Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

‘I have less than half of my reserves left, Master.’ Dee greeted Yuriko mentally as soon as she and Scarlett landed in front of the Chaos Lord and the rescued captives.

Yuriko took a couple of seconds to observe the prisoners, and the cousins in particular.

Both of them looked dazed, though their physical wounds were mended. Their necks weren't collared, but their clothes were tattered. It was much the same with the rest.

Desire was humming. Yuriko could see the light Chaos mist emerge from her lips and drift across the air. It lingered around the prisoners and seeped into their bodies. It was also nearly impossible to see unless Chaos Sight was active, though if they weren't so out of it, they would have noticed their wounds mending.

Now came the dilemma.

The nearest rift from their position was a couple of hundred paces away on the horizontal, and twenty on the vertical. Unless she threw everyone into the rift, they couldn't use it to exit the Interstitial Space. The nearest ground level rift was five hundred paces away, right next to a railway. The ritual vessel Desire described to Yuriko was much farther away, at about a longstrides.

‘You used your reserves for transport and healing?’

‘Yes, Master,’ Desire’s mental voice held a tone of satisfaction.

“Bril, Speedy…” Scarlett murmured as she alighted from Yuriko’s Animakinetic harness. She hurried towards the cousins and touched their arms. The younger woman blinked at the contact, a little bit of coherence returned in her eyes.

“Hara…kin?” Brilliance's voice was raspy.

“Urk…” Speedrun mumbled and coughed.

“Thank the gods we found you,” Scarlett said in a low voice while she stroked Brilliance's arm. The younger girl stood head and shoulders taller than Scarlett, but she somehow looked more delicate.

Yuriko kept an eye on the rescued prisoners while she continued to assess their choices. Desire managed to spirit them away from the ritual vessel but in the process, caused it to activate erratically, which resulted in the current situation. Dee said that there were at least a dozen portals, but there might be more than that just from what she could feel through the air. Up close to an actual rift, she was able to discern a few more things.

For one, the rift hovering above wasn't a temporary thing. Well, it might not last forever, but it didn't show any signs of degradation. The larger rift in the distance did, however, but at the rate its boundaries flaked particles off, it could last for Seasons.

There were smaller rifts close to the big one, though not all of them were at ground level. Perhaps there were some that had dug into the ground too.

After staring at the big rift, and realising that she still couldn't see through it, Yuriko thought that using that one wasn't the best of ideas, especially considering that it looked like the planned portal rather than the accidental ones. Meaning, it probably let out to a forward operations base rather than somewhere random.

The nearest mid-air one looks increasingly likely to be the best bet for a safe extraction, with the only complication being how to get the others there and how they can land safely on the other side, provided that it also ended up midair, which logically, may not be true. There was also no reason to believe that it was a two-way connection so she couldn't simply exit and return. Extending an Anima tendril may or may not work, but at least that test was easily done.

And…her Anima couldn't cross the rift. Not unexpected. So, now what?

Well, whatever she decided to do, she would need to be ready to project force. She thought to conjure more sunblades and paused to reconsider. She conjured a dozen mini-sunblades instead—not to be confused with sunshards which were the size of sewing needles and shaped like knives rather than swords. The mini-swords were in between and were definitely sideblade shaped. The distinction reinforced the Ennoia of the Radiant Flying Swords as well as Bladeless Sword, which had been the whole point of why she diverged from her incarnation’s practice rather than simply mimicking her true body.

‘And,’ she thought idly, ‘I should do so if I get another chance to split off another incarnation.’

Hmmm, perhaps one that wasn't focused on the sword?

The other Ennoia she came close to touching during her ascent to Transformation was that of the Four Elements. Though that had shown to be quite limited in its own way, especially after what she learned and witnessed in Bresia.

That aside, since she couldn't explore the nearby rift with her Anima, the next step was her sunblade, though one infused to be independent rather than tethered. She would need a full sunblade for that rather than the mini version, though why that was so kind of escaped her at the moment.

Hmmm. Finding the particulars would be necessary for progress, she was sure, though she also guessed that it was a matter of unconscious bias rather than anything else.

She promptly changed tact and infused a mini blade—and found out the difference. Small size, more effort to pack the necessary Intent and Will. Not much, true, but it was noticeable. She supposed it tracked considering it was easier to infuse the sun greatsword than the normal version. The amount wasn't lessened either.

Once the mini blade was ready, she sent it towards the rift and it successfully passed. The blade was connected to her consciousness in a similar way her true body and incarnation were, so it wasn't a matter of distance. The temporal dissonance was bothersome, but the strands of consciousness from her true body could actually control it instead. Interesting.

Before she thought to explore the other side, which, upon a quick survey, she discovered was in midair, though only by about three paces above the ground, which was mostly uneven dirt and sand, bare of vegetation, though not of bugs and other small critters. She wasn't sure where it led to, but it wasn't here, at least.

