Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Book 18-6.3: Behind the Masks

The following exchange was hot and heavy, and at that point, neither Yuriko nor the bearman cared about the apartment. His swipe carved furrows into the wall, and her parry knocked his arm up and poked a hole into the ceiling. After her taunt, the bearman wordlessly growled and simply went berserk. Her perception showed her that he had started frothing at the mouth, and she was sure his eyes had turned bloodshot. 

Unlike with the sniper, her Ennoia was not hindered by the bearman’s defences, even if the wild flailing was barely enough to deflect her cuts and stabs. Which was another point of interest, considering her sunblade was infused with enough Radiance to burn anything it touched. His sleeves suffered for it, but the infused claws resisted her assault.

Also, every now and then, the sniper would, well, snipe at her. The bullets weren’t effective, but they were distracting. A claw managed to slice into her side when her intended parry was interrupted by a bullet to the eye. Her reflexes were still mired by Amalia’s, such that she still instinctively protected her vital points despite knowing the attack wouldn’t have harmed her. Well, the bullet would have stung and probably would distract her more, but the infused claws drew a line of burning pain across her flank. Radiance immediately flooded the area and expelled the invasive energy, but the heat discharge burned her flesh. 

But, with evidence that while the claws would hurt, they weren’t immediately fatal, it bolstered her courage. She growled, then lunged. She accepted blows to her other side and her arm, but in exchange, the sunblade slammed into the bearman’s centre mass. Right at his heart. 

“Ack…” he gasped before staggering back.

Yuriko grimly pulled the sunblade sideways, and it exited through the left side of his torso and dismembered his arm. Radiance warred with whatever energy he used, which produced sparkles from the gaping wound. The same sparkles erupted from her own wounds.

The sniper fired at her, and because her perception was focused on the bearman, she was unable to counter his displacement technique. The bullets slammed into her temple, and while it didn’t rock her skull, it still made her head ring. 

More than a bit annoyed, she oriented towards where the sniper was firing from and got ready to charge, but she hesitated when the bearman’s body caught on fire and disintegrated to ashes. He left his belongings, however, including a fat wallet, a combat knife, and jewellery. 

Yuriko blinked at how her eyes were drawn to all of it, and she could only mutter at how her original body was such a miserly eye. Still, she didn’t hesitate to swipe all of it, but by then, the sniper had run off. The wounds on both sides and her left forearm stung, however, and when she tried to use Recovery to heal, it didn’t work. It was as if the damage resisted accelerated healing, and she didn’t have enough spare Radiance to attempt a partial elemental transformation. Oh well. 

The entire fight lasted for all of three minutes. She could hear engines roaring as the armoured vans—the ones that were still intact—drove towards her position. She briefly checked bearman’s wallet, pulled out a bunch of bills, and then dropped the rest of the contents. She glanced at the ID and bank cards, but of course, she didn’t recognise the name. The stitching of her backpack held up to the abuse, but there was some damage, and the infused energy ate up some of the runescript enchantment. Thankfully, the spatial expansion enchantment was quite robust, and even if the lines were disturbed, it wouldn’t fail within a short time. She’d have to repair it as soon as she could, however. 

She ran towards the roof, and once she was there, hopped across several blocks. She reined in her Anima perception as she had an inkling it was how she left traces for that woman. She wasn’t sure if her previous dance partners had been on the same side as that woman, and they even called her the same way, but the insignia on their armour was different from the mercenaries she encountered at the park, or those she followed from Lucian’s apartment. Given that she was wanted by the law, it could be anyone who was after her, not just that woman’s faction.

She arrived at the vicinity of Windlass Road, but she didn’t return to her previous resting place. She didn’t leave anything important there anyway, and the area might be compromised. For that matter, she was sure Diamond Residences was compromised too, but she had no other leads. And…

She retrieved her pager. It was beeping again, and it occurred to her that mobile phones could be tracked, so perhaps this bit of technology that felt like a precursor to phones could have the same capability. Certainly not through this end, but considering it was the authorities who were against her…

She turned the thing off, but didn’t break it. She’d check periodically, as she knew that it could receive a message as soon as she turned it on. For now, she needed to find a new place to hunker down. 

She roofhopped away from Lucian’s place, towards the east. She would eventually head there as soon as Amalia’s last regrets were solved, though she felt it was getting a bit too inconvenient. She had intended to head directly towards where she felt her children were, but she supposed travelling that far had its own issues to solve, and unless she intended to run all the way, it would be faster to arrange for passage. It wasn’t as if she could fly at the moment, and she certainly wasn’t going to swim all the way across an ocean. 

She found an empty apartment, broke into it using Helpful Hand, then focused on stitching her wounds up. Actually, she burned some of her stored Radiance to enact partial elemental transformation, though the area it could affect was less than a hundredth of an inch at a time. It worked with removing her wounds, though, and it took the rest of the night to repair her body. Unfortunately, progress with Radiant Physique stalled out until she was done, but she knew the conversion had to be stopped to repair the nearly unhealable wounds anyway. 

