Alone at last, Gwen tried to measure the short stick handed to her by lady Fortuna.

So she’s a spy now.

Gwen Song, a femme fatale of Mata Hari's fame.

Should she find a red dress and a chaise lounge to malinger so that she could be smouldering jazz, languishing smoke and mirror all at once?

She didn’t have a chaise though, all she had was a stainless steel protrusion from the wall with a foam mattress that made her sweat profusely.

Gwen glanced at the stainless steel throne embedded into the floor, attached to the drinking fountain.

Nature called.

Was someone watching? Was there a guard looking at her through some lumen recorder right now? Would someone burst in if she answered her biological needs?

Gwen frantically tried to activate her Storage Ring, but the dampener stole away even the thimble of mana she required to enable its spatial effect.

“Is someone there?” she announced to the general vicinity of her cell.

No one would come. Of course.

But the silence was hardly reassuring.

There was no Telescreen here for her to turn her back to, no corner in the room for her to be just out of sight.

She looked at the stainless steel water throne again.

Fuck it. Gwen convinced herself. Why torture herself?

She'd seen enough reruns of MacGyver.

Convincing herself the guards should understand, she tore the sheets from the foam mattress's steel frame and wrapped them around her upper body. Then she proceeded to perform a pantomime charade of a one-woman tent, trying to find a viable way to protect her privacy while also meeting her needs.

The problem was that she needed two hands to hold up the cotton canvas of her 'tent'.

Arrrgh! She groaned inwardly. Why didn't she pick a dress to wear!

Defeatedly, she sighed.

At least her bladder was no longer about to explode.

“Cut the feed. All of it.”

Colonel Guo Song of the Commission of the Ministry of National Defence, Deputy Secretary of Internal Security and Anti-Reconnaissance Division and Chairman of the Confidential Communications Committee leaned back in his chair.

The lumen display embedded into his office wall ceased its broadcast of the Scry spells directed towards the cells.

He had been curious as to what his granddaughter would do, what she would attempt, of whether the girl would venture to escape, perhaps faking an illness or use her allure to blindside a guard.

He wasn’t curious now.

If anything could convince him that the girl wasn’t a spy, it was watching her spend two inexpert minutes field-dressing a foam mattress and using thin sheets as a bathroom stall. Didn’t she know how Scrying worked? Scrying worked through walls, through concrete, through any non-magical containment, and a sheet of cotton certainly wasn’t going to help.

In a way, he was glad.

Unless Gwen was intelligent enough to be playing Planar-Chess with them, she was finally acting as one of her age and experience should be doing.

Digging through a dozen manila envelopes, Guo pulled Gwen’s file from a pile of missives and reread it.

Wei had submitted their report as soon as they arrived, delivering a detailed reading of Gwen’s life insofar as could be discerned from their source at the Singapore Tower.

Her biometrics are within acceptable parameters of deviation.
Her talents merely read Lightning (3), Evocation (3) and Conjuration (3), which was a blatant lie.

Mother: Helena Huang.

A nobody from a nobody Clan, a descendant of long-lost glory banished from the verdant colonies of the Indonesian islands, long since mingled with the blood of the Europeans— an ordinary Mage of no importance.

Father: Morye Song.

The traitorous whelp, the one who fled the mainland, leaving behind his parents, his clan, his future, all for some absurd notion of western liberty, a coward escaping from the duties he was born to fulfil.

Curiously, the Singapore Tower had lacked any data beyond that. There wasn’t any mention of the son, this Percy Song, Gwen's Master, or her position in Sydney's Tower.

Was someone deliberately censuring her data? The Singapore Tower would have received its knowledge from Sydney. For such a minimalist volume of erudition to exist, the source would have been someone the Singapore Tower trusted enough to rubber stamp.

If so, who are his granddaughter's backers in Sydney? The Contingency ring was a telling clue in itself. There were only a handful of people capable of giving such a treasure away.

More curiously, how did Gwen acquire so many Schools of Magic?

The Frontier cities were not like the Capital cities; they did not possess the resources to awaken and train their children from an early age. Gwen would have been fourteen-fifteen when she awakened, meaning she had achieved in a year and a half an impossible feat— a feat attainable only by the ancient Houses, a feat the Clan of Song was incapable of conceiving.

To achieve her proficiency level, it meant she had to have access to abundant resources, instructors of the highest degree of competence, a safe place to train and learn, especially one with access to a Greater Cognisance Chamber.

That meant, of course, the Sydney Tower, the only place where such resources were possible.

The late Master there, Henry Kilroy, was a well known Magister within the Circle of Mages of the Commonwealth, serving under the British Mageocracy. He was an old school Mage, a survivor of the Magical Beast uprising, a veteran of more wars than modern Magisters had birthdays.

A week ago, reports had flooded Guo’s desk; assessments of the Sydney crisis, whispering of Spectre and the rogue Mages that live on the fringe of the Wildlands. There were reports of an enervating Black Sun that bloomed over the city, a Strategic-Class Ritual of the Void Element. There were also unreliable reports of a Mythical serpent that supposedly swallowed the Ritual, itself an almost absurd idea. There was the Mermen incursion, which came as no surprise. The Mermen saw attacks on Frontier cities as a rite of passage for their foot-soldiers, weeding out the weak and thinning their ranks to blow off steam, redirecting the masses' bottled up aggression elsewhere before it turned upon the Dynasty.

The brief report ended in Singapore, where an escort of Senior Mages serving under the Crimson Sorceress, Alesia de Botton, accompanied his granddaughter. When questioned, however, his granddaughter had declined to inform them of this connection, offering no erudition of her ties to the premier Militant of the Coral Sea. The girl was hiding her guan-xi, but it wasn’t difficult for someone like Guo to join the dots.

Guo closed his eyes for a moment to conclude his conjecture— that Gwen was somehow attached to the upper echelons of the Sydney Tower, that expectantly, they would come knocking soon.

But Sydney was a sea of fire and flood as they speak, so that "soon" was likely going to be drastically delayed.

Then there was the matter of Gwen's unusual talent, an affinity for the Void— a rare and dangerous element, sanctioned by the Politburo Magics and Sorcery Committee as a Class 4 Restricted Sorcery.

Guo’s fingers rapped the sturdy wood of his mahogany work desk.

Henry Kilroy’s war hero wife, Elizabeth Sobel, was a Void Mage. There was intelligence that she wasn't deceased, that she joined the Rogue Mages of the Wildlands, a group called Spectre.

Was there a connection there? Who was teaching his granddaughter Void Magic? Was she learning it all on her own? How was his granddaughter associated with the now-deceased Magister, and was there a connection between Gwen and the Void Sun that appeared over Sydney?

Difficult questions, with dangerous answers, Guo thought to himself.

He reached for his cold tea.

“Heat.”

The water began to steam gently.

It took great skill to heat Pu’er tea to an exact eighty degrees with a single cantrip.

He turned his mind to the other matter at hand.

Percy Song.

A grandson.

His legacy.

His wife had three children before he was rendered too infertile by his affinity with the energies of Yin.

Song Nen, the harvest.

Song Hai, the ocean.

Song Jun, the soldier.

Jun, the youngest, was everything a man could ask for in a son, but his immense affinity for the Yin also made him woefully infertile from an early age. By the time they needed him to act as the heir, it had been too late.

Nen inherited her mother's talent for the Yang. She bore two children, Tao and Mina, but they wouldn’t be inheriting his name.

Guo had thought that the line of Song would have ended with Jun, but now Hai had returned. Not only that, he bore two children, a boy and a girl.

Most importantly, a boy with the surname of Song.

Guo felt in his heart a solace that he could barely contain without bursting into exuberant exclamation. A man should have a legacy! A Clan needs new blood! With a grandson whose name was Song, the family surname could survive, and this was a comfort Guo could take to the grave. What a boon of unexpected fortune born from the calamity that was his wayward son! Finally, he could visit the Ancestors' Hall and tell them that the line would remain, that they needn't adopt a branch family member to fill the gap. Finally, Guo could face the grave with the peace of knowing that he had left something in this world that was tangible.

But Guo had to act fast.
Like himself, the Yin energies of elemental Salt possessed the boy.

It meant that they must retrieve the boy and put him in training as soon as possible. He must learn to control his powers, learn to minimalise the damage to his body. Percy must undergo extensive rituals with the Amulet's blessing to bolster his defences against the draining of his vitality.

Guo clenched his hands, balling them into a pair of tight fists.

“Thank you, Ancestors, for this blessing,” he exclaimed silently. “I’ll not fail the Clan of Song!”

A polite knock came from the door.

Guo relaxed, returning himself to his usual, calm demeanour.

“Come in.”

“Colonel.” It was Captain Fu, his aide. “Jun— Captain Song has just entered the compound. Should I bring him here?”

“Did Ah-Jun state his purpose?” Guo furrowed his bushy brows, his jowls jiggling with disapproval.

“He has informed the administrators' office that he is removing prisoner 1403's and placing her under house arrest. The order comes from the office of the Internal Security Deputy Chairman, Secretary Li.”

Guo sighed; he had anticipated interference. He would have preferred to observe his ‘granddaughter’ for a few more days, having arranged a host of probes to plumb her hidden talents.

“It's fine. And Fu, remember— not a word gets out.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Guo took a sip of his tea and pursed his thin lips. His eyes fell on the report in his hands.

The girl was in trouble, but she was also his granddaughter.

Disposing of her was out of the question; it was heartless and, importantly, a waste of potential.

Returning her to Sydney was likewise out of the question. The Americans and the Brits, even the Central Europeans, would have a field day if they could get their hands on a teenage Magus with Yin and Yang dual-Elemental Affinity.

No, for the girl to grow, she would need backers. That would mean having her worth proven and sanctioned— itself a trial by fire, like a koi trying to leap over the dragon gate; it could cost her life. In his country, it is said that the Kirin who soared above the planes of servitude and slavery must command strong winds, for it is a sad spectacle to see a noble beast strapped and saddled by mortal men.

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What a thing for Hai to bring into the world. What an irresponsible father his son was. What a burden for an old man and woman to bear.

"Fu, I am returning to the compound. Tell Corporal Bao to bring the car around."

"Yes, Sir!"

If he knew his wife, the banquet was already being prepared.
All that was left was to see how honest Gwen was willing to be.

