Following a token greeting from the swamped Tower Master of Auckland, Gwen was assigned to Te Wherowhero, who took his pick of seven Mages from Gwen's entourage, including Aria. She was then left with Petra, Richard, and two of her seniors for Wellington—Caleb Ross and Jaxon Reid, an Illusionist and a Transportation Specialist, both inexperienced in combat but promising in utility.

After thanking the second team and leaving tasks for supply delivery with Aria, Gwen returned to the Auckland representative tasked with moving them out of the Tower's resonance range.

"Sis, I still can't believe you're a Magister. When we were in Sydney, you were an Acolyte."

"Bro, I can't believe you somehow got taller."

The man she spoke to was none other than the boy once assigned to her school competition in Sydney, the larger-than-life Whetu Tikitiki O Taranga. In the years since, the giant had blown past seven feet and had the girth to match, becoming a veritable home-grown avatar of Māui.

Like old times, the two embraced, giving Gwen the feeling of a kitten being hugged to death by a Greater Ursine.

When they separated, Gwen extended a hand.

"Provisional Magister Gwen Song of Cambridge, London, under orders of the Shard, reporting for Wellington."

"Magus Whetu Tikitiki O Taranga, of Auckland, assigned to the defence of the Auckland Frontier."

The two clasped by grasping each others' wrists, then introduced their teams. To Gwen's delight, she recognised the Ta Moko Enchanter, Opi Raharuhi in Whetu's group, who greeted her with a heartfelt "Kia Ora!"

"Shall we fly and talk?" Gwen gestured to the landing platform distending from the Tower's interior.

Compared to Gunther's ambitious semi-superstructural Tower in Sydney, Auckland's flying fortress remained firmly rooted in the frugal 80s, when Oceania first introduced Shielding Stations and ley-line Towers. With an overall shape akin to a ballistic missile with a hat-dome top, Auckland measured barely one-tenth the size of Sydney—which was reasonable, considering that the entire Frontier's population was scarcely one-fifth of Australia's south coast.

The ISTC array in Auckland was situated nearer the top, taking advantage of the height to broaden the clarity of Divination signals, meaning Gwen now stood in the outer circumference of a giant disc from which the defenders launched artillery-class sorcery, as well as sent and received Mage Flights.

Whetu and his team accompanied Gwen's small group to the staging zone.

The fighting in Auckland had thus far remained skirmishes and ambushes, but the Mermen Shoal visible from the flight deck was no less a spontaneous geographic formation parked in the Tipaka Moana, the gulf separating Auckland from the South Pacific.

"How's Wellington?" Gwen asked as they approached the flight deck. There were facilities for herself and the crew to change into their battle garbs. "Have you heard from Yue?"

"Yue saved the city, pushing back the Mermen there last night," Whetu informed her with a sigh. "As of this morning, the sea-saw along the city's cliffs continue. During the day, the Mermen won't launch an all-out assault. Are you disappointed?"

The news of Yue's arse-kicking undid the knot tightening in Gwen's chest. As much confidence she possessed for Yue's abilities and Alesia's contingencies for her Apprentice, she knew the dangers of assaulting a Merman Shoal without her particular skill set.

"With what?" Gwen said cooly, then cocked her head to regard her old companion. She had to cane her neck, for Whetu's enormous face was at least a head and shoulder above her own. Now in his prime, the Punamu Abjurer was a gentle and sentimental giant whose bearing was made doubly more impressive by the snake-like Ta Moko covering his body from his lips to his wrists.

"That I am not with Yue, and I need to leave yous as well," Whetu's tone reminded Gwen of a scolded puppy. "I had promised to protect all of yous."

"That was in high school, Whetu." Gwen laughed, slapping the man on the back only to feel like she'd just struck a wall of carved jade. Nursing her fingers, she gave the small of Whetu's back a gentle rub instead. "Simpler times, eh?"

"Yeah, those days were sweet as."

"Well," Gwen reminded the man. "Other than the Sobel thing."

"Keen." Whetu shook his head to agree.

They soon arrived near the change rooms. Gwen would love nothing more than to eat a pot of mussels and catch up with Whetu—but alas, Wellington was on the verge of being overrun.

"Righto—" her gaze swept the open vista of Auckland spread out beyond the disk's edge. The city was as hilly as she'd recalled from her past life, only here, each headland was illuminated with the brutalist visage of concrete-clad Shielding Stations. As Whetu followed her eyes, she pulled back her long hair and twirled the raven coils into a flat bun.

