The sli creature closest to her lunged. It lost its humanoid shape, turned into a pillar of sludge and attempted to engulf her. Yuriko watched impassively as it splattered against her condensed aura, she released her control over her Radiant aspect. The sludge emitted a high-pitched squeal as it tried to escape, but Yuriko pressed down on it, even as she pushed it away from her. It bubbled and boiled, the steam vented through tiny passages she built, and it died, leaving behind a sliver of its core. She stared at it for a mont and identified it as a beast core.
Was there a Chaos Fount underneath the city? That was the most likely reason why these things just popped out of the sewers. But even as she pondered the incredible coincidence of an overflow happening on the Festival of Joy, she was already acting to eliminate the sli monsters nearby.
Sunblades ford around her and flew towards the slis she perceived. So of them flew into the sewers through the drain, but despite the wide radius her Anima could reach, she couldn't find the Chaos Fount that the slis ca out of.
She ran towards the palace square which had most of the populace within the central district. As she had been standing on one of the arterial roads, it was a straight run to the palace. But halfway through, she stopped at the sight.
She honestly thought that there would be a bloodbath, panicking n, won, and children running away from the square, but instead, she was happy to see the crowd leaving the square in a hurried, but orderly manner, while the guardsn were taking care of the overflow.
The slis she could see were frozen in place while the guardsn smashed at them with their sidearms. The counsellor and her party were nowhere to be seen, and the palace guards were wide alert with their rifles in ready position, though not aid at anyone in particular.
When one of the sli creatures erged from a storm drain near the palace entrance, the guardsn took aim and discharged their weapons. Yuriko expected the explosive crack of superheated steam to propel the bullet, but instead, the rifles glowed with runescript components and shot out a beam that froze parts of the sli. Multiple beams struck until the monster was frozen solid. The nearest guardsman approached it, drew a truncheon from his belt and proceeded to smash the creature apart.
“Does this happen often?” she asked out loud, not really directing it at anyone. A nearby guardsman answered.
“The Fount under the Delver’s Office overflows often,” he growled. “But it should have been cleared so they don’t overflow today.” He looked at her, eyes widening for a mont, then he reddened and coughed, “Apologies, please excuse so I can continue.”
“Alright.” Yuriko nodded and waved him away. The central palace square was secure but from the commotion drifting from all over, more creatures were erging.
She flew high enough to clear the buildings and she used Enhanced Sight to survey the damage. She focused on her hearing and altered her Anima perception to heighten that sense. Then she allocated half of her consciousness strands to pick apart what she heard and saw, then used the other half to analyse the information she received. A spike of pain shot through her mind, but eased up after she directed her internal Animus reserves to her head. Then she spun around slowly to take in all she could.
A few minutes later, she had a good idea of what was happening and she couldn’t help but scowl. Many of the alleyways were concealed from direct sight because they were behind buildings, as were the circumferential roads. The radial roads didn’t show much, actually, just people - guardsn and soldiers, differentiated by their uniforms - rushed towards the outer petals.
The way Virtalla was made had the wealthier citizens ensconced in the part of the petal district closer to the centre, which ant bigger buildings, yards, and fences. The military base was in the north and east petals, and it was practically boiling over. However, from what she could see, they weren’t deploying inside the city but were marching towards the outside.
“Where are they going?” Yuriko muttered before sothing flashed in front of her mind, a mory of a news pamphlet Juan Carlos had while eating breakfast. Of Ishodir Empire sending ‘training battalions’ into the bordering Elental Conflux. They might be headed to the border, but the heading they had wasn’t directly at the border…
Oh wait, she was sure the roads weren’t a direct line towards it, and the Sodden Plains was probably quite wide. It was just a hunch though.
Her senses pulled her to trouble spots in the southeast petal. The slis in the central district were corralled and taken care of, so she could safely just fly past them. She wondered if soone would try to call her out on flying in the city, Minister of Comrce Soria had certainly been quick to confront her that evening. The Scions of Virtalla, huh…did they have sothing to do with this?
Her runaway thoughts screeched to a halt as she spotted several shadows converging on a couple of teens running away from a sli monster. She flew towards the shadows and frowned as she saw the shadows engulfing the teens. Yuriko hesitated to act since they were running from the sli creatures. A few monts later, the shadows disappeared, only to reappear fifty paces away.
The shadows revealed themselves to be a stern-looking man clad in a dark coat with an emblem that Yuriko didn’t recognise. The man pushed the teens towards the main road, faced the slis and began to weave a spell.
Yuriko left him to it and sought out other targets. Her sunblades darted around her and struck every sli within a hundred and fifty paces of her, and every ti she hit, the creatures erupted into steam and bubbly remains. She sent a few sunblades into the sewer and she swore when she detected hundreds more squeezing their way towards the surface.
