Gwen Song awoke to the melody of _Grande Valse_ blaring with the strength of an air siren.

Reflexively, she groped for her smartphone, making the familiar sliding gesture to unlock. Instead, her vague fingers encountered the strange sensation of physical buttons. A moment of frantic fumbling ensured, then a sound began to stream:

_“BBC World Service, September 21st, 2001: An ancient Red Dragon has destroyed a section of the London Metro, resulting in over two hundred dead and thousands injured, paralysing the city. Authorities have linked this latest incident to similar occurrences involving Magical Creatures carried out by the anti-tower cabal known as Spectre- Magister Livingstone, Mayor of London, calls the latest terrorist attack a day of infamy…”_

_More terrorism_ , Gwen groaned wistfully. Finally she found the mute button.

Slowly, synapses dulled by Moet & Chandon ignited one by one.

_Red Dragon?_

_What’s that, a new euphemism for WMDs?_

_Wait—_ Her mind performed a double-take.

The date was correct. It was September twenty-first — but the year appeared to be missing a decade and a half. It had been 2017 when she stumbled into bed, but the report had said 2001.

Regaining a measure of lucidity, she inspected the brick in her hand to confirm the date, only to be bemused by an alien device constructed of ceramic-seeming material, with a screen that looked nothing like back-lit LED.

The only clue that it may be a Nokia was the bloody ringtone.

She turned the device over.

No logo. No ports. No battery sliders.

This isn’t her iPhone.

Her brain throbbed.

Could she have been roofied? In her office, at her very own corporate party? That would be absurd. Even if she had, there were security guards and staff who were sober enough to send her to a hospital. Concurrently, her joints were on fire. She was dizzy and light-headed, hungry and hollowed out. Additionally, the sickening sting of digestive acids lapped at her throat.

But for now, she chose calm over panic.

She inspected her surroundings.

Firstly, she was sleeping in a single bed.

Secondly, she wasn't naked or anything. She wore her PJs, although, for some reason, her silk nightie had transformed into coarse cotton. A sloppy, cheap-looking duvet covered her body. The print was vaguely familiar—a horrid, half-faded floral design commonly used for IKEA curtains.

The bedroom felt claustrophobic; the ceiling low and oppressive.

Recognition dawned.

Isn't this her old apartment? From when she was a kid? Why was she in the bedroom of her adolescence? What had happened to her bayside home? Her French-windows?

The bedroom to which she now occupied had existed only in the distant past.

She had been in high school, living with her divorced father.

“Is this a lucid dream?!" she muttered to herself.

Her voice!
It was youthful and sweet and without the abuse of all-nighters, scalding coffee, and copious amounts of alcohol.

She closed her eyes to think, but the memory of her last conscious hours was a scrambled mess of whites and yellows.

Slowly, in fragments, recollections came.

Here was her old home. Her original home. The apartment she’d grown up in as a girl-child. Over yonder was the fold-out desk she had piled her clean laundry on. Next to the cabinet was the basket for her dirty laundry. To her right was her study desk, which her father sometimes used as a Mahjong table. She could even see her study guides.

But where she expected volumes on chemistry, physics and literature, she instead saw thick bound volumes with strange names.

_Allenberg’s Primer for Astral Theory?_ _Otsu's Primer for Evokers?_

Without warning, her head split.

"Ow!"

A jackhammer ripped through the interior of her skull. Memories flooded her brain, bloating its synapses so that she felt as though two fingers were pressed against her optic nerves. If anything, the sensation was akin to the time she had forgotten to take her quinine tablets in the Amazon and had malaria shitting on her brain for a week.

_I have an aptitude test today._ A stray thought boomed across Gwen's consciousness.

_No, you don't,_ Gwen dissuaded the voice in her head. _You just had a staff party where you celebrated your consultancy's second anniversary. You drank and danced and forgot all about what champagne could do to a woman who was no longer in her twenties._

Unbidden, another thought solicited her stream of consciousness, accompanied by gut-wrenching anxiety. Her chest convulsed. She couldn't breathe.

_Today is an important day._

_I need to go to the Awakening Test._

_Mother will be upset if I fail._

"Ugh!" Gwen fought back the acid reflux threatening to escape her oesophagus. _Jesus Christ_ , she cursed. Was she now suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? Dr Monroe never said anything about MPD disorders!

"Shut up!" she threatened the ceiling.

The voice ceased.

She ran a hand over her forehead and found it drenched with perspiration.

"Alright," she whispered to herself. Her mind remained sceptical even as her senses seemed helplessly invested in this new reality. Cynically, she pinched herself hard on the thighs until a welt appeared and her eyes moistened.

"Shit," Gwen affirmed her worst fears. “Why is this happening?"

Frustrated, she rubbed her eyes. Her fingertips came away with crusty chunks of dried mucus, which she crushed between her fingers. _Shit_ , had she been crying?

_Click._

Her internal discourse was interrupted by an intruder. Instantly, her blood ran cold. She was trapped in a strange parallel world, who or what could be coming through that door?

The door opened.

It was her brother, Percy, who peeped in with a face still drugged with sleep.

“Dad called and said you have to get up now,” he informed her. “It's your PMAE today.”

She quietly regarded the boy, mindful of any buttons or cross-stitching that would reveal a skin-suit.

Percy was her brother, an athletically-inclined adolescent with olive skin and large luminous eyes. He had the thick lips of their mother, taking after the family's mixed heritage.

She pulled the cover over her collarbones and scowled at her brother. What kind of an idiot barges into the room of their teenage sister? She was hardly dressed for decency.

"Oi! Get out of here!" she yelled angry nothings even as Percy yawned disinterestedly.

With her brother gone, she pulled herself out of bed. A full-length mirror ran the length of her built-in-wardrobe. Now that she was up, she had to ensure that all the pieces of her body were present.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

What she saw was the reflection of a dark-haired girl who was a little underfed but reasonably proportioned. She had the pale skin and high cheekbones of her mixed father but had inherited her mother's eyes. Her striking irises, afflicted with central heterochromia, possessed an amber core bound by a ring of dark emerald, hinting at her cosmopolitan origins.

Gwen pulled on her earlobes, watching her simulacrum wince.

No luck.

It wasn't a lucid dream.

She was indeed back in her teenagehood.

After a moment of deliberation, she removed her pyjamas for a more thorough inspection.

When she had struck the big three-o, she had wondered about her adolescent body. Would she have loved or loathed it? Though her answer was ambivalent, what she found queer was her paleness. Her skin was unusually pallid, almost as if she'd rarely seen the sun. By her recollection, she had spent the whole summer of 2001 hawking ice cream at Bondi and learning to surf. As a result, she had been positively caramel. Compared to her old Billabong body, her present physique smacked of anorexia.

Still, at a meter-eighty, she cast an impressive figure for a fifteen-year-old.

As young as twelve, people had assumed she was older. She had been denied children’s fares at carnivals and accosted by boys who thought her their age. Once, a bloke at Bondi had propositioned her, offering to teach her about her maturing body.

Gwen dug through the wardrobe and found something to wear, straight away arriving at a pair of cut-off jeans and a white tapered tee.

The door opened again. It was Percy.

“Why are you in your Sunday clothes?” he questioned in his youthful voice. “You need to be in your uniform for the Awakening.”

At the mention of the word, another wave of nausea bowled her over.

"Get out!" she hissed. Percy fled.

She held herself against the mirror until the buzzing went away.

A little immodestly, she performed a self-examination, concluding that it wasn't that time of the month.

"Fine, I'll go to the damned test." She told her reflection. "Happy now?"

She searched through her wardrobe again and located her school blouse and skirt. She remembered being horrid at chores, so it must have been her brother who had collected and packed the laundry.

Making a note to thank young Percy, she Googled her fragmented memory and found the school blazer hanging in a separate section of the closet.

She inspected the result.

The Blackwattle High School senior uniform was a little loose around the bust but appeared otherwise handsome and prim. A grey-white tartan skirt, a navy blazer, and a white blouse gave the costume the feeling of a private academy. There was a vest as well, but Gwen had forgone it for reasons of budget.

_D-Ding!_

An alarm went off on her phone.

“You’re going to be late for the train!” her brother called out.

Gwen opened the door to see Percy with a piece of toast packed in foil, the acrid smell of Vegemite and cheese polluting the air.

“Thank me later.” He grinned, revealing pearly white teeth.

“Cheers,” she replied, her teenage voice sounding strange as it reverberated through her skull. She needed more time to collect herself, but the urgency of having to attend the Aptitude Test hastily drove her through the door.

Following an internal compass, she managed to board a train for the city.

The streets of Sydney's CBD were the same old familiar concrete and bitumen, but the transportation had shifted from the grumble of fossil fuel into the thrum of humming mana cores. For the moment, Gwen was glad that no airships sailed across the horizon, completing the vision of a dystopian Weimar Metropolis.

The journey towards Blackwattle Bay proved enlightening. In her brave new world, trains ran on ley-lines, fed into a network of mana conduits known simply as the Grid. All around her, geo-dynamic mana powered the city's infrastructure, the most important of which were the Shield Barriers.

_A shield what?_ She pinched her brows.

Shuddering memories informed her that humanity was hardly safe in this world, that despite the rule of Mageocracy over the Earth, much of it remained under the control of Demi-humans and Magical Creatures. Hell, there wasn’t even an aviation industry thanks to the presence of predatory monsters ruling the skies. The average man could only survive in secured enclaves, sheltered against the unknowable world beyond the Shield Barriers.

Despite wearing her blazer, Gwen shivered uncontrollably. Apathetic to her distress, the silent carriage dumbly made its way on enchanted rails into the heart of the city.

She disembarked at Pyrmont, finding herself among like-patterned uniforms walking to school.

The day was Saturday, the day of the Aptitude Test, A.K.A. “The Awakening”.

“Awakening” to what though?

_Magic._

_M-Magic?! Mages? Spells?_! Gwen shook her head, attempting to make sense of her new lexicon. Where the hell had she ended up? Was this budget Hogwarts? _You’re a Witch, Gwen?_

With great agitation, she trawled her mind again, fishing the flotsam and jetsam of her fragmented memory.

One by one, details emerged.