"Just one more question," Whetu asked, his eyes moving across her shoulders to her side.

"What is it?" Gwen asked, wondering if Whetu liked what he saw.

"Is that..." The giant grew contemplative. "Is that a duck?"

North Island.

Twenty kilometres south of Auckland, the sound of rolling thunder across a cloudless sky gradually dimmed as Gwen and company came to a halt.

Quickly, they landed on an empty hilltop on a secluded rise named Pōkeno. The selection was based on their inland route to Wellington, a sweet spot far enough away from the Halfing settlement of Hamilton and equal-distant from either coast to safely conjure Golos.

Very quickly, Gwen marked the area, laid down her ingredients, then made the familiar Mandala with help from Richard and Petra, who were now old hands at supporting their cousin. Petra could complete the Mandala in record time thanks to her multi-headed Spirit, even working solo. With the Cambridge Mages and a duck standing guard, the three finished the Greater Planar Ally within three-quarters of an hour, then loaded the operant Glyphs with crates of HDM "offerings".

Above, Dede's eyes grew orange with envy. Following the rules of the pond, however, the drake understood its place in the pecking order.

Therefore, without complication, once the passage of supernatural thunder and crashing lightning encircled the Mandala and turned the once-green hilltop into no man's land, Golos, Scion of the Yinglong, descended upon ancient Aotearoa.

Golos appeared larger than Gwen recalled, possibly reaching a good twenty meters from snout to clubbed tail. His growth only stood to reason, for the Wyvern had been bumming it at Ruxin's bachelor pad and crashing in Huangshan with access to Ayxin and Ruxin's old nesting haunts. With so much resource aiding in the Wyvern's growth, Gwen could only blame his maternal bloodline for not providing her Gogo with forelimbs and innate Draconic sorcery.

"Quack!"

"Lord Golos," the others greeted her ally.

"Gogo." Gwen patted her lizard's chest, marvelling at the beauty of Golos' blue-white scales. "You ready for some fun?"

"Calamity—" The lizard returned her greeting with a strange expression. "Step aside."

Before Gwen could ask why Golos looked constipated, the Wyvern inwardly coiled its serpentine neck and assumed the pose of a cat hacking up a furball.

"Christ, what—"

Gwen's eyes widened into the size of hen's eggs as the Wyvern flatted itself against the sizzling Mandala, planted both wing-claws against the ground, then began to regurgitate an enormous… something.

"Is Lord Golos alright?" Petra materialised a few Restoration Spellcubes, likely thinking that the Wyvern had damaged its internal organs mid-transit.

"Indigestion?" Richard observed with sympathy. "It happens to the best of us."

Cambridge's Mages dutifully took notes.

Gwen stumbled back as Draconic-acid washed over her Da-peng leather booties. Whatever made up Golos' eye-watering breath could only be said to be magnified a hundred-fold by the gush of yellow liquid oozing from his feeding orifice.

"Quack!" Their duck protested the sorry state of a creature it saw as a rare superior.

The Wyvern ignored the duck and persisted in his masochistic act of unhinging his jaw, appearing like a snake regurgitating an egg in reverse.

With a final grunt, what looked like a steel coffin emerged, its surface marred and scarred by his digestive acid.

_Clunk!_ The steel _something_ landed, pulverising the charcoal landscape.

"For you, Calamity." Golos nursed his neck.

"For me?" Gwen could only guess that perhaps, Golos wanted to bring her a gift. If so, why not put the thing in his Storage Rings?

Before she could ask, a series of taps came from the coffin, then—

_CRUNK!_

The coffin's lid flew open, struck from within by a shapely pair of emerging calves. A moment later, the doll-like figure inside dizzily pulled herself upward.

Gwen's jaw dropped.

Richard whistled.

Petra's expression grew contemplative.

Cambridge's Mages took notes.

"L-LULU?" Gwen could hardly catch her next breath. "LULAN? You were inside—THAT?"

She looked toward Golos, her mind a riot of possibilities.

Lulan was inside Golos?

INSIDE A THUNDER WYVERN?

WHAT THE FUCK?

Could a Summon Planar Ally be used as an ISTC relay? Or was that merely because Ruxin willed it? At any rate, is it even possible that a Human Being could survive such an excursion through the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Lighting? It wasn't as though Golos hadn't sent her men before through the array.

Or… was that the purpose of the steel box?

