Metaworld Chronicles: Famila
Date: 2024-10-29T18:00:00+00:00
Description: After the terror Sydney's incursion, Gwen's journey continues in Volume 3 as she travels to Singapore to rescue Yue and Elvia with Alesia's crew and her father, Morye. Along the way, she inadvertently discovers a wholly unexpected side of her family she had not known from her previous life.

Famila

David J. Wuto

Mango Media LLC

Dedication

To Jenny

For reading my terrible first drafts

Blurb

After the terror Sydney's incursion, Gwen's journey continues in Volume 3 as she travels to Singapore to rescue Yue and Elvia with Alesia's crew and her father, Morye. Along the way, she inadvertently discovers a wholly unexpected side of her family she had not known from her previous life.

Copyright © David Jian Wu 2021 produced by Mango Media LLC

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher at admin@mangomediapublishing.com.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book cover by Sanwansen. Typesetting by Miblart.

Contents

1. Come Together

2. Picking up the Pieces

3. No News like Bad News

4. Cabin Fever

5. Stifling

6. Creepers and Crawlers

7. O Captain

8. Respite

9. Detour

10. Taken

11. Then there was Light

12. An invitation from a Doppelgänger

13. A Sliver of Silver

14. A Meeting at the Threshold

15. Cold City

16. More ways than One

17. To Skin some Cats

18. Remember Me

19. Introspection

20. No Longer Alone

21. A Tale of Two Towers

22. Hold on and Let Go

23. Human Nature

24. Risk and Reward

25. Visions and Revisions

26. Spotty Hands

27. Night Whispers

28. A Matter of Face

29. Brave New World

Thank You

Glossary

Elements & Elemental Magic

Chapter one

Come Together

With their course set and objectives aligned, Gwen and her crew presented themselves to the Quartermaster of Melbourne Tower to receive their arboreal adventure equipment.

The old sergeant was a gruff and bearded veteran Mage missing several digits of a finger and with a brace holding the left side of his body steady. As the man spoke, Gwen could see the scars on his face flush with blood; a sure sign of improper healing.

"What you're dealing with is a primordial jungle with vines as tough as steel cables that regrow in a day. It isn't going to be a walk in the park, lass! Yer sure yer head'n in with the major?"

The Quartermaster appeared sceptical as he eyed Gwen up and down. "Show me yer hand."

Gwen did so.

"Ye barely got a single callus on there! Yer fingers are as smooth as a baby's bum! I am warning yer, lass—the woods out there are no place for a wee princess-like yew. Yer be bled and scabbed by the time ya first day's done!"

Gwen’s forehead perspired with consternation. It wasn't as though she’d wanted to assume the youthfulness of a newborn babe, but she couldn’t explain that a netherworld shapeshifter had eaten her old body and that the man was complaining about her newly regenerated dermis.

Besides her, Alesia's crew chuckled mirthfully at every grievance made by the wizened sergeant.

"Ah, Brune, give her the gear. We'll make sure she's alright," Paul said.

"She some bigwig's daughter? Why are ya buggers playing honour guard?"

"That's on a need-to-know basis." Paul winked at the senior sergeant. "From up on high."

"Bah!" The Quartermaster resumed his item sorting. "Three Healing potions and two Mana potions P-P. Five Cure Poison. Five Remove Disease for the party. Use it sparingly; we're running low, thanks to the Mermen. Alright—here are five pairs of skinsuits, four sets of fatigue combat mesh, four pairs of waterproof hikers, two lengths of Magic Rope, one decanter of Everlasting Water. Bring yer own woollen socks—I’m out of stock."

The Quartermaster paused and looked up at Gwen, raising a sceptical brow before unhappily handing over what looked to be a model house and a bulging bandoleer. "One Portable Habitat and one hundred HDM crystals, military issue."

The men each passed their fingers over the assigned items. By consensus, Gwen became tasked with carrying the restorative potions, as well as the water supply.

When she received a model of what looked like a small cabin, she had to ask what it was.

"It’s a pocket dimension habitat, you know?" Taj appeared surprised that she had never seen such a thing. "They're pretty common for camping in zones through which sleeping in the wilderness is hazardous."

"What does it do?"

"You put the crystal in here." Taj mimed placing an HDM crystal into a slot that fed into the toy cabin. "It generates a small pocket dimension that only attuned individuals can see. Inside the portal is a Conjuration-based persistent effect that mimics a cabin. We can safely rest, cook and heal in there for twelve hours per crystal, maximum of three crystals per cycle."

"That's incredible!" Gwen marvelled at the toy structure, turning it around and around in her hands.

"It better be, for a whole HDM." Paul winced. "Rank and file get ten HDMs, officers get twenty to fifty. Most of it goes to buying magical stock, training and replenishing mana. We should only use the cabin out of necessity. I mean, for an NoM, one HDM is about a month of their wage as a low-level maintenance engineer."

"Is that very little?" Gwen asked. Had she been allowed to procure items, she may have paid more attention, but thus far she hadn't needed to worry about resources. Her opa was a very sugary grandfather.

"Yeah, nah, NoMs get paid in currency, not crystals." Paul looked at her strangely. "I am talking conversion here, so it's probably really skewered. After all, what's an NoM going to do with crystalised mana?"

"Oh." Her face grew bright pink. She'd hadn't had much consideration for income since Opa had taken up her finances. Furthermore, Henry had provided her with all the training materials and spell components. LDMs, HDMs, currency—she had much to learn about this world still. If Gwen ever wanted to put her old-world skills to the test, she would have to find some time to re-hone her gifts for her present context. As for her immediate concern, that was far more straightforward—she had to become an Omni-Mage of sorts and master multi-Schools of Magic, then work on synergising her options.

Paul leaned in conspiratorially. "Gunther's ring is worth about ten thousand HDMs."

Gwen felt the immense weight of the ring on her ring finger.

"Without the Contingency enchantment…"

The weight now felt as though a neutron particle studded her ring.

"The price of having a tier VIII Enchanter engrave the spell is a minimum five thousand HDM…"

The blood drained from Gwen's face.

"That excludes the materials for the enchanting and the fame of the Enchanter, so one might say the Contingency Ring is priceless."

Gwen shot a nasty look at the Translocation Mage, who chortled satisfyingly to himself as he drank in her agony.

"Alright! I've got the confirmation." Jonas came between the two of them before Gwen could respond. "Let's go see Master Surya."

Their reverse-exodus flight proved heartbreaking.

This far inland, there was little evidence of the Mermen incursion. Unfortunately, that didn't mean that the countryside had remained idyllic and unaffected.

Below Gwen's party's flight path across the landscape, convoys of cargo transport moved from the tablelands down to the city, bringing much-needed food and water supplies. In reverse, caravans of NoMs in vehicles of all sizes, with men and women crammed into military trucks like sardines alighted in temporary refugee zones. According to Paul, until the city purged the Mermen and the Shield Stations could be repaired, the refugees would sojourn here under the Frontier Government's martial law. The process could take months, perhaps even a year, and even then they shouldn't be optimistic about the prospects of rebuilding their homes.

"Half a year, assuming no Mermen attack, no tier I city pulling our resources and no Factional bullshitting," Paul quipped in response. The others chuckled. Neither of those elements was likely avoidable.

"Maybe the factions will settle down, I mean, surely the big Three are willing to work together under Gunther. The grey busybodies are halfway responsible for the shit show, Gunther is the de-facto leader of the Middle Faction, and the militants are Gunther's fanboys," Paul continued. "The little factions won't cause disruptions needlessly, so it'll be the external power players we need to look out for."

Gwen and her company made a strange spectacle as they soared over the makeshift camps—three military men in green-olive fatigues flying in an arrow formation, flanking an inexperienced girl in a black skirt and white blouse, silhouetted against a cloudless blue sky.

Paul had taken the opportunity to teach Gwen how to fly, but it would take hundreds of hours until she could wrap the elemental air around her like an extension of her body. To subconsciously operate the Flight buff while casting spells and dogfighting was a skill few possessed and even fewer Mages mastered.

It took them two more hours to reach Surya's estate, by which time the sun had begun its descent towards the horizon.

Her opa's home no longer had the idyllic look of an outback oasis. Instead, the entire frontage had been converted in record time into a receiving zone for refugees and supplies, with a line of trucks idling outside the property, waiting to get in. Unlike the property owners adjacent to his estate, Surya was a genuine survivor of the last Coral Sea Conflict and a veteran of many evacuations. The moment the news of the breach in the Shield Wall had reached his ears, he had instructed Tess and Melissa to be ready for the influx of refugees.

Presently, rows and rows of transmuted stone and iron formed self-contained makeshift shelters, hundreds of them, stretching from one side of the estate to the other. Its once blue lawns of emerald buffalo were now strewn with the refuse of NoMs fleeing danger and tragedy, littered with cardboard, clothing, and odds and ends of the lives the refugees had left behind.

Most tellingly, the infinity pool had been transmuted into an aqueduct that provided fresh water to the camp. The moulding workshop where Surya made his sculptures had become a transmogrified open kitchen where dozens of men and women milled about with plates and pots.

"Your grandfather is an incredible man," Jonas spoke with genuine awe as he slowed their descent and flashed his badge at one of the Military Mages manning the perimeter. The young man saluted and pointed them to the main house, which was now a temporary clinic.

"Yes." Gwen didn't know enough about her opa to append the comment, but the compliment nonetheless filled her with a giddying sense of pride.

When they'd landed, there was a welcoming party waiting for her.

"Richard! Percy!" Gwen squealed gleefully and leapt towards her kin. Richard had been the first to contact her when she'd thought all as lost; his well-wishing had filled her with the audacity of hope. Her brother too was a sight for sore eyes. With all that had transpired, she felt a sudden pang of guilt for not thinking over much about Percy during the crisis. Seeing his wane smile and ashen face now, she felt her heart abuzz with mixed emotions of maternal, sisterly love and indignant disappointment that he'd not so much as sent her a single Message during the entire ordeal.

"Hmm—GNNHMM!" The sound of a throat clearing diverted her gleeful advance.

"Opa!" Gwen changed her trajectory midway and flew into her opa's bony arms, almost bowling the old Mage over.

"My cucu perempuan!" Gwen felt the scarecrow body of Surya embraced her own.

"Oh, how I've worried!" Her grandfather appeared revivified by the release of tension brought on by the physical evidence that his granddaughter was unharmed. After the story she'd told him, the man had likely imagined her in direr straits.

"I've missed you too, Opa." Gwen brushed her lips over the whiskery beard of his cheeks, feeling the stinging itch of her grandfather's bristles poking into her tender flesh. Even though they'd spoken prior, a physical meeting held a special feeling that Message spells couldn't replicate.

When her opa finally released her from his embrace, satisfied that she was in one piece, Gwen turned to Percy and Richard. The euphoria of the moment had passed, so Gwen delicately asked if their evacuation from the city had been fortuitous.

"I just arrived a few hours ago." Richard smiled broadly, though Gwen could see the fatigue written all over his face. "I can hardly believe how much of the inner city has gone down. It's been a long day for many of us. Are you feeling alright yourself?"

"Is something the matter?" Gwen asked. If something was troubling Richard, she wanted to be able to lend a hand.

"Nothing I can't handle." Richard tried to brush off her concern, but Gwen distinctly felt that the young man was trying to avoid making her anxious.

"Richard…" Gwen realised from his expression that her curiosity would have to wait.

She turned to Percy, who'd watched her interaction with Surya and Richard silently. They say that growing girls changed every other month, but in Gwen's eyes, the changes occurring in Percy were no less surprising. Having seen him only a few times in the last year and a half, the boy more and more resembled their father.

Like Morye, Percy had that strange, indescribable handsomeness that was becoming of mixed heritage children, with a strong jaw and a well-spoken chin, but a delicate mouth and an effeminate nose. His eyes were darker than the hazel that Gwen and Helena shared, giving him a more distinct, prominent appearance than Gwen's fair skin and light eyes. His complexion took its tone from their grandfather, awarding him a honeyed tan that falsely gave the impression he was an outdoors type.

"Hey buddy, how's life been?" Gwen studied her brother.

"Alright, I suppose, until all this." Percy looked unkindly towards the NoMs milling about the place before sighing. "I was going to enrol in Prince's, you know."

"I am sorry to hear that," Gwen replied, unsure now of how to approach her brother after disgracing Helena at the Huang's Estate. Holy shit! Kwan's home!

My uncle's estate!

Suddenly, it struck her, Kwan's manor was in Kirribilli!

Gwen spun around and caught Richard’s eyes.

"Richard, your family…"

"They're safe and inside."

"But your home! Your family's properties! Their investments! Your tier I city studies!"

Richard tried to put on another grinning face, but the straight-spoken young man was terrible at hiding his emotions. "You know how it is. You win some, you lose some. I guess two decades of peace had us on the back foot."

"Oh, Richard…"

Before Gwen could pursue the matter, Surya instructed them to convene in the East Wing. The rest of the building, including the guest rooms, had been converted to service the refugees.

When they made their way through the central atrium, Gwen felt a slight tingle of premonition triggering her Divination talent. She paused to regard her surroundings and caught a familiar pair of heavily mascaraed eyes meeting her own.

Helena Huang regarded her with a complicated expression, then sighed.

"Mother." Gwen curtsied after the smallest pause.

"Gwen," her mother greeted her. Gwen's eyes scanned the space around her and saw that her stepfather was nowhere near.

"Tang's helping with the shelters," Helena retorted with a hint of pride in her voice. "His manufactorium is bringing supplies to us as we speak."

That was not what Gwen wanted to know, but she paid Helena the fished compliment nevertheless. The mother and daughter then regarded one another for a few more moments, each wondering if something of substance might be exchanged.

"I am glad you're alright," Gwen said at last.

"You too." Helena was putting on a brave face, but Gwen could see that the woman was a mess beneath her stoic, self-aggrandising forbearance. Her mother's makeup was usually impeccable, with sharply contoured shadows framing her vivid eyes, and lips that were well defined and outlined. Now her eyes were a little smokier than usual, her lips merely matted with a dull crimson that looked cheap and negligent. It didn't mean that she wasn't her usual self, of course. Even now, as others passed them, they'd stop to steal glances at the striking pair, though more so at the effortless sensuality that oozed from Helena. Strangely, Gwen felt a trickle of sympathy for the poor woman—how tiring it must be to live like Helena, to be so wary of what others thought at all times.

Gwen watched her mother study the three burly men who'd taken up positions beside her. She could see her mother was feeling intimidated, for the mana radiating off these men suggested Senior Mages, while their cold demeanour inferred they were seasoned combatants of many battles.

Her mother's expression tightened.

Gwen could guess her thoughts by reading her stiff upper lip. Only a year and a half ago, her daughter had been a mewing teenager whimpering at the utterance of every critique from her lips. What could her daughter have done to gain so much influence with those from up on high? What use had the late Henry Kilroy found for her daughter? How had she wormed her way into the good graces of someone like Gunther Shultz? There was her talent, of course, but hundreds of Mages had talent. Why Gwen?

But Gwen wasn't about to humour her mother.

"Gwen, in here." Surya's voice came from behind the double doors of the second living room.

"I am coming!" Gwen called out. She turned to Helena. "Please be safe, Mother."

Her mother nodded. "You too," she said, her lips growing parsimonious. Helena was far too proud in Gwen’s eyes to admit that her daughter now frightened her. "Stay safe, Gwen."

Gwen reached out to embrace her mother, who returned her affection after an awkward hesitation. As they exchanged cheeks, Gwen noticed her mother's generous application of Chanel No.5. Where previously she had dreaded the scent, it now felt almost nostalgic, reminding her of the few times they'd genuinely shared some mother-daughter moments of innocent happiness.

"Gwen, come on." Surya was watching them. "You can kiss and make up at dinner. What was it that you wanted to know? Shultz wasn't clear on the details."

Gwen left her mother standing as she entered the room with Surya. The second living room was likewise a mess. Most of the statues and artworks had been stashed inside to make space for the clinic.

"Right," Gwen found a place to sit.

Surya left for a brief moment and returned to materialise a decanter of cold water and several glasses. Gwen took over from the venerable Enchanter and poured for the men in the room, mindful of her junior status amongst them.

Surya took a sip from the water and looked at Gwen with gentle eyes. "How are you feeling now?" he asked his granddaughter.

Gwen recalled that only last night her communication with the old Enchanter had been choked with uncontrollable emotions, confessing to Surya what she had done and how Henry had died. In his face, she could see that Surya shared unspeakable grief. A portion of it was over his friend's death, while the latter half was for the trouble their lack of vigilance had brought upon his granddaughter. After all, he had been there when they’d "confirmed" that Elizabeth had died. He'd also voted to support censuring Mark when the Neophyte Necromancer had announced that Elizabeth was still alive. What could the Enchanter be thinking? What if they'd instead chosen to pursue the matter? They might have uncovered Elizabeth's tracks and prevented the tragedy to come.

More than that, Gwen realised Surya's guilt was exacerbated by Debora Jones, whose original body had been a skinsuit for Faceless. Her grandfather must be feeling a deep-seated dread for his stupidity in bringing Faceless to the meeting and catalysing Sydney's demise.

Thankfully, she knew her grandfather was a military man; despite his artistic sensitivity, he knew that there was a time for grief and a time for action. Now was not the time to mope over the loss of a friend and ally, but the time to ensure that the city survived and his legacy continued.

Playing the dutiful grandchild, she extended a hand and held Surya's own, feeling the empathic warmth of resonant grief flow between them. With a voice that trembled, she told Surya about her desire to save her friends.

"The Grot, huh?" Her grandfather took another sip before fossicking through his memory.

Jonas had come prepared and produced blurry aerial lumen recordings of the archipelago between Singapore and Jakarta. A circle had been drawn around a small group of islands where a red dot marked a blurry smidgen of green with a handwritten title— Kapulauan Riau.

"You're going to be in for a hard slog," Surya forewarned them. As he recollected what he could, he informed them that "Deathless Henry" had already become a famous moniker amongst the deployed Mages when their team had first formed. Henry was older than all of them by at least a decade, though his presence had always felt younger thanks to the influence of his Dryad familiar and her supply of vigour-rich essences. "’Tis the milk of paradise," Henry had joked. He had been happy to share it, but Sufina was frugal when it came to the golden mead.

"Well, the story goes that the island contains a groove of rather xenophobic Dryads," Surya continued. "Of the man-eating variety, that is."

His face took on a redder shade as he met Gwen's inquisitive, anxious eyes. "You know what that means, right?"

Gwen's cheeks blossomed. Paul had explained rather explicitly what "it" was that Dryads usually took for sustenance and sport.

"Right." Surya coughed. "So the story goes that Henry was one of the Mages who advocated scouting and mapping out the region during the seventies so that we could find potential locations for further FOBs against the Mermen. When he and his squad got caught by a sudden sea-sprout, they were blown off course onto this island, which today we call Kapulauan Riau. The location of the island and its archipelago is incredibly convenient, for it was within Greater Teleportation distance of Vietnam, Singapore, the Malaysian coast and even Brunei."

Jonas and the old Magus discussed some geographical details before continuing.

"They explored the island for the first half a day without incident, but then they ran into the island's inhabitants. As you can imagine, this would be the millennia-old Bayan tree Dryads that reside at the island's centre. I remember Henry telling me that his men were overwhelmed by the Dryads after a few days of being kited through the woods. The fairy-folk have a fey-charm ability that muddles the mind, especially when it comes to young men."

Surya stopped to take a sip of water.

"When it came to Henry, however, he told me that since he was naturally a Mage aligned with plant life, he managed to 'convince' the Dryad to come with him instead of drawing him into the woods."

Paul whistled. "The boss's Master must be close to the tier of a Magi if he could kidnap a wood nymph from her people. That's a helluva reversal."

Surya nodded in affirmation.

"Sufina was still young, of course—a century, at most—and so more pliable to becoming a bonded familiar. It was fortunate for both of them, I'd always thought. I've never seen another plant-Mage like Henry, and Henry never encountered a suitable magical creature like Sufina after that."

Her grandfather's audience agreed.

"Now that brings me back to the point I was making," Surya continued. "While you will be fighting your way into the island, you mustn't attack the Dryads themselves."

"How strong are they?" Taj inquired. "General class for the mature ones? Giant class for the Elders? Titan for the mother tree?"

"No no, nothing like that." Surya waved his hand. "Nothing so exaggerated. A tier III Fire Evoker can take down your average Dryad without breaking a sweat, Soldier class at best. Only the Matron, who feeds off the grove, could arguably approach the Commander class or tier VII thereabouts. I am saying that once Sufina returns to the fold, she would be far more powerful than your average Dryad, maybe even approaching Titan class on her own. If you start killing the Dryads, you'd be killing her kin, and then you'd have to face her wrath."

"But she'll remember us, right?" Gwen asked anxiously. "She'll know who Yue and Elvia and Whetu are."

Surya dipped his chin ever so slightly. "She's a sentient being, so she'll have memories of friend and allies. However, when a contracted creature is released, there's a loss of the empathic bond. When you have shared a telepathic connection with a partner for over three decades and then suddenly it's gone, you're bound to feel a little crazy. Gwen, you have animal companions, so you wouldn't know just how much feedback the loss of a spiritual companion gives you, but it is said to be worse than death. I've even heard of Conjurers committing suicide when they lose their familiars. The feeling of losing a sentient spirit is said to be the soul-rending feeling that you'll never again know completion or happiness."

Gwen took in a nervous breath of cold air. In the stillness of the room, they could audibly hear the quickening of her erratic breath.

"Sir." There was a rap on the door. "Afternoon tea?" Tess's bright face looked into the room. "Hi, Gwen!"

"Hey there," Gwen said weakly, still thinking about her friends and now with the added trauma of projecting the paranoia of losing her familiars.

"Let's break for a bit. We have to wait for our last member anyway," Jonas suggested. When he walked past Gwen, he gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "It'll be alright. We'll recover your friends safe and sound. You'll see."

Gwen followed the rest of them onto the alfresco dining area of the veranda. Everyone was present—Richard, Kwan and Tali, Helena, Tang and Percy, Tess and Melissa, Gwen and her companions. A large table was set, modestly filled with simple sandwiches, bits of leftover roast carved into cold cuts, and fresh fruit.

"It was all we could do under the circumstances, Sir." one of the NoM maids bows toward Surya, who gave her a gentle pat on the head, then excused her. Gwen looked at them and felt her heart skip a beat when her gaze met those of NoMs that milled about the refugee camp. Here they were, barely surviving on the supplies given to them by the military, and no more than a dozen metres away the Mages of the household were having a picnic.

They probably had no idea that what they thought was a feast was a horrifically underrepresented afternoon tea for someone of Surya's position, but their resentment was nonetheless palpably felt. Nevertheless, her grandfather paid them no mind, though Melissa seemed genuinely displeased by the looks they were getting.

"Ungrateful serfs," she mumbled to Tess under her breath. "If it weren't for Master, they'd be dodging Mermen while knee-deep in seawater right now."

Tess patted her sister's hand and told her not to mind.

Surya tapped a glass. "Family, friends, I am grateful that all of us could be here today," the old patriarch began, appearing touched that all of them had survived the calamity. "Though the past few months had seen some great turbulence, I hope that in this time of crisis, the family can remember that blood is thicker than water and that no matter how far we roam, we remember that unity brings strength and prosperity."

"Hear, hear!" To Gwen's surprise, Kwan began to clap frantically. Everyone else followed, some more vigorously than others.

"Now," Surya continued when the applause had died down. "I wanted all of us to be here today because even though in the next few months we may go our separate ways, compelled by different circumstances, I want all of you to at least remember that today, on this day, we are one family."

"All of you are close to me." Surya's voice became full of emotion. "It means so much to me that—"

"Am I… am I late?" A pauper entered their presence with an indifferent air. Yet, despite his bedraggled state, the man possessed a ruggedly handsome mien.

Surya halted in his speech as a lone figure intruded onto the veranda.

Gwen's eyes grew as large as quail eggs.

Her grandfather’s face grew three shades darker.

Helena spat out her sparkling chardonnay.

"Er…" Gwen's father appeared to realised that this was perhaps not the best time to make his presence known. She could only guess that since the family was all here, her father must have thought he may as well keep thing short.

"So." Morye Song grinned. "Bad time?"

Chapter two

Picking up the Pieces

The family made space for Morye next to Gwen out of politeness, but the pleasant atmosphere prior was shot and done to death in a dark back alley. Demurely seated next to her father, Gwen could feel her stepfather regarding Morye with near-tangible antipathy.

When two men who had slept with the same woman sat at the same table, particularly in the presence of the former's children, a feeling of contest or enmity was unavoidable.

It was not so for Gwen's father, who was as cool as the proverbial cucumber, without a smidgen of annoyance or care. He spoke quietly to the people he knew, asked them about their survival experiences, and even cracked a few jokes to nervous laughter. Not even Surya's growls and death-stares could faze Morye's come-what-may repose. Whenever Helena, Surya or even Kwan tried to undermine Morye, they had the distinct impression of punching wool.

"I was looking for our daughter, you should know." Morye turned to a startled Gwen, who didn't believe a word her father said. "I tried to call her many times."

If there was one person at the table who seem to stagger Morye's impervious demeanour, Gwen was it. For some reason, her father spoke to her with a feeling of reservedness, carefully formulating his words and thinking twice before delivering them. As he told his tale, Gwen measured Morye with untrusting eyes, sceptical about her father's purpose.

She knew that he had met her brother every other weekend for a luncheon or had frequented one of his school's Spellcraft competitions.

With herself, he had cut himself off since the day she’d walked out after he'd prematurely brought a girlfriend over. She could guess that, to her father, his wayward little girl had changed beyond all recognition. Gone was her timidness, the insecurity, the panicky obsession with her appearance. The Gwen seated next to him now possessed an air of supreme confidence about herself; a kind of surety that came with age. She wore very little makeup, suggesting she'd grown out from that particular phase of her life, but remained uncommonly pretty even without effort. Thanks to Almudj, her skin was pale and flawless, as tender as that of a child's. Her figure as well, which had always been a little anorexic, was now supple and shapely, attesting to the good life she must have enjoyed for the last year. Watching his face, her father seemed happy but likely had no idea how much her former self had been battered, bruised, starved and mistreated.

"Thanks, Dad." Gwen felt strange calling a man she'd already rejected and forgotten in both lives with the endearing moniker of "Father", but there was no helping it under the circumstances.

Her father appeared to wrack his brain for something to say that would break the icy tension between them. "So how's the Void magic coming along?"

Suddenly, all sound and action ceased at the table.

Morye looked around the table and saw the astonished expression of each member frozen in different stages of surprise, shock, confusion, disbelief and murder. To Gwen's chagrin, it was only now that father realised with a sudden outbreak of cold sweat across his brow that he'd made a terrible blunder.

Gwen's mouth opened and closed for a few seconds, but no words ushered from her paling lips. She knew now how her mother felt. She wanted to strangle Morye right here, or at least punch him squarely in his stupid face.

Her grandfather buried his face in both palms and was trying to breathe without inducing an aneurysm. Tess and Melissa seemed to be in the know and so looked down at their plates, finding a sudden interest in their half-eaten sandwiches. The military men who had come with Gwen said nothing. Instead, they looked as though they were ready to murder everyone on the table if Gwen would only give them the command.

On the table, only Kwan, Tali, Helena, Percy and Tang's faces looked as though they were seeing NYE pyrotechnics for the first time.

"The… Void element, was it, Gwen?" Helena said after what must have been half a minute. "One of the scarcest taboo elements, said to be second to none in offensive ability?"

Beside her, her husband Tang's face was less kind. As a retired colonel and a Senior Enchanter himself, he immediately realised the correlation that may or may not exist between the crisis and the suspicious coincidence of Gwen's talent.

"What do you know about the Black Sun?" Tang demanded with a voice that boomed across the veranda. "Are you involved with the Mermen incident? What happened to Lord Kilroy?"

"Colonel Tang," Jonas said dangerously. "I'd advise you to consider your next words very carefully."

Gwen was sure Tang felt the killing intent flow from the three men at the end of the long table. Instantly, his expression resembled a Gob who had triggered a Glyph of Warding and knew that his leg was forfeit at any moment. However, the man's suspicions were sound, as he had been present when his wife had been disgraced. Unfortunately for Tang, Gwen knew that his hypothesis no longer mattered, certainly not with three Combat Mages breathing down his neck and whetting their knives.

"Sorry." The strength seemed to drain from the retired colonel as he apologised to Gwen. "It's the stress, the heat. I wasn't thinking straight. Please forget what I said."

Alongside her husband, Helena's face alternated between shades of ash and carmine. Gwen cringed when she studied her mother's eyes. The Void element! The same talent as the war hero, Elizabeth Sobel! Even from a distance, she could see the gears and cogs of Helena's mind tick, foreshadowing great things that had seemed just out of reach a moment ago.

As expected, Helena slowly moved her eyes until she met Morye's. The careless fool was now scratching his head apologetically in that scrappy, slipshod manner that irked Gwen inconsolably.

Her mother must be wondering where the element had been hidden. Surya's talents were Enchantment and Fire, her talents were Evocation and Fire. Their late grandmother had had Transmutation and Water, which had passed onto Kwan, then onto Richard.

Was Helena regretting leaving Morye now? There was no doubt that the answer was negative. If Helena had stayed any longer with the capricious incarnation of irresponsibility, she would have probably murdered the prick in bed with an ice pick. What Mother dear regretted was all that potential talent that even now was going to waste. If only her father could have used his talent, then she might be married to another Gunther Shultz.

The others at the table watched Morye, clearly with the same thoughts. With the prevalence of inherited talents, Gwen and Percy's uncommon element of Negative Energy could only come from God himself or from this blithe idiot who was even now stuffing himself with their sandwiches.

"Please, Major Durn, no need to be like that." Surya looked towards his children and their spouses with eyes that glowed like two notes of dark, smouldering coal. "I assure you, those present here can keep a secret. If I recall, Gwen's talents will be made public in time, though that time is not now."

"There's been a change of plans, Opa." Gwen bowed to her grandfather. "Now that Ma— Magister Kilroy has passed."

"Of course." Surya nodded understandingly. "Later then?"

"I should hope so, Opa. There'll be plenty of opportunities, I am sure."

Her grandfather observed a moment of silence, then turned to the table. "You. All of you. Swear on your astral souls that you will not speak a word of Morye's blunder."

Kwan was more than happy to oblige, as was Tali. Surya noticed that Richard had been entirely unfazed this whole while. "She told you before?"

"Around about three months ago, Grandfather."

Tali and Kwan regarded their son, who then swore by his astral soul that he would keep faith with Gwen's secret. Though such oaths were non-binding, they manifested a phenomenon whereby the constant reminder of one's betrayal of the pledge would ultimately influence the progress of one's Spellcraft training, especially when it came to attunements, which directly drew power from faith and belief. And though there were individuals who were sociopathic enough to ignore the oaths they’d made, it was no less a token demonstration of one's willingness and sincerity associated with oath-making.

Tang followed without incident and then their attention fell upon Helena, who gritted her teeth through each word, exhausted by the effort of the simple pledge.

"Percy, you too." Surya was merciless.

"I don't want to." Gwen could see that Percy was at a rebellious age and saw the push to make him swear some incoherent oath for his sister as a clear sign of favouritism.

Surya's fuming displeasure could have lit the tablecloth on fire.

"Opa, it's okay," Gwen intervened, not wanting to make things any more awkward between Percy and herself. From Alesia, she knew that the oath was less a magical compulsion and more psychological trickery. Her sister-in-craft had once boasted to Gwen that when she compelled oaths from felons, she would brand them with fire. That way, each time the miscreants thought about reoffending, the ache from their scars coerced them to reconsider life's choices.

"Ungrateful little weasel," Surya spat, clearly displeased with Percy's challenge of his authority.

The table regained its awkward silence. Once more, the murderous gazes of its inhabitants gathered upon Morye, who happily drank his chardonnay.

Without a doubt, the luncheon was at an end.

"We'll leave it at that." Jonas stood from the table. "We'll be getting ready. As soon as our number five and our documents arrive, we're leaving."

Morye raises a finger to stop the Healer. "Ah, about that…"

Gwen turned sharply to her father. "Dad, I don't mean to be rude, but why are you here?"

Morye's guilty face turned to face Gwen with a look of helpless consternation, like a sailor who'd been shanghaied by his mates and now found himself bound for Barbados.

"I am your fifth man!" he announced with the flourish of a third-rate magician shouting "ta-da!"

"Yes, excellent, Father." Gwen made an expression akin to seeing her dog shit on the front lawn in front of guests. "So why are you here?"

Morye's face grew tragic with wretchedness. "I was told that I had to accompany you on this journey because you are a child and thus had to be accompanied by a guardian."

"I am thir… I am sixteen. Dad, I am not a child! Besides, I have some of the most capable men in the military with me. Not to mention I can take care of myself."

Morye turned to regard the three military men, who grinned at him confidently as if to say "We're happy to leave you behind."

"No!" Morye affected an expression of disbelief and hyperbolic grief. "You don't want me to come?"

"I don't," Gwen said coldly. Her father had already ruined their luncheon and the man had only been there for an hour. Gwen wanted nothing more than to leave, supply or no supply, but she had to wait.

"Good, please call Gunther and tell him that I've been discharged," Morye said quickly, handing Gwen a Message device that was already dialling.

To Gwen's surprise, it connected.

Ding!

A Private Message spell bloomed beside her ear.

How the hell could a mid-tier Abjurer just casually call the Paladin of the Tower during a crisis? Gwen shot her father a look of ambivalent emotions and quickly moved away from the table. With the absurd number of NoMs going to and fro, she retreated instead to the second living room, shutting the glass doors being her as she did so.

"Brother Gunther, what's happening? Why is Morye our fifth member?" she quickly asked her craft-sibling.

Gunther's mirthful voice came through the spell's aural invocations. "He's there? Good. I am sending the documentation now. Ask Surya to retrieve the package from the Teleportation Circle he set up for your training."

"Thanks, Gunther, but how the hell is my dad going to help?"

Gunther's voice became more severe as he continued. "Gwen, just how much do you know about your Father?"

"He's a useless, lazy lout, a womaniser and a faithless scoundrel who is a Water Abjurer? I think he was tier IV or 5; I am not sure. He works some menial technical job at a Shield Station."

Even behind the pulsing Message Glyph, Gwen could feel Gunther wincing at every barbed insult.

"But… I suppose Morye was a nice enough dad. Kept us through the darker time when Mother was away. I don't remember having wants for food, shelter or clothing while he stayed with us. Even though we lived in a working-class neighbourhood, we felt safe."

"That's it?"

"There's more?"

Gunther fell silent as if gathering his thoughts. "He gave you the pendant, the one that saved our lives, right?"

At her brother-in-craft's reminder, Gwen felt her conscience mugged in the night by her balaclava-clad guilt wielding a nail-studded bat.

Her father had indeed given her the pendant. But it was Morya who had idiotically implied that it was for childbearing, hadn't he? What kind of a lecherous father gave their daughter a fertility pendant? Had her father anticipated this day or was he as clueless as he appeared?

"You may be interested to know," Gunther continued. "That your father was the only survivor of incident Zero at the Watson Bay Shield Station. That's where your father worked. Of all the Mages stationed there, including a guard unit of Senior Combat Mages, your father, a 'useless technician' was the only survivor."

Now it was Gwen who grew uncertain. She recalled seeing the station blow up. She remembered the moment with clarity.

"Before we even knew of the Mermen invasion, I received a call from your father, specifically asking for you and your brother's whereabouts. When I asked him what happened to the assailants, do you know what he told me?"

"They escaped?"

"No, Gwen. He told me they’d collectively committed suicide. "Gunther's re-telling wasn't funny, but the event was indeed in the style of her father's morbid humour.

"Another thing. When my recovery team went in, the debris was covered with Negative Energy residues collated in powdered white crystals."

"Salt!" Gwen mouthed to herself in silence. For someone with her life experience and keen intelligence, it wasn't difficult to join the dots.

Her father's survival.

The Salt residue.

Percy's talent.

"Not only that, we found one of your old acquaintances at the scene."

"I am not familiar with his co-workers," Gwen continued to dig through her alter-self's memories. She had recalled seeing her father's co-workers when she was younger, but her memory was indistinct.

"We found the remains of a certain Edmund Moore Ravenport at the scene."

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"Also known as The Dust Devil or the Mind Mage, Edgar."

Suddenly, Gwen found herself short of breath.

"The body was in quite a state, I am afraid. Crushed, drained, limbless, castrated."

Gwen felt her mind reeling with visions of Edgar, the man who had come close to violating her mind and body. At that moment, she had tasted the malice and darkness that lay in "Edgar's" heart and knew that his capacity for malevolence was unfathomable. How could a Mage like that die so unceremoniously? She'd been loathing their next meeting, playing the scene over and over in her head, and now, without warning, the bastard was worm fodder?

"Wait, did you say 'castrated', as in the…" Gwen tried for a euphemism. "Servants of the sultan's harem sense?"

Gunther chuckled uncomfortably. "Rather violently, I am afraid. Dashed eggs and all that."

Gwen raised a brow.

"Well, that's what the report stated in its exactness. Anyway, why do you think someone would go to such lengths to inflict so much pain on such a man? I mean, it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination. After all, your father risked exposing himself just to extort you and your brother's location. If you don't mind me saying so, Gwen, despite Morye's affairs, he cares a great deal for his children."

Gwen looked outside towards the long table, where her father was helping himself to the decanter. Surya was in low conversation with Jonas, while Richard spoke jovially with Morye while ignoring his mother's frantic tugging of his shirtsleeves.

In an accidental Renaissance sort of way, the scene somewhat reminded Gwen of an infamous supper. Would their family ever be together like this again? What would happen once they went their separate ways?

"Gwen?" Gunther stirred her from her daydream.

"I think I understand."

"Good. Far be it that I should come between father and daughter, but I hope you resolve your differences. Also, I would very much like to know what that Kirin pendant does and if we can replicate its effects. I am waiting on reports on your father's past, but mayhap he is willing to let you into his head a little."

"I'll try my best."

"Excellent, sister. I am certain Yue, Elvia and Whetu await your timely rescue. Godspeed."

Gwen moved out onto the veranda. From the direction of the workshop, a NoM servant approached with a package covered with protective glyphs.

"For Mistress Song's party." The maid placed the box on the table and curtseyed before leaving.

The family turned to address the incoming Gwen, who held the inert Message device in her hand and looked at Morye intently.

"I've confirmed with Gunther, he's our man," Gwen announced to the group.

Paul, Taj and Jonas gave one another looks that suggested they had just stepped on dog shit.

"I won't pull your leg," Morye said to them when he caught their constipated expressions. "If you don't pull mine."

"Dad's got a commendation from Gunther," Gwen backed up her father, having gained a new, previously unfound confidence in the flighty fellow.

Despite their disbelief, the package passed down to the group, where Jonas opened the glyphs with a secretive invocation. Within were several metallic plates constructed of some composite material that resembled thin pieces of flexible carbon plates. When the Healer channelled a mote of mana into the card-like object, it projected an illusory field that held his headshot, biometrics, affinity and rank.

When Gwen received her identification, she saw that the range of her abilities had been underreported, as expected.

Gwen Song

Multiple Transit Pass

I.D: 2840598 01

CoO: Australia

Eyes: Hazel

Skin: Caucasian

Hair: Black (Warm)

Height: 180CM

SoM: Evocation, Conjuration

AFT:: Quasi-Elemental—Lightning

There was also a line of small print that could be just visible in the indent: This pass is for valid transit holders only, effective within the territories of the Mageocracy’s Commonwealth.

There was a careful balance to her falsely advertised talents. If Gwen's skills appeared mundane, her retinue would cause suspicion. If she were overtly unique and precious, her lacking a substantial entourage would also bring trouble.

Feeling the card in her hand, Gwen wondered if Gunther was trying his best to emulate his late Master's methodology. Gwen knew she couldn't be grown in a greenhouse and still hope to attain the same level of Spellcraft as Alesia and Gunther. If Gunther was happy to let her roam as she pleased, then she was glad to take the opportunity.

When she had earlier received the Teleportation Ring from Gunther, an unspoken understanding had passed between the siblings-in-craft. The message was simple—all Gwen had to do was survive. In her mind, she understood that she had to prove herself worthy of Gunther's protection, just as Gunther would do his best to ensure that she would survive to try again.

Morye took his I.D. and examined its contents. "Mineral Mage," he mused. "Well, I suppose it's close enough."

With the luncheon utterly disrupted by Morye's blunder, the rest of the group had little desire to persist in the family gathering. They broke off into private assemblies across the long veranda, exchanging members once in a while to build rapport for the days to come.

Thanks to Tang's presence, Helena stayed away from her ex, which came as a great relief to Gwen and Percy. The teenagers, meanwhile, had formed their huddle separately from the adults.

"Now can you tell me what's going on with the family?" Gwen asked of her cousin.

Richard had been about to pivot to another topic when his cousin's serious eyes cornered him. "Well, we're shit broke," he confessed candidly.

"How?" Gwen demanded. Her uncle might be a conniving, name-dropping charlatan, but his real talent in investment brokerage seldom failed the family.

"The Mermen invasion, of course," Richard replied. "It's the normal thing during a large-scale invasion. It's not like it hasn't happened before, just not to Sydney and not to us."

With nonchalance, her cousin explained their dire straits. As a Praelector candidate from Prince's, Richard had received the opportunity to attend university in London. There, he'd planned to earn enough accolades to eventually move his parents to the tier I city itself, from which their rise into the upper strata of the Mageocracy could begin.

Unfortunately, even with his prodigious talent, mere talent proved insufficient to gain a full scholarship to the colleges he wanted to attend. Now with the sudden destruction of the property market and their family estate in Sydney, Richard could no longer afford the price of immigration, not to mention the cost of renting and staying in London's upscale educational districts.

"There's also the problem of policy," Richard continued. "In a state of emergency like this, the standard procedure is to move all non-essential Mages from the Frontier city and assign them to the closest tier I city willing to take them. From there, the rarer talents are 'divvied up', for lack of a better word, by the power brokers."

"What happens to those with mundane talent?" Gwen asked suspiciously, thinking of their friends in Blackwattle.

"Bundled off to another tier II cities, I imagine," Richard replied. "A new life, as the propaganda would say, though I imagine it's a case of waste not, want not."

Gwen fought the repression in her chest, feeling such sympathy for her cousin. "So you are going to a tier I city?"

"As a refugee, not as a student." Richard sighed. "We don't get a choice of cities. As refugees, we'll be living in segregated zones from the rest of the tier I folks. Knowing the snobbery of the citizens there, I'd half-expect them to see us as little more than NoMs."

"Can Opa—"

"No." Richard stopped Gwen before she could make the suggestion. "Why do you think Kwan came here first thing? Surya's doing the right thing here, spending the family's money to help the NoMs and those Mages who wish to stay here. The NoMs will be living under some pretty feral conditions until the city's cleansed and the stations repaired. They could be here for years, living in these concrete boxes. At any rate, you need more than just money to bend the rules. I'll hit up some of my seniors and see what they can do."

"So what's your projection?" Gwen asked. She wasn't sure how many people knew that Richard had already contracted an Undine, but surely someone of his talent would be a clear stand out even if they were forced into special refugee zones somewhere in a tier I city.

"Making sure my parents are safe, I suppose. Then I can focus on the new world. I am confident we'll be fine wherever we go. At any rate, I look forward to you visiting our new home."

"What about you, Percy?" Gwen turned to her brother. "What's Mum's plan?"

The young man looked up at Gwen with questioning eyes. Percy had an expression that looked as though someone had stolen his lunch. Gwen could understand how the boy felt. A proper Awakening, a rare elemental talent, a bright future—all of that had been within his grasp. Then before he'd even enjoyed any of it, a tsunami of Mermen had dashed his dreams and washed his hopes out to sea.

"Dad, I mean Step-Dad, is staying to repair the city. That's what his manufactorium specialises in, fabrication. I doubt Mum would stay here if she's allowed to go to a tier I city though, even if it's in a special exclusion zone."

"So that means you'll be going as well if it comes to it?"

Percy nodded. "Richard said that with my talent, I'd be able to continue schooling."

"It's true. I doubt a Tower would let someone with Percy's elemental talent just languish. He's likely going to be picked up in processing and sent back to school. Maybe even a school like Prince's; they’ve got branches and brother schools in all the major Frontiers."

"How's Prince's holding up?" Gwen asked out of curiosity.

"Gone." Richard shrugged. "No Shield Station, no school."

Gwen nodded. She'd heard that the influential Houses all had connections linking back to tier I cities. For those born to privilege, the invasion's extraordinary circumstances merely compelled an accelerated timetable for their return to the main branch.

They kept up the small talk for a while longer until the conversation was interrupted by Paul.

"It's time to go," The Translocation Mage announced. "We'll be taking the Teleportation Circle to the Tower, then to Brisbane, then to Townsville. There are a few inland hops from there until we get to Darwin. I hope you had a light lunch just now. It's not going to be gentle on the stomach."

By now, Gwen was no stranger to teleportation, but this was her first foray into inter-continental travel.

"Luckily, Gunther's done a bang-up job." Paul grinned affably. "We're clear for uninterrupted travel until we board the freighter in Darwin."

"How long until we reach the island?" Gwen inquired.

"Assuming we find a ship in Singapore willing to take us," Paul's eyes fell on Gwen' Storage Ring, where a hundred military-issued, high-density mana crystals sat in a pouch, "all in all, I'd say seven to eight days."

Gwen almost spat out the glass of water she'd been nursing. "Seven to eight days!" she uttered in disbelief. "How long does it take us to get to Darwin?"

"About ten hours, most of which is waiting for the Teleportation chambers to be attuned."

"Then?"

"A ship. More specifically, we'll be boarding a cargo freighter. There are ones that go out every day."

"We can't teleport to Singapore?"

Gwen watch Paul snigger, realising that despite her capabilities, she was still a teenager who'd never been outside her Ivory tower. "No, Singapore is not a part of the Oceania Council of Ten. We have ongoing treaties, but the Fortress Port has sovereignty within its territories."

"But Gunther could ask for us to go direct, can't he? We're in a hurry."

"By what capacity do you propose we make the proposition?" Paul's brows furrowed. "Do you know anyone there? Does Tower Master Lee owe you a personal favour?"

Gwen chewed her lower lip. Indeed, she had no rebuttals for Paul's rationale.

They were three Senior Mages with military ranks, one zealous apprentice to a deceased Magister, and one unwilling loafer, venturing into a Black Zone. "Why are you going there?" An official Singaporean Magus would question. "What lies at the end of so much risk and effort?"

"We're saving three junior Mages," they'd reply, and their stunned audience would surely demand that they own up to the undeliverable truth.

"Gwen," Richard interjected before Paul became irritable with Gwen's dissatisfaction over the delayed travel arrangements. He took her icy palms and held them in his own, which were dry and warm. "Your people have done their best in the circumstances. You have to trust them if you want them to help you."

The tactile warmth of Richard’s assurance brought her back from the anxious edge of impatience. Gwen took a deep breath and calmed herself, measuring their circumstances.

Could Yue stay put for nine more days? Could Whetu last that long? Elvia should be fine, but there were many unknowns she couldn't even begin to guess.

"I am sorry," Gwen said to the two boys. "I have to go."

"We'll be out of contact once we leave Darwin," Paul reminded her cousin and her sibling. "If there's an emergency, get Master Surya to contact Gunther and he'll try to get hold of us."

Gwen fiercely embraced her family. "Percy, take care of Mother. Richard, good luck with the relocation. I hope to be back before it happens, but please keep me updated."

"Will do. Hopefully, we'll see you soon."

"Goodbye, sis." When it was Percy's turn, her embrace grew fiercer and more maternal, pressing the embarrassed boy tightly against the small of her body before kissing him on the forehead.

Back on the veranda, the rest of the family waited.

"Opa, I have to go."

"I know." Surya came and embraced Gwen, his bony frame poking into her ribs as usual. "Be safe, my little cucu perempuan."

"I will."

"Take care of her." Surya said.

"We will, sir." The men saluted.

Gwen turned to her mother, who'd been laconic since Morye had blurted out that she was a Void Mage. "Goodbye, Mother."

"Good luck," her mother replied before they embraced, performing the familial ritual with duty rather than feeling.

There was also Tess and Melissa, who gave Gwen a tearful farewell. Tess handed over a large ration of roo jerky, a full kilogram's worth, which she made Gwen promise she would save for an emergency. Melissa, meanwhile, had prepared a bottle of eucalyptus oil. "For the bugs," she explained. "bugs as big as your face."

Gwen held the flask a little closer to her chest.

"Right." Paul pointed the way to the workshop, where the Teleportation Circle awaited. Soon they would be away. Gwen would leave Sydney for the first time in her life.

A cry from the crowd impeded their progress. "Ms Song! Gwen Song! Please! A moment!"

The voice wasn't from their party, but from the crowd of refugees gathered on the property's camp. The family turned to see an auburn-haired woman with amber eyes, middle-aged and well kept, waving frantically in their direction.

Gwen recognised the woman's face with a sinking sensation. She'd never seen her before, but it didn't take a Diviner to guess that she was the mother of the late Debora Jones.

To be the harbinger of bad news had always been one of the most challenging endeavours an individual could undertake. It took immense mental fortitude and incredible empathy for an individual to become capable of looking a mother in the eye and state with absolute certainty that their child had died.

Gwen considered herself a woman of spirit—she could stomach pain, disgrace and trauma when performed upon herself, but it didn't mean that she had the stoic forbearance necessary to bring such mental anguish to another.

One must be cruel to be kind.

"Let her through," Gwen said, mindful of the several seconds in which she'd stared at the woman in wide-eyed horror. Two of the militiamen keeping order in the refugee camp allowed her to pass.

Debora's mother was an Earthen Transmuter. With only a modest talent for Spellcraft and elemental affinity, she'd worked part-time at a local manufactorium and was principally a homemaker. When the evacuation had begun and the list of inland locations for temporary shelters had come up, she had seen Surya's estate and used what little connection she had to move her family to the Hunter's Region.

Gwen felt her chest constrict just thinking about what "Debbie" would have told her mother, of how they adventured together as chum, of her misguided love, perhaps, and of their friendship.

"Mrs Jones." Gwen approached Debora's mother and extended a hand.

The formality seemed to catch Debora's mother off-guard, causing her to hesitate before taking Gwen's hand. "Just Verna is fine."

"I am sorry." Gwen bowed before Verna could persist in any small talk. There was no point to it. No matter how they twisted and sidestepped, the outcome was inevitable.

"Why— are you sorry?" Verna's face turned the colour of fresh sheets.Gwen remained bowed while Verna stammered. Jonas moved up and helped the woman steady herself.

"She was brave until the very end, Mrs Jones. I couldn't have had a better companion."

Verna held onto Jonas for a moment more, then her expression turned cruel. "That's it? How can you be so heartless? Debbie said she was your best friend! She said that she admired you!"

Gwen felt the palpable disappointment in Verna's accusation. She knew she couldn't blame the woman, or herself. If she had been Debora's friend, if she had spent a year with her friend, if her friend had died in her arms, then she could have spoken of every detail in Debbie's eulogy.

But the reality was far from Verna's desired truth.

In the end, she had not been Debora's friend. She hadn’t even known Debora. Instead, the thing that had taken Debora's form had directly resulted in her Master's death, her real friends' displacement and the city's loss of life.

In an instant, her heart grew cold. She wasn't a saint. She couldn't possibly waste another minute here, conferring with this woman of no importance who'd only accuse her of abandoning her daughter, who knew nothing!

Her eyes turned to Taj.

The senior sergeant came between Verna and Gwen as Debora's distraught mother continued to pour out a torrent of hysterical abuse. Jonas tightened his grip on the woman as well, ready to give her a jolt of Calm Emotion if she should turn violent. Though they frowned at Gwen's apparent coldheartedness, they had a long journey ahead.

In the end, it was Surya who took the disconsolate mother away, speaking to her softly with kind words.

Taj caught up with them a moment later at the entrance to the workshop. Morye had long since escaped the spectacle and was waiting for them within. Paul was readying the circle. Jonas gave Gwen a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "It's alright if you want to grieve," he suggested helpfully.

Gwen shook her head. "I am alright," she replied, looking toward the silvery glow of the active Teleportation Chamber within. "Let's go. Delay as we may, time waits for no one."

Chapter three

No News like Bad News

“Achoo—!”

Gwen watched her father sneeze for the twelfth time since they'd embarked upon the Cargo Freighter, the Queen's Efficient. Akin to the cargo carriers of Gwen's old world, the ships achieved near-indestructibility through scale. Built around an enchanted and strengthen keel, the freighters were clad with transmuted steel seamlessly merged plate to plate against a lattice framework of glyph-enhanced supports. Their ship, a medium-sized vessel, measured almost four hundred metres from bow to stern and fifty-nine metres across, a veritable island of steel. As Gwen surveyed the impressive length of the ship from the top deck, she marvelled at its miraculous Magi-tech.

Upon their arrival in Darwin, her party had met the harbour master and then the Honourable Captain Scott Tully, a veteran seaman with four decades of ocean-faring experience. When Gwen asked how safe he expected the voyage to be, the old seaman burst into laughter.

"Lass, there's nary a Kraken that could take Queenie down!"

Smiling at her expense, Taj explained that open-ocean transit was the safest means of moving between cities. With the invention of American Mana Engines that drew power from stable fuel sources such as LDM and HDM Crystals, it had become possible to translocate ships with displacements from eight hundred tonnes in the 1920s to an absurd fifty-five thousand tonnes in 2000. Their freight carrier, the Queen's Efficient, was one wonder owned by Maersk Corp of Denmark, a Triple E monstrosity.

"We're almost ten times the size of a regular Kraken!" the Captain boasted with confidence. "It would take a Leviathan to take down a Triple E, not to mention we have on-board Shield Resonators."

Though Gwen couldn't understand half of the jargon the Captain was delivering, she understood that, short of a catastrophe, nothing would impede their progress to Singapore.

After a small cache of HDM crystals exchanged hands, the Captain leased to them a full cargo section, including private cabins, separate showers and an impressive view of the ship's aft.

"Why cargo space?" Gwen asked when they had finally settled. Their specific bulkhead was artificially lit by Daylight Glyphs, utterly spartan except for four steel walls. At one end was the entrance to the control tower, where the party could access their rooms in the midship, while in front of them was half a football field's worth of enclosed space.

"We have seven days at best to get you ready for the Black Zone, so let's not waste any time." Taj threw off his jacket, revealing a sculpted body rife with scars. "If we're going into the jungle, the first thing you have to learn are CQBs—close combat spells."

"You're participating too," Jonas said to Morye. "If Gunther thinks you're so good, let's see what you can do."

"I'll be right." Morye pushed himself from the floor and made for the Tower.

Paul blocked his path.

"Hazing the new guy?" her father asked with nonchalance. "A little old-fashioned, don't you think?"

"If we're going to operate as a team, we need to know what you can do."

"I can take care of myself and Gwen. That's all you need to know." Morye tried to push past Paul, but the smiling Translocation Mage wouldn't budge. "Do you mind?"

"Come on, just a peep," Taj urged Morye, his voice echoing through the bulkhead. "Show us your signature spells. You can keep the trump cards up your sleeve if you want to."

Morye sighed. He walked toward a wall and sat on the floor, crossed-legged. Then he began to meditate. The rest of the group, Gwen included, regarded her father with disdain.

"Well, let's see what you can do, Gwen." Jonas motioned to the open space.

"Do we have privacy?" Gwen asked the men before her.

"Yep," Jonas banged a hand against the hull. "No lumen-recorders in here; had Paul do a thorough check-up when we came in. There's also a double barrier access hatch preventing access, so we'll be fine. The thickness of the walls and the cargo likewise interferes with Divination spells."

"Alright, let's start with Lightning." Gwen nodded to her companions, mindful of her father, whose closed eyes either suggested he was watching subtly or that the man had dozed off. If so, Gwen had a real surprise in store for the veteran.

"So there's this signature spell that Alesia and I came up with. I can conjure it as a crystal or use it as a spontaneous burst."

Gwen picked a spot not far from her father. "Flashbang!"

The container ship's enclosed space exceedingly magnified the concussive effect of the spell, so much that Gwen managed to stun herself.

"Christ Almighty!" Jonas watched his mana shield shimmer.

"That's a hell of a spell, Gwen." Paul had been far away enough to manage by covering his eyes and shielding his ears.

"Very nice; a real ripper of an opener. How long did it take you to manifest? Half a second?"

"0.4," Gwen replied. Flashbang was one of her earliest spells and her favourite. Feeling the tinnitus fade from her eardrums, she snuck a peek at her father. Morye seemed unfazed by it all, sitting still with a Zen-like expression that suggested he was entirely relaxed and at peace.

"Let's continue, anything else… loud?" Jonas inquired carefully.

"Not so much, no," Gwen replied and began to cycle through all her known Evocation spells that she had learned in the last year and a half. First, she had Guiding Bolt, Lightning Blast, Lightning Grasp and Taser, her improved non-lethal Lightning Grasp. Of all her Evocation spells, Lightning Bolt remained Gwen's staple offensive spell, capable of penetrating multiple enemies in a line and causing paralysis as a side-effect.

Then there were her Conjuration based spells. Lightning Blade and Lightning Grasp were sound spells, but so far she’d never gone toe-to-toe with a Magical Creature. Warding Bolt was another of her staples—a conjured orb that shot bolts of lightning empowered by her Evocation talent, though it only held three charges. Call Lightning served as a secondary battle-turret, indiscriminately targeting enemies.

Morden's Faithful Hound was Gwen's guardian spell, creating an invisible dog that attacked enemies as they came close. Dark Tentacle was a spell used to constrain and damaging enemies while paralysing and harming them with multiple strikes. Finally, her signature Dimension Door remained her staple translocation spell— either through Void or Lightning, Gwen could affect a "halo" of energy at the point of arrival.

"I also know some utility spells from schools I can access but have yet to train in," Gwen explained, going on to demonstrate Jump and Feather Fall from Transmutation, as well as Detect Magic from Divination.

As for Abjuration, when she demonstrated her unique Non-Newtonian Shield, the men became immensely impressed.

Taj immediately begged Gwen for the working theory but found the manifestation unmanageable. Gwen wondered if it was because she understood the concept of Non-Newtonian fluids; a way of thinking that juxtaposed Taj, who thought of mana as quasi-mystical.

When Gwen had finally exhausted her Lightning repertoire, it was time for the main event.

"Let's see the beasties," Taj huffed and straightened from where he'd knelt. Despite his Earth element's good parity in resisting Gwen's Lightning, the Quasi-element still possessed its infamous paralytic effect.

"Ariel!"

A bolt of Lightning struck the galvanised steel, summoning an adorable white marten that landed with a flourish.

"Eee! Eee! Ee!" The marten posed handsomely before running between Gwen's slender ankles to perform a perpetual figure eight.

"Combat form!"

With a growl, Ariel began to grow, crackling with electrical energy that raced across the steel plating.

To Gwen's surprise, Ariel was much larger than before. Had her Conjuration Sigil grown stronger? Had Faceless possessed the Conjuration talent as well as the Transmutation?

"Grrrrr."

Before the impressed soldiers now stood a wolf-sized mongoose with a blue-white coat, crackling with electrical energy. Ariel glanced at Gwen and urged her to give it another jolt of Lightning-charged mana, to which she obliged.

Instantly, the creature became clad in white Lightning—its fur stood on-end with such violence that it began to resemble a serpentine porcupine.

"EE!" Ariel reached the end of the container platform and came back again in the blink of an eye with a push from its powerful hind legs.

"Ho, a self-hasting ability, very nice," Jonas applauded Ariel, who raised its snout snugly. "That bite looks very nasty as well."

"He'll be useful in the jungle for sure," Paul remarked. "Especially as we'll be land-bound when we hit the Black Zone."

"How so?" Gwen asked. Surely it would be easier for them to fly into the grove.

"Remember Gwen, there are three places you can't fly—dungeons, arboreal regions and tier I cities."

"Tier I cities?" Gwen furrowed her brow.

"Well, not without a permit, and those are virtually impossible to get without deep pockets and deeper connections."

"I see, but why can't we fly into the forest?"

"It would only confuse you," Taj said patiently to the untested sorceress. "Orange Zones and beyond are tainted by the unpredictable mana of the Wildlands. Visually, it is virtually impossible from the air to find one's bearings by surveying the canopy. When intelligent magical beings further inhabit the arboreal regions, it becomes doubly difficult as they can reform the forest to confuse unwanted intruders."

"What makes ground cover any safer?"

"Who said it was safer?" Paul joked. "The ground approach gives us room to leave Arcane Marks, Teleportation Beacons and, if all else fails, we can burn ourselves a little clearing to mark the spot."

"That and most Mages are incapable of throwing down while using Flight," Taj pointed out. "You've been spoilt by austere company, Gwen. In the real world, very few Mages can cast spells in dogfights. The toll on your concentration and your body renders the vast majority of Mages incapable of high-tier spells while in motion."

"Or situational awareness," Paul added. "I'd say that's the kicker. You're concentrating so much on flying and casting that you can't see the forest for the trees, ha!"

"Okay." Gwen nodded, thinking when she'd be able to dogfight with the best of them. "No flying in the Arboreal Zone."

There was a thrum in the air, a slight feeling of inertia. The ship was leaving port.

"You want to check out the harbour?" Jonas turned to Gwen. "There's quite the view. Let's get this over and done with and we can head up to the deck. Let's see your Void familiar."

Gwen inclined her head and took a deep breath. She felt more hale and awakened than ever before. Somewhere in her astral soul, her body remained imbued with the emerald vitality of the Serpent.

She commanded Ariel to return to its marten form, smiling when her creature harassed Morye by turning onto its belly and rubbing its back against the galvanised bulkhead with delight. Annoyed, her father ceased his meditation and stood to attention, his eyes trained on the space in front of her.

"Caliban is a little scary," Gwen explained. "He's very much an alien creature, so prepare yourselves."

"We've seen things you wouldn't believe," Taj quipped with a grin. "Let's see what you got."

"Alright, here goes." Gwen collected herself and drew upon the Void, feeling the necrotic energy flood her Mana Channels. For now, at least, they no longer permeated her physical body, being kept in check by Almudj's blessing.

There was a slash in the air, a gash in time-space, then out came Caliban. At least, Gwen thought it was Caliban.

Rather than the expectant slither and a soundless plop, what came out instead was a pair of long, spindly legs in transparent obsidian, multi-segmented in a way that resembled disjointed, anorexic fingers. There was another pair, and another and another, until Caliban was out in its full horrific glory. Four teams of legs skittered across the floor, raking and rasping against the metallic hull in the uncertain manner of a newborn foal. Caliban's body, which had previously been serpentine and sinuous, was now a bulbous, fleshy mass in purple and tentacle pink, resembling that of a spider or a scorpion turned inside out. Its back carapace remained the hard-shelled, semi-translucent plates that interlocked, but its underside was wet with sucking noises that slurped and gurgled. Where its spine ended, there was a long tail, a remnant from its old morphic shape that whipped the air like a steel cable.

Gwen recognised the shape at once.

"Wanka?" Gwen said to Caliban. "Cali! You took on Wanka's form!"

She immediately thought of Faceless and its morphic talent. Unlike the shapeshifter, Gwen wasn't the one to consume her victims, so the polymorphic ability must have been inherited by her familiar! Gwen closed her eyes and retracted her mind within her astral soul, searching for the Transmutation Sigil. She found the constellation not far from her radiant Evocation, dark and brooding, radiating a malevolent mauve light.

Meanwhile, Taj shouted incoherently, his voice growing a whole octave higher.

"Shaa!" Caliban turned to face the screaming Abjurer, forming a duet of hysteria. "SHAA! Shaa! SHAAAA—!" Its five tongues, each barbed with spikes dripping with grey goo, flayed excitedly at their new companion.

"Fuck me!" Paul was no better, the man dropped to both knees and hurled out his guts as the Void aura struck.

"Caliban, HEEL!" Gwen commanded the skittering thing, now the size of a pony. Caliban found purchase on its legs and sidled up to her, whipping its tail happily. It raised a spindly spider leg and wrapped it lovingly around her waist. That was the best it could manage without hugging her face and choking its master. Gwen reached out a dainty hand and patted Caliban's carapace, causing it to flay its tail wildly, leaving white scratch marks across the galvanised iron and dribble profusely.

"Alright, let's see your combat form." Gwen took another deep breath.

"STOP!" Morye's voice cried out. "If you keep going, there's not going to be a team left to take onto the island."

Gwen looked up to see her father, handkerchief in hand, wiping away a snail trail of vomit from his chin.

Gwen turned to Caliban, who wagged its tail.

"Good boy, Cali!" She glanced at her father. "Caliban! Go play with Daddy!"

Caliban turned to Morye and reared itself upwards. Two fangs burst from its face as Void mana coursed through its body. As a black blur, it launched itself toward "Daddy", its multiple tongues wagged excitedly for a good licking.

"OH, FUCK NO." Morye felt every hair standing on this back. "Salt Skin!"

Chapter four

Cabin Fever

“Back! Away! Foul creature!”

Gwen watched as the pony-sized Caliban bowled over her father and pressed against the wall of the bulkhead. Its claws scrabbled across the galvanised metal like nails on a chalkboard, causing her audience to wince.

"Gwen, tell this thing to back off! Else I will banish it!" Morye warned as multiple tongues lashed his armour of crystallised Salt.

Caliban cooed and informed Gwen empathically that her father was delicious and delightful.

"Caliban, enough," Gwen commanded both verbally and mentally. "To me!"

Ariel took the opportunity to leap onto Caliban as it skittered back, looking gallant as it balanced itself upon Caliban's carapace.

Glancing at the marten enviously, Gwen wondered if she could also ride on Caliban, making her visage a real horror show. For now, however, she still needed time to figure out how his polymorphy worked, and the island seemed as good a spot as any.

The two pets returned to their Master, the ten-legged arachnid Scorpiones skittering to and fro while the marten did laps around her ankles.

Her father began the process of scraping goo from his armour but then stopped when the effort proved futile. "Dispel!"

Salt cascaded from his body, collapsing onto the floor in great big chunks, like a knight stepping from plate mail with the cords cut loose. Meanwhile, Jonas, Taj and Paul finally recovered from their initial state of shock.

"Sorry, I was told it was a snake…" Paul said with a face full of hurt and betrayal. "I don't mind spiders, but that thing is something else."

"I once saw a carrion crawler eat a man alive," Jonas muttered. "I had thought that was disturbing, but that thing takes the cake. My God, you were going to take that into a public tournament? You're going to cause a riot."

Caliban wasn't a spider-demon back then, Gwen thought, but it was too complicated to explain her life story to those not in the know.

"Sorry," Taj said self-depreciatively. "I've seen some shit, but that thing terrifies me."

"Caliban, heel," Gwen commanded the fiendish creature gently. Caliban wagged its pointed tail and stopped by her side.

"So, what are its abilities?" Jonas asked.

Gwen looked at Morye. Morye's looked away probably fearing his daughter thought he'd make a good demonstration.

"Void-charged physical attacks that penetrate most shields and armour," Gwen spoke. "What else can you do, Caliban?"

Caliban raised its body and launched a pair of fleshy tongues with barbed daggers for tips.

"Flesh hooks?" Gwen turned to the group and shrugged, watching their lively faces.

Caliban's tongues retracted into its second jaw.

"God, imagine fighting that thing!" Jonas pulled a face, patting his pockets. Gwen thought he’d quit smoking. "Give me Mermen Wavestriders any day of the week, but not that!"

To Gwen's surprise, Morye produced a Winfield Blues packet from his pocket and pointed the yellow tips towards the men. They each took one.

"How good's your elemental control?" Morye asked. "Can you light us up? A little Chain Lightning, perhaps?"

"I'd prefer you to keep your faces. And no, I can't do that yet." Gwen reddened. She was a long way away from learning that particular whopper. Instead, she produced a piece of enchanted tinder used for outdoor survival and dutifully lit their cigarettes. It was the least she could do after what they'd experienced.

Watching the men passive smoke with glazed over eyes, she retracted both her familiars and told them that she'd be outside, watching the ship's departure from Darwin.

When Gwen's clanging footfalls fell away, the men turned their attention towards one another.

"Sorry for the bother, fellers. Gwen is a real handful." Morye looked at each of the men in the eyes as he spoke, taking the opportunity to break some ice.

"Don't be," Jonas replied. "We usually work with Alesia de Botton."

"The Crimson Sorceress?"

"The one and only," Paul piped in. "The shit we have to deal with you wouldn't begin to believe."

"Does it include netherworld spiders that try to fuck your face?" Morye quipped with a jocular tone.

"Ha!"

The group chuckled with unbidden synchronisation.

Morye extended a hand and let a sprinkle of Salt fall from his grasp. The other three men watched as it grew into a crystal cylinder, its uppermost tip expanding until it formed an elegant looking ashtray.

Morye tapped his cigarette and the others followed suit.

"I guess there's no avoiding it." He coughed to clear this throat. "Morye Song, Transmuter tier VI Major, Abjurer tier IV Minor, Salt Element."

"Good to know you." Jonas reached out and shook his hand. "Jonas Durn, Evocation-Conjuration, Healer tier V, Positive Element."

"I am Paul Mckay," Paul likewise exchanged greetings with Morye. "Conjuration-Transmutation tier V Major, Enchantment Minor tier III. I specialise in Translocation and Teleportation. I am sorry to say that my elemental affinity is one, so I am not much for combat."

"Good to meet you, Paul."

"Likewise."

"Trajan Smith Philips, but call me Taj." Taj offered his hand after the others had finished their greetings. "Abjurer tier V, Earth Element."

"So how do you guys know Gwen?" Morye inquired. "She and I don't talk much. We're not close."

"Ah." Paul's eyes had a twinkle in them. "If you're keen to know, I should probably start with Alesia. You sure we have the time because it's going to be a long story."

"Well, we got seven days. As for Gwen's training, I'll have a chat with her and we'll sort something out. That bloody spider monster, huh? Why can't she get a pony or something like a normal girl? My God."

"You know," Paul said quietly. "I am kinda looking forward to seeing Caliban mangle something."

The others nodded. They were military men, after all, conditioned by training and trauma to anticipate the rare beauty that was something becoming FUBAR.

Gwen stood on the gunwale railing, watching the shining city of Darwin disappear into the distance. Once they moved out from the deep harbour, the carrier quickly gained speed until the waters beneath its bow became a churning white froth. From above where the great chimney of the engine room sat, a plume of dark blue polluted the salty air, raining down upon the oceans unfiltered bits of unburnt mana crystals.

They were moving, but the atmosphere was hot and humid, moist and clammy against the exposed skin of her lower limbs, though the view was well worth the discomfort.

The men smoking below crossed Gwen's mind as she watched her streaming hair whipping wildly.

Gwen knew she owed them a debt that was difficult to repay.

Taj, Jonas and Paul had no obligations to come. They were here because of Alesia's command. They felt nothing for Elvia and Yue, or Whetu, and were risking their lives to please their mistress, a woman they respected and adored like a sister.

Her father likewise had no obligation. Gwen wasn't sure why he'd suddenly have a change of heart. Yet, whatever the reason, he was here for this time, and maybe that's worth something.

All these threads, all these connections— that was what separated the life she had now versus then. There, she had only her company, her Assistant and her employees. She had no close friends to visit her, just clients and associates; there was no family to bother her; she'd lost them somewhere in the past. Of course, she had her cats, Ariel and Caliban, but those guys were assholes, kind of like herself.

Gwen laughed, first a choked trill, then roaring laughter that floated upon the wind and out to sea.

Her hand fell upon the Kirin pendant.

Her Master and Gunther both said that this was a precious item. If so, why did her father give it up?

And on that topic, she was sure Morye was the pink salt guy.

It meant that her father was not a useless Abjurer, but a Salt Mage, a Magus dual-classing in Abjuration and Transmutation, an Alesia-tier combatant commanding a suit of Salt.

Gwen had to admit, that signature spell of Morye's with its tasselled plates and the embossed carapace with intricate scrollwork was very, very cool. Its visor was a stylised helmet with a T shaped slot for eyes and nose, flared with a pair of white crystalline wings. The interlocking plates too possessed the reactive ability to be discarded and re-grown. She especially liked the shoulder pauldron, with one side taller than the other, which gave the armour an asymmetrical charm.

An idea struck Gwen. Didn't she likewise possess Transmutation now? If the glow from the Sigil was anything to go by, her Affinity should already be tier II.

She could be tapping into the ability enhancing spells unique to the school, like the ones Debora used to use.

Debora—

Her mind once more wandered into unpleasant spaces.

Master.

Elizabeth.

Elvia, Yue, and Whetu.

Unbidden, her mood grew dark and heavy. The skyline of Darwin had lost its magic.

Her smoke break was over.

Supper was served by the ship's cook, a young fellow who'd just finished his traineeship and had been enlisted by the Captain to replace their retiring chef. When the young man gave Gwen an extra helping of meatballs, a clamour went up throughout the mess. Amidst laughter and jests, the crew gave the poor lad a few well-aimed punches against his right arm.

Such was the madness of the sea and its effect on the lonely men of the long-haul. Ever since a wandering sailor saw Gwen, the conversation between the crew had consisted of little else but the lovely specimen of femininity that had descended upon them. As for Gwen herself, she didn't mind the sailors having a jovial go at her expense, though their crudeness made her feel squeamish and uncomfortable.

Eventually, however, the noise level returned to its usual droning. The crew needed only to remind themselves that Gwen was a sorceress that summoned monsters with toothy tentacles and their blue balls quickly shrunk back into their bodies, shuddering and begging for warmth.

Time took on a strange dilation within the confines of the bulkhead, where indoor darkness and the Evocation staple Daylight made strange bedfellows.

Gwen sought out her father and asked him for instruction on using her Void magic. Her thinking was that they'd start with something less personal before moving onto sordid revelations. Though he'd been avoiding her, she'd expertly cornered him in his cabin so that his only escape was to bodily push past her.

"You want me to teach you Void Magic?" Morye regarded his daughter critically. "What makes you think I know Void Magic?"

"No, I mean like, how do I cast it without killing myself?" Gwen fluttered her long, weapon-grade lashes.

Her father looked down to see goosebumps all over his skin, then looked up. "Don't do that." He put some distance between them. "If you mean how to conserve your vitality, I am afraid you're shit out of luck."

"How come?" Gwen replied, her voice full of disappointment. "If what I am hearing is true, you fought for hours! How can that be possible if you're not conserving your vitality?"

"Well, I am a Salt Mage, for one." Morye placed both hands together and pulled them apart, forming a pillar of Salt. "Here. Use Detect Magic; tell me how much Negative Energy is in this."

Gwen incanted the Divination spell and focused on the rod of Salt, finding it to be principally a mass of Elemental Water, with trace volumes of Negative Energy.

"There's hardly any Negative mana in there," Gwen answered her father, feeling an unkind suspicion that the answer wasn't going to be to her liking.

"Channel a cantrip's worth of Void mana, just a little. Go on," her father instructed.

Gwen focused her mind and imagined the phenomenon in her mind. A tenebrous sphere, darker than black, hovered over her palm. The exertion was low, but still, it made her conduits tingle with iciness.

"Detect Magic."

The Negative Energy that emanated from the ball was so dense it formed a dark cluster. There were traces of Elemental Air within, silvery and shimmering, but well-hidden amongst the agitated, seething mass of malevolence.

"What do you sense?"

"Negative Energy. Most of the Void is Negative Energy."

"Good, let it go now."

Gwen snuffed out the void sphere.

"Give me your hand."

She complied and extended her right hand. Morye took it in his palm and placed a finger on her pulse. Gwen could feel her father's rough fingers, coarse and warm on the tender wrist where two blue veins were just visible.

"Surprisingly healthy," her father said after a moment. "What are you taking for supplements? Or is this Caliban's doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does he transfer life to you?"

"A bit." Gwen's voice was barely a whisper. "When he feeds on living prey."

"Do you feel sick when you use the Void? Like vertigo or disorientation?"

Gwen nodded. "When I incant high-tier spells, I feel dizzy. I've also fainted a few times. There was also a period when I was very weak, bodily I mean, skinny, always hungry, but nothing I ate seemed to help."

Morye took his finger from Gwen's wrist. "Can't you refrain from using the Void element? After all, you have Lightning. That's a rare boon already."

Gwen shook her head. "I am special, Dad. There's no denying or ignoring that. One day, perhaps soon, certain people are going to know about my Void element. Before then, I need to become powerful, influential; I need strong allies and influential backers. Without these things, I am just going to be someone's puppet or maybe worse."

Morye licked his drying lips thoughtfully. "Probably worse." His expression was unreadable. "There's no recourse?"

"None whatsoever."

"Fine, so back on topic. You can't mitigate the effects of the Void because the Quasi-Elemental Plane of the Void is primarily Negative Energy, mixed with trace elements of Elemental Air."

"So I have to endure it then? I've been offsetting the Negative drain by using Healers who provide me with Positive mana."

Morye arched a critical brow and gave her a disapproving look full of scepticism. "Doesn't help. The consumption of channelling Void is not Negative drain from an Undead. It can be mitigated, yes, but reversing is much harder. Your body itself is channelling a power anathema to life. No force on earth can stop it from consuming your vitality. My advice is to use the Void as a killing blow or use it only to empower Caliban. At least that thing will give you something back."

Gwen’s hopes drove off a cliff.

"Look, there's a reason why there are no Void Mages, alright? It's not an ability meant for people who yearn to stay alive. I don't even know why you have two elements, Gwen, but that's winning the God damned lottery, alright? Whatever fate you think might await you, is it worth dying for? Even if you end up marrying someone for a political reason, or 'Gwen' forbid it, to continue a bloodline, is it worse than death? If you die, nothing else matters, you know? Your friends, your mentors, Alesia and Gunther and the girls we are trying to rescue, none of it would matter."

Gwen did her best to digest her father's thoughts, though the truth stung nonetheless.

"Are you listening to me?"

She was listening, but her father's words did not appeal to her in the slightest. Her father was right, but not entirely. Gwen had seen for herself that a being existed on Terra capable of undoing the damage caused by the Void. She had received it thrice—first when she’d fought Edgar, then again when she had sung the Serpent, and finally when she’d drawn Almudj's essence from the pendant.

Not only that, hadn’t Elizabeth Sobel overcome the limits of the Void element, even if she had to consume the lives of others to do so? If the Void Magister could find an unethical way then she would find an ethical path. Almudj had already shown her she could, now she just had to replicate it.

Gwen produced the pendant from under her blouse. "What can you tell me about this?"

Morye's eyes looked away from the mutely glowing jade. "You'll have a safe delivery for sure if you wear it."

Gwen pinched her father's thigh, causing him to yelp. "I am serious!"

"You're guaranteed to have twins."

She pinched him again.

"Alright, alright! Hey! Hey! I am ticklish! Sheesh." Morye blocked Gwen's arms with both his hands, parrying them expertly. Then with a sudden thrust, he pinned them to her sides. The swiftness of the execution caught Gwen flat-footed and for a moment she thought she saw a Morye she'd never seen before.

Morye held his vexatious daughter before him and looked her in the eyes with a seriousness that made her shiver. "Are you sure you want to know?"

Gwen swallowed nervously. "I do."

"Alright, stand up and stand to the side." Morye freed her arms and pointed to the side of the cabin.

Gwen obediently stood by the bedside.

"Right." Morye pulled out a cigarette and hung it by his mouth. He lingered by the door for a moment dramatically, no longer impeded by his daughter's blockade. "I need a smoke. Wait here. I'll tell you everything."

Gwen nodded.

Morye turned and left, disappearing into the corridors.

It took five minutes before Gwen realised that her father was gone for good.

With her father eluding her, Gwen passed the time with the other men.

Her CQC training had begun in earnest, sparring with Paul and Taj as they taught her basic body techniques for using touch spells, as well as how to dodge, parry and retaliate enemies that ventured too close to her for a Shield to manifest.

"So your average constrictor type is likely going to go for a grapple," Taj explained as the conversation turned from fighting humans to creatures. "You should know that encountering giant constrictors is preferable to encountering smaller, venomous ones whose bite has all kinds of nasty surprises."

"What do we do if we do get bitten?"

"Hope Jonas is nearby, I suppose. Remember, there are universal antidote injectors in your ring. I'll be running a tutorial when we get closer to Singapore so that you know how to differentiate between normal snakes and venomous ones."

"Okay, you ready to go again?" Taj cracked his neck. "I'll be trying to pin you. Your job is to dodge and get enough distance for a Shocking Grasp, okay?"

Gwen pulled back her loosened hair until it was taut against her head, collecting at the base of her skull in a thick bun. "Alright, let's do it."

For the first few days, Gwen had gone out on the gunwale to check out the scene, but after three days of monotony, she'd given up going her tours of the deck, instead choosing to spend her time in meditation, harassing her father and training with the others.

"God! You're just like your mother!" her father accused her with exaggerated exasperation. "I don't mean that nicely, either. Give a man some peace and space. You're giving me cabin fever."

Conversely, the Captain was a friendly man who'd delighted in talking about his wife and daughter.

"You ever been to Asia, Dad?" she said persistently.

Finally, her father relented. "A long time ago."

"Did you live in Shanghai?"

"None of your business."

"What's the city like?" Gwen inquired, mindful of her small-town provincial origins.

"Larger than you can begin to imagine," her father said with a sigh. "Imagine going down the Yellow River and, on both sides, for as far as the eye can see, there are buildings glowing with illuminators, adverts and posters of the latest magic items, fashions and trends."

"Are there lots of Magitech shops?"

"Naturally. The largest shopping street for Mages, Nanking Road, extends five kilometres from the Bund down to the Jing-An Temple. Hawkers, crafters, renowned Enchanters, all have shops here, plying their wares. Whatever magic items you desire, no matter how high-spec or rare, can be found here, assuming you have the HDMs and the CCs."

"Lots of food as well?"

"Every style and taste." Her father's tone grew strangely nostalgic. "At the top of each arcade are the restaurants. There, the most incredible and rare samples of Wildland's greatest gifts are kept in stasis. Some have rare cuts cured and put on display, others are more blatant with their offerings, displaying their stasis frozen carcasses behind large windows. The greatest of these establishments even have specially designed pens that keep these creatures alive so that its peerless clientele can enjoy the freshest, most mana-infused delicacies power and money can afford."

"It sounds incredible," Gwen marvelled with genuine anticipation as she sipped her water.

"Maybe you'll go there one day with your new friends."

"I hope so," Gwen said. "I mean, certainly not now. After we finish our mission in Singapore, we'll be heading back to Sydney."

"Mmm." Morye lit up.

Growling, she fled the cabin, unable to stomach miasma of tobacco smoke.

As the final part of her training, the party went over survival scenarios.

"But of course, if we're talking tropical weather, the most dangerous thing is hardly going to be giant lizards or snakes. It's the little buggers that get ya," Paul explained a few days into the trip. "Swarms of poisonous flies, ants, parasitic worms, you name it."

Gwen felt her skin crawl at the thought.

"We'll be using repellents, of course, but if you do get swarmed or we have to bypass a swarm, here's the basic method to protect yourself.

"Bark Skin!"

With his limited Affinity in Air, Paul showed the primary manifestation, which hardened his skin and gave it a rough, bark-like texture. "I can cast it on you as well, but in case we get separated, it’s best if you can do it."

"I don't know the spell." Gwen shook her head. "Both of my elements are woefully weak in defence."

"You won't be using it for defence against slashing or bludgeoning weapons, just lots of little nasties." Paul pointed out. "I was discussing your condition with Taj the other day and we were wondering how your Void interacted with defensive spells."

"Terribly." Gwen grimaced. "It drains my vitality so I am losing health before I've even been hit."

"Erh…" Paul pursed his lips. "How's Lightning?"

"An offensive shield, but unlike fire, I've got terrible coverage. Not all parts of my shield are electrified."

"Has your Evocation reached tier IV?"

Gwen shook her head. "Not yet." Unless I run into some evil Evokers begging Caliban for a good meal, Gwen thought morbidly. In which case, she was probably a few carcasses away. Ever since the Elizabeth incident, Gwen had felt herself undergoing episodic, hypothetical temptations of whether or not she should take ruthless advantage of Caliban's ability. Naturally, even entertaining the thought of cannibalism made her physically ill. Even if she should begin with the best of intentions, empowering herself at the expense of her enemies, she would one day become a thrill-seeking glutton who would challenge others with rare abilities and consume them when they inevitably fell underneath her heels.

Besides, she wanted to hunt Sobel, not become her Master's wife.

"Alright," said Paul. "We'll work on Bark Skin up. It's a pretty easy spell to learn; kind of like Shield and Magic Missile."

"Great." Gwen pushed herself from the cold iron floor. "Let's get started."

On the sixth day, their ship skirted close enough to the Indonesian archipelago to see land.

The Captain alerted them through the loudhailer that they were about to pass the Bangka Selatan peninsular, informing them that if they were interested in seeing some unusual fauna, now was the time to be on deck.

The military men passed on the opportunity, but Gwen and her father keenly made for the starboard gunwales.

When the duo exited past the sealed bulkhead, they came face to face with giant albatrosses, each almost six metres across from wingtip to wingtip, taking advantage of the updraft created by the ship's passing. Drifting through the air and keeping up with the freighter without apparent effort, they had a comical look about them when their necks retracted into their torso to reduce drag.

The sight was inspiring enough that Gwen felt the impulse to utter an old favourite from the world she left behind.

"A good south wind sprung up behind, the Albatross did follow, and every day, for food or play, came to the mariner's hollo!" she mused to herself, hoping that someone wouldn't be stupid enough to shoot a Magic Missile at the majestic birds.

"Look there!" Morye pointed, his sight far keener than his daughter's wide-eyed wonderment.

A pod of sea creatures followed the ship's flank, leaping from the waters and spreading their scintillating fins into a semblance of insect wings. With each sinuous twist, the serpentine fish, which must have been about two to three metres in length, launched themselves from the water's surface to dance across it, leaving behind a milky shoal of foaming water.

"Flying Rainbow Fish." Her father grinned. "Delicious whether grilled, baked or steamed. Whoa!"

There was an explosion of water, then a Plesiosaur burst from the waters and bore down upon the flying fish. The scintillating creatures scattered in all directions, but the sinuous neck of the plesiosaur snapped through the air and snagged one of the fish before it could land.

"Pseudo-Dragons from the ancient times are common where the waters are deep," her father said. "Beautiful creatures."

With a slash that churned the waters white and blue, the primordial creature sank, disappearing into the sea.

In the distance, the duo saw a dark blur upon the bright horizon.

"That's Kapulauan Riau, known locally as Abang—" Morye said to her, watching her face snap back to the collected cynicism of late adolescence. "Your eventual destination."

"We pass it?" Gwen asked her father. "Can we just disembark as we pass?"

Her father snorted. "That's suicide." He chuckled at her inexperience. "Remember the plan, what Captain Durn briefed. We need to get to Singapore first and find a local ship willing to take us to the island. What good would it do us if we save your friends but have no ship to return to the mainland?"

Thinking of Evee and Yue, Gwen felt the bright burn of impatience melting a hole in the thin veneer of her patience. "How long do you suppose it'll take?" she asked urgently. "To find a ship, I mean."

"With the HDMs in that pouch of yours? Probably a few hours, if you're willing to burn it."

Gwen nodded and felt her Storage Ring, making sure that the pouch, as well as her cache of crystals, remained within.

Along the way, the duo watched the isle of Bangka Selatan approach. At one point, they skirted so close to its landmass that it had felt almost within reach, though that was merely a trick of scale and perspective.

Roving masses of seabirds, some as small as finches, others as extensive as the albatrosses they had seen earlier, roved across the island from coast to coast. Where they convened, the sky became darkened by a black, spotted haze.

"The shit on that cliff must be waist-deep," Morye joked, dispelling the romanticism.

Gwen shot her father a displeased look and turned again toward the birds, marvelling at the scale and variety of animals on a planet where men had not utterly decimated the biosphere.

"Dad," Gwen suddenly spoke to her father in a tone that was both serious and sincere. "Can you tell me about your past, about the pendant, and Mum? I want to know. I need to know."

Her father stayed silent, listening to the cacophony of birds on the distant shore.

"I think I have a right to know the circumstances of my birth, don't you think, Father? Please?"

Morye sighed. "It'll make your life so much more complicated." Her father spoke not toward her, but instead into the ocean. "But that's your choice to make, not mine, I suppose."

"So you'll tell me?"

"I will but promise me one thing."

"What is it?"

"When all of this is said and done, don't pull me into your world again."

Gwen bit her lower lip. She knew now the cardinal truth behind the old aphorism, "You can put makeup on a gnoll, but it'll still eat shit" and "A Rakshasa can't right its paws".

"Fine," she said coldly. "I promise you'll have your privacy."

"Don't be like that," Morye replied coolly. "You're still my daughter. I just want you to know that each of us has our own lives and aspirations. There's no use trying to drag me into yours. Our paths are not the same."

"What is your path then, Pink Salt Saviour?" Gwen sceptically demanded of her father.

"Well," Morye ignored her snideness, "think of me as an esoteric monk, knowing no conflict with the world. I am the cultivator seeking no attachment, not to things, not to people, not to a higher power. I walk the way of freedom, of untethered chains and open spaces, the path of the Sensate."

Gwen smirked. "The path of Eros more like it. When can we talk? Now?"

"No." Her father shook his head. "I need some time to gather my thoughts. I'll talk to you after supper."

Her father then turned away, no longer looking at her, focusing instead on the seabirds. Below them, the ship's wake left ten thousand gleaming, coruscating shards to catch the light.

Satisfied, Gwen ventured below deck to rest.

"The truth," he said to no one, watching his daughter go. "I hope I still remember the truth."

Chapter five

Stifling

Gwen found her father sitting in a miasma of cigarette smoke, forcing her to keep a discreet distance. Morye had a nervous, agitated air about him, as though the very act of reminiscing the past to deliver to his daughter irritated him to no end.

Watching Morye taking a long toke, Gwen wondered if there was such a thing as air purification spells, a kind of Prestidigitation that would remove undesirable particles from the immediate vicinity.

She waited for her father to finish his cigarette, but when the man pulled yet another from the packet, her patience became paper-thin. "Well, let's have it then," Gwen said cattily, wrinkling her nose. She forced herself into the room and took a seat by the bunk, feeling the unpleasant sensation of tar-infused smoke soaking into her hair.

"What do you want to know first? The pendant, the Songs or your mother?"

"The pendant," Gwen replied, caring more for pragmatism than for curiosity.

"That's going to involve some bad shit, but fine." Morye closed his eyes. "So, the pendant is made from the Core of a Kirin. You know what a Kirin is?"

Gwen nodded.

"Good. What do you suppose it is that the Kirin Core does?"

"Takes in the souls of dead monsters?"

"Not exactly. It takes in the essence of magical creatures at the moment of their death. How do you suppose Creature Cores work?"

"We learned that they were the ‘heart’ of Magical Beings, where their vital force resides," Gwen parroted from her textbook. "When a creature dies, its essence, element, vitality, life, whatever the nomenclature, dissipates into the astral realm. For most creatures, the essence is contained within the core— a condensed orb of crystallised mana that becomes more compact with seniority."

"Is that all?"

"Umm, the reason why it is near impossible to harvest cores is that, at the moment of death, the energy held within bursts forth, seeking an escape into the immaterial astral. This force is so powerful that the cores of most low-tier creatures crack or dissipate."

Morye tapped his ash into an iron tray. "That's not entirely true, Gwen. When a core reaches a certain level of density, it becomes near indestructible. Of course, hunting down such a creature is nigh impossible for low-level Mages.

"To answer your question as to what makes the pendant so special, the Kirin stone is one such item. As a by-product of its natural density, the inscribed Enchantment consumes the escaped energies. As to its usage, I would suggest trying it out and see if you can pick up a few extra cores on your adventures."

Gwen recalled that her late Master had once told her that the amulet was part of something larger, the heart-stone of something ancient and powerful. Henry had been correct that the "core" had a capacity for storing essence, a fact her father now confirmed. "How do I use it?"

"Wear it on you when you deliver the killing blow. Sometimes it works, other times, who knows?"

"Is this a famous item?" Gwen asked. If the Kirin stone was going to be something that others coveted, she'd better keep it well hidden and out of sight, or perhaps even return it to her father.

"Only amongst those in the know." Morye swung the cigarette through the air, drawing a Chinese pictogram that Gwen didn't recognise. "Not many of those left now, not after the Communists came through the old country."

"How do I use the essence?"

Morye regarded her guiltily. "I'll be honest with you." He puffed out. "I have no idea. Never learned that particular trick."

"Who gave it to you?"

"From my father to me, and from me to you." Morye seemed to grow agitated at the mention of his father. "If you must know, you are only in possession of half of it. The other half is with the family."

The family, Gwen noted, processing the information. "Tell me about 'the family'." She perceived her father's impatience and pursued the matter, waving a hand to bat away the smoke. Morye scowled, as though he was being held under lamplight and interrogated.

"If you mean 'our' family," her father stated after a momentary pause. "The story is not for me to tell, but I'll let you in on what I can disclose."

He took a deep breath, taking on an expression of one combating some internal demon. "First of all, you have a set of living paternal grandparents who are alive and well, at least last I checked."

Gwen paused, blinking her big bright eyes at her father as her brain tried to process the information, feeling as though she was forcing a square peg into a round hole. Morye averted his gaze as Gwen's pupils turned sharp and critical.

"What?" Gwen uttered suddenly, an edge of iron rising in her voice. "I have another set of grandparents but you didn't think that was important enough to tell Percy and me? What the hell, Morye? What the actual fuck?"

Gwen didn't lose her head often, but she was seething with resentment and contempt, so much so that she felt as though something was going to erupt from within her body. Her eyes grew electric, like two concentric rings of crackling lapis that sizzled as her rampant emotions took hold. In her old life, she had never had a chance to spend time with her paternal grandparents before they’d passed, but in this world, they were alive and well and yet she had no idea they existed? Her father had spent the last decade fooling them into believing that he was orphaned! What could compel a man to do something so absurd?

Her father groaned. "I told you it was going to complicate things. You're the one who wanted to know."

"How is this my fault!?" She wanted to slap him again, maybe Shocking Grasp the bastard. Her skin crawled all over. "Okay, okay, keep going, tell me about my NOT DEAD paternal grandparents, go on."

"You also have a paternal aunt and uncle…"

Gwen placed her head between her hands and tried to slow her breathing. The stupid cigarette smoke made her dizzy, and her father's bombshell revelations didn't help one bit. She looked up after a minute or so of meditative introspection, her eyes bloodshot with stress and pent-up emotions. "Okay, go on."

"A few cousins."

"That's fine." Gwen's voice trembled. "Just get on with it. What about them? Where are they? What do they do? How are they now?"

"They're in Shanghai." Morye looked around and found a bottle of water. He shook it towards his daughter, but Gwen declined. "As for the rest of your questions, I can't answer them because I haven't seen them in about fifteen years."

So her father was from a tier I city. Gwen allowed the knowledge to sink in. What she couldn't understand was why anyone would leave Shanghai for a Frontier town like Sydney. "Why did you leave Shanghai? I assume you were born there?"

"I was," Morye replied. "I am the first son of the House of Song."

"A 'House', with a capital H?"