The mini blade reentered the portal with little trouble and she sighed in relief. A quick escape, at least, though they'd be stranded somewhere remote in the meantime.

She moved the mini blade back through to scout, then conjured another one to explore the bigger rift.

Dee’s concealing veil had dissipated by now, and the soldiers were still on high alert. She could hear the thump-thump-thump of the gun turrets shooting over the walls, as well as more artillery.

How many cannons do they have anyway?

No, that was a foolish question. Why wouldn't they bring as many as they could?

Dee and the rescued prisoners had hidden in between a couple of buildings, barracks from the looks of it, and her Chaos Lord had probably tricked the inhabitants to leave. But that didn't mean they would remain unnoticed for long. Already, she saw a company headed towards the rift. They might not spot her and the others but if they secure the rift, they would become an obstacle anyway.

After a last bout of consideration, Yuriko decided that the closer rift would be the better choice. Mostly because her mini blade reached the bigger portal and there was a battalion of infantry, accompanied by armoured, tracked vehicles, and accompanied by several squads of power armoured soldiers, most of them weren't fliers but looked like mobile artillery platforms.

Either way, too many to fight while handicapped by twenty weakened fighters.

As for reaching the airborne rift…that was easy enough to remedy now that she had a couple of minutes to think about it.

The barracks to either side of her were empty and they were made of blocks filled with cement and supported by metal tubes. It was simple enough to dismantle the walls, gently lower the roof so that it wouldn't fall on anyone, then pile up the resulting blocks into a stairway.

It took a couple of minutes to do this, and the spectacle was more than enough to draw attention. The nearest company of soldiers pointed at the construct, then at her rather obvious display. The rescued, Scarlett, and Dee were still hidden since she demolished the barracks that were on the opposite side of the incoming hostiles.

The gap from behind the rift wasn’t as much of a problem considering a bunkbed she stole from the barracks would be enough to catch anyone going though. She tossed several blocks into the rift to form a stable base, before she tossed the bunkbed, then mentally said to Desire, ‘Go, ready the landing area, then come back. I’ll hold off the soldiers.’

She stepped into the middle of the road, surrounded by half a dozen tethered sunblades, and immediately, she had to harden her Anima into hex shields to deflect bullets. Then, she had to scramble to intercept launched grenades at the makeshift stairs she was building for the others to climb all the way to the rift. The thing was nearly six storeys above the ground after all, and to build a stable path, the base had to be quite wide.

The first sunblades shot forward and the vanguard held out bucklers that shone with Occult Resonance. Translucent tower shields suddenly walled off the front, while the bullets that came from behind simply phased through them. Yuriko tested the projected shield, which cracked, then shattered after she applied more force, but the simpler method was to bypass them, so the other sunblades flew over the line.

Only, to her surprise, the second, third, and fourth ranks held up their arms and projected the same tower shield, which effectively made a turtle formation out of them. The same happened to the sides and the back, and the only way to bypass it was if she drove the blades under the ground. She did send a couple of blades to do so, though she concealed it from their view by conjuring them under her feet. In the meantime, since the bypass wouldn’t be so easy, she strove to force her ebay through. Her goal wasn’t really to kill them anyway, but to delay them long enough so that she and the others could escape.

Now if only the rotters stopped trying to bomb her stairwell.

Well! If they want to play like that, she would oblige.

The first sunblade slammed into the tower shield in the middle of the vanguard. Previous attempts merely cracked the resonance induced barrier, and penetrating would have taken more time and effort. Except she infused an Invisible Edge along the sunblade. Then, it sliced right through the shield, and pierced the soldier behind it through the torso. Only luck had the sunblade miss his heart, but a good chunk of his left lung was now a smoldering hole. Hmmm, not so much luck, come to think of it. She just couldn’t summon up the bloodlust to kill mortals. Too easy and unworthy of the effort.

‘Rotter. Anima Pride rears its head again,’ Yuriko sighed to herself as she pushed down the impulse. Keeping the swarmfodder alive to spread tales of terror was a nice plan, but then again, a few survivors could carry the tale just as easily. And if the once she carelessly swatted away managed to live past the day, then they could thank their luck. And their tales would carry just as easily.

So she stopped caring. She stopped being gentle. They were actively trying to kill her and her rescues. They were trying to trap them here. They had chained and collared people.

So. No mercy.

She infused enough sunblades with Invisible Edge so she could hit every tower shield along the vanguard, then shot them forward.

Puchi!

And they all fell down.

She hadn’t stopped with building the stairs, and Dee had already come back from the other side of the rift. The Chaos Lord nodded wordlessly, and Yuriko did the same. She swept her gaze across the camp, and noted that there were no soldiers headed their way at the moment, not on the ground, at least.

The last block settled in place and the prisoners rushed to freedom.