Metaworld Chronicles

Despite her involvement in more conflicts than she could count, Gwen still had trouble processing the notion of an eternal war against the Mermen.

The abstraction was simple but not one she could readily internalise. Even against the Undead, there was a perceivable "end game" where Liches turned to powder and regions like North Korea, Siberia, and the Balkans returned to man's domain.

But to wage war until the butt-end of the smoking ruins of human history?

It was something Gwen chose not to think too deeply about lest her resolve waned.

Therefore, her mind chose the present sanity of practical slaughter.

In Humanity's perpetual cycle of conflict against Mermen, a commonly agreed-upon reality was that Mermen were easy to kill on land—but bloody impossible to repel from the territorial waters.

Even though humans were undeniably amphibious mammals, possessing an inborn diving reflex, their means to engage underwater was limited—despite the fact that common Transmutations like Aqua Lung, Water Breathing, Water Walking—were commonly used in construction.

For reasons of efficiency, underwater warfare never came to pass—amphibious Mage units could neither move like the fishes nor utilise the full complement of their magic. Likewise, Humanity found success only on the surface, where their Battle Barges and flying Towers could broadcast deadly waves of resonance to keep the Mermen at bay.

Thereby, akin to a seasonal rash, the marauding Mermen rioted as they pleased, plundering at their leisure, keeping Humanity panting and salivating for the resources of the coastlines, each dotted with their densest cities, hoping that one day, man could conquer the final Frontier—the sea.

For her present purpose, Major Kotts had long-ago assigned readings and research for his War Mage student, knowing that an encounter with the Mermen was inevitable.

A compulsory reading was Meister Jacques-Yves Melchior of Paris, author of "Mage and the Forbidden Sea: A Treaties on Coastal Potential". Within were countless anecdotes of man's failed ambitions to venture into the wide blue yonder, detailing the history and process by which the Oceanographer created the first Resonance Engine for aquatic use, ushering man into an unforeseen epoch of freight and colonisation.

The book had been of great interest to Gwen because she recalled seeing the volume in Henry's study.

But compared to the version she had read, the "original" edition given to her by Magister Brown was a treasure trove of observations editorialised by the Oceanographer on the Mermen of the Seven Kingdoms, each guarding their rifts throughout the Atlantics and the Pacific.

Mermen, the Meister had said, are fabulous sea creatures, man or woman or its likeness above, and fish below, an invasive species of Elemental humanoids from the Plane of Water. A commander must know that there is no possibility of peace between Man and Mer. Just as a kingdom may not have two monarchs, and no firmament shall play grace to twin Gates of Radiance.

In a later chapter, in a section Henry's copy lacked, Gwen had found a picture of a woman with crow-black hair and porcelain skin, with a mien more like a Lumen-cast celebrity than a War Mage.

"Magister Elizabeth W. Sobel—" The entry had read. "A case study on the Subjugation of the Coral Sea under Master Kilroy of Sydney."

What shocked Gwen wasn't the vivid accounts of Sobel's conquest of the Coral Sea but the fact that a report was published. Thanks to Henry's long shadow and innumerable favours, reliable recordings of Elizabeth's military operations were inversely proportional to her infamy.

Gwen had devoured the volume with hungry eyes, reading between the lines of Meister Melchior's first-hand account to find the slimmest hint of Sobel's vulnerabilities.

To that end, she had found nothing.

What she did learn was the Meister's instruction in resolving the paradox of fighting an inaccessible foe, which read as such:

Any commander wishing to battle with the Mermen should refer to Chapter III: The Shoals, surmising a hierarchal, pyramidal food chain with a dynamic relationship between predator and prey. A Crabman may be food today, but a thriving tribe may feast upon a weakened Shoal of Sharkmen tomorrow. Do not forget that unlike the world of men, in Mer's world, society, politics, power and survival bisect. A tribe that grows weak becomes combat fodder, and should it grow weaker still, it becomes food. For this reason, an Ordo Knight or militia Wing Commander must tacitly acknowledge that whatever their feelings are for the present wave of a Mermen Tide, chances are they are battling the weakest member of a Shoal's food chain at any given time.