“Um… can I ask if Colonel Song is coming back anytime soon?” Gwen inquired the NoM Corporal who came to deliver her first meal in China, batting her lashes to entice a response from the stone-faced guard.

She may as well be wringing blood from a rock.

The young man averted Gwen's gaze as though she was the mythical Medusa.

She was sure it was a test.

The minuscule, five-foot-four Corporal looked as though he’d never heard of a dangerous Void Mage before, opening a small segment of the portal so that he could put the tray into her cell.

The tray consisted of two steamers, a bowl of soup and a square box of rice. Also, she’d been given metal utensils in the western style - a knife, spoon, and a fork.

She had no mana, of course, but had she been a real espionage agent; she could surely dice the man a dozen ways and use his access to escape somehow.

The Corporal obliviously retracted his hands and left the cell, still avoiding her gaze.

“Thank you!" Gwen called out.

The Corporal fled.

Gwen sighed.

She opened a steamer. Inside were pork buns, like the juicy kind she’d had in her old world. They had become popular enough to be almost omnipresent in the late 2010s, mainly where the Australian-Chinese congregated.

Perhaps the food was poisoned or drugged?

There was no need for that. It wasn’t as though the Colonel Grandfather lacked for mind-reaping Mages.

She picked one up and popped it into her mouth.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

The internal juices were boiling. Does this world even have microwaves? The searing pain inside her mouth was a pizza-pocket disaster the temperature of the sun.

The tray below held more buns, this time a vegetarian option. Gwen guessed the mere fact that her meal wasn’t mouldy bread and grey water was evidence enough to suggest that her grandfather had at least acknowledged her existence.

She won't be harmed; he had told her, though his tone was hardly reassuring.

Gwen wondered if Gunther had gotten the word and was trying to figure out a way to retrieve her. Would her brother-in-craft realise that Percy may be a target as well since Morye was himself a target? Would Gunther feel accountable for sending Morye with Gwen? Was the circumstance of their abduction entirely outside of Sydney's sphere of influence, especially now that the Tower was in ruins?

She didn’t know the answer to any of these questions.

She could only sip the salty pork-bone soup and use the spoon to mash the buns into the empty bowl before eating them, sitting crossed-legged in the manner that she had done so when they ate bush tucker back in Australia.

It was food for NoMs, greasy and insubstantial, without an ounce of restorative mana.

But she was very, very hungry.

She was still trying to masticate through a bun, her burnt lips glossy with grease, when her father’s face suddenly appeared at the perspex panel, grinning from ear to ear.

“Puuufft—!”

The apparition was so startling that she spat out the dumpling, sending forth a spray of pink-mince and fatty-lard all over the pane.

“Sorry!” her father's phantom exclaimed. “Shall I come back later?”

Gwen swallowed.

There had been no fanfare from the guards.

How was it possible that her father had come here? Wasn’t he bloody and bruised? Had he been cured, healed, restored? Was he free? Was this what he had meant when he told her earlier that she should be free soon? Why not just say it to her straight? If so, why the ambiguous communiqué?!

“Not eating then? Well then, how are you?” It was Morye's voice, but not his voice. This voice was deep and resonant.

He was looking at her with a mouth full of delight, trying to hold back from laughing out loud. Different to her father, there was sunniness about the man that made her feel strange inside.

“Morye?” Gwen replaced her bowel onto her tray. "Morye, what did grandfather say about Percy?"

Her ‘father’ looked at her strangely.

“Who is Percy?”

Gwen moved to a splatter-free part of the perspex pane.

Their eyes met.
Morye's irises were of a lighter hue; this ‘Morye’ had eyes that were like two obsidian orbs, the eyes of her Grandfather.

‘You're not Morye," Gwen stated awkwardly, her heart pounding like a jackaroo.

“I am Jun. Jun-Song, I suppose you can call me Uncle.” Her uncle's smiling face even had the same way of curling the edge of one lip, though Jun's was less sardonic and more jocular like there was a big joke somewhere that only he understood.

“Uncle…” Gwen tried to wrap her mind around the doppelganger thing. Her grandfather had said something about a brother. “Are you Morye… Hai’s twin?”

“He’s older by a year.” Her uncle maintained a satisfied smirk. “Sorry for surprising you.”

“It’s alright.” Gwen looked around for a napkin, eyeing the bedsheet. So much for first impressions.

“One sec, I’ll let you out.”

To her surprise, the perspex screen dematerialised. Gwen, who had a hand pressed against its surface, fell forward into her Uncle’s arms.

“Woah there, hold it steady.” Jun chuckled, bracing Gwen as she slipped from the cell. Outside and away from the anti-mana shielding, she felt immediately restored, as if a woman dying of thirst had plunged into the sweet pool of a fresh-water oasis.

Just like that?
Was she free to go?
What about her grandfather’s ire?
Could she just waltz out of here, right now?

Gwen pulled herself away, her face beet-red. There was a strange sense of familiarity that she felt when their hands touched, as though she'd known the man for a long time. It was a puzzling enough feeling that she paused to take a good gander at ‘Uncle’ Jun.

His face was like her father’s but had in its possession a tighter musculature that made his jaws more defined and gracile. His eyes were darker than Morye’s, his brows bushier; Gwen further noted alarmingly that rather than a broad, five-o-clock shadow, Jun sported a villainous goatee. She hoped at once that this didn’t mean Jun was her father’s mirror-world villain, though it was difficult to imagine anyone could be more destructive than her father when it came to hurting his loved ones.

“Uncle Jun,” Gwen began. “Can I leave?"

“You can leave this cell; if that’s what you’re asking. You can leave this facility too.” Her uncle answered, scratching the back of his head abashedly. “But if you’re wondering if you can leave the city… well, that’s a conversation for another time.”

“Oh.” Gwen's face transformed from gladness to dourness.

“Chin up,” her uncle intoned merrily. “You'll love it here. Let's get some fresh air and I'll tell you about what's going to happen from here on out.”

When they approached the double doors, Jun knocked.
The doors slid open, revealing two guards who saluted crisply.

“At ease.” Jun ushered Gwen through without so much as batting an eye. The guards had made no motion to impede their exit, which eased her frayed nerves.

“Thank you, Uncle Jun.” She simpered sweetly, wondering if her 'uncle' responded to charm better than her marble-miened grandfather. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jun beamed back, giving Gwen a boost of confidence. “Although, we should get moving before the old man changes his mind.”

“No more tests? Or interrogations?” Gwen glanced back at her cell, her voice hopeful and uncertain. She wasn’t about to go back in there without kicking and screaming, but her grandfather did not seem like someone who would let an allegation of espionage just walk through the door.

“He's just paranoid.” Jun’s voice was more resonant than her fathers, more distinct and debonair. “Not to mention I am supremely confident in your future honesty."

Gwen looked away, hoping that her flushed face wasn't too noticeable.

The reinforced compound they proceeded throughout began to change after the second level, the exposed concrete giving way to matt-white walls smelling of diffused silica.

They soon approached a checkpoint, where intervals of lumen-globes threw their shadowy outlines against the partitions.

“We’re not going to teleport out?”

“Not possible,” her uncle informed her. “There are Teleportation Circles here that you can teleport into, but once you’re in, the only way out is on your feet.”

She then saw the soldiers, a dozen of them stationed at the checkpoint. When they had turned the shallow corner, a few of them sat at a table with what appeared to be a scanning device. Two men stood alongside an iron gate with bars as thick as Gwen’s arm, refracting the cold light from the corridor beyond.

Is this the final barrier? Gwen wondered. Was her deliverance beyond this particular portal?

“Officer present!” The soldiers saluted.

“Comrades.” Jun saluted back.

“Sir!”

The corporals all looked to be in their twenties, but the officer was an older man, a Sergeant by the looks of his lapels. He measured Gwen with his eyes, alternating between curiosity and consternation.

To her surprise, the sergeant offered Jun a cigarette, which he accepted.

One of the corporals lit the fag with a flame cantrip, watching as Jun took a luxurious pull.

“American Marlboro? When did you get so tasteful, Cho?”

“Heehee, glad you like it, Cap, got it from my uncle, over at Putong.”

“It’s smooth as hell; I'll give you that. I’ll bring you something next time as well if I get a chance.”

“Sure thing, Captain. Now, if I may inquire—” Chow pocketed the red-white packet. His gaze moved over to Gwen, who tried her best to look innocent.

I am just a teenager. Gwen willed herself to look as harmless as humanely possible. I am a bipedal lamb.

“Is your withdrawal… off the record?”

Jun rapped the old Sergeant's shoulder appreciatively.

“Chow, are you suggesting I would attempt to circumvent the bureaucratic stranglehold of our fine intelligence establishment?” Jun asked with mock incredulity.

“Sir?” Chow smiled nervously, immediately trying to laugh off his scepticism.

“It’s alright.” Jun comforted the veteran. His rice bowl wasn’t going to shatter today. “This is a family matter. Powers greater than we are at play here. Give me the discharge form.”

The sergeant breathed a sigh of relief and handed Jun a slate, which he signed with a flourish.

“There we are.” Jun gave the man a friendly grin. “No one is going to dissipate into thin-air today, hmm?”

“Heh, you know it, Sir.”

“Gwen?” Jun motioned for her to follow, and she demurely obeyed, keeping her eyes downcast. What did he mean by dissipating? Did people just disappear around here?

A set of dense, multi-pronged keys was produced, unlocking the intricate mechanical lock embedded within the transmuted iron gate.

When Gwen and Jun had passed, the soldiers looked at one another and wiggled their eyebrows.

“What do you suppose that was?” one of the men asked his Sergeant, still feeling star-struck.

“Who is he?” another guard asked, then added more meaningfully while licking his chops. “And who’s the young lady?”

Sergeant Chow turned to the one who spoke.

“Su, how long you been here?”

“Two months, Sir.”

“And you’ve never heard of or seen Captain Song?”

“Wait, that was Captain Song? THE Captain Song?”

The rest of the men nodded.

The Corporal’s face burned.

“Do you think it's too late for an autograph?”

The rest of the men broke out in uproarious laughter, punching the embarrassed soldier in mockery.

“I’ll get one for you next time, Su.”

“Who was the girl, Serge?” the corporal gave the man a thumbs up. "She was like this."

