Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

The massive explosion knocked Yuriko’s flight path, and she inadvertently rolled and spun in mid-air. The winds buffeted her, and since she wasn’t hooked into the canvas of reality, the same method she used to remain airborne was what tossed her about.

As she spun head over heels, she caught sight of a burgeoning cloud rising from the ground, from the same spot where the Astorian soldiers had been holding the line. The brief glimpse was enough to tell her that most of them had probably died. Vapourised, or if they were lucky, thrown away from the blast zone. The only silver lining was that the Irvallans were wrecked in the same way.

Where were Gramps and the other two?

She wasn’t the only one distracted, but she recovered her aplomb first. She hesitated for a long moment, however, and considering that the mission’s objectives had been to rescue prisoners… no, it was to make sure the ballistic missiles were neutralized, either through hiding the control codes, or through destruction. Evidently, the latter had been accomplished. Did she enjoy the battle so much that she ignored the reality of the situation?

What had she gained in the odd hour that she fought?

The fliers regained their bearings and inexplicably continued to shoot at her. Well, perhaps because she hadn’t retreated, huh?

The sunblade on her right hand snapped and deflected a bullet. The sunblade on her left did the same, but redirected it back towards the shooter. She had a third sunblade earlier that hadn’t depleted its Radiant energy, and she knew she could deflect and redirect bullets in the same way. It was a marked difference from how she’d been defending with the Flying Swords, which, simply put, she used as mobile cover. That hadn’t taken too much thought or focus, and with the number of Flying Swords her true body could bring to bear, more than enough to keep any attack from reaching her.

Active defence always took more focus. That had been her thought then, but perhaps it was because she didn’t have a Sword Ennoia focused on defence. Radiant Flying Swords had been for force projection, while Bladeless Sword was for powerful attacks that could strike at things that normally could not be cut with a blade.

The best defence was a powerful offence? She hadn’t thought that way at the beginning of her journey. She had focused on defence. She focused on creating openings to take advantage of.

Well, she didn’t regret it. But it meant her foundations were lacking. The basics were fine and sturdy, but once she progressed beyond it, her Truth was steady.

It was amazing how a simple change in the way she saw things, a shift in angle, a shift in perspective, made all the difference. Where she once saw two points weighed in balance, she now saw an incomplete triangle. Perhaps, in time, the triangle would become a square, then a pyramid, or even another shape. Or more likely, and much more desirable, they would all collapse into a singular point. An all-encompassing singularity of the Truth of the Sword.

Her task suddenly became larger than she expected. To progress her Ascension, she needed to advance her Colligia into a Reperta and have another Ennoia become a Colligia. Or perhaps, multiple Ennoias would do. They must all be related, or they wouldn’t be able to support the Reperta, and with shaky foundations, she wouldn’t be able to create a Dominus, which was what was needed to move past Manifestation. Beyond that was still veiled from her sight, but the accumulation of related Truths seemed the correct path.

So what kind of Truth, what kind of Sword Ennoia would she touch upon? A defensive Sword? That seemed the most apt.

Anyway, she could continue to dally here, but she’d already garnered as much insight as she could. She needed to digest, then integrate it with her Sword Truths. She envisioned the capability to deflect and redirect bullets… or rather, attacks, with her Flying Swords, and perhaps do the same with an Invisible Edge.

No, no, she was getting ahead of herself. Touch the Ennoia first, then figure out a way to combine it with the others.

But…did she need to form a new Ennoia core to do it? If so, she would have to build and balance a dual core within her incarnation body. In her true body, it wouldn’t be an issue as she could just build the Ennoia cores around her Colligia, and come to think of it, why hasn’t she done that yet?

She hummed and thought back for a moment, and realised she hadn’t done that since she wasn’t satisfied with her Sword Ennoia. But could she not combine them all later? Three Ennoias should stand in for the Colligia requirement to advance, right? And all the Sword Ennoias should be able to combine as long as they remained Ennoias. But she probably wouldn’t be able to advance beyond Manifestation if she didn’t combine the Sword Ennoias into a Colligia.

While her true body ruminated over her plans, and it wasn’t even all of her strands of consciousness, just about a dozen of them focused on planning, in Astoria, she decided that she should return to Neo Prism City, and she should at least figure out if her relatives survived the explosion.

So…where was the Swift?

Yuriko glanced around while she absentmindedly deflected a couple of bullets from the fliers. She managed to redirect both back towards the shooters, but most of the kinetic energy had been drained, and the projectiles simply bounced off their armour. They continued to strafe at her, but they moved in complex patterns. Their evasion pattern had not repeated over the past hour; she would have struck a decisive blow already. They were also on par with her flight speed, but since their armour was purposely designed for aerial manoeuvring, they were much more agile than her. She wasn’t quite as versed with this new method of flight yet, and while she was fast in the straightaways, turning was a rather clumsy affair.

