_Cla-Clang!_

_Clung!_

_Clang!_

Lulan exchanged swings with the girls from Emei, inspired by Gwen to go for a two-on-one.

"Plum-blossom Strike!"

Risking a shallow wound to trade blow for blow, she allowed one of the Hsu sisters, Vicky, to gash her thigh with a mana-charged thrust, thereby overextending her reach.

"Heart Seeking Sword!"

_KRUNG!_

The slab of iron that suddenly emerged was enough to send the girl flying, scattering a vivid crimson arc across the invisible barrier. Above, the adjudicator did not call for a halt, as Sword Mages, unlike Western casters, usually forwent Shields for Transmutation-focused defence such Lulan's Iron Heart, or the Falling Feather technique employed by the Emei sisters, negating blows and blasts through the application of Taoist mysticism.

Lulan landed without so much as a grimace, her Iron Heart technique instantly closing her flesh wound.

Vicky Hsu, conversely, didn't fare so well. Coughing up a mouthful of bile and blood, she had to be aided by her sister.

"Thank you for the instruction, Lulan shimei."

"Hsu shijie, the same," Lulan returned, stowing her iron-slab back into the Elemental Plane of Earth.

The crowd clapped and cheered, though their heart wasn't in it.
After the first match, nothing else could set the blood to boil, not when it had already evaporated.

The duels ran at half-strength at best. The members of Seoul U had retreated earlier, taking with them their advisor, likely to strategise and lick their wounds. Kyoto meanwhile, sent out a few members who stuck strictly to Western spellcraft.

Gwen chose to stay close to the buffet table, sipping Mao-tai and pulverising the vitality-rich crab claws harvested from Yangon's mana-rich river between her carapace-crushing teeth.

At present, Kyoto U's shugenja and priestess sat politely to one side, holding small talk while Ariel and Caliban slithered about underfoot, teasing the Mages for crystals.

On her other side sat Jiantong's Captain, already flushed from his second glass of rice wine, speaking slowly and carefully lest he fell into a potential honey trap.

Eunae meanwhile, sat on a stool beside a jubilant Anita, blissfully supping on a young coconut.

"I feel so full of vitality," she remarked to the team's Mineral Mage, blushed by the booze. "Come what may- let me at em!"

The rest of the team broke into laughter while Richard returned with Lulan.

"Healing Word!" Eunae managed the Sword Mage's flesh wound. "Does it hurt?"

"There isn't much sensation when my Iron Heart is active," Lulan clarified, stretching her leg. "Thanks, Eunae."

"You should have gone for the face," Richard advised with a grin. "It'll take a Regenerate to restore sensory organs, and I have a feeling the Emei girls are underplaying their hand."

"They have a sword formation that's famous among the Clans, a kind of low-tier Simulacrum," Lulan agreed with the second statement. "Vivian has to be the Illusionist, Vicky's blow felt like a Transmuters."

"They can formation all they want." Richard laughed. "Good spell fodder for Chain Lightning."

Fudan's party collectively sighed with satisfaction. What a spectacle that had been. It perfectly demonstrated that certain spells, when mastered, constituted significant milestones.

For Fire Mages, the ubiquitous Fireball at tier 3 was the single most practical magic in existence. For Evokers especially, even well into their career as Magisters, the spell remained a constant companion, an invocation so ingrained it could manifest with a thought.

Conversely, for Mineral and Earthen Mages, it was Stone Shape or Transmute Stone that made all the difference, swiftly adding versatility and utility to all Schools of Magic.

As for Air Mages, Flight served as the tipping point of their advantage, after which no other Elementalist might hope to catch an Air Affinity Combat Mage without Teleportation or a means to restrain their mobility.

Finally, for Lightning Mages, their sweet fruit of deliverance came at the end of a long, hard road in the form of Chain Lightning, originating from the Icelandic Gothar. The earliest records pointed to a Mage of antiquity known as Thangbrand the Priest, who deployed the ancient magic against Ice Giants.

As for Gwen's specific variation of Chain Lightning, her private instructor had delivered a spell which, in Walken's words, secured his previous career. Incepting as an Air Mage, he initially struggled to invoke complex multi-target strikes, and so had spent years researching and modifying the original incantation so that with Aella's aid, he could replicate the spell.

When applied to Ariel, the two then discovered that her pseudo-Kirin was capable of reinvigorating a refracted bolt, continuing the cycle. With Gwen's current Affinity, the second sequence reduced her Chain Lightning to half-strength, while the third cycle was little more effective than a low-tier Lightning Missile. However, when fused with Almudj's Essence, it took three cycles for the bolt to be reduced to its original strength, arguably capable of returning for a fourth and final strike.

Though impressive, the spell was highly conditional. First, targets had to be intimately displaced. Second, while cycling, targets must remain within range, as a single Teleportation or Blink could disrupt the flow of the spell as it refracted from each victim. Third, Ariel must remain in range and immobile, opening her Familiar to banishment, assaults, and other dangers. Lastly and finally, the spell's effectiveness dwindled against Abjurers who are capable of dampening her lightning, as each strike relied on carrying over energy from the last. In the worst case scenario, a skilled Earthen Mage with a strong metal-element may ground the first strike, undoing the spell altogether. In tests conducted with Walken's conjured targets, it was against clustered aerial foes that the Signature invocation truly shined.

Though as Walken noted, countermeasures were her opponent's problem: as a group; they fed her Chain Lightning. Alone, she could eat them alive.

That was the "Fear of Gwen" he had intended.

All that was left was the competition itself.

Magister Lutz von Schlabrendorff stood by the window atop the Royal Strand by Seikkantha Park. His suite overlooked the Secretariat below, where the students should by now be returning to their rooms.

For the next few days, the students could socialise and get to know the people and the land. Of course, the competition itself would take place in Kachin, ten hours Mage Flight north of Mandalay, but the students didn't know that.

Standing in the middle of the luxurious living room, the Magister closed his eyes, allowing greater focus.

"Reveal Dweomer."

Lutz invoked a high-tier detection spell which reacted to the presence of unsavoury enchantments within the vicinity of the caster. At his behest, a ripple of vibrant energy manifested as a sphere radiating from the caster, enveloping the top floor of the hotel.

"Hmm…" Lutz grunted with displeasure. He was being watched. For the defeated ruling remnant of an uncivilised frontier, the audacity shown by this House of M was astounding.

"Obfuscate!" A second invocation from the School of Illusion was enough to render any Divination below tier 7 senseless.

"Evelyn," the Magister spoke into a Message spell of his own making, utilising a private network established between himself and the advisors for the various teams. "Inform Walken I need to speak with him."

"Yessir," came the reply from Magister Evelyn Hass, his right-hand woman.

Lutz had all but ten minutes to set up the lumen-projector and conjure two servings of Old Fashioned before Hass returned, signalling Walken's arrival.

"Come in." Lutz unlocked the door with a wave of his hand.

"Eric, it's been too long."

"Good to see you too, Lutz."

The two shared a friendly handshake.

"Please, take a seat, make yourself comfortable." Lutz indicated to the spacious hotel room. "I've got something interesting to show you."

Each of the veteran Mages took up a spot around the room while Magister Hass left the room.

"Replay," Lutz commanded the lumen-recorder.

The scene now projected in the living room was the match between Gwen Song and Seoul U.

Manipulating glyphs only he could see, Lutz's Panopticon Engine, a sophisticated crystalline device operable only by the Chief Proctor, shifted its angle until it focused on the dais upon which the House of M's representative, the lithe Miss Maymyint, holding a flute of golden liqueur.

"Eric." Lutz indicated to the sight of their female host. "As you are aware, a part of the Panopticon is designed to identify oddities, such as malignant magic utilised to aid students to gain an unfair advantage. In reviewing suspicious magic during the match— observe."

The Mages watched a thin golden thread materialise, linking Maymyint and Mayuree.

"Now that IS interesting."

Walken knew that The Eye of Providence was a class III restricted Divination Spell originating from a darker era under the Papal Inquisition. With it, a Diviner may monitor and record the activities of students and their actions during the competition.

"Well, Eric? What do you have to say for your local contestant?"

"If you must know, she was a temporary shoo-in," Walken grumbled darkly. "The original Diviner quit, saying that she didn't want to die, and her sister, our host, volunteered Mayuree. I can assure you, Lutz- if there is any attempt at subverting the fairness of the game, my team will have no part in it. I've proctored in the past. I know how this works."

Stolen novel; please report.

Lutz von Schlabrendorff regarded his old friend from the Grey Faction, then exhaled. "Needless to say, if this happens during the Quest, penalties will apply."

"Maybe the House of M is planning something," Walken changed the subject. "Can you do me a favour and route some information from the betting houses?"

"You think they're trying to make a quick mound of HDMs? It's nothing so crass," Lutz refuted Walken's hypothesis. "The House of M donated three-hundred thousand HDMs to the competition's coffers, Eric, and they're paying for all expenses incurred while we're in Burma."

Walken smirked at the nation's old colonial name. To think that only a decade had passed since the Mageocracy pulled out before the Orientals had a dragon infest the north. It was laughable how incompetent these prideful independence governments could be.

"What do you suggest?"

"Nothing. I'll leave that to you." Lutz offered his old colleague a glass of the Old Fashioned, now suitably infused. "The IIUC must go on. Remember, so long as our host holds up their part of the agreement with the Committee, we are a strictly neutral party. For good reasons, we do not interfere, even if the contestants are to lose their lives."

"So, this is a favour?"

"Would you believe pity? You need this. Don't you?"

Walken grunted. Pity was the right word. To think one of the Oceania Ten was now reduced to chaperoning an eighteen-year-old girl Mage like a steward.

"What happened to your famous impartiality?"

"The match hasn't started yet. Can't a man chat with an old friend?"

"Well then, thanks, Lutz." Walken breathed out, bowing his head slightly. "I appreciate it."

"I am doing it for the girl as well." Lutz von Schlabrendorff scratched his temple. "A talent like that, remind you of someone?"

"Sobel?"

"Who else?"

"Gwen is…" Walken checked his tongue. "...different."

"Time will tell." Lutz appeared unconvinced. "Like Sobel, I anticipate the Mageocracy will squeeze a decade out of her at least, two at best. Though I don't think there'll be another Kilroy to ferment a second Sobel. I still can't believe old Henry died such a needless death. He was the best of us."

