Lester Yong & Rosa Fontelera-Yong

CoESC Book 12-13.1: Adventurer's Guild

The single droplet of Ambrosia glimmered in the dim light. Gwendith pursed her lips. The entire point of their mission had been to help the team in Bella harvest Ambrosia, and here’s the trick of Fate that led them to a place that had them. A single drop, sure, but each and every one was precio...

CoESC Book 12-12.3: Three's A Pattern

The entrance chamber was empty, Alejandro noted.

Crunch.

He stared at the cavern floor, which should have been slick and slippery with a thin layer of water that was perpetually enough to make it hazardous, but not enough depth to create drag.

No, instead of that, there...

CoESC Book 12-12.2: Three's A Pattern

“What was that?” Alejandro muttered to himself. The team of adventurers around him were similarly confused.

“Light Element?” Laura Mondero, Adventurer Vigilant based in Nirlith, muttered. “No, it’s not purely Light.”

“Lady Mondero,” one of her retinue said. “This i...

CoESC Book 12-12.1: Three's A Pattern

Alejandro Martelli froze when he heard the alarm. His eyes darted to the mechanical clock, then to the window to check the sunlight. The constant hum of Waterlow’s falls was a soothing melody that most people got used to, then ignored, but he had always kept his awareness of every little thing ...

CoESC Book 12-11.3: Overflow

The living statues marched straight towards Norrington from the Chaos gate. There were other settlements nearby, hamlets, small villages, and farmsteads. She noted a couple in the opposite direction of Norrington, and the farming hamlet was even closer to the gate than the town. But the statues u...

CoESC Book 12-11.2: Overflow

The Wind Darter settled with nary a thump on the other side of the town. Crossing the ravine had posed an issue with the sloop’s levitation runescript not being strong enough to lift them that high. It was easy enough to circumvent. Yuriko simply picked it up, along with everyone else, with her...

CoESC Book 12-11.1: Overflow

The clothier shop Gwendith found a block off the western square was filled with ready-to-wear garments that ran the gamut from blouses, shirts–short-sleeved and long–trousers, skirts, coats, cardigans, and all sorts of pretty underclothes.

Gwendith inspected a provocatively lacey set of...

CoESC Book 12-10.3: Forays

Since Heron’s Anima wasn’t as flexible and stretchable as Yuriko’s or Gwendith’s, he had developed another tool to enhance his senses. His eyes and ears were as honed as they could possibly be, though that might change once he embarked on his Physique Refinement. He was supposed to use hi...

CoESC Book 12-10.2: Forays

The rest of the Chaos Fount was just as easy to subjugate, Yuriko thought. Her sunblades were more than capable of exploring everything since the whole space was less than half a longstride wide. Not that she killed everything by herself.

Well, she would have, except Gwendith stopped her. 2024-01-22 13:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post

CoESC Book 12-10.1: Forays

The forest was thick enough that Yuriko had to aid the levitation runescript to reach the Chaos Fount’s entrance in the middle of it. The trees grew close together and the undergrowth was too thick otherwise. The canopy was roughly twenty to thirty paces above the forest floor.

Adan flew ...

CoESC Book 12-9.3: Arrangements

By noon, the Wind Darter had travelled roughly twenty leagues. Yuriko could have pushed faster, but not by that much. Maybe another ten leagues or so. She could fly faster, but pushing the Wind Darter took a lot of her Animakinetic strength. Even with the runescript weaving that allowed the Darte...

CoESC Book 12-9.2: Arrangements

Almost as soon as the restriction cuffs closed over Desire’s and Devotee’s wrists, both Chaos Lords shuddered.

“What?” Yuriko asked quickly.

“That’s so strange,” Desire muttered, turning her wrist over. “I feel weird.”

“In what way?”

“It’s as if�...

CoESC Book 12-9.1: Arrangements

Yuriko paused at the threshold. Behind her, Gwendith peered over her shoulder to look at the two locals. Heron, being farther back, saw nothing, and simply waited for her to enter. The Sha’ledras captain, and the human lieutenant, noticed her at the door. Coinoch struggled to soften his express...

CoESC Book 12-8.3: An Invitation

Yuriko didn’t say anything about her revelation to her friends. Not for the rest of the night, and not when she wasn’t really sure. The insight did prompt her to ask the others what they could sense.

“Shadow essence,” Saki said softly. “I thought I was hallucinating, dreaming, or ...

CoESC Book 12-8.2: An Invitation

The Bresian soldiers dug into the corpses’ torsoes, into the ribs and probably towards the heart. Yuriko’s perception caught most of it, though she still couldn’t press up against the people without alerting them. She noticed how Lieutenant Coinoch flinched whenever her Anima became denser,...

