Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Target Located.

Begin Operation.

___________

It was close to dusk, and Yuriko had finished her third mission from the AWH. She spent a quarter of an hour afterwards just meditating on her technique, and spent another half hour trying to define the rest of the Style’s name. Severing Shard Style hadn’t been easy to name either, but the Ennoia she derived from it practically named itself.

At times like these, she wondered at the nature of Ennoias. Truths were easy to define since they ultimately relied on the self. Ennoias were fragments of the world’s mysteries, but she wasn’t sure if those mysteries were long defined or if they formed naturally. Logically, there could not be an Ennoia of the Sword without the weapon having been invented first. After all, the sword was a tool of war made by sapients. It wasn’t the first time she pondered the nature of Ennoias, and absent a source of knowledge, nothing more came of it. Even Damien’s memories didn’t contain an answer…or perhaps it did, just that she was unable to perceive it. There was still a perception filter there, and she wouldn’t know what she was missing simply because she didn’t know she was missing something in the first place. The odd gaps had just occurred a few too many times to remain unnoticed.

She was getting ready to fly back to Thornton for the evening when her phone beeped a notification. She fished it out of her hip satchel—one that she enchanted with runescript lines to increase the internal volume a few weeks ago—and checked it.

“All call: AS fighters. Counteroffensive in progress at these locations:...All able fighters are to assist and support the AAF…”

An evening assault? Yuriko frowned and opened the app to parse the details. Yes, a night raid…or rather, a full-blown bombardment. Details on where the bombardment will come from aren’t noted on the app, and considering how easy it was to acquire and divert intelligence just by capturing a fighter’s phone, the measures were understandable. That they sent out a call now meant that all preparations had already been done, and perhaps this was also a trap for the Irvallans.

Anyway, the support request was for partisans to be ready to intercept a counter-counteroffensive by the invaders, and the app pointed out locations for the defenders to gather. One such location was just about a couple of dozen longstrides to the east. It was a natural chokepoint where the highway was bordered by steep hills on the west and a marshland to the east. The choke point wasn’t more than a longstride, and the highway was practically a bridge across the wetlands.

The standard operating procedure was to acknowledge the request and note her participation. The sun had fully set by the time she was close to the chokepoint. It was also at that time that the fireworks began. Admittedly, the beachhead and the Irvallan fortresses were more than fifty longstrides away. And she could only see the explosions while she was about five hundred paces above the ground. Astoria was either a planet or a plane that sloped downwards rather than the usual flat planes common in the Chaos Sea.

She could hear the faint rumble that might have been mistaken for thunder, however. Yuriko pursed her lips as she used Enhanced Sight. The curvature of the land really didn’t do her technique any favours, and she wondered if there was a way to see beyond the curve. There was probably a spell for it, and she could ask Carina. Arcana Weaving was a bit bothersome and slow to use, and she much preferred leveraging her Anima techniques instead. If she had a Truth related to senses, or perhaps, Light? Radiance was close enough to Light that she could probably work out a way to go about it. Perhaps by bending the light that came to her eyes?

No, how would she know which particles to grasp? Perhaps if she sent out motes of Radiance into a wave…like the Astorian technology, RADAR? Or more appropriately, LiDAR, which stood for Light Detection and Ranging, especially since she didn’t know how to use radio waves as opposed to the visible spectrum of light.

Dragon Fall City had similar technology, as did Shangria, she assumed. The latter was sort of the melting pot of varied cultures, styles, and technologies, and perhaps it included ways to meld them all together. Even if it was only two or three types mashed together, it would give quite a bit of insight into how things worked.

Perhaps Astorian, Irvallan, and Dragon Fall City’s style of technology was simply just a way to use runescript lines by running electricity as both power and the base? She hadn’t tried to dissect their tech, and she should spend some time with Ilvara to familiarise herself with the silverette’s gear. Although Dragon Fall used Ossifrum—the harvested bone fragments of a dead dragon—as the basis of its higher-tier technology rather than the electric and circuitry that Astorians used. She also hadn’t been able to examine Irvallan occult-tech either, though she remembered theirs as being a bit more primitive back when she left that place.

The fireworks continued as she landed at the designated rally point. Oddly, nobody else was there, and when she double-checked the app, it indicated that she was in the right zone. So what happened? Hmmm, no other fighter was nearby? What were the chances that the Irvallans went through here to counterattack anyway?

The rolling thunder of the bombardment continued for a few more minutes, though she was sure that the Astorians used missiles rather than artillery cannons.

