Metaworld Chronicles

London.

The Royal Docks.

Lord Mycroft Ravenport, Marshall of the Kingdom, Protector of Albion, stood in the dreary drizzle, browsing newspapers held up by his Mage Hands, shielded by a barely visible umbrella of mana.

To his left levitated the Sun and the Telegraph, each with purposeful images of the girl, not in her crow-skin combat suit but eye-catching casuals, out and about on the Isle of Dogs. The Sun had a paparazzi shot from January, with the girl showing far more leg than necessary for winter. The Telegraph sported a headshot of her mid-speech to the dock workers, with her mouth contorted mid-syllable. Behind both cut-outs loomed the latest images from Auckland—that of an all-consuming, ocean-devouring, Mermen mangling Shoggoth shucking a worm from what looked like a floating oyster shell.

"USURPER OF THE SOUTH SEA," the Sun prophesied in garish red—though the implication was firmly set on the girl rather than the monstrous worm. Besides, in bold black, "AUCKLAND DEVOURED" was the Telegraph's fighting words. Both ran enough truths to remain within the good graces of the Middle Factions, but the implications invited the reader with pretty flesh, then foretold doom and gloom.

Comparatively, the truth-promising METRO had produced a six-page special on the "AUCKLAND'S TRIUMPH" celebration special, together with a picture of the girl standing in the centre of a group photo with Auckland's Te Wherowhero, Esther Hildenbrandt, and much to Ravenport's surprise, the Militants' highest-ranking representatives.

Mycroft rested his eyes briefly to conjure a vision of the Shoggoth as he had witnessed through Morrigan's secretive parcels.

That the Shoggoth might be deployed was within the expectations of Gwen Song's Magisterial trials, even if Mycroft had anticipated a better resolution. After all, Shalkar had been such a successful demonstration of skill and subversion that the Imperial College seriously considered its inclusion in future textbooks.

"Lord Father!" came a vibrant Message from the general direction of the enormous Ice Breaker Barge in the No.2 wet dock. "We're ready to receive The Lord Marshall. Please come to the forecastle."

Quickly, Mycroft stowed away the newspaper by passing the enfolded broadsheets back to the aide who had purchased it from an urchin at the dock's entrance. He had no wish for Charlene to witness his curiosity, for a good father would never allow his child to suspect a greater interest in someone else's child, worse if that child was her contemporary.

Stepping into the air, the Duke of Norfolk cast a grim silhouette as he stepped into the dock's highly-restricted airspace. Though the weather had warmed, his signature winter coat, gunmetal-grey but for the embossed orichalcum buttons, remained the Duke's unchanging uniform.

Below his perfectly polished boots, the three hundred-meter Breaker Carrier, the HMS Royal Raven, sat like a splayed bird, with all its side ports open for loading and renovation. Among the milling masses of men and machines, Mycroft could spot the figure of one of his contemporaries, the disgraced-then-redeemed Eric Walken, the Grey's factional pawn in Oceania, being worked to the bone in a high-visibility vest. The Conjurer was dutifully going over the manifests, six Mage Hands holding data slates while shouting a mixture of Dwarven and common, back-hunched like a hag who hadn't slept for days.

Was Walken's appointment a reward or penance? The man had failed his Faction and enraged the Kilroy loyalists—and yet, had weaselled his way back so that he now stood on the node of power that was the Isle of Dogs. Few Factions now trusted the Magister, yet, he was living as large as ever, more intimately involved in London than he had ever been in his career as one of Oceania's Ten.

His eyes followed the line of rails encircling his old subordinate. Across from the Bunker's warehouses, the stand-alone Invincible-Class Carrier was a floating city converted for traversing the Black Zones of the Arctic Circle. However, this time, its mission would be in the Antarctic. Of the stout crewmen and the squat Construction Golems milling about the ship's vicinity, there was one sight that Ravenport had not expected to see in his lifetime.

Dwarves on a boat.

The idea was absurd, yet the Dwarven Battle Golems being loaded into the hull were an undeniable reality of a new world unfolding before his eyes.

Shamefully, Mycroft's thoughts once more wandered to the girl, one indirectly responsible for the loss of his child.

The Norfolk part of him applauded the fortunate outcome that Edgar had failed and died. The fatherly part of him proved a little more sentimental. Thankfully, the thought of Charlene, a motherly raven commanding flocks of the lesser families' chicks among the crew, quickly extinguished his doubts.

Nevertheless, he did not hurry. He was here as the Lord Marshall of England, auditor and inspector of the budget assigned to the Royal Raven.