Where her old world had had the SAT and the HSC, this world had the dreaded Projected Magical Aptitude Exam, or PMAE for short, undertaken to segregate Mages from the multitudes.

As it stood, the vast majority of humanity were non-magical citizens, lovingly denominated as "NoMs". In a world of Spellcraft, NoMs lived in the Mages’ shadow, living diligent lives as administrators, service personnel, labourers for manufactorums and bodies for the frontlines.

For the mundane citizen, ascension was improbable. For those with a magical lineage, one could additionally become a Magus or Magister, whose rare convergence of sorcerous, physical and intellectual potential ensured a charmed life.

_I can't fail the test!_

_Okay! Fine!_ Gwen assured her spirit of PMAE past.

She ruminated on her new knowledge.

_So… apartheid._ Gwen bit her lower lip as the unpleasant epiphany traversed her mind. Moreover, her imminent ordeal seemed especially dubious. Was her memory informing her that a single test determined if she would be a worker ant or an august queen?

That seemed ridiculous to Gwen, whose old world at least entertained the illusion of egalitarian meritocracy. The PMAE appeared solely based upon manifest destiny.

Even assuming she passed, what of the life she had been living one inebriation prior? She had worked tirelessly to build a company of her own, collecting devoted staff over a decade. They’d just had their second anniversary, and she'd only recently acquired the Lendlease account.

Fuming, Gwen trudged with resentment towards her destination. In the distance, the Blackwattle campus appeared more extraordinary than her memory served. An entire wing of buildings appeared appended to the existing sandstone facade that loomed over the bay. Concurrently, the Fish Market next door bustled with semi-magical bounty, disseminating an ignoble stench of discarded seafood.

“Gwen!”

A chirpy voice rang out from the multitude of bobbing heads walking the steep incline up toward the school's gymnasium.

She turned to see a spry Asian girl rushing towards her, two imposing masses rioting as she ran, her face plump with adorable baby fat.

“Gwen-Gwen!” The girl embraced her before landing a quick peck on her cheek. “Ooo! I missed you so much! I am beyond happy that we're seniors together!"

She recognised the overfamiliar girl as Yue, a Shanghainese girl whose family had immigrated from the southern capital. Yue’s china-doll face was milk white and porcelain, punctuated by the small pink of her mouth. Her eyes, two luminous crescents beset by prominent lashes, seemed to swallow Gwen with their softness.

The sight of a friend she had not seen for a decade took the words right out of her mouth.

Yue Bai had been her closest and dearest friend back in high school, though they had drifted apart when Gwen escaped her home.

“It's only been a month.” She smiled back, hiding the fact that the original Gwen wasn't in the driving seat.

Though faint and spectral, she could sense her alter ego hovering around somewhere in the dark recess of her brain like the Ghost of Banquo, only she hadn’t done anything to warrant its unpleasant haunting.

Beside her, Yue began an endless stream of small talk.

Gwen listened as her old friend chittered excitedly about the latest gossip—who had been tested for what; who had been picked for which scholarship; what was the best element was to pair with which School of Magic.

When the duo finally made their way into the hall, the rest of the student body was already waiting in the auditorium.

The headmaster and the instructors were in militant dress uniforms that reminded Gwen of decorated veterans on ANZAC Day. She scanned the hall for more familiar faces but was quickly shuffled into place by a prefect.

Upon the podium, the principal addressed the assembly.

“Students, staff, members of the chancellory, welcome to the 2001 PMAE. This exam is carried out statewide on Spellcraft course Year ten students. In a moment, you will be asked to approach the dais and place your hand on the Awakening Crystal…”

A murmur spread across the auditorium as the officious announcement reverberated through the air. The principal, a raven-haired man of advanced age, spoke sonorously over the assemblage.

She recognised the man as Magus Jules Bartlett, principal of Blackwattle. Under the man's watchful eye, generations of Acolytes came and went, all remembering the ever-present personage that was Principal Bartlett at the gates, 0700 sharp, dutifully greeting each student. Amiable and approachable, the principal was a man fond of oration.

“Students! Young Mages! The Path of Spellcraft is glorious but fraught with danger and risk! Upon the Path, many trials shall beset you—forbidden knowledge, creatures horrid and savage, Demi-humans cruel and heartless!"

The students broke into a murmur.

“For now, your lives are peaceful - but make no mistake, let not your daily comfort confuse you. We are beset on all sides by forces far greater than humanity itself. Compared to the creatures of the Wildlands, we are weak. Compared to the creatures of the Deep, we are few. Compared to the beings of the Elemental Planes, we are mortal!"

"Yet WHY is it that man persists upon the Material Plane? Why has man survived the aeons to establish our civilisation on Earth against all the odds? It is because, through the application of Spellcraft, we are _strong_! We, the human race, are united in our mastery of _sorcery_!"

Abruptly, the principal’s voice took on a new intensity and volume.

"The PMAE is only the first step, but it is a significant one. It will define who you are and what you aspire to be. Do not fret; there is a place in our world for everyone. No matter your talent, you will be appreciated! The survival of one contributes to the survival of all!"

Thunderous applause filled the auditorium as the students roared their collective approval. Though confused, Gwen clapped alongside, not wanting to appear the stranger.

"All of you already possess magical affinity; your studies in junior high have proven that you are worthy to be Mages,” the principal announced confidently, “Some of you, perhaps, may even become Magus! But know that be you Citizen, Mage, Magus, or Magister: only united, can human civilisation push back the tide of the Wildlands seeking to subsume us."

Compared to the earlier clamour, the applause grew demure. Gwen wondered if each student was thinking of their chances at the hands of Fortuna, pondering whether they would awaken to glory or slumber in anonymity.

To her understanding, the principal had told a compelling truth. Who would not wish to possess the power of destruction and creation? Who would not desire to wield the raw elements of nature, to freeze one's foes with shards of eldritch ice, to blast apart the monsters that threatened one's home?

But it wasn't the old Gwen who now had to face the music. It was her, and Gwen realised she had no idea what was going on. The only sensation she truly felt was numbness—numb for the world she found herself in, stunned by the chaotic emotions smothering her over and over.

Survival of humankind?

Magic to rule the world?

She was in her PJs an hour ago!


The whole thing feels like a cult, Gwen cynically assessed the assemblage of students and staff. All around her, the cohort separated into rows standing before ten crystal spheres. The 'Awakening Crystals' reminded her of E-meters she saw once on Castlereagh St.

These students, who had already had their affinity affirmed, were being tested for their aptitude for different Schools of Magic. The procedure was simple enough. A student stood in front of the stone and placed their hand atop the sigil sensing crystal. The crystal then expanded its magical energies after completing the circuit, sending mana back into the recipient. Whatever Glyph the indicator reciprocated then betokened the student's proficiency in a School of Magic.

At least that's what her alter-self recalled.

According to her memories, official Spellcraft theorems privileged a trifactor of conditions impacting a Mage's talents: their natural affinity for a particular School of Magic; the Element they attuned to, and finally their natural born intelligence for manipulating Spellcraft.

Either of the three could be developed later in life, but as humans had limited lifespans and dubious willpower, those born with a headstart rose to the top of Spellcraft society with accelerated ease.

As far as she knew, there were seven primary schools of Spellcraft: Evocation, Transmutation, Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, and Illusion. Each had their specialities, and each manifested a particular arcane phenomenon unique enough to be called a ‘school’. Other schools existed but were unique to bloodlines, cultures, and religious mythos.

“OH MY God, Gwenie, I am nervous as hell.” Yue clutched onto Gwen’s arm with a force rivalling that of the proverbial koala, known for having a grip strength many times its body mass.

“What do you want to awaken as?” Gwen shook herself from the dizzying remembrance. Spellcraft, Schools of Magic, Monsters, none of it made any sense to her.

“Evocation of course,” Yue squealed. “The cardinal rule of all magic is firepower, followed by firepower, and finally, some more firepower!”

“That would be pretty nice,” Gwen answered blankly. “Firepower for sure.”

“When we go out there during the Field Trip, we can blast away everything with impunity!” Yue’s expression was dreamy and hopeful, her face flushed with enthusiasm.

“Field Trip?”

“... You know, going outside the Shield Barrier, kicking ass…”

“And?”

“And KILL SHIT!” Yue made an evil looking grin, probably already dreaming of carcasses flinging through the air after a particularly robust pyrotechnical display.

“Muscle-headed idiots,” a voice interjected beside them.

The speaker was a bronzed-skinned teen wearing a uniform one size too small. Her tartan skirt exposed her upper thighs, and they could see her bra strap against the taut-fabric of her white blouse. Her hair was dyed with a pink tip, though her natural colour would have been an alluring auburn brunette.

“What are you looking at?” the girl snapped.

Gwen felt struck by a strange sense of déjà vu. That catty demeanour was almost endearing. She wracked her brain until starcrossed memories of two lifetimes converged, revealing that the hot-topic with the resting bitchface was Debora.

Holy shit, Gwen mouthed silently. Debora Jones! Good grief - that takes her back! As far as she could recollect, Debora was the faction leader of what was dubbed the bimbos by the egg heads, and ‘hotties’ by the boys in general. She had been friends with Gwen during primary school, but their friendship drifted apart once puberty kicked in. In her old life, Debora was obsessed with Gwen because they were both as tall as one another, even more so than the late-blooming boys. When Gwen’s parents divorced, Debora had ceased to be a priority.

"Debbie-" Gwen began, but Yue was way ahead of her.

“I bet you’ll awaken in the school of the whore…” Yue remarked rudely. Her eyes scanned Debora's scandalous uniform. "Slut."

Gwen stared at Yue with genuine shock. Only now was she recalling that Yue was a mad dog when it came to cat fights. The petite Asian girl had a temperament like forty-grit sandpaper. She wasn't one to mince words when insults were needed. Her fiery disposition and foul mouth were matched only by her bust.

“My uncle and my father are both Transmuter Mages,” Debora retorted effortlessly. “What about yours? Conjuration specialising in boats? People like you should go back to where you come from.”

“This stupid Gweilo…” Yue let loose a string of unwelcome syllables that was half Chinese and somewhat English, “I'll awaken as a fire Evoker and burn your whore (whole) house down.”