“Don’t know, didn’t see her go in, and I’ve been on duty the last three days.”

“Think she’s an actress or something?”

The men turned to look at Slow Su with ridicule. If the intelligence office were keeping members of the Cultural Performance Committee in its secretive holding cells, it would undoubtedly be dangerous to be wagging tongues in jest.

“Corporal Su?”

“Yeah, Serge?”

“Shut up and go back to your post. The rest of you, zip it.”

Chow felt the weight of the slate in his hand, looking up to see the distant figure of the girl walking up the stairs. Who was the girl? He wondered. When she had passed him, his hair had stood on end.

Whatever she was, his combat instincts told him she was no less dangerous than Jun.

Another checkpoint later, Gwen and Jun exited the basement level and entered the interior of a public building with a civic centre's facade. Gargantuan marble columns held up towering ceilings adorned with etched bronze plates, florid with imprints depicting the founding of the Communist nation.

To Gwen, the feeling of space was immediately liberating after having spent a day and night inside the containment chamber, with nought but bare concrete walls and a perspex pane for companionship.

Exhaling loudly, she stretched out her body, enjoying the open air, feeling her bones creak.

Her actions drew strange looks from passersby in dark suits and olive khaki, a few others in digital-camo. It was her foreignness, her height, her being the odd one out. Immediately, she retracted her arms and tried to make herself smaller.

Her uncle stopped beside her and gave her an appraising look.

“I am afraid your height is going to give you that reaction wherever you go in the city, Gwen. You're as tall as a man, even taller if you're going to wear fashionable clothing. Think it'll bother you?”

Gwen shook her head; she was used to it. It cost her nothing for others to stare, and at any rate, it wasn’t as though she could help it.

“Are you the same height as Dad, Uncle Jun?" Her uncle was just a smidgen shorter than her.

“I am superior by a centimetre.” Jun smirked, his eyes sparkling mischievously. Now that they were away from the uncertain light of the bunker, Gwen could inspect Jun in the light of his full glory.

Jun's face was more defined and taut than her father, more muscular and chiselled with darker eyes that gave him a solemn demeanour. He had on a casual jacket over a white Tee, wore over tapered military cargos, completed with a thick, brown leather belt. Underneath the dark blazer, his shirt wrapped around well-defined pictorials that were like carved granite.

Gwen had never thought her father good looking, although many women would contest that her father was very handsome. But now that she’s seen the same face plastered onto her uncle, she had to admit that her father's innumerable willing victims may be onto something.

Jun warily pulled his jacket inward.

“I don't like that look,” he laughed. "What? Too strange seeing your father's face on mine?"

Gwen laughed as well. It felt like the first time she’d smiled in weeks, even though less than forty-eight hours had passed.

“You're dressed for the weather, at least. It's a steamer outside today.” Her uncle straightened up, then struck a thumb toward the sunny space just outside the building’s enormous floor to ceiling doors embossed with oriental motifs. "It's a short walk to the car though, let us proceed as quickly as we can."

Gwen followed Jun across the threshold, where she felt something wash over her body as they passed. Some barrier spell, maybe, or perhaps a scanning Glyph, Gwen wasn’t sure. There were so many things here, contraptions and magic items of convenience, all of which Sydney lacked.

Immediately, a wave of hot air struck her like a hammer, plastering her with humidity. It felt as though she’d walked into a sauna.

“How is it? Monsoon season in Shanghai.” Jun chuckled as he watched Gwen wilt like a flower under the sultry heat.

“It feels like Singapore—” Gwen groaned. “Are there overlapping Shield Stations here?”

“Ah, you know the microclimate well,” Jun gave her a thumbs up. “Too many magical effects in too dense a location, generating far too much heat. Without the easterly breeze from the South China Sea to take away the miasma, the city cooks like a crab steamer.”

Gwen felt as though she was melting. Her eyeliner wasn’t waterproof, so if they stayed any longer, she would be crying like a Demi-human with a calamari lineage.

A hundred meters later, her arms and legs were dripping with a sheen of moisture. There was something about the heat that made it even worse than Singapore or the Jungle. In a way, the feverish metropolis was like a sad metaphor for her present condition, caught within the city, unable to escape, slowly simmering as she simmered in the crab pot.

They proceeded to the end of the civic century’s concrete superstructure, where a row of cars parked end to end.

“B-7.” Jun drew a glyph in the air. It floated toward the attendant, an elderly looking man with a blue Municipal Officer's uniform.

“Right away, Sir.”

A moment later, a levitating platform retrieved an SUV, gently depositing the vehicle onto the pavement. What Gwen couldn't help noticing was that the man was an NoM, and yet here he was, operating a magical device.

“Bill it to Internal Revenue,” Jun told the man, who bowed from the waist before returning to his post.

Watching the NoM attendant leave, Gwen turned her attention to the car, wondering what it was that people in the ‘tier 1’ cities drove. In Sydney, the vehicles mainly consisted of older models. To her surprise, Jun's SUV was a Jeep, or at least it looked like a Jeep. It had four elongated slits across the front grill that formed the focal point of a boxy facade. Additionally, the urban 4x4 sat on lifted suspension and custom archways, with an open-air roof protected by a sturdy roll cage.

“That’s your car?” Gwen asked her uncle despairingly, dripping sweat from every pore. She hoped that the car would have been an enclosed space to dry her out. From the looks of it, she was more likely to leave an embarrassing Gwen shaped sweat-stain on her uncle’s pristine leather seats.

“Good grief, Gwen.” Jun urged her to get into the car.

Instantly, her drenched body became cooled by a pleasant breeze.

The open-air vehicle was air-conditioned! An air-conditioned convertible! O, the miracle of Spellcraft! She praised the minds that created this boon; the world had become a better place for their invention.

“How do you guys live down-under? I heard it hits forty-five down there.” Jun hopped in. “There’s a decanter in the glove, cups too if you're thirsty.”

“Its dry heat, so it’s not that bad,” Gwen replied, feeling the cold leather luxuriously. True to Jun’s word, a nozzle connected to an endless decanter was installed conveniently next to some paper cups. Gwen placed a cup under the spigot, watching it dispense cool, purified water.

The water was enough to refresh her mind and body. She was still hungry, but the water could tide her over until more substantial food could be sourced to feed her Void hunger.

With an incantation, her uncle started the Jeep, revving up its mana-cores. Unlike the Commonwealth nations, the Chinese made vehicles were left-hand drive. The mana engine thrummed until it grew into a throaty roar, transmuting its power through her feet and legs.

Her uncle materialised a baseball cap and a pair of aviators from a Storage Ring. Wordlessly watching her Uncle, Gwen wondered if Jun resembled a Eurasian James Dean.

“Welcome to Shanghai.” Her uncle grinned, his thin lips opening to reveal pearly-white teeth. “Ready to meet your Grandmother?”


Shanghai.

Even in Gwen's old world, the Pearl of the Orient was a city of outlandish origins.

The name of the city itself means "the town upon the sea". However, the indigenous fishermen who named it couldn't have imagined that it would become the single most significant trading city in Asia Major. Unlike China's other trade hubs, it was the Opium Wars that gave bloody birth to the city's foundations, forcefully opening the sleepy fishing village at the tip of the Yangzi delta to international trade.

The following decades tumultuous time for Shanghai; a city carved up into autonomous concessions administered by the British, French, and Americans, all beyond the withered reach of the failing Qing Dynasty. Concurrently, each colonial presence brought its particular flavour, making the city an eclectic mecca of cultures.

By the 1930s, Shanghai was a melting pot, a cosmopolitan metropolis, taking on its own identity, attracting natives and foreigners alike. In its heyday, the city upon the Sea was the place to be— it had the best art, the most fabulous architecture, and the most bustling trade in Asia. The city had the sleaziest dance halls, the most lascivious brothels, the glitziest restaurants, the most expensive international clubs, including the world's single longest bar. Shanghai was a city of sin that catered to every whim of the rich and powerful; even as abject poverty ran alongside the affluent, many of the underclasses, primarily Chinese, provided the cheap labour that kept the city running.

The Mageocracy called it the Paris of the East.

Then began the Sino conflict of WWII.

But this world, with its magic and monsters, had never seen the Second World War.

Or at least that's what Gwen had learned in the discourse of Blackwattle's limited history classes.

In this world, The Second World War was man against the Beast Tide in the spring of '71, awakened by the awakening of an ancient Dragon in central Europe that threw man's unprepared realm into anarchy. In the aftermath, borders were redrawn, countries shrunk by halves, cities became isolated, and the known world splintered into zones, from the inhabitable death-worlds of the Black Zones to the contested, resource-rich Green Zones.

Gwen wondered if she would at all recognise the sprawling metropolis they were about to enter.

She did not.

That much was self-evident the moment they entered the orbital highway. In Gwen's old reality, Shanghai was already one of the most developed cities in the world. In this alter-existence, Shanghai was far more extensive— a sprawling mass of skyscrapers that resembled pyramidal hive-cities, with its epicentre congealing into a solid wall of superstructures towering well over the rest of the city.

As Gwen and Jun cruised through the Second Orbital-Loop, they came face to face with walls of high rise apartments, identical fabrications in clumps of a dozen or more, sprouting from the flat earth like bamboo after the spring rain. There were so many of them, gleaming wetly in grey, ochre, lime and off-white, that they blotted out the sun as the highway ran its circumference.

"Those are NoM housings." Her uncle pointed out. "Pretty good, actually, despite how they look. There are small parks below the apartments, underground shopping malls too. Vivacious places, good food, if you don't mind the NoM stuff. When they clump, we called it a District. Each one has an assigned number."

"Where do the Mages live?" Gwen asked. If there was a Second Orbital Loop, was there a first? And a third and fourth? Did the real estate determine the social strata of those living in Shanghai?

"Here and there, depending on your profession," her uncle replied. "We're going to the new district in the Third Orbital Loop, where members of the Party have private residences."

Gwen turned to the cityscape, taking in the vista of the sprawling city, splayed like an etherised patient under a sweltering pseudo-summer brought by the mana-smog.

"Can you tell me about Dad?" she asked when they passed under a series of Illusion-enchanted billboards dozens of meters across.