Turning his attention back towards the Dwarven Golems, the Duke passed his learned eyes over the machines tuned for what the Dwarves called the Himmseg. In readiness, the combat units were remodelled for ice and snow, conditions to which the armies of Red Peak were well accustomed.

His attention rested on the mat-wrapped arms of the Golems. The Spellswords mounted on the Dwarven machines were smaller, more compact—yet more efficient and powerful. Unlike man-made Wands, Dwarven weaponry was limited to Elemental Earth and its various Elemental Shifts like Mineral, Mud and Magma. However, their unique architecture meant each machine held at least two under each arm-manipulator, while the artillery variants held up to four additional modules on their backs and shoulders.

What also drew Ravenport's jealous admiration was the Elemental Exo-Plating, more casually known as Golem Suits by the rank and file of the Militia. These were personal armours owned by individual pilots, akin to a Mage Knight's heirloom plate mail. These could be worn inside the Golem Units while piloting the war machines and, in typical Dwarven fashion, came armed with individual Spellswords.

Compared to the Mageocracy's colonial Militias, a Hammer Guard Battle Group with a full complement of war machines possessed the firepower of six similarly-manned Mage Flights plus their hundred-strong Militias—and did not tire so long as the supporting Fabricator could drop anchor and draw mana from the Plane of Earth.

From Charlene's manifest, he knew that somewhere in the Royal Raven's belly sat the Fabricator Crawler, the pulsing Cores of a Dwarven city, loaned from Eth Rjoth Kjangtoth to grace the interior of a floating castle.

Anything was possible with the Fabricator and its crew of Runesmiths and master Engineseers. If the expedition ran short on fuel and supplies, the engine could produce small amounts of HDM fuel from ley-lines nodes. Should they require metal and parts, the same machine could cannibalise broken Golems or even the Royal Raven to fabricate what its Engineseer desired.

The latter was why the ship was undergoing extensive renovations, converting its Kraken-Core Ether Engine into one that meshed with Dwarven Runic Magic, vastly increasing its power output and reliability in a Black Zone without dry docks or supply lines.

Likewise, the Breaker Carrier's exterior was being remodelled to hold and deploy Dwarven Golems en masse. Additionally, the hammer-bow had been re-clad in Dwarven Cold Iron, the surface reworked with Runic Glyphs to shatter the thickest ice in a single blow.

On paper, though the HMS Royal Raven was an "unarmed" carrier ship, it may eventually possess more firepower than any other ship in Her Majesty's Royal Navy.

What would Gwen—no—Charlene encounter on that stark continent of snow to need so much firepower? Would the combat potential of a multi-Flight, Magister-class Expedition field-lead by a Void-empowered War Mage be enough to resolve the obstacles in their way? The Northern Expedition had already confirmed that Spectre and the Elemental Princes of Fire and Water were in cahoots against the Elves—

But what had given the girl enough confidence to move heaven and earth to invest so much, and was she expecting to profit, or was this all a haphazard gamble?

Or—was her confidence a product of her Patron, the Mythic Serpent of Australis?

Or was the girl's paranoia of what she called "Climate Change" a secretive legacy left by Kilroy to his Apprentices? The old Mage had cast a long shadow, one with too many unresolved secrets.

For this reason, it made the Duke uncomfortable to know that he had to allow events to play out to gain hindsight rather than face the future with foresight.

"Lord Father! Welcome to my home for the next few months." Now that he was close enough, the emerging Charlene was exuberant. "Ask us anything, go where you please. All is laid bare for the Kingdom's Lord Marshall."

Ravenport chuckled. His daughter had been very happy of late, especially after her marriage had been indefinitely put on hold. For this, Mycroft was of two minds, for more heirs meant more alliances, but he also wanted his daughter to fulfil her potential and be happy.

Unlike his miserable ingrate, an Icarian boy spoilt by Everleigh unto death.

"You have been busy." He made a show of inspecting her work. The Duke nodded at the awe-struck dockworkers and addressed the junior officers assigned to her cause. Once done, he returned to his child. "Is the Royal Raven on schedule?"

"Ahead of schedule." His daughter walked him down the inner gangway beside the forecastle until they entered the ship's interior. Inside, long tunnels pierced the dividing bulkheads. "It's all thanks to Master Bronzeborn."

Charlene rattled off a list of statistics while Mycroft counted the steps within the ship's lengthwise bulkhead. Closer to the mid-ship, the Duke's nose wrinkled instantly at the heavy scent of industrial-strength alcohol, which after a moment, he recognised as the thick, oat-coloured dregs the Dwarves drank as a part of their lunch meals.

