Metaworld Chronicles

Watching Almudj's Strange Danger at work, Gwen felt like a catfishing hussy whose Big Daddy was taking her unsuspecting chump to town like Rocky to a side of beef.

The outcome was coincidental, for Henry's censured repertoire of magic was beyond the ken of her Cambridge lecturers, who gained data by abetting her experiments and sweeping regulatory mishaps under the rug.

The same could be said of Almudj's magic, for which her knowledge was an estuary meeting a vast Essence Sea.

Therefore, her "Offensive Essence Tap Field Test" was akin to the pre-Spellcraft transmutation of phosphorous by Meister Hennig Brandt, lighting up new possibilities of monster hunting like a retina-searing Lumen Globe.

When her group first encountered the avatar of Nyrlesvinyr at Jackson, it was waist-deep in steamed seafood piled two storeys high against Force Barrier. The creature had snarled at her—but wasn't content with abandoning the last few thousand HDMs worth of shielding before facing its foe.

That was her victim's last mistake, for Lulan instantly pinned it to the granite with her stone-shaping sword nails while Gwen rushed its rear, her body buffed with every form of defence Richard and Petra could muster.

Her crow armour made light of the bristles' acid and venom. However, Gwen still found it almost impossible to penetrate the mechanical defence of the porcupine spikes. A flood of Void Bolts solved the problem, with Lea sweeping her landing before she fired up Essence Tap and stabbed the worm with gut-churning necrotic energy.

The first few seconds of paralysis had been within her expectations. As with the Balefire, she and the worm entered a state of Astral shock while their Essences mingled like oil and vinegar in a cocktail shaker.

The next part was the opening act to a brave new world.

With the Balefire, the feedback had been instant.

With Garp, she had usurped the creature's will while her superior, sapient blessings dominated its dull hypo-Essence.

Compared to the Enginseer and Garp, Nyrlesvinyr's offshoot possessed an ancient and rare Essence, imprinted with the prideful psyche of a Mythic Dragon Turtle. Rather than cowering and allowing itself to either be absorbed or contained, its jaw-clenching reflex was to attack, usurp, and consume.

Therefore, before Gwen's sanctioned Necromancy could run its course—her inner Almudj decided it would take no piss from an upstart turtle worm.

And perhaps to remind her of her fidelity, it delivered a flashback as brilliant as white phosphorous.

Cracking timber

Burning eucalyptus

Blasted bark

Burning wood

A million-million flying embers

Kalinda's crystalline tears as her olive skin turned to char

And the smug laughter of old, cheeky Tjupurrula, cackling like an insane kookaburra.

Before Gwen could gasp, the ire of Almudj had grown to admonish Nyrlesvinyr with a literal baptism of cleansing fire. If the stranger's Essence would not assimilate, it need not exist.

The result, therefore, was the manifestation of an ancient rite of the primordial universe, with the only difference being that both Nyrlesvinyr and herself were Vessels of their irrespective patrons—a pair of sly foxes borrowing the terror of their tiger mothers.

And in their case, both patrons were asleep, meaning their respective Essences were left to duke it out—only her lineage was superior, even if her body was mortal.

And so, Nyrlesvinyr burned.

The fortunate discovery came with a caveat—with Barbanginy, she could control the Essence through Ariel's feedback loop.

But within herself, how could she command Almudj's flaming ire?

To redirect Al's will was no different from wrangling lightning with her bare hands—and should her wilfulness grow excessive, would the flame turn her into Kalinda?

Watching Nyrlesvinyr's Draconic Essence ignite like an expensive cocktail was an experience. The psychic stab must feel like a wasp sting to the nerve centre.

After Big Bird Caliban had pecked clean the worm at Port Jackson, she recalled Golos, who finished up his hard-won meal and then told Dede to stay as a defender. With the usurped Essence from Nyrlesvinyr, Golos was hale as ever. As a caution, Gwen had her Wyvern acknowledge that they had defeated an appendage, not the Mud Wyrm itself.

When she and her entourage finally arrived to nix her next target, the battle of Barrier Island was at its conclusion.