She could probably do it. Gwen perspired nervously. Damn Yue, you scary!

“You chicks gonna start pulling some hair, ripping some blouses?”
came another voice from beside them.

It was a boy with an utterly forgettable face, an acquaintance of Yue’s from the same primary school, one of those faces you never bothered to speak to on the bus. His eyes moved between the girls lasciviously. When he gawked at Gwen, her gaze made him choke on his next words.

“Piss off you loser.” Debora scowled cattily.

“Come on people, make or break moment here.” A Prefect stepped in between them. “You’re all nervous, I get it, but don't forget your humility and manners as students of Blackwattle.”

Good luck with that, Gwen mused at the Prefect's words. Blackwattle was a Government run school. There were no distinguishing hallmarks other than a campus that overlooked the harbour of Sydney's industrial zone. Most of the time, the campus smelled faintly of fish.

"Go fuck yourself," Yue added testily before turning away. The boy's eyes met the Prefect's, who shrugged.

Gwen and Yue watched as students approached the dais, legs quivering and fingers shaking, placing their hands on the crystal.

Flashes of indistinct colour indicated schools of magic and elemental affinities, following which the students had their I.D Cards registered after a brief vis-a-vis with the Instructors.

Debora’s name came, and she stepped forward towards the crystal. One could see that despite all her bluster, her well-exposed stalks still shook from anxious anticipation.

The surfer girl placed her hands on the crystal and waited. From Gwen's ignorant perspective, a glow entered into Debora's hand and permeated into her body. Then it recycled through the crystal, causing the stone to illuminate. After a few moments, the glass atop the device glowed with a glyph indicating the School of Transmutation, its soft brown halo indicating an Earthen affinity.

Debora signed with relief, though she still felt a little disappointed that she was no more talented than her father predicted. She had wanted the School of the Evoker or Conjurer, to be a bright star upon the battlefield, a blazing tempest of power and fury.

“Your turn, Shorty." Debora looked over at Yue before walking from the platform.

“What an annoying bimbo,” Yue blustered, trying to mask the demons wreaking havoc in her chest.

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“Good luck.” Gwen’s own heart was pounding against her ribcage, quickening her breath and flushing her cheeks bright pink. From what she could gather so far, this Awakening ordeal was an extraordinary moment of exceeding importance.

A few more students came and went.

When it was Yue’s turn, she made her way to the top of the platform and placed her hand on the assigned crystal. The same glow enveloped her small frame; Yue squirmed as the mana completed its circuit. When the radiance returned, it became a blazing glow of ochre, so bright that it illuminated half the auditorium.

A collective gasp emitted from the assembly.

“Evocation with a high tier Fire talent!” an Instructor called out incredulously. “It's tier 4 affinity at least!”

The news was both welcome and remarkable for the pedestrian populous of Blackwattle. Generally speaking, only bloodlines that had generations of Mages who practised the same style was more prone to producing high-affinity talents. Those with affinities often inter-married, generating greater chances of begetting offspring with ever more prominent sympathies for a school or element.

As far as anyone knew, Yue was a regular migrant fleeing the Magical Beasts. For Gwen, the shock was doubly so, as she knew Yue's mother was a NoM. Her friend's common heritage was precisely why she was causing such a stir, could Yue's Awakening mean the rise of a future House?

Observing Yue's serendipitous stardom seemed to trigger another bout of anxiety within Gwen. She was glad that a single piece of toast was all she had for breakfast.

The room erupted into applause. Yue gave a smug look toward the red-faced Debora, who quickly left to speak to her coordinator.

Yue’s fire affinity inferred that with sufficient training, her fire spells would be less costly and more powerful. Though not precisely stellar at lower tiers, should Yue make it to the rank of Magus or Magister, her spells would be stronger, more efficient, and manifest faster than her peers. As for her immediate future, her greatest advantage lied in the fact that Evocation Mages could hunt monsters from the get-go. For Yue, the future was flaming bright.

“Congratulations Yue!” Gwen was happy for her friend but found herself thrust aside by the crowd of students and instructors who surrounded the newly crowned Queen of Flames.

“Next!”
“Evoker, tier 1 Water.”
“Oh, God! Please give me another go! I don’t want to be a fireman…”
“Remove him!”

“Next!”
“Abjuration, tier 1 Earth!”
“Next!”
“No reaction! I am sorry.”
"NOOOOO!"

“Next!”
“Transmutation, tier 2 Air! An Air Mage!”
“Yes! Just what I wanted!”
“Congrats mate!”
"Cheers!"

“Evocation!”
“Divination!”
“Evocation!”

“Conjuration! Tier 1 water!”
“Oh, hell yeah!”

The crowd murmured and congratulated the newly minted Conjurer. Conjuration Mages were extremely powerful once they found their Familiars. In a place with as much water as Coastal Sydney, a Water Conjurer could go far.

Gwen felt another bout of irritation stripping her stomach-lining. According to her alter-ego, one's Primary school of magic determined the most synergetic school that would be available to a caster. To train one’s second school required painstaking repetition, and only those with the talent, experience, and luck of surviving mortal combat ever attained the rare opportunity to master a school beyond the first.

Most Mages remained between tiers 1 to 5 in a single School, happy with the gainful employment offered by the state's many institutions. The risking of life and limb, after all, wasn't for everyone. The world outside the city might be full of monsters, but behind man's Barrier Shields, they could live in relative peace.

“Gwen Song,” called out a voice that sounded to Gwen like a death knell.

The moment of truth, Gwen muttered to herself.

She made her way to the platform and placed her hand on the crystal.

“Relax,” advised the Instructor.

You RELAX, Gwen thought, I don't even know what the hell I am doing.

Gwen's hand touched the cold stone. In an instant, she felt herself on the verge of collapse. Her clammy perspiration glued her blouse to her pallid skin. She had no idea what was going to happen, and her heart felt as though it was trying to shut itself down.

Get a grip! Gwen willed herself, but her body was neglectful of her command; whatever mental synapses that were firing within her physical form was entirely outside of her mental domain.

“Don't be so nervous, place your hand firmly on the crystal,” the instructor commanded.

With vague and trembling fingers, Gwen gripped the crystal.

The mana jolted her hand like a static shock, it travelled red hot up her arm and into her body, invading her spine and filling her veins with molten lead. Her world seemed to expand, her consciousness enveloping the room and extending beyond her physical self. She saw within her mind's eye arcane Sigils that represented the different schools, each cognitive illusions created by her Spellcraft-indoctrinated mind, fabricated by ingrained knowledge to make sense of the senseless, to visualise the incomprehensible.

The mana coiled and flowed, connecting her Astral form to her physical body.

Evocation! Evocation! Evocation! Come on! Gwen's dearest wish was to stick close to Yue until she could figure this world out for herself.

Then a bright Sigil bloomed in her mind.
A golden glow.

But Gwen had no idea what the visions meant.

Then another sigil flared.

A bright and piercing beacon of light.

What the hell does that even mean? Gwen hissed with frustration. Do I touch it? Or talk to it? Isn't there a supposed to be a voice asking me if I want power? What if she had to go to a different campus? Gryffindor! Not Slytherin!

Then another shade, blue this time, and yet another, a bright orange, a purple mauve, a pale lilac-

The Sigils were beyond comprehension now; they seemed to amalgamate into a quickened form of crystalline brightness, brighter than anything Gwen had seen.

The colours blurred and became a nimbus, a twin world of light and darkness. Then as quickly as it began, light and darkness split. There was now two nebulous figures standing side by side.

What the hell is happening? Gwen tried to orientate herself within the light fantastic. What the hell did I Awaken? Some strange new school? I better not have awoken something weird! An abduction by a government agency after less than twenty-four hours in this world would be the worst.

Gwen opened her eyes and looked for her instructor. Maybe he could provide some guidance as to what her affinities are.

“Oh My God!”
“Eek! Aeeee!”
“I can’ believe it!”
“Why God? Why not me!!!”

The room became wild with excitement.

Though it wasn't for Gwen.

Gwen’s instructor regarded her colourless crystal.

“Er…”

“We have a Biomancer!” someone positively shrieked. “Elvia can tap into the Plane of Positive Energy!”

A green glow was fading from the other side of the auditorium, the student body crowding around a small girl even shorter than Yue. From her timid posture and gentle face, Gwen recognised the girl as Elvia Lindholm.

The bookish blonde girl had been the invisible sort, though now her presence captivated the auditorium.

A Biomancer.

Clerics were a rare bird in any neck of the woods as it required simultaneous affinities for both Evocation and Conjuration Schools. The essential caveat though was possessing the Positive Elemental trait. Elvia - made special by a twist of fate, had become a cherished class of individuals existing beyond social strata, for the Frontier was always short on healers.

“O happy day!” the Principal harkened loudly. "Congratulations! Miss Lindholm!"

There had not been a natural healer in the school for almost a decade. Having a healer like Elvia meant Blackwattle would receive a funding boost. The administration would have to hire a specialist to teach her, and the Education Department would be obliged to provide the very best. A school with two healers, a master and student duo! They would be the envy of almost every other school in the district! Usually, only the Selective class of schools had trained arcane healers. The regular school nurse was just a quasi-Cleric trained in applying remedy gels and administering potion-injectors.

Back in the real world, Gwen's instructor faced her with an awkward, apologetic expression.

“I am sorry Gwen.”

Her crystal possessed a transparent glow that was more daylight than any distinct colour.

“You have very low affinity…” the man noted. "Furthermore, I don't see a Sigil or an element...”

What? What do you mean you don't see a Sigil? I saw them! I saw all of them! Those squiggly worm-like arcane marks, right? The things that looked like hieroglyphics married into the Hebrew alphabet.

“It's strange but not unheard of,” the Instructor continued. "We're all made differently."

The instructor’s unwelcome decree was like a death sentence.
Gwen felt a cold shiver of dreadful premonition hang over the nape of her neck like a raised guillotine.

“Well, the transparent nimbus shows that you can tap into the Planes and channel mana,” the Instructor stated with a tone of surety. "But you don't have any affinity, it seems. I am afraid you have what we call a null-base."

Not synergistic? Gwen searched through the brief impulse of her memory.