Think of the Shoal as an onion, the Meister advised; the outer layers of the Shoal are the weakest and the most brittle but also cover the largest surface area, consisting of the fodder troops. Strip it, and the Shoal gives way to expendable shock troops, core infantry, siege, freight, magical units, and the Elemental nobility at the centre.

In the eternal battle against the Mer, we must never forget that the Demi-Humans of the sea consist of a hundred thousand conflicting interests cowed by a hierarchy of predation and violence. Should the widely feared Wave Witches or the shrimp-headed Coral Knights lose enough numbers to control their subordinate Clans, the instinctual desire of their next-of-kin is to usurp their betters and fill the vacuum of power. An Elemental noble may interfere with natural succession, but they cannot halt the ingrained credo tattooed into the Cores of the Sea Folk.

In this manner, Lady Sobel's unique talents enabled Lord Kilroy's rapid pacification of the Coral Sea and the reclamation of the East Coast (diagram IV.ii). She directly challenged the core infantry, lured their magical and siege units to the surface, and disrupted the innate "hierarchy" of the Shoal...

Which was why—Gwen supposed—here she was, reenacting Sobel's gambit like a dutiful daughter playing at dress-up.

"Ready," Richard levitated a dozen meters away, bobbing now and then like a dandelion as his Flight magic fought the wind. "Lulu?"

Lulan hovered close, surrounded by seven gleaming blades, each as wide as her thighs and twice as long. Together with the thrumming claymore beneath her feet, she and her Naga Spirit controlled eight slabs of death-dealing iron.

"Leave anything large and armoured to me." The Sword Mage scanned the brimming waters half a kilometre below them. "Assuming they could even fly this high."

"I like Lulu's confidence," Gwen's cousin assured her. "Start whenever."

Gwen, too, felt confident that between Richard's soft barriers and Lulan's ability to deflect the rest, she should have no fears of losing control of her grand summons. Therefore, she took a deep breath, ensured that Almudj's Essence had well-tempered her vital conduits—then activated her tandem-layered Void Shield.

In an eye-blink, her world grew dark and devoid of sight and sound, producing a sensory deprivation chamber. The experience wasn't pleasant, but she needed total concentration for what was to come.

That and she required privacy, for the euphoria that would soon flood her torso would tax her mind to its utter limits as she sought to balance the debit and credit of Void drain and vitality.

"I am beginning," she informed the others through their Dwarven-forged Communication bangles, then sang the forbidden invocations thrifted from her Master's belongings at Tryfan, spellshaping a spell she now knew almost by reflex.

Wellington.

WETA.

Petra Kuznetsova, yet another "roommate" of the Devourer, stepped back from the Teleportation Circle with a face full of satisfaction.

"Amazing." Magister Kawhena circled the complex, multi-layer Mandala with an expression of awe. "What was that, eight minutes?"

"Just past seven," one of his aids could hardly keep his mouth closed. "Magus Kuznetsova, what were those… tentacles?"

"Naga heads," Petra clarified that, yes, she did indeed possess a multi-headed Draconic Mineral Spirit. Upon her arrival, she had decided to impose the full extent of her significant script-scribing powers because she wanted to examine the rest of WETA's Glyph work. According to her briefing, the original inscriptions were personally composed by Gwen's Master, which was then perfected by generations of Oceania's best Transmuter-Enchanters. With it, she could help her cousin decipher more of Henry's Elven library.

"Activate!"

With a final invocation, the Teleportation Circle triggered with a hum, meaning she could relax. Her Cambridge companion, Jaxon Reid, would maintain the central station here while she dove down below.

"Master, is it prudent to allow an outsider into the Core Chamber?" a student indiscreetly whispered, perhaps forgetting that there were Mermen outside, and she had just ensured none of them would die.

"As always, the Shard thinks they own the place," someone else remarked.

All around Petra, she could sense the fluctuation of emotions like a rippling pond of summer insects. As a Mind Mage trained to detect such thoughts, she could empathise with their frustration at perceiving such a difference in skill and resource.

Unlike in London, Teleportation Circles were a rare art in the Frontier for expenditure and security reasons, known only to very senior members of the magical hierarchy. Yet, here she was, not only inscribing a Mandala from scratch but doing so through a semi-autonomous Spirit capable of filling in the details while she inscribed the framework.