The Shielding Station was now a ruin, meaning the centre-dot connecting the outer barrier's connect-a-three had completely extinguished. The moment Auckland's Tower left the vicinity, Barrier Island would have no shielding, opening up the city's inner sea to the invading Mermen, meaning that as of this moment, all of Nyrlesvinyr's presumed objectives had been met.

Gwen woefully conceded that battle strategy was a shortfall she should address.

The Mermen's grand gesture of Soviet-era tactics using waves of fodder to shatter the psychic and then the physical defence of the defenders was not something that she, a finance broker, could begin to imagine. After all, if she had told London that she gleefully sacrificed two hundred of the thousand Mages assigned to her so that her foe would grow complacent, there would be an Integrity Commission, followed by her immediate imprisonment in the deepest dungeons of London Tower. Thankfully, a good manager delegates, so in the future, she would need someone on her roster capable of planning war games, someone used to the command of armies: a Militant Officer well-versed in tactics and the management of the involved logistics. That way, she could focus on her strengths, such as her role in the Tower's promise of mutually assured destruction.

But for now, she should contend with the consequence of her catfishing for Dragon Worms.

In the distance, the "landmass" approaching the Barrier Islands appeared to be moved by pure menace.

When Gunther had shown her a mock-up of Nyrlesvinyr's abode, it had looked like an asteroid with an embedded Exogorth emerging to take a bite out of the Millennium Falcon. In life, however, the asteroid wasn't bare rock but an entire ecosystem of vibrant coral overgrowths in every shape and colour. From its crags and caverns, hundreds of streams of water issued forth, some as propulsion, others merely flowing the way of gravity. The magic that compelled the island to move could only be Draconic, utilising the same reality-altering power as Ayxin's space-sorcery or Ruxin's verbal commands that compelled obedience from inanimate objects. The result was a living-breathing battle barge dredged from the deepest depth of man's limitless imagination.

DING! The Message from Paladin Wherowhero bloomed a rich scarlet. "To all personnel on the Barrier Islands, get to the way station NOW! All non-Aerial Mage Flight operations will be conducted from the Tower! Magister Song, are you present?"

"I am. Paladin Te, this is Magister Song," Gwen returned the response with a Divining gesture. "Where do you want me?"

"Return to the deck. You've saved my men, Magister, but also crossed us over the Rubicon. The Shoal is coming, and there will be no stopping them with Barrier Island now extinguished. After consulting with Tower Master Hildrenbrandt, we have decided to escalate to the Planar Ally summoning."

"Understood," Gwen looked once more at the island. From the disturbance in the sea, it didn't take a Tower to divine what was following the spearhead.

She had hoped to avoid the cost of utilising an all-hungering planar monstrosity held in check only by the metaphysical forces of the Prime Material. In the aftermath, would a Void-swept seascape improve Auckland's chances?

"Whetu, will you be alright here?" She asked their erstwhile companion, who was still reeling from the sight of the jumping-jack Dragon Worm.

"We'll be sweet-ass." Whetu forced a smile that was betrayed by the distance kept between himself and her. "Go with Paladin Te, Magister Song. I'll round up the survivors in the rear and take them to the Teleportation Circles."

"Okay. Caliban—gather the rest of the food!" Gwen commanded her creature toward the flaccid worm with the sundered sinews. At the same time, she readied the opening invocations to Elemental Swarm. The was an enormous amount of vitality here, dead or dying or living, none of which she could waste. "We'll be leaving first. Cali, stock up while we prepare. Eat everything. Shoggy will need every drop..."

Nyrlesvinyr, ninth of He who Slumbers in the Crown of Corals, felt an unfamiliar feeling.

Doubt.

It wasn't that a Dragon-kin such as herself was incapable of doubt, but that doubt was a psychic affliction felt by prey, while Nyrlesvinyr was a born predator.

Her Shoal had been reduced, but her most prized troops and elite Mermen remained hidden, feasting upon the flesh of the fallen and the inept, awaiting her call to sweep across the Human city to raze the hated land-kin to the ground.

Unfortunately, these prideful cohorts were not so easily cajoled into combat as the fodder from the shallow seas. Behind each Elemental General and their microcosmic Shoals stood an infinitely entwined food chain of favours, betrayals and alliances by blood and circumstance stretching into the murky depth of the Elemental Plane of Water.