In a moment the anxiety attack that had been kept at bay by her curiosity returned with a crippling force, striking her as though a concussive blow had been dealt. Gwen had to hold onto the pedestal to keep herself steady.

Synergy was a matter that related to how fast a Mage was able to progress in their schools. It also determined the variability of hybrid magic that Mages mastered as they choose their second, and eventually third schools. A poor synergy meant poor mana conversion efficiency. No matter how hard Gwen trained, she would be far behind those with innate talent.

"Careful now." The instructor arrested Gwen's shoulder.

A flood of memories assaulted her conscious. Her family was still reeling from a messy separation; her father was a useless waste of space. Her mother had fully expected Gwen to awaken in something rare and precious.

What was this absurd plot twist? What difficulty had her rebirth been cranked? Try as she might, the compelling force of conditioned biochemistry held fast her trembling body.

Wasn’t she supposed to be overpowered? Why isn’t everyone shouting and screaming that she was the Girl who Lived?

Gwen beheld at her instructor, dumbfounded.

“I am sorry Gwen,” the man repeated with a sympathetic face. "But it looks like you’re just a common Mage.”


“So, what do I do?” Gwen's trembling lips begged for an answer.

By now, her eyes were moist with the distress of her devastating evaluation. The pitiful look she projected gave the instructor such a pang of guilt that he felt his iron mien falter. After all, the girl's future was nothing if not bleak.

But the crystal told no lies.

Whatever it had presented at its conclusion, was whatever the poor sorceress drew for her lot in life.

“You should be able to cast basic spells without issues,” the Instructor attempted to soothe her confusion with a delicate tone. "Having no affinity also means you have no real drawbacks for accessing different schools, so you could work on being a utility Mage, maybe a machine operator?"

The look of chilling despair on the girl's frail, white face bespoke her desolation.

“Look.” He glanced over at Yue and Elvia, still being congratulated by her fellow students. “You’re close friends with the Fire girl right?”

“Yes Sir,” Gwen replied, still stunned by her commonness.

What was the point of being taken from her perfectly fine life, only to be thrust into a mediocre role in the midst of a eugenic apartheid? Gwen couldn't help but be reminded of an old Bard's musing - that as flies to wanton boys are mortals to the Gods, they pull our wings for sport. Was it mere chance that she was plucked from the apex of her life in Sydney and deposited into this depressing canyon of despair? If there was 'sport' in it, it was certain at her expense.

“I'll put you down as Evocation since you will have access to it. It's also the cheapest and most time efficient to train, but from here on out it's going to be just you. The school will provide what we can of course, but…”

The look on the instructor’s told her more than she needed to know. It was no concern for the school to include her as a low-tier student. All low tier students received the same resources anyway until they could somehow distinguish themselves. She would be one more in a sea of nameless faces that dotted the place like the decor.

“Thank you, Sir,” Gwen answered finally, unsure if her Instructor had helped her or prolonged her suffering.

The Instructor nodded and jotted down in his scribe pad her new classification.

Gwen Song - Tier 1 Evoker.

“Good luck.”

The rest of the grade soon passed their examination.

The junior Mages were assigned to their respective Schools of Magic.

Gwen was in Class II.

As promised, she was in Yue's class. To their surprise, the new darling of the grade, Elvia Lindholm, was also included in class II.

Thankfully, Debora was in Class III.

Looking around, Gwen saw vaguely familiar faces who ignored her. The snub was unpleasant. Her unique family drama over the last two years meant that she seldom had time for friends. For now, however, she had bigger problems, like the fact that she was a wayward soul stolen from across space and time then untimely deposited in a delicate body.

She was one amongst thirty students who were Evokers. It was, after all, the staple of Mages everywhere. Beside the group were the rarer Mages, an assortment of Abjurers, a few Transmuters, two low-affinity Diviners, one low-affinity Enchanter, and so on.

The specialists who emerged were:

Yue, tier 4 Fire Evoker
Jasmine, tier 2 Ice Evoker
Owen, tier 2 Earthen Enchanter
Juergen, tier 2 Water Illusionist
Patrick, tier 1 Water Conjurer

And of course, the creme de crop, Elvia the Tier 2 Biomancer.

The whole thing seemed absurd to Gwen, whose old world was driven by the basic tenet that everyone got a fair shake of the sauce bottle.

It was all well and good if one won the genetic lottery, but what about the NoMs? What about people like her whose talent sucked? Were they doomed to be forever denied a spot in the sun?

She wanted to say something snide, to express the displeasure and frustration that was ripping her chest apart - but she became struck by yet another epiphanic revelation.

Humanity wasn't alone in this world.

This world never had significant wars fought between humans. The Great War was against an Undead incursion that saw the loss of almost twenty per cent of Humanity's land mass to Necromantic Magical Beings. Conversely, the Second World War happened in the 70s, triggered by the awakening of an ancient dragon. In that bout, Humanity lost another swath of cities and fortresses, effectively cut them off from the Pacific Ocean and isolating man into City-states.

In the three decades since a few fallen cities had been reclaimed and stabilised with barriers, but Man had never escaped the existential crisis of being wiped out by an attack from the great unknown.

In fact, her current residence, the Frontier City of Sydney, was one such reclaimed port of call.

Originally lost in 1940 to the Coral Sea War, the coastal areas of Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne were returned to human dominion by the might of the Commonwealth Mageocracy, lead by an English-Chinese-American expedition. The city became thus repopulated by refugees and volunteer forces from the Commonwealth and the diasporic Micronesian nations.

As with all Frontiers, supplies were constrained. Maintaining the Shield Barriers served as the primary preoccupation of any city. What meagre resources remained were then channelled into the city's systems to be redistributed.

When Gwen underwent her junior examination, she had shown no particular aptitude for Magic and had to attend a regular school that taught basic level theory and prep. That had proved a moment of significant disappointment for her mother, who'd expected her to be a prodigy.

Her brother Percy, conversely, had the making of something special, registering a mana signature as young as 10. He was enrolled currently at The Sydney College of Magic for Boys, a 'Selective' government institution.

All in all, what it meant was that she would be starved of resources, which made escaping mediocrity yet more difficult.

In the old world, Gwen had been no stellar student either, but that never stopped her believing that she would do well in life. There was always merit in networking, taking risks, and catching the right business opportunities.

In this world, however, Gwen felt her insides atrophy.

What the hell was she supposed to do?

Virtually everything in this world relied on some knowledge or affinity for magic. Even the wealthiest of the NoMs served a particular House, Clan or Faction. Self-sufficiency for one without immense talent was nigh-impossible.

“Gwen!” A familiar voice shook her from her nightmarish introspection.

It was Yue.

“We’re both Evokers!!” The jubilant Asian girl hugged Gwen’s arm gleefully, sinking Gwen's bony elbow between pillowy mounds. With a tier 4 affinity, her friend's future was as bright as a fireball.

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Was it possible to eke out a living away from Spellcraft?

As with all clickbait rhetoric, the answer was 'no'.

If she gave up Spellcraft, she would be a woman of no importance, a worker ant in a hive of indifferent activity. Without background and lineage, she would be transparent. Her only worth would be as a pretty face in the crowd. When the creatures come for the cities, she would cower in the bunker with the other civilians, awaiting death or salvation.

What kind of stupid life would that be? Who aspires to become cannon fodder, behaving as the wind behaves?

Feeling Yue press against her icy body, Gwen stifled a sigh. She hugged her friend, stealing some of Yue's warmth.

It was stupid to give up so soon, Gwen informed herself. Hadn't the years already taught her that? She wasn't a girl-child out of home for the first time. If she could strike out alone at sixteen and make it then, she could surely do it again. Isn't that what Ol' Blue Eyes said? If I can make it there. I'll make it anywhere?

So what if life gave her lemons?

She's going to make lemon sorbet and key lime pie!

She's going to work it until she spewed blood. No one was born an Archmage. The Path, as they say, was three-quarters risk and reward and one-quarter talent. If she died, then hell, maybe she can wake up back home in her bayside bed!

A plan began to form in her mind.

“I agree, Yue, it's going to be great,” Gwen announced to her friend, who was already daydreaming about the academic term to come.

“Yeah!” Yue grinned from ear to ear, caring not in the slightest the look of dour jealousy and calculated guilt staining Gwen’s brow.

“We’re gonna be the dynamic duo! The Evoker sisters of Blackwattle!” Yue uttered jubilantly.

"Dynamic Duo!" Gwen echoed, swallowing her pride.

The newly formed classes slowly converged into their assigned groups. Now that aptitudes results were assigned and recorded, classes would resume in their new configurations within the week.

For Spellcraft students, boarding on campus was compulsory.

The weekend was so that they got to return home and sort out parental notifications. To Gwen, the ordeal reeked of overreach and authoritarianism. Should a parent deprive the State of a much-needed body, stiff penalties applied.

With a feeling of ambivalence, Gwen said goodbye to an unwilling Yue and returned home to deliver; she supposed, the bad news.

When she once again boarded the tram, Gwen realised the day was still young. As it was still mid-noon, she decided to take the opportunity to engage in some academic research on her current condition.

She switched trams for the State Library, northward of Hyde Park. As a Spellcraft student, her new I.D card allowed her limited viewing of closed resources on magical lore. Not knowing where she must begin, Gwen withdrew several rudimentary tomes to dispel some of her ignorance.

In the past, she had been a troubled high school student, though university quickly saw her talent for academia blossom. She quickly scanned through the necessary volumes and found that she was already familiar with the knowledge. It was more so that she couldn't coax her long-term memory to regurgitate the information she needed. The reading of basic lore, therefore, acted as a trigger to bring forward a decade of schooling.

As knowledge new and old agonisingly conjoined, she came to realise that she was in one hell of a pickle.

First of all, in this world, Spellcraft was kept behind closed doors. Beyond the first few tiers of magic, there existed little to no information on an efficient method of training. Knowledge beyond the high school syllabus was well restricted in a world without Wikipedia, or an Encyclopedia, for that matter. Here was a world where tertiary level knowledge was given exclusively to those who were meritocratically proven.

In the old world, she could Google in five minutes the theory behind nuclear fission. In this world, she had better make it to university before learning anything beyond tier 3 magic.