"They could use her to fight Sobel, you know." Walken tasted a metallic tang of guilt on his tongue. "I can tell you Gwen has good cause to give it her all."

"Ha!" Lutz von Schlabrendorff laughed, swirling his drink. "Good luck with that, Eric. May the best team win."

"I thought the competition isn't about winning?"

Lutz von Schlabrendorff swilled the last of his drink; then the room filled with rye-scented laughter.

Walken teleported back into his hotel room, feeling an urgent need to set matters into motion.

He discerned immediately the error of letting his passions ferment, channelling a little too much of Henry. He reminded himself that his old rival had grown soft, and that was why he failed. Henry had let his students' affections affect his thinking; he allowed his sentiments for his wife to impact his judgement.

Mayuree, defrauding the competition? He found that unlikely. No, this was something more. Something nefarious. He could feel it in his bones; it was just the sort of thing he would plot.

Shuffling out of his jacket, he washed his face to cool his head.

_How to proceed?_ Walken asked himself.

The contents of the match remained unknowable. _Lutz wasn't THAT generous._

Should they swallow the risk and persist in their suit?

To bail— to reconvene, may very well waste their immovable advantage. As the team stood now, Jiantong's Captain was amiable to cooperation, Kyoto U had been charmed by Gwen's pseudo-Kirin, and Seoul had been suitably oppressed.

As for Mayuree.

If this were the Eric Walken of the past, there would a hundred and one ways to make the Diviner cough up the truth.

But thanks to Gwen' soft-heartedness, disabling the girl was out of the question, not to mention they genuinely needed a Diviner.

As for the path of least resistance, Walken knew he had to do the unthinkable; he had to tell Gwen the truth.

"Yes? Who is it?"

Gwen opened the door to find Eric Walken standing at the entrance of her Secretariat's west-wing guest room.

"Gwen, we need to talk."

Had Walken's face been any less the likeness of a basilisk, she would have thought the old man desiring a heart to heart, but the firmness of Walken's jaws indicated this was serious.

"Right, what's the matter?"

"Bring your Habitat."

At the mention of her portal Faraday cage, Gwen realised the trouble might be more severe than she initially thought.

"Righto, one sec."

In her spacious guest room were almost a dozen girls fondling Ariel and playing cards. Within her seraglio of feminine figures, she had the hungover Lulan, the thankful Eunae, Anita, Rene, and to Walken's great surprise, Yuki, the Captain of the Kyoto team, as well as a few of her companions, was even now holding Gwen's Kirin with a dreamy expression. Together, the girls had been playing Da-Lao-Er, a game she had learned from Tao, engaging in an equally entertaining but far less destructive royal rumble.

After much grumbling and a promise to leave Ariel behind, Gwen met Walken in the courtyard. One HDM later, the duo joined in the grey space of the habitat's courtyard.

"Here's fine." Walken eyed the conjured home. "Listen well. The Chief Proctor has just informed me that your friend Mayuree is under suspicion of using Mind Link to violate the rules of the competition."

Gwen's eyes grew as large as hen's eggs; a complaint reached her lips reflexively.

"Hold your horses." Walken put up a hand. "Lutz doesn't know Mayuree as you do, nor does he have the information that we have, such as your involvement with her, or the House of M."

Gwen swallowed. She did not recall telling Walken any of this. If so, where had he gotten the information?

"Call it due diligence." Walken gave her a sideways look. "Something that will preoccupy much of your time should you ever come to possess a Tower. So, are we in agreement that your previously naive friend lacked the mental means to execute such a daring subversion?"

"Definitely." Gwen nodded, thinking of the demure Mayuree, who could be overexcited and careless but who certainly wasn't capable of pulling a con like this. "What do you propose?"

"I don't believe this Maymyint is so foolish as to mind-tap Mayuree in the middle of a match. More than likely, I think it's plausible that your friend is under the influence of her sister to perform some bidding. The more I hear about this, the more I am starting to suspect that there's some disastrous event on the horizon. The Tyrant, your friend, the House of M, Myăma, all of it. There's a piece of the puzzle missing, but I just can't put my finger on the pulse of it."

"Ah…" Gwen realised immediately the precise piece of the puzzle that Walken was missing, objectively speaking. There was one thing Walken could not discover through observing her finances, habits and charming her host of loose-lipped mentors. "Eric, there's something I think I should tell you."

Walken ceased his pacing, then met her eyes.

"Don't get angry, because its not something I would have trust you with at any rate."

Walken sighed. "Go on."

"Well…" Gwen organised her thoughts. "See, this whole thing started when I entered Fudan, and I ran into Mayuree and Kitty at the Scholarship Exam…"

Walken listened with increasing grimness while Gwen clarified the conditions of Mayuree's prophesy-driven friendship.

"The Matriarch of the House of M must be senile to pull a stunt like this," Walken spluttered. "Even assuming Mayuree's vision is correct, there's no proof you haven't saved her already. Unless she's the Oracle of Delphi, her foresight could be entirely impressionistic or abstract."

Walken paced back and forth.

"I assume that somehow, the House of M is growing desperate to defeat this Tyrant. Paying tithings to a dragon that occupies a mountain isn't news. It's a tradition as old as time itself. I think something has disturbed the status quo."

Gwen watched her advisor wrack his brain.

"So, the primary outcome, assuming their ploy works, is that they planned for the Tyrant, a draconic-being of some sort, to attack Mayuree. Then, assuming Mayuree lives, there can only be one outcome— someone has to defeat the dragon, thereby freeing their nation from the threat of the Tyrant."

"BUT—" Walken continued. "That's not possible. From what I can see, Myăma is a wealthy country. There's bound to be at least a dozen Magister-level casters, not to mention they can hire mercenaries. That they remain in thrall means the Tyrant is beyond the ability of Mages without the backing of a Tower to challenge. It implies the Tyrant must be at least five or more centuries old, starting to moult, drawing power from the land's ley lines, only then is it beyond the challenge of a mortal Mage. Only a Tower can cut the dragon off its near infinite supply of mana."

Her advisor exhaled.

"I think their plan is doomed to fail." Walken shook his head. "Either these locals have no idea what they're facing, or there are greater powers at play than we can know."

"Should we inform the proctors?"

"No."
"Why not?"
"The IIUC Committee won't act," Walken explained. "Lutz has a spell called the Eye of Providence. It's highly restricted Panopticon-Class Divination linked to the Towers. When the competition begins, you will all carry beacons that make you subject to direct observation. During the competition, Lutz and the others will not interfere, no matter what happens. Afterwards…"

"There'll be hell to pay?"

"Yes, which is why none of this makes sense." Walken gnashed his teeth. "What's there to gain for the House of M? You win, the Towers will come down on Myăma. You all die? They would come down on the House, then the dragon. Myăma will be a Black Zone."

The two of them remained silent while they mulled on the matter.

"I guess I'll play it by ear." Gwen's thoughts turned to her friend. "Poor Mia… and that snake Maymyint! To think she helped me with Kitty. Bloody Kitty, I wonder if she's in on this."

"Presumably the House of M will send you toward the north, where the dragon will be in your path. As for the Tyrant: one can only guess what creature lurks in those mountains. Either way, the teams have enough offensive firepower to wound it, though defeating it would be impossible."

"Eric." Gwen grounded her teeth guiltily, realising she had omitted yet another a critical fact. "Can I tell you something else? You can't get mad, okay."

Walken furrowed his brows. "What now?"

"Er… I might know who the Tyrant is."

Her advisor blinked.

"Alright." The old man appeared unfazed. "Confess."

"I have it on good authority that it's probably an in-law... my Uncle's wife's brother; someone called Ruxin. According to Ayxin, he came to Myăma some three decades ago, the exact time that the Tyrant appeared. He's a full-blooded Thunder Dragon, about five hundred years old, and he's looking to nest and mate."

"… okay." Walken pinched his forehead. "So an Asiatic Blue Dragon in the moulting phase, going musth- anything else?"

Golos' name simmered at Gwen's throat. She had promised herself not to count on the stupid prophecy as a part of her plans, but the dots were joining together inside her head. Even if Golos came in at the eleventh hour to save her from certain death, how could he possibly fight a mature Dragon? The Thunder Wyvern, by Jun's count, was just over two centuries old, he is a young buck and would only be dragon fodder. It made far more sense that Golos shows up to explain that if Ayxin lost her niece, her new husband would be furious, meaning Ruxin would have to now deal with both Axyin and Jun, as well as the family, friends, institutions, and the country of anyone else who went down with her. Surely Mayuree isn't worth that much trouble.

"Wait, I do!"

Gwen materialised the Storage Ring Maymyint had given her.

"Maymyint gave me this, and told me to open it when the time comes."

"Allow me." Walken volunteered his well being. With great care, he attuned himself, hawkishly watching every mote of mana.

It was just a mundane Storage Ring.

And within was a device Gwen recognised as a transponder.

Walken inspected the device, a thing carved from jadeite.

"A paired transponder?" Walken palmed the device a few times. "One way as well. It's not for tracking you, but for directing the user to something else, a sister-device. Stranger and stranger."

"I guess we'll find out," Gwen said. "Should we confront Maymyint?"

"Leave it." Walken appeared deep in thought. "Against a schemer, it's always best if they think us ignorant. If you claim to know this Tyrant and he confronts your team, there may be something that we can use to our advantage."

"You know what." Gwen fingered the transponder gingerly. "What if this whole thing could be resolved just by me having a chat with Ruxin? I could wax some sentiments about his sister, about his dad Yinglong whom I hung out with, sort of, and about how we're like, family and stuff now and we're not a threat to him. I could tell him all about the House of M's ploy to turn the world against him, and he could deal with Maymyint himself, saving us the trouble."

"That's an absurd proposal." Walken baulked.

"I'll make a good case, I can be very convincing," Gwen insisted. "Think about it, what would Ruxin gain by attacking us unprovoked? The ire of the entire IIUC committee from the most powerful universities around? Does the dragon even want to keep his mountain? If he kills or maims us, there'll be Towers, least of all from Gunther, parked five-deep in his ass by next month. I imagine brooding eggs while been pounded by Gunther-beams would be pretty hard."

"At the very least, this land will be cut off to him," Walken agreed. "Still, don't do something so stupid if you don't have to. When the match starts, proceed as you will. If Ruxin starts rampaging, take your friends and run. You'll be fine so long as you're not the slowest, there's plenty of fodder."

"… Eric, seriously?"

"A dragon breathing down on you isn't serious enough?"