As the Shoal's sovereign, Nyrlesvinyr had been certain that a slow victory was assured—until she lost not one but two appendages.

Slumbering Miommiriorthyr! If a single fraction of her Essence had imploded for a single instance, she could have stomached the loss. Yet, not only had two fractions of her Astral Essence been lost, they had been eradicated with such totality that Nyrlesvinyr could no longer feel whole.

Hence, her aloof confidence turned to disturbed rage.

She knew not what happened to her Essence—for she had severed the threads when the flaring pain shocked her Astral Soul—but Nyrlesvinyr knew who was responsible.

Her Core had cautioned its many heads against an open confrontation with the Mageocracy's newly minted Void Mage. Some thirty ocean cycles prior, she and her Kin had encountered the girl's predecessor, Elizabeth Sobel, in the Coral Sea War. The Great Shoals had been larger in those days, the Seven Kings more united.

In her memory, Sobel had been terrifying to the mundane Mermen—but posed only a marginal threat to true-blooded Dragon-kin.

So why, Nyrlesvinyr wondered, was she… feeling doubt?

But be it suspicion or premonition, Nyrlesvinyr knew she could not retreat. A true Scion, one born from the Para-Elemental Plane of Ooze with its primordial womb as her birthplace, possessed Draconic pride not as a quirk but as a metaphysical manifestation of her being.

There were arrogant Dragon-kin.

Wrathful Dragon-kin.

Dead Dragon-kin.

Usurped Dragon-kin.

But among her siblings, a cowardly Dragon-kin had never existed, or if there were, she and her siblings would tear them apart.

Besides, why should she be cowed? She had not underestimated the foe, having spent more than two moon cycles testing the city's defences, drawing out the Void Sorceress, testing her abilities, expending almost a million Mermen lives to guarantee victory for Shoal, going so far as to risk her true-blooded brother.

Thereby, driven by jaw-clenching credo and buoyed by confidence, Nyrlesvinyr allowed her Dragon Fear to take root in the heart of her Shoal.

Only then, with her Shoal ashore, the sorceress fled and the human city dashed, would her hearts have satisfaction.

Snug on the sky deck of Auckland's floating Tower, Gwen seriously considered if she should make her Tower the likeness of an Imperial Star Destroyer (™). Granted, they were not in outer space or pursuing rebels through an asteroid field. Still, the déjà vu generated by the thrumming of the mana engine, the running crewmen and the field of view was as close as it got.

In the looming distance, the coral island of Nyrlesvinyr approached as a bio-organic spaceship, closing the gap with the pace and determination of a strike cruiser. For the moment, Nyrlesvinyr's abode posed no danger, though there was no doubt that a hovering landmass covered in seafood could unleash a horde the likes of which only a Leviathan-class sea beast could muster.

That and the Shoal was legitimately on the move, pushing forward as a tidal cohort of coral and spines, fins, teeth and claws, swarming around and over the island for the inner bay of Auckland cove.

It's alright, no pressure. Gwen double-checked her Mandala. By now, her Enchantment tier had significantly improved, but a year had also passed since she conjured her last Shoggoth.

What preoccupied her was not the menace on the horizon but rather the lack of proton torpedoes or pew-pew lasers from the Tower.

Once the inner Mandala was completed, she turned to her aide, Aria Campbell-Ravenport. For the moment, her staff from Cambridge had packed away their work, for the Pocket Plane that housed their auditing office was far too dangerous a place to be in the middle of a direct Tower-to-Monster battle. As a result, the London Mages insinuated themselves into the various departments in the Tower, offering their first-tier expertise wherever they could.

To deploy the Shoggoth, authorisation was required from herself, the Tower Master and Auckland's Paladin. Aria's role was to act as London's observer, returning in the aftermath with a treasure trove of data.

"Aria... pardon my ignorance, but where's our Ray of Disintegration?"

When she fought the Lich in China, Gwen recalled that the PLA had been exceptionally liberal in using hyper-range spells of mass destruction. A nice death ray, lasting a few minutes and a half-million HDMs, should be able to slice Nyrlesvinyr's home in twain or at least give it caution that the Tower was out of bounds.