"No, no." Morye waved his cigarette. "Old bloodline, new House. The revolution uplifted us, so no history, only status."

Revolution. Status. Bloodline. None of those things meant anything intelligible to Gwen, least of all the idea of a Communist revolution in a world of magic and monsters, least of all because her Frontier history class had left students wanting.

Her father caught her incomprehension. "Have you heard of old-world cultivators?"

Gwen blinked.

"Never mind, then. Suffice to say, you have an extended family somewhere in Shanghai, China, and maybe some relatives from the Eurasian Steppes, though I've never met them myself."

"Jesus, how many relatives do I have?" Gwen snarled at her disinterested, apathetic father. "Why am I finding out about this now?"

"Because you asked." Morye shrugged. "What, don't like the answer?"

Gwen fantasied about summoning Caliban right there and have the thing give her father a good tongue lashing. The infuriating lout! To think she'd thought he was getting better and that he cared enough to come out here and risk his life for her! The man was unbearable! At once Gwen felt a surge of sympathy for Helena, empathising with why her mother was so offended all the time and withholding her affections.

"Fine, because I asked." She moped, unable to find the words to express her exasperated emotions because she never had family in either of her lives. "Putting that aside, tell me about Mum."

"What do you want to know?"

"Does she know?"

"About?"

"About your talents!" Gwen gnashed her teeth. "Do you have to make this so… difficult?"

Her father gave her a look that said she didn't want to know the answer to that rhetorical question.

"She has an inkling," he said after another agonising drag on his cigarette. "But alas, she has no evidence."

"And you’ve just lived in mediocrity this whole time?"

"Hey! We were happy for a while, raising you, married despite Surya's protests."

"And then?"

"There is no 'and then'. Your mother couldn't handle being ordinarily happy. I couldn't stomach her psychosis. I needed space. So she left. End of story."

Gwen regarded her father's self-righteous explanation with incredulity. The absurdity of it, the sense of selfish entitlement that radiated from his self-depreciative face made her sick with loathing. How could such a human being even exist in this world? How could it be possible that such a person brought forth herself and Percy?

"Okay! So if you hate each other's guts, where Percy come from?" Gwen asked suspiciously.

Morye turned to look at Gwen with an awkward expression. "When a man and a woman love one another very much—"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Dad!" Gwen snapped, stomping her foot on the galvanised flooring. "I mean, why did you get back together again?"

"You know your mother, surely." Morye pursed his thin lips. "She can be very possessive. If you want the details, I'd advise against it."

Gwen sighed. Her father had guessed right. but she didn't want to know about that. "Why did you leave China?"

"Ah, a good question."

"Well, why?"

"Can't say, it's confidential."

"How come?"

"Gwen, don't be difficult."

"I want to know. Tell me."

"Why do you deserve to know?"

"FUCK! JUST TELL ME ALREADY!" Gwen felt her frustrations erupt like a Magma spell; at last, her patience was exhausted.

"Because I KILLED someone I shouldn't have! That's all you need to know!" Her father snapped back at her. "It doesn't involve you in the slightest, not then and not now.

‘Okay, you know what? This conversation is over. Now be a good girl and shut up! We will go and get your friends, we'll take them back to Sydney, then we'll luncheon every few weeks, okay? Go to bed. You have a long day ahead."

Gwen stared at her father, her conduits tingling with Void mana. She was no longer sure what was true or false because she had come for answers and was now left with more questions.

The pendant was a precious item that could draw out the essence of magical beings as they died, but was that all it did? What had compelled the Kirin stone to regurgitate its essences when she’d needed the serpent's aid?

Then there was her paternal family, now no longer deceased but alive in China. Would she want to meet them? Would they want to meet her? What would they think of her Frontier upbringing? Was one of them also in possession of the Void talent, as she was?

Then there was her mother. Gwen still couldn't believe that Helena had just given up on her father. That must have been a fate worse than death for a social climber like herself. But then again, Gwen gazed at her father—trying to squeeze the truth from this man was like wrangling blood from a rock. If she were married to a man like him, death would be preferable.

Her father exhaled.

The tobacco smoke was getting to her now, making her throat itch and her hair stink. "I need a shower," she announced. She fought down the questions bubbling in her throat, then left.

Once his daughter was gone, Morye extinguishing his cigarette.

"Control Wind," he incanted, and a gust of air cleared the cabin of the smoke.

"Good grief, I'd thought she never leave," he said to the door as the wind blew the thing shut, plunging the room back into thankful silence. Sighing, he renewed his meditation. In less than ten hours, they would be in Singapore and, knowing Gwen, there was bound to be more trouble.

Gwen scrubbed herself raw, cleansing the fetid tobacco stench that clung to every inch of her skin.

Still burning with disquiet, she pulled the water through her hair and allowed it to drip between her shoulders. The ship's showers were fit only for Dwarves, though thanks to a Conjure Water implement, it had no lack of freshwater.

They had fewer than ten hours before Singapore became a reality and she would have to get ready for the obfuscation they'd undergo at customs. Though Gunther's Multi-Pass allowed them access through the Commonwealth territories held by Singapore, it was very much unlikely that the local authorities would be happy to know that they were going to stir up a hornet's nest in the Kapulauan Riau archipelago.

Putting her head once the faucet more under, Gwen thought about her friends, her Master, her siblings-in-craft, and about her unknown paternal relatives. Threads, all of them, tying her to this world, lashing her with a hundred ropes of nerve and sinew like the bound Gulliver in Lilliput.

Her left hand turned the faucet. The falling water slowed to a drip, beading droplets trickled from her torso and down her thighs to pool at her feet.

For now, she reminded herself, the only folk that mattered were Evee, Yue and Whetu.

After six agonising nights, Singapore appeared on the horizon.

First came the human-made islands, dozens of them, each sporting a concrete structure that indicated the presence of a Shielding Station, each akin to crystalline daggers stabbing the sky.

Between each structure, a thrum of energy signified the resonance that hung between the city and the outside world, giving the South Sea trade fortress a surreal, mirage-like appearance.

Gwen fingered the Kirin amulet gently as they passed the barrier, feeling the core grow hot before once again matching the warmth of her skin.

While her heart pounded, the others gathered on the top deck. Jonas had informed her that they had travelled to Singapore once before, with Alesia on a Purging quest for one of the satellite islands. They knew the local Tower, therefore, and should pass without incident.

The main Shielding Station guarding the city sat at the tip of Sentosa. Perhaps inspired by the local fauna, the Singaporeans had built a gargantuan Merlion statue—a half-fish, half-lion creature, local to the South China Sea, famous for bringing good fortune. Holding an enormous Shielding Crystal in its mouth, passing the statue officially indicated that they were now within the territorial jurisdiction of Singapore Tower and its provincial government.

According to her companions, though Singapore could be considered a Frontier like Sydney, it enjoyed an unusual eminence due to its proximity to the tier I capitals of the South Sea, existing as a gateway to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo. As a result, Singapore was immensely wealthy for a Frontier of its size. Here, all its citizens, both Mages and NoMs, enjoyed some of the highest quality of life possible in Humanity's hinterlands.

Another reason for Singapore's rise as the crème de la crème of the Frontiers was the institutional reformation the city had undergone under the Magister Lee Kuan Yew, more endearingly known as Uncle Lee. Before the loss of the Micronesian islands to the Mermen, the Magister had introduced significant legislative reforms, such as an uplifting program that offered citizenship, housing and gainful employment to any awakened caster across Micronesia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The policy had infamously caused a sorcerous drain in the surrounding regions while greatly enriching Singapore and its cache of service Mages that staffed the city's manufactoriums.

For their entry into the fortress city, the party had chosen a believable backstory that Gwen was the scion of a notable House in Melbourne, friend to the Magister Guldric Uther. If challenged, the party would reply that they were in Singapore to procure supplies before returning to Melbourne and that Magister Uther would back up their story.

To appear the part, Gwen had spent the morning picking through her outfits, looking for the right sass to assume the air of a spoilt adventurer princess, one uptight enough to be travelling with an entourage of Senior Mages.

She settled on an old dress she'd found on Surya's estate, a simple floral one-piece that reached just above her knees, with a hem that blew out beautifully like a reverse tulip. Unlike before Almudj's blessing, she found little need for makeup, for her flawless complexion left no doubt that her persona had not seen a day of labour.

The men didn't think it their business to comment on her attire and her father wasn't keen on talking, but Gwen ran into a few agog sailors that showed she had done very well indeed.

As they pulled into port, Gwen realised they had skipped the crystalline skyline with its ship-like Marina Tower and instead had arrived in a deep-sea port with enough shipping containers to form a bastion of steel crates and floating platforms. All around her, cargo cranes sprouted like mushrooms after a monsoonal shower, dotting the horizon with a forest of claws and pulleys.

A disembarking platform made its way from the dock towards the control tower, just a level from the top deck. The writing on the docking arm read "Pasir Penang Terminal 3".

After farewells had been said to the crew, the gangway gave Gwen a feeling of mild vertigo as they crossed the hundred or so metre drop onto the central harbour platform.

The Freight Station maintained a small Customs Station at its far end, a significant distance from the cargo processing assemblage, giving the group ample time to gather their stories and unify any contingencies as they approached the moment of truth.

At Customs, they were greeted by two Customs officers with Chinese-Singaporean likenesses. Seeing Jonas and the others in their military uniforms, the guards stood respectfully and saluted. "Good morning Sirs. Ma'am. The City of Singapore welcomes you."

"Greetings, we're looking to enter the city on business." Jonas nodded, reaching into his jacket for his pass-card.

Paul and Taj likewise presented their cards, allowing the Singaporean Mages to transcribe them behind a counter, where the passes' authenticity was verified.

"They're verifying the glyphs embedded within our cards against the ones authorised by the city's immigration department," Jonas explained to Gwen in the tone of her instructor. "When challenged, have your pass out immediately and remove any accessories that may impede the examination of your facial features."

"Yes, sir," Gwen replied dutifully. One of the guards glanced towards her when Jonas spoke, lingering on her face a second too long for comfort. Gwen met the young man's eyes and smiled. As anticipated, the Customs officer blushed and turned away, which made her laugh. The exchange gave her a little rush.

"Miss, your pass, please."

Gwen pulled the pass from her Storage Ring with a flick of her fingers, further verifying beyond doubt that she was from a family that was rich and rare.

The Customs officers looked impressed at her Quasi-elemental talent; their eyes sparkled when they returned her multi-pass with both hands.

"Thank you." Gwen beamed at them, revealing gleaming white teeth.

"Our pleasure, ma'am," one of the men replied. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

"I am sure I will." Gwen leaned in before moving past the counter, feeling their eyes following her around the gallery. "Say, what's good in Singapore, what's the best place for seafood?"

"I'd recommend Jumbo by Long Beach."

"It's the River Walk for me, maybe Palm Beach?"

Though she should be interrogated, the young men were instead recommending restaurants. Gwen played along, asking them about their favourite spots in the city, laughed imploringly, and enquiring about seafood, turning what should be a severe atmosphere into one of joyous delight.

"How dangerous," Paul said to the others.

"I wish Alesia would learn some of Gwen's charm instead of intimidating the shit out of the Customs officers."

"Hear, hear," Taj said with a painful grimace. "Remember that time we got detained in Hong Kong because they thought we were Triad?

"Erh, don't remind me." Paul groaned.

"Eh? What happened?" Morye asked out of curiosity.

"After Alesia made a scene and Paul intervened, they threw him in a holding cell with actual Triads. After he’d laid them out, Paul ended up with a gang of brothers for life who wanted to help us navigate the Nine Dragons District. Alesia ended up having to call Master Henry to assure Hong Kong Tower that we were legitimate military officers and she was not an imposter pretending to be the Crimson Sorceress."

They chuckled as Gwen passed without incident, stowing the pass with a click of her fingers.

When Morye underwent inspection, one of the officers stopped him before he could exit. "Are you father and daughter, sir?"

Morye affirmed that they were.

"Is something the matter?" Gwen came striding back towards the Customs desk, heels-clicking one after the other.

"Just for the record. It's nothing to worry about, miss. Enjoy your stay in Singapore."

Past Customs, the group entered Singapore proper. The moment they ventured outside, however, Gwen felt the crisp indoor atmosphere dissipate. A sweltering heat smothered every inch of her body, plastering her arms and legs as though an invisible being had draped a warm film of plastic over her skin.

The heat! The humidity! It was incredible. When they were at the port and moving through the sea, it hadn't felt nearly as oppressive, but now they were outside the city's glass and concrete megastructures, it felt as though they had walked into a lukewarm sauna.

Gwen made it no more than a hundred metres in the open when her chiffon dress hugged her thighs like cling-wrap, making progress near impossible. She suddenly discovered new things about the human body, such as that knees could sweat.

"Good God!" Paul moaned. "Give me the blistering heat of the Outback any day of the week!"

"Alright, let's find us a shrimp boat Captain," Taj announced, his face likewise melting.

Jonas hailed two taxies from afar.

"Where to?" a South East Asian taxi driver asked them.

"Hello. We're looking to hire a boat and do some fishing. What's a good port to charter?" Jonas got straight to the point. "Got any good recommendations?"

"I can help," the taxi driver answered with a moustachioed grin, his eyes moving up and down Gwen's attire before turning to regard her retinue. "You looking for luxury or sport?"

"Sport. We're short on time. Ideally, we’d like to head out and back in a day or two. Find us someone willing to play guide and navigator."

"Okay, get in. I take you to Jurong Port, many private ships there. You got money, someone happy to take you for sure."

Gwen ducked into the taxi as Jonas held the door for her. She rode with Morye while the others rode in another taxi behind them.

To her unfamiliar eyes, though they were far from famously ultra-luxury areas such as Clementi Park or the high-density district of Hougang, the industrial areas of the city's urban crawl still felt considerably more developed than Sydney. The roads were extensive and better maintained, the streets spotless and without garbage. The buildings stood in blocks rather than sprawls, with clean, centralised designs that involved contoured, modern-industrial aesthetics.

What caught Gwen's attention in particular wasn't so much what the city possessed, but what its streets seemed to lack.

There were homeless hobos in Sydney even in the best areas, sprawled on the streets every few blocks, begging for change. The phenomenon was especially prevalent in the city's industrial and commercial areas, where Gwen attended school. Here in Singapore, there was not a single hint of poverty. Instead, its overwhelming prosperity made her nerves jitter.

On every other avenue, black-uniformed militiamen in urban combat fatigues with duckbilled hats and glyph-embedded glasses carried alchemical bandoleers across their uniforms, concurrently armed with Combat Wands that extended from hip to thigh.

"Morye," Gwen turned to her father, hoping to break the tension, "what do you suppose that wand is?"

"Likely utility spells like Move Earth or Shape Stone." Morye turned to the police officers as they passed. "Impressive gear, though. Those are likely Detect Magic goggles. I bet that uniform is elementally attuned too."

Gwen whistled.

In Sydney, most Mages carried a few magic items covertly. Gwen had never even seen the Sydney police with Combat Wands, much less decked out in a suite of magical gadgets. In Sydney, only the Tower Mages came equipped.

They turned into Jurong Fishery Port and proceeded until both taxis were facing the entrance of the fishery.

Gwen paid the talkative driver with her card, then disembarked into an area where already, the stench of seafood busy decomposing permeated their nasal cavities.

"Well?" Gwen wished they were already on a ship heading out to sea. "Let's find us an entrepreneur, shall we?"

Chapter six

Creepers and Crawlers

Their Mr Entrpreneur was bought for twenty HDM crystals, with two more if they returned to Singapore without incident.

The Captain, going by the singular name of Sukarno, was a crafty, middle-aged fellow formerly from Indonesia. Taking advantage of Singapore's offer of open immigration for Mages with useful talents, the Water-Transmuter had found his way to the city and now operated a small trawler with a dozen NoMs for a crew, prowling the coastal waters for shrimp and squid. The ship itself appeared weather-beaten and well-seasoned but was also well maintained by the prideful Captain, insistent that he routinely inspected every nook and cranny for both mechanical and arcane failure.

The mechanism of the ship itself was of much fascination to Gwen, who'd never seen trawlers in action, even in her old world. Two arms extended from either side of the eighty-footer ship with an assortment of accessories dangled from the arms, possessed of everything from Daylight Glyphs for attracting squid to nylon mesh for trawling prawn.

"You're looking for an island called Abang, in the Riau chain, about sixty kilometres outside Shielding coverage from Batam," Captain Sukarno said after pocketing ten of the HDM crystals, the other half to be delivered upon their safe return. "It's a Black Zone, so we'll have to cut in and out real quick."

He turned to Gwen, his face revealing mixed feelings of interest and scepticism. "A bit dangerous for a chiobu like you. You look too tender, going to get gobbled up."

"What if we run into Mermen outside the Barrier?" Gwen asked.

"Not much chance of that. If we kena, you guys take care of it, okay? We not exactly following maritime protocol where we go, so I take only trusted crew of kaki. Don't expect help from the navy if we get sunk."

The party assured the Captain his customers would behave.

They boarded at the end of the pier, drawing curious eyes from the other ships' crews. Gwen, in particular, caught the eyes of strangers wherever she ventured. It was hard to miss a six-foot, leggy Eurasian in a green retro-dress, even in a sea of staked ships and knotted sails.

"You should change into something that won't take on water," Sukarno suggested as his crew emerged to greet the group of Mages, bowing deeply, not daring to meet their eyes as they announced their names. Sukarno pointed to the last NoM in the row of indistinct dark bodies. "This is Arnav, my first mate."

A skinny Indian who looked in his thirties waved at them, staring straight down at his feet.

"Hi, I am Gwen. These are my companions, Paul, Taj, Jonas, and this is my father, Morye."

In response, Arnav ducked and bowed in quick succession, greeting each of them before moving off, still staring intently at the ground, to work the riggings.

"Sorry, lah. The men don't deal with Mages much. Normally it’s just me, and they know me."

"It's okay." Gwen watched the crew, six NoMs working the boat's cranks and levers as they began to drift from the dock. It was queer that the seamen seemed to be avoiding them entirely, not even looking at them or her with curiosity.

The trawler pulled from its mooring silently. Once cleared of its attachments and lines, Sukarno fired up the mana-engine, issuing twin jets of water from the ship's aft as the propulsion began to spearhead the vessel out towards the sheltered egg of the Singapore Strait.

When the boat penetrated the first layer of the Fortress Cities' Shielding Stations, the air turned cool, crisp and salty.

"What a difference," Gwen noted to her companions. "Wonder why it's so hot in the city?"

"It's the Shielding Resonators," Sukarno shouted back. "Singapore is a very safe city. We have a three-layer barrier! The Batam Islands, the artificial islands of the strait and the main station on Sentosa. As a result, our city very humid in summer."

"Singapore is the safest Frontier region in the southern hemisphere," Jonas affirmed Sukarno's commentary. "Almost as expensive to live in as a tier I city too, especially near the CBD and the Clementi hills."

The artificial islands they passed soon transformed from commercial to industrial, then to lonesome installations built for military utility. Freight ships formed a line throughout the strait from shore to sea, creating a veritable bulwark of freight and cargo.

Their journey to Abang should take six hours.

On the fourth hour, the ship cleared the final safety buffer of the city.

"Everyone! Arnav! Keep an eye peeled for Mermen!" Sukarno barked at his crew, then politely asked Gwen and her party to be vigilant as well.

Thankfully, the final two hours of their journey proved uneventful save for a few curious incidents with local marine life that came to inspect the fishing trawler. With tact, Gwen dissuaded the fauna with her Lightning Bolts.

"Whoa! Quasi-element! Nice!" Sukarno exclaimed happily.

"Thanks." Gwen flashed the Captain a toothy grin, making Sukarno smirk appreciatively. When the wind soon picked up and the spray became too much. As one, the party retreated into the cabin from which Sukarno steered the vessel.

Sukarno offered Gwen a newspaper that he'd picked up at the port authority, bold with Sydney-centric headlines in dark lettering.

"Hey, you guys from Australia, hor? Aiya, sorry about Sydney lah, it sounded like a real tragedy. I hope all your family are safe."

The men took the paper and gave the headlines a browse, their jaws firmly clenched as they read the latest body count. When Jonas turned onto page four, he paused to steal a forlorn look toward Gwen.

"What's up?" Gwen noticed the sudden tension in the air.

Jonas folded the paper and passed it over.

She opened the tabloid spread and read silently to herself.

TERRORISTS ATTACK SYDNEY, TOWER DOWN

13th July 2003

Thousands are dead and injured as rogue Mages assault Sydney's Arcanum. The Sydney Tower is brought down, leaving the city in chaos. Lord Magister Kilroy is said to be among the victims. The arrival of Brisbane Tower and Melbourne Tower puts Sydney under Martial Law. Borders are closed. Arcanum vows to "find those responsible".

Sydney—In the worst terrorist attack ever made against a standing Frontier city of the British Mageocracy, a group of rogue Mages struck the coastal Shielding Stations and disabled the Sydney Tower midday Friday, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.

As a horrific city watched itself roll back three decades of civil progress, the city of Sydney became besieged by the Mermen, who took advantage of the failed barrier breach to attack. In all, a total of twenty-one Krakens and a single Leviathan was seen entering the city, with an estimated force of Mermen numbering between twenty to thirty thousand.

Sydney's Tower did not respond within the allocated timeframe for impeding the Mermen’s advance.

When contacted for answers, both the Brisbane and Melbourne Towers declined to comment.

The attack has stirred fears and anxiety across Oceania and evoked comparison to the Pearl Harbour Siege of 1943 and the Coral Sea Conflict, where Mermen had likewise besieged Brisbane in 1987.

Though no one has claimed responsibility, official suspicion quickly fell to the shadow organisation Spectre, which had formerly claimed responsibility for the Red Dragon incident in Britain in 2001. Thus far, the Paladin of the Sydney Tower, Lord Gunther Shultz, has declined to comment on how the terrorists penetrated the Tower's defences.’

Addressing the Mageocracy on Saturday night, the Britannic Commonwealth's High Chancellor, Magister Fulgor, vowed to "find those responsible and bring them to justice". He said the Towers would retaliate against "those behind these evil acts", including cities that harbour them.

Though tallies are incoming, the loss of Mage lives is estimated to be between one thousand to twelve hundred, with another two thousand Mages currently injured or in serious condition. The Sydney Tower is being repaired, though its superstructure has been severely damaged by a burst of Negative Energy reportedly emitted from its control spire.

The estimated casualty rate of NoM civilians may rise as high as twelve thousand.

Assessors have indicated that a vast swath of the infrastructure of Sydney's CBD has been destroyed, with sixty percent of its commercial buildings damaged, while twenty percent of Magical structures remain inoperable. Presently, the streets are flooded and dangerous. The militia advises non-essential personnel to avoid the CBD until the seawater can be drained and potential Mermen spawns purged.

At a Monday conference, Sydney authorities under Gunther Shultz announced that among the dead was the Magister of the Tower and the Master of the Ten presiding over Oceania—Lord Henry Kaine Foster Kilroy.

Lord Kilroy has been the presiding Magister of Sydney Tower for two decades; an incumbent since the Tower's inception. He is publicly known as a master Conjurer with a Dryad companion, gaining the moniker of "Deathless Henry". Currently, no official statements exist for the cause of Lord Kilroy's death.

Following the Sydney incident, the Mageocracy has placed all forces in Oceania on high alert. Sydney is the worst incident of terrorism waged against a Frontier since implementing the two-tier city system following the Beast Tide. The attack has paralysed the city and its surrounding regions, crippling the Oceanic Region's economic output. As the city readies to ship out its non-essential Mages, all travel to and from the city are banned. Travellers seeking emergency transit and special circumstance permits should contact the relevant authorities.

Seven days after the Sydney Incident, Magister Henry Kilroy is entombed in a ceremony attended by colleagues, presided over by his apprentices—the Paladin Gunther von Shultz and the renowned sorceress Alesia de Botton, who is still recovering from her injuries.

There was a full-colour page attached, showing Alesia in a wheelchair beside Gunther. Together with other prominent Magisters, the group carried a casket through St Andrews Cathedral, where presumably her Master's empty sarcophagus would be symbolically interred.

To her understanding, the symbolic ceremony was usually reserved only for noble members of the Mageocracy. To be inhumed and remembered in a place of public worship was a great honour, one that spoke loudly of the opinions the rulers of the Mageocracy held for Henry Kilroy.

In remembrance of the Late Magister Kilroy, Lord Gunther gave a eulogy to an audience of prominent figures, citing Lord Kilroy's contribution to establishing the Tower System, his gallantry in the Saurian War and the ongoing Coral Sea Conflict, and his immutable contribution to the prosperity Sydney had enjoyed before the incident. In closing, Lord Gunther promised to continue the legacy of his Master, dedicating his life to reconstructing Sydney and restoring it to glory and beyond. Officially, both Melbourne and Brisbane Towers had voted to move Lord Gunther into the position of Master.

Gwen scanned through the article, founding a particular quote extracted for a bleed-out by the reporter.

To my Master's loved ones who are unable to be here today, wherever you maybe be, however far you are from Sydney, our hearts are with you.

It was an innocuous line, but Gwen knew that her Master had no other family left and that Gunther had intended it for herself. With shaking hands, she clutched the paper and felt an indescribable pang wringing her heart.

"You okay?" Jonas' voice was kind and reassuring.

"Yeah." Gwen looked ahead at the spray striking the panes of the cabin. "I am fine."

The Island fast approached.

The party changed into long-sleeved skinsuits constructed of a breathable and pliable material in the final hour. The gunmetal bodysuit was of standard military issue, and so left an excessive length of Gwen's ankles exposed, giving the professional attire the unexpected likeness of jeggings. The amphibious hiking boots they had acquired from the Brisbane Tower's Quartermaster likewise had a low ankle line, which further ensured that a few centimetres of her flesh were left unprotected. Over her skinsuit, she wore a set of combat meshes, their pouches loaded with Healing, Antidote and Cure Disease potions.

When Morye emerged, Gwen was surprised to see that her father's musculature was as sculpted as the military men's, with nary an ounce of extra fat on his torso. With his preference for slightly loose shirts and casual wear, she'd always imagined Morye with an endearing little beer belly and a muffin top.

"Wow, this is much better than what my division used to ration," Morye noted with pleasure, pulling at the stretchy fabric on his thigh. "The suit is elementally attuned too? Very nice."

"What'd you used to wear?"

"Un-enchanted cotton." Morye wore a vest and pants over the skinsuit.

When her father put on pants, Gwen felt herself becoming conscious of the skin-tight suit. She had the mesh on top, but maybe she should also cover her bottom? That would impede her movement though, making her a prime target for branches, bushes and insects.

The island came into view with about a quarter of an hour left to their journey. Even from a distance, they could see that Abang was verdant with wildlife, with canopies that reached twenty to thirty metres stretching well above the island's base. Many of the archipelagos in the strait grew from volcanic eruptions, implying that its greenery hid caverns, hills, and sheer drops.

"We'll be mooring in an inlet at the south of the island. There should be a pebble beach there," Sukarno explained. "You have two nights, three days. Come Sunday, high tide, I go back to the mainland, that okay, hor?"

In theory, three days was ample time. The island was small enough to be traversed on foot in a day on paper, and an hour if they flew.

Jonas materialised a Message Device the size of his arm. This far out from the Divination Tower nodes, they’d had to bring a portable device. "We'll keep in contact as best as we can."

"Of course," Captain Sukarno inclined his head in acknowledgement, pulling the military-issue communicator towards him and inspecting it. "Of course, just remember I also need to consider the safety of the crew."

"Agreed." Jonas turned to Paul. "Let's get moving."

Paul drew a few glyphs over the party. "Mass Water Walk."

While Paul worked his Transmutation buffs, the trawler moved into the inlet, setting anchor a hundred metres or so from the shore. The weighty anchor struck the bottom with a thunk, stirring the white sand below, sending up a cloud of silt and silica. When the chain became taut, Sukarno indicated that the party was free to proceed.

For Gwen, water striding felt as though she was skipping to and fro from a series of trampolines. The Invocation created a layer of hydrophobic mana around the caster's lower body, lifting them from the liquid and propelling them from footfall to footfall.

Gwen almost lost her footing a few times, but the others caught her before she could strike the water and transform into a bedraggled spectacle. By the time they had reached the shore, she was sure that Sukarno and the crew were blue with lark at her comical incompetence.

A quick count at the beach and the party was at the tree line. The immediate vegetation was taller than they had anticipated now that they were face to face with its verdurous growth. The palms themselves reached dozens of metres, with girths as thick as a man's torso. Deeper into the canopy, sunlight became a rare luxury.

"Alright, form up!" Jonas commanded the party. "Gear check!"

Gwen stood to attention while the major fixed her combat straps and double-checked the bandoleers. Morye he left well alone, the Magus making it self-evident that he did not desire to be manhandled, citing that he would suit up in his lavish Salt Armour if it came to it.

"Alright, buff up!"

"Mass Bark Skin."

"Mass Resistance."

"Mass Aid."

"Mass Dark Vision." The Transmuter and Cleric of the party gave the group a once-over.

"Enhance the Constitution."

"Protection from Poison."

Gwen was singled out for a few extra buffs from both Paul and Taj, who likewise buffed themselves.

The party then formed into marching order. Taj led, his Earthen Mage armour moulded around him like a suit of half-plate. He was followed by Gwen, who was a staple DPS output with Elemental Lightning, especially when supplemented by her Void. The middle was held down by Morye, who could help Gwen with his Abjuration and hold his own. Their fourth and fifth men were Jonas followed by Paul, who was responsible for leaving behind trail markings for orientating his Translocation spells.

"Detect Magic!" Gwen incanted, her eyes taking on the soft glow of Divination.

She scanned the immediate distance in front of her up to thirty metres or so, finding a miasma of mana permeating the dense foliage like a stream of multi-coloured pendants.

"It's too dense. I can't see the trees for the forest." Gwen dispelled her Detection spell, after which she rested her eyes to flush the mana from her pupils.

"No helping it, then. Just be vigilant." Taj took the first step, swinging a machete enchanted with Keenness into the flora.

As they penetrated the rainforest, Gwen spotted exotic fauna darting for cover as they moved through the dense tropical jungle. A curious pair of white-beaked birds of paradise, wary of their invasive entry into their home, began to follow them, chirping and screeching every time Taj took his blade to the vines and trellises that barred their way.

Gwen noticed that some of the vines bled a strange, red substance instead of the white ichor normal to the strangler-creepers, attracting great hosts of insects such as ping-headed ants with jaws as wide as their bodies and orange-jacketed wasps that greedily dived into the crystallising carmine residue.

"Four degrees to your right," Paul said, correcting their vector, aided by his triangulation beacons. Taj adjusted his position and shifted the direction of their progress. In his hand, Paul held an enchanted compass that resisted Obfuscation sorcery, keeping a true north heedless of illusion or enchantment.

Their progress slowed as the loose groves of palm became dense coppices of white jasmine and moon orchid. Taj became more cautious as he hacked through the leafage, wary of falling crawlies and slithering things with many legs skittering away as they crashed through the foliage.

"Good grief, what's that smell?" Gwen uttered, unexpectedly assailed by a scent of horrid decay a few hours into their trek.

"Something rotten from the smell of it. Carrion?" Taj pulled apart a thicket of vines. "I think I see something."

They had arrived at a small clearing where an enormous bulb towered towards the dim light of the canopy. Its flower was already in full bloom, revealing a fleshy hood of purple pink that wrapped around a colossal ochre phallus towering up to three metres.

"It smells like… shit, actual shit." Taj marvelled. "Christ, what in the world?"

"Alright, form up, don't move. Eyes open. We'll check for hostiles and move around it." Jonas commanded. "Gwen?"

"Detect Magic!"

The jungle itself was verdant with rampant motes of Elemental Water and Earth. When she looked towards the flower, she noticed that it seemed to be coalescing dark, shadowy mana specks at its base.

"I sense… Negative Energy at its core." Gwen felt on the verge of a personal eureka. "To think Negative Energy exists in nature!"

"Life and death is a balance; that is the way of the natural world." Jonas scanned the jungle with his eyes. "If I recall, this is a death-flower, a Titan Arum, a carnivorous creature that feeds by attracting insects with its stench of decay—"

"Hold up." Gwen motioned for the group to stay still. "I see something coming."

"Warding Bond." Taj incanted softly, suffusing the party with a mute, earthen shimmer. Gwen recognised it as an Abjuration spell that shared damage between the caster and its targets, giving the entire party the ability to resist harm both magical and mundane.

In the next moment, a slithering, crawling stream of Elemental Earth, tinged with specks of Negative mana, roved from the canopies down towards the flower's vivid display of dusky elements.

In the eyes of the others, they saw a giant centipede a metre in length, as thick as Gwen's thighs, meandering past the small clearing and toward the stem of the Titan Arum. Like twin sets of perfectly synched piano keys in motion, its legs latched onto the base.

"A victim?" Gwen asked.

To their surprise, the centipede wasn't trying to climb the flower. Instead, it was attempting to borrow straight through the base towards the nectar of necrotic energy.

"Smart bugger." Paul grimaced. "Looks like a predator to me."

Gwen meanwhile, couldn't take her eyes off the coalesced core of Negative Energy. She recalled her growth in Lightning Affinity after Caliban had taken in Wanka. Could this also mean that she could supplement her Void element's affinity by consuming natural flora and fauna?

"I need that thing," Gwen announced to the group. "Can I get some cover fire if things go south?"

Morye looked up with annoyance but said nothing. "What're you thinking of?"

"Absorbing both flower and monster," Gwen confessed, though in a manner that misled their understanding of her methodology. "Caliban needs to eat live prey to mature."

The men saw the disgusted looks on each other's faces.

"Alright, go ahead." Taj double-checked his warding bond.

Opportunities for gaining resources for one's craft seldom appeared in mundane life. It was only through haphazard brushes with boons and banes that a Mage grew, rapidly gaining unique abilities by testing oneself against the Wildlands' chaotic flora and fauna.

"Cali!" Gwen whispered, kneeling close to the ground to release Caliban discreetly. To her surprise, it wasn't the spider form that appeared, but its usual serpentine likeness. Did Caliban adjust its appearance for the occasion? Mentally commanding Caliban to transform on the ship hadn't helped.

Silently, the slithering Caliban meandered through the tall grass, moving ever closer to the centipede busy at work. When it came within range, it turned its faceless mien towards Gwen imploringly.

"Want a hand?"

Gwen suppressed as much of the Invocation as she could before releasing it as a muffled blow just above the centipede's many eyes. "Lightning Bolt!"

A dull thud echoed across the immediate space of the clearing. A bolt of Lightning materialised from her fingertips, flashing across the distance between her and the centipede before striking it squarely on the head, momentarily stunning it.

"SHAA!"

A pair of flesh hooks launched from Caliban's maw, taking the centipede by the rear. Twitching wildly, it dragged the still paralysed creature towards its jaws. With a sucking sound akin to slurping ramen, Caliban drew the many-legged morsel into its lamprey's maw, effortlessly sliding its metre-long body into its bottomless gullet. Before its final demise, however, the centipede whipped around and bit Caliban's head. There was a crunch as the mandibles penetrated, followed by a soft empathic whimper from Gwen as her flesh throbbed.

The party winced as the last of the giant centipede's tendrils disappeared.

Taking a deep breath, Gwen then pointed Caliban to the base of the plant. In place of the now-deceased centipede, Caliban latched itself onto the thick stem and secreted a dark substance that instantly melted the fibrous plating of the Arum.

In a moment it broke through into the pool of feral scented briny liquid, spilling it over the forest floor. A wave of nauseating scent exploded over the party like the world itself had just farted wetly.

"Bloody oath, my eyes are watering." Morye covered his nose and mouth. "I can taste it. Why, Gwen? Can't you train like a normal Mage?"

The other three men were silent, bearing the singular assault of the exquisite stench with voiceless fortitude.

"Control Wind!" Morye incanted, making the air displace about them, sending the stench on high.

Gwen, meanwhile, was entirely unaffected. She watched through her mana-infused vision as Caliban's dark mass of Void-matter drained away the tenebrous motes of Negative Energy. With a final punt, Caliban punched through the base of the towering flower, collapsing the stalk.

"Caliban!" Gwen hissed, and the creature de-materialised, returning to its pocket dimension. Her complexion paled for a moment until she was positively ghostly, then the moment passed and she could once again sense her limbs.

The party watched the Titan Arum crash to the forest floor.

"Okay, let's keep going," Jonas commanded, looking around for any attention they'd have drawn. "Paul?"

"Six o'clock."

The group plunged again into the thick green sea, hacking and hewing through a green barrier that seemed never-ending.

"How’s our orienteering?" Jonas asked their Translocation specialist.

"Beacons active, all sound. No tampering," Paul returned after a moment's concentration.

The day waned as the group's slow progress continued. A few more encounters with ambitious local fauna resulted in some hairy moments of thrilling combat, though Jonas' healing touch ensured that the group remained in tip-top form.

By nightfall, the group estimated that it had made an ingress of about ten kilometres towards the centre of the island, at which point the towering Bayan trees began to make their presence known. With any luck, they should penetrate the region where the Dryads made their home the next day.

As most of the creatures on the island preferred nocturnal activity, it became too dangerous to move through the uncertain shadows cast by Dancing Lights and Daylight, which both dazzled the eyes and made discerning fauna from foliage impossible.

Gwen produced their shelter, the Portable Habitat, and placed an HDM crystal into the slot at its base.

She invoked the glyph of activation, at which point the habitat quickly grew into a portal that shimmered in the middle of the forest, invisible and shielded except to registered members of her party.

Gwen stepped into the shelter to find a large, multi-bedroomed bungalow formed from aluminium and glass in the Bauhaus style, sitting in an area that was grey and mute. Disturbingly, there lacked a sense of finiteness about the space. Even gazing past the confines of the bungalow's white fence gave her an uncomfortable feeling of being lost in a place of grey-nothingness.

"I think it's obvious that you shouldn't be wandering out into the ethereal world." Jonas proceeded past Gwen. "Give me the Decanter of Endless Water. I'll get the showers and the kitchen set up."

"There are showers?" Gwen could feel the humidity congealing like stick brine between herself and the skinsuit. The breathing fabric made her feel like she was wearing a film of warm water.

"Well, it only produces so much at once." He grinned as Gwen gushed at the thought of a cold shower under fresh water. "I'd recommend you use your own Conjuration cantrips if you're going to be in there for long. We need to fill up our supplies and make dinner as well, you know."

"I am just happy there's an actual shower." Gwen pushed past the door, the alien anxiety of the grey-void forgotten. "What's for chow?"

"Noodles, I'd imagine. Pasta and the like. Storage Ring Pot Luck?"

Gwen had the most extensive storage space and was thus the proverbial mule for their party.

To her body, the cool "house" made a jarring difference. One minute, she was trekking through a Black Zone jungle, then suddenly, they were in a safe pocket space with working stoves, showers and actual beds. She couldn't imagine what it would have been like if they’d had to find shelter in the trees, as her high school field trip had done. Was this the difference between adventuring with professionals, and adventuring with poorly equipped amateurs?

After a cold shower, she found Jonas humorously attired in an apron, serving bowls of aromatic Bolognese.

"Pepper?" he inquired.

"Parmesan too, please." Gwen indulged herself.

At night, the military men's snoring was like rolling thunder, softly vibrating the windows of the bungalow. Gwen was glad that her doors were stout oak, but even so, it hardly suppressed the diesel generators running in unison.

An alarm sounded at what must have been six or so in the morning, signifying the pocket dimension would soon end and its inhabitants ejected. A quick breakfast of cereal and rations ensued, then the members once again equipped themselves for the dense jungle.

Taj volunteered to venture outside first, but Gwen convinced them to substitute Ariel instead. When the little marten reported no immediate alarm or danger, the rest of the crew followed.

True to the Quartermaster's words, the clearing they'd cut had almost grown back entirely in the time they'd been asleep.

"How're the beacons?" Jonas asked Paul.

The Translocation specialist drew a few sigils in the air.

"A few left, enough for us to triangulate our way back. The missing glyphs start about three kilometres back, extending to the five-kilometre marker."

"Alright, let's get going."

Their progress became impeded an hour later when Taj halted at an unexpected clearing. It was an unusual sight, the blue sky above catching them all unexpectedly and stunning their Dark Vision buffs. They'd been hacking through the densest part of the jungle when Taj's machete had struck a tree, only to find the offending branches hollow and empty.

"Huh?" He stumbled forward as his weighted blow fell short, stepping unexpectedly into a clearing. It was a decidedly abnormal formation, for the thick foliage just gave way as though they'd crossed over an invisible threshold.

When the rest of the party joined the bewildered Taj, they saw an awful number of carcasses lying on the path ahead. Birds seemed to be the mainstay of the collected boneyard, scattering through the fallen logs and stripped branches devoid of leafy green matter. The shells of large insects filled the spaces where the dead birds' white bones languished, forming mounds of chitinous shells, creating a grisly game of guess the fauna.

"Gwen."

"On it. Detect Magic!"

Gwen made a mental note to learn more specific Detection Divinations as she turned her eyes upon the unnaturally cleared space. Above the ground were scattered motes of Elemental Air. Below, was a solid mass of roving Elemental Earth so thick and voluminous it was a carpet of ochre shifting to and fro.

"Incoming!" she called out. "Out of the clearing now! They're below us!"

As though answering her behest, a soldier ant emerged head-first, a three-inch-long length of obsidian mandibles slicing the air hungrily as it burst through the carrion. Another broke out a split-second later, followed by a dozen, a hundred, possibly a thousand innumerable heads of various shapes and sizes, all expertly armed with scythe-like jaws both large and small.

The party reacted immediately, turning about and making for the assumed detour.

"Eight o'clock, then five o'clock after two hundred metres!" Paul commanded.

Jonas materialised another Keen-enchanted machete, opening a path ahead. "Shield of Faith!"

The half-dome barrier of Positive Energy wasn't as effective against physical attacks as plain-old Mage Armour, but it would have to do.

"Shit, how the hell are ants moving so fast?"

The ants were a flood of chittering hunger. When Gwen took another gander in-between the motion of her pumping legs, she noted that they were the same pin-headed critters they’d previously seen, only now they were a roving tide of terror.

A handful of the ants fell on Taj from above, landing on his Mage Armour. The group heard a sizzling sound as the stink of oxidising earthen mana filled the air. To their woe, the needles on their heads sprayed a corrosive, milky liquid that wore away magical protection.

"Shiva's wrath!" Taj shook off the offending insect by dispelling and re-summoning the Mage Armour. "Can we go any faster?"

"Too much jungle!" Jonas called out from up ahead.

"We have to fight them! Shit! Arrrgh!" Paul shouted as his hand brushed against a tree haphazardly. "Fuck!" Whatever Paul had grasped with a wayward hand in the heat of the moment had secreted a substance that removed a layer of skin from his hand.

"Healing Word!" Jonas restored his Translocation Mage a second later.

As for Gwen, her repertoire of spells flashed across her mind. To her chagrin, none of her Evocations had sufficient AOE potential to clear millions of minuscule insects at once; that was one of the fundamental fallacies of the Lightning Element.

"Caliban!"

A slithering serpent slipped from a dark tear in thin air.

"Drop and roll!"

Caliban dived into the tidal wave of ants and began to roll like a child amongst the sea spray. Now almost a metre and a half in length, it carved a path through the ants. Curiously, the swarm seemed to know instinctively that the Void-filled Caliban wasn't food, and so parted from the slithering thing as though it was Void-Moses parting the ant sea.

Just as Gwen felt her chest fill with hope, a writhing sphere of ants, taking advantage of the height offered by the foliage, began to rain upon them, blooming into vicious sacks of acid and venom as they landed suicidally on the Mage's Shields. With the shimmering of their expanded Mana Shields, the Mage's progress became even slower, becoming impeded by the flickering of one another's projected, semi-spherical buffers as they tried to escape the swarm.

"We have to fight this out!" Jonas commanded them. "Watch for friendly fire, AOE at will. Taj! Explosive Warding Glyph! Maximum range centred on you!"

"Cover me!"

"Got it!" Gwen's shrill voice pierced through the male voices. "Deploying Shield!"

Gritting her teeth, she manifested a dark Shield of obsidian Void as Jonas began to draw the Repulsion Glyph. The dusky barrier flickered into being with a hiss, consuming all it touched. When the swarm of ants ran into its base, their bodies sizzled like white-hot metal quenched in bubbling fat.

Gwen's face immediately turned a shade of white. Not even the buffer energy left by Almudj was enough to mitigate the drain caused by hundreds of thousands of minuscule insects marching like kamikaze lemmings towards certain doom.

"Shit!" Jonas shot Gwen a bolt of Positive Energy, restoring some colour to her complexion. "Taj! How long?"

"Five seconds!"

"Don't bother. I'll take care of this." In the chaos of their frenetic actions, her father's voice pierced the chaos. "Empowered Transmute Salt!"

The group felt a surge of Elemental Water gather beside them like a gravity well, their skin instantly becoming dry as their hair grew encrusted with crystalline strings of white-pink Elemental Salt. Morye gathered the spell force in his hand and struck the ground beneath them, transmuting all within a radius of thirty or so metres into a world of rosy pinkness.

In the next moment, a sudden frost consumed the forest. All moisture, both flora and fauna, became fuel for the growth of saline snow.

The ants too, burst into crumbling masses of desiccated shells, a veritable river of black sand mixing in with the white.

Morye, his face a little paler for the effort, pulled his arm from the pillar of salt that had formed where he stood. His clothes, combat mesh, hair and exposed skin were all covered with his innate element.

"Should have just done that first thing," Morye noted casually as the others shook themselves from the unforeseen circumstance of their escape from imminent doom. "Gwen, don't do that Shield. It's the stupidest thing a Void Mage can do. You just lost life invoking it and lost life absorbing those ants."

"I had to protect our Healer," Gwen replied sulkily. If Morye could have resolved the problem, he should have just done so in the first place. Why the delay, why the running? Why the endangerment if he had a solution up his sleeve all along?

"You live and learn." Morye shrugged. "By the way, I think we're going to have company."

The once verdant jungle, now a world of snow sculptures, was beginning to crumble around them.

"Which direction?" Jonas wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever his intentions, Morye had saved them from a pyrrhic victory, and that was commendable in itself.

Morye tapped his nose. "I smell perfume."

There was a distinct sound of distorting wood, a sort of bizarre onomatopoeia, a groan that was at once the rapid growth of wood as well as the splintering of its fibres. Gwen had heard it many times before in the Grot, playing in the backdrop of her conversations and lessons with Henry as Sufina tended to her grove.

An island pine that had survived the salt apocalypse parted to reveal a giantess clad in yellow and bronze, her face a vision of loin-tingling allure. A full head of autumn tresses fell like a scintillating waterfall from her head, framing exquisite, leafy brows that defined a pair of burnishing eyes sparkling like emeralds.

"Oh," Jonas muttered. "Oh, dear."

"Whoa," Paul mouthed, his mouth becoming a perfect O.

Taj brushed the ants from his body and made ready to finish that Glyph of Warding.

Gwen felt her spine tingle with expectation and anticipation, a flood of passions flushing her cheeks. How should she engage the Dryad? Should she immediately mention Sufina and demand access to the Grot? Should they perhaps parley with it and negotiate the terms of their passage? She had given this moment days of speculation, but now that they had found themselves a three-metre-tall goddess of exquisite wood with bolted-on breasts, Gwen discovered that she had lost all words.

"Hey there, lovely."

A husky voice sounded beside them, full of confidence and without a smidgen of hesitation. The party turned to see Morye as they had never seen him before, upright, tall, at ease, his face chilled and handsome, his hair slicked back and flawless. When he smiled, there was an aura of vitality and self-assurance, elegant and confident.

"Hello there," the leaves rustled as the giantess spoke, her eyes gleaming as she looked down and saw Morye grinning at her. "Are you humans lost?"

"Lost and found." Morye made a subtle flourish as he bowed. Much to the party's consternation, he approached the Dryad without so much as manifesting a suit of Salt Armour. "But I could just as easily loose myself in your arms."

Gwen felt a glob of vomit forcing its way up her throat and into her mouth.

The Dryad seemed taken aback by Morye's candidness. "What can I do for you?"

"Ah, the things we could do would make the bush blush." Morye smoothly replied without breaking eye contact. "But for now, we would like to find a certain Mistress Sufina, though as for myself, I would be delighted to make your acquaintance while my companions did their duty."

Gwen wondered if Dryads could cringe because she was already sweltering with nausea.

"Oh, you're the Mistress' friends?" The Dryad's eyes lit up, casting a luminous glow on her face. "Come this way then, let me show you the way to the Grot. We'll have so much fun, I am sure."

The woods parted as the Dryad moved, opening a path for the party to follow.

Gwen forced the sputum down her throat and gathered her wits about her. She turned to see the others, Paul, Taj, and Jonas, looking towards Morye with faces full of admiration and worship.She bit her lips in frustration.

Men! What had she expected?

Chapter seven

O Captain

When the giantess reached a second clearing, it became evident to the party that a calamity had stuck the grove. Considering the prevalence of exotic orchids Gwen had seen on their way in, she had been expecting to find a resplendent paradise, the very apex of nature's crowning beauty. Instead, they found a ruined wasteland that was only now beginning to recover. Old roots and branches that had once formed into chairs and tables were charred and shrivelled, black and burnt and mangled. The Grot's dappled pavilion with its leaves and branches overhead was all but in tatters. The earth stank of rot, the soil ankle-deep in soot and decomposing mush.

"This is an… interesting Grot you have." Her father studied their hostess with scepticism. The man likely doubted the Dryad's intelligence, though Gwen felt that wasn't an undesirable quality in a nymph.

Beside them, the wood-sprite turned a stain darker. Gwen hadn't realised that Dryads could blush. She’d imagined one needed flesh and blood for that.

When the Dryad spoke, her voice was bitter and tragic. "Sufi's guests—uncouth, mortal louts, the lot of them. I invited them to tea out of the kindness of my heart and this is how they repaid me—by burning my lovelies."

"Brutes!" Morye said to the verdurous goddess. "Let me find a way to make it up to you."

Gwen, meanwhile, had cold sweat oozing past the fabric of her skinsuit. It had to be Yue. She was sorry for the Dryad's loss, but also thankful, for the garden's distressed state meant her friends had made contact with Sufina and so must be alright.

"Mistress of the Wood, may I ask where Sufina is now?" Gwen stepped into the clearing, imploring the Demi-human, full of hope.

To her surprise, the giantess turned her sculpted face toward Gwen and leaned in closer. "Mmm… what is that scent?" The Dryad came closer and closer until her nose was almost touching Gwen's. The woodland being was enormous, her head nearly the length of Gwen's torso, carved as though a grandmaster had taken his skills to a colossal trunk. Her lashes, tiny blades of grass, fluttered lovingly, drawing attention to two smouldering orbs of viridescence that seemed to possess infinite depth. It was an alluring but alien expression, for the woman's eyes had depthless pupils. "Your face…"

Gwen felt her skin crawl as the creature stalked about her, causing Taj and the others to ready their guards and half-incant spells under their breath. She too was prepared to let loose her Void-Shield or clad herself in Void-skin if the wood-woman were to fancy a sudden assault.

"How curious," the giantess muttered to herself. The Dryad carefully placed a tendril under Gwen's sculpted chin and lifted her face so that her eyes could fully purchase the dimensions of her appearance. "You remind me of Sufina's contractor and yet you're not?"

"We are… related," Gwen answered obscurely. "Can you direct us to see Sufina now? The matter is urgent."

The Dryad reared back, almost striking Gwen with her flailing vines. Gwen staggered back, mildly alarmed by the woodland lady's exhibitionism. Moving with the sound of lifting timber on a summer morning, the nymph peered towards the group's men with a gesture filled with promise. "Maybe they'd like to stay for tea while you make your visit? My sisters and I are starved for company."

When she spoke, a dozen more Dryads of different shapes and sizes appeared at the edge of the clearing, each sprouting garlands and trellises of vibrant hair that filled the grove with colour.

Where the men hadn't seemed so smitten before, now they were reddening with swelling anticipation. Even Jonas seemed to hold his breath as a red-headed Dryad made her acquaintance known by running a hand of white pine down the length of her washboard abdomen.

"Maybe they will." Gwen turned to face their hostess with an expression several degrees colder, muttering under her breath. "Are there mortals like me with Sufi?"

"There are." The Dryad didn't look pleased as she recounted an unpleasant story of uncultured savages ravaging her grove. "There was a little maniac of fire, a dainty midget Healer and a very strapping native, which Sufi cruelly denied us. I figure she must be wringing him dry right now."

Gwen turned to the party to ask for an escort, but the grinning fools that greeted her made her sigh deeply. Maybe it was the military life, but Taj, Jonas and Paul seemed especially vulnerable to the charms of the opposite sex, notably when they resembled the pin-ups she'd sometimes see in the dorms. The fact that the dryads were fully compliant, eager even, with a master carver's perfection, stripped the disciplined men of their senses.

Her father especially demonstrated an enviable ability to hold three to four conversations, flittering between compliment and flattery with the ease of a river eel sliding over mossy stones.

Gwen had told them not to initiate combat under any circumstances. Still, she hadn't anticipated that the Dryads were completely friendly or harmless, or that the men could initiate extra-curriculum contact.

Should she tell them off or should she let them be, she wondered, painfully aware of her junior status. Surely with Sufina as the Madam of the Grot, the men would be safe, if a little worse for wear—having survived the strange hazards of the island, there are worse fates than picking wood splinters from one's tender regions.

"I am going to find Sufina!" she called out to them. "You lot should be perfectly safe here."

"Want me to come with?" Jonas tore himself away from the redhead with the painful expression of immense self-sacrifice. By now, the lesser Dryads had grown furniture to cater for the men, twisting branches and roots to form divans, chairs and tables, creating linen from beds of emerald moss and jade turf. The flourishing transformation proffered the clearing with an eclectic air, making Gwen's nose wrinkle.

She sighed. That Jonas had posed a rhetorical question told Gwen that perhaps it was time for her to take a hike in the woods. There must not have been much privacy for men to perform maintenance on the ship.

Then there was the real reason—that Sufi's Grot was a place where only she could venture. She neither wanted the men to see nor for them enter a haven that was sacred to her Master, a private sanctuary ventured into only by Alesia, Gunther and herself.

Wistfully, the Dryad opened a path through the jungle and told Gwen to follow it until she reached a Bayan tree that had a clearing all to itself. Gwen followed the dark road of fecund soil, sensing her shoes sink into the rich loam with each step. After a few minutes, she came to a clearing, though there was nothing open about the space occupied by the singularly immense Bayan tree.

The familiar creaking of warping wood greeted Gwen's entrance.

A branch dipped from up on high and began to lower itself. From its tip, Gwen could see a familiar female figure striding forth on a pair of svelt stalks that ended in needlepoints tapered to a wasp's waist, adorned with modest bosoms of smooth blonde wood.

It was Sufina, but the Dryad was also not Sufina. Something that had made the Dryad her Master's companion had grown ambivalent in his absence. The warmth, the humanity, the little gestures of whimsy, were now absent.

"Greetings, Gwen," Sufina uttered, the stifled emotion in her voice punctuated with a slight tremor, as though she was having trouble recollecting the past. "Your Master is no longer among us."

"I know." Gwen felt her throat tighten, eyes a little warmer for the effort. She could feel the tremorous grief she'd left buried for a week rising from the dead and kicking apart the box she'd shut it in. "Sufina…"

"Would you like to see him?" The Dryad interjected.

At the wood woman's behest, Gwen felt as though a cat had snatched her tongue and fled with her words. "Master's remains… are here?"

"Yes." Sufina motioned for the entrance to the Grot. "Come."

Gwen wordlessly followed her erstwhile family member until she reached the entrance to the Grot. It was no longer the familiar sight of a portal artistically woven into elegant designs. The entry was now a dark hole caught between two slabs of sinuous roots, its degraded state an apt metaphor for their present circumstances.

The pair passed over the threshold and made their way deep within until they reached the heart tree, the place where Gwen had laid down Henry to be healed by Sufina's natural vitality. That was the last time she had seen her Master, and he rested in its centre now, just as she had left him, only pale, still and unmoving.

"Oh." Her body turned rigid and unyielding as her eyes fell upon the harrowing sight. "Oh— Oh gods."

As though moving through molasses, Gwen shimmied towards her Master's cadaver. One step, then another, then the rest of the distance in quick succession. Her hand immediately fell to his jugular, her other hand hovering just over his nose. Despairingly, there was nothing. The coldness of his flesh struck like eldritch frost.

"Master." Her chest heaved out of control, her heart struck by such arrhythmia that she could hardly draw another breath. Then something escaped from her throat, a long wail that echoed across the hollow chamber of the heart tree, now empty of its Master and occupant.

A sobbing mess, the inconsolable girl fell upon the chest of the unmoving man, all her dammed-up grief abruptly unleashed. Beside her, Sufina watched, her face as calm as a billabong that mirrored the still sky.

"I have preserved him, in so far as my magic allows. He will exist in gentle repose so long as my Grot exists," she informed Gwen, placing a hand on the shoulder of the grieving girl. "I'll take you to see your friends now. Would you like to leave a few words? I think he would have liked that. He had always liked your way with words."

Half-ruined with tears, Gwen looked up at the Sprite that had once laughed and indulged her with the delight of a child. Sufina's tone was distant and aloof, as befitting a powerful magical being. Creatures such as Dryads knew want, lust, greed, desire, hate and like, but empathy was a trait honed for predation. Unlike their Demi-human cousins, the Elves and Dwarves, or even the Orcs, they did not possess the capacity for what scholars called the Human Condition.

A few words?

What words could she leave Henry now? Her Master was no more; Henry was no more here than Sufina was the Sprite she had known for the last twelve months. If she were to leave words, it would not be for herself or Henry, but for Sufina, whose intact intellect would recall and mayhap even one day understand the lament enough to protect Henry's remains for centuries to come.

What could she say? What was Henry to her and Sufi? What words were fitting for a man who’d singularly changed their lives, whose constant affirmation and support had aided her in her darkest hour? What would resonate with Sufina's alien heart?

Perhaps there was something.

Gwen couldn't recall the recital in its entirety, but she couldn't think of a better way to commemorate their bond.

"O Captain, my Captain…' she began, fossicking through her memory for the words. After the initial stutter, the words came to her.

"O, Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,

For you, bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores—and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead."

The sentiments of Whitman far exceeded her circumstances, but it was all Gwen could eulogise. Henry had been her Captain and he had given his life in their defence. She was his torchbearer now, like those who’d come after Lincoln, but where would she start? How would she even begin to live up to her Master's hopes? For now, all that crossed her mind was wrapping her fingers around Sobel's white neck.

"O, Captain…" Sufina appeared to be digesting the words. "My Captain. Fallen cold and dead."

The wood-nymph allowed the words to roll off whatever Dryads used for a tongue. Gwen observed the doll-like woman as she repeated the words, each time engendering a shiver.

"I will let Gunther and Alesia know, Master." She returned her attention to the reposed Master of Sydney. "We siblings will come and visit you, all three of us, in the future."

"Come." When Sufina spoke again, her voice no longer had that burred feeling of apathy. "It's time to meet your friends."

Gwen found Elvia and Whetu in a walled garden.

Whetu looked as though he was bored out of his mind. The poor Kiwi Abjurer was building himself a precarious house of Punamu cards.

Elvia, golden and resplendent as always, appeared happy and hale. She was still wearing her competition uniform from the attack on Rosebay, though it looked to have been laundered since. The diminutive girl was playing catch with what appeared to be a flower sprite of some kind, tossing a ball of Positive Energy to and fro as the creature skipped across the lawn.

"EVEE! Oh, my dear Evee!" Gwen sprinted from the entrance at a bolt, responding to feelings she had not realised were so acute and advanced.

Elvia's face showed agog surprise as Gwen tackled her from the ottoman stool and pushed her onto the lawn, burying Elvia's face between her bosoms.

"Gwenmmph!" Elvia cried out, wrapping her arms around Gwen's waist, squeezing with all her might. "Oooivemiffedyew!"

"Ke kee!" The little Sprite that had been playing with Elvia fled into the tangles of her hair.

"Oh, I've missed you too!" Gwen pulled herself away to kissed Elvia thrice on the forehead. She felt such joy that she was about to give Elvia another hug when someone beside them coughed.

"Hello." Whetu waved at her.

"G'day," Gwen nodded back, for her hands were busy.

Elvia writhed in Gwen's arms, her head still buried against her. The petite girl's face grew thoroughly flushed as it pressed against her friend. "Gwennie! I—I can't breathe!"

Gwen relented, panting slighting for having exhausted her bottled-up emotions. Between the extreme grief of her Master and the explicit joy of seeing Elvia, she was emotionally exhausted.

"Where's Yue?" Gwen asked, looking around. "Is she alright?"

"She's on another level," Sufina answered from behind. "Your pyro friend was beyond maddening."

"Oh?" Yue's rage did not require any stretch of the imagination. "Sorry, Sufina."

"Gwen," Whetu said, retracting his house of pounamu. "Does you been here mean we're getting out?"

"I'd presumed so." Gwen turned to Sufina. "Can we leave, Sufina?"

"You have a ship?"

"We do."

"Good. Get your pyromaniac away from my Grot," Sufina spat with a scowl.

At her behest, the reconvened party descended a flight of stairs interlaced from the Bayan tree's roots. As the tunnel burrowed downward, they could hear a dull thud striking the earth at irregular intervals. Elvia made an awkward expression when Gwen asked what was causing the horrid racket, because "it" was probably Yue.

"I am cooling off your friend's temper." According to the Dryad, Yue didn’t like that Sufina had kept them "incarcerated" in the Grot's safety. In her own words, given time, she could surely burn a six-lane highway through the greenery to the sea.

Though Sufina had to admit that Yue presented a reasonable goal—given that the island had no megafauna and consisted mostly of poisonous and carnivorous plants and insects, she could hardly allow the madcap psychopath liberty to wreak havoc. When told that she would not be allowed to do as she pleased, the Battlemage had challenged Sufina to a duel, insisting that she was trying to trap them.

Sufina had obliged, bones had been broken and then mended.

It was under these circumstances that Gwen and Elvia found their friend, her attire in shambles, scorched here and there and bleeding from several places, battling a gnarly Root Elemental in an underground arena.

The summoned creature was an interactive dummy, ceasing its offence whenever Yue exhausted herself and resuming its offensive as soon as she recovered. For seven days and nights they had squared off, Yue drawing as much mana as she could from meditative sleep, Sufina's nourishing mead and the cache of mana crystals she had in her small Storage Ring.

With smugness, Sufina explained that the Root Elemental was, in fact, a part of the Bayan heart-tree, and was immortal while within the confines of the Grot. Tired of her bickering, she had set Yue up to blow off her bottled rage accumulated from Debora's betrayal, trading precious mana for silence.

When Yue saw Gwen appear at the threshold of the arena-like cavern, she sizzled off her spell and bolted toward them at full pelt, still energetic after a week of ceaseless combat. Her eyes though, betrayed her frayed nerves, for they were two panda rings of puffy flesh.

"Gwen! You're alright! You're okay! You're safe!" Yue shrieked across the arena, diving headfirst into Gwen's arms. Taking both of her friends, Gwen invited Elvia to join a long-desired huddle.

"I know this might not be the right time…" Yue pulled herself away after she ran out of breath. "But where is—"

"Debora's dead," Gwen announced immediately, reading her friend's one-track mind.

"Dead? How?"

"Digested slowly by Caliban."

Yue pumped her fist in the air. "Hell, yes! I wish I could have watched. How about Elizabeth? The Void Mage? The Mermen?"

"Not good. Sydney is an ongoing concern."

Beside her, Elvia's eyes were as large as bluebells in full bloom.

"Gwennie, Caliban ate Debbie?" Elvia spluttered, her complexion turning pale as a sheet. "Like, bones and all?"

"It's a little more complicated than that." Gwen went on to explain to the frantic Elvia. "There's a sordid tale to be told for sure, but we'll have plenty of time on the way back. For now, let's get out of here."

"What, we can leave now?" Yue turned to Sufina with a catty expression.

"Gwen has a ship and a whole party of Senior Mages." Sufina returned Yue's catty expression with a resting bitch-face of her own. "Now get out of my Grot!"

Yue turned to wave to the Elemental that she'd been sparring with for a week. "I guess this is goodbye, Woodie."

To their surprise, the Elemental waved back.

"Woodie was originally made by Henry to be your sparring partner, Gwen," Sufina explained to the girls. "At least someone got some use out of it."

At the mention of her Master, the jubilation of the moment was murdered and left for dead. In silence, the four of them returned to the upper level of the Grot, bypassing the Heart-tree and the treasured body of Henry Kilroy.

Then, without warning, the dappled light of day dazzled their eyes.

Elvia had acclimatised to living underground for the last seven days. When they emerged again into the sunlight, she clasped Gwen's hand and squeezed nervously.

Meanwhile, Yue fell to her knees in triumph. "Yes! FUCKING natural light! Blessed open air! We're finally out!"

Whetu seemed stunned by the unexpected deliverance. "Boy, I am happy to be out. Imagine that, a life without Hungi Feasts. Without root beer. Without Feijoa Cider! Nothing but Golden Mead."

Watching the grinning Maori, Gwen wondered if Whetu felt homesick for Auckland Tower after all their wayward adventures fighting competition matches, surviving a city-destroying conspiracy, then surviving a tropical island full of century-old cougars.

After giving Elvia another pat to ensure that her blondie was really there in the flesh, she turned once more to Sufina, who had watched the girls with a complicated expression. Sensing a strange inspiration, she tapped into her astral body and felt for Almujd's Essence deep within her animus. Drawing on instinct, she gathered the emerald energy and compressed it into a ball, willing it to coalesce.

"I still have some of that life-force you loved so much," Gwen offered the prize to Sufina. "Thanks for taking care of my friends."

Sufina eyed the viridescent Essence; a wet pink tongue darting between her lips hinted at her desire. "Thanks." She absorbed the mote with her finger.

"Do you want to keep exploring the outside world?" Gwen metaphorically tested the lukewarm waters with her toes. "I think our Master would have liked that."

"I can't be moved that easily." Sufina's eyes moved from the girls towards Gwen, facing two shimmering orbs of emerald on amber. "I refuse to be contracted to another Mage, not after Henry."

"Is it because of elemental compatibility?" Gwen asked. To have Sufina as an ally would surely be an incredible boon.

"Irrelevant." Sufina raised a hand and grew a small flower from her palm. She allowed it to bud and bloom before depositing it in Gwen's hair, behind her ear. Gwen noticed Sufina herself had the same flower on her opposite ear. From afar, they must look like fraternal twins, one flesh and blood, the other a delicate wooden replica. "Gwen, when Henry died, and our contract absolved, I lost a part of myself. It was a part of the spell, I know, but it had been a part of me for so long. You should know that I am still in possession of almost three decades worth of shared memories. But…"

Sufina turned toward the middle distance. "I don't feel it, Gwen. I want to cherish those memories, but they're someone else's now. What Henry provided for me, the emotions and the feelings, they're gone. The 'Sufi' you knew has been unmade."

"Sufina." Gwen moved to touch her hand, but the Dryad drew away.

"I need to stay here," Sufina announced to the open air, almost as a declaration. "If I am away from him, my memories will fade faster."

Gwen ignored her earlier rejection and embraced her doppelgänger, feeling Sufina's recalcitrant body press against her own. "Okay," she said, for once lost for words.

"You may visit." Sufina watched Gwen retract her embrace without particular emotion. "I would like to see Gunther and Alesia, I think. I watched them grow from mewling children to adults, after all."

"I'll let them know and we'll come together in the future," Gwen agreed. "So, this is goodbye?"

"For now." Sufina turned back to her Grot. "The others will open the way for you."

Gwen watched the Dryad stalk back into the darkness of the Grot. The portal shimmered for a moment, then faded, revealing naught but the exposed roots of an enormous Banyan tree. She spun to address the others, who'd been watching them.

Elvia appeared frail but in good cheer, her blonde hair plastered to her face by the jungle's humidity. A little Sprite-thing poked from her hair and watched Gwen with luminous eyes.

Yue was sweaty but felicitous. Her body was rightly battered, but the girl was happier than she looked.

Whetu looked like himself, but skinnier and more mellow than Gwen had recalled. There was a hungry look in his eye that suggested he couldn't wait to be feasting on something other than Dryad milk.

"Shall we?" She motioned for the far clearing. "Home awaits."

The reformed party found Taj, Paul and Jonas not far from the path that led back into the clearing. She hoped that in the several hours she'd been gone, the men had not engaged in haphazard coitus with the wood nymphs.

Nonetheless, they had been fed berries and mead made by the ladies of the woods, playing house with the doll-like damsels. More than anything, it was a strangely comical sight—three military men sitting rigidly upright, surrounded by a plethora of flowering ladies with laughter like tingling bells and trilling birds, asking them questions about the outside world.

"Hey, guys! We're back!"

Jonas bolted upright as though he'd been caught doing something dirty red-handed. "Oh, thank God you're here!" He moved from the table, the red-headed dyad still hanging onto his arm. "Any longer and they'll be putting us to pasture."

The other two men stood as well, trying their best to shake off their admirers.

"Yue!" Paul snapped a smart salute, which was returned by Yue expertly.

"Good to see you guys, I am happy you all came to pick me up."

"Elvia."

"Hi, everyone, I am very thankful for your efforts to retrieve us."

"Don't mention it."

Gwen scanned their surroundings.

"Where's Morye?"

The men whistle innocuously.

"He went off with the giantess, the elder Dryad… somewhere."

Gwen had expected as much, but to think that her father was somewhere right now being put to stud was too much. Unbidden, she took hold of her Evee to dispel the horrid vision.

"Eek!" Elvia yelped as Gwen caught the mind-scrubber in her arms and squeezed her shoulders.

"Kee! Kiki!" A vaguely humanoid Sprite tried to repel Gwen by striking her with a leafy burst of Positive Energy.

"What is that thing?" Gwen spluttered, batting away Evee's leafy protector.

Elvia looked sheepish. "I contracted it," she whispered under her breath, barely audible, her face as red as a beet.

"You contracted what?" Gwen pawed her chest mesh for the Cure Disease potion. Hopefully, it would be enough to cleanse Elvia of whatever she had picked up in the woods. "Don't worry, a shot of this and it's going to be A-okay."

The group stared at Gwen dumbly.

"She contracted a spirit, Gwen," Yue pointed out loudly.

Gwen's brows furrowed and realisation dawned. "Oh, a contractual spirit! Like Alesia's Crimson Caracal?"

"Yes!" Elvia affirmed her relationship with the Sprite.

"Ki-ki!" The Sprite raised its head in defiance.

Gwen awkwardly laughed with them before turning back to the matter at hand. "So, anyone knows where Morye is?"

"Morye, as in your dad?" Yue raised a sceptical brow. "What's a useless no-good old man like him doing here?"

"Plenty, trust me," Gwen replied with a heavenward roll of her eyes.

"So what's the plan?" Jonas pulled his arm from between the wooden vice that was the redhead's hills and valleys. "I am sorry, miss. We have to go."

"Stay!" The junior Dryad seemed to be capable of only simple speech. "Play with us! Feel good!"

Gwen half-expected a "We love you long time" from the Dryad but chose to ignore the raunchy display. Instead, she pointed to the only path leading away from the Grot. "That's our way out. Let's skedaddle before it's overgrown again."

"Agreed," the others replied.

The group checked their gear and politely asked the Dryads to leave them alone. Whetu especially had to fight them off bodily with a few Punamu barriers. The sun was reaching a low orbit, but with any luck, they could be halfway out by nightfall and reach the beach first thing in the morning.

"Tell Morye we're heading for the ship," Gwen informed one of the blonde dolls still trying to convince Paul to stay.

The Dryad ignored her.

Gwen dismissed the snub and moved toward the trail.

Soon they would be out on the beach.

From the beach, they would retreat to the City of Singapore.

Then, one freight ship later, they would be home.

Chapter eight

Respite

Morye held himself against a branch to brace his frail and exhausted lower body, now possessing the rigidity of wet spaghetti. He grinned with satisfaction, for though there was now a part of himself that was a bruised, doughy mess, the affair was a big tick off the bucket list.

In his mind, an indistinct amount of time had passed in Dryads' Grot. Wiping the nectar from his lips, he touched his chin gingerly. There was the bristly spikiness of a five-o-clock shadow rubbing his palm like coarse sandpaper.

How long had he ploughed the land to seed the crops? He hadn't felt this drained since meeting Helena back in their university days.

Here and there in the grove, flowery Dryads still milled about languishingly. A few of them drifted Morye's way, but even he felt too sluggish to keep on trucking after such a marathon. Though he looked hale, he knew he was running on empty, riding on fumes, squeezed out like a desiccated cucumber.

"Where's everyone?" he asked a redhead with lovely eyes and a vacant expression.

"Gone!" the nymph-girl lamented, her eyes predatorily scanning over Morye's lower body. "Play?"

"Er… not right now. Where did my party go?"

"They went that way. You sure?"

More cursed under his breath. The others must have abandoned him. The nerve! He would now have to catch up and hope that the boat remained anchored when he arrived.

"Enhance Constitution! Enhance Agility! Expeditious Retreat!" He activated some self-buffs and fled where the Dryad had indicated. It was going to be an uneasy trek with little light, for the sun looked about as exhausted as he was.

Behind him, the woods parted.

"Where art thou going?" a shrill, feminine voice called out, not too dissimilar from the milk-curdling pitch a Helena always effected. A verdurous dryad, glossy with effort and gloriously alluring, crashed into the clearing, heaving voluptuously. "There's life in you yet, dearie!"

Suddenly, the fatigue of his aching muscles no longer mattered.

Morye bolted like a shot stag.

Deep within the Banyan Grot, Sufina returned to her heart tree, where she had grown an elaborate sarcophagus for her former companion. She watched stoically as the roots wove themselves into place, crossing over and melding into a single block of stout ironwood that grew around Henry's body.

"O Captain, My Captain." Sufina allowed her voice to fill the air, hearing its tremor reverberate across the uncertain space of her Grot.

Not so long ago, the place had been full of human voices.

There was first Gunther, debating loudly with Henry and seeking advice. There was Alesia, pretending to be young and coy even though she was thirty years old, trying to get out of trouble. Then came Gwen, forever eager for knowledge and the next spell, speaking in that strange way of hers and asking questions that came out of the blue.

Now there was nothing; there would be no visitors for the foreseeable future. For the first time in a long time, she would be alone. Alone in the deep dark, with nothing but a cadaver memento.

Slowly, with great care, she raised Henry's body onto a wooden dais.

There was an unobtrusive tink as something fell onto the floor. Sufina willed a tendril to retrieve the object for closer inspection.

It was a shimmering scale about a thumbnail in size, scintillating with a mid-shower rainbow's vibrant hues. She had seen it before—it belonged to the girl, and through it, the girl-Mage had channelled the primordial mana of creation itself.

It was spent, though a seed of life remained, awaiting revitalisation.

Instinctively, Sufina placed the scale upon her left breast, allowing the woodgrain dermis there to open and swallow the relic, sending it to rest beside her Creature Core. As her life force worked to nourish the object, she could feel a slight tingle informing her that her vital energies had begun cultivating its severed connection.

It was a strange, indescribable feeling, one that the Dryad no longer could adequately process, but the sentiment lingered and somewhere within her anima, she recognised the heartwarming sensation.

It was the feeling of no longer being alone.

Paul contacted Sukarno before they broke free from the tree line.

The Captain answered the Message happily, ecstatic that the party were returning so soon. Unlike the landing party, he had little means to fend away curious creatures that lurked in the shallow bay. After all, these islands were said to be inhabited by man-eating wood Nymphs. He knew for sure that should any fishermen be lured by the bathing nymphs onto the island would never be seen again.

When the party broke out from the tree line, Sukarno was further surprised to see that it had grown. They’d been joined by a small blonde girl who looked refreshingly adorable, a giant Polynesian with facial tattoos and a Chinese girl with an outrageous figure.

For a moment Sukarno had to wonder if the party had kidnapped some young Nymphs from the island. He had heard that the upper echelons' fabulously wealthy men and women had exotic tastes. No matter how exquisite or vivacious Human girls could be, those with money always turned to stranger thrills.

When the returning party came closer to the boat, it became evident that the returnees were sorceresses.

"Hoi! I am happy to see that you are all safe." He did a quick headcount as the Mage known as Paul cast Water Walk on the party and escorted them across the shallows towards the boat.

Gwen, their "leader", embarked first, hoisting herself dextrously over the gunwale. "Good evening, Captain. I am afraid we have a few extra passengers."

"That no problem. Everybody safe; that's what's important." His eyes scanned the party.

"Huh, where is your father? He okay?"

"I am sure he's fine." Gwen looked behind her where the jungle was growing back with visible progress. "When can we go?"

"You want to leave now? Or we wait for him?"

"Is there a problem with travelling at night?"

Sukarno shrugged.

The girl measured her fingers against the setting sun. As taught by Surkano, she deduced that they had two more hours of daylight, then one more in the blue hour before the sun sunk into the sea.

"Given him until we change. After that, we start the engines. If Morye doesn't show, it means he's chosen to live life as a seed stud with the Dryads."

"O that sounds like an enviable way to die lah." Sukarno chuckled, his suggestive grin split ear to ear. "Okay, we wait a bit more."

He envisioned the island populated with little Morye saplings and couldn't help but laugh. For the girl, however, the revelation was of such exquisite revulsion that she gagged.

Thankfully, Surkano's Captain’s cabin had a shower.

Subtly, Gwen informed the others of her intention for a hearty cleanse, then they set to work. Feeling a little guilty for always having first dibs, she asked the men if they wanted to wash first, passing over her Decanter of Endless Water. To her disappointment, Whetu took her up on her insincere offer.

As they waited, Gwen gathered Elvia and Yue at the trawler's aft, where the trio faced the blue yonder and related the tale of what had happened between Debora, Faceless and herself.

"Fuck me!" Yue articulately her dismay. "A god damn shapeshifter tried to put the moves on you while we were at your grandpa's?"

"Oh Gwennie, I am so sorry." Elvia cuddled her, despite the filth.

"It's okay, Evee. I survived. It's over, at least for now." Gwen sighed with relief. "Elizabeth is somewhere. Master is gone. Gunther has taken over the Tower in Sydney. The city is rebuilding. I think we can all lay low for a while and focus on this refugee business."

"You reckon the Serpent ate Sobel?" Elvia asked.

Gwen shook her head. "She lost all that life force she'd been collecting though, stolen from two million people, not including the Mermen, so I'd say she's going to be out of action for a while. That is unless her Void magic completely differs from mine."

"What's the refugee thing you're talking about?" Yue asked.

"According to Richard, we'll get assigned to tier I or tier II cities, depending on our talents." Gwen chewed her lower lip uneasily. She wasn't sure either. Could it mean that Yue, Elvia and herself wouldn't be able to stay together? Then again, she could appeal to Gunther or the Tower to intervene. It was good having friends in high places.

The broader issue wasn't Yue or Elvia, but their families. Gwen doubted the Tower would be so generous as to cater for two entire households, much less provide for Yue's mother, who was an NoM. Elvia's family, likewise, probably had their plans. Maybe they could take this opportunity to return to Europe, a place their patriarch had dreamed of returning to since losing their land and migrating to Australia. As for Whetu, he would probably return home to his Master in Auckland.

"Hmm." Yue tapped her fingers on the warm metal planking. "I think I'll stay with Alesia. How badly did you say she was wounded?"

"Bad, though she's recovering just fine," Gwen assured her friend. "The Medical Mages say she should be back to normal after a year or so. It's more so her sundered astral body that needs time. It was badly damaged when she took on her Djinn form. Physically, she's probably going to be fine in a few weeks."

"That's good to hear." Yue breathed out. "I'd have to tell Mum and Dad, although I think that works out. Dad's just a regular Joe and Mum's an NoM, so I doubt they'd even send us away. There'd be no profit in it. What city would want a nobody and an NoM?"

"Let's hope so," Gwen replied. If Yue's family could stay in Australia, she could probably pull some favours and have them well looked after. If nothing else, they could stay with Surya and be safe while the city recovered.

"I don't want to go to Europe," Elvia said suddenly, likely realising that the chance that her family would take up the opportunity was high. To Gwen's knowledge, a family the tier of the Lindholms would be welcome anywhere, at least as refugees. Her family would have to scrape by and bury their heads in work for a few years, but after a decade or so, they could re-attain the same life they had in Australia, only in a tier I city, mayhap even in ancestral Austria.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Gwen said confidently, squeezing Elvia's reddening cheeks. "At the very worst, you can stick with me. We'll take rooms in the Tower and us three can start a cabal. We'll be the three Sorceresses of Sydney!"

"You don't think they'll send you somewhere?" Yue questioned.

"I'll stick with Gunther and Alesia, I think." Gwen nodded to assuage Yue's paranoia. Just as the words left her lips though, she felt the skin-tingling, hair-raising premonition of Divination, indicating something unpleasant was about to happen.

"Taj?"

"On it. What do you sense?"

Gwen scanned their surroundings, checking for danger.

CRASH!

The tree line on the opposite shore burst out in an explosion of cascading salt.

Morye came springing out at full pelt, a white blur stomping across the beach. Behind him, a giantess, emerald with lascivious beauty, came striding forth in all her nubile glory like a primal fertility goddess.

"Morye, where art thou going?" The Dryad reached out, tendrils whipping across the air.

"Salt Shard!" Morye spun and let loose a hail of jagged shards, cutting her tendrils to shreds. The salt Mage ran onto the water without stopping, his footfalls turning the seawater into chunks of bobbing crystals. Using these as a platform, he ran straight across the shallows toward them.

The Dryad stopped at the edge of the shallows. for the island was the extent of her domain.

Meanwhile, the crew was in an uproar, taking pictures and pointing wildly, marvelling at the enormity of the Dryad's voluptuous display. The sunset, the seawater, the salt and the Dryad—there would be tall tales to tell at the bar for sure.

Morye landed onto the trawler's foredeck with a flourish, the Mage Armour cascading from his body to reveal tattered attire that looked as though it had been ravaged.

"O God, that smarts!" he hissed as the salt worked its way into his wounds. His back looked as though he’d been pulled through a sandpaper wringer. "Jonas, give me a Healing Word! I think she took some of my flesh as souvenirs. Arrgh! Thsssss!"

As Elvia had been closest to Morye, the kind Healer opened up with Cure Wounds. Gwen could see that her friend's spell was more potent than before now that the plant-Sprite's Positive Energy supplemented her casting. With Elvia's tender touch of restoration in place, Morye's skin began to heal rapidly. Gwen's father calmed his nerves and turned to look upon the angelic little nurse with eyes full of benevolent thankfulness, giving her a glinting grin of confidence.

"I could be wounded a thousand times over if someone like you was there for me at home," He said to Elvia with solemn eyes. Immediately, the man’s tone changed, and Gwen saw in his father’s eyes the hunting gaze of a predator. "Dearest, may I have your name?"

"Void Bolt!"

A bolt of eldritch energy, darker than black, zinged past Morye's face with a smell of rot and decay, shaving off a millimetre of skin from his cheek. It all happened so fast that his Mage Shield sprung up a split-second too late. When the blood began to ooze, Morye’s face twitched.

"Don't," Gwen said to her father sternly, like a master admonishing a nasty dog. "Just. No."

Elvia stuck out her tongue and healed Morye's facial wound. Morye appeared alternatively furious and guilty at once; he wanted to admonish Gwen for daring to endanger him with a Void spell. He had to have realised that this lovely young thing must be one of his daughter's dear friends—the very object of their rescue. Gwen almost immediately regretted the impulsive assault, though she kept her face highly indignant.

"Don't do Void," Morye reproached her sternly, his eyes darting away to avert her critical gaze. "It's not good for your health."

Gwen's hazel orbs traversed from her bloody father to Elvia, whose face was scarlet from cheek to cheek, to the dryad sex-goddess who was still loudly pining for Morye, jumping up and down to entice his return.

"Wow, Mr Song, you are a piece of work," Yue commented.

"Watch your mouth, Ms Bai, lest I tell your father," Morye snubbed her back, then added a few more empty admonishments. "Or your mother."

Yue's eyes narrowed dangerously; the air grew hotter.

Gwen took both Yue and Elvia by the arm and pulled them towards the lower deck. Maybe it was best to keep these two upstarts away from one another. If they kept at it, the boat would probably never make it back to Singapore.

Above, Sukarno gave the order to set sail. The mana engine thrummed to life and the ship began to move.

Once Whetu had returned to the upper deck, it was the girls' turn to shower. As close as their friendship professed to be, they weren't close enough to share a communal shower in a cramped cubical. Gwen went first, stripping off her skin suit and packing away her stinking gear.

When the girls emerged finally from the cabin with their new summer attires, the men's eyes lit up.

"I want a daughter," Paul said seriously to his friends. "I think I am beginning to understand the happiness of being a father."

Jonas nodded, likely dreaming of sweet nothings with Alesia.

The girls did not mind the men's benevolent attention, smiling, laughing and joking as the ship broke through the water with the cool, briny breeze of the sea washing away the forest's mildew.

The trawler made it about thirty minutes away from the island when a sea-sprout erupted from the otherwise calm ocean, showering the unsuspecting crew with fishy water. The boat skidded to a halt with a violent lurch, dipping a little as a massive Merman leapt onboard with a scowl.

The bedraggled crew looked at the Merman incredulously. They were outside the Shield Barrier, that was true, and they were only a small-sized ship, but they had a full complement of Mages! The sheer force their small vessel possessed could purge an island, much less deal with a Merman raid.

Expecting the Mages would resolve the matter, Surkano's crew turned to look at Gwen and her friends, now drenched from head to toe and bedraggled with bits of seaweed. Only a moment prior, the girls had been discussing Singapore and branded goods in the craft market. The next moment they had arrived at a fish stall.

"Hurr! Hur!" The Merman brandished a coral trident. The bestiary said that though magical creatures could naturally sense mana, only those with high cunning and intelligence levels could truly hone their detection skills. This specimen looked as though someone had migrated a barracuda onto a bipedal body so was likely not the intelligent subtype.

Three Senior Combat-Mages, one Salt Magus, four junior Mages and Captain Sukarno turned to face the haughty Merman with sympathetic grins.

The creatures' eyes lit up when it saw Gwen and the girls, for Mermen liked their flesh tender and youthful. Its bulbous eyes moved over the group as its lips curled to reveal rows of dagger-like teeth.

"Hur hur!" It called out.

Two more Mermen just like it emerged from the sea and leapt onto the decking with wet slaps from their finned feet. It turned to regard Gwen with as arrogant an expression as seafood could muster.

"How do you usually deal with this?" Jonas asked Sukarno.

"I chase them off, or give them some crystals, and they leave us alone." The Captain cut the feed to the mana engine. "Maybe it thinks we're out fishing?"

Gwen brushed her dark hair away from her face, revealing glowing, electric eyes that shone in the dusk of day. Beside her, Yue was already steaming, the seawater evaporating from her body. Whetu stepped forward, but Jonas halted the pounamu Abjurer. The girls needed to blow off steam and one should never refuse martyred sashimi.

"Ariel!" Gwen called out, her mind buzzing with possibilities. "Keep it still. I need to test something."

A bolt of lightning transformed into a massive mongoose that tackled the Merman before it could react. From its teeth and claws, jolts of paralysing lightning penetrated the creature's slimy scales and nailed it to the floor, sending electrical sparks skittering over the deck.

The other two Mermen roared in defiance, hopping mad that instead of a gift in fish or crystals, these sailors would dare attack them.

Yue, who'd been steaming with pent-up fury since a moment ago, exploded with gouts of orange-red flames that flash-dried her maxidress.

"Scorching Rays!" With a practised hand, Yue manifested four intense beams of flame in an instant. A burst of pink steam exploded over the iron decking as one Merman exploded into gibs of roasted flesh. The other had time to scream before it sizzled.

Meanwhile, Ariel had the first Merman pinned down in its jaws and was slowly crushing the fish by clamping its sinuous neck.

"Hur? Hur! Hur?" The fish huffed distressingly. Likely, imminent death wasn't what it had expected. From the looks of its fishy expression, it seemed to be suggesting that the meeting was an honest mistake and that it had only intended to buy some fish from the lovely humans.

Gwen turned to Morye. "How close do I need to get?"

Morye shrugged.

Gwen clicked her tongue and stepped within melee distance of the Merman. From up on high, she could see its beady eyes rolling in its sockets, begging for mercy. The Void sorceress wrinkled her nose and banished her sympathy. "Do it."

The thing's spinal fluid sprayed into Ariel's mouth. Her mongoose whined. Fish wasn't its favourite— it preferred snakes. Beside the grimacing mongoose, Gwen had her Detect magic activated, carefully observing the Merman. She noted that its core ceased to be a dense cluster of Elemental Water at the moment of its death. Instead, the mana drained away into the general atmosphere. With her limited Divination, she couldn't sense the "Essence", but she could see a few minute motes of Elemental Water drifting her way. Beneath her soaked dress, her Kirin amulet grew warm for the span of two breaths, then it was once again dormant.

"Is it dead?" Elvia asked, still a safe distance away.

Gwen extended a hand toward the creature and materialised a bowie knife. She inexpertly butchered the body to the chagrin of her spectators, digging and hacking away until she found her expectant prize.

"Whoa, a core!" Captain Sukarno triumphantly exalted when Gwen lifted the bloody thing, smeared with the clear slime of fishy entrails, into the open air.

Gwen grew silent and contemplative, her mind full of purpose. Her father had been right—the killing of creatures at close range allowed for the influence of the Kirin amulet to take effect. If that was the case, she could arguably be the most effective core-harvesting adventurer in Oceania.

"What's the damage for the core?" Gwen felt her mood lighten as she examined the Creature Core.

"Oh, soldier-level core? Fifty LDMs to a single HDM? I know a guy who will buy for a good price," Sukarno happily replied. "You very lucky, Miss Song. Very lucky."

The Creature Core passed from hand to hand, sans Morye, with each of the Mages marvelling at Gwen's good fortune.

"Dinner's on me tonight!" Gwen announced. "Seafood! To the city! To Singapore! Tonight, it's my shout!"

It took a further six hours to return to Singapore, where Jurong Port would open come morning.

The team spent the night anchored in the safety of the harbour, the thrum of Singapore's many Shielding Stations upon their backs, watching the stars and catching up on old times, enjoying the soothing atmosphere of the open sea before it heated up, transformed by the detestable, humid haze.

When the day broke, the company sailed into Jurong Port without further incident, safely docking where they had left two days ago. To avoid trouble with the city's infamously hardcore military Mages, Gwen and friends had to take Elvia, Yue and Whetu to be registered.

When the Customs officials at Jurong began to ask uncomfortable questions, Jonas stepped in. He presented himself as an officer of the Frontier Military of Sydney and a senior member of the Tower's Recon unit. Paul and Taj likewise presented their credentials, suggesting that the Singapore Tower would verify these girls' identities through Long-Range Messages.

Thankfully, Yue, Whetu and Elvia had kept their student cards on them, and with another hour wasted going back and forth on bureaucracy, they finally receive temporary passes for Yue and Elvia.

Captain Sukarno stayed with them a while to ensure that everything was alright before leaving with his extra twelve HDMs, shaking the men's hands happily and giving Gwen and friends a brief benediction with both hands in prayer. To save them time, he even bought Gwen's Merman core, which he stated he would keep as a souvenir of their exciting little adventure together.

Just as they were about to leave the Jurong Customs area, one of the officers stopped them to confirm if they were leaving Singapore soon.

"We'll be leaving as early as tomorrow, officer." Gwen flashed a smile at the man. "There's nothing to worry about. We're just going to head to one of your famous seafood restaurants, maybe book a dock-side motel, then we'll be out of your hair, I promise."

"That's no problem," replied the middle-aged senior sergeant. "I can recommend some restaurants. All the seafood goes through Customs as well, as you know."

The two made jovial banter as Gwen took down the address for a recommended place to eat seafood without suffering the tourist tax.

"Staying in the city is very expensive," he continued. "We have hostels for temporary travellers like yourself that are very cheap. If you want, I can get you a card."

"Ah, that would be wonderful.' Gwen leaned against the counter. "We're poor as it is, lah!"

"Ha!" The sergeant laughed. "Okay. I get you the address, wait here."

True to his word, the officer returned with a business card. "Follow the direction; it's very close to here. Very convenient. Tell the office I send you. My name is Liu. Enjoy your stay in Singapore. I hope you like chilli crab!"

As the group left the Customs area, they drew curious looks from all over. They could only hope that they resembled a group of father-daughter travellers, seeing as they were three teenage girls and five middle-aged military men.

Outside, the day reached high noon.

"Well, where to?" the men inquired, as they had no particular plans for the city.

"We might go shopping after we send some Messages from the post office," Gwen declared, flashing her ring and its cargo of crystals. "Somehow I don't think shopping is going to be feasible in Sydney anymore."

The Messages would be for Gunther, Alesia, as well as Elvia and Yue's parents. She had to contact her grandfather too to tell Surya to look after Yue's mother and father.

"Want us to escort you?" Jonas asked, though the very thought of following the girls through the shopping district likely turned the soldier's stomach. The military men were perfectly willing to follow the girls into an uninhabitable jungle, but to follow them into clothing stores was too much. "Maybe take Whetu?"

"How safe do you suppose the city is?" Gwen asked.

"The safest, so long as you stick to the CBD and the Bay Sands area," Jonas replied.

"Then we'll be fine. Meet up at the restaurant?"

"Sure, I'll go confirm our manifest. We'll see you guys soon."

"If you don't mind, I'll hang with the blokes," Whetu said. "Not one for window shopping meself, nuffin’ fits."

"You look good in a tight shirt," Yue remarked.

Whetu laughed nervously. "Sorry, no shopping."

"I'll see you guys tomorrow at the terminal then," Morye said suddenly, drawing their eyes.

"Where are you going?" Gwen asked reflexively.

"Do you want to know?" Morye grinned at his daughter knowingly.

"Erh, no," Gwen confessed. "Don't commit a crime or anything. Singapore is a lawful city."

"I'll be fine. I've been here before. Merely curious as to how the city has changed." Morye dismissed her warning with a wave of his hand.

With their plans for the afternoon settled, the members went their separate ways. Gwen turned excitedly to her friends and found them looking apprehensive and unsure.

"Gwennie, are we going to be okay?" Elvia asked. "We don't know anything about the city!"

"Yeah." Yue looked strangely nervous as well. Unlike her experienced self, both of the girls had never travelled alone. "How do we know what to catch and where to go?"

"Hee." Gwen turned to her friends. "Just you watch, I know the perfect place."

Half an hour and two LDMs later, they were staring at an open bay filled with construction still in progress.

"What is this place?" Yue asked sceptically. "What are we doing here?"

"Gwen." Elvia shivered at the sight of gargantuan construction Golems pounding away. "I am starving. Where are we? Where are all the shops?"

Her destination was Marina South.

The year was 2003.

Gwen suddenly recalled that the Marina Bay Sand compound opened in 2010. "OH MY GOD." She facepalmed. "I am an idiot."

Their taxi was thankfully fifty metres away and making a U-turn.

"Taxi!" Gwen called out, praying that she wasn't wrong a second time. "To Clarke Quay!"

Chapter nine

Detour

Thankfully Clarke Quay had existed since the 1900s.