Gwen rolled her eyes.

"Gwen." Walken faced her seriously. "Listen to me. You might think that I am a coward, and I know your real zodiac is that of the mule, but you have to listen. Your life is extraordinary- many people are looking toward your future. Gunther and Alesia are waiting for you so that one day the three of you might visit Sobel. Your friends, Yue, and Elvia are waiting for your return to Sydney. Your grandparents are anticipating your triumph. Petra, your friends, and I, we're all looking forward to what you'll do in the future.

"This is the IIUC. People fail all the time, and sometimes, contestants die. Gwen, despite everything: you're allowed to fail. The IIUC is a stepping stone, an important one, but just a step. In life, you'll have failures, but don't falter by dying. If you perish: all is lost. There are no second chances, no second life. Even Deathless Henry, someone I'd never thought would be gone from this world, lost his life, and now all of us are adrift in the wake of his passing. You must survive; else none of this is worthwhile, understand?"

Their eyes met, and the Magister could see that the girl was digesting his thoughts, becoming more miserable for the wisdom of his words.

"In the meanwhile." Walken sighed in turn. "Keep an eye on Mayuree, but let nothing slip."


For their layover, the team had the choice of exploring Yangon on a motorised rickshaw with a young monk as a guide or join Mayuree's coach group. Though the city had no restrictions on flying, the local populace frowned upon Mages gliding over the golden stupas that dotted the city, and so magical locomotion mostly remained within the realm of discrete teleportation and mechanised transport.

To Fudan's surprise, the leadership of the Kyoto team agreed to Mayuree's offer, with their squad Captain taking such a shine to Ariel that Gwen was beginning to feel awkward for having to zap the girl in the competition to come.

For the first day, the Mayuree Express took the group into the local craftsmen's district, urging the contestants to dispense some of their first-world HDMs. At the Dagon Market, the girls single-handedly elevated families by distributing the equivalent of yearly incomes as they stuffed their storage rings with hand-made shawls, scarves, local dresses and silk-print fabrics. As for the men who had decided to join, Richard entertained his Familiar, Lea, who fancied the floral colours and myriad spices that dotted the place, while Jiro and Ichiro seemed to hit it off after losing their minds within the hour.

For the tour's luncheons and dinners, Mayuree introduced the local fare, consisting of Mohinga fish soup with rice noodles, creamy aromatic catfish curry, deep fried curdled tofu, and Laphet Thohk – pickled tea salad.

It was between a delicious meal of fried fish in caramelised fish-sauce and stuffed pork-skewers that Mayuree showed her true colours.

"This meatball is so buttery!" Gwen, the gastronomic adventurer, had been nourishing her ever-lingering hunger when Mayuree's expression grew strange. Not realising, Gwen smacked her lips, giving her glistening, greasy lips a quick lick, then complimented the local cuisine. "What an original taste! Like a firm oyster."

"What's wrong?" Anita poked what appeared to be a musk-scented poached egg.

"If you scrap off the curry…" Richard noted. "You'll find that it's an entirely original ingredient."

Gwen performed the careful operation by following Richard's advice, realising that Mayuree had made a crack at her expense, knowing that she was willing to eat anything.

"I see!" She gagged, relishing the creaminess on her tongue, feeling a little disgusted. "It's an eye- yeah? It's a goat or a sheep's eyeball!"

Mayuree shook and quivered as she stifled her merriment.

The rest of her teammates, as well as their guests, laughed as well, though much more awkwardly.

Below the table, Ariel and Caliban chowed down as half-a-dozen Mages gingerly put their bowls onto the floor, donating the still simmering goat gonads out of the goodness of their dear hearts.

After a quaking Gwen forced a fried gonad between Mayuree's resisting lips, subsequent meals were taken at colonial establishments, as well as at modernised hotels around the port, where the majority of the country's trade with China, India, and colonial Indochina took place.

From roof-top restaurants, the team dined on Australian steak and drank French wine almost a century old, eating seafood from the Gulf of Martaban, prying crystal flesh from scampi and crabs fresh from the Bay of Bangor.

The next morning and the next, they sat drinking cold-dripped coffee and enjoying the morning sun from a lounge thirty-stories high, realising just how nourishing and comfortable the unfiltered sun could feel on the skin.

All the while, Gwen studied her friend. It was without a doubt that this was the Mayuree she had known, but there was also a queerness to her actions, akin to the unsettling sensation of entering an uncanny valley. While Ariel interacted fine with Mia, Gwen felt a disingenuine and jarring sense of reservedness. As a mental parallel, Mayuree's exuberance reminded Gwen of some of her colleague's wives whose manic joy smacked of a morning and afternoon glass of Chardonnay.

It was finally on the fourth day that Gwen managed to corner Mayuree alone in the public spa of the Strand hotel, their modesty preserved by a layer of Egyptian cotton. After some teasing here and there, Gwen had invited Mayuree to join her for some high-spec skin pampering, taking advantage of the House of M's unlimited lavishness.

"Ah-." Gwen exhaled as a female masseuse worked her elbows into the nook of her shoulders. She then turned to her companion. "Thanks for everything, Mia."

"Don't mention it." Mayuree was a little distance away, enjoying a good ginger-lime rubdown from a pair of giggling young women awed by the duo's presence. "It's the least I could do for my friend."

"So." Gwen caught the unnatural formality. "I never asked why you decided to join the IIUC. You're just putting yourself in danger, you know."

"But you're here to save me, right?" Mayuree buried her head in the elevated lounge, where an aperture left the customer's nose and mouth free to breathe. Below, a pool of essential oils distilled from Wildland jasmine wafted upward, nourishing the mind.

"That goes without saying." Gwen allowed her neck to relax as the masseuse worked on her legs, starting with her rather sensitive toes. "Still, to think all of this began with an Eland Core. I wonder if I've paid it off by now, do you recall how high the auction had gotten? Five thousand?"

"Ten thousand," Mayuree remarked. "But you've done so much more for us."

Close but no Cigar, Gwen corrected her friend silently. She was starting to pick up little pieces where Mayuree's memories lapsed, not unlike herself when it came to alter-Gwen's childhood. From what Walken discerned, Mayuree was glamoured under something akin to the tier 5 Hypnotic Suggestion or the more invasive tier 6 Implant Agenda. Both spells sealed away certain aspects of the victim's ego, while the latter operated as a trigger, forcing the victim to enact a particular action when a condition was met.

"According to Irene, spells like Dominate Mind have a fatal flaw," her advisor stated after casually dismissing his encyclopaedic knowledge of Mind Magic. "The controlled target tends to draw knowledge subconsciously and without the benefit of context or subtlety. They can blurt out long-held secrets in the presence of the wrong party, or reveal knowledge of themselves otherwise kept sacred."

And so, from Gwen's subtle goading of Mayuree in recounting their good times at Fudan, she was beginning to figure out when Mayuree was and wasn't in the driving seat.

As for the dispelling of whatever potential enchantment holding her friend, she had two options. The first was to find a Mind Mage of equal power to Maymyint, who Walken anticipated was tier 6 at best. The second was for their resident Cleric, Eunae, to attempt a Greater Dispel Magic once they were away from the city.

At any rate, for now, all she could do was roll the dice and move her piece the allocated number of squares.

If there was one good that came with co-trafficking in Maymyint's deception, it was that the team got to dip their feet in the proverbial water of Yangon River, gaining access to offices and temples.

Myăma, as they now knew, was divided into the wealthy south and the ravaged north. In the south, the presence of Yangon and its Buddhist pagoda had pacified the region's dangerous demi-humans for aeons, ensuring a relative prosperous human settlement.

Up north, midway to the old royal city of Mandalay, was the abandoned city of Naypyitaw, half-built and barely populated when the Tyrant laid its claim. After that, over the next three decades, the north continued to decay, losing infrastructure even as its mining operations boomed, uncovering seam after seam of gold, gems, jade, and other precious minerals. From this cache, a portion went to the Tyrant as a tithe, while the rest was traded away to maintain the House of M's hold on Yangon, the last seat of power of the old regime.

As for the Tyrant itself, Gwen and co were shocked to find that the locals knew only of its existence as a sort of natural disaster. Even when she consulted with the older monks, their stories consisted only of mystical euphemisms, such as that of the hubris of Aung San, who tempted the Earthen Asura and its incessant greed, bring divine retribution.

When she asked about operations relating to the House of M, the monks had no idea, and the labouring NoMs, mostly illiterate, struggled to understand her inquiries. But overall, the people of Mayuree's homeland differed little to NoMs elsewhere, desiring a universal wish for shelter, food, and procreation.

"If you mean the cherished scions of Nanmadaw Me Nu." An old abbot's face grew kind when finally Gwen explained that she wanted to know more about Mayuree and Miss Maymyint. "Then they are our saviours. Many of us fled from the holy stupas and monasteries in the royal capital when the Tyrant came, and we would have starved to death were it not for the actions of the Matriarch and her children."

"So, the old leader of the nation was General Aung San, three-decades ago?"

"We do not speak of that demon." the old master sighed. "May the tempter of the Asura be returned a thousand-fold onto the eight-fold path to atone for his sins."

When she enquired further, the old master wished her well and returned to his meditation, leaving Gwen with the distinct impression that somehow, the web of truths had gotten even more complicated.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

One week later, upon the seventh morning of the student's arrival, the contestants returned to the Secretariat to receive their Quest.

Seoul U had by now recovered from their earlier setback. After an impressive entrance in their charcoal uniforms, the Lee brothers dipped their heads at Fudan as they passed, snubbing the others.

Kyoto once again appeared in their traditional attires, with half the team dressed in the Miko's scarlet hakama and ivory haori, their long ponytails tied with a red ribbon. Ichiro and Yuki both bowed their heads as Fudan took their place, with the girls waving at Gwen as she passed.

Finally, besides Fudan stood their old rivals, Jiantong, who tensed as Fudan's Mages looked their way. Their Captain, however, appeared far more relaxed than his peers, particularly the anxious-looking Kurou, who averted his eyes when a certain Void Sorceress looked his way.

Upon the same dais stood their exam proctors, a team of ten Magisters and Maguses, as well as Maymyint with a group of representatives from the House of M.

"Contestants, welcome!" Magister von Schlabrendorff once again greeted the students. "I hope that in the days since your arrival, you have gotten to know the local culture a bit better and understood its people's needs and desires, their values, hopes and fears. Now, as you are well aware of our purpose, let us proceed to the competition itself!"