All in all, there were 9 tiers of Spellcraft, classified as spells, rites, and strategic-class rituals. Thanks to modernised Spellcraft theorems, elemental affinity directly impacted the effect of spells. Moreover, magical phenomena were transmogrified by Spirits and Meta-magic, creating a vast array of spells near-impossible to document.

By the same measure, professional instruction came in the form of Master and Apprentice. For one in Gwen's present condition, the Instructions given to the masses served only to produce fodder Mages necessary for filling gaps in the battle lines. Even when one was lucky enough to employ a Master, few Magisters were willing to teach the secrets of their craft to anyone but a legitimate heir.

Nonetheless, Gwen kept on reading.

Spellcraft was the manifestation of magic.
Casting a spell was achieved via incantations.

Incantations, consisting of both oral and somatic components, served to trigger mnemonic procedures necessary for shaping arcane energies.

The source of a Mage's power was their Astral Soul, perceived in deep meditation as one's Astral Body. An Astral Body's affinity for specific Schools of Magic manifests as Sigils.

One's Sigil shaped the mana from the Elemental Gate. From Fire, Water, Earth, to more exotic powers such as Dust, Magma and even Radiance.

Thus a Spell begins in the form of raw spiritual energy or Mana emitted by the Astral Body. The Mage's elemental affinity supplements this energy through one's Elemental Gate. Simultaneously, invocations shape the energy as it courses through a Mage's mana conduits, exiting the body as the desired phenomena.

The process was simple enough in theory, but the problem lay with the exponential complexity of spells as they increased in tiers.

A tier one spell was a little more than a single incantation. A tier two spell had three incantations. A tier three spell had nine, and tier four spell a whopping twenty-seven. Each existed as a highly complex pattern of thought that must be fluidly delivered through the correct pronounciation. If a spell failed, the Mage suffered mana burn. Usually, failure resulted in dizziness and nausea; with higher spells, the caster could be incapacitated. At its extremity, the invoker may be reduced to a blithering idiot.

In this manner, complex phenomena were incredibly challenging to manifest, as the mana requirement was proportional to the risk of failure and self-harm.

Gwen tried to imagine an Archmage casting a legendary tier nine spell, using old world algorithms to crunch the numbers.

6561 incantations, performed mentally without failure or pause.

By Pythagoras! She sucked in a cold breath of air.

No wonder there were only a handful of these individuals in the world. A dozen Mages out of five billion human beings were capable of becoming arcane Super Computers.

Gwen read on. There was a section on affinity for Schools of Magic.

It would appear that Mages were born with affinities for particular forms of magical phenomena. Evokers, the most common, were adept at releasing energy. Conjurers were best at coalescing and calling forth objects and creatures. Abjurers could create solid matter as barriers.

Any attempt at using a School of Magic in which a Mage lacked affinity would require excessive concentration, risking mana burn.

On the other hand - possessing a Sigil - a talent Mages tend to be born with, made invoking that School of Magic almost second nature.

Gwen closed the book despairingly.

So that was why her instructor had told her that she could only be a utility mage - a third-rate healer, a spotter for the Evoker battalion, a controller for the levitation transports, an operator in the Divination department.

It was because she couldn't cast spells in the heat of combat.

When she turned the page of another Primer, she saw that there was a cantrip on the page before her - something so simple it didn’t even require a Sigil. These simple spells were called Cantrips.

She closed her eyes and began the chant.

"Mage Hand!"

In her mind's eye, she felt the flow of mana race through her body, tingling her skin as they passed through her body's conduits.

She envisioned a hand, an invisible astral limb, holding up the book she was reading.

"Mother! Look!" Gwen's moment of serenity was interrupted by the cry of a child.

The hefty tome fell into her lap.

She was still in the midst of the library and that the pale glow of mana emitted by her indiscretion had caused a stir. There was a child who stared at her wild-eyed, pointing a rudely erect finger toward her face.

"Samuel!" The mother retracted the child's hand. "It's rude to point!"

She turned to regard Gwen with a frightened, apologetic face.

"I am sorry, Mistress Mage," she intoned with a voice that trembled.

"It's fine," Gwen promptly responded, her face flushing a shade of scarlet.

“Miss, no phenomena in the public space please.” Came a voice from behind them. It was a librarian whose face scrunched with displeasure.

“I am sorry,” Gwen apologised. "It won't happen again."

"Thank you, Ma'am!" The woman apologised again.

To be so afraid of even a worthless Mage like me, Gwen thought sadly.

This world was a two-tier dystopia. Here the Mages were nobles, and the nonmagical population the serfs. Such was the difference in their natural endowment. She wondered what compelled the Mages to live beside the NoMs? Noblesse oblige?

Though Mages and citizens had agreed to abide by the metaphorical Magna Carta, it was self-evident that Mages occupied a position irreplaceable by the NoMs.

A system of Nobility based upon genetic meritocracy? Gwen shuddered. A eugenicist's wet dream.

Again, her alter-memories reminded her that when survival was at hand, the handing over of power to a small and elite group of individuals seemed natural and unquestionable.

When the creatures of the Wildlands came, a party of combat Mages could defeat a hundred monsters. A single Magus could annihilate a hoard infestation in a single large-scale assault. A Magister could take on a General class magical beast. A Magi? They were more akin to nuclear deterrents in Gwen's old world. They kept the balance of the world and its fragile peace.

We won't nuke your monster Necropolis if you leave our human Metropolis alone, Gwen mused acidulously. To be a Mage in a world where magic ruled.

The aptitude test was a watershed moment; when the Schrödinger's cat was finally out of the box. Most of the time, the cat died. Sometimes, the cat lived. Once in a blue moon, what came out was a Displacer Beast.

But until then, all children were Tabula Rasa.

'Ping!'

An announcement echoed across the library.

"We will be closing in ten minutes..."

Gwen closed the books. It was time to face the music.


When she was eleven, Gwen's parents separated. Custody, alimony, property splits, embittered family taking sides and caustic dialogue all took their toll. It had been a terrible time for the teenage Gwen, who through it all, tried to take care of her brother Percy.

In the end, she powered through and believed herself stronger for surviving the drama. She suffered a few psychological tics- but it was nothing a North Shore therapist couldn't resolve, especially aided by pharmacology, the 'magic' of her old world.

She had believed her past behind her, yet here she was, ambushed by her second adolescence.

The district they lived in, Forestville, was primarily for working class Mages and NoM civilians. The streets were narrow and cramped, and her area of the neighbourhood, lovingly designated Zone 11, was filled with stifling habitat blocks smothering one another’s access to sunlight, ensuring that the vast majority of residents lived in permanent shadow.

"Oi, Lover!"
"Give us a kiss sweetheart!"
"I could play with those legs for days!"

Catcalls from the locals were a common occurrence in Forestville. The district was, after all, filled with unemployed NoMs and luckless Mages half-hanging out of windows in their sweat-stained shirts.

Gwen hastened her pace and made for the apartment.

She paused in front of the gates, attempting to recollect herself. Now that her talent was set in stone, she had people to disappoint.

At the thought of her mother, Gwen shuddered involuntarily.

Her memory threw up the vision of a fierce, beautiful, vivacious existence offset by hare-brained schemes and bouts of irrational jealousy. Mid-life crisis combined with a bi-polar personality had ensured that the old Gwen lived in abject terror of her mother's slightest displeasure.

Her alter-self couldn't understand why her father - Morye Song - a half Russian, half Chinese Abjurer, a ‘success story’ migrant, chose to remain in her mother's orbit.

But Gwen did.

The reason was simple.
Economic reality was a bitch.

The apartment under which she stood belonged not to their father but their mother, or more accurately, her Clan. It was only by their mother's charity that their unambitious, skirt-chasing father could afford a comfortable lifestyle for the kids. Simply put, the economic impetus of a roof over their heads bound Gwen and Percy to their mother, likewise serving as a Sword of Damocles held over the head of her ex-partner.

She pushed through the gate and entered the complex.

The six-storey building did not possess a Levitation platform. The physically demanding ascent gave her more time to catch up with memories of her alter ego.

Her parents had met while studying, catching on like a house on fire. By Gwen's recollection, it should have ended there. Yet, something alike to opposite attract seemed to have found one another, and the easy-going Morye Song married the rebellious Helena Huang.

Of course, the brightest candle burns only half as long, and her mother was gunpowder.

By an age alter-Gwen was old enough to understand, their different upbringings had made them less in kin and more in malice. Helena was an ambitious princess, Morye was a laidback bloke. It was all very Edward Albee.

When Gwen grew up a hale and mundane, tested to reveal precisely nothing by the divisive age of 10, the marriage had reached its limit.

“Your blood is weak,” her mother had announced one day, long before her brother Percy displayed his potential.

The argument escalated, and more than just dinner was destroyed that night.

Then revelation came that her mother had found an old flame, a former admirer, an industrious tier 4 Earthen Enchanter-Magus who had a lingering crush on the vivacious girl of his dreams.

Rationally, it was a reasonably prudent and pragmatic choice. For if and when the Shield Barrier failed, would one prioritise some no-name Barrier Abjurer, or would one preferably be escorted to the nearest Freight-Carrier as the partner of a vital Fabricator?

She ascended the last flight of stairs, out of breath and feeling torn. How should she deal with her parents? Could she even see them as her own? Certainly, they were the biological parents of this body she now inhabited, but-

Gwen turned the handle.

Was her father home? She wondered. Discerning his work schedule at the Barrier Station was difficult. After the divorce, Morye had found rebirth in playing with younger women.

Was a little payback for her mother's possessive ownership over his children? Then again, Gwen reminded herself, in this world or the last, Morye's priority had always been himself.

She arrived at the door, turned the keys, and entered.

Percy was chewing through Allenberg’s Primer for Astral Theory on a desk covered with notes. From the looks of his copy, her brother had sunk far more hours into it than she ever did.

“I am back!” Gwen announced to the world.

“Welcome back Sis,” Percy addressed her.

Gwen dropped off the books in the cramped living room, then slumped into the decaying foam of their two-decade-old couch.

“What you having for avo-tea?” She asked.

“The usual, Sambal Eggs.”

“I'll have it on bread.”

