Metaworld Chronicles

Shalkar.

The Human Commons.

With a measure of irony, Shalkar’s core command group commandeered the Shalkar Municipal Education Centre’s surviving hall to serve as the centre of command of the present crisis. The same hall had been preparing for the election in the coming days, meaning Richard and company were surrounded by the liveries of socialist slogans calling for the elevation of the Human workers of Shalkar.

The tragedy at the school had not pronounced the end of the day’s complications but its first syllable.

Against their absent Regent’s expectations, though not against Richard’s, the “riot” involving supposedly long-suffering grievances by Shalkar’s refugee community erupted not just at the site of the explosion but elsewhere in the districts as well. Agent provocateurs, some known to the Shadow Mages under Richard’s command, had pushed their narratives of discontent to action and, finally, to wanton violence, necessitating the appearance of the city’s hoofed riot squad.

These select warriors of the Khesig, armoured with telescopic Batons of Shocking and protected by lightly mechanised Dwarven Golem suits, strode through the flaming Molotov cocktails, tearing down the impromptu barricades to deliver peace via concussion-induced memory loss.

Following the Centaur cavalry engines were the city’s regular peacekeepers, the lightly armoured Rat-kin and their human compatriots, each wearing their glinting badge with ardent pride as pieces of bricks and mortar flew from the rooftops of the Brutalist apartments built by the Dwarves and gentrified by their generous Regent.

“There’s nothing natural about this,” Richard briefed his Regent on the latest reports. “Mass hysteria may explain it, though if Petra were here, she’d inform us there’s Mind Magic at play. Half of the men the Centaurs have rounded up don’t seem to remember why they were ridden down in the first place and are calling for the council to investigate species-induced violence by law enforcement.”

“Where the hell is Petra?” Their regent did not allow her temper to spread to their close cousin, though her face wore her disappointment vividly. “This is the most un-Petra thing I’ve ever experienced.”

Richard answered a few more questions from the Glyphs of milling rescue staff before checking on their cousins’ Message Device.

“She must be occupied,” Richard ascertained that Petra’s device must be disabled—an occurrence that isn’t uncommon in testing new Magitech. Still, that the Dwarves had arrived with their Golems before Petra showed up spoke poorly of their cousin’s priorities or were the signs of something more dire. “Besides, can’t you tell where Petra is?”

“The World Tree’s mana feelers aren’t that articulate,” Gwen shook her head. “Maybe once Sufina’s Spirit awakens, but not now.”

In response to her impatience, the air outside sizzled, materialising an unmistakable mana signature.

“There she is—!” Richard felt a surge of relief. “Pats! What was the matter?”

The Petra that walked through the door was not the confident, intelligent and vivacious beauty Richard used to tease her prospective suitors. The young woman instead looked as though a Necromancer had run a Soul Tap over her, then reversed and back over the corpse doll.

“Regent! Richard!” Petra stumbled when she crossed the threshold of the ruined hall. “I need to speak to you in private.”

“Now?” Richard stopped their cousin before she could accost their leader. Leaning back from the map, he pointed to the wreckage of the Shalkar Municipal Education Centre’s eastern quadrant, currently being re-fabricated by the Dwarves. Unfortunately, while the Dwarves could repair the exterior and the structural foundations, the interior work was the labour of the Humans alone. “Golos is still out there putting out fires… well, setting fires to belligerents, but you get the idea.”

Their cousin seemed to collect herself. Then, a Silent Message bloomed beside their ears.

“Moscow sent a Mind Mage to my home, a Sparrow from the same cadetship I was enrolled in,” Petra’s internalised Message explained, her thoughts fighting the natural cadence of desperation. “I don’t know if they’ve put a Suggestion or a Geas on my parents, I don’t know if they’ve done things to others in our Chain of Command. I am so… so sorry, Gwen. I’ve failed you all.”

Richard felt his spine tingle just a little before he recovered enough to acknowledge the Explosive Rune that Petra had dropped in their midst.

“They sent a Mind Mage to your house?” Gwen’s voice drifted through the space between them. Richard felt the hair on his arm instantly grow to attention. “To your cottage in the Lake District, where uncle and aunty enjoy their retirement?”