Other than Magister Kawhena, she could smell the sour odour emitting from the mouths of these astonished Wellington Mages. They too had worked hard their whole lives. They too, were considered the best—until they met Petra. And to add fuel to the fire, Petra was both young and beautiful, which, when combined, made Kawhena's men lament the unfairness of life.

That was why Petra loved her work among the Dwarves. She had felt most at home in the Bunker's workshops, for the Engineseers ignored her looks, poked fun at her Enchantments, and put her through the same wringer as any Journeyman.

Ding!

A Message spell bloomed beside her ear.

"Kuznetsova, I've finished the relay at Wright's Hill Bunker. Do you copy?"

"Copy, dissipation register only at level one." Petra confirmed the connection between the Divination Sigils carved into the Lesser Teleportation Mandalas.

"Excellent. Mine says two. We can transfer the WETA team anytime. Do you have enough HDMs? Can we switch to WETA's signal?"

"Yes, and yes." Petra glanced at the knee-high latticed boxes of HDMs taken from her Dwarf-forged Storage Ring for Golem units. What would these men think if she told them she also had a utility Golem currently occupying half the space? That she had anticipated digging their cold corpses out of WETA's ruins?

"Good work, Jaxon. Ross will oversee the relay at WETA with Magister Kawhena's men while I link our Divination Devices with the superstructural Mandala array."

"How's our leader?" the Translocation Specialist asked. "Good news? Since we're not evacuating yet."

"Gwen should soon be beginning her Purge on the main column," Petra replied. "We'll know whether we're defending Wrights Hill or celebrating by the hour. Can you set up our next waypoint?"

"Leaving now," Jaxon announced the conclusion of his task. "Confirming Senior Apprentice Jones of WETA will oversee the waypoint at Wright's Hill."

"H-hello!" A voice said over the communication channel.

"Confirmed," Petra looked to WETA's Magister. Now, she needed access to the internal superstructure to patch their Divination Glyph array into the academy's decades-old systems.

"I can hardly believe it, but all battle stations are clear," Kawhena affirmed that they had a few hours of rest before the Shoal sent out more of its fishy feelers. "Magus Bai says she's with something called 'The Caliban'. Does that sound right?"

"That would be Gwen's Familiar," Petra reassured the Magister. "I would like to begin on the Divination array. Magister, if you could?"

"Of course." Kawhena willed away his Apprentices.

Once more, Petra stood at the centre of the group's loudly broadcasting emotions, suddenly self-conscious for wearing a pair of prohibitively priced Parisian boots of Flight, naturally a gift from Gwen. Besides her, WETA's administrator completed the secret Glyph work near the Mandala module, allowing a section of it to slide apart, revealing a manhole just wide enough to fit a single Mage.

"Be very careful," Kawhena warned her. "Divination Arrays begin at C-44-B8, touch nothing else."

"I shall take the greatest care," she replied as she levitated downward, noting how comfortable and Dwarven the humble access tunnel looked.

Plop!

Plop—!

P-plop—!

The distinct sound of giant, goo-slathered Void Hydras hitting the water from five hundred meters up wouldn't impress an Olympic dive judge—but was enough to arouse the attention of the Merman patrolling the exterior of the Shoal.

One by twos, sometimes threes, her Hydras plopped into the water, happy as lampreys on a whalefall, swimming free as they pieced the bean-blue surface of the South Sea. Such was the method used by Sobel, one delivered from the shelter of her Dark Egg.

The rationale behind Sobel's "drone" warfare was that Human Mages fought terrible aquatic battles.

Even Richard, whose Undine could call forth a tiny "Shoal" of her brackish cousins, was useless when pitted against water-breathing Elementals formed of the same Plane from which such monsters hailed.

Gwen, however, had Hydras.

First and foremost, her creatures need not draw breath. They were alive—but they lacked the physiology of mortal conjured beasts. When Magister Brown had dissected one of her summoned Hydras, they had found its interior to be more mana than meat, possessing only rudimentary organs, making it akin to primordial organisms.