"A gift from brother." Golos' voice transformed from a hoarse croak to his usual confidence as his torn throat rapidly healed. "He says to bring him gifts from the Seats of Frost to repay him."

Rushing toward the steel coffin, Gwen grasped the calloused hand of the swordswoman and pulled her close. Lulan did not smell any better than the phlegm Golos projectile vomited, but Gwen couldn't care about that now.

"Lulu," she said softly. "Can you hear me?"

The light of cognisance slowly returned to Lulan's eyes.

"Saviour—" The swordswoman tried to smile. "I am sorry I stink."

"Quack!"

"Why..." The confusion returned to Lulan's eyes. "Why is there a duck here?"

Before Gwen could explain that ducks were for all occasions, the girl pushed herself abruptly from Gwen's arms, forming a posture not too different from when Golos had first arrived.

"Oh, Christ." Gwen mouthed. If there's another fucking “gift" _inside_ Lulu _._ She and Ruxin would have words! Did the Dragon think her friends were Matryoshka Dolls?

Thankfully, Lulan only evacuated the entire contents of her stomach over Gwen's one of a kind battle armour.

"Pats!" Gwen called for their medic.

Petra produced both a healing injector and a Restoration cube, then after a second, a Cleansing cube as well. Richard and Lea helped with fresh water to wash off the gunk on Lulan, hosing down the surrounding area befouled by Golos. Eventually, Lulan was relieved from her coffin, cleaned up, then restored to relative health.

Now that her Wyvern and swordswoman had established their bearings, Gwen stood between the two with a hand on Lulan's shoulders and another against Golos' knee.

"It warms my heart that you're both here," she said after a moments' thought. "That said, I can't advocate for Golos' oesophagus as a means of transport in good conscience. Lulu, you could have just used the ISTC arrays, you know? What's money if you travel safely? You know we have a lot of that these days, right? Couldn't Ruxin just Glyph you up with Dragon magic? Who told you to use the _Golos Express_?"

"ISTCs involved too many complications and paperwork." Lulan, still pale, gave her a look of pride. "Lord Ruxin said I needn't follow the rules of mortals and that if I wanted to join you as soon as possible, simply ask Mistress Ayxin."

"So, Ayxin put you up to this?" Gwen huffed.

"She taught me how to construct that." Lulan pointed to the coffin. In Gwen's eyes, the steel casket was what it resembled.

"Are you sure Ayxin meant it _literally_?" Gwen asked. "I mean, she _is_ a spatial sorcery user, but..."

"Mistress Ayxin said that I'd be welding a coffin, yes," Lulan concurred. "I asked Lord Ruxin, and he said it was a brilliant idea, better than what he could manage."

Gwen looked toward Golos with questions.

A shrugging Wyvern was a sight to see, though Gwen was less than impressed.

"Strewth." Gwen chose to banish the matter for now, for the day was wearing on and nearing noon. "Okay, let's assume they meant well. How are you feeling, Lulu?"

"Good enough to fight." Lulan grasped at a space beside them, then to Gwen's wonder, materialised a gleaming blade of patterned steel. "I've learned a lot in the last few years. Lord Ryxi taught me everything from our Sect since before the Yuan Centaurs razed our temples. I've also picked up useful skills from the remaining four Sword Sects that he thought was useful. AND I've perfected the Panzerschreck you taught me—although Lord Ryxi said the name sounded like Lord Golos choking on fishbones—so he named it the _Falling Star Sword._ Oh, Ruì misses you too, though she's crazy busy with Lord Ruxin's appointments. We've expanded the Tonglv Holdings now, and the local government's more or less falling in line thanks to Professor Ma..."

As Lulan delivered her report, Gwen studied her illegally immigrated companion, perceiving that Lulan had grown a little taller, though not by much. From what Gwen could see with her Divination, Lulu's Heart of Iron was wholly tamed by the uncorrupted Sect-magic Ryxi had gifted as a favour. On a more aesthetic level, Lulan had lost the puppy fat on her face, making her once youthful mien more mature and aggressive. Her hair was kept long and folded back in a ponytail—possibly as a tribute to when she, Lulu and Petra had enjoyed themselves visiting Peaches' performances.

"Gwen," Richard interrupted the stream of consciousness from Lulan with a polite cough. "Wellington awaits."

The reminder restarted the engine of anxiety that had cooled with Lulan's unconventional arrival.

"Of course," she asked for Lulan to keep her updated while they flew, passing her one of the dozens of spare Message Devices made by her Dwarven artisans in the Bunker. "Do you know our mission, Lulan? Gogo? Did you inform Lulu?"