She slept through half of the day and woke up with her tummy loudly complaining. She repaired her backpack first, however, before the enchantment ruptured. She then spent another couple of hours stitching durability enhancements on it, too. She had to use thread scavenged from her damaged shirt, though, and she needed replacements. It was a couple of hours past noon before she had a chance to eat. 

Her loot last night was seven hundred and eighty Weyrmarks, a combat knife, a gold ring, and a golden necklace chain. She wasn’t sure how much the latter could get her, but she did not doubt that she could sell it at a pawnshop with little trouble. Probably for a small fraction of its value, though. The Weyrmarks were more useful, and she splurged fifty Weyrmarks on her meal. 

After she was sated, she shopped for more clothes and was a hundred Weyrmarks poorer by late afternoon, but she had a better assortment of clothes. The Seasonal heat meant that she couldn’t really conceal herself with hoodies or coats, but a sunhat, braided hair in a bun, as well as sunglasses could hide her features well enough. The sniper survived so he could give a better description of her changed features, but the glimpses she caught on the television didn’t show an updated photo. Strange. 

She spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening ambling about, but she also took breaks to continue forging. It would take the better part of the day to finish the third Seal if she focused and got absolutely nothing else done, so she figured she’d forge every now and then and let it build up that way. If she had nothing else to do, then she could focus on it, but at the moment, she devoted part of her strands of consciousness to reflect on events thus far. 

She was a criminal, but that didn’t really bother her beyond the inconvenience. She certainly didn’t intend to stay for longer than necessary…although she had a feeling that the limitation she set could stretch too far if she wasn’t careful. Still, she had no intention of abandoning this body, as having more than one was quite convenient. Perhaps after she rescued her kids, she’d use this incarnation to head back to Rumiga. She had a feeling that travelling through the Void was the key to crossing the vast distance between the Empire and the Great Continent, though she also thought that the Tower was a viable way. Astoria connected to Irvalla, and from that plane, she could find a way to head towards the Siderious. 

That night, there was still no contact from her brother, so she snuck into another apartment and focused on forging. By the next day, she had finished the third layer Seal and had started on the fourth layer, which would take thirty-six hours of meditation to complete. Ugh. Did that mean it would take seventy-two for the fifth layer? How long before it was complete then? Or could it infinitely stack? Unlikely, but the third layer allowed her to use the Adamant Guardian Seal for a longer time, seven seconds total compared to the second layer's five. Could she devote a strand of consciousness to forging while she was doing something else? 

Huh, she could. It would take two to three times as long, however, but she could always keep it active. Of course, that meant she’d be down a strand of consciousness in her everyday life, but as before, she could simply pause forging when she had to. Yeah, that works. 

It was her fifth day on this plane, the 30th of Iunius 1995. The skies were clear blue, and the false sun was harsh. Yuriko shaded her eyes as she lounged on a rooftop just a block away from Diamond Residences. Lucien had not been home or at work over the past couple of days, and his roomies didn’t seem to care. Which felt odd, honestly, but since she didn’t know them personally, she just let them be. Her pager, the few times she turned it on, was bereft of any messages, though it tried to ping her location a couple of times, which was why she didn’t use the pager unless she was away from her safe haven. 

Amalia’s resentment poked the back of her mind, and the compulsion to hunt Lucian down grew stronger. She could use the dreamscape tomorrow when she synchronised with her greater self, so she only had to wait. She’d also been a bit more frugal with her funds and had spent only ninety-seven Weyrmarks for meals and other necessities. She was also well stocked with preserved food, mostly canned meat and jerky, as well as hardtack, which tasted as bad as Imperial ration bars but was quite filling. 

She hadn’t been bothered by those bloodsuckers, but her wanted poster had been updated, though it was a separate entry from Amalia’s, so not really an update if she was being nitpicky. Her features had returned to her true self’s, though it was mixed with Amalia’s, just as her 1st-incarnation body had features a mix of her true self and Lilibeth. Her hair was down to her shoulders, and her Anima reach had expanded a couple of paces.

She wasn’t quite done with the 4th layer Seal yet, but since she’d been bored the last couple of days, she had devoted enough time that she could passively finish it in a couple of hours. 

She nibbled on a piece of jerky while watching the street. The sun would set in a couple of hours, and maybe something would change…

Huh? 

Her skin prickled as she felt someone watching her. She looked around warily, then activated Enhanced Sight. A dozen paces in front and above her was an invisible sensor quite akin to a scrying spell…actually, it was a scrying spell. 

She blinked as the sensor disappeared. So she wasn’t the only one who knew Arcana Weaving here. Interesting.