When attacking, a Hydra first latched onto its prey, dissolved the entry-point by regurgitating bile consisting of concentrated Void vomit, then injected an admixture of digestive enzymes to break down a prey's interior.

Once done, the Hydra's contracting body would slurp back the admixture, taking everything its gastronomic juices could absorb, from vitality to mana to physical flesh. The whole process then repeated itself until there were only two outcomes.

In the first scenario, the nourished Hydra, bloated on its new vitality, rapidly grew in size, producing more Void-enzyme and an unendingly voracious appetite.

In the second scenario, the expenditure of the attack, together with the Hydra's entropic decay, exceeded the vitality and mana it could absorb, thereby weakening the creature, eventuating in its exit from the Prime Material.

As the chief researcher behind her aptly named Shoggoth, Brown had proposed a hypothesis that the Quasi-Elemental Plane of the Void might be home to a semi-sentient Mythic consisting of many parts. Brown furthermore hypothesised that Gwen and Sobel's summons might be components of a being enormous beyond comprehension. The "Void ink" so commonly manifested with Void Magic might be its digestive juices and that Gwen and Sobel's summons were otherworldly appendages living within its fleshy domain.

Without evidence to counter the point, Gwen added to the idea, positing a "what if" in which the "manifestation"—one she had negligently named Shub-Niggurath—encompassed the entirety of the Quasi-Elemental Plane, leaving only endless hunger.

The room had grown silent at her remark, and further discovery was postponed for another meeting.

But even without further discovery, Gwen deeply suspected that Sobel had used the Hydras, rather than the Dark Sun, on the Mermen Shoals.

After all, Hydras were self-perpetuating mouths with no need for air, possessing no vulnerabilities to water pressure.

Considering how a Shoal defended itself—how could it even begin to withstand Sobel without prescient knowledge to engage the flying sorceress with their elite Elemental units? Not to mention Henry was up there, waiting for the Mer to fall into Sulfina's traps.

By the time a Hydra had feasted on a hundred Mermen, what power would be needed to take one down? Her Master had once said that all things came in balance.

Was her expedience also one of the world's balancing acts?

And should she take the thrifted vitality from her Hydras to keep reproducing them from her Dark Egg, what Shoal could stifle the progress of her Lovecraftian swarm?

Lä! Shub-Niggurath!

May she be the mother of a thousand Dark Young!

Hell, Gwen giggled in the dark, mindful of how insane she sounded; her milk could even mutate a duck into a Drake!

But all self-fulfilling fan-fiction aside, Gwen knew that she had a long and brutal fight. Without risking life and limb to enter the depthless water of the South Sea, she and her company couldn't comprehend that a Shoal wasn't two dimensional—but a three dimensional, dynamic wall of foes.

For all Gwen knew, the Shoal could just... fuck off and leave her hungry and hanging.

From her vantage, the Shoal might look like a large reef buried a meter under the water, but in reality, it was over seven kilometres long, close to three kilometres across, and how deep?

Not even Lea dared to risk an Elemental Princes' domain.

Nonetheless, in the liminal space of the Dark Egg, she formed a mind map from the synaptic feedback from her Hydras, constructing a distant vision only she could know by joining the dots.

Plop! Plop—Plop!

Ignoring the onomatopoeic herald of her armageddon worms, Gwen focused on the first wave of Mermen to encounter her creatures. Through her use of Link-Sight, her Hydras possessed the grey-scale vision of Vital Sense, from which she could see a shimmering wall of multi-armed monsters. To her surprise, these were not the Mer-gobs so common in coastal waters but a solid wall of tentacled cephalopods.

When her swarm of swimming mouths closed in on the wall, the whole school shifted as one, forming an indent as to draw her creatures inward—

Then as sudden as they had withdrawn, tentacles wielding coral lances emerged by the hundreds, spearing her Hydras, a sight that would make David Attenborough weep.

Her Hydras made no sound as they became Julius Caesar spear holsters. Quantity, she acknowledged with renewed appreciation, was indeed a quality in itself.

The Coral Spears used by the native Mermen were simple constructs, crafted, according to Meister Melchior, in the Reef Gardens of Wave Witches specialised in crafting armaments. The older the coral, the stronger its lattice-woven structure and the more potent its innate magic. The process was positive primitive compared to Dwarven Magi-tech, child-like when pitted against Sylvan Glyph-etching, but had an insurmountable advantage in one regard.