"I know. We're exterminating Mermen." Lulan's face broke into a grin, echoing the very same on Golos' face. "I'll protect you."

"And I am hungry for fish," Golos' protest announced his perfect candidacy for unbridled mayhem. "You said there would be more fish to eat than I could count."

"Oh, the buffet's gathering southward as we speak," Gwen assured the Wyvern. "Richard, how far are we now from Wellington?"

"Four hundred and twenty-four kilometres inland," her cousin replied. "But now that Lord Golos is here, shall we entertain a shortcut?"

"Yes, we should take the coastal route," Petra concurred.

"Magister Song?" One of the Cambridge Mages raised their hand. "Wouldn't we be beset by random encounters if we go outside the Green Zones?"

"We would," Gwen agreed, then gestured to the imposing form of her Wyvern stretching out its spines. Golos' spiked-club tail was of especial interest, for its bristles contracted and expanded like a living thing. "Caleb, Jaxon, you fellers ever experienced Dragon Fear?"

"I have." Caleb's complexion paled. "I was in London during the er… incident."

"I have not," Jaxon confessed. "Is Lord Golos going to show us how it's done?"

"Indeed he is," Gwen confirmed their worst suspicions. "Don't worry. The nausea isn't so bad if the aura owner isn't trying to eat you."

"That way, we should be in Wellington before sundown," Richard confirmed their new coordinates on the map. "An hour to mana-up and pre-buff should be more than enough."

"Quack!" Dede also gave his two LDMs.

Having received her assurances, Gwen snapped her fingers, materialising another gift from her Draconic business partner, the Omni-orb.

"Ho," Golos remarked with appreciation. "Brother's gift."

"We're _going to Welling to find Yue,_ " she declared to the orb in translated Draconic. It wasn't how its divination worked, but Gwen felt that vocalising her intentions seemed to bolster the orb's accuracy. "Go!"

With the agility of a Golden Snitch from a money-printing franchise, the Omni-directional Orb lifted into the air and began to drift southward.

Gwen adjusted her orientation toward the direction indicated by the orb.

"Ariel!"

"EE—EE!" Her Kirin materialised.

"Caliban!"

"SHAA—!" A gruesome and faceless Da-peng birthed from a slit in space-time.

"Dede!"

"QUACK!" the duck quacked.

"Gogo!"

"Calamity. Get that thing away from me—" Golos drifted a safe distance away from the Da-peng with every feather on his neck bristling.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Dick, leave Lea on overwatch and put our beasties into formation," she said to her majordomo. "Pats, Jaxon, Caleb, you're with me. Lulu will run rear guard. How's your Flight magic, Lulu?"

"I can keep up," Lulan replied without ambivalence. In the next moment, the Sword Mage materialised an enormous blade twice as long as herself, resembling the world's most dangerous surfboard.

She hopped on.

Cooing, Cambridge's Mages took notes.

Under Richard's directions, the Familiar, pet and Mage party organised itself into a spear point with Golos as the tip.

_Yunnie! We're coming!_ Gwen told herself silently. _Don't Fireball us._

"Alright!" she declared her intentions to the group with Clarion Call. "Let's go save us a city!"

Wellington.

WETA.

Magister Kawhena understood very well the Mermen were grinding them down.

Since the early morning, the Mermen had renewed their harassment, sending troops of chitin-covered Crabmen and Fishmen buffed with air-breathing sorcery to scale the cliffs overlooking Lyall Bay, attempting to flank the city from the South Sea.

With WETA burning HDMs, the Militia could abjure the foe from their shores with minimal losses by hiding behind spontaneous barriers, retreating to higher ground, and forcing the Mermen into kill-lanes.

Without Kawhena transmuting the landscape around Wellington's ley-node, entire patrols could be wiped out by the superior physicality of the armoured sea-soldiers, becoming vulnerable to the bolt-throwing hybrids who wielded anemones that shot bone-spines laced with nerve-toxin.

And so, Kawhena's team continued to work throughout the day, never resting, beset by one encounter after another.

After more than twenty hours, their mana was untouched—and the ley-node beneath WETA remained stable—but the spell fatigue assaulting their brains had grown significant enough to cause mana-feedback in the junior staff, incapacitating the poor sods for days, if not weeks.

