Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

The flight took just a bit over twenty minutes, and if Yuriko was honest, she could have flown the distance faster. Not unnoticed, unfortunately, which meant the trip aboard Lilibeth’s grandfather’s flying box had been necessary. Well, unless she was fine with a full frontal assault with little intelligence and with all her enemies waiting for her.

She would have preferred that, actually, but the mission parameters were to rescue the captured soldiers, or in the last extreme, eliminate them to avoid an intelligence leak. She hoped that the Irvallans hadn’t brought their POWs across the portal. If they had, then any hope of keeping activation codes for long-range weapons of mass destruction would wither at the vine. The tertiary objective was to destroy the missiles, hopefully have them explode and take out the base in the process, too.

Oh, wait. No, that wasn’t ideal. The Republic would like to reclaim the base and make use of it afterwards.

She wasn’t sure what manner of resistance they’d face, and she wasn’t sure if her reserves were even enough for it. She could simply limit her use of Radiance, but Invisible Edges still drained her, even when her Intent and Will reserves regenerated quickly.

Twenty minutes wasn’t long, but given the decidedly awkward atmosphere, it seemed to drag on longer than she expected. In her true body…they had set up camp for the evening, though they remained in the second layer. They would move on the next day.

With nothing really happening in Shangria, Yuriko’s true body devoted most of her senses to supporting her incarnation body and pondering the Ennoias and Truths she witnessed. It had been a long while since she fought in actual melee range, and she found that she actually enjoyed it. The close quarters, the danger, and the thrill of it made everything seem fresh and new.

Fighting with the Radiant Flying Swords and the Invisible Edges lacked any sense of danger, she supposed. After all, what can an opponent who couldn’t even reach her do? Therein lay the problem with her defences too. Some foes could bypass her perception, and if they got close to her, condensed aura might not be enough. She’d neglected her defensive swordplay, and perhaps it was time to focus on it again.

“Hmmm, so all along you were Altered,” Yuriko said plainly to Gramps.

The old man shrugged. The flying box, which they called the Swift, was just about twice the size of a van, though it barely had enough room inside for the four of them. The metal-clad man who’d attacked her back then was the pilot, and he acted as if he didn’t recognise her. Neither did he acknowledge her stare, and his body was oddly still. Perhaps his powered armour was thick enough to hide the involuntary movements of his body? Imperial Knights back home were able to control their bodies in such a way as to be absolutely still, and that technique had also been taught to her by Da, as part of her marksmanship training. When he sought to shoot over a league away, the slightest deviation due to breathing could mean the difference of several inches to paces when the plasma bolt reached the target. Hmmm, but it didn’t seem as if Steel Hive needed to do something like that. Huh, it must be the armour.

Gramps removed his morph mask and revealed his slightly wearied face.

“It is a secret to most, of course. At least to those who aren’t Altered. But it was only a matter of time anyway, since more and more people became Altered over the years. Perhaps in another couple of decades, perhaps half a century, every Astorian would have Altered power.”

Yuriko raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? An exponential increase?”

According to the history books, the first Altered appeared about four to five decades ago. She didn’t make the effort to remember the specifics since she thought it didn’t matter much. Even so, it was easy enough to check her smartphone…only to realise that the connection was still intermittent and her query got stuck on the loading screen. Huh.

“So what are the objectives of this thing?” Yuriko asked instead.

“Rescue of captive officers or elimination if that isn’t possible. Preferably, we kill the interrogators, too.”

“Are you sure the Ir…they took prisoners?” Yuriko shook her head. “Right, foolish question. They abducted civilians and other Altered, which led to this mess.”

“We didn’t see this coming either,” Alexis commented.

“Oh, when I told you that they blew holes into the canvas of reality, what did you think would happen?” Yuriko asked drily.

“Ahaha…hah.”

“And another thing, you seem to think that I’m suited to this mission. Why?”

Gramps snorted a laugh. “We have eyes, you know. We won’t just leave you unattended.”

“Creepy.” She rolled her eyes.

Gramps’ smile was pointed. “Family is family, even if you want to distance yourself from us.”

“Where was this in the past?” Yuriko’s voice was unexpectedly sharp, as was the anger that welled up inside. She blinked, then breathed deeply. She tasted the Lightning and Wind elemental motes within the Swift, emitted by both men across from her. The strangest of the motes grounded her after a couple of moments, and she shook her head.

The old man in front of her remained silent, but his eyes were soft.

“Tch.” She looked away, still agitated.

‘Odd,’ Yuriko mused. Strands of consciousness rooted in her true body noted the incursion of suppressed emotions and memories from the original Lilibeth, and they pushed against the barriers that kept her two brains separate.

