Book 17-20.3: Bulwark
The following weeks in Astoria saw intense fighting across the Prismatic State. Yuriko and the others fled back to the city even as the Astorian air force tried to bombard the invaders to smithereens.
She spent all of the flight in meditation, and even when they returned to the city, she was nowhere near finished. But she could offload the processing to her true body, so she got up, waved goodbye to her gramps and his assistant, then took to the air to return to Scarlett, though she sought a reclusive spot to first talk to her bound Chaos Lord.
Desire had little to report that wasn’t already covered by the news. The portals had opened near the town she followed the Unfettered to, and the area had become their primary beachhead.
‘There are other beachheads,’ Desire said. ‘I think a dozen across the republic, and about half as much outside…to the north. They exit the portal, build up defences, then head directly towards fortresses and other strategic locations. I saw no hesitation in the direction they marched, and there was a fervent air within the bridge.’
‘How long has it been since we left Irvalla?’ Yuriko mused, ‘I thought the war there was over, and I suppose that’s true to a certain extent. There is no war with no opposition, after all.’ She snorted and felt some pity for the people she left behind in Karcellia, but ultimately, they weren’t her people, and she was in no way responsible for them. Of course…she had been instrumental in destroying that Progeny’s scheme, and in the process, probably increased the level of ambient energy within the plane. That might be why they were more skilled in their varied techniques than she expected. But it could also be that more time had passed in Irvalla than had for her. In that case, this might be an entirely new generation.
In Shangria, the night passed relatively quickly. She spent most of that time in meditation, and she had managed to create the outline of her new Sword Style. Bulwark…?
Hmmm. Sounds alright, for now. It was the name of the Style, just as Flowing Water and Raging Volcano were…though it needed an adjective to be proper about it. Nothing stuck out quite yet, so she’d ruminate on it as she practised the Style.
It was similar enough to Jade Mountain that it could be considered an offshoot except for the fact that she used Bulwark to attack and defend at the same time, while Jade Mountain focused on holding the ground.
Anyway, she received an unpleasant surprise in the morning. She’d been looking forward to the spar against one of the twins, the sabre duelist, Alexandros. But he and his twin were nowhere to be found.
Ilvara approached her with breakfast as soon as she strode out of her tent. It was a bowl of soup and a couple of slices of wheat bread. The soup was a mix of ration bar grit, varied fruits, and root vegetables that they harvested from the resource point, and had left to keep overnight, heated to a simmer in the morning. Yuriko accepted the bowl and bread with a nod of thanks while her perception ranged over the plateau. Nothing.
Ilvara handed a note. Her perception skittered over it and didn’t latch, though when she pressed, she felt a familiar aura signature.
She frowned in thought. It wasn’t familiar just because she knew it was Alexandros’, but there was something else.
She broke open the seal, with barely a look at the sigil, and read the elaborate cursive.
“Lady Yuriko,
Apologies. I detected the resonance of your newly developing Truth and determined that I’d rather not serve as a whetstone to further it. I would welcome a challenge once you’ve matured your new sword and are ready to truly put it to the test. As such, my twin and I will proceed to delve into Shangria, and should the Threads of Fate will it, we shall meet again.
Alexandros Davar
P.S. The Fifth Layer Hub would be a good place to meet.”
Yuriko’s eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline. Davar. Family? She shook her head. How? Three thousand years since the Shattering. The Chaos Sea took a couple of centuries to stabilise after it was formed, and from then, Imperial reckoning was close enough to draw a calendar. Three thousand years? An offshoot of the Davars?
“That’s quite likely,” she chuckled while Ilvara gave her a curious and befuddled look.
The Davar Wanderlust. Even now, she could feel it. Even in her incarnation body, which was affected by Lilibeth’s bloodline, the Davar Wanderlust seeped through.
So it came as no surprise that the Davars would be scattered across the Myriad Planes and the Great Continent, and even beyond the Towers of Eternity, which led to different planes, both sacred and common.
Family?
After a divergence of thousands of years, would they really still be family? Any blood relation would have diluted to nothingness unless they heavily intermarried, and the very touchstone of being a Davar meant that it was unlikely. But then again, if all Davars experienced the wanderlust, then that which brought them apart also brought them together.
“How interesting,” Yuriko chuckled. And she knew that she’d have to pursue meeting with the twins again, even if just to satisfy her curiosity. It was unlikely they would recognise her easily as kin, considering her features were rather distinctly unlike a Davar.
“Ah, no wonder they looked familiar.” Sandy hair and hazel eyes were common features of her family, after all. But her Mishala side features were stronger.
“Lady Yuriko?”
“It’s nothing. Just a point of interest. Let’s eat.”
At her first glance of the third layer, she thought, ‘It’s not another desert?’ The entirety of the second layer was composed of arid biomes, while in the first, variations of pleasant glades, woods, and valleys. The third layer was composed of plains, but not those untouched by artifice.
