the hand mirror close to the ground. It was a circle the size of his palm and wasn’t really all that clean. That helped a bit since it prevented more light from reflecting, which made it harder to be spotted. He was next to a corner, hidden from the turn of the street by a square building.

The Femorants’ patrol circle was just past the edge, and he had little more than five paces clearance from the corner. Or at least, it was five paces before. Today, it w...

CoESC Book 9-14.2: Intrusion

“Why are they empty?” Gwendith asked from inside one of the buildings constructed along the side of the pillar.

“Empty?” Yuriko repeated.

“Take a look.”

“Huh.”

The building was basically a cuboid, and when she entered inside, it was just empty space. Except…the space wasn’t a cube. She spread her Anima throughout the interior, somewhat thankful that it was smaller than her Anima reach. The chamber was roughly six paces long and about four and a half...