“A Sparrow called Natalia,” their cousin confessed. “I should have known. I mean… I did know, but even so, I was lax. It's how they operate… how we operated…”

“And they threatened you with aunty and uncle?” their Regent’s rising ire was enough to clear the other consultants from the table. For the ones who remained, Richard ushered them outside and then asked his Undine to establish a barrier. When Petra did not immediately answer, Richard caught motes of mana lifting the debris dust from the floor around them. It would seem that their Regent had picked up traits and habits from the Deep Vel that were not for the polite company of Mageocracy Mages.

“They did,” Petra had never looked so defeated, not even in Tianjin or Auckland. “Natalia told me things about the past and Popov that I had thought behind me. I was naive, stupid and mistaken to think they would have forgotten about me.”

Lea re-emerged from a rent-in space to inform them of their complete privacy.

“Is this how Moscow bares its fangs?” Gwen’s eyes swept over the crude map of the district and its hot spots of unrest. She seemed to have reached a decision, then looked up with eyes that were twin pools of molten rage. “Fine. If they like making threats so much—I’ll give them something to feel threatened about. Richard—we’re deploying Shoggy onto Nizhny Tower.”

Richard wondered how he could help Petra resolve the issue when he heard his Regent blowing up the civil order they had worked so hard to import into the Fire Sea Black Zone. His mind performed a mid-air pirouette before landing with a wet thud. “I am sorry… you said… Shoggoth?”

“That’s right,” Gwen concurred, then turned to Slylth. “Slylthie, can you manage another Meteor? Even a small one will do.”

“Er… what?” the Red Dragon looked up from his seat, having participated in the conversation without particular care. “Meteors don’t grow on trees, you know? Not your tree, not at its current size and age, at least…”

“But can you summon one?” Gwen demanded.

“It’s supremely taxing on my Core.” Slylth Alexander Morden looked to Richard, then Gwen. “You realise there’s a whole Accord against deploying upper-tier Spells of Mass Destruction. You can’t just order one delivered like takeout. I need components, preparation, and meditation… it takes much mana and preparation…”

“I don’t like men with poor endurance,” their Regent barked, her eyes flashing. “Can you do it or not?”

Slylth growled miserably. “Yes, dear. I’ll manage.”

“Good, it’s settled,” the Regent tapped her Message Device. “I’ll gather Strung’s Paladins and notify Temir Khan. Garp will move with Strung and Slylth on Novosibirsk Tower, immobilising the hovering mechanism while we deal a major blow to its structural integrity. Golos, myself and the Centaurs will move on Nizhny. Golos will lead, the Khan’s men will strike the levitation mechanism, and we’ll finish with the descent of the Shoggoth.”

Richard trembled as a vision of spreadsheets in red flashed across his frontal lobe. Shalkar was rich, but it wasn’t that rich. After their first calamity, the renewed investments from a year ago had only just started to pull in profits. Then there was also the human cost…

Petra raised a demure hand.

“What about me?” Lulan rubbed her hands, setting off sparks like flint stones. “Shall we notify our Dwarven allies? The Engineseer won’t take the attack on Petra’s family kindly. They’ve lore against that sort of thing.”

“Do that,” Gwen confirmed the strategy. “Maybe I’ll visit Tryfan. Now that I am a Guardian, they can’t just sit on their pretty hands. Some parasitic vines would do well in keeping those Towers in place.”

Petra raised both hands.

“Before we move, allow me to confirm the outing with Mother.” Slylth shook his head, appearing like a man too tired to argue. “Maybe she can hold the fort for a week while we reclaim the north.”

“No need. The Dwarves will remain in the citadel. Besides, the faster we do it, the less prepared the Russians will be,” Gwen slapped her hands together. “Richard!”

Richard felt the roots of his hair pulling an Ollie. “Hold up—! Wait! I said HOLD UP!"

The group turned to regard him. “Pats, what’s your desire? What were you going to say?” Richard finally addressed their cousin’s raised hands.

“I was going to suggest we put my parents in Stasis…” Petra looked like she was about to collapse over the possibility of starting a regional war with casualties in the tens of thousands. “Then ask our alumni in Cambridge to send over counter-intel to deal with the possibility of Mind Mages meddling with our middle ranks.”

Sweet Nazarene! A reasonable, proportional response! Richard felt the stress drain away like a good session of bloodletting.