Aside from her initial salvo, she hadn’t been able to scratch them. Not without investing more Intent and Will into her attack than she was comfortable with anyway. The distance between them hadn’t shrunk to less than a longstride and she just didn’t have the range to effectively fight at the engagement in her incarnation body.

While she was debating with herself about her next move, something else happened. Or rather, she noticed something she hadn’t before.

Higher up in the sky, well above the power armoured fliers, she noticed a wing of fighter planes. They were already moving away from the base, but as she sharpened her Enhanced Sight for distance, the planes, jet-powered from what she could see, were of different sizes. In fact, the central one had an odd, flat shape, and she saw bay doors underneath it close. Bombers, then. Ah, so it wasn’t her gramps who blew things up. Uh… they were still alive, right?

She juked to the side and dropped a couple of paces, which was just enough to avoid a barrage of bullets. Unfortunately, it looked like the Irvallans weren’t unaware of the bomber planes and had changed their priorities. At least, she assumed so, since more of their mechanised elements as well as their infantry and some hidden daemon troops, wheeled out of hiding and the camp and…

Huh, they were marching towards her. More guns, artillery, and vehicles directed their ordinance at her, and she deftly evaded what she could, absorbed the unpowered munitions, and deflected a couple of artillery shells towards the fliers, which still didn’t harm them, or reach them for that matter. In the distance, the flight of jets wheeled around, well, some of them, and began shooting missiles at the revealed forces, which then distracted them from continuing their assault.

The fliers that had been hounding her suddenly shifted focus, and the tanks and other armoured vehicles shifted their anti-air fire from her to the incoming missiles. Those things barely made it a third of the way to the surface before all of them were shot out of the air, then the bullets shifted targets to the jets.

The lead plane evaded by spinning away in a barrel roll. The bullet stream looked to have crossed its path, but either it didn’t penetrate the hull, or the damage wasn’t enough to knock it down. The anti-air fire concentrated on that plane, and eventually, it must have hit something critical since an explosion erupted from the tail and the jet spun out of control. Only when the first one was downed did the gunners focus on the rest, but by then, the jets had pulled out of range.

Baboom!

The spinning jet exploded into a fireball, but not before the pilot ejected from the cockpit. She tracked their progress as the pilot fell, still strapped to their seat, then there was a puff of white smoke, and a parachute popped out.

A moment later, the rotters of the Irvallan army shot the parachute and the pilot to pieces.

Yuriko glared at the tanks, then shifted her ire towards the fliers in powered armour. They’d gone back to sniping at her, but at this point, she had a keen grasp of her relatively new sword style. It wasn’t an Ennoia yet, but she felt it could be the basis of a new one. There was no inkling of a name just yet, but she was close to defining one, she was sure. But she also knew that she’d already risen beyond this particular challenge, at least the one that involved defending herself with her blades and the ability to counterattack using the enemy’s own bullets.

She flew towards the base and channelled her perception into a cone and swept it to and fro, looking for Gramps, Alexis, and the flying metal jerk. She paused after a minute, still automatically deflecting bullets. She got tired of the exercise and controlled both sunblades to float and defend her by themselves. Initially, she controlled the flying swords, but then, she decided to infuse them with Intent and Will. From there, she didn’t need to give the blades any of her focus, though the continued action drained its resources. However, since they were well within her aura, less than an arm’s reach really, it was also just as easy to continuously feed both blades with Radiance and reinfuse them.

For some reason, her casual disregard seemed to further incense the Irvallans. More and more battlefield units focused fire on her, but she only conjured three more sunblades for a total of five, to surround and protect her. It was a nice balance to her Radiant and her Intent/Will resource regeneration.

The sun had fully set even before the battle started, but the moon had risen. It wasn’t exactly bright, but her own aura lit up the battlefield. That, and her night vision was pretty good once she adjusted her Enhanced Sight for it.

Soon enough, she found where the Swift landed, and coincidentally, just as Gramps and Alexis returned. No sign of Steel Hive, and it looked like they weren’t waiting for him. Alexis spotted her first, though Gramps already seemed aware of her presence, considering he glanced at her and nodded, then frowned at the attention she continued to draw.

He hesitated for a long moment, then waved at her to approach. By the vigorous movements, he wanted her to hurry too. She landed and suppressed her aura under her skin until she stopped glowing, then sent her sunblades towards the fliers, who were still a longstride away.

“Hurry! We have to go!” Alexis hissed from the hatch. Yuriko entered and noticed that Gramps was already on the controls.

“Steel Hive?” She asked.

“Sacrificed his remote body,” Alexis said nonchalantly.

Oh. That was good, she supposed. Everything else could wait, however, as she sank into a seated meditative pose and pondered her gains.