Aria remained politely mum while directing her gaze toward the tattooed giant on the rails overlooking the Mandala.

Te Wherowhero, who had joined them in person to oversee the deployment of her Shoggoth, looked sheepish. "Magister Song, Auckland is a tier 2 Tower… We have no Ray of Disintegration Mandalas."

"Hmm..." Gwen racked her brain for something that could give Nyrlesvinyr food for thought. "Surely, a super-charged Fire Storm isn't out of the question. Wasn't Yue just here?"

"Magister Song, Towers like Auckland are built for Abjuration," Aria reminded her of a long-ago lesson on the logistics of the Mageocracy. "Of course, there are offensive Towers in the Frontier—Gunther's, for example. And the Melbourne Tower. But this is Auckland—even if Paladin Te had a Disintegration module installed, which Frontier will they attack? The South Island that belongs to benign Demi-humans? Those Mandalas cost millions of HDMs and months to construct, and the maintenance material cost alone will unbalance Auckland's budget."

"Right…" Gwen gazed at the approaching island. "I guess you guys will do this the old-fashioned way, eh? Paladin Te, I saw Mages using the amplification Mandala earlier. We can use that, yes?"

"You and your team have priority, Sis," Wherowhero assured them. "However, Lord Gunther has advised that we do not tax you with this burden."

"That's because while the Mandala amplifies the spells' range, damage and overall draw-strength—" their interlocutor was Petra, currently working on the outer circles of her Mandala. "—we have limited data on the amplification of Void Magic or Barbanginy. If you remember our work with Magister Brown, the Mandala cannot lend Essence or vitality."

"And even if Magister Song does have enough," Aria raised her voice. "She would be left with nothing to summon the Strategic-class Planar Ally."

"It was just a thought," Gwen calmed her two guardians, assuring them she wasn't about to put her curiosity to the test.

After a year-long study as Brown's lab rat, she knew better than to drain her Essence to the last drop. As with Gracy and those other Void Mages she had signed up to help, a high-tier Affinity meant the need for an equal or greater offset. To drain herself completely of vitality and Essence could have dire consequences.

"Lulu!" Gwen willed forth her bodyguard. "As discussed. Could you help the Tower with rebuffing the island? I don't believe Paladin Te has any offensive material-casters on his roster."

Lulan dipped her chin obediently. "I won't be able to control the swords with Ki."

"I don't think you'll need precision," Gwen said. "Just fire away and let the metal work their magic. The Shoggoth summoning requires a distraction, and I can't think of anyone better than you and Yue to keep a Mud Princess occupied."

"Understood." Lulan looked to Paladin Te, who nodded appreciatively, then told an aide to lead the Sword Mage down the gangway to the Tower's amplification batteries.

Gwen continued to lay down the concentric runic circles with her inscription wand. On launch, the deck section could be detached and teleported by the Tower to its desired location mid-air. There, she would summon the Shoggoth and allow it to descend, free from the interference of the water-born Mermen, who had no idea what was coming.

As always, the tiny part of her that remained unused to the moral pragmatism of her new world reared its head and whispered words of doubt.

Mermen…

It wasn't as though she didn't know any Mermen. There was that funny feller, Lei-bup, whom she met on Chicken Shit Island back in Pudong. She had also seen and met others on her journey through the coastal regions of the UK, where the Mer "folk" of the lakes and streams co-existed and thrived beside humanity.

These were sapient beings, capable of love—capable of sorrow.

These were not the alien mind of the Triffidus or the unfathomable malice of the Undead hordes.

To consign the milling millions in that Shoal to the Shoggoth…

"Magister Song—" Petra's criticism drifted through the air. "Your lower-right inscription is one stroke away from connecting to the wrong circuit."

"Whoops—sorry," heeding the admonition, Gwen redoubled her focus, making provisions for the expression of lesser woes. "Say, do you think the Mermen will accept a loss by Shoggoth? Or are we setting ourselves up for something more sinister later down the track?"

"The full impact of something like this is impossible to predict," Richard butted in. He would be her bodyguard in place of Lulan while on the platform, using Lea's supernatural invisibility to disguise their presence and mask their mana signature. "And it's above our pay grade. For now, we are merely the Mageocracy's implements."