A cautious silence descended upon the contestants as their ears strained.

"Students, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to announce the first round of the 2004 IIUC. Your Quest comes from the House of M of Myăma, our host and sponsor. The location will be the State of Kachin, located in Northern Myăma, south of the Chinese border and north of Mandalay. In a moment, the details of your Quest will be given to you in the form of a scroll, upon which you will imprint your mana signatures as an acknowledgement of its contents."

With the details unveiled, the students began to murmur.

"Your team will use a Teleportation Circle to reach Mandalay, from where you shall assemble a party of five individuals to complete objectives in Kachin State while the home team completes quests around Mandalay in support of the away team."

"As for your objective itself, the away team will proceed toward the mining township of Hpakan, an Orange Zone, famous in all of South East Asia for its production of the highest calibre of jadeite. There, each university shall be assigned a village, namely Kamaing, La War, Nanmati and Mogaung. Your objective is to resume the production of jadeite from the region, clear the area of hostile monsters, then rally the local populace to clear the roads blocked by landslides from the monsoonal rains, and to reconnect the village with the Mandalay Militia to re-secure the region."

"During the competition, the IIUC basecamp will be located sixty kilometres Mage flight away in Hpakan with a medical facility provided by the House of M, as well as emergency Teleportation Circles for contestants wishing to quit. The total examination time for the mission is fourteen days, starting from today. CCs will be given based on your performance achieving said objectives, tallied after extensive review one week after the competition. Expect to receive your results by the end of August."

The Magister allowed the moment to sink into the contestants' heads.

"Make sure you leave a full manifest of your carryon items with the Quarter Master. Remember, offensive Magic Items, implements, weapons, scrolls, personal vehicles and classified items not crafted by yourself are forbidden. You may keep them on your person, but you may not use them. Any transgression will result in harsh penalties and even disqualification of your whole team."

Magister von Schlabrendorff took a deep breath, watched by forty hopeful faces.

"Students! We of the IIUC committee look forward to your sterling performances! Step forward to affirm your consent for the daring glories ahead, and I shall look forward to seeing you all in Hpakan!"

Gwen checked-in a list of her items after affirming her willingness to participate in the IIUC's Myăma round. As Walken had stated, the presence of death and danger on a quest like this was par for the course.

According to the waiver, the IIUC Committee would not interfere under any circumstance to rescue the students, even if they chose to leave the competition. The rationale was that in the past, certain parties had exploited the presence of a dozen Magisters and Maguses to push forward political agendas or to clear out a stubborn region, endangering students to force the committee's hand. Not wishing to dissolve their long-running IIUC, nor willing to be wielded by scheming individuals, the Brussels Committee resolved to introduce an unreasonable but arguably understandable policy of non-interference.

The exception to the rule was that in the event of a catastrophe, a team's Advisor could step in to aid or save the students with healing restoratives as well as scrolls utilised for escaping from danger, though that would disqualify the team.

Fudan's two five-person parties lacked an Enchanter-crafter, and so they carried little more than the prepared suite of defensive items, as well as a complement of antidote and healing injectors.

Across the laneway, Gwen marvelled at the stacks of hand-written talismans carried by the Japanese team which had to be each individually verified and recorded, as well as other arcane implements akin to wands.

To their left, Jiantong presented an allotment of enchanted swords, implements crafted by the Sword Mages for their use, as well as a stack of Fuda, Chinese magical amulets, crafted by a quiet, unassuming young man called Jiufan Chen. After activating her Detect Magic and having a sneak-peek next door, she noted with disquiet that these were Illusion and Earthen empowered talismans, likely for a misdirection formation.

Conversely, Seoul U presented a host of utility Magitech from sleek Message Devices to Portable Habitats to Rings and Amulets for the whole team. Even their uniforms were magically enchanted.

When finally Gwen presented her articles, the presiding Enchanter-Magus gave a start, her breathing quickening as she inspected the increasingly lavish stock of passive items. When Gwen allowed Gunther's Contingency Ring to be examined, the woman's eyes widened, and her mouth opened and closed a few times.

"A Royal Asscher original?" The woman's breath caught in her throat. "From an E-Evil Eye's optic Core?"

"It's on loan from a family member." Gwen smiled at the woman, quickly withdrawing her hand. "Could you…"

"Of course." The female Magus promptly finished her inventory check. "Please keep safe, young Miss. There's not many of those left in the world. Every stone spent is one less treasure that will grace the Mageocracy with its beauty."

Afterwards, Gwen felt the band burning her ring finger. I should give it back to Gunther, she told herself, possessing no desire to lose the GDP of a small city. The pressure of such a thing was too much for a girl from the Frontier to handle.

With their items thusly declared, the students boarded the coach for the ISTC array for their transportation to Mandalay.

First was Kyoto, then Seoul U, then Jiantong and finally, four hours later, the underdog of the competition, Fudan, waving at the lumen-recorders as the Glyphs flashed silver and white, distorting the rational rules of space and time, piercing through the Astral Realm.

It was raining when the team arrived in Mandalay.

The dry months had already arrived at the lowland seaside regions of the nation, but where the Himalayan range curved through the north of Burma, its sky-high peaks blocked all access to the traversing clouds pregnant with lowland moisture, extending the wet season well into early September even as temperatures soared to a stifling thirty-six.

The great gusto the teams had summoned at the Secretariat was immediately dampened by the tepid air of Mandalay, submerging the students under swamp water.

Outside the refurbished ISTC chamber, the jungle crowding the verdant royal capital dawned green and glistening from the continued monsoonal efforts, with the vigour of the city gone entirely to the vegetation. Across the central business block where the old colonial buildings smouldered with mildew, the buildings glowered; here and there, mud was knee-deep, growing grasses higher than sugarcane. This deep in the Green Zone, the district felt abandoned even as it bustled with monks and labourers moving to and fro, some braving the rain, others hiding under roofs cross-thatched with banana leaves.

Improbably young and bald, a group of monks greeted the contestants as they arrived, emerging from the rain, drenched from head to toe in twos and threes. Behind them were children, almost all barefooted, splashing through the mud to catch a glimpse of the newly arrived Mages from "Big Town" outside the country's borders. To Gwen, they appeared as beautiful and happy children, skinny and caramel, with gleaming white teeth yet to be stained by betel-nut tea.

Once the team relocated to an assembly point, they huddled to plot their next step.

"From here, you're all alone." Walken activated some imperceptible magic to manage his impeccable hair and beard, now fraying thanks to the excess moisture. "Considering the nature of the quest ahead, your Captain Bai will explain."

"Alright, everyone." Tei took a deep breath. "On the surface; it looks like we have two tasks. The first is to send out an away team to reach our assigned village- La War - as soon as possible to assess the situation. The second is for a home team to organise a local force to begin pushing northward to meet the first team in a fortnight. I think we can safely assume that our proctors will assess our ability to get as much accomplished in two weeks as possible. Gwen, can you explain the team makeup and our projected activities?"

"Pertaining to necessary talents, I will lead the away team, consisting of me, Anita, Richard, Lulan and Mayuree," Gwen explained. "I have full confidence that in a mountainous region like Kachin state, there will be no shortage of landslides due to the monsoonal rain. Assuming this is what the examiners have planned, we are essentially engaging in search and rescue missions, combining area defence with disaster relief. Anita and Lulan are both well versed in Stone Shape and Transmute Earth, essential for maintaining the safety of our assigned settlement. Richard's ability to shift large volumes of water…"

Gwen pointed at the bucketing rain.

"… will be essential in anything that we do. Mayuree will be able to locate missing persons, serve as a relay for our Messages, and detect allies and enemies through the dense jungle. As for myself, I should be able to handle most creatures in the Orange Zone, as well as any of our competitors. If nothing else, I doubt anything can catch up with my vomit-inducing Dimension Doors."

Her teammates shared a few nervous chuckles, lacking her natural confidence. Kitty, Gwen noted, stared intently at the floor. The girl had been avoiding her as always, only sticking to Mayuree whenever the two could be alone.

As for the mission, Gwen's confidence was founded on old world headlines. Owing partly to the clarifying power of her Ioun Stone and partly due to her essence-altered powers of recall, she remembered that Kachin State had been famous for all the wrong reasons in her old world.

Kachin was the hotbed of horrors that formented the Kachin Civil War, begotten by the British when they erased the old border between Myăma and the traditional land of the Kachin-Jinpo people. For decades after the pullout of the Empire, the people of Kachin demanded independence, only to be met with brutal massacres orchestrated by the Burmese Junta. As late as 2015, she recalled that Kachin suffered from an inundation of yearly rain, exacerbated by the poorly planned mines dotting the mountains like hornet hives. Knowing the House of M's appetite for profit, it was entirely possible that "Corporate" had left the local villages to fend for themselves while the company's miners drew back into Mandalay.

According to their proctor's documents, Kachin was an Orange Zone partly because the local Demi-human tribes had long-resisted the rule of the Myăman government, and that they should beware of the complex web of alliances between each village. As for Mandalay, the old royal capital was the last outpost of true human civilisation before the young Mages stepped foot into the Wildlands.

"Thank you, Gwen," Tei continued where she left off. "Meanwhile, me, Rene, Jiro, Kitty and Eunae will be organising a supply train with the locals to leave in one week. Assuming Gwen's hypothesis of what lies in store is correct, we will be able to maximise our CCs if our supply can supplement your rescue efforts, or at least shorten the time it takes to produce visible results."

"That rain is going to be a problem." Richard raised his hand. "Lea says it's going to continue to pour like this every few hours, day and night. I can keep us dry, but it's going to waste unnecessary mana."

"Let's get changed then." Gwen pulled at her sundress, its sheer fabric already clinging like a second skin. She glared miserably at the rain, yearning for the American-made body-armour Jun had brought to Huangshan. "I guess it's going to be soggy skin-suits all the way..."


After her trip in Singapore, Gwen knew that traversing through a sub-tropical jungle wasn't going to happen without permanent protection. There were bugs- and there were bugs, then there were parasitical carnivorous plants, barbed roots, spiked fruits, flesh-eating flowers and predatory fauna.

But torrential rain was new.

In Australia, flood and fire reigned, but the precipitation wasn't ten-thousand Calibans in a chorus of "Shaaa!" for hours on end.

