Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Damien’s shadow emerged so abruptly that Yuriko hadn’t been able to take a good look at anything but the Anima shroud. In a subconscious attempt to ward off the darkness, and though her gaze was locked against his, a strand of consciousness was tasked to take a gander at everything else.

Behind the shroud were more of the larger powered armour soldiers, and the way they stood clued her in on their true purpose. Guards. Royal guardsmen…or imperial, considering the way they named their nation.

Her thoughts raced. The shrouded Damien had sent his minions to hem her in and drive her towards the kill box. Although…she wasn’t sure what his real goal was. Kill her? That would only destroy this incarnation's body. Her true body was far away, in both space and probably time. She would lose the excess Anima reach, but she was sure she’d recover her attuned strands of consciousness. She also wouldn’t lose her Ennoia of the Bladeless Sword, which was arguably the greatest gain she had in this tower floor.

Well, the worship that gave her Quintessence and Ambrosia was equally valuable.

Oh. If Damien were the focus of a nation, wouldn’t he gain just as much Ambrosia, if not more? How long had he been at it, she wondered, ever since she left Irvalla? How long had he been implanted into that little patsy he was using? And from the looks of it…was there even something left of the guy? Actually…was she sure it was a man underneath all of that? No need, she supposed, as that was entirely irrelevant to the situation.

One second had passed since the beginning of the encroaching darkness.

Her true body was unaffected by it, as far as she could tell, but whatever it was, it introduced a kind of static to the connection between the two bodies. In Shangria, they had just finished the day’s hunt and were settling in for the evening. She sank into a seated meditation pose and drew her Anima into her body.

“Yuri? What’s wrong?” Gwendith asked hesitantly.

“A battle in Astoria. With a terrible foe,” Yuriko said absently as she focused the majority of her strands of consciousness into her incarnation. Even as she spoke, things steadily got worse.

The darkness spread, and was definitely not the result of a hallucination or an illusion. Damien’s powers were broad, and over the numerous millennia of his life, he learned many tricks. Every second that passed, it encroached. From a tiny fraction of her field of vision, to a larger percentage—perhaps a whole one percent.

She didn’t feel fear, not really. Anger, yes, and a sense of betrayal, even if the latter was unreasonable. The Damien that had accompanied her for nearly half a decade wasn’t the one in front of her. That Damien had sacrificed his consciousness to save her and her homeland. That Damien had been a friend and mentor, and on his last breath, he warned her of coming danger. It seemed he referred to this one.

The image of a dozen or so shards that escaped the crystal in Irvalla surfaced from her memories. Fragments… shards of Damien’s memories, and perhaps, his ego. What was this in front of her? The shroud’s expression had not shifted one bit, even if whatever it was doing was succeeding.

Thirty seconds. About a tenth of her field of vision was corrupted.

The Damien shroud wasn’t the only thing she had to fight. The guardsmen continued to shoot at her, and she used her sunblades and her Anima to deflect bullets.

The shroud raised a hand, and the guards stopped. Odd.

It was only her vision…

No. It was her Anima. Her perception aura had spread unconsciously when she saw the shroud, and it was the edges of her field that were being affected. What was it?

The shrouded Damien didn’t do anything other than stare at her, but it was just as likely that he was doing something she couldn’t detect.

There was a tidbit from Damien’s memories that she looked up when she encountered other Ancients. Those of a higher realm could hide their Anima perception field from those lower. She didn’t think that was true for kinesis, as that would have some visual effect, but perception aura was stealthy.

But then, if it was just perception aura, how was he doing that?

She tried to fight back, of course. From the very beginning, she did. She threw Radiant energy at the edges, confident that it would burn and consume whatever it was that invaded. To her surprise, that didn’t happen. Instead, the Radiance simply faded away. It took a shameful five seconds before she realised why.

Damien taught her about Radiance. He didn’t give it to her, as that was apparently innate. Something the old pervert inserted into his memories when she inherited them. She thought Fri’Avgi had something to do with how she received her Radiant Ennoia, but apparently not. Radiance was one of the affinities that could not be trained, or even learned, without having a foot across the threshold already. The old pervert admitted that he didn’t have as high an affinity as she did at the beginning, and that was probably why he changed his plans about her.

That didn’t mean she knew more than he did. He reached a higher ascension than she did, clearly, and using Radiance against him was much like giving an archer an arrow to shoot her back. Foolish…if that was all she did.

She should know better by now.

She infused her Intent and Will into her Radiant probes and sent them at the edges of her perception. It was only then that she finally saw what was happening, and the tightness around her heart eased.

It was Radiance.

Of course it was.

Conquest.

She remembered from her dreams of Damien’s life. Conquest was his primary Truth, and she supposed Radiance was somewhere next to it, along with Lust that he got from liberating her Ancestor.