Though it was not the shopping Mecca the place would become in the late 2010s, the promenade was already taking shape as a trendy district for the well-to-do to spend their hard-earned HDMs. A riverside district, the streetscape resembled the French Rivera, only adorned with Edwardian Era architecture mixed with traditional Chinese facades, housing a flotilla of pleasure Junks working as floating restaurants and nightclubs.

Thanks to Singapore's unrivalled economic prowess, Clarke Quay's many dockside warehouses had been converted into massive shopping malls full of boutique stores, offering some of the best mundane and magical handcrafted goods this side of the southern hemisphere. That was why Gwen was especially looking forward to what they would find in its many nooks and crannies.

This time, when the trio alighted from the taxi, Gwen exhaled with relief. The place was as she had recalled from her past life, though it had far fewer patrons, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

The girls’ communal war chest was forty-two HDM crystals, though Gwen had more on hand if they needed the money and would happily shout her friends whatever they fancied, providing it wasn't too expensive.

When Elvia's blessed conscience raised the question of whether or not it was appropriate to be shopping in a place that was safe and prosperous while their home burned, Gwen gave her a little life lesson imparted from a seasoned adult.

There was a time to mourn, a time to act, a time for procrastination and a time to relax. There was more to life than worrying about events beyond one's control. Sydney was now a reality, and, as students without resources and virtually no influence, all they could do was help when they could. In the interim, their time was undoubtedly not better spent brooding in a terminal.

"Evee, the great poet Horace taught us that one should ‘carpe diem’, that is, seize the day and put minimal trust in tomorrow."

"Okay." Elvia nodded unconvincingly.

Gwen's persuasion was aided by the many kinds of exotic magic items at their disposal. In Sydney, they’d never have an opportunity like this. If not now, then when?

"So what you're saying," Yue regarded her strangely, "is that we should shop till we drop because life is short?"

Clarke Quay did not disappoint.

Surrounded by the outlets of the local garment industry, Gwen took the opportunity to replenish her wardrobe. For mere LDMs, Gwen could easily find skirts and shorts, shirts and blouses, camisoles and belts, bangles and hats that would not look out of place in a trendy cafe.

When Yue reached out yet again for a lime-green puffer jacket to go with a white, low-cut tank-top, Gwen slapped her hand like a stern governess. "No, Yue. You'll look like avocado bread, not even the toasted kind."

Elvia likewise wanted to know if a pink skirt should be paired with a cream-pink blouse when offset with a sakura-pink camisole.

It was hideous, of course. But on Elvia, she could accept it.

"Yeah, that's lovely. Go ahead. I'll pay."

Afterwards, the girls visited the magic item shops, at which point they sobered up.

"Holy Jesus." Yue's eyes bulged. "How much?"

Braces of Armour (Tier III)

This finely crafted item once belonged to the illustrious Maj. Farid Malik.

Increases resilience of wearer to physical attacks.

Tier V Skin of Stone Aurok, Orange Zone, South Africa.

Created by Master FJ Vanderfare, 4En. 4E.

~ $98,000 SG / ~ 10 HDM Crystals

Goggles of the True Night

These beautifully crafted goggles gift the wearer with the sight of the True Ancestor, able to see in complete darkness and highlight the blood of the living, including most Demi-humans. A must for adventuring in the Dark Zones.

Tier VI Vampire’s Eyes, Black Zone, Bulgaria.

Created by Magus P Gorchev, 7En. 5Trn. 4F.

~ $220,000 SG / ~ 220 HDM Crystals

Staff of the Illusionist

A boost to your Illusion Spells that greatly increases potency and decreases mana usage. This staff can store up to twelve slots of Illusion spells of tier VI and below. A truly unique item!

Tier VIII Ancient Cedar Core, Black Zone, Indonesia.

Created by Master GG Fulcher, 8Ill. 5En. 3W.

~ $1,200,000 SG / ~ 1220 HDM Crystals

Barter options available on request.

"Ahuh." Gwen choked while greeting the shop assistant.

The store that crushed their dreams was a high-end item shop selling gear from Europe. An assistant offered them cold glasses of sparkling pineapple juice as soon as they walked through the double doors, which were opened by a handsome young man in a waistcoat. Where usually the girls would have been ignored or snubbed, Gwen's regal bearing, together with her Enchanted Rings, got them first-class service.

Yue was still trying to count the zeroes on her fingers when Elvia expressly wished to leave lest she breathed on an expensive item.

When the girls finally tired of the impossibly priced shops, they came into the localised section of the magic item market where low-level crafters plied their wares. Unfortunately, there was nothing of particular note unless the girls wanted to restock on potions or purchase one-use scrolls, which they currently possessed no disposable funds to procure.As the late afternoon approached, they found a nice junk converted into a riverside cafe where Gwen ordered a frap, soy, no cream, while the others had milkshakes.

"So mature." Elvia marvelled at Gwen, cutely sipping at her shake. Exhausted by the shopping, she grew so relaxed that she fell asleep for a few minutes against Gwen's shoulder with a happy expression of contentment.

"Where are you guys from?" the waitress asked when Gwen called for the bill.

"Melbourne," she replied without batting an eye, not wishing to be bothered for details.

"Oh, I heard lovely things about that place. A shame what happened to Sydney though, I hope they pull through."

"Yeah, it's pretty bad."

"I guess we won't be eating Auroch for a while, or the wine. A shame. Both are popular around here."

"I can imagine." Gwen paid as the girls finished their drinks and they were soon on their way.

Dinner time quickly approached as the boiling sun finally struck the horizon, causing the temperature to drop from stifling to just bearable. A water taxi took them from the quay towards the riverside, where the famous restaurant Jumbo floated on a wooden platform tethered to the dock. Renowned for its chilli and pepper crabs, the restaurant boasted live, mana-rich tier III mud crabs caught straight from Sri Lankan Orange Zones, brought to Singapore through glyph-cooled barges.

When Gwen arrived with the girls in tow, Whetu, Paul, Taj and Jonas were already seated, having come early to obtain bay view seating. Whetu was drinking cola, but the men already had half a dozen beers down the hatch.

"Yo!" Gwen hailed the Alesia trio, Whetu included.

"No Morye as of yet," Paul noted, but that wasn't to Gwen's surprise. If her father said he would be back tomorrow morning for the freighter, then that was when he was due. Though she would have liked him to be there to enjoy the celebratory dinner, she wasn't about to force him to attend.

A waiter saw to their seating and Gwen browsed the menu. The crabs clocked in at 56 LDMs per kilogram, which was reasonable given their difficulty of capture. Likewise, it took a Mage Chef of considerable talent and skill to prepare a creature capable of tearing through sheets of galvanised steel.

The girls had only a dozen HDMs left from shopping, but Gwen was happy to use her private funds. A "shout" was a fine Australian tradition, one Gwen was pleased to use upon the men who’d risked their lives for loyalty and favour, retrieving her friends from certain doom.

She ordered for the group, additionally purchasing a bottle of Yarra Valley Riesling, whose beautiful stonefruit and floral palette would uplift the savoury taste of the juicy, fat Sri Lankan crab when joined in harmony with spices from the egg-beaten tomato chilli. When the servings came, the group stared down two crabs the size of a small child. She should have paid attention when the waiter was explaining serving dimensions.

She wept for the loss of HDM crystals, but it was worth it. As the group lavishly ate into the soft, tender flesh, their mouths oily with pepper and chilli, they could feel their mana replenishing impressively. Tier III Wildland products were rare in Sydney, usually supplied exclusively to tier I cities.

When the inevitable food coma took over, they sat and made small talk, discussing what life would entail once they returned to Sydney. The men would return to the military or take up Tower duties, becoming indisposed for the foreseeable future.

"I wheel miss you girls, but I can't say I won't be glad to see Orklund," Whetu remarked, cleaning his hands in the lemony solution provided for patrons. "I've learned a lot and seen a lot, though. Thank you. Really."

"I am sorry the inter-high competition never worked out, Whetu," said Gwen.

"Seeing the world, the Dryads, experiencing the fall of a city more than made up for it. So did fighting those Mermen and that Void sheila."

Gwen raised a toast. "To your safe return to Auckland. To Whetu O Turanga!"

"For New Zulland!" Whetu announced.

"Cheers!"

The gathering raised their glasses and clinked, filling the air with crystalline notes.

"Are all of youse going to do your military service?" Whetu asked the girls. He was already enrolled in Auckland and was merely awaiting the onset of July.

"I am, for sure," Yue said. She turned with a look full of expectation towards the Alesia trio. "You guys don't mind if I tag along, do you?"

"It’d be our pleasure." Paul grinned affably.

"What could go wrong with two Alesias on the team?" Taj noted wryly. "Double the power, double the fun."

Jonas laughed, likely finding Taj's projected vision of mayhem less than enterprising.

"Well, that'll do. For Yue's new party!" Gwen raised a toast.

The group obliged, some more happily than others. As much as Jonas and Taj jested, it was a given that Alesia would want Yue close while she underwent mandatory military service. Where better to train her Apprentice than under her trusted team?

"What about you, Gwen?" Yue inquired. "What are your plans?"

"Well, my big reveal at the inter-high is toast." Gwen sighed, not wanting to think about her Master so soon after their recent disengagement. "I'll have to discuss it with Gunther, but I'd say military service attached to the Tower. With the accolades I aim to pick up in the next two years, I can apply for university somewhere, maybe join Richard? Back in the day, I aimed for Sydney Arcane U, but with the city like this, maybe somewhere in Shanghai or even here at the NTU?"

Thinking of Richard, Gwen wondered if the Magus-in-training would be willing to stay with her in Australia if it meant that they would serve directly under the Tower, working together to get a commendation into a prestigious university. He could earn money needed for tuition, as could she, and they could work out something between them that would be mutually beneficial. Mayhap that was the best way forward for them both, toiling together, helping one another as a family and as partners in Spellcraft.

Then there was her "new" family in China, towards which Gwen felt ambivalence. Here was an opportunity to relive a wholly neglected part of her old life. Yet, compared to her House, she was a country bumpkin, while they were the residents of the largest tier I metropolis in China. Travel to and from a tier I city was highly restricted; she could apply as a refugee, of course, but that would mean separating from Alesia and Gunther, which would be both foolish and hazardous in her present circumstances.

Ten days ago, her life had been all mapped out. Now it was in shambles. But such was life, was it not? Gwen banished the feeling of annoyance from her mind. She would have to make do with the lemons she'd been given and get on with the lemonade business.

"Gwen," Elvia said, tugging at Gwen's sleeve.

"Yes, Evee?"

"If I want to stay with you and Yue, if my parents are adamant about going overseas, can you convince my parents to let me stay?"

"Of course!" Gwen exclaimed felicitously, grinning expansively. "We can share a room like always, though I am sure there's plenty of room in the Tower. If not, you can sleep with me."

Elvia blushed. The others laughed.

"Here's to the three of you staying together then." Jonas raised a toast. "To make a team! You just need an Abjurer and one other."

Yue's eyes twinkled.

Their very own party! They could take on missions, go on adventures, travel to exotic locations. With Gwen's pull in the Tower and their combined talents, that was an entirely plausible scenario.

"Oh! I can see it!" Yue exclaimed, her face red with excitement. "We can be the dynamic trio plus two!"

A round of roaring laughter passed over the table.

A waitress cleared the empty shells. Their final dish was a wobbly coconut flan dripping with golden caramel.

"Oh. My. God. I am in heaven!" Yue exclaimed as the creamy pudding encountered her tongue.

Gwen smiled and dug in, watching Elvia close her eyes and entered nirvana. Whetu wasn't big on the dessert, so Yue pilfered his bowl and the girls shared it between them.

"Sure you don't want to stay with us, Whetu?" Yue coaxed the big man with a suggestive wink.

"When ai become a Magus, sure," Whetu replied confidently. "When you necks see me, my pounamu will be en-penetrable."

Gwen felt a sudden clarity come to pass. An Abjurer? Wouldn't Richard fill the spot? He was a first-tier Abjurer, and he had an Undine capable of covering both support and tanking roles within a party. If they could recruit Richard to their cause, it would mean that they only needed one more member, perhaps a Transmuter or an Illusionist, and they were good to go.

It was perfect! Gwen was sure Richard wouldn't refuse, at least not in his present circumstances. Even with the four of them, they could begin to take on quests from the Tower once they started their military service.

"To the future!" Gwen made a final toast, and the group honoured the sentiment by draining their cups.

With that, the much-lauded dinner came to an end. When the party exited the restaurant and stepped onto the riverside promenades, the city had changed entirely. A concourse of scintillating colours refracted from the skyscrapers onto the meandering river, placidly flowing through the city's centre. There, on the not-so-distant horizon, the shape of Singapore's Capital Tower loomed, rising from Downtown Core's superdense city blocks toward the sky like a skyward sword.

As the blue hour came upon them, a bloom of colours swept the skyline. Massive illusionary glyph-arrays embedded onto the sides of skyscrapers burned the air with their dazzling hues. Transnational corporations haughtily displayed their companies' logos, glowing and dimming, changing between adverts of products and services and giant emblazons ten stories tall and dozens of metres across. Further on, streaks of red and blue light flashing across the night sky indicated aerial Mage patrols, while here and there in and amongst the masses, Gwen could see the Military Mages in their dark uniforms patrolling the streets. Unlike Sydney, Singapore's CBD seemed festooned with men and women busy at work, dinner and play wherever they looked.

"Shall we head back?" Jonas asked her.

Gwen's eyes floated over the dreamlike riverside, filled with the refracted rainbow of commerce, enjoying the wonder that was Singapore before their inevitable return to the war-torn home that awaited them.

Geylang. Singapore's premier red-light district.

"Target is moving, fifty metres to Guillemard." A nondescript diner wearing a tight singlet and blue jeans spoke into a coded Message Device as he busily mimed the eating of L32's famous prawn noodle Laksa. "Target has stopped. He is at Madam Lin's."

"Confirm target entry," the cold voice of control came over the glyph.

"Confirmed. Switching optics."

As if displeased with the restaurant's daylight globes, the young man put on a pair of American-made Ray-Bans. He leaned back in appreciation of the famous noodle joint and its spicy serving of gut-churning wonton prawn noodle and burped.

A few glyphs passed over the aviator's dark surface and a Lesser Scry effect came into being.

"Confirmed. Target is engaged in negotiation with the Madam."

"Target is entering level two."

"Target is with a female. Make that two females."

"Target is…" his voice trailed off, "engaging."

"Keep watching," the voice implored. "Do not break scry. Target is exceedingly slippery."

"Affirmative," the voice replied. "Target is now engaged… in coitus."

"Confirming target two."

By the glowing waters of the riverside, a young man with a heavily accented voice moved fluidly past the crowd, tailing a group of foreigners. There was a tall, lithe girl among them, as tall as the Singaporean men around her, as well as a gigantic Polynesian who towered heads and shoulders over the public. He wasn't afraid of being seen; everywhere the group ventured, men turned their faces to steal glances at the girl, while children gawked at the dark-skinned giant with facial tattoos and pointed.

"Target is returning on route seven to the designated hostel."

"Confirm observation status."

"Confirmed. Target is a six-foot female, dark brown hair, shoulder-length. Eyes, green. White dress, floral notes. Travelling with a contingent of Senior Mages. Advise next course of action."

"Stay at medium operation distance. Move to maximum observation distance once the crowd thins." Control's voice came over the Message Glyph with the precision of a mechanical apparatus.

"Affirmative. Request more information."

"Granted."

"Is capture operation tonight?"

"Negative, contact will initiate elsewhere. Continue as ordered."

"Affirmative."

The hostel that the Customs officer had recommended was both clean and cheap, much to Gwen and her crew's surprise, despite its proximity to the city's industrial blocks. The men took two rooms, two in each, and the girls took the other. After more showers, they were ready to tuck in for the night. Their designated freighter for Brisbane was to be boarded at 0900 sharp, meaning they would need to be at Customs two hours prior.

They put the beds together and laid next to each other, feeling the warmth of one another's bodies in the dark. Gwen reached out and held Elvia's hand, and Elvia touched and found Yue.

"That's not my hand."

"Eek."

Thus connected, the friends fell into silence.

"So, Gwennie," Elvia's voice drifted through the invisible dimensions of the darkroom.

"Yes, Evee?"

"Are you ever going to tell Debora's mother the truth?"

Gwen groaned.

"I wouldn't," Yue's voice joined them. "If I were her mom, I would want to know my daughter died defending her friends."

"Yeah." A long sigh lingered in the air. "I wouldn't either."

The sound of soft breathing filled the room.

"Gwen?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for saving us."

"No need." Gwen smiled in the dark. "You guys would have done the same for me."

"You know it," Yue's voice interjected. "Goodnight."

"Thanks, Yue."

Yue's snores were instant.

"Goodnight, Evee."

"Goodnight. Hey, Gwen?" Elvia's hand crept a little closer.

"Evee, go to sleep."

"Okay."

The morning saw the group gathered outside the hostel, sans Morye.

Thanks to their well-placed hotel, they were within walking distance to the Jurong docks. The group walked through the warehouse area until they were hailed by a black-uniformed officer who directed them to the Customs terminal, an impressive building with a modern facade of concrete and glass.

The ship they were to embark on was the Crown Express, a Triple E class Freighter. From their vantage point, they could see the cargo cranes presiding over the ship's massive hull like skeletal fingers.

As usual, the difference between the interior and the exterior of the building differed by at least ten degrees, the humidity about one hundred percent.

"Oh wow, I am alive again," Yue exclaimed loudly, fanning herself with one hand.

"Yeah." Gwen inhaled the cold air. "It's a steamer out there."

"Yo!"

The group turned to see Morye, still wearing the same clothes he had left with, lifting himself from a sunken sofa in the lounge. It was evident that he had spent a few hours sleeping in public.

"Good morning, Mr Song," Elvia greeted him sweetly.

"Hi there." Morye gave her a toothy grin. "Good morning, daughter o’ mine."

"You look to be in good spirits, Dad." Gwen forced herself to smile.

"So I am." Morye's eyes moved over the crowd, exchanging nods and greetings until they fell upon Yue's liberal frontage. "Oh hello," he said, not looking her in the eyes.

"Mr Song." Yue stuck out her chest proudly, though her eyes were mirthfully watching Gwen's expression turn frosty.

Whetu stepped between them. Gwen could see that the lad very much wanted to go home and not be delayed by a showdown in the middle of Singapore Customs.

"Right, let's go home!" Jonas clapped, calling for the group's attention. "No delays, single file, follow me."

A different officer greeted them this time, a young woman whose gaze lingered on Morye as he made flirtatious eyes at her.

"Just this way, through the scanner portal" The girl pointed them in the right direction. "Do you have any forbidden goods you like to declare? The list includes Transmutation or Evocation magical items of tier II and above, Conjuration based items of tier III and above, as well as anything you would like to volunteer for inspection. If you do not declare these items, Singapore's Maritime Code issues fines and sentences up to 100 HDMs and one year in prison."

The military men produced several items that had to be inspected for safety and clearance while Whetu and the girls went ahead with Morye.

"This way, please," the spritely counter girl pointed to a sectioned-off series of corridors that divided the space between the boarding station and Singapore city. "Please stand here and here. The machine will scan you for volatile Elements."

Elvia and Yue went first.

When Morye's turn came, the Customs officer flashed him a suggestive look, which he reciprocated with a flirtatious wink.

A few metres away, Gwen felt the fire rising in her chest but forced it down like a good girl who knew not to act up in public. Her father went next into the partitioned section, then it was finally her turn.

There was a tunnel inside. It was empty, white, sterile and impeccably clean like many places in Singapore. Her father was nowhere in sight and must have gone through quickly.

Gwen made it about halfway when a Mandala lit up. She picked up her pace and walked forward, hoping that whatever they were scanning for wouldn't pick up anything strange, like a flux of Void mana or her Kirin amulet.

There was a brilliant flash of silver-white mana, the tell-tale colour of Conjuration, one that Gwen had seen many times before.

A Teleportation Circle? What could they be scanning with space-time magic?

The mana faded the next instant, and Gwen found herself in a cubic room, about four metres across and utterly sterile. She stood in the centre, atop a fading circle of spent teleportation mandalas. There were three men by the door at the far end, two in dark suits and one in the navy uniform of a Customs officer she recognised as the friendly Sergeant Liu—the very man who had offered them the cheap hotel.

"Shit!" Gwen cursed under her breath. "Ariel!"

The marten materialised from thin air, filling the room with the stink of ozone. Whatever was happening, Gwen would have the insurance of a familiar by her side to harass her foes if things went south.

"Very impressive, Ms Song," Liu said, golf clapping politely. "But please do not make a scene and instead listen very carefully to what I have to say."

"Who are you?" Gwen narrowed her eyes and leaned back into a combat stance. If need be, she could unleash Caliban in his spider form, but that would also mean that she was desperate enough to risk exposure. Immediately, her mind turned to that disturbing episode she had suffered in Blackheath. "Are you slavers? Traders?"

Liu seemed taken aback by her outlandish accusation. "Oh, no. We're legitimate officers of the law, I assure you." Liu produced an ID card and waved it in front of her. It scintillated as it refracted the light, showing the Singapore Tower's unmistakable symbol—a rainbow-hued Merlion. "I assure you that you are in no trouble."

Gwen did not drop her guard and instead applied a layer of Bark Skin charged with Elemental Lightning, causing arcs of blue-white electricity to leap from her body.

"Now listen to me," Liu continued. He pointed to the two men beside him. "These two gentlemen are from the Shanghai Tower."

Gwen's heart stuttered. Mages from a tier I Tower!

One of the men removed his glasses, revealing a stoic, featureless Asian face that was pancake flat and almost reptilian in its impassivity. The man pressed something besides his ear, and a pink-green Ioun Stone began to float around his head.

"I am Wei." The stone took a few seconds to attune, translating his speech from Mandarin to perfect English. "We are from the MSS."

Gwen blinked, having no idea what "MSS" meant.

Wei frowned; it seemed her confusion was not the reaction he was expecting. "The Ministry of State Security."

Gwen's eyes told him that she still had no idea.

"They would be men that the People of the Republic of China sent to do rough work," Liu explained helpfully. "The kind that keeps you and me honest."

"What do they want with me?"

"It's more so what they want with your father that matters, but orders have come through to take you in as well. I am sorry."

Gwen wasn't sure how to respond. As often as she'd travelled in her old life, she had never once been detained, not even when she’d flown to the Middle East, visited Iran and returned laden with souvenirs. "I am not going."

"You will." Wei reached into his pocket and retrieved a small cube. "Willingly or not, your choice. It doesn't change the outcome."

"Where is my father?"

"He is on the way."

"Where are we going?"

"Shanghai. All I can say is that you are safe."

"Are you going to read me my rights?" Gwen felt stupid the moment the words left her mouth.

Wei palmed the golden cube, which must be some imprisonment-based magic item. "You have sixty seconds to decide to comply."

Liu stepped forward, hands extended in front of him in a gesture of peace. "Now, Ms Song, I understand that you are personally acquainted with Lord Gunther of Sydney, so I am going to make this quick and easy for you. In a moment, your friends will emerge on the other side of that barrier, but they won't see you. As a favour from the Singapore Tower, I will bear your message of peace. Recorded here."

The man pointed to what must be a lumen recorder pinned to his chest.

"If your friends were to attempt a rescue or cause a scene, it would be not only futile, it would also land them in prison, so think carefully about your next words."

A year ago, Gwen would have felt awash with panic and despair. But all she felt now was a cold calm. Angry as she was, she understood that Liu was speaking to her as cordially and patiently as a man in his position was capable of doing. Liu wasn't rude; he wasn't condescending. He merely explained the situation to her as one might to a Neophyte on their first entry into some strange new zone.

Dispelling Ariel and her Bark Skin, Gwen faced the lumen recorder and tried to relax her body. After more than ten seconds, she wrangled a convincing smile.

"Speak," Liu nodded approvingly. "Please."

Gwen obliged.

"Evee, Yue, I am not in danger. My father has become involved in some trouble. I need to go with him to sort out whatever this problem may be. I will try to get back to Australia a soon as I can. I'll contact you as soon as I am able. Tell Gunther to contact the Singapore Tower for details."

"Excellent, Ms Song. I find it difficult to believe that you are just a high school student. A lesser Mage would have reacted far more passionately."

Gwen said nothing. Instead, she turned to face the two Chinese men and put her wrists forward in a gesture of supplication. "I am all yours."

Wei and the others looked at her wrists blankly.

Gwen felt her face redden as she pulled her hands back to her sides. "Is this not how authoritarian arrests work these days?"

"Not if you come willingly, Ms Song," Wei noted drily. "For your peace of mind, I can assure you that you are in no trouble."

"So my father is in big trouble?"

Morye had previously told her that he killed someone he shouldn't have, but had spoken little else about it. Was this his past catching up to him? If so, why was she being taken along with him?

While she tried to recollect Morye's outburst, the two men in black stepped past Liu and stood beside her. Strangely, though their aura felt intimidating, they were both shorter than her. It made them far less terrifying now that she was standing next to them toe to toe and looking over their heads.

"Please relax," Wei said without any particular emotion, sending a jolt of mana into the golden cube device. "This might be a little nauseating for someone who has never experienced LR Teleportation Circles."

They each placed a hand on her exposed shoulder.

"Wha—"

There was a flash as the Teleportation Circle reactivated. Then they were gone.

Chapter ten

Taken

“Where’s Gwen?” Jonas’ face scrunched with puzzlement when he passed the checkpoint and found Elvia and Yue milling about aimlessly.

"She was right behind us." Yue paced back toward the gate, but the opaque exit barrier prevented both return entry and stickybeaking.

"What’s wrong?" Whetu came through a corridor to their right, stopping when he saw the companions meandering aimlessly. "Did Gwen get held back? She’s got an entire wardrobe in that ring of hers. Was there something she should have declared?"

"Maybe?" Yue shrugged, confused by Gwen’s apparent evaporation. If they counted the time since Elvia first entered, ten minutes would have passed by now. "Has anyone seen Uncle Song? He's not here either."

The group collectively denied seeing Morye.

It became evident that the situation had soured. If something had happened to the two Songs, who could they hold accountable? What if the Tower was responsible?

The door to the opposite entryway opened with a hiss.

"Gwen?"

The friendly grin of a Customs officer greeted them. A few of the party recognised the man as the one Gwen had spoken to the morning prior. He raised both hands to show his innocent intentions. "Hello, everyone. I am Sergeant Liu. I have a message for you from Miss Song." Liu pointed slowly to a lumen device on his chest.

The military men formed up against the two girls and Whetu, shielding them against unseen dangers.

An illusory vision flickered before them as the pin on the officer’s chest began to broadcast. It was Gwen's visage, suspended midair.

"Evee, Yue, I am not in danger. My father has become involved in some trouble. I need to escort him to sort out whatever this problem may be. I will try to get back to Australia as soon as I can. I’ll contact you as soon as I am able. Tell Gunther to contact the Singapore Tower for details."

After her measured voice died off, the illusion began to loop.

"Would you like to hear it again?" the man proposed congenially after the second play-through.

"What the FUCK did you do to Gwen?" Yue's infamously short fuse exploded as a gout of flame irradiated from her body, forcing the others to step away. She could hardly believe what she was hearing. They’d just gotten back together and now Gwen was taken again? She wasn’t about to let that happen.

"You’d better hand her over to us right now, mister!" she hissed between her teeth. "Or this place is going to be called the Jurong disaster zone."

Liu sighed. He looked towards the military men. "Miss Song left willingly and peacefully. Are you sure that you want to disregard her efforts to send you all home safe and sound?" He spoke patiently, his expression unchanged from the gentle smile he wore at all times.

"Bullshit! Where is she? How far can she be? I want to see her! Let her talk to us!"

Jonas moved beside the Fire Mage. "Yue, calm down."

"Yue…" Elvia tugged her friend’s shirt, holding onto her arm even though it welted the skin on her hands.

Yue stared at her companions, especially Elvia, whose eyes were large and watery and full of imploring agony.

"Where has Gwen been taken?" Paul demanded.

"I am not at liberty to say," Liu replied. "The Singapore Tower was not able to intervene, else we would have tried our best to delay or defer the order. Lord Gunther is one of our benefactors, after all."

Yue’s fire glowed hotter, stoked by her rising ire.

"Ouch!" Elvia removed her hands, blowing them to cool her blistered skin.

"Yue, dis is not the time; it is not what Guin would have wanted." Whetu stepped between Liu and the soon-to-be rampaging Evoker. "Please, you must also consider your family at home. They are waiting."

The air between the two parties broiled as the standoff scorched the humid air, transforming the glyph-cooled atmosphere into dry heat. Surprisingly, the military police hadn't made their presence known. However, it was clear that should Yue lay a finger on Liu, black-uniformed men would suddenly materialise from the corridors.

"Put us in contact with Gunther now," Yue said at last. "I want to speak to him."

Liu nodded in agreement. "That much I can do."

Yue allowed the mana to drain from her body. Her inexpertly discharged mana flooded the air like helium from a deflating balloon, causing the ambient temperature to rise.

"Sorry, Evee." She placed a hand on Elvia. The wounds on the Healer's hands were already mending, but they must have stung like hell for a minute.

The party delayed their boarding while Liu used his Message device to route their call through the Tower directly. After about two minutes of operators exchanging glyphs, Gunther’s voice addressed them through the vox-glyph.

"Liu, what’s wrong? Have my team recovered the girls and Whetu?"

"Gunther," Yue interjected before Jonas could answer. "Someone took Gwen!"

"By which you mean a third party has abducted Gwen?"

"We don't know. We were at the customs, going through final boarding, then Gwen was gone!"

Gunther's glyph grew silent for a moment. "Magus Liu, are you there?"

"Yes, Lord Gunther."

"Liu, what does the Singapore Tower have to say?"

"It was an urgent matter that passed through the highest channels in the Tower, sir," Liu replied flatly and matter-of-factly. "We have been assured that Ms Song would remain unharmed and that, once matters are resolved, she would be allowed to leave."

"Details?"

"I have sent a Message to your Tower, sir. It should arrive soon."

More silence as the gathering waited for Gunther to reply.

"Alright. Jonas, how long until Yue's party is back in Sydney?"

"Ten days on the freighter to Brisbane, then a few hours from the station," Jonas replied respectfully.

"Yue?"

"Yes, Gunther?" Yue croaked, her voice coarse from all her anxious feelings of helplessness. She would have felt far better if a few Fire Balls had been exchanged.

"I’ll take care of it. Alesia misses you, so come home safely. Don’t delay anymore. Leave Gwen to me."

"Alright, is Gwen going to be—"

"I’ll let you know once you’re back."

"But—"

"She’s going to be fine. I think I have an inkling where she's gone if Morye was also taken."

"Okay," Yue replied sulkily.

The device disconnected.

"Satisfied?" Liu asked them. "You better get going. You’re going to miss the ship."

"No, I am not satisfied," Yue replied cattily, grinding her teeth audibly. It was still hard to believe that Gwen had been shanghaied only a few feet away from returning home. Unable to placate her feelings, she stood to one side to fume.

"Allow me to apologise for the outburst, Sergeant, Magus Liu," Jonas intoned in spite of her tantrum. It was just as well that Alesia wasn't here, Yue thought, else this place would henceforth be known as the Jurong Disaster Epicentre.

"It’s fine, Major. Another De Botton in the making? You have your work cut out for you."

"You know it." Jonas looked toward her. Yue looked away.

"God’s speed, Major. Do visit Singapore in more peaceful times."

The military men exchanged final farewells, after which Jonas urged them to make for the freighter. Ten days wasn’t long, but knowing that Gwen was gone, Yue loathed the trip home.

Just how, she sighed. Her only solace was that with Gunther at the helm, she wouldn’t be the one to explain this to Alesia.

Wei sighed deep and long.

The girl vomited a torrent of chilli crab, half-digested, acrid with stomach acid onto his shoes.

The MSS Red Guard had wanted to keep a tight schedule on his quarry and so hadn’t noticed her ashen face turning green the moment they passed through at the Inter-State Teleportation Circle.

The girl had been hale after the short-range teleportation, behaving as though she was used to the lurching feeling of vertigo that accompanied short jumps. By that measure, Wei had imagined that she should be fine to withstand the Long-Range Teleportation Circle, one that took them almost 3800 kilometres across the Ethereal Plane via an extended jaunt through space-time.

Every central trade hub possessed one such ISTC array, embedded at the Tower's base, well shielded and guarded, protected by layer upon layer of glyphs from every conceivable School of Magic.

The cost of transporting three Mages that distance was astronomical, but the powers that be had decreed it done, and so it was.

Upon their arrival, the girl had immediately slumped in Wei's arms and let loose a torrent of Singapore’s choicest crab sauce all over his shoes and pant leg, painting the cobalt-silver glyph of the Teleportation Circle red and brown.

His partner, Yung, stifled a snigger.

"I told you we should have sedated her." He chuckled.

His face was so annoying that Wei wanted to kick the vomit in it, allowing his forever-single partner an opportunity to dine with a comely lass.

"You okay?" He asked Gwen in Mandarin.

The girl replied in English, but the language wasn't Wei's forte.

He pulled the Translation Ioun Stone from beside his ear and passed it over her head.

"Fo-kas," he told her in English. "Tie to at-u-en."

The girl appeared to master as much of her mind as she could under the circumstances and felt the stone affix to an orb around her head, falling into place until it rested just behind her earlobe. It gave the impression that she was wearing a small opal earring.

"Better?" Wei asked.

"I am dying," the sorceress moaned miserably.

"There's a first time for everything," Wei assured her.

He understood that surviving a long-range teleport was like sitting on a carnival ride, one of those topsy-turvy ones, the kind that turned upside down and sideways, delivering momentum, vertigo and lurching all at once. The nauseating effect she felt was the same thrilling displacement, multiplied a hundredfold, magnified by the concourse of time and space.

The girl must have felt as though she'd been taken apart and then recombobulated onto a heavily warded platform glowing with quicksilver Conjuration mana.

Wei motioned to one of the guards, who motioned to one of the lesser guards, who spoke into his Message Glyph for a cleaner.

A Message spell blossomed next to Yung's ear. "Report."

"I am on-site with Target 2, awaiting further instructions."

"Extract Target to Facility Forty-Three, await handover procedures."

"Affirmative, Control. Proceeding to site now."

"Where we headed?" Jung asked his partner.

"Forty-Three."

"Huh."

Jung raised a bushy brow.

Wei shrugged, then turned to study the Mage caught in his arms, whose face was as pale as a ghost's. The girl was uncommonly pretty, very much so, almost like one of those idols that frequented the vid-casts. She was of Eurasian descent, her ancestry indistinct and impossible to discern, and young—far too young to be someone of note. It meant that whoever had requested her was probably after someone in her family; not an unusual task delegated to the MSS, but impressive nonetheless, given that the political and material capital they had just expended.

"Do you know anything, Wei?"

"Shut up," Wei said coldly, shooting his partner a stern look. "Loose lips sink ships."

Jung rolled his eyes.

They picked up Gwen by both arms and began to drag her toward the second localised Teleportation Circle.

"Don't worry," Wei supplied as much sympathy as he was allowed under the circumstances. "You'll be safe. Just remember to tell them everything."

"Them?" The girl croaked.

"You'll see," Wei sighed. He hoped that whatever reason the Secretary wanted the girl, it was in her best interest. "We'll part soon. Good luck."

Gwen raised her groggy head and tried to look around at their surroundings. The room was bright with glowing Daylight globes that lit the immense Conjuration array required to activate Teleportation across such tremendous distance. The interior architecture was geometric, simplistic and ultra-modern, giving the chamber the air of a brutalist dystopia.

The room they took her to was smaller, with Wei leaving behind puddles of dripping crab as he walked. Gwen felt impressed even in her illness. Whatever these men were, they were consummate professionals with singly focused minds. She was briefly glad she hadn’t tried her luck attempting an escape.

Another flash of gut-pounding Conjuration later, Gwen felt barely capable of standing on both feet. She felt drunk and drugged by nausea. That the men's final act involved taking her through the facility without so much as an opportunity for cleaning up spoke loudly of their priorities.

They eventually reached the end of a long corridor, where she was bodily handed over to a pair of uniformed guards, now clad in dark olive khaki with red striped lapels.

"Take her to the infirmary," Wei said. "Orders are to take care of this one. She's important."

The guards saluted smartly and took Gwen by the arms. Much to her relief, she soon found herself on a gurney being wheeled through alternating sections of dimness and brightness. She listened to the clatter of the wheels echoing through the corridor, feeling like death. Wherever they were, she noted with some alarm that the walls were solid concrete.

Jesus. Whatever her father had done must have made powerful men upset. Who the hell had he killed? The son of a Politburo Secretariat? Or perhaps the son of a General? Even in her diminished state, she could tell that the soldiers accompanying her were career military men. Their uniforms, the way they spoke and saluted one another, suggested that they did not moonlight in a second profession.

The gurney stopped.

The room was much too bright, so bright it hurt her eyes. She was just about to will her arm to move across her face when an alien coldness touched her thighs.

Gwen shot up from her prone position, heedless of the queasiness assailing her body. Her head grew suddenly light, feeling as though flung by a Catapult spell.

She was face to face with a woman in a white doctor’s coat. Underneath, she also wore the omnipresent olive khaki uniform.

Her world came into focus. The doctor was holding a wet towel in one hand, the other hovering over a patch of her dinner. There was a red flag with five gold stars on her left lapel.

China.

Had they come to China in that short a while? In a single charge of teleportation? How was that possible? The amount of energy it took to move mass was inverse-squared by distance. Just how many HDMs had they used to transfer three adults through to China?

More importantly, why was she back in her father's motherland?

"I… I er…" Gwen tried to speak, but her stomach quickly deposited a gift of revolting liquids in her mouth.

"Restoration." The female doctor gave her a comforting smile, happily injecting the equivalent of WD-40 for the human body. Gwen felt her disorientation fall away as the spell coursed through her body and calmed her frayed nerves.

"Where am I?" she finally asked, feeling the Ioun translation stone working its charm of Comprehend Language. The man called Wei had given her the stone without much thought. Were such magic items that pedestrian in tier I cities? The simple device was at least four HDM Crystals in Sydney.

"A secure facility. That’s all you need to know for now." The doctor beamed confidently at her. "Glad you're feeling alright. Want to get changed out of that filth? Ventilation is not good here. There’s a screen over there you can use."

Gwen nodded and pushed herself off the gurney, balancing when the platform moved.

She performed a quick mental check-up of her current status.

Her rings were still on her hand—a Ring of Evasion, a Storage Ring and a Band of Contingency. Whoever had abducted her deemed her docile enough to leave her magic items. Had they taken a peek at her ring, though? Not that her wardrobe would help. She wasn’t sure. At any rate, it didn’t feel like her items had been tampered with. If so, she could deduce that these people were likely serious when they stated that they meant her no harm. After all, who could forgo the temptation of a free large-size Storage Ring, especially one that still had thirty-odd HDM crystals and a Portable Habitat?

While she changed, Gwen obediently hid herself behind the tri-fold partition.

"There’s going to be a more thorough inspection later and I’ll be taking your bio-metrics and generating an identity card for you," the female doctor said, passing over the box of body wipes.

Gwen wiped away the foul-smelling chilli sauce, then found the first outfit she had stashed on her pile of clean laundry—a pair of cut-off white khaki shorts paired with a cropped blouse. She gave her hair a quick spritz with a fresh wipe as well, allowing it to cascade over her neck and shoulders. She then carefully stowed her precious Mary Janes after a meticulous wipe and materialised a pair of sneakers she had purchased in Singapore.

"Over here." the doctor indicated to a set of scales. "I am Lieutenant Miao, but you can call me Vivian."

"Thanks, Vivian." Gwen followed the doctor’s directions demurely, standing upon a set of scales. Vivian looked a little older than thirty or so, with crow’s feet just beginning to appear near the corner of her dark eyes.

"Just under fifty-five kilograms." Vivian drew with her fingers onto a data slate. "Somewhat on the low side for your height. Sit here."

Vivian took measurements of Gwen’s arms and shoulders, measuring her sitting height and then the length of her legs with a tape ruler. The doctor then scratched away on her pad.

"What kind of slate is that?" Gwen asked. It reminded her of an E-Ink electronic device.

"Oh, this?" Vivian turned to show her the "pad". It looked to be a carbon slate enchanted with some morphic transmutation spell. When touched, it was possible to inscribe words and numbers upon it. "Ah, you’re from Australia, no? Frontier cities are not allowed to import storage-type Magi-tech."

"Yeah, we’re a pretty backwater." Gwen tried to deflect the feeling of awkward inferiority. Was there such a difference? Did that mean the tier I cities had computation engines and modern conveniences? Did they have internet?

"Hey, I’d kill for one of your Black Angus Aurochs steaks though. They cost a day's wage. You guys must eat it all the time over there. From what I've seen in the vid-casts, they're all over the place."

"Yeah, we eat those a lot," Gwen lied, feeling strange that she had never even heard of such a thing. Maybe she had eaten Auroch before? She couldn’t tell. Usually, food appeared and she ate.

"I am jealous!" Dr Miao stifled a smile. "Okay, some important questions now that your basic biometrics are finished."

"Shoot."

"Have you ever had sexual relations?"

"No."

"How about with magical creatures?"

Gwen blinked innocently at the good doctor.

"I need a yes or no," Dr Miao said seriously.

"No."

"Very good."

"Have you ever had sexual relationships with a Demi-human?"

"No. Is this a thing here? In tier I cities?"

"You'll be surprised."

"Okay."

"A virgin?"

"Yes."

"Right." Vivian studied Gwen from head to toe, not appearing to believe her. "Continuing. Have you never been admitted to an institution? Such as for abuse of substances, mental illness or temporary derangement?"

"Temporary derangement?"

"Such as Enchantments or Illusions."

"Have I … ever been glamoured?"

"Indeed."

Gwen fell silent. Did short-duration attacks count? Did Edgar count? The bastard had gotten pretty deep into her psyche, touched her astral soul, even. Gunther had told her that Morye had killed him. Speaking of her father, how was he doing? Where was he?

"No."

Vivian nodded.

"Okay."

"That’s it. I’ll have your file generated." Vivian said. "Forgive the questions. Quite interesting the kind of guests we have here these days."

"Here?"

"Well," the doctor coughed, "you'll see."

"What happens now?"

"Now you go to a temporary place of residence."

A Message spell bloomed beside the medical officer's face. She gingerly touched a finger to her ear. "Yep, we’re done. You can take subject 1406 now."

Gwen stepped into her shoes.

Vivian looked up from her seat, her legs crossed and enveloped in her dark olive pencil skirt. The doctor furrowed her brows while running her eyes over their prisoner's figure. "Miss Song, are you certain you’ve never had…"

"No." Gwen cut the woman off before she could suggest something scandalous. "I am only sixteen, after all."

"Soon to be seventeen," Vivian said. "I hope you're telling the truth. For what's coming, telling the truth will be very important."

"What?" Gwen felt her stomach tighten and her chest constrict. What did the woman mean by telling the truth?

The double doors opened.

Two olive-uniformed men presented themselves and saluted the doctor. "Escorting prisoner 1406 to the containment area."

"Containment area?" Gwen snapped alarmingly. What was she, a magical specimen? An exotic species to be put on display? What was this place, and what were they doing? "1406?"

Had she been transported to another world? Was this Oceania? Were they headed to Room 101? Were there going to be rats?

"Please come with us," one of the men said when Gwen refused to budge from the spot.

"Vivian, tell me—"

"Let's hope we don't meet again," the doctor proclaimed. "My ward isn't usually reserved for biometric inspections."

"No—what? Wait!"

The men took her by the arms and pushed her from the room. These men were not like Wei. They had little patience and even less delicacy. They were grunts, foot soldiers, and they were here to shut up and do their duty. When Gwen calmed herself enough to observe them, she noticed something that shocked her to her core.

They were NoMs! The soldiers were Non-Magical, normal human beings!

Could she escape? Surely she could overpower NoMs.

She felt a tingle of lightning coalesce in her body, responding to her thoughts. One of the guards clenched her arm so tightly it hurt.

"I wouldn’t." He continued to move without pause. His companion said nothing, his face entirely robotic.

They took her into another corridor, and another, then another again. Then they pushed through a set of double doors.

A long warehouse, featureless and derelict of colour, greeted Gwen. The containment chamber's interior consisted of a row of cells with thick Perspex at the entrance, possessed of no visible entry point. A total of five cells made up the entirety of the rectangular space, giving the air a cold and malicious wintriness.

One of the guards activated a hidden glyph and Gwen was pushed into the cell, passing between the Perspex with the sensation of slipping between its molecules. Another glyph later, the transparent wall once again became impassably solid. Inside the cell was a stainless-steel bathroom throne fixed onto a drinking fountain. Adjacent to it was a foam bed clad in a white sheet. The floor was pieced together by segmented grey tiles. The rest of the room was seamless, moulded concrete.

Gwen caught herself against the wall and turned to glare at the guards, who ignored her and retreated without a word.

The transparent pane radiated cold hostility. The walls looked especially made to resist all assault.

Then the floor began to thrum.

Gwen felt her mana drain away as unnatural fatigue overcame her body. She felt as though she'd trained for hours, that she had emptied her reserves over and over.

In a blind panic, she tried to access her astral body but found herself incapable of turning inward into the inner realm. Even her sigils felt diminished, barely registering against her force of will. Her enchanted rings, likewise, appeared dormant and inaccessible. She tried to summon Ariel or Caliban, but the Conjuration Sigil was silent; her familiars remained torpid in their pocket dimensions.

Gwen felt an unbidden wave of mental exhaustion washed over her. She fell onto the bunk, feeling the solid steel beneath the thin foam rap unsympathetically against her buttocks.

Her magic was gone.

She felt as though she'd lost a limb.

Even in her most desperate hour, the raging torrents of elementally charged mana had been with her, coursing through her veins. Now she was without even that.

She closed her eyes and tried to focus her breathing, which had noticeably quickened.

"Calm," she said to herself. "Evee."

"Evee, Evee, Evee." She pictured her best friend's smiling, guileless face, blossoming the moment she saw Gwen descend with Sufina.

Her heart rate slowed.

She felt somnolent and exhausted.

Oh, how she desired to be hot and insomniac within the cargo hold of a Triple-E Freighter ship!

Maybe her present circumstance was just a dream. Maybe when she woke up, she would be against two bulkheads and Yue would be trying to wake her up by suffocating her with hugs. Gwen willed herself to remain conscious, but it only made her sleepier.

"Please let this be a bad dream," she said to the merciless light. "Let me wake up to Evee."

Her alarm rang; a screeching catcall that may as well be the indistinct crying of babies in the night. It increased in volume until it filled her ears like tinnitus.

Her eyes shot open.

The Awakening Ceremony.

The Awakening Stone glimmered faintly.

"Hmm, you have certainly some affinity…" the instructor noted, but his expression was distant. "I don't see a sigil, though." His words felt like a death sentence.

Beside them, Yue celebrated her newly discovered Affinity for Fire.

At school, snotty girls and smirking boys appraised her cynically, audibly whispering that she wasted the air just by standing there. "She should just transfer to a vocational institution," they mocked her maliciously. There was a place where she belonged and it wasn't in the Magical Curriculum.

"Shut ya pie-holes, go fuck yourselves!" Yue’s firecracker voice blew those snide whispers away while Elvia gently held her hand. Gwen’s pale face broke into a wan smile. "Thanks, Yue. Thanks, Evee."

Mother's disappointment.

Father's apathy.

Percy's preponderance.

The futile training.

The Field Trip.

"You coming?" Mr Crusoe's face melted away, the illusory glamour fading until it revealed the cowled Dust Mage, Edgar. Debora was dominated, holding Gwen by twisting her arm into an impossible angle.

"Don’t hurt her, I’ll come with you," came Yue’s voice, heavy with dread and loathing.

Gwen felt Debora’s immovable Bronze Flesh dig deep into her tender skin; the pain was sharp enough to cause her to whimper.

"See? It’s not hard to behave, girls." Edgar chuckled cruelly. "Especially with a little persuasion."

And then they were in the cave with Almudj's egg. Gwen watched in horror as Yue’s eyes glazed over, smiling dreamily.

"That would be lovely—to be like Alesia."

Gwen shrieked insanely, crying out as Edgar entered Yue and began to consume her friend's animus. She felt something building up within her, boiling over, spilling out. There was a burst of darkness, not unlike the discharge of a tenebrous pustule discharging its cargo of malicious, plague-ridden puss.

Edgar stared in disbelief at his displaced arm and leg, then teleported away; just as well he had a meat shield handy to take the brunt of Gwen's attack.

After all, who'd thought the Gwen would be a Void user?

"No!" Gwen heard herself cry out.

A funeral.

Gwen hunched over from the weight of her guilt.

Yue's casket was kept closed for the ceremony.

Henry stood beside her, sombrely dressed in his dark tweed jacket and a grey woollen vest.

"You can be honest with me, child. I will accommodate you, for your sake, for Alesia’s sake, to the best of our abilities. What do you say?"

"I want POWER," Gwen began. "I want the power to save my friends. If I had been more powerful…" Her eyes were dead—two hazel stones staring into the middle distance, puffed from tears ducts that had long run dry.

"You will have it," Henry intoned. "But with power comes accountability."

The old sorcerer talked of obligation, of the remorse that came with dominion. Gwen nodded. She'd agree to anything as long as Henry was willing to teach her. She was willing to give her body and soul.

Fruitful training.

Elvia's understanding.

Gunther's kindness.

Mark Chandler's quest.

Blackheath.

Gwen woke from the aftermath of Caliban's carnage, scared and alone, whimpering and mewling like a snivelling child. She'd thought herself ready for anything, but not for this.

Gunther appeared like Apollo's visage, and Gwen sank into his strong arms, feeling safe at last. There was nothing for Gunther to teach her, though. Nothing was left alive within the slaver's compound.

Her familiar had dined to its heart's content.

"Debbie!"

Debora's face moved from Gwen's, a silver thread of saliva parting between them. Debora's hands wrapped around Gwen's waist and pulled her closer. Gwen's heart was still bleeding from the rejection of the immovable Gunther Shultz. Debora's interest came as a panacea that she needed. Without thinking, Gwen returned the kiss and allowed the fire to stoke, flaming high in the long night of the cold Outback.

Debora's warm body.

Uncle's invitation.

Percy's esteem.

Elvia's companionship.

Of her companions, only Debora gave Gwen what she wanted.

Debora said she loved her.

Gwen said nothing.

But it would do.

They kissed again.

When she opened her eyes, they were in Rosebay. A faceless companion, Yue's replacement, who Gwen never liked, was skewered like a meaty kabab on a Merman's spear. Elvia rushed forward haphazardly to heal the poor sod, sobbing and crying as the mortal wound liberated her innards.

Gwen desperately incanted a Void Bolt, but her constitution was far too feeble; she was already skin and bones.

Elvia’s body fell beside her like a battered, broken doll, a toy in blood.

Alesia pulls her away. There was no time to grieve.

Her Master must return to the Grot, else all was lost.

Debora took Gwen by the arms and tore the girl from Elvia.

"No!" Gwen moaned, thrashing in Debora's arms. "Don't eat me! For fuck's sake, don't! Spare me, kill me even, but not that!"

"This is the only way we can be strong." Faceless explained to her. "You're too weak."

Gwen thrashed and kicked as Faceless began her terrible work. In desperation, she channelled everything she had into her Evocation Sigil, feeling it fill with the life-draining darkness.

"You can't have it! It's mine! MINE!" she screamed insanely. She channelled everything she had, feeling the last motes of her consciousness fade away, preferring suicide over being consumed by a skin-changer.

Faceless stopped when she reached Morye's Kirin necklace.

There was a moment of hesitation.

A black hole tore the sky asunder, smothering Sydney with its enervating rays, consuming everything.

Gwen shot up with a violent start.

What the FUCK was that? She thought, feeling her skin slicked with shimmering cold sweat, sticky against the stifling futon.

The room was dark. Was it nighttime? Had they turned the lights off? What kind of a dream was that? No, that wasn't so much a dream but a waking nightmare. Was it a night terror induced by her anxiety?

Gwen tried to orientate her mind. The vexing vision had felt so real.

"Gwen?" a voice came across the hall, muffled and distant, from the room adjacent to her own. A familiar voice. A voice that, at this moment, was hateful to her.

"Dad?" Gwen felt her voice tremble tumultuously—anger, gladness, fear and loathing forming a cocktail of volatile emotions. "Dad, what… what the fuck is happening? Why I am here?"

"Don’t speak. Go to sleep. Everything will be okay tomorrow."

"I don’t… I—"

"Shhhhh, the walls have ears. Tomorrow."

Gwen tried to shut up, but her good girl persona had run out of fuel. "What tomorrow?" she vehemently spat in the dark. "What does that even mean? Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow! To our dusty deaths! Is that what you mean? You bastard!"

"This isn't the time to wax poetry," Morye hissed next door. "Get some sleep. You're going to need it."

But how could Gwen sleep now?

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Fuck you so much."

"Sure."

Gwen sobbed. It was done. Now she could sleep.

Evee. Gwen chanted like a mantra inside her head. One Evee. Two Evees. Three Evees.

Slowly, inevitably, the lull of sleep came.

Thankfully, this time, without the nightmares.

Chapter eleven

Then there was Light

Then there was light.

Without warning, darkness turned into day, blasting every inch of the holding cell, eradicating every inch of shadow.

The dazzling glare flooded the inside of Gwen’s eyes with a stark whiteness that sent her into a blind panic. She rolled off the bed, meeting the cold floor with her knees. As before, the grey tiles thrummed with anti-magic resonance, forcing her to rest for a moment on her elbows. With some effort, she forced herself up against the wall to face the perspex pane, feeling her eyes adjust painfully to the sterile glare of the omnidirectional illumination.

A resonating clang echoed across the corridor, followed by the creak and groan of hinges. The sounds of boots striking concrete foreshadowed two olive-uniformed soldiers parading past Gwen’s cell, their eyes staring straight forward.

Another pair followed, rigid with mechanical efficiency, their shoulders decorated with a single band joined below by a set of phoenix wings crossed over with two staves. They proceeded until they were right in front of Gwen's cell, then turned their backs toward her.

Gwen held herself steady with one hand against the wall. The glare was giving her a headache. How long had she slept? A few hours? She felt hardly rested.

Trying to ignore the throbbing in her brain, she studied the guard's uniforms, trying to figure out any similarities between this world and her old one, despite knowing nothing about China other than a cheap tour she had gone on in 2006 that had kept taking her to shopping destinations.

The soldiers wore doubled breasted tunics with four pockets an equal distance apart placed across the chest and waist. Up top, a crimson band encompassed a broad-brimmed cap. At the centre, a crest displayed five golden stars looming over the Forbidden City.

Chinese soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, Gwen guessed.

But that still didn’t explain her abduction.

"Back!"

A voice barked from the corridor, starling Gwen and driving her backwards. She stepped away from the Perspex pane as the expressionless face of a middle-aged Chinese man came into view, flat and dispossessed of remarkable features.

This one was an officer—his lapels sported a single vertical stripe with two gold stars. She tried to simper at the stoic man, but he turned away from her, just as the two soldiers had done.

Gwen felt the smile fall from her face.

How does one communicate with captors who refused to look you in the eye?

The two grunts and the officer saluted smartly at the corridor, just out of Gwen's line of sight.

Ah, Gwen thought, this must be the bigwig.

She was right.

Even from inside the room, she could feel the Mage's aura, thick and heavy, weighted with supernatural pressure. It was akin to the feeling Gunther gave off, but his was much more congealed and condensed.

Finally, her captor came into view.

Gwen carefully inspected the senior Mage. He looked old enough to be in his sixties, with two slabs of impressively drooping jowls that gave him the impression of a bulldog akin to an English prime minister. When he stopped mid-step and turned his head to face her, she met his dark obsidian eyes, cold and intense like the core of long-dead stars.

Perhaps she should say something? What was the etiquette for an abductee of the MSS when greeting a commandant?

"Sir? May I ask a question?" Gwen tried her luck, adding a higher octave to her voice to sound more juvenile. Surely, the imprisonment of children, even ones standing at six feet, wasn't standard practice for the secret police.

The old commandant's lips moved to form a thin line. The frown was barely perceptible, but it sent shivers down her spine.

Who was this old codger? Why was he displeased with her? They didn't even know one another.

Her gaze attended the emblem affixed to the man’s neck and shoulders.

Two stripes. Four stars.

A four-star general? A colonel? Gwen had no idea how PRC insignias worked, but it was evident that the codger was from the military's upper echelons.

He began to move.

She had to get his attention.

"Sir! My name is Gwen Song. I entered this facility with Morye Song, my father. May I ask—"

The old general left her line of sight.

He left! Gwen was agog with disbelief. Why stop to gawk if he wasn't keen to talk?

Beside her cell, the Perspex pane of her father's cell was made immaterial.

"Atteeeention!" the officer called out with that barking voice of his.

Gwen could hear the sound of her father scrambling to stand.

The new crisis next door dispelled the immediacy of her predicament. She ignored the guards posted in front of her cell and plastered her head against the perspex pane, trying to see and hear what was happening next door.

Was this a "general" whose family member her father had killed? What was going to happen to Morye and how could she help, if at all?

Gwen called on her mana reserves to no avail. Even her Kirin amulet ignored any attempt at summoning its powers. Only passive effects feeding on a Mage's residual energies, like her Ioun Stone, appeared to operate. If only she could somehow retrieve an HDM—the mana contained within could be enough for her to summon Caliban or Ariel to aid her father and break out of the prison.

"Shit!" Gwen grunted quietly, drawing a severe glare from one of the guards.

It didn't help. The thrum of anti-magic floorboards was tyrannically draining every mote she could summon. In her present condition, she couldn't even feel her sigils, much less will enough mana to command her astral body to tap into her Elemental Gates.

"Hello, old man," Her father's voice came through, a little muffled by the Perspex barrier. "How ya been?"

"Do you know how long I’ve looked for you?" the general stated severely. His speech had a heavy accent that not even the translation stone could displace. Hearing the hardness in his voice, Gwen felt the hair standing on her arms.

"TWO DECADES! For twenty years, I searched high and low, you ungrateful, white-eyed wolf!"

"Well, I am here now, ain’t I?" her father replied. "You got me."

There was a shaky quality to his voice that Gwen had never heard before. Her father was scared! The infallible Morye was afraid? Gwen wanted more than anything to witness this improbable spectacle and to discover the identity of the old man.

"Are you ready to meet the wrath of your maker?" The coarse voice of the commandant dripped with malice.

What! Gwen's mind buzzed. Was her father going to be executed in cold blood? She placed both hands on the screen, deforming her face against the pane.

"No!" she cried out, smashing her fists against the glass. "Dad!" Whatever her father might have been, Gwen still felt the bonds of kindred blood between them. The last thing she wanted to see was Morye murdered!

"Repent, you ingrate!" The voice that came through the corridor was ripe with emotion.

CRACK!

A vehement snap tore the air asunder. There was a sound of cured hide striking flesh, followed immediately by her father’s painful grunt.

"You ungrateful, unfilial bastard! Do you know how worried your mother was?"

CRACK!

"Do you know how many nights she cried herself to sleep?"

CRACK!

"Do you know many favours we pulled searching for you all over China?"

CRACK!

"Do you know that Jun relinquished his promotion to save you from court marshal?"

CRACK!

"Get up! You have not had enough yet!"

"I… I can’t see out of my left eye," Her father grunted and spat, likely discarding a bloody glob of loose teeth. "Can we take a break? Do this after I get a few heals in?"

There was a flash of familiar mana.

Water.

Negative Energy.

Salt.

"Arrrrgh!" Morye howled, followed by the sound of a body writhing on the floor.

"You insolent wolf! How dare you! Your poor mother! Once you pay your respects to her, you'll be seeing the ancestors!" The gruff voice of the general reverberated from wall to wall, barely able to contain the rage caught in between each syllable.

Safe in her cell, Gwen tried to process the string of pronouns coming her way.

The old man had called Morye an "ungrateful son" and mentioned "your brother" and "mother".

Wouldn’t that mean that the brutal commandant was Morye’s father? He was her grandfather! Her paternal opa!

The knowledge caused her to almost collapse against the pane of her cell. Did this mean they were saved? There was no way her father could be killed by his father, although it would seem that he'd be shedding a layer of skin before his ordeal was over.

Gwen breathed out. The terror of the moment was forgotten and she felt buoyed by unforeseen hope and elation.

After a while, she looked up.

The old commandant looked down on her half-kneeled figure.

When had he moved? The old codger was like a ghost!

More importantly, was he willing to talk?

Gwen stepped away from the pane and tidied herself against the refracted visage of her reflection. She was not dressed to meet the elderly, that was for sure. She was wearing white khaki shorts cut off a few inches above her knee, her long legs bare except for sneakers. Her blouse was cropped above the elbows, tapered against her waist with a flared, rounded collar in the French style. Her hair, as before, was loosely styled around her face, which thankfully had the barest of makeup.

The cold codger looked to be the type to expect their grandaughters in prim and proper black on white.

But it was too late now. It wasn't as though Gwen could have known Opa Two was going to be here. She had been in Singapore less than twenty-four hours ago, walking around in the stifling heat, where her attire was entirely appropriate. Gwen wished she had something to cover her legs, which left a little too much to the imagination, and perhaps a camisole or something to give her upper body a more prudent, rather than frivolous air. It was in situations like this that a pair of horn-rimmed glasses would have done wonders.

"De-phase," Opa Two commanded.

The Perspex dematerialised, allowing the middle-aged officer, a guard and her grandfather to pass.

Gwen noted that unlike those in the Sydney Tower or anywhere in Sydney, the men took little note of her uncommon comeliness. Was it a condition of their training? Or the professionalism of soldiership? Or perhaps she was simply too freakishly large and unaesthetic in their eyes. She knew from her old world that Asians very much preferred the small and cute rather than Brobdingnagian.

"Greetings, Grandfather." Gwen wasn’t sure how to respond, so she performed a western curtsey.

The general nodded.

Good, Gwen thought.

"You are older than I imagined." The general's voice was low and resonant.

Gwen moulded her face into an affable simper.

"Lower the draining frequency," the commandant ordered his second, who ordered a guard, who manipulated a series of glyphs invisible from Gwen's point of view.

The thrum of the floorboards dimmed.

"Child, manifest your talent," her grandfather said, his voice commanding and firm. He stood with his legs stiffly apart, his hands placed behind his back like he was inspecting a piece of military hardware.

Her magic? Gwen felt a few motes of mana coalescing, enough for an impressionable spell.

"Perform your Magic," the old man repeated.

More excuses would probably just cause "Gran" to get suspicious. Perhaps it was best to show rather than tell. Salt was a Quasi-element, and so was her Lightning.

Gwen pointed to an empty spot on the dampening tiles, facing away from the general and the soldiers. She didn’t want to expose all her cards, but she had to impress.

"Lightning Bolt!"

A bolt of Elemental Lightning arched from her fingertips toward a distant tile, at which point the incandescent energy fizzled, leaving a scorched splatter mark.

Gwen turned to her grandfather, wondering what he thought of her rare quasi-talent.

"Yang… and Air? Not Yin and Water. How curious." Her grandfather's face took on a thoughtful expression. "A rare talent indeed."

Gwen breathed out as the man's expression softened.

"What are your Schools of Magic?"

"Evocation." Gwen paused for dramatic effect. "And Conjuration."

It wasn't as though she could have shown her grandfather anything else. What she’d suggested was written on her student card and Multi-Pass, which she was sure the MSS would have inspected. To show anything else would imply that her card was false and that she was hiding something, resulting in inexplicable falsehoods.

Her grandfather nodded approvingly. "A rare talent indeed, child. Are you gifted with other blessings?"

"I am afraid not, Grandfather."

"Just as well then. Your talent pleases me greatly, you should know. Your grandmother has an affinity for the Yang. Mayhap you inherited it from her? I believe she would be happy to meet you."

"I would hope so, Grandfather."

"You have your grandmother's features," her grandfather continued in an affectionate tone. "You look just like her."

"Ha, I am sure Grandmother's beauty is peerless," Gwen remarked. Her grandfather was easier going than she’d thought, at least after what had happened to Morye.

"Tell me, daughter of my ungrateful son, what is it that you do? In Sydney, I mean." Her grandfather's tone remained amicable.

"I am a student," Gwen replied demurely. "Although the fall of the city has impacted my school year, so I guess I need to find a place to graduate."

"That's unfortunate to hear, child." Her grandfather motioned for the two men beside him to exit the cell. "Would you mind if I helped? There are some schools here in Shanghai, which would love to have their very own Quasi-Elementalist."

"Oh." Gwen considered it for a moment, strangely glad that she could find another opa. "I am afraid I need to return to Sydney first. I have friends who are worried sick."

"It is good to have friends." Opa Two walked through the shielding and invited her to follow. "Are these friends your teammates? Companions?"

"We're very clos—" Her speech cut short as she ran face-first into the barrier.

"Opa—Grandfather?" She felt her stomach lurch, echoing the painful bump on her head. Gwen needn't guess what was happening; the implication was obvious enough.

Her grandfather shook his head.

"How easy it must be for you to lie."

Gwen stared at her grandfather, whose once kind demeanour became sharp and cynical. She could feel the mana gather within him as his ire rose. Gwen felt as though she had plunged into a pool of icy water. Goosebumps formed all over her skin, sending her into a terrific shiver. She wanted to move away from him, but her body refused to budge. Was this what it was like to face a high-level Mage of a tier I city? It was as though her very blood had frozen. Her teeth chattered as she tried to formulate another lie but could find nothing intelligible to say.

Her grandfather turned to the middle-aged officer beside him.

"Tell the MSS to do their job properly next time. As for this one, get them to find out what she knows and who she is. I want a thorough vetting. Leave nothing unturned."

Gwen felt a sudden panic overcome her calculated calmness. Leave nothing unturned? Was she headed for Room 101? Was she going to be tortured with rats? Was holding back her talents a mistake? What was Chinese O'Brien expecting? Give her to the MSS? What does that mean? Was she not going back to Sydney? Shouldn’t he be saying, "Let her go home? She’s uninvolved and innocent?" Why was he so paranoid?

Her grandfather turned to face Gwen with an impassive expression. "Is there anything you wish to confess?"

"Grandfather…" Gwen didn't know what to say. What was there to confess? She didn't even know what the old codger wanted. "What do you want?" She tried to calm herself as best as she could.

"The truth."

"I don't know what that means."

"The full range of your abilities, to start." Her grandfather was relentless. "Then your associates, your Master, your employer."

"I—" He thought she was a spy!

"I am not a spy!" Gwen blurted out, then immediately bit her tongue. "I mean, why would you think your granddaughter is a spy?"

"Your 'acting' is pretty poor if you're trying to imitate a sixteen-year-old child," her grandfather snorted disdainfully. "Didn't your handler run you through the proper protocols?"

"I am sixteen!" Gwen retorted.

"Of course, and I am to believe that my teenage granddaughter is so superior as to be unfazed by the Ministry of State Security! To calmly inform her friends that she is to be abducted by strange men in dark suits! To walk into the infamous Sky Prison without so much as twitching a brow! What are you, anyhow? A skin changer?"

"I am just… me!" Gwen wailed. How could she get this old codger to believe her?

"Then there's the evidence hanging from your fingers," her grandfather growled. Mastercrafted Ring of Medium Storage, Contingency Ring of Teleportation, Ring of Evasion!

"Tell me, my granddaughter. How does a teenager, much less the daughter of my worthless son, gain access to close to fifteen thousand HDMs worth of magical items? Does your father run the Sydney Arcanum? Is he the Master of the Tower there? Had my son finally decided to be useful?"

"I…" Gwen choked. What could she say that wouldn't implicate her?

"So tell me, Gwen Song, Granddaughter of mine, who are you?"

"I am not your enemy! I am not lying, and damn you for thinking so!" Gwen fought the pressure emanating from her grandfather, pushing back against his force of will. "Look at me! I don't even want to be here! You took me against my will! YOU THINK I WANT TO BE HERE? I wanted to be in Australia, amongst the ruins, rebuilding my life! With my friend and my REAL family! There is nothing, NOTHING, that I want from you!"

Gwen watched her grandfather's face turn a dark shade of scarlet. Her face, if she had to guess, likely paralleled her father’s desperation.

"Dad!" Gwen wailed out, her voice beginning to crack. "Dad! TELL HIM! Tell him I speak the truth! Tell him to send me back!"

No reply came from the adjacent cell. Was Morye unconscious or was he too afraid? Gwen prayed that it was the former, else her wrath would know no bounds.

Her grandfather turned to the middle-aged officer beside him.

"Captain, initiate the Cognisance field."

"Yes, sir!"

The tiles beneath Gwen's feet began to shimmer a shade of grey, vibrating until they took on a mirror-like polish.

"What are you doing?" Gwen pounded the Perspex pane. "What is this?"

"Your last chance to give up the truth," Her grandfather intoned flatly. "I hope you value your life."

"Damn you!" Gwen hissed at him. Her Void Element! What would happen if the Chinese military found out? Presently, she owned God knows how many other people's talents. She hadn't visited a chamber since Henry last tested her aptitude after the Mark incident. What would even show up?

The shimmering stopped.

Gwen swallowed nervously and looked down.

There it was, her astral body, reflected beneath her in all its glory.

A glass sculpture of glass resplendently refracted in a mixture of darkness and light, Void and Lightning in a precarious harmony. There was something else within her glass figure as well, motes of emerald energy that surged between the light and dark branching out in Lichtenberg forks that appeared and disappeared.

"Yin and Yang?" Her grandfather's brows furrowed. "Fu, run a Greater Dispel Magic through the cell."

A halo of white-blue energy shimmered and passed through Gwen from head to toe.

The guard, the Captain and her grandfather stared at Gwen as she stood with both hands against the pane.

"Now do you believe me?" Gwen choked out between gritted teeth, shame, resentment and fury filling her head with white noise. "I am innocent. I am real."

"Sir," the Captain looked at his senior officer dubiously. "Shall I continue?"

Her grandfather grew contemplative.

"Give her some mana," he ordered. "I want to see what she is made of."

The tiles ceased their thrumming.

Gwen felt her body suffuse with mana, merging from the aether into her astral form. The dark motes became darker than black, the lightning began to arc and jump, forming complicated patterns within the exquisite glass sculpture.

A sigil flared brightly—the sign of Evocation.

Another followed, even more brightly than the first—the silvery-mithril of Conjuration.

Her grandfather’s eyes were cold stone orbs.

"A Magus at sixteen?" the man said to himself. "Of course, and Astral Body doesn’t lie—"

Before the man even finished, a third nimbus, malevolent in the mauve of Transmutation, came into being.

Gwen's audience fell silent.

FUCK. Gwen closed her eyes and resigned herself to whatever may come. It was over. They knew now. Her secret was out. All that was left was waiting to get dissected. That and stomp her father's brains out. Yue and Evee—all she wanted before they took her for parts was a chance to speak to them again.

"Sir…" The Captain’s eyes were as large as hen's eggs.

A fourth sigil began to form.

"Purge record." Her grandfather raised a hand and touched a hidden glyph in the air that Gwen couldn't see.

All magic drained from the room. Gwen was once again standing atop the grey tiles, which thrummed gently against the arch of her aching feet.

"Are you satisfied?" Gwen questioned her grandfather with a husky voice drained of vitality.

"All of you." Her grandfather turned to the others. "Out."

The men shuffled out obediently.

"Captain?"

"Committee Chair?" The Captain saluted at her grandfather’s command.

"Level six protocols. Full censure."

"Affirmative, sir."

Gwen watched as her grandfather's minions left.

So her grandfather was a Committee Chair; not that it meant anything to her.

"I am coming in."

To her surprise, he entered the cell, bypassing the perspex pane entirely. She silently watched him as he walked past her, exposing his back toward her, then sat patiently on her bunk bed.

"My granddaughter."

He looked up at her, his bulldog's face now genuinely filled with gentler emotions. Gwen wondered if she had passed some test and if her interrogation was at an end.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," Gwen said quickly. Maybe she could salvage this yet. Maybe there was a play here. She so desired to see Elvia and Yue. She was sick of this place, of this claustrophobic cell. She wanted to leave as soon as possible.

"I want to say I am sorry, Gwen, but I am not," Her grandfather stated matter-of-factly. "I believe you. I do, but your dishonesty troubles me."

"Ask me anything." Gwen tried to modulate her voice, but one couldn't help but be frigid after a reception like that.

"Are you alone in Australia?"

"No."

"Who else?"

"My mother. My brother. My opa."

At the word "brother", her grandfather's eyes lit up like those of a bloodhound's, becoming two orbs of dark ice. "Go on."

The cordial atmosphere was suddenly gone.

The pressure from the old codger made Gwen’s knees knock. Her premonition screamed at her to avert whatever was coming her way. Cold sweat oozed from her pores.

"I… er… I need to sit down." Gwen found herself slumping against the adjacent wall, her thoughts felt like the yolk of a blended egg.

"Tell me about your brother."

There was something about his voice, cold and hard, that compelled the truth from her.

"His name is Percy. Percy Song," Gwen heard herself reply. She commanded her lips to stop moving, but it was as though she was having an out of body experience, floating above the figure of her physical shell, feeling as though she'd become a marionette.

"He had attended Sydney Selective for Boys. He is talented in the craft. He is thirteen, turning fourteen."

"What is his element?"

Gwen felt the words gush from her lips, unbidden and uncontrolled.

"Salt."

Her grandfather visibly stiffened, his face taking on an emotion that was difficult to read.

When the strange pressure finally faded, Gwen could hear herself gasping for breath. With difficulty, she willed herself back into her body, pushing away the strange force that had sent her into a bout of obedient confession. She didn't know how it was for other Mages, but it was easy for her to resist compulsion once an Enchantment's initial impact grew exhausted.

Her grandfather's intense eyes regarded her unpleasantly. "You have had counter-espionage training?" His face once again grew suspicious, his jowls stiffening with displeasure.

"No!" Gwen braced herself against the wall. "Just… No! Oh, for God's sake! I am not even a high school graduate! I don’t even have my graduation certificate. I am still in my final year. Stop imagining me as something I am not!"

"Explain then how a high school student can resist the compulsion of Suggestion incanted by one trained in the interrogative arts."

"I…"

Gwen felt the panic she had averted earlier strike back with accumulated intensity. This new grandfather of hers was far too neurotic and erratic. What did the old codger do for a living? Why the secrecy and the constant accusation that she was a spy?

"Opa… Grandfather, Committee Chair, please, you have to believe me. I am Morye’s daughter. Just ask my father!"

"His name is not Morye!" her grandfather snapped at her, his voice rising several octaves. It’s Hai! You don’t even know your father’s real name!?"

An aura of nauseating mana erupted from the Mage. Shards of salt crystalised from the floors and the walls. A few slivers even hung from her hair.

"I am innocent," Gwen growled, her voice growing firmer with every syllable. "But you don't care, do you? Well, fuck it then! Broil me! Grill me! Burn me alive! SEND ME TO THE RATS! Beat me to a pulp! TEAR OFF MY FACE! It won't change a thing!"

Her grandfather shook his head sadly. "You won't be harmed," he said quietly, then lifted himself from the bed and walked clean through the screen. "But you won't be leaving here either. Guards!"

The Captain and four dispassionate guards reappeared. First, they proceeded next door, where two of the guards retrieved her battered father. Morye looked beaten within an inch of his life. His face was a bruised and bleeding mess.

As he passed her cell, he turned to look at her with eyes full of sympathy and sorrow.

"Dad…" She placed a hand against the Perspex, wondering if he had any advice to offer.

"You'll be alright," Morye spoke with a mouth full of blood and broken teeth, sending a spray of crimson spittle against the pane of her cell. "You'll be out soon, trust me."

"Dad!" Gwen called out, but it was too late.

Her grandfather was gone as well. The guards retreated, still ignoring Gwen as she frantically pounded on the pane, calling out Morye’s name—no, Hai’s name, over and over again.

The double doors boomed as they shut, leaving her alone amongst the row of containment cells.

Gwen stared around her cell, dazed by the suddenness of it all.

What had just happened?

Then a terrifying epiphany struck.

HELENA!

What if her paternal grandfather wanted to take Percy away from her mother? What could Helena do to resist? Her Clan was helpless against any power from the tier I cities, much less one that seemed as invested as her paternal grandfather. Her mother had pinned all her hopes and dreams on Gwen's brother and now she was going to lose her only son because Gwen had blabbed like an idiot?

Gwen felt a cramp in her stomach, but it wasn't just from the hunger.

She’d fucked up.

And then she’d fucked up again.

Chapter twelve

An invitation from a Doppelgänger

Alone at last, Gwen tried to measure the short stick handed to her by Lady Fortuna.

So she was a spy now. Gwen Song, a femme fatale of Mata Hari's fame.

Should she find a cocktail dress and a chaise lounge to malinger like Veronica Lake?

She didn’t have a chaise though, all she had was a stainless-steel protrusion from the wall with a foam mattress that made her sweat profusely.

Gwen glanced at the stainless-steel throne embedded in the floor, attached to the drinking fountain.

Despite her most wilful efforts, nature called.

Was someone watching? Was there a guard looking at her through some lumen recorder right now? Would someone burst in if she answered her biological needs?

Gwen frantically tried to activate her Storage Ring, but the dampener stole away even the thimble of mana she required to enable its spatial effect.

"Is someone there?" she announced to the general vicinity of her cell.

No one would come. Of course.

But the silence was hardly reassuring.

There was no telescreen there for her to turn her back to, no corner in the room for her to be just out of sight.

She looked at the stainless-steel water throne again.

Fuck it. Why torture herself?

She'd seen enough reruns of MacGyver. Convincing herself the guards should understand, she tore the sheets from the foam mattress's steel frame and wrapped them around her upper body. Then she proceeded to perform a pantomime charade of a one-woman tent, trying to find a viable way to protect her privacy while also meeting her needs.

The problem was that she needed two hands to hold up the cotton canvas of her "tent". Arrrgh! She groaned inwardly. Why hadn’t she picked a dress to wear!

Defeatedly, she sighed.

At least her bladder was no longer about to explode.

"Cut the feed. All of it."

Colonel Guo Song of the Commission of the Ministry of National Defence, Deputy Secretary of Internal Security and Anti-Reconnaissance Division and Chairman of the Confidential Communications Committee leaned back in his chair.

The lumen display embedded into his office wall ceased its broadcast of the Scry spells directed towards the cells.

He had been curious as to what his granddaughter would do, what she would attempt, whether the girl would venture to escape, perhaps faking an illness or use her allure to blindside a guard.

He wasn’t curious now.

If anything could convince him that the girl wasn’t a spy, it was watching her spend two inexpert minutes field-dressing a foam mattress and using thin sheets as a bathroom stall. Didn’t she know how Scrying worked? Scrying worked through walls, through concrete, through any non-magical containment, and a sheet of cotton certainly wasn’t going to help.

In a way, he was glad.

Unless Gwen was intelligent enough to be playing planar chess with them, she was finally acting as one of her age and experience should be doing.

Digging through a dozen manila envelopes, Guo pulled Gwen’s file from a pile of missives and reread it.

Wei had submitted their report as soon as they arrived, delivering a detailed reading of Gwen’s life insofar as could be discerned from their source at the Singapore Tower.

Her biometrics were within acceptable parameters of deviation.

Her talents merely read Lightning (3), Evocation (3) and Conjuration (3), which was a blatant lie.

Mother: Helena Huang. A nobody from a nobody Clan, a descendant of long-lost glory banished from the verdant colonies of the Indonesian islands, long since mingled with the blood of the Europeans—an ordinary Mage of no importance.

Father: Morye Song. The traitorous whelp, the one who’d fled the mainland, leaving behind his parents, his clan, his future, all for some absurd notion of western liberty—a coward escaping from the duties he was born to fulfil.

Curiously, the Singapore Tower had lacked any data beyond that. There wasn’t any mention of the son, this Percy Song, Gwen's Master or her position in Sydney's Tower.

Was someone deliberately censuring her data? The Singapore Tower would have received its knowledge from Sydney. For such a minimalist volume of erudition to exist, the source would have been someone the Singapore Tower trusted enough to rubber stamp.

If so, who were his granddaughter's backers in Sydney? The Contingency Ring was a telling clue in itself. There were only a handful of people capable of giving such a treasure away.

More curiously, how had Gwen acquired so many Schools of Magic?

The Frontier cities were not like the capital cities—they did not possess the resources to awaken and train their children from an early age. Gwen would have been fourteen or fifteen when she’d awakened, meaning she had achieved in a year and a half an impossible feat—a feat attainable only by the ancient Houses, a feat the Clan of Song was incapable of conceiving.

To achieve her proficiency level, it meant she had to have access to abundant resources, instructors of the highest degree of competence, a safe place to train and learn, especially one with access to a Greater Cognisance Chamber.

That meant, of course, the Sydney Tower, the only place where such resources were possible.

The late Master there, Henry Kilroy, was a well-known Magister within the Circle of Mages of the Commonwealth, serving under the British Mageocracy. He was an old school Mage, a survivor of the Magical Beast uprising, a veteran of more wars than modern Magisters had birthdays.

A week ago, reports had flooded Guo’s desk—assessments of the Sydney crisis, whispering of Spectre and the rogue Mages that lived on the fringe of the Wildlands. There were reports of an enervating Black Sun that had bloomed over the city, a Strategic-Class Ritual of the Void Element. There were also unreliable reports of a Mythical serpent that had supposedly swallowed the Ritual, itself an almost absurd idea. There had been a Mermen incursion, which had come as no surprise. The Mermen saw attacks on Frontier cities as a rite of passage for their foot-soldiers, weeding out the weak and thinning their ranks to blow off steam, redirecting the masses' bottled-up aggression elsewhere before it turned upon the dynasty.

The brief report ended in Singapore, where an escort of Senior Mages serving under the Crimson Sorceress, Alesia de Botton, had accompanied his granddaughter. When questioned, however, his granddaughter had declined to inform them of this connection, offering no indication of her ties to the premier militant of the Coral Sea. The girl was hiding her guan-xi, but it wasn’t difficult for someone like Guo to join the dots.

Guo closed his eyes for a moment to conclude his conjecture—that Gwen was somehow attached to the upper echelons of the Sydney Tower, that expectantly, they would come knocking soon.

But Sydney was a sea of fire and flood, so that "soon" was likely to be drastically delayed.

Then there was the matter of Gwen's unusual talent, an affinity for the Void—a rare and dangerous element, sanctioned by the Politburo Magics and Sorcery Committee as a Class 4 Restricted Sorcery.

Guo’s fingers rapped the sturdy wood of his mahogany work desk.

Henry Kilroy’s war hero wife, Elizabeth Sobel, had been a Void Mage. There was intelligence that she wasn't deceased, that she’d joined the Rogue Mages of the Wildlands—a group called Spectre.

Was there a connection there? Who was teaching his granddaughter Void Magic? Was she learning it all on her own? How was his granddaughter associated with the now-deceased Magister, and was there a connection between Gwen and the Void Sun that had appeared over Sydney?

Difficult questions, with dangerous answers, Guo thought.

He reached for his cold tea. "Heat."

The water began to steam gently.

It took great skill to heat Pu’er tea to an exact eighty degrees with a single cantrip.

He turned his mind to the other matter at hand.

Percy Song.

A grandson.

His legacy.

His wife had had three children before he’d been rendered too infertile by his affinity with the energies of Yin.

Song Nen, the harvest.

Song Hai, the ocean.

Song Jun, the soldier.

Jun, the youngest, was everything a man could ask for in a son, but his immense affinity for the Yin had also made him woefully infertile from an early age. By the time they’d needed him to act as the heir, it had been too late.

Nen had inherited her mother's talent for the Yang. She’d borne two children, Tao and Mina, but they wouldn’t be inheriting his name.

Guo had thought that the line of Song would have ended with Jun, but now Hai had returned. Not only that, he’d borne two children, a boy and a girl.

Most importantly, a boy with the surname of Song.

Guo felt in his heart a solace that he could barely contain without bursting into exuberant exclamation. A man should have a legacy! A Clan needed new blood! With a grandson whose name was Song, the family surname could survive, and this was a comfort Guo could take to the grave. What a boon of unexpected fortune born from the calamity that was his wayward son! Finally, he could visit the Ancestors' Hall and tell them that the line would remain, that they needn't adopt a branch family member to fill the gap. Finally, Guo could face the grave with the peace of knowing he had left something in this world that was tangible.

But Guo had to act fast.

Like himself, the Yin energies of Elemental Salt possessed the boy. It meant that they must retrieve him and put him in training as soon as possible. He must learn to control his powers, learn to minimalise the damage to his body. Percy must undergo extensive rituals with the amulet's blessing to bolster his defences against the draining of his vitality.

Guo clenched his hands, balling them into a pair of tight fists. "Thank you, ancestors, for this blessing," he exclaimed silently. "I’ll not fail the Clan of Song!"

A polite knock came from the door.

Guo relaxed, returning himself to his usual, calm demeanour. "Come in."

"Colonel." It was Captain Fu, his aide. "Jun—Captain Song has just entered the compound. Should I bring him here?"

"Did Ah-Jun state his purpose?" Guo furrowed his bushy brows, his jowls jiggling with disapproval.

"He has informed the administrators' office that he is removing prisoner 1406 and placing her under house arrest. The order comes from the office of the Internal Security Deputy Chairman, Secretary Li."

Guo sighed; he had anticipated interference. He would have preferred to observe his granddaughter for a few more days, having arranged a host of probes to plumb her hidden talents.

"It's fine. And Fu, remember—not a word gets out."

"Yes, sir."

Guo took a sip of his tea and pursed his thin lips. His eyes fell on the report in his hands.

The girl was in trouble, but she was also his granddaughter. Disposing of her was out of the question—it was heartless and, importantly, a waste of potential.

Returning her to Sydney was likewise out of the question. The Americans and the Brits, even the Central Europeans, would have a field day if they got their hands on a teenage Magus with Yin and Yang dual-elemental affinity.

No, for the girl to grow, she needed backers. That would mean having her worth proven and sanctioned—itself a trial by fire, like a koi trying to leap over the dragon gate; it could cost her life. In his country, it was said that the Kirin who soared above the planes of servitude and slavery must command strong winds, for it is a sad spectacle to see a noble beast strapped and saddled by mortal men.

What a thing for Hai to bring into the world. What an irresponsible father his son was. What a burden for an old man and woman to bear.

"Fu, I am returning to the compound. Tell Corporal Bao to bring the car around."

"Yes, sir!"

If he knew his wife, the banquet was already being prepared.

All that was left was to see how honest Gwen was willing to be.

"Um, can I ask if Colonel Song is coming back anytime soon?" Gwen inquired the NoM corporal who came to deliver her first meal in China, batting her lashes to entice a response from the stone-faced guard.

She may as well have been wringing blood from a rock. The young man averted Gwen's gaze as though she was the mythical Medusa.

She was sure it was a test.

The minuscule, five-foot-four corporal looked as though he’d never heard of a dangerous Void Mage before, opening a small segment of the portal so that he could put the tray into her cell.

The tray consisted of two steamers, a bowl of soup and a square box of rice. Also, she’d been given metal utensils in the western style—a knife, spoon and a fork.

She had no mana, of course, but had she been a real espionage agent, she could surely dice the man a dozen ways and use his access to escape somehow.

The corporal obliviously retracted his hands and left the cell, still avoiding her gaze.

"Thank you!" Gwen called out.

The corporal fled.

Gwen sighed.

She opened a steamer. Inside were pork buns, like the juicy kind she’d had in her old world. They had become popular enough to be almost omnipresent in the late 2010s, mainly where the Australian-Chinese congregated.

Perhaps the food was poisoned or drugged?

There was no need for that. It wasn’t as though Colonel Grandfather lacked for mind-reaping Mages.

She picked one up and popped it into her mouth.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

The internal juices were boiling. Did this world even have microwaves? The searing pain inside her mouth was a pizza-pocket disaster the temperature of the sun.

The tray below held more buns, this time a vegetarian option. Gwen guessed the mere fact that her meal wasn’t mouldy bread and grey water was evidence enough to suggest that her grandfather had at least acknowledged her existence.

She wouldn’t be harmed, he had told her, though his tone hadn’t been reassuring.

Gwen wondered if Gunther had gotten the word and was trying to figure out a way to retrieve her. Would her brother-in-craft realise that Percy might be a target as well since Morye was himself a target? Would Gunther feel accountable for sending Morye with Gwen? Was the circumstance of their abduction entirely outside Sydney's sphere of influence, especially now that the tower was in ruins?

She didn’t know the answer to any of these questions.

She could only sip the salty pork-bone soup and use the spoon to mash the buns into the empty bowl before eating them, sitting crossed-legged in the manner she had used when they’d eaten bush tucker back in Australia.

It was food for NoMs, greasy and insubstantial, without an ounce of restorative mana.

But she was very, very hungry.

She was still trying to masticate through a bun, her burnt lips glossy with grease, when her father’s face suddenly appeared at the Perspex panel, grinning from ear to ear.

"Puuufft!" The apparition was so startling that she spat out the dumpling, sending forth a spray of pink mince and fatty lard all over the pane.

"Sorry!" her father's phantom exclaimed. "Shall I come back later?"

Gwen swallowed.

There had been no fanfare from the guards.

How was it possible that her father had come? Wasn’t he bloody and bruised? Had he been cured, healed, restored? Was he free? Was this what he had meant when he told her earlier that she should be free soon? Why not just say it to her straight? If so, why the ambiguous communiqué?

"Not eating, then? Well then, how are you?" It was Morye's voice, but not his voice. This voice was deep and resonant.

He was looking at her with a mouth full of delight, trying to hold back from laughing out loud. Different from her father, there was sunniness about the man that made her feel strange inside.

"Morye?" Gwen replaced her bowel onto her tray. "Morye, what did Grandfather say about Percy?"

Her father looked at her strangely. "Who is Percy?"

Gwen moved to a splatter-free part of the perspex pane.

Their eyes met.

Morye's irises were of a lighter hue. This "Morye" had eyes that were like two obsidian orbs, the eyes of her grandfather.

‘You're not Morye," Gwen stated awkwardly, her heart pounding like a jackaroo.

"I am Jun. Jun Song, I suppose you can call me Uncle." Her uncle's smiling face even had the same way of curling the edge of one lip, though Jun's was less sardonic and more jocular like there was a big joke somewhere that only he understood.

"Uncle…" Gwen tried to wrap her mind around the doppelganger thing. Her grandfather had said something about a brother. "Are you Morye… Hai’s twin?"

"He’s older by a year." Her uncle maintained a satisfied smirk. "Sorry for surprising you."

"It’s alright." Gwen looked around for a napkin, eyeing the bedsheet. So much for first impressions.

"One sec, I’ll let you out."

To her surprise, the Perspex screen dematerialised. Gwen, who had a hand pressed against its surface, fell forward into her uncle’s arms.

"Whoa there, hold it steady." Jun chuckled, bracing Gwen as she slipped from the cell. Outside and away from the anti-mana shielding, she felt immediately restored, as if a woman dying of thirst had plunged into the sweet pool of a freshwater oasis.

Just like that?

Was she free to go?

What about her grandfather’s ire?

Could she just waltz out of there right away?

Gwen pulled herself away, her face beet-red. There was a strange sense of familiarity that she’d felt when their hands had touched, as though she'd known the man for a long time. It was a puzzling enough feeling that she paused to take a good gander at Uncle Jun.

His face was like her father’s but had in its possession a tighter musculature that made his jaws more defined and gracile. His eyes were darker than Morye’s, his brows bushier. Gwen further noted alarmingly that rather than a broad, five-o-clock shadow, Jun sported a villainous goatee. She hoped at once that this didn’t mean Jun was her father’s mirror-world villain, though it was difficult to imagine anyone could be more destructive than her father when it came to hurting his loved ones.

"Uncle Jun," Gwen began. "Can I leave?"

"You can leave this cell if that’s what you’re asking. You can leave this facility too," her uncle answered, scratching the back of his head abashedly. "But if you’re wondering if you can leave the city… well, that’s a conversation for another time."

"Oh." Gwen felt the sudden gladness turn abjectly to dourness.

"Chin up," her uncle intoned merrily. "You'll love it here. Let's get some fresh air and I'll tell you about what's going to happen from here on in."

When they approached the double doors, Jun knocked. The doors slid open, revealing two guards who saluted crisply.

"At ease." Jun ushered Gwen through without so much as batting an eye. The guards made no motion to impede their exit, which eased her frayed nerves.

"Thank you, Uncle Jun," she simpered sweetly, wondering if her uncle responded to charm better than her marble-miened grandfather. "Thanks for getting me out of there."

"Don’t mention it." Jun beamed back, giving Gwen a boost of confidence. "Although we should get moving before the old man changes his mind."

"No more tests? Or interrogations?" Gwen glanced back at her cell, her voice hopeful and uncertain. She wasn’t about to go back in there without kicking and screaming, but her grandfather did not seem like someone who would let an allegation of espionage just walk through the door.

"He's just paranoid." Jun’s voice was more resonant than her fathers, more distinct and debonair. "Not to mention I am supremely confident in your future honesty."

Gwen looked away, hoping that her flushed face wasn't too noticeable.

The reinforced compound they proceeded through began to change after the second level, the exposed concrete giving way to matt-white walls smelling of diffused silica.

They soon approached a checkpoint, where intervals of lumen globes threw their shadowy outlines against the partitions.

"We’re not going to teleport out?"

"Not possible," her uncle informed her. "There are Teleportation Circles here that you can teleport into, but once you’re in, the only way out is on your feet."

She then saw the soldiers—a dozen of them stationed at the checkpoint. A few of them sat at a table with what appeared to be a scanning device. Two men stood alongside an iron gate with bars as thick as Gwen’s arm, refracting the cold light from the corridor beyond.

Is this the final barrier? Gwen wondered. Was her deliverance beyond this particular portal?

"Officer present!" The soldiers saluted.

"Comrades." Jun saluted back.

"Sir!"

The corporals all looked to be in their twenties, but the officer was an older man, a sergeant by the looks of his lapels. He measured Gwen with his eyes, alternating between curiosity and consternation.

To her surprise, the sergeant offered Jun a cigarette, which he accepted. One of the corporals lit the fag with a flame cantrip, watching as Jun took a luxurious pull.

"American Marlboro? When did you get so tasteful, Cho?"

"Heehee, glad you like it, Cap, got it from my uncle, over at Putong."

"It’s smooth as hell, I'll give you that. I’ll bring you something next time as well if I get a chance."

"Sure thing, Captain. Now, if I may inquire…" Chow pocketed the red-white packet. His gaze moved over to Gwen, who tried her best to look innocent.

I am just a teenager. Gwen willed herself to look as harmless as humanely possible. I am a bipedal lamb.

"Is your withdrawal… off the record?"

Jun rapped the old sergeant's shoulder appreciatively. "Chow, are you suggesting I would attempt to circumvent the bureaucratic stranglehold of our fine intelligence establishment?" he asked with mock incredulity.

"Sir?" Chow smiled nervously.

"It’s alright." Jun comforted the veteran, assuring the man his rice bowl wasn’t going to shatter today. "This is a family matter. Powers greater than we are at play here. Give me the discharge form."

The sergeant breathed a sigh of relief and handed Jun a slate, which he signed with a flourish.

