Chapter 705: Book 11-7.1: Hidden Counters

Riley Siofra Davar charged down the tunnel, his Plasma Caster held at the hip. He had enough control over his Animus that the unwieldy position would still be effective as long as his target was less than fifty paces away. He didn’t want to keep the weapon held at his shoulder as that had the tendency to narrow his focus too much. Sure, he was in a tunnel, and the path was narrow by definition, but there were many hidden nooks and crannies, not to mention small side branches that those filthy traitors to humanity could use, much less the actual invasive Chaos dwellers.

He was at least several hundred paces underneath the surface, and aside from the brief time he and the other marines had reported to the legion commander in the Watchtower, he and the others had spent the rest of the Season underground, fending off sappers and geomancers.

Speaking of filth…

A swarmling horde popped out of the corner, saw him, and shrieked as they rushed to strike. Riley skidded to a halt and depressed the trigger. His Plasma Caster had been retrofitted with a spreader muzzle, and so, instead of a plasma bolt, it blasted out a cone of superheated flame. Empowered Strike melted whatever the swarmlings used to keep themselves stable in the plane, and the rest of the flames engulfed the small horde of fifty or so. The burning plasma was just hot enough to burn through the protections, as well as most of the creatures’ fur or scales, but no more than that. He had to save his Animus after all.

Riley took a long moment to ensure that all of the horde was well and truly dying, before skirting past them. He was alone in the tunnel, but his brother and his marines were within the next few branches, clearing them of vermin. He didn’t really expect to continue working underground. These tunnels were the exact opposite of what made him fall in love with the idea of sailing the Chaos Sea. Out there, nothing was bound, nothing limited. Only his Will and Intent, and his imagination gave limits to possibilities.

Here, he was forced to walk specific routes, narrow paths and cramped caverns. He never expected defending the Watchtower involved being underground more than fighting on the surface. Not that he had much of a choice. The commanding officer ranked over a merchant marine even if they were of the same Anima strength.

The Watchtower was larger underground compared to the hundred paces or so that stuck up above it. And Riley could swear that the thing was growing. But it was the last refuge of the remaining Gwemheart and nothing must destroy that relic, or Rumiga would be lost.

Sighing to himself, he ran past the corner, and nearly into a Wanderer and another horde of swarmlings. He had to keep killing.

__________

The entrance to the Tidelands, seen from the other side of the Veil, was really quite obvious, Yuriko thought. Unlike the Veil, which seemed clear and solid, even if it was a longstride thick at least, the Tidelands looked like a drawn-out and faded bedsheet. There were wrinkles that stuck out farther from the rest of the Veil, but she knew that was just an illusion. The Tidelands fit into the Veil as easily as the rest of it, and it was no more vulnerable. Still, the Silver Tiger entering the Depths caused such a large ripple that they were almost repelled back outside. They had been approaching at speed.

That was a day ago, and they were still in the Depths, and the Midmarches were still a couple of days away. It took longer to enter the plane through this place than a Chaos Channel which would have allowed them to pierce through the Veil in less than an hour.

For that matter, maybe it would be easier for an individual to enter rather than a collective. From her lessons, Tidelands restricted and slowed the travel of powerful beings, but in exchange, eased the transition between Chaos Sea and planes. It was the reason why weaker Wyldlings were able to invade without getting sucked dry by the negative Chaos pressure.

And speaking of Wyldlings, the Tidelands were crawling with them.

Eli’Theria flew a couple of longstrides ahead of the Tiger, tethered by an Animus thread to her Mum. The Vasi Colossus had been downgraded to an Evgenis, losing a pace in height and several MiJin in weight, just so Yuriko could pilot and power the Colossus alone.

The results weren’t all that impressive, and Yuriko wondered if she was better off fighting alone. For one thing, her Anima reach amplification dropped from tenfold to simply half as strong. So instead of three hundred and change paces, it was now roughly forty-six paces of reach. It was still a respectable boost, but the amount of things she had to pay attention to when it came to piloting the Colossus took up more than half of her streams of consciousness. So she was actually worse off when it came to versatility. Eli’Theria’s armour meant that almost nothing could get through it, so that was the point, she guessed.

The Depths of a Tideland was rather like a Waypoint. Actually, it was exactly like a Waypoint except the areas shifted around, so it was actually like a bunch of Fysalli’s stacked together. The rate at which the environment changed depended on how watchful or wary a traveller was. Of course, Eli’Theria avoided most of those concerns. The Colossus felt as though she were a boulder thrown into a rather shallow pond, and it was the Depths that warped and shifted around the Colossus rather than being moved.

And at the moment, Yuriko was looking at several hordes of swarmlings and Wanderers. The Wyldlings howled at her presence, and they tried to attack. Even though she was hovering above the ground, they tried to reach for her. And the Depths around them shifted to their need.

The air solidified into steps, floating platforms, and eventually, walkways that rose to the sky. The environment shifted from an open field to a forest canopy, wherein she and Eli’Theria were flying underneath the leaves. The swarmlings raced up the gigantic trunks and ran across the branches before flinging themselves at her. Not that she was just hovering.

Her Animakinesis flung the weak creatures back and broke them at the same time too. But they were unfettered. The swarmlings, Wanderers, and a few Hunters continued to charge towards her, and in greater numbers.