For that matter, she wasn’t even sure if Damien was her Ancestor, not really. But she wasn’t about to hunt around his memories for when he and the Mishala Progenitor made babies. She was sure they got it on quite often enough, but creating kids was a matter of Intent at their level rather than an accident or effort. Nope, not thinking of that.

The infused Radiance slammed into the motes the shrouded Damien was using to invade her Anima.

As soon as the motes touched, everything stopped. Though a moment later, she determined that she and the shrouded Damien were accelerated to a point that everything seemed to stand still. She couldn’t move, not her body, nor her Anima, and only the consciousness strand she attached to her probe could actually act. Her attention was riveted to the contact point, and…she hesitated too long.

The shrouded Damien’s Radiant mote ate her probe, then spat her strand of consciousness out. Everything returned to its normal pace. She sent another probe, and instead of freezing or hesitating, she pushed her probe to fight back.

She visualised a figure, the Golden Silhouette, to fight the encroachment. It had been instinctive, and it had been a while since she called on her. Not that the visualisation was actually called the remnant from when she practised the Imperial method. No, it was just a memetic aid.

She fought against the encroaching mote, but the most she was able to do was cancel each mote out. Her infused Intent and Will clashed against the shrouded Damien’s, and both winked out. She wasn’t sure if the quality of her Willpower was the same as his, or if she compensated by having more Intent and Will infused. After all, she only sent a single probe against a near countless number of his.

Even as the clash ended, his encroachment advanced. 1.2% now. She had ten strands of consciousness tied to her incarnation body, and she couldn’t make use of the ones tied to her true body here. So she had to be better; otherwise, she’d lose.

It was quickly apparent that the shrouded Damien wasn’t overwhelmingly strong. Otherwise, she would have been finished already.

She sent another probe, but put two strands of consciousness into controlling it. When it clashed with an opposing mote, she focused on what happened upon contact.

She couldn’t see much, but she made a chain of probes to clash with the invaders so that only a little time passed in between battles. She dedicated the second strand of consciousness to observing the process, and it took another dozen battles before she saw.

Her probe was a small orb. Radiance infused with Willpower—Intent and Will combined. The invaders weren’t orbs. They were spikes. When her orb clashed with the spike, the shrouded Damien’s attack would pierce her orb, and the resulting instability caused a minor explosion. Even if she envisioned her probe to be the Golden Silhouette, the result was the silhouette materialised within the orb, and she only fought once the surface was pierced.

It also wasn’t a guarantee that her probe would win the clash. Rather, she had no point of reference if she lost.

Each probe contained a tenth of a percentage point of her Willpower reserves. The gap between each clash was about a tenth of a second. Her Willpower would dip below 90% in less than ten seconds, which meant she would run dry after a couple of minutes.

Either reduce the amount she infused, or extend the gap between clashes. Either defence would only prolong the fight and lead to her eventual defeat. So the only way to win would be to win each battle with as much Willpower saved as she could.

First. She had to modify the orb. She thickened the side that would clash with the spike so that it would deflect the point, but the shrouded Damien simply controlled his spike to poke at the non-reinforced side instead. And she lost that clash since he managed to inject his Willpower into the weakened point, which destabilised the construct and popped it.

Wait… why was she keeping the orb? Her Ennoia of the Radiant Flying Swords gave her enough experience in manipulating sword-shaped constructs that it should have been her default action.

Her next probe shifted into a sunblade shape. The Golden Silhouette materialised to wield it, as a physical manifestation of her Willpower. The sunblade clashed with the spike, and somehow, the shrouded Damien still managed to poke past the surface. Still, the blade cut the spike in twain, and only half of her Willpower was consumed.

She immediately pulled back that probe and sent the next one against a fresh mote. She won that clash and only lost a third of her invested Willpower. The next clash she lost when the spike wheeled around her sunblade and poked the Silhouette. She fashioned a new probe with two sunblades, one for attack and another to defend, then applied the principles of the Flowing Water to the clash.

She won. Then, she lost as the shrouded Damien adapted. She won the next, and the one after that, without losing any Willpower.

Dozens of battles every second, and she managed to keep her Willpower expenditure below her regeneration rate. But she was still losing ground. Two percent of her Anima had been darkened, but over the last minute, the shrouded Damien’s progress had been less than 0.1 percent.

The next minute, he stalked out, and Yuriko grinned fiercely. She had the measure of him now. He was skilled as only a several millennia old pervert was, but his vessel wasn’t stronger than she was, even if she was limited to her incarnation body. The expression on the shroud’s face hadn’t changed either, and…she suspected that Damien’s consciousness wasn’t all there.

That was a relief.

Well, until the pervert made another gesture and the guardsmen started to shoot her again. What a sore loser.