She didn’t really understand how incarnations came to be. She’d encountered several in her journeys in the Chaos Sea, and even saw an incarnation of a Primordial being. A lesser one, no doubt, at least according to Mum. She asked what that meant in a moment of idle curiosity, and Mum’s offhand comment was that lesser incarnations were truly connected to the prime body. But then, Primordials were a different beast altogether.

Most of her knowledge about such creatures was from Damien, and that was heavily redacted. Just that they naturally had multiple bodies and multiple cores. Each core was a unique being, but they were part of the whole, even if they weren’t really connected physically.

As far as she could tell, her incarnation body synchronised with her true body because of Anima. Though separate, they were one and the same, though the incarnation was clearly subordinate. Hence, this body couldn’t grow her Anima, but it advanced in lockstep with her true body.

The incursion of Lilibeth’s emotions…no, it wasn’t something really active. Attachments? Anchors? There were things the girl regretted, resented, and was obsessed with that got passed down to her. It almost made her want to abandon this body…but no, it was too late for that. She didn’t form the incarnation body by herself, after all. She wouldn’t be able to until she reached the next step in her Ascension, but even so, Manifestation couldn’t really create permanent incarnations without something special.

By the time she mastered herself, the trip had come to an end. The Swift veered away from following the highway in an effort to avoid detection, though it seemed too late for that.

“We’ve been made,” Gramps spat out, clearly disgusted.

“This ain’t a stealth plane!” Steel Hive spat back even as he juked the Swift to the left and down, just in time to avoid a line of machine gun fire. Neither the gunner nor the emplacement was within her range, but it did come from the direction they were flying towards. The Swift’s interior wasn’t conducive to looking around anyway, at least not for passengers.

Yuriko donned her mask and unbuckled from her seat. She strode towards the side hatch and opened it with a flick of her Animakinesis. “I don’t know who your target is, but I’ll tangle with them directly. You three do what you’re supposed to.”

“Hey, wait…!” Alexis yelped, but the opened hatch stole away the rest of his words. Well, that and Yuriko had already leapt out. She condensed most of her Anima into armour and left only a sliver of perception, extended into a cone that swept forward for detection rather than the normal spherical shape. She flew away from the Swift even as the flying box dove for cover. With her light, she was the easy target. Soon, three machine gun lines focused on her position.

The bullets stung her Anima but didn’t penetrate. These were mundane bullets, she realised, and weren’t even strong enough to give her microfractures. She shouldn’t be overconfident, however, so she juked around to evade. She aimed her perception cone towards the base, but something slammed into her back. She hissed and reformed her perception sphere, and caught another projectile as it entered her range from above and behind her. She spun around to glare at a flying armoured soldier roughly half a longstride away. Well, there were three of them, and they clearly came from the camp. Speaking of that, Ackermont Air Base was another two longstrides northwest of her position, and the aeroplane runway was pockmarked with artillery shell craters. Smoke rose from several points on the base, and she could see flashes of light at one of the base’s corners. Perhaps there was still resistance inside?

The three flyers peppered her with bullets, and unlike the machine gun nests, which were part of the air base’s captured defences, these bullets were enhanced with esoteric energies. She formed a couple of sunblades and deflected the bullets instead of taking them against her aura, though she only did so for those that would hit her despite her evasive manoeuvres. Several of the bullets that missed her turned around and chased her, and she was only startled for a moment. She noticed the thicker glaze of esoteric energy infused into those chasers, and it wasn’t as if she was ignorant of guided shots. She just didn’t expect all three were capable of it.

This was no time to play around, however, and those power armoured fliers weren’t the only threats on the battlefield. And if she was to play her part, she had to present a clear threat.

She noted the evidence of the siege across the terrain. The Irvallan war machines were out in the open, and there were several wrecks. A fraction of what they brought to bear, and those within line of sight were turning their turrets at her.

Half a longstride wasn’t as far as her enemies thought. She infused both sunblades with Intent, though only the left included Radiant energy. She released an Arclight Crescent imbued with an Invisible Edge from the left, though it might not be called Invisible anymore, considering it glowed a bright gold. She followed it up with a controlled thrust with her right blade and released a smaller Edge, this one really invisible.

The Arclight Crescent crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, and her target reacted as she predicted. The Crescent was slightly off-centre, and the lead flier dodged directly away. Which was where the Invisible Edge sliced into their armour. She’d tangled enough with these rotters a week ago that the tuning on the Edge bypassed most of the armour’s protection.

The cut wasn’t that clean. The Edge hit the torso, though closer to the lower left than centred. Sparks flew from the failing protections, the Edge went through the composite armour, then through the body, only to splash against the back plate. That probably proved more lethal than if the Edge went through and through.

The lead flier fell, and their squadmates froze in both surprise and terror. She could feel it through her Mien’s threads. Fear strong enough to overcome thoughts. They recovered a moment later, and their training saw them through. They dove towards their falling companion, only to be met by two more Invisible Edges, and were thus, subsequently bisected.

Well. Three down.