"I don't think flying in this weather is going to be very practical," Gwen grumbled as she walked into the pouring rain to test her gear. Immediately, her combat mesh sagged, her potion pouches drowned, and her Chinese-made water-repelling combat boots grew sodden. "I think we could swim there…"

"I feel unwell." Jiro raised his hand, his fire element reacting badly to the moisture.

"Yep, glad we're staying behind to organise the supply train." Rene shuddered as she watched the swell of water stream through the street.

Earlier, the team had taken a tour through the city to gain their bearings, taking in what they could of the old Royal Capital. Historically, it was originally constructed by King Mindon, the last pre-colonial ruler of old Myăma before a civil war incited by the British Mageocracy looted its riches. When the deposed royal household attempted to reclaim the ancient capital in 1967, the Tyrant routed their army. Then in 1973, the city was sacked anew, with the Tyrant ravaging the jadeite-encrusted Kyauk Taw Gyi Pagoda and looting the Jade Pillar.

As the ancient capital now stood, the administrative district was surrounded by a moat, while individual stupas of varying sizes acted as Shielding Stations, warding away the magical beasts and creatures that lurked in the jungle and the city's many canals. What was once a vibrant capital of a million souls now wasted away amidst an emerald sea awash with flora, with barely two hundred thousand of its inhabitants remaining; all of whom serviced the mineral and gem trade that lied at the heart of Myăma's wealth.

Whoom! A low rumble passed overhead.

"There's Seoul U." Mayuree was the first to note their mana signature.

Fudan's contestants looked up to see five Mages travelling in a wedge formation, parting the cascading rain with water-repelling cloaks, making a ghastly racket as their Captain ploughed through the deluge.

"Looks like they got crystals to burn." Richard raised a brow. "I wonder if there are CC penalties for spending more crystals than one would otherwise earn in a quest."

"There's not a problem as far as I know." Wry smiles echoed Tei's reply. "Brute force is one way to do it, though they'll be visible for kilometres, not to mention they might anger whatever's living below."

"I wonder how the others are getting to their villages," Gwen said.

"We'll find out soon. Our assigned settlements are less than ten to twenty kilometres apart. Don't forget to watch out for our Korean friends, last year they herded all their monsters into our district," Tei warned the away team. "They lost CCs, but we failed our objective."

"Gotcha, I'll keep an eye out." Gwen wondered if the Lees held fresh grudges or liked revenge served cold.

"Alright, then." Richard eyed the rain. "Stay close for now. Lea will divert the flow of water. Let's hope this rain stops before my mana drops."

"Hold up!" Something clicked in her head. "Ariel!"

"EEE!" Ariel appeared in the rain. As expected, its fish-scale fur was hydrophobic.

"Ah-ha!" she exulted, recalling that Dragon Carps swam through air and water alike.

The others formed up behind.

"Gwen, everyone, safe travels." Walken nodded at the students.

"We'll be waiting." Gwen bowed her head. "Eunae, Kitty, everyone. Take care!"

"Don't let a hair on Mia's head get damaged!" Kitty bristled. "Promise!"

"I promise!" Gwen replied, though her eyes landed on Eunae, who together with Walken, returned a subtle nod.

With Ariel leading the teardrop slipstream, the Fudan party formed into a bizarre train, blasting through the water like a slick comet.

While serving as the locomotive's engine, Gwen envisioned lashing together eight of her bloodhounds, Caliban, and a phosphorescent Ariel, thinking oh fun it it is to ride an eight hound Kirin-sleigh.

Trailing behind, the rest of the party observed the urban sprawl dwindle into reclaimed nature, beyond which were five hundred kilometres of Wildland as the reindeer flew.

To the traveller's left, the Irrawaddy River roared brown and turbulent through the landscape, making up-stream travel impossible. In the distance sat the Arakan mountains, forming the border with Bangladesh, its vast catchment pouring south toward the Bay of Bengal.

The party had clocked about two hours of monotony when they spotted their first place of respite, Pan Kone, a mining-cum-fishing village. This far north, human settlements fed off the river's riches, with its NoMs panning for gold and gems cascading from the Arakan basin into the lowland.

"Pitstop," Gwen communicated through the Silent Messages provided by Mayuree's presence. When flying, the buffeting wind and streaming water ensured that oral communication was all but impossible.

As one, the team descended.

The village consisted of a few hundred huts made from thatch and wood, resting on stilts that lifted buildings some two meters from the ground to avoid the inevitable flood. In the centre of the village, on the highest point of a hill, stood the communal hut, a brick and mortar building on concrete foundations.

"Hail." Lulan raised both hands as they landed on the decking. "Can we dry ourselves here? We're international students from Fudan University on a quest to aid Kachin deal with the monsoon."

An old abbot waved back.

"Come in," he offered with nonchalance. "The guest area is readied for your arrival."

Gwen inspected the interior for signs of the others, herself grateful to be out of the downpour. "Have the others arrived before us?"

"The Japanese arrived an hour ago." The venerable priest nodded benevolently, revealing darkly stained teeth. "Though they left shortly after."

"Old Master, what's the rain like this season?" Gwen wrung the water from her hair. "How are things in Kachin? I bet it's hard to keep up an insurrection when you can't even keep your sandals dry."

"Ho, you claim to know Kachin's troubles, young Miss?" The abbot appeared startled by Gwen's audacious claim.

"I know there are dissenters up north," Gwen teased the abbot for answers. Though she had no evidence, a hypothesis had been fermenting in her mind ever since she saw the devastation at Mandalay.

"It's true, the wet season isn't good for fighting," the monk returned. "Worry not Miss. What is your quest in Kachin State?"

"To re-open the transport routes for the mines." Gwen drew a line with her fingers. "Can you tell me about the roads? How bad are they?"

"The last shipment was four days ago," the abbot said.

"How do you know so much about Kachin?" Mayuree asked innocently. "Even I don't know anything about it."

"It's not hard to imagine." Gwen coughed, masking her white lie. "I mean, mud, rain, mountains, mines and roads in a third-world country, what else could happen?"

"My country is not... whatever that means!" Mayuree pouted. "We're reclaiming our Frontier."

"Haha." she laughed, noting that some of Mayuree's habits were starting to return. If and when they met up with Eunae's party, she would have the girl step into a dispelling mandala. Her advisor had stipulated that so long as it didn't impact their quest, there should be no dramas with the proctors. When she had disputed the delay, Walken riposted with a Chinese proverb: don't hit the grass carelessly and frighten away the snake.

"Master Abbot, have many lost their lives this season?"

"Too many." The monk grew solemn. "The mines grow hungry for lives. But the Kachin's jadeite has gotten purer and more brilliant as well. Tempting those who dream of moving to the southern city."

"How about the Tyrant, old sir?" Gwen continued. "The Arakan mountains are only a day away by Flight."

At the mention of the Tyrant's proximity, Mayuree visibly flinched, her complexion instantly blanching. Gwen reached out and patted her friend's hand assuringly.

"We haven't seen Lord Naga return to these waters for a long time," he affirmed Gwen's expectations with words distinctly different to the ones used by the abbot in Yangon. "One begins to wonder if he has forgotten his Buddha-given duty to tame the river."

"Hold on," Richard cut in. "Are you saying the Tyrant is a water-based Naga? Isn't it an earthen beast?"

"Lord Naga is the land; its body is the river, its claws are the mountain's horns, the whiskers are the great trees crowning the peaks." The monk stiffened. "Being a thing of the world, who may tell what form Lord Naga favours? Take your rest, strangers from another land, I shall leave you now."

With that, the abbot bowed, then left the team to nurse their tea.

The party members regarded one another.

"Old man's got a temper." Richard scratched his head. "I suppose with a place like this. It's easier to believe the Tyrant an angry deity than a greedy lizard. That way, they can swallow the fact that half of their country is buried and gone."

"I was going to ask about Aung San, actually," Gwen remarked. "Back in Yangon, they told me that it was Aung San that initiated trades with the Tyrant. I can't help but feel there's something we're overlooking."

"General Aung San is the reason the Tyrant took the north," Mayuree repeated an oft-heard platitude Gwen had been told a thousand times in Yangon.

Aung San, Gwen mulled the name over and over.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

In her old world, Aung San was the man who brought independence to Burma, alternatingly playing the Japanese and the British against each other while fermenting a socialist force for the liberation of his nation. Ironically receiving the Order of the Rising Sun from Emperor Hirohito, Aung San then betrayed his Japanese allies by leading a joint-taskforce of Communist and British forces to repel the occupation. Unfortunately, his victory drew ire from the British, the Communists and the Japanese, and so the Major General perished- after which martial law befell Burma.

In this world, "General Aung San" was a man whose struggle was futile. Informed by hindsight from her old world, she could see how the Commonwealth's Tower system would have dissolved Aung San's desire for true independence. For a nation to succeed in this world, how can they refuse Shielding Stations, Towers, ISTC Arrays, and publically funded Spellcraft schools?

To her, the geopolitics of Mia's home was the real puzzle.

Though Mayuree's House of M hailed from the old kingdom, their rule had been usurped by the British Mageocracy. Meanwhile, Aung San fought the Mageocracy, not only from the British but from the old imperials as well. Then, between the British Mageocracy pulling out in the mid-1950s and General Aung San's contact with the Tyrant in the early 1970s, Burma lost its northern cities and provinces, including the Jade Pillar, excavated by the pre-exile House of M.

The Pillar's loss is an important distinction, for if the materials were present and the host nation could subsidise the expense, the Mageocracy would have fast-tracked the installation of the Mandalay Tower. Had Burma kept the Jade Pillar, Henry Kilroy might have graced his presence in Yangon or Mandalay. Which then left her with a million-HDM question.

Had Aung San brokered a deal with the Tyrant? If so, that's a Bingo.

It could explain why citizens in Yangon, atypically a British stronghold and the jewel of the old colony, denounced Aung San and believed the Tyrant their greatest obstacle to rebuilding, and also explain why the north looked like an abandoned stepchild.

When she excitedly explained this to Walken, her advisor had told her that indeed, her hypothesis showed a political acumen that would have impressed even a senior scholar at London's Imperial College.

"But your goal here is to gain more CCs than Seoul, Kyoto, and Jiantong- so Gwen, can you focus on what's at hand? Please don't accidentally liberate an Indochinese nation while you're questing. My heart isn't as frail as Henry's, but it's not robust by any means."

"But—"

"Give it a decade or three, when you have a Tower of your own, you can fly it down to Naypyitaw and declare it a new Protectorate, but for now, keep yourself safe, and keep your hands out of someone else's internal politics."