CoESC Book 12-8.1: An Invitation

Cillian Coinoch carefully watched the foreign magi as they approached. All throughout the journey, he had been reviewing Corporal Ortiz’s report mentally. And he had been nervously fidgeting the entire ride over.

The foreigner Ortiz met…she might be a Grand Magus and was at least a True...

CoESC Book 12-7.3: From Duskfoot Guard

Yuriko stared curiously at the bird beastman. She didn’t know what his tribe was called, else she would have referred to him by it instead. The man had been startled at her quick arrival, that she could easily tell. Her Mien was still in Tranquility so he wasn’t panicking. Although she could ...

CoESC Book 12-7.2: From Duskfoot Guard

Corporal Adan Ortiz could do nothing other than his role in the company. He flew nearly a longstride above the ground and watched with glee as the patrol wiped out a sizable fraction of the herd. Then with disappointment when the herd beasts didn’t rush past the corpses to chase. That was becau...

CoESC Book 12-7.1: From Duskfoot Guard

With a pleading glance towards Yuriko, Gwendith grinned when she saw her beloved silently acquiesce. She knew that the current fight would be trivial if the other fought, but it wasn’t as if Yuriko could always be there to protect her. And the way to get better was practice. And in this case, u...

CoESC Book 12-6.3: On Strange Shores

The wind blew pleasantly against Adan’s feathers as he flew up high enough for the air to thin. Tendrils of arcana helped support his flight, despite the altitude, and it warmed his small body, insulating him from the deathly chill. His eyesight, as a member of the Ib’honara Tribe, was sharp ...

CoESC Book 12-6.2: On Strange Shores

The darkness seemed to last forever, but Yuriko’s timesense, even though it wasn’t tethered to Imperial Standard, still told her that the trip across whatever it was took less than a minute. The Wind Darter moved across the threshold and picked up speed. It moved faster and faster until they ...

CoESC Book 12-6.1: On Strange Shores

To say that the Chaos Storm was a surprise would be false, Yuriko knew. The Imperial Calendar told them that they were still just past the middle of the Season of Water, which was when the Sea was most prone to throwing up storms.

The irony of the fact that something that embodied Chaos was...

CoESC Book 12-5.3: Resource Gathering Mission

The budget for the mission was five hundred thousand Sovereigns. It sounded like a lot, but when Yuriko looked at the equipment menu and saw the prices there, it was apparent that it was not. The spatially expanded backpack that could carry three cubic paces inside already cost a hundred thousand...

CoESC Book 12-5.2: Resource Gathering Mission

The Fortuitous Stone followed along the tethers to get to Delovine plane, rather than forging a new path through the raw Chaos. Yuriko understood, even if she felt the days crawl by. There had been five Waypoints between Rumiga City’s Chaos Channel and Delovine’s, which meant five days, at le...

CoESC Book 12-5.1: Resource Gathering Mission

“At your earliest convenience, bring yourself, and your support team to Delovine’s Legion Command,” Tribunus Mariko Manuella said to Yuriko after she accepted the Ambrosia gathering mission. “If you wish, there is a scheduled voyage of the Fortuitous Stone on its way to Realmheart, acting...

Holiday Break!

We're taking a break for the holidays so there will be no chapters next week (December 25 to December 31, 2023). New chapters will resume on January 1, 2024! ^_^

CoESC Book 12-4.3: Serene

Later, Gwendith held Yuriko throughout the night. The torrent of grief and despair nearly brought her back into that strange funk that lasted two Seasons, but…with the shared grief with her parents and brothers…with how Gwendith comforted her, she…

Yuriko sniffled and wiped her tears ...

CoESC Book 12-4.2: Serene

Yuriko’s eyes fluttered open and she stretched languidly on her bed. For a long, long moment, she simply luxuriated in the strange sense of tranquillity that overcame her senses. It was as if she had no worries at all, and that she had a nice long, full-body massage that hit every twisted knot ...

CoESC Book 12-4.1: Serene

“Congratulations!” Yuriko said when Gwendith entered her bedroom. The other girl gave her a tremulous smile and fell on her knees in front of Yuriko’s bed. “Gwen?”

“I…did you feel it?” Gwendith asked.

“Feel what?” Yuriko tilted her head in confusion.

“My…...

CoESC Book 12-3.3: Squires

Edward Turner absently glanced at his scrying mirrors, each of which was randomly flitting through the empire’s many different Chaos Founts. A group of Apprentices and a Journeyman were featured briefly in one of the scenes, but the mirror’s built-in circuits had alerted him to a potential tr...