Indeed, the plains of the third layer, and perhaps other biomes, contained ruins of civilisations, or at least, their simulacra.
About a couple of dozen longstrides away from the portal exit were the bones of civilisation. Skeletal buildings, like fingers, reached up to the skies. She couldn’t really judge their heights, but most were broken and jagged. A metal road led from the portal towards the city, but the surface was pockmarked and broken, with weeds and wildflowers between fragments.
Yuriko exchanged glances with her lovers and companions, then shrugged and decided to follow the road. Here, their old marching order was changed into a tighter formation that had the more vulnerable members within a diamond. She marched at the back and kept careful watch of her companions.
She wasn’t quite sure what manner of monster would come from the biomes, and she didn’t expect broken-down automatons that emerged from the pillars that bordered the road. They were squat things, about a pace or so in height, and just as wide. They had spindly limbs, but those not broken were tipped with plasma emitters or harnessed lightning much akin to Astoria’s tasers. They ambled around in a loose patrol—two or three at once—and it was even chance if they noticed her companions when they drew within a dozen paces, or sometimes, within fifty, and it seemed irrespective of ranged weapons or melee.
That first group of first whirled from their original course, pointed their broken limbs at her companions and attempted to attack. On two limbs with plasma emitters, shot bolts that were quickly defended against by Heron’s hexagonal shields of stilled air. Ilvara and Carina opened fire, the former with a pistol that fired slivers of metal accelerated by coiled electricity, while the latter used a Plasma Rifle. The slivers pinged off the automaton’s shell, but the monster’s protections were not whole. The stream of slivers found purchase when the metal shell dented, and Ilvara did not miss the weakness and focused her fire there. Soon enough, the shell was penetrated, and Yuriko’s perception saw how the slivers bounced around inside the automation and wrought havoc within its internals.
The plasma bolts, on the other hand, splashed and melted the armour, though it only took thin layers off at a time before the heat dissipated fully. It took several hits before the plasma penetrated the automaton’s interior, but it was destroyed soon afterwards.
Heron, Gwendith, and Saki took care of the melee automatons afterwards, but when the creatures dissipated, they didn’t just leave behind shards. No, there were metal shavings. Perhaps a couple of GiJin were left from each critter. Yuriko retrieved the shavings while examining them with her perception, and they were of the same material as the automatons. She wasn’t versed in metallurgy, but what she could detect were trace amounts of Metal Elemental energy, as well as a smaller fraction of Lightning, and oddly enough, some Water variant. Each bit had a different attunement, and there were about five to ten fragments per automaton. She separated the shavings according to Elemental attunement and stored them in glass vials.
“Did you know about this, Carina?” Yuriko asked their local team member, and the greenette nodded.
“I did, though the value of such salvage isn’t really worth a fraction of what shards do. At least, not this shallow into the third.”
“The slivers would attune the camper vehicle, wouldn’t it?”
“It would help, yes. But the amount would need to be several KiJin, I think.”
“Huh.”
“Easier to buy, milady.”
“I suppose, though I’m still interested in observing these.”
Carina simply nodded, but she still looked somewhat nervous. Yuriko didn’t say anything about it and figured it had more to do with the fact that she’d never reached the third layer in such a small group.
So it went over the next couple of weeks in Shangria. They crossed several biomes a day, the limit being eight. She didn’t catch up to the twins, but considering each biome had several exit points and maps weren’t readily available here, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Since the others were more focused on fighting and honing their skills, Yuriko drew the maps and annotated them with her findings. She mostly noted the biome type, which direction they came from, and what sort of enemy they faced in each.
The difficulty of the battles didn’t rise by much, and they did turn towards a resource spot so they could gather more materials without worrying about supply. Carina had taught them what to look out for so they could predict how far they were from a resource point or the entry and exit points of the layer. It mostly had to do with how the portal frames were decorated. Swirly patterns somehow conveyed the distance to the supply biomes while angular patterns pointed towards the nearest descent or ascent.
It would have taken less than a week to find a supply biome, but the nearest one to the upward gate was full of delvers. Or rather, that’s what Carina assumed. If they went there and found little room to resupply, they would have five days out of the way to the second supply biome.
Once they settled camp, which was at the supply biome itself—which looked like an overgrown and wild orchard as opposed to the previous layer’s oasis—Yuriko ventured out alone to train her Bulwark Style.
How convenient that the third layer had a higher ratio of range attack capable monsters than the previous ones, and just as convenient was that those monsters fired projectiles that looked and acted like bullets, as opposed to poison, acid, fire, or ice sprays.
Instead of reflecting the bullets, she redirected them so that they would impact the ground next to the ranged monsters. It saved her from wasting time looking for more critters to practice with. Over the next three weeks, she honed her craft and could reliably deflect even if she controlled the sunblades with her Anima rather than her hands.
This proved quite a boon, considering how useful it was when Astoria and the Prismatic State had transitioned to full war footing.