Dragging the unconscious bird woman along, Yuriko checked her connection with Scarlett. It wasn't as muffled as before, and she assumed that the other girl was unconscious, but just a few moments after she started moving, she felt a spike of fear and anger through the thread. It was a flash that disappeared almost as soon as it appeared, then the muffling returned.
Worried, she boosted the connection with her Intent, and a moment later pierced through the blockage.
"Ancestors," Yuriko muttered. The muffling wasn't because of space, but because of time. Scarlett and the others were under the effects of a time distortion and she didn't know how much time had passed while she worked her way into this space. From the determined air she felt, it was definitely more than an hour already. She could only console herself by the fact that Scarlett was still alive, and possibly unharmed. Not permanently anyway.
Even if she was injured, or even crippled, as long as she lived, Yuriko could do something about it. She might not be able to heal the other girl directly, but she could either teach Recovery as an Animus technique, or just as easily, feed Scarlett with a couple of droplets of Ambrosia. She had enough Quintessence floating around her dreamscape self to squeeze that much out of it.
The centre of the valley, near the lake, looked fuzzy to her eyes. It was like looking through light smoke, or mist. The thread led directly there, but as she ran closer, the view shimmered and slowly changed. Instead of a lake, it was an empty basin. Tall hedges grew into a maze, and she could feel her friend was somewhere in the middle of the mess. She activated her Enhanced Sight, but the distorted view just grew worse the more she focused.
When she set her foot off the slope, she suddenly felt a heavy resistance, as if the space was actively trying to push her back. Yuriko frowned and latched on to the canvas of reality, then shoved her way through. The veil resisted much more than she expected, growing stronger the more she pushed. She huffed, then used Invisible Edge to cut, though she had to repeat the motion a couple of times before she reached the right frequency to cut the resistance rather than the air.
There was a sense that she didn't have before with the Ennoia of the Bladeless Sword. It was as if there was a gradient that wasn't there before, or rather, one that was locked firmly into the physical. Now, she could sort of slide the gradient towards a target, much like one of the contrast sliders on her smartphone, that determined how objects within the screen grew in sharpness and definition. It wasn't a very apt metaphor, but maybe a slider bar for colour would be more appropriate? Although there really wasn't a limit to the slider either, just that one end was firmly on the material, and it wasn't a single slider that the indicator could go, but through many different branches…
Either way, she could intuit which way she slid the marker when it came to Invisible Edge's targeting, though it was still a bit rough. A bit more practice and probably knowledge would be useful.
The resistance disappeared when she cut, and when she stepped through, the temporal distortion disappeared. She was now experiencing time at a much faster rate, much like she did in the interstitial bridge a while back. The distortion that disappeared was between her and Scarlett, but in its place was the one between her bodies. Thankfully, it was easy to partition her mind so that one body wouldn't be disturbed by the other. Her true body had gone back to meditation, hoping to recapture the state of enlightenment that was lost. Although, with what was happening now, she wouldn't be surprised at new insights appearing. Why, just experiencing the interstitial with its clear bias against her gave her some ideas how to do the same to any space she opened up, and she could try reversing the bias when she had time to spare. For the moment, Scarlett was primary.
She tugged the woman behind her, but a couple of seconds inside the new area bolstered the bird woman's regeneration. She woke up with a start and immediately began struggling and screaming.
Yuriko snorted with annoyance, but before she could think of silencing her, something else happened. The air rippled around them and solidified around the bird woman, or at least, that's what it tried to do since her Animakinesis was on the way. It felt as if something was squeezing her, much like how the water felt when she dove deep into the sea while swimming, or really, how higher iarvesh numbers felt.
Either way, she didn't let the surprise loosen her grip on the bird woman and she thickened her Anima around her mouth to muffle her screeches. However, the initial caterwauling already attracted undue attention. The pressure wave was probably a response to it, and she could feel the air thicken even further, and the winds stirred to ruffle her hair. The background noise, which honestly wasn't much considering how desolate sublayers normally were, receded as the density of the air seemed to impede sound rather than propagate it. Her vision shimmered and the distant view faded or distorted, with probable mirages in their place. It was only because there was no way for the atmosphere to conceal things from her Anima perception that she saw and felt things—more bird women?—enter her range.
Without looking back, Yuriko leaned away from the line of attack and countered with an Invisible Edge. As with the other bird woman, her assailant saw the attack but was moving too quickly to evade. The Edge carved into feathers and flesh, sprayed blood in the air, then caused the bird to tumble out of the sky. But a second bird woman followed the first, hidden from sight by hiding behind the first. Unfortunately for them, Yuriko's perception was not limited by line of sight, and while the second attack adjusted her line to Yuriko's evasion, it was just as easy for her to avoid the second attack as the first. She flicked another Invisible Edge against the second and saw the woman grounded.