Therefore, he had fallen for the Mermen's ploy. It was a cheap strategy, but a strategy nonetheless. That was the unsettling thing about a Mermen Tide led by notable personage from the Seven Kingdoms. The Sea Lords may not understand the extent of tactical limitations outside of the ocean's three-dimensional scope—but their disregard for Mermen's lives was more than made up for misconceptions.

"Are our Militias holding their zones?" Kawhena asked an aid.

"Magister Addison reports eighteen of twenty-four battlegroups are still in operation," the junior Magus reported, struggling to stay awake. "We lost contact with squads eight, fifteen and twenty-one entirely."

Nodding, Kawhena hid his alarm from the young ones.

"How's Magus Bai's team?"

"They're recovering mana after Purging hostiles near Miramar."

"Where the Fairies live?" Kawhena pinched his brows. "The Wisps didn't evacuate after all?"

"I think they'd prefer to perish with their Grove."

"Right." Kawhena pursed his lips. Far be it that he should worry about the Demi-humans. "Any news from Auckland?"

Te had pledged help.

But would that help arrive in time?

Before the junior Mage could answer, a Message spell bloomed beside the Magister's ear.

"Te?" Kawhena felt the weight on his shoulders loom like a swinging guillotine. "Tell me there's good news."

The voice that came across was at once pleasant and relaxed. "Brother, there's good news indeed! Of course, I had to confirm before informing you, lest our defences are misallocated. You've got your reinforcements! Guess what the Shard sent Wellington?"

"A Combat Flight?" Kawhena wondered if he'd dare to hope. "Lead by a Magister? Dare I ask if they sent an Ordo Purge Team?"

"HA—!" The laughter from the other side of the Message Device was enough to relax the nerves of all the younger Mages present in the makeshift war room. "They sent us Magus Bai's roommate!"

"You're taking the piss, Te," Kawhena protested. "This isn't the time for jokes."

"Before sunset—look to the horizon due north," the Paladin's voice rose in volume. "You must tell me how quickly the Mermen flee!"

"From who?"

"From Master Shultz's sister—" The Paladin's voice took on the cadence of a passion-fueled Haka. "—That's right, brother! They sent us the Devourer of Shenyang!"

Wellington.

Titahi Bay.

"I see the city," Gwen reported to the team, taking advantage of her Essence-tempered vision. "Any closer, and we're bound to be discovered. How are our Divination signals? Can we get anything across?"

"It's spotty. I am shocked we're not getting full signal even this close." Richard double-checked his Message Device. "I think we've been spoilt by living in London for so long. That said, Wellington knows we're coming—and it isn't as though we could be mistaken for Mermen reinforcements. The main thing is Yue, ha. She's not going to greet us with a Fireball, right?"

"We'll keep the broadcast going," Gwen affirmed her unequivocal desire to see Project Legion functional and put to use. "And yes, I'd love to surprise Yunnie, but let's not surprise Yunnie."

"Alright, as planned then." Richard nodded. "Lea, if you would?"

"Sure thing!" The Undine appeared suddenly beside her, twirled, and split her ultramarine hair into four separate Lake Sprites with slim, petite figures and vaguely human faces.

The plan was for Gwen's bevvy of beasties to douse fires near Wellington's struggling Militia. Before he had to leave, Whetu had left the group with a map of Wellington's dugouts and battle lines, which for a city small enough to be observed from the air, should be easy enough to discern.

Still, Gwen felt it best if Lea could direct her quintet of avatars to keep an eye on her creatures.

Of her monstrous foursome, Golos would be fine alone.

Caliban could fight until it was banished, though when pitted against "meat shields", the Void beast could likely riot until the last morsel.

Comparatively, though Ariel's lightning worked wonders on fish, she felt it best to assign Dede to protect her pseudo-Kirin from becoming swamped.

Petra, Jaxon and Caleb had the task of contacting and coordinating combat with WETA, first informing Yue of her arrival, then aiding the construction of Teleportation Circles as a contingency.

As for herself, she would form a Combat Team with Richard and Lulan playing interference while she performed what the London's papers had dubbed "The Dark Womb", despite her METRO dubbing the spell combination as "The Dark Egg". For the battle to come, she hoped to sow enough chaos among the Mermen with her Void lampreys to disrupt the Shoal's coherence while taking advantage of the fact that most Mermen were incapable of aerial combat.

"Gogo? Dede?" Gwen turned to her pets for proof that they were ready.