Inside the cargo bay, the stratum bulkheads had been removed to create a vast space capable of housing the Fabricator Crawler and its support Golems. Among constant showers of sparks, Dwarves in their personal Golem Suits were manhandling molten sheets of steel or carrying materials by the ton like dockhands with crates of fresh fruit. To Mycroft's senses, it was a chaos of noise, Dwarven swearing, and judgemental accusations from Masters to Journeymen. Still, the learned part of him saw an order to the anarchy that no human workforce could replicate.

"Hi-ho…hi-ho…" there were also the strange mutterings of a work-song among the Transmutation magic.

"You've made extensive modifications..." The Duke remarked. "It's just as well our House paid for the ship in full. Her Dwarves seem well motivated."

"They've been at it for two months since installing the Fabricator Crawler in March." Charlene's face contorted with uncharacteristic compassion. "Some of them work around the clock, stopping to get plastered on beer, after which they're rested. Originally, we had planned our schedule around human hours. Until the Dwarves complained that too much time off was unsafe for their mental wellbeing."

"An admirable and Protestant work ethic." The Duke sighed with appreciation. "They must be keen to repay their Debt of Haj-Zül."

"Aye, such an opportunity would not present itself so easily," Charlene agreed. "I wonder. Gwen is very confident that we shall be pushed to our limits. She even acquired seeds from Tryfan. And then there are those gentlemen from South East Asia. We were supposed to pick them up on-route—but they came to us instead."

"Oh yes. Have those Frontier Mages from Manipur settled in?" Mycroft asked.

"Yes, they're extremely obedient, almost to a fault." Charlene furrowed her thin brows. "I told them to rest—and they did that for two days until I went in to check up on them. They hadn't eaten or drank in that time, just meditated..."

Mycroft recalled the reports provided by Morrigan.

"Is that so? I believe troops under the Geas-dominion of a Dragon tend to do that," he advised his child, glad to be of aid before her feathers were fully grown. "They will die for Gwen without question. They have been forbidden from overt individual needs and will attend to every order with absolute conviction. So take care with their use—if they should perish, it shouldn't be by your command, but hers."

"Understood." His daughter was quick on the uptake. "Still, I have a question for our Lord Marshall. Three Mage Flights of Magus-class assassins, half of which are aligned with Elemental Smoke. Isn't that dangerous for anyone to possess so... casually?"

"No more dangerous than her shadow-hopping Rat-kin," Mycroft smirked. "Curious, no? Gwen's putting together quite the strange force for her future Tower. Her Master, the late Lord Kilroy, was comparatively a purist. It's an interesting dynamic, don't you think?"

"And unpredictable, if you ask me." Charlene invited Mycroft to land among the workmen, slipping around the Golem suits to direct the attention of an indistinguishable Dwarven labourer. Once the helmet retracted with a hiss, the uplifted visor revealed the fierce face of Hanmoul Bronzeborn, whose facial profile Mycroft knew well.

"Boss Ravenport. Yer art here. Will yer be giving us ter authority ter get floating?" the Dwarf also recognised him from their initial meeting when the Dwarven delegation first arrived. "Yer also here earlier than expected. Does the lassie need us?"

"Not exactly, not yet—" Mycroft looked around the chaotic cargo space. Finding no papers from the morning, he used a Silent Message to beckon an aide to Dimension Door beside him. "But your lassie has been doing God's work down south, paving the way with Mermen bodies. Here—allow my aide to produce a copy of the METRO, Master Bronzeborn—there's a great deal to know about Gwen's present whereabouts and a great deal to discuss regarding your month-long voyage, first to Auckland—then south to the Seat of Frost."

Auckland.

The Sky Tower.

Behind stacks of folders taller than her head, the Devourer of Shoals worked hard at balancing the financial affairs of a near-fallen city. Her liver-busting dedication was to Auckland and herself, for though Pyrrhic victories were acceptable, Gwen had no desire for Auckland's aftermath to mar her impeccable resume as an up-and-coming Tower Master-in-waiting.

Outside her team's private Pocket Dimension window, the city was a buzzing hive of demolition and construction, with ships arriving from every port from Brisbane to Melbourne, encircling the whole span of the inner bay. Unlike before, each new boat slowed as they passed what was once the Great Barrier Islands of Aotea because an eerie silence now haunted the uncertain sea between the island and the headland of Leigh.

It wasn't so much that a million or more Mermen had perished here—but that the island and the headland had been reduced to an extraterrestrial landscape resembling wind-swept crags on the Elemental Planes of Dust, devoid of all life.

Once, the Barrier Islands had held a host of ten million sea birds of every form and size.