At their erstwhile Mind Mage’s insistence, the flaming sea of destruction to Shalkar’s Northern Steppes receded, and the absolute field of lifeless devastation left behind by the passing of the Shoggoth slinked away into the darkness.

With Gwen’s scarlet face growing hotter, Richard exhaled. Their Regent was wise in many ways, but her dalliance with the Demi-Humans had left her with a lingering straightforwardness unsuited to terrestrial affairs. Certainly, the Russian Shoals’ erasure would not signal the end of their regional problems but the beginning of something global.

“Let’s get Charlene in on this,” Richard decided to push the envelope from their cousin onto someone more suitably educated in inter-Tower conflicts. “And while we’re there, let's get the raven’s opinion.”

Shalkar.

The World Tree.

With Ambassador Ariel remaining to perform miracles of crowd suppression in the Commons, Shalkar’s leaders made their way to the Department of Foreign Affairs branch office, a building their Regent had promised Duke Ravenport during the prior calamity.

Constructed in a quasi-pocket space on the same tier as the residential “spaces” of the World Tree’s largest upper arboreal realm, the building itself was a modest, modern construct grown into place by Tryfan’s woodworking arborists, appearing more like a luxury chateau than an office.

They were here because Charlene Ravenport had figured it was best to directly consult her father rather than communicate through the “Avian Whispers” made accessible by The Morrigan’s supernatural feathered friends.

“Magus Kuznetsova is correct in her protocol,” the sharply angular face of the Duke of Norfolk spoke through the holographic Project Person built into the LR Message Mandala. “Stasis, followed by careful applications of Dispel, is usually how we deal with suspicions of mental manipulation via Enchantment. More than anything, however, I am honestly surprised our friends in Moscow have chosen to travel so low a path.”

“You’re telling me!” Gwen felt calmer now that they were in the heart of the World Tree, where Sufina’s Essence flowed more easily and naturally through her mana conduits. “If you recall, dear Duke, you had told me it was taboo for geopolitics to touch family.”

“I did,” Mycroft Ravenport appeared dismayed though the man’s recovery was instant. “And nothing has happened to your mother, father, your grandparents… all within reasonable access to Moscow should they desire.”

“I am pretty sure the Chinese PLA will launch a multi-Tower invasion force if they try to touch Ayxin’s new family,” Gwen refuted Ravenport’s logic. “Siberia will change hands within the year if someone messed with their pregnant weather system.”

“I’ll concede that,” Ravenport’s projection flickered. “Nonetheless, Petra’s status is the gap they sought. After all, Richard has far better influence and cares for his family, no?”

Besides Gwen, her male cousin shrugged.

“Look,” Ravenport continued. “Petra used to be a part of their Sparrow project. They know how she thinks and works—and made a move based on that assumption. Likewise, Petra’s parents are Mages exiled from Moscow, meaning there’s every possibility they had Mind Magic imprinted upon them already to make them exceptionally pliable to future Suggestions. Now, that is the protocol for Moscow. Would you not use it if you had such a pawn in Moscow Tower? Especially an expendable one?”

“That’s some bullshit,” Gwen felt her chest growl. “A couple more captured Towers will make them sing a different tune.”

“Language, Regent,” The Duke of Norfolk exhaled. “I am here to aide Charlene, not your pleasure or anger.”

“Sorry,” Gwen exhaled. “A lot is going on.”

“What did you expect?” The Duke made a short, succinct laugh. “Just look at what you’ve made here in London and Shalkar. You were away for a year. With the city’s top dog absent, everyone wants a bite. The loot is formidable, while memories are short.”

“Well, this bitch bites back,” Gwen snapped when Ravenport rolled his eyes. “Alright. Fine. I told you my options. What can you add to them?”

“I very much like your suggestion of a Cooperative fund to divide and conquer,” the Duke replied with relief. “Very Grey Faction, if I may say so. You have my full support. At the same time, The Department of Foreign Affairs would like to thank Richard and Petra for preventing a regional conflict.”

“Milord,” Richard tipped an invisible top hat.

Petra remained silent.

“Enough,” Gwen felt her temper simmer. “What about this… Natalia?”