“Do it yourself ya lazy bum!” her brother replied tartly.

"Make it for me! Please?"

"Arrrgh! Stop pinching me!"

Percy made afternoon tea, and the two shared a meal of dubious eggs.

“So…” Percy said finally, “how goes the aptitude test?”

"Evoker, null element," Gwen admitted with a bittersweet tone.

"Congrats!" Percy raised a fork to toast, then realised what his sister had said. "Oh."

"It's fine." Gwen put on a wane smile.

She supposed it was better than being a NoM.

Percy went to a Selective High School, where the guy that no one wanted to pick for a ball game would be minimum tier 2 something. Percy himself was probably tier 3 at worst, higher if he got lucky.

Telling him that she awakened as a no-element Evoker was akin to the old world version of informing a peer on the U Syd Med-track that you managed to get into an Arts degree at a vocation college. She felt embarrassed just saying it.

The peppery-chilli eggs turned to ash in her mouth.

"I am happy for you." Percy tried to say something comforting, but he was just a kid with an adolescent's emotional quotient. Percy's education placed exceptional emphasis on talent, privilege, and the promise of a holier-than-thou future. From the look of consternation on his face, Percy appeared abashed and confused. Gwen knew that Percy of all people would be aware that once they were on their career tracks, he would never see her again except for Christmas dinners. After all, the exact thing happened in their old life together; this world may be different from old Sydney, but many occurrences ran on parallel rails.

"It's okay," Gwen said finally after a moment. "Thanks for caring."

"I'll be in my room, got a lot of work to cover,” Percy replied in kind. He packed the paper plates and dropped them in the bin before returning to his room. "You do the pans."

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Gwen growled. This world or that one, she HATED doing the washing.

Gwen pulled her face from the Primer manual spread out in front of her. After another more hours brushing up on theory, she once again felt the itch for some practicum.

Their apartment was built on the top floor and had access to the rooftop, thanks to fire regulations.

Gwen recalled the feeling of trying to summon the Mage Hand and found herself a comfortable spot in the sun. She opened the manuscript of Black’s Transmutation Cantrip for Beginners and turned the page.

**Mage Hand**
Conjuration, Cantrip
Casting Time: 1 minor Incantation
Range: Visual, up to ten metres
Components: Somatic
Duration: 1 minute + variable

_The caster creates a hovering hand capable of manipulating small objects._

Gwen could see why the process was considered arcane. Beyond general advice, there was almost no indication on how to manifest the phenomenon; her manuscript was particular to the author. If she were to peruse different editions, they would possess different annotations.

She calmed her mind and tried to think of nothing, banishing her anxieties and worries for the moment.

Invoke the Sigil.

Channel the mana.

"Mage Hand!"

And Release!

In her mind's eye, she caught sight of a School-less Sigil, requiring no astral attunement. She felt something pour from her thoracic diaphragm and traverse under her skin. A tingling sensation exited her fingers with a lilac spark, then in front of her, a semi-transparent hand manifested.

No, not a hand. It was more like a ‘presence’, a constrained force that was moulded and shaped by her will. She imagined it lifting up her manuscript, and felt the phantom feeling of weight upon her fingers. So that’s why it’s Phantom Hand, Gwen realised. It was much easier to replicate the arcane phenomenon by drawing upon physical synaesthesia.

So that's somatic casting, Gwen mused to herself. Most spells required at least one free hand to indicate direction and expression. It took years of practice to forgo the somatic component, longer to forgo the verbal component.

She played with the telekinetic hand for a minute, lifting and moving pots and plants that littered the rooftop, noting the diminishment of the spell’s effect over time. She wished that there was a numerical value to mana, but apparently, that was too difficult to apply systematically and universally. Additionally, as the spell drained mana from her Astral Body, she could feel the onset of a mental fatigue like the brain drain one felt when trying to solve a complicated equation for too long.

Alright, she told herself. Not a bad start.

Satisfied, she produced another textbook, Otsu's Primer for Evokers, and turned to the only level one Evoker spell without any elemental affinity - the ubiquitous Magic Missile.

Magic Missile
Evocation
Casting Time: 1 Major Incantation
Range: Visual, about 30 - 40 metres
Components: Somatic
Duration: Instantaneous.

Launch three or more projectiles of force at a designated target. When used in its default capacity, this spell possesses line-of-sight target seeking.

If she registered as a tier 1 Evoker, she would need to be sufficiently proficient in demonstrating an Evocation spell.

Once again, Gwen uttered the invocation for the Evocation school.

It felt stupid completing her invocation with a boisterous 'Magic Missile!', but she had no other instructions to follow.

With measured confidence, her mind tapped into the celestial conduit of the Evocation Sigil. She tried to envision three objects of force, each shaped by a keen edge.

Invoke the Sigil.

Channel the mana.

"Magic Missile!"

And Release!

The expectant thud of three projectiles chipping concrete did not manifest. Instead, a sudden, dizzying sickness overwhelmed her. With a violent start, she doubled over and retch up a serving of fried eggs, curling up upon the concrete pavement like a cooked prawn.

Gwen groaned, keeping her head perpendicularly rested on the side as to avoid choking on her vomit. Insufficient ability to tap into the pathways of magical schools meant that unspent mana fed back into her body, the book had stated as much.

After a quarter of an hour, she returned to the kitchen and washed out her mouth.

No more chilli eggs before practising, Gwen reminded herself.

She then returned to the rooftop and hosed down the area with the garden sprayer.

The Primer inferred that the only way to overcome mana sickness was efficient activation of the Sigil, and that came with experience and talent - ideally a combination of the two.

Gwen steeled her spine, settling again into her mind’s eye.

Another episode of gut-wrenching nausea followed her second attempt.

Right, no solid food before practice, Gwen cleaned up after herself. She felt the slow onset of despair as denial turned to anger.

By her third attempt, Gwen failed to manifest the Sigil. She was mana drained, or as the popular parlance would have it- she was OoM, out of mana.

No blue, no spell. An exacting law of Spellcraft.

Three spells and I am out. Gwen thought to herself, feeling her mana recollect slowly.

The more she failed, the more Gwen grew frightened of what her failure implied. Driven by tenacity as much as anxiety, she continued to experiment well into the evening, choosing to push past the toll it took on her physical body.

When finally the last drop of stomach acid had been dry-heaved, she sat back in a daze and pondered the possibility of accepting her traumatising reality.

She turned again to her books, trawling through every word and paragraph to find some clue. Had she been the scion of some great, influential house, they would have found Tutors, associates and allies to teach her, but Gwen was all on her own, and only she could be the instrument of her metamorphosis.

'Clang!'

The mesh door opened behind her.
The baritone voice of her father pierced through the threshold.

“Good Gods!” Her father's eyes widened at the terrifying state of the rooftop, filled with scrunched kitchen wipes and the contents of his daughter’s digestive tract.

“Hey Dad,” Gwen replied weakly.

“Gwen! What are you doing! You little Idiot! You can’t rush these things!” Her father’s voice unusually worried and tender. He extended a hand and Gwen took it, feeling her father's affirming grip retrieve her from the floor.

“I know, Dad. I had a long day, that's all,” Gwen returned. She regarded her other-father in the light of the mauve, dying sun, and saw in his eyes genuine worry.

The Morye of this world was ruggedly handsome, with a chiselled jawline and high cheekbones carried over from his Eastern European heritage. His eyes, two dark brown orbs, were soft and gentle. Curiously, he was a few centimetres shorter than his teenage daughter, although considering her six-foot height, his limited stature was barely noticeable until they stood side by side. An imperturbable man of carefree nature, there was a quiet masculinity in Morye that seemed to attract particular types of women.

“Thanks for asking,” Gwen answered softly, struggling to erase the edge in her voice.

“Don’t be so cold,” her father responded, sensing the distance in his daughter. “Come on. I bought some wonderful stuff for dinner.”

She returned with him down into the apartment, where Percy was setting up the dinner table.

“Roast wild quail,” her father stated. “From the Wildlands. It should help you replenish your mana.”

Unlike domesticated beasts, many of the flora and fauna that lived beyond the human cities possessed qualities beneficial to Mages.

The culinary fare was another point of disparity that made Gwen’s desire to equalise her position more difficult. The scion of a wealthy Magus family would have consumed nought but quasi-magical diets throughout his or her life, and in a world where every ounce of mana counted, it made a significant difference.

“Let's eat,” Percy begged. “I am a growing kid!”

“Alright, go ahead." Gwen chuckled, sliding into her seat as her family dug into the food.

“I am happy that you made it as a Mage,” her father said when the quail had gone the way of the dodo.

“I am glad too,” Gwen remarked, unconvinced.

“So, an Evoker huh?” Her father grinned. "It’s a great school for progression, pretty good for getting out there into the Green and Orange Zones.”

“Yeah.” Gwen nodded, wondering if she should confess to her father that she was not technically a true Evoker, merely registered as one.

“If there’s anything you need…” her father began.

As her memories continued to meld, Gwen felt torn by a dissonance of logic and emotion. Her unbidden memories threw up a brief vision of her father disinterestedly watching her mother dash their dinner to pieces, sardonically putting an apathetic cigarette to his lips as she screamed and raged. The whole while, Percy hid in her room while Gwen had peeked from a gap in between her bedroom door.

“It's okay Dad." Gwen recovered from the disturbing recollection. “I’ll manage, and I’ll let you know if I need anything, I promise.”

“Alright.” Her father smiled wearily, unsurprisingly breathing out with evident relief. "You’re a big girl. You let me know.”

With dinner over, Gwen wanted to return to the rooftop, but her father disallowed it, citing the disturbance it would cause to neighbours if they saw disorganised, impulsive flashes of mana blasting from their building.

“Hey, before you go…” the man continued. Gwen could see her father's Adam's apple bobbing back and forth. It was a tic, her father always did this when he was forcing himself to commit to something.

“Your grandfather gave me this when I came into my talent.” Morye removed a jade pendant in the shape of a Kirin, a mythical chimaera. “I want to give it to you, now that you too have become a Mage.”

Gwen took the pendant in her hand and felt the residual warmth remaining on the jade.