There was nothing truly special about the rally point. It was set at a lay-by, which only had a landline and a small restroom. It was also at the end of the sort-of bridge, and there was a short barrier that was about waist-high to her. The street lights flickered on, but they weren’t all that bright. This section of the highway was about four lanes wide and would normally have a bit of traffic flow, but considering the state of the area, it was currently deserted. South would eventually lead to Neo Prism City, while continuing north would eventually pass near the primary beachhead.

It wasn’t the only road, by any means. There were quite a few routes that intersected this particular one, and those weren’t as convoluted as this one weaved around the foothills of the mountains. Still, this particular chokepoint was one of three, so it was quite curious why she was the only one here.

Half an hour passed, and the bombardment ended. Her phone’s AWH app warbled with a completed assignment, and she shrugged to herself. Free points, she supposed.

It was when she was about to take flight…

A sniper’s shot entered her perception range, followed by two more, though the latter were void spots in the wind rather than physical bullets. Yuriko leaned away from the first while her hand drew the longsword at her hip.

Her first swing caught the leading edge of the void spot, and she deflected the slug towards the ground. Her parry was imperfect since she couldn’t see the bullet properly, but even so, it was enough to defend. With a quick twist of her wrist, she intercepted the second void spot and reflected it back to its original ballistic path. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to add much energy to the returning bullet, which meant it only flew back a hundred paces before wind resistance dragged it out of line.

The next second, another barrage of bullets entered her perception range, and though she had expanded her reach over the past five weeks—thirty-five paces for her true body, but only three and a half for her incarnation body—the shooters were well out of detection range. The angle of the attacks pointed towards the sky, however, and so, she used her Enhanced Sight to scan for them. She noticed the glow of flying powered armour wings that had been disguised by the moon, clouds, the stars, but also by the commotion of the bombardment.

Now that she was paying better attention, she easily located the displacement of the voided sniper shots and managed to reflect both back to their shooters. Why did one of them have normal bullets, though? It only tipped her off.

The answer came in the form of voided sniper bullets that came from directly behind her, angled almost parallel to the ground. If suspicion had not stayed her hand at focusing her perception upwards, she would have been caught flatfooted. As it were, she twirled her longsword over and behind her back, at exactly the right moment to deflect the shots.

The longsword wasn’t really built to deflect bullets, of course. It was made to clash with other blades in the HAMA club. As such, the second parry chipped the edge, and the third snapped it clean off. It brought her enough time to conjure a sunblade, however, and just in time to reflect a fourth bullet. Since she wasn’t using a steel weapon unsuited to channel her Intent, Will, Anima, Animus, and Radiance, the reflection was done properly. She heard the bullet impact with something, but probably not flesh or powered armour. A veteran soldier would be foolish to stay still after shooting, unless they were under cover. A glance back revealed a squadron of infantry-level powered armour soldiers several hundred paces back. They were shooting assault rifles… and a rocket launcher. The latter’s missile was slower than bullets, which was why it only crossed into her perception range now. But at that point, the thing exploded and obscured her view of her attackers.

Animakinesis manipulated her phone to send out a distress signal, not so much because she needed help but to notify the military that the invaders had attacked at this location. No signal.

Yuriko frowned. She was using a phone that had been hardened against jamming, and this one had been given to her by the AWH when she signed up. To think it would fail so easily. Then again, she still wasn’t sure at what level the Irvallans had advanced their technology.

Was this an ambush specifically for her, or had they intercepted others in different rally points? Had they compromised the AWH system already?

Still, an aerial squadron and an infantry squad aren’t enough. She quickly decided to handle the ones on the ground first, since they couldn’t move faster than her flight. Then, she would be free to focus on the fliers afterwards. She kicked off the ground and ran rather than fly, though she did spread her Anima in the shape of wings to help her manoeuvre around as needed. She passed through the blast cloud a moment after it erupted, and her Anima armour was peppered by shrapnel and heat blasts. She formed a second sunblade for her other hand and used both weapons to reflect incoming bullets. They stopped using voided shots by this point, probably because those things consumed more Occult Resonance than normal bullets, not that those were unenhanced either. Mundane bullets wouldn’t damage her aura after all.

She crossed fifty paces in the blink of an eye. The fliers shot their normal bullets at her back, but she zigged and zagged to avoid them. Some of those bullets turned out to have guidance enchantments written into the metal. Not enough to pose much of a risk to her, but enough to distract. The act of parrying the bullets also destroyed it since reflecting the thing would only see it curve back towards her.

She slowed her forward momentum for a heartbeat. And from there, she saw more elements of the assault force. Mostly because they also started shooting from the east and the west. Stuck in an annoying crossfire with her sunblades dancing in the air to defend, she wondered what touched off the Irvallans this time.