Walken's wisdom had been enough to stifle her fancies, though when they arrived at the ruined capital of Mandalay, she couldn't help but observe that the city's disrepair was intentional. From the fact that the people here seemed utterly unfazed by the "Tyrant" flying down to raze the town with dragon fire, it was evident that an invasion was the least of their concerns.

Moreover, if she went by the cardinal rule of 'he who benefits', it was evident that the House of M reaped the highest profits out of the current situation.

But why would the House of M risk Mayuree and Gwen's prophesy? Why break the status quo? She didn't know, and for someone who liked their accounts balanced, not knowing was worse than constipation.

Then just like that, the rain stopped, the sun emerged, and humidity became an unbearable slick.

"Let's get a move on!" Richard ushered the party outside.

"Buffing up." Anita concentrated for a moment, then cast her Abjuration magic. "Crystalline Armour! Enhance Ability!"

"Right, let's make haste," Gwen affirmed the team's desire to trade speed for sight-seeing encounters.

Allowing her thoughts to slide, she lifted into the air, holding onto Mayuree, followed closely by Lulan, then Richard and Anita picking up the rear.

"Let me know when you've reached maximum velocity." Gwen made sure the others were watching before vocalising her next words. "I feel the NEED—."

"What do you need?" Lulan replied faithfully, her eyes twinkling. "I'll do anything."

"… for—" Gwen choked. "Nevermind. Let's go."

"Gwen! Slow down; look there!"

Below, glaringly visible, was a dark brown gash in the landscape.

A landslide! Gwen exalted guiltily, glad to be right but feeling downright bastardly to be happy that her foresight came true.

"I don't think this one is under our jurisdiction," Anita commented.

"Hard to say, but this IS Kachin State, and our objective is to 'complete objectives in Kachin State' and 'rally the locals'." Richard threw in his two cents. "Take a look?"

"Lowering altitude." Gwen made the call as team leader, simultaneously materialising her Invisible Familiar. "Ariel!"

As they approached, the scene of the devastation became explicit. Two dozen wooden huts among a hundred or so spread alongside a stream had been buried under a mass of earth. From every other interval, a branch or the upturned roots of an enormous Padauk or Banyan demonstrated the unstoppable force of savage nature.

When the Mages had gotten close enough, several figures stirred from the mud, and dozens more emerged from huts yet to be submerged.

"Mia, stay behind me." Gwen grew conscious of the crystalline armour surrounding her torso, making her appear decisively aggressive. "Anita, can you suppress the armour for now? I'll be fine."

Their defender performed as her leader requested.

"Hail, we're Mages from Shanghai, and we're here to help," Gwen declared with a blast from her Clarion Call. "When did this happen?"

The audience below bowed their heads, then fell onto their knees into the mud.

"Mia, what are they doing?"

"I don't know." Mayuree appeared perplexed as well.

"Looks like they're kowtowing," Richard remarked drily. "Are these the indigenous people of Chin State that we've heard about?"

"Gwen!" Mayuree suddenly stopped. "I don't think some of them are human! Mana signatures indicate some of them have Cores!"

The team tensed. Besides Richard, Lea sprung into being.

"Raise your faces!" Gwen commanded, hoping her Ioun Stone worked on Demi-humans as advertised. She could see that the villagers had been trying to dig out their neighbours, but it would appear the loss of the village hall also meant the loss of relevant tools, as well as the local shaman.

"I don't know about this." Anita readied a barrier. "We're not here to save Demi-humans."

Lulan kept a Heart Seeking Sword simmering at the edge of her lips, paralleling Anita's conjecture.

The leading figure pulled back a ragged, mud-strewn cowl to reveal a young man's face. It was human enough, Gwen acknowledged- until she saw his single-slit eyes, that and subtle scales covering his chin and neck where a human would grow a beard.

"Wow." Richard whistled. "Serpent-folk, never seen those before."

"Cannibals," Anita spat. "We read about them in the Bestiary."

"Hold your positions," Gwen snapped. "Richard, get Lea to cover me. You guys stay here. Ariel, with me. Mia, use Comprehend Language and translate for me if they don't speak the local tongue."

As her team took up positions, Gwen descended.

"What's happened?" She arrived a few inches from the mud. "Is this your village?"

"It ith," the serpent man spoke with, as expected, an occasional lisp. "The Land God is angry with us, not enough tribute, dethtroy village, many deaths. Please help us, great Mithtriss. Though I fear we have nothing to offer but prayerth for your good health."

By now the others had also removed their cowls, evidently used to ward off the water. Almost immediately, like many a scene from a disaster flick, the survivors congregated toward hope, no matter how feeble or futile. From where she hovered, it was evident that most of them were human, or human-enough, as it were, to pass unnoticed in Mandalay. Only a few, like the young man, possessed enough reptilian features to be Demi-Humans, potentially a sign of the Tyrant's Essence permeating the land.

"Gwen, we don't have time to spare." Anita's voice came through Mayuree's routed Message service, calmer now that most of the citizens appeared to be indigenous NoMs. "The rain will come soon."

"There are others, still buried." Another survivor, visibly the village's alderman, glowed with hope. He lowered his head in genuflection. "Please show mercy, Mistress."

"It's because the rain will come that we must help," Gwen said aloud. She knew it was better that they leave right now, but she had no desire to abandon these people to wallow in desperation. "Is there anyone here who can use magic?"

"None, Mistress Mage." The slit-eyed young man once again got on all fours, urging the others to do the same. "Our abbot has perished. The temple was buried."

"We should go." Anita's voice grew urgent even as the villagers despaired.

"Alright, form up! Follow my command." Gwen's commanding voice absolved any need for further discussion. "We're doing what we can! Consider this practice. Lulan, I want a sloped and cantilevered wall of earth around the village's rear from the north-east to the south-west boundary, a meter minimum to help divert the runoff toward the river. Richard and Anita- start excavating the buried huts. Drain the mud to make retaining back-fill for Lulan's wall. Lea and Mia, you're with me; we're going to look for survivors."

She landed with a plop, her boots digging ankle-deep into the squelching mud. In the next moment, her eyes blazed with emerald Essence.

"Alright everyone, back to your huts. I am going to conjure some help."

While Gwen usually utilised her Lightning element, her Hound Pack and Blood Hound spell retained the ability to bring forth the original conjuration.

When six draconic-deer hounds the size of small horses materialised, the inhabitants of the unnamed village fled back into their huts, leaving only the old man and the reptilian youth to gape at the quasi-magical beasts. When furthermore a brilliant Kirin and a strange, nauseating ophidian joined the fray, the young and old cowered on the floor, muttering prayers to Buddha.

With Mayuree's Arcane Eye and Caliban's life-sniffing as a guide, the dogs began to furiously overturn the loosened earth, parting sediments and boulders, splitting trees with their bites and dragging bodies from crushed homes and humpies.

Anita began her excavation too, uncovering the shattered portions of the village, forming piles of mud that crawled across the landscape while Lulan erected coarse iron barriers from the mineral-rich earth beneath in the design that Gwen had demanded. Aided by Richard, who diverted the squelching water and wrung the moisture from the soil, the trio made quick progress in erecting a flood barrier where the village's border met the hill's saddle.

When it became apparent the foreigners meant the villagers no harm, the surviving members reemerged to aid with the effort, moving piles of debris and dragging the bodies of the deceased away so that they could be recognised.

"Gwen, over here!" Mayuree called out suddenly, her eyes alive with excitement. "There's someone alive! We need to hurry!"

Gwen's hounds furiously went to work, tearing through the earth while Lea helped with the shifting soil until they uncovered the mud-brick foundations of a basement. Taking advantage of her liquid state, Lea squeezed into the gap between the crumbling brickwork and retrieved, after a blow from Gwen's alpha hound, two children and their mud-clad, asphyxiated mother.

"Cao!" Anita inspected the mother, having had some experience in the military. "We're too late."

The children, wild-eyed and disorientated, burst into tears at the sight of monsters dragging their mother's body.

As for Gwen, she knelt into the mud and performed her own inspection. The woman's skin was warm to the touch despite the hypothermia, from Caliban. she noted a mote of vitality remained.

With a word, she dispelled her Crystalline Mage Armour and un-clicked her combat mesh, then knelt to place two hands on the woman's chest. After three dozen compressions aided by her enhanced strength, she pulled the mother's head back and delivered two lungfuls of air. When after two repetitions the woman failed to revive, she materialised a potion injector and stabbed the woman just under her breasts.

Then, with renewed vigour, she pounded at the mother's heart, pushed with both hands for another thirty compressions, and began the rescue-breaths anew.

"What's she doing?" Richard grew as puzzled as the rest of the team.

The villagers likewise gathered to watch the strange spectacle, drawing the children away from the peculiar Mage and most importantly, her Asura monstrosities.

Ignoring hundred-odd pairs of eyes, Gwen felt for the woman's pulse again.

"SHIT!" She cursed. Anita was right, if they had been a little faster, or if she had not bothered with conserving her combat potential and conjured her Void-dogs or empowered Caliban-

Unsure what else to do and willing to try anything, she gathered a mote of Almudj's Essence on her tongue, then gave in to a moment of spontaneity. With the next compression done, she breathed her Essence, along with a life-giving breath, into the woman's lungs.

Wake up! The woman's chest inflated under Gwen's fingers. Live! Else your kids would be orphans!

"Gasp!"

The body underneath her suddenly shuddered.

"NECROMANCY?!" Anita spluttered, leaping back a safe distance.

Richard's eyes were likewise widened in disbelief, echoing that of Lulan and Mayuree's. The woman was dead, wasn't she? Anita had said so. How could Gwen bring the dead back to life by breathing into them and pounding at their chest? Was this a new form of Raise Dead?

"It's CPR." Gwen collapsed on her buttocks, but not before turning the woman on her side. Taking a deep breath, she addressed Anita's hypothesis. "She was near death, not dead. No one can bring back the dead like that. Lea, can you dry her out?"

"Tell it to the walking corpse." Anita swallowed nervously. "I don't think the others will believe this. That NoM was dead as a plank of wood. Trust me, I know. There was no breath."

Meanwhile, the woman vomited up a mouthful of mud and silt, spraying mucous here and there.

"She'll be alright, but she'll be out for a while," Gwen explained. Unlike in a movie, fever, disorientation, confusion and delirium afflicted the victim of asphyxiation. Often, there was permanent brain damage. "You there, warm her up and get her to vomit up whatever else she can."