“Caw—!” a crow cawed from the beams. There was a nest here, inside the newly furnished building. “Caw—caw—“

“Morrigan is correct in that there should be a notable form of retribution,” the Duke’s image flickered. “If nothing else, we need to send a reminder that you are not to be trifled with. The response, however, should not make you into an international calamity like Sobel. You need to show a measure of… ruthless restraint.”

Gwen rolled the contradiction over her tongue like a jaw-breaker candy, trying to break through Mycroft's’ inferences.

She played out a mental map of Shalkar’s trade lanes and the nations that directly benefited from her city’s foothold in the central Black Zone of Eurasia. A dozen nasty solutions came to her simultaneously, some more morally dubious than others, but all deliciously malicious.

“If the reports are correct, the transit of grains and heavy goods is almost 17% dependent on Bavaria’s Express Dyar Morkk. I will offer a discount to the Middle Faction trade consortiums using the Low Ways,” she mapped out her first idea with a wicked note of glee. “With the proviso that all transit of goods using our systems will incur additional tax incentives if the destination lies beyond the Dnieper Line. The exact penalty I’ll figure out once you send me a dossier on Moscow’s finances.”

“That will increase the price of grain,” the Duke nodded. “And yes, their defence initiatives will suffer as a result. As the IoDNC is a private enterprise, the Mageocracy will wash our hands clean of complaints.”

The clockwork of Gwen’s brain continued its doomsday tick. “And though it will take some time, I will bring a reckoning to Moscow’s trade fleet at the Crimea Orange Zone. The Axis Mundi connects all the bodies of water through the Elemental Plane, and with Aristotle, we’ll eventually be able to transit into the Black Sea…”

“Let me hold you there for a moment,” the Duke’s image flickered more violently. “I know you’re excited to bring suffering to a nation of people who happened to have a bastard of a Tower Master as their proxy head of state, but let’s not put the… ship before the Leviathan.”

The Duke of Norfolk sighed. “Gwen, you’re outraged because Moscow dared to touch your family. However, is it right then to induce misery upon a million families? What did Margot and Petyr from some forsaken Moscow Oblast do to deserve the hunger you seek to inflict upon them?”

Gwen understood the high horse Mycroft was riding upon. Still, she also wanted to say that in the Vel, a billion and more had suffered so that ultimately, billions more were categorically elevated from being fodder and serfs.

Was she wrong, then, to want to punish Moscow Tower? That didn’t seem right either.

“And never mind the splash that a Great Shoal controlled by a Human would make in the Black Sea. Our partners in the Parthenon will erupt with such protest that the heavens will change hues. The fortress city of Istanbul will close its great gates, and all trade through the region will cease. The moment your Aristotle rears its tentacles, the entire political balance of the Mediterranean will collapse—and all this just to make the haggard lives of Muscovites a little worse?”

Gwen sighed in turn. “Okay, what then? Feeding Shoggy is starting to look better and better.”

“Gwen—“ The Duke spoke as fatherly as an old snake could manage. “It is times like these that I wish your Master were still here with us to share some of his flexibility. You have gained a great deal of power, Regent. RAW power. Yet, that power is itself a paradoxical source of influence. Exercise it without restraint, and you become no better than what Sobel was to Henry. Exercise too much restraint, and parasites like Vasili Popov crawl out of the woodwork. Wisdom is knowing when to use the pommel and when to use a cutting edge. Do you understand?”

Gwen waited for the Duke to finish.

“At this point, you lack intelligence,” the Duke congratulated himself at his fatherly pun. “Your city is young, Regent, and though you’ve kept a tight leash on your population, there is little you know of the goblins outside your candle-lit village.”

“We’ve never made a poor trade,” Gwen protested. “My industries flourish.”

“I cannot fault your eye for commerce,” Ravenport nodded in agreement. “But this isn’t about profit, Regent. This is about sabotage, subversion, and theft of land, property and people. Even if you wildly succeed, do you think that the suffering of its people would move a single heart in that blasted Tower of Moscow? It’s a fool’s errand! To the old men, you are little more than a lovely child with a satchel of sweetmeat, do you understand? If you were not a part of the Mageocracy and had fewer allies and Towers in Central Europe, every Tower from Cairo to St Petersburg would be making headway toward those Leviathan Cores making their transit to Shalkar. Sure, you can burn a Tower or two, but what of the others? At what point will Shalkar lie in ruins, its people scattered into the Black Zone?”