"Finally!" Golos' scales crackled with lightning as visible ripples of Dragon Fear distorted the air. That was another of the Wyvern's insurances. While Golos could be overwhelmed by numbers, that number first had to survive the crush of their fleeing friends' armoured bodies. "Their Essence is junk, but Ruxin said that quantity is a quality."

"Quack!" Gwen had no idea if ducks could salivate, but Dede sure as hell was making a good effort.

"Watch out for the Mermen leader and their magic users," Richard warned against her and her pets against boisterous confidence. "You're not fighting the Triffidus. These are creatures with complex societies and ancient civilisations. Pull their whiskers hard enough, and you're bound to summon something capable of giving us trouble."

"I wouldn't worry until we can thin out the Shoal," Petra delivered a point of insight. "Remember what I told you? The Mermen fight like we Russians do in the Old Country. We send waves of conscripted NoMs to colonise the Wildlands while the Mages sit back and wait for our foe to exhaust their mana."

"Ah yes, the Path of the Old Country, if only Humanity could spawn a thousand young a season, per female," Richard snorted. "But enough of that—because we have Lord Golos! Milord Wyvern, if you could be kind enough to show us how it's done?"

Gwen's impatient Wyvern needed no prompting to execute the ultraviolence to come. With a mighty blast of air that sent the Mages reeling, the Wyvern launched itself forward, forming its silhouette into that of a forward-pointing spearhead.

As a breathing thunderclap, Gogo flew forward and downward, his neck framed by a suddenly appearing and disappearing cone of air, shrieking toward Wellington as a white-hot mote of Dragon Fear, giving Gwen the strangest sensation of controlling a fish-eating, Core-shitting living airstrike.

Rongo Winiata, a native of Wellington and a one-time participant of the IIUC, put himself in the front lines to ensure that the NoMs could safely wield their Quasi-magical implements.

A working battle group, he had explained to the hundred-odd men and women under his command, was a product of symbiosis. With the Mages alone, the casters would be quickly overwhelmed by the oncoming crush of shelled bodies. Likewise, without the Mages to break up the rank and file of the crustacean shock troops, the NoM Militia would be filling gaps with new bodies every few minutes.

At a time like this, Rongo wished more than anything that their Frontier city could have invested in Golems like the ones he'd seen on the Chinese Undead Front.

As a Mage, he could amass spells with far more complexity—but he was still one Mage in a team of five, while a well-protected Golem unit could be refitted and rearmed for firing by a couple of NoMs within the hour to wreak havoc to half of Wellington's coastline.

And if Wellington had _two_ Golem units attached to each Militia? And if they had Magister Kawhena funnelling their foe into tight-quartered kill zones?

Would they even need reinforcements?

Rongo shook his head. He quickly banished his wishful daydream and checked that his mana had recovered. He was the most senior Mage in his unit, and he had to keep a clear head.

He was on his second injector already, and there were three more hours until sunset, when Maka and Timoti Wikiriwhi, the Magma Brothers, would finish their meditation.

"Erina—Rangi—with me! One more push! Keep them off the NoMs." Rongo's Ta Moko flashed cobalt as he leapt into the air, kept afloat by a surge of water commanded by his Taniwha Spirit, the Great Whale Shark tied to his ocean-fairing ancestors. At his mental behest, clarified mana tore through his conduits, materialising the overabundance of Elemental Water brought by the Mermen.

"Tidal Surge!"

The Mermen soldiers clambering blindly up the escarpment were struck by a sudden wave of white water, tearing them from the transmuted concrete and dashing those with softer bodies against the spiked exteriors of the shock troops below.

Erina followed with Fireball and Scorching Rays volleys, picking off the stragglers closest to the man-made wall on the harbour. At the same time, Rangi erected barriers of stone whenever their foes launched tridents, spikes, and sometimes fish at the Mages.

Behind the seawall itself, Rongo's support Healer mended groaning NoM militia members maimed by the barrier breach prior in the day. Not far, their final member, a Ta Moko Enchantress, maintained the dwindling array of Wand-implements used by the NoMs.

Rongo's crested wave reached an apex—then rapidly dwindled as his mana surge waned, unable to sustain the attack.

When he landed, winded and dizzied from the continuous expenditure, he unhappily realised that most of the monstrous silhouettes had remained.

Had his spell gotten weaker? Rongo wondered Or had the Mermen brought more substantial reinforcements?

Either way, he was about to learn a lesson from his Master firsthand: never leave a gap for a foe to exploit. He hadn't meant it, but he had been fighting since the morning, and he was bloody buggered.