On cue, the floor began to tremble. The Magnification Mandala was active, meaning Worm Island had hovered over the Barrier Island's northern lip and was now close enough to take damage.

"Look, if you're worried about using the Shoggoth on people," Richard's next words seemed to have read her mind. "It isn't as though you're preventing the Mer from fleeing. Any that doesn't wish to perish by Shoggoth merely needs to turn tail and swim as deep and far as they can. When we make the decisions, you can give them a warning and a Lumen-caster Trailer to watch. For now, we're just doing our job."

"Likely, Magister Song, this needs to happen only once," Aria was also an excellent mind reader. "After Auckland, every Shoal between here and the Seven Kingdoms of the Deep will think twice before committing a force of that size."

"That," Richard added with his usual sardonicism. "Or they would hail Auckland as the perfect garbage disposal for their excess citizens."

"Ah, of course," Gwen didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Thank you, Dick. The prospect of an annual Shoal has put me completely at ease. I—whoa—"

Her words were cut short by an ear-splitting, teeth-grating, onomatopoeic SCHWING splitting the air, joined by a chorus of suddenly manifesting metal projectiles.

From their vantage, Gwen and her company saw the parabolic curve of Lulan's blades shrieking through the cloudy yonder, trailing white streaks of chemtrails as they flew.

The first blade, much to their disappointment, fell short.

As the trail behind it grew dense, it failed to maintain the momentum of its flight and began to dip about three-quarters into its two-kilometre flight.

"A shield?"

"Looks like a Vapour Barrier, an enormous one," Richard remarked as Lea manifested beside his ear, delivering a string of whispers in Elemental. "It's not much up-close, but if it's a kilometre thick, it'll work."

Lulan must have adjusted, for the rest of the blades came closer. One was enough to float past the island, where a second command word from Lulan was enough to deploy a Blade Shatter, pelting the coral surface with metal shards. In the aftermath, living bits of bone, rock and aquarium interiors splattered upon the abandoned installations on Barrier Island. From the looks of the collateral, these were very dense and heavy debris, compressed by the immense pressures of the sea.

The other swords, which now dotted the general vicinity, erupted in sequence, harvesting great semi-circles of sea fodder.

At the same time, a spiral began forming from the coral island's misty surface, creating something akin to a lance.

"Brace for impact," her Water Mage cousin notified Gwen before the mud missile materialised. A dozen breaths later, a battering mud ram leapt in an arc across the distance between the two flying structures, making for the Tower's sky deck.

Gwen was already afloat, though she had underestimated the true forte of Auckland's Tower Master. Esther Hildenbrandt might be a wizened old Abjurer from Henry's epoch—but she remained the famed inventor of the honeycomb lattice employed by many a Mineral Mage.

As the projectile mud-slide approached, deflecting panes of hexagonal force began to shave away at its trajectory, eventuating in the beam striking at the lower, slender segment of the Tower, where a multitude of panes deflected the blow.

Several breaths later, the landscape behind the Tower erupted, uprooting ancient trees, turning stone to spontaneous mud, resulting in a landslide beginning from the cape's tip to the disturbed ocean below.

"Holy shit." Gwen's brows twitched.

"Good thing we didn't fight it head-on, hey?" Richard whistled. "I'd done a few lair Purges, but this is the first time a lair itself has attacked. It's kind of surreal, don't you think?"

Gwen nodded. There was no possibility of her personally dealing with the mud sprout.

It was one thing to fight a Magical Beast on its own and a whole other thing to fight it in its lair. She had felt incredibly powerful after besting the Dragon Turtle—but now, not so much. A part of her wanted to give Gunther a call so she could grumble—and her Brother-in-craft would likely arrive to help. Should such a thing come to pass, the spoils of victory would be tithed to Sydney, leaving Auckland with a ravaged city and no means of re-investing. That and the Factions would implode, leaving her and Gunther up shit creek.

Heedless of her thoughts, the two flying fortresses continued to close in upon one another, reaching the span of a half-kilometre. With her Essence-enhanced eyes, Gwen could see every detail, including the beady eyes of the numerous heads lurking in the caverns of Nyrlesvinyr's abode.