But the villagers weren't listening.

As one, they had begun a wave of willing prostration.

"Buddha! It's she who cures the world of dukka!" The village alderman declared loudly. "All hail the incarnation of Lord Bhaiṣajyaguru!"

"…"

Gwen lifted a mud-clad hand to refute the claim. She was six-foot in a skin-tight bodysuit half-covered with mud, with only her soiled face showing, not to mention she had a full head of hair tied into a bun. What part of her looked like a saffron-clad Buddha carrying a medicine gourd, sitting on a jade lotus?

"Looks like we have a new deity on our hands." Richard laughed, happy that the villagers had become pliant, reminding himself to ask Gwen about that revival technique. "Gwen, who brings the newly dead back from the grave!"

"Please don't," Gwen groaned. "Mayuree, was that all you could find?"

Mayuree nodded, shocked by what she had just witnessed.

"Anita, Lulu, the wall?"

"It's finished." Anita bowed her head reverently.

Lulan gushed in full agreement.

"Righto." Gwen got to her feet, uncomfortable with the worshipful gazes. "We should go."


Before they left, the village alderman sent away the young man to fetch a token for the village's saviours.

"Please take this, Lord Bhaiṣajyaguru." The two prostrated. "Should the others turn against you, show them this and our kin will know that you have saved our lives in this time of need."

Gwen observed the jade pendant, meticulously carved with the image of a Buddha riding on a Naga of some sort. From what she could see, the quality of the jadeite was exquisite, for half of it glowed shallot-green while the other half had the richness of lamb's fat.

"I can't." She shook her head, pushing it away. "It's too precious."

"You must." The two prostrated once more, raising the item like an offering. "The food you have left us more than makes up for this small thing. As Buddha preaches: the karma from saving one life exceeds dedicating a seven-tier stupa."

Earlier, Gwen had also left the village a portion of her SPAM collection, some forty cans worth, together with instant ramen. Nephres' ring was large enough to stow a pallet of canned goods. After her other mishaps involving Void-hunger, Gwen promised to live by Scarlett O'Hara's creed.

"Gwen, take it." Richard was shameless.

"You saved her. You deserve it." Mayuree appraised the composite jadeite carving. "It's the villager's well-wishes you are receiving. The jade isn't that precious."

Reaching out gingerly, Gwen allowed the alderman to wrap the jade pendant around her wrist.

"Thank you." She made a note to stow it in her ring. "Take care."

After leaving the kowtowing villagers, Gwen once again resumed her place at the fore of the formation, equipped with a newly buffed crystalline armour. She had half a mind to give a little speech about how well they did, but her party had Necromancy on the brain.

She did her best to explain cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but she couldn't recall if this world had such a thing. CPR had been developed in her old world by the American Heart Association in 1956, but in a world of rejuvenation and regeneration treatments, why would Mages care for CPR? It was only her Master, who had literally and metaphorically lost a good chunk of his heart to his wife, that seemed to struggle with arrhythmia. As for the medical science passed down to the NoMs, she had no idea if somewhere across the ocean someone had gifted the life-saving technique to the masses, for no resuscitation routines had graced her first-aid classes in Blackwattle or Fudan. The last person she had performed CPR on had been Debora—

Gwen stifled a gag, suppressing the memory.

"Gwen." It was Anita who Messaged her privately. "I am glad we helped that village."

Anita had donated some of her supply as well, her calcite encrusted heart growing soft as the children thanked them and the adults wept.

"Don't mention it." Gwen redoubled Ariel's forward momentum. "Let's hope La War's doing better."

By dusk, the light grew too dim to continue travelling, for the inundation of low clouds meant a dearth of stars, preventing meaningful navigation, not to mention the forest's denizens were principally nocturnal. Though Mayuree could potentially use her Divination to steer them in the right direction, the Mages were exhausted and tired from seven hours of flight, four of which had been spent in the downpour.

Alighting on a clearing amidst a cascade of Dancing Lights, Flare, and Illumination, the students found shelter in an alcove provided by a Banyan tree's walled roots. Atop the indent that held their Portable Habitat, Gwen left a Faithful Hound, while around the place Mayuree placed Alarms and Anita drew crystalline Warding Glyphs.

"We'll leave first light, 0600," Gwen informed the others. "As for now, who can cook?"

Richard was the only one to raise his hand.

Gwen was a calamitous chef, and Mayuree had never cooked in her life. As for Anita and Lulan, both declined the opportunity to poison their teammates.

"Seriously?" Richard scratched his head. "What do you guys eat if you're adventuring alone?"

"SPAM boiled in water," Gwen proudly boasted of her resistance to toxins. "You can dunk bread rolls in the meat water…"

The team gagged, happy to let Richard work his magic.

Anita, Richard and Lulan each had a room of their own, but for Gwen's paranoia, Mayuree slept with her in the master bedroom. Thus enfolded in Gwen's thousand-threaded sheets, the Diviner passed the night restlessly, quaking when Gwen wrapped a restless leg around her diminutive companion, terrifying the girl with the unsolicited invasion.

A 0500, the party made and ate breakfast prepared by Richard, then set out once more. During the night, Gwen's faithful hound had slain at least a dozen snakes of varying sizes drawn to the thrum of faint mana where the portal to the habitat manifested. Additionally, a family of White-Leaf Macaques, primates native to the Yunnan region, had set up above the student's encampment, curious but wary of the invisible guardian.

The group set out again at 0600 as planned, taking advantage of the lull in the weather. An hour and close to eighty kilometres later, the wet caught up, cutting their speed in half. Following another three hours of near-typhoon conditions, the Fudan Party finally spotted the beginnings of the plateau they would call home for the next ten days - La War.

From above, La-War looked like any other village large enough to grace a mention on the topographic map. Sitting atop a series of hills that made up the surrounding region, its founders had taken advantage of the natural clearing formed by jutting outcrops of igneous rocks, then slashed-and-burned through the surrounding jungle to enable pebbled paths connecting the hundred-odd or so houses to an arterial roadway below the valley.

The residences on the outskirts of the village were a composite of bamboo and banana thatch, elevated on wooden stilts, while the wealthier, larger constructs consisted of corrugated iron and concrete plasterboards in green and carmine. In the centre of the village was presumably the town's hall, two storeys tall and painted a brilliant cerulean. All along the border of the township were thick rolls of brambles new and old, forming a formidable barrier against the local fauna.

Below the brown and barren hill-scape of the village itself was a cascading tier of rice fields carved into the hill, twenty-deep at its very bottom, where lapping waters met a gushing stream.

"We're students from Fudan!" Gwen declared several times before her party alighted in the square. "We're acting on behalf of your government's request for aid."

Gathered at the square, consisting of a tennis-court-sized plateau beside the hall, was the village's longyi-attired alderman, together with a group of young women adorned with patterned thanaka. As the Mages landed, the villagers prostrated.

"Please, there's no need." Gwen landed in the mud with a wet, sucking sound as the soil gave way. "No! Don't kneel! Go inside! Inside!"

The hall's interior consisted of a double-storey covered courtyard, then a converted loft where the Mages may rest if they chose to humble themselves, as well as what passed for a shrine paying homage to an unknown Buddha, besides which sat a nine-headed jadestone Naga.

"Master and Mistresses." The alderman kowtowed, ignoring Gwen's protest. "Welcome you to La War. I have readied warm meals and baths if that is what you desire."

"That would be lovely. Your name, sir?"

"Please call this one Shwe, Mistress."

"Righto, Shwe. I am Gwen. This is Richard. That's Anita, and over there is Mayuree and Lulan." Gwen decided getting to the business end of things was likely for the best. "Please tell me about the village. How big is it, how many people there are. How many work for the mines. And what's happened so far since the monsoon started."

The Mages took their seats in what looked like a meeting room. The alderman remained at attention, commanding the young men and women to bring towels and tea.

"We are a village of eight hundred and seventy-two, Mistress Gwen, including the children." The alderman appeared not to know who Mayuree was, which suited Gwen just fine. "The La War jade quarry is five kilometres from here. We are an open quarry, so the rain has not given us too much trouble. About half of our people work there. Manager Mingyi lives on top of the mine itself, overseeing the operation and defending it against poachers."

"Poachers?" Gwen raised a brow.

"Rogue miners, Mistress." The man nodded. "They have their uses during the dry season, but when they are desperate, they will try to steal raw jade stones at night. It's not so unusual to find a few that have slipped and lost their lives. During the wet season, many fall to their death; others drown in the pits."

The party grimaced.

"Any major incidents so far? Landslides or other geological incidents?"

"We were waiting for your esteemed arrival to clear several blockades formed by the rain, Mistress," the alderman affirmed her hypothesis. "That and we are harassed by rebels now and then, who flee into the mountains after stealing supplies."

"Rebels?" Richard snorted. "Working for whom?"

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

"For Aung San." The alderman gave Richard a peculiar glance. "They have fortifications in the Arakan mountains, west of Kachin."

"Ah." Gwen nodded. "What can you tell me about this Aung San?"

"Not much, Mistress," the man said. "The General has not been seen for many years, but occasionally, we get raiding parties who disrupt our mining and raid our village."

"What makes you think they're Aung San's forces?" Gwen asked. "The General hasn't been seen since almost thirty years ago, right?"

"Who else would attack us?" The alderman's expression appeared offended, as though Gwen was asking if Buddha truly saves. "The Masters from Yangon have assured us that they will keep Aung San in check, though the occasional party slips past the border patrols."

What patrols? Gwen exchanged a look with Richard. From Mandalay to Kachin, it was nothing but jungle.

"Mayuree, any ideas?"

Her expatriate friend shook her head. She wasn't privy to the Burmese operations of the House of M.

"Thank you, alderman." Gwen turned her attention back to the old man. "Please be at ease. We will rest for a short while, then go and inspect these collapsed roads. I have a feeling there's likely more work once we get to the mine as well."

"Of course, Mistress. Please rest well."

The alderman left the Mages in a hurry, leaving the girls behind as servants.

"Hello, what's your name?" Gwen said to one of the girls.

"…" the girl quailed.

"Ariel." Gwen conjured her secret weapon.

"Eee!" Ariel appeared with a flash, swishing its tail adorably.
"Aeeeee! Buddha protects!"
"A monster! Don't eat us!"
"Asura!"

The girls fled.