One displayed a three-dimensional illusion depicting a kind, middle-aged gent with a benevolent, Buddha-like gaze, looking out over the highway with infinite patience. A series of Chinese characters next to his face translated to, "Premier Wen implores you to live in harmony and civic responsibility," in large, red pictograms.

In the next second, just before they passed it, the image transitioned into that of a gorgeous blond with effeminate, elfin features, hair blowing out into the wind. The slogan for this one read, "Head and Shoulders: Who says gorgeous, dandruff-free hair can't smell gorgeous?"

"About Hai?" Jun considered her question once Gwen peeled her eyes from the adverts. "Alright, shoot."

"Okay," Gwen gathered her thoughts. "Who did Dad murder? WHOA!"

The sudden inertia caused Gwen to lurched forward as Jun swerved the car onto the shoulder lane.

"He did what now?" Jun turned toward her, making Gwen breakout in a terrific cold sweat.

Curiously, the cars that screeched and braked did not honk. Instead, they placidly drove by with caution and politeness.

"We're on military plates," her uncle explained, catching Gwen's puzzlement. "So, tell me again."

"There was this time in Singapore when I pushed Morye about why he wanted to leave China, a tier 1 city, and he said that he 'killed' someone he shouldn't have."

"And?"

"That's it; he refused to say anything else after."

Jun scratched his goatee.

"That's…"

Her uncle's face momentarily lit up with an epiphanic comprehension. "Wow, Hai, you weasel."

"Uncle?" Gwen's felt her curiosity well whetted.

"Well, I think I know what your father meant. It's Hai, by the way, don't let grandfather hear you use his alias. In our culture, names have a peculiar inference, and it is disrespectful to reject a name bestowed by the ancestors."

Gwen dipped her chin in acknowledgement. She wondered if the ancestors would accept her foreign name or if she would have to acquire a new one. In her old world, she had Asian colleagues who had two names, one for public and another for private.

"So, about my father?"

"I've only a hypothesis," Jun replied after a moment of hesitation. "At any rate, out of respect for Hai, I think he should be the one to tell it."

Resuming the journey, their Jeep turned from the six-lane orbital highway onto an adjoining sky bridge. An overhead sign indicated an off-ramp that connected to the Third Outer Loop. Jun slid the wheel through his hands and allowed the car to coast down the spiralling ramp. The mana-engine thrummed as the flywheel picked up the momentum, holding the Jeep's velocity at a steady cruise.

The Jeep then decelerated as it entered a residential zone, where the bare concrete of the freeway gave way to rows of giant cypress lining both sides of a broad, two-lane avenue.

Another half a kilometre passed before their Jeep turned into a parkland gated community. A plaque in Chinese read "Hamlet of the Plum Blossoms."

"We're here," Jun announced.

The siheyuan's entrance announced a four-section town-house complex.

Alright, Gwen took a deep breath. Time to meet her gran-maker.

Here was the family that she had wholly neglected in her previous life. There were no expectations here, no clues, nothing to indicate their likes and dislikes. She was a stranger in a strange land, held captive by powers beyond her ken.

Jun gave her a confident smile and stepped in; Gwen steeled her spine and followed.

The courtyard was erected in the old Chinese style, though constructed with new composite materials. The square, as Gwen entered, was an open-air atrium-garden split toward four pathways; one toward the exit lobby, the other three leading toward an open communal hall, the bedrooms, and an extensive training ground.

It was the communal hall that now solemnly awaited them.

Gwen wetted her lips and stepped in. She felt shaken up, not unlike the time she had to propose a project to the board at McKinsey's for her first internship.

The hall itself was a two-storey building with a vaulted ceiling held up by two massive beams painted in deep scarlet, richly lacquered and edged with dusky gold. A set of Chinese characters prefaced the plaque hanging overhead with many pictographic characters, whose meaning her Ioun Stone mangled.

"Country... justice..." the other two words remained cryptic.

Gwen felt as though she travelled back in time into a period setpiece.

A faded crimson rug, two dozen meters in length, led her eyes toward the centre of the spacious chamber, where two dark mahogany chairs sat side by side with a side table between them. Flanking the seats were four more sets of smaller chairs, four on each side, lining either side of the carpet runner.

Currently, only one of the seats remained occupied.

To Gwen's complete and utter surprise, the matriarch was a foreign-looking woman with flowing silver hair that framed her petite face, possessing a much younger appearance than her bearing suggested. Her skin glowed with near-supernatural vitality, radiating a halo of kindness and benignity.

The woman, she presumed, would be her "Grandmother".

"Welcome, Granddaughter. My name is Klavdiya."

Her grandmother's voice was like gently flowing water.

"Grandmother!" Gwen paced across the carpet quickly.

When she came within speaking distance, Gwen realised she had no idea what to do. She didn't know any Chinese greetings. Was there a protocol to follow, some ritual to perform? Hopefully, she needn't kowtow, at least not in public.

In the end, she curtsied like she'd done in Sydney for the senior Mages and her instructors.

"That's sweet, dear, though a bow would have sufficed." Her grandmother observed; the old woman's expression was mystical and mysterious.

Their eyes met.

Klavdiya possessed a heart-shaped face familiar to herself, sharing the same straight nose, the same pursed lips, the same correspondingly high cheekbones. Unlike herself, Klavdiya had a thick head of silvery-flaxen tresses that bespoke of her age even as her face gave off a youthful exuberance.

Gwen had always wondered why she didn't particularly resemble her father or mother - though she did have her mother's eyes - and now the mystery was solved. It was her grandmother whose features she had inherited.

"You may call me Nainai, or grandmother, or babushka, though 'babulya' certainly wouldn't be amiss should the fancy catch you." Her grandmother intoned with a voice full of quiet wisdom.

Babulya, it is then, Gwen told herself. She liked how the word rolled off the tongue with its triple-tap of syllables.

Her babulya then stepped off the impressively sized mahogany chair and confidently sauntered toward Gwen, who felt indecisively welded to the spot by a mess of uncertain emotions.

To Gwen's shock, despite her presence, her babulya was barely five-foot-two. She must have gotten her height from her mother's side.

Her babulya wore a comfortable smock shaped from a simple tunic paired with an ankle-length skirt, capped off with a pair of dark cotton walking flats. More strikingly, despite babulya's venerable age, her spine was ramrod straight; her shoulder squared and poised, her chin held high— though that may be because Klavdiya was looking up toward Gwen's face.

Then she opened her arms and embraced Gwen at the waist.

Gwen lowered herself by a head's height so that their faces could meet, welcoming the cuddle with all her heart.

Klavdiya gave Gwen a hearty peck on both cheeks.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Finally! A granddaughter as tall as the girls I used to know from the mother country!" Her babulya exclaimed excitedly, patting Gwen's head gingerly and touching her face and shoulders. "Good bones too, strong and well-formed. Oh, I think you have a bit of growing left in you yet!"

When Klavdiya's hand found its way under her chin to extract the amulet hanging there, Gwen felt a sudden quickening of her pulse.

"You have the Kirin?" Her babulya seemed startled by the find.

"I do," Gwen replied, sliding a hand between her blouse and removing the jade pendant for Klavdiya's inspection.

"No need to give it back." Her babulya patted the space between her chest. "It's yours— if Hai had given it. It will be of great benefit to you in the future."

Gwen carefully slipped the amulet back between her bosoms, where it sat snugly, diffusing its gentle warmth.

"So, let's take a good gander at you." Klavdiya pulled herself back, gently pinning Gwen's arms to her waist.

She still couldn't believe how young her grandmother looked. After all, her father was thirty-seven, meaning that at best, her Klavdiya was in her mid-fifties, an impressive feat for a woman with three children and four grandchildren.

"Detect Magic!"

Babulya's eyes glowed with the magic of Divination, mixed in with a radiant aura of positive energy that formed a visible halo over her temple.

Gwen felt a wave of warmth emit from her babulya's hands, washing over her Astral Body. It was a familiar feeling she had known many times before from another diminutive angel.

"You're… a healer?" Gwen blurted out. Who'd have thought that her babulya was a healer of all things? From the way Guo had behaved, Gwen had imagined that either Klavdiya was a femme fatale of unfathomable power or a bronze-faced babushka with an iron palm.

"You've got quite a few hidden injuries there, my dear granddaughter," her grandmother frowned. "The second-rate healers of the tier 2 cities are not trained to deal with magical injuries fully, and from the looks of it, you have taken quite a beating. There are parts of your body that have sustained extensive regeneration, but it doesn't appear to have meshed well with your pre-existing flesh."

Gwen ran a hand over her chest, across her shoulders, then over her abdomen. She had indeed felt a little unused to the youthfulness of her new body, as though parts of her were slightly out of sync.

"But now that you are here, we can heal you." Klavdiya smiled gently, bringing a gentle hand to meet Gwen's own. "Come, come, sit with me."

She directed Gwen toward a chair adjacent to her own.

Beside them, Jun took an opposite seat.

"You must have suffered much while in the Frontier." Klavdiya clicked her tongue a few times to drive the point home. "Sydney is not a bad city by any means, but the constant exposure to the Mermen must have taken a terrible toll."

"It was alright, Babulya," Gwen replied carefully. "I have friends there who are faithful and loyal, as well as mentors who helped me out during the year and a half since I had Awakened."

"Oh, I am sure." Her grandmother gently patted Gwen's hand. Klavdiya had almond eyes that were amber flecked with bits of sunburst yellow. Gwen wondered if that was her babulya's natural colour or if years of training with Positive Energy had altered her irises, just as the Lightning Element added to the emerald of her eyes.

Feeling the unadulterated amiability radiating from her grandmother, Gwen sensed the time had come for her to appeal.

"Babulya," Gwen inquired carefully, holding steady her tone and cadence. "Do you think it is at all possible that grandfather will let me return to Sydney?"

Her babulya smiled.

"Would you like me to be honest with you, my dear?"

"Yes, Babulya."

"Alright." Her grandmother held her hand. "In a moment, your grandfather will come home—"

At the mention of Guo, Gwen's chest hurt, constricting her diaphragm with an acidic twist.

"—and then we are going to have a banquet. You are then going to meet the rest of the family."

Gwen nodded demurely, unthawing herself through force of will.

"After that, you, me, Grandfather and Jun, we are going to sit down, right here, and we are going to have a nice, long conversation..."

Gwen acknowledged her second chance.