"There we are." Jun gave the man a friendly grin. "No one is going to dissipate into thin air today, hmm?"

"Heh, you know it, sir."

"Gwen?" Jun motioned for her to follow and she demurely obeyed, keeping her eyes downcast. What did he mean by dissipating? Did people just disappear around here?

A set of dense, multi-pronged keys was produced, unlocking the intricate mechanical lock embedded within the transmuted iron gate.

When Gwen and Jun had passed, the soldiers looked at one another and wiggled their eyebrows.

"What do you suppose that was?" one of the men asked his sergeant, still feeling starstruck.

"Who is he?" another guard asked, then added more meaningfully while licking his chops. "And who’s the young lady?"

Sergeant Chow turned to the one who spoke. "Su, how long you been here?"

"Two months, sir."

"And you’ve never heard of or seen Captain Song?"

"Wait, that was Captain Song? The Captain Song?"

The rest of the men nodded.

The corporal’s face burned. "Do you think it's too late for an autograph?"

The rest of the men broke out in uproarious laughter, punching the embarrassed soldier in mockery.

"I’ll get one for you next time, Su."

"Who was the girl, Sarge?" the corporal gave the man a thumbs up. "She was like this."

"Don’t know. Didn’t see her go in and I’ve been on duty the last three days."

"Think she’s a foreign celebrity or something?"

The men turned to look at Slow Su with ridicule. The Sergeant wondered if he should explain that if the intelligence office were keeping cultural exchange members in its secretive holding cells, it would undoubtedly be dangerous to be wagging tongues in jest.

"Corporal Su?"

"Yeah, Sarge?"

"Shut up and go back to your post. The rest of you, zip it."

Chow felt the weight of the slate in his hand, looking up to see the distant figure of the girl walking up the stairs. Who was the girl? When she’d passed him, his hair had stood on end.

Whatever she was, his combat instincts told him she was no less dangerous than Jun.

Another checkpoint later, Gwen and Jun exited the basement level and entered the interior of a public building with a civic centre's facade. Gargantuan marble columns held up towering ceilings adorned with etched bronze plates, florid with imprints depicting the founding of the Communist nation.

To Gwen, the feeling of space was immediately liberating after having spent a day and night inside the containment chamber, with naught but bare concrete walls and a perspex pane for companionship.

Exhaling loudly, she stretched out her body, enjoying the open air, feeling her bones creak.

Her actions drew strange looks from passers-by in dark suits and olive khaki, a few others in digital camo. It was her foreignness, her height, her being the odd one out. Immediately, she retracted her arms and tried to make herself smaller.

Her uncle stopped beside her and gave her an appraising look. "I am afraid your height is going to give you that reaction wherever you go in the city, Gwen. You're as tall as a man, even taller if you're going to wear fashionable clothing. Think it'll bother you?"

Gwen shook her head; she was used to it. It cost her nothing for others to stare and, at any rate, it wasn’t as though she could help it.

"Are you the same height as Dad, Uncle Jun?" Her uncle was just a smidgen shorter than her.

"I am superior by a centimetre." Jun smirked, his eyes sparkling mischievously.

Now that they were away from the uncertain light of the bunker, Gwen could inspect Jun in the light of his full glory. Jun's face was more defined and taut than her father’s, more muscular and chiselled, with darker eyes that gave him a solemn demeanour. He wore a casual jacket over a white tee and tapered military cargos, completed with a thick, brown leather belt. Underneath the dark blazer, his shirt wrapped around well-defined pectorals that were like carved granite.

Gwen had never thought her father good looking, although many women would contest that he was very handsome. But now she saw the same face plastered on her uncle, she had to admit that her father's innumerable willing victims may be onto something.

Jun warily pulled his jacket inward. "I don't like that look." He laughed. "What? Too strange seeing your father's face on mine?"

Gwen laughed as well. It felt like the first time she’d smiled in weeks, even though less than forty-eight hours had passed.

"You're dressed for the weather, at least. It's a steamer outside today." Her uncle straightened up, then struck a thumb toward the sunny space just outside the building’s enormous floor to ceiling doors embossed with oriental motifs. "It's a short walk to the car, though. Let us proceed as quickly as we can."

Gwen followed Jun across the threshold, where she felt something wash over her body as they passed. Some barrier spell, maybe, or perhaps a scanning glyph. Gwen wasn’t sure. There were so many things there, contraptions and magic items of convenience, all of which Sydney lacked.

Immediately, a wave of hot air struck her like a hammer, plastering her with humidity. It felt as though she’d walked into a sauna.

"How is it? Monsoon season in Shanghai." Jun chuckled as he watched Gwen wilt like a flower under the sultry heat.

"It feels like Singapore—" Gwen groaned. "Are there overlapping Shield Stations here?"

"Ah, you know the microclimate well," Jun gave her a thumbs up. "Too many magical effects in too dense a location, generating far too much heat. Without the easterly breeze from the South China Sea to take away the miasma, the city cooks like a crab steamer."

Gwen felt as though she was melting. Her eyeliner wasn’t waterproof, so if they stayed any longer, she would be crying like a Demi-human with a calamari lineage.

A hundred metres later, her arms and legs were dripping with a sheen of moisture. There was something about the heat that made it even worse than Singapore or the jungle. In a way, the feverish metropolis was like a sad metaphor for her present condition—caught within the city, unable to escape, slowly simmering in the crab pot.

They proceeded to the end of the civic century’s concrete superstructure, where a row of cars parked end to end.

"B-7." Jun drew a glyph in the air. It floated toward the attendant, an elderly looking man with a blue municipal officer's uniform.

"Right away, sir."

A moment later, a levitating platform retrieved an SUV, gently depositing the vehicle onto the pavement. What Gwen couldn't help noticing was that the man was an NoM, and yet here he was, operating a magical device.

"Bill it to internal revenue," Jun told the man, who bowed from the waist before returning to his post.

Watching the NoM attendant leave, Gwen turned her attention to the car, wondering what it was that people in the tier I cities drove. In Sydney, vehicles mainly consisted of older models. To her surprise, Jun's SUV was a Jeep or, at least, it looked like a Jeep. It had four elongated slits across the front grill that formed the focal point of a boxy facade. Additionally, the urban four-by-four sat on lifted suspension and custom archways, with an open-air roof protected by a sturdy roll cage.

"That’s your car?" Gwen asked her uncle despairingly, dripping sweat from every pore. She hoped that the car would have been an enclosed space to dry her out. From the looks of it, she was more likely to leave an embarrassing Gwen-shaped sweat stain on her uncle’s pristine leather seats.

"Good grief, Gwen." Jun urged her to get into the car.

Instantly, her drenched body became cooled by a pleasant breeze. The open-air vehicle was air-conditioned. An air-conditioned convertible! O, the miracle of Spellcraft! She praised the minds that created this boon; the world had become a better place for their invention.

"How do you guys live down under? I heard it hits forty-five down there." Jun hopped in. "There’s a decanter in the glove. Cups too, if you're thirsty."

"Its dry heat, so it’s not that bad," Gwen replied, feeling the cold leather luxuriously. True to Jun’s word, a nozzle connected to an endless decanter was installed conveniently next to some paper cups. She placed a cup under the spigot, watching it dispense cool, purified water.

The water was enough to refresh her mind and body. She was still hungry, but the water could tide her over until more substantial food could be sourced to feed her Void hunger.

With an incantation, her uncle started the Jeep, revving up its mana-cores. Unlike the Commonwealth nations, the Chinese made vehicles were left-hand drive. The mana engine thrummed until it grew into a throaty roar, transmuting its power through her feet and legs.

Her uncle materialised a baseball cap and a pair of aviators from a Storage Ring. Gwen wondered if Jun resembled a Eurasian James Dean.

"Welcome to Shanghai." Her uncle grinned, his thin lips opening to reveal pearly-white teeth. "Ready to meet your grandmother?"

Chapter thirteen

A Sliver of Silver

Shanghai.

Even in Gwen's old world, the Pearl of the Orient was a city of outlandish origins.

The name of the city itself means "the town upon the sea". However, the Indigenous fishermen who’d named it couldn't have imagined that it would become the single most significant trading city in Asia Major. Unlike China's other trade hubs, it was the Opium Wars that had given bloody birth to the city's foundations, forcefully opening the sleepy fishing village at the tip of the Yangzi delta to international trade.

The following decades had been a tumultuous time for Shanghai, a city carved up into autonomous concessions administered by the British, French and Americans, all beyond the withered reach of the failing Qing Dynasty. Concurrently, each colonial presence brought its particular flavour, making the city an eclectic mecca of cultures.

By the 1930s, Shanghai was a melting pot, a cosmopolitan metropolis, taking on its own identity, attracting natives and foreigners alike. In its heyday, the city upon the sea was the place to be—it had the best art, the most fabulous architecture and the most bustling trade in Asia. The city had the sleaziest dance halls, the most lascivious brothels, the glitziest restaurants, the most expensive international clubs, including the world's single longest bar. Shanghai was a city of sin that catered to every whim of the rich and powerful even as abject poverty ran alongside the affluent. Many of the underclasses, primarily Chinese, provided the cheap labour that kept the city running.

The Mageocracy called it the Paris of the East.

Then the Sino conflict of World War II had begun.

But this world, with its magic and monsters, had never seen the Second World War. Or at least that's what Gwen had learned in the discourse of Blackwattle's limited history classes.

In this world, The Second World War was man against the Beast Tide in the spring of ’71, awakened by the awakening of an ancient Dragon in central Europe that had thrown man's unprepared realm into anarchy. In the aftermath, borders had been redrawn, countries shrunk by halves, cities had become isolated and the known world splintered into zones, from the inhabitable death-worlds of the Black Zones to the contested, resource-rich Green Zones.

Gwen wondered if she would recognise the sprawling metropolis they were about to enter.

She did not, that much was evident the moment they entered the orbital highway. In Gwen's old reality, Shanghai had already been of the most developed cities in the world. In this alter-existence, Shanghai was far more extensive—a sprawling mass of skyscrapers that resembled pyramidal hive cities, with its epicentre congealing into a solid wall of superstructures towering well over the rest of the city.

As Gwen and Jun cruised through the Second Orbital Loop, they came face to face with walls of high-rise apartments, identical fabrications in clumps of a dozen or more, sprouting from the flat earth like bamboo after the spring rain. There were so many of them, gleaming wetly in grey, ochre, lime and off-white, that they blotted out the sun as the highway ran its circumference.

"Those are NoM housings." Her uncle pointed out. "Pretty good, actually, despite how they look. There are small parks below the apartments, underground shopping malls too. Vivacious places, good food, if you don't mind the NoM stuff. When they clump, we called it a district. Each one has an assigned number."

"Where do the Mages live?" Gwen asked. If there was a Second Orbital Loop, was there a first? And a third and fourth? Did real estate determine the social strata of those living in Shanghai?

"Here and there, depending on your profession," her uncle replied. "We're going to the new district in the Third Orbital Loop, where members of the party have private residences."

Gwen turned to the cityscape, taking in the vista of the sprawling city, splayed like an etherised patient under a sweltering pseudo-summer brought by the mana-smog.

"Can you tell me about Dad?" she asked when they passed under a series of Illusion-enchanted billboards dozens of metres across. One displayed a three-dimensional illusion depicting a kind, middle-aged gent with a benevolent, Buddha-like gaze, looking out over the highway with infinite patience. A series of Chinese characters next to his face translated to, "Premier Wen implores you to live in harmony and civic responsibility," in large, red pictograms.

In the next second, just before they passed it, the image transitioned into that of a gorgeous blond with effeminate, elfin features, hair blowing out into the wind. The slogan for this one read, "Head and Shoulders: Who says gorgeous, dandruff-free hair can't smell gorgeous?"

"About Hai?" Jun considered her question once Gwen peeled her eyes from the adverts. "Alright, shoot."

"Okay," Gwen gathered her thoughts. "Who did Dad murder? WHOA!"

The sudden inertia caused Gwen to lurched forward as Jun swerved the car onto the shoulder lane.

"He did what now?" Jun turned toward her, making Gwen break out in a terrific cold sweat.

Curiously, the cars that screeched and braked did not honk. Instead, they placidly drove by with caution and politeness.

"We're on military plates," her uncle explained, catching Gwen's puzzlement. "So, tell me again."

"There was this time in Singapore when I pushed Morye about why he’d wanted to leave China, a tier I city, and he said that he’d killed someone he shouldn't have."

"And?"

"That's it; he refused to say anything else after."

Jun scratched his goatee. "That's…"

Her uncle's face momentarily lit up with an epiphanic comprehension. "Wow, Hai, you weasel."

"Uncle?" Gwen's felt her curiosity well whetted.

"Well, I think I know what your father meant. It's Hai, by the way, don't let grandfather hear you use his alias. In our culture, names have a peculiar inference, and it is disrespectful to reject a name bestowed by the ancestors."

Gwen dipped her chin in acknowledgement. She wondered if the ancestors would accept her foreign name or if she would have to acquire a new one. In her old world, she had Asian colleagues who had two names—one for public and another for private.

"So, about my father?"

"I've only got a hypothesis," Jun replied after a moment of hesitation. "At any rate, out of respect for Hai, I think he should be the one to tell it."

Resuming the journey, their Jeep turned from the six-lane orbital highway onto an adjoining sky bridge. An overhead sign indicated an off-ramp that connected to the Third Outer Loop. Jun slid the wheel through his hands and allowed the car to coast down the spiralling ramp. The mana-engine thrummed as the flywheel picked up the momentum, holding the Jeep's velocity at a steady cruise.

The Jeep then decelerated as it entered a residential zone, where the bare concrete of the freeway gave way to rows of giant cypress lining both sides of a broad, two-lane avenue.

Another half a kilometre passed before their Jeep turned into a parkland gated community. A plaque in Chinese read "Hamlet of the Plum Blossoms".

"We're here," Jun announced.

The siheyuan's entrance revealed a four-section townhouse complex.

Alright. Gwen took a deep breath. Time to meet my gran-maker.

Here was the family that she had wholly neglected in her previous life. There were no expectations here, no clues, nothing to indicate their likes and dislikes. She was a stranger in a strange land, held captive by powers beyond her ken.

Jun gave her a confident smile and stepped in. Gwen steeled her spine and followed.

The courtyard was erected in the old Chinese style, though constructed with new composite materials. The square, as Gwen entered, was an open-air atrium garden split toward four pathways—one toward the exit lobby, the other three leading toward an open communal hall, the bedrooms and an extensive training ground.

It was the communal hall that now solemnly awaited them.

Gwen wetted her lips and stepped in. She felt shaken, not unlike the time she’d had to propose a project to the board at McKinsey's for her first internship.

The hall itself was a two-storey building with a vaulted ceiling held up by two massive beams painted in deep scarlet, richly lacquered and edged with dusky gold. A set of Chinese characters prefaced the plaque hanging overhead with many pictographic characters, whose meaning her Ioun Stone mangled.

"Country… justice…" The other two words remained cryptic.

Gwen felt as though she’d travelled back in time into a period set-piece.

A faded crimson rug, two dozen metres in length, led her eyes toward the centre of the spacious chamber, where two dark mahogany chairs sat side by side with a side table between them. Flanking the seats were four more sets of smaller chairs, four on each side, lining either side of the carpet runner.

Currently, only one of the seats was occupied.

To Gwen's complete and utter surprise, the matriarch was a foreign-looking woman with flowing silver hair that framed her petite face, with a much younger appearance than her bearing suggested. Her skin glowed with near-supernatural vitality, radiating a halo of kindness and benignity.

The woman, she presumed, was her grandmother.

"Welcome, Granddaughter. My name is Klavdiya."

Her grandmother's voice was like gently flowing water.

"Grandmother!" Gwen paced across the carpet quickly.

When she came within speaking distance, Gwen realised she had no idea what to do. She didn't know any Chinese greetings. Was there a protocol to follow, some ritual to perform? Hopefully, she needn't kowtow, at least not in public.

In the end, she curtsied like she'd done in Sydney for the senior Mages and her instructors.

"That's sweet, dear, though a bow would have sufficed." Her grandmother observed; the old woman's expression was mystical and mysterious.

Their eyes met.

Klavdiya had a heart-shaped face familiar to hers and shared the same straight nose, pursed lips and correspondingly high cheekbones. Unlike herself, Klavdiya had a thick head of silvery-flaxen tresses that bespoke of her age even as her face gave off a youthful exuberance.

Gwen had always wondered why she didn't particularly resemble her father or mother, though she did have her mother's eyes, and now the mystery was solved. It was her grandmother whose features she had inherited.

"You may call me Nainai, or grandmother, or babushka, though 'babulya' certainly wouldn't be amiss should the fancy catch you." Her grandmother intoned with a voice full of quiet wisdom.

Babulya it is, then, Gwen told herself. She liked how the word rolled off the tongue with its triple-tap of syllables.

Her babulya stepped off the impressively sized mahogany chair and confidently sauntered toward Gwen, who felt indecisively welded to the spot by a mess of uncertain emotions.

To Gwen's shock, despite her presence, her babulya was barely five-foot-two. She must have gotten her height from her mother's side.

Her babulya wore a comfortable smock shaped from a simple tunic paired with an ankle-length skirt, capped off with a pair of dark cotton walking flats. More strikingly, despite Babulya's venerable age, her spine was ramrod straight; her shoulder squared and poised, her chin held high, though that may have been because Klavdiya was looking up toward Gwen's face.

Then she opened her arms and embraced Gwen at the waist. Gwen lowered herself by a head's height so that their faces met, welcoming the cuddle with all her heart.

Klavdiya gave Gwen a hearty peck on both cheeks. "Finally! A granddaughter as tall as the girls I used to know from the mother country!" Her babulya exclaimed excitedly, patting Gwen's head gingerly and touching her face and shoulders. "Good bones too, strong and well-formed. Oh, I think you have a bit of growing left in you yet."

When Klavdiya's hand found its way under her chin to extract the amulet hanging there, Gwen felt a sudden quickening of her pulse.

"You have the Kirin?" Her babulya seemed startled by the find.

"I do," Gwen replied, sliding a hand between her blouse and removing the jade pendant for Klavdiya's inspection.

"No need to give it back." Her babulya patted the space between her chest. "It's yours if Hai has given it. It will be of great benefit to you in the future."

Gwen carefully slipped the amulet back between her bosoms where it sat snugly, diffusing its gentle warmth.

"So let's take a good gander at you." Klavdiya pulled herself back, gently pinning Gwen's arms to her waist.

She still couldn't believe how young her grandmother looked. After all, her father was thirty-seven, meaning that, at best, her Klavdiya was in her mid-fifties, an impressive feat for a woman with three children and four grandchildren.

"Detect Magic!"

Babulya's eyes glowed with the magic of Divination, mixed in with a radiant aura of Positive Energy that formed a visible halo over her temple.

Gwen felt a wave of warmth emit from her babulya's hands, washing over her astral body. It was a feeling she had known many times before from another diminutive angel.

"You're a Healer?" Gwen blurted out. Who'd have thought that her babulya was a Healer of all things? From the way Guo had behaved, Gwen had imagined that Klavdiya was either a femme fatale of unfathomable power or a bronze-faced babushka with an iron palm.

"You've got quite a few hidden injuries there, my dear granddaughter." Her grandmother frowned. "The second-rate Healers of the tier II cities are not trained to deal with magical injuries fully, and from the looks of it, you have taken quite a beating. There are parts of your body that have sustained extensive regeneration, but it doesn't appear to have meshed well with your pre-existing flesh."

Gwen ran a hand over her chest, across her shoulders, then over her abdomen. She had indeed felt a little unused to the youthfulness of her new body, as though parts of her were slightly out of sync.

"But now that you are here, we can heal you." Klavdiya smiled gently, bringing a gentle hand to meet Gwen's own. "Come, come, sit with me."

She directed Gwen toward a chair adjacent to her own. Beside them, Jun took an opposite seat.

"You must have suffered much while in the Frontier." Klavdiya clicked her tongue a few times to drive the point home. "Sydney is not a bad city by any means, but the constant exposure to the Mermen must have taken a terrible toll."

"It was alright, Babulya," Gwen replied carefully. "I have friends there who are faithful and loyal, as well as mentors who helped me out during the year and a half since I Awakened."

"Oh, I am sure." Her grandmother gently patted Gwen's hand. Klavdiya had almond eyes that were amber flecked with bits of sunburst yellow. Gwen wondered if that was her babulya's natural colour or if years of training with Positive Energy had altered her irises, just as the Lightning Element added to the emerald of her eyes.

Feeling the unadulterated amiability radiating from her grandmother, Gwen sensed the time had come for her to appeal. "Babulya," Gwen inquired carefully, holding steady her tone and cadence. "Do you think it is at all possible that grandfather will let me return to Sydney?"

Her babulya smiled. "Would you like me to be honest with you, my dear?"

"Yes, Babulya."

"Alright." Her grandmother held her hand. "In a moment, your grandfather will come home—"

At the mention of Guo, Gwen's chest hurt, constricting her diaphragm with an acidic twist.

"—and then we are going to have a banquet. You are then going to meet the rest of the family."

Gwen nodded demurely, unthawing herself through force of will.

"After that, you, me, Grandfather and Jun, we are going to sit down, right here, and we are going to have a nice, long conversation."

"Yes, Babulya." For now, Gwen choose to acceptance.

When her father had told Gwen about her paternal family, Gwen had fantasised about meeting them. It was a strange and giddy sensation to have another chance at reliving a life that she'd neglected a lifetime ago. As much as she had to remind herself that she had been roughly abducted and brought into the home as one under house arrest, she was still appreciative that such a silver lining playbook sort of thing existed in real life. Likewise, if she thought of her father's unwitting error as an accidental accelerant that had pushed forward an inevitable meeting, her bitter pill was easier to swallow.

Either way, what she had now was family.

An extended family.

What a strange thing to find later in life.

Gwen squeezed her grandmother's hands.

"Such a good child." Her babulya had a twinkle in her eye that Gwen recognised. It was a look of sly triumph.

Were her grandparents playing a bad cop, good cop routine? It didn't matter. If she were going to commit to the path ahead, there would be no room for lingering regrets, at least not with her grandfather's bloodhound's nose for conspiracy.

As Gwen played with potential scenarios in her head, she became struck by a delightfully wicked thought.

What if she told Grandfather and the MSS about Elizabeth?

The number of people who knew the truth could be counted on one hand. What if Gwen told them about Elizabeth, her powers, what she had done in Sydney, and sold her worst enemy for Contribution Credits? She didn't have to tell them the entire truth; of course, her Master's many acts of misplaced mercy would be omitted, and Elizabeth Winsted Sobel would simply be a psychotic rogue Mage returned from the dead to wreak havoc upon a man who had almost rid the world of her taint. Wouldn't it be fun to sic a beautiful little Interpol warrant on that nasty woman? It would perhaps flush her out from hiding, where Gunther and Alesia would be waiting for her.

On that same note, Gwen's mind raced. What did the tier I cities know of the Void Element? Indeed, if the bloodline of Song practised the power of Salt, they would know plenty about the dangers of utilising Quasi-Negative elements. If her father couldn't help her, maybe her grandfather could? She could finally share with someone her worries and fears about Caliban's powers, perhaps receive some guidance in mitigating its effects.

Even if they refused to take her in, perhaps they could give her a hand.

Her grandfather was a stone-faced spymaster, but what of her babulya? Perhaps Uncle Jun or even her yet unseen aunt? Hell, if her father was willing to return to the fold, maybe she could take advantage of that. Beggars couldn't be choosers, especially if she desired to see her friends again.

There was most definitely a play she could execute here.

"Gwen?" Her babulya tapped Gwen's hand. "Don't worry about your grandfather. He's an old softy once you get past the spiky exterior. Think of him as a Horn-back Pangolin. There's nothing to fear."

"Of course, Babulya, I was just thinking, that's all."

"I am sure you were, dear." Babulya looked across the courtyard, toward the gate. "Why don't you go and get changed? Give him a fresh, new impression. I've prepared something suitable for you in the guest room. It would do you both good to not remind him of the Sky-Prison."

"I will, Babulya," Gwen replied, turning to look at Jun.

"This side." Jun led her away. "I'll show you to your room."

My room. Gwen masticated the words carefully in her mind. It looked like she was in for the long haul. If only they would let her contact Elvia or Yue, maybe even Gunther.

Her room was surprisingly situated, not on the family's side of the siheyuan, but in the east wing, next to the training hall. It was a semi-detached single with a small closet, a bed and a bedside table. The room had no ensuite, for the bathrooms were adjacent, just inside the adjoining training hall. These were public bathrooms, but as long as the building remained unoccupied, Gwen would have her privacy. From the looks of it, the abode used to house instructors when they stayed to tutor the members of the household.

More than anything, its location was a telltale sign of her current position within the House's hierarchy. Not quite in the family, not quite out—just close enough to be within hand's reach, but kept far away enough to be disposable. Her grandmother may have played the simpering babulya, but her intentions were measured and precise. She was a woman who thought a dozen steps ahead, the Healer-wife of a spymaster.

Having inspected her new home, Gwen relaxed. Now that their respective positions were transparent, it made her calmer. "Be out soon."

Jun left Gwen at the door and went to oversee the banquet.

Gwen found a mixed East-West ensemble within the closet—a one-piece, knee-length blue skirt with a cheongsam blouse for the upper body, embroidered with a Ming vase filigree.

Gwen slipped the dress over her head and clasped its butterfly knot buttons. Just as she was beginning to think it was too large, the gown shifted. The effect was so startling that she yelped as the fabric tapered to her torso. She had to do a doubletake in the mirror to confirm that the dress had indeed resized itself.

This mandarin dress was a miracle. What an excellent Enchantment! O brave new world that has such magic in it!

She materialised a brush and smoothed out her hair, wrangling her mane into an oriental-looking coiffure, a cute little sideburn that she pinned down with several wire clips.

For shoes, she brought out her lucky, veteran Mary-Janes. Gwen promised herself that if she had a chance, she would get them enchanted with a self-cleaning, self-polishing effect, for she had grown emotionally attached to the pair of shoes that had seen her through thick and thin.

The overall effect was better than she had anticipated. The form-fitted cheongsam suited her well. She could be gracing the silver screen and not seem a single frame out of place.

Right. Gwen thought. Round two.

"DAD?"

To her surprise, her father had arrived. He was healed and attired in a military jacket with matching olive pants. It was such a rare sight. The military outfit suited him. It made Morye look almost respectable.

"Wow, you're out already?" Her father was surprised to see her too. "I guess we both should thank your grandmother, eh? Babulya!"

Babulya shot him an expression that was at once scalding and tender.

"Are you alright?" Gwen approached her father, touching his face here and there.

"Hey, HEY! That tickles, don't!" He protested loudly, clearly embarrassed to be fussed over by his daughter in front of his family. Gwen had never seen her father like this before, so out of his element, so agitated and disturbed. It was fun.

There was a loud cough.

Guo Song, patriarch of the clan, dressed in a crisp military uniform, made his presence behind her father.

"Grandfather." Gwen bowed deeply. Jun had taken her aside earlier and taught her how to do a Chinese greeting properly.

"Mm," her grandfather grunted, looking her over with a perspicacious gaze that acknowledged improvement in her mannerisms. "Let's get started. I am starving."

"Not waiting for Tao and Mina?" Jun inquired. "We need to wait for Nen as well; she's likely trying to wrangle them."

"They can be late!" Her grandfather blew two jets of disgruntled air from his nostrils and began to move.

"Right, off we go then to the banquet hall." Jun changed his tone as soon as Guo made a sour face. "Gwen, come with me."

Within the main compound, in the open room cleared for the occasion, a giant banquet table sat, kitted for eight.

Her grandfather, Guo.

Her babulya, Klavdiya.

Her uncle, Jun.

Her father, Hai.

Gwen.

And three empty chairs.

The NoM servants came and went like a stream of bees, though Gwen was flummoxed to see them all in military outfits. Was this another aspect of how NoMs lived in a tier I city or was it a uniquely Chinese thing? There were so many of them, these servants, a dozen in all, who stood to attention behind the family as they each took their seats.

Gwen waited until all the others were seated before taking a seat herself.

The food presented in front of her was decidedly beyond the ken of her limited vocabulary. Of all the dishes, a dozen in all, she only recognised the pancakes as the famous Peking Duck. As for the others, she couldn't begin to guess.

Beside her, Morye sat miserably, looking up at the ceiling wistfully, looking every inch a man who wished he could be somewhere else, far away.

Jun sat opposite the table, grinning at his elder brother with an ebullient expression, bathing in Morye's misery.

Grandfather sat with his eyes closed as if in meditation, and grandmother fussed over the temperature of the Oolong tea.

"Hungry?" her uncle asked. Gwen was starving, but no one dared to eat without her grandfather touching the first dish.

Gwen shook her head— but her desperate eyes were terrible liars.

"What food is that?" she point to a dish to offset the awkwardness.

"Ah, an old favourite—the palm of the Snow Bear, cooked with roe of the Yangzi-Sturgeon."

"Right."

"Oh, that one? Ah yes, this one is called the Golden Burning Brain."

Gwen's eyes grew wide. "B-brain?"

"No, you goose, not 'brain'. It’s made from bean curd simmered in a soup of Wildland pheasant, giblet of Mandarin Duck, and stewed with the Hooked-clawed Cock."

"That sounds expensive."

"Don't fret, if you're disappointed that there's no brain, that right over there," her uncle pointed with his chin as well toward a grey mass sitting in a creamy broth, "is the brain of the Gibbon Shark, cooked two ways in yin-yang soup. Be sure to take a big bowl later."

Amazingly, her Void-hunger began to fade. She pointed to something that looked like frogspawn in pastry. "And that thing?"

"That's just a regular egg tart; the wild vanilla seeds are rather large this year."

She could eat that. Her eyes moved over to a bowl of clear jelly.

"Good choice. That one is a family favourite!" Jun laughed.

"Is it coconut jelly?

"What? No! That's the nest of the four-winged swallow, harvested fresh from a coastal Black Zone."

"You guys eat nests?" Gwen’s insides fought a war between disgust and desire.

"It's not a nest," her father answered for her. "It's swallow."

"The what?"

"The spit of the swallow." Her father grinned at her.

Gwen sighed. Egg tart it is.

They waited for a few more minutes before finally, a growing clamour heralded the arrival of their final guests.

Nen came through the door first, bowing and apologising for her tardiness. It wasn't hard to recognise her aunt because she looked just like Klavdiya, having the same face and mannerisms. Despite their similarity, however, there remained a telling difference between them. Nen lacked the dignified air of supreme competence that Klavdiya possessed. More so, watching Nen smiling blithely as her grandfather seethed gave Gwen the impression that her aunt was a bit of a ditz.

The following figure to come through the door was yet another alter-ego of Klavdiya's face, this time more distinctly Asian, complete with warm black hair. Where Babulya had the amber, almond eyes of the Eastern Europeans, this girl, who Gwen presumed to be Mina, had dark, obsidian orbs like their grandfather, giving her a doll-like appearance that suited her expensive clothes. Their eyes met, and immediately Gwen felt an unbidden sense of hostility. She followed Mina's gaze until it landed on her mandarin dress.

Ah. Gwen understood immediately; she was well-learned in the art of reading men and women. Mina must have coveted the dress and now a lovely misunderstanding was upon them.

Unlike Nen or Klavidya, Gwen couldn't tell Mina's age. For all she knew, she was anywhere between fourteen and twenty-four. Goodness, Gwen thought, if anyone wished to woo their Healers, they better as for ID!

Then came a strange absence of sound.

The silence was a jarring lull in the bustle of the moment, where just a second ago, two women had burst through the doorway like blooming, noisy flowers.

"Tao!" Guo's command cracked the air like a bullwhip.

Slowly, Tao came through the partitioned door.

Gwen's eyes almost popped out of her sockets. If she'd been eating the tarts, she would have gobbed the table like a spitting, four-winged swallow.

Gingerly, her cousin walked across the threshold, lifting one leg above the other.

Are those drop-crotch low-sag jeans? The spectacle assailed her as though someone had king-punched her in the brain. The visual stimulus that assaulted her eyes was beyond belief.

What was she seeing? Was she still in China?

With a stooped gait, Tao, her cousin, just walked in like someone from a 2010 hip-hop video with the prefix 'Lil' something. Unlike Nen or Mina, the boy wore ankle-height Nike sneakers in a blinding shade of white, low-rise jeans, two overlapping tee-shirts, one white and the other black, and a baseball cap too big for his head, worn slightly askew.

He also had a black eye.

All Gwen's worries melted. There was nothing, no abduction, no threat of Room 101, that could top the absurdity of this moment.

Is this real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality?

From the door, Cousin Tao looked up.

There must have been a sequence of genes missing somewhere, lost in the translation of generations. Tao had a face that looked like a man had mated with a surprised squirrel, creating a gaunt, skull-shaped head with deeply sunken sockets, from within which two startled looking amber orbs sat.

To Gwen's surprise, Tao's eyes did not register Morye, his long-lost uncle of many years, but instead fell upon herself. The boy's face lit up like a man who'd suddenly discovered fire.

"Yo, wassup?" he said, swinging his head back and forth, bobbing in Gwen's general direction. "Who's the hoe? She looks hella fresh."

Gwen's world imploded.

It was too much.

She couldn't hold back.

If she had to hold back her laughter now, she would die.

Chapter fourteen

A Meeting at the Threshold

Some die for beauty.

Some die for the truth.

Gwen died trying to be polite.

Her innate reaction was to unleash a hysterical cackle, to strike the table with her palms, laughing until her stomach was in stitches.

But Gwen held back.

Anyone who could act and say whatever they wanted in front of Guo was an asset Gwen wished to preserve. Who knew if one day Tao may become a helpful speakerphone, even if all she needed from him was a few words in the right place, at the right time? So he’d called her the "H" word. Could he have meant it endearingly? It was no skin off her nose to ignore the insult.

"I am your cousin. Gwen Song," she answered, standing from her seat to shake his hand.

Having delivered his shocking entrance, Tao staggered towards the table. "I got chu, fam." Tao threw her a gang sign.

She shook his fingers. The young man's digits were a little sticky.

They sat.

Guo's fury was no less scalding than the bun Gwen ate in prison. Red-faced, the patriarch appeared paralysed by his rising his blood pressure, sitting like a statue until the colour faded from his cheeks and he could introduce the new comers.

There was an audible gasp from Nen, whose eyes grew as round as quail eggs. "Hai!"

You didn't notice? Gwen stared at her aunty.

Nen pushed back her chair, ran toward Morye, embraced him, and began rubbing her hands all over his face, raining a series of pecks on his grizzled cheeks. "Oh, I've missed you! We all thought you died!"

Morye withstood the assault quietly and graciously, slumping back as though he was trying to survive a summer squall.

With the greetings over, the banquet was finally ready. At the head of the table sat the patriarch with their children's matriarch. Nen sat on the left and the two sons on the right. Beside Nen was her daughter, Mina, who still glared at Gwen, and then it was Tao.

Tao eyed the food a few times before his eyes moved onto Gwen, running over her mandarin dress like a dog panting over a steak. It wasn't so much as lecherous as it was comical, for the young man sported a prison-type haircut and his two watery, sleep-deprived eyes resembled poached eggs sitting on a pancake-flat face.

On second thought, Gwen realised, it wasn't that Tao was leering at her, but that he could not help himself. His libidinous intent was attributed entirely to the unfortunate structure of his unpropitious face. His back, she noticed as well, was hunched, his chest sunken. Had he sustained some injury in the past? Her eyes moved from his torso up to his face, where his bruised eye throbbed.

"Which hood you from?" Tao's head bobbed when he spoke, giving the impression of a nervous but also impatient chicken.

"I am from Sydney."

"Whoa! You from the Frontier, dawg? That's hardcore, yo. Props."

"One second, Tao." Gwen turned toward her uncle. "Uncle Jun, I don't speak Chinese, so is Tao's vernacular for real or is my Ioun Stone acting up?"

"Oi!" Tao protested. "That's how mah b-boys roll, dawg. Don't hate the playa!"

Jun cringed as well. "He is er… "for real", as they say."

"Yeah, bitches!"

"Well, I am happy to have met you, Tao." Gwen extended a white hand to pat Tao on the arm, spreading a little intimacy to break the ice.

Tao stared at her slender fingers.

"I thought you bumpkins are all farmers and shit, ya know?" He took her hand and studied it. "Why you all dolled up and shit? I reckon if you put on a party dress, you'll make Mina look like a bitch, haha!"

"Brother!" Mina snapped at him, her pretty face screwing up into a scowl. "Be rude again and I'll grow you an extra set of wisdom teeth."

The older of the siblings instantly shrivelled.

"Hi, I am Gwen." Gwen turned to Mina and likewise offered her hand.

Mina stared at it. "Hello." She didn’t take it but instead threw her shade under her voluminous lashes, her doll-like, porcelain face taking on an aloof expression.

Gwen retracted her hand and turned to look at Morye, who looked like he was enjoying a little schadenfreude of his own. Jun, meanwhile, looked as though he was already exhausted by his nephew and niece's shameful display.

"It's good to see you're all getting along so well," Nen announced suddenly, oblivious to the fire. "Family should stick together! Hai, I am so happy you're back to life. I never believed it for a moment when they said you’d died."

Morye fired back a smile as false as water, which Nen riposted with absolute earnestness. The radiant demeanour she put up made her father wince.

"ENOUGH!" Gwen’s grandfather growled. Guo was very fond, or so it appears, of listening and watching in deathly silence before suddenly making an announcement. "Start eating!"

And they did, despite Gwen’s fear of what might be in the dishes, her Aunty Nen overzealously filled her bowl with bits and pieces of each exotic item, forcing Gwen to grit her teeth and embark on an Epicurean adventure.

As the dinner progressed, Guo sat like a lord surveying his domain, his eyes moving from Gwen to the others, to her father and back to Gwen again. As Guo absentmindedly chewed through each dish, she could almost hear the gears turning inside his head; little cogs clinking into place as loops and hooks interconnected plots and projections.

"Try this, dear; it's good for your Mana pool." Nen passed Gwen a bowl of brain that resembled tofu. Elvia likes Tofu, Gwen thought, therefore, I like tofu. Eat the tofu.

"Thank you, Aunty."

There were a hundred questions Gwen wanted to ask her father, but she would have to wait until after their soft interrogation by Guo. Beside Morye, Jun spoke patiently and meticulously, asking his brother about life in Sydney, asking how he survived without access to the clan's resources.

"I get by, you know? I guess the gift of not using any Salt magic was that I got to have kids, although the curse was that I got to have kids." Morye shot Gwen a glance.

"Ha, you got me there." Jun chewed on his rice with a vacant expression. From her observations, Jun was the type to want kids. On the car trip, he had told her that when Morye had disappeared and the title of ‘heir’ had fallen on to him, he'd found out that he was infertile. To heal his lifeforce would have meant giving up his talents for a decade, which wasn't an option.

Her babulya seemed to be in conversation with her grandfather—their lips moved without sound, exchanging words which evaded her best attempts at eavesdropping.

Mina, meanwhile, fiddled with what appeared to be a data slate, half-distractedly going about dinner without engaging with anyone at the table.

Without a single person to converse with, Gwen turned to Tao, who was digging through the dishes like a man who had just survived a famine.

"So, cousin, who gave you that black eye?"

"Sum bitches." Tao hissed while chewing on a pork-trotter.

"Details, perhaps? Surely a man such as yourself would have given as good as you received."

"You talk like Babulya," Tao observed offhandedly. "You old?"

"Er… I am underage." Gwen forced herself to refrain from striking the boy. "So tell me about the fight."

Tao dropped the trotter and looked for a tart. With a mouth still full of crumbs, he began to regale his tale in great detail.

"So, there was this motherfucker from the Lin Clan who wanted to fuck with my crew. My boys and I were like, hanging out ’n’ chilling, minding our own business at the M, right. Then this prick shows up, and he's like, 'What brings you out here?’ and I am like, 'What's it to you, Fuck Face?' Then he's like, 'Clean up your mouth, Tao.' Then I am like, 'Go fuck ya self.'"

"Oh, my." Gwen listened with rapt fascination, a captive audience to Tao's Homeric epic.

"Dat Lin fucker's a real tool, you know, the bitch-face dared to turn away from me. Like WHO DA FUCK turns away in a fight? So I am like, 'Bitch, take mah Ray of Frost!' And I nailed ’im right at the back of his fucking neck, hahaha."

"Go on. Then what happened?"

"The fuck you think happened, bitch? He turns around and he's all like fired up and shit. Motherfucker's from a good bloodline, you know? I am like, 'Aw shit!' and he's like, 'Yeah, you little shit,' and I am like 'Bros, protect me!' and my bros are all like 'Protect Peaches!'"

"Who's Peaches?"

"Bitch, you even listening? I am Peaches! Tao is Chinese for Peach, alright?"

"Okay, Peaches. Go on."

"Anyway, this Lin bitch, right, he's about to fuck me up, you know. He's all fluffed and shit; fucking university wanker. Anyway, I am like, 'Bro. You want to fuck me up! Come at me. You know who my dad is?' And he's like, 'What the fuck, are you mentally disabled? We went to junior school together. Our dads golf on Sundays!' Then I am like, 'Fuck you!' That's when he hit me with his mother fucking hands, man! The fucker knows we're not allowed to duel in public spaces, so he beat me like an NoM!"

"With his bare hands, you say?"

"Motherfucker beat me like a slab of char-siu, bitch."

"When did he stop?"

Tao, AKA Peaches looked around the table before replying quietly. "When he fucking got tired, I guess?"

"Security doesn't like to meddle with the military's kids," Morye explained, likely from experience. "No spells, no trouble."

Gwen turned to the rest of the table to see if anyone had just experienced the Epic of Peaches in the same manner as she had.

"It grows on you, doesn't it?" Jun said after a moment. "Sometimes I miss it even."

"You the best, Uncle Jun! YOOO!"

Gwen turned to look at Guo.

"He is not Song," he announced after a few unkind moments. "Thank the ancestors."

"Tao is er… disinherited," Jun added helpfully.

"That's hardly fair!" Nen protested, her face unhappy and adorable at once. "Peaches needs all the help he can get!"

"Can you all keep the volume down?" Mina interjected suddenly. "I am trying to have a conversation here."

That was when Gwen noticed that Mina had a subtle glow flickering beside her ear. She had been on a "Message" with someone this entire time? Gwen looked around for a device but couldn't find one. Was the girl a Diviner? No, she gave off the aura of a Healer, and there was that strange perfume hanging about her as well. Was it an ability or was it a gadget?

"Mina is… also not in line," Jun added. "At least until they prove themselves."

Percy, you lucky bastard, Gwen noted silently to herself. If Percy could be half as obedient as these two living examples of filial piety, then he had it in the bag.

Dinner proceeded for another half an hour, after which the servants brought bowls of water that they used to sanitise their hands. A palate cleanser of herbs in a slightly syrupy soup was the last dish, after which the banquet ended.

Grandfather rose. "Gwen, Hai, Jun, in the meeting chamber now. Nen, look after your children."

Those whose names had been called stood to attention.

Gwen felt her stomach make a little topsy-turvy tumble.

This was her second chance.

There would not be a third.

The meeting chamber was a conference room on the side of the main dining area.

Grandfather sat at the head. Babulya sat beside him. Jun sat to the side. Nen was missing, though Gwen had a suspicion that her air-headed aunty was likely terrible at keeping secrets, which would explain her absence.

Gwen and Morye stood in the middle.

Four giant pillars held up the room, each painted in dark crimson. Above them, a plaque read "Righteous Heart… One…"

"Which one of you would like to speak first?" Grandfather broke the silence.

"I will." Morye raised a hand.

"Gwen, take a seat while your father speaks." Babulya pointed to a chair beside Jun.

Her father gathered his thoughts while Gwen patted down her dress to prevent it from riding upward. The skirt portion of the dress was pleated, but the mandarin-style torso pulled at the hem.

"Before I begin," Morye announced to his parents. "Allow me to apologise. Father, and especially Mother—I am sorry." There was a dramatic pause as Morye tilted his neck like a tired sunflower. "I am sorry I faked my death at the Battle of Hunan."

Gwen baulked, her hazel orbs sparkling with astonishment and disbelief. Her father had said that he’d killed someone he shouldn't have, but so far, there was no indication of who he had murdered. So the man he’d killed was himself?

"Is inheriting the Clan such an impossible task?" Guo's voice was frustrated fury simmering under a surface of forced calm.

"It is," Morye announced. "Father, neither of us can be euphemistic, so let me say it once more. I have no desire to inherit the Clan and act as its head. I just wish to be myself, do what I want. As you should know, I am not a man given to duty. I maintained that when we fought about it so many years ago and I maintain it now."

"A Mage's talent does not belong to himself alone." Her grandfather gripped the knob of his chair.

"Which is why in my escapade, I never relied on the gift of Yin and the bloodline of the Song," Morye pointed out. "When I survived in Sydney, I did so entirely on the Water element, which I performed at a reduced Affinity, and my self-taught Abjuration."

"You are a Magus now?" Babulya looked up. "This is wonderful news."

"Well, unintentionally, maybe." Morye shrugged. "My point is, I was perfectly happy there, using my powers to survive, untethered to all of this."

"Tell me about your life in Sydney, how you have lived in these twenty-odd years," Klavdiya said, glowing with the happiness that her useless son had unwittingly become a Magus.

"Alright. After my escape, I arrived on a freighter under the pseudonym Morye, which means ocean…"

"In Russian, I know," Klavdiya replied warmly. "Dear, please go on."

Morye spoke plainly of his experiences, but much of it, Gwen either already knew or had guessed at in the past. Her father had worked hard to join a vocational college in Sydney, got a scholarship to Sydney University through that, then met her mother. They’d fallen in love, had children, then divorced due to differences in life's philosophies. When pressed, Morye stated that Gwen's mother had found out about Morye's powers and wanted a better life, a life of prestige, but Morye had refused, so they had come to blows. Likewise, he’d looked after his two children until they graduated junior high and Awakened to their abilities.

"Is this true, Gwen?" Babulya asked.

Her father's story was true because she didn't want to say it was false for fear of his life. Morye's tale was also missing the hundred or so times he cheated on her mother. Moreover, that had been so fucked up that Gwen had come home feeling suicidal after her rebirth only to find Morye had invited a girlfriend over to celebrate her moving out of the house. Likewise, in the year since, he'd completely let her go.

But she wanted her dad to owe her one. "I didn’t know want, go hungry or feel unsafe during the time we grew up," she said carefully, avoiding looking at Morye. "He is a good father, better than many could hope for."

"So you can be responsible!" Babulya happily declared to Morye. "Hai, why not reconsider your father's proposal? It's only right that the firstborn son inherits."

"It's death." Morye shook his head. "I wanted life."

"Insolent ingrate!" Guo looked as though he wanted to give Morye another sound thrashing.

"Now, now." Babulya calmed him by rubbing his chest to ease his congested fury. "Hai, regardless of whether you listen to your father, I think we all deserve an apology."

Morye took a deep breath.

Gwen watched as her father carefully walked in front of the two old folks and dropped to his knees. "Mamulya, Baba, I am sorry for my selfishness and the pain that it has caused you for these past twenty years. Please accept my apology." He touched his head to the ground and kowtowed, repeating the ritual three times before standing back up.

"Thank you, dear." Babulya reached out and cupped his face with her hand. "You must have suffered a lot in the tier II city, no? All those Mermen and Saurians, Kangaroos even, constant attacks, never knowing peace."

Sydney is safe! Gwen wanted to yell. Morye spent the entire time chasing skirts and pissing off my mother! But how could she blab when her grandmother was melting even the cynical heart of her stone-faced grandfather?

"You have no regrets?" Gwen's grandfather asked her father wistfully. "None at all?"

Morye's expression looked tragic and self-aggrandising. "What is regret when I had no choice?"

The room took on an oppressive silence.

Each side took a moment to digest Morye's philosophical declaration.

"Hai, go and sit," her grandfather told Morye. "Gwen, it is now your turn."

Gwen conditioned her nerves and pulled herself from the hardwood chair. As she passed Morye, their eyes met, and her father gave her a reassuring nod.

She took her place in the centre. A severe mental pressure descended upon her, numbing her scalp and setting her skin to crawl.

Gwen took a deep breath, savouring her final few seconds. There was no holding back this time, no playing dumb to try and see how they’d react. Gwen's grandfather was in no mood to play cock and bull. Her grandmother was likewise expecting the gospel truth.

So how should she lead the conversation? She needed to distract them somehow, unbalance them, get them on the back foot; even if she was pushed to confess her secrets, it must be on her terms.

"I am going to show you something. Is that okay?" She stepped back and retreated a safe distance.

Her grandfather nodded.

Babulya's eyes sparkled.

Jun leaned forward with an alert expression of expectation.

Morye groaned softly under his breath.

"Ariel!"

The Lightning marten landed with a flash and examined its surroundings with its electric blue pupils. It spotted the old couple at the end of the row and made a flourishing turn onto its stomach, exposing its belly before dropping to the floor and rolling back and forth adorably. It was an old hand at this game.

"Oh, how precious!" Babulya noted. "What an intelligent familiar!"

"This is Ariel. He is a Lightning Element familiar I acquired when I had just awoken to my powers."

Babulya retrieved an LDM crystal from thin air and threw it towards Ariel, who caught it mid-arc in its teeth, puffing up its cheeks for maximum cuteness before landing deftly.

"Now this…" Gwen took a deep breath, "is Caliban!"

Don't be a spider! Don't be a spider! Gwen prayed to the Elder Gods. Snake! Snake! Snake!

A slit opened in the fabric between the Void and the material plane, ejecting Caliban like an abortive dark tumour. The Lovecraftian thing uncoiled itself into a tenebrous centipede with its slimy, translucent carapace, a multitude of skittering legs emerging from its fleshy torso like bony fingers.

"It's not dangerous," Gwen announced quickly. "Caliban is entirely under my command."

Her babulya had an unruffled expression that suggested she'd seen worse. Her grandfather gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that Gwen wondered if the man would tear the handles off.

Jun had darted between his parents the moment the thing appeared, an incantation upon his lips, ready to visit terrible destruction upon Gwen should she attempt to harm her grandparents. When no hostility materialised, he awkwardly returned to his seat.

Caliban sniffed the air before lowering its head and coiling around Gwen's feet. Its centipede form was immense, just over two metres in length and as thick as her thighs at its centre. Its many legs skittered over her shoes and her white thighs until it could gain purchase, with the help of her arms, in scaling her dress. Gwen held the upper section of the netherworld monstrosity as one would cradle a long-bodied cat, showing off its faceless head and the mandibles there.

"This is Caliban," she said with a quavering voice. "It is my other familiar, from the Void Element."

Gwen stroked the terrifying, tenebrous thing, causing it to purr with a series of wild clicking. Ariel, not to be beaten, finished its crystal and began doing laps around her other leg.

"Caliban has a unique ability." Gwen felt her heart catch in her throat. "When it consumes an enemy, it can sometimes take on their shape. Additionally, I gain some the Affinities of the Mages it consumes, though I don't know exactly how."

The room fell silent as the last words left her mouth.

Her grandfather turned to his wife. "A calamity," he said audibly.

Calamity? Gwen's ears perked up, a sheen of cold sweat drenching her back. That didn’t seem like a reasonable reaction at all. Had she made yet another mistake?

"No," her grandmother retorted, moving her luminous eyes slowly until she met Guo's cold black orbs. "A boon."

Boon is good. Gwen repeated babulya's words. More boon, please.

"How did you come about this talent then?" Her grandfather turned back to Gwen, his tone less antagonistic than she had imagined. "Tell me from the start, from your moment of Awakening."

The breath that Gwen had been holding released. Below, her legs felt like two long strings of failing spaghetti. With a silent command, she retrieved Caliban and Ariel, returning them to her pocket dimension.

"I will, Grandfather," she began. "My Awakening took place about a year and a half ago, in September, at a school called Blackwattle…"

Mindful of any pitfalls in her narrative, Gwen began to recount the past year and a half of her life with as much truth as she could conveniently deliver. She omitted the secret of her twin-soul, of her otherworldly wisdom and her strange, quizzical transportation into this world from her old one, but told the truth of her Awakening, first as a Generalist, then as a Lightning Evoker, then their adventure in the Royal National.

"That was the first time I met the Rainbow Serpent, a mythical existence by the name of Almudj…"

She told them of what had happened on the Field Trip, of Debora, of the Rainbow Serpent, of what had happened to her when the Mage known as Edgar had tried to take her body and soul.

"Father later killed that Mage, or so I was told…"

"Hai, you did this?"

"I did." Her father said.

Guo nodded, evidently pleased.

"That was when I finally met my Master, Henry Kilroy, the Lord Magister of Sydney Tower…"

Gwen then told them of her training under Henry, Alesia and Gunther, of her growing kinship. She regaled her story about Blackheath, the slavers, and the first time Caliban had taken within itself the lives of the innocent Mages who’d kept prisoners there. Of Gunther rescuing her in the eleventh hour and cleansing the place with his radiant fire.

"You keep austere company, my child," her babulya interjected as Gwen spoke of Gunther and the Tower.

"The Morning Star," Guo intoned, none too happy with the revelation. "I know of this man."

"Not to mention Deathless Henry himself," Grandmother added. "But all men die. Am I presuming too much to say that you had a hand in that as well?"

Gwen felt her voice falter as her babulya struck the nail right on the head.

"It's fine, child. Continue."

"Grandfather, the next part of my story is going to reveal some of my late Master's secrets. May I ask that you keep this revelation in confidence?"

"You have it," her grandfather intoned seriously. From his expression, Gwen could read that he had imagined the girl's past to be shallow, but they were in deep waters now, and the depth of Gwen's life descended well into the muck.

"I am going to tell you about the Mage who is responsible for the fall of Sydney," Gwen began. "I am speaking of Elizabeth Winsted Sobel, the wife of my master, Henry Kilroy—a Void Mage like myself."

Gwen then spoke of Mark Chandler, his ploys involving his sister, and about Elizabeth and her madness, fleshing out the rationale of her failure at Blackheath. She told them about her subsequent training for the Inter-high, of what her Master had said about the Sea of Flames and how she would be protected by fame and notoriety when the time was ripe to expose her powers to the world.

"A wise and bold choice. How great the mind of this Henry Kilroy must be," her grandmother said, deeply impressed. "It would have certainly worked, you know. I can most assuredly imagine how the Mageocracy would react if Kilroy threw the weight of his influence behind you."

"He is dead?" Guo interrupted her with a hint of steel.

"Yes. My Master is no more," Gwen affirmed grievously.

She then told them of her first match at Rosebay, of how Elizabeth must have found and ambushed Henry, of the Mermen invasion that followed. She explained the Tower's downfall, of how Debora was Faceless, and of her moment of crisis when she had been about to be consumed by a skin-changer.

"Then my amulet released all the energies it had gathered from Almudj." Gwen retrieved the Kirin amulet from beneath her mandarin blouse and placed it upon her palm for all to see.

"You gave the Kirin amulet to a daughter?" Guo turned to Morye incredulously. "What about your son?"

Morye shrugged. "She needed it more than Percy."

Guo's face twisted into something terrifying.

Jun reached beneath his shirt and took out a familiar flash of jade. It was another piece of greenstone carved in the shape of a Kirin, though his one arced its back in the opposite way to Gwen's. When placed together, both Kirins formed the semi-circle halves of the yin and yang symbol.

"Would you like to have it returned?" Gwen asked immediately, holding out the amulet. She had no desire to forsake her precious item, of course; it was her ticket to harvesting Creature Cores. But she knew how these things usually went. In a contest for something where one was bound to lose, there was no advantage in avarice. Instead, it was wiser to take the moral high road and appear superior to the thing itself to create future opportunities for barter.

"You are free to keep it." Surprisingly, it was Jun who spoke, cutting off her grandfather before he could announce a decree. "The amulet has followed the streams of fate and chance and anchored itself to you. Who is to say that it would bring the same boon when forced upon another?"

Her grandfather swallowed his following words like a man forcing down a hardboiled egg, attracting another bout of chest rubbing from her grandmother.

"Tell me more about this Sobel woman," Guo said finally.

Gwen repeated what she knew about Elizabeth in reasonable detail, emphasising that her Master's only fault was his falsely placed faith in her death so many years ago. She then told them about the disappearance of her friends, Elvia and Yue, into the Grot and her mission to retrieve them from Singapore.

"And that's about all I know," Gwen confessed. "That and you already know about Caliban's particular physique."

"Is the Morning Star going to try and retrieve you?" her grandfather inquired, scratching his chin.

"Assuredly," Gwen replied. "We are brother and sister-in-craft, Alesia included. I'd wager Gunther is working on a plan as we speak."

She raised her hand, where three rings sparkled. "The Storage Ring is from Surya, my maternal grandfather. The Evasion Ring is from Magister Ferris, of Sydney Tower. The Contingency Ring is from Gunther; it was his own."

Her grandfather's face lost some of its colours, though whether from regret or not she did not know. After all, the Scarlet Sorceress was no slouch, and Gunther Shultz was a different creature entirely.

Gwen studied her grandfather as he tapped the chair with his fingers, his expression growing harder by the minute. Hopefully, the man wasn't thinking of killing her and burying her corpse.

"I would like to know your mind on this, Klavdiya," Guo murmured.

Her grandmother gave her a kind look of approval, then spoke. "You can keep a lid on the stew, Guo, but for how long would it simmer before it boiled over? Her old Master knew the reality of her situation far better than you. Don't fight her siblings. Leave the girl to her own devices. Leave her to me if you are disinclined. You are going to be preoccupied with your grandson, no? What about his retrieval?"

"If the Morning Star is aware, I do not think Wei and Jung can succeed," Guo confessed.

"Why not approach this with diplomacy?" Her grandmother asked. "What's the harm? Shanghai isn't at war with Sydney. Far from it. We trade with the Australians."

Guo sighed.

Gwen waited patiently while the two elders conversed. She repressed her body's natural desire to sway and shift, standing to attention with focused intent, awaiting summary judgement from her patriarch and matriarch.

"Gwen," it was her grandmother who addressed her.

"Yes, Babulya?"

"You will stay in Shanghai for the time being until matters of your status, your wellbeing, and the future of your education can be arranged."

"Yes, Babulya," Gwen said. Under the circumstances, that was the best she could hope for, at least until Gunther called.

Klavdiya raised an elegant eyebrow. "That's it? No questions? No requests?"

"May I ask for a favour then?"

"You may."

"Can I contact my friends in Sydney?"

"You speak of the girl Apprentice to the Scarlet Sorceress?" It was her grandfather who spoke this time.

"Yes, she is my dearest and closest friend."

His brows furrowed.

"They are still in transit as far as I am aware," Her grandfather said. "You will be permitted to contact your friends in time, but not now. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir," Gwen replied rigidly.

"Father, may I make a suggestion?" This time, it was Jun who spoke.

"Jun, go ahead." Klavdiya gave her second son a motherly smile, which Jun returned wholeheartedly. The exchange made Morye cringe, which made Gwen want to roll her eyes.

"If you want Gwen out of your hair for a few days," Jun began. "There's the gathering of the Houses happening on Hengsha Island in three days. Mina and Tao have to attend. I thought that this year, maybe we could bring Gwen and see how she performs."

Gwen's ears perked up. Hengsha Island? Gathering? Houses? Performance? What did all that mean?

"Bah, a stupid gathering of little princes and princesses," Morye interrupted them. "I don't know about throwing Gwen into the mix. Although she has seen some action out on the Frontier, her proficiency at holding back is mediocre at best. If she fries or tries to consume one of those kids…"

"She'll be fine." Jun's eyes sparkled. "Babulya is lending us her grand-niece, Petra."

"I don't know who that is." Morye shrugged.

"Oh, ho ho." Jun shook his head, grinning. "She is a monster." He turned to Klavdiya. "What do you think, Babulya? I think Gwen will get along with Petra."

Four pairs of eyes turned to Gwen, who swallowed nervously.

"Gwen," Klavdiya asked gently. "Would you like to stay with Grandfather or would you like to see a bit of the Shanghai countryside? Specifically, one of the Orange Zone training grounds?"

"Hengsha please!" Gwen answered a little too eagerly, drawing a grunt from her grandfather.

"Then it's settled." Jun clapped his hands. "In the meantime, why don't you get acquainted with Mina and Tao? They are both your seniors, Tao by two years and Mina one. Get them to show you the city, see some of its sights. It'll be fun to get to know your cousins."

Gwen thought about Shanghai Barbie and her motor-mouth brother. Arguably, things could be worse. She could be spending the weekend with Guo.

"Okay," Gwen said. She had to wait five or more days until Yue and Elvia arrived in Sydney. What was the worst that could happen?

Chapter fifteen

Cold City

When they exited the conference chamber; the banquet table was cleared and gone.

Mina lounged uncomfortably on a mahogany settee, a white length of leg swinging to and fro, trying to get comfortable on the wooden chair, one hand fidgeting with a newfangled Message device hanging from her wrist in the guise of an accessorised bangle.

Tao was listening to music, the droning of thumping treble and bass spewing out from a set of over-large headphones.

More examples of consumer-grade magical devices? Gwen paid particular attention to them. So far in this world, she had not seen any meaningful representation of scientific knowledge; spell glyphs ensuring that such inventions were made redundant.

The lack of science also meant NoMs were bereft of the sorcerous marvels the Mages created, resigned to the margins of labour and living. In her eyes, even if the non-magical portion of society lived meaningful lives of safety in Shanghai, it was because of policy and politics rather than any individual contribution. How could they matter when a single Magi was existentially more salient than ten million NoMs? How did this world's status quo maintain its stability when the threat of annihilation compelled the many to put their lives and limbs in the hands of the rare few?

Additionally, Gwen felt mystified by the power dynamic of the various forces in Shanghai. How influential was the People's Liberation Army? How all-powerful was the Politburo? What was the place of the globalised Towers in a closed country like China? What was Shanghai's relation to its satellite Frontiers like Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia? What about its relationships with Seoul, Tokyo or superpower blocs like the USA or the Commonwealth?

There was so much to learn that she felt dizzy.

First, she had to find a way to graduate. For someone with two degrees and an MBA in her old world, it was amazing that she was missing a high school certificate! But now that she had arrived in Shanghai, would her babulya oblige in sending her to a magical institution?

Knowledge was power in more way than one in this world, and she had to understand both sorcery and society to avoid being swallowed up by forces more powerful than she could know.

"Yo, yo, yo!"

Tao interrupted her thoughts by ambling toward her. His progress was careful and measured, for the low-riding jeans impeded the freedom of movement. "So, how was the grill, gurl? Yeye roast you like a whole lamb?"

"Sure, but I am still in one piece, Peaches." Gwen wasn't sure if it was an intended inflexion of the word "Tao" in Mandarin that changed the translation but felt that the fruit moniker suited him well. "From the looks of it, I am going to be in your hands for the next few days."

"So you chilling with us?"

"Yep."

"Nice. Me and Sis show ya places, dawg."

Mina audibly sighed.

"Mina! Don't be rude!" Jun, who'd been watching their interaction, raised his voice. Unexpectedly, Mina shut off her device the moment Jun showed his ire. "Yes, Uncle Jun? How can I help?" she simpered.

Jun patted the girl on the head, not unlike how Gwen would pat her cats a lifetime ago. The look he gave her was a mixture of doting affection and helpless criticism. It was far different from how Kwan had dealt with her—as property. Or her father, to whom she was a bother.

"I want you and Tao to take Gwen around the city for a few days. Take her everywhere, show her some of the interesting sights. Make sure she gets a feel for Shanghai's main districts, not to mention meet some of your contemporaries."

"I'll do my best, Uncle." Mina's eyes floated over to Gwen, where the passion in her eyes instantly died. "But Gwen has so much to see." She tilted her head and gave Gwen a knowing smirk.

Gwen winced. Yes, she was the country cousin who had never seen the city before, the high school dropout! In a tier I city, Gwen Song was a hillbilly visiting Beverly Hills.

"Mina, don't be like that," Jun said. "Gwen will teach you things about living in the real world that you can't even begin to imagine. She had been through a hell of a lot more than you and Tao. She was in Sydney, you know, when the city fell. Gwen's killed more Mermen than you've had sushi dinners."

The news prompted Mina to turn to Gwen with an expressive "Oh" on her peachy lips. "You fought Mermen? Out there, on the Frontier?" Mina examined her in a new light. "That means you have incredible stories, right?"

Gwen sensed an unwelcoming premonition as Mina's eyes formed into twin crescent half-moons of anticipation. "Yes."

What was Mina seeing inside her pretty head? Did Shanghai Barbie think Gwen rode Kangaroos into battle, unleashed Drop Bears at command and waded knee-deep through Mermen's guts while flinging spells from both hands?

"Well, I suppose some time away from medical school would do me good." Mina materialised her slate and checked through whatever projection it showed. Gwen's eyes focused on the device, which appeared inactive. Perhaps it was an Illusion aimed directly at the user? That would solve the matter of privacy in one fell swoop. How did such a device function? "Yep, I think I can do it."

"Alright, alright, ALRIGHT!" Tao punched the air excitedly. "Gwen Cuz, I am going to show you the best time of yo life! We gonna hang with my crew, slug some Cris, flash the bling and cause havoc on Huaihai Road, bitch!"

"Thanks, Peaches." Gwen decided to punish the outrageous young man by embracing him. "I am happy to have found family."

Tao received her embrace rigidly, a little intimidated by Gwen's overfamiliarity. It was then that Gwen remembered public displays of affection were rare in Asian cultures. Mina snickered.

"Okay then. I'll leave you to it." Jun nodded affirmatively. "I am heading back to the base. I'll be here to pick you up Thursday morning at 0900. It's a long ride from the ferry terminal to the island. You don't want to piss off the Adjudicator of Hengsha this year. It's going to be Magister Paris from the Putong Tower."

Mina sweetly affirmed her uncle's command. Tao's expression was languished, intimating he did not possess pleasant memories of Hengsha Island.

The three cousins watched Jun disappear behind the landscaped fountain just outside the front gate.

"Alright, cousin, let's get moving." Mina motioned outside with her thumb. "Let's go show you Shanghai."

Gwen indicated to the inner chamber. "Shouldn't we say goodbye to the grandparents?"

"Nope, too much bother." Mina checked her watch. It was precisely 1400. "Mother's taking care of them. I want to take you somewhere interesting."

Mina disappeared.

"Yeye's such a hater!" Tao shook his head sagely, following his younger sister. "He hates the playa and he hates the game."

"Mina, you can drive?"

"What, you don't? You guys have cars out on the Frontier, right?"

"We usually make do with the roos. We leash them up and ride across the Outback. The pioneers generally get about a dozen kilometres before they have to stop and fisty-cuff them," Gwen replied earnestly.

"Oh?" Mina appeared to seriously considered a vision of rat-like megafauna fighting a man in hand-to-hand combat. "Wow, Australia's a crazy place."

Her cousin’s wheels turned out to be a gleaming cabriolet with four concentric rings for a logo. Gwen wasn't so much as impressed by the car as the fact that there was an Audi in this world. For a moment, she had to remind herself that since fashion icons like Miu Miu and Prada exist as quasi-magical item makers, why shouldn't other brands also have parallel twins?

Mina, however, looked to have taken her contemplation to indicate that she had never seen such an expensive vehicle before. Patting Gwen on the shoulder patronisingly, she told her hillbilly cousin to get in.

Tao sat behind the two girls, stretched out, legs apart, hat covering half his face.

Gwen sat demurely, her dress folded between her thighs. Mina started the engine with an invocation, after which the car pulled away from the parking compound of their grandparents’ gated community.

A safe distance away, Mina floored it.

The Third Orbital Highway soon gave way to the second, in front of which the looming superstructure of Shanghai CBD rose like a mountain as they turned into the First Orbital Ring Road.

The tallest architecture in the city was a ziggurat-like hollowed-out pyramid that took up a quarter of the skyline, perched over Shanghai obtrusively like a cubist sculpture.

"That's the PLA's Tower," Mina said helpfully. "Hideous, isn't it? It's more bunker and shelter than tower. They say that the superstructural bunker beneath it can hold almost two million people in an emergency."

"Does Shanghai have any Shielding Stations?" Gwen inquired. The air was hot and stifling from the excess mana pollution, but it wasn't the muggy heat she'd felt in Singapore.

"Nope, we've no need. Shanghai sits on the main ley-line of the Asian-Pacific and we're surrounded by the Frontier cities, as well as protected by the PLA."

"The city has never been attacked?"

"Not by monsters, if that's what you're asking," Mina replied. "It's fallen a couple of times to people, though, like the Japanese. These days, none of the Demi-human races dare touch us because we have two Magi sitting atop the Towers—one for the PLA and one for the Shanghai Tower."

"A Magi!" Gwen marvelled.

"Two," Mina corrected. "Grand Marshall Sun from the Politburo and Lord Magi Huo of the Shanghai Tower."

"So their presence ensures the city's safety?"

Mina gave Gwen a wilting expression of growing impatience. "Either one will ensure that the Mermen and the mountain demis don't dare screw with the city, that is, unless they want their settlements reduced to rubble. The Magi are here to keep each other in check. The Communist Party doesn't trust the Westerners and the Westerners don't trust the Communist Party. Lord Sun acts in the interest of the Politburo and Lord Huo represents the Mages of the Mageocracy, rather than all the people, NoMs included."

From the sounds of it, Gwen needed to seek out this Mageocracy Tower. Maybe they were linked to Gunther's people and could give her some leverage if push came to shove. It would come at a cost, of course, but she preferred paying the devil she knew.

Their convertible slowed as the glaring sun turned into geometric shadow.

"I've heard lots about Pudong," Gwen said. "What can you tell me about it?" Pudong was a significant financial district for Shanghai in her old world, having the tallest buildings and the most expensive restaurants.

"Pudong?" Mina said. "It's a special economics zone partitioned from Shanghai proper, carved out by the Yellow River. Most of the foreigners from the International and French Concessions live there now, as well as representatives from the demi-races."

"Whoa!" Gwen's voice raised an octave. Her body's previous owner had been conditioned and brainwashed to fear and loathe them. "Can we see them?"

"Ha! Not likely. You need special permission to enter Pudong. You also need to receive orientation training before extra-human contact is allowed. Maybe Gramps can sponsor you for a licence? Who knows?"

"Okay." Gwen turned to marvel at the city and its superstructure. It seemed that the ziggurat structure wasn't as dense as it appeared. Instead, it was a honeycomb lattice of hollowed-out domes towering over the commercial districts below.

Still, to think there were other races of beings in this city! Gwen couldn't wait until she met a walking, talking Demi-human in real life. An intelligent Merman, perhaps, or a human-sized birdman. Would there be Elves? She was a staunch Tolkien fan. It would be delightful to see the real deal in the flesh, assuming the Elves here were romanticised supermodels and not the little gremlin that tinkered toys.

Their convertible turned into a building constructed wholly of curved glass and fibrous strands of steel cabling. Mina coasted to a stop, where a handsome attendant addressed them. "Valet, ma'am?"

"Yes."

Mina ushered her crew out of her car. Tao appeared to have fallen asleep and had to be slapped awake.

"Peaches, move your ass off my car."

"What? Yeah. Where are we?"

"K-27," Mina replied.

"Again? We were just here this morning." Tao frowned.

"I know. I want to introduce Gwen to some of my friends."

"Yeah, well, is Frederic Lin still here?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know that?"

Tao glanced around cautiously as if this Fred Lin would leap out and ambush him.

Gwen swung her legs out from the passenger side and stood behind the arguing pair, half a head taller than either of her cousins. There were more attendants inside, all NoMs, well-dressed and courteous, who opened door after door for them. There was even a well-groomed attendant in the levitator.

The glass platform ascended as silent as a whisper, opening onto an open floor with a sea-side view of Shanghai proper. Gwen noticed that, unlike her old world, the river here was still bean-green and blue, not possessing any of the ochre-yellow algae-bloom that haunted Shanghai in the spring and summer months.

Ding!

They entered a cafe, though it was now nearly empty, as lunch had come and gone. Here and there were groups of lingering socialites dressed in handsome jackets and cocktail dresses, engaged in quiet conversation as the afternoon sun filtered softly through the transmuted glass panes.

"Mina!" someone called out from a corner table. A group of girls and a few young men sat around a circular chaise overlooking the skyline, an assortment of drinks and desserts splayed across the table. "You're back? We didn't think you'd return!"

"Hi, girls!" Mina tittered forward, her mobility restricted by her heels.

"Oh, your brother is here too," the girl's voice seemed significantly less enthused. "Hi, Peaches."

"Sup, Vivian." Tao threw her a gang sign.

Vivian returned his greeting with a faux gang sign, emphasising her middle finger. The rest of the girls burst into laughter.

"Stupid bitch," Tao muttered loudly.

"Oi, watch your mouth!" A young man pointed an accusatory finger toward Tao. "You didn't have enough from Frederick earlier?"

Mina pinched the bridge of her nose. "Tao, go sit down over there. Please."

Tao muttered something more discreetly and moved on.

Gwen watched Peaches go with mixed feelings. On one hand, her cousin was a bit of an idiot, but on the other, that public whipping was entirely unnecessary. Whatever the case, Tao's dejection gave Gwen a general idea of Mina's friends and the dynamic of their relationships.

"So who is this?" The young man turned his attention to Gwen, his eyes measured her from head to toe with a familiarity that she had come to know growing up around her Uncle Kwan and his friends.

"Gwen, these are my friends and their friends. From the left, Vivian, Fei, Tzusu, Amy, Gabrielle, John, and this is Dai."

"Pleased to meet you." Gwen greeted them with a pleasant smile.

"Everyone, this is Gwen, my cousin from Australia. Before you ask, yes, her eyes are natural. Yes, her hair is real. No, she did not get any transmutations done. She is au naturel. Happy?"

"Wo ho! A free-range beauty!" Dai exclaimed, grinning widely.

"A cow from a Frontier farmhouse, you mean?" one of the girls interjected cattily.

Infectious chittering spread from the table as Mina commanded one of the girls to move over so that she could get a seat. The assumption seemed to have been that one of the young men, Dai, would likewise squeeze out a space for Gwen on the semi-circle chaise.

However, Dai, the very one who had snapped at Tao, made no motion to move. The young man was tall in stature with a face that was handsome enough. There was an uncommon arrogance to his eyes and a slight hook to his overlarge nose, which gave his face an unkind countenance.

He patted his lap. "I've got the best seat in the house for you." He grinned at Gwen expectantly.

The rest of the table giggled.

Mina looked to Gwen, frowning.

Gwen looked over at Mina, confused as to what she expected. When Mina said nothing, Gwen furrowed her brows with resignation. What did she expect? These little twerps look fresh out of senior high and had the attitude to match. She had to wonder if the tier I cities conditioned these progenies of power to act as such or if these kid-adults genuinely thought that this was a proper way to treat a stranger you'd met for the first time. What if she was somebody significant trying to be incognito? What part of her looked cheap enough to bully?

To her audiences' surprise, Gwen turned to Tao. "Peaches, bring me a chair."

Unexpectedly, Tao obediently retrieved Gwen a high-backed, Victoriana dining chair.

Gwen dramatically spun on her heels before taking a seat, looking regal in her cobalt dress. She lifted her chin slightly and gave the gathering the knowing smirk of an adult looking down on unruly children.

Her poise, her squared shoulders, her ease of presence, every inch of her physique told these young men and women that she was superior to mewling children.

While her audience baulked, she felt suddenly struck by a serendipitous fancy. In her Greater Cognisance Chamber lessons, she had seen how her mana coursed through her body. Her Master had taught her how to enhance her body's particular functions by collecting mana in her conduits.

Facing Mina's foolish mates, Gwen allowed a sliver of the void to trickle into her Mana Channels, feeling the insidious hunger fill her senses. Her eyes, which had been two clarifying hazel orbs, swiftly turned dark and dangerous, her irises dilating until they took on the quality of a vortex that held her viewers captive in its reflection.

Those who met her eyes instantly felt diminished by the experience as if they'd lost something forever.

In a split second, the atmosphere shifted, Gwen was the queen in the room and they were her subjects. She may not profess to be the Nemean lion, but those gazing upon her countenance felt distinctly like gazelles.

Gwen said nothing, so they said nothing.

The Void mana subtly drained from Gwen's body. She had kept every mote within, not letting a single one escape the confines of her astral form. A quick inspection of her condition revealed the confirmation of her present situation. A little Void-channelling was okay for her Almudj-blessed body, at least enough to wrangle lower-tier spells.

Opposite, Dai seemed lost for words. The young man sat rigidly and stared, his mouth half-open.

One of the girls, Amy, gave him a pinch on the thighs. He mercilessly slapped her hand in annoyance.

Gwen wondered if that display was enough to get some payback for Tao until her cousin demonstrated why Mina was so often at her wit's end.

"Ha! Sup Bitches! Cat got your tongue?" Tao taunted them. "Mah cousin is the shit. Ya'll toads try'n’ ta get a piece of the swan! Ha!"

The carefully orchestrated atmosphere shattered like cheap crystal dashed against concrete.

Dai stood. "I am, Dai Fung, of the Nantong Clan of Fung. Your name, Miss…?"

"Song," Gwen replied. "Gwen Song."

Dai glanced at Mina before continuing. "Miss Song, may I have the pleasure of inviting you to an exclusive affair this evening? A simple bit of blood sport among friends to test our abilities amidst fine food and finer drinks."

"The bout is on tonight?" Mina interjected, her voice a little peeved. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The gathering shifted their gaze toward Tao.

"I'll own that shit, man. You bitches got nothing on my crew and me!" Tao said.

"You could have just told me in confidence," Mina complained cattily. "It's not as though he and I are joined at the hip. I thought we knew each other better than that, Dai."

"Well, here's your invitation." Dai produced an envelope and passed it over the table toward Mina. "So Gwen, will you be gracing us with your presence?"

"What is this 'bout' about?" Gwen asked cautiously.

"It's an informal tournament for Mages," Vivian butted in rather rudely, wrapping a suggestive arm around Dai's elbows. "You can challenge opponents, bet crystals or Magic Items, or even bet yourself."

"Bet yourself?" Gwen raised an eyebrow.

"For favours." Vivian eyed Gwen suggestively.

"Favours?" Gwen's expression darkened. A place where one peddled oneself in this day and age? This "bout" was getting seedier by the minute.

Mina coughed. "A favour from your family, which you will try to deliver if you are the debtor," she carefully explained, meeting her eyes with a smirk. "Of course, I doubt you're in a position to offer that, so I suppose you could sell yourself if that's how Frontier Mages roll?"

"Right, so when's this bout?" Gwen pivoted from the misunderstanding. The whole setup seemed enterprising if what they said was true. A gathering of spoilt princes and princesses mock-fighting for money and items? It seemed an excellent opportunity, at least on paper, for her to see what the tier I city's Mages can do.

"Tonight, M on the Bund, nine pm. You game?" Dai grinned at Gwen. "I'll make sure you and Mina get the VIP treatment."

"I want Peaches to come." Gwen pointed at Tao. She wanted people she could count on, and right now, Tao was the only person here who didn't feel as though they'd sell her in a heartbeat.

"Fuck, yeah! Peaches in the house!"

Gwen instantly regretted her choice of cousins.

Dai looked over at Tao with the expression of having stepped in dog shit. He was just about to say something when his face suddenly turned cruel. "Peaches, are you going to bout tonight? Or will you hide in the corner like you always do, put on Invisibility, then flick your bean?" he said suddenly.

Both Gwen and Mina grimaced. Gwen did not need that mental image at all.

"Hey, bitch!" Tao punched the air, ducking and weaving like those American CQC Mages. "Watch me. I'll pound your ass!"

Gwen and Mina sighed; Gwen didn't need that image either.

Dai produced a crystalline card and waved it in front of them. "One hundred HDMs," Dai announced to the table. "You come to the bout, you fight one round, win or draw, it's yours. You lose, you pay out."

"You're on!" Tao threw out what must have been half a dozen gang signs in quick succession. "Prepare yoself!"

Dai turned back to Gwen. "Well?"

Gwen looked at Mina, who looked dubiously at Tao, who looked expectantly at Gwen with the eyes of a pleading pup. Was he saying no or was he answering yes? Tao seriously needed to work on his ambiguous body language.

"I'll be there," Gwen said.

"Wonderful!" Dai slid his arm from between Vivian's bosoms.

"Dai?" Vivian turned to him, clearly alarmed by his lack of interest.

"See you all there tonight." Dai ignored her and moved for the lift, snapping his fingers at a waiter. "Put the bill on my tab."

"Yes, sir, Mr Fung, sir." The waiter bowed from the waist.

With Dai gone, the gathering evaporated. A few scattered conversations caught here and there, but nothing of substance or interest passed between the remaining members. The girls tried their best to ignore Gwen, while the men remained cordial and politely distant. Mina studied her "friends" but stayed with Tao and Gwen. "I am bored. Let's go, Gwen, Peaches. Let's go pick out an outfit for tonight."

"What's wrong with what I am wearing now?"

"Please," Vivian scoffed, not failing to embrace the opportunity to deliver a sarcastic jab. "You look like a waitress at a hostess bar."

"Touché." Gwen's eyes moved over Vivian's frilly, revealing smock. More than once, she had to remind herself these were just idiotic university students.

Vivian appeared so taken aback by Gwen's supreme confidence that she allowed her mana to flare. Alarmingly, Gwen spotted motes of water congealing on the glass countertop beside them.

"Vivi!" Mina snapped. "What do you think you're doing?"

The rest of the party said nothing as Vivian controlled herself. "Just you wait."

"Let's go."

Mina slipped an arm between Gwen's waist and elbow and began to drag her from the room. Tao followed closely with both hands in his pockets, looking far more pleased than when he'd first arrived.

"What the hell was that?" Mina demanded once they were in the lift.

"What was what?"

"That wacky eye shit, Gwen! You caught those bitches mid-air. Pow! Pow!"

"What he said."

"That was…" Gwen ran a few mental algorithms through her head. "Killing intent."

"Killing intent!" Tao marvelled. "Shit, are you a stone-cold killer?"

"I am indeed a cold and ruthless eater of men," Gwen affirmed with a straight face. "I have thus far taken the lives of two slavers, inadvertently killed a dozen Mages and actively murdered one woman-thing."

"Well, SHIT, that's wicked!"

"You've killed people?" Mina asked quietly.

"Yes." Gwen smiled wistfully. "It's the Frontier, after all. The Wild Down Under."

"Anything else?"

"A few hundred Mermen, a hundred-odd Magical Beasts…"

"Stone cold! Stone cold!" Tao chanted beside her, giddy with excitement.

Mina fell silent until the lift dinged. They were on the atrium floor, where a shopping mecca extended from the lobby as far as the eye could see.

"I am sorry for that stupid encounter," her cousin said suddenly. "Let me buy you something—as an apology."

Gwen wanted to say that it was alright, that it had been fun, but the promise of freebies sewed her mouth shut. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? She had no idea how much things cost in tier I cities. Now was a good time for some market research.

"Sure, I didn't mind," she added quickly. "I do need something expensive to wear."

Mina smiled, accepting her olive branch. "Alright, dear cousin." Mina took her by the hand. "This place we're going? It's going to blow your mind!"

Chapter sixteen

More ways than One

Mina was a girl’s girl, the kind who thrived on retail therapy.

She was sullen when they entered the first boutique store, peppy when they browsed the third, happy when the trio exited the fifth, and ecstatic when they embarked upon the avenue of the exclusive and exorbitant.

As they tried out dresses, Gwen knew Mina was measuring herself against her. It was vanity, sure, but a Shanghai Barbie had her pride.

Her cousin stood only five-foot-four but had that winsome slenderness that made men want to hold her tight. Her cheeks had dimples on either side, her face embellished with a pair of dark, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled like gemstones against her milky complexion.

Tao sat drooling, bored out of his mind at the lounge, attended to by an NoM who giggled at his every word. Meanwhile, Gwen and Mina exchanged ideas on the virtues of accessorising.

"I can't believe I am saying this…" Mina checked herself out in the mirror, marvelling at the straight-laced, knee-length one-piece. "But your taste is good. Are there even couture in Sydney? Did you attend a fashion college or something?"

"Oh no," Gwen confessed. "I have an eye for it, I guess. I do have a few Miu outfits, but they were all imported by my mother. Cost her an arm and a leg; I'd wager."

"Well, I am wearing this to the M tonight. You should pick out something too. Remember, it's my gift."

"Sure, but not here." Gwen had seen the price tag— 7 HDM was nothing to scoff at for a bumpkin; it was almost half a month of training or several expendable items.

"I'll be wearing this out," Mina informed the shop assistant, who assured her that the outfit was laundered and ready to go. Mina passed over a crystalline currency card.

Gwen watched the assistant tap the card against a slate device. Was this a wireless banking system? Did tier I cities have a finance sector? If so, how developed was it? If she could find out more about the comings and goings of the micro and macroeconomics in this world, then many of her old skills could finally find gainful employment.

"Is that card linked to a bank?" she asked Mina once the assistant was gone.

Mina didn’t seem surprised by Gwen's lack of common knowledge. "The currency cards? They're a standard issue. They come in ten, fifty and one hundred HDMs. Higher cards are issued on request. You can convert them from raw HDMs, which tend to have different purities. You're not using raw crystals, are you?"

"Er…" Gwen could hear the crystals clinking in her ring.

"Get ’em converted at the PBC. There's one on the second level."

"PBC is…?"

"People's Bank of China. They issue currency cards or you can get a topper like mine linked to your astral signature. Fair warning though, currency cards costs crystals to maintain."

Ah, Gwen did not feel confident at all about gaming a centralised currency agency.

"Alright, next!" Mina's mood improved significantly now she was in a new outfit.

The trio wandered through a dozen more shops until Gwen saw a cobbler store that custom-enchanted footwear.

"You want shoes?" Mina tilted her head. Her cousin likely expected Gwen would have picked an expensive dress.

"I'd like a pair of calve-length boots," Gwen said to Mina. "Ideally leather ones that won't wear and tear if I had to, say, sprint or land from a Jump spell."

"No need to buy the cheap stuff in here," Mina pointed out. "All the top brands offer in-house enchantment for a couple more crystals."

"Do you mind if I take a look?" Gwen inquired. She didn't want Mina to spend a fist full of HDM on ultra-luxury goods when everyday items would do.

They browsed the shop for a few minutes until Gwen picked out a pair of antique-looking women's boots with a soft leather binding. The fit was intimate, the heels neither too high nor low, thick or thin.

"Good eye," the shop owner, who was also the assistant, noted when Gwen tried them on. "Hide of Canadian Ice Auroch, treated and thrice matured, comfortable to wear, supple and durable."

"How much?"

The older gentleman checked Gwen out, his eyes falling at her feet. "Four HDMS."

Gwen considered her prior market research; it was a fair price.

"I also need these enchanted for endurance and impact. Also, do you think it's possible to enchant the pair I am wearing now?" She pointed to her Mary Janes.

"Here, take them off. Let me see." The cobbler offered Gwen a set of slippers as she took off her shoes. He ran a quick diagnostic Divination over the pair of Mary Janes, then studied them with a careful eye. "Mundane… Australian Angus? Not bad, to be honest, but hardly worth enchanting."

"It's for sentimental reasons," Gwen assured him.

The man shrugged.

"Endurance? Self-cleaning? Something more interesting?"

"Just the former two."

"Three HDMs, and I'll throw in a Minor Elemental Resistance."

Gwen looked at Mina, who affirmed that was the going rate. "Cheaper if I get ’em both done?"

The cobbler smiled politely.

Gwen realised this was one of those shops that didn't barter. "Sorry. What's the total?"

"Nine HDMs, for hopefully a returning customer." The cobbler chuckled. "I can have them done right away. Do you have an hour or so?"

"Mina?"

"Sure, we'll wait." Mina approached the counter to pay.

"No. I'll pay." Gwen motioned her hand over the counter and nine HDM crystals appeared.

"Whoa!" Mina grabbed her hand.

Gwen flinched when her cousin's face suddenly became contorted with surprise. Mina ran a finger over Gwen's rings. She felt a few motes of magic pass over her Storage Ring, after which her cousin looked up indignantly. "A… a Ring of Medium Storage? And a Ring of Evasion?" Her face was a carnival of bewilderment. "That's…"

About five hundred to seven hundred HDMs, Gwen thought. She'd worn her opa's gift for so long she'd forgotten about how rare it was supposed to be.

"Hmmph!" Mina sulkily sat on the couch, kicking Tao's splayed legs, forcing him to wake with a start. "In that case, you can pay for the shoes yourself, little Miss Richie-Rich."

Gwen smiled at Mina innocently and recompensed the cobbler for his services. Little did Mina know that she was less than ten HDMs and a hundred LDMs from bankruptcy, nor did she know that Gwen's glamoured Contingency Ring had a market value of over 10,000 HDMs or was near-priceless in reality. Even now, it burned her fingers. For the precious, life-saving ring was a generous loan, one she hoped to repay one day.

Besides Gwen, Mina appeared peeved to be outclassed by a country bumpkin. When the stinging passed, she inquired about Gwen's Storage Ring, asking her about specs, price, who had made it and so on.

"Your grandfather is a Magus Enchanter?" Mina's eyes sparkled.

The owner of the shop emerged after a few more minutes with Gwen's shoes. Gwen stowed away her Mary Janes and put on her new midcalf boots. "How does it look?"

"Looks good enough to eat off." Tao gave her two thumbs up.

"Thanks, Peaches," Gwen said. "What's the time now?"

"It's about five pm." Mina flashed a sparkling braceleted timepiece on her wrist.

"Shall we head over?"

"And be early?" Mina made a feigned expression of shock. "Never!"

Gwen laughed. "I want to check out some of the fights, get an idea of what the competition is like."

"You're not going to participate, are you?" Mina regarded her suspiciously. "What can a Frontier Mage do against tier I Mages?"

"Ha." Gwen pivoted from the topic and Mina chose not to pursue it. "My purpose is academic, I assure you."

"If you must."

"Let's go, then."

"Let me get my crew together!" Tao announced.

"Hell no, not those shit for brains." Mina groaned.

"Hey! The crew that shits together eats together!" Tao pulled out his Message device and rapidly began to dial glyphs into it.

"What the hell does that even mean?" Mina snapped. "Mao!"

Besides the comedic duo, Gwen thought about the brick-sized Message Device in her Storage Ring. In an emergency, she could probably use it as a lethal bludgeoning weapon. She would need to find a way to generate a steady income soon. There were so many things to buy and that list would only grow in the immediate future.

Tao complained around the later afternoon that he was hungry, but Mina insisted that they eat at M on the Bund.

"Let me buy dinner at least," Mina informed Gwen as she went to polish up her evening outfit. "The food there is surprisingly good."

Gwen emerged a few minutes later with one of the outfits she had procured in Singapore—a sky-blue, plunging button-up blouse with a high-waist skirt. It was minimalist yet sophisticated with a hint of flower child and a dash of urban chic. Completed with her latest acquisition, the endurance-enhanced faux-antique calf-length boots, Gwen felt both cool and confident.

Mina looked very impressed. Tao leered expertly. The skirt and the boots naturally drew the eye toward Gwen’s thighs.

Mina opened her mouth but said nothing. A few seconds later, she rallied the group. Then they were away.

M on the Bund was a chic, riverside cafe at first glance, furnished in a faux-Victorian setting. It had wall-to-wall French windows for patrons sitting in the interior and alfresco dining for those who preferred the open air. A series of cooling and heating glyphs moderated the temperature, while conjuration magic ensured that lavender, bluebells and other perennials were in permanent bloom.

Its actual business, however, was another matter entirely.

After Mina threw the key glyph of her car over to a black-suited valet, a bouncer escorted them toward the kitchen, then diverted their progress through a series of underground passages until the sound of pumping music and reverberating bass seeped through the reinforced concrete.

A heavy set of ironbound double doors opened, and light and music flooded the corridor.

It was only eight pm, but the bar was already in full swing. Within, the metropolis' wealthy darlings congregated, floundering in the vices available only to the rich. The men were mostly in their twenties, though a few fell outside of the mean. Likewise, Gwen noticed an equal distribution of Asians and Westerners there; a stark contrast to the city itself. It either meant that not many Asian youths were wealthy enough to party at a place like this or that this was a place popularly frequented by expatriates.

The women were another story altogether—mini-skirts, tight dresses, heels so thin and tall they could be lethal weapons. The women's calibre was far more rarified than the men, and Gwen recognised instantly the age-old trick of privileging attractive women so they would decorate the place and attract the men, who were the big spenders. Some of them were like herself and Mina, who were here to experience the M and enjoy the atmosphere, but Gwen could see dozens of girls who may very well be "flowers of the night".

Gwen was glad she’d chosen an outfit so diverted from the purpose of the present scene. Theirs were shimmering and skin-hugging, hers, easy-going and comfortable. It was immediately apparent to those who beheld her that Gwen was neither here to dance nor socialise.

Mina searched for her friends but couldn't locate them in-between the swaying bodies and the flashing lumen globes. Tao, however, was immediately spotted by his friends, who began hooting for the "Big Peach".

Mina's lovely eyes made several revolutions in their sockets before she finally relented and followed Tao.

Gwen, meanwhile, smiled when they reached Tao's mates.

They dressed in the same style—a strange concoction of hip-hop fashion from the late nineties and mid-2010s. It was especially amusing because Gwen heard from Mina that those faux-ghetto garbs were worth dozens of HDMs, while ironically made to resemble fashion from the poverty-stricken, inner-urban culture on the West Coast. To Gwen, it was apparent that these were all wealthy wannabes who paid out of their noses to look "ghetto", but that the point of subcultural trends.

"Whooooaaaa!" One of them threw a gang sign, which Tao returned with graceful ease. "Who's the new girl? She is HAWT! Pageant!"

One of the young men attempted to look thuggish, but his carefully conditioned, flawless skin gave him a gregarious appearance instead. It was evident even to Gwen that the B-boy was usually meticulously groomed when not channelling his inner gangster.

"I am GWEN SONG," Gwen shouted over the music, affirming one of the reasons she'd always hated clubs.

The B-Boys introduced themselves—Eric, Lu, Ming, Mack-Daddy and Little-Dog.

"What's with the last two names?" Gwen asked Tao puzzlingly.

"They're artist names," Tao said proudly. "They're illusionist-musicians, like me."

"You're a musician?" Gwen asked incredulously. "What do you play?"

"I beat-box," Tao said proudly. "Peaches Emcee represent."

"Like a bitch!" someone added.

"Yeah, in the heat!"

"Bringing all the dogs!"

"All the dogs!"

What are you, a dog whisperer? Gwen thought, trying to process the unwavering support shown by Tao's friends. She couldn't tell if they were mocking him or trying to bolster his confidence. Maybe they were just fond of saying the word "bitches" because it rolled off the tongue? Perhaps ghetto slang translated very poorly into Chinese, especially when re-interpreted into English? She was surprised her Ioun Stone of Comprehend Languages hadn't imploded yet.

Mina glared at Tao's friends, her face well-rested in her signature look of complete disapproval.

"Sorry, Miss Mina." The one called Mack-Daddy said. "A slip of the tongue."

Little-Dog cleared a seat and Mack-Daddy borrowed another one from their neighbours.

"Here you are, Miss Gwen. What would you like to drink? Something fizzy, sweet? On the rocks? I'll buy," Little-Dog offered.