Thereby, he could only curse when a crustacean with a crested crown like a Roman Centurion tossed a subordinate toward Rongo, catapulting the akimbo crab toward him as a living, flailing cannon ball.

Rangi was quick on his shielding, intercepting the crab.

Unfortunately for Rongo, he knew exactly how much the damned things weighed and that the first crab would merely be one in a volley of dozens. What's worse, despite the blue ichor prettily painting the semi-sphere barrier, the crustacean that clambered off Rangi's shield was twice as mad.

Before Rongo could activate a Jump or an Expeditious retreat, the creature had already taken a swipe at the Evoker, scoring a flesh-mangling gash across Rongo's bared chest, bypassing his innate Water Shield with minimum effort.

"Rongo!" Rangi's voice called out. "Watch out!"

Rongo couldn't hear his mates over the sound of howling blood in his head and his own foul-mouthed explicative.

He fell.

A few seconds passed as slow as molasses before Rongo's world returned to normal, realising that he had not activated his escape spell or triggered his Contingency Ring.

Instead, he was on the floor, ass-down and face-up, staring at the sky.

SHIT! Rongo tried to speak, but he could hardly catch his breath. The fucking crab was over him now, dripping blue blood and waving its Māui-damned limbs in some victory dance.

_Rangi!—Erina—!_ he tried forcing his voice out. _Get behind the NoMs! GET—_

_CRACK—!_

Rongo's world turned white.

For a blooming second, Rongo was sure he had ascended into a higher Plane, for every muscle in his body had involuntarily tensed, _and_ his bowels had threatened to release the Earthen Hounds.

When he painfully turned his head, his muscles buoyed on pure adrenaline, Rongo saw past the fresh-gauged cavity in his pectorals to see...

Rongo had no idea what he was seeing, though having fought the Crab-men for a day, he knew that they were capable of _shitting_.

And now—a whole legion of the bloody things had just shat themselves blue and brown.

"RONGO!" Rangi reached his side. Together with Erina, they began to pull him bodily backwards, dragging him by the shoulders. Above Rongo, his clawed foe remained frozen, unable even to twitch.

Fighting mortal injury and mental disorientation, it took Rongo a dozen meters to finally find out why the Crabmen were frozen like fish-dinners.

"Is that ours?" Rangi asked. "Or are we bunged?"

Erina was too terrified to speak, and Rongo knew the reason.

There—above them—hovering over the sudden descent of innumerable piles of reflexive faeces—was a Wyvern in blue and platinum.

And the crazy thing—

And the _craziest_ thing—

Was that he recognised the damned monster!

"HMM…" came the rumbling of a familiar voice from the armoured flying fortress looming over a thousand Crabmen too terrified to shift limb or claw. "... a good appetiser."

The Wyvern opened its mouth.

Its sadistic, sunset pupils transformed into twin pools of molten plasma.

There was a sound of sudden thunder.

An abrupt blast of heat and light.

A simultaneous singing of Rongo's exposed body hair.

Then Rongo's world grew peaceful, blessedly knowing well that Wellington and his buggered body would see the dawn of a new day.

Northward of Golos' landing was Wellington Quay, once the crown jewel of the city's economic zone, now a wasteland of overturned ships and freight equipment.

When the Mermen came again, they emerged in the thousands, using the blasted ships from the tsunami for cover, climbing, clambering and scampering from shade to shade until they made landfall.

Unlike the Crabmen assaulting the main harbour head-on, these were the surviving locals, lead by a true denizen of the deep—a loyal attache to the Elemental Prince Shyvaphyr, seventeenth in line to the Coral Crown.

Anarr was the name of the attache assigned to the fodder, and he possessed only one job—to herd the cowardly Mudskippers to death or glory.

Hailing from the rare and noble Clan Ocellatus, Anarr was equally capable underwater and in the murderous air. Blessed with a gift of Essence from his Prince, the Eel-kin neared eight-feet standing on his transmuted dorsal fins, not accounting for his enormous maw, which weighed down his upper body and gave him the likeness of a bunched-back, bipedal toad.

"Faster! Attack more! Crush the air-suckers!" Anarr swung his serrated Coral Sword, sending ripples of Elemental Water outward to stimulate the Mudskippers, likewise informing them that should any flee or escape, he had them marked for feeding fodder.

In the distance, beyond the crushed lines of bobbing boats, flashes of Human magic pushed his men backwards.

Thus far, Anarr was thoroughly unimpressed with the progress of his coastal cousins.