“That’s a little excessive,” Gwen did not find the Duke’s pessimistic wisdom agreeable to her anger.

“My point,” Ravenport ignored her. “Being that forces more abstract than military prowess has allowed you to establish Shalkar. As it stands, you are a young Dragon standing atop a vast hoard. Yet, why is it that no Towers find themselves attracted to such places of unfathomable wealth?”

“The Accord,” the one who answered was not Gwen but Slylth. “Not The Accord, but the ancient agreements that govern our kind, set in stone by beings like my mother. Raze one of our homes, and a hundred of our kind will raze your cities until not even bedrock remains.”

“Young Lord Morden has much to teach you,” the Duke appeared glad that at least someone seemed to have understood him. “Do you understand, Gwen?”

“I get it,” Gwen felt her chest deflate with annoyance. “Shalkar is a city of trade. We are a hub for our allies who rely on us. We cannot destroy our status quo and become a fortress.”

“Indeed,” Mycroft nodded. “The unseen web of accords Shalkar shares with the Mageocracy and its allies, from the hallowed halls of Scandinavia to the ancient temples of the Mediterranean, is why Moscow dances around your city like a prancing pony instead of a ravaging Centaur. Until your Tower is completed, that’s all you are. And the closer you are to that goal, the more they will escalate.”

“Am I to do nothing then?” Gwen looked guiltily at her cousin, the very guilty-looking Petra, who did not want to start a regional war.

In the projection, the Duke stepped out of range to be replaced by his daughter. “Gwen.”

“Charlene.” Gwen acknowledged the young politician. “Is that the extent of your father’s wisdom?”

“Of course not,” Charlene smiled back. “However, what transpires from this point onwards will have nothing to do with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Are we in agreement?”

“Sure,” Gwen shrugged. “Show me your best poison.”

“The chief culprit of our current predicament is the Moscow Tower,” Charlene took a deep breath before continuing. “Popov’s little birds are the agency most responsible for the problems in Shalkar, Petra’s dilemma and the tragedy in the Human Commons.”

“Agreed,” Gwen felt her ire burn once more.

“The source of their influence and power,” Charlene persisted in her report. “Lies in the dark. Therefore, I propose that we shine a light on their operations.”

“You have intel on these bird people?” Gwen asked, feeling hopeful. “Your father is willing to part with that?”

“Not quite,” Charlene smiled awkwardly. “What we do have are the tools to uncover the Sparrows, and what my father can do for us is to turn a blind eye…”

Gwen felt her brows furrow. “Meaning?”

“It’s unusual for a Sparrow to be so… forthright,” Charlene noted. “I assume this is because Petra was enough to inspire less clandestine protocols. Hence, they directly approached her and gambled on the fact that… she would be accommodating to mere intelligence leaks.”

“Right,” Gwen gave her cousin a nod. What Charlene proposed was that Moscow had miscalculated that Petra would unquestioningly risk her loving parents, instead prioritising her loyalty to Gwen, a peer of a younger age. That, or crossing colleagues, came naturally to their ilk.

The devastation on Petra’s face made her all the more determined to give her cousin justice.

“So let us also be ruthless,” Charlene proposed. “We have the face of a Sparrow, a senior one at that. Let us make use of her with every means at our disposal.”

Gwen felt her morality tingle. “You don’t mean… Mind Magic? Of our own?”

“Ah…” Charlene’s expression grew expectant. “Gwen, I think you know what I mean.”

It took Gwen a few more seconds to internalise exactly what Charlene meant.

Indeed, if she were willing to do that, then truly, Mycroft Ravenport would have to turn a blind eye.

Ruthless restraint, the raven had cawed. Now, she knew precisely what the old bird meant.

“Right…” Besides her, Richard pointed to the liveries, posters, tables and chairs stacked up for the fated day of independence to come. “If you’re done deciding, what shall we do about all this?”

Shalkar.

The Human Commons.

Referendum Day.

Together with her entourage, the Regent of Shalkar watched the farce that was the referendum of independence cast by the Human citizens of Shalkar.