Time and quantity.

Reefs as old as time itself, existing near vents exposed to Elemental tears, were as common as marsh iron for the deep crafters. Therefore, even the most basic "Wand-like melee implements" wielded by the lowest footman of the Mer-armies were as powerful as uncommon Shock Wands crafted by mid-tier Enchanters. Sometimes, fishermen could accidentally recover tridents tipped with coral fragments from three different Elements, capable of delivering electric, fire and ice-based attacks simultaneously.

Which meant the spears wielded by these Humboldt Squid-folk individually dealt inconsequential damage to Gwen's Hydras—yet nonetheless transformed her creatures into pin-cushions.

It was a shame that her Hydras were veritable Honey Badgers, incapable of caring for mortal injury when their innards consisted of little more than collated cosmic hunger. With the school of squids so close, those capable of doing so simply arched their serpentine necks—released its internal vomit of tentacle tongues, latched on—then began to grow.

If the Void-aura inherent to her creatures had slowed the squids earlier, the inundation of Void-matter compelled by the influx of vitality was enough to slow the squids closest to her monsters.

Like a squid and lamprey orgy, her monsters and their Mer-partners flayed and clawed at orifices, tearing with tooth and nail, tentacle and teeth-lined lips, one growing larger and stronger while the other quickly grew limp.

More spears attacked her creatures, penetrating those busily mating stomachs to colour-changing flesh.

It took six to twelve seconds to produce anywhere between one and three Void Hydras via the modified Conjure Elemental Swarm, meaning she was averaging twenty summons per minute. By her mental count, almost ten minutes had passed.

And some two hundred Hydras were in those waters, feasting on Squids, with the rest of the Shoal merely spectating the chaos like gamblers in a terrier pit.

The result was hungrier and larger Void fiends that instantly broke off from the attack, this time roping two squids a piece into their embrace.

Very soon, here, there, and seemingly everywhere in the school of converging Squid-folk, her slug-like manifestations sought to fill a bottomless hunger, heedless of their injuries, caring only for the next morsel.

With a grunt, Gwen took hold of the morbid pleasure from the incoming vitality and transmuted the euphoria into Void expenditure. Then, she Messaged her companions to be ready for retaliation.

After the squids, there would be stronger Mermen, then after that, hopefully, something more substantial.

According to Meister Melchior's notes of the Coral Sea War, the Mermen's command doctrine emphasised absolutes. A well-loved subordinate rarely received direct orders from a superior, for they who could anticipate their Master or Mistress' desires with absolute clarity. In a Shoal, therefore, explicit orders were given and obeyed with disdain and loathing—with only details such as "attack here", "hold here", and "kill this creature". A good subordinate was expected to survive and succeed on initiative alone—while the poor were right to perish, making way for more worthy attendants.

Gwen only hoped she wouldn't be stuck in this state for hours.

The incoming vitality was now making her spell-weaving fingers unsteady and the interior of her Da-peng suit clammy. She instantly pacified her numbing body with a jolt of Almudj's Essence, feeling as though someone had flooded her conduits with liquid peppermint.

With a clearer head now, she began to feed the excess vitality into Caliban, concurrently informing her Familiar that once it was done chumming with Yue, she would very likely re-manifest it to fight whatever monster would soon rise from the Shoal's deepest interior.

Prince Shyvaphyr, Seventeenth in line to the Coral Throne, lounged in his whalebone settee, carved out from the skull of a long-term rival, listening to the bickering of his subordinates.

A part of him told him he should be glad, for the chance to liven one's life from the eternal trials of the Viridian Enclave was rare and a privilege many of his siblings fought over, often to the exhaustion of their Cores. Yet, Shyvaphyr felt comparatively ambivalent, for his task was a thankless objective compared to the prize his regal sister sought in the Human city called Auckland.

But thankfully, entertainment had arrived.

Presently, the Shoal was under siege.