“Thanks, Dad, I'll cherish it,” Gwen replied, feeling surprised at her father's offer. From the corner of her eye, she could see Morye staring at the jade longingly for a moment more. When she looped the pendant on her neck, he seemed to resign himself to his decision.

“I am glad to give it,” he said finally, giving Gwen the expression of one releasing some great burden.

“Is it special in any way?” Gwen asked gingerly, testing the waters.

“It brings fertility and fortune.” Her father laughed to himself.

“Please be serious,” Gwen asserted coldly.

“I have no idea.” Her father shrugged. “It's a keepsake from the old country.”

“From Grandfather?” Gwen pushed the question a little more. Her father had very few triggers - though questioning how their family had become lost in the Old Country was one of them.

“Go get some rest.” As expected, her father 's answer became evasive. A look of weathered annoyance spread across his scowling face.

“You have a big day ahead," he warned her. “You need to report to your mother.”

Her supper immediately threatened rebellion.

"I am going to sleep."

With dinner concluded, Gwen retired to her room.

She slipped into a hot shower, summoning the meditative Zen of shower thoughts.

_What a day._

She woke up firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place.

Despite her best and most ardent attempts, it was impossible to invoke that damn Evocation Sigil. She had spent so much of her time reeling from illness, that she could not successfully evoke a tier 1 spell.

A tier 1 spell! Gwen baulked at the thought. What would happen when she had to practice spells with two-digit incantations? Would her head explode like a crushed melon?

Little wonder, so few people make it past Magus, she thought to herself. The mental toll could crack one's brain like an egg.

Exhausted, she returned to the same bed from which she awoke, its sheets still unmade.

Hopefully, when she woke up again, it would be beside seaside Sydney.


Turbulent thoughts tormented Gwen through the night.

Why was she here? What happened to the teenage Gwen of this world? In fact, now that she thought about it, what about her thirty-year-old body? Would her secretary, Becky, find her boss in a state of decomposition? Would the Sun Herald report on her mysterious demise with the headline, 'Woollahra Woman Mysteriously Dead: Face eaten by her two Cats! Pictures Inside!'?

Hovering above and watching herself below, her body began to writhe on the bed, softly whimpering as if taken by a night terror. Within her mind, her twin animus folded upon themselves like origami. Collapsing, collating and condensing until her consciousness became obscure and ambiguous.

The scene of her Awakening once again flashed upon her inward eye. Little squiggly Sigils crawled across her vision, manifestations from a feverish brain. In anger, she reached out and grasped at the illusive glyphs, tearing from the celestial nebulas handfuls of stardust.

Once again, there were two of her: one crackling with energy, the other glowering with obsidian malevolence, consuming one another like dissolving twin-stars. Whenever a sliver of shadow broke from the confines of her body, a stab of lightning banished it below the surface. Where the light had filled her to the point of bursting, the shadow consumed it for fuel.

Her existential struggle continued until it assumed the shape of a lithe female silhouette, an obsidian glass sculpture. Slowly, her consciousness settled back into her body, forever anchored to its host upon the Material Plane.

Gwen felt as though she had witnessed the tapestry of the universe, an interplay of Eros and Thanatos. From one came two, from two came three, then from three, came the COSMOS.

Gwen awoke in the late morning, exhausted by insomnia. Every bone in her body felt sundered as she lay in bed, paralysed within a pool of salty perspiration.

Jesus. Gwen pressed her swollen eyes. Had she been crying? Her lips were parched, and her tongue was on fire; she needed a drink desperately.

Painfully, like lifting a dumbbell, she moved an arm across her chest. With a grunt of wilful imposition, Gwen threw herself from the bed in a moment of dizzying weakness. She struck the carpet below, taking deep lungfuls of air, each gasp sending electric shocks through her torso.

Was this the price of training foolishly and unwisely? Gwen tried to recall her actions from last night. Was it was impossible to overcome talent with effort?

Leaning against her nightstand, Gwen stood; her trembling legs may as well be wet spaghetti.

She checked her clock.

11:00.

“Aw shit,” she cursed.

She was going to be late for her mother; a direr prospect than trying to move her battered body.

Forcing herself into the shower, Gwen leaned against the cold tile and let the warm water run over her. The steam soothed her bruised tendons and eased the dryness in her throat.

When was the last time she cried?

Gwen herself did not recall having such moments of emotional vulnerability, at least not since her old world family had gone their own way.

But her youthful body was only fifteen, a vulnerable, hormonal flesh and blood biochemical construct undergoing puberty. She felt the dissonance between her helpless psyche and her temperamental physique distinctly, making her simultaneously young and old.

Gwen turned off the tap.

Now, she must meet her other-mother.

Within a particular section of her wardrobe was kept all the presents gifted to her by her mother. By Helena's decree, whenever they met, Gwen should publically display her appreciation for her mother’s “tender loving care”.

A dizzying array of dresses presented themselves.

With a sharp eye, she picked out a blue Miu Miu one-piece pleated skirt with rounded French collars and a pair of Mary Janes which the old Gwen kept polished to a dazzling shine. From another draw, Gwen unfolded a velvet package and retrieved a leather handbag she couldn't possibly afford.

The selection suited her skinny, adolescent body well. After brushing down her defiant hair and touching up her brows and lashes, she flew down six flights of stairs to the tune of clicking heels.

As she staggered out the door, Gwen observed that her alter ego disliked the feeling of having her legs bared to the world, fearing that her long and shapely limbs drew unwanted attention. Presently, however, she cared little for such immature self-consciousness. A woman's beauty was her own; she could damn well do as she pleased.

The station was only a few minutes away from her habitat-block.

The Forestville to City-Circle was far more crowded than Gwen expected, and by the time the 'all stop to Central' pulled past Redfern, it was jam-packed. Lulled by the beat of the train's wheels against the tracks, she thought of her mother and how she would broach the subject of her lack-lustre, uncompetitive Awakening, hopefully not giving herself away in the process.

In this world or the other, her relationship with her mother was tumultuous at best. Gwen knew from experience that behind the facade of their cordial monthly meetings and trendy, expensive dinners was the expectation that she would not fail her mother’s Great Expectations.

"Erh..."

A reflexive moan issuing forth from her lips took Gwen by surprise. She quickly turned her body against the crowd of impatient passengers to hide her flushing face. The mere thought of Helena's frigid face made her want to suck in her gut.

Get a grip girl! Gwen commanded her unruly teenage body. Was she ever this emotionally unstable?

“!”

Her meditative introspection was rudely interrupted by a tactile invasion creeping up her thighs, sending goosebumps up the entirety of her torso. There was suddenly the horrid, slimy sensation of a foreign appendage pressing against her buttocks.

Her immediate reaction was to freeze up like a deer caught in the path of a Fireball, her body turning rigid as paralytic shock overwhelmed all awareness.

Gwen! GET A GRIP!

Through sheer force of will, her all-consuming rage restored some of her mobility. This assault on her person was an outrage! She was being invaded and violated. She required the immediate expulsion of her offender from the world of the living!

Slowly, she turned her face, bringing the full force of her heterochromatic hazel eyes to bear.

'CRACK!'

An odour of ozone filled the air.

Unbidden, the tension drained from her body. Gwen felt the snap of something unleashed, a violent flash of mana igniting the conduits of her body, accompanied by the dizzying sensation of mana drain. A Tyrian-purple shunt of electricity ran along the metallic door of the carriage, crawling across its surface as a fissure of lightning. Above, Lumen-bulbs grew several magnitudes brighter before bursting in a shower of sparks, sending its diffused mana all over the cabin.

An alarm screamed through the carriage as the public display panel began to screech.

“Spells are forbidden on public transports.”
“Violation of the Transport Safety Act is a federal offence.”
“Remain calm as officers will momentarily be onsite.”
“Remain still. Scrying spells are in effect,” a chirpy female voice informed the passengers.

A circumference of space cleared around Gwen. Murmurs of disbelief passed between passengers.

It was evident who the miscreant had been. A young man with a terrified mien and Einstein-hair sat on his bottom, a wet patch on his pants where a single pulse of electricity had made him instantly incontinent.

“Spare me please,” the offender moaned. “I didn't mean it, it… it was an accident.”

“Holy crap did you see that?”
“A Quasi-elemental Mage!”
“What an unlucky bastard…”
“That's like assaulting a Magical Beast in public…” someone joked.
“God, I wish I awakened as a Quasi-elementalist.” A passenger sighed.
“I hope there's not going to be a delay,” a more pragmatic voice joined the first.

Below her, the young man whimpered.

“I didn't know! I didn't…” her assailant grovelled.

A feeling of disgust aside, Gwen was just as shocked as her offender.

What the hell was that!?

Gwen tried to recall the last ten seconds.

The man's filthy paw and touched her buttocks, then sparks were flying every which way. Gwen quickly searched within herself and felt an absence of mana. She had invoked something, no doubt about that, but how had she done it?!

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The far side of the carriage slid open, and a path was made by the crowd to admit the attending officers. Their uniforms revealed them to be RailCorp Mages, both conductor and guard.

“Alright, clear out,” commanded the lead officer in his navy uniform. “Who cast the lightning spell?”

When they saw that the crowd had made a circle around Gwen, their attitude became incredulous.

“G’day.” One of them tipped his hat. “Can someone tell me what happened here?”

A dozen voices spoke at once, with the two officers taking note of the consensus.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” One of them questioned the offender, having already framed the occurrence within his mind.

“It… it was an accident…” the young man maintained.

“NoM.” The senior the Officers pinched the bridge of his nose. “You better be sure of what you’re saying, because of two reasons. One, you just assaulted a Mage, and Two…”

He turned to Gwen.

“Miss, we are going to need your student I.D.”

“Yessir,” Gwen replied demurely and produced her I.D from her handbag.

“… and TWO, you assault a minor.”

The man’s face was ashen and dripping.

“… which means, for either infringement, we’re authorised to use Mind-Magic on you.” The officer smirked smugly, “So, NoM, what'll it be?”

“I tried to touch her inappropriately…” Her offender confessed, yielding like a bag of soaked ramen.

“Now then.” The Officers noted each other's acknowledgement before turning to Gwen politely.

“Your I.D please young lady… You’re not in too much trouble, but it is still a crime to use a spell on the public transit system.”