At once, each head manifested separate magics to attack the Tower.

The floor thrummed.

Gwen gripped her inscription wand and continued her work.

A minute later, Auckland began its return volley.

SCHWING—

Cruise Missiles in the shape of iron slabs sallied forth from the Plane of Earth. This time, the swords reached their target, embedding themselves into the craggy surface of the coral island.

An invocation later, the upper surface of the landmass erupted, tearing out chunks of fossilised stone, exposing the underlayer of Nyrlesvinyr's home.

"SKY Metal!" Petra recognised the composition at once. "That's no coral! That's a hollowed-out celestial ore!"

Like Petra, Gwen paused her work to stare.

This world, like her own, had a dire need of rare metals for Enchantments and assorted circuitry for Mandalas. A rare source of these hyper-dense materials that had soaked up the elemental energies of the cosmos was celestial ore—known to her as meteorites.

To think that Nyrlesvinyr made her home in the largest deposit of rare Elemental Earth metals she had ever seen!

But that made perfect sense, for Nyrlesvinyr was a true-scion Dragon. It needed to be surrounded by dense mana similar to its Elements to sleep and grow. What better bed-cum-nest than a meteor fallen into the ocean, sent adrift into the Elemental Plane of Water?

Her money-making senses tingled.

If they got their hands on the worm's home, Auckland might have ninety-nine problems, but finance wasn't going to be one.

Shrugging off Lulan's best, the island continued its forward trajectory at ramming speed.

In response, the Tower's creep ground to a halt as it readied itself either for Teleportation or to pull its gravitational arrays for a quick reverse.

"ELEFA-MUNTHREKI—" a blast of loud-hailing Draconic reverberated from the island, triggering a visually confirmable pulse of Dragon Fear that turned the Tower's defence matrix momentarily white-hot.

When her vision returned, Gwen confirmed Nyrlesvinyr's commitment.

Where the invasion wave was making steady progress, it was now surging forward at full tilt, swamping the island from east to west. From her vantage, she could see the Human stragglers—either Militia who were left behind or the stubborn inhabitants who had refused to leave, disappear under a tidal wave of roving, clambering, slithering bodies.

Once the main mass of the Shoal reached the inner sea, Auckland as they knew it would cease to exist. And so, any doubts about the Shoggoth's deployment perished.

The floor jolted.

The Tower began to move backwards, maximising its chances of avoiding a direct impact from Nyrlesvinyr.

Focus. Gwen told herself. Focus on the Mandala.

She had another section to finish, and then Petra would need to check and double-check the inscriptions while she lay down the HDMs necessary to invoke the gate for her fictive "Old Ones".

Turning her mind from the battle of the titans merely an eggshell's Wall of Force away, Gwen continued her work.

Six arrays later, the atmosphere outside glowed a sudden amber, turning the interior of the sky decks vibrant autumn, mirroring every surface with flame.

That would be Yue working her magic below in the Amplification Mandala. Her heart grew sore for her companions, for Gwen knew from her academic studies that any connection with the Tower's sub-systems was extremely taxing on the mind and that consecutive uses of magic would render a Mage's brain into jello. Lacking a super-human like Gunther, it was why a Tower had a Paladin and a Master, for one controlled the battle, while the other managed the Tower's complex resources through its array of support Mages.

Gwen lifted her hand each time the Tower shook and waited for a lull to continue. The process persisted for an uncertain number of exchanges between the Tower and Nyrlesvinyr, with Mages swapping in and out of the Amplification Mandala.

"It's done!" Gwen stepped back as Petra stepped in to double-check her work, making minute corrections here and there. "Paladin Te, we're ready to proceed."

"Thank Old Yog for that," her cousin replied cheekily.

Te instantly began the process of shielding and teleporting the platform.

Looking outside once more, Gwen noted that the floating island was now below the Tower and out of her line of sight. Up close, the island looked more beautiful than ever—and the "true" bodies of Nyrlesvinyr were as menacing as they were colourful.

Switching to Golos' Link Sight, she saw from its flyby that Nyrlesvinyr and the Tower were engaged in a deadly, tentacle-themed tango.