‘Filth.’ Eli’Theria growled. The Colossus’ animating spirit activated two of her autonomous weapons, mini Plasma Casters mounted on her shoulders, and started blasting away.

In the meantime, Yuriko used her extended Anima reach to form her sunblades and sunshards. As soon as they were out, she began to slaughter the Wyldlings with impunity. While the Radiant energy inherent in her Anima composition was inimical to the creatures, the rate at which they were damaged was too slow. Using her kinesis directly was much less efficient since she had to crush them against something to really kill them, or grind them against the Radiant.

An hour later and the Wyldlings’ numbers didn’t decrease. Instead, even more of the creatures were pouring into her surroundings.

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“Yuri, baby, report?” The communication crystal from the Silver Tiger chimed in with her Mum’s voice.

“Wyldling horde, Mum.”

“Oh, try to look for their nests. Endless horde otherwise.”

“Alright,” Yuriko agreed. but she didn’t really know where to look. Before she decided to ask, she intended to try her luck at finding the Wyldling nests first.

The Depths didn’t have as many swirls and eddies as the outside Chaos Sea, but it was still quite confusing. Chaos Sight showed how thick the ambient Chaos was, and it was hard to see through the mass…

As she continued to slaughter the Wyldlings, she noticed something. Whenever one of the Wyldling corpses disintegrated, which happened somewhere between a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how intact the corpse was, glimmers of light that were nearly identical to the background Chaos flows emerged. Those motes of lights drifted away from the battlefield. She wouldn’t have noticed it except for the fact that the hundreds of dead Wyldlings released enough motes that they stood out against the background.

Frowning, Yuriko used her Anima perception to trace where the motes went, and after a moment’s hesitation, she followed. The trouble was that the motes went in three different directions, each one wildly divergent from the others. One went to the left and backwards, another towards the skies and to the right, while the third meandered forwards and slightly to the right. Since it was on their path anyway, Yuriko decided to follow that one.

As she continued on the path, the number of swarmlings swelled so much that they were practically on top of each other. If not for the fact that the Depths bent itself to their needs, they wouldn’t have been able to walk much less attack.

Swish, swish! Chop, chop, slash!

Sunshards and sunblades cleaved through the masses, leaving disintegrating corpses and blue blood that stained the fallen leaves and twigs. She hurried towards the remnant trail but was soon stymied by the sheer number of swarmlings. It came to a point when she couldn’t kill them fast enough with her shards.

Snikt!

Eli’Theria’s gauntlets extruded a couple of blades and Yuriko directed the Colossus to cut her way across. Each swipe of her hand reaped a dozen swarmlings, but more than that came every moment. She flooded her Anima with Radiant energy, and that seemed to help. From her core, from her lattice, and from her evolved Ennoia, the Colligia of Radiant Light, she converted when Animus she had to Radiant, and forcibly shifted the ambient Chaos too.

The golden light that came from her became so bright that it was almost possible to see her body through Eli’Theria’s armour. And as soon as a swarmling touched Yuriko’s Anima, they simply burned and turned to smoke.

But each time one of them was burned, Yuriko felt as though a slight weight landed on her mind. A single one was nothing, but the number of destroyed swarmlings soon became practically uncountable, especially since they died as soon as they touched her Anima. Hence, an open field formed around Eli’Theria, forty-six paces across. The streams of remnant motes became so thick that they truly became visible.

The space around her changed and she found where the remnants went. It was a structure much like a beehive except it was nearly twenty paces across and thirty high. The remnants entered one of the holes and swarmlings came out of others. Curious, Yuriko lowered the Radiant energy concentration in her Anima and used her perception to inspect the insides.

The remnants, once they were inside the nest, entered a smaller subchamber that was roughly the size of a swarmling. Then, moments later, the covering burst open and an entirely new swarmling came out. It followed a stream of its fellows heading out of the hive and went straight at Eli’Theria.

Each of the subchambers had inert bodies in it. Where did they come from and what made them? Yuriko inspected each of them, and the deeper into the hive she looked, the less whole the bodies were. The chambers were pushed towards the outer parts of the hive as the bodies grew up inside. At the very centre, there was a strange organ that looked much like a humanoid heart, except it was the size of a Koinos Colossus. It pumped out…eggs…that were a few inches long, which were then placed in an empty chamber. Ambient Chaos which was about 3 iarvesh dense was pumped into the chamber by some pipe that only connected to them briefly until it was full. The egg absorbed the ambient Chaos at a prodigious pace, then grew into a swarmling body.

Then the remnant Anima from destroyed swarmlings merged with the inert body and they were reborn.

Yuriko’s mouth felt dry. At the rate the nest was going, it could produce thousands of swarmlings a minute. She flooded her Anima perception with Radiant energy and the hive began to smoke. A shriek reverberated across the air, and the hive burned. The desperate swarmlings tried to kill her, but they were too weak. But she was on a Colossus, and at the Knight level. For a denizen of Faron’s Crossing, the numbers here were enough to drown them.

Once the nest was destroyed, the remnant motes swirled around for a long moment, before something else attracted them. Another hive, probably. And it looked like she’d have to clear the Tidelands of these vermin, otherwise…

Yuriko growled to herself. She would not let Faron’s Crossing and the Watchtower succumb to this Wyldling Wave. She hurried along the path and soon found another hive. It was smaller and churned out fewer swarmlings per minute, but it was still far too many. So she destroyed it.

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