Despite the previous day's riots, the school's surviving parts were converted into a polling station and the thirty-thousand-something Humans who currently lived in the habitat blocks travelled from all over Shalkar to throw their votes into the ballot boxes.

“That’s Sergey Ivanov from Yekaterinburg, formerly its Lieutenant-Colonel,” Richard pointed to the enhanced projection made via his mastery over water. “He’s the foreman of the Socialist Worker’s Party of Shalkar.”

Her cousin moved the lens to another line, where a man shook hands with the voters. “And that’s Alexander Fishenko, Fish to his friends. He’s a London boy, but we suspect he’s a Sparrow. How he climbed from Mage labourer to the second in command of the Socialist Party has all the readings of one.”

The lens continued to move through the enormous crowd until it focused on a young woman working the ballot tables. Even at a distance, Gwen could tell from the silhouette of her face that she was incredibly attractive despite the muddy overalls of someone who looked to be a Magitech mechanic.

“That’s Natalia Volkova,” Richard affirmed her suspicions.

“That’s the one?” Gwen asked her cousin and companion.

“That’s the one,” Petra concurred. “Popov’s right hand. I’ll make the call now.”

Her cousin gestured a Glyph into her Message device.

On Richard’s projection, Natalia feigned a mild dizziness from overwork, whereupon several young men offered to take over her station while she took a break.

“Natalia,” Petra spoke into the Message Glyph. “The Regent has returned to the tree with loot from her recent expedition. She has made plans to confront Novosibirsk and Nizhny… If you want to know where she went and what she pillaged, undo the Glamours affecting my parents.”

The group waited while Petra underwent a pained exchange with the not-so-hidden Sparrow. When the conversation finally ceased, Petra switched off her Message Device entirely.

“She’s meeting me inside the school’s basement, out of sight of our Harpies and Wyvern…” Petra sickly smiled. “Gwen… I am sorry for what you must do.”

“Nonsense,” the Regent of Shalkar’s eyes grew hard as marbles as Richard’s projection focused on the blonde’s feigning smile for her peers. With great determination, Gwen’s long fingers dug through the soft fur of a not-so-soft killer. “Strung, you know what to do.”

The Yeas won by a twelve per cent margin over the Nays.

To the watching eyes in the World Tree, the election was neither fair nor systematic. Not all members of Humanity in Shalkar were invited to attend or allowed to vote, and the vote itself was closely monitored by the Socialist Party so that troublemakers were swiftly taken out of public view.

Likewise, the Rat-kin civil servants and the Centaur officers overseeing the district did not make their way into the voting centre itself, and neither a Celestial Kirin nor a Thunder Dragon belonging to the Regent had swayed hearts by parking itself on the rooftop.

All-in-all, the fated day of clashes suffered no chaos other than the vote itself. When the Socialist Workers Party of Shalkar declared its victory and its demand for semi-autonomy, no militia confronted its leaders.

Instead, Rat-kin workers employed by the Department of Public Welfare quietly arrived around the city. They began putting up enormous, multi-storey posters with the image of a cup of cornucopia, the logo for an initiative called the “Shalkar Agricultural Trade Co-operative International”.

At the same time, on the latest print of the Shalkar METRO, the front page announced the specifics of a state-sponsored fund meant for the welfare and advancement of its Human citizens, available only to registered citizenry or new immigrants.

The front page led to the middle page, where enormous volumes of information, statistics, tables and lovely lumen-recorded images of happy Human families living in harmony with their Demi-human neighbours inferred without doubt that the Human habitants of Shalkar would, in six months, make a choice. With absolute respect for their Human autonomy, the METRO announced the Regent will allow citizens to pull themselves up by the bootstraps or ride on the communal success of her multi-specie city of unparalleled prosperity. There would be no legal penalty for citizens wishing to renounce their citizenship—and public services such as the Low-ways and the generous medical allowances for magical healing would still be available if they paid out of pocket.

Very quickly, the euphoria of the Worker’s Party’s new victory was doused as though drenched by Caliban’s secretions.

However, no change was sensible to the new guest who arrived at the World Tree of Shalkar, sitting in a pocket space just above its Thunder Dragon’s sky garden.

Natalia Volkova, the prima starling of the forty-second generation of Sparrows hatched by Moscow Tower’s Master Popov, sat in a space of verdant emerald shades more beautiful than any woodland she had witnessed in all twenty of her years.