When her father had told Gwen about her paternal family, Gwen had fantasised about meeting them. It was a strange and giddy sensation to have another chance at reliving a life that she'd neglected a lifetime ago. As much as she had to remind herself that she was roughly abducted and brought into the home as one under house arrest, she was still appreciative that such an opportunity existed at all. It was a silver lining playbook sort of thing.

Perhaps, Gwen thought to herself, she should think of her father's unwitting error as an accidental accelerant that pushed forward her timetable. That way, her bitter pill was easier to swallow.

Family.
An extended family.
What a strange thing to find later in life.

"Alright, Babulya." Gwen squeezed her grandmother's hands. "I'll tell you everything I can."

"Such a good child." Her babulya had a twinkle in her eye that Gwen recognised. It was a look of sly triumph.

Were her grandparents playing a bad cop, good cop routine? Gwen wondered. It didn't matter. If she were going to commit to the path ahead, there would be no room for lingering regrets, at least not with her grandfather's bloodhound's nose for conspiracy.

As Gwen played with potential scenarios in her head, she became struck by a delightfully wicked thought.

What if she told Grandfather and the MSS about Elizabeth?

The number of people who knew the truth could be counted on one hand. What if Gwen told them about Elizabeth, her powers, what she had done in Sydney, and sold her worst enemy for Contribution Credits? She didn't have to inform the entire truth; of course, her Master's many acts of misplaced mercy would be omitted, and Elizabeth Winsted Sobel would simply be a psychotic rogue Mage returned from the dead to wreak havoc upon a man who had almost rid the world of her taint. Wouldn't it be fun to sic a beautiful little Interpol warrant on that nasty woman? It would perhaps flush her out from hiding, where Gunther and Alesia would be waiting for her.

On that same note, Gwen's mind raced. What did the tier 1 cities know of the Void Element? Indeed, if the bloodline of Song practised the power of Salt, they would know plenty about the dangers of utilising Quasi-negative Elements. If her father couldn't help her, maybe her grandfather could? She could finally share with someone her worries and fears about Caliban's powers, perhaps receive some guidance in mitigating its effects.

Even if they refused to take her in, perhaps they could give her a hand.

Her grandfather was a stone-faced spymaster, but what of her babulya? Perhaps uncle Jun or even her yet unseen aunt? Hell, if her father was willing to return to the fold, maybe she could take advantage of that? Beggars couldn't be choosers, especially if she desired to see her friends again.

There was most definitely a play she could execute here.

"Gwen?" Her babulya tapped Gwen's hand as the poor girl appeared to have drifted off into space after she had announced Guo's imminent arrival. "Don't worry about your grandfather. He's an old softy once you get past the spiky exterior. Think of him as a Horn-back Pangolin. There's nothing to fear."

"Of course, Babulya, I was just thinking, that's all."

"I am sure you were, dear." Babulya looked across the courtyard, toward the gate. "Why don't you go and get changed? Give him a fresh, new impression. I've prepared something suitable for you in the guest room. It would do you both good to not remind him of the Sky-Prison."

"I will, Babulya," Gwen replied, turning to look at Jun.

"This side." Jun lead her away. "I'll show you to your room."

My room. Gwen masticated the words carefully in her mouth. It looks like she was in for the long haul. If only they would let her contact Elvia or Yue, maybe even Gunther.

Her 'room' was surprisingly situated not on the family's side of the siheyuan but in the East Wing, next to the Training Hall. It was a semi-detached single with a small closet, a bed and a bedside table. The room had no ensuite, for the bathrooms were adjacent, just inside the adjoining training hall. These were public bathrooms, but so long as the building remained unoccupied, Gwen would have her privacy. From the looks of it, the abode used to house instructors when they stayed to tutor the members of the household.

More than anything, its location was a telltale sign of her current position within the house's hierarchy. Not quite in the family, not quite out— just close enough to be within hand's reach, but kept far away enough to be disposable. Her grandmother may play the simpering babulya, but her intentions were measured and precise. She was a woman who thought a dozen steps ahead, the Healer-wife of a spymaster.

Having inspected her new home, Gwen relaxed. Now that their respective positions were transparent, it made her calmer.

"Be out soon."

Jun left Gwen at the door and went to oversee the banquet.

Gwen found a mixed East-West ensemble within the closet, a one-piece, knee-length blue skirt with a cheongsam blouse for the upper body, embroidered with a Ming-vase filigree.

Gwen slipped the dress overhead and clasped its butterfly knot buttons. Just as she was beginning to think it was too large, the gown shifted. The effect was so startling that Gwen yelped as the fabric tapered to her torso.

She had to do a doubletake in the mirror to confirm that the dress had indeed resized itself.

This mandarin dress was a miracle. What an excellent Enchantment! She marvelled. O brave new world that has such magic in it!

She materialised a brush and smoothed out her hair, wrangling her mane into an oriental-looking coiffure, a cute little sideburn that she pinned down with several wire clips.

For shoes, she brought out her lucky, veteran Mary-Janes. Gwen promised herself that if she had a chance, she would get them enchanted with a self-cleaning, self-polishing effect, for she had grown emotionally attached to the pair of shoes that had seen her through thick and thin.

The overall effect was better than she had anticipated.

The form-fitted cheongsam suited her well. She could be gracing the silver screen and not seem a single frame out of place.

Right. Gwen thought to herself. Round two.

"DAD?!"

To her surprise, her father had arrived.

He was healed and attired in a military jacket with matching olive pants. It was such a rare sight. The military outfit suited him. It made Morye look almost respectable.

"Wow, you're out already?" Her father was surprised to see her too. "I guess we both should thank your grandmother, eh? Babulya!"

Babulya shot him an expression that was at once scalding and tender.

"Are you… alright?" Gwen approached her father, touching his face here and there.

"Hey, HEY! That tickles, don't!" He protested loudly, embarrassed to be fussed over by his daughter in front of his family. Gwen had never seen her father like this before, so out of his element, so agitated and disturbed. It was fun.

There was a loud cough.

Guo Song, patriarch of the clan, dressed in a crisp military uniform, made his presence behind her father.

"Grandfather." Gwen bowed deeply. Jun had taken her aside earlier and taught her how to do a Chinese greeting properly.

"Mm," her grandfather grunted, looking over Gwen with a perspicacious gaze that acknowledged improvement in her mannerisms. "Let's get started. I am starving."

"Not waiting for Tao and Mina?" Jun inquired. "We need to wait for Nen as well; she's likely trying to wrangle them."

"They can be late!" Her grandfather blew two jets of disgruntled air from his nostrils and began to move.

"Right, off we go then to the banquet hall!" Jun changed his tone as soon as Guo made a sour face. "Gwen, come with me."

Within the main compound, in the open room cleared for the occasion, a giant banquet table sat, kitted for eight.

Her grandfather, Guo.
Her babulya, Klavdiya.
Her uncle, Jun.
Her father, Hai.
Gwen.
And three empty chairs.

The NoM servants came and went like a stream of bees, though Gwen was flummoxed to see them all in military outfits.

Was this another aspect of how NoMs lived in a tier 1 city, or was it a uniquely Chinese thing? There were so many of them, these servants, a dozen in all, who stood to attention behind the family as they each took their seats.

Gwen waited until all of the others had seated before taking a seat herself.

The food presented in front of her was decidedly beyond the ken of her limited vocabulary. Of all the dishes, a dozen in all, she could only recognise the pancakes as the famous Peking Duck. As for the others, she couldn't begin to guess.

Beside her, Morye sat miserably, looking up at the ceiling wistfully, hoping he could be somewhere else, far away.

Jun sat opposite the table, grinning at his elder brother with an ebullient expression, bathing in Morye's misery.

Grandfather sat with his eyes closed as if in meditation, and grandmother fussed over the temperature of the oolong tea.

"Hungry?" her uncle asked, watching Gwen's lips wetly salivating. He knew that she must be starving, but no one dared to eat without her grandfather touching the first dish.

Gwen shook her head, but her wetly desperate eyes were terrible liars.

"What's that?" Gwen indicated to a dish. "Ah, an old favourite— the palm of the Snow Bear, cooked with roe of the Yangzi-Sturgeon."

"Right."

"Oh, that one? Ah yes, this one is called the Golden Burning Brain."

Gwen's eyes grew wide.

"No! You silly goose, not 'brain', its made from bean curd simmered in a soup of Wildland pheasant, giblet of Mandarine Duck, and stewed with the Hooked-clawed Cock."

"That sounds expensive..."

"Don't fret, if you're disappointed that there's no brain, that right over there—" her uncle pointed with his chin as well toward a grey mass sitting in a creamy broth. "The brain of the Gibbon Shark, cooked two way in yin-yang soup. Be sure to take a big bowl later."

Amazingly, her Void-hunger began to fade. She pointed to something that looked like frogspawn in pastry. "And that thing?"

"That's just a regular egg tart; the wild vanilla seeds are rather large this year."

She could eat that. Gwen thought to herself. Her eyes moved over to a bowl of clear jelly.

"Good choice. That one is a family favourite!"

"Is it coconut jelly?

"What, no! That's the nest of the four-winged swallow, harvested fresh from a coastal Black Zone!"

"You guys eat nests?"

"It's not a nest," her father answered for her. "It's swallow."

"The what?"

"The SPIT of the swallow." Her father grinned at her.

Gwen sighed.
Egg tart it is.

They waited for a few more minutes before finally, a growing clamour heralded the arrival of their final guests.

Nen came through the door first, bowing and apologising for her tardiness. It wasn't hard to recognise her aunt because she looked just like Klavdiya, having the same face and mannerisms. Despite their similarity, however, there remained a telling difference between them. Nen lacked her babulya's dignified air of supreme competence that Klavdiya possessed. More so, watching Nen smiling blithely as her grandfather seethed gave Gwen the impression that her aunt may be a bit of a ditz.

The following figure to come through the door was yet another alter-ego of Klavdiya's face, this time more distinctly Asian, complete with warm black hair. Where babulya had the amber, almond eyes of the Eastern Europeans, this girl, who Gwen would presume to be 'Mina', had dark, obsidian orbs like their grandfather, giving her a doll-like appearance that suited her expensive clothes. Their eyes met, and immediately Gwen felt an unbidden sense of hostility. She followed Mina's gaze until it landed on her mandarin dress.