Once, the isle's shores were dense with seals and other quasi-magical mammals basking in the sun.

Once, its shores were home to countless tonnages of coral and a kelp forest so vast as to contain a unique ecosystem.

Now, each seafaring Captain had only their memory to remind them that this was once a vibrant Frontier rich with life. Now, bare rock devoid of even lichen lay in shambles, collapsing and falling to the impact of the ocean waves, crumbling in the absence of roots that formed natural nettings.

The sea itself was also a strange matt hue. Perhaps, long ago, the kelp forest had given it a particular shade, capturing light and releasing nutrients to its residents. That was no longer what the seafarers witnessed, for even mindless, floating floatsams avoided the patch of absolute erasure conjured by the Shoggoth's passing, creating a new and undesirable landmark for the recovering city.

The result was a lesson for London's Mages, who had furiously transcribed the spectrometric readings for their respective Magisters of the Colleges. All had wondered how the Shoggoth would fare in its first foray—many felt that if the Shoggoth had fought Nyrlesvinyr alone, it might have been banished. The titanic contest, lasting half a day, was a testament to Nyrlesvinyr's Draconic vigour. However, with several million victims feeding it from below, Nyrlesvinyr grew eventually exhausted, allowing the Shoggoth to penetrate, enter, and hollow out its main body from its meteorite home.

And once the Shoggoth was done with Nyrlesvinyr, it allowed the shiny, pitted shell of the island to fall into the sea.

After that, it began to move toward Auckland.

As with her earlier experiment, Gwen had admonished it, compelling the creature through the contracts formed via the Planar Ally spell, threatening its very existence. When it got too close, the Tower opened fire, burning another hundred-thousand HDMs through Yue, Lulu and its supporting Mages. The Shoggoth… understood, or at least, it chose to halt. However, it had continued to feed, wiping every mote of algae from the sea, distending its tendrils dozens of kilometres from the Aotea until parts of it had mounted Auckland's northern-most headlands.

The Tower once more admonished Gwen's pet.

Unfazed, the Shoggoth's patience-testing plundering had continued for several more hours, with the city's leadership grimly observing the consequence of their choice.

Thankfully, Mid-morning the next day, Gwen notified the others that her Shoggoth had begun to recede.

Three days later, she compelled the skyscraper-sized creature to return to its Elemental Plane, slipping into the crack from which it had arrived like an octopus sliding between the gaps of a ship's gunwale. Golos made unhelpful remarks of mockery toward his colleague, boasting that "The Mighty Golos" could play as long as it wanted—to which Gwen acknowledged by sending the bored Wyvern back to its brother's bachelor pad.

Dede had offered its sympathies with a quack.

What's left was a workload no less taxing than the Shoggoth.

Within the month, trade between the city and Australia's east coast had to be resumed.

The shattered Militia had to be replenished and reorganised.

The shipping lanes had to be remapped as safe passages.

The Mermen who invariably made it to shore had to be banished or put down.

The rebellious Mer-folk native to Auckland's coast was another diplomatic can of worms only Caliban could wrangle.

That and Auckland's dire financial straits had to be addressed.

For the latter, Gwen's position as the Director of the Isle of Dogs was more precious than all her capacity as a War Mage. In her time split between IoDNC and Tonglv, she had filled her Pokédex with power-holding managers connected to many of Mageocracy's infrastructural institutions.

Of her top picks, she knew several corporations that would go ham at the news that a small island of precious metals had fallen into Auckland's lap—even if Auckland lacked the means to retrieve it from the bottom of the Firth of Thames. As a guarantee, she had Te's Divination department produce certified readings consisting of Mithril, Orichalcum, assorted Cores and most importantly—a collected mass of raw Adamantine. From the unusual composition, it would appear that one of Nyrlesvinyr's abilities was to consume, purify, and then add these mineral compositions to her home—which in hindsight, made perfect sense for a primordial scion from the Para-Elemental Plane of Mud.

Therefore, forsaking her signature percentile stake out of the unimaginable goodness of her heart, Gwen had sent out feelers to her choice of England's BHP Billiton, Shanghai's Sheng-Hua Minerals, and The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, a key stakeholder in GlenCORE, the American mining giant. In this world, where money "grew on the ground", few corporations were as obscenely wealthy and in possession of liquid capital as the mining conglomerates.

Her message was simple—she was looking for a partner corporation to purchase "more than your competitor" a volume of Reconstruction Bonds offered by Auckland's government, either through themselves or their network of financial institutions, to boost the Bond's stock value.