It was a prospect that stirred Shyvaphyr's twin hearts, for his anticipation was that he would slowly doze away the light cycles while waiting for the city to be erased from the headland, then join his sister after she's had her share of slaughter. The bipedal humanoids on the surface may only be food, but they were an industrious lot. The loot from Humanity always involved interesting gadgetry perfect for wasting time, and their Mages were an excellent sport. For that reason, those who returned with the most thralls, and the most unusual items, could enjoy long cycles of exaltation among the Seafolk's upper circles.

As for the attack on his Shoal, Shyvaphyr listened in wonder as the Wave Witches recounted the result of their Far Sight.

"Otherworldly lampreys with scales the colour of jet!"

"The foe numbers only in the hundreds, but they're wreaking havoc!"

"The Jabia Clan! Consumed by half, then fled!"

"And the other half is dinner for the Mahi Marauders, I assume," Shyvaphyr blew a stream of bubbles. That was the way of the Shoal. In each layer, each species had to maintain their territory, or they would not receive their share of food or spoils and become food and spoils to their neighbours. "How are the Marauders fairing against this foreign Lamprey swarm?"

"No fairer," a Siren Sea Witch reported in her sing-song manner of speech, both gills bristling with blushes of pink. "The Lamprey creatures appear indomitable."

"Nonsense!" Shyvaphyr scoffed. The Dragon-kin were indomitable. His kingly father, the Deep Drake Miommiriorthyr, was indomitable. With their Dragon Turtles matron, he and his sister were somewhat indomitable.

Human Mage fodder—indomitable? Was the Witch drunk on the landmen's fermented fruits?

"How many Mages are there?" Shyvaphyr rolled all four of his eyes. "Two? Three Flights? Who would have thought this 'Wellington' would be so well defended?"

"Great Prince," the Siren constrained her hovering bubble of Far Sight, then drifted closer so Shyvaphyr could see without craning his serpentine neck. "There isn't a Mage Flight. There's just…"

Shyvaphyr invaded the Sea Witches' sorcery with a mere twitch from his regal whiskers, causing the Siren to shiver as his Dragon Fear caressed her splendiferous scales. With a hand on the female's waist, Shyvaphyr penetrated her mind.

There was an egg hovering somewhere above the Shoal.

A dark egg that reminded Shyvaphyr of the floating spawn left behind by the Kraken-kin, drifting with the oceanic currents in the depth of the Plane of Water until the surviving few, chosen by fate and chance, spawned into ravenous, all-consuming monstrosities.

From the egg, tiny lampreys no larger than Shyvaphyr's fingers emerged from slits in the Prime Material, falling an uncertain distance until they struck the red-brown water below, dyed pink by the blood of his panicked Shoal.

When he shifted his gaze outward, he saw a Human sorceress patrolling the egg, riding on what appeared to be an enormous melee implement.

Another human, a male, laid barrier after barrier of veiled water, likely warding against the Marid Wave Witches under Shyvaphyr's command.

Elsewhere, nearer the coast, Shyvaphyr felt the shimmering Essence of a kindred being—a Greater Draconid like himself, a curious existence, but not one that could measure up to the full might of his Shoal.

And that was the extent of the Siren Witches' clairvoyance.

Of the suspects, the Mages were different to the usual foes Shyvaphyr encountered on his rare excursions to the surface—the Draconid he could negotiate with—but the squid-ink egg was something that made Shyvaphyr's scaled brows furrow.

As a near-immortal of the Shoreless Seas, Shyvaphyr and his ilk lived long lives and possessed extensive memories.

Therefore, his pulsing frontal lobe told him that the "Dark Egg" was a known phenomenon—he was sure of it.

Some cycles ago, there had a brief lull in the unending civil conflicts between the Seven Kingdoms when enormous rents in the Prime Material opened, allowing innumerable numbers of Sea Folk to pass. Salsabeel, the Supreme Seat of the First Swell, had issued a crusade to reclaim the coastal "farmlands" of the Prime Material. Shyvaphyr's home reef, Manhal, had also taken part in the slaughter, laying waste to Humanities' coastal cities.

Somewhere within those dimmed and indistinct impressions, Shyvaphyr recalled the stories from the shallow reef. There had been a Human sorceress who possessed the same pale skin as the Deep Witches who had never seen sunlight, whose "Spellcraft" conjured flesh-eating blood worms that ate their way through entire Shoals.