The sunblades bounced from sli to sli, vaporising them. Caustic steam rose from the storm drains and cracks in the cobblestones. She brought more blades to bear but hesitated on conjuring more than her easy limit. Aside from the fact that it was too ostentatious, she also didn’t have the focus to keep the blades from lting the stones or igniting the houses. A hundred blades would have to be enough now, less, actually, since she had to devote fifty strands of consciousness to her surroundings.
Ten minutes passed and the caustic steam grew thicker in the sewers. The build-up was starting to look dangerous, and she didn’t know what to do to disperse it. Adding more heat only made the thing expand farther, and the concentration lted off the lichen and mould sticking to the walls.
'Wait, what about those cellars…" Yuriko thought as she spread her awareness towards the last place she rembered finding one, only to realise that those she found were in the southwest petal, not the southeast.
Except she found one such cellar just a few dozen paces away. And it was not empty.
'Are those kids?' Yuriko was tempted to burst into the cellar but she'd have to go down into the sewers nearby if she did. There was a sewer entrance that opened up to a house's basent a couple of blocks away, and there were more than a few ard n and won at the periter.
They are clad in nondescript clothes, mostly greys and browns. They had short blades on their waists, had a spell activation tool on hand—wands, rings, and orbs roughly three inches across—and we're quite vigilant.
Even as she watched, a carriage stopped right outside the house, and this one was powered by a Steeld built into the chassis as opposed to horse-shaped or actual horses. The footman jumped down from the back, pulled the door open, and dragged a couple of kids out and shoved them roughly towards the house guards.
Yuriko began to seethe. Her hands clenched accompanied by little booms of displaced air as she watches the kids brought down to the cellar. That one didn't have weapons, and barely any food. There was also a half-filled chamber pot in the corner.
When the carriage left, she didn't wait. She slipped through an upstairs window and down through the stairs. Her appearance, enhanced by the reddish tinge of her Terror Mien, froze the abductors for a long mont.
Yuriko's Anima kinesis slamd into their bodies and they hit the walls, floor, and ceiling. They collapsed into a boneless heap when she removed the pressure, and she turned to face the only one she didn't incapacitate.
She sank into her Mien and commanded, "Tell who you are, and why you're doing it."
The man stared at her with a pale face even as the front of his trousers grew wet from his urine, then, to her utter annoyance, it tented to prominently display his arousal.
"Agent Callon," he started to babble, "of the…" he clamped his mouth shut despite the look of surprise on his face. He tried desperately to open it, face paling even further as he tried to obey her command, then foam started to bubble from his nose, then the corner of his lips.
Her Anima perception bore into his body, pushing to get past the natural resistance of his body and Anima, but the only this she saw was the sa foam bubbling from his stomach and lungs, as well as fragnts of tal scattered down his throat. Then he keeled over and died.
"Ancestors!" Yuriko muttered. The others were only unconscious so she pried open another man's mouth so she didn't have to force her Anima perception through his flesh, and easily found a false tooth near the back of his mouth. It was covered in runescript weaving but only glimred with faint power. It was a rather simple contract reinforcent formation, as well as an anti-tampering seal.
It wasn't as complex as the Seal of Authority that was still stored in her Anima, but it would take her more than a few minutes to check, and an unknown ti before she could decipher and crack it. Ti she wasn't sure she had.
The cellar with the abducted kids was just beyond her easy reach so she prioritised retrieving them. She went down the basent, wrenched open the secret door and hurried into the sewer tunnels, half gagging at the stench.
Thankfully, the sli monsters had not reached the area and she got to the concealed cellar without issue, save for the two returning abductors who brought the kids there, as well as the sentry.
They jolted when they saw her and imdiately drew their spell activation tools. But before they could even begin to cast, she pressed her Animakinesis against their bodies, lifted them slightly, and dragged them towards her. She punched each of them in the guts, dropping them to their knees. One bent over and puked. Then she cast a forced unconsciousness spell, or Beddy Bye as so of the students had taken to calling it and knocked all three out.
She left them there, half subrged in the sewage sludge, and hurried to the concealed door. She plucked a seal key from the sentry and pressed it into the command nodes etched into the wall. The camouflage faded away and allowed her to grab and twist the doorknob, frowning as a jolt of lightning elental energy struck her from the trap. The lightning grounded harmlessly but left her fingers tingling slightly. She clicked her tongue and forced her perception into the door, berating herself for being careless and hasty, and heaved a sigh of relief when no other trap was inside the door.
She pushed it open and allowed the inside to be illuminated. A dozen teenagers and younger kids swivelled to look at her, most of them boys.
Nearly all had bruised faces, and one had an eye swollen shut. A few had remnants of their festival masks clinging to their ears.
"Let's get you out of here " Yuriko said as she pressed her Mien firmly to Tranquility.
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