Once she came to, her mind very quickly assessed her situation.

Immediately in front stood the unmistakable presence of the Regent of Shalkar, as regal and petrifying as the tales foretold, a woman who walked on equal footing with the scions of Dragons and rubbed shoulders with Demi-human immortals.

It was strange to Natalia that the woman wore a plain white tee-shirt and a saggy pair of shorts, for the mortal clothing did nothing to hide the alien aura of a being putting on a pretence to be homely and human.

To the Regent’s right stood the loathsome figure of Petra Kuznetsova, traitor to the Tower and the sole survivor from the thirty-ninth generation purged by Master Popov after the incident with his son.

Besides her, as a presence discerned with her mind, was the Captain of the Rat-kin security forces, the creature known as Strun, a monstrous Demi-human blessed with the boon of regeneration.

There was one more being beside them—a young man with the build of a scholar and a mop of red hair not uncommon to the bloodlines of Russia’s magical elites. From the psychic shape of his mind, however, Natalia knew that the man had about as much humanity as her hope for survival.

She looked down.

She was fully clothed and rustled but still wearing her overalls.

She wasn’t even bound to the chair, though a pair of enchanted cuffs prevented her from somatic casting. Unfortunately for herself, there would be no sympathy here for a young woman with smouldering eyes and a squirming body begging to be freed.

“Petra,” Natalia heard her voice speak with a disembodied quality as she performed the mental rite to isolate her consciousness from the frailness of her pliant flesh. There would soon be torture—Natalia knew this well—though she was glad that the Thunder Dragon was absent. “So this is what you’ve chosen? You must love your Regent very much.”

“Is it that surprising?” the traitor’s face possessed only a look of sympathy. “You would betray your family in a heartbeat, would you not? Yet, what do you owe Master Popov but for the Suggestions and Geas planted in your mind?”

“My generation are all orphans. Besides… Loyalty to the Tower, Loyalty to the Motherland,” Natalia repeated a mantra as she continued to layer her mental protections. “Surely that implant has never left your mind.”

“I never received it,” the traitor’s expression did not change as Natalia had hoped. “My Master and I shared something a little more genuine.”

Natalia knew she should be angry, but the ire rising in her body no longer affected the clarity of her mind. “I see. That must have been nice. Did you pillow talk him into that?”

“Natalia,” the voice that spoke now was from the Regent. “Petra tells me that any interrogations of a Sparrow is beyond purposeless. This is correct?”

“It is,” Natalia answered with confidence. “We can die, but we will not give up our secrets. You can try Mind Magic, though I will perish long before that. The heat-death of my mana organs as my conduits expand and swell will be a painful and gruesome reminder for the both of us.”

“Then wasn’t it foolish to reveal yourself to Petra?” The Regent’s amicability made Natalia feel paranoia, though with death so soon on the horizon, she could at least comfort herself with that final certainty.

“We are all pawns in a game of chess,” Natalia replied vaguely. “You may act the part of a player, Regent, but you are hardly free from the board itself. An attempt was made, it failed, and now I will pay the price. Petra should know nothing is surprising here. Have you placed your parents into Stasis, Petra? That’s our protocol, after all.”

“She banters very well,” the Regent turned to the traitor. “No stutters, nothing.”

“We’re trained to do that,” the traitor shook her head. “Gwen. Shall we begin?”

“You won’t get anything from me,” Natalia watched her body squirm, a reaction that was more honest than the coolness her isolated mind offered. After all, the only human confronting her was the traitor. “Petra, you know this. Why waste our time? The Regent is a busy leader. Have your Void fiend consume me or throw me to the Thunder Dragon if you want sadistic satisfaction.”

“Strung, if you will do the honours,” the Regent approached.

Natalia saw that she was made to stand, and then the rat stripped the upper part of her garb until her neck and back showed. The Regent walked a slow circle around her trembling figure, stopping when she faced her neck and exposed back.

“While you were resting,” the Regent touched a finger onto her back. “I gave you a boon. It’s somewhat tyrannical compared to the voluntary variant given to Strung and his folk, but it should work well.”