"Peaches, go get me a Strawberry Daiquiri, get Gwen a Virgin Mary or something, as long as it’s virgin."

The boys beamed.

"You don't drink, Cuz?" Tao scratched his head.

"You're a fucking idiot, Peaches," Mina snapped at him. "Gwen's underage."

The B-boys suddenly appeared less confident about their prospects.

"What about you, Mina?" Gwen asked. Wasn't Mina also not yet eighteen?

"Turning eighteen in a few weeks," Mina retorted. "Besides, this is nothing for me. By the way, you idiots, stay away from Gwen. She's an important guest."

"No way!" One of Tao's boys moaned dramatically. "She's right there. She's stolen my heart already!"

"It's only six years plus probation, Eric. Your dad knows a guy, right? Maybe it's worth it."

The rest of the crew laughed wholeheartedly, taking mirthful jabs at Eric.

"What's so funny?"

"Eric tried to date one of Mina's juniors once without realising she was underage, took her to a hotel then fled the scene when she ’fessed up," Little-Dog said.

"Shut up!" Eric and the gang fell about pushing and shoving, cackling madly.

It was an atmosphere distinctly different from Mina's friends, whose exterior belied an undercurrent of competition and jealousy. Instead, these boys and their interaction reminded Gwen of the larrikins like Jacko and Tako back in regional New South Wales.

Mina was grinning as well, but Gwen felt she seemed to prefer the competitive, scheming air of her clique. Some people seemed to thrive on that sort of thing.

The young men passionately asked Gwen about her life in Sydney, but the overloud music made any meaningful conversation impossible. Peaches returned with drinks, and the two girls sipped their beverages while listening to the B-Boys discuss the latest in American hip-hop from across the sea.

"It's gotta be Buzzy, man. His rhymes are ill."

"Naw, Naw, you gotta understand the context. Life in the hoods is harsh, dawg. Only true survivors like Kooholio know the streets intimate enough to be genuine. Buzzy is just a marketing man. All his lumen-casts are full of bitches and rides. It should be about resisting the man! You know what I mean?"

"Sure, sure, but how about that Lizzy Knight chic who sings the chorus? She was sick in Lil Philippe's casts, totes bonkers…"

Mina appeared to shut off the part of her brain that had to endure their conversation. Gwen, likewise, could only take so much of Peaches' ghetto sermon on the latest American rap trends. She was much more interested in technological or geopolitical trends.

Despite Gwen's no-nonsense attire, she was still intermediately approached by semi-intoxicated men and at least one woman who wanted to know if she was there to dance and would like to join them for some vertical tango on the dance floor.

Gwen politely declined and, to her surprise, no one pursued the matter. It was unexpected, considering her past experiences in Sydney, where she could somehow attract trouble even in the canteen of a Tower one day after a city-wide crisis.

Peaches' friends ordered food, and Gwen partook in the dim-sims and other authentic street foods of Shanghai that M on the Bund sold in their above-ground establishment. The kitchen, it seemed, serviced both establishments concurrently.

When it was ten pm or so, the dance floor began to clear. The music died with a sudden pop and the revellers found places around the club to sit and stand.

A middle-aged gentleman wearing a loud vest presented himself before the gathering and introduced himself as the Master of the Bout, Magus Ji Meng Yuu.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the bout tonight. I hope you've had a lovely month since our last competition, that your purses are full, and that your lucky stars are bright and polished!"

Ji wasn't tall or handsome, but his radio presenter's voice was as deep, resonant and smooth as butter.

"Tonight, the brightest and the best of the Shanghai's darlings will duel to rule the night. The rules remain unchanged. Challenge each other! Settle a grudge! Most importantly, BET YOUR HEARTS OUT!"

The crowd cheered, reciprocating the passion shown by the bombastic Magus, who answered their applause by dipping an invisible hat and bowing deeply. "Our waitresses will be out in a moment to exchange crystals for chips. Don't forget, HDMs or go home! The M is not a charity. The bout is a show of skill. A show of courage and tenacity. A show of ARCANE FORCE!"

A cage materialised from the dance floor, then abruptly energised before turning transparent. From Henry's past instruction, Gwen recognised it as a form of Force Cage, capable of negating most magical attacks up to tier VII. How extravagant. How many crystals did it cost to invoke such an effect?

"FIRST UP! To whet your appetite, loosen your pockets, to get you ladies weeeeet! I present our resident heartbreaker, the reigning champion! Magus CANTO from Indonesia!"

The lights of the duelling field rose to an impressive brightness while the rest of the room dimmed.

"Detect Magic," Gwen incanted softly, channelling a little Divination to her eyes to get a better sense of what she was seeing.

Mages—Mages everywhere. Except for the serving staff, the entire room was awash with leaking motes of elemental magic. It was like trying to look for details in a Jackson Pollock painting.

She quickly dispelled the magic from her eyes and wondered how her Master and her seniors could use the same spell with such expertise. Did she have to block out the noise? She didn't know. It was another mystery to be solved once she could restore her training regime.

Meanwhile, a silver flash of conjuration mana summoned a near-naked Mage wearing naught but a pair of military cargos into the room. His face was handsome and chiselled, but his most impressive attribute was his rip-roaring body, sculpted and oiled so the floodlight emphasised every inch of well-articulated muscle.

The women began to whistle and cheer, and even Gwen let loose a few catcalls in the heat of the moment as the well-toned body of Magus Canto gleamed under the harsh ring floodlight.

But why male models? Gwen asked herself jokingly. She could sense the magic radiating off Canto like concentric rings of displaced water upon a still pond. Whatever he may look like, Canto was the real deal.

"As for the CHALLENGER—" Yuu began again. "We have Magus Lamba, from the northern states of India, the Tiger of Punjabi, the Stone Breaker, a Troll Slayer!"

Another flash of Conjuration mana and the audience found themselves in the presence of a dark-skinned man dressed in a brown lungi with a blue waist-sash, his head densely wrapped with a gold-threaded turban in white.

"I hope you've read your invitations and done your homework because the bout will soon begin. Ladies of M, go forth do your duty!"

Trapdoors around the stage opened to reveal gaggles of young women in outfits so skimpy they may as well have been body paint. Like nymphets from the woods, they dispersed around the crowd, taking bets and exchanging crystals for chips as the two Mages in the ring stared each other down.

"This isn't a fight to the death, is it?" Gwen asked Mina, feeling cautiously optimistic about the setup. The club, the setting, the theatrics, it seemed far too elaborate to be an underground death ring. After all, what a waste of the resources required to train a Mage into a Magus if they were to duel to the death for something as trivial as entertainment.

"Well, you know." Mina turned toward the stage. "'No, but it's not like it doesn't happen. With challengers, it's just ego and good fun. With these mercenary Mages, it depends."

"On what?"

"Who's betting, who's watching. What's at stake. These guys are rogues, with no country and no affiliation. They fight for money, sure, but they also fight so that somebody somewhere could be impressed enough to invite them to join their clan or organisation, or whatever else."

"Hmm." Gwen kept her eyes on the stage.

The betting took another fifteen minutes or so while each of the Mages showed off cantrips and minor abilities that gave little to nothing away. The challenger had the advantage here, especially if they were unheard of and unknown.

"What's so special about Magus Canto?" she asked Mina.

"He's a CQC specialist, used to be Indonesian Special Forces. When the Micronesian Islands got wiped out, he was abandoned by his team. Word in the M is that he survived in a Purple Zone by himself for a year. If you're wondering, he's a body enhancement Transmuter and a Pencak Silat master."

"Pencak Silat?" Gwen asked. Was it a new School of Magic? Maybe Indigenous magic.

"Oh man, Silat is the SHIT, dawg!" A torrent of syllables spewed from Tao's mouth.

"Shush, it's starting," Mina hissed.

The lights dimmed and the betting girls in black faded into the dramatic darkness. All eyes fell upon the two Mages at the centre of the Force Cage.

"Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, the first bout. The showcase! The feast for the eyes! I give you the battle of the two Magus, Canto versus Magus Lamba. The rules are the same as always, first to yield. First to Shield Break!"

A Dimension Door later, Yuu appeared atop the Force Cage, striding over its surface, striking off ocherous bursts of Abjuration. "BEGIN!"

The two Maguses moved at once.

"Stone Strike!"

"Gaseous Form!"

Magus Lamba opened up with a classic, front-loaded spell he had probably been fomenting since arriving on the stage. A cascade of sharp stones emerged from thin air and struck around Canto, thudding into the wall of force and crashing against the likewise reinforced floors. The range of the spell easily spanned a radius of six metres, catching Canto in the entirety of its blast.

"Cheap move!" someone shouted from the crowd. How tedious it would be if the match ended after one AOE.

Canto, however, had anticipated his opponent's pre-prepared alpha strike. The issue with front-loading spells was the inevitable mana leak that gave the discerning observer clues as to what was coming their way.

Comparatively, his Gaseous Form was near-instant at tier III and far more practical than the powerful tier V Stone Strike. In front of Gwen's eyes, the CQC fighter became a cloud of fog that negated the physical damage from the downpour of razor-sharp stones.

Lamba cursed loudly and waved a hand over the space before him. "Wall of Stone!"

It was entirely unclear what Canto had changed into as he was still in his gaseous form, but three exchanges into the battle, it was evident who had gained the upper hand.

"Stone Skin!" Lamba surrounded himself with a layer of dark, obsidian-like stones, turning him into The Thing. The Mage then cautiously examined his surroundings. After all, Canto could not exit the duelling arena without forfeiting, so he must be within the twenty-odd metres or so that the dance floor extended.

Not being able to locate his opponent did not appear to worry Lamba. The man was duel-classed as Abjurer and Evoker, defence and offence in one package. In Gwen’s eyes, as long as he could withstand Canto's sneak attack, he could reverse their chances in a single exchange.

Between the piles of rocks and shards of stone, the audience on the reverse side of the Force Cage could see Canto powering himself up.

"Haste."

"Enhanced Ability."

"Lesser Polymorph."

"Oh shit. It's a-coming! The ass-whooping is a coming!" One of the boys beside Tao began to whoop jubilantly, watching Canto incant buff after buff. This Lamba might be a skilled monster hunter, but he lacked experience in duelling other Mages. If he had been more cognizant, he would have continued to batter the stage. Against an Illusionist, one would rather be OOM than let the opponent have breathing room.

Canto was ready. "Blink!"

Within a second, Canto was right beside the Golem-like stone Mage. The Transmuter reached out and touched Lamba, feinting as though he was about to deliver a Transmutation spell to disable the Indian Magus' Stone Skin.

"Destruction Wave!" Lamba had been waiting for Canto as well. He'd been nursing another spell, this time, a wave of rolling shale that should affect even Canto's gaseous form.

"Got you!" Lamba announced triumphantly. In the next second, Canto's illusory form disperse into nothingness. "Shit!"

A second Canto suddenly appeared from above Lamba and landed on him with both legs locked around the Mage's neck, the invisibility illusion falling away as the CQC Mage moved to attack. With a deft twist, Canto struck the stone-sheathed Mage's head with both hands, cupping his hands over Lamba's ears and creating a resounding thunderclap. Lamba staggered back from the sudden blow against his brain.

Then the rest of Canto's gaseous form fell away, revealing the altered body that Canto now possessed.

A Troll! Gwen gasped. She'd never seen anything more hideous. Canto's arms were long and curved, his legs now extending past the torso of Lamba as the stone Mage futilely tried to throw Canto off.

"Do you yield?" Canto rasped, wrapping long thin fingers around Lamba's neck.

"You can try!" Lamba boasted. "I'll get you yet! Spike Shield!" Bits of floating stones, jagged and sharp, began to spread in concentric rings around Lamba, cutting and slicing into Canto's flesh.

To Gwen's surprise, Canto healed his exterior injuries as quickly as they occurred, restored by the green, algae-like blood that flowed from his Troll-flesh.

"Have it your way." Canto fell from Lamba's body as if he'd lost his grip.

"IT’S HERE!" Eric screamed, hooting and stomping in excitement.

Canto dropped about halfway before his elongated body bent into an impossible angle and his legs wrapped around Lamba's waist. Like a whip, he brought his lower body to the fore, taking Lamba off balance as his long arms swiped the poor Mage's feet from the ground.

In a blind and confused panic, Lamba fell into confusion as he grew airborne.

Meanwhile, in one swift, uninterrupted motion, Canto spun in mid-air and threw himself in such a manner that he and Lamba made a two-seventy-degree rotation in the air, ending up with himself on top and Lamba on the bottom, head-first.

CRUNCH!

A split second later, Lamba smacked into the Force Cage floor head-first.

The shattering strike informed the audience that whatever confidence Lamba possessed crumbled as the Magus lost consciousness, falling limply onto the floor.

The duelling arena filled with the sound of jeers and cheers so boisterous that Gwen had to cover her ears with both hands.

"Fuck yeah!" Eric announced triumphantly. "Always bet on Canto. I've just won two HDMs!"

Canto retrieved himself from the floor and made a flourishing bow, returning to his sculpted splendour.

So that's why he's near-naked, Gwen realised. Canto was performing an Incredible Hulk scenario. The military cargos he was wearing must be a self-fitting magic item, else the girls would be swooning by now.

Lamba was cleared from the stage by two of the betting girls dressed in nurses' outfits. They placed the unfortunate Mage on a stretcher and rolled his unconscious body over. Hopefully, those sirens would take Lamba to what Gwen hoped was the infirmary and not a dumpster out the back.

The Force Cage disenchanted and Yuu drifted toward the floor serenely. He began to lay down a torrent of praise on Canto, but his voice became lost in the crowd's wild passion.

Canto went about signing signatures on shirts and sleeves, receiving tips from excited patrons who threw crystalline cards at his feet. A few of the ring girls hastily collected the M's patrons' generosity on Canto's behalf.

"So what do you think?" Mina asked, watching Gwen's face flush.

Gwen had to admit, watching two Magus duke it out for one's viewing pleasure was exciting, not to mention educational. She had learned quite a bit about Illusionary tactics just in the last five minutes.

Just as she was about to answer, though, an overly familiar hand found its way to her shoulder. Gwen looked up to see Dai, his face possessing a self-aggrandising grin of supreme confidence. He looked down on her or, more accurately, he looked down at the plunging U neck of her shirt.

Should I zap the guy? Gwen fantasised, then brushed off his hand. She had plans for the young man, which meant she should stay in his good graces.

"Glad you all made it." Dai smirked. Behind him was Vivian, but none of the others seemed to be present. "Good fight, yes? Canto is one of the best. I sponsored one of his first fights, you know."

They waited for Dai to finish the small talk and get on with his obtrusive business. "Now, Peaches…"

Ah, there we go. Gwen shifted her body so Dai's hand wasn't so imposing on her wrist. It felt like such a simpleton move, a kind of insecure possessiveness that suggested he was afraid she might make a break for it.

"Didn't you say that you were going to show me a bout tonight? You still up for it, gangster? Or should we square the payment, right here, right now?"

Tao's friends fell into an awkward silence. Tao himself looked like a deer caught in the high beams of a Radiant Blast. "Dai… Mr Wei, Peaches' was joking—" Eric tried to intervene.

"Shut your face, Eric." Dai snapped. "We're talking here!"

Eric flinched.

"You wanna fight, bitch?" Tao's demeanour seemed to change.

"Don't be absurd. You're no match for me. But you know what? There is someone who wants to fight you, so I am going to make it easy," Dai replied arrogantly. "You win if you manage to beat him."

A young man with a cruel face walked out from behind Dai, whose presence had eclipsed the companion standing behind him.

"Fredrick Lin!" Tao hissed. "The fuck you doing here, fool?"

"I am here for satisfaction, Peaches." Fredrick grinned, flashing his pearly whites. Frederick had an unmemorable Asian face that would have been handsome were his pallor not so ghoulish from excessive indulgence. "I didn't think the beating earlier today was satisfying enough so I am here to give you a chance to make it up to me."

"Fred, don't be such a shithead," Mina interrupted them. "None of our fathers want to see you guys fight or get hurt."

"It's just a bout, a little practice match. Who can fault that?" Fredrick flashed his eyes menacingly at Mina. "You were there this morning. Did I provoke your brother? If you want to blame someone, blame his motor mouth."

"Screw the both of you," Mina scowled, evidently unused to both Dai and Frederick ignoring her wishes.

"Well, Peaches, you fighting or cashing out?" Dai was relentless. "Don't worry. I know your daddy's richer than ours."

"Dai," Gwen said. She shrugged off his hand by withdrawing her own. "I am on Peaches' side."

"Gwen." Dai gave her what he must have thought as a dreamy look. He moved it a little closer to her face.

Wow. This guy has a fucking death wish. Gwen imagined Caliban giving Dai a facial.

From behind Dai, Vivian's eyes filled with venom.

Dai gave Gwen his best smile, then turned coldly to Peaches, his lips curled. "Well? If you refuse to honour our agreement, I can always contact Daddy and ask for the crystals myself. It's not going to be the first time, anyway."

Tao's bravado was now painted on his red face like a monkey's ass. It was apparent to all at this point that he did not have a hundred HDMs to spare. Neither did Mina, who had spent twenty on her shopping spree, nor did Gwen, who couldn't scrounge up a dozen if she tried.

"How about this?" Dai turned to Gwen, taking another liberal look down her shirt. "If you convince cousin dear here to party with us for a few days, I'll let the matter go."

Gwen was just about to get up and lay a verbal smackdown on Dai when Tao suddenly let loose a torrent of rhyming abuse.

"Fuck you, Dai!

I'll beat you at your game, any time o’ the day

Beat you like a bitch, til you got nutt'n’ to say

Come ’ere; ya loser, I'll show ya the way

Running scared? Too late!

To get on yo knees and pray!"

"OH SHIT, SICK RHYMES, MY MAN."

"WOOT, WOOT."

"What UP!"

His friends, who'd been quiet the entire time, were now hooting and whining, transformed into a riot of jubilation and misdirected support.

Post-beat, Tao's face turned as white as a bedsheet.

"I'll take that as a yes," Dai spat coldly, his face multiple shades of overlapping crimson. "Frederick, I want you to make sure he completely and utterly regrets those words."

"You got it, Dai." Frederick grinned at Tao.

"And you." Dai turned to Gwen, evidently having lost patience and gentlemanliness after Tao's taunt. "After this, we'll be seeing each other plenty."

"At what point did I agree to be a part of this?" Gwen waited until Dai was out of earshot before turning to Mina and Tao with a complaint full of exasperation.

Dai had retreated to his little corner of heaven, a VIP area where he and his friends had their private little nymphet waitress all to themselves. Wow, what a shithead, Gwen fumed. If the man was going to be a prick, at least he could make good on his promise to give them VIP treatment. "Anyway, why am I a part of the prize box? I just wanted Tao to come with us."

"Yeah, well…" Mina pinched the bridge of her nose. "You asked to bring Tao, you deal with it."

"Does Dai even know I am sixteen?" Gwen asked.

"He's rich as hell and he's an arrogant cad. His father is the police commissioner, by the way. So good luck informing the cops. Also, if you know what's good for you, don't involve the Song family. I'll scrounge up what we can and try to pay the man, but if he's really after your body…"

Mina left the words unsaid, but Gwen read the frustration in her cousin's eyes. Mina meant that if this Dai fellow wanted to get rough with her, there was nothing they could do other than escalate. But what happened when that happened? Where did the buck stop?

She looked at the now shaking Tao, whose adrenaline of the moment had faded and was beginning to comprehend the consequences of his actions.

Nonetheless, a hint of sadism rose in Gwen's Frontier heart.

Can't hurt the son of a commissioner?

Boy Blue-balls can't take a "NO" to the face?

No problem.

She could handle that.

There was more than one way to skin a cat.

Chapter seventeen

To Skin some Cats

The event organisers made the necessary changes to the schedule immediately, distracting the impatient crowd with teams of scantily clad waitresses who dished out coupons then promoted the benefits of club membership.

Another team cleaned out leftover magical debris, after which Yuu once more made his presence known.

"Alright, alright, ladies and gentlemen! We have a real treat for you, a bout of ego! A contest of pride! A match between friendly rivals! A clash between the illustrious Clan of Lin from the Huashan region against Wang Xing Enterprise of Shanghai!"

A staccato bass filled the club basement. Emerging from the mist and surrounded by cheering brothers, Tao appeared from the east end.

A wave of disappointed booing resounded from the crowd, from which Gwen inferred this was not Tao's first rodeo.

"What are Peaches' talents?" Gwen asked Mina. It hadn’t been polite to do so before, but she wanted to be prepared for what was unmistakably a poorly matched battle.

"Illusion and Air." Mina slumped in her chaise, exhausted before the night had even begun. "Fredrick is Fire and Evocation, but his Affinity and techniques are top-notch, even by our standards."

"Does Peaches have a chance?"

"Sure, the same chance as an Ice Mage stuck in the Elemental Plane of Fire."

Unexpectedly, only a handful of people cheered Frederick as well. Gwen guessed that there was no sport in wasting breath on a one-sided beatdown.

Yuu was still trying to rile the crowd up, but not even someone of his calibre could inspire the betting pool to get any larger.

"The Challenger! Tao Wang, AKA Peaches, The King of Fruit, a practised master of the illusory arts. With a record of all losses, he may yet be the ticket for some to beat the odds and break the bank!"

The crowd booed.

"The Defender! Fu Lei Lin, AKA Frederick, a prodigy we know well, a master of Evocation, from the illustrious Clan of Lin upon the mystical Mont of Huang, with a steady record of six wins and one loss, as steady a bet for pocket change as any other!"

The room dimmed.

The wall of force went up.

There remained only Tao, Fredrick and the illuminated space of the arena floor.

"BEGIN!"

"Flame Shield!"

"Mirror Image!"

Four other Taos appeared beside Gwen's cousin.

Gwen expected Fredrick to open with a barrage, but to her surprise, the Evoker quietly stood and watched as Tao continued to weave spells.

"Silent Image!"

"Major Image!"

The spells were directed at Fredrick, but the nature of Image spells lay in manifesting visions from the coalescing mana, visible to all and very much reliant on deception.

Tao's first Image was one of his friends, Little-Dog, who threw gang signs whilst mouthing something with a rapid flutter of his lips.

Beside Gwen, Little-Dog began to deliver a rhyming sermon of bombastic beats, as if providing an audio track for Tao's Silent Image.

Gwen's attention returned to the fight with a terrible suspicion.

The next one, the Major Image, came with sound, appearing as Mack-Daddy carrying a boom-box, moving to the rhythm of a tune that only Tao could hear.

"Hypnotic Pattern!"

Graffiti, stage lights, and other visual and auditory effects joined the rapping trio.

"Humpty Dumpty, you bitches be rusty,

Ima knock yo shit down,

DAWG, you gonna go against me?

Ima take ya downtown
like you're soft cream cheese.

Ima hit you with sick beats.

This MC is gonna school you…"

At least a dozen of the crowd groaned, Gwen among them.

She had to admit. It was, in fact, a catchy tune. This aspect of Illusion was a kind of Spellcraft Gwen had read about in textbooks but had never experienced due to the Frontier's emphasis on military service.

In her limited experience, she had seen lumen casts of daytime drama and propaganda lumen recordings. The notion of a pop producer who was a powerful Illusionist who created audio-visual spectacles was indeed a viable career for those with talent.

And though the path of an Entertainer-Mage was not a career lauded by respectable members of society, it was a path that possessed immense allure for young men and women, whose existence was haunted by the possibility of sudden, inexplicable death on the Frontier.

However, Tao's unusual competence and control didn't matter, for he was a Mage duel, a demonstration of arcane might and spell force, not a beatbox battle in the Bronx.

That much became apparent when Fredrick ran out of patience. "Wall of Fire!" At his behest, a flame barrier rose from the floor atop of which Tao rapped to his heart's content.

"Peaches!" Gwen called out, alarmed. Her cousin was still blithely pipping away, swaying his body this way and that, an instant before he became honey-glazed char-siu.

"Bitch! You missed!" Tao's voice taunted his opponent from another part of the arena. "Magic Missile!"

The flames passed through Tao's body harmlessly, turning the Illusion semi-transparent. A volley of arcane force, invisible to the naked eye, assaulted Frederick where he stood.

"Shield!"

An orange barrier intercepted Tao's attacks without apparent effort.

The young man was well-trained, Gwen acknowledged. Shielding was the common weakness of an Evoker Elementalist, but Frederick had clearly poured thousands of hours into fortifying his fundamentals.

"You're such an idiot, Peaches," Fredrick riposted with an insult and a spell. "Fireball!"

A mote of flame shot from his finger and struck the barrier behind Tao. In a split second, the orange legume of fire blossomed into a semicircle dome, conflagrating half of the force cage.

One of Tao's rapper illusions immediately burst into motes of untethered mana, dispelled by the disruptive invasion of heat and fire.

"Fear!" a voice cried out from somewhere in the cage. A shimmering silhouette indicated where Tao had been hidden, which was thankfully not in the corner now filled with fiery destruction.

Invisibility! Colour me impressed. Gwen whistled. Tao wasn't so useless after all. If only her cousin had another mode of offence or had better damage output, then he might have taken the match. Unfortunately, it looked as though Tao possessed very little in the way of direct damage.

Presently, an abjuring halo glowed around Fredrick's head, indicating that Tao's illusory assault had failed to connect with Fredrick's consciousness.

"Bloody hell," Mina growled, stabbing the ice in her drink with frustration. "As if someone from the fucking Lins, of all people, wouldn't have a Mind Shield charm. What a waste."

"Is having a Mind Shield a common thing?" Gwen inquired, wondering if she could get one as well. It was a Phantasmal Killer spell that had brained her during the Blackheath incident.

"Common enough," Mina replied. "Most of us military-gen kids had to undergo training as well."

Tao's terrible decision to use a psychic assault proved to be his undoing. Fredrick casually flicked another mote of fire his way and the blossom caught Tao before his invisible form could escape the vicinity.

"Ouch! Ouch! ARRRRRGH!"

Tao rolled onto the floor, trying to put out a localised blaze that had caught his hat and set fire to his collared tee-shirt.

Gwen's eyes grew wide, her mind rioted. She wanted to scream at her cousin, WHERE IS YOUR SHIELD?

"Where is his shield?" Gwen asked Mina incredulously.

"He SUCKS at Abjuration and he's lazy as fuck when it comes to training," Mina stated as if she'd had to explain the same thing a hundred times over. "Wait for it."

Sure enough, a Shield of air sprang into being half a second too late.

"Oh, Peaches," Gwen's eyes grew watery with sympathy.

Fredrick appeared too embarrassed even to attack the wretched, writhing form of Tao. It was supposed to be first to shield break, but how did that apply to a Mage with developmentally delayed Shields? If he had not suppressed the flames' heat, Tao would be making a trip to the local military ER.

Peaches' assailant turned to look at Dai Fung, who likewise had an expression that suggested he'd swallowed a fly or two by accident. Dai motioned quickly to Magus Yuu, the Adjudicator.

"VICTORY, to Young Master Lin of Huangshan!" Yuu announced quickly, ushering the white-clad team of skimpy nurses onto the stage. "Applause!"

Scattered applause filled the arena.

Compared to the first match, the second was blisteringly lacklustre. Instead of a feeling of excitement, the two-minute spectacle had clearly filled the patrons with a cringe-worthy sense of self-loathing, as though they'd just watched an angry widower beat his crying kid.

"I haven't lost yet!" Tao screamed as he was placed on a stretcher and taken to Mina, who promptly restored him with a Cure Moderate. His shirt and hat, however, were toast.

"It wasn't Shield-break yet," Tao protested groggily.

The winners approached with smug expressions. Gwen needed no Divination to anticipate their subsequent encounter. She closed her eyes, counted to three, then opened them. Dai teleported beside her, standing above Tao with a gloating expression.

"Good match! You were almost going to win, but alas," he comforted them with sardonic sympathy. "Now, you looking to pay in crystals or currency?"

"Dai, don't," Mina snapped at the young man. "You know we can pay. Give me a day or two."

It was unfortunate that even scrounging up all the crystals Tao's crew possessed, they were still missing thirty or so HDMs. Tao's friends might be affluent, but their families were strict. Likewise, Mina wasn't of any help because she was equally guilty of spending money like flowing water.

Dai mused, looking at Gwen with the suggestive grin of a two-bit crook. "Well then, cousin, shall we?"

Gwen sighed, rolling her eyes. After surviving Faceless, Elizabeth and Walken, their present foe's ploy felt like the jabbering of mewling children fighting over a favourite toy.

"Dai! You're starting to piss me off," Mina hissed at him, but Dai blissfully ignored her.

"And where are we going exactly?" Gwen questioned Dai, who seemed in love with the sound of his voice.

"Join me in the VIP, of course." Dai inclined his head, his eyes already eyeing her hungrily. "Give a man a bit of face, share a few drinks. All very innocent and fun."

"I am coming with you!" Despite his exhaustion, Tao's camaraderie, though headstrong and foolish, pleased Gwen greatly.

"You are not welcome." Dai shot Tao a grimace of disgust. "Go home, cherry-boy."

Tao's companions helped her cousin to his feet, but it was evident to Gwen they dared not speak up against the son of a police commissioner.

"Am I also unwelcome, then?" Mina replied between clenched teeth. Her eyes flashed dangerously, growing hard enough to entomb Dai on the spot. "Should I tell Uncle Fung about what you're trying to do? Maybe he’ll be a better judge."

"What's with the angry flirting?" Gwen whispered to Tao, pulling his face closer to her own. As a woman of experience, Mina's and Dai's mutually indignant gaze brought to mind two individuals who unmistakably shared an intimate and sordid history.

"He's her ex," Tao said, providing an unenterprising piece of the puzzle.

Gwen felt the components slotting into place like a final Tetris block. So Dai's interest wasn't just about Tao. It wasn't just about her, either. Gwen had suspected that Dai wasn't so stupid as to lose his cool over something as base as a chance to grope her buttocks. There was an element of revenge best served cold involved, and Dai was using her as leverage to dig deep into Mina's prideful flesh.

With the puzzle solved, now came the time for action. Abruptly, Gwen stood from her chair, forcing Dai to rest on his back foot.

Dai was a tall bloke, but with her well-heeled boots, they were the same height. Their eyes met, she smiled at him, then began to walk toward the VIP section, directly opposite their current position.

"Gwen, wait!" Mina stomped her food. "Tao, you IDIOT!"

Dai's grin split from ear to ear. "Your cousin is a far more obedient girl than you," he teased Mina behind her. "But Mina, you can tag along if you like."

"You're such an er-bi…" Mina swore with a word Gwen's translation stone could not discern.

"Hahaha!" Dai turned to follow her. Gwen counted the steps, listening for Dai's leather-soled shoes until he was right behind her, then just as they reached the duelling floor, she stopped.

"What's wrong, Gwen—"

Dai's quizzical inquiry was interrupted when Gwen threw a hand casually into the air, the same invocation as her Flashbang.

BUNG!

Briefly, night turned into day. A discordant explosion of sound and light, charged with hair-raising static, lit up the club's interior.

The music ceased, as did the conversation.

Every eye in the room sought out the source of the disturbance.

They found it in a foreign girl standing centre stage upon the duelling field. A cascade of silvery Conjuration mana fell about her like blue-white fireflies.

"FREDERICK LIN!" Gwen shouted toward a bewildered young man in the VIP section of the club, surrounded by a plethora of eager girls who'd been lapping at his retelling of the duel.

Gwen raised a hand in the air before retrieving from her fingers an Enchanted Ring. "I challenge you to a bout! I will offer this Master Crafted Ring of Evasion, made by a Magister of the Tower, as ante!"

Gwen spun around the dance floor, allowing the others to behold her striking face and mana-enriched eyes.

The silken silence continued to reign.

"Of course, I could offer myself, but first, you'll have to win this ring." Gwen smirked, teasing the crowd.

The club burst into wolf-whistles, cat-calls and jubilant shrieks of untempered delight.

Dai stared, no less confused than Frederick.

"A CHALLENGER HAS SPOKEN!" Magus Yuu leapt at the opportunity, entirely beside himself with excitement. From the crowd’s reaction, Gwen deduced that in the House of M, nubile challengers were precisely the sort of thing that got the young folks’ blood boiling and the bets rolling.

Dai attempted to intervene, but the Magus blew past him. There were favours, but nothing would stop the House of M from making crystals.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! I know you can't wait! I know I can't wait! But rules are rules! A challenge cannot be rescinded. Give us a moment while our challenger is registered and her betting prize verified."

He turned to Frederick. "Mr Lin, do you accept?"

Frederick looked to Dai for advice. Gwen could read the sadism on Dai’s face like an obscene book.

"I accept."

"A BRAVE and RECKLESS choice!" Magus Yuu announced to the world. "Youth lives but once! Win or lose, we applaud your bravery!"

"What makes you think I would lose?" Frederick taunted the announcer, eyeing Gwen as though seeing her for the first time. "Perhaps when this is all over, she and I will be spending some quality time by the VIP."

A round of boos addressed Frederick. There was a natural advantage enjoyed by those in possession of comeliness that couldn’t be superseded by those who hadn’t won the genetic lottery.

A female attendant took Gwen's ring and had it inspected by a resident artificer. It wasn't uncommon for people to want to bet magical items when the heat of the moment fried their brains.

Meanwhile, a second attendant took a print of Gwen's Multi-Pass, which served as an ID recognised by the Shanghai Tower. As for why an Australian student was in Shanghai illicitly, that wasn't the M's business, whose only concern was unadulterated entertainment and the ceaseless generation of crystals and currency for its owners.

It took only a minute for a slip of paper to make it back to Magus Yuu.

"FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY HDM CRYSTALS!" he screamed into the voice modulating incantation. "A TREMENDOUS confidence!"

He spun to face Frederick Lin with a toothy grin. "Mr Lin, do you wish to proceed?"

All eyes turned to Frederick, whose face instantly paled. It was clear the young man lacked the funds, but how could he say no, now of all times? He looked at Dai desperately.

Dai approached the duelling floor and produced six crystal currency cards.

Frederick's face restored some of its previous confidence. However, he also grew contemplative, likely wondering who Gwen's Master was and whether it was wise to give the man the piss by trying to bully his Apprentice.

But it wasn't because of pride, family, or honour that she was challenging him. Gwen wanted to fight the bastard because she expected to fleece five hundred buckaroos from his unresisting body.

"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!" Yuu's voice was almost going hoarse. "It is ON! My friends, clear the space. Challengers, present yourselves—"

The interior lights flared and the exterior perimeter dimmed.

Gwen stood demurely on one side, a gentle, mirthful smile lightly touching her petal-pink lips.

Frederick stood opposite, still apparently bewildered by the sudden turn of events.

The Magus requested a final confirmation. Gwen nodded silently.

Frederick said nothing as well, but for an entirely different reason. Even from afar, Gwen could feel the motes of fire radiating off him. The Evoker was trying to front-load something big, likely a Fire Ball. She needed to finish this fast and clean. The less she showed, the more crystals she was likely to generate with her next con.

"ALLLLLLLRIGHT! On my signal…" Yuu Dimension Doored from the floor and onto the roof, landing with a flourish atop the rectangular Force Cage.

"BEGIN!"

"Fire Ba—"

"Flashbang!"

A crystalline shard materialised for a fraction of a second in front of Frederick's face before manifesting as a localised thunderclap.

Frederick hadn't even finished his spell before his world turned white with noise and illumination. The malformed chant in his mind became white noise as both the Flashbang and his mana fed back into his body.

Gwen, who knew mana burn better than anyone, could see the poor bastard's face blanch and therefore knew that the young man was entirely at her mercy, at least for another few seconds.

"Dimension Door!"

Leaping into her short-range teleport, Gwen barrelled into Frederick with her shoulder, appearing just centimetres beside Frederick's stunned body before crashing into his chest. A burst of electricity exploded where her Mana Shield impacted his instantly-erected Shield, after which Fredrick flew backwards.

Frederick desperately tried to fire off a spell that would give him even a second of breathing room.

"Lightning Whip!" Gwen lashed the air in front of her twice; twin tendrils of lightning lacerating Fredrick's Shield with such force it sent him kneeling against the wall of the force cage, engendering a shower of orange-yellow sparks where her electricity impacted the invisible barrier.

"Blade! Blast! Whip!" Her lightning flashed and flashed again.

Caught by the momentum of her spell flurry, Gwen forwent even the first segment of her chants, simply using her Transmutation Sigil to keep the channel open, allowing the electrical energy to pour out freely.

Her spells were weaker without her Evocation sigils empowering the damage. However, to the untrained eye, it seemed as though she was ceaselessly churning out an endless torrent of sorcery that was alternatively blades, tendrils, blasts of lightning and other misshaped detonations of electricity.

Fredrick must have fainted at some point during the exchange, for Gwen noticed her discharges were singeing his clothes and hair.

Quickly, she ceased her attack. She was there to win money, not cause a homicide. The fight felt good. She felt good.

And with five hundred HDMs in her pockets, she would feel even better.

With comparative slowness, Frederick's smoking body slid off the conjured pane of force and comically knelt toward the young sorceress, head over heels.

Around the arena, hundreds of mouths opened and closed, trying to find words that could adequately describe what they had just witnessed.

A few keen observers wondered if her display was a part of some show, some illusion maybe, set up by the Magus Yuu to liven up the atmosphere after Tao's dismal duel.

It was as good as an explanation as any other.

After all, the girl, a junior by the looks of it, one who looked more like an idol than a combat Mage, just trounced the son of the Lin family, renowned for their Evocation Mages, with nothing but Quasi-Elementalist cantrips and a single Dimension Door?

How was it that she had incanted her spells so fast? How could it be that her low-level incantations had so much power? How many schools had she used just then? Most importantly, why had no one ever heard of her? No Master worth their salt would forget a junior of this calibre after seeing her in action once.

Was she a secret disciple, finally let loose into the world? Who was her Magister Master? That was the most critical question of all. No one wanted to step on the toes of a Magister without carefully considering the consequences.

"Peaches," Eric said softly, "I am in love."

"Peaches," Little-Dog likewise intoned, "I am in love too."

"Peaches," Mack-Daddy said after a moment of deliberation, "I am so scared I am at full mast."

"Same," Little-Dog confessed. "I am sorry, Peaches."

As for Mina, she could wonder what other secrets Gwen was hiding from them.

"THE WINNER! Miss SONG!" Yuu's voice rang like a clarion across the space of the club.

"Woohoo!" Tao screeched, completely beside himself, wild with joy. "Gwen!"

A second voice joined in.

Then another.

And another.

Then the entire club was hooting and stomping.

"Lightning Sorceress!"

"Goddess!"

"Gwen!"

The skimpy nurses made their rounds. Thankfully, the boy was fine. Gwen could see Frederick returned to consciousness after only a minute, but his body had sustained so much elemental damage that he had become completely numb and paralysed.

Magus Yuu approached Gwen with the prize of the bout. He had her Ring of Evasion on a small, red cushion, which he returned to her, and the currency cards in the other, which he presented to her.

Before the watching crowd, Gwen turned to where Dai and his friends sat in the VIP section, still overcome with disbelief.

"Mr Fung." She walked towards him, her boots clicking on the illuminated floor, her dancer's figure followed by hundreds of pairs of eyes until she reached their booth.

She produced one of the cards—one with a one hundred HDM denomination. "Here's the money Peaches owes you," she said sweetly, her eyes full of sincerity. "Thanks for being a good sport."

Before Dai could respond, Gwen spun on her heels and strode back toward the centre of the dance floor.

Just as the young man sat, Gwen stopped as she had before, performing the exact come-hither twirl, watching Dai as his expression soured.

"Mr Fung! Another round?" Gwen held up her ring and the four hundred or so HDMs she had in both hands. "Nine hundred HDMs, winner takes all."

Magus Yuu was beside himself with joy. "Miss Song, you're our lucky star, our goddess of currency! Also, you might not be familiar with this, but as you are the instigator of the bout, the M offers you a ten percent cut on all the club's winnings. Though the exact amount cannot be tallied as of yet, I can assure you that your portion of the last match should total about three hundred HDMs."

Gwen turned to Dai. "Apologies." She bowed. "Twelve hundred HDMs, winner takes all."

Dai's face altered between fifty shades of red. He opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to refute her challenge, but again was interrupted.

"Bet!" Tao began chanting, joined by his friends.

"Bet!"

"Bet!"

"Bet!"

The whole club joined in.

"BET! BET! BET! BET!"

The son of the police commissioner grew contemplative.

Dai looked over at Mina, who was staring at Gwen with undisguised disbelief.

"Well, Mister Fung?" Gwen teased the man with an innocent smile of expectation.

After what seemed like an eternity, the heir of the Fung Clan nodded. "Okay, but not me. My family won't allow it. Instead…

"Lok," he said quietly into the darkness, where a skinny man in a grey suit stood silently with the appearance of a stone sentinel. "Can you take care of this?"

"As you wish. Shall I spare the girl?"

Her opponent nodded affirmatively to his guard. "Do what you must. We have to avenge this insult."

Lok emerged from the darkness and into the light of the duelling floor.

"Master Dai answers your challenge. I will be his representative," he said to the crowd emotionlessly with the same intonation of one calling out a takeout order.

A silent Message bloomed next to Gwen's ears, invisible to all.

"That's Lok Khun. He's a Burmese national but served under the PLA's foreign operative teams. Dai always liked to boast that his bodyguard was very skilled when it comes to his duties."

"What are his abilities?" Gwen said audibly. She didn't care that Lok heard. After all, she was the challenger; she possessed the onus of accepting or refusing their representative.

"Enchantment and Abjuration, Earth Element, though Dai said that he trained in Mind Magic. I've never seen him in action, so I can't help you there."

"Thanks, that's enough. I'll take care of it."

"Are you sure?" Mina paused, seemingly reaching a decision. "Don't push yourself too hard. If it comes to it, Tao and I have your back."

Gwen returned her gaze to Lok, who awaited her reply patiently.

"Don't do it!" someone called out from the crowd.

"Yeah, he's a Magus. The fight's a travesty. Unfair!"

"Go and fight yourself, Dai!"

Gwen's following words silenced the crowd at once. "Alright, I accept."

Yuu was there before the crowd even reacted.

Magus Yuu erupted. "THERE YOU HAVE IT, ladies and Gentlemen! Austere Mages! Annnnnnnother groundbreaking match! The spectacle of a student in training against a seasoned Magus! Can experience beat talent or does talent trump all? EGO is what the bout is all about!"

"She's a student?" someone from the crowd demanded.

"The challenger, Miss Gwen Song! From the Frontier of Australia! A Quasi-Elementalist! A teenage prodigy! The defender! Magus Lok Khun, employed under the House of Fung. A renounced master of the Abjuration Arts!

"Lightning versus Earth! A decisive advantage for the Magus Khun. Can Miss Song overcome the fundamental mismatch? Make your bets! Who will the Goddess of Victory Embrace! Who will emerge as the penultimate victor of this night?"

The force cage resumed its protective enclosure.

Lok Khun gazed upon Gwen with his dead fish’s eyes. There appeared a little bit of Edgar in the depth of the man's calm pupils to Gwen's mind, suggesting someone who was used to bringing pain to others.

She glanced at the twelve hundred HDMs of crystals and prizes on display. Dai didn't have enough on him to pay outright, which meant that he would owe her if she won the match. If she were to keep his shame private and their exchange in intimacy, it would further imply that he owed her a debt of gratitude. After all, crystals were merely numbers—social capital was priceless.

She took a deep breath.

Around them, the jibbering crowd hedged their bets.

One cat down. This new one looked like a biter.

Chapter eighteen

Remember Me

“BEGIN!”

"Protection from Energy!"

"Shield!"

Wary of one another's untested strength, both Gwen and her opponent forwent the option to front-load spells, instead choosing to open the battle defensively, electing caution over risk.

Lok's choice was evident, creating a shimmering skin of elemental resistance that negated much of Gwen's offensive electricity outright, ensuring that even if he were stunned or blinded, his Earthen Shield could withstand any unforeseen burst potential from the Lightning Mage.

Gwen knew her choice would be both puzzling and astonishing. Wasn't she an offensive caster? What was an Elementalist going to do with a Shield? Especially one under the auspices of Air and Positive Energy, both of which were insubstantial in defence?

"Catapult!"

"Warding Bolt!"

A spiked boulder the size of a ripe jackfruit smashed into Gwen's static-charged Mana Shield. To the surprise of all, rather than shattering the transparent glass dome, the spike came to a crunching halt, turning the impact point opaque with congealed mana. In the next moment, the stone fell from Gwen's half-dome barrier and dissipated into motes of Elemental Earth.

The spectacle would have made perfect sense if Gwen was a Mage attuned to the Mineral talent, or perhaps a spiritually modified talent of Earth, but she was a Lightning Mage. How was it possible that an Elementalist could possess such an impenetrable Shield? If offensive casters could hold their own in a shielding duel, there would be no need for Abjurers on a five-person team.

"Stone Spear!" For a Mage specialised in defence, a tier II Evocation was the best Lok could manage without risking mana burn and disorientation. Four stalactites of compressed granite launched toward Gwen, covering the distance between them in the blink of an eye.

Gwen gritted her teeth. "Call Lightning!"

A miniaturised cumulonimbus cloud briefly appeared overhead before manifesting as a hazy field of electricity.

Her previously conjured Warding Bolt zapped away at Lok, triggered by his presence, leaving behind a dazzling white scar over his reinforced Stone Shield.

Immediately after, Lok's spears struck.

In the past, Gwen had withstood the assault of a tier V Magical Beast known as Wonka. Even with the burst of momentum and all its impressive weight, it had just managed to penetrate her non-Newtonian barrier, and this was at a time when Gwen hadn’t even been a trained Abjurer. Now, Lok was just unlucky.

The seemingly deadly spears clattered against her shield, turning its frontal surface opaque before crumbling.

Gwen could see a spiderweb of fissures spreading across the first layer of her double-glazed mana barrier. Thankfully, her weakness became masked by the zinging arcs of electricity that showered the surrounding air spectacularly whenever her Shield shed its reactive energy.

When the Stone Spears failed to penetrate, the crowd gasped, looking at one another to see if they were all witnesses to the same spectacle.

"Wall of Stone!"

"Ariel!"

All of Gwen's pieces were falling into place.

Ariel appeared behind Lok and instantly transformed into its Mongoose form, its static-charged body covering the force cage’s cobalt surface with blue-white static.

"EE—EE!"

A blast of fur from Ariel smothered the space where Lok stood his ground, a few tiny darts catching him unaware and penetrating his hastily erected Shield.

Such was the natural advantage of Conjurers, whose strength in numbers had to be endured or negated. Gwen's problem was that her education was incomplete. She had forgone Summon Elementals for Dark Tentacles and the defensive Faithful Hound, neither of which was of much use against a turtling Earthen Mage.

Lok cursed under his breath. The man’s eyes grew suddenly cruel. A little more! Gwen told herself, for slowly but surely, her electrical discharge found its way through the dart-like fur and invaded the man’s body.

"Lighting Blast!"

"Blank Mind!" The Mage activated his latent mental powers.

Gwen felt a deluge of psychic energy bypassing her Mana Shield and assail her consciousness. She became at once dizzy and confused as if injected with a sluggish agent that hindered her thoughts. It was a familiar feeling which she loathed more than anything in the world.

Fight it! an inner voice screamed as her body faltered. It was just as well that her Warding Bolt continued to fire and her Called Lightning was falling into a steady pace of randomised electrical blasts.

At the other end of the arena, Ariel sensed its Master's distress and directly assaulted Lok with a frenzy of blows, becoming a blur of whirling claw and flashing teeth against the Magus' Shield of Stone.

Though Gwen could feel a part of her mind becoming cloudy and unfocused, she maintained control through force of will. From experience, she suspected that if she had lost her mind, Caliban would likely escape and attempt to make a feast out of every Mage in the club. She could just imagine it now, Caliban eating Lok before thrashing itself bloody upon the force cage.

For that reason, she had to fight. Else, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what her grandfather might do.

Lok had felt his spell connect with Gwen's mind. He had also expected her to fall limp, to cease her attacks, to beg or kneel or at least be held, even for a fraction of a second.

Instead, even after his mana became consumed, there was nothing. There was no feedback, no adjoining reciprocity that allowed him an estimation of his target's paralysis.

It was as though he had cast Hold Monster on a pet rock.

Then he felt the connection between himself and the spell cease, signalling the end of the Enchanter's hold on his target.

His Stone Shield was already a blaze of electricity that cascaded from top to bottom, turning the surface of the force cage a bright, brilliant blue. Where the Mongoose's fur had struck his shoulder, he could feel a numbness coming on.

Whatever had happened, his spell had gone to waste, and Lok wasn't foolish enough to flaunt his mind-flaying abilities in public. He had no desire to be gang-pressed into the military for the second time, especially in a place like China, where the PLA kept a close eye on all Mind Mages.

Were they at a stalemate then?

But he was a Magus! The girl was sixteen, seventeen? Maybe younger? For a Magus to draw the match with the girl was no different from losing. He had to do something, anything, to ensure that his Master did not suffer any more loss of reputation.

"Stone Skin!" Magus Lok incanted loudly.

Now, he would earn his keep.

Unexpectedly, Gwen’s enemy made the first move to break their stalemate. Lok must have lost patience with his terrapin tactics and wanted to finish the match and salvage Dai's lost honour.

In an instant, the Mage became The Thing from an infamous Marvel franchise, only covered in layers of grey-blue granite, slowly moving toward her with the certainty of a glacier.

As for the Mind Magic, Gwen was still reeling from its impact. She was indignant and confused. Why hadn't Yuu called out the Magus for using an illicit spell? Was it legal for capital city Mages to employ mind-altering effects? Or did paralysis not count as mind-control?

Heedless of her woes, Lok came closer, trying to corner Gwen at one end. Gwen had no idea what the man intended, but she wasn't about to lose the advantage of distance. What if he had a melee-touch, mind-altering Enchantment that could control her? What if Caliban escaped?

In desperation, she chose the only spell she knew that would work on stone.

"Flashbang!

"Flashbang!

"Flashbang!

"Flashbang!

"Flashbang!

"Flashbang!"

She held a dozen of the unstable crystals in her hand, vibrating dangerously in their volatile fragility.

What would happen when a dozen of her most disruptive spells erupted at once? How many times could the magnitude of a single spell increase with each reverberation? Gwen was no physicist; she could only speculate about the multiplicative effects of detonating sound and light in an enclosed space.

Faced with the advancing Mage, she threw the volatile shards toward the ponderous form of the despairing Lok, whose stony face twisted in dreadful anticipation as the crystals flew toward him in slow motion.

"CLOSE YOUR EYES!" Gwen advised the crowd, retracting Ariel to her side as she covered her ears, reinforcing herself with mana.

Above her, Magus Yuu relayed her command.

As the crystals ignited, Gwen summoned yet another Shield, a thin Void skin, within her semi-circle dome of non-Newtonian particles.

BUNG! The resulting Flashbang may as well have been a localised supernova. The force cage grew white-hot as though it momentarily held the interior of a dying star. Violent, reverberating sonic energy and dazzling incandescence rocked the underground chamber. Were it not for the sheer power of the protective barrier, the observers were sure that the M would have erupted, perhaps launching off its foundations and landing piecemeal throughout the bay of the Bund.

After the concussion, the flare finally dimmed.

Unfortunately, though the force cage had tempered the thunderclap, there was no helping the phosphorescence.

Those who'd anticipated the flash felt their sight returning after several seconds. Those too slow to react became blinded for half a minute.

Those who'd refused to heed Gwen and Yuu's advice wailed and beckoned for Minor Restoration.

When the confusion finally ceased, those with enough vision left to see turned their attention back toward the duelling floor.

They had their answer.

The Lightning Mage, Gwen Song, appeared entirely unaffected by the explosion. She stood to attention, steadfast in trying to maintain a triple-set conjuration of familiar, Warding Bolt and Call Lightning.

Magus Khun, meanwhile, had ceased moving entirely. Sheets of granite fell from his body like a stone statue crumbling in a time-lapse. Twin streaks of blood oozed from where his ears were just visible beneath the Stone Skin, flowing profusely past his cheeks.

Above, Magus Yuu swayed on his feet for a moment as his wits restored themselves.

Opposite the fallen Earthen Mage, the Lightning Sorceress dispelled her summons, then dropped to one knee. Her chest violently rose and fell as she panted profusely from the effort of managing a dozen spells in quick succession.

"THE VICTOR! MISS GWEN SONG!" The voice of Magus Yuu rang across the club. The announcer expression was one of Chinese New Year come early. "What a world, what a night, what a bout! To think that junior Mage could defeat a Magus with incantations no higher than tier III!"

Slowly, boos and groans began to spread among the losers who had betted on Lok, taking solace only in the pretty sorceress who had provided them with a blood-boiling bout. Years later, they might even be recounting to their peers that they were there when a new Magister began her ascent to power. Conversely, a small number of participants in the room were jubilant with joy and exaltation, throwing crystal credits at Gwen's feet.

Are you not entertained? Gwen wanted to take a victorious stroll through the arena space, but she felt too breathless to speak and adrenaline rushed to react. Forcing herself to stand, she patted down her skirt, turned to face the crowd and curtsied, bowing to each side.

Another round of cheers resounded, followed by an encore of cascading crystals. Gwen had intended to show herself as the humble victor, but it appeared there had been a miscommunication of sorts. Still, she wasn't about to turn down free money.

Dai joined her on the duelling floor. He approached her directly and bowed deeply, placing a hand upon his heart in a show of sincerity. "You have proven yourself beyond doubt, Miss Gwen," he announced to the crowd in a volume audible to all. "For sparing Magus Khun, who is my bodyguard and my dear friend, I want you to know that I owe you a favour. If there is service that Dai Fung of the Clan Fung can perform in the future, please do not hesitate to make a request."

Gwen wasn't sure of the etiquette for accepting a concession of defeat and so offered her hand. Shockingly, Dai took it and kissed her ring.

The crowd grew wild with cheers and applause.

Just as Gwen tried to speak, Dai turned to the club and lifted Gwen's hand in a gesture that made it seem as though they were both victors.

You sneaky little…! Gwen could only marvel at the smoothness of Dai's recovery. Here was a man groomed from birth to play to a crowd. What thickness of skin he must have!

"Please play along." A glowing Message spell bloomed beside her ear. It was Dai. "I will double the winnings I owe you, an apology, and as a gift to our future friendship."

"Fine," Gwen answered the young Master.

"Wonderful. I'll have the club bring it to you."

Dai bowed again, then quickly retreated, overseeing his bodyguard's medical care, roleplaying the benevolent Master full of concern for his underling's welfare.

Gwen left the stage and returned to her cousins. As she descended from the duelling floor, men and women reached out and touched her arm and felt her hair, causing her to shiver with discomfort. Canto had endured the same treatment, though the man had seemed to enjoy it. She hadn't thought much of it then, but now it was happening to her. Gwen just hoped that some mug didn't get too enthusiastic with their tactile devotion.

"Oh. My. Mao!" Tao's friends were beside themselves.

"Master Gwen!"

"Mistress!"

"Masterful Mistress. Please take me as your disciple!"

Gwen declined playfully. She would rather not have a group of rapping disciples helping her produce an MTV video.

"Ganbei!" Little-Dog and Mack-Daddy celebrated with a fresh round of beverages.

"Cheers!" Gwen joined the round.

"Thanks," Tao said seriously, wiping the foam from his lips. "For what you did to Frederick out there."

"It was nothing." Gwen pulled her cousin in close and hugged him. "Feel better now?"

His fellow B-Boys gulped their drinks enviously.

"I am impressed, Gwen. You did great." Mina's voice had an edge of relief to it. "I can't believe Dai folded. He's a tit-for-tat kind of guy, even if he's an arrogant idiot most of the time. Now, if anyone wants to mess with you, they'd first have to ask if they want to piss on the commissioner's son, especially if you intend to call in that favour."

"True, and I got some funds for my living expenses in Shanghai." Gwen laughed, her eyes lighting up like electrically charged HDM crystals. "More shopping tomorrow?"

"What's the score?" Tao regressed to his inner-city vernacular. "How much ya win for smacking a bitch up?"

Gwen tried to do a quick calculation in her head.

As if on cue, Magus Yuu appeared beside them, flanked on either side by two girls with such audacious fashion that Tao's eyes protruded from their sockets.

"Caught you at the right time, it seems." Magus Yuu grinned affably. "Wonderful match. A marvel. Truly inspirational!"

"Thank you for the kind words." Gwen bowed her head politely.

"Your winnings." Magus Yuu handed over a card. "Please attune yourself."

They seemed surprised that Gwen didn't know what to do. After an awkward moment of confusion, Mina told her that she needed to pour her astral mana from her Elemental Gates into the card.

"You channel your mana into the card, like so…" Yuu demonstrated a simple cantrip.

Gwen performed likewise, and the number 3534 showed up.

"Three thousand, five hundred and thirty-four HDMs!" Tao bit back tears. His friends, likewise, were beside themselves.

Gwen had never held so much money in her second life.

In one night, over two duels, she had made more money than an NoM would see in a lifetime. Granted, she had risked her life and limb, but the speed and volume in which she had acquired currency must be impressive, for she could see the awe in Mina and Tao’s faces.

"This here is a little contribution from us, from the House of M," Magus Yuu added, passing over a golden card imbued with intricate scrollwork of dragons in flight.

"Whoa." Mina bit her lip.

"What is it?" Gwen received the card carefully, balancing it on her hand.

"Contribution credits," Mina hissed. "They're the currency of favour from the Towers!"

Gwen had heard the term before from Richard, but she had never seen them in the real world.

"More precious than crystals, rarer than Creature Cores." Magus Yuu tapped the card gingerly. "There are ten credits contained within, enough for a few small but challenging requests."

Gwen had no idea what Yuu meant, but she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Two cards, one crystalline and the other golden disappeared into her Storage Ring.

"One more thing," Yuu persisted. "As a young woman with a great deal of liquid currency, we would like to extend an invitation to you, from the House of M, to attend an auction of Rare and Magical goods in a week."

Mina's ears perked up.

"Gwen, you have to go. He's talking about the legendary Underground Auction hosted by the House of M."

"I would love to attend." Gwen had no idea what this auction portended either, but if Mina wanted to go, there must be some merit involved. "May I bring guests?"

"Of course, Miss Song. We shall look forward to you gracing us with your presence once again." Yuu dipped his head. "For now, please enjoy the evening or, should you feel so inclined, issue another challenge."

"I am tapped out for now." Gwen was out of the tricks she was willing to reveal, meaning her night had come to an end.

Magus Yuu thanked her again before disappearing into the crowd.

Her companions continued to sip their drinks and discuss the duel, though the music remained far too loud for engaging conversation. Several groups of men and women now hung around their perimeter, trying to make their way past Tao and his friends to speak to Gwen.

Then a bright blossom of Divination magic bloomed next to Mina's ear. "Shit!" Mina turned instantly as pale as Gwen’s Void consumed complexion.

"What's wrong?" Gwen's face felt as flushed as pink pippins; unlike the juices she had earlier, her celebratory drinks were alcoholic.

"Shush!" Mina answered the call. "Yeye?" she spoke sweetly into the Message. "Yes? Yes, Gwen is with me. Where are we? Oh, you know, young people places."

Gwen watched as Mina suffered what looked to be a torrent of invisible abuse.

Yeye. Gwen tried to think. That means grandfather. OOOOh shit!

Mina tore the bracelet from her wrist and handed it to Gwen as though she'd just ripped a writhing leech from her arm. "It's for you."

Gwen took the bracelet with trembling hands, hoping she sounded sober. "Grandfather?" she answered sweetly into the Message device.

The corresponding voice flushed every ounce of excitement from her blood. "Come home. Now. At once!"

Gwen passed the bracelet back to Mina, holding the device between two fingers as though it had just tried to bite her.

"Well?" Tao asked blithely.

"Well, nothing," Mina sulked.

"What's happening?" Tao persisted.

"You're getting a beating," Mina informed him with absolute sincerity.

"WHAT?" Tao checked his surroundings, possibly checking to see if Frederick Lin had returned to deliver vengeance.

"If Yeye demands whose idea it was, he dragged us out here," Mina told Gwen. "Peaches is such a troublemaker, always taking us girls out to seedy places."

"Naturally." Gwen studied the siblings with a grin even as Tao began to tremble. Suddenly, she missed Percy dearly. How nice it was to have siblings!

Mina's madcap vehicular mayhem ended when they finally reached the model citizen's village of the Plum Flower. It was almost midnight and the gated compound took on the quietness of a rural village, punctuated only by the sound of trickling water and frog song.

The trio stalked the perimeter of the Song compound before entering the cross-shaped courtyard. Unfortunately, the silhouette of a stocky old man awaiting their arrival informed them that their hope of a subtle return had failed.

"In the communal hall," Guo announced stoically.

Gwen, Tao and Mina stepped over the wooden threshold and faced the open space of the hall. It was now a vacant space furnished with a red carpet runner, accentuated by two chairs and a wooden chaise, adjoined by a collection of antique-looking melee weapons embellishing the interior walls.

"Where were you?" Guo stopped once he reached the middle.

"We went to a bar and enjoyed some food," Mina told the half-truth.

"I don't know." Tao played the idiot.

"M on the Bund," Gwen replied. "We engaged in some underground fighting."

The other two turned to look at Gwen with painful expressions.

"Tao took us there," she added hurriedly. Was she supposed to pretend to be deaf and dumb? Was that the siblings' survival tactic? Did they have any idea who their grandfather was and how many spies he controlled?

Tao's grimace resembled a man wounded by an unexpected shiv in the kidney.

Guo sighed. "Hand."

Mina and Tao extended their hands. Puzzled, Gwen did likewise.

Guo materialised a length of vicious-looking bamboo.

SNAP!

Tao bore the snap without dignity, instantly retracting his hand.

SNAP!

Mina clenched her jaws as a strip of flesh across her hands began to welt.

SNAP!

Having never in her life been slapped or punished by Morye, Gwen flinched and retracted her hands.

"HMMM?" Guo's displeasure at her withdrawal was a deep-throated growl.

Gwen winced, swallowing nervously. For an adult, the juvenile corporal punishment was shamefully challenging to endure. She extended her hands again.

SNAP!

Her palms were on fire.

It was only then that Guo launched into a rant. "That’ll teach you all for street fighting! You could have been injured!" he barked. "Ingrates! Do you think it was easy raising you? You all want to fight so much? I'll send you to the North. You can fight the Undead all day and all night!"

Gwen held her tongue in check.

Guo fumed, watching the three nurse their swelling hands. Unexpectedly, he then turned to Gwen and began to speak more tenderly. "You won against the grandson of the Huashan Lins." It was a statement.

That was quick, Gwen thought. Between her victory and their desperate journey home, it had taken about thirty minutes for the news to travel to old Guo's ears. Did that mean he had sent someone to keep an eye on her? Was it through a Scry or was it an old school tail and tackle? So much for privacy.

"I did," Gwen affirmed.

"Then you managed to defeat Lok Khun, the bodyguard of Dai Fung. A Mind Magus," Guo continued.

"I did."

Mina and Tao regarded their grandfather strangely

"Come with me," Guo commanded Gwen. "You two, go home."

Tao's face split into an enormous grin. "We’re going!"

"Reflection essay on why you were defeated. A thousand words," Guo added before Tao could make it out the door.

Tao’s joy turned to sobs. His sister had already escaped, too smart to stick around and be an eyesore.

Gwen followed her grandfather into the room where they'd previously held the family meeting. Guo took a seat and motioned for her to stand to attention. She was standing a lot these days; China was not a country where different generations sat together.

"Give me a moment." Guo fiddled with something on the tea table. The gadget was a prismatic crystal pyramid that gleamed as it caught the light. Intricate glyph work in silvery scripts covered its base, from which concentric, symmetrical bands covered the slanted panes in set intervals.

A thrum of mana lit up the strange device's core, then a projection of light formed a vaguely humanoid shape in front of Gwen.

A lumen-projector! Gwen flinched when an image sprang into being a metre away. She had heard about these things since forever. Back on the Frontier, it was rumoured that every middle-class tier I household had one. It sent and received real-time Illusions or whatever passed for television in this world, by empowering it with crystals.

When the glowing figure came into sharp focus, Gwen felt her mouth form a perfect 'O' of surprise. "GUNTHER!" she exclaimed, rushing forward to embrace the illusion only to miss and make a spectacle of herself.

"Gwen, my sister-in-craft." Gunther's chiselled profile and noble mien filled her body with familial warmth. "I hope—"

"Is it connected?" another voice interjected, pushing Gunther from the projection. A flash of auburn hair followed by an uncommonly beautiful face appeared, illuminated by a pair of lapis eyes rich with emotion.

"Alesia!" Gwen squealed with delight. "Can you see me? Can you hear me?"

Alesia rolled into view, seated in a wheelchair propelled by some unknown artifice. "Gwennie!" Alesia squealed excitedly, decorum be damned, not at all careful that she was a thirty-year-old woman. "Oh my God! It feels that we haven't seen each other forever."

"I know!" Gwen was giddy with barely contained excitement. "You can't know how happy I am feeling right now. I can't even think straight."

Besides the projection, Guo appeared shocked by their overt familiarity. His expression was of one who finally accepted Gwen's word, though the new information wasn't something the old spy liked.

Gwen had to stretch for a moment because she had pulled a muscle when she tried to catch herself from again hugging the illusory projection. Though the crystal possessed a limited field of view, the illusions were very life-like.

"Where's that old man?" Alesia suddenly demanded. "I'd like to give him another piece of my mind."

The room grew deathly quiet.

"Hey! Oi! What are you doing? Alright, fine." Alesia's disappeared.

Gunther reappeared in the illusory projection. "Gwen, are you alright?"

"I am fine, brother." Gwen bowed respectfully, tilting her head and arching her back.

"That's good." Gunther smiled warmly. "I heard you've been engaging in local street fighting. I hope that's not your idea of a good time or 'being alright', as it were."

"How did you know about that?" Gwen asked incredulously.

Gunther smiled secretively. "On a more serious note, Gwen, how do you like Shanghai?"

Gwen glanced at her grandfather, whose face was as expressionless as always. "It was scary at first, but I am getting the hang of it," Gwen said. "How're things in Sydney?"

"Chaotic, messy, but we're managing," Gunther replied. "Your opa sends his regards."

"Please tell him I am alright."

"I have already."

"How's my brother? And mother, for that matter? Have the refugee transfers started?"

"It has, though Percy is the reason for our inter-city communication," Gunther informed her, his tone taking on a severe timbre.

"Oh?" Gwen felt her premonition tingling, though not from her Divination.

"Indeed," Gunther said. "Magus Song, may I speak to Gwen alone and inform her of our agreement?"

"You may."

Guo paused to look Gwen in the eye, then left without saying a word.

"Gunther?"

"I am going to inform you of recent developments first. Then we are going to discuss the details. Is that alright with you?"

"Please go ahead," Gwen said cordially.

"Your brother, Percy Song, is coming to the Song Estate to study with Magus Song."

"Okay." Gwen had expected that much.

"You do not seem surprised," Gunther observed.

"Not at all. I was wondering the when and how, but not the if." Gwen pursed her lips. "How did Mother react?"

"Livid at first, but then sufficiently satisfied by the exchange." Gunther shook his head as if recalling an unpleasant memory. "She caused a scene at the registration office, as you can imagine. That was where Magus Song's men caught up with them. I had my people there as well, knowing what happened to you. After a less than cordial encounter, Magus Song and I became acquainted."

Gwen could very well imagine Helena causing a public spectacle while beside her, two teams of Tower Mages, one from the PLA and the other from the Commonwealth, faced off. In between their death stares, the standoff would have been punctuated by her mother's ceaseless wailing, not unlike a cat running its claws across the length of a chalkboard. After a few minutes of her incessant screeching, both teams would have lost all faith in their ability to resolve the matter and called for support.

"I believe it best for Percy to be given to his clan, to be trained in controlling his Quasi-Negative arts."

"I see, that's good."

"If you are alright with the arrangement, then it puts my mind at ease," Gunther said with evident relief. "Next, you will be beginning university in Shanghai as soon as you are able."

Gwen responded by nodding.

"Is there nothing that would surprise you?" Gunther seemed displeased by her nonplussed reaction. "Why don't you inform me of my next piece of news?"

"That, I do not know." Gwen grinned winsomely. "Do tell."

"I shall, but first, details regarding your university education," Gunther continued. "I have offered to sponsor you through the Shanghai-Pudong Tower, but I am afraid the Commonwealth has limited reach outside its old colonies. After an extensive conversation with Magus Song, it seems that you will have to attend selection trials for the Gifted and Talented to apply to your two target institutions, Jiantong and Fudan."

"That's a reasonable condition."

"I would expect as much. Both universities lie at the epicentre of magical theory-crafting in the region of South-East Asia."

"One problem," Gwen pointed out awkwardly. "I am a high school dropout. How can I apply for an elite university?"

"Not a problem." Gunther broke into a mirthful smirk. "I have asked Bartlett to finalise your graduation certificate and it should be making its way to you with Percy. Congratulations, Gwen, you were valedictorian of your graduation year."

"I was?" Gwen could see that Gunther was entirely serious. "I so was."

"How do you feel?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I feel like I graduated decades ago?"

Gunther laughed heartily. "The final article is that I am sending Richard Huang down to Shanghai with Percy."

"Oh my!" Gwen’s smiling eyes reflected her unadulterated joy. "That's wonderful news!"

Gunther made the satisfied expression of finally having seen the face he had been expecting since their conversation began. "Indeed. I am afraid the two of you will have to figure out your tuition fees, but I can at least provide you with the certification for enrolment. In that regard, I must say Richard is better equipped. I am still puzzled as to why he had stayed in Sydney. He could have left with Prince's or applied for a Section 8 visa for the Gifted and Talented. I suspect it may be something to do with you, Gwen, or maybe his parents, or both."

"When should I expect them? Where do I pick them up?" Gwen said with giddy expectation.

"Magus Song has arranged transport and escort. I would assume very soon, given the ISTC stations."

"I'll ask Grandfather then. How are Yue and Elvia?"

"Still in transit, I am afraid, though their families have been informed. Your opa had a big party planned for you all, you know, though I am afraid that may now be indefinitely delayed."

Gwen felt her face pale at the implication. "I won't be returning to Sydney?"

"Not for a few years at least, not until you graduate," Gunther informed her matter of factly. "This is to be expected, of course. You are about to become an invaluable asset. Until you resolve your allegiances, I am afraid you're temporarily under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China."

Gwen felt stunned by the unfortunate news. She had thought Gunther would have been able to arrange for her to travel to Sydney perhaps for a week or just to visit once a year.

"Silly girl!" Gunther suddenly chuckled, laughing at her dismay. "You can ask Yue and Elvia to come to you as well."

"I can?"

"Indeed, after all, only you can help them."

"How?"

"Connections, resources and contribution credits." Gunther counted for her on his fingers. "Connections as in knowing the right people to stamp the right documents. Resources to grease the wheels of bureaucracy, and finally CCs to get the Tower to enact on your behalf."

"I have CCs right now." Gwen blurted out. "I have ten!"

Gunther burst into laughter. "I am afraid immigration for a single Frontier Mage begins at one thousand credits," he pointed out cheerfully. "With ten CCs, you can probably issue a gathering quest for some tier III ingredients for alchemy."

"Oh." Gwen felt her charmed bubble disintegrate.

"Chin up, Mädel." Gunther consoled her. "Three years of university will pass in the blink of an eye, assuming you pass all your examinations and Field Trials."

Thinking of her Evee, Gwen felt infused with a burning conviction. Three years? It was nothing! For Elvia, for Yue, she could fight the world! She exalted her speculative future. With her talents, she could surely gather the CCs needed to bring her friends over for a reunion. What were a mere three years when she had the surety of rubbing Elvia's cute little face and kissing her cheeks as her reward?

"One final thing," Gunther interrupted Gwen's internal revelry.

"Yes, brother?"

"There is another opportunity to execute the plan our Master had intended for you in the Inter-High."

Gwen listened intently.

"Should you be accepted into Jiantong or Fudan, there is an international university competition held for second and third years, overseen by the Tower Masters of the Mageocracy, stationed in Brussels. Master knew them well and even presided over many a competition."

"Right." Gwen's voice grew husky when she thought of her Master, lying cold and dead under Sufina's Heart Tree.

"Good," Gunther said. "As before, this is your chance to shine. If you should demonstrate that the Void Element can be harnessed for the good of the Tower, for mankind, then you may become a celebrated member of our order. Maybe even invited in time to come to possess your very own demesne. Such is the prestige of distinguishing oneself in that austere competition."

"Is it difficult?"

"It's one of the most competitive student contests in the world."

"Did you…"

"I did."

"How?"

"I was voted MVP but lost the competition."

"Oh." Gwen pondered the immensity of the competition's field of challengers. Just how challenging was this competition if even the mighty Gunther Shultz had to face inevitable defeat? "How about Alesia?"

"She—"

"SHUT UP!" Alesia's voice returned. She'd been listening in on them.

"She was disqualified."

"NOOOO! Don’t tell her."

"Hahaha."

Gwen was happy that the two of them seemed to be getting along. Had her fellow Apprentices 'got together' yet? How would Jonas feel about that? Gwen whispered a benediction for Poor Jonas' unrequited love, feeling her heart sigh sadly for the old romantic and his doomed, solitary amour.

Gwen waited until Gunther and Alesia had settled themselves. "I have something to say," she said solemnly. "It's about our Master."

Her sibling-in-craft's faces grew solemn as well.

"I found Master's body in the Grot, along with Sufina."

Her siblings listened with rapt attention.

"Master's remains have been kept in stasis by Sufina. She has asked that one day, the three of us go and visit her together."

"Master…" Alesia's voice choked up.

"We will." Gunther's voice became cold steel. "We will bring him the head of Elizabeth Sobel."

"On a silver platter!" Alesia's eyes glowed an ochre-orange.

"I concur," Gwen said.

"Then it is decided," Gunther’s tone had a finality to it that made her shiver.

Gwen felt her scalp crawl as a solemn silence lingered, allowing the siblings’ vindictive promise to be digested wholly, with the oath of cold vengeance fortifying their resolve.

"Gwen, can you ask Magus Song to return?" Gunther said softly. Gwen could see the man holding his trembling emotions in check. Comparatively, Alesia lacked her Brother-in-craft’s emotional fortitude, and so left the lumen-caster to vent.

"Yes." Gwen nodded. Outside the room, she found her grandfather alone in the stone garden.

"You have finished speaking?" he asked softly. "Is the arrangement agreed upon?"

"It is," Gwen whispered in return. "Gunther would like to speak with you again."

"Alright."

Watching her grandfather go, Gwen stood by herself in the garden and shivered.

Revenge.

What a strange and alien phrase.

To murder.

To take a life.

To deliberately seek out and destroy another human being and exalt in the fact of having done the deed.

"Remember thee. Poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat. Wipe away all my trivial fond records, and thy commandment alone shall live…"

The words from her old world were now fragmented and incomplete. She was beginning to forget it all, losing track of the life she’d once had. Now she was the avenger incarnate, whose blade would weep the blood of her enemies, whose sport was to make mincemeat of hated flesh.

How much of her would remain Gwen and how much of the Gwen she knew was left to give?

Only the future would tell.

Chapter nineteen

Introspection

Gwen slept restlessly in her new spartan room, tossing and turning, irritated by the rough cotton sheets and the stolid air. When morning came, she vowed to upgrade her accommodation with thread-counted linen duvets and cooling glyphs. She was, after all, a woman of means now. There was no point denying herself life's simple pleasures.

When she again dug into the rough linen for a catnap, a knock came on the door. "Gwen?"

It was her grandmother.

"Babulya, one second!"

She emerged a few minutes later in a bare-shouldered maxi that ran the length of her body until it reached her ankles. A simple belt tapered the fabric around Gwen's waist, allowing the pleated folds to adhere to her hips. Her long hair formed a tightly knotted ponytail.

"Good morning, dear," Babulya's voice was soft and comforting. "Come, much to do today. We're going to get you checked up and registered. But first, the most important meal of the day."

When they arrived at the banquet hall, a dozen and more people were present—her grandfather, Babulya, herself, Aunt Nen, and a host of the house's staff, mostly in military uniforms, were busy chowing down on sticks of fried dough and slurping on rice congee.

"Good morning, Grandfather. Good morning, everyone."

Guo nodded, then continued slurping piping hot porridge.

It was another culture shock. People here spoke when they ate, ate when they chatted, drank soup with their mouth full of rice and luxuriously slurped, chewed and swallowed whenever the chance presented itself.

Gwen found a place to sit and took some congee and golden dough from a communal basket. The pairing side dish was a strange-looking egg sliced in half.

"Egg of Mandarin Duck, salted in brine," Babulya pointed out when Gwen gave the strange, oily yellow core a curious poke. "Very rich in mana and nutrients. Do try it."

Not wanting to disappoint, Gwen retrieved the yolk and placed it in her mouth. It was salty, fishy, semi-raw and tasted strongly of egg that had gone slightly off. She quickly drank some congee to wash the taste from her mouth, politely vocalising a few appreciative slurps so that she fitted in with the noisy crowd.

"How do you feel?" Babulya asked, her wizened eyes blinking expectantly.

"I feel… fullness? Vital?" Gwen marvelled at the unexpected satiation of her astral body. "What's in this porridge?"

"It's called the Congee of Eight Treasures." Her Babulya chuckled. "Frontier cuisine, especially western cuisine, doesn't have ready access to produce harvested in the Wildlands. As someone unused to the food here, you will quickly absorb the additional mana boosts offered by the rarer ingredients, though it will take a few years of fine dining to catch up to Mina and Tao."

Gwen nodded, though she didn't think she would have less mana capacity than the people here. Was there a numeric capacity for measuring such a thing? She felt no reason to withhold her curiosity. "Babulya, how do I know what my mana capacity is?"

"You will have your answer soon, dear." Klavdiya pushed over another bowl. "Eat."

Gwen wolfed it down. With her Void-assisted appetite, she was a girl who could eat the world. After a third bowl, her abdomen could be kindly described as having a food baby.

With breakfast done, Klavdiya led Gwen outside, where a dark sedan with military plates awaited them.

"Second Army PLA," Klavdiya informed the driver, then reclined in the large leather seat. Compared to herself, her Babulya was dressed in a cotton mandarin jacket. She appeared very prim and proper, though in a way that projected humbleness.

"Ma'am!" The driver saluted smartly, starting the vehicle.

The interior of the saloon was roomy and spacious. Gwen noticed that when the door closed, it cut off almost all sound from the outside.

"Can you tell me about where we are going?" Gwen inquired.

"An army hospital," Klavdiya repeated as the car gently took off. "Your babulya happens to be one of the seven directors."

Gwen's lips puckered to form a little "O".

"It's not much to boast, dear. There are not many of us left these days from the original members in the fifties. A few dozen families, that's about it. Any one of us who desired a position like this would have been offered one eventually, assuming we're in the right field, of course."

"Babulya, can you tell me more about yourself and grandfather?" Gwen inquired carefully. "If it's too intrusive, you don't have to."

"No, I'd love to tell it," Klavdiya replied kindly. "What do you want to know?"

"Well." Gwen tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it. "Is Yeye a spy of some sort? A secret agent?"

"Ha! He's not a Grey Ghost if that's what you suspected." Klavdiya quietly laughed to herself. "He has quite a few titles. What do you know about the PLA?"

"Nothing," Gwen confessed. It wasn't as though she had a Bachelor of Political Science or Asian Studies.

"Then I'll keep it simple." Babulya patted her hand reassuringly. "Your grandfather is a commissioned secretary under the Ministry of National Defence, meaning he's something of an intelligence big-wig, about three rungs from the top. He is also the deputy secretary of Internal Security and Anti-Reconnaissance Division, which means he has to sign off, though not plan or execute, missions involving counterintelligence. Finally, his actual job is being the chairman of the Confidential Communications Committee, which serves as one of twenty-four counsels for the Secretariat Committee, the governing body of the Communist Party of China here in Shanghai."

Gwen nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. Klavdiya may as well be speaking Russian.

She must have sense Gwen's confusion, for her Babulya gave her an analogy. "He specialises in counter-intelligence and internal security," Klavdiya added after shaking her head, distilling Guo's position to its lowest common denominator.

"Okay," Gwen nodded emphatically. "This may sound rather presumptuous of me, but if Grandfather is that power, then do we have any enemies? Several of the youngsters seemed less than friendly toward Tao and Mina. If I had to, say, fight them, I want to know who I shouldn’t fight."

Klavdiya stifled a laugh. "What a bloodthirsty little minx you are, Gwen. Nothing for you to worry about, dear, Guo is not a factionist. Just remember a few golden rules."

"Yes, Babulya?"

"Should you be inclined to duel, no killing. No maiming. No permanent injury. That applies to NoMs as well. We are not the Mageocracy, after all."

"Which means," Gwen contemplated a bothersome hypothetical situation, "no Void Magic?"

"Yes, No Void, at least until you can control it with absolute confidence. If you inflict a mortal injury on someone with Void, expect their family to be beating down our door, demanding to put you in the military court."

"But I can use it, assuming I use it safely?"

"I would avoid using it in a non-official capacity, dear." Klavdiya's eyes were full of kindness. "Are you so eager to show the world your skills?"

"I don't know," Gwen confessed.

"That's alright. Use it when you have to. There are not many like you, and none with access to both Yin and Yang elements, but you need not fear for yourself. The Tower exists to protect talented Mages like yourself, be it our Tower or theirs."

"How so?"

Klavdiya chortled. "Unless you wish to be a rogue Mage, you will automatically become a Tower Mage, although the choice of PLA or the Pudong Tower is up to you. Certainly your grandfather would want you to join the PLA, but that would mean committing resources and support, which he will not do."

"Why is that?" Gwen asked quietly. What was wrong with investing in her?

"Why?" Klavdiya patted her thighs, causing Gwen to blush mightily. "You lack the yaytsa to inherit! But your brother Percy does!"

Gwen's babulya cackled to herself heartily as Gwen grew flustered. As for Gwen, she could only chew on her lip.

A woman can't inherit and can't pass on the family name so they're not worth spending resources? What bullshit! she fumed. In a way, she understood the logic but felt repulsed by the misogyny.

"Why fret, dear?" Klavdiya squeezed her hand. "You are the Apprentice of Henry Kilroy, are you not? The sister-in-craft of the Morning Star! Why would you care if Guo Song tried to limit your horizons? If it's a matter of resources, did you not make three thousand HDMs in a single night? Are you incapable of making more?"

Gwen relaxed. "You're right," she replied after a moment of contemplation. She was pedantic and greedy. "Thanks for putting that into perspective, Babulya."

The interior lights kicked in as the exterior of the car dimmed. They were now entering a superstructure that spanned across a pentagrammic array of highways and underground passes. A few lumen globes grew in gradual brightness until their faces were just visible.

Outside, Gwen deduced that they were traversing through a tunnel network.

A glowing green sign indicated an underground entrance for staff. The sedan slowed, then pulled into a circular parking bay guarded by olive uniformed guards with combat wands strapped to their thighs.

Granddaughter and grandmother alighted the vehicle, where Klavdiya received another round of salutes before being escorted to the lift.

The levitation platform penetrated several strata before it broke through to the surface, allowing Gwen to finally take in the entirety of the structure they were entering.

The Second PLA Army Experimental Hospital was a superstructure overlooking a byway of five roads that met within its interior. It contained a military hospital, a civilian hospital, a veteran's hospice, a recuperation ward and, most importantly, housed the PLA Medical Research and Development Division.

Beyond the superstructure sat a profusion of NoM apartments and their underground commercial districts, crowding the horizon like a meadow of brilliant tomato stakes. Below the two women, the multitudes of milling people looked like termites swarming a perforated stump.

Gwen grew nervous when Klavdiya led her into an intimidating laboratory.

It was stark white, sterile in every respect—white walls, with shapeless opaque lights embedded into a featureless, white ceiling. White, polyurethane-like surfaces made up white tables and benchtops, underneath which was a profusion of stainless-steel made-up chairs and tables, trolleys and dollies. The machinery was likewise a combination of ceramic white on brushed galvanised steel.

"I’ve appropriated the lab for a few hours, for your privacy," her babulya assured her. "You will need to put on a hospital gown; there's one in the cupboard there. It's just you and me, so help yourself."

"Can I keep my inners?" Gwen inquired, hoping the answer was yes.

"No." Klavdiya shook her head. "Don't be shy. The equipment is designed to work without interference. However, you can keep your rings on. They shouldn't be a problem. For future reference, you would have to remove items possessing body-enhancing, regeneration or obfuscation capabilities."

Gwen changed behind a screen, emerging a moment later a little colder. The extra-large gown was still too miserly for her tall body, but the extra-extra-large would have been too loose for her shoulders, leaving most of her flank exposed.

"Very good." Klavdiya pointed to a platform and told Gwen to stand between what looked like two magnetic prongs, one pointed at her head, the other at her abdomen. "Relax."

There was a thrum as something thrust against her diaphragm and her belly. Gwen felt a wave of permeating mana penetrate her body.

On a side screen about waist height, a three-dimensional illusion of her materialised. It was life-like, though transparent. Upon closer inspection, Gwen realised it was a projection of her astral form laid over her physical body.

"This is a sonogram projection." Klavdiya tapped a few glyphs that only she could see, her expression the very face of professionalism. "Now we can get to work."

Gwen turned her attention to her babulya as she incanted arcane invocations beyond Gwen's knowledge, watching Klavdiya's fingers dance across runes and glyphs both visible and ethereal, a few of which she recognised from her grandfather's workshop.

"So, let me explain." Klavdiya directed Gwen to another platform, where she became backlit by a blinding sheet of bright perspex humming with Positive Energy. "Do you know how magical healing works?"

"No." Gwen felt she was saying that a lot these days. "Well, I know the theory, but I have a feeling the Frontier left a lot of details out."

"Oh, you poor kitten!" Klavdiya gave Gwen a motherly hug, her small stature and Gwen's hospital gown making the encounter more intimate than necessary. On Gwen's end, receiving the doting affection of her matriarch was strangely jarring. Klavdiya wasn't her mother, but she gave off an effect far kinder than any embrace Helena had ever delivered.

"Magical healing is not a substitute for natural healing," Klavdiya said as they separated, sternly taking her by one arm. "At least without supreme knowledge of the human body and its anatomy down to the structure of the cells."

She enlarged the illusory Gwen's body with a flick of her wrist, where red lines ran through her imaginary form like spider web fissures.

"Look at these," Klavdiya pointed out. "These are fault lines where new and old flesh has fused."

Gwen nodded.

"They are what we call Positive scarring, meaning that the imperfect regeneration of your flesh has grown cancerous."

"C-Cancer!" Gwen blurted out. "No!"

"Your injuries are extensive." Klavdiya clicked her tongue. "In the battle with the Skin Changer, you must have lost a significant portion of your organs and a considerable section of your lower muscle mass as well.'

"I… I have CANCER?" Gwen tried to wrap her mind around the news. After all the bullshit she had gone through, she had cancer?

"Why? What's wrong?" Klavdiya looked at her granddaughter strangely. "That's what happens when you overheal."

Gwen's eyes grew misty with despair.

Klavdiya regarded her panicked granddaughter wordlessly. "Lie down. This is going to itch."

Gwen laid down on the white linen examination table, blank with the dire news.

Klavdiya tapped a few glyphs. A few mechanical injectors pierced her quivering flesh with their precious cargo of alchemical solutions. "True Restoration!"

A gentle warmth suffused Gwen, turning her skin translucent with a carefully controlled array of Positive Energy that seemed to permeate every pore.

"There. It's done."

"What's done?" Gwen felt suddenly and inexplicably healed.

"Your cancer." Klavdiya slapped her granddaughter on the thighs.

"Oh?" Gwen suddenly felt quite stupid.

"A lesson to be learned," her babulya continued. "Avoid excessive healing in the field. With each healing spell you receive, your body's resistance to the spell grows and the chance of malignancy increases. If you subject yourself to too many low-level healing spells, there may be irreversible damage to your body that not even tier VII spells can restore. There's a reason Frontier Combat Mages have unusually short lifespans, though the rarity of upper-tier Healers in those parts of the world is to blame, I suppose."

Gwen inclined her head. "They never told us," she said wistfully, thinking of all the times those around her casually treated every other minor injury with blasts of Positive Energy or chugged healing potions like it was raspberry cordial.

"Why would they? It's not as though anyone could refuse magical healing. Does the Frontier even have facilities for the NoMs for the natural and mundane restoration of the body? Do you know how many resources that would take?"

Gwen shook her head. She wondered if Elvia knew or if her friend had been too much of an Acolyte to be told such a secret of the trade. Her Master and siblings probably knew as well but thought little of it since they could arguably access high-level healing, which meant Gwen would have received this treatment sooner or later. In the end, despite the convenience of magic, it still boiled down to a stratified society of the rich with access to the best medical care, while the poor were left in their battered bodies until they reached the grave.

"Gwen." Her grandmother questioned her doubt.

Gwen turned to regard her babulya, seeing the older woman's eyes grow damp with care and concern.

"Your path, my dear granddaughter, will be a Path of Conflict."

Gwen felt the sagacity of her grandmother's words soothing the turbulent anxiety that had haunted her since her troubled conversation with Gunther.

"Think of all the fighting you will be doing, Granddaughter—the wolves, the lions and tigers, the hyenas, the foxes and the jackals. You will fight monsters across the land, air and sea, the Demi-humans who think you a threat. You are going to fight allies. You may even fight family."

The last word made Gwen wince unpleasantly.

"If you want to attain what Magus Shultz and de Botton expect of you, of what I imagine you expect for yourself, then the road ahead is a never-ending path of what the Buddhists call Asura, the Path of Violent Reckoning. There will be no rest. No solace, not even when you're spent and bloody and desire nothing more. With your talent, your blood, you will become a locus of envy, jealousy, wrath and lust. Can you understand that?"

Gwen replied that she did.

She had survived the Mermen incursion.

She had lost loved ones to conspiracy.

She had killed and murdered.

A year and a half ago, she would have quoted back Shakespeare, but what she had experienced had gone far beyond the realm of make-believe.

"Sorry, dear. That came out far more seriously than I expected," Klavdiya said. "To get carried away at my age…"

"Babulya, your advice is very sound," Gwen confessed.

"I am glad to hear it, dear." Klavdiya took Gwen's hand and guided her from the Healing Table. "Now, for some volumetric measurements of your current abilities. That's why we're here, after all."

A yellow-jacketed folder materialised on the stainless-steel surface of an examination table, indicating the presence of a built-in spatial storage system. Klavdiya retrieved Gwen's portfolio from the envelope and scanned the numbers.

"Miao did an extensive survey with your biometrics." Her babulya placed the file onto the table for Gwen to peruse. The Comprehend Language of her Ioun Stone did its best to translate the medical jargon, but much of it remained a jumble.

Gwen moved onto another set of machinery. This time, the mechanism resembled a chest extension station at the gymnasium. Klavdiya instructed her to place her hands on the handlebars, arching herself over an L-shaped bench.

"Okay, we're going to take the average of three attempts," Klavdiya informed her. "The spectrometer is to get a volumetric reading of your mana pool."

"What do I do?" Gwen's ears perked up.

"Channel for ten seconds, as much as you can. Three times. The machine operates much like the Awakening Stones. It will send a guiding mote into your astral body to generate a statistical representation of your capabilities. Just relax and remember to let the mote return to the machine."

The spectrometer began to thrum.

"Ready? Three, two, one. Channel."

Gwen gathered her focus and imagined herself pushing the mana in her body outward, much in the same way that Mana Shields manifested. Around her, astral energy poured from the aether, gushing through her Mana Channels. Where her palms touched the handlebars, she could feel a mote of Divination invade her astral form before quickly disappearing.

Klavdiya watched the indicator rise and fall as though it crested upon a moving wavelength.

"Calm yourself," she advised. "Long, sustained manifestation."

Gwen tried again, then performed the same exercise a third time. "How's it looking?" she asked her grandmother eagerly.

"About one hundred and thirty-two VMI. That stands for Volumetric Mana Index."

"How does it measure up, I mean," Gwen rephrased her question coyly.

"What do you think?"

"About average?" Gwen tested the waters.

"Ha!" Klavdiya chuckled.

"You're teasing me!" Gwen nagged her grandmother winsomely, both keen and curious to find out.

"Alright, it's impressive."

"How impressive?"

"Well, to give you some perspective, Tao sits around sixty VMI, Mina about sixty-five VMI. The boy you fought, Frederick Lin, would sit at about seventy VMI. I don't know about your father, but Jun is a marvel at four hundred and forty VMI. Your grandfather hasn't been in combat for some time, and his last checkup was two hundred and eight VMI. The requirement for an Intermediate Mage to gain employment under the Shanghai Towers is ninety VMI. What do you think that means?"

Gwen crunched the numbers. "Why is mine so high?" she inquired, a dreaded hypothesis forming within her mind.

"I am sure you have an idea, dear." Klavdiya patted Gwen on the cheeks.

It was true, then. Assuming her meagre diet of semi-magical and mostly mundane produce, she should be sitting around forty VMI after a year and a half of training. What this meant was that she had an excess of ninety VMI that Caliban had acquired. The junior Mages at Blackheath would have provided five to ten each, while Faceless had likely supplied the lion's share.

When her late Master had been teaching her tier IV Conjurations, she had felt that her pool was insufficient to sustain all of her Conjuration effects concurrently. Yet, during that bout with Lok, she had only just broken a sweat after almost four minutes of sustained firing from her Orb, Cloud and summoned familiar. Furthermore, she had noticed that her non-Newtonian shield had felt extraordinarily dense. Lok's Earthen Spears had only just cracked her outer shell.

Now she knew why.

"I am curious as to why I've never heard of VMI on the Frontier," Gwen asked.

"It is forbidden to export Magitech to the Frontier, dear," her grandmother answered patiently. "But the Frontier does fine without it. Spellcraft itself isn't an exact thing, strange as that may sound."

"I see. What else?" Gwen was beginning to realise why Richard wanted to be out of the Frontier so eagerly.

"Affinity!" Klavdiya took Gwen to another station, one holding a large crystal ball that resembled an Awakening Orb. "Hand on the stone, channel Elemental Lighting thrice, then we'll reset for Void."

"Alright," Gwen placed both hands on the stone and waited for Klavdiya's command.

"Three, two, one. Channel."

The stone crackled with an electrical discharge.

"Again."

The stone flared.

"Once more. Good."

A shunt of mana belonging to the Enchantment school cleared the crystal ball, returning it to its crystal clarity.

"Now for Void, as much as you're able. If you feel faint or weak, just let me know. I shall have a Restoration held in reserve."

"Okay, Babulya." Gwen took a deep breath. It had been some time since she had hollowed herself out channelling the Void.

"Ready? Three, two, one!"

Gwen's face paled as the surge of Void matter pushed past the threshold of safety provided by Amuldj's blessing. She felt her vitality ebb away as dark motes of blackness filled the Awakening Crystal, filling it with a maelstrom of elemental entropy.

"Restoration!" A contraflow of carefully attuned Positive Energy flooded into Gwen's body, repairing and mending the parts of her physique weakened by the inundation of Negative Energy. "Can you manage one more time, dear?"

