Book 15-23.1: The Broken Road

Crimson Ape daemons. 

Yuriko froze for half a moment as she hadn't expected something from her past would surface now. Well, not that she had much of a past. It's just been over five years since her Atavism Ritual, and not only was she in another country millions of leagues away, but she'd also gained two bodies. So when she encountered something that should have been as equally distant from Astoria as the Great Continent was from Rumiga, she was decidedly shocked. 

She only recovered her aplomb when her true body noticed the consciousness gap and prodded her incarnation body out of her stupor. 

Crimson Ape daemons.

She counted over a dozen. They weren't charging towards her and the others initially, but since someone could see them, they could also be seen in turn. The creatures bunched up then galloped across the plains. They roared and thumped their chests in turn, creating a thundering rhythm that made the ground shake and the dust fly. 

"Divine mercies…" Victor repeated. "What are those monsters?" 

"Crimson Apes," Yuriko answered, "and we should move or we'll be pinned here."

The daemons were still a couple of longstrides away and on normal terrain, the sight lines would be concealed by the lay of the land. But the plains here were too flat. The apes saw them and charged and it would take just a couple of minutes to reach them.

Come to think of it, how far can the others run in a couple of minutes? Not enough to make a difference considering there's no place to hide anyway.

"Huh, go, I'll stop them." 

"I…" Christine looked at the dozen or so apes, each one at least twice her size. "I'll help." She gulped and clenched her fists, but her knees were trembling. 

"If you want to," Yuriko said. "Don't die, alright?" 

"I'll help too!" Michael yelled as his power created an inky katar on his hand. 

"Follow when you can," Yuriko barked as she moved.

Her steps covered several paces for each one she took, puffs of dirt and dust exploded from where she kicked off. It took only a few seconds to close in on the Crimson Apes, and she was about a longstride from the others, with Christine and Michael four or five hundred paces behind her. 

The Crimson Apes were different from what she expected. They were tall, but gaunt. There were patches of bare skin in long streaks across their arms and torsos, and there…were thin shackles around wrists, ankles, and necks. Their eyes, though feral, were dull at the same time, as though the fight was nothing more than routine. She remembered the apes fought with gusto, and relished the fight. Nevertheless, they approached with hostility, and she could see that there were more behind the initial dozen, only they were concealed by a thin cloud of dust.

She thought about concealing her Animakinesis during the fight, but it was the fastest way to defeat these apes. Should she kill them or should she simply disable them? There was a treaty between Karcellia and the apes, and she wondered if that nation had something to do with this. 

She allowed her Anima to spread to its full extent and engaged the apes in battle. She sent orbs of condensed Anima to strike chins, guts, and joints. 

Blam, blam, blam! Thud, thud, thud. 

The ones hit on the chin dropped like rocks. Those she hit in the gut folded over, and those she hit on the knees and joints, crumpled. In the blink of an eye, all dozen were down, and she glanced back, she grinned at Christine, Michael, and Alexis, who had followed quickly behind. But she quickly turned her attention to the next wave. There was another dozen on the way, but they were still a good longstride behind the first set. 

By the time they closed within her range, the other three arrived. 

"Wow, Lily. You're stronger than I expected," Michael said in wondering tones. 

"Almost too strong," Alexis murmured, barely loud enough for Yuriko to hear, though she didn't think he intended to actually say anything.

It was true, though not in the normal way. She thought Alexis knew she was supposedly 'Altered', but it was a recent thing. The way she fought and acted revealed that she was used to battle. But where in Astoria could she have learned how to fight? Ah, a wrinkle in her identity's veil. 

Yuriko's perception honed in on the fallen Crimson Apes. They had a minute or so before the next set of apes arrived, and thankfully, they were all headed directly towards her instead of trying to intercept the others. A glance back made her blink. The remaining five cast and crew hadn't moved from the entry point and were goggling at her instead. Well, that works too. 

The shackles and collar drew her attention. She'd thought they were steel or iron, and they were some kind of grey metal for the most part, but they also had runescript engravings. She only had time to ponder the basic meaning, which, as she expected, was confinement. It was linked to more words that defined, narrowed, and strengthened the engraving, but the apes had already come. Ah, she did have time to make sure the apes remained unconscious. 

Zap!

Alexis' lightning bolt slammed into the nearest ape, but it danced from the fur towards the shackle. That didn't quite help the daemon as the bolt grounded into its body instead of towards the earth. It convulsed and collapsed, twitching. 

Michael was in trouble. He tried to punch the ape with his katar, but the simian daemon's reach was nearly twice his, so the ape punched him first. That would have caved in his skull had Yuriko not interposed a small, inch-wide hexagon of solidified Animus in front of the ape's fist.

Christine received a blow to her arm, but her Alteration empowered her body enough that it only caused her to stumble back a couple of paces rather than crumple bone and pulp flesh. A second later, Yuriko knocked out the rest of the apes except for the ones engaging the other three. 