Once accomplished, she would give up her "spoils of war" so that "a" lucky companies might turn a super profit through mining the mineral island. Should no buyers invest to her liking, she would wait out her Dwarves and pay for the island to be dredged. Then—with the help of her Dwarven allies, who can refabricate the mineral island into ingots, the IoDNC alone would profit from the city's reconstruction profits.

Together with the carrot and stick, she also offered a nailed bat. With great politeness, she had explained in her letter that having herself transmute and sell the ores would be a calamity. In her haste to help Auckland, there would be no choice but to undercut the market with a flood of precious metals, unwittingly impacting the bottom lines of everyone involved.

To the awe-struck Wherowhero, she had then rationalised that the mining corporations were only boosters for Auckland's "initial IPO offer".

From London and beyond, Lady Astor, The Marchioness of Ely, the Norfolk Fund, and her Dragon-partner at the House of M would guarantee another twenty-five per cent purchase of Auckland's released bonds.

After their friends make the initial purchase, the mineral corporations would make theirs, and thereby, new Bond Stocks would inflate—drawing investors from the true chopping block—London's greedy nobles and others from around the Commonwealth.

And once Auckland's futures began to circulate, it would stabilise the city's credit strategy, meaning they could borrow more HDMs and resources from London.

Thereby, her allies would profit.

The mining corporations would eventually profit.

And with careful management, Auckland would not only rebuild—but turn a profit from the act of borrowing money itself.

The illustrious image her Illusion School of PowerPoint illustrated was shocking enough for both Te and the Tower Master to inhale breaths of frigid air—and regard the "Profitess" with more fear than they had felt for the Shoggoth.

Concurrently, Gwen had also offered Auckland the possibility of Chinese investment—though both Te and Hildenbrandt grew wary at the prospect of a regional power buying up their debt. No matter how much she explained the irrelevance of debt ownership in a multi-national, globalised human world—her clients remained unconvinced.

And so, with the equivalent work of a dozen Shalkars piled on top of her desk, Gwen had immersed herself in the sorcerous act of financing the rebuilding of a sundered city's coastline, breaking only to stretch her limbs and Purge wayward Mermen.

For weeks on end, never had Auckland's ISTC burned so hot, nor had its three-decade-old systems required so much maintenance from Petra and the Tower's resident Enchanters.

Working six days a week, Gwen held enough meetings with creditors for Auckland to ease the Tower into expending whatever funds it had left, rapidly establishing a supply chain from Sydney and Melbourne, attracting talent of all stripes. The winner of her Bond-selling competition, GenCORE, went as far as sending in a team of Magisters specialising in retrieving shipwrecks to slowly displace Nyrlesvinyr's island onto the barren shores of Aotea.

On advice from Eric Walken, she then extended a gesture to Elvia's folk, the Ordos responsible for the Mageocracy's wellbeing. The Ordos did not refuse—nor did they send Elvia as Gwen had hoped. Instead, the powers behind the Knightly orders sent her manpower in the form of migrants and refugees with magical abilities, retired men from the military, and other bodies that would rapidly refill Auckland's depleted Militia. When she did ask for her Evee, Elvia's Abbess kindly informed her that Elvia, like Gwen herself, was occupied saving the world in insignificant but important ways.

Unable to unify the trio in her spare time, Gwen spent her Sundays picnicking with Yue, which meant the pair and their bodyguards went about looking for Yue's favourite trouble, Crab-kin in butter and garlic. It wasn't how she had imagined her future with Yue while studying in Blackwater, but it was close enough to temporarily fill the gap of her five-month separation from the absence of their cherished No.3.

Day after day, week after week, even as Nyrlesvinyr's home became a Commonwealth-famous attraction that drew national debate on privatising public wealth—Gwen worked tirelessly in what she deemed the "true" work of a Magister.

Auckland's Greys, on order from their superiors across the sea, swallowed the wand tip and stood down their stubbornness, opening their relations to facilitate trade openly. The Militants, on orders from a stock-tipped Thomas Benedict Holland, likewise suspended their competition and focused on protecting the shipping lanes and clearing Auckland's surroundings. Outside Wellington, the Halflings of Hamilton emerged in force, piling Auckland's warehouses with countless volumes of preserved and fresh produce, even venturing from their copy-righted hole-homes to aid the survivors of Wellington in their reconstruction.

For almost a month and more, Gwen played the shepherd to Auckland's reconstruction, guiding that rare honeymoon of congeniality in which cooperation overshadowed grudges, allowing hope to flow unmolested.

Then, on a cold day in the ide of July, forewarned but still, a shocking sight—The Royal Raven sailed into Auckland's port, signalling the next chapter—Mount Erebus.