"Hahaha…" Richard burst into laughter. "Good work. I wanted some quiet, and you've managed just that."

Gwen bit her lips.

"Don't worry bud, it's not you," she assured her Kirin, who looked offended.

Meantime, the downpour continued to bucket down, drumming on the tin room with the cacophony of someone pouring a semi's load of loose gravel.

"Let's dry out." Gwen produced a magic cube for dehydrating laundry. "I might take up that bath."

"Lord Mages!" The alderman stumbled into the room, noting that only Richard sat in the middle of the converted loft. "It's terrible! We need your aid! Where are the wo- the Mistresses?"

"I'll get them." Richard cocked his head at the alderman, studying the man's panic to ensure his distress was genuine. Satisfied, he fired off a Message. "Alright, they're coming. What's wrong?"

"Something's happened to the stream!" the man blustered, spraying spittle all over Richard. "It's gone! Just gone!"

Gwen and the girls emerged after a few minutes in their magically laundered skin-suits, making the alderman avert his eyes.

"Where's it all happening?"

"Just upstream. Please do something. Hurry!"

Anita raised a finger to berate the bellicose old man, but Gwen interposed with a pat on the shoulder, calling Ariel to her side.

"Should all of us go?" Mayuree asked.

"We're going together," Gwen affirmed.

Upon arrival, it became evident that the alderman's woes were well-founded, as the quickened stream that had swiftly surged only hours prior had now dwindled until it was at half. Considering the deluge that even now flowed into the canal, it was self-evident that something had blocked the stream further up, building up potential energy somewhere out of sight.

"If this were Nantong, I would be advising we evacuate about now." Richard drew from a wealth of his experience working in construction for the past year. "My suggestion is we put up barriers and blockages to disrupt and disperse the flow."

"Agreed." Gwen flew into the air to survey the surroundings. Under the persistent downpour, the vista of the village had the likeness of a Monet masterpiece. "Let's have retaining barriers starting from the right bank, half a kilometre wide, diverting to the left. We need to spread the momentum of whatever is coming down over a large surface area. Lulu, what do you think?"

"I can try putting up those diamond-shaped wave breakers like the ones in Nantong."

"You beauty. Anita, you're reinforcing Lulan's obstructions with whatever you can dredge up. Richard, see how much of the silt you can flush out of that stream."

"What about me?" Mayuree asked.

"Stay here, let everyone know, and keep your Scry active. If you see something coming, get the hell out."

"How about you?"

"I am heading upstream with my dogs." Gwen did her best to disregard the water stream down her face and into her mouth. "If I can find out what's blocking the river, maybe a wide-area Barbanginy will reduce whatever's coming down next."

"Alright," Richard noted the efficacy of Gwen's task-arrangement. "Take care, and D-D back if there are Monsters."

"Will do," Gwen said. "Mia, stay close to Richard."

"I'll take care of her," Richard passed his cousin a subtle acknowledgement.

"Okay!" Mayuree nodded, looking decidedly nervous without Gwen nearby.

"Sir Mages, the rice fields…" The alderman was struggling under the weight of the water pouring from the heavens, drenching his conical hat.

"Old feller." Richard's stood between the alderman and the girls as they set to work, with Lea forming an umbrella screen to ward away the water. "I don't think you have time to be worrying about your fields. Not when your village could be the next thing to go. Let's get some heads together, and I'll tell you how to keep everyone safe."

This time, Gwen spared no expense in deploying her resources.

From Wikipedia and Nat-Geo documentaries, not to mention her old Geography teacher, Mr Ayres, she tried to recall what she could. There was abrasion, which pointed to damage dealt by boulders; attrition, meaning something wore out the banks; and hydraulic action, which pointed to water erosion. From the looks of the mountain stream, it was evident that some sort of collapse was inevitable as the villagers had left nature to take its course.

As her Lightning Hounds discharged when encased in water, it was up to her Void Hounds to do the job. Compared to the non-elemental variation, the slavering netherworld mouth-on-legs were far more adept at eating through obstacles, be it trees, rocks, monsters or otherwise. Furthermore, even if they were injured, she could revitalise about half their number before her vitality ran into the red.

As for her Familiars, she kept Ariel hovering above to ward off the rain while Caliban lurked, invisible but for the persistent drizzle.

After passing the village's clearing, the landscape sloped upwards. Where the water in the stream had reduced, Gwen could see the imperilled banks crumbing like waterlogged fondant, with networks of old roots exposed and torn by boulders propelled through the water. Here and there, jagged granite deposits the size of cars validated her fears.

"Chakram!"

Her attempt at slicing the boulders met with another expectation versus reality lesson of life. Void Chakram couldn't be used in heavy rain. The water consumed her paper-thin disks.

Along the way, she encountered the occasional over-ambitious mudskipper, a dozen goblin-like, fish-faced Demi-humans she couldn't identify, a giant salamander creature that fled with surprising speed, and a ten-meter boa that tried to have a go at one of her hounds. More fortuitously, the eroded river revealed a century-old snapper-turtle that attempted to ambush her, only to be dragged out of the mud by her dogs.

Naturally, whatever Caliban and or her dogs ensnared fed her vitality, restoring what she had expended. The snapper, in particular, had a nourishing essence. Her only regret was that without Percy, no Core had survived, leaving no tangible resource to be collected.

After half-an-hour of leading her dogs through the slog, she reached the source of La War's woe.

As expected, a natural levee had formed upstream, ten-meters wide and then some, created by collated trees, leaves, mud and shifting soil catching an exposed escarpment where normally the stream cascaded freely. Thankfully, the rainfall had by now grown sparse, affording Gwen enough visibility to figure out a viable solution.

But when her dogs scampered up the waterlogged plateau, they were met with a burst of magic—

"GRRRR! Yip!"

_CRINK!_

— followed by the distinct sound of an elementally-induced blast.

A wave of cold permeated atop the dam. One of Gwen's hounds had instantly expired.

Suddenly livid and smarting with sensory feedback, Gwen hastened her ascent, rising above the barrier with a combination of Jump and Flight.

"YOU!" she howled at the sight of a familiar face.

"YOU?!" The face of Lee Si-won, Vice Captain to Seoul U, stared back at her. "You're the source of those abominations?"

But Gwen wasn't interested in the Korean Vice Captain.

She was gazing with trembling outrage at the sight of the frigid water sloshing atop an enormous, near-overflowing bank of ice, frozen in place so as to collate into an ever-growing pool.

_SO THAT's why the river dried up!_ She immediately recalled what Tei had told her about Seoul's favourite methodology, that winning isn't about winning, but instead having your opponent's fail. Had Seoul known about the landscape and the topography of the villages? Was that why they left so early from Mandalay, going so far as to burn HDMs to mitigate the rain?

"Caliban!"

"Ssi-bal!" Si-won swore, kicking into action without a second word. "Creeping Ice!"

But it wasn't Caliban who came on first, but Gwen's hounds, yelping and yapping as they skittered across the thinly formed ice, slavering with grey goo. Si-won's frost-laden AOE caught the first two dogs as they entered its range, freezing their paws to the water, but the remaining few skittered across the rime.

"D-Dimension Door!" Si-won reappeared some hundred-odd meters away.

Gwen was in no mood to see the culprit escape. She wanted to drag the man back to base camp, and pending on the bastard's honesty, maybe even have Richard work the prick under with a Lea special.

With a Dimension Door of her own, she and two of her dogs appeared less than a metre away, quicker than Si-won could re-orientate his bearings. A splash of tenebrous, nauseating Void-ink splattered all about them, sizzling the ground and consuming all that came into contact. Though the well-trained Acolyte immediately erected a Shield, the unexpected offensive teleport had caught him unaware, sending out a jolt of reactive mana as the defensive spells woven into the fabric activated.

"Taser!" Gwen's low level spells now possessed near-instantaneous activation. She lashed Si-won's shield several times in quick succession while her dogs bit and clawed its surface, surprised that they failed to penetrate an Evoker's shield.

"Dimension Door!" Si-won made another desperate teleportation back to base.

"Ariel! Ball Lightning!"

This time, she allowed four orbs to chase down the escaping Evoker before Teleporting in herself to once again close-in with Si-won, knowing that Seoul U's Vice Captain's best spells were all mid-range AOEs.

"Shield!" Si-won could do nothing as the deerhounds continued their hunt, covering the distance of a hundred meters in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile, a spider-form Caliban, Hastened and terrible, leapt from tree to tree, aiming for any lapse in his judgement.

When he reappeared, the orbs also reached their destination, detonating with terrific force, stripping away his defences.

"Icy Eruption!" Si-won pointed a finger some distance away.

"Lightning Bolt!" Gwen exchanged spells with her opponent, though it seemed she wasn't the target of Si-won's newest assault.

Her bolt caught the Mage in the chest, sending the man staggering backwards. To her wide-eyed surprise, he remained standing.

_THUMP! CRACK!_
The ice dam erupted with a terrific noise as a tectonic volume of half-congealed water began to shift.

"!"

Her Divination Sigil pinged.

The feeling of foreshadowing she had felt since seeing the icy levee erupted. She realised with growing dread what Si-won had in store for her friends below. "Caliban, keep him occupied!"

She Dimension Doored away from the target of her ire to inspect the damage afflicting the debris-strewn blockade. When she arrived above the Korean-made beaver dam, she could see that the ice magic holding it in place had been withdrawn and that its structural integrity was disintegrating.

"Fuck!" she called Ariel to her side. If that morass of ice and mud picked up momentum, it would take out half the fucking village.

But what could she do? She wasn't a Water Mage, and so she couldn't divert the stream. She wasn't an Earthen Mage, and so she couldn't erect a barrier to hold the dam. At a time like this, an artillery-Mage like herself was helpless. Against the relentless physics of the natural world, even Barbanginy was no more effective than a low-tier Bolt.

"Shaaa!" Caliban's cry came across her Empathic Link. It and the dogs had injured their prey, but then Si-won had disappeared; likely propelled by some defensive item to safety. She commanded her creatures to return, then made a quick calculation for the trip back to La War.

She could at best manage two-hundred meters per Dimension Door, and she had at least five kilometres through dense woodland to cover before she could message Mayuree. If she averaged five Dimension Doors per kilometre to make the exhaustive distance, it meant twenty-five continuous casts before she was in range.

_CrinK-CRACK!_

The dam gave in to its momentum.
The time for doubt was over.
The Void sorceress vanished in a flash of thunder and lightning.