If Shyvaphyr's memory served, the entire Eastern Shoal had collapsed because of the infamous sorceress, leaving legions of scattered warrior Mer to fend for themselves on the Prime Material. When finally the magic users found their way back to the Plane of Water, Manhal's Coral Guards gleaned that six Shoals, including a Great Shoal, had perished to the wielder of worms. As the price for their retreat, several Wave Witches had their Coral Gardens given up for gladiatorial spoils and their Essences consumed by Shyvaphyr's father. From these inherited insights of the survivors, Shyvaphyr now recollected the vague memory of this "dark egg".

There was another memory of note—that the sorceress of the flesh worms was no longer a part of Humanity's defence but fended for herself by working with Demi-humans such as his kinfolk from the Queendom of Gak.

Of course, from the looks of what he was now witnessing—he could disregard that possibility entirely.

"Her Lamprey-kin grow stronger through battle," Shyvaphyr's slitted eyes narrowed with displeasure. "The ones nearer the surface aren't nearly so fierce."

Shyvaphyr could see the Mahi Lancers piercing the slow-moving lamprey within the Siren's vision. On impact, a lamprey's chitin lasted only a split-second before the rods of old coral tore through its innards, entering one side and exiting the others. There would be no blood, only a splatter of grey goo and organ fluids; then, the impaled creature would turn on its attacker, using its improved reach to grapple the Mahi Mermen.

Most knew well enough to relieve their spear—those too slow to do so would grow suddenly rigid, then rapidly be consumed by the lamprey even as it received retaliation from others. To disable the black worms entirely, Shyvaphyr realised, would involve its total destruction. A feat the Mahi Lancers could not accomplish with their emphasis on melee and momentum.

Should he call back the Mahi Marauders? They were a higher echelon troop than the expendable squids, slow-growing and difficult to tame but immensely powerful in the speed-based conflicts of the deep.

But who should then battle the lampreys? Shyvaphyr knew he should not allow the swarm to penetrate any deeper, for past the Mahi were the giant mantas, beasts of burden used by the Shoal to transport food and supplies. These were themselves enormous food sources—and should the lampreys find these as prey, what might they become?

Shyvaphyr had no desire to reorganise the Shoal's lower hierarchies, to re-examine who should fight, who should be fodder and who would be food. The strategy against the Humans was well-known, and he had no desire to be scolded by his sister.

"There are only three Human Mages above us?" Shyvaphyr asked. "No Tower?"

"You are astute, Sire," the Siren allowed Shyvaphyr's fingers to wander, not daring to move a muscle. "Auckland's Tower remains distant."

"And these Mages have no mana signatures befitting a Magi?"

"Not even a Meister, O Sire," the Siren confirmed.

"And the Morning Star isn't near?" Shyvaphyr had to be sure. Of all his inherited memories, survivors of the Human Mage called the Morning Star reigned supreme.

"Sydney is thousands of currents away, Lord Shyvaphyr."

Now reassured, Shyvaphyr's lips grew cruel.

"Then let us pay our challengers a visit, and my cousin of the air, even if the brute intends to feast on my kin," Shyvaphyr announced, simultaneously moving his armoured torso from the whalebone settee.

Using only his will, Shyvaphyr gracefully slid through the water, his enormous body possessing the agility of a minnow. As his Dragon Fear rippled outward, the inner court cowered.

"Summon your sisters," he commanded. "Keep the Shoal from infighting in my absence. Protect the manta lines at all costs!"

"Yes, Great Prince," the Sirens sang praises to their Lord and Master. "Thy will be obeyed."

"Zitusphyr, Sevphr," Shyvaphyr summoned his guards, younger cousins from his mother's Clan who were dull of mind but suitably "indomitable" for the purpose of preventing harm from coming to Shyvaphyr.

Twin titans lifted into the water, each some twelve meters from crowned ridge to barbed tail. Of the Shoal, only Shyvaphyr's Clansmen and select members of the Wave Witches' cabal had the confidence to fight in the air. Worse than land, the lack of water and friction made manoeuvring almost impossible for the untrained and untalented.