Michael gritted his teeth and stepped under the ape's reach. The daemon howled as it cradled its wrist bent back after slamming hard into her shield. He punched the blade into the daemon's throat and the inky weapon sank all of three inches into the fur and flesh. The roar turned into a gurgle as he pulled back and jumped away, just in time to avoid a retaliatory swipe. When he landed, he was forced to jump and roll to the side as the beast attempted to fall on him. 

Christine pummelled her foe. Her fists left deep depressions on the ape's flesh, and a final haymaker caught the thing on the chin. The ape toppled over, eyes rolled up. With the remaining three apes down, Yuriko focused on the incoming wave and frowned when she saw them half a longstride away, howling and thumping their chests. The noise caught the attention of more apes, she suspected, since there were more than a dozen. But while they were rallying, she took the time to more closely examine the fallen. 

With a flick of her fingers, she used an Edge to slice a collar off the nearby ape. 

Clang.

The Crimson Ape's eyes opened with a snap, as wide as they could go. The blood-red irises and the white sclera darkened to black, and a few moments later, the ape slumped down. Its face slackened and its breathing stilled. Another moment later, the edges of its body started to disintegrate. The expression on its face wasn't of fear or pain, but…peace. 

Yuriko frowned as she retrieved the collar. As she suspected from how Alexis' lightning acted, it had spikes on the inside, though they weren't too large or longer than half an inch. The tips were stained crimson, but it looked like the ape's wounds healed around the spikes as there were nothing more than stains on the tips. 

"Oh, disgusting," Christine complained as she trotted away from the ape, "Uh, are we just going to…?"

"To what? Leave them or kill them?" Alexis asked rhetorically. "I don't think these things will be any less confrontational when they wake up again." 

"There's more of them there," Michael said, his voice and body tense, "I don't think we have enough time to escape." 

"Or do much of anything," Alexis muttered. "Let's try to get back to the bridge."

He turned around and jogged back to the others. Christine followed behind him and Michael started to as well but stopped when Yuriko didn't move.

"Lily?" 

"Go," Yuriko said. "I'll hold them off while you guys figure things out." 

"I…" 

"Just go. You saw how easy it was for me to defeat them." 

"Oh, uhm, alright. Come back alive please."

Yuriko smiled, "I will." She paused then snickered, "My career's just starting, I don't want to stop until everyone in Astoria knows who I am."

"Ah, that's quite ambitious," Michael said. "Well, I'm already your fan."

"I know," Yuriko smirked. "Be careful. Just keep pushing to get through, you'll eventually do it." 

"Alright." With less hesitation, he ran back. Alexis stopped and turned back towards her, but Yuriko waved him off. 

She flicked off the shackles and collars of the unconscious apes and all of them died with peaceful expressions. She examined the inside of the shackles and found them identical to the collars though the spikes were barely nubs and weren't quite as sharp. 

The gathering of Crimson Apes reached a hundred strong and they began their charge. Yuriko ran towards them and crossed the distance faster than they could, then went directly for the kill the first time. When her Invisible Edge cleaved an ape's head off the first time, blood tethers emerged from the severed halves and reconnected the decapitated head back before the body fell. The ape didn't even stumble as it continued its attack. 

"Knockouts then," Yuriko muttered as she danced across along the front. Her Anima reach wasn't quite enough to catch all of them in one go, and she only had ten strands of consciousness to use. The apes fell ten at a time, and half a minute later, she broke the collars with the Edge, though she didn't spend more Intent that she recovered every minute. 

Dead and withered. Yuriko sighed as the daemons disintegrated. She thought to gather the collars and shackles but held it off when she saw more of the daemons in the distance. Thankfully, the majority weren't headed towards the bridgehead. Instead, they were pounding shafts into the earth. She couldn't quite make out what the things were made of, but they were black enough that they could be mistaken for shadows. 

The ever present dust turned distant figures into blurred silhouettes, but there was something bulky there that drew her eye. Several bulky things, actually. 

There was another set of apes heading towards the bridgehead's direction. Yuriko headed towards them, though hesitated when she worried that the apes could outflank and outmaneuver her position. So she stood still and waited for the enemy. 

The bulky silhouette in the distance moved. It was at least twice as tall as the surrounding apes. It moved, then blurred. Yuriko's eyes widened as she caught sight of the dust trail as it shot up to the skies.

It slammed into the ground a hundred paces from her and sent up a mushroom cloud of dust and dirt. Pebbles pelted against her Anima and they struck with the force of pistol bullets. The huge figure stood up and strode towards her. It stopped once it was out of the dust cloud and held out a gigantic arm. A pillar of rock shot up from the ground and it snapped it off. It smacked the makeshift quarterstaff against its palm, and its voice boomed. 

"So we meet again, Ancient."

Yuriko recognised him, of course, and she couldn't help but smirk. Their last battle had been one of the challenges she relished overcoming, and she wondered if the Living Monument was still as strong as it was then. Hopefully, he was stronger, so that beating him down would have meaning.