Gwen recognised in the Officer's halting tone that there was wiggle room in the man's edict. In addition to the trouble that would come with being charged with a public offence, having a record would impress her academic record poorly.

While pondering her next course of action, Gwen felt a breeze pass between her legs. Her alter ego would have burst into tears, but Gwen was no shrinking violet. Men, particularly men in positions of power, responded very well to vulnerability.

“I am sorry.” Gwen made herself smaller, leaning a little against the pane of the door so that it accentuated her long white legs. She looked up at the officers with downcast eyes moist with distress.

“I didn't know that someone would grab me by the… the…tooshie…” She opted for a more juvenile lexicon. She was just fifteen, after all. “I was so scared… I lost control; I am not very good at spells… I had Awoken yesterday…”

The Officers' faces grew full of empathy and compassion.

This poor girl!

Such a sweet little thing! To give her a record would surely ruin her life - all because of this scum sucking NoM! Some human garbage no better than fodder for the Goblins!

“We’ll just take a record, Miss.” The senior of the two seemed to have made up his mind. “There will be no charges. Anyone can see that it was a genuine accident.”

When Gwen put her hand on her chest and felt her heart flutter, she was no longer acting. The mind was competent, but the body was inadequate.

“Thank you,” she replied sweetly, her face glowing with happiness.

Aww, the crowd cooed. The assembly within the carriage nodded in satisfaction. Justice had transpired. This incident would make a pleasant luncheon conversation, accompanied by smashed avocados.

When the train pulled up to Central, the officers took down Gwen's details.

Gwen bid them a G'day before realising with renewed dread that she was now indubitably late for her mother's appointment. Exiting Central, she began to sprint. Clicking, clacking and turning heads wherever she went. Gwen soon arrived at Sheraton by the Park, where undoubtedly her mother was on the verge of burning down the hotel.

"Ma'am?" A footman gazed over's Gwen's panting form appreciatively.

Gwen straightened her hair with her hands and followed the footman into the cafe. She didn't have to look far for her mother. Helena Huang always occupied the most conspicuous space.

Helena sat at the bar with a too tight dress that hugged her curvaceous body ridiculously. Her mother was tall and voluptuous but had a way of carrying her sumptuous flesh sensually as some women can. Even indoors she wore the classic brown Gucci shades that covered her face, framed by a mass of cascading black ringlets. Her scissored legs revealed toned, tanned thighs still supple and tight, her bosoms pressed to create an intrusive cleavage that drew furtive glances from men and women across the room.

“I am sorry I am late!” Gwen declared with a distinctively sweet voice that escaped her lips reflexively.

Helena swivelled in a manner that made it seemed as though there was a camera somewhere.

Her mother took off her sunglasses with a swish of her voluminous hair to reveal dark eyeliners and too-thick lashes framing a vivid pair of eyes.

“My lovely Guinevere,” her mother intoned in that sickly-rich voice of hers, full of promise for exciting things. Gwen’s real name was the same, but her mother would have liked it be something with more, ‘culture,’ as she put it.

Crossing the floor, the sensuous woman embraced her lithe daughter, forming an enviable arch of femininity. A blooming teenage, a loving mother, a backdrop of flowers and desserts at the high tea room of the Hyde Park Sheraton - that was Helena's perfect world.

Despite being an hour late, the Maitre d’ micromanaged a free table for the two, at which point mother and daughter settled down to cakes, cups, and ices.

Watching her mother leaving a perfect lip print on the china gave Gwen heartburn. The high tea was a rare treat, though right now, even Royal Earl Grey turned her stomach. After struggling to deliver a strawberry shortcake to her lips and failing to swallow the tarty dessert, Gwen opted to just come out with the truth.

“So…” she coughed politely behind a serviette, “I got tested for aptitude yesterday, and I am an Evoker.”

Her mother’s hazel eyes were two balls of amber-green ice.

“That’s wonderful dear,” her mother spoke in a manner filled with indifference. They said that the worst form of neglect wasn't aversion, but the cessation of care. "And?"

“Just… Evoker.” Gwen willed herself to look, but her body dared not meet her mother’s eyes. Helena's irises were even more striking than Gwen's, a rarified green with concentric yellow rings which delivered the terrifying impression of a tigress eyeballing its prey.

“I … see.” Her mother smiled, but it was a smile with teeth.

They drank the tea in silence.

Gwen wondered what went through her other mother's head. She knew that her maternal Clan was very wealthy in Sydney. Helena's brother and his wife were mediocre Mages, but opportunistic real estate brokers. Their son, Richard, attended The Prince’s College, the premier private magical institution in Sydney as a Water Conjurer. Gwen's widowed grandfather was once a famed Enchanter, though now dangerously senile.

Helena must have hoped against hope that Gwen would give her something to brag about to her brother, but that daydream had now died a dog’s death.

“Mother, I was groped by a guy on the train,” Gwen said suddenly, the words blurting out of her mouth as though possessing a mind of their own. “I managed a spell discharge…”

“It's getting late,” her mother interjected suddenly.

"Mother..."

“Gwen. It is rather late.” Helena repeated herself, her tone frosty with rime.

When Gwen regained control of her body and attempted to salvage some dignity, her mother's expression soured. Did Helena think she was lying to diffuse her anger? Trying to score pity marks? Not even her original mother had been this bad!

You selfish bitch! She wanted to shout.

Her body responded by cramping up.

“Next time?” Gwen heard herself bleat, her guts pantomiming a pretzel.

Jesus, I am a grown woman… Her face flushed red with frustration and distress. What had Helena done to this poor girl? The Pavlovian response from her teenage body was beyond Gwen's mastery.

“I’ll call.” Her mother replied, her eyes already in another place. "Goodbye."

Gwen made it as far as Hyde Park before she felt the impulse to tear off her expensive dress and gift her Chanel bag to the nearest hobo. She wanted to cry; God knows she could use a good scream and howl. The soft fabrics of her expensive attire irritated her skin. She stood under the iconic cypresses that lined the World War I memorial and tried to recollect herself as logic and psychosis jostled for control.

The struggle proved futile.
Her whole body shook uncontrollably; she wanted to vomit.
Something unspeakable bubbled forth from the dark recess of her tenebrous psyche.

"Blurrgh!"

Up came the high tea, together with a resonating eruption of mana from her Astral Form. A feeling of self-loathing overwhelmed her as an inexplicable hunger course through her body. A shunt of dark energy, visible only at the edge of vision, encompassed her immediate surroundings. The lush lawn beneath her feet began to tear and disintegrate as abrasions lashed the trunk of the giant cypress, gouging grooves across the blond flesh.

The effect seemed to last only a second, but her vitality was drained beyond measure. Her world began to spin as she slumped against the cypress, collapsing in a heap against its withered roots.

Gwen sat with a start, her body aflame with aching joints and tender flesh. She shivered in her sweat-soaked mini-dress.

Did I lose conscious in the middle of the city, in a public space?! Gwen marvelled at her inopportune epilepsy. She’s damn lucky she didn't get assaulted or worse!

Instinctively, she felt for her bag, the absurdly expensive, near one of a kind handbag from her mother.

Naturally, it had found a better, more astute owner.

Now she felt like crying, and not on behalf of her alter-ego either. This despair was her own, trying to come to terms with the succession of fucked up events that seem to pile on without end. First, she Awakened to become trash. Then, she gets molested on the train. Now she falls unconscious and gets robbed. Maybe she'll get groped on the way back too, completing the fucking quad-factor.

Gwen felt that if she cried right here, right now, there would be no shame; she deserved a little emotional bloodletting, grown woman or otherwise.

Not to mention she was indeed bleeding.

Her Message Device, her 'phone' was gone as well, as was her cash.

Thankfully, she still had an ID, a currency card, and a train ticket in her skirt-pocket.

Gwen stared blankly at the battered tree in front of her, some asshole had vandalised the park. Nothing was sacred in this world.

She looked about her dazedly.

It was only her second day and already she could do with an overdose of Celexa and Buspar washed down with a double shot of Don Julio.

Her dress was soiled, her shoes dusty and the leather scuffed. Her exposed thighs were covered in goosebumps, unprepared to face the cooling dusk. Her wounded knee stun.

She just wanted to go home. She had her ticket, that was good enough, for now.

She stumbled to her feet, her hands brushing down her dress. It would need to be dry cleaned. More money, more costs she couldn't afford.

Like the blood, her mood consisted of a rusty, oozy melancholy.

I guess this is how people get suicidal, Gwen thought to herself, watching the trains pull in. What a fucking day.

She stopped by the police box in Central and made a report. She left the Officers her father’s Message Glyph, then stumbled her way toward the platform for South Sydney.

On the train, she hugged herself tightly against the pane of the double doors, the very picture of pity. With her blemished dress and a freshly scabbed knee, she must have thoroughly kindled the imagination of her fellow travellers.

By the time Forestville rolled around, she had politely explained to several Samaritans that she was alright and was now going home. At Redfern, she had threatened to call the Railcorp guards when a salacious salary man assumed she was homeless and wanted to know her nightly rate.

When she finally opened the door to her apartment in what felt like a return trip to Mordor, sans Eagles, she was faced down by the surprised expression of her father.

“I got a call from the police…” he began, but Morye's face wasn't one of worry. It instead carried a look of guilt, like a child who'd been caught red-handed. She was being rude, Gwen knew, but she was too mentally and physically drained to deal with her father right now. She pushed past Morye and made for the kitchen, where the family kept the medicine box.

“Hey! Go to your room...”

Gwen looked toward her father.

A woman called out from the kitchen.

“Morye, is everything alright?” It was a voice she had never heard before. Gwen was very good with voices.

Fuck! Gwen heard herself scream internally. FUCK!

She was moving out next week, but this fucking guy.
This selfish piece of shit!
Would it kill her Dad to wait five fucking days before fucking a woman in the living room? Where the fuck was Percy? Why isn't he saying anything?

Unwashed and no longer giving a shit, Gwen stumbled into her room while her father commanded her angrily to stay. Slamming the door, she locked it behind her.

What new fucking wonders would tomorrow bring? Gwen thought to herself bitterly. Her body struck the bed, and her mind became full of darkness.