Shyvaphyr addressed his men with a bark of Draconic, then banished the Siren's shared vision, causing the female to stagger back with a delightful moan.

Three Draconid true-bloods against a sorceress without a complete party and a juvenile blood-kin— Shyvaphyr could not foresee why he still felt so uneasy.

Momentarily, however, he felt great enlightenment.

What rewards might his father give if he could capture the worm-wishing sorceress? What fame and glory would await him in the coral halls of Manhal if he should present its gladiatorial arena with an indomitable slave-witch?

Wellington.

East Coast.

Golos bathed in the Haka-song of Wellington's lowly mortals, snacking on a crab claw while sucking the marrow from a still-living length of Fish-folk. He was happy, very happy, and well-satisfied. A part of him cautioned his Draconic soul against singing the Calamity's praise, but he was enjoying himself too much to care.

Earlier, from the air, he saw the Crab-men menace the Calamity's Mages. So he had landed with style, unleashed a forty-meter long line of life-extinguishing plasma, then inhaled the Essence and vitality of his slain foes by crashing into their lines, clearing the invasion through a counter-invasion.

Drinking in their pitiful Essence, Golos made sure most of the Mermen would leave their worthless Cores, a matter of great importance to the Calamity's kin.

After that, he pounced through the scattered survivors, enjoying the sight of their blue blood splattering against the shattered concrete buildings of the humans, chasing the Mermen up and down his section of the coast until they were either dead or retreated.

At the dock's extreme north, he met the team's mascot, Dede, and the Calamity's false Kirin.

He hailed the two with a grunt.

One made its mewling noises while the other barked an affirmation that foes were subdued. Around the pair were hundreds of slimy Mudkin, each looking more traumatised than the next by their encounter with the duck.

The mascot was a curious existence, more so an accidental experiment than an elevated minion, reminding Golos of his lesser cousins—creatures who gained his father's Essence by fate or consumption, only with the Essence of an Old One. Golos felt a fondness for the multi-coloured duck for its adorable feathers. It is unfortunate then that Dede's terrestrial body severely limited its Astral development, meaning it would grow obscene and robust—but would not transcend its earthly coil to become a being halfway between the Prime Material and the Unformed World, as Golos might one millennium, or as Ruxin now aspired to be.

Comparatively, Ariel lay in the opposite spectrum, being wholly manifested from the Calamity's psyche, existing most time in the Astral World, and occupying the Prime Material only when willed into being by its mistress. Of the two, Golos felt a kinship toward the Kirin, for its metamorphosis had come from the Yinglong's stolen Essences, which had led to his meeting with the Calamity.

His meeting with the Calamity had changed his fate, though as for bane or boon, he could not confirm. In Huangshan, his sire had slumbered since the day the Calamity was driven from the mount by Ayxin. Not even when Ruxin ascended to his new domain had their deified father awakened, leaving the entirety of his earthly realm to Golos and the soft-spined Ryxi.

Nonetheless, as a divine scion of the Yinglong, Golos could feel in his marrow that some great calamity was coming and that his Calamity would be at the epicentre of the calamitous calamity.

All in all, very much in style with the Calamity.

"MABLIK—SLATHALIN—!" A great roar, audible for kilometres from its origin point and barked in Draconic, radiated from the whereabouts of the Calamity's present battleground.

"Hmm…?" Golos wasn't for deep thinking and so grew immensely annoying when his rare moment of reflection was interrupted by the intrusion of a fellow Dragon-kin.

"Quack!" The mascot lifted into the air, making for its Essence dispenser lest she became damaged.

"EE—EE!" Though the false Kirin could be summoned at a second's notice, it also took to the air.

How interesting! Golos sniffed the winds. A distant cousin with blood more diluted than his!

It was very, very rare that Dragon-kin confronted one another in neutral domains, for there was nothing to be gained.

A lesser Dragon-kin wants to usurp the Calamity?

HA!

Ignoring the gurgling of his guts, Golos felt it was his duty to see the beast bested! Only in witnessing the Void Fiend mangling his kin could Golos vicariously receive the schadenfreude necessary to heal the fissured scar in his Draconic heart, that terrible unmentionable memory that even now inspired week-long bouts of involuntary constipation.