As their terrestrial kin called it, the prime Material was seen by Anarr's lord and masters as a grand prize. To those in the deep, Terra existed as an inexplicable conjunction of the Elemental Planes, a place inundated by influences from the Plane of Water and, therefore, the Mermen's natural second home. To Anarr's superiors, here was a neutral world rich for colonisation and plunder, gifted by the Elders of the Deep.

Yet, much to their chagrin, the other Elementals were also keen on taking a fragment of the whale fall. Furthermore, the indigenous population on Terra not only saw themselves as the watery globe's rightful rulers but had the gall to nourish themselves by hunting the children of water!

Of course, Anarr's kinfolk ate one another—such was life so long as one and one's dinner weren't too closely related—but to have finless creatures biting into the sumptuous flesh of a fish-folk? That was gobsmacking.

And what was worse was that here existed land creatures that flew through the air—and _hunted_ kin in the sea! What an aberration! A travesty of existence!

The first day he walked on the surface, Anarr had made his new sycophants retrieve these "Birds", as the Terrestrials call them. There was a plague of the fiends flying above the Shoal, meaning to bring them down required an effort.

Unhappily, other than a vague saltiness, Anarr could only say that he was disappointed.

He later tried the eggs of a creature dubbed an "Albatross" by the local kin and dozens of its screeching larvae. Those had been nourishing, and Anarr had immediately demanded a dozen be delivered into his gullet.

"QUACK—QUACK—QUACK!" A series of orifice-quailing barks made Anarr physically recoil, stirring him from the succulent recollection.

Anarr looked up at the sky.

There was an Albatross approaching, one clothed with the splendiferous hues of the highly prized Mantis-kin.

"Hah?" Anarr huffed, spraying spittle from his fanged maw as he hollered at the nasty thing. "Have you come for your children? Fish-eating fiend?! You're too late! For they rest now in the merciless gullet of Anarr of Ocellatus!"

"Quack?" The flying beast banked hard, descending in a rapid spiral.

"I want to eat that thing!" Anarr gave the command. "Mudfins! Attack!"

As his troops converged, the quacking fiend began a rapid descent, appearing larger and larger until Anarr's throat felt parched by the dry air.

_This Albatross is a true Monster!_ Anarr thought. A Kraken-kin of the air! Anarr had eaten hundreds of "birds" by now, even a vicious "sea eagle" captured at the cost of a dozen Mudkin lives. Yet—this creature dwarfed them all in size, beauty, and sheer arrogance!

Just before the Albatross struck the ruined shipyard and its graveyard of metal, it pulled back both wings, causing such a violent gust that the dozen or so Mudkin with their nets and serrated spears were blown about, losing their footing despite their sticky dermis.

When Anarr's eyes met the creature's, he shuddered to discover that the creature's irises' were twin pools of pure pitch, depthless and without a hint of compassion.

_WHOMP—_

The hungry _bird_ landed, sending the half-shattered tanker ship to roll from the momentum of its descent.

Instantly, a dozen Mudkins piled upon the Albatross, hooting, howling and stabbing with their poisoned spears, trying to bring the flying fiend low.

"Quack, QUACK—!" the creature let loose a battle cry.

Anarr craned his neck. How would a limbless, armless imbecile fight? Could this airborne pathogen, this uncivilised low-order animal, even contest the Mudkin, who had been given magical implements from his Prince?

Abruptly, the Albatross made its move.

Anarr couldn't follow its movements, but from the way it rapidly waddled, distended its neck to and fro, and swung its wing-limbs, he instantly banished all thoughts of underestimating the creature's might.

A second later, Anarr applauded his wisdom.

The Mudkins who had made their move were all dead.

Where the creature had pecked with its oral implement, the unarmored Mud-kin erupted, exploding into piles of grey flesh, rendered sinew and liberated offal.

Those struck by the wings flew instantly away, shattering as though algae polyps dashed against a foamy cliff.

The worst was the few that somehow ended up beneath the creature, becoming crushed so entirely that their innards ruptured forth like stuck seaweed from the orifice of an underwater geyser.

But that was okay. Anarr had thousands of Mudkin and ten thousand more up the coastline.

"Attack!" Anarr gave the command once more. He brandished his jewelled trident in one hand, a gift from his Master, the almighty Seventeenth, whose depth the likes of Anarr, a mere Wolf Eel, could never reach. Enchanted by the Wave Witches, with a core moulded from a thousand-year old growth