Gwen focused her mind and again performed the feat, feeling herself weaken as her vitality waned. Her face became pallid and pale, her skin slimy and grey with the sweat of exertion. It took all of her conviction just to stand upright.

"Greater Restoration!"

Her grandmother liberally exhausted her mana on Gwen. Even half-conscious, Gwen baulked, knowing that each casting of Greater Restoration consumed almost a dozen HDMs worth of rarified components.

"It’s 4.45 for Lightning." Klavdiya jotted down the figures carefully. "I am surprised to say that your Void is 4.03."

Gwen had felt that her Affinity with the Void had increased significantly but hadn't expected it to almost double from taking in a single Faceless and an elementally-ambivalent centipede.

"So you are sitting effectively at Void 4 and Lightning 4; both impressive statistics."

"How do I…"

"Measure up? Above average, but for the fact that you possess two Elements, I would venture to say that you are already beyond reasonable comparison. After all, the number of Mages who currently possess two pure-strain elements number no more than a dozen in Shanghai. There are a few young ones as well, but certainly, your kind makes for a rare breed."

"There're others like me?" Gwen wondered aloud.

"Not exactly." Klavdiya tapped the table. "I recall a Clan Mage, Fei Ling Yi, the first disciple of the Kunlun Clan, who wielded both Air and Ice. The twin element talent is a rare occurrence that happens once every so often in the inheriting branch. However, it has been a decade since the Kunlun Clan disappeared.

"As for you…" Gwen's babulya presented her palms in exasperation. "I don't think I've never heard of someone awakening in oppositional twin elements. It goes against all our current astral theory. If you ever choose that discipline in university, you will understand. It is not too uncommon for siblings, or even twins, to awaken in oppositional elements, for creation favours a dichotomous pairing, in Yin and Yang, Water and Fire, Earth and Air."

"So I am a curio," Gwen stated quietly.

"Don't fret. You have us and your brother-in-craft," Klavdiya assured her. "Although, if you want to volunteer, your babulya is more than keen to take a poke around in your astral body. Would you like to know how you came about?"

"Sure," Gwen nodded. "There's one more machine, so another test?"

"Indeed."

Klavdiya directed Gwen into the final machine. The glyphs were familiar to her—she had seen them many times under Henry's instructive tutelage at the Sydney Tower. "This is a Cognisance Chamber?"

"More or less," Klavdiya helped Gwen into the harness—a soft leather strap that wrapped around her wrists and waist. "It'll give us some insight into your body's affinity for the different Schools of Magic."

"I think I know what I am proficient in already," Gwen volunteered.

"Nonetheless, we need to issue a transcript," Klavdiya informed her. "Why do you think we're here? The tests are not for satiating our curiosity, dear. This is so you can apply for university."

"Oh? Oh!" Gwen said. She had hidden her abilities for so long that it felt more natural not knowing her Affinities and talents. "Babulya, thank you for doing this for me."

"Well, the numbers speak for themselves. I am just jotting in the details." Klavdiya smiled benevolently at Gwen and gave her a squeeze on the arm. "Relax, you don't have to do anything. Just keep your arms and legs inside the oscillator when it spins."

The tubular mechanism that held Gwen began to hum, filling the air with Divination energy. Another set of arms bearing a Diviner device began to circle her body.

A set of scripts poured from the console.

"Alright, let's see here," Klavdiya poured over the list. Her eyes became wide with wonder. "Goodness gracious!"

Gwen craned her neck. She wanted to see as well.

Klavdiya read it out one by one.

"Evocation, 3.28. Conjuration 4.05. Transmutation 1.50. Abjuration 1.05. Divination 1.01. This reads like I crammed four Mages into the same machine," Klavdiya said, puckering her lips thoughtfully. "Five schools, Gwen. I don't know what to say."

"It's Caliban," Gwen explained. It appeared that she couldn't just pad her Affinity with corpses. Her Transmutation had been less than tier I previously and, after digesting Faceless, a minimum tier VI Transmuter, Gwen had only had an increase of 0.5 in her efficacy. For her, the more Affinity she absorbed, the less effective her consumption effect became.

"But your Conjuration and Evocation seem to be a double Awakening," Klavdiya pointed out. "That and you possess twin oppositional Elements."

"What does that mean?" Gwen asked her grandmother.

Klavdiya's eyes fell upon her and Gwen's heart skipped a beat. Did her babulya suspect? Could she know about the twin-soul?

"I suspect…" Klavdiya began.

Gwen gulped.

"That you may have had a fraternal-dizygotic twin that died in the womb, and I suspect that your body, while an embryo, likely absorbed her." Klavdiya's hypothesised was thankfully based on her decades of medical-arcana experience. "That would also explain the Yin and Yang," her babulya offered expertly, her voice growing with confidence. "I am sure of it, though we would need to conduct extensive tests on you and your mother to be sure."

"I don't think she'd agree to that," Gwen said.

"Nor do I wish to proceed." her babulya shook her head. "Speaking of your mother, do you think she and Hai could get together? Having a divorced spouse here in Shanghai always complicates one's social standing. The major families, the clans, the Houses, the state itself, are very particular about the family unit and the viability of one's bloodline."

"Not a chance, not to mention Mother has a new husband."

Klavdiya's expression grew instantly cold. "What, Hai not good enough for her?"

Gwen glanced downward, finding sudden interest in the sterile floors. She would preferably not contribute to the direction of their current conversation.

"Well, at any rate, we are almost done." Klavdiya carefully labelled and filled in each document. "Lastly, I need some of your blood."

She produced a syringe and six small vials. Gwen winced and extended her arm, from which her babulya painlessly and professionally withdrew six ruby-red vessels of sanguineous fluid.

"These will be sent to the Tower to generate your visa and passport, academic ID, Public Practice of Magic Licence, and Adventuring Permit. Remember, Gwen, astral attunement is your best identification. No one can pretend to be you, not even a Skin Changer unless they can consume your astral body."

Gwen shivered at the thought. "Thank you, Babulya," she replied earnestly, realising the sheer amount of red tape that Klavdiya had just circumvented for her. From the moment these documents entered into the system, she would become an official citizen of Shanghai, no longer a vagrant hobo from the Frontier who had wandered into town. "I don't know what I would do without you."

"It's alright, dear, just make sure you make us proud." Klavdiya smiled gently and uttered an incantation that seemed to drain the life from all the machines. "I daresay that we've spent the better part of the day here. You kids still have to leave for Hengsha Island tomorrow. I am sure your grandfather is receiving the newest members of the family as we speak."

Gwen felt a sudden palpitation of the heart. "Percy is here? Richard too?"

As if on cue, a crimson Message spell bloomed like a lotus beside their ears.

"Speak of the old devil." Klavdiya chuckled. "Guo?"

"I am taking the two of them home now." Guo's familiar voice came through the Message. "Are you done?"

"Just finished," Klavdiya replied sweetly.

"Good." Guo's voice was much softer when speaking to his wife. "I'll see you soon."

"I desire a kiss, dearest," Klavdiya suddenly demanded of the stoic old man, watching Gwen trying to stifle a giggle. She winked.

There was a moment of futile internal struggle. "Muah!" A puckering sound came from the other side of the Message.

The two women broke out into uncontrollable giggles as the Message abruptly ended. Gwen and Babushka tittered, then cackled, then finally broke into uproarious mirth until they held their stomachs.

"Alright, alright." Klavdiya urged Gwen to change into a demure attire. "Let's go see this heir of ours."

Gwen picked herself up from the floor. Percy! She felt her heart aglow with warmth. And Richard!

Chapter twenty

No Longer Alone

The scant traffic at noon meant that Gwen and Klavdiya were home in record time.

Gwen burst through the gates and ran into the courtyard, her eyes frantically scanning for her brother and Richard.

"In the training hall, Mistress Gwen." A NoM servant indicated the training area. Gwen tried to recall the sweeper's name but couldn't and so bowed, then made purposeful headway to find her kin.

As she came close, she grew aware of ripples of indeterminable mana as familiar to her as her own, emanating from the interior. Gingerly, Gwen opened the heavy, oaken doors, sliding them to one side.

Happily, she met the expectant sight of a young man looking very much like a young Morye summoning a stream of Elemental Salt from thin air. Beside her brother were two other figures. One was her grandfather, looking stoic and stern, and the other was the welcoming sight of Richard grinning broadly at her entrance.

"Richard!" Gwen felt confounded by an emotion that she could hardly contain. Ignoring her grandfather's displeased scowl, she ran toward Richard and leapt at him with open arms. He caught her by the waist, and they met in midair, with Gwen wrapping her arms tightly around Richard's neck.

"Oh God, it's so good to see a familiar face!" she uttered felicitously, feeling all the tension drain from her body.

She then turned to Percy and embraced him, pushing her brother against her body like a plush toy. "Percy! Percy! Percy! How I've missed you!" she gushed with jubilance, ruffling his hair and gifting him a sloppy kiss on the forehead.

Her brother mumbled a greeting under the threat of suffocation, his face turning a deep crimson from the public display of affection.

Gwen then tried to get them all into a group huddle, but Percy declined. She laughed, realising her brother was at a tender age where affection and attention were loathed and loved in equal measure.

Klavdiya then came through the door, her presence as luminous as ever.

"Grandmother!" Percy walked robotically towards Gwen's babulya before bowing from the waist like a boomerang. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise, let's take a look at you," Klavdiya replied in a matronly manner. "Raise your head, dear."

Percy did so; his dark eyes, inherited from his grandfather, studied his grandmother while Gwen watched their interaction. As with Gwen, her apparent youth seemed to catch Percy off guard. After all, her grandfather looked like a grizzled old veteran, while here was their grandmother looking not a day past forty.

"So much of Hai in you." Klavdiya measured Percy with her eyes. "We will be spending plenty of time together in the future, dear. You may return to Guo."

"Yes, ma'am," Percy answered stiffly before returning to the centre of the room.

"The boy has potential," Guo informed his wife satisfyingly. "He has demonstrated a strong Affinity with Salt, and I suspect he should be a Transmuter or an Evoker, either of which should do nicely."

"Of course." Klavdiya shot her husband a knowing look. "I have Gwen's numbers as well. We'll talk later."

Gwen watched her grandparents' interaction with interest, but her primary focus was still on her brother and her cousin, united at last. "How was the trip here? Did you feel sick after the Teleport?"

"Oh yes, very unpleasant," Richard confessed. "Felt like someone had reached into my gut and jerked my appendix. Percy projectile vomited as soon as we arrived. Spectacular stuff."

"Richard!" Percy flushed.

"Well, you look fine, little man!' Gwen squeezed her brother's shoulder. "You've grown taller."

"I want to be taller than you," Percy replied sulkily. Gwen chuckled. She understood that it was awkward to be so much shorter than one's female sibling. How could a brother maintain his masculine decorum if his sister towered over him every time they went out?

"I think you're out of luck there," Richard interjected. "Maybe Awaken as a Transmuter? You can grow as many inches as required."

Percy glared at Richard.

Gwen lightly punched her cousin in the arm. "Stop that."

"Ah, there's no sport in the kid." Richard snickered. "He's too easy."

"How's your family?" Gwen inquired.

"With Surya helping out, they're okay. Right now, they're waiting for me to get some contribution credits together."

"Seriously?" Gwen raised a critical brow.

"Yeah, I kid you not. Well, I already promised my parents I'd get them out ASAP. I think the fact that both of your parents are now in tier I cities set them off. After all, Kwan has always had a complex about besting your mother in life," Richard added.

"Percy, how's mum?" Gwen turned to her brother. "How pissed was she?"

Percy chose his following words carefully. "Mother says to tell you that she never wants to see you or speak to you again, not on her life."

"Oh?" Despite her prior speculation, Gwen still felt a little stung. Having overcome the previous Gwen's traumatic conditioning under Helena's history of abuse, she now felt more sympathetic toward her erstwhile mother than anything else.

"Yeah, I was there," Richard affirmed candidly. "She was pissed as anything, my God. The shriek she delivered. I thought my ears would start to bleed. She may as well be the new resonating frequency to fend off the Magical Beasts."

"Yeah, I figured." Gwen sighed.

"Percy, tell your sister how you feel about all this." Richard tapped her brother on the arm. "Tell her the truth."

Percy brushed off Richard's intrusive fingers. From the look of his sullen face, the boy wanted to remain mum.

Richard sighed. "Your brother was up all night, fucking jubilant and whooping on about how he's going to a tier I city, Destiny Manifest, that kind of shit." He frowned at Percy. "He may be fourteen now, but he's as much a rebellious little shit as they come."

Unable to retort, Percy blushed a deeper shade of crimson.

"What are they talking about?" Next to them, Guo appeared displeased with what his Ioun Stone translated, looking none-too-pleased that this cousin of Gwen's was heaping criticism on his new, precious grandchild.

Klavdiya patted her husband's hand. "Richard, come here." She spoke fluent English.

"Ma'am?" Richard presented himself politely.

Klavdiya materialised a cream coloured Ioun Stone from the air. "Put this on," she commanded, passing the stone over to Richard.

Richard took it with both hands and bowed expertly. He thanked Klavdiya with impeccable manners, then attuned the stone without incident.

"I like this young man already." Klavdiya gave Richard a once over with her eyes. "Where did you train, Mr Huang?"

"Just Richard is fine, or Dick, even."

Percy smirked.

"Alright, Richard."

"I trained at Prince's, ma'am, the Sydney branch."

"A Commonwealth Greater Public School? A fine establishment. We have a branch here in Shanghai, too, though much smaller than your European divisions. Have you completed your studies?"

"Yes, ma'am. I was on leave and serving as a resident at the college in place of my military service. Before the incident, I was awaiting transfer to Europe."

"Oh, how unfortunate." Klavdiya patted Richard on the cheeks as his impassive face affected a pleasant smile. "What are your plans now?"

"Gwen is my plan now." Richard looked at Gwen and gave her a toothy smile. "I plan to go to university with her and serve as her second."

"You what?" Gwen spluttered. "No! Richard, your career is more important than mine!"

"I wanted this," Richard affirmed with absolute confidence. "Not to mention, I have discussed my future in great detail with Lord Shultz."

"You did?"

"He hinted at a possible future Tower opening," Richard replied. "Though we're not very compatible, I will be satisfied as long as he allows me to serve his interests and vice-versa. The Tower Master has plans for Sydney that will span decades and I am happy to be a part of them."

"But Richard!" Gwen felt such jubilance fill her heart. It was too much. How could her cousin have so much confidence in her? She felt glad and happy but also considerably pressured, sensing the burgeoning weight of new responsibilities buckling onto her shoulders.

"A wonderful prospect," Klavdiya applauded Richard. "You have my blessing."

"Thank you, Grandmother Song." Richard bowed lavishly in the manner of European nobility.

"Oh my, that takes me back." Gwen's babulya blushed happily. "I hadn't seen anyone perform that bow in decades, not since the old days when we used to have debutant balls."

"You would have been the most beautiful debutant by far," Richard said without even pausing for breath. "But then again, Babulya, even now, your unfading pageant remains in bloom."

"I remember that line," Klavdiya said. "Is that Ruminov?"

"Yes, from the Second Translation by Wessen," Richard replied.

Beside them, Guo coughed uncomfortably.

Goodness. Gwen marvelled at Richard. What a babushka killer!

"Have they got their IDs yet?" Klavdiya inquired of Guo, who nodded in response.

"Tomorrow," her grandfather replied.

Their meeting was interrupted by a servant who waited patiently by the threshold of the training hall. "Masters, the table is set."

Klavdiya turned to her husband and the grandchildren. "Well, shall we break for lunch? I am sure you boys are all starving after travelling such a long distance."

"I am indeed famished and would love to accept," Richard said politely. "You are too kind."

Gwen blinked, again impressed with Richard's high society training, something she’d lacked in either lifetime. Even under Henry, etiquette lessons had been forfeited for training. It was no surprise, as her Master had begun life as a commoner, while Alesia took great pleasure in beating down high society and Gunther hated sophistry.

Klavdiya seemed immensely pleased with Richard "speaking" her kind of language. She took him by the arm and kept speaking to him in low tones that made Guo's face alternate between disgruntlement and vexation.

"Grandfather, are you alright?" Percy inquired carefully. Interestingly, her brother already appeared to be able to read his grandfather's growing ire.

"I am fine, Grandson." Guo's face immediately changed into one of benevolence. The effect was so startling that Gwen felt as though she was watching a Shapeshifter change faces.

"Are you hungry?" Guo asked, his voice rich with patience. "Our banquet uses the best ingredients, just for you! We need to make up for all those years of mundane diets. I've prepared some herbal baths as well to help you with your Mana Conduits. We're booked in for a check-up at your grandmother's clinic too."

"I am looking forward to it, Grandpa." The expression on Percy’s face showed a man well-indulged in Guo's shower of attention.

"Call me Yeye." Guo chuckled happily to himself, in a world of his own. Watching it all go down, Gwen felt a little sick.

"Yeye!" Percy shamelessly delivered his flatulent flattery.

"Oh ho ho! Hahaha!" Guo guffawed, not at all the Commissioner of Confidential Communications but a doting old gramps. Gwen baulked. The man was laughing! She hadn't thought Yeye capable of expressing such human emotions. The way he’d stared at her had always been as though she was a strange decorative part of the house.

She felt strangely oppressed but knew better than to be greedy. She had received a second chance to know her family, and now she had Richard and Percy back with her too. Wasn't that enough?

"So what's this Hengsha Island?" Richard asked when they entered the communal hall, where the banquet awaited them.

Gwen told him of their travel plans, briefly explaining who Mina and Tao were, then dismally failed in clarifying what the island meet-up entailed.

"Babulya," Ricard announced suddenly. "Can I ask where and what is Hengsha island, and may I accompany Gwen there?"

"It's a meeting of the Shanghai Clans, mostly children from lineage families," Klavdiya explained patiently in that soft, gentle voice of hers. "As a mimicry of the International Inter-University Competition, the clans make teams that compete for objectives. Sometimes there are even Dungeons from long gone magical or demi races you can explore. The purpose is to get to know your peers and to give a chance for the well-established families to pick out talented candidates for the future."

"So a marriage mixer?" Richard snorted.

Gwen's dumpling paused in midair. "What?"

"It's not really like that," Klavdiya confessed. "No one is going to push for anything. It's a very informal affair. Mostly young egos, duelling one another down to size, that sort of thing. Although, now that you mention it…"

The two of them looked at Gwen, who squirmed under their gaze.

"Gwen," Klavdiya asked seriously. "Did your Frontier school teach sexual education?"

"I don't want to talk about this," Gwen confessed. "How about we talk about Percy?"

Richard interjected. "Now that you mention it, I don't think her school offers that curriculum. Gwennie, I don't suppose Morye gave you the 'talk', did he? The proverbial phoenix and the dragon?"

Gwen's complexion turned the hue of pink pippins. She cringed inwardly. If only her family knew that she wasn't blushing for inexperience, but that despite being thirty in her old life, she was a virgin in this one. With her accusing eyes, she cursed Richard's bluntness. Bloody Richard!

"I'll let Jun know you're coming along," their grandmother said. "Will you protect Gwen, Richard?"

"Without fail." Richard flashed Klavdiya a charming grin, showing just enough teeth to be winsome but also solemn enough to be serious. "You know, you are my favourite person besides Gwen, Babulya, and I mean that."

"What a delightful young man," Klavdiya muttered with pleasure. "Make sure you settle in properly, Richard. You and Gwen are sharing the trainer's rooms."

With the matter settled, Gwen turned her attention back toward the mana-rich dumplings.

Dick. She shuddered. What a frightening babushka killer!

Once lunch was over, Gwen asked Richard to catch her up on the comings and goings of the last week or so while she was first away to Singapore, then spirited away to Shanghai. She had asked Percy if he would join them as well, but Guo dragged his heir apparent away, eager to begin the indoctrination of the newest member of the Song Clan.

Desiring privacy, the two retreated to the seclusion of the training hall's courtyard.

"First of all, how's everyone?" Gwen began.

"Surya is doing very well, keeping busy with the refugees." Richard read her mind, as usual. "He's called in his old war buddies and they've expanded their camp into the adjoining properties, whose owners have decided to move to the other Australian cities while Sydney's Shields are replaced. Tess and Mel are heavily involved in the caretaking, so I guess they're flat out as well."

"Where's mother right now?"

"She's gone to her husband's. Fabricator Hu has the main branch of his family in Shanghai."

"Oh?" She had expected her mother to be lurking somewhere in the compound and had spent lunch wondering where Helen had gone.

"Hu's a nice guy," Richard added, seeing Gwen's expression. "Your mother will be safe and happy with him. I think Helena needs someone like that to keep her in line. Let me tell you, what I heard and saw at the registrar's office is something that is going to turn me off the sound of a woman screaming for a long time."

"How bad was it?" Gwen asked.

"How bad, you say?" Richard made an expression akin to wracking his brain. "To give you some context. Your mother had been worried about her passport since the incident, obsessed even. She tried to get Surya to pull some connections, even demanding that he contact Magus Shultz. When your grandfather completely ignored her, she became intolerable."

"I am sorry, Richard." Gwen sighed apologetically.

"Eventually, Fabricator Hu contacted his family here and managed to cut them in line for an interview at the Immigration Registrar. We were there at the processing centre—my parents, your mother, Percy and Hu, when Magus Song's men found us."

Gwen hearkened for the explosive climax.

"First, Helena was afraid when the men approached her. When they showed her their MSS identification and told her that they were taking Percy away, she turned completely white. That was when the poor bastards, Wei, I think? And Jung? Made a terrible mistake."

"What did they do?" Gwen asked curiously.

"They mentioned that your father was already in Shanghai and that he would be in contact with her."

"Oh no, they didn't."

"Oh yeah, they did!" Richard roared with laughter. "Your mother went ballistic. Ape-shit. It was like a sonic attack! Every pair of eyes in the centre, almost a thousand people, were staring at us. She was about to claw their faces out!"

Gwen cringed so hard her neck cramped.

"Then Magister Shultz's men came out of nowhere. They confronted Song's men on Helena's behalf."

"Did that go well?"

Richard shook her head, clearly lamenting his lost sanity. "Well? Imagine that you're trying to avoid a public spectacle. However, every other sentence you manage to get out, there is a loud, wailing screech that seems to blot out all sound, every time. EVERY DAMN TIME the two parties make a single compromise, there is another screech. I believe that at one point, either of the teams would have just preferred killing your mother right there and damn the consequences."

"I am so sorry." Gwen moaned. Just trying to picture the scene was enough to transmogrify her brain into a mass of migraines.

"So after the fourth or fifth interruption, I can't remember, Magus Song and Shultz's men gave up negotiations and just called their bosses so they could speak to one another privately." Richard stared into the middle distance. "Well, I am glad that's over. Don't ask me to recollect that ever again."

"How's Aunty Tang and Uncle?"

"Getting along well with Surya, another reason I, or we, now that we're in this together, need to move fast. As I mentioned before, contribution credits."

Gwen reached out and held her cousin's hands. They felt rigid and cold in hers. "That's alright, Dick. I'll do what I can to help. We'll do it together. My goodness, your hands are freezing!"

"A little case of the nerves." Richard chuckled nervously. "You know, all my life, I’ve wanted to be in a tier I city. Now that I am here, I am not so sure."

"You'll get used to it," Gwen promised. "Say, do you need money? I just came into a great deal of money."

"Oh? You undertook some quests already?"

"Heehee." Gwen smiled slyly. "I got it from fleecing some rich boys at an underground fighting competition."

"You didn't?" Richard's face lit up and he burst out laughing. "That's wonderful. Haha! Oh, you have to tell me all the details. How do the Mages here measure up?"

Gwen explained the bout with a masterful retelling, detailing the Affinity of the Mages she had encountered and what she had seen so far on offer in Shanghai.

Richard breathed out. "Good. Nothing too overpowering then, at least at our age and level." He looked immensely relieved. "That's about the same as upper tier at Prince's, for the Members of the Four Houses."

At the mention of Prince's, Gwen's ears perked up. "You know, why did you leave Prince's? It can't just be because of money, can it?"

Richard's shoulders sagged. "It's a question of servitude." He chewed his lip for a moment. "After I was selected for the Four Houses and even made Praetor, I found out that for selection to a tier I branch, I must first declare my allegiance to a Noble House of the Commonwealth Mageocracy, something called the Militant Faction. But it's essentially indentured servitude! A decade spent serving as a House Mage! Furthermore, as a Latus Genere, a side branch warden, I can't ever enter the upper echelons' inner circles. If so, what's the point? Why waste my time? I would rather be a free Mage."

"I am not sure what some of those words mean, but I'll support your decision, whatever it may be." Gwen touched her cousin's arm encouragingly, happy that he had chosen to risk his life and limb in Shanghai of all places. She leaned over and gave him another hug.

"Thanks, Gwennie."

"Speaking of which, did you bring much luggage?" Gwen pointed to her Storage Ring. "Which room's yours?"

Not surprisingly, Richard was staying in the room adjacent to her own, in the training hall. Furthermore, it was no surprise to either of them that Percy was living in the main branch of the house, possessing a bedroom with an ensuite and a separate living area all to himself. It had been Tao's room, but the rapscallion hip-hop artist had loathed staying at Guo's residence, stating that he preferred death.

"Anyway, let me speak to Babulya. We need to get some serious necessities; trust me on this. Those rooms are going to be the death of us."

"I am in your tender hands." Richard was grinning from ear to ear. "As of this moment, I am a kept man, and you're my sugar-Gwen."

Gwen fell about laughing until her belly was in stitches. When she’d recovered, she hooked her arm in Richard's. "Okay! Let's ask Babulya for permission."

The duo found their babulya sitting inside the Master's suite with Guo and nursing a cup of tea. Gwen and Richard stopped at the threshold of the door and politely knocked.

"Come in, dear," Klavdiya said.

They entered the resting chamber, adjoining the master bedroom and Guo's heavily warded study. "Babulya, may Richard and I go out to shop for some necessities? I wish to acquire some linen and some, er, feminine products."

Guo's eyes glazed over the moment Gwen mentioned the latter.

"Alright, dear, I'll get Lu to bring the sedan around. He can drive you to the commercial district."

"Thank you."

The grandparents watched the pair withdraw.

Gwen's grandmother turned to Guo. On their table was an envelope containing the data from the morning excursion. "Are you so determined?"

Guo possessed a face full of iron. "My decision is final!"

Klavdiya's brows furrowed, her eyes gazing at the two bodies fading from the courtyard.

"You men and your legacies," she scoffed. She knew her criticism would sting her husband. "There are no medicines for regret, just so that you know, dear husband."

Guo said nothing. Instead, he stood from the chair and left his wife to fume.

Klavdiya shook her head, allowing her disappointment to drain slowly away. "What a waste," she muttered to herself. "What hubris."

By the time Gwen and Richard returned home for dinner, they were a hundred HDMs down, and Gwen's Storage Ring had become inundated with enchanted glyphs for cooling, heating and circulating air. She had further purchased a dozen conveniences that she’d never known existed, such as disposable crystal glyphs that allowed for small but complex magics like Prestidigitation for cleaning laundry.

Soon, their spartan rooms in the training hall were outfitted with new lights, wardrobes, bedside tables, new beds and fresh linen sheets weaved with supple, flaxen silk from Wildland moths.

Gwen gave Richard a minor Storage Ring, having lost his own when he quit Prince's. She also left him a full complement of Mana, Healing, and Cure Disease and Poison potions that she had left over from her trip to Singapore.

While sorting through her inventory, she rediscovered her Portable Habitat, which she would need to return to Melbourne Tower. Her intention, however, was to use it for as long as she was able. Despite the one HDM it cost every twelve hours, she could have a villa all to herself with a working kitchen and showers too, that she could manifest anywhere.

When the night finally descended, Gwen and Richard further spoke at length about their skills and their abilities, finding ways to improve their synergy should the need arise. When Gwen confessed to Richard about her current complement of Talents and Affinities, her cousin's eyes lit up with anticipation.

"Hold on!" Richard started suddenly. He left her bedroom, then returned a few seconds later with several documents.

"Those are?"

Her cousin coughed. "Gwen Song, congratulations on graduating from Blackwattle Bay. These are your certifications for completing secondary education at the senior level, as well as completing Preliminary Compulsory Magical Education. I am proud of you, Gwen Song."

Gwen took the certificates and stowed the lot in her ring. "Thanks, Richard."

Watching his impassive face, a sudden feeling of mischief overcame her and she desired a little retribution for Richard's earlier performances.

"Caliban!" A slurping sound engendered, after which a hellish arachnid from the darkest depth of an elder god's madness-addled mind materialised from a slit in space-time.

"HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS!" Richard appeared genuinely startled. Without warning, a sprout of water leapt from his body, squirting forth a frothy jetstream, engulfing Gwen and Caliban in a shower of salty brine as the spray pushed them both against the wall.

A spluttering Gwen commanded Caliban to heel, after which a bedraggled mistress and her monster sat demurely, regretting their prank.

Above Richard, Lea was as beautiful and ethereal as ever, her transparent face exquisitely sculpted, with deeply set aquamarine eyes and a high ridge-line nose. Strands of cascading water flowed from her head like a waterfall, trickling with the ambience of crystalline streams. The Undine's pellucid body was just as scandalous as Gwen recalled, for her translucent aquamarine dress left nothing to the imagination.

"Please forgive us," Lea said, putting her palms together. "You surprised me, is all. Here, I'll collect the water."

"No, no, it's my fault." Gwen waved her hands to say that she was fine and then produced some of the magical loot she had acquired during the day. One of them was a device for drying clothes. "Dry!"

Moisture drained from her sheets and her clothes, quickly drying the fabric within a radius of about a metre.

"Cleanse!"

The scent of freshly laundered sheets once again permeated the room.

Two of the glyph-stones dimmed and died, requiring replenishment from mana crystals.

"So good!" She giggled gleefully. She loved this world of magic. Goodbye house chores! Goodbye laundry day!

"Gwen, I know you're rich now," Richard observed dryly as the moisture faded. "But you just spent eight LDMs. Just so that you know, it costs nothing to ask the NoM servants to change and wash your sheets."

Gwen stuck out her tongue playfully.

Beside them, Caliban flailed its multiple tongues in imitation. "Shaa! Shaa!"

Lea floated over and patted the nightmarish spiderling. "You look different," Lea commented as she tapped Caliban's carapace, giggling as its tongues tasted her wet skin. "Cali is stronger."

"Yeah, a lot has happened," Gwen replied.

Lea coiled herself around Gwen and took in her scent. "I can still smell the mana on you, the one from before," she noted. "So ancient. May I?"

Gwen channelled a mote of Amuldj's mana to the conduits of her left arm, suffusing her fingertips with a soft green glow.

Lea placed Gwen's finger against her pale blue lips, then began to suckle.

The two young Mages' eyes grew as round as hen's eggs, their faces mutually turning a crimson shade of beetroot.

"I am leaving!" Richard took off from the bed and left the room.

"Nooooooo." Lea left the room, taken by a reddening Richard. Unless Richard manifested his Summon Familiar formally, his humanoid familiar couldn't traverse more than a few metres from his body.

Gwen chuckled and unsummoned Caliban.

With a moan, she slid into her soft, luxurious, two-thousand thread count sheets made from the ejaculated silk of ten thousand Wildland worms. Now smothered in the lap of luxury, Gwen thanked the gods of manchester, wiggling her body until she burrowed into the cocoon-like bed.

Tomorrow was yet another adventure.

Tomorrow, together with Mina and Tao, and this "monstrous" Petra, they would be travelling to Hengsha Island.

But most importantly, she was no longer alone.

Chapter twenty-one

A Tale of Two Towers

The following day, Jun arrived in a military specced truck.

"Good luck! See you in a week." Babulya kissed Gwen on the forehead as her uncle parked. Gwen noticed that she gave Richard one too, bringing big smiles to her cousin's face.

Jun hopped from the driver's seat and commanded the side cabin to open. After giving Gwen an affirming nod, he turned to Richard. "So, you're the Prince's Praetor that came with Percy, huh?"

The two men shook hands. Gwen noticed the veins on Jun's hand pulsed as they clasped hands, with Richard grinning somewhat fiercely.

"Not a Praetor anymore, sir, that's long behind me now." An understanding passed between the two men of competence.

"I look forward to your performance. I have read your history, and I have the utmost confidence in your abilities," Jun assured his in-law.

"It would be my honour, sir. I will keep Gwen safe."

"Good man!" Jun struck her cousin on the back with a resounding slap.

Gwen was still trying to place how Richard seemed to insinuate himself with such ease into every other circumstance when the familiar face of Mina disembarked from the vehicle.

"Gwen!" Mina waved a small white hand at her daintily. That was another aspect that Gwen had to get accustomed to. In China, even family did not hug. There was a strict hierarchy between the young and the old measured in respect and intonation, manifesting physically through personal space. To let another individual into that lauded intimacy would imply a profound connection such as lovers or comrades.

To validate her hypothesis, Gwen had carefully observed that no matter how much Guo was pleased and enamoured with Percy, her grandfather did not embrace nor initiate tactile intimacy with his grandchild. Likewise, Guo seemed perfectly happy with Percy reacting to every command as though it came from a superior officer, responding with formality and respect.

Mina's eyes fell upon Richard. "Ooo." She pursed her petal-like lips. "You must be Richard."

"Richard Huang, at your service." Richard presented himself in the manner taught at Prince's, bowing with a flourish.

"I am Mina Wang," her cousin offered coyly. "Hi."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Richard replied, taking her hand and brushing her fingers with a mock kiss. "I hope we can work well together."

"I am sure we will," Mina tittered, with a pleased expression. "We should hang out sometime. I want you to meet my friends."

"But of course." Richard's wolfish grin made Gwen wince.

"Mina?" Gwen nudged her cousin.

"Hmm? Oh yes!" Mina stole another look at Richard before addressing Gwen.

"Before I forget, your IDs." Jun opened his hands and materialised two stacks of identification cards.

"Thank you for going the extra mile to get these for us." Gwen thoughtfully retrieved the banded stack and examined the cards each by each:

Her passport was a blue book embossed with the crest of the Commonwealth Mageocracy.

"An Australian Passport?" She turned her eyes toward Jun wonderingly, confused that she didn't have a little red book embossed with the Forbidden City.

"A Commonwealth Passport with a PR visa, at Lord Shultz's request," Jun replied. "That was a part of the agreement."

Gwen nodded and inspected the contents. The first page was an embossed, enchanted crest with the Commonwealth's heraldry imprinted with an emu and a kangaroo. The second page contained her likeness etched onto an Illusion Glyph, which could be activated and projected. The page also held her biometrics, such as her eyes, hair and ethnicity. The rest of the twenty-page book was blank but for one, where a large glyph took up the whole sheet. It was a glowing, golden crest of the Forbidden City topped by a constellation of five red stars.

Her academic ID was just that, a plain white, nondescript card about the thickness of a fingernail. A headshot adorned the left corner. All the entries were blank except for a section that indicated she had graduated from Blackwattle Bay High School, Sydney.

Her Public Practice of Magic Licence was more interesting, as it listed her skills and talents, as well as her associated Tower. The sigil on the bottom right showed the silhouette of Pudong Tower with the shape of three spheres stacked atop one another, forming the likeness of the Oriental Pearl Television Tower in her old world.

"Yes, you're a member of Pudong." Jun noticed Gwen's lingering gaze. "Another condition, as it were, of the 'exchange program'."

Gwen nodded and examined her registered powers.

Gwen Song

Public Practice of Magic ID:: 9840598 001

Evocation (3), Conjuration (4), Divination (1), Transmutation (1), Abjuration (1)

Quasi-Elemental :: Lightning :: Void

Class Permit (B)

"That's… everything," Gwen muttered, feeling her gut churn. She turned her eyes toward Jun questioningly.

"There's nothing to fear. You're registered with the Putong Tower now." Jun gave her a confidence-boosting smile. "You should be known at the highest level since Gunther personally asked for the favour. If someone wanted to spirit you away, they have to deal with the Tower. If need be, the matter may even escalate to Lord Huo himself."

"What's the 'B' for?" Gwen turned her attention back toward her ID, wondering how reliable it was that the Tower would come to her aid in the event of some nefarious force having designs on her talents.

"Tower access," Jun answered her patiently. "B gets you access to basic spells and items, which you can trade with contribution credits. You don't have a mentor right now, right? As long as you have crystal and CCs, you can get access to tutors, Cognisance Chambers, and spellbooks."

Spellbooks! Gwen's felt a tingle of excitement. She desperately needed to expand her Spellcraft options. "That's good to know." She stored her licence in her ring and examined her last ID.

Multi-Pass Adventuring Permit

Gwen Song

LOI: China, Shanghai

PPM: 9840598 001

Nationality: Australian

Eyes: Hazel, green

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Hair: Black (warm)

Height: 180cm

Access Rank: E

Quest Attainment: N/A

"Quests can be from either Tower," Jun helpfully explained. "Though I would try to stick to a single Tower to avoid future complications. That said, you're a student, so I wouldn't expect you to do much questing."

"Thanks, Uncle Jun. I'll let you know if I have any other questions." Gwen bowed her head and stowed her last ID, watching Richard do the same.

"Peaches, move it!" A sonorous female voice muttered from the truck's interior. "Get!"

The command was answered by the sound of Tao grumbling about wanting to sleep. A few silent seconds passed, then came the sound of a lever clicking into place, followed by an insane, guttural shriek.

"ARRRRRRGGGGH! Eeeeaaa! Bitch, you caught mah hand! FU—"

Klavdiya sighed.

Jun shook his head.

They hadn't left yet, and Gwen's party was already one member down.

The next moment, a stunning young woman of breathtaking allure emerged from the vehicle, moving past Mina to embrace Klavdiya. "Grandmother!"

The girl appeared older than both Gwen and Mina. Effortlessly, she leaned in and kissed Klavdiya soundly on both cheeks.

Even Gwen's cousin Richard held his breath for a second to take in the splendiferous vision that had emerged so unexpectedly amid Tao's porcine wailing.

"Mina, if you could?" Klavdiya commanded her granddaughter with her eyes.

Mina sighed and retreated into the interior, where Tao continued to whimper and complain.

"It's just bruised!" she growled at her brother. "Give me your hand."

Meanwhile, the culprit of Peaches’ agony addressed both Gwen and Richard. "Hello, I am Petra Kuznetsov." She inclined her head. "I am your Enchanter."

Her cousin twice-removed stood an inch taller than Gwen, attired in a collared blouse, skirt and white runners. She had auburn hair that fell about her face in ringlets, framing her cheekbones. Her face had the likeness of Kalvdiya, but where her grandmother appeared timid and benevolent, Petra's aura was vivacious and passionate. Below her husky-blue eyes, her lips hinted at an aggressive sensuality. Her brows were similarly thick and defined, adding to the imposing superiority she projected.

Was her cousin beautiful? Gwen wouldn't doubt it. But Petra had the kind of beauty that one discovered by observing bushfires—in swirling tornadoes of orange flame ravaging ten thousand acres of prime woodland. It was the kind of attraction that filled a girl with wonder, like watching howling tundras cracking under a rolling storm. Gwen knew how vain she was about her looks, but in front of Petra, she felt unquestionably diminished.

"I am Gwen Song, Hai Song's daughter." She extended a hand to shake, wincing as Petra took her white fingers firmly.

"Richard Huang, pleased to make your acquaintance. I hope we can work well together." Richard also suffered Petra's death grip.

"Very good," Petra intoned impassively, neither friendly nor cold, with a voice more akin to the affirmation of receiving goods from a delivery. "I would like to know more about you two as well. Shall we speak in the truck? Captain Song should be finishing his errand in less than sixty seconds."

"Don't mind her aloofness." Mina's voice came from the interior opposite. "She grew up in the military. It turns them into squares."

Petra said nothing. She turned from Gwen and Richard and ducked back into the van.

"Move," she commanded Peaches.

Tao shrunk from Petra as though extolled by a Displace Beast, adhering to the cabin's far side as she passed.

Gwen exchanged a glance with Richard. Could things be worse? she said with her eyes.

Brimming with confidence, Richard gave her a thumbs up.

"It takes an hour to get to the docks, so get acquainted," Jun informed the hold and its cargo of cousins.

Mina opted to sit up front with Jun, while Tao, Gwen, Richard and Petra sat behind.

Gwen tried to break the ice, but Tao wasn't in the mood to speak to Petra. When the crew finally shared their abilities, the conversation grew surprisingly formal, with Petra presiding over the minutes.

"My highest rank when serving under the Moscow Tower was officer cadet," Petra explained. "That said, I have lived in Shanghai for two years now, working with Fudan University on research and development programs."

"Have you graduated?" Gwen asked. Petra didn't seem that much older than herself.

"I was fortunate enough to be an accelerated student," Petra announced proudly. "I am eighteen if you are wondering. The same age as Tao."

"First or second year?" Gwen resigned herself to be Petra's academic inferior.

"I am on my second year at Fudan," Petra advised them. "Though I am currently enrolled in post-graduate research as well."

"That's incredible," Gwen said, realising that Petra was way ahead of a curve she and Richard had yet to enter. As Richard had served as Praetor instead of his military service, he was almost nineteen now, two years behind the average university student. If and when they graduated, Gwen would be twenty or twenty-one and Richard would be nearing twenty-three.

"There are others," Petra said simply. "I am not that impressive, in comparison."

"So are you a Mind Mage?" Richard asked interestedly.

"Richard!" Gwen nudged him. If Petra were a Mind-Mage, according to Guo, her talents would be part and parcel of a highly classified identity.

"No," Petra replied stoically. "I am an Inscriber, under the branch of Enchantment and Fabrication."

" A rare and welcome addition!" Richard slapped his thighs. "Your Enchantment is already at tier V? Have you taken a minor School of Magic, say, Conjuration?"

"You know how Inscription Glyphs work?" Petra raised a brow at Richard.

"Our grandfather is a Master Enchanter." Richard pointed helpfully at Gwen.

Petra turned to look at Gwen.

"Yes, but he's in Sydney," Gwen confessed a little too eagerly, not wanting to get Petra's hopes up. "He's a Frontier Enchanter though, a trinket maker."

"Impressive nonetheless, to achieve that level of expertise." Petra's expression softened. "What do you know about Magitech, Gwen?"

"Not an awful lot." Gwen grimaced.

She was a bumpkin, but even so, Gwen had discerned from their everyday conveniences that there existed a branch of Enchantment which combined demi and Human Spellcraft to create Magitech, this world's version of electronic circuitry. The archaic cars that they drove in Sydney were a product of early Magitech, while advanced variations afforded more complex operations, culminating in the construction of war machines like Golems. Now that she was in Shanghai, she could see that even in Sydney, the presence of Magitech was ubiquitous—seen in lifts, data slates, Message devices, even the Towers.

Assuming that Magitech was the same as engineering in her old world, Petra, she figured, would be someone involved in electrical engineering or perhaps mechatronics.

"What kind of Magitech do you specialise in?" Richard was curious to know how a researcher was helpful in combat.

Petra allowed a slight smirk to touch her lips. "The deadly kind."

"Are you saying you're a Runesmith?" Her cousin raised both brows. "Or perhaps an Artificer?"

"The former." Petra snapped her fingers, materialising a crystalline cube. "I can manifest these small, expandable devices that store a spell of my maximum tier minus one. There's a hard limit on conjuration volume and manifestation duration, but the cubes make for a flexible offering."

Gwen could hardly close her mouth. Petra's sorcery was unlike anything she had seen in all her years.

"For example." Petra allowed another cube to "load" onto her hand. "This one is from my Master's friend."

The transparent cube looked etched with glyphs on all sides. Within the cubic frame, a volatile swirl of Elemental Fire raged.

"It's a Scorching Ray," Petra explained. "Single target spells are the best. AOEs are harder to manage because I can't spell shape magic that isn't mine, only manifest them."

She produced another spell cube tinged with blue and glowing with glyphs that Gwen recognised as Conjuration.

"A Call Lightning, but cast by an Ice Para-Elementalist Mage," she continued. "Spells with seeker functions are excellent as well. Though there's is a limit to how many can be released at once without mana bu—"

The truck rocked as Jun powered over a speed hump and the cube fell from Petra's hands.

Gwen instinctively reached out and snatched it before it struck the floor. The spell cube felt unexpectedly warm and there was the additional feeling of pulsing mana within, not unlike a heart.

"Close one!" Gwen breathed out, turning to face her peers with evident relief. "Wouldn't want that going off in here."

Both Richard and Petra regarded her with dismay.

"It's perfectly safe," Petra explained, taking the cube from her hands. "It only activates on my command."

Her cousin then regarded Gwen with a look of suspicion. "Which school did you say you’d graduated from?"

Gwen felt her face flush. Who could blame her? She technically didn't even graduate from high school.

"Well," Richard intervened, diverting Petra's obtuse question. "If you must know, I am from Prince's."

Like many things in the city, the Shanghai ferry docks were constructed with a ridiculous traffic volume in mind. While Sydney's ferry pier in Circular Quay had eight berths, the Shanghai Metropolitan Port had twenty-four segments built into an artificial grotto of moulded steel and reinforced glass in a U configuration.

Gwen and her party made their way through the building's vaulted arches, marvelling at the architectural possibilities manifested by the application of high-level Transmutation and Enchantment.

Petra played with a cube of dark, malignant energy, her mood greatly improved since the crew had embarked on Jun's truck. Gwen watched the cube of Void matter bounce up and down in Petra's hands. It was just a Void Bolt, but her cousin seemed enamoured with the exotic element.

Earlier, when they had finally got to the business of exchanging spell lists, Petra had seized Gwen's wrists with such a wrenching strength that Gwen had almost yelped.

"You're a Void Caster?" Petra's voice had quivered, her fingers like steel fasteners wrapped around her delicate wrists. "Do it now, make a spell. Here!"

She had materialised one of her spell cubes and insisted Gwen cast something into it.

Tao had finally paid attention as well, his eyes widening a little at hearing Petra's provocation. Simultaneously, in the passenger seat, Mina had fallen silent =rather than banter with Jun.

Despite the questionable wisdom of manifesting a Void spell in a moving vehicle, Petra's fervent glare had frightened Gwen into submission. "If you're sure." Gwen had then cast her spell, unable to refute Petra's husky-blue eyes.

A feeling of sickening vertigo had overwhelmed all in the vehicle when Gwen had manifested the consumptive mana, nearly causing Jun to swerve the truck onto the dividing wall. "By Mao!" he cursed loudly. "What the hell are you girls doing back there?"

Once she had the spell, Petra had etched out multiple, multilayered mandalas in thin air, imposing them upon the mineral surface of her crystalline spell-storage device.

Gwen was no stranger to Enchantment, but her grandfather had used quasi-magical tools to keep his mandalas precise geometry. Meanwhile, Petra seemed to work entirely freehand, manifesting through the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Mineral, an amalgamation of Positive Energy and Earth. Moreover, from what Gwen could discern, the specific Crystal Petra accessed was high-density quartz.

Petra had ignored both Gwen and Richard for the rest of the ride, secluding herself at the back with the cube in hand, muttering quietly and smiling secretively every so often.

Tao had stared in awe at the cube in Petra's fingers, his eyes flitting between Gwen and Petra. Mina likewise had remained silent, her thoughts and expressions unknowable.

Uncle Jun had offered no commentary, shock or surprise, and so the group journeyed on.

On the pier, the ferry itself was a domed glass construct that resembled a tortoise. It sat low in the water, less than half a metre above the cloudy, silt-churned surface of the Huangpu River, rising from its lowest deck to a total height of four tiers. Atop the ferry, where a chimney stack would sit on an alter-world vessel, there instead sat a Barrier Crystal Array. The ferry looked equipped to carry close to a thousand people, with each deck possessing its own kiosk for food and drinks. The exterior barriers were glass, giving the passengers a two-seventy-degree view of the harbour, blocked only by the engine room near the aft.

"Yo! Boys!"

Tao threw a few gang signs into the air, one answered by two familiar faces—Little-Dog and Mack-Daddy. Tao wore an Adidas jersey and pants with three vertical stripes running down one's arms and trouser legs, ending at the matching runners.

"Gwen!" It was she they greeted first, bowing their heads slightly. After Gwen returned the gesture, the rest of the group introduced themselves. Tao's boys did not disappoint. They also outfitted themselves in matching Adidas, but in different colours.

Holy shit, Gwen thought. If Tao had five friends and they each wore a different coloured set of Adidas in green, red, yellow, blue, and black, they would resemble those early nineties kids’ shows with colour-matched rangers. Hell, they could even be called the Rapping Rangers.

"Ma'am." Mack-Daddy and Little-Dog bowed at Petra, who nodded before turning back to study the cube.

When Richard introduced himself, both boys grew wary, asking him questions about how well he knew Gwen. She knew Richard could read their jealousy like a book and knew how he would nip this unpleasantness in the bud.

"We slept together," Richard informed them, failing to mention they’d been in different rooms. "Last night, Gwen surprised me, and we both became drenched."

Mack-Daddy appeared stunned by the revelation. Little-Dog made an expression as though he was about to cry.

Mina looked at Gwen, at Richard, then shivered.

Gwen punched him in the arm. This time, she didn't pull back. "Don't listen to this guy!" she said before the boy's imaginations ran wild. "He's just trying to jerk you off."

"Well done, Gwen." Richard patted her back. "Well done."

"I like your outfit," Mack-Daddy remarked, looking over Gwen's outback adventuring outfit.

Gwen kicked out her knee-high riding boots and tipped her broad-brimmed Akubra hat. "You like it? I got it when I was still in Sydney."

"It suits you well." Mack-Daddy's face grew beetroot red.

Mina folded her arms. Compared to the positively country Gwen, she wore a Sunday dress with a modest neckline and hem. To Gwen's confusion, the girl even wore Roman sandals.

"You look lovely as always, Miss Mina," said Little-Dog as he appraised Mina's choice of attire for adventuring.

"Why, thank you, Bao. For noticing that I exist," Mina replied sulkily, glancing at Gwen and Petra. Mack-Daddy quickly added his compliment, though Mina was already too offended to care.

Besides Gwen, Petra, who dressed for practicality, rolled her eyes.

As the day wore on, more and more participants arrived, young Mages like themselves, each with their guardians in tow. Gwen saw Vivian appear and disappear into the crowd, as well as a few faces she recognised from the bout.

After half an hour or so, Gwen realised that though most of the people there were strangers to her, she was not a stranger to them. Once every so often, someone somewhere would point toward her or meet her gaze and nod.

Before she could ask Mina who these people were, a blaring horn announced that the hour was upon them.

In a dozen rows, the adolescents filed into the ferry like school children escorted by their teachers on an adventure island day trip.

Jun had purchased tickets for the top deck, so they found themselves enjoying a splendid view of the Bund, across from Pudong.

Gwen studied the Mageocracy's Tower in Shanghai, her ultimate and eventual destination, upon which a Magi sat on the throne, lord of his domain.

On the opposite side, the PLA Tower loomed in its ziggurat-like immensity, its pyramidal magnificence presiding over Shanghai's CBD, a gleaming beacon of sandstone, glass and steel.

A Tale of Two Towers? Would her future be the best of times? Or would it entail the worst? Only time would tell.

The ferry blared twice, then set out. Past the docks, the Huangpu River opened onto the sea, where, four hours later, they would arrive on the island of Hengsha.

Chapter twenty-two

Hold on and Let Go

With the susurration of sloshing water on either side of the ferry, the vessel meandered through the estuary of the yellow river. Around the passengers, the steel and glass exterior of Shanghai's CBD slowly fell away to reveal red brick and sandstone, then finally the verdant countryside.

When finally, after every one of Shanghai's wonders was exhausted, the curious passengers returned to their seats and sought other ways of passing the time. From their position near the aft, Gwen studied their congregation of sorcerers and sorceresses.

Different from Sydney, the gender imbalance of the magical population in Shanghai veered toward the masculine. By the same measure, most of the gathered Mages were Han Chinese, with scant few having a Eurasian appearance or darker complexions that pointed toward a South-East Asian heritage.

Beside them, Tao shared an earphone with his mates, looking wonderfully in sync in their matching Adidas.

"Captain Jun!"

Her surveillance of their surroundings was interrupted by a middle-aged man's appearance. An older, Caucasian Mage with the expression of a hawk parted the crowd. "Goodness, it is you. What luck!"

"Halbert!" Jun stood and extended his hand.

As the two greeted one another, other Mages joined the semicircle.

Jun greeted his guests, speaking to them with an informality that the visitors appeared to enjoy. Gwen caught snippets of conversation about a battle up north, as well as operations in the inner Three Gorges Region.

After a few minutes, Jun turned to his protègès and introduced them.

"Good morning, Magus Halbert." Mina waved to the appreciatively smiling Magus.

"Sup." Tao made a sign. "Yo!"

The senior Mage returned a polite smile, then turned toward Gwen and her company of three.

"New blood?" The Magus raised his brows inquisitively. "Two lasses and a lad. My word, how fine they look."

Jun laughed. "They are awfully aesthetic, aren't they?" Her uncle rubbed his chin. "Not that looks will help them in Hengsha. There are no replacements for skill. That's what counts in the end."

"Well said," Halbert said. "Still, it doesn't hurt to be easy on the eyes."

Gwen curtsied, Richard bowed formally and Petra inclined her head.

"Don't suppose you'll let me take a gander at their specs?" Halbert teased.

"Ha!" Jun's eyes twinkled. "Fifty HDMs. You'll never guess."

"Ho?" Halbert trained his eyes upon the young Mages. "Detect Magic!"

The mana of Divination illuminated Halbert's eyes. Trapped beneath the Magus' gaze, Gwen felt as though the man was swabbing her skin.

"Gwen is a Conjurer, Lightning Quasi-Elemental, and something else I can't quite discern, Evocation, perhaps?" Halbert noted with care. "Petra is an Enchanter. Mineral, I am sure. And Richard would be a Conjurer, Water, with a bit of Abjuration?"

Gwen felt immensely impressed by the man's expert reading of Divination Magic. They were on a ferry full of young Mages leaking mana like no tomorrow, yet Halbert could pinpoint their powers with near unerring precision. Was this the experience of a master Diviner?

Jun whistled. "Well done, but no cigar. It looks like you're buying, Halbert."

"Really? Hmm." Halbert examined the trio again, wondering who he had failed to discern. "Alright, I trust you. Shall I congratulate the House of Song on acquiring such fortuitously talented descendants?"

"You may, and thank you," Jun laughed. "These kids are our future. Ain't that right, Gwen?"

"I'll do my best, Uncle."

"She's such a good girl," Jun sighed.

While the adults conversed, Magus Herbert's juniors sought counsel with Gwen and her group. A few went directly past Gwen and Richard and attempted to speak with Petra. Unfortunately, their Russian cousin secluded herself near a window and continued to entertain herself with the captured Void Bolt.

Thus rebuffed, their guests instead approached Mina, who introduced Gwen and Richard. The youngsters then made small talk about Spellcraft and their expectations of Hengsha, giving Gwen the opportunity to pass the time until they disembarked without impatience.

According to Uncle Jun’s briefing, Hengsha island didn't exist before 1858.

For whatever reason the Chinese authorities had yet to discern, the island came into being on the evening of July 18th, 1858, following a disturbance at the mouth of the Yellow River where it met the South China Sea. Of course, during this epoch, the Chinese Communists didn’t exist. Instead, under Emperor Yizhu, the late Qing Dynasty spent its final years haemorrhaging territory to the Mageocracy, the Taiping Rebels and the Demi-human tribes of the steppes and the sea.

The island was initially discovered by local fishermen, who reported its surfacing to the authorities, who sent a group of Daoshi, Chinese Mages of yore, onto the island.

Of the dozen sent, three returned, bringing with them tales of riches, veins of crystals and monsters that feasted on human flesh.

The emperor had no idea what he had discovered, of course, but the sects all know that Hengsha was a pocket dimension carved out from some obtrusion of space and time, sent into the material plane by portent and chaos.

By the time the Qing Dynasty became replaced by its new socialist rulers, the island had disappeared. It was only after the country's unification under Mao in 1949 that the interim government relocated the astral tear that led to Hengsha.

Soon after that, China's new rulers discovered the island's pocket plane was moving. As a landmass created from shifting currents of silica, it migrated about half a kilometre a year, always moving north toward the satellite city of Chongming, a part of the Shanghai Metropolitan port project. Attempts to halt this drift seemed futile, for it appeared that the movement involved forces beyond Humanity's control. When the time came, Shanghai's government could disrupt and shunt the pocket plane but not control it.

In the meantime, Hengsha proved itself a boon of treasures as a Special Resource Region, vomiting forth intermittent chunks of HDMs, as well as exotic flora and fauna.

After balancing the risks and rewards, the Chinese authorities chose to let Hengsha be, for the "Dungeon" it provided could be useful in training the city's junior Mages.

The island was flat and mundane to Gwen's eyes, with forests near the centre, scattered beaches all around, and mangroves by the edges. Its only peculiar feature was that the sandy isle was surrounded by the silt-heavy waters of the yellow river, inundating its surroundings with flotsams of flora from the mainland.

A long pier had been carved out from the thickly overgrown sedge, allowing the passengers to depart from the river-faring ferry.

Gwen and her company were the last to descend, affording her a view of the island from the four-tier ferry vantage.

Already there were about a hundred junior Mages and their guardians on the island, with a further two hundred-odd arriving from the ferry.

"Looks like it's about to start." Jun moved forward eagerly. "Come on."

The group followed him off the ramp until they reached the rendezvous site, where some Transmuters had set up a dais. Within the circular elevation was a Senior Mage from Pudong Tower.

Gwen's group drew a great deal of attention as they entered the gathering. Petra especially may as well have been a gravity well, making Gwen self-conscious at the fact that her cousin appeared entirely apathetic to the effect she had on others.

It took another half an hour for the gathering to settle, after which the presiding Magister, Moreau Paris, began to speak.

"Seniors of the various Houses, noble guests, and young Mages, welcome to Hengsha Island. I am Magister Moreau Paris, the Tower Magister presiding over this Field Trial. In a few minutes, we will be declaring the objectives of this year's gathering. As always, if you do not wish to participate, speak to Magus Xi after the announcement."

A round of polite applause greeted Magister Paris' speech, who then motioned for the crowd to quieten down.

"First of all, the Pudong Tower thanks you for coming today. Next to me is Magus Alison Xi and Magus Shu Jin Gwok from the PLA, who will be my aides in judging this trial."

Another round of applause followed, louder this time.

Xi looked to be a diminutive Han woman in her forties. She had a distinctive scar across one eye that resembled a little centipede. Kwok was a generic-looking middle-aged Southern Chinese man without any distinguishing features. Even his olive uniform, displaying the rank of Captain, felt nondescript.

"Allow me to announce the purpose of our gathering today," Paris continued. "Every two years, the best and the brightest Neophytes from the notable Houses are gathered to participate in a group event, giving young Mages a chance to use their talents and skills in the field, gathering Contribution Credits."

"This year, we have a real treat for young spell slingers. But where there are rewards, there are also dangers. For this year, Hengsha Island has once again become a full-fledged Dungeon!"

Upon hearing the D-word, Richard gripped Gwen's wrist with barely contained excitement.

"Is that right?" Gwen whispered carefully. "A Dungeon, here?"

"Yes!" Richard's eyes were gleaming. "A Dungeon!"

Gwen turned back to Paris, who began extolling the dangers of Dungeon diving. A Dungeon! Gwen tried to think back to textbooks the previous Gwen had studied.

A Dungeon could be one of several things. It could be a monster's lair—from a goblins' warren several kilometres deep to the hidden den of a dragon containing precious crystals and rare minerals by the ton.

It could be a pocket space, left behind from the primordial times, trapped in the volatile magical energies that allowed it to drift through the ethereal plane or the astral, occasionally drawn to the material plane and manifesting serendipitously.

Likewise, a Dungeon could be a piece of the elemental planes that had burst through into the material, bringing with it unimaginable fortunes, elementally charged minerals, and even extra-planar beings.

Even Sufina's Grot could be considered a Dungeon.

However, Dungeons appearing on the Frontier were considered a calamity. If one should appear in an Orange or Black Zone, it was the duty of a Frontier Tower to offer up the lion's share of its loot while sending some of its best men and women.

"… Initial orientation has deemed the Dungeon's danger rating to be Green to Orange, between tier III and 5, nothing to fret over if you work together. The landscape is marshland and the dispersion of creatures are medium. There are abundant sources of crystals, rare flora as well as old ruins for you to explore. For adventuring, therefore, you will form into teams of five…"

The crowd broke into clamorous contemplation.

Gwen looked around at the suddenly cacophonic crowd. That was quick! No resting period? No "meet and greet"? Just straight to the action?

Magister Paris' voice pierced through the volume of the babbling Mages. "The entrance of the Dungeon will open at the forest's edge in exactly two hours," Paris said. "If you wish to participate, register your team with Magus Xi and Kwok. As always, all items and materials gathered from the Dungeon count toward Contribution Credits. The Diviners have determined the Dungeon duration to be seventy-two hours, after which you will be ejected onto the island. We will have Aerial Mages running pickup if you are injured, both within and outside the Dungeon. The rule for calling for assistance or forfeiture is the same as the international competition. If you choose to leave or must seek aid from an Adjudicator, your exit CCs will be halved."

Paris halted his infodump.

“…On a more pleasant note, the top three teams will receive additional CC rewards of fifty per person for first, thirty for the second, and ten for third."

An enthusiastic din radiated across the field. Fifty CCs! Gwen smacked her lips in anticipation. According to the rules, the winning team would likely gain forty CCs plus another fifty CCs per person, enough to exchange for half a year's worth of HDMs required for training. Or several spells at the fourth tier or a single tier V spell. Or several tuition sessions accompanied by a Senior Magus at a Tower.

"Well, you kids excited?" Jun grinned at the gathered members of the Song Clan.

"I am raring to go, sir." Richard's face was rosy with adrenaline. "Got any advice? It's my first Dungeon dive. I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"Not my first," Petra said casually. "I'll be fine."

"It's my first time," Gwen confessed nervously. "Fingers crossed it won't hurt too much."

Tao sniggered. Mina slapped him, then shot Tao a dirty look. "You're one to speak, Peaches, the last time you were in one…"

Tao groaned.

"Well, no worries. We’ve got a team now." Gwen placed her hand between them. "Come on, cousins!"

Richard followed through by placing his hand on top of Gwen's. Mina joined unwillingly, sighing, then Tao, and finally Petra.

"Team Cousins!" Gwen said as she waited to break the huddle. "Pain heals. CCs LAST FOREVER!"

Besides the huddle, Mack-Daddy and Little-Dog looked on gloomily.

"Sorry, guys." Gwen offered the boys her best smile.

Usually, they would pair with Tao. But she knew they wouldn't dream of asking Gwen or Petra to leave. As it stood, they would have to resign themselves to a pickup group—a far more painful prospect. Besides, as Gwen had just declared, Team Cousins was forever.

Mack-Daddy and Little-Dog assured Tao that they were alright and to look out for Gwen, then left their friend to find a pickup group. At worst, they could always tag behind Tao's party once they were in the Dungeon.

Unlike Gwen's group, which consisted entirely of family members, the rest of the Junior Mages became a chaotic jumble of shouts and moving bodies.

"Healer! I need a Healer here! We're good to go!"

"Abjurer? Is anyone a tier III Abjurer and above? We have two Evokers and Transmuters!"

"I am a tier III Cleric! Looking for a strong group to protect me! No Abjurer, no go!"

"I am the inheriting disciple of the Jurong Clan! Tier IV Evoker, tier II Transmutation!"

"Need someone who can buff! Willing to trade ten percent of all CC gained for a member that can buff Bark Skin and Absorb Element!"

It took an hour for the two hundred or so junior Mages to arrange themselves into parties of five. By then, Gwen and her party had already registered with Magus Xi, who commended their efficiency. When Xi took Gwen's card to imprint on her data-slate, she met Gwen's eyes and gave her a knowing look of "Oh, so you're the one". The PLA Magus also seemed to know Petra, for the two shared a quick exchange before processing her form.

Thankfully, Mack-Daddy and Little-Dog had found a party willing to take them, especially as Mack Daddy was supposedly a skilled Abjurer.

About thirty or so leftovers were then assembled by the organisers by force into well-balanced groups.

Gwen's party had all their bases covered. They had Abjurers, Damage Dealers, a Healer and a Support; it was an excellent composition.

Petra once more rolled the Void Bolt spell cube across her palm. "How strong is this thing?" she asked.

"One hit can kill a Soldier-class monster or a tier II to 3 beast," Gwen said. "Beware the vital drain though, I have ways to mitigate the effects, but for you…"

"I know. That's why we’ve got Mina here, right?" Petra smirked as Mina puffed her cheeks indignantly. "She'll keep us topped up."

"Of course," Mina replied with a prideful expression. "I am no slouch like Peaches."

"What should I do?" Tao scratched his head.

"Use illusion to disrupt the monsters' teamwork," Richard replied helpfully. "First observe how Gwen and I fight, then try to match our cadence. Play distraction, use Fear when you can, create decoy Greater Images if we run into a swarm, and use Mirror Image on us if we run into a bruiser, got it?"

Tao nodded, his expression taking on a look of seriousness.

"What happens if one of us gets injured mortally?" Gwen asked Mina.

"That's not supposed to happen," Mina pointed out. "Why do you think we have these compositions?"

"Let's say we do…"

"Then you become a burden," Petra interjected coldly. "This is a trial, Gwen Song. It is not a place to have fun. If and when Mages die in a Dungeon, think of it as being weeded out."

"Still, what of those young masters and mistresses out there?" Gwen pointed a thumb at the crowd, still trying to sort out their complementary skills.

"Who would want a useless disciple who cannot even survive a tier V Dungeon?" Petra remarked poignantly. "What a waste of air."

"Okay," Gwen replied, growing annoyed with Petra's irksome air of superior confidence. "What if we get into a scuffle or friendly fire? Or let's say someone's after us, or that we're after someone else? Can we attack the other Mages, even in self-defence?"

"That is a matter for the adjudicators," Petra stated flatly. "We need only to fight and survive, even if it means fighting the other Mages. The inside of a Dungeon is a free-for-all."

"But—"

"Gwen." Richard placed a hand on Gwen's shoulders. "We'll see what it's like when we're inside. You worry too much. I'll protect us."

"At any rate," Mina interjected. "We all have Contingency Rings. Likewise, most of the clans have rings they lend out to disciples going out on potentially dangerous quests."

"You do?" Gwen glanced at Mina's hands. She had a full complement of rings.

"Mine teleports me back to the Wang Estate," Mina said.

"I’ve got one too." Tao flashed his digits. "Dad bought us all insurance."

"I don't have a ring, but," Petra stated warmly, "my Master has crafted me a Crystal cube that has the same function."

"Well, I am fucked," Richard said disparagingly. He just had the one ring. The Storage Ring that Gwen gave him. "Guess I'll just have to survive the old-fashioned way."

The party turned to look at Gwen.

Gwen also had a Contingency Ring. But how could she tell them that she owned Gunther Shultz's ring, one that allowed for single, life-saving teleportation virtually anywhere in the civilised world, taking her directly into an associated Tower? Or that it was contracted to guaranteed healing and protection? Her unique item made their localised Contingency Rings look like toys.

"I have a ring," Gwen confessed.

Thankfully, a sudden thrum interrupted their exchange, after which the island beneath them shifted with a slight tremor.

The forest, which had seemed so substantial and real only moments ago, began to diffuse. A rolling fog poured from the woods, forming a smoky, swirling miasma.

"It's here!" someone shouted jubilantly. "My CCs!"

"Be careful you don't die a few hours into the Dungeon!" his peers jeered.

"You'll protect me, right?" a female voice not far from Gwen announced adorably.

"Of course!" a masculine voice answered, causing more jeering.

Magister Paris' voice penetrated the din. "Mages, you will enter the Dungeon in the order in which you registered. When I call out your number, proceed forward.

"Guardians and parents, we have portable habitats set up if you wish to remain on the island. Otherwise, you are free to return to your duties. We will contact you at the first opportunity should an unforeseen circumstance arise. To reiterate, the Tower has Senior Mages on standby within the Dungeon should your wards desire assistance. Likewise, allow me to stipulate that the dangers here are real, and injury is inevitable. If you cannot agree to that, refrain from participation."

Gwen watched the young Mages move into blocks of five, forming a line that led toward the fog, which even now was becoming as thick as a woollen blanket. Even from here, she could feel the ley lines and their unstable mana flux.

"Contestants, proceed! Move forward in an orderly fashion!"

Gwen's chest constricted as the groups began to move.

"Hold hands," Petra announced as the fog loomed. "Sometimes, the spatial distortion of entering a different space can separate us. Stick close, but if you feel something pulling on you, let go."

"Why let go?" Gwen inquired. "Wouldn't it be better to try and stay as a group?"

"If you don't let go, expect to take someone's arm with you," Petra advised impatiently, likely wondering why her grand auntie had so much faith in two Frontier newbies who had never even been inside a low-tier Dungeon. "Remember, the more violent the displacement, the further we're likely to be taken apart from one another."

"I prepared Flare spells," Mina said helpfully. "Look for my Glyph signature in the sky."

"Assuming there's a sky," Petra added. "Though Paris did say it's a marshland."

"I'll funk it up with some beats and a bitch'n projection so you can all come hollering!" Tao likewise volunteered.

Gwen couldn't help but imagine a twenty-foot projection of Chinese Tupac beckoning his teammates to join him.

"How likely are we to be separated?" Gwen asked as they moved forward.

"Almost certainly, but the displacement ranges from a few metres to a kilometre at worst," Petra answered. "More likely than not, at least two or three of us will stay together."

"Okay, here we go!" Richard's voice quivered. "My first Dungeon Dive with Gwen! You're my lucky star, Cousin!"

Gwen's hand felt small and moist in her cousin's palm as the fog enveloped them.

There was a sudden tug, then a wrenching pain that shot up her forearm. The force that sought to separate them was immense.

Gwen desired to hold on for dear life, but Petra's contrary advice rang in her ears. She felt a moment of paralytic hesitation before Richard made the call in her stead. His rigid fingers squeezed her fleshy palm reassuringly, and then his hand was gone.

Chapter twenty-three

Human Nature

Gwen felt the expansive force of spatial distortion on her arm like a vicious vice rending her flesh and sinew.

If what Petra had said was accurate and the Dungeon's interior was more extensive than its exterior, shouldn't the spatial expansion affect their bodies as a whole? Why separate individuals? Then again, Gwen reminded herself, it wasn't as though the magical forces of this world followed any of the rational laws of earthly physics. Here was a place of pocket dimensions and one-Mage nuclear arsenals—a world where shark-rhinos swam through solid rock.

In addition to the dizzying disorientation, there was also a strange sensation of inertia and vertigo. Gwen's vision blurred, then with a loud WHOMP, the surrounding air cleared. There was a sensation of falling, then a splash as she struck the ground.

Gwen landed on all fours in a salty pool of brackish plant matter padded thickly with silt. A generous dash of the foul-smelling liquid splashed against her chest, turning her blouse into full-bodied camouflage. A portion of it entered her open mouth, making her gag.

"C-Caliban!"

A roving mass of spider legs skittered out from the space between two planes. Caliban stood two metres tall in its spider form in front of the mud-caked sorceress, its long legs effortlessly stabbing into the soft earth.

Quickly, she clambered onto her spider demon thing. Gwen had yet to see Caliban, now tier IV, prove his mettle against a Magical Beast of equal power. But considering its sterling performance against the tier V Wanka, she was confident in her familiar's abilities. Comparatively, Ariel was too tiny to navigate the swamp, but Caliban's leggy form was perfect for wading through the murky byways and billabongs.

"Shaa! Shaa!" Caliban promised to keep watch.

With a thought, Gwen materialised the Decanter of Endless Water. She changed the setting to lukewarm and poured the decanter over herself, washing away the mud and grime, clearing out the foul taste in her mouth. When enough of the disgusting substance fell away, she replaced the flask and produced a pink cube of inscribed crystal.

"Prestidigitation!"

She felt the marsh's foulness clear from her body, her dirty hair joyous at receiving the much-needed benediction. Her face as well, even her little nooks and crannies became cleansed of the intrusive, sticky muck.

In her hand, the light within the cube died. It would need another LDM to resume its function. After praising the inventors of Magitech, she stowed the cube away and investigated her surroundings.

True to the words of Magister Paris, the terrain was a salt marsh. The tepid, foul-smelling water reached up to her knees, making travelling on foot trying. She no longer had her Water Walking Ring, which she had returned. Gunther's gift did not have secondary effects paired with its august primary function.

Gwen tried to orientate herself, to no avail. In senior school, she, Elvia and Yue had failed orienteering.

The failure to discern directions made her paranoid and worried. Anxiously, her luminous eyes scanned the distance for details.

The Dungeon's horizon was an uncertain grey smog, made indistinct by the steamy mass of swamp gas that rose from the marsh intermittently. Troves of trees, spartan and stripped of leaves, distended from the water like rot-clad, bony fingers.

Beside her, Caliban paced here and there, testing the murk ahead. Gwen watched the spider-thing hover its cephalothorax over the water, its legs moving with the fluidity of hydraulic pistons in mechanical motion.

"Caliban, can you arch your body like so," Gwen commanded.

Caliban heeded her communication. Gwen pushed against Caliban's leg joint, feeling the sockets of its limbs slightly depress as she saddled up on the spider's back, near the front where its head offered a seating platform. The netherworld spider's thorax carapace consisted of smooth pearlescent plates, affording her plenty of purchase. Beneath her buttocks, she could feel the pseudo-organs pulsating inside Caliban's body, a shadowy mockery of the form the Lovecraftian-being had consumed.

Caliban then dug its legs into the marsh, moving in tandem by crossing its long spindly limbs asymmetrically. Behind them, Caliban's tail, a barbed thing resembling a whip with a pointed spear, wagged as Gwen sent a mental command to giddy-up.

"Hi-ho, Caliban! Away!" she announced to the air, and Caliban skittered forward, its body keeping a near-perfect gyroscopic plane via its four pairs of legs.

"Alright," Gwen said. "Let's head toward the grove over there and see if we can get a better vantage on our whereabouts!"

"Shaa-Shaa!"

"Ha! WHOA."

Caliban stepped into an obfuscated snag beneath the brackish stream, immediately sending rider and beast face-first into the water.

Gwen closed her mouth tightly as she struck the surface. Suffice it to say, it was going to be a long, wet day.

Fei Lin expanded his Shield before falling into the mud. It was just as well that the saline water held mostly moss and decayed vegetation and not sharp bits of jagged stone or sharpened branches.

"Camouflage," the junior Illusionist incanted just as the waters around him became displaced by the Shielding, disrupting the serene marsh's tranquillity.

Righting himself, Fei waited for the dark waters to return to calmness, then took in his surroundings. He waited patiently for any curious creatures to visit the disturbance, watching out for other contestants who may have landed in the vicinity.

He was both relieved and disappointed after five minutes.

Okay, Fei told himself. Slow and steady.

As an Illusionist major, he could keep the Camouflage spell up near indefinitely. There was a grove of trees in the distance, meaning he could Spider Climb his way up to get a better lay of the land.

Fei waited a minute more, then moved.

Gwen nestled herself comfortably into the second digit of Caliban's bulbous body, her feet caught between a crevice where soft purple tissue pulled and tugged as the creature moved.

Once Caliban got used to the terrain, her ride became much safer.

Unfortunately, whenever Caliban attempted to gain speed, a wave of muddy matter splashed over the pair. After half a kilometre and another Prestidigitation, Gwen resigned herself to the reality of marsh tramping and decided to change.

She replaced her cowgirl getup with a pair of waterproof trail shoes and a full-body nylon skinsuit. Her broad-brimmed hat was likewise stowed, for the sunlight in the swamp was sickly and Gwen felt that she needed to watch for dangers both above and below. Her ponytail was tied and tied again, forming a tight knot that prevented gunk from catching in her hair.

She wondered how the others were dealing with this. Were their clothes enchanted to repel dirt and water? Or perhaps they had means of walking across the water? Conversely, Gwen pondered thoughtfully, in this watery world, Richard would be having a field day.

"Hi-ho!" She knocked her heels against Caliban's sides and they were on their way. She briefly fantasised about firing a few Flashbangs into the sky to attract her teammates but decided against it. Lord knows what she could draw on in a place like this.

Thus engaged, Master and scorpion-spider rode through the swampy arena, splashing here and there as they made furious progress toward the tree line of the elevated plateau.

When they came well within the grove's spell range, Gwen commanded Caliban to slow and watch for hostiles. As her Wildland survival skill was near non-existent, she had to trust that Caliban's vitality-sensing organs weren't just for show.

"Shaa!" Caliban moved gingerly toward the trees, then paused. It waved its tail overhead, undulating its fleshy tip like a cobra's head. "SHAA!"

Gwen felt a tiny sliver of vitality drain from her body, passing between herself and her familiar before inseminating itself into its obsidian interior.

A hooked barb shot out from the tail with a wet squelch, ejaculating itself across the span of six metres or so. With a violent thunk, it embedded itself into a tree.

"KYAAAAAA! ARRRRRGH!"

A camouflaged form on the tree began to writhe and turn as the barbed hook injected its payload of corrosive energy. The indistinct form fell from the branch and struck the water, then Caliban began to reel in its tail.

By Mao’s Crystal Tomb, an elf-spider! Fei held his mouth to prevent himself from screaming.

He had just skirted half the circumference of the grove when he’d heard splashes, then hid quickly by shimmying up a tree and making himself scarce.

What the fuck is a Possessed arachnid doing here? Since when did they cross habitats into the marsh? Fei tried to recall the Demi-human bestiary classes.

Dark Elves were underground Demi-humans that lived in massive cavern complexes. They belonged to a class of Demi-human sprites that worshipped the Gods of the Dark, creating a dangerous religion that worshipped nefarious schemes and the doctrine of might makes right. The Bestiary stated that when members of their society were condemned, they were forced to undergo a ritualistic form of torture that transmogrified the humanoid upper body onto a giant spider's base, creating an engine of cruelty and spite.

The spider-worshipping dwellers of the dark typically settled in areas with extensive underground networks, such as Borneo, Mexico or the northern Black Zones of South America. So what the hell was one doing in Hengsha? Had the creature perhaps wandered into some naturally forming wormhole, connected by swirls of mana caught in an underground ley-line?

Fei forced himself to calm his nerves so that he could study the creature's weaknesses, as his elders had instructed him.

First, he counted the legs. There were eight in total and a lashing tail. That didn't make sense—Spiders had eight legs but no tail. Scorpions had eight legs, two pincers and a stinger.

What the hell was this thing, then? Was this a rare spawn or a failed chimaera?

His eyes moved upward. There, the shape was more than pleasing.

There was something familiar about the female torso that extended from the front, which he couldn't quite place. The feminine silhouette reminded him of that Lightning Conjurer belle from the ferry. Still, this thing was a far cry from the gorgeous, electric-eyed sorceress, for prideful Lightning was antithetical to the baseness of this Negative-aligned monster.

Soon, the undoubtedly female creature began to move. Fei could see her contour even from this distance, marked by some dark membrane half-covered by drying mud. The female's form had a serpentine waist just above the spindly skittering legs. Her face was not discernible beneath the muck. Curiously, the Possessed wore its hair in a bun. More horrifically, where its hips joined the thorax, there was another mouth where several tentacles flailed, dripping grey goo as each "head" went about its business as though possessing minds of their own.

Fei shuddered. He instinctively knew that a Possessed Spider such as this loved to eat its prey alive.

Still, that upper body. Was the Elf-Spider as intelligent as they said?

The creature didn't seem to be carrying any equipment as it stalked here and there, dodging invisible things as it approached.

Finally, it stopped just a few metres outside the grove.

Fei almost shat himself. Did it see him? He was well-camouflaged.

Then, unexpectedly, its stinger tail moved to the fore and burst open with a wet clang, ejecting forth a pink blur that embedded itself half a metre from where Fei had hidden with a wet THUNK!

Fei's heart almost exploded. Then, he saw with horrific, gut-wrenching horror that a pink barb had penetrated the middle of what appeared to be an amphibious creature about the size of a large dog.

Unlike him, the thing possessed natural camouflage. With a wet thump, it fell from the tree, writhing and screeching.

Fei felt bile rise in his throat as the beast was dragged kicking and screaming towards the Spider Elf, who lifted it from the water with its retraction mechanism. He could see now that the stinger's victim was a frog—a dangerous-looking thing with chitinous horns over its balloon-like eyes, its skin bustling with pustules that dripped venom.

The tail offered the twisting, dying creature to the female head, but the elfin face grimaced in disgust.

Then it happened just as Fie had thought it would. The creature shoved the frog into its lower mouth where a dozen pincer-claws began to strip it of its flesh while the frog croaked in despair.

Finally, Fei's life living in the greenhouse of academia caught up with him.

It was too much.

He had held back as much as he could, but no more.

Doubling over, he began to vomit controllably.

"Who's there!" Despite her failure at both spot and wilderness orienteering, she couldn't fail to spot a vomiting length of mangrove.

The choking and gagging sounds the tree made were undoubtedly familiar, for she had heard it many times before as a girl living in Forestville, where every Friday night up until two am, the streets below their apartment had been filled with the sound of NoMs purging the contents of their stomachs.

Caliban flung away the foul-tasting frog below her and skittered into the grove, parking itself directly under the shivering tree.

"Show yourself," Gwen commanded, readying a Flashbang. "Who are you?"

A young man peeled himself from the tree and climbed down on all fours. He had a soft, effeminate face that was womanly, an anorexic figure, and long hair worn at shoulder length. From a distance, it would be easy to mistake the silhouette for a skinny girl.

"You… can talk?" The young man visibly swallowed some of his ejecta. "Greetings, I am Fei Lin of the Huashan Clan of Lins."

"Do you know a Frederick Lin?" Gwen was caught off-guard by the young man's impertinent challenge of her ability to speak and so followed up with the only thought that came to mind.

"Fu Lei? He's my cousin and fellow disciple," Fei replied.

"So what are you doing here?" Gwen asked, dismounting from Caliban. "I am Gwen Song, by the way."

The young man's eyes bulged against his sockets. "How can you detach from your lower body?"

Gwen looked to Caliban, who shrugged with a "Shaa?" then turned back to the bewildered young Mage.

"I am human!" Gwen pointed to her legs. "I am a Conjurer and that's my familiar, Caliban."

"Of course, whatever you say." Fei nodded eagerly, his eyes warily inspecting her limbs.

"Look," Gwen felt a little annoyed, "I think we might have a misunderstanding."

"No, no. I believe you." Fei nodded eagerly, not coming any closer than necessary. "You're human, I know."

Gwen sighed. "Have you seen anyone else around?"

"Just you and me," Fei replied automatically, then his face grew pale from the terrible admission. "No, I mean, there are others. Around here. Close. Close enough to hear me scream!"

Gwen rolled her eyes, ignored the Mage, then patted Caliban to settle her fear-tasting Familiar, commanding it to scale one of the trees. Without apparent effort, Caliban's sword-like limbs tore into the branches, sending down a shower of broken wood and loose leaves as it went.

Fei stared.

Meanwhile, Caliban perched itself comfortably across the branches of two trees, its spear-like limbs embedded into the sodden wood. From her new vantage point, Gwen could see a commotion in the distance.

A Sigil Flare she didn't recognise hovered over the horizon, setting the swamp gas aflame in hues of carmine and lilac, indicating a combat engagement. The other directions seemed to contain nothing, at least for now.

With a command from its Master, Caliban hopped from the tree and landed below gracefully, using its long limbs to skitter from upper to lower branch while balancing Gwen on its back.

"Okay, there's combat that way," Gwen pointed out helpfully to the cautious Illusionist. "I am going to check it out. You coming?"

Fei's indecisiveness was written on his face.

"Suit yourself." Gwen turned from the junior Mage. If there was combat in the distance, it could very well involve one of her teammates. She didn't have the time to waste on this idiotic Lin and his fantasies.

Fei watched the spider girl skitter off into the distance.

If there was going to be combat, wouldn't it mean that potentially, his team could be a part of it too? If so, what would happen if the Spider-Conjurer barged in and assaulted them?

The young Illusionist scanned the empty skies. Where were the Adjudicators? Were they watching somewhere? And if they were, would they just let this fiendish spider demon ravage its way through the swamp?

He looked toward his right, where the drained carcass of a frog the size of a hunting hound floated placidly on the surface of the dark water. Its skin was entirely shrivelled, deprived of all vitality.

It had been Negative drained to death.

Fei gritted his teeth. "Water Walk!" he invoked a Magic Item, then ran in the direction the spider girl had gone.

Caliban crushed another of the frogspawn creatures in its maw as the fiend pistoned ahead with its sword-like legs, slicing through the marshland with the efficiency of a combine-harvester.

As they approached a waist-deep region covered with sedge, all manners of strange amphibian creatures began to flee from Caliban's wrath.

The sedan-sized spider was relentless. As it made swift locomotion with its eight hind-limbs, its two forward "claws" stabbed downward with unerring accuracy, lifting from the water bits of fish, chunks of frog, and the occasional salamander, all of which Gwen's monster fed into its maw without a moment's hesitation.

"Caliban, you glutton," Gwen chided the nightmarish thing.

"Shaa! Shaa!" Caliban cooed, informing her of its joy.

While Caliban's thorax grew engorged, Gwen could feel a trickle of vitality feeding into her astral body, transforming into motes of Almudj's emerald mana. Was this what it was like to feast upon magical creatures? Gwen wanted to experiment some more, perhaps with a mega-fauna of some kind. If there were a way to keep her vitality up and Almudj's essence happy, then she could be a Void Mage yet.

It took her fifteen minutes to reach the glowing gas that surrounded an island plateau overgrown with thick, dark green vegetation.

"Shield!"

"Wall of Stone!"

"Firebolt!"

"True Strike!"

"Take that!"

"AARRGH—"

The commotions of combat within, mixed in with the tumult of incantations, involved a cacophony of explosions, skittering stones, an occasional grunt, and the sound of bodies splashing violently.

"Caliban, stay close and stay low. Get ready."

Gwen dismounted and proceeded on foot, stepping wetly onto the mossy mass of semi-solid bog. Her creature dug into the soft peat, following her discreetly.

There was a clearing inside the grove, in the midst of which was a large tree much taller than the surrounding mangroves. Its extensive root system crawled across the moss floor, looking like serpentine sinews.

At the foot of the tree was a mass of skeletons, most of which were amphibian.

A group of young Mages were fighting what appeared to be a giant red leathery bullfrog.

A Frog-kin? Not quite. The creature did not appear terrestrial in origin. Imposingly, the xenos amphibian stood over two metres when it reared up on its hind legs. Its arms, elongated and muscular, ended with horrifically long claws. Its plated skin was a gleaming mess of red welts crisscrossed with festering boils. Its eyes were two amber dots gleaming with malice, utterly mad with glee that it had found prey.

As Gwen watched, a Firebolt fizzled against its skin. Innate magic resistance! Gwen marvelled. Whatever the Mages threw at the thing seems to slide from its thick hide.

By that same measure, the creature's natural weapons seemed incapable of penetrating the stone fortifications the defender's skilful Abjurer had affected. Its assault slid harmlessly across the stone Shields whenever it lashed out with alternatively howling frustration and hooting, gibbering joy.

Should she help? What was the etiquette? Unquestionably, her fellow Humans weren't in any danger. Should she enjoy the show or leave them be?

The party that fought the frog thing consisted of five young men—one Abjurer, two Evokers, a Cleric and another Gwen couldn't tell. From the fact that the Mage was throwing out harmless Magic Missiles, he was likely a Diviner.

She was just about to holler out and ask if they would like a hand when she spotted something moving atop the five-person party. There was a second bullfrog up in the foliage of the giant banyan tree!

"Oi, you guys! Ambush!" she shouted. "Overhead!"

The Diviner picked up on Gwen's warning. He must have used a Mass Message, for when the hulking frog thing dropped down violently, it halfway kissed a Stone Shield that sent it careening away. Whether willfully or by accident, it barrel-rolled toward Gwen.

"Thanks, but watch out!" the Diviner shouted back, waving frantically.

Gwen waved back. "Caliban, stop that thing—"

Without warning, the recovered murder frog leapt from where it had previously landed, then bull-rushed her with a single bound from its tree-trunk sized legs. Its maw opened to reveal razor-sharp teeth as it cleared the space between them in a heartbeat. Gwen baulked; clearly, this creature did not survive by eating insects.

She willed her familiar to defend her, invoking the skill that its spider form gained from consuming Wanka. Instantly, a portion of mana and vitality drained from her body.

"Cali!" Next came her battle cry, her voice rising above the clearing like a Valkyrie's death wail. "Onslaught, now!"

With a combination of Expeditious Retreat and Water Walking, Fei followed the spider girl.

He had again used Camouflage to hide, observing how the girl interacted with the Mages she encountered. If she were hostile, he would delay the girl and warn the others. If she was friendly, maybe they could travel together for a short while and look for their mutual companions.

When he thought of the girl's exquisite face, his heart fluttered. And then, his brain reminded him that she rode on a spider demon from the lowest depth of the underworld. After all, the drained carcasses "Gwen" and her pet left littered in their wake was evidence of the girl's malignancy.

How could anyone with such a capacity for violence be benign? Hadn’t his tutor said that such life-draining abominations were antithetical to the existence of life? Weren't the Undead that haunted China's northern border precisely the bane of their generation?

Wracked with indecision, he chose to watch in silence.

And then the fallen frog-demon turned to attack the girl.

It was demon-on-demon action, but Fei felt strangely worried as the Demi-human frog turned its aggression towards Gwen. With a single bound, the amphibian cleared the space and was almost within striking distance of her.

What would the Conjurer girl do? Shield up? Drain its life?

"SCREEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

A soul-piercing wail penetrated Fei's eardrums like a dagger.

From behind the hazel-eyed sorceress, her spider familiar launched itself toward the frog, catching it midair.

"Shaa! Shaa! SCREEEEEE!"

Fei Lin watched with heart-in-mouth as the creature pinned the frog into the ground with its spear-like tail, penetrating its rubbery hide as readily as if its magic-resistant hide were wet paper.

Below, the hulking red frog returned the favour by swiping its claws across the spider's abdomen, taking out a good chunk of purple-pink flesh near its soft belly, causing a cascade of ichor to shower the frog in bruised blood.

Then the scorpion-sword-spider transformed into a meat grinder.

Its limbs blurred, becoming a howling gale of stabbing blades and slicing forearms. The frog croaked and barked, making a desperate pitch of guttural horror as it fought back, confused as to why its prey wasn't dying.

"SCREEE! SCREEE! SCREEEEEE!"

The upper portion of the frog's torso was flayed away within a second, revealing the thick white bones that made up its skeleton. Still, the frog incredulously lived on, seeking to fight or flight.

Finally, two sword-limbs pinned the frog's arms into the ground, then the scorpion-spider lifted its torso to reveal a second mouth.

"OH, MY MAO!" Fei again felt bile rising in his throat.

A dozen writhing tentacles, each with a lamprey's mouth, dug into the frog creature's exposed viscera and began to feed.

Unable to help himself, the mangrove tree vomited again.

Gwen didn't know what she had expected. She knew that empowering Caliban made it more robust and resilient to magic and physical attacks and Hasted it as well, but never had she imagined just how aggressive her spiderling could become.

As such, when Caliban performed the full-monty in plain view of an adventuring party, Gwen realised that she had far underestimated Caliban's Lovecraftian charisma.

The remaining red-skinned frog stopped attacking the party, turned one-eighty, and fled the scene.

The other Mage party couldn't even be bothered giving chase. They just stared at Gwen as though they'd seen the loin-spawn of an Elder-horror devour a human-sized frog by vivisecting its top half and then eating it from the inside out while it writhed and begged for the sweet mercy of death.

How Gwen wished the whole scene was merely an illusion, but no. They could still smell the blood and guts of the frog thing. Her spider thing was still licking its fucking chops as though it had finished an entree and was expecting more.

If so, what was the main course? Gwen looked around. The Mages couldn’t be the main.

The previously friendly Abjurer shifted his position to stand in front of his party protectively, facing Gwen head-on.

Oh God, Gwen groaned, cursing herself for letting her conceit get to her head. She had been so eager to see Caliban in action that she'd allowed the situation to escalate without fully considering the ramifications of Caliban's expressionist art on the public gallery.

"My name is Gwen Song. A member of the House of Song. My grandfather is a director of the MSS!" She called out toward the team, hoping for the best. "This is my familiar. He's harmless. A cutie really, like a pony!"

"Shaa!" Caliban helped out gleefully. "Shaa! Shaa!"

"Caliban, heel!" Gwen withdrew her mana and commanded Caliban to shrink backwards demurely. She noticed a white-purple scar where its wound had been, healed by the vital force Caliban had taken from the frog-thing.

"Stay your distance!" the Abjurer called out.

Gwen stepped back. Her familiar did not follow but moved forward and nudged the corpse.

With its pincers, it retrieved a jagged crystal the size of a fist. Within the core's uneven surface, potent motes of chaotic mana twisted and turned, glowing a dull shade of crimson.

Oh? Gwen felt her Kirin amulet glow warmly. A Creature Core already?

Opposite the strikingly beautiful foreign sorceress, Hu Sheng and his teammates stared at the Spider Familiar's loot.

A Creature Core! And not just any core either. A Dungeon Beast core, a tier IV core of a beast that resisted low-level magic!

The instant the Creature Core had seen the light of day, the atmosphere of fear and suspicion changed. The fearful eyes of those within his grew bulbous with desire, their breaths quickening as they studied the lonesome, skinny sorceress.

Hu Sheng couldn't believe his luck. They had been here for two hours! Just two hours out of three days, and they had already found a Creature Core?

It was unbelievable. It was like stumbling upon an HDM mine! A core of this quality was worth at least 30 CCs, maybe more! More importantly, this was the core of a creature they had never seen before! Mao forbid! It could be something exceedingly rare. If so, could it be worth 50 CCs? More perhaps?

Hu Sheng eyed this "Gwen Song". The sorceress was skilled, but she was a gweilo, a foreigner. Could someone like that be related to a committee member?

Likewise, was the girl that dangerous? Knowing his Spellcraft theory, commanding something with the stature of this spider beast must have its drawbacks. A limited range, perhaps, or a limited manifestation duration.

Looking at the girl now, Hu was sure he was right. The girl looked sickly, weak, like someone suffering from mana burn. Her complexion was ashen, indicating someone who was put out by the combat.

As birds die for feed, so men die for fortune, Hu convinced himself with an ancient proverb.

Where the girl had seemed a Mage of impressive power a moment ago, all he could see now was a skinny Acolyte standing next to a spent spider-thing. Most importantly, Hu was in a well-formed, well-trained party, and the girl was alone.

Anyway, so what if the girl was related to a colonel in the MSS? Were they not likewise well-connected sons of notable patriarchs in high places? Not to mention the unspoken rule of a Dungeon was might makes right. How stupid was the girl to try to frighten them with her family connections? How green? It must be her first dive. Just look at the way she stood there, pretty as a picture, yet to meet up with her party, not worried at all while holding that precious Creature Core.

Hu sent out a Silent Message. His teammates concurred.

The monster core was theirs. The girl had merely got lucky. They were the ones who had spent all that time fighting the monster—they deserved it more than she did.

Hu stepped up. He was the leader. He made the call.