Nyrlesvinyr's abode had lost much of its mobility out of the water, staggering toward Auckland Tower like a drunk, persistent admirer. A dozen "worms" distended from its caverns, each a living hose of mud and acid, spraying down the Tower's exterior with all manners of ejecta, trying to latch on and bore a hole into its interior.

The Tower was playing hard-to-get, equally lacking in mobility but still better than a worm-island out of water. From its lower batteries, it was hammering Nyrlesvinyr with everything from Punamu, Lulan's iron, Yue's Fire, Lightning and every other magic its Mages could muster. Golos assisted with lines of lightning, but the Thunder Wyvern had to rest between each attack, and Elemental Lightning was itself mud when used against… mud.

A missing element, Gwen supposed, would be Steam—but Thomas and his team had earlier teleported out, having already overstayed and fought in a battle they were not authorised to participate. If one were to put Thomas in a twenty-magnitude amplifier—and if Thomas were to manifest a Steam Bomb...

"Paladin Te has authorised the Mandala to be deployed," Petra stepped back with both hands raised, like a surgeon stepping away from a sutured wound. "Magister Song, you may proceed."

Gwen took a deep breath. She stepped into the centre of the Mandala.

"Paladin Te, Magister Hildenbrandt?” She dropped the Message to the control centre. "Let's end this war."

As an oceanic Elemental Princess, Nyrlesvinyr knew every advantage offered by her "shell", one stout enough to withstand attacks from her sibling rivals.

Yet, bathed in the shadow of an existence she could not comprehend, Nyrlesvinyr felt seized by the all-consuming riptide of a Leviathan's sea-swallowing gulp.

The Thing that emerged from the heavens, rending the Prime Material apart like a ragged cloth as it came, was living hunger from the Unformed Land.

As it descended, the Elemental Princess became reminded of an absurd rumour she had heard from traders in the North Pacific: that a great cult had arisen near the Yellow Sea, one disassociated from the Seven Kingdoms. In battle, the Shoals of these fanatic cultists would perform suicidal rushes, eating and devouring everything in their way, howling the name of an unnamed "Pale Fleshed Priestess". If left alone—and if enough Mermen were to perish, or so the stories went, a great Kraken of the Void would emerge, with tentacles studded with eyes, consuming cultists and foes alike.

Nyrlesvinyr had no idea if that rumour was genuine—but the cloud-Kraken currently being regurgitated downward certainly matched the description.

Immediately, Nyrlesvinyr had ordered her troops to turn the creature back into the aether from which it came.

Elite Mermen calvary riding on spirited seahorse Undines surged forth on high-rising crests to blast beams of ice and water toward the draping tendrils.

These were successful—until they were not. The fallen segments of the Kraken merely took on a new life. Where the tendrils fell, they began to consume her Shoal en masse, rapidly expanding into floating drapes of oily film that dissolved scale and shell alike. As for her Wave Riders, those who charged into the lumbering tendrils soon joined the wailing chorus of existential agony.

Nyrlesvinyr redoubled her efforts against the Tower—but knew that a breach would take several moon cycles while her Shoal had already entered a state of severe shock. Without her below to compel order with her Dragon Fear, the Shoal would soon disperse into the deep. Even now, only a short distance away from the loci of her presence, she could feel the hysteria brewing below, touching the sanity of the lowest prawn to the highest Shark-kin.

An enormous tendril, dark and tenebrous and studded with unblinking eyes in every shade and colour, dipped into the water.

When it struck the churning surface, its split tendrils erupted into an oily dragnet, each teeth-covered tentacle holding the screaming, howling form of a semi-paralysed Mermen, each singing insane orisons, pleading for death.

Nyrlesvinyr fought the desire to look up—for she could not withstand the hungering gaze of that singular ocular orb staring down at the feast of fish below, devoid of feeling yet full of malicious intent.

The Summoner! Nyrlesvinyr knew the solution.

She tasted the air for the sorceress' Essence.

Then felt despair.

The Vessel with the ancient Essence had fled inside the Tower, near the top, where the panes of force were thickest—where Nyrlesvinyr could not reach without first breaching its defences.