Ah. Gwen understood immediately; she was well-learned in the art of reading men and women. Mina must have coveted the dress, and now a lovely misunderstanding was upon them. Unlike Nen or Klavidya, Gwen couldn't tell Mina's age. For all she knew, she may be anywhere from fourteen to twenty-four. Goodness, Gwen thought to herself. What dangers must lie in this world for the men and women who wished to woo their healers!

Then came a strange absence.

The silence was a jarring lull in the bustle of the moment, where just a second ago, two women had burst through the doorway like blooming, noisy flowers.

"Tao!" Guo's command cracked the air like a bullwhip.

Slowly, "Tao" came through the partitioned door.

Gwen's eyes almost popped out of her sockets.

If she'd been eating the tarts, she would have gobbed the table like a spitting, four-winged swallow.

Gingerly, her cousin walked across the threshold, lifting one leg above the other.

ARE THOSE DROP-CROTCH LOW-SAG JEANS? The spectacle assailed her as though someone had king-punched her in the brain. The visual stimulus that assaulted her eyes was beyond belief.

What was she seeing? Was she was still in China?

With a stooped gait, Tao, her cousin, just walked in like someone from a 2010 hip-hop video with the prefix 'Lil' something. Unlike Nen or Mina, the boy wore ankle-height Nike sneakers in a blinding shade of white, low-rise jeans, two overlapping tee-shirts, one white and the other black, and a baseball cap too big for his head, worn slightly askew.

He also had a black eye.

All of Gwen's worries melted. There was nothing, no abduction, no threat of Room 101, that could top the absurdity of this moment.

Is this real life?
Or is this fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality?

From the door, cousin Tao looked up.

There must have been a sequence of genes missing somewhere, lost in the translation of generations. Tao had a face that looked like a man had mated with a surprised squirrel, creating a gaunt, skull-shaped head with deeply sunken sockets, from within which two startled looking amber orbs sat.

To Gwen's surprise, Tao's eyes did not register Morye, his long-lost uncle of many years, but instead fell upon herself.

The boy's face lit up like a man who'd suddenly discovered fire.

"Yo wassup," he said, swinging his head back and forth, bobbing in Gwen's general direction. "Who's the hoe? She looks hella fresh."

Gwen's world imploded.
It was too much.
She couldn't hold back.
If she had to hold back her laughter now, she would die.


Some die for beauty.
Some die for the truth.

Gwen died trying to be polite.

Her innate reaction was to unleash a hysterical cackle, to strike the table with her palms, laughing until her stomach was in stitches.

But Gwen held back.

Anyone who could act and say whatever they wanted in front of Guo was an asset Gwen wished to preserve. Who knew if one day Tao may become a helpful speakerphone, even if all she needed from him was a few words, in the right place, at the right time? So he called her the "H" word— feasibly, could Tao have meant it endearingly? It was no skin off her nose to ignore the insult.

"I am your cousin. Gwen Song," she answered, standing from her seat to shake his hand.

Having delivered his shocking entrance, Tao staggered towards the table.

"I got chu, Fam." Tao threw her a gang sign.

She shook his fingers.

Gwen couldn't help but notice the young man's palm was slick and a little sticky.

They sat.

Guo's fury no less scalding than the bun Gwen ate in prison. Red-faced, the patriarch waited until his blood pressure had returned to a manageable level before he introduced Gwen and Morye to the latecomers.

There was an audible gasp from Nen, whose eyes grew as round as quail eggs.

"Hai!"

You didn't notice?! Gwen stared at her aunty. Nen pushed back her chair, ran toward Morye, embraced him, and began rubbing her hands all over his face, raining a series of pecks on his grizzled cheeks.

"Oh, I've missed you! We all thought you died!"

Morye withstood the assault quietly and graciously, slumping back as though he was trying to survive a summer squall.

With the greetings over, the banquet was finally ready. At the head of the table sat the patriarch with their children's matriarch, Nen sat on the left and the two sons on the right. Beside Nen was her daughter, Mina, who still glared at Gwen, and then it was Tao.

Tao eyed the food a few times before his eyes moved onto Gwen, running over her mandarin dress like a dog panting over a steak. It wasn't so much as lecherous as it was comical, for the young man sported a prison-type hair cut, and his two watery, sleep-deprived eyes resembled poached eggs sitting on a pancake-flat face. On second thought, Gwen realised, it wasn't that Tao was leering at her, but that he could not help himself. His libidinous intent was attributed entirely to the unfortunate structure of his unpropitious face. His back, she noticed as well, was hunched, his chest sunken. Had he sustained some injury in the past? Gwen wondered, her eyes moving from his torso up toward his face, where his bruised eye throbbed.

"Which hood you from?" Tao's head bobbed when he spoke, giving the impression of a nervous but also impatient chicken.

"I am from Sydney."

"Whoa! You from the Frontier, dawg? That's hardcore, yo, Props."

"One second, Tao." Gwen turned toward her uncle. "Uncle Jun, I don't speak Chinese, so— is Tao's 'vernacular' 'for real' or is my Ioun Stone acting up?"

"Oi!" Tao protested. "That's how mah B-Boys roll, dawg. Don't hate the playa!"

Jun cringed as well. "He is er… 'for real', as they say."

"Yeah, bitches!"

"Well, I am happy to have met you, Tao." Gwen extended a white hand to pat Tao on the arm, spreading a little intimacy to break the ice.

Tao stared at her slender fingers.

"I thought you bumpkins are all farmers and shit, ya know?" He took her hand and studied it. "Why you all dolled up and shit? I reckon if you put on a party dress, you'll make Mina look like a bitch, haha!"

"Brother!" Mina snapped at her brother, her pretty face screwing up into a scowl. "Be rude again, and I'll grow you an extra set of wisdom teeth."

The older of the siblings instantly shrivelled.

"Hi, I am Gwen." Gwen turned to Mina and likewise offered her hand.

Mina stared at her hand.

"Hello." Mina did not take it but instead threw her shade under her voluminous lashes, her doll-like, porcelain face taking on an aloof expression.

Gwen retracted her hand and turned to look at Morye, who was enjoying a little schadenfreude of his own. Jun, meanwhile, looked as though he was already exhausted by his nephew and niece's shameful display.

"It's good to see you're all getting along so well," Nen announced suddenly, oblivious to the fire. "Family should stick together! Hai, I am so happy you're back to life! I never believed it for a moment when they said you died."

Morye fired back a smile as false as water, which Nen riposted with absolute earnestness. The radiant demeanour she put up made her father wince.

"ENOUGH!" Her grandfather growled. Guo was very fond, or so it appears, of listening and watching in deathly silence before suddenly making an announcement. "Start eating!"

And they did, despite Gwen being deathly afraid of the dishes. Her aunty Nen overzealously filled her bowl with bits and pieces of each exotic item, forcing Gwen to grit her teeth and embark on an alien Epicurean adventure.

As the dinner progressed, Guo sat like a lord surveying his domain, his eyes moving from Gwen to the others, to her father and back to Gwen again. As Guo absentmindedly chewed through each dish, she could almost hear the gears turning inside his head; little cogs clinking into place as loops and hooks interconnected plots and projections.

"Try this, dear; it's good for your Mana pool." Nen passed Gwen a bowl of "brain" that resembled tofu. Elvia likes Tofu; Gwen thought, therefore, she likes tofu. Eat the Tofu.

"Thank you, Aunty."

There were a hundred questions Gwen wanted to ask her father, but she would have to wait until after their soft interrogation by Guo. Beside Morye, Jun spoke patiently and meticulously, asking his brother about life in Sydney, asking how he survived without access to the Clan's resources.

"I get by, you know? I guess the gift of not using any Salt magic was that I got to have kids, although the curse was that I got to have kids." Morye shot Gwen a glance.

"Ha, you got me there." Jun chewed on his rice with a vacant expression. From her observations, Jun was the type to want kids. On the car trip, he had told her that when Morye disappeared, and it fell to him to continue to the line, he'd found out that he was infertile. To heal his lifeforce would mean giving up his talents for a decade, which wasn't an option.

Her babulya seemed to be in conversation with her grandfather; their lips moved without sound, exchanging words which evaded her best attempts at eavesdropping.

Mina, meanwhile, fiddled with what appeared to be a data slate, half distractedly going about dinner without engaging with anyone at the table.

Without a single person to converse with, Gwen turned to Tao, who was digging through the dishes like a man who had just survived a famine.

"So, cousin, who gave you that black eye?"

"Sum wankstas." Tao hissed while chewing on a pork-trotter.

"Details, perhaps? Surely a man such as yourself would have given as good as you received."

"You talk like Babulya," Tao observed offhandedly.

"Right." Gwen forced herself to calm. "So, tell me about the fight."

Tao dropped the trotter and looked for a tart.

With a mouth still full of crumbs, he began to regale his tale in great detail.

"So, there was this motherfucker from the Lin Clan who wanted to fuck with my crew. My boys and I were like, hanging out n' chilling, minding our own business at the M, right. Then this prick shows up, and he's like, 'What brings you out here?" and I am like, 'What's it to you, Fuck Face?' Then he's like, 'Clean up your mouth, Tao.' Then I am like, 'Go fuck ya self.'"

"Oh, my." Gwen listened with rapt fascination, a captive audience to Tao's Homeric epic.

"Dat Lin fucker's a real tool, you know, the bitch-face dared to turn away from me. Like WHO DA FUCK turns away in a fight? So I am like, 'Bitch, take mah 'Ray of Frost!' And I nailed 'em right at the back of his fucking neck, hahaha."

"Go on. Then what happened?"

"The fuck you think happened, bitch? He turns around, and he's all like fired up and shit. Motherfucker's from a good bloodline, you know? I am like, 'Aw shit!' and he's like, 'Yeah, you little shit,' and I am like 'Bros! protect me!' and my bros are all like 'protect Peaches!'"

"Who's Peaches?"

"Bitch, you even listening? I am Peaches! Tao is Chinese for Peach, alright?"

"Okay, Peaches. Go on."