Natalia could now feel the strange markings on her skin, an irritation she had neglected. “A new form of torture? We’re trained against that too, Regent.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” the Regent spoke behind her. “It’s more so something like… this…”

Her skin tingled—then something invaded Natalia’s Astral Body. To her horror, the layered protections and self-destructive Enchantments did not trigger, for the warmth that flushed into her body was no different to the Faith Magic used by the Orthodox Church. Forcing herself to peer inwards using her Astral Eye, Natalia shuddered at the abstract sight of verdant energy pouring into her Astral Body, nourishing a part of her that was neither mind nor body but something closer to one’s soul.

At once, she felt as though bathed in lukewarm water. Her torso reacted by relaxing entirely as motes of life itself coursed through her conduits. Natalia felt suddenly connected to something far larger than herself, a living ecosphere as old as time.

“What… what is this?” She couldn’t help her curiosity, even knowing the Regent had nothing so pleasant planned. “What did you do?”

“I’ve connected you to myself,” the Regent said. “And from myself, the World Tree.”

Natalia felt as though she was free-falling through another layer of existence. “Is… is this the Axis Mundi?”

“Yes, you’re glimpsing it now,” the voice that spoke was accompanied by fingers that walked from Natalia’s shoulder blade until they encompassed her skull.

“Natalia,” the traitor’s hand tightly held Natalia’s own. “I hope you survive. Sister.”

Before Natalia could discern the traitor’s words, shards of Negative Energy pierced the veil of her mind and invaded her brain. Something inside her, something which was the essence of her, felt as though it was being torn from her Astral Body. To say that there was pain would be the greatest understatement, for what she felt was all the pain in the world, distilled into liquid agony and pumped through her veins.

“Her Geas are triggering,” Petra reported as the young woman in the chair convulsed, blood oozing from her eyes, ears and nostrils. Parts of her skin split, triggered by the tearing of her mana conduits, leaving long lesions as long as Strung’s whiskers.

Yet, the Sparrow did not die, for Gwen’s verdant supply of limitless vitality kept her organs intact and her heart beating as healthily as any woman in her prime, albeit supremely elevated from the excitement of her flesh.

Wounds mended, wounds appeared. Muscles tore, and flesh stitched shut. Conduits erupted—conduits healed, over and over, as the true spell invoked by Gwen took its shape.

Soul Tap.

A spell derived from her Master’s Essence Tap, originating from Svartálfar Essence sorcery.

Since learning the original, Gwen had stripped back many of its tyrannical immoralities until she had arrived at the version used for her followers, the largely benign Essence Sympathy empowering her Demi-human followers.

Now, for the first time, she conceded the rationale behind her Master’s grimoire and its inclusion of magic that would bury a regular Necromancer in the deepest dungeons of London Tower.

Besides her, Petra took notes on the number of Geas triggers with a pen and a data slate, her eyes one of a studied scholar overseeing a difficult specimen.

“Four Implanted Suggestions, a Schism, six Geas triggers, and one Greater Geas,” Petra delivered the final tally. “Talk about trust. She should be dead ten times over.”

Unfortunately for the Sparrow, she was far from dead.

By the spell’s forceful completion, there was blood oozing from the pore of the Sparrow’s skin, making the young woman appear as though she had bathed in a filthy pool of gore and rust. At the same time, more than just bodily secretions had been evacuated from her in the death throes of her former self.

“Cleanse—“ Petra activated a Spellcube, sending the most offensive of Natalia’s indiscretions into the Plane of Water.

Like a boneless doll, the Mind Mage slumped over her chair, held in place by Strun.

We’re monsters, I fear. Gwen shuddered. We see monsters in others, yet they show us who we are.

Still, was this monstrous act preferable to the honesty of open war and the extinction of tens of thousands of men and women, Russians and Shalkar’s citizens both?

“Natalia,” Gwen knew the girl to be physically hail, for she had shared her vital sympathies with Garp, whose life force could keep ten thousand Natalias alive and dancing on hot coals deep into midnight. “Speak.”

“I… I am…Blergh—” Strun released the young women, who wretched up blood and bile. Compelled by the will of another, she spoke. “How… how am I alive?”

“The spells implanted in you have run their course,” Gwen explained what Petra had hypothesised. “The triggers happen only once, you see? Congratulations, Natalia Volkova, you are now free from Moscow—and bound to me.”