Despite her growing chagrin, the volleys of spellfire pounding her shell continued unabated.

After a moment of indecision, Nyrlesvinyr lifted herself from the Tower.

Auckland's floating battle station pulled away from Nyrlesvinyr like a fleeing dance partner. It began to beat a retreat back to the human city, withdrawing the dragnet of echoing resonance as it went, abandoning every landmass of the islands below, including both stations on either headland.

So that's what it was. Nyrlesvinyr read the tactical retreat at once. So not even the Land-kin could control this unnamable beast from the Void. Her adversary might appear magnitudes more powerful than the Coral Sea's Void Witch, but the whelp possessed no control over that which she unleashed into the world.

However, that didn't change the fact that her Shoal, having been caught unaware, was rapidly disintegrating.

For a while, her synaptic organs had been bleating Dragon Fear non-stop to no avail. Only those of her Essence and blood managed to respond, though, by their meagre numbers, they were subsumed by the dangling tendrils, becoming nutrients to its exponential growth.

Deep Miommiriorthyr! Nyrlesvinyr involuntarily turned her dozen eyes upon the unformed monstrosity. The bloated fiend was already a hundred times the size from whence it emerged!

She should have fought it as soon as it manifested.

Perhaps then, she could have caught the summoner.

Or at least expend enough of her vital force to force it back into the devouring Void.

Should I flee? The self-imposed question shook all three of her Cores.

Nyrlesvinyr felt a sudden and unwelcome sympathy for Shyvaphyr.

Somewhere in the Shoal's depth, her headless brother remained unconscious, his Essence busy at work re-knitting his sundered sub-Core.

Soon, he would be nourishment for the great eye.

To fight the creature now, as it continues to absorb her Shoal, portended no victory.

But to flee from the creature without her Shoal—to return to the deep without Shyvaphyr—would entail shame and mockery from her siblings, torture from those who coveted her domain, and then— her Essence would be parcelled out to others.

Following her anagnorisis, Nyrlesvinyr felt a sudden weight lifted from her dozen heads.

To become blissfully extinct in glorious battle against the appendage of an Old God of the Planes.

Or to die a worm's death.

For one as old as Nyrlesvinyr, a Prince's death was far worthier than a pauper's.

Besides, what if the beyond wasn't oblivion but the Unformed Land?

The Yellow Sea.

Deep below the surface, the Great Shoal was once more on the move.

“GWEEE—GWEEEN— GWEEENGH— GWEEENGH—“

With each echoing cry, a sea shanty of psychic madness polluted the waters of what human sailors dubbed the gateway to northern China, driving any Mer caught in its mental net into a frenzy of indiscriminate feasting.

"PRAISE!" Came the echoing cry of a singular voice from within the swirling vortex of the roving Shoal. "FEAST UPON THY FOES, THAT WE MAY PRAISE THE PALE PRIESTESS!"

"WEEE— WEEE—" sang the Shoal in response, surging forward and in every way, rolling like a grinding mill wheel into the necrotic waves of lumbering Mer-carcasses making up the opposing Shoal. "WEEE—WEEE—WEEE—"

The year-long battle for the dominion of the East China Sea had been at a stalemate for months, but today—but now!—Lei-bup, Archpriest of her Paleness the Priestess of White Flesh, was truly confident they would win!

As early as the morning, when the first rays pierced the blue yonder, his un-healable void-wounds began to ooze, putting him in such exquisite agony that only the soothing songs of a dozen Mermaid Priestesses could prevent him from seeking eternal union with the Pale Priestess.

Then, after a meal of SPAM and an hour's supplication at the alter of her likeness, Lei-bup knew that the time had come.

Today—no—this hour!—The Old Ones would descend! Unlike the dozens of failures that saw the death of a hundred thousand faithful to the zombified Shoal, their current crusade would succeed.

All the Shoal needed was faith and belief in the great egalitarian dream that no fish was unworthy of her Paleness' all-devouring consumption.

And those zealots of Undeath! Those mad kings and princes who dared to hound his Shoal and put an end to Priestess' wild dreaming—

All would be punished!

All shall be consumed!

ALL—MADE—EQUAL by the great devouring eye!