"Look here," he declared to the girl. "That Creature Core belongs to us. That was our kill you stole."

The girl met his gaze without so much as a twitch of her porcelain, impassive expression.

"Don't be shy now." Hu grinned. "Hand it over. No one wants to hurt a pretty girl, least of all gentlemen like us."

Chapter twenty-four

Risk and Reward

As an old witch in a young girl's body, Gwen saw the Abjurer's avarice a mile away.

There was an old aphorism in her alter-world. When profit exceeds the single-digit percentage in a bull market, traders are willing to take inordinate risks. When the advantage exceeds double-digit figures, individuals are willing to flout the law. When the margin of profit surpasses even that, financiers will voluntarily risk the market economy and others' lives.

Unsurprisingly, her Divination Sigil pinged her spine, affirming the immediate danger of her future, unpleasant encounter. Forcing herself to calm, she weighed the boons and banes of resistance.

If she relented, she could arguably score another Creature Core. There was, after all, another one of the creatures, if not more. Secondly, she would also have to fight five Mages at once, which placed her at an extreme disadvantage. Thirdly, her Void spells were too costly for AOEs, and her Lightning did not fare well against Earthen Mages. She also had no idea who they were or what family connections her foes possessed. Even if she "won" by crushing them in a pyrrhic victory, she may lose out in other ways.

Conversely, if she "won", her reward for victory was a single Creature Core.

Gwen made her choice.

She would pay them back ten-fold in the future, if and when another opportunity presented itself. Revenge, as they say, was a dish best served cold.

Now considered and cool-headed, she put up her hands and walked backwards, commanding Caliban to likewise back off, dropping the Frog core at its feet.

The Abjurer proceeded until he was within the range, then retrieved it with a Mage Hand.

"Good girl." He smiled at her, eyeing her appreciatively.

Gwen read his following thoughts and felt no desire to linger. She would find her team first and then these fucks would know her wrath. She wasn't sure whether Hengsha's Adjudicators would intervene, but she'd be damned if she let them leave the Dungeon in one piece.

Caliban picked her up with a swift sweep of its forelegs, then they were away.

"Hey!" Hu hollered behind her.

Gwen silently incanted her favourite disruption spell, then fled as fast as Caliban's legs could carry her.

"Smart girl." Hu’s voice faced, ending with a quizzical, "Now, what is this?"

Strangely, where Gwen had expected at least a token pursuit, there was none.

She moved in the opposite direction, no longer caring for the splashing of mud as Caliban roved across the landscape, devouring whatever unfortunate creature that crossed its path.

The occasional Magical Beast provided a moderate challenge, though she managed by pairing Caliban's attacks with Dark Tentacles and the occasional Lightning Bolt. The Dungeons' lower-tier monsters became easy prey for her Void fiend between the snare and the paralysis.

Though Gwen was no zoologist, she noted that two predominant colours, scarlet and ultramarine, seemed to afflict the magical creatures of this region. Furthermore, it appeared that the fauna's offensive mainstay was poison, which would explain the vivid hues. Thankfully, Caliban, who wasn't even in possession of organs, cared little for the toxic protein. Nonetheless, looking at the fetid salt swamp and its grey expanse, Gwen couldn't help but wonder why the creatures were all so similar. What had happened to coastal biodiversity?

By dusk, there was a noticeable increase in the activity of the alien amphibians. When at last Caliban finished a round of combat but failed to replenish the vitality it had spent, she acknowledged that she had better find a place to put herself up. Despite being vitalised by Caliban's harvest of flesh, her mana pool wasn't nearly as sustainable.

The fact that she had not seen anyone even as final hours of daylight fell stimulated her growing anxiety, causing her to jump at every shadow. Didn't Petra say they should be close? Surely she had travelled at least eight or ten kilometres at this stage. Just how unlucky was she?

She tried her Message device out of curiosity, but it was dead beyond a limited distance without a Divination Tower. Perhaps one day, when she had mastered the School of Divination, she could offer herself as the team's communications relay. Until then, she was silent and cut off.

In the distance, Gwen spotted yet another peat-covered isle held together by a profusion of gangly mangroves. Caliban made swift progress as it waded up to its waist toward the island, dragging itself onto its banks, a slimy, crimson catfish arrested in its maw.

Arriving at its centre, Gwen sent Caliban to scout the perimeter while she summoned Ariel to keep watch. The little marten jealously eyed her spider-thing as it stalked off, then dashed about here and there mischievously.

Next, she materialised the Portable Habitat and slotted an HDM into its battery compartment. With a thrum, the device initiated. When Gwen deposited the instrument a few feet away, a portal appeared atop the model of the tiny bungalow. She then channelled a good portion of her Lightning charged mana and began to manifest a Faithful Hound, an invisible guardian that would keep watch while she rested within the portal.

"Um, excuse me, Miss Song?"

Ariel zipped toward the source of the uninvited presence, becoming a white streak of furry thunderbolt ready to visit terrible, paralytic reckoning. "Ariel, down!"

Gwen recognised the voice. "Fei?" Her brow furrowed.

Fei emerged from the Camouflage Illusion, his clothes worse for wear for spending hours pursuing her.

"I am sorry to disturb you," the effeminate-faced young man begged. "Do you think… I could borrow a bit of your Habitat's space?"

Fei looked like he'd been through hell and high water, the very picture of pity. In the distance, Caliban came skittering, a scarecrow spider stalking on obsidian swords.

"Please don't eat me!" Fei bowed deeply, offering the equivalent of a dog showing its belly. "And please help me!"

Gwen felt her irritation turn to compassion as the young man shivered in the dying light of dusk. Not far from him, Caliban's faceless head glinted with the sickly glow of the declining sun.

Despite her earlier encounter, she felt sorry for the boy. "It's fine, just don't do it again." She gave the poor Acolyte a reassuring sigh, her eyes scanning the dishevelled young Mage from head to toe. The young man was pungently odious after his marshland adventure.

She thought of the events of this morning, at which point a welcoming realisation came to mind.

"Fei," Gwen inquired sweetly, looking at the young man in a new light, "did you distract those assholes from earlier? Was that why they didn't chase me?"

Fei's face flushed, stammering that he thought it best if they didn't follow her and that he'd left an illusion of her escaping in the opposite direction. At that moment, the quiet, unassuming young man reminded her a little of Percy.

"Alright." Gwen withheld an urge to hug the smelly man. "Do you know how to cook?"

Fei Lin rarely cooked, but as a non-inheriting disciple without a cadre of NoM servants, he knew how to make a tasty meal from simple ingredients. When Gwen produced bottled sauces, pasta, frozen mince, bacon, mushroom and bread, he felt hurt by the imbalance of resources.

Just how spacious was this girl's Storage Ring?

"Carbonara with mushroom and chicken," she commanded him.

Thankfully, the packet instructions were in Chinese. As the pasta boiled, Gwen asked Fei about her earlier dilemma.

"So, not engaging those guys was the right choice?"

"Undoubtedly so," Fei replied, his hands carefully slicing and dicing. "I don't know who the others are, but the Abjurer is the inheriting son of the Clan of Xiao, a dynastic family. They're a millennia-old Clan that's survived the transition of epochs and revolutions. Very much old money and old magic. If you had killed or maimed one of these guys, I honestly don't know what would have happened."

"What about the Adjudicators? Wouldn't they cut in?"

"Well, unless you intend to kidnap them or torture them, the modus of the Adjudicators is not to intervene. Usually, in a Dungeon of this size, there'd be a dozen of them at most. Localised conflicts like duels and robbery are expectant encounters in a Dungeon. If you can look at it another way, this is all training for us. If someone dies, their job is to verify the conditions surrounding an Acolyte's death, not to save the individual."

"That's brutal." Gwen frowned. Magister Paris had seemed so friendly in marketing the Dungeon as a grand adventure.

"This is my second Dungeon dive," Fei said. "During my first, I saw an entire team swallowed up by a worm creature that they had foolishly challenged. When the Adjudicators put it down and opened up its stomach—"

"Pasta's boiling." Gwen stopped him right there.

Fei shook the vision from his head. "One guy survived. That's the Abjurer you almost fought."

"How do the Lins compare to, say, the Xiao?" Gwen pivoted the topic, having no desire to know about half-digested teenagers.

"Shouldn't you know?" Fei added the packet sauce. "Our families know each other. The Songs and the Lins are all new Houses that emerged after the Revolution in the forties, coming to prominence in the decades since the CCP took power. The clans or 'Clanners' see us as upstarts."

"What about Mina's family, the Wangs?" Gwen inquired.

Fei regarded her strangely. "The Wang family is a mercantile family. No notable bloodlines, but they've been trading with tier I and Frontier cities for generations. I'd say if you were to put the wealthiest individuals in Shanghai on a list, a double-digit ranking for the Clan of Wang wouldn't be out of the question."

So Mina is humbler than she put on. Gwen considered this new information. Tao as well. So they're the kids of a billionaire?

When they sat down to share the meal, Fei asked a few questions of his own.

"Are you really from a Frontier city?" Fei’s face remained full of disbelief. "With your talent, shouldn't you be the heiress of some archaic household? Also, what kind of Acolyte casually carries a Portable Habitat? This thing costs a single HDM per activation, half the weekly wage of a low-level Fabricator Mage. This particular model must be worth hundreds or thousands of HDMs!"

While Fei ranted, Gwen engaged the creamy pasta with the voracity of Caliban's onslaught.

After dinner, Fei offered to do the washing up and the cleaning. After that, Gwen showered, dressed, then rested well, leaving a wide-eyed Fei sleeping in the room opposite, likely choked full of repressed desires and outlandish what-ifs.

They set out at first light after Fei had made breakfast.

Gwen sauntered forward while her temporary companion followed with Water Walking, keeping a safe distance from Caliban.

"Shaa!" Caliban stopped abruptly after an hour's travel.

Frustrated with the lack of progress the day before, Gwen was determined to find her missing companions.

By mid-morning, a sizeable peat-bog plateau, more significant than any of the ones they'd seen before, loomed through the foggy swamp gas. Surrounded by thickly built mangroves, it sprouted a tree that rose into the smoggy fog. From afar, the outcrop looked just like the one where they'd encountered the red frogmen, but on a much larger scale.

There was the sound of combat coming from within the emerald thicket.

With a "Giddy-up!" Master, spider and lackey rushed through rows of the stunted mangroves until they reached the battlefield. Amid this particular clearing was the largest Banyan-like tree yet, its size so grand it disappeared into the low clouds. Underneath its bowers there lay a field of corpses both skeletal and in the process of decay. Above, long tendrils hung from the branches, digging into the flesh of the dead, rooted upon the bones.

Presently, several Mages were engaged in a deadly contest with blue frogmen almost twice the size of the red ones Gwen had seen prior. These were far more impressive than their crimson cousins—their hides consisted of interlocking plates of thick skin that resembled mail. Rather than fingers tipped with claws, their massive barrel-sized fists had twin protrusions which they wore like bladed gauntlets. To Gwen, the beasts resembled battling toads from the Nintendo game of the same name.

Opposite the creatures and fighting desperately were four Mages, or more accurately, a singular Mage and three hangers-on. One of the combatants writhed on the floor, holding a gash in her gut. Another, a sorceress, sobbed paralytically over the first. Yet another one, a young man, was meditating desperately, trying to recover enough mana to continue the fight.

"That's Yuan! one of my teammates!" Fei announced with agitation and worry. His eyes pleaded with her desperately. "Gwen, can we help them?"

It wasn't as if Gwen could say no. The final Mage that held the defence line was none other than her prideful cousin, Petra of Moscow.

At once, her cousin spotted her across the clearing.

"Gwen, standby!" Petra's Message bloomed next to her ear. "I can hold them down for a while yet. Is there a Healer nearby?"

There were three of the blue bastards wailing away on her crystalline Shield. With one hand, Petra held a spell cube, maintaining the semi-dome barrier with a look of intense concentration.

"Fei," Gwen commanded the Illusionist. "That's your cue. See what you can do."

Fei nodded and threw his hands into the air. Tapping into his Sigils, the young Mage gestured toward the sky. "Flare!"

A Sigil escaped the mangroves and burst into a flare ten metres wide, glowing with the intensity of a small sun.

"I'll rally the help," Fei announced. "What about you?"

"I’ve got to help Petra," Gwen answered, her eyes taking on a blue glow as Lightning charged mana circulated her conduits. "It's going to be dangerous and I won't be able to protect you. Go!"

Fei appeared to hesitate but then made haste with Expeditious Retreat.

"Ariel!" Gwen materialised her marten. It instantly transformed into a mid-sized Mongoose bristling with electricity. "Take the one on the right."

"EEEeee!"

"Caliban!" Gwen fed her familiar a nauseating chunk of vitality, watching its purple flesh pulse and its carapace bristle as it accelerated. "Take the one on the left."

"Shaa! Shaa!"

Further observing the battle's outlook, Gwen bit her lips and incanted another Void spell, followed by another Lightning Bolt to the creatures' backs. The brilliant blasts of manifesting electricity caught the frog trio's immediate attention. Without hesitation, they ceased dashing themselves senselessly against Petra's Crystalline Wall.

"You idiot!" Her cousin's muffled howl was audible even from a distance. "These blue bastards are magic resistant! RUN!"

Her warning came too late, for the frogs had locked on to the solitary sorceress who stood without an Abjurer to shield her.

As they leapt and bound toward Gwen, the frogmen split in three, demonstrating a low cunning capable of executing pack tactics.

Gwen readied herself for a world of pain. "Ariel!"

Her mongoose was the first to engage.

On Gwen's right, the marten fired off a blast of Lightning Needles that struck the unsuspecting, hulking frog in the face, sending it skittering into a howling madness. The mongoose then launched itself with a thunderclap toward its disorientated prey, transforming itself into a blur of crackling energy that bit, slashed, and mauled the creature mercilessly.

"Caliban! Onslaught!"

On the left, Caliban met the battle-toad tail first, piercing its carapace at the thigh and halting its movements instantly. The momentum of the giant creature, however, proved too much for either of the combatants. As the frog thing struck out against Caliban, it tore the ligaments of Caliban's tail, sending the netherworld scorpioid into a furious fit. However, the frog's careless assault also crippled its leg, resulting in a torso-sized chunk of flesh dislocating from its thigh.

Monster and monster then fell upon one another as a blur of tooth and nail, carapace and vivisecting flesh.

The final creature made it within thirty feet of Gwen when it ran face-first into a nest of hidden tentacles.

Dark Tentacles composed of Void-matter ate into the creature's hide, ignoring its armour and lashing it into the ground, pinning it helplessly as the boundless hunger tore at its life force.

With a grunt of supreme, supernatural force, the creature made it another two metres, using its magical resistance to negate Gwen's life-draining side effect. Unfortunately, it charged right into the second blossom of hysterical, lightning-charged tentacles.

The Lighting and the Void Tentacles' combined force created a crisscrossed network of white and blue, lifting their victim bodily into the air. As a candid moment, the horrific and the comical came to astounding matrimony as her yin-yang octopi tugged an ogre-sized frog back and forth between them, helplessly suspended mid-air. Unfortunately, both spells proved insufficient to kill her foe.

From behind her crystal barrier, Petra's blue eyes grew brilliant with amazement. Gwen, however, had no time to laugh at the unexpected froggy-in-the-middle.

To the dismay of her gallery, she began to run towards the trapped frog.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Petra cried out. "Don't be an idiot! It'll gut you with one swipe!"

Gwen approached within melee distance of the floating terror-toad. A hypothesis had been floating in her head since Uncle Jun mentioned their amulet's function, and the core she had earlier gained provided further evidence that needed affirmation.

With a sudden burst of rapturous strength, the creature lunged for her out of pure malice.

"Dimension Door!" Gwen disappeared and appeared behind the thing. Her tentacles retrieved the monstrous frog and held it within their suspended embrace.

"Blast Bolt!"

Once again, the boon of the Lightning Element showed its true wrath. An element gifted by the gods to hunt monsters, the dozen or so bolts of electrical discharge ravaged the innards of the frog and cooked it inside out. Even near death, Gwen could feel the creature's chaotic flesh trying to repel her magic, but by then, it was too weak to sustain its elemental resistance.

As it expired, Gwen felt its essence suffuse the Kirin amulet. She then made for Caliban's prey before her familiar consumed it entirely.

"Oh my God! You stupid bychit!" Petra's voice held more frustration than anger now. Having no more enemies to fight, she lowered her Crystalline Wall and watched her spell cube disperse into mineral dust. She had to protect the wounded Mages, but Gwen could see Petra also wanted to make sure that her idiotic cousin didn't get herself killed.

On Petra's left, Ariel was losing ground against the hulking blue frog. Her familiar's problem was that it couldn't inflict significant damage to the armour-plated creature. Meanwhile, even thrashing wildly without any attempt at strategic combat, the battle-toad managed to land a hit on Ariel, each time sending the wounded mongoose through the air like a struck ball.

Inevitably, the monster scored a home run, and Ariel went skittering across the bog and into the mess of bones that decorated the tree's undergrowth.

The frog then leapt for Ariel's Master.

Her cousin swore.

"Dimension Door!" The Enchanter expended her life-saving crystal and appeared just behind the creature.

Without warning, Petra's eyes blazed with the dull gold of flaring Enchantment. "Hold Monster!"

The frog spawn stopped in its tracks. With a grunt of supreme effort, Petra forced the frog to kneel. "FINISH IT!" Her cousin called out to her. "It's resistant! You’ve got thirty seconds!"

"Dimension Door!"

Nearer their left flank, Caliban and the frog-beast traded wounds, with the spider's pseudo-physiology negating injury. Meanwhile, suffering blood loss and evisceration, the battle-toad grew weaker and weaker until it fell to grievous wounds.

Gwen materialised from thin air with a blast of electrical discharge and shot a Lightning Bolt right into the frog's open maw, watching its eyes burst with brilliant cobalt.

Another warm trickle suffused the Kirin amulet.

She then turned to the final creature.

"Hurry!" Petra gritted her teeth. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Caliban! Ariel!"

Both of her pets closed on the held creature, a blur of tenebrous blades and whirling lightning. With a final Dimension Door, she zipped behind the thing and channelled the rest of her mana into Ariel's elementally charged fur, turning the frog into a pincushion.

"Lightning Bolt!"

Her Kirin amulet gorged upon the essence of the last frog.

"What the hell was that?" Petra snarled, her eyes flashing with anger. "Why would you try to melee these things? Who the hell trained you?"

"There's a reason for this. You'll have to trust me." Gwen put up her hands in a gesture of genuflection. "I am serious."

Her cousin's accusing eyes were steel, but looking upon the carnage created by Gwen, her expression visibly softened.

"How are you feeling? That was a lot of spells," Petra inquired with exasperation, exhaling with effort. "Risky moves, Gwen."

As if on cue, Gwen stumbled where she stood, forcing Petra to brace her by the shoulder.

"I am not out of mana yet," Gwen's face regained some of its pinkness. "I am just a little woozy from the drain, that's all."

Fei quickly entered the clearing.

"Who's that? An ally?" Petra pointed at the skinny Mage, another spell cube materialising in her casting hand.

Fei's surveyed the clearing, evidently trying to hold back his disgust.

"That's Fei Lin, from the House of Lin. He's a teammate of that Mage over there." Gwen pointed to the survivors.

Seeing that his name had been mentioned, Yuan, the one who'd been trying to recover his mana, came jogging toward the pair of cousins.

Behind him, the girls were still in shock. One of them was mortally wounded. Beside her, the kneeling girl Mage cradling her companion turned her face toward Gwen, her eyes full of desperation and pleading hope. "Please! Please help Lily, she—"

"I’ve got Healing Potions." Gwen materialised two injectors.

"No, she needs more than that." Petra sighed. "She's infected by a magical phage."

With Petra holding Gwen by the arm, the group approached the wounded girl.

"You should forfeit," Petra said coldly after observing a red rash that was even now spreading across the girl's body.

"Please, if there's anything you can do," Lily's companion begged, her contorted face a mess of melted makeup.

The wounded sorceress gasped and coughed up blood. The rash spread yet again. Now it was making its way down her thighs. Gwen noticed that the welts looked curiously similar to the red frogs' leathery complexion.

"Petra?" Gwen wondered why her cousin was staring so intently at the girl. "Could you…?"

Sighing, Petra materialised a spell cube. "Restoration!"

Positive Energy suffused the afflicted Lily. In a moment, her breathing returned to normal, and her diseased skin ceased its advancement.

"You—!" Lily's shell-shocked companion turned to Petra angrily. "You said you didn't have any healing!"

Petra's eyes held a dangerous, frigid intensity.

Gwen read the situation and moved to intervene. Unfortunately, her ailing constitution provided no opportunity for her to come between the two.

"You bitch!" the Mage continued. "Lily could have—"

SLAP! Petra backhanded the sorceress across the face so hard that her neck cracked.

"Petra!" Gwen could have swallowed an egg whole.

"Ungrateful scum," Petra spat. "Get the fuck out of here or I will end you."

Gwen didn't know what to say. Was Petra in the wrong? Hardly. She’d saved their lives. She’d risked her life to defend them against those monsters. She had continued to do so when she could have escaped anytime. What gave these foolish children the right to question her motives? They owed Petra their lives.

The girl Mage picked herself up from the ground and began to sob. Lily, now recovered and standing, bowed deeply before Petra and apologised profusely.

"Don't talk to me. Just go," Petra commanded.

The party didn't move. The girls were clearly too afraid to move. Gwen didn’t blame them. What if more of the frog things were waiting in the waters beyond?

Beside them, Fei conversed quietly with Yuan, watching the spectacle unfold.

After a minute, Caliban returned, having consumed the carcasses. Gwen sensed some of her vitality returning and turned toward the stalking spider expectantly.

"Well?" She crossed both sets of fingers. "Got anything for me, Cali?"

"Shaa—Blurgh!"

Caliban vomited forth a mass of viscera.

Yuan turned away. Fei handled it better, having become accustomed to Caliban after a day and a half of witnessing the Void fiend at its finest.

Petra stared at Gwen in incomprehension.

Lily fainted once more. The rude one with the swollen cheeks abruptly vomited through her nose.

Gwen gingerly reached into the steaming pile and picked out an object. "Ta-da!" She presented the bloody thing before Petra, whose irises contracted.

A Creature Core!

Their eyes met; an understanding passed between two women of competence.

"I see," Petra said. "I apologise for doubting you. Good work."

"Thanks," Gwen said.

Feeling her mana pool running on fumes, Gwen called Ariel and Caliban toward her. Caliban's form was missing two of its limbs with a third hanging limpidly, though her familiar didn't seem to care at all. Ariel, on the other hand, was battered and bloody and in significant pain.

"EE-EE!" Gwen injected the marten with a healing potion, then unsummoned both.

The core disappeared into Gwen's ring. She would trade it for CCs when they were out of the Dungeon.

The survivors gathered together. Gwen greeted them all once more, then produced blankets, the decanter and an assortment of canned foodstuffs so that they could all partake in the joy of having survived an ugly encounter.

"Thank you." The young Mages bowed toward the big sister sorceress and gingerly accepted her food, water and cleansing. Gwen passed over a Mana injector to Petra, and the two girls stabbed the short-fire needles into their thighs.

Once their mana had recovered, Petra took the opportunity to extract from her cowed victims her saviour's tax.

"Shield."

"Fireball."

"Mage Armour."

"Haste."

"Flame Skin." The Mages each delivered their due.

The Enchanter crafted a dozen cubes, one every few minutes, as they rested. She had expended many of her spell cubes and she needed replenishment. From Gwen, Petra extracted an assortment of Lightning spells, as Gwen was now too weak to sustain more Void Magic than necessary.

"Thank God you've got Dimension Door." Petra waited until Gwen recovered, then made another two copies.

"Have you seen the others?" Gwen had to inject another Mana potion, burning her alchemical cooldowns for the next twelve hours.

"No, and for a good reason. We need to stay here." Petra leaned in close to Gwen's ear, where she could feel her soft breath on her lobes. "There's a boon for us up on that tree. I've been eyeing it, but now that you're here, we can do it. To avoid complication, we need to do this as soon as possible."

"Oh?" Gwen felt Petra's ticklish breath.

"We need privacy if we want to hold on to our prize," Petra whispered. "We need these hangers-on to fuck off."

"Oh?" Gwen may have had experience fighting monsters and duelling Mages, but she had never been in a situation where she had to tell a peer to "fuck off and survive the wolf-infested woods on your own".

When Gwen neither affirmed nor rejected her recommendation, Petra's expression grew ambivalent. "Are you recovered?" Petra moved away from the intimacy they had momentarily shared.

Gwen examined her condition with a quick meditation. Her health was manageable. Caliban had replenished a significant portion of it, though a jolt of Positive Energy would do well in mending her fatigue. Her mana pool had been topped up by the injectors as well, so she was ready for action, though far from peak performance. "Yeah, I am good to go."

"Alright then." Petra evil-eyed the folks around them. "Regardless of your choice, let's do it."

Not far from Gwen and Petra, Fei sat with Yuan, watching the two girls recover their mana.

The dual-element sorceress had a sickly beauty about her that made one's heart sore, while the Mineral Mage, Petra, possessed a frigid kind of attraction that fascinated the observer. Presently, the two sorceresses appeared to be planning a way to ascend the tree.

"There is a fruit up there," Yuan announced quietly to his companion, then hissed. "Don't look up!"

Fei forced himself to remain unaffected.

"Do you think anyone saw your signal?"

"We didn't see anyone on our way here," Fei said quietly. "It was just Gwen and me."

"That's good and bad." Yuan looked over at their companions, Lily and Wenshi. The girls cowed by Petra would be of no use in an insurrection. "Alright, so I found something up that tree. A magical fruit or perhaps a precious herb, but unless we can fight those girls off, we'll be looking at kissing twenty to fifty CCs goodbye."

"You can't fight Gwen." Fei shook his head. "She's too strong. If you've seen what I've seen, you wouldn't even dream of it."

Yuan glanced again at their opponents. The Conjurer sorceress was now upright, resting her weight on her back foot, her swan's neck craned and looking upward. Beside her, the Mineral Mage quickly noticed him looking, forcing him to turn back to Fei Lin.

The girls were undoubtedly dangerous.

But the rewards were also great. If he could come top ten in this competition, the recognition he would gain from his Clan was immeasurable.

"Listen," Yuan gripped his friend's arm tightly, afraid that the enthralled Illusionist might turn on him. "I have a way of contacting a Diviner I know."

A discreet distance away, Gwen and Petra were ready to proceed. Petra pointed out that Caliban was probably their best bet in scaling the tree, so Gwen summoned the spider horror once again.

When Caliban emerged from the veil between two worlds, Gwen noticed its body was once more "whole". She measured her summoning's exactitude and acknowledged that Caliban's most recent emergence had cost her a little more vitality than she was used to, though thankfully, still within range of Almudj's buffer.

The outcome made sense. Caliban was, after all, a shapeless thing of the hungering dark, a resident of the Void. It was her contract that gave Caliban its fair proportion and sent it ambling into the prime material.

Gwen straddled the first segment of Caliban's thorax while Petra took up near the tail, entirely at ease with the eldritch appearance of the aberrant arachnid.

"You're not disgusted by Caliban?" Gwen asked Petra curiously as they made slow progress up the trunk of the skyward tree.

Petra balanced herself on Caliban's body, shifting her weight as it stabbed its bladed limbs into the timber with trained ease.

"It's beautiful." To Gwen's surprise, Petra patted Caliban's tail, which wagged here and there excitedly. "I'd love to have a powerhouse familiar like this one. Who'd think that it could near-solo a Blue Gila?"

"A Blue Gila?" Gwen noticed that her "Comprehend Language" Stone couldn't quite translate the last part of Petra's speech.

"A Gila," Petra repeated.

"The bestiary we have in the Frontier is very limited," Gwen explained helpfully, hoping for clarification.

Her cousin was happy to help. "The Gila is a race of creatures that roam the space between planes, drifting from the astral into the prime material. No one knows where they are from, only that they are creatures of chaos. The weakest ones are the reds, who are cunning like goblins but about as strong as a soldier-class Magical Beast, and the blue ones we fought are a little stronger. They can get pretty huge, with the den mother reaching six or seven metres and approaching the risk tier of a Gargantuan. There's also rumours of Emerald Gilas that use magic. And the red rash? That's a phage that turns the victim into a Gila."

"What? Wait, that's horrible!" Gwen started to understand why Lily’s friend had been so desperate.

Petra said nothing else. Instead, she pointed upward.

Gwen tilted her head and spotted their prize—a pod about the size of an adult hung from the top branch. It resembled a jackfruit or a durian and it gave off a scent that suggested the fruit was ripe for the picking. To Gwen's Almudj-enhanced olfactory senses, the aroma was a cornucopia of flavours.

Her mind turned to the piles of animal carcasses laid out as nutrients for the tree's roots. There was something deeply suspicious there. Had the Gila creatures been feeding the trees, awaiting this day? Or was something else the tree's caretaker?

"Do you think the tree has a guardian?" she asked Petra, whose eyes were likewise focused intently on the fruit.

"Most certainly," Petra said to her. "That's why we left bait below."

"Bait?" Gwen's eyes widened as details clicked into place. No wonder Petra was so compliant in leaving the others alone. No wonder she hadn’t dispersed them by force.

"Petra!" Gwen's cry of horror rang out among the trees. "You did not!"

Chapter twenty-five

Visions and Revisions

Petra returned her accusation with a passion that surprised Gwen. "Did I not tell you we should have dispersed them?" Her cousin studied her with critical eyes. "They're not your allies, Gwen. They're our competitors. Did you know that before you arrived, that Yuan fellow was the one chased by the Blue Gila? That he fled toward me? Had I been a lesser Mage, I would have died down there and he would have fled."

Gwen deflated. Now she understood.

But it wasn't just Yuan down there. There were the girls as well, not to mention Fei, who had done a bang-up job cooking and cleaning up after her. She still owed him one for diverting the Mages from the House of Xiao.

She glanced downward, but they were now too far up the canopy to see any details below. On that note, the height of the tree was physically implausible. Gwen was sure that Caliban had been making slow but steady progress for at least ten minutes. Even going at their snail's pace, it put the tree at about two hundred and fifty to three hundred metres. In fact, from the marshland, the tree seemed barely over thirty. She knew that the Eiffel Tower was three hundred metres, and the tallest tree in Gwen's world was Hyperion, which stood at one hundred and fifteen. If so, what the hell was she climbing?

Then again, Gwen reminded herself, rhino-sharks swam through solid rock in this world. What was so strange about a tree with an internal pocket space?

"At any rate," Petra observed the fruit, "the objective is ours. That's what matters."

Her cousin then produced the spell cube with Gwen's Void Bolt.

"I've been saving this," She allowed the cube to levitate into the air before activating it with a flourish. In a second, the spell manifested, forcing Petra to let loose a low, breathless moan.

Soundlessly, the Void Bolt cut the fruit at the stem, causing it to titter as the final few fibres broke under the tension.

"The feedback is stronger than I’d anticipated." Petra met her eyes, her face pale with exertion. "So that's what it's like to use the Void. To think you've suffered this every time. I am impressed."

Gwen's mind remained upon the people below, specifically, the innocent Fei, who had followed her to certain doom.

"It's falling. Catch it!" Petra commanded her. "No, not with your hand. Use your Storage Ring."

Gwen snapped back to reality as the fruit fell. A burst of aroma erupted from the durian-thing, a sickly-sweet scent that clouded her senses with odious delirium. Gwen reached out with one hand and tried to calculate the trajectory of the falling fruit.

She waited until it was almost overhead, then willed her Storage Ring to work its spatial magic.

It was just as well that she had an improved mana pool. Lesser Mages with a ring of equal spatial generosity would not have been able to "catch" an item of such size and volume so effortlessly, at least not without exceeding magical limitations.

With the sound of displaced air, the fruit disappeared.

"Quick!" Petra directed spider and master. "We need to stow it properly to retain its properties. Get Caliban to set us down on that branch!"

Gwen shifted her spider familiar until they’d descended upon the broad branch Petra had pointed out.

"Shape Wood!" Petra burned a utility cube, magically flattening the branch into a rectangular platform that comfortably held the both of them. "The fruit!"

Gwen retrieved the durian with a thud.

Petra materialised a dagger in one hand and stabbed into the bulbous, spiky exterior of the durian. The blade penetrated easily, after which Petra worked the edge until it reached the shell's nadir. She then dug her fingers into the open fold and pulled, splitting the giant durian in two.

If the scent from earlier had been intense, it was now so redolent that Gwen felt as though she was tasting the fruit. Like the durian of her old world, it was deliciously foul, the fragrance so potent and offensive it made her eyes water.

Petra dug into the white membranes and pulled out a piece of flesh that resembled a block of wobbly cream-coloured jade with the clarity of cloudy sap.

"We eat first," she ordered Gwen. "I can only seal so many so quickly. Wildland fruits are most potent when eaten fresh."

"Don’t our Storage Rings have stasis?" Gwen inquired carefully, wondering why Petra was so agitated with the need for haste.

"Only for mundane produce." Petra dragged out a piece of flesh and flash froze it in a crystalline cube. "Alchemists and professional herbalists have especially enchanted Storage Rings and stasis containers. As for this specific fruit, I read about it in the university's Dungeon archives. Unless I am wrong, this is a Fructum Vitae. From the moment it is removed from the mother tree, we have a limited window to either consume it or stow it."

"What happens—"

"Shut up and eat!"

Gwen obediently took up the white flesh and placed it in her mouth. Instantly, where she bit into the flesh, the peachy fibres melted into a creamy stream of indescribable flavour that cascaded down her throat and permeated her torso. Visibly, her hair grew a little longer; even her nails seemed to lengthen.

"Oh, my." Gwen let out a slight moan. Within her body, motes of Almudj's mana began to glow magnificently with renewal and vitality, as though each were tiny seeds that had tasted the spring rain.

She reached out for another slice.

"No." Petra slapped her hand away, then returned to her meditation. "You'll explode!"

"I can handle it," Gwen insisted. She wasn't about to let an opportunity to restore or temper Almudj's mana pass her by. The more of the serpent's life-force Gwen nurtured, the more likely she was capable of surviving higher tiers of the Void's volatile feedback. If she gathered enough of the vital force, maybe she could reconnect with Almudj, awaken it from slumber, even.

Not to mention, she still owed the rainbow Mythic her life.

Silently, she admitted there was selfishness as well, a lingering, wish-fulfilling fantasy that maybe, just maybe, if she were ever again in a pinch, there would be a mythical serpent dropping down from the heavens to save her.

"Fine. If you wish to be the python that thought it could swallow an elephant, be my guest." Petra turned away and focused on her work. Her cousin had finished her piece and was now creating crystalline cubes to preserve the other petals of flesh.

Gwen proceeded without heeding Petra's warning.

The second piece went down her throat like a bag of razors, forcing her to kneel over in a fit of agony. The vital force that permeated her body seemed to stretch every inch of her physical form, feeling as though someone had forcible inflated her lungs until she was on the verge of bursting.

Beside Gwen, Petra finished her third cube. She was about to begin on the fourth when Gwen's moans became such that she could no longer ignore them.

"Lesser Restoration!" Petra said, giving yet another one of her limited supply of utility cubes.

Gwen had been bearing her baptism as a woman dunked in smouldering lime when unexpectedly, a cold wave of healing energy repaired her pain-wracked body and restored her mind to clarity. Now lucid, her Almudj's Essence hungrily lapped up the primal vitality.

Over the next minute, the pent-up pressure of raging effervescence within her body deflated. Though she had to wipe away a trickle of blood from below her nose, she felt more hale than ever.

Did she dare she risk a third?

"You're insane. It's too reckless!" Petra snapped, watching her cousin gazing forlornly at the white-jade flesh. "Gwen, don't be an idiot. I don't have another Lesser Restoration."

"Sorry." Gwen’s Divination had fired up as soon as she’d touched the third piece, indicating a significant life-or-death trial ahead.

Petra finished off her sixth cube. "Okay, we need to go," she announced abruptly, abandoning the pile of lychee-flesh spilling from the giant durian. "Now. The flesh is about to turn."

The two girls quickly mounted Caliban, who began to make headway below.

Above them, a change came over the juicy flesh. Where the fruit had radiated Positive Energy, the crystal-jelly tissue abruptly turned necrotic with deathly malignancy. The wooden platform abruptly shrivelled into withered wood, the branch becoming blackened and rotten as though it had decayed decades ago.

At the same time, the tree itself seemed to lose all vitality. A shower of leaves began to surrender to the uncertain space below, falling over the girls and catching in their hair and on Caliban's nooks and crannies.

"Good God!" Gwen said as they descended, making it just past the enervating circumference range, awed by the magnitude of the tree's destruction.

"Duality in all things," Petra parroted their babulya. "Where there is life, there is death. That is the reason we had to hurry."

"Right." Thinking of death, Gwen's thoughts flittered toward those they had abandoned below. Were they still okay?

To Gwen's immense relief, no guardian had made its presence known thus far. Unfortunately, the young men and women below were not as they had left them.

Instead, to her spine-tingling, scalp-numbing distress, she and Petra found themselves surrounded.

"Greetings, O sorceress from the Song Clan!" The young man who cheerfully greeted them from below had a face hateful to Gwen. It was the Abjurer from the Clan Xiao, the very bastard who had robbed her of her Creature Core the previous day.

His team was spread out strategically in a semi-circle, presumably within the range of his Shielding abilities. The two girls Petra had saved stood to one side, an impassive gallery, with Fei and Yuan occupying the adjacent space.

Fei looked to have been roughed up; his shirt was torn and his face was swollen on one side. The Mage Yuan, however, had a smug expression that Gwen knew all too well.

Petra shot her an "I told you so", smiling as Gwen felt her eyes grow as hard as peach pits.

Mindful of her cousin's smugness, Gwen considered their present condition. Her mana had recovered and her vitality brimmed. If this had to be a fight, then she would give them a bloody good one. This time, she would not retreat. This time, with her newfound confidence in Caliban, she would make sure these bastards knew the cost of messing with her not once but twice.

"What a pair you make." The Abjurer smirked with undisguised intent. "Are you sisters?"

Gwen did a double-take. It was true that some Asians were face-blind when it came to Westerners. She and Petra did not look remotely alike, but the horny prick was probably too preoccupied to see even that.

"Anyway," the Abjurer rubbed his jaws, "you may call me Xiao Huyi or Young Master Huyi, of the Hubei Clan of Xiao. These are my companions—Lei, Jingwen, Fuhui and Pan, fellow disciples in all, and all Xiao by name.

"From my understanding, you are Gwen Song, and you, my dear," Huyi turned his eyes on Petra, "you're the prodigy from Fudan, right? The Mineral Enchanter? I've heard of you. My brother's a Second Year at Fudan too."

"And what does Young Master Xiao want from commoners like us?" Petra stepped in front of Gwen protectively; her posture suggested her patience was running on fumes. Unfortunately, with Petra's looks, this only seemed to incite their opponents.

"A commoner? Hardly! You're Magister Wen's belle of the ball! Her darling protègè, and who could fault that?" Huyi's incriminating gaze did not suggest to Gwen that he was privileging Petra's magical talents. "If the two of you are willing to forfeit your acquisitions, I wouldn't mind sparing you some CCs by the Dungeon's end. You get to keep face and we get to part ways on friendly terms. How's that?"

"Shut your mouth," Petra stated coldly. "Your breath turns my stomach."

"Why make it harder on yourself?" Huyi appeared to control the simmering rage boiling beneath his amiable exterior, but his Chestershire smile failed to reach his eyes. "Had your Master not taught you to partake the offer of respect than force down the bitter cup? Or is that too philosophical for you gweilo girls?"

"You're walking a dangerous path," Gwen said. She could feel her eyes growing cobalt with electricity as she revved up a mighty Flashbang. If they were going to fight, she would have the first strike. There was no point letting these asses stroke their egos while talking down to them.

As the parties stared down, a chilling breeze stole all warmth from the peat bog. Then, as if on cue, a misty shower descended. Motes of water sizzled as they splashed against Gwen's skinsuit, sending azure discharges of static to arc from her body.

"Well, the first item on the agenda, how about sharing some of that fruit—" Huyi's patience proved as pathetic as his threats.

"Flashbang!"

"Dispel Magic!"

In a split second, the mana she had conjured rushed back into Gwen's conduits. Her head grew instantly swollen, her brain felt like Fuyi had taken a mallet to her temple.

It took her a split-second to realise she had been Counterspelled. The likelihood of such a thing was impossible on the Frontier, for Alesia had said that the ability to counter a spell as it manifested was a rare occurrence. Affinity, experience, talent and split-second judgement; all of the above was needed for a Counterspell to succeed. It was a key but rare duelling skill, one only made possible when the Spellcraft knowledge gap between duellists grew significant enough for one party to be entirely predictable.

"Ha!" Huyi mocked her as Gwen's face paled. "Fredrick Lin was right. You do open with that specific spell every time!"

"Gwen, take us up!" Without waiting, Petra made the call and activated her Crystalline Shell. With the sound of crinkling stone, the sheltering barrier moulded itself around Caliban, protecting the Void spider as it began an upward retreat.

Though Gwen felt drunk with disorientation, her cousin's decree was sufficient enough to will Caliban into a rapid ascent.

"Oh no you don't!" Huyi materialised what appeared to be a bamboo scroll from his storage ring. "You four! Cover me!"

"Fireball!"

"Shatter!"

"Scorching Ray!"

Their opponents consisted of two Evokers, both Fire, an Air Transmuter, and a Diviner. The Diviner hid in the support line, scanning their surroundings for Gwen's allies.

A blanket fire of spells washed over Petra's crystalline Shielding, blinding the pair and setting the tree to shudder and shake from the explosions, triggering a violent shower of leaves that fell about them like an emerald waterfall. A section of the wood caught fire, further making Caliban's purchase precarious and risky for the girls.

Below Gwen and her cousin, Huyi read aloud the bamboo scroll, activating its ancient sorcery. "Nine-Jia-Zhi-YI Seal!"

Gwen's translation stone was utterly incapable of keeping up with the Daoist incantations, spamming her mind with gobbledygook.

The spell hit.

Caliban paused. Something terrible struck Gwen's spine as her Divination screamed, then unbidden, her familiar's physical manifestation in the material world imploded.

"Petra—"

Gwen stepped into thin air, her legs straddling nothing. She fell about half a metre before landing on the bottom of Petra's crystalline wall. Petra likewise fell the same distance and landed beside her, though with more grace and control. With a gesture, her cousin willed a crystalline partition to bite into the tree's trunk, violently digging into the timber.

"Ariel!" Gwen called for her other familiar.

The marten, now significantly restored, appeared next to its Master.

When Gwen tried to summon Caliban again, she found the netherworld creature was absent from its pocket dimension. Where had it gone?

"I'll prepare a few Conjured Flashbangs, then open up with a Void Blast," Gwen shouted under the ding of spells pinging off Petra's Shielding.

"No," Petra stopped her. "Too risky."

"What do you suggest?"

Petra reinforced her Shielding; a Mineral Mage's advantage lay in their walls, barriers and shields, which possessed high efficacy against physical and elemental damage.

"We break through the middle. You and I, we Dimension Door first me, right; you, left. Then, we DD pincer where they least expect it. We go for their leader. With both of our Lightning bursts at close range, we should be able to stun the fucker. As soon as we're both in range, you encase us with a Void Shield, and I'll Hold Monster the prick. With Xiao as our hostage, we can force the others to forfeit. That or we Void his limbs, one at a time."

Gwen's heart pounded in her seated ribs. "Right." She nodded, trusting her cousin to be the more experienced tactician.

"Gwen." Petra arrested her wrist.

"Petra?" Gwen gulped.

"No more mercy."

Gwen felt her lips parch as she met Petra's eyes, two crystallines, pale blue orbs surrounding the loci of her dark pupils. She fought down the screaming compunction inside her head. Voices of the past, both recent and distant, protested against maiming and murder.

"Did you think this was going to end amicably?" "They were dead the moment you appeared in their lives." "DO IT!” At the same time, Gunther's lesson reared its head like Almudj's rainbow from the mindscape of her memory.

Petra's barrier rocked. Fissures appeared like living spider webs, turning the transparent crystal opaque with refracted light, illuminating their faces with flaming, marigold shards.

"Right," Gwen affirmed her cousin's sentiments. "No more mercy."

With a suppressed groan, she allowed the Void to fill her Mana Channels, feeling Almudj's vital force fighting to keep her body intact. Her electric eyes dimmed until they became two swirling orbs of consuming darkness.

Beside her, Petra's own eyes lost their colour and became two crystal pools of water, so pale there was barely a hint of blue.

"Crystal Skin"

"Void Skin."

A thick membrane of bark-like texture covered Gwen's body, encasing her in midnight.

Petra became encased in scintillating crystal.

They were ready.

Gwen took a deep breath. She wasn't at all confident that she could control the burst of the Void matter when her Dimension Door manifested, but that would be no one's fault but Huyi's own. Perhaps she should affect a suitable warcry? The situation seemed ripe and ready for a good rallying.

"YOU BASTARDS!" she began.

"Arrrrgh!"

"Shit!"

"CAO! THERE'S SOMETHING—"

"HELP!"

The assault upon their Shield ceased. The girls met one another's eyes in confusion.

"A trick?" Gwen asked.

"Like I would know?" Petra shook her head. "Hold the DD just in case."

It was absolute foolishness for their opponents to stop their attack now. Gwen was the kind of Mage who could quickly turn the tables if one was negligent in a sustained offence.

Paranoid, the girls waited another minute, suspended upon the tree trunk where the crystalline structure had bit into the wood. They awaited the moment when the final spell hit and, in that split second, they would set upon their foes as two tigresses unleashed.

Yuan couldn't breathe.

One minute they were about to breach their victims’ defences, and then—

Then what happened?

From imminent victory, he was suddenly in a position where death was preferable. Trapped within the watery bubble, Yuan had gained a significant opportunity for philosophical contemplation in the first minute.

After that, the next ten seconds elapsed like years. Yet just when he'd thought his life was forfeit, a bubble of sweet air met his lips.

But half a minute later, he was out of breath again. The feeling of impending asphyxiation was like a dirk stabbing into his brain, demanding release so that his gnashing organs could find liberation from their misery.

Just as he wondered if he should swallow the marsh water and end his life with dignity, there came another bubble, another breath.

That was when Yuan realised the horrible reality of his and his team's present condition.

Whoever captured them wasn't trying to kill them.

They were in it for the sport.

But how was it that he came to be in this dilemma again?

It had all begun an hour earlier when Yuan had contacted the Diviner from the Clan of Xiao, who had promised a fair split of credits if any of the dozen or so lackeys he had contracted delivered a source of CCs.

Being from a small clan, Yuan had no reason to watch his chances at gathering CCs float away, just the same as him having no desire to see two stuck-up princesses exit the Dungeon with a trove of treasures.

His compatriot, another nobody from the Lins, Fei, seemed to know the girls, but Yuan had forced the weak-willed fool into obedience with both threats of telling his uncle and a few well-placed punches to the gut.

As the stupid, sentimental idiot grovelled in the dirt, Yuan received a reply from his collaborator.

They would be there within twenty minutes!

For good measure, he socked Fei again.

"I know we're supposed to be teammates," Yuan had said to his erstwhile companion. "But we're just a PUG group, right? So no hard feelings."

Fei whimpered on the floor, coiled like a cooked prawn.

"I suggest you stay put," Yuan gave the poor Illusionist another swift kick to the chest.

He then turned his attention to the girls. The short one was Lily, the taller one was Wenshi.

"You girls want payback?"

Lily's eyes grew wild with fear.

Wenshi wasn't such a coward. The girl nodded.

"Good. Stick with me. We'll fleece those bitches yet."

Wenshi placed a hand on her swollen cheek.

"Let that be your strength," Yuan recalled advising the girl. "You can slap them around all you like later, although I have a feeling the Young Master would love a go himself, ha!"

The unassuming girl grew crimson with anticipation. Yuan tsked. What a vengeful little harlot. Was it so easy to forget that the "bitch" had saved her earlier? It was women like this he hated the most.

After that, Clan Xiao's five-person team arrived. Yuan had shaken hands with their leader, Huyi, and then they laid out the ambush.

"You have done very, very well." Huyi patted Yuan approvingly on the shoulder. "If your account of their abilities is correct, then I'll give you extra ten CCs as a reward."

"Thank you, Master Xiao." Yuan was confident that calling the Xiao Clan was the best decision he had ever made.

Usually, Yuan loved the company of beautiful girls. But this time, the gweilo girls made him feel self-conscious. They were so gifted, perfect and came from good families that gave them tremendous support and resources. They had everything that fate had denied Yuan. To watch them humbled, taken off their pedestal and stepped on would give him the most longed-for, sadistic pleasure.

Yuan recalled shivering from the cold. He could hardly wait.

The girls had eventually descended and the ambush had been carried out precisely as they had planned.

It was raining in the marsh, but Yuan hadn’t cared that he become bedraggled. As soon as they’d cracked that crystalline barrier, he would see the two girls dragged by their hair before the Young Master of the Clan of Xiao. They would be stripped of their possessions, humiliated and made to quit the Dungeon.

Or that had been the plan, at least.

So what had happened?

Yuan still wasn't sure.

Above them, the twin-Evoker's spells had pounded the Crystal Shielding, cracking the surface and sending bits and pieces of it to fragment and fail.

Overjoyed, Yuan had turned to the others to make a quip but couldn't find his friend.

The Diviner, Jan, was gone.

He recalled hearing the sound of sucking water. Then the man had evaporated!

"Oi! Oi!" he shouted out to the others. "Something just took your Diviner!"

"Wha—"

Then one of the Evokers was gone too!

Yuan felt his balls shrink. Suddenly, he loathed the chaos of combat. There were exploding spells above, loud incantations below, tumbling leaves throughout and bits of crystal fell, conjoined by the soft archery of rain soaking their bodies.

"Where did Lei go?" Fuhui, the other Fire Evoker, demanded of the party.

"I don't know!" Yuan felt his spine turn to jelly as his mind reeled. What in Mao's name is going on?

The remaining three Mages were simultaneously swallowed by the sodden earth. This time, Yuan saw the source of their sudden abduction.

It was the peat bog! There was something under the slough!

"Run for the tree!" Yuan shouted to the girls, who were wide-eyed with terror. "Ru—"

Then he too had become an inmate of the waters below.

The rain that had drenched them all had suddenly expanded from their clothes as if gaining sentience. There was the sensation of a terrific pull, after which they rested in their watery tombs.

Above Yuan, the vegetation closed like a pair of smirking lips.

Below, there was only cold, dark, smelly water.

The last thing he heard was a soft, amiable voice.

"Welcome to Motel Lea, my friends. You can check out anytime you like, but you will forfeit your rings' contents and the competition. Otherwise, you can enjoy an Undine's full-body service for the next thirty-six hours."

The girls stared at the smiling face waving below them, welcoming them home.

The party of Mages who had attacked them were gone.

Replacing the self-satisfied faces of their assailants was a man close to Gwen's fluttering heart.

"Richard!" Gwen dispelled her Void armaments then let Feather Fall take her gently toward Richard's open arms in disbelief.

"EE-EE!" Ariel scampered down the tree and ran around Richard in circles.

"Petra!"

Below Petra, Tao likewise with his arms open. The Illusionist's mouth opened to reveal neglected teeth, his face full of smugness.

Gwen wrapped herself around Richard like an octopus. "Oh my God! Richard! Thank God! Thank God you're here! HOW?"

"Arrgh!" Petra landed heel first on Tao's face, balancing herself as he crumpled, stepping down gracefully via his body.

"Mina!" Gwen said to her other cousin.

Gwen detach from Richard, then gladly embraced her cousin, squeezing her cousin tight, unable to help herself after the tension dissolved from her body. Despite her initial hesitation, Mina reciprocated her over-affectionate gesture.

"What happened?" Gwen scanned her surroundings. "Where are the others? Where's that Huyi guy? Where's Fei?"

"I've got them right here," Richard chuckled. "Lea, bring up one of our guests!"

A portion of the peat bog below their feet opened to reveal an aperture, within which entombed the silhouette of a feebly struggling Mage. Gwen recognised the face as one of Huyi's lackeys, the Diviner.

A sleeve of green water encased the young Mage, giving him the comical likeness of a human-size edamame bean. Lea levitated the parcel of water above them, then with a pop, Richard released the Mage so that he fell to the floor gasping and gagging.

"Well, what do you think of my proposal?"

"I yield!" The Diviner emptied the contents of his Storage Ring. A few strange-looking crystals, assorted potions and random adventuring necessities poured out. "Take it. Take it all! I give up. Let me go. I want out!"

"Good choice, my man." Richard nodded approvingly. "Master Hao, are you there?"

A silvery mandala materialised beside the group. With a thump of displaced air, a wizened, middle-aged man with an impressive Confucian moustache appeared. "Xiao Pan is forfeiting the match," the Mage said without expression. "I will now transport you to a medical facility. Do you wish to proceed?"

The Diviner gazed upon Richard with absolute gut-wrenching hatred, snot and ejecta running down his handsome face.

"Lea?" Richard smiled with teeth.

"I forfeit. Take me now!"

"Very well."

A flash of Conjuration later, the boy was gone.

The Adjudicator turned his eyes upon them. "Will you let the rest out?" he asked Richard seriously, his brows knitted. "If you intend to murder them in cold blood while they are helpless, that is your choice, but I will have to make a report."

Richard shrugged. "They tried to bully Gwen. They can wait."

"Richard, what happened? What did you do?" Gwen felt her rational world turned upside down by the sudden turn of events. Just as a minute ago, she had just set her mind to murder mode, now she was being treated to a grotesque comedy.

More pockets of the waterlogged bog opened around them. Gwen saw half a dozen pods of encased Mages writhing in their watery pouches in a radius centred around Richard. One by one, their victims rose from below the peat bog, suspended in the air.

"Well," Richard's eyes regarded his cargo of captured CCs lovingly. "I should thank you two for the distraction, but it's a long story."

"Fei!" Gwen pointed to a skinny Mage suspended and barely conscious. "Dick, can you let this one go?"

Richard opened the Water Tomb without question.

Fei choked and gagged on the floor, then turned over onto his stomach, vomiting forth a torrent of swamp water. "Oh Mao, Gwen, thank Mao, you're okay," he choked. "Horrible. So horrible. I thought for sure I’d died. So many times."

"MMMMmmph! Mmmph! Mm!" One of the Mages, the one called Yuan, began to beat his tomb's walls. From what Gwen could see, his face was turning deathly pale with asphyxiation.

"It was him. He was the one who called the Xiao Clan!" Fei said.

"Fei?" Tao said to the haggard Illusionist. "Is that you?"

"Tao?" Fei feebly offered a greeting. "Yeah, it's me."

"EE-ee?" Ariel yipped cutely.

With a wave of his hand, Richard injected a bubble of air into the sleeves. The inhabitants of Richard's watery worlds greedily gulped the air. Still, the momentary respite was worse than actual drowning, for their desperate salvation lasted no more than half a minute before they again begged for sweet release.

Gwen knelt beside the shivering Fei and made sure he was okay.

"Anyway." Richard turned to Gwen with eyes that were soft and mirthful. "Storytime. So, I landed pretty close to Tao and Mina. We ran into some others while looking for you two. Helped people out and made some gains. We were just headed down south when we saw an SOS sigil."

Gwen stared numbly at the pile of trinkets, crystals and Dungeon loot that lay in a knee-high heap beside them.

Richard told her that using Tao's Illusions and Lea's control over the water, they’d managed to spread Lea "like butter" over the opposing Mages without them suspecting. They then used a tunnel system in which Richard took advantage of the peat bog to ambush the unsuspecting assailants.

"Anyway, what's it going to be, rat face?" Richard freed Huyi, the last Xiao left, from the watery tomb.

Besides them, the Adjudicator rolled his eyes. "You know, I've seen people get robbed in the Dungeons, but he had never seen Clan disciples farmed like sheared sheep. You're a brave man, Mister Huang."

"What did you do to my Caliban?" Gwen interjected before Huyi could answer. "Release my familiar at once!"

The vomiting Huyi, however, had no interest in answering her. As soon as the Clanner finished hurling, he turned onto the Adjudicator. "YOU! Are you just going to let this happen? Who's your registrar? I am going to file an official complaint! What's happened here is the negligence of your duty! He was torturing us! I was fucking tortured, do you understand me?"

"My Caliban." Gwen tried to regain the boy's attention, to no avail.

The Adjudicator stared at Huyi without a single hint of emotion. Once Huyi had exhausted himself, the Magus turned to Richard. "You killing him?"

"Nope," Richard replied. "Happy, Huyi? You get to go home now."

"In your fucking dreams! You upstart dog!" the Abjurer said, though he backed off as the words escaped his mouth, giving his threat a hint of the comical. "Do you know who I am?"

"You want to go back in there?" Richard knitted his dark brows. Lea's exquisitely beautiful face giggled beside the Conjurer and blew Huyi a kiss.

Huyi turned again to the Adjudicator. "Did you hear that? Arrest him now! He's trying to torture me! This behaviour is against the protocol of a Dungeon dive!"

The Adjudicator turned to Gwen and her companions as though Huyi was no more than flatulence. "I hear a distress call," he said. "It sounds urgent."

"I do too," Richard said. "Very urgent."

"Yes, clearly audible," Petra added.

"What distress call?" Tao said confusedly.

”If he doesn't tell me where Cali's gone," Gwen said quietly. "I am going to Void him."

The gathered turned to stare at Gwen.

"You guys, for the love of Mao," Mina moaned, touching a hand to her temple.

"Yes, I better get going." The Adjudicator dissipated into a cloud of silver.

Huyi regarded Gwen and her group with watery eyes. "You wouldn't dare!"

"Richard, cover me," Petra faced the Abjurer with a look of pure malice, then produced a spell cube. "I am trained in this sort of thing."

Unlike Gwen, Petra hadn't dispelled her Crystal Skin. "Now, I am going to ask questions and you're going to—"

Gwen stepped in before Petra could begin her regime. Extending an exquisitely shapely leg ahead as though she was taking a step into the air, she stomped Huyi in the chest and sent the sod skittering before he slammed into the ground, winded and wheezing.

"WHERE IS CALIBAN?" she screeched. "Give me back my Cali!"

Just the very thought of summoning Caliban and feeling his empty pocket dimension was making her see red. Being untrained in the art of interrogation, she did the only thing she could think of, which was to stomp on Huyi until the answers flowed out of his guts.

"Where is my familiar?" She stepped on Huyi's Mage Armour.

Watching her boot lay into the young Master over and over again, the corner of Richard's mouth twitched.

"Gwen," he advised with great deliberation. "The way you're gingerly stomping him with those delicate stalks of yours, he’s probably loving it."

Then Petra joined in, shattering the Abjurer's protective armour with a body blow before gutter-stomping his face.

Gwen stared. Her cousin had no chill. Also, Petra was not joking when she said that she was trained for this.

It took only a minute for Huyi to cough up the core he had received from Gwen and release Caliban from his Clanner sorcery. With his forfeiture, Huyi gained the opportunity to be immediately transported to a medical facility.

Then, there was one more account to settle.

The comatose Yuan.

"You first or me first?" Petra asked Gwen, her eyes alive with excitement. "Me?"

While Petra railed against the patriarchy, their cousin Tao held a recording device to taken down what Richard said was precious memories.

"Mack-Daddy, Little-Dog, where are you guys?" She heard Tao lament to himself, his eyes likely filled with misty remembrance of when he had fled from every danger in the Dungeon. "I miss you dudes so much."

Chapter twenty-six

Spotty Hands

With Yuan forfeiting after being taught a hard lesson in ethics, Gwen and her companions formed a huddle to discuss their next course of action.

Besides the party of five, Caliban, Ariel and Lea played about tagging one another, skittering back and forth across the soggy bog. Caliban resumed its serpentine form and slithered between the peat layers, while Lea cheated by diving into the marsh itself. Ariel, as a result, was left fuming and frustrated, chittering with frustration.

"Oh yes, your shares of the fruit." Petra threw three cubes toward Richard, Mina and Tao consecutively. "Vitae Fruit. Good for the skin. Eat it or trade it, up to you."

"How many CCs?" Richard asked.

"No idea." Petra materialised three more. She had six in total. "One for Babulya, one for my Master, and one we can trade away. I'll pay for my Master's one with my portion of the CCs."

Gwen raised her hand. "Can I purchase the last one? I have a use for it." She had great use for the fruit, either to nourish Almudj's mana or to give away for favours in the future.

The others didn’t mind her offer. From what she knew, Mina and Tao's father was still young, while Richard was in dire need of his CCs.

"All yours." Petra agreed.

Richard allowed the stasis cube to rest between his fingers. In her cousin’s hands, the mutton-jade flesh glistened like a work of art. "I'll trade it for CCs," he said after some thought. "Gwen, can I keep it with you? You're welcome to trade me for it if you like."

"Sure," Gwen said. Perhaps, with Babulya's help, she could consume two more pieces of flesh without incident.

"I'll eat it now," Mina said. "Tao, you eat it too. Mao knows if you'll be able to hold onto it."

Tao gave Mina a mean look, but his heart wasn't in it. Gwen knew Mina was speaking from experience.

Petra dispelled the stasis cube and the pair of siblings partook of the wondrous gifts bestowed by the Fructum Vitae.

Mina asked Tao to conjure a mirror. As with herself and Petra, Mina’s skin appeared more tender than before, her eyes a little brighter. The best part of it was her figure, which was fuller.

"How do I look?" She turned to Richard, her smiling, luminous eyes forming two half-moons. The ability to talk with one's eyes was a talent neither Gwen nor Petra possessed but which Mina executed to perfection.

"Wonderful, Mina, as always." Richard retained that slight smile he always wore. "You too, Tao. You're looking far more fortified."

Tao turned the mirror toward himself. Having absorbed the Fructum Vitae, his posture appeared more statuesque, his body more toned and masculine. The timidness that seemed to underly his exterior machismo became less pronounced.

"So, back to the Guardian?" Gwen packed away the spare Fructum Vitae.

"Ah yes, the Guardian." Richard tapped his chin. "I think I know where it went."

Five pairs of eyes turned to the grinning Conjurer.

"There's a hollowed-out section beneath us. If there's going to be a guardian, I would suppose it's there. Lea, tell them." Richard called forth his Undine, who materialised from the waters beneath his feet.

"There is a cavern below, very big!" Lea fluttered her impossibly long lashes and illustrated what she had detected with her hands. "Big Salamander with many eggs."

"Those worth anything?" Richard turned to Petra.

"Gila Eggs?" Petra allowed the protective crystalline shell to fall from her body, fading into motes of mana as the fragments lost their enchantment. "That can't be right. Gila don't breed like that. They implant phages or tumorous tissue into their victims, then the victim slowly turns into a Gila."

"What if the Gila found a host that's able to mutate?" Richard inquired. "Unless chaos follows specific biological pathways?"

“Life, er… finds a way?" Gwen said sagely.

Petra considered her words.

"And there's always the Gila core," Gwen added. "How big did you say this thing is?"

"Lea, give us a look at it."

Lea summoned water from between the sodden peat. She roughly constructed a salamander about the size of a semi-trailer.

"That's a huuuge bitch!" Tao blurted loudly.

"That's a huuuge Magic Resistance," Petra observed thoughtfully.

The group fell silent.

"We can probably overpower it with Lightning and Void," Gwen suggested. "From what I could attest with the large Blue Gila, enough damage should make it through."

"It's underground, though." Petra raised an arched brow. "I don't fancy our chances fighting it underwater."

"How about this?" Gwen continued. "We can lure it with something like the Vitae Fruit, and then we can alpha strike it to cut off its mobility."

"That's a bit optimistic," Petra said. "The older the Gila, the smarter. Reds have low cunning like Goblins. When we start seeing blue ones, you're looking at Hobgoblins. At green, we're looking at something like Humans. Once we start getting to super rare breeds like grey or Black Gila, we're looking at ancient intelligence like Elves or Dragons. I doubt an angry, ancient Gila is going to be a dumb animal."

"Think it can use magic?" Mina asked. "The green ones can do magic."

"Lea says it's red," Richard assured her. "We're looking at a mighty bruiser, maybe a tier VI or so in strength, but tier VIII in anti-magic defence. Let's assume it's intelligent, but not too intelligent. That means we need some serious damage. Gwen? Petra?"

"Well, we got a spare Vitae Fruit to act as the lure." Petra pointed out. "How well do you think the Lightning and Void spells work against the Gila?"

"I'd say half-strength?" Gwen tried to quantify the resistance of the creatures she'd slain earlier, upscaled for size. "Void will eat away at its body regardless of the resistance and Lightning can penetrate its slime."

"Right." Petra appeared to contemplate the possibilities. "Okay, say I spell cube some of your attacks. We double down on Void while Mina keeps me topped up. Full pre-buff. Two Lightning Tentacles, two Void Tentacles. Double sets of Warding Bolt and Conjure Storm. We'll potion up after initial buffs, then again at half-tank. I'll make combat platforms on the tree over yonder, well out of reach of that thing. You and Richard to the right, Mina and me to the left. What do you think?"

"We'll need to rest," Gwen advised.

"That works out well." Richard pointed at the watery model of the great beast. "You know, I think I’ve figured out why our guardian didn't show."

"What do you know?" Mina eyed her relative.

"It's entirely obvious when you think about it." Richard laughed. "It's nocturnal!"

A look of realisation washed over the other four companions. Gwen slapped her forehead. Of course, she should have thought of that. She's been to Taronga Zoo many times in her past life. She’d even done the night tour! Amphibians, particularly creatures of the dark like salamanders, were nocturnal hunters.

"How we gonna bring that huge bitch to the yard?" Tao proposed after a few seconds of contemplation.

"Well," Richard eyed their companion up and down, "you're going to bring it to us."

"Oh." Tao’s face turned ashen. "I… I am?"

"Indeed, Peaches." Richard patted the Illusionist on the back. "You too, Fei."

"Me too?" Unlike Tao's fearful consternation, Fei's expression was one of unexpected anticipation.

"Of course." Richard smirked. "You two are the heart of our plan."

Due to the extended time required to prepare Petra's spell cubes, the party settled in to rest their minds and bodies.

Gwen volunteered her Portable Habitat, much to Mina's delight, slotting an HDM into the magical device and lying it down at the tree's base.

Each member then found rooms to prepare for the night battle to come. Gwen meditated to recover her mana, aided by Mina, stoking Almudj's life force to give herself a tolerance for Void. Petra carefully cubed Gwen's higher tier spells, reproducing her spell list in both Lightning and Void.

Richard, meanwhile, sat in the living room, carefully explaining a plan involving Lea and the two Illusionists in their project to lure the Salamander.

When the late afternoon arrived, Lea reported that other Mage parties came to take shelter on the relative dryness of the peat bog. Having ascertained who and what they were dealing with, Richard sent Gwen and Mina to negotiate with them.

Mina saluted like a good soldier and took Gwen by the hand. "Come on. You've been cooped up in there cooking up spell cubes." Mina dragged her from her room. "Let me show you how we've been harvesting loot the whole way here."

"Tao, if you please?" Richard was close behind them. "On myself as well. Don't forget to record."

"Invisibility!" Tao incanted the spell twice. The sanctioned spell was Tao’s life-preserver, only now they were using it for Richard's nefarious purposes. If Tao had been by himself, Gwen suspected, the boy would have found his friends, then they would hole up somewhere safe until the Dungeon ended.

"What are we doing?" Gwen looked at Richard. Even as an ally, all she saw was a vaguely humanoid distortion.

"We're doing the Lord's work." Richard's voice was secretive and expectant. "Out we go, let's see what we got. Lea, you good?"

"I am in place, Master." Lea's voice came from thin air.

"Let's go!" Mina pulled on Gwen. With a quick tug across the threshold, they were out of the portal and into the Dungeon once more.

"Wo Cao!" another voice, rougher and spoken far less delicately, answered the first. "Just because we're a PUG, don't think you can mess with us!"

"We were here first!" A haughty voice cut through the air. "This groove will shelter the House of Xu tonight and we do not desire unwanted company, especially one of your foul presence."

Gwen caught the tail end of their conversation as she and Mina appeared from behind the tree, where a depression in the trunks hid the portal Gwen had set up. Pulled by her cousin, they stalked around the circumference of the giant Bayan and found themselves caught in between the two bickering groups.

"Fuck!" Now in range, Gwen's Ioun Stone translated the curse. "Where the hell did you two come from?"

The Mage who spoke was a fat woman with broad shoulders and barrel-waist. She had a voice like a loudspeaker and wore her pigtails like a younger girl, which made her look ridiculous. Behind her were four ragged-looking Mages, injured and exhausted-looking, all young men of indistinct attire.

"Indeed, it would almost seem as though you appeared from nowhere." A soft, polite voice came from their left. The speaker was a young man with a sculpted face and bright, intelligent-looking eyes. He was wearing a one-piece mandarin robe that came straight out of eighties Jet Li films. His attire was entirely white: white-cloth shoes, white tunic and white pants. His companions were three other males, likewise clad in white, and a girl who looked to be a PUG member for she appeared carefully made-up, wearing a minidress that showed off her shapely calves.

"We're lost!" Mina announced with her cute, diminutive voice. "Can any of you help us? We need a safe place to meditate and restore our mana. We've been running from monsters since this morning and manage to shake them just an hour ago."

Mina's voice sent shivers up Gwen's spine. Her cousin must have foregone the auto-cleaning function of her Sunday dress somehow, for the fabric was a little torn and soiled at the hem. Furthermore, her Roman sandals trailed with wayward mud, marking her shoes with evidence of a panicked escape.

Beside the tragically pretty maiden, Gwen appeared stupefied. She was still wearing her skinsuit, which was charred and marked by their earlier combat. Despite a refreshing Prestidigitation, the suit would need repairs when they returned to Shanghai. Added to the fact that she'd been draining spells for the last four hours to feed Petra's cubes, she appeared the very picture of a survivor.

The two groups regarded the girls.

"Play along," Richard's voice spoke next to Gwen.

Gwen looked around bewilderingly. Were they doing what she thought they're doing?

"Can… can we help them?" The comely PUG girl with the white-suited Mages reflexively asked her companions, her eyes filled with sympathy.

The leader, the one who spoke, looked toward Gwen doubtingly, narrowing his eyes.

"We'll shelter you," the other Mage, the burly female, announced confidently, her face pudgy like a smiling Buddha. "Come here, quick."

Mina took Gwen's hand and joined the pick-up group, tittering with "panic" as they did so.

When they arrived, however, they were received by wanton and greedy eyes. An atmosphere of repressed mana filled the air, suggesting that these Mages were not the friendly kind who helped a maiden in distress.

"Show me the contents of your ring and we'll protect you," the burly woman demanded once Gwen and Mina were out of range of the Mages in white. "Those guys over there, you can't trust them. I saw them rob a few juniors only a few hours ago."

"That’s bullshit!" the minidress girl shouted across the bog. "They tried to rob me!"

"Ring. Contents. Now!" the barrel-waisted girl-Mage demanded quickly. "They're monsters hereabouts and they'd take you under the bog sooner than you can say 'regret’. If you want our protection, it's only natural that you purchase a little faith, hmm?"

"Are… are you robbing us?" Mina demanded angrily. "This isn't fair! As if we have anything to give!"

Gwen almost spat in the fat girl's face. Holy shit.

"Don't make me shut you up." A gauntlet of stone materialised on the sorceress' forearm. "I'll snap you like a twig. I can see your Storage Rings. Hand them over."

"Never!" Mina snapped, her face full of anguish. "Gwen has a Large Storage Ring. It's priceless."

The look of avarice on the stout sorceress' face was painfully obvious. Gwen tugged Mina's shirt, requesting that perhaps she should dial down the charade.

"Won't somebody stop them?" Mina shouted towards the four Mages behind the fat one, who burst into laughter. "What's so funny?"

"What House you from, green girl?" one of the Mages demanded.

"I've seen you around." Another pick-up member licked her with his eyes. "You're that Lightning Sorceress that was at M the other night, right?"

"How dare you take advantage of us when we're OOM!" Mina quickly retorted in case the Mages got cold feet.

Seriously? Gwen pinched Mina, who shrugged it off and elbowed her in the gut, causing Gwen to keel over.

"She was?" The burly Transmuter-leader shifted her attention to Gwen. "I heard she won two thousand HDMs from the son of the Fung Clan just the other night. How dare you lie to us. You said you had nothing!"

Over on the other side, the white-clad Mage began to move.

"Hey, you! Over there! You girls. You can seek shelter with us. We won't harm you or ask for reparations. I swear it, by the name of the Xujiahui House of Xu."

"PEI!" The burly sorceress spat vehemently at the young man. "Fuck! Who do you think you are, huh? Local land gods? This isn't Xijaihui. These girls came to us first and they're under our protection whether you like it or not!"

"I have no loot to give!" Mina wailed, her eyes full of tearful desperation. "I mean, Gwen has a Creature Core, but we need it. If we go back with nothing, our dads will think we're useless!"

What an actress! What a terrifying girl! Perhaps Mina should focus on theatre. Tao can be the musician, Mina, the actress; they could be the dynamic entertainment duo of the Wang family.

The Transmuter's beady eyes lit up. It was a terrifying expression, like watching a lucky Buddha's lips opening to reveal pointed teeth.

"If you know what's good for you…" The greedy Mage was far more focused on the House of Xu's white-clad Mages than Gwen and Mina. Her companions too were readying attack spells by front-loading their mana and incantations.

"I am not giving you my core," Gwen tried to follow Mina's suit. Her acting was so wooden, so unnatural, that the effect was immediately immersion-breaking.

"You're testing my patience, princess," the Transmuter threatened with a glare, losing all patience. "Empty your ring, now—"

Fsssuwurp!

Gwen felt immense relief when the bog finally opened up its maw and swallowed their assailant. The charade had been wreaking havoc on her nerves.

The Transmuter's four companions, who'd been loading up spells, were likewise taken by the suck of the swamp.

An eerie silence overtook the clearing, then abruptly, four vibrant shields of different elements sprang into existence. The House of Xu was in combat formation, all except their leader, who took on an expression of disbelief.

"Praetor Huang? Is that you?" The leader of the House of Xu announced to thin air.

"Yo!" Richard materialised a few metres away. "Now that you mention it, you do have a familiar face."

"Praetor, it is you! It's me, Julian Xu. Do you remember me?" The Mage called Julian seemed far more excited to have met Richard than worried about their dubious circumstances. It was only when the two shook hands that the tension softened and their Shields retracted.

"Julian? From Xiaoming Academy? Goodness, it's been two years! How've you been?"

"I am doing well, senior!" Julian turned to his companions. "This is the man I've told you guys about—Senior Huang from Prince's. He was there at the exchange conference a few years back as the Praetor for Prince's Sydney team. No one got past them that year, remember? And Prince's London branch picked up the Inter-high Cup."

Two of the members mumbled that they did. Another one of Xu's mates worshipfully shook Richard's hand.

The two girls watched the exchange with some surprise, Gwen more so than Mina.

"Anyway, this is my team, Gan, Felix, Gui and Taiyuan. The girl is a PUG member we picked up. Her name is Felicity Tang."

"I have a few more members with me as well. I'll introduce them later." Richard broke off from the group and told Gwen and Mina to come closer.

"This is Gwen Song, my cousin, and Mina Wang, from Wang Enterprises."

"A pleasure."

"It's good to meet you."

"Likewise."

"From the one in Huaihai Road?"

"The very same."

"Thank you for offering to help us earlier." Mina bowed slightly.

"I am glad you're both safe," Felicity Tang quickly ingratiated herself with their noteworthy party. "Senior Richard, it's a pleasure to meet you. May I ask what happened to the other party?"

"You'll have your answer very soon, my dear," Richard said, his intelligent eyes glinting. A girl not in the know would have fancied the young man to be flirting with them, but Gwen knew Richard was probably thinking of the Crystals and the CCs.

Taking the wrong hint, Felicity edged closer to Richard. Mina snickered coldly and pushed Gwen toward Richard. At six-foot-two, Gwen's hips started at the Asian girl's navel. Felicity's face withered like a trodden orchid.

"Richard," Mina said innocently. "Think it's time?"

"Another minute," Richard answered nonchalantly. "So, how're you guys faring so far?"

"Passably." Julian began a tirade of their exploits since entering the Dungeon. Felicity made inane small talk with the girls, asking about their experience. "Although, what do you intend to do with those Mages? Surely you're not thinking of killing them? Why so serious?"

"See for yourself." Richard motioned with a hand. "Lea, bring 'em up!"

The barrel-waisted Mage was in an extra-large satchel of brown liquid, her face blue with asphyxiation. When she landed on the soft peat in a burst of brown water, she let loose a gibbering, bestial torrent of salty gunk from her lips.

The small crowd of Mages regarded the arrogant Transmuter with sympathy. Transmuters could train to breathe in water, but the spell took both time to incant and manifest. To be stuck in a water prison and denied the air necessary to cast a life-saving incantation must make an exquisite dilemma.

"I… I forfeit!" the Mage uttered feebly. "Please, no more."

"Excellent choice, my good woman, the contents of your ring to the right—"

"STONE SPIRE!"

A burst of violent Earthen mana burst from the Transmuter's outstretched hand. The embittered Mage must have been holding the spell since her entrapment, for the usually second-long incantation for the tier III spell was completed in a split-second.

The sudden change, especially after a forfeiture, was unexpected and caught Gwen's party off-guard.

Lea was the first to react; her twitch reflex as an attuned spirit was enough to form a Water-Shield half a metre away from Richard. It was unfortunate then that the Water Abjurer's shields were weak against the Earth element's brute-force attacks. The stone projectile burst through the transparent barrier and shot toward Richard's surprised face.

It was a mistake made out of hubris. The gathered had thought the Mage a Transmuter only. No one had suspected that she would also be an Evoker or that Evocation may have been her primary School of Magic.

"Shield of Faith!" Mina's training had drilled the reflexive reaction into her body. A blooming sheet of light, empowered by Positive Energy and pure mana, moved to envelop Richard.

Gwen, however, had never received formal Abjuration training. Seeing Richard in imminent danger of becoming enveloped in a world of jagged shards, she extended a hand toward the Mage and uttered the first thing that came to mind. "Void Bolt!"

A dart of dark matter sliced through the air and pierced through the Transmuter's Stone Shield. The fat sorceress had probably suspected she would get hurt in the scuffle, but had not imagined that she would cop a Void Bolt to the face.

Without sound nor any form of spectacular display, the bolt consumed the sorceress' head, leaving only two pigtails to flutter to the ground. Above them, her attack fizzled into motes of indistinct mana.

For a moment, the headless Mage remained unmoving. A second later, from the horizontal cross-section of her neck stump came a gush of arterial blood that soaked the peat bog, a stream of crimson ejaculating with each pulse of her failing heart.

Gwen stared at her handiwork, a spine-tingling chill working her way up her spine like silver of eldritch frost. She's dead! Her mind screamed. I just murdered a woman in cold blood!

She felt numb with clarity, as though she'd stepped through a threshold. The Transmuter was not someone who had done her grave injury; she was merely someone she had met no more than five minutes ago, a careless bully and a greedy guts. Now she was a headless corpse bleeding out on the floor! Only a split-second ago, this was a cheating, conniving, scheming human being, fully capable of rationality, possessing the faculty to learn and change. She had taken all of that away from this woman, this girl-Mage. Now she was just a bag of dead flesh on the floor. She hadn't just stolen this Mage's life, she'd taken all the potential that her humanity offered the world!

"Gwen!"

"Cousin!"

Voices calling out to Gwen seemed to pull her back from the abyss of her own making. Gwen turned to see her companions, who by now had spilt from the Portable Habitat, calling out to her.

"I am…" Gwen wanted to say that she was alright, but she was hardly that. She stumbled backwards and had to be caught by Petra, who hugged her close to her chest. Her heart was pounding like a rabbit in a bag; she wanted to vomit.

"It's fine; she deserved it," Petra said, her voice calm and collected. "Good job."

"Yeah, that bitch was asking for it, dawg. I got that shit on Vid-cast!" Tao added his piece, shaking his Lumen-recorder with confidence. "Stone cold! Capped that bitch like a dog!"

"Peaches, shut up! Gwen, please don't feel bad about doing what's necessary," Mina said. "Richard could have been injured."

Gwen felt her stomach churn.

Mina had already covered Richard.

They had a Healer with them.

At worst, Richard would have needed some minor healing. If the pair had worked their way across the marsh, fearing these men and women of sin, they would have indeed fought off at least a dozen that had tried to ambush them by now.

"I… I am…" Gwen tried to catch her breath. She had killed a woman for no good reason. A Mage had lost her life because she couldn't hold her horses.

Then a hand took her by the wrist and pulled her away from Petra.

Gwen turned to see Richard's dark eyes gazing upon her with benevolence. "Richard, I didn't mean… I…" Her mind remained a chaotic jumble of emotions and unbidden horrors. She had only been in Shanghai for six days and she was already a murderer.

Richard massaged her hands.

"I didn't mean…" She tried to pull away.

To the surprise of all, Richard slapped her across the face.

Gwen felt her anarchic thoughts cease at once. A flush of anger and confusion replaced the immensity of her remorse as her eyes flashed electric and emerald.

"Gwennie." Richard held both of her wrists so that she couldn't move. "Thank you for saving my life."

"But—"

"GWEN." Richard's voice was like a booming thunderclap; his vice-like grip bruised her tender, white wrists. "You saved my life."

Slowly, she felt the adrenaline drain away, and with it, the chemical hysteria of the blood.

Her eyes fell upon the corpse. From the enormous cadaver came the sighs and murmurings of escaping gases as organs lost their vitality and shed their cargo of liquids. From the stomach to the spleen, the woman's wrecked locomotive shut its valves for the final time, its meat settling into a quivering silence.

A flash of silvery Conjuration appeared not far from the group. Master Hao, the Adjudicator, appeared beside them.

"Mr Huang, I told you that trouble would find you if you persisted," the Senior Mage said.

"I'll take full responsibility," Richard said without any emotion of panic or remorse. "Mr Wang has the whole thing on Vid-Cast. I do believe that we are well within our rights to defend ourselves."

"I'll be the judge of that." The Adjudicator turned to Gwen. "A Void Mage. It's been a while. How long have they been hiding you?"

"That's on a need to know," Petra said before Gwen could answer. "Please take it up with my Grandmother, Director Klavdiya Song of the Second PLA Army Hospital."

"I would like to submit for the record that the House of Xu is in full support of Senior Huang and Ms Song." Julian stepped forward.

"My father is with Villeroy and the Wus," Mina added her piece. "If you want to question Richard or Gwen, I suggest a formal application through our Arbitrator-Solicitor."

The Adjudicator rolled his eyes. He ignored the junior Mages' threats and chose instead to focus on doing his job. Producing a recording device that hovered over one hand, he took a copy from Tao's recording.

"Retaliation in defence. Unlawful assault after forfeiture by Baiming Shui, independent House from Lishui. Death by single spell decapitation, Void Bolt. Dead on arrival. Dated Sunday, 13th of April, 2003."

After jotting down the details, he turned to the child-Mages. "Goodbye. Try not to kill anyone else."

The Adjudicator was once more gone from their sight.

"Wait." Richard watched the Senior Mage disappear. "There are four others!"

The Adjudicator did not return.

With Gwen still in her depressed state, the afternoon had lost its festive, relaxed atmosphere. Richard summoned the other four prisoners, took their crystals and their loot, then sent them packing.

With the matter now resolved, Petra, Tao and Fei introduced themselves, then Richard accepted the offer of aid and cooperation proposed by Julian. Both parties confirmed the split of the potential loot from the giant Gila, then the members shook on the agreement.

Questioning the members of their extended party, Petra requested they submit spells to her cause. Stunned by her breathtaking grace, the men eagerly complied while their female companion, Felicity, sulked.

Gwen sat on a rock, glancing at the body every once in a while. She became so distracted that Richard opted to just disappear the corpse altogether.

As daylight began to lose its lustre, the group settled into their respective roles. Gwen provided the food and the conjoined party made the most of the facilities offered by the Portable Habitat. With a helping hand from the girl, Felicity, an eleven-person serving of noodle and spam fed the party.

Gwen became surrounded by the sound of slurping and sipping as dinner commenced. Her eyes glanced at the spot where the Lishui Mage had died. Now, only a patch of dried blood remained.

The erstwhile Transmuter's Storage Ring had held a significant volume of loot, ranging from exotic flora to small Creature Cores to alien metal. It was a testament to her avarice.

"It is a vile thing to die," Gwen mumbled to herself, "when folk are unprepared and look not for it."

She gazed at her dainty white hands and wondered if she would see the spots of blood. With Void, hers was an implement of murder that left no tales. Still, would all the perfumes of Arabia make her little hands sweet again?

Gwen closed her eyes to rest and saw Faceless' distorted, shapeless mien mocking her hypocrisy. "I told you we were alike! I told you, Gwen Song. We would be together. One way or another."

Gwen suppressed the sickness that rose in her stomach. Her grandmother's words hung in the air. "There will be no rest. No solace, not even when you're spent and bloody and desire nothing more than to sleep. With your talent, your blood, you will become like a beacon for the Rakshasa, a locus of envy, jealousy, wrath and lust. Can you understand that? You will walk the Path of Violent Reckoning!"

Gwen closed her eyes again and banished the darkness. She circulated Alumdj's mana through her circuits and breathed in, inflating her lungs until they were on the point of bursting, then breathed out.

For now, her companions were waiting, and there was a Gila to be Purged.

Chapter twenty-seven

Night Whispers

Nightfall.

The time for action was nigh.

"Alright!" Richard clapped his hands together and gathered the attention of the assemblage of Mages. "As discussed, let us proceed with hunting the elder Gila. Gwen, Petra, how are you?"

"I am ready," Gwen said. Keeping busy was the only way she knew to keep the sickening memories at bay.

"My spell list is adequate," Petra replied.

"Julian?"

"We're ready." Julian's men looked thrilled to be engaged in an operation to bring down a tier VI monstrosity.

"Felicity?"

"I got ’em covered, Magus Huang." Felicity's eyes sparkled. Surprisingly, she was the Xu party's Abjurer. Unfortunately, Clan Xu's Abjurer had either perished or failed to join up with the leading group. They would not know if their companion was safe until the Dungeon concluded.

"Not a Magus, not yet," Richard said. "Mina, you're with Petra on the left. Gwen, you're on your own on the right platform. Can you handle that?"

"I can."

"Tao, Fei, come here. Lea, let them attune with your mana."

A swirl of water flowed around Tao and Fei. Lea's alluring semi-transparent form flitted between the two Illusionists.

"The Gila is awake," Lea informed the two parties. "Shall I begin?"

"Everyone, battle stations!" Richard stood alone by the peat bog. The others hid behind platforms transmuted from the Bayan tree by Warp Wood. "Tao, Fei, you may begin."

Deep within the bog, the elder Gila stirred.

It had existed within the Dungeon dimension for aeons, arriving almost a millennia ago upon the currents of a mana storm. It had begun its conquest by consuming the local fauna, transforming them into Gila-like creatures. Its first spawn had been a drove of Blue Gila, which had left its peat bog den searching for prey. The subsequent spawn had been Red, followed by Blue, then Red again. Occasionally, there had been a Green Gila, but those had been far and in between; without access to humanoids and Demi-human hosts, the elder Gila couldn't perpetuate its rarer bloodlines.

Then as though answered by the gods of chaos, humans appeared, and the Elder Gila rejoiced. Not only that, these humans were Mages—creatures attuned to the magical energies of the universe and the planes! With any luck, Gila's proliferation would inevitably spawn a supreme existence such as a Black Gila King via the strange arithmetic of chance.

Meanwhile, the original fauna of the plane had all become its kin. The elder Gila had also made its spawn feed the marsh's mangrove forests to accelerate the growth of the magical fruits the pocket plane initially held—fruits that could extend the lifespans of the creatures that consumed it.

As old as the elder Gila was, it knew it would meet the inevitable end that not even chaos could overcome. That was why it cultivated the fruits of life.

The instant it had awoken, it had understood that the guards it had set underneath a ripening tree were dead, that usurping invaders had taken its prize.

"GARRRRROP!" The elder Gila quivered with rage. It wanted to capture these humanoids and infect them with its parasitic eggs. But it also knew to be cautious. More than once, these humanoid invaders had almost taken its life. It would need to gather a swarm of its spawn and make a push for the tree, where it would—

"Yo! Yo! Yo! Lizard Bitch!"

The elder Gila was surprised to find its thoughts interrupted. In front of its snout, a swell of water transformed into a human! The creature wore skin with three white stripes and had a strange thing on its head that looked like a duck's bill. It taunted the elder Gila by throwing its limbs this way and that.

"GARRROP?" The elder Gila demanded to know why it was here.

"I am here—" The image met the elder Gila's shrivelled eyes, still the size of dinner plates. "—to smack a bitch up!"

Despite recognising the image as an illusion, the elder Gila felt an insolent force connect with its lower jaw, sending its head upwards to smack onto the cavern's roof.

"GARRRROP!" The elder Gila roared, sending the water currents to rush and the image to blur.

"Yo Fei, pass it over."

Another image approached the first, this one another humanoid.

"Look what I found," the small, androgynous-looking image said. "A Fructum Vitae!"

"Do you think this big delicious fruit belongs to somebody?" the first image asked, looking around.

"GARROP!" The elder Gila howled at the vision. It was his fruit! The one he'd spent a century cultivating. The one closest to ripeness!

"Naw, this belongs to no one." The small image began to pull the fruit open.

The waters around the elder Gila flooded with the scent of its long-awaited harvest—the rich odour of its holy fruit. The prize the elder Gila needed to extend its life! With shocking realisation, it acknowledged that these miscreants must be eating the fruit! They had just opened it! How else could it be sensing it so strongly?

It must attack these wretched beings forthwith. With any luck, it could consume the fruit before they did; it still had a chance!

With a wave of its gigantic tail, the Gila launched itself upward, punching through the layers of peat and slipping through the taut gaps with the lubrication afforded by its slimy exterior.

Its fruit. Its prize. It would have it!

"IT COMES!"

Lea appeared beside the illusory image of Fei and Tao busily tearing apart the fruit. In-between the two bickering visions was the "spare" piece of the fruit that Gwen had hoped to keep, now expended as bait to lure the elder Gila. A portion of it had been taken apart by Lea, whose elemental body transported the tasty morsel downstream.

The surface of the bog swelled like a bloated balloon before it erupted, ejaculating a geyser of rotten water into the air and showering the surrounding with a cloud of foulness. The Red Gila that emerged was true to form—a giant salamander, its eyes and limbs long atrophied thanks to a life of unmoving stasis in the deep-dark of the fetid cavern.

Along with its exit, a swarm of strange Gila-fauna likewise emerged. Fish that were lizard-like, lizards that were frog-like, everything from ankle-sized biters with razor-sharp teeth to dog-sized spawn with jaws that distended to encompass more than half its body, rushed towards Tao and Fei.

"Shit! Run!" Tao grabbed the fruit and fled.

Fei, meanwhile, distracted the lesser creatures by swinging to the right, throwing ineffective spells at the swarm as it advanced behind the elder Gila.

"GARRRRROP!" The elder Gila howled with insane rage. With a dull whoomp of its tail, it slid forward, balanced by small, ineffective limbs, toward the Gwen’s party that it desired swallow with a single snap of its unhinged jaw.

With the swarm and the elder Gila somewhat separated, Tao turned to face his enemy. The Illusionist's face was white with fear and pale with terror. "No!" He cowered before his inevitable demise.

The elder Gila's mouth closed over Tao, only to shudder when it bit into something long, slithering and sinuous. Surprised and with its mouth burning with necrotic energy, the elder Gila swallowed.

"NOW!"

Beneath the gigantic Bayan tree, the elder Gila gazed up with its mucus-covered head and measured the humanoid creatures' mana-rich presence.

An ambush! The Gila howled, spraying gobs of mucus all over. It had to escape!

With supernatural effort, it turned its body and slid on its mucus trail to turn, slamming against the tree as it did so, making a shower of leaves rain down, together with the spellfire.

Gwen injected herself with a mana potion as soon as she felt her reserve drop to half. After Conjuring Caliban, Ariel, two sets of Warding Bolts, Dark Tentacles and Call Lightning, what was left was insufficient to sustain her. Likewise, the vital Positive Energy from Mina's delayed healing buff expended itself without reserve.

As the Gila had consumed Caliban, it had crushed the lower half of the serpent's body, forcing Gwen to expend another portion of her vitality to sustain the critically injured netherworld creature until it could begin its terrible surgical excavation.

When the creature had slid under the tree and tried to propel itself backwards, Gwen knew that it was now or never.

Ariel let fly with a shower of needles that embedded themselves into the slimy, leathery exterior of the salamander. Four sets of Lightning Bolts fired downwards from above the Gila to sizzle its skin, splitting open the oozy surface and frying the fatty dermis below. Four bolts of Void matter followed, biting into the flesh and gouging out chunks of dark pink tissue from the crimson exterior of the barking beast as it sought to escape.

Gwen felt her vitality drop again. A wave of dizziness washed over her, forcing her to brace herself against the warped, wooden platform. In moments like these, she began to understand why her contemporaries call her a glass cannon.

"Caliban!" she commanded. Despite becoming smothered by the barrage of malefic magic, the salamander's magical resistance had proved superior. A lesser creature would have become mincemeat, but the elder Gila was merely wounded and remained fully mobile.

With a mighty swipe of its tail, it launched itself back toward the rupture in the peat bog, seeking to escape.

Unfortunately for the Gila, its escape route was no more. Richard had used Lea to crush the passageway, closing it like a choked oesophagus.

"GARRRRROP!" A resounding roar echoed through the surrounding grove.

Around them, Julian and the House of Xu battled the tide of small Gila creatures, keeping them away from the main combatants. Occasionally, one of them threw a spell at the Gila. Unfortunately, every element apart from the monster-hunting Lightning and the all-consuming Void seemed to slide off its exterior like water off a duck's back.

"HURRRRK!" The Gila turned toward Gwen's elevated position and fired off a glob of corrosive liquid without warning.

"Richard!" Gwen was far too occupied with maintaining her spells to reinforce a Shield or effect a Dimension Door.

"Water Shield!" A double layer of water covered Gwen. The first took the attack's brunt, while the second, a shield with a broader base, prevented any of the phage-laden fluid from reaching her.

"Gwen, I can't sustain your Void spells!" Petra called out from the right. "Mina's almost out. It's all electricity from here on out!"

Behind Petra, Mina panted with exhaustion.

"One more bolt," Petra demanded of her cousin. "More Positive Energy!"

"I am doing it!" Mina let loose a moan of effort, her blouse sweaty with exertion.

Below, the elder Gila slid forward, only to meet with a shoal of writhing tentacles. Lashes of Void and Lightning wrapped themselves around its torso, neck and its bulging waist, cutting apart the slime and reaching for the flesh.

Another barrage of Void and Lightning bolts arrived, punching through the creature's hide. The Void created pockmarks the size of a human head, while Elemental Lighting penetrated the freshly made wounds, expending its volatile forces inside the Gila's organs.

"Ice Ball!"

"Wall of Stone!"

"Flame Sphere!"