The three bird women looked similar to each other but had minute differences in facial features. She wondered if they were clones or incarnations, but had little evidence to substantiate her thoughts. She also wondered if she should secure the other two, even as she clubbed them to unconsciousness with her Animakinesis. She did the same to the first one, and shrugged to herself as she left them half buried on the ground.
She felt for Scarlett's thread and sensed a fair amount of fear, though it was tempered with determination. She hurried along, but didn't fly above the canopy. Still, she was attacked twice more with identical bird women that she subdued and secured, and the one time she peeked above the tree line, she caught sight of dozens of the things patrolling the skies.
The air pressure attack didn't continue when she left the bird woman she captured so she wondered if the controller of the space could only detect her, or intruders really, in the presence of their minions.
The valley had more ridges, more ups and downs, compared to the one on the material plane so she couldn't catch another sight of the centre. The lakebed itself had many ups and downs, and her senses pointed her directly there. The trees and shrubbery were thicker, too, though she was easily able to push through them. There were thorns and stickers aplenty and if she didn't have her Anima armour, and given how flimsy her clothes were, she'd probably have ruined clothes and shoes by now.
Soon enough, she ended on the lake's bank, and the mists parted enough to catch a view of the waterless depths. Enhanced Sight worked now, and she could see grooves on the earth that were arranged in a maze. She took in the entire sight and swore as she saw what was happening. It wasn't so much a maze but a series of separate lanes that eventually met each other into a node, from which only one lane would lead out of. Several of the outer nodes were empty, but the ground was churned into bloody mud. She didn't see any bodies, however, which gave her a modicum of hope. And she could now pinpoint where Scarlett was. Her smol friend was in one of the outer lanes that had yet to reach one of the nodes, and she was alone, walking cautiously. She carried a tire iron over her shoulders, and looked fiercer than the lionesses.
On another lane, two people were about to enter a node. One was a member of the fencing club while another, the HAMA club. Each one was armed with their respective weapons, though Yuriko wondered how effective the saber was, considering it was blunted. Although…no, it wasn't blunt anymore. The edge gleamed from a rather amateurish sharpening, but she supposed that was effective enough.
When they entered the node, she expected that the two students would face off against a monster, a lioness, or a bird woman, but there was no such thing. Instead, they eyed each other warily and brandished their weapons…against each other.
Yuriko gasped as she spotted several club members who were already beyond the first node, and they were still alone on the lanes. What was going on?
While she was preoccupied, the two on the node started to clash. The HAMA club member was using a longsword and he used his longer reach to good effect. While the weapon wasn't razor sharp, he managed to subdue the fencer after a couple of heavy blows. The bruises looked nasty, and there was broken skin on some of them. Contrary to what she expected, the HAMA club member didn't try to finish the other off. Instead, he moved towards the exit lane and left. The fencer that remained behind collapsed into a heap, but after a few moments, got back to his feet and staggered towards where he first entered. But almost as soon as he left the node, the lane he was on was suddenly covered by mists, and only a brief scream escaped it.
"That's more than enough," Yuriko said grimly.
"I would not enter there, were I you," a guttural voice said, from seemingly nowhere.
Yuriko frowned since nothing was within her perception range but the voice wasn't loud enough to cross forty-one paces at that volume, at least, not without manipulation.
"Who are you?"
"A bit rude to ask without offering your own name."
"As is speaking without showing your face."
"You have me there, hah!"
Yuriko didn't pause for more than a second and walked into the lake bed. She felt the same resistance as when she entered the valley proper, and with the same contemptuous motion, she severed the barrier.
"It's quite a treat, watching you do that. And it's rude to walk away, you know."
Yuriko smirked. "I feel you now."
"Huh?"
With a snap of her fingers, she sent an Invisible Edge careening towards a tiny, near invisible, electronic speaker, and was sliced in half. Sparks rose from the remnants while the rest of the components were crushed by her kinesis. She examined the materials closely and clicked her tongue in annoyance. She would not have missed such a thing within her perception range if it hadn't been shrouded with some kind of technique. The only reason she did was the speaker formed a thread.
"Huh, interesting."
The voice came from another direction.
"By all means, please continue to resist. We're very interested in watching."
With that sour note, Yuriko ignored the taunting and sped towards Scarlett. She'd deal with the rotters watching once her friends were secure, and she would make sure they wouldn't find it amusing.