"Anyway, this Lin bitch right, he's about to fuck me up, you know. He's all fluffed and shit, fucking university wanker. Anyway, I am like, 'Bro. You want to fuck me up! Come at me. You know who my Dad is?' and he's like, 'What the fuck, are you mentally disabled? We went to junior school together. Our Dads golf on Sundays!' Then I am like, 'Fuck you!' That's when he hit me with his mother fucking hands, man! The fucker knew we're not allowed to duel in public spaces, so he beat me like an NoM!"

"With his bare hands, you say?"

"Motherfucker beat me like a slab of char-siu, bitch."

"When did he stop?"

Tao, A.K.A Peaches looked around the table before replying quietly.

"When he fucking got tired, I guess?"

"Security doesn't like to meddle with the military's kids," Morye explained, likely from experience. "No spells, no trouble."

Gwen turned to the rest of the table to see if anyone just experienced the Epic of Peaches in the same manner as she just did.

"It grows on you, doesn't it," Jun said after a moment. "Sometimes I miss it even."

"You the best, Uncle Jun! YOOO!"

Gwen turned to look at Guo.

"He is not Song," he announced after a few unkind moments. "Thank the ancestors."

"Tao is errr… disinherited," Jun added helpfully.

"That's hardly fair!" Nen protested, her face unhappy and adorable at once. "Peaches needs all the help he can get!"

"Can you all keep the volume down?" Mina interjected suddenly. "I am trying to have a conversation here."

That was when Gwen noticed that Mina had a subtle glow flickering beside her ear.

She was on a "Message" with someone this entire time?! Gwen looked around for a device but couldn't find one. Was the girl a Diviner? No, she gave off the aura of a Healer, and there was that strange perfume hanging about her as well, was it an ability, or was it a gadget?

"Mina is... also not in line," Jun added. "At least until they prove themselves."

Percy, you lucky bastard. Gwen noted silently to herself. If Percy could be half as obedient as these two living examples of filial piety, then he had it in the bag.

Dinner proceeded for another half an hour, after which the servants brought bowls of water which they used to sanitise their hands. A palate cleanser of herbs in a slightly syrupy soup was the last dish, after which the banquet ended.

Grandfather rose.

"Gwen, Hai, Jun, in the meeting chamber, now. Nen, look after your children."

Those whose names were called stood to attention.

Gwen felt her stomach make a little topsy-turvy tumble.

This was her second chance.

There would not be a third.

The meeting chamber was a conference room on the side of the main dining area.

Grandfather sat at the head. Babulya sat beside him.
Jun sat to the side. Nen was missing, though Gwen had a suspicion that her air-headed aunty was likely terrible at keeping secrets, which would explain her absence.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Gwen and Morye stood in the middle.

Four giant pillars held up the room, each painted in dark crimson. Above them, a plaque read "Righteous Heart… One…"

"Which one of you would like to speak first?" Grandfather broke the silence.

"I will." Morye raised a hand.

"Gwen, take a seat while your father speaks." Babulya pointed to a chair beside Jun.

Her father gathered his thoughts while Gwen patted down her dress to prevent it from riding upward. The skirt portion of the dress was pleated, but the mandarin-style torso pulled at the hem.

"Before I began," Morye announced to his parents. "Allow me to apologise. Father, and especially Mother— I am sorry."

Morye paused for effect.

"I am sorry I faked my death at the Battle of Hunan."

Gwen baulked, her hazel orbs sparkling with astonishment and disbelief. Her father had said that he 'killed' someone he shouldn't have, but so far, there was no indication of who he had murdered. So the man he 'killed' was himself?

"Is inheriting the clan such an impossible task?" Guo's voice was frustrated fury simmering under a surface of forced calm.

"It is," Morye announced. "Father, neither of us can be euphemistic, so let me say it once more. I have no desire to inherit the Clan and act as its head. I just wish to be myself, do what I want. As you should know, I am not a man given to duty. I maintained that when we fought about it so many years ago, and I maintain it now."

"A Mage's talent does not belong to himself alone." Her grandfather gripped the knob of his chair.

"Which is why in my escapade, I never relied on the gift of Yin and the bloodline of the Song," Morye pointed out. "When I survived in Sydney, I did so entirely on the Water element, which I performed at a reduced Affinity, and my self-taught Abjuration."

"You are a Magus now?" Babulya looked up. "This is wonderful news."

"Well, unintentionally, maybe." Morye shrugged. "My point is, I was perfectly happy there, using my powers to survive, untethered to all of this."

"Tell me about your life in Sydney, how you have lived in these twenty-odd years," Klavdiya said, glowing with the happiness that her useless son had unwittingly become a Magus.

"Alright. After my escape, I arrived on a freighter under the pseudonym Morye, which means ocean…"

"In Russian, I know," Klavdiya replied warmly. "Dear, please go on."

Morye spoke plainly of his experiences, but much of it Gwen either already knew or had guessed at in the past. Her father had worked hard to join a vocational college in Sydney, got a scholarship to Sydney University through that, then met her mother. They fell in love, had children, then divorced due to differences in life's philosophies. When pressed, Morye stated that Gwen's mother had found out about Morye's powers and wanted a better life, a life of prestige, but Morye refused, and so they came to blows. Likewise, he looked after his two children until they graduated junior high and Awakened to their abilities.

"Is this true, Gwen?" Babulya asked Gwen to confirm Morye's story.

Her father's story was "true" because she didn't want to say it was "false" for fear of his life. Morye's tale was also missing the hundred or so times he cheated on her mother. Moreover, that was that fuck up when Gwen came home feeling suicidal after her rebirth, only to find Morye had invited a girlfriend over to celebrate Gwen moving out of the house. Likewise, in the year since, he's completely let her go.

But she wanted her dad to owe her one.

"I had not known want, gone hungry, or felt unsafe during the time we grew up," Gwen said carefully, avoiding looking at Morye. "He is a good father, better than what many could hope for."

"So you can be responsible!" Babulya happily declared to Morye. "Hai, why not reconsider your Father's proposal? It's only right that the firstborn son inherits."

"It's death." Morye shook his head. "I wanted life."

"Insolent ingrate!" Guo's expression looked as though he wanted to give Morye another sound thrashing.

"Now, now." Babulya calmed her grandfather by rubbing his chest to ease his congested fury. "Hai, regardless of whether you listen to your father, I think we all deserve an apology, don't you think?"

Morye took a deep breath.

Gwen watched as her father carefully walked in front of the two old folks and dropped to his knees.

"Mamulya, Baba, I am sorry for my selfishness and the pain that it has caused you for these past twenty years. Please accept my apology."

He then touched his head to the ground and kowtowed, repeating the ritual three times before standing back up.

"Thank you, dear." Babulya reached out and cupped his face with her hand. "You must have suffered a lot in the tier 2 city, no? All those Mermen and Saurians, Kangaroos even, constant attacks, never knowing peace."

Sydney was safe! Gwen wanted to yell. Morye spent the entire time chasing skirts and pissing off my mother! But how could she blab when her grandmother was melting even the cynical heart of her stone-faced grandfather?

"You have no regrets?" Gwen's grandfather asked her father wistfully. "None at all?"

Morye's expression looked tragic and self-aggrandising.

"What is regret when I had no choice?"

The room took on an oppressive silence.

Each side took a moment to digest Morye's philosophical declaration.

"Hai, go and sit," her grandfather told Morye. "Gwen, it is now your turn."

Gwen conditioned her nerves and pulled herself from the hardwood chair. As she passed Morye, their eyes met, and her father gave her a reassuring nod.

She took her place in the centre.

A severe mental pressure descended upon her, numbing her scalp and setting her skin to crawl.

Gwen took a deep breath, savouring her final few seconds.

There was no holding back this time, no playing dumb to try and see how they react. Gwen's grandfather was in no mood to play silly buggers with cock and bull; her grandmother was likewise expecting the gospel truth.

So how should she proceed to lead the conversation? She needed to distract them somehow, unbalance them, get them on the back foot; even if she was pushed to confess her secrets, it must be on 'her' terms.

"I am going to show you something. Is that okay?" Gwen stepped back and retreated a safe distance.

Her grandfather nodded.

Babulya's eyes sparkled.

Jun leaned forward with an alert expression of expectation.

Morye groaned softly under his breath.

"Ariel!"

The lightning marten landed with a flash and examined its surroundings with its electric blue pupils. It spotted the old couple at the end of the row and made a flourishing turn onto its stomach, exposing its belly before dropping to the floor and rolling back and forth adorably. It was now an old hand at this game.

"Oh, how precious!" Babulya noted. "What an intelligent Familiar!"

"This is Ariel; he is a Lightning Element Familiar I acquired when I had just awoken to my powers."

Babulya retrieved an LDM crystal from thin-air and threw it towards Ariel, who caught it mid-arc in its teeth, puffing up its cheeks for maximum cuteness before landing deftly.

"Now this…" Gwen took a deep breath. "... is Caliban!"

Don't be a spider! Don't be a spider! Gwen prayed to the Elder Gods. Snake! Snake! Snake!

A slit opened in the fabric between the Void and the Material Plane, ejecting Caliban like an abortive dark tumour. The Lovecraftian thing uncoiled itself into a tenebrous centipede with its slimy, translucent carapace, a multitude of skittering legs emerging from its fleshy torso like bony fingers.

"It's not dangerous!" Gwen announced quickly. "Caliban is entirely under my command!"

Her babulya had on an unruffled expression that suggested she'd seen worse. Her grandfather gripped the arms of his chair so tightly that Gwen wondered if the man would tear the handles off.

Jun had darted between his parents the moment the thing appeared, an incantation upon his lips, ready to visit terrible destruction upon Gwen should she attempt to harm her grandparents. When no hostility materialised, he awkwardly returned to his seat.

Caliban sniffed the air before lowering its head and coiling around Gwen's feet. Its centipede form was immense, just over two meters in length and as thick as her thighs at its centre. Its many legs skittered over her shoes and her white thighs until it could gain purchase with the help of her arms in scaling her dress. Gwen held the upper section of the netherworld monstrosity as one would cradle a long-bodied cat, showing off its faceless head and the mandibles there.

"This is Caliban," she said with a quavering voice. "It is my other Familiar, from the Void element."

Gwen stroked the terrifying, tenebrous thing, causing it to purr with a series of wild clicking. Ariel, not to be beaten, finished its crystal and began doing laps around her other leg.