The House of Xu continued to isolate the swarm from joining its creator, transforming the surrounding area into a fire zone separated by Felicity's barriers. Petra too, spared what she could, laying down preprepared walls of crystal to ward off the wayward creatures.

With the salamander held down by her tentacles, Gwen checked Caliban's progress. Her familiar informed her that it would soon complete its terrible work.

"Void Skin," she incanted, the protective film turning her silhouette the consistency of midnight. "Richard, I need to get close!"

"I got you!" Richard answered her from below. "Fei, Tao, Mirror Image, now!"

His command was answered by an affirmative. As Gwen drifted down toward the dying Gila, two images of her shadow-clad form appeared beside her.

Within the Gila, Caliban had finally located its prize—the Creature Core.

"Do it!" Gwen commanded, landing just beside the Gila, avoiding its thrashing tail. A single strike from the battering appendage would likely break every bone in her body.

An illusory Gwen landed near its head, instantly becoming crushed by a snap of its maw, while the other, appearing near the tail, was dashed by a single slap that sent up a small tsunami of swamp water.

Gwen felt another wave of weakness as Caliban took its pound of flesh and engaged its consumption ability. It was slithering through the Gila's innards and making for its spine.

"Come on!" Gwen mouthed a little too audibly, unnerved by the presence of the gargantuan Gila. This close, the feeling was akin to standing next to a school bus as it attempted a blind turn at full speed.

Her Warding Bolts fired again, finishing off its cartridge of three. Her Call Void and Lightning likewise engaged, feeding off her Evocation Sigil to emit bolts of terrible destruction.

Then Caliban tore into the Gila's spinal column and a mighty shudder overcame the churning beast. The Gila reared its head, turned toward Gwen, and twisted its body to perform a last-ditch body slam.

"Everyone," Richard called out. "Lea, give Gwen everything you got!"

The momentum of a creature measured in tonnage and far exceeding Gwen’s sixty-odd kilos of body weight slammed into her non-Newtonian Shield. Just as she saw her life flash before her eyes, Richard's Water Membranes opened in front of her, lasting only a split second against the physical force of the dying monstrosity.

With a ground-shaking thud, the creature body-slam landed.

"Gwen!" her party collectively screamed.

Gwen felt sorry for filling her friends with undue suspense while she reappeared on the other side of the Gila in a burst of Lightning from her Dimension Door.

She landed awkwardly, fell to her knees and slumped onto the peat bog's torn soil, the churned mud instantly reaching her waist. The Gila twisted itself again and tried to bring its body back the other way.

"Shield of Faith!"

"Water Shield!"

"Stone Shield!"

"Crystalline Barrier!"

A glowing shield, films of reciprocating water and an immense, umbrella-like barrier of stone appeared above and beside Gwen. The combined might of the accumulated defence bore the attack's brunt and repelled the Gila. Upon landing on its belly, an arterial spurt of dark blood erupted from its pale white abdomen in the space between its two frontal legs.

"SHAA!"

Caliban burst forth from the Gila's chest in a guttural spray of viscera and roared triumphantly. "Shaa! Shaa!" it cried out, engorged and bulbous with life-blood and stolen vitality.

With the swell of vital energy from Caliban, Gwen caught her breath and lifted herself from the sloppy embrace of the marsh.

The salamander's atrophied eyes regarded its assailant for the final time, then the fluttering firelight within its beady orbs died, turning into a milky emptiness. Its gargantuan body twitched and shook; its limbs pawed the air helplessly. Then, with a gurgling shake of its jiggling flesh, it was no more. Gwen felt a pulse of psionic energy escape the salamander, then the cacophonous crash of combat came to a sudden lull.

Stricken by their matriarch's death, the spawns of the elder Gila fled into the swamp. Now it was every Gila for itself.

Petra was the first to land beside Gwen, providing a shoulder to lean on. She too was pallid with Void-drain. Richard, Tao, Mina, and the others quickly joined the girls to ensure they were alright.

With a theatrical expulsion of gas, the salamander's giant carcass began to collapse, its soft bones breaking one by one as the magic that sustained it drained out into the aether. A burst of nauseating stench from its relaxed anus released a cargo of dark matter more deadly than the Void itself.

At the same time, a pulse of mystical energy fed into Gwen's Kirin amulet.

"Caliban!" Gwen willed her familiar to slither toward them. The Mages seeing Caliban for the first time were slack-jawed at the sight of the viscera-clad worm.

"Hurk! Hurk! Hrkbleeegh!" Caliban declared as it heaved like a cat trying to cough up a furball.

The Gila's Creature Core emerged pointed end first, the size of a man's torso. Caliban's ribs bloated and its carapace became stretched until it bled a milky-purple ichor. Then with a final, exhaustive motion, it spat the gore-laden crystal out onto the ground, a portion of it still attached to what looked like a segment of the creature's spine.

"Wo Cao!" someone said loudly. "That is a huge core."

Richard lifted the core into the air and cleansed it with Lea's aid, polishing the stone until it sparkled with refracted light. A heart of this size, from a creature with magical resistance, was undoubtedly immeasurably valuable.

"Gwen?"

"Yes?"

"Storage, please."

Gwen moved toward the core, allowing her ring's spatial field to envelop the thing entirely.

When the air displaced and the core disappeared, their newer members gaped in awe at her, with her Lighting, Void and a large Storage Ring.

"The eggs!" Petra turned to Richard. "Should we destroy them?"

Richard rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "This place is already a plane populated by the Gila," he suggested. "Maybe we should leave them? If the Gila are gone from this place, the Dungeon will diminish in many ways. How would that affect the population of magical materials in the plane? What would Acolytes farm in the future?"

"How about just one?" Mina suggested. "Could be someone is desperately looking for an egg. You never know."

"Alright, just the one," Richard commanded Lea to retrieve an egg from the bubbling corpse. "At worst, we can have a dubious omelette for breakfast."

The gathered party members turned to regard the mountain of flesh that sat before them, bathing in the afterglow. A tier VI beast! One with Magical Resistance that increased its toughness up to tier VIII! And yet, they’d been the ones to butcher it!

When the Dancing Lights and Daylight spells faded, the clearing was once again reduced to darkness, illuminated only by a sliver of moonlight. The enormous corpse of the Gila attracted a plague of carrion crawlers, so after some deliberation, the party opted to open up a chasm and throw the Gila back beneath the resting bog.

The combat over, Gwen retreated to her master bedroom, for she was the Habitat owner. The rest of the men slept in the living room. At her behest, the girls had their choice of lodging, for the king-sized bed was enormous and there were only two other spare bedrooms with single beds.

Of their party, Felicity flatly refused to sleep with strangers. Mina had never shared a bed with anyone, and so Gwen and Petra became bunk buddies in the master suite. As ex-military, Petra appeared entirely comfortable with the proposition of sharing a bed with a comrade.

Gwen rested her eyes beside Petra's body, mindful of her soft breath. However, when she finally closed her eyes, Gwen once more saw in exquisite detail those damned pigtails fluttering gently onto the bog.

Her eyes shot open and her breath hastened.

“God damn it…” she mumbled. Gwen has murdered sleep and therefore she shall sleep no more. But this world was not like her old world. Why should she be so distressed over the death of one inconsequential Mage, a nobody? It was her attacker's fault! She’d acted in self-defence.

In the dark, Gwen felt herself pivot dangerously towards a sinister axiom before she stopped herself.

She closed her eyes again.

A scent of hot iron filled her nostrils.

Gods! Gwen bit her lips. SLEEP, you stupid brain.

"Hey." Dark silhouetted fingers moved through the night and parted Gwen's ruffled hair to reveal her face. "You alright?"

"Yeah." Gwen turned toward the ceiling, wondering if the dark downlights offered some epiphanic solution to her insomnia.

Petra shifted on the bed until the silhouette of her face hovered on the edge of Gwen's vision. She could make out Petra's Husky-blue eyes catching the ambiguous light of the pocket dimension peering in from the semi-opaque pane in the dim darkness.

"Want to hear a story?" Petra said. "If you can't sleep, that is."

"Sure," Gwen said to the ceiling.

While her cousin gathered her thoughts, the shared darkness filled only with the sound of soft breaths exchanged in alternating intervals.

"I was twelve," Petra began. "I Awakened a little earlier than the other girls in my military school. As I was from a state institution, the Moscow Tower picked me up, and I was assigned to one of the Magisters there, an Enchanter, Magister Popov. Master Popov was an eccentric, a bohemian if you will, not a man for the rules. His personality and profession were bad combinations, for Popov was a sanctioned Mind Mage, a spy by profession. He used his talents liberally and without much regard for ethics, but the leadership turned a blind eye to any unsanctioned use of his magic because he was also the best they had.

"I was young and ambitious, and I thought the world of Master Popov. He was suave, he was skilled and he drank like a fish. I thought he was going to teach me Material Enchantment because I was a Mineral Mage. But Master Popov had other plans for me."

"Other plans?" Gwen shifted a little to catch Petra's profile. A sliver of silver moonlight contoured her figure under the silken sheets. Other plans. It didn't take a stretch of the imagination with Petra's nubile body beside her to see where this was going.

"He convinced me that I should train to become a Mind Mage like him. He told me I was born for it," Petra said nostalgically. "Popov told me that there were dozens of Mineral Mages, hundreds even, that the Tower could tap into if they needed work of that kind done, but there was only one Enchanter he knew of that could do my work."

"What kind of work?"

"Espionage. Ghost work. Specifically Red Ghost—meaning youthful, female spies."

"Wow," Gwen replied. "They sought to make you into a Black Widow?"

"You know it well." Petra laughed self-deprecatingly. "He had no interest in my Mineral talents, Gwen. He thought that with my external gifts, I could become more successful than anyone. I could become his Apprentice, take over his role at the Tower one day. I was smitten. Me, a Magister and a Ghost!

"I went along with it at first. Like I said, I was young and ambitious. Think about it, a Magister telling a junior Mage she could be as great as he was. Who was I to refuse?

"I agreed, and we trained. He taught me everything he knew and then some. He was full of impatience. Then, when I was fifteen, Popov decided that I needed to see some blood. He volunteered me for an operation in downtown Moscow dealing with the illicit trade of young Mages trafficked from the now-defunct Communist states overrun by the Beast Tide, you know, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus?"

Gwen knew only vaguely, but she inclined her head so as not to interrupt Petra's story. She had seen the trade in illicit Mage flesh firsthand, even in a Frontier city as "orderly" and "low-crime" as Sydney. With its vast stretch of hostile landscapes and endless tundras full of Magical Beasts and Demi-humans, Moscow's outer Frontiers had always been endemic with traffickers.

"As expected, I acted as bait. I charmed one of the traders and bid them take me to the underground market. The Tower Mages laid in wait for my signal, for it was my job to identify the ringleaders. Everything had gone well until I caught the eye of one of the customers, who demanded an immediate purchase and transfer from my charmed informant. When I willed my informant to refuse, he killed him right there."

"Jesus." Gwen inhaled an unsteady breath.

"It was the first time I saw someone killed." Petra's voice was calm and controlled. "They crushed his head with an Earthen Evocation."

Petra swallowed before she continued. "The customer's goons took me after that and dragged me to a room somewhere in the den. I acted the part of the hapless waif and begged him to spare me. Satisfied with my helplessness, he dismissed the guards. It was an unexpected scenario, but I was sure I had the situation under control. The man was smitten, and this made him far more pliable to my Mind Magic. But when we entered the room…"

Gwen gulped.

"It was a room without windows, all done up to look like some dungeon, though you might be a little young to know what that is. Anyway, we got into the room, and the first thing I saw was a child."

"A child!" Gwen spluttered in horror and disgust.

"I couldn't tell if it was alive or deceased. I thought it was a girl at first, but no, it was just a skinny boy, a street urchin. There are a lot of urchins about in Moscow and the surrounding Frontier cities. We're famous for it. The boy was undressed from the waist down."

"Jesus."

"The man must have thought I was frightened witless. He came toward me, like this…"

Petra moved her head closer to Gwen, close enough that she could feel Petra breathing on her face.

"Oh, Pats…" Her voice was full of quivering sympathy.

"When he tried to touch me with his filthy hands, all that training, all that tutelage Master had drilled into me flew out the window. I blasted him with a Hold Person then I materialised a crystalline dagger and placed it under his throat. The man whimpered. His face was so pitiful, so scared. I think he would have shat himself were it not for the Hold Person."

"What did you do?"

"Then, with one swift push, just like Master taught me…" Petra poked a thin finger under her cousin's chin; the unexpected synaesthesia instantly coated Gwen's skin with a sheen of cold sweat. "Then I had an unexpected discovery."

"What was it?" Gwen choked out, moving a hand to caress her intact neck as she tried to pace her heartbeat.

"You should know it well." Petra smiled. "The blood.

"Who'd have thought the old man would have so much blood in him," Gwen said softly.

"Yes." Petra moved away. "So much of it. It was like a fountain, spraying all over my hands, my clothes, my face. I had thought murder was clean, quick, easy, like killing a monster. The reality was obscene. It was disgusting. It turned my stomach."

"Then?"

"Then the Tower Mages moved in. I had blown my cover. When the VIP died, it sent the place into a frenzy. There was no more purpose to me discreetly identifying the ringleaders."

"The operation?"

"A modest success, no thanks to me. Master said that it was a test and I had failed it spectacularly."

"I am so sorry." Gwen moved a hand over to touch Petra's face.

Petra brushed her vague fingers away. "I am glad it happened that way. "I quit the Tower after that. Master rescinded my Apprenticeship. My parents, both serving in the military, were told of my failure. Father was disappointed, of course, but mother was alright with it. They asked me what my plans were, and I said I wanted to be a crafter. They contacted my grand-aunt—our babulya—then sent me here to Shanghai, where I wouldn't be an eyesore."

"But you're amazing!" Gwen gripped Petra's cold fingers. "Your skills with the cubes; They're incredible!"

"That's thanks to my new Master, Magister Wen," Petra spoke with a voice full of reverence. "A magic just for me. I owe Babulya my life, Gwen. She gave me hope. My Master as well, she gave me purpose, even if it's just an exchange of favours with grandmother."

"I hope she'll be satisfied with the Vitae Fruit," Gwen said.

"I hope so as well." Petra smiled.

The two girls laid side by side until their breath fell into a comfortable, iambic rhythm.

"I don't how if that helped," Petra said after a while. "I just thought I'd share it. I am not good with these things. I am sorry if there was no wisdom there to make you feel better."

"It helped," Gwen said earnestly. "Thanks for sharing, Pats. I appreciate it."

"It was good to tell someone," Petra answered. "Also, I hadn't expected that I would be so willing to overshare. Our story is strictly between you and me."

"Alright."

"Sleepy now?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I am sleepy too."

Gwen closed her eyes.

True to Petra's words, she felt the creeping lull of sleep, however troubled and uncertain it was.

When she woke the following day, Petra was gone. The whole house was empty except for Fei, who waited upon her with breakfast.

"Everyone's outside," Fei said. "We need to hurry up; the Dungeon is ending soon."

"It is?" Gwen quickly consumed her porridge and exited with Fei. Outside, the gathered crew was impatiently waiting for the final countdown.

"So soon?" Gwen asked Petra, who was happily stretching her body without regard for the hungry eyes observing her every move.

"Expected fluctuations." Petra shrugged. "We got a good 40 out of the maximum 72 though. That's not bad. Especially with the ley-lines around Shanghai, which primarily services the city."

They waited half an hour more, then each of their Message devices began to vibrate.

"Participants, you have thirty minutes until the Dungeon collapses. When you reappear in the material plane, there may be slight disorientation. Make your way to the staging area once you are clear. If you require aid, signal an Adjudicator once you are outside. There are no penalties for asking for aid once you exit the Dungeon. Likewise, you may not attack or engage in hostile actions toward other members of the Dungeon once you're outside."

"Anything to watch out for?" Gwen asked the party. "When we pop out, I mean."

"We're going to be pretty packed in, like when we entered. Careful no one tries to take our loot or repay a grudge with a sneak attack," Mina said.

"That likely?" Richard raised a bushy brow. "I guess we did piss off a lot of people."

"Sure, why not? If any assailants get caught, though, it's a huge penalty, paid in CCs." Mina smiled sweetly. "Think anyone would want to have a go?"

"They can try." Richard grinned. "I am happy to take a few CCs to forgive and forget, ha!"

The two cousins chuckled amiably.

When the countdown reached the final minute, all the members were packed and ready to leave. Gwen had retrieved her portable Habitat, but not before changing into a clean dress that showed off her figure.

"What strange vanity," Petra said, her eyes scanning Gwen's outfit.

"What a waste," Gwen retorted with big smiles, scanning her cousin back.

"See you on the other side." Mina rolled her eyes, then waved to the crowd, who waved back.

"Senior Huang, it's been a pleasure," Julian announced. "I look forward to seeing you again in Shanghai."

"Thank you. Senior Huang, Ms Gwen, Mina and Petra." The others bowed.

"Julian, the pleasure was all mine," Richard replied.

"Thank you, everyone." Gwen bowed as well, returning the favour. "I hope to see you all in Shanghai very soon."

"We look forward to seeing you as well, Ms Gwen."

Their Message devices began to vibrate.

"All participants, the Dungeon is now collapsing. You will be teleported to Hengsha Island shortly. Keep your arms and hands close to your body, and if you should be displaced into the ocean, immediately signal an Aerial Mage to render assistance."

Gwen held her breath as the distortion began.

Her first Dungeon dive was at an end.

Now it was time to count the loot.

Chapter twenty-eight

A Matter of Face

Once again, the world became an indistinct bank of fog.

As the Dungeon dimension closed around her, Gwen felt the physical world manifest in a swirl of volatile mana.

Immediately she checked her surroundings. Thankfully, she wasn't alone, for there were hundreds like her, standing around with mixed expressions of joy and anxiety, despair and triumph.

"Gwen!" Richard's voice cried out from the mass of bobbing heads.

"Richard!" Gwen waved back.

"Fam, over here!" Tao's greeting was like a loudhailer.

"Everyone, you're all here!" Mina skipped through the crowd and reached their sides.

"Me too." Petra's discretion was a waste of effort; with her height and dashing figure, she was the most conspicuous of them all.

Thankfully, the party gathered without incident, then made their way towards the staging area just south of the lowland clearing. When they entered the half-moon seating zone, groups that had arrived early were already having their loot measured and calculated for CCs.

Gwen's group made for one of the temporary platforms, where a familiar face awaited them.

"Adjudicator Hao!" Richard greeted the old Mage.

He scowled as soon as he saw them. "Oh, it's you. Well, I am glad to see you survived. I heard that you took down the elder Gila? Impressive work." Hao's mood improved as he spoke. "Well, let's see your ill-gotten gains."

"You jest, sir." Richard shared the Adjudicator's mirth. He bowed slightly and the others followed his lead. "At any rate, Magus Hao, I am thinking you're going to need a bigger table."

An illusionary projection ten metres high floated above the central dais, displaying the current top score for groups returning with their CC-converted loot. By the time Gwen and her group accosted Hao, the count was already an impressive one hundred and ninety-one CCs.

"A man of supreme confidence." Hao rubbed his hands. He produced a slate in one hand and motioned to his assistants. "Let us begin."

"Gwen?" Richard gestured for her to unveil their ill-gotten booty. More than half of the loot in her ring had been at one stage someone else's hard-won CCs. Gwen was so giddy with the prospect of overwhelming victory that she unconsciously vocalised the incantation. A crash of cascading minerals covered the table.

As the crystals covered the surface, Gwen thought of the bags of litter her cats used. Both unwashed and stinking of the swamp, their stony loot smelled strongly of ammonium.

"Ho! Very nice. Elementally tainted crystals. Good for making magical items." Hao recorded the amount as his assistants sorted and weighed the stones. When the final stone moved into their irrespectively colourised pile, Hao rolled a hand over the multi-coloured mounds and stowed them away. "Eighty CCs."

Next came a loose collection of strange flora—a few mushrooms and a fruit of mysterious origin that they could not identify.

"Hmm, Swamp Jezebel. Three Strangle Vine Hearts. Two Crystallised Hartcry. A bushel of Vitae Grass. All up fifty-nine. I'll throw one in for the exemplar specimen of grass. Add sixty CCs."

The CC scoreboard now had a total of two hundred and two CCs.

Feeling her heart beat against her chest, Gwen pumped mana through her conduits and produced the twin Gila cores.

"Whoa, lucky you! Two cores. Adult sized, very nice." Hao nodded appreciatively. "That's thirty CC each."

"Red stars! Look at the scoreboard."

The party's attention turned to the central dais, where a group of haughty-looking young Mages in identical uniforms stood presenting a human-sized crystal block to Magister Paris. The citrine chunk of crystalline rock was enormous, taking two strength-enhanced Mages to hold it steady.

"The Dungeon core!" an indistinct opinion identified the item. "So that's why the Dungeon closed prematurely!"

"For real?" Richard turned to Petra. "I thought they were a myth. At least, no one is supposed to be able to find it."

"They exist," Petra said with a curl of her lower lips. "The core is found deep in the Dungeon, generally far underground, making discovery entirely accidental. To try to pry into so much space is impossible without expending a disproportionate amount of resources."

"Still," Mina added, her expression becoming dejected. "They found it. I wonder what kind of a Guardian they had to defeat? How many CCs is it worth? Those cores can be made into Shielding Crystals or even enchanted to become Pocket Worlds. That Portable Habitat you got, Gwen? It's constructed from a chunk of this thing."

"Oh?" Gwen felt repressed by this other group's luck. "How the hell did they find such a thing?"

"Oh, you didn't hear?" said a junior Mage beside them who'd been listening to the girl's conversation. "They found it in a giant underground labyrinth flooded with water. Supposedly the guardian was absent, so they just nabbed it and legged it."

"Absent guardian, huh?" Richard manifested Lea. Her appearance was itself a source of envy for the Mages around them. A beautiful, humanoid familiar was an incredible boon, especially a sapient one. "Lea, did you see a core while you're down there?"

Lea shook her head. Gwen read the body language as maybe she’d seen it or maybe not. Even though Lea was self-aware, the Undine was more so a creature of passion and feeling than critical thought and introspection. If Richard had not known that a Dungeon Core existed below, Lea could not have known either.

"Don't worry about it." Richard patted his familiar. He repressed a sigh. "It hardly matters now—it's our fault for not knowing that a Guardian's nest could potentially hold a Dungeon Core. That's why it's important to study, kids."

Beside him, Petra appeared sick with self-loathing as well. The thought that a core was down had not crossed her mind either.

The party regarded one another and waited for the guillotine to fall.

"Maybe we can still win?" Gwen tried to be optimistic, but her naivety was crushed by a sudden cheer that grew from the riotous multitude of young Mages.

"Four hundred CCs!" someone shouted. "By Mao, they're going to win for sure! And they're going to get fifty CC for coming first. Red stars! Four hundred and fifty CCs!"

"Jesus." Richard sucked in his breath. "What are we sitting at?"

"You got anything else?" Hao patted the empty table. "Come on; you looted more than that."

"Gwen?" Richard's voice wavered.

Heart in mouth, Gwen moved her hand over the table once more.

THUNK!

The core of the giant Gila fell onto the table and chipped the granite surface.

"Cao!" Hao swore, taken aback by the size of the thing. "You did kill the Guardian! You guys found a core after killing a single elder Gila? I don't know what to say. Lucky? Unlucky? That's too pitiful. You could have gotten the Creature Core and the Dungeon Core and made record history!"

"Yeah, well," Richard said, glancing at the crew lording over their Dungeon Core. "You win some, you lose some."

"What's it worth?" Gwen asked. "We did it with an eleven-man team."

"Ah." Hao shook his head. "A damn shame then. I am afraid it has to be an even split unless you can convince the other team to forfeit their CCs."

"No, that's fine." It was one thing to come second, another to stab your allies in the back. She'd hate to imagine what Richard would think if she demanded that the House of Xu forgo their rightful reward. Would he lose faith in her judgement? There was also Fei; Gwen didn't want to take away the boy's CCs for the young Illusionist was only going to exit the Dungeon with ten to fifteen at most.

"Well." Hao rubbed his chin. "I'll try to be as generous as I can. I'll award two hundred and twenty CCs. The guardian's core is a rare find, and I know of a few Magisters who would love to experiment with a Chaos core of this calibre."

"Okay," Richard calculated their gains.

"We have three hundred CCs." Gwen did the math for him. She glanced longingly at the Dungeon core, feeling a little discouraged.

"That'll put you in a safe second or third," Hao said. "A shame, but it is an excellent show for your first dive. Congratulations."

"The egg?" Mina suggested.

"How about this egg?" Gwen materialised a Gila Egg held in the stasis of a crystalline Spell Cube.

"Hmm." Adjudicator Hao rubbed his grizzled chin. "A rare ingredient, but of insufficient versatility in experimentation. At the very best, I can award you twenty."

"That puts us at three hundred and twenty." Mina sighed.

Gwen glanced at the scoreboard.

Should she ask the party to give up some of their Vitae Fruits? How much were they worth? One was for Babulya. One was for Petra's master. One belonged to Richard. Should she sacrifice the chance to grow Almudj's primal mana for some CCs?

She could always participate in more Dungeon dives, but the opportunity to grow her resistance to Void consumption was a far rarer benefit.

"Wait!" Tao interjected. "Gwen, didn't you say Caliban murdered its way through the marsh?"

Tao's unfortunate choice of vernacular struck a wrong chord in Gwen's heart.

"His belly," Tao said. "Cali be spewing dem that cores like taking a big dump, right? Doesn't he have more inside? Maybe there are more cores inside like that time Bubbles shat out Mina's earrings?"

Mina's face became deathly pale. "The pearl earring? My favourites? The ones you said I must have lost at the club?"

"I ain't saying shit, dawg." Tao tried to pivot the topic. "Caliban be shitting treasure any minute now."

"Tao!" Mina took her brother by the scruff of the neck. "What the fuck did your dog do?"

Richard turned back to Gwen. "Well?"

"I could try." Gwen turned her mind inwards. "Caliban, you got more of these cores in you?"

"Shaa!" Caliban replied, implying that it could shit out a modest collection, should it wished to do so.

"Okay, come out discreetly."

Gwen turned to Tao and the others. "Peaches, Richard, give me some cover. I don't want a spectacle, at least not yet."

"You got it." Tao gave her a thumbs up and began a Major Image.

Their immediate surroundings became reflective and difficult to discern. Richard likewise reinforced the illusion with a water screen. With both physical and magical warding in place, Gwen called her familiar.

An obsidian serpent resembling a work of grotesquely erotic art slithered onto the table. Hao had seen the creature prior and so appeared to repress his revulsion. His assistants, conversely, collectively stepped back lest they drew the ire of the netherworld fiend.

Caliban cocked its lamprey's mouth.

“What’s it—“ the Adjudicator’s question came too late.

"SHAA—bluuuuggh!"

A torrent of grey goo in a volume impossible for Caliban's slim body to possess poured onto the table. Captured within the mucus in the manner of frog spawn, were Creature Cores that cascaded over the counter like tidal water. There were stones both large and small, the most potent of which was the size of a hen's egg, the finest of which was the breadth of a fingernail.

The torrent of horrendous nether liquid continued until Caliban began to dry heave.

"Cali, go home," Gwen commanded.

The party breathed a sigh of relief as their resident nightmare fuel retreated. Now there was only the matter of the semi-digested cores. The party had stood well away from the table, but Hao would need new robes.

Tao and Richard dispelled their illusion and Shield.

"Well? Gwen gulped. "Is that enough?"

To the Mages who had been curious about the deliberate obfuscation, it was as though a small mountain of Creature Cores had materialised from thin air.

"R-Red stars!"

"Whoa! Where’d that come from?"

A riot erupted where the party stood, ankle-deep in mysterious slime.

"Those ain't crystals!" someone shouted incredulously. "They're CORES!"

"AEEEEE! Hundreds of cores!" A female voice pierced the already bothersome din.

Adjudicator Hao plucked a core from the grey goo. "Swarm cores, five to one CC. Tiny cores—one CC each. Small cores—two CCs each. Medium cores—five CCs," he commanded his assistants, who were trying to hold their guts in. "Begin!"

Meanwhile, upon the central dais, more crystals and assorted flora were exchanged.

"Total: four hundred and twenty-three CCS!" Magister Paris announced, triumphant over the Dungeon core group's surprising windfall.

But the Magister's attention was soon drawn by the commotion coming from the lower sector where a few hundred Mages were chanting and chittering while surrounding one of the sorting tables.

"Hao, how goes your group?" Paris was full of questions. What would be more alluring than a Dungeon core? Who could collect enough bric-a-brac to exceed a lump sum of four hundred CCs? "What's your count?"

"In a minute. I am going as fast as I can," Hao Messaged back. "Get ready!"

Magus Xi and Gwok likewise approached the goo-covered table where Hao picked out core after core.

Thus far, the top score was four hundred and twenty-three CCs, the second being two hundred and twelve CCs.

"Where in the world did you find so many cores? How many creatures did you kill?" Xi's scar glowed crimson with excitement. From the looks of the Magus, she greatly approved of their bloodthirsty group. "Awe-inspiring work, Neophytes."

Their eyes fell over Gwen, Petra and Richard. Richard was the first to bow, followed by his companions. Gwen was the last to bow, for she was caught in the intricate calculations carried out by Hao and the assistants.

"Tao and Mina Wang?" Xi turned to her colleague, her expression one of bewilderment. "I thought they were the young masters of the Wang Enterprise."

Gwok felt likewise surprised by the composition of Gwen's party.

"He scored zero CCs last dive," The Mage added.

The two Magus turned toward the party and observed Hao's painstaking work.

"Peaches!" a voice called out from behind the group.

"Mack-Daddy! Little-Dog! Yo-yo, wassup!" Tao hollered back. As the two met with the party, Tao exchanged a blisteringly fast array of hand signals and gang signs with his two brothers from another mother. "Oh shit, man. You guys won't believe what happened! I almost, like, died! We capped some bitches, busted up some Gila, it was nasty as anything, dawg."

"Yeah, that's Tao Wang." Xi scratched her scar.

"Stranger things have walked the Prime Material." Gwok shrugged, appearing no less bewildered.

“Well then,” Hao declared, his voice triumphant. "Assorted Chaos cores from Gila creatures, one hundred and thirty-three CCs!"

"YES!" Gwen punched the air, her eyes glowing with concentric rings of cobalt blue.

"That puts you at…" Hao announced.

"That puts us at four hundred and fifty-three CCs!" Gwen yelled. She liked winning. She enjoyed it very, very much.

"Oh shit! No Way!" Tao said, hugging his two friends.

"Eeeek!" Mina shrieked, mimicking Ariel.

Petra breathed out. "I am glad."

"Fuck yes!" Richard raised a hand. "Give it to me, Team Cousins!"

"Tao!"

"Mina!"

"Petra!"

"Gwen!"

Their hands met in a series of resounding high-fives.

"Everyone!" Gwen left Richard's arms and pulled the others in to form a huddle. "Team Cousins!"

"I can't believe you guys did it!" Mack-Daddy shouted as he and Little-Dog exalted the jubilant Tao.

"Peaches in the house!" Tao began a beatbox with Mack and Dog.

The crowd around them applauded as well, breathing in the celebratory air. With Hao making the announcement official, Magister Paris left the dais and flew over the clamorous youth toward the group, declaring with joy that such potential had emerged from a low-tier Dungeon.

A dozen more Dungeons like this, the Magister said, and Pudong would have a whole new generation of Magisters!

"Five hundred and three CCs, including the reward for coming first," Gwen said. "Split five ways, that's a hundred CCs each!"

"Congratulations!" the booming voice of Magister Paris rolled across the clearing. The Magister's eyes surveyed the masses of congregating Mages, young and old. No other group raised their hands to contest the score, which was fair, seeing that Gwen's party had produced the Guardian's core.

Watching Paris float through the air on a spell of flight, Gwen could only lick her lips in envy at the ability to fly.

As the Magister landed amongst them, the party paid their respects.

"You're Captain Song's group, no?" Magister Paris clasped his hands together. "My word, what fortuitous encounters you must have had. You have gathered enough materials and cores to rival five adventuring parties!"

"We happened to be in a good spot, sir," Richard replied modestly. "Gwen's the one who did the most legwork. She's our primary damage dealer."

"Indeed, a girl of many talents." Magister Paris turned his eyes upon Gwen, who felt her insides burn as she endured Richard's shameless plug.

"Richard is far too kind." Gwen gestured toward her companions. "I couldn't have done it without the others. I doubt we would have even held onto our items if Richard hadn't saved me, or been too injured to continue were it not for Mina. Petra rescued me from forfeiture on more than one occasion too, and Tao was likewise instrumental in our defeat of the elder Gila."

Paris nodded with satisfaction. "Excellent, Ms Song. We need Mages who are more aware of teamwork and less obsessed with their standing. I look forward to your future performance and that of your team. Your student cards, please."

Gwen and the others produced their cards.

"By the power invested in me by the Two Towers, I now award you ninety-one and an additional—"

"HALT!"

All who heard the command felt shocked by the upstart interjection, none more so than Magister Paris, whose face instantly grew cloudy with subdued rage. Gwen was amazed as well, for who would dare to disrupt a speech by a senior Magister from Pudong Tower?

The answer to her question came in the form of a group of Mages penetrating the crowd of anxious juniors to reach Gwen and her company.

"Well, shit." Richard's smile grew rigid. "It's the Clan of Xiao."

There was the familiar face of Huyi Xiao in the congregation, as well as his aggrieved party. Their assembly was led by an elder radiating a palpable aura of power.

With a cold expression of loathing, Magister Paris turned to Gwen and her company. "I am afraid I can't intervene if this is a private matter. Us Tower Mages must be delicate when dealing with Chinese Clanners, who’s roots are deep and intertwining. They even have connections with the Chinese Communist Party."

The PLA Tower gave its two cents as well. "By that same measure, we can't mediate if you're not a part of the CCP," Magus Xi said.

Gwok affirmed Xi's claim. "But we'll make sure they don't do anything drastic. More than likely, they're here to get their 'face' back."

The oppositional party reached Gwen and her group.

"I am Elder Xiao Leung Tian of the Clan of Xiao," the leading Mage announced. The Magister looked to be in his forties. Were it not for his westernised attire, he would have resembled a picture-perfect Daoshi.

They dipped their heads before Paris, who returned their greeting.

Gwen and her party had to bow. There was a place for blood and robbery, but it was manners and etiquette that produced civilisation.

"You have tortured and robbed our inheriting disciple, Huyi," Leung Tian proclaimed. It was not a question but a statement of fact. "Your illicit act has forced him to quit the competition. We demand compensation."

Gwen's group fell into nervous silence. They could show a vid-cast of Huyi's shame, but that seemed like it would make matters worse.

"You will forfeit." Leung Tian continued. Behind the wizened elder, Huyi's eyes passed over Gwen and Petra hungrily, delighting in every word spoken by his clan's Magister-tier Mage. Watching the girls squirm with indecision made his face all the more sadistic.

"And if we don't?" Gwen felt an inexplicable calm overcoming her initially nervous anticipation. She was the sort that grew colder and calmer with increased opposition.

"You shall return what you did to Huyi's team ten-fold, right here," the Xiao elder stated arrogantly. The aura of distorted, indiscernible power surrounding the Mage suggested he could indeed carry it out without significant effort.

"Tian, spare me some face," Magister Paris attempted to intervene, likely for the sake of his reputation. "This is a children's competition. Don't you think that it's shameful for you to get involved?"

"These are no children," Leung Tian spat. "They're foreign devils, imperialists. They have no morality. You should have heard of what this Richard and this Gwen Song did. Who can defend that?"

Her face grew instantly scarlet. Gwen wanted to shriek and scream and kick the old dog between the legs. The hypocrisy! She ought to let loose Caliban in the man's face! Most importantly, they were a second away from receiving their CCs.

That's it. She was done! She was going to have words with the old dog!

"Gwen…" Mina tugged at her sleeve.

"What is it?" Gwen was visibly panting with the effort of keeping her simmering resentment from overflowing.

Mina pointed into the crowd with her eyes.

A familiar face was grinning at them.

"Uncle Jun?" Gwen blinked. Had he been there all along?

"Mind if I come in?" Jun said. The crowd parted as the Magi Moses had parted the Red Sea.

"Captain Jun," Leung Tian Xiao's voice took on a tone of caution.

Jun walked beside Gwen's group after greeting Paris amiably. Around them, the chattering assemblage fell silent. Most of them knew of Captain Jun Song and his reputation.

"My niece." Jun pointed to Gwen. "A lovely sight, no?"

The crowd made an "Aaaaah!"

"My other niece." Jun patted Petra's shoulder. "A distant relative, but family nonetheless, not to mention I owe him one." He shook Richard's hand. "Thanks for looking out for the girls."

"It was my duty and my pleasure, sir," Richard said.

"The Clan of Song thinks too highly of itself." The Xiao elder's brows knitted. "Do you believe a Clan as illustrious as ours is going to fear the MSS? You're just the CCP's dogs. What would the Communist Party think if you bite the hands that fed its coffers?"

Jun appeared unfazed by the insult. "I am waiting." He stood casually, his expression impassive. "Don't worry. We’ve got time."

"Waiting?" Leung Tian scanned the horizon. "For what?"

"For you to try something. Go on." Jun's eyes were full of mirthful mockery.

"You!" Leung Tian’s attitude was beyond arrogant. "Insolence!"

"Magister Paris is a busy man." Jun spread his arms helplessly. "As am I. So, you know, get on with it."

His message was self-evident for all whose eyes turned toward them. Jun was telling the Clan of Xiao to either shit or get off the can. But how could the Clan of Xiao forfeit now? They were the ones who had begun this altercation. How could they afford to lose more face? It would be like being spat on in public.

An eerie silence descended amongst the audience and between the two parties.

"You won't dare attack us." Leung Tian retorted after what seemed like a minute.

"A man is entitled to self-defence, no?" Jun turned to Paris, who had a grin split from ear to ear. "I can do that much, right?"

"By article 13, clause 3.4 of the Tower's Governance Article concerning the Public Use of Magic, Captain Song is indeed entitled to a lawful self-defence," Magus Xi said. "Captain Song, I am your witness."

"So am I." Magus Gwok threw in his lot as well. Gwen was not surprised. Compared to these Clanners, Jun must be a CCP darling.

Leung Tian looked to be torn between heaven and earth as his well-waxed beard quivered with indecision.

"How about this?" Jun announced, still clearly amused by the whole thing. "We can have an old-fashioned, friendly five-by-five. If our kids win, you forgive and forget. If we lose, our team forfeits all their CCs."

The proposal was fair. Leung Tian turned to see what the young Mages of his Clan thought of the offer.

Gwen followed the Clanner’s eyes as he turned to regard his scions. Then she saw his expectations sink like a millstone thrown into a lake.

Huyi's face was as white as milled flour. The others behind him had equally browbeaten expressions. One of the Mages, the Diviner, was visibly shaking with fright.

The Xiao Magister then turned to look at Gwen and her troop of junior Mages. Beside her, Richard looked more amused than anything else at the prospect of a five-by-five. Petra appeared to take the news with complete indifference. Tao and Mina at least wore humble expressions of mild worry. As for Gwen herself, she could only describe her present condition as bloodthirsty.

The juxtaposition made the outcome of the contest self-evident.

After a moment of unwelcome clarity, Leung Tian’s chest deflated.

He turned to regard her uncle, still untouched by the events. Instead, Jun appeared sympathetic to the elder of the Xiao Clan. In a way, Gwen felt for the elder as well. The man himself must have gone through some serious history, such as the Communist Revolution, then the Sino War with Japan, then the Beast Tide. Now, in this time of prosperity, these losers were all his Clan could produce? These arrogant ingrates?

The tense atmosphere deflated.

"I withdraw my statement." Leung Tian turned to Jun. "We wish no further conflict with the House of Song, nor against the Ash Bringer himself."

The Ash Bringer? Gwen looked at Jun's broad, sculpted back. What an ominous title. Was Jun a Fire Mage like Alesia?

Jun extended a hand, then after a moment of hesitation, Leung Tian shook it.

"Our patriarch will personally issue an acknowledgement to Patriarch Xiao." Jun firmly clasped the Magister's hands. "I hope you don't mind if we pay the estate a visit, together with humble gifts."

"The gift of peace would be more than sufficient." Elder Xiao separated from Jun. "Though you are welcome anytime, I would have you know that the generosity of the Xiao is well-founded. Your nieces are welcome as well."

Paris breathed out.

Xi and Gwok nodded with satisfaction.

The gathering let loose a collected sigh as the tension diffused.

Magister Paris turned to the party and raised his hands. "Our winners! Coming in at four hundred and fifty-three CCs. By the power invested in me by the Pudong Tower, I now award you one hundred and forty-one CCs each!"

A wave of jubilation flowed from the crowd and spread through the multitude of cheering Mages. Gwen felt overwhelmed by the sudden outburst. Had it not been for the Xiao's intervention, their reception would have been subtle, but now they were at the epicentre of the event's conclusion.

She turned and bowed in each direction. Richard raised his hand to the squealing of girls from the crowd. Mina looked like she wanted to kick her brother, who paraded back and forth as if he'd won a boxing match. Gwen could also see Fei, the Xu Mages, and Felicity in the crowd, waving frantically toward them and cheering.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Elder Xiao retrieved his clan's children and beat a hasty retreat.

As the excitement died down and the records exchanged hands, Gwen and her party finally found themselves alone. For an hour after the end of the Dungeon, they had been made to shake, greet and exchange contacts with hundreds of other Mages. Where Gwen's Message Device had been derelict, it now held the names and titles of a hundred strangers whose faces she couldn’t recall.

When the party finally exhausted its social duties, the day was well into the mid-afternoon and Jun presented to them their boarding passes.

The return embarkment was likewise prolonged, with passengers using the remaining time to socialise and exchange goods and promises. Still fatigued from having only a few hours of sleep, Gwen sheltered in the corner of the upper cabin, resting her eyes, and quickly found herself dozing off, her lulling head slumped on Jun's shoulder.

Mina likewise took the opportunity to take a nap on the smiling Richard, who looked at his cousin with benevolence and happiness.

When Gwen awoke, it was already evening. The shining city of Shanghai loomed in the distance, its piercing reflection stabbing like daggers into the dark waters of the South China Sea.

Though the feeling was faint, she felt like she was going home.

Chapter twenty-nine

Brave New World

The transfer from the Port Authority to the mainland was hastened by Jun's presence, so much so that when the time came to part ways, the party grew despondent at their imminent separation.

A dark limousine lingered just outside the port, waiting to pick up Tao and Mina. To Gwen's surprise, Mina parted from her with a peck on the cheeks—a bold western farewell—before retreating into the palatial vehicle.

Petra, likewise, had her dorm to return to, leaving Gwen and company when Jun dropped her off at Fudan's internal residence complex. She hugged Gwen, signifying how close they've come since the Dungeon's events.

Finally left on their own, the trio escaped the glittery glamour of the sparkling city, their Jeep making for the third Orbital Ring under the low thrum of its mana engine.

"So that you know, I sorted out the incident with the Lishui girl," Jun calmly announced when they were on the orbital highway. "No point having such a stain on your public record. Do be careful in the future, though. Scrubbing offences takes more than just CCs, it takes favours."

"I will, and thank you," Gwen muttered demurely. "I am sorry for the trouble, Uncle Jun."

"And you should be," Jun said sternly. "The taking of a life, especially a fellow Mage, is no matter to be taken lightly, even if you have full justification. Remember that."

"I shall."

"Good, then there's nothing more to be said. I look forward to your future performance."

With the scolding over, Gwen's fell into reflective silence.

"You too, Richard," Jun continued. "Can you hear me at the back?"

"Yes, sir. I can."

"Just Jun is fine."

"At least let me call you Senior Jun," Richard insisted.

"Alright, suit yourself." Jun clearly wasn't one for titles. "You're special, Richard. You're Gwen's peer, and you have a good temperament and just the right amount of apathy for taking ethical liberties. That said, I know why you're desperate for CCs, but dial it down and try not to piss off too many people. The nature of CCs is that you accumulate them over time. Any windfall accumulated by your method of highway robbery is just going to bring trouble later."

"I'll be careful, Senior."

"Of course, and think about the years ahead. What would happen when your parents, who lack the talent to take care of themselves, come to Shanghai? What if you make too many enemies and some of them decide to take advantage of the fact that you will be away on extended missions? A Magus need allies as well as CCs, Richard. Don't forget that."

"Thank you for the advice," Richard said seriously. "I realise now I was too arrogant and careless."

"Good. You are both good students." Jun turned the Jeep into the Song compound. "Here we are. Try to have some food before you sleep. The food on the ferry was hardly nourishing."

"We shall, Senior."

"Thank you, Uncle Jun. I truly appreciate all the things you've done for us."

"Hey, we're family." Jun slowed the car until it came to a complete stop. "I'll see you guys in. I still need to greet the old folks."

"We'll join you." Gwen swung her legs from the Jeep's leather seats. By now, her thoughts were dizzy with fatigue. The last three days felt more like seven.

Or had it been seven after all? Since leaving Singapore, she had spent two days in the holding cell. Then she had spent a day and a half in the Song Compound. Mina and Tao had expended another day or so, plus three more in the Dungeon.

Had Elvia and Yue gotten back to Sydney yet? Their journey to Darwin should have been six and a half days. At worst, after another day or two, they should be in Sydney.

"Uncle Jun," Gwen inquired as they made for the courtyard. "Think my friends have gotten back to Sydney yet?"

"Perhaps, assuming they disembarked at Darwin and Magus Shultz supplemented their travel expenses," Jun said. "I can ask father to loan you the LE Message Device if you like, though I daresay you’ll have to supplement your own LDMs."

"That would be lovely, thank you," Gwen replied.

Outside, the blue hour was quickly fading and the courtyard became illuminated with low consumption lumen-globes. The inquisitive face of Babulya awaited them in the communal hall nursing a pot of Oolong that simmered softly over a glyph of heat. Gwen's grandfather, Guo, was nowhere to be seen.

"Congratulations," she happily declared as they crossed the threshold into the hall. "Petra told me you came first."

"I'd say we came first," Gwen answered modestly. "Everyone helped, even Tao."

"That's a good attitude to have." Klavdiya reached out and took Gwen by the hand. Gwen felt a mote of Positive mana enter her and make its rounds through her body.

"Quite a bit of damage." Her Babulya's face lost some of its happiness. "Though I am surprised you managed to reinforce that primal mana of yours. Got lucky?"

"Very lucky." Gwen sat beside her babulya, though her buttocks just eclipsed the edge of the seat in case her grandfather burst through and she had to offer a prompt and formal greeting. "Also, we brought you this, Babulya."

Gwen passed a hand over the elevated coffee table and produced Petra's stasis cube, within which was a jade-like piece of fruit. "It'll go sour very quickly," she said. "Petra and I have already had a piece. We saved this one for you."

"I know, dear, thank you." Her babulya passed a hand over the cube, taking possession of the prize. "I'll share some of it with your grandfather. At our age, he needs it far more than me."

"I have another." Gwen took out the piece that she’d purchased from Richard.

"Oh, no, no, save it for yourself, dear. Petra said that it helps you mitigate the Void. That is far more important than adding a few years to our lives. There are plenty of opportunities for that in the future." Her babulya pushed the cube back towards her. "I'll instruct you on how to acquire its benefits without damaging your physical form. Rest assured that Guo and I shall accept your piety and kind intent."

Reluctantly, Gwen withdrew the Vitae Fruit.

Jun, who had stood beside her smiling serenely, raised his hand to catch his mother's attention. "Well, if there's nothing else, I need to go. I'll be back to visit in a week or so, Mother." He hugged her.

"Take care, Ah-Jun," Klavdiya said.

"I will, Mother. Gwen, Richard."

"Goodbye, Uncle Jun."

"Tell father I just missed him and that there's the matter of the Clan of Xiao which he needs to deal with." Having delivered his goodbye, Jun turned to leave. "Any words for Hai? He's still sweating it out at the barracks."

"Tell Dad I said hi," Gwen replied earnestly.

Gwen and Richard watched Jun go before returning their attention to Babulya.

"I appreciate the opportunity you've given us," Richard lowered his head toward Klavdiya. "Truly, I am grateful."

"You can repay me by keeping an eye out for this little one," Klavdiya gave him a knowing smile. "And the others, if you can spare the time."

"I will do no less," Richard inclined his head. "You can leave it to me."

"Good; we understand each other." Klavdiya's eyes were mirthful. "Speaking of which, if and when your parents get here, I would like you to know that we have spare abodes around the city that I can offer your family until you find a place of your own."

"I would appreciate that, Babulya." Gwen was surprised by the candidness of Klavdiya's generosity and she could tell Richard was too. Here was a woman who knew not to beat around the bush. "I will try my best not to take advantage of your kindness, but I thank you for thinking so highly of me."

"Such a sweetheart," Klavdiya cooed. "You could do well to learn a thing or two from Richard, Gwen."

"I'll do my best." Her eyes met Richard’s. "Where is Grandfather?"

"Training your brother, I'd wager. He thinks of little else these days, and young Percy has much to do to catch up."

"To the curriculum here in Shanghai?" Gwen said, a little worried that her studies were going to be far behind the norm.

"To you!" Her Babulya laughed.

"I don't think that's ever going to happen," Richard stated bluntly. "Sorry if that was too abrasive."

"Don't say that in front of Guo," Klavdiya told the straight-shooting Conjurer. "I agree, by the way."

"I am sure Percy can do it, especially with Grandfather's support and the House of Song behind him. He has father's talent." Gwen flushed with embarrassment at Richard's high praise.

"I know you're a sentimentalist, Gwen, but perhaps less wishful thinking?" Richard was relentless. "Think about how this works, realistically. You've gone through how many moments of death and danger so far? How many times have you almost lost it?"

Gwen sighed. There were too many times to count.

"You think Percy, the 'heir', is going to have the freedom to risk himself? Without risk, there is no reward. Why do you think we kicked that Dungeon's arse? How is it that we went and slapped down those young masters with their diet of rare ingredients? It's because we take risks, Gwen, and we survived those experiences and grew stronger."

"Richard, enough." Their Babulya placed a hand on Richard's arm. "While you and Gwen are staying here, it is best to keep such sentiments to yourselves. When university begins, you can seek more convenient residency closer to your schools."

"Sorry," Richard's voice grew faint. "Gwen is too nice. It's a flaw."

"Why is that a flaw?" Klavdiya's voice was full of kindness as she pinched Gwen's cheek. "The Path of Ren should temper the Path of Asura, else self-destruction awaits the headstrong traveller. You too, Richard, should be aware of your prejudices."

Listening to Klavdiya's advice, Gwen felt a warmth in her chest that was pleasing. She felt the glad affirmation that, in this new life of hers, she had not forsaken the chance to connect with her babulya.

"Shall we retire then?" Richard inquired. "You've slept on the ship, but it was hardly restful."

"Yes, I would like to take a shower and sleep," Gwen confessed. "Babulya?"

"Greet Guo when you get to the training room," their grandmother reminded them. "If you're hungry, ask the servants to bring you supper."

Guo heard Gwen and Richard enter the training hall from the side entrance and told Percy to maintain his mana circulation.

Percy, as usual, took his word as though it came straight from the Chairman’s mouth, doing his best to ignore all distractions even as the clamour grew.

In a moment, the double doors opened a sliver, and House Song’s triumphant Dungeon divers presented themselves for his inspection.

Upon seeing Gwen, Guo furrowed his bushy brows. The girl who emerged from the door felt different somehow from the one who’d left the estate only three days ago.

Has she become even more powerful? Guo thought uncomfortably. Her growth was unreasonably quick. From Jun's Message earlier, he had heard that Gwen's group had taken first place in the competition.

That was in itself an absurd achievement. Two Frontier Neophytes on their first Dungeon dive, coupled with the useless Wang siblings and one Petra Kuznetsov, could defeat all that the local clans offered? He knew that Richard was already a first-class Conjurer and Gwen had survived a war, but the news still shocked him to his core.

Klavdiya had said it was terrific news, but for Guo, it meant trouble.

When a member designated for a side-branch—a daughter—was so much more talented and charismatic than the heir, it subverted the family's hearts and a house's servants' loyalty. When achievements inevitably accumulated, the Songs’ allies would no longer look to the heir for support but throw their allegiance to Gwen, whose favour carried the most clout.

What if Gwen were to marry into a House that far superseded the prestige of the Song? What if she were to return one day with the blood of a Clan far nobler than the Songs, bringing with her a Magister at her beck and call, and demanded allegiance from her brother? Or worse, what if she were to claim birthright, pointing out the weakness of the incumbent?

Guo felt a prickling numbness on the back of his neck as paranoid scenarios manifested themselves one after another.

Watching his granddaughter flaunt her dancer's figure made him all the more conscious of that very possibility. She was too gifted, and her uncommon beauty made matters worse. He would only know the true extent of her actions after receiving a full briefing the following day, but already the girl had become a killer. Was the power going to her head? The life of one Lishui sorceress was no matter, but his granddaughter seemed to have established a reputation for bloodlust. In seven days, she had defeated contenders from various Houses and killed a Mage with impunity.

In life, Guo had a simple winning philosophy that allowed him to succeed in his work—nip the trouble in the bud before it bloomed. Yet was it not said that the "tiger does not harm its cubs"?

Guo felt a discouraging sense of disquiet as Gwen bowed deeply, her dark hair falling over her shoulders like a waterfall. Beside the girl, the Conjurer cousin reciprocated the gesture, though Guo could feel the young man's insincerity from across the room.

The Water Mage made his granddaughter all the more dangerous. It was clear that Richard's loyalty was first to Gwen, then to the man known as Gunther Shultz. Each of them, each bud, must be clipped before they grew poisonous and carnivorous.

A dull ache caught Guo unaware as his head throbbed, and the old Magus winced with a sudden grimace.

"Are you alright, Grandfather?" the girl asked him, her face beset with genuine worry.

"Percy! Concentrate!" Guo barked at the shifting form of the boy behind him. "I am fine."

But the boy had already lost his concentration. The exercise would have to resume some other time.

"You must be tired," Guo said to his precious heir. "Goodnight. Percy, go clean up. We resume tomorrow morning after 0700."

"Yes, Grandfather." Percy bowed and left the room. He didn't stop to speak to his sister, and that made Guo feel better.

"Good night," Guo said again, turned on his heels and left.

He would soon have to force Klavdiya to participate in something she disagreed with, an act that pained him more than anything in the world.

Anything, apart from disadvantaging the boy.

Sunday was spent in idyllic recovery.

Gwen woke late in the morning, dressed casually, and met Richard for breakfast.

After her morning meditative exercises, she travelled with Babulya to work, where she received another bout of therapeutic healing to repair the damage caused by her Void usage.

"Your body has taken too much of the Vitae Fruit for now. Maybe after a few more months, but for now, it is best to keep you well away from the fruit," Gwen's grandmother offered her piece on her granddaughter’s burgeoning ambition.

After that, the afternoon was spent with Richard, walking the Bund's quay and taking in Shanghai's sights. One of the local artists had thought her a celebrity of some kind, for she and Richard caused a stir along the boulevard, both being exceptionally tall and well-formed, and asked to paint their picture.

Gwen was too embarrassed to hold a pose for hours, but the artist laughed and told them that he just needed a lumen pic.

They returned two hours later, and the artist presented them with the painting, gratis.

She offered the man an HDM crystal, but the artist refused, saying he was happy they’d allowed him to work on something he truly enjoyed. That was when she realised that the man was an NoM and that he was reeling from the knowledge that two Mages who appeared the scions of noble Houses were entertaining his hopes at all.

The painting itself was hasty and impressionist, but it captured her likeness beside Richard as they wandered through the quay. Behind them, the Pudong Tower glinted beside the Huangpu River.

"A foreshadowing of the future?" Richard joked.

Gwen laughed without worry, dreaming of one day crossing the bay. They had been in Shanghai long enough to know that Pudong was where the Mageocracy and the Demi-humans resided. It was a city-in-a-city, where only sanctioned Mages who'd undergone mental conditioning could venture.

The pair did not return that evening for dinner but instead attempted adventurous culinary fare on the Bund.

In the middle of dinner, Jun came through with the Message that her friends should be arriving in Sydney soon and that Gwen should anticipate a call within the next twelve hours.

A taxi took the two home before the 2200 curfew, where they retired to their rooms after checking in with dear old Babulya.

Then Gwen tucked herself into bed, where she counted Evees until she could fight off the anxiety of having to wait for their call.

"Gwen, you have a Message!"

Gwen had been wide awake since daybreak, waiting for the call to come. In hindsight, counting Evees mightn't have been the best solution to insomnia.

She leapt out of bed, still wearing yesterday's clothes, and made for the communal hall, where the LR Communication Device awaited in Guo's spare office.

Her desire for privacy was wishful thinking, Gwen acknowledged as she entered the room where a servant had set up the device for her. Would the servants be watching? She had no idea, but the scene cemented the notion of her moving out and living alone or with Richard.

With a hum, the flickering projection came into focus. A close-up crop of outrageous cleavage promptly accosted Gwen's field of vision.

"Is this thing on?" Yue's voice sounded far too close to the microphone, assuming the device had such a thing. "Hello?"

"Yue!" Gwen shrieked. "Oh my God, I see you. I see a lot of you!"

"Yue, get back here!" Elvia's embarrassed voice was as sweet as ever.

"Elvia!"

"Gwen!"

"Yue!"

"Gwen!"

Gwen's chest puffed with turbulent, childlike glee. These were her friends! Friends! People she never had in her old life.

"I am so happy to see you guys." she choked, her eyes misty with recognition.

"Oh, Gwennie, I am so glad you're alright!" Elvia was no better; she was already leaking like a faulty tap.

"You alright down there? I heard from Gunther and Alesia that you've decided to stay?" Yue's timbre was equal parts disapproval and hurt.

Her friend's accusatory statement weighed upon Gwen's shoulders as a mountainous mass. When they had left the island, they had all promised to stay together through thick and thin— now she was the first to break that promise.

"No, no, we're not upset or anything," Elvia bawled. "It was just so… unexpected!"

"Gwennie, what have you got to say for yourself?" Yue wasn't nearly so kind.

"Let me explain," Gwen spoke slowly, drawing upon a measured calm. It was all she could do to keep her emotions in check. "So, Wei and the other guy, that's the MSS agents, took me to a holding facility…"

She related her arrival in Shanghai. The isolation chamber. The matter with Percy. Gunther's advice and Babulya's support. She explained her paternal family's situation and the decision to remain as logically as she could.

"Alright, I guess that's acceptable," Yue sulked before rolling on her back and kicking the air with her legs like she was stomping an invisible adversary. "ARRRGH! I am going to be so lonely!"

"Lonely?" Gwen said. "But you have Evee."

It was now Elvia's turn to put on an expression full of guilt.

"What's wrong, Evee?" There was something distinctly heartbreaking about the angelic Healer's sullen demeanour that implored Gwen to teleport across the world and embrace her.

"She's going to Europe." Yue sighed. "Everyone is leaving me. I am just a lonely Evoker, setting fire to this cruel and uncaring world. Let it burn, I say. Let it all burn!"

"Evee? You're going to Europe?" Gwen felt a sinking feeling in her gut. So Evee couldn't avoid her family's pressure after all. Was Elvia going with her family because she was no longer in Australia to keep the three of them together?

"It's my family," Elvia spoke between sobs. "My father accepted a position in Germany. We're going to relocate to Hamburg in a week. They've been waiting for me to return."

"Oh, Evee." Gwen wanted to say that she was happy for her, but she also realised that, unlike her temporary stay in Shanghai, Elvia's European stint was likely permanent.

"With my potential, they're going to try and enrol me at the Nightingale College in England or the School of Asclepius in Greece. That means I'll be away from my family as well. Father says it's for the best because they don't know what's in store for them once they arrive in Hamburg."

"And neither of us can help her," Yue fumed, her dark eyes glinting dangerously. "Those places are for Clerics only! God knows what those religious nutcases will do to Evee."

"Those are incredible tier I schools," Gwen said.

"You can thank your brother-in-craft for that," Yue's intonation was ambivalent but she sounded upset. Gwen too felt a strange cocktail of ire and gladness, concern and gratitude.

"I am sure it'll be alright, Evee." Gwen reached out to try and comfort the projection. "You'll make new friends in no time."

Elvia made a horrid grimace made infinitely worse by dribbling snot and streaky tears. "All those strangers, Gwen, and not knowing anyone there." she held onto Yue's arm with white-knuckled trepidation. "I-I don't know if I can do it. You know what it was like when I came to Blackwattle. If it weren't for you guys…"

Yue sighed and produced a handkerchief, wiping down Elvia's face.

Ah, social anxiety. Gwen mourned for Elvia. Hello darkness, my old friend.

Evee's words made Gwen think of their past. What would Elvia be like if she hadn't befriended Gwen and Yue? For the whole of junior high, she’d been a loner. The old Gwen had barely registered the angelic cleric on her mental radar, and Yue would have unquestionably bullied Elvia if they’d been forced together, most likely unconsciously, which made things worse still.

But what could she do? Gwen wracked her brain. How could she help her friend through her trial of isolation? What manner of aid could she deliver from ten thousand kilometres away? She couldn't Skype Elvia when the Healer felt down or something, could she?

Wait a minute. Gwen regarded the LR Message prism in front of her. Weren't they FaceTiming at that moment?

"Yue, is Brother Gunther there?"

"Nope, but I can get Master," Yue answered. "Shall I?"

"Sure. There's something I need to ask."

Yue left the projection.

Alesia's gorgeous face came into view a minute later. She looked far more hale than when Gwen had last seen her.

"Hey there, tiger," Alesia said with her usual sultry joviality. "How's my little sister doing?"

"I've got so much to tell you. I did my first Dungeon dive!"

"Already! Impressive. How did it go?"

"We came first!"

Alesia squealed with delight, lifting the mood significantly. Gwen quickly told of her exploits in record time, covering only the highlight reel.

"So, Alesia," Gwen cut to the chase, "I want to know if it's possible to get Elvia one of these LR Message projectors, one she can take with her to her new school."

"No," Elvia interjected. "Gwen, that's too much."

"It's not available for sale just to anyone, you know." Alesia furrowed her flawless brows. "You going to need HDMs and CCs."

"How much?" Gwen carefully inquired with fingers crossed.

"Assuming I pull a few strings." Alesia puckered her lips alluringly. "About fifty CCs for a set?"

"Done," Gwen said without hesitation. "Can I trade it in at the Shanghai Tower?"

"The Pudong Tower is one you'll need to deal with." Alesia's eyes sparkled. "How come you’ve got so many CCs? You've been there for what, two weeks? A week?"

"You're looking at a woman of one hundred and fifty-one Contribution Credits," Gwen boasted, puffing out her chest. "I've got contributions to spare."

Alesia fell about laughing in stitches, wiping tears from her eyes.

Elvia tried to dissuade Gwen, but she wouldn't have it. Fifty CCs to ensure that Elvia could be safe and sound and could report to her anytime? It was worth it!

"Okay, I'll make sure Elvia has a nice dorm wherever she goes to medical college and that an LRM device is installed for her use." Alesia raised a thumb. "Additionally, I'll match you CC for CC. She'll have the best accommodation there. A private one even, if she wants it."

"Maybe not a private one. It'll isolate Evee from her peers," Gwen said. "How about improving her foodstuffs?"

"Done," Alesia said. "It'll be like you're pampering her yourself, you sugar mama, you!"

Gwen laughed. Yue joined in after she found out what Gwen had done, and even the tearful Elvia sobbed and laughed at the same time at the absurdity of it all.

"Can I mail some HDMs over to Elvia?" Gwen asked. If she was going to be a sugar mama to Elvia, she might as well play the role well.

"I'll set her up with a trust and you can pay me back a few years down the road," Alesia said. "A few thousand HDMs here and there over a few years, no problems."

"My family isn't poor either, you know," Elvia protested, her little face red with embarrassment. "I can take care of myself."

"Evee, You brave little angel." Alesia hugged Elvia in her stead, pressing the Healer's sweet little face against her cheeks. "Of course you can!"

"There, now we can chat every night if you want," Gwen told Elvia confidently. "Just Facetime—I mean, Message me. It'll be like I am there next to you."

"Okay." Elvia made a brave face, which was so adorable it brought another round of hugs, Alesia and Yue passing her back and forth like a rag doll.

"Wow." Gwen’s heart was heavy after the rouge-like aftermath made Elvia even more adorable. "To think we're going to be apart for so long."

"Negative." Alesia made a cross with both her arms. "I could come out there to Shanghai tomorrow if I wanted. It's Yue you have to wait for."

"Yue?" Gwen looked at her friend.

"Master says I need to accumulate my CCs for the immigration application," Yue sulked. "She says it'll motivate me."

"When Yue joins you again," Alesia snorted arrogantly, "she'll be a dreadnought of destruction."

"I am sure she will." Gwen said a silent prayer for all the creatures in the Orange, Purple and Black Zones surrounding Oceania. "What's your projection, Elvia?"

"Three years at minimum," Elvia said miserably. "I need to do at least a year of practicum as well."

"Well, I'll earn enough CCs for you to come to Shanghai if you like," Gwen said. "Four years is a long time."

"What, you think CCs grow on trees?" Alesia scoffed. "Even during the last Coral Sea Conflict, with a four-figure kill count, I only earned six thousand CCs. I spent a whole lot on my Crimson Caracal, and now I am short on CCs to get another one."

"Can't Gunther lend you some?"

"What, you don't know? It's forbidden to lend or trade large volumes of CCs except in rare, Tower-sanctioned transactions. The process to get one of those to pass muster is downright impossible. Might as well squeeze a camel through a needle's eye," Alesia replied indignantly.

"Wouldn't Yue need a spirit as well?" Gwen asked out of curiosity.

"Yep," Yue replied miserably. “Bloody hell, this illusion makes me feel so close, yet so far away from ya."

"Could I buy a spirit?" Gwen asked. What would a spirit do for her elemental abilities? What would it do for Caliban or Ariel? "I’ve got an auction later with something called the House of M."

"Ha, good luck with that." Alesia gazed at Gwen with a penetrating look of mock sympathy.

"Expensive?" Gwen swallowed nervously.

"Fire is one of the more common elements of Evocation, yet still my Caracas cost Fourteen hundred CCs," Alesia said. "As for Lightning, only the blackest of Black Zones have an abundance of Lightning Elementals. Whereas for Void, where the hell do we even begin?"

"I see your point." Gwen bit her lip.

"Right, anything else? I'll make sure these two are safe and right as rain. Yue can use my LRM and I'll make sure Elvia has hers when she arrives at school."

"Great, thanks. I appreciate it, sis."

"I'll let Gunther know you dropped by."

Gwen once again faced her two best buddies. "For the future." She put forward her palm so that the illusory projection could see her hand.

"For our futures." Yue followed suit.

"For us!" Elvia joined in, stacking their outstretched arms so they could all see each other's hands.

Gwen took the wordless moment to heart as she etched the scene into the recess of her mind.

Another half an hour of small talk followed as they discussed their families. Yue informed Gwen that she'd try to get Surya to call her on the LRM device, as well as broker a meeting so that Richard could speak to his parents. Elvia promised to talk to Gwen as soon as possible, though they would have to wait until a Tower technician installed the LRM device in her dorm. Furthermore, Gwen would have to undergo screening to ensure that she wouldn't defraud the Tower of sensitive information if she were handed an LRM device. Either way, the process would take weeks, if not months, and by then, it was likely that Gwen would have begun university.

"Goodbye," she said at last as the illusion died, the projection transforming into ghostly motes of white-grey Divination.

Gwen exited her grandfather's warded office, feeling like a girl emerging into a brave new world.

University, Gwen thought. It was probably time she collected some brochures and pamphlets on the matter, maybe hunted down a few copies of students’ handbooks.

The future might be far away, but she felt as though she was already standing on its doorsteps.

End of Volume III

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Glossary

Sanctioned Schools of Magic

(Sigils by Lampshade)

Evocation

The most commonly awakened school in modern Spellcraft, Evocation is a school that manipulates energy. Evokers become the mainstay of the citizen soldiers, wielding spells of Fire, Earth, Water and more exotic elements such as Lightning or Radiance.

As Evokers mature, they become more specialised in a particular elemental affinity, taking up specialist equipment, attunement and contract spirits. In the media and propaganda, the Evoker is the archetype Mage, the spell slinging, fireball blasting sorcerer of yore, tapping into and drawing limitless power from the elemental planes.

Abjuration

Abjurers weave spells that protect, block, dispel or banish. An Abjurer is a common but highly sought after profession. Abjuration makes shielding stations possible. An Abjurer possesses the unique ability to utilise restoration spells such as De-curse and the ability to dispense protective AOE combat buffs. Specialists in this field typically contract elementals of earth, ice and water, all of which are relatively common.

Conjuration

Conjuration is a school that materialises creatures or materials for the caster. A Conjurer becomes a one-man army after mastering higher tiers of magic. Through familiar rituals and/or contracting magical creatures, Conjurers gain lifelong companions that grow with the Mage in power. Due to this advantage, it is not uncommon for Summoners to become several magnitudes more powerful than Mages of equal tier. The disadvantage of Conjuration is the persistent mana drain caused by most of its sustained effect spells and crippling loss of combat potential to specialised Abjuration such as Banish. Certain Conjurers choose to focus on the summoning of items or beings. These valuable individuals are also responsible for the teleportation circles around the cities.

Divination

Diviners reveal information. They are highly prized for their cognisant abilities in detection and foretelling. Many Diviners go on to become telecommunication specialists, becoming key intelligence and strategist operatives who serve a multitude of critical roles. Other schools of Divination focus on disaster deterrence by reading the threads of time and fate.

Despite their lack of offensive capabilities, it is said that the most influential Magi on the United Nations Council is the Oracle of the Acropolis. Though the Divination school has no preference for elemental afflictions, it is a school that synergises well with subsequent studies of other schools. Many Diviners go on to become Magus or Magister.

Enchantment

The school of Enchantment remains the most difficult and expensive to train of all schools. Capable of imbuing items and buildings with protection, strengthening materials and extending persist phenomena, Enchanters are essential to humanity’s cities. The world's most successful manufactoriums and artisanal workshops are all operated by skilled Enchanters. Unlike regular Mages, many Enchanters seek to master additional schools such as Transmutation or Abjuration for the creation of magical items. A dangerous school within-a-school of Enchanters are those whose abilities allow them to control, manipulate and glamour the minds of others. Mind Mages are closely watched by government forces for the misuse of mind-altering effects on others could lead to life-imprisonment or banishment.

Illusion

Illusion is the magic of mirage, the altering of perceptions to create false visions. Many Illusionists go on to become involved in espionage if they choose the path of the militant. Many others, however, have elected media and entertainment, creating spectacles for adoring audiences, becoming superstars of immense prestige. Illusion spells which deal damage attack the mind directly, creating what is known as psychic feedback.

Transmutation

Transmutation is an unusual school in that it changes the caster and the objects they touch, manipulating the properties in powerful ways. In the present world, Transmuters become builders, architects and creators, working hand-in-glove with Enchanters. In combat, some Transmuters choose to specialise in manipulating life itself, changing plants, creatures and even themselves to become deadly and proficient in the art of war. It is said that Transmuters possess the most versatile school of all and enjoy the most lauded status after that of Evokers. An overall well-rounded School of Magic.

Biomancy

The Clerical School of Healing Magic has always existed in human history in one form or another. Some say that this was the original “school” of magic. In modern Spellcraft, Clerical magic exists between Conjuration and Evocation and is considered a hybrid school of magic. Exclusively, Biomancy requires mages attuned to the Positive Energy Plane. The combination of Healing Magic and Positive Energy often shrouds the Biomancer with a “halo” of sorts.

Necromancy

The dreaded School of Necromancy was banned after WWI following the Geneva Convention. Currently, the school is studied only by sects authorised by the U.N., arguing that the study of souls and the afterlife is inseparably connected to matters of faith, culture and religion. For many scholars, the irony of the matter is that Necromancy is most likely the most ancient school of magic in the world, dating back to the Egyptian pharaohs, in an age when man first uncovered magic. As such, it is more accurate to say that the summoning, raising and animation of the dead is strictly forbidden, as much of the old world turned into ash and cinder following The Great War with the Undead.

Other Schools of Magic likely exist but lie beyond the reach of the ordinary Mage. These include Faith Magic, ancestral worship, old world shamanism, naturalism, animalism and so forth. By the same measure, rumours of humans learning the magic of monsters, magical beings and Demi-humanoids, or Demi-humans learning human Spellcraft abound.

Elements & Elemental Magic

The Prime Material Realm

The primary elements of the material plane are what astrologists propose our world is made from. It is the very stuff of existence itself, existing in perfect harmony. It is suggested that when a Mage is attuned to a certain element, it is because an excessive element is present within their body. Though exceedingly rare, there exist individuals who are born capable of tapping into all four ary elements, becoming mages capable of manipulating wood and other natural phenomena, hypothesised by eastern Spellcraft as an individual element.

Prime Energy Planes

The Positive Plane—The Plane of Positive Energy is a place of pure life force. It is where the healers draw their power to heal and mend one's broken bones. The undead are fearful of this energy and the unwary caster should be as well. Too much positive power without the ability to channel it may lead to strange mutations and cancerous tumours.

Negative Energy—Where Positive is life, Negative is death. The undead are tethered to this plane, drawing their undead lifeforce from this domain. When living creatures utilise Negative energy, they suffer Negative drain—rapidly diminishing vitality. In the old days, the Mage world saw the Negative energy as just another source of power. After WWI, Necromancy became highly controversial, gaining a dangerous reputation as a forbidden craft.

Prime Elemental Planes

Earth—Earth is one of the most useful and common elements awakening in human Mages, it is the element responsible for most of our industry, mining for mana crystals, building our cities and so on. It is said that one-fifth of Mages awaken as Earthen Mages.

Air—The Elemental Plane of Air, as the name suggests, is a place of gases and open space frequently filled with thunderstorms, blizzards, microbursts, tornadoes and all manners of interesting weather phenomena. Of the four common elemental affinities, Air is the rarest.

Fire—Fire is another common element Mages manifest. Ancient legend has it that Fire was stolen from the gods themselves. With Fire, man has created many useful tools and beaten back tides of monstrous creatures. Fire is another common element for Mages to possess and the mainstay of Combat Evokers, Transmuters and Conjurers.

Water—Assumed to be a near-infinite volume of water, this elemental plane is pivotal to the survival of modern magical cities. The plane provides human cities with its supply of fresh water. Likewise, human cities pump their wastewater back into the elemental plane. It is theorised that the oceans are directedly connected to this elemental plane. Water affinity is exceptionally common among coastal communities.

Para-Elemental Planes

Ice—Ice is the most common para-element to Awaken in Mages. It is a supremely useful element that creates drops in temperature, being a combination of Air and Water. The Plane of Ice is said to be a tumbling expanse of frigidity with islands of glacial ice. Ice provides good defensive and offensive capabilities, as well as chill and slow effects against water-based enemies.

Ooze—Ooze is a stranger element, scarce and virtually non-existent outside of isolated magical bloodlines. Ooze Mages are specialists, depending on their school, with spells that focus on entrapment, debilitation, poison and other strange and mysterious effects.

A speciality of the Ooze Conjurer is the ability to summon creatures that exist within that elemental plane—Oozes. It is theorised that some oozes are virtually indestructible except by other specialist Mages. Ooze is a combination of Water and Earth. Mud is a derivative of Ooze, though far closer to the Elemental Plane of Water than true Ooze Mages.

Magma—The Magma Mage is unique indeed; a rare combination of Fire and Earth. These Mages are typically found where there are volcanic islands or fjords. Their power combines the physical prowess of the Earth Mage with the damage potential of the Fire Mage.

Smoke—Smoke is the marriage of Air and Fire. Smoke is an element that is said to only exist in legend. Very little is known about Smoke Mages or the Para-Elemental Plane of Smoke.

Positive Quasi-Elemental Planes

Mineral—Mineral Mages take their capabilities from the form of specialised mineral or metal to which the caster is attuned. As such, the element creates distinct abilities that differ from Mage to Mage. A Mage capable of summoning volcanic stones, for instance, would generate obsidian shards which are brittle and fragile but possess dangerous offensive capabilities. Jedite Mages create powerful super-dense defensive layers. There are rumours that King Midas was a Gold Mage.

Lightning—Existing between the Air and Positive elemental planes, Lightning is the most penetrative of all elements due to its electrical nature. Lightning causes stun and paralysis, in addition to manifesting instantly and delivering payloads in a fraction of a second. Lightning Mages are preferably Evokers, Conjurers or Transmuters. The Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lightning is said to be a place of plasma, ozone and endless thunder.

Steam—Where the Positive and Water elemental planes meet, one gets Steam. Steam is a rarely seen element. Only a handful of Mages are on record as having tapped into a Goldilocks zone where two elements meet in harmony. There is little known about the plane and its elementalists.

Radiance—Radiance is formed from Fire and Positive energy. Often mistaken for the power of Light. In theory, it should be useless—too scattered to be used offensively, too dispersed to be used defensively. It takes a special Mage, therefore, to change something so immaterial into a powerful projection of destruction.

At a certain intensity, Radiance is capable of melting through solid steel, boiling blood, searing flesh and severing matter. Not much is known about the Elemental Plane of Radiance.

Negative Quasi-Elemental Planes

Ash—A derivative of Negative Fire that manifests corrosive ash and black flames, Ash is the most destructive element in the array of elemental planes. Ash Mages rarely live long, as the element eats away at their minds. It is said that Ash Mages exist as tortured existences whose ruinous powers wrack their bodies with unbelievable pain. If one is Negative drained by an Ash Mage, one loses one's seven emotions and six desires.

Dust—Dust is the most stable of the Negative quasi-elements, next to Salt. It doesn't have any offensive capabilities of its own but enjoys the same corrosive ability drain as Ash. The most annoying part of fighting a Dust Mage is their ability to deaden all elemental damage. Due to its abrogating nature, Dust consumes Fire, Water, Air, Lightning, even Ash. It is said to be the most stalwart Abjuration Affinity next to Mineral.

Salt—Salt is a stable Negative quasi-element with the additional ability to form into a range of crystalline shapes. It's capable of dealing extreme damage to Slimes and Oozes, as well as an assortment of creatures composed mostly of water, including humans.

The desiccation caused by the Salt Mage draws out elemental water from the bodies of their enemies. Elemental Salt is different from mortal salt, found in oceans and sometimes in rocks. It is formed where Negative energy and Water meet. Salt is the least destructive of Negative quasi-elements.

Void—As the name suggests, the Elemental Plane of Void is a place of vast, perpetual darkness where strange, forgotten things lurk in a vacuum darker than black, always hungering. It is a plane consisting of the very idea of nothingness, a place where forgotten things end up. When manifested in the material plane, Void consumes matter, then disappears. Like Steam and Smoke Mages, very little is known about Void Mages. Arguably, the most famous Void Mage in Modern History is Elizabeth Sobel.

Spellcraft and Metaworld Lexicon

Astral Body—The cognitively generated projection of one's connection to the Multiverse, visualised via indoctrinated Spellcraft. Typically manifests as a humanoid silhouette with abstract details pertaining to the user's sigils and elemental affinity. Elements are perceived to be within the astrophysical body, while sigils manifest externally. Only Mages possess astral bodies.

Physical Body—No matter how powerful a Mage may be, they are still biological creatures that need to eat, crap and sleep, subject to Eros and Thanatos, life and death. The physicality of a Mage tends to reflect the degree of their elemental affinity. Most infamously, Earthen Mages have rock-hard physiques, Air Mages are frail and flighty, while Lightning Mages have quickened metabolisms.

Anima (Animus) —Drawn from the theory of the Meister Sigmund Jung, the psyche, the anima (male psyche and common vernacular) and animus (female psyche) inference a being's subconscious self-awareness. Only sapient creatures are classified as capable of possessing anima and animus.

Mana—The gurus of Hinduism refer to this as spiritual energy or Prana. Chinese Doshi denotes this spiritual energy as Qi. Early western theology referred to this energy as Faith or Zeal. Modern Spellcraft unified the term as mana, a generic word for mystical energies of any kind. The astral body produces mana as it interacts with Glyphs and gates, channelling mana into conduits of the physical body.

Mana Pool—The maximum amount of mana which a Mage can produce. When the astral body is no longer capable of producing mana, this is referred to as OOM or Out of Mana. VMI—Volumetric Mana Index—is the official nomenclature for measuring a Mage's mana pool.

Mana Channel—Often confused with the concept of a Mana Conduit, a Mana Channel refers to metaphysical pathways by which mana produced by the astral body enters the Mage's physical body. A Mage's Mana Channels can never be damaged without injury to their astral body.

Gate and Conduit—A gate refers to nomenclature describing the effect of non-elementally attuned mana becoming suffused with the Mage's element. This elementally-attuned mana then feeds back into the physical body. The pathways through the Mage's physical body are referred to as Mana Conduits. Damage to the physical body damages one's Mana Conduits.

Essence—A metaphysical form of energy derived from a being's existence. Referred to commonly as one's soul or spirit in ancient Spellcraft, contemporary Spellcraft sees essence as a hitherto little-known form of energy, separate from mana.

Creatures possessing great magical power and ego possess higher degrees of essence. Likewise, sapient beings typically possess greater essence than their non-sapient peers of the same subtype. NoMs, in general, possess little essence. human and demi-human Mages possess immense essence, a fact profoundly valuable to the study of Necromancy. Theoretical Spellcraft proposes that essence is tied to a Mage's ability to access particular Schools of Magic.

School of Magic (Imperial Metric Schools) —Since unifying the study of magic under the IMS during the Spellcraft Revolution at the turn of the twentieth century, seven Schools of Magic exist—Evocation, Transmutation, Conjuration, Abjuration, Divination, Enchantment and Illusion.

Hybrid School of Magic—Rarely, some Mages awaken with magic in between the Sanctioned Schools of Magic, belonging to no school. Of these types of magic, Biomancy, the manipulation of Postive energy and Necromancy, the manipulation of Negative energy, reign supreme.

Awakening—The term is loosely used to describe an Acolyte coming to terms with their first School of Magic and their affinity for an element. In Frontier cities, NoM civilians are filtered, with potential Mages tested for aptitude. In tier one cities, Mages naturally grow into their powers, training from an early age. A stimuli crystal may be used to induce an Awakening, circulating mana into the recipient as to jolt their astral bodies into existence.

Spellcraft—The study of magic. The Imperial Metric System (IMS) splits spells into nine Tiers.

Advanced Spellcraft Theorems—Spells whose theory and manifestation fall outside existing methodology. Most universities study advanced Spellcraft to push past the current boundaries of human knowledge of magic. Those who contribute significantly to this study are awarded the title of Meister.

Sanctioned and Unsanctioned Magic—Sanctioned magic may be purchased by Tower Mages with LDMs, HDMs and CCs. Unsanctioned magic may only be acquired through petition. If a Mage is found practising unlicensed unsanctioned magic, they are subject to severe punishments and even disbarment.

Sigil—A spiritual manifestation of one's affinity for particular forms of magic, tied to the generation of one's astral body during Awakening. Each School of Magic possesses a unique sigil under the IMS visualisation doctrine.

Glyph—Sigils exist only in one's mind. When Mages wish to manifest the concept of sigils externally, they turn to glyphs. Glyphs vary but may be thought of as symbols of power capable of channelling magical energy as though a man-made conduit existing outside the Mage's body. Magic items and enchantments such as wards rely exclusively on complex glyphs and mandalas.

Mandala—Originating from Tibetian mysticism, Mandala refers to large-scale, complex glyph arrays used to support complex Spellcraft manifestations.

Spell—A series of incantations both somatic and verbal which triggers magical phenomena when exercised with mana from a Mage's astral body.

Rite—A spell requiring time, preparation and setup. Typically includes meditation, ritual and complex external components. Rites include city-wide strategic-class spells.

Incantation—Invocations with somatic and verbal components. These are mnemonics which manifest magic through sigils. The higher the tier of magic, the more complex and convoluted the number of major and minor incantations. Senior and experienced Mages may specialise in particular spells so that they become “silent”.

Shield (Mage) —Shield refers to the mental ability of Mages to form a barrier of mana around their physical bodies. Even without training, Mages are capable of manifesting a membrane of mana projected just outside their physical body, which displaces hostile mana and foreign objects. Abjuration specialises in forming persistent shields and shields that can manifest on Mages other than the caster.

Acolyte—Neophytes and Acolytes are the colloquial names for beginner Mages. The moniker of Mage or Senior Mage is given to those with mastery over at least one School of Magic, meaning access to spells over tier IV.

Magus—A Magus is an arcanist who has gained multiple Schools of Magic through talent or laborious study. To be called a Magus in public, the Mage must undergo examination within a Tower.

Magister—Likewise, a Magister is a peer-reviewed, publically-sanctioned Magic Caster. Unlike the moniker of Magus, Magister is a title that comes with the weight of public service and responsibility of upholding the Tower's interest.

Meister—A Meister is a Magister, but not all Magisters can become a Meister. A Meister is a Mage who has contributed significant advancement to Spellcraft, and whose work benefits all of mankind. Claude Van Saint, the famous healer who pioneered modern magical medicine, is a Meister. Philo R. Farnsworth, the man responsible for proving that Illusions may exist as a form of media stored in capture crystals, is a Meister. As powerful as famous individuals like Henry Kilroy have been, his preference for keeping his studies wrapt and secret excludes him from the title of Meister.

Magi— A Mage whose power and command over Spellcraft exceed sanctioned limits, going beyond the nine tiers. A Magi rarely concerns themselves with worldly affairs. They are seen as humanity's greatest deterrence against demi-human and magical creature incursions. It is unfortunate that Magi are typically old and venerable.

Sanctioned Mage—A Mage registered under a Tower, beholden to its laws, codes of conduct, and ethics for the public practice of Spellcraft.

Rogue Mage— A Free Mage that is not registered, practices magic freely and therefore is perceived as dangerous to society.

Tier (spell) —Tier I to IX of Spellcraft. Tiers – I to III is accessible to almost all Mages. This tier is capable of combating individuals, as well as groups of Monsters. Tiers – IV to VI exists within the realm of all Maguses as well as most Senior Mages with a single School of Magic. This tier is capable of wiping out monster lairs and demi-human villages. Tier –VII to IX is open usually to Magisters for reasons of both academic access as well as state sanction. High tiers of magic can act as strategic class spells capable of wiping out cities.

Tier (Affinity) —The attunement of a Mage to their element. The higher the affinity, the higher the efficacy for damage and mana cost. As Affinity grows, damage increases by a magnitude of ten percent for every observable tier. Likewise, mana cost for spells decreases with higher affinity. Though damage increase appears to be on a linear scale, mana cost suffers from diminishing returns. As such, a spell will never be “free”.

Higher affinity likewise involves physiological and psychological changes for the Mage in question. Some examples are provided below, taken from the story-in-progress. Fire Mages are often hot-tempered and over-zealous, possessing a short fuse. Physiologically, they gain resistance to cold and heat. Air Mages become fragile and whispy, becoming airy and flighty in their mannerisms. Earthen Mages undergo the most profound physiological change, becoming taller and more robust, with enhanced musculature, increasing both strength and fortitude. Water Mages are known to be pliable and easily convinced, with personalities that like water, and are capable of fitting any vessel. Lightning Mages gain increased metabolism, becoming prideful and possessive beings. Ash Mages are known to become apathetic. Their emotions become dulled by the continued practice of Ash Magic until they waste away. Void Mages are rumoured to exhibit extreme hunger, both physiologically and in terms of their psychological demands. Ooze Mages are said to be slothful and lazy, unmotivated and uninspired. Mineral Mages become dispassionate and pragmatic, often their eyes take on the likeness of their attuned mineral element. Positive Energy Mages are ubiquitously known to be amiable, friendly and full of life and vigour, possessing a halo of likability.

Tier (Creature) —A generic classification system used in common parlance to ratify the danger level of a particular creature. Goblins usually have a tier of I. A raid of goblins may be up to IV or V, an adult dragon up to XI. A leviathan with a swarm of mermen may be up to –twenty-five to thirty, requiring the mobilisation of a Tower or Towers.

Class (Monster) —Military lexicon for the number of Mages needed to pacify a threat. Soldier Class infers a single Mage. Lieutenant Class infers the need for a Magus or two or more Mages. General Class requires a Magister. Usually, a party of Mages may subdue a Lieutenant-Class magical creature. A party of Senior Mages lead by a Magus may defeat a General-Class creature. Some creatures, such as titans (overlarge monsters) and mythics (land gods) are likewise a part of this denomination. Class systems differ from nation to nation and are not an official Tower designation.

Wildlands—Lands not occupied by human cities, separated into zones.

Green—relatively safe for NoM habitation.

Orange—unsafe for occupancy, safe for Mages to traverse.

Purple—dangerous for both Mages and NoMs, contains hostile creatures that will disrupt human habitation.

Black—extremely dangerous for human habitation. Zone includes creatures that predate on humans. Environmental factors may also play into codified zoning.

Demi-Humans—Humanoid races that share the Prime Material Plane with humans. Friendly species include Nordic and Bavarian dwarves, Celtic elves, German gnomes and hobbits from New Zealand. Hostile races include goblinoids, dragonoids, harpies, serpentfolk, merfolk, mermen (Oceanic), lizardmen, dryads and other sapient beings capable of speech. Like most magical creatures, these beings possess a core. Some demi-humans are capable of interbreeding with humans. The majority of human cities are highly xenophobic and racially homogeneous.

Magical Creatures—Creatures generated by nature where the veil between the prime material and the elemental planes are weak. Current theory infers they are elemental creatures that manifest into the Prime Material. Magical creatures possess cores, which are condensed mana that serve as the anchor of the creature's essence to the prime material, giving it life.

Cores (Creature) —From the lowest Gobs to the highest ancient dragon, all magical creatures possess cores. Upon death, the core shatters, releasing the wild energies contained within. Interesting fact—ancient creatures have highly condensed and compact cores that are virtually impervious to damage.

Spirit (s) —When a creature possesses a high level of anima, its core may contain a spirit. Spirits are potentially found in all forms of creature cores, though typically, it is exceedingly rare amongst lower order magical creatures. For spirit-Seekers, the irony lies in that billions of low-tier creatures exist with a lottery's chance of possessing a spirit. While beings with a high probability of retaining a core upon death, as well as possessing both ego and anima, are exceedingly rare, they are more often than not incredibly powerful.

Spirit (Mage) —Mages dream of augmenting their elemental powers with a spirit. A spirit may be acquired through directly killing and harvesting cores, then bending the will of the anima of the creature contained therein to the mage's service. When successfully attuned, the spirit is absorbed into the Mage's astral body, becoming a part of the Mage's ability to channel elemental powers.

The alternate method of gaining a spirit is through taming existing magical creatures and opening one's astral body to the foreign spirit. This methodology is considered highly irregular and potentially fatal for an unsuspecting Mage incapable of melding with the entity.

Familiars—Typically, the Conjure Familiar spell is responsible for bonding elemental entities to a Mage's psyche or anima. Such creatures are manifested from the psyche of the caster. When a spirit is partnered with the Mage, the anima of the spirit usually takes the form of the familiar. When a spirit is bonded with a Mage already in possession of a familiar, it usually subsumes the form of the familiar and replaces it with its own. It is not known if familiars can become spirits through gaining ego and animus.

The Frontier—Originally a term denoting cities which were cut off from logistical support after WWII, the term has grown to encompass all human territories lacking geodynamic ley lines. Some Frontier cities such as Merauke, Darwin, Chittagong and Izmir are little more than human havens eking out a living in the wilderness, serving as little more than trading ports and supply stations. Prosperous Frontier cities such as Sydney, Singapore, Naples and Las Vegas, have a quality of life nearing tier one cities in all but name, lacking the geography, natural resources and political power to ascend into the status of a tier one city. With exceptions akin to continental hub cities like Singapore and Istanbul, the vast majority of Frontier cities have limited access to Spellcraft and Magitech.

Tier One Cities—Cities built around powerful convergences of ley lines are considered tier one cities. These cities have the near-perpetual energy to supply to their internal and external shielding stations. To apply for tier one status, a city-state must pass muster with the Commonwealth Towers, joining the network of tier one cities.

Shielding Station—A stationary mini-tower built to withstand the elements, manned by abjurers and a patrolling team of Mages. At the heart of the shielding station is a Resonance Crystal which projects a frequency harmful to all beings possessing cores that are not attuned to a Mage. A Shield Generator Tower creates the resonance, visually manifesting as a shimmering wall or barrier, and additional, smaller station refract the shielding.

Tower—A robust structure with inbuilt Enchantments. A Tower can vary in size, function and power. In most cities, the Tower functions as a way-station, a bastion and a nerve centre for all magical matter. Even the most basic Tower includes the ability to amplify the manifestation of Spellcraft of its stationed Mages, the levitation of its structural body, long-distance teleportation and displacement, and the ability to act as a mass-communication Divination array. A tier one city's ley lines usually provide power to the Tower. For Frontier cities with limited geodynamic supplies of mana, a significant cargo of HDMs is required.

The Towers—The United Nation Council of Towers (UN) refers to a coalition of all Towers from around the world formed after World War II's Beast Tide. Akin to the UN in Gwen's old world, the Towers sanctify and ratify the regulation of Spellcraft, the status of city-states, and mediate the conflicts of interest between human nations.

Tower (Commonwealth) —Towers belonging to the old British Mageocracy, said to have conquered more than fifty percent of all human lands in its golden age. The Commonwealth forms a loose factional coalition through a shared ideology of social democracy, English as a primary language, and mutual defence pacts.

Tower (Independent) —Towers not beholden to any specific faction and are wholly independent (on paper). Singapore, Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong are examples.

Tower (State Owned) —Towers that are a part of the global network of towers but are beholden to their city-states or nations. Almost all non-independent towers belong to this category.

NoMs—Non-magical human beings, also derivatively known as No-Magic. In the Frontier and tier one cities, NoMs serves as a labour force. The majority of NoMs work in agriculture and manufacturing, with a small percentile working in administration and other white-collar positions. Most NoMs, whether because of indoctrination or the social climate, see the possibility of becoming a Mage or introducing a Mage to their bloodline to be a way out of a life of oppression, poverty and mediocrity.

House (Mage) —A bloodline of Mages usually with a powerful or influential progenitor. A House usually includes three or more generations of Mages. A Branch House is when a potential heir, usually a sibling, starts a new House with the same bloodline.

Table of Contents

- 1. Come Together
- 2. Picking up the Pieces
- 3. No News like Bad News
- 4. Cabin Fever
- 5. Stifling
- 6. Creepers and Crawlers
- 7. O Captain
- 8. Respite
- 9. Detour
- 10. Taken
- 11. Then there was Light
- 12. An invitation from a Doppelgänger
- 13. A Sliver of Silver
- 14. A Meeting at the Threshold
- 15. Cold City
- 16. More ways than One
- 17. To Skin some Cats
- 18. Remember Me
- 19. Introspection
- 20. No Longer Alone
- 21. A Tale of Two Towers
- 22. Hold on and Let Go
- 23. Human Nature
- 24. Risk and Reward
- 25. Visions and Revisions
- 26. Spotty Hands
- 27. Night Whispers
- 28. A Matter of Face
- 29. Brave New World
- Thank You
- Glossary
- Elements & Elemental Magic