"Caliban has an... unique ability." Gwen felt her heart catch in her throat. "When Caliban consumes an enemy, it can sometimes take on their shape. Additionally, I gain some the Affinities of the Mages it consumes, though I don't know exactly how."

The room fell silent as the last words left her mouth.

Her grandfather turned to his wife.

"A Calamity," he said audibly.

Calamity? Gwen's ears perked up, a sheen of cold sweat drenching her back. That doesn't seem like a reasonable reaction at all. Had she made yet another mistake?

"No," Her grandmother retorted, moving her luminous eyes slowly until she met Guo's cold black orbs. "A boon."

Boon is good. Gwen repeated babulya's words across her lips. More boon, please.

"How did you come about this talent then?" Her grandfather turned back to Gwen, his tone less antagonistic than she had imagined. "Tell me from the start, from your moment of Awakening."

The breath that Gwen had been holding released. Below, her legs felt like two long strings of failing spaghetti. With a silent command, she retrieved Caliban and Ariel, returning them to her pocket dimension.

"I will, Grandfather," she began. "My awakening took place about a year and a half ago, in September, at a school called Blackwattle…"

Mindful of any pitfalls in her narrative, Gwen began to recount the past year and a half of her life with as much truth as she could conveniently deliver. She omitted the secret of her twin-soul, of her otherworldly wisdom and her strange, quizzical transportation into this world from her old one— but told the truth of her Awakening, first as a Generalist, then as a Lightning Evoker, then their adventure in the Royal National.

"That was the first time I met the Rainbow Serpent, a mythical existence by the name of Almudj…"

She told them of what happened on the Field Trip, of Debora, of the Rainbow Serpent, of what had happened to her when the Mage known as Edgar had tried to take her body and soul.

"Father later killed that Mage, or so I was told…"

"Hai, you did this?"

"I did." Her father did not deny the kill.

Guo nodded, evidently pleased.

"That was when I finally met my Master, Henry Kilroy, the Lord Magister of Sydney Tower…"

Gwen then told them of her training under Henry, Alesia and Gunther, of her growing kinship. She regaled her story about Blackheath, the slavers, and the first time Caliban took within itself the lives of the innocent Mages who kept prisoners there. Of Gunther rescuing her in the eleventh hour and cleansing the place with his radiant fire.

"You keep austere company, my child." Her babulya interjected as Gwen spoke of Gunther and the Tower.

"The Morning Star," Guo intoned, none too happy with the revelation. "I know of this man."

"Not to mention Deathless Henry himself," Grandmother added. "But, all men die. Am I presuming too much to say that you had a hand in that as well?"

Gwen felt her voice falter when her babulya struck the nail right on the head.

"It's fine, child. Continue."

"Grandfather, the next part of my story is going to reveal some of my late Master's secrets. May I ask that you keep this revelation in confidence?"

"You have it," her grandfather intoned seriously. From his expression, Gwen could read that he had imagined the girl's past to be shallow, but they were in deep waters now, and the depth of Gwen's life descend well into the murk.

"I am going to tell you about the Mage who is responsible for the fall of Sydney," Gwen began. "I am speaking of Elizabeth Winsted Sobel, the wife of my master, Henry Kilroy— a Void Mage like myself."

Gwen then spoke of Mark Chandler, his ploys involving his sister, and about Elizabeth and her madness, fleshing out the rationale of her failure at Blackheath. She told them about her subsequent training for the Inter-high, of what her Master had said about the Sea of Flames and how she would be protected by fame and notoriety when the time was ripe to expose her powers to the world.

"A wise and bold choice. How great the mind of this Henry Kilroy must be," her grandmother intoned, deeply impressed. "It would have certainly worked, you know. I can most assuredly imagine how the Mageocracy would react if Kilroy threw the weight of his influence behind you."

"He 'is' dead?" Guo interrupted her with a hint of steel.

"Yes. My Master is no more," Gwen affirmed grievously.

She then told them of her first match at Rosebay, of how Elizabeth must have found and ambushed Henry, of the Mermen invasion that followed. She explained the Tower's downfall, of how Debora was Faceless, and of her moment of crisis when she was about to be consumed by a skin-changer.

"Then my amulet released all the energies it had gathered from Almudj…"

Gwen retrieved the Kirin amulet from beneath her mandarin blouse and placed it upon her palm for all to see.

"You gave the Kirin amulet to a daughter?" Guo turned to Morye incredulously. "What about your son?"

Morye shrugged.

"She needed it more than Percy."

Suddenly, Guo's face twisted into something terrifying.

Jun reached beneath his shirt and took out a familiar flash of jade.

It was another piece of greenstone carved in the shape of a Kirin, though his one arced its back in a way opposite to Gwen's. When placed together, both Kirins formed the semi-circle halves of the yin and yang symbol.

"Would you like to have it returned?" Gwen asked immediately, holding out the amulet. She had no desire to forsake her precious item, of course; it was her ticket to harvesting Creature Cores! But Gwen knew how these 'things' usually went. In a contest for something where one was bound to lose, there was no advantage in avarice. Instead, it was wiser to take the moral high road and appear superior to the thing itself to create future opportunities for barter.

"You are free to keep it." Surprisingly, it was Jun who spoke, cutting off her grandfather before he could announce a decree. "The amulet has followed the streams of fate and chance and anchored itself to you. Who is to say that it would bring the same boon when forced upon another?"

Her grandfather swallowed his following words like a man forcing down a hardboiled egg, attracting another bout of chest rubbing from her grandmother.

"Tell me more about this Sobel woman," Guo said finally, trying to distract his seething disapproval.

Gwen repeated what she knew about Elizabeth in reasonable detail, emphasising that her Master's only fault was his falsely placed faith in her 'death' so many years ago. She then told them about the disappearance of her friends, Elvia and Yue, into the Grot and her mission to retrieve them from Singapore.

"… and that's about all I know," Gwen confessed. "That and you already know about Caliban's particular physique."

"Is the Morning Star going to try and retrieve you?" her grandfather inquired, scratching his chin.

"Assuredly," Gwen replied. "We are Brother and Sister-in-craft, Alesia included. I'd wager Gunther would be working on a plan as we speak."

Gwen raised her hand, where three rings sparkled.

"The Storage Ring is from Surya, my maternal grandfather. The Evasion Ring is from Magister Ferris, of Sydney Tower. The Contingency Ring is from Gunther; it was his own."

Her grandfather's face lost some of its colours, though whether from regret she could not know. After all, the Scarlet Sorceress was no slouch, and Gunther Shultz was a different creature entirely.

Gwen studied her grandfather as he tapped the chair with his fingers, his expression growing harder by the minute. Hopefully, the man wasn't thinking of killing her and burying her corpse.

"I would like to know your mind on this, Klavdiya," Guo murmured.

Her grandmother gave her a kind look of approval, then spoke. "You can keep a lid on the stew, Guo, but for how long would it simmer before it boiled over? Her old Master knew the reality of her situation far better than you. Don't fight her siblings. Leave the girl to her own devices. Leave her to me if you are disinclined. You are going to be preoccupied with your grandson, no? What about his retrieval?"

"If the Morning Star is aware, I do not think Wei and Jung can succeed," Guo confessed.

"Why not approach this with diplomacy?" Her grandmother asked. "What's the harm? Shanghai isn't at war with Sydney. Far from it, we trade with the Australians."

Guo sighed.

Gwen waited patiently while the two elders conversed. She repressed her body's natural desire to sway and shift, standing to attention with focused intent, awaiting summary judgment from her patriarch and matriarch.

"Gwen," it was her grandmother who addressed her.

"Yes, Babulya?"

"You will stay in Shanghai for the time being until matters of your status, your wellbeing, and the future of your education can be arranged."

"Yes, Babulya," Gwen concurred. Under the circumstances, that was the best she could hope for, at least until Gunther called.

Klavdiya raised an elegant eyebrow.

"That's it? No questions? No requests?"

"May I ask for a favour then?"

"You may."

"Can I contact my friends in Sydney?"

"You speak of the girl Apprentice to the Scarlet Sorceress?" It was her grandfather who spoke this time.

"Yes, she is my dearest and closest friend."

His brows furrowed.

"They are still in transit as far as I am aware," Her grandfather intoned. "You will be permitted to contact your friends in time, but not now. Is that clear?"

"Yessir," Gwen replied rigidly.

"Father, may I make a suggestion?" This time, it was Jun who spoke.

"Jun, go ahead." Klavdiya gave her second son a motherly smile, which Jun returned wholeheartedly. The exchange made Morye cringe, which made Gwen want to roll her eyes.

"If you want Gwen out of your hair for a few days," Jun began. "There's the gathering of the Houses happening on Hengsha Island in three days. Mina and Tao have to attend. I thought that this year, maybe we can bring Gwen and see how she performs."

Gwen's ears perked up.

Hengsha Island? Gathering? Houses? Performance?

What does all that mean?

"Bah, a stupid gathering of little princes and princesses," Morye interrupted them. "I don't know about throwing Gwen into the mix. Although she has seen some action out on the Frontier, her proficiency at 'holding back' is mediocre at best. If she fries or tries to consume one of those kids…"

"She'll be fine." Jun's eyes sparkled. "Babulya is lending us her grand-niece, Petra."

"I don't know who that is," Morye shrugged.

"Oh, ho ho." Jun shook his head, grinning. "She is a monster."

He turned to Klavdiya.

"What do you think, Babulya? I think Gwen will get along with Petra."

Four pairs of eyes turned to Gwen, who swallowed nervously.

"Gwen," Klavdiya asked gently. "Would you like to stay with Grandfather, or would you like to see a bit of the Shanghai countryside? Specifically, one of the Orange Zone training grounds?"

"Hengsha, please!" Gwen answered a little too eagerly, drawing a grunt from her grandfather.

"Then it's settled!" Jun clapped his hands. "In the meanwhile, why don't you get acquainted with Mina and Tao? They are both your seniors, Tao by two years and Mina one. Get them to show you the city, see some of its sights. It'll be fun to get to know your cousins."

Gwen thought about Shanghai-Barbie and her motor-mouth brother.
Arguably, things could be worse.
She could be spending the weekend with Guo.

"Okay!" Gwen agreed to her uncle's suggestion. She had to wait five or more days until Yue and Elvia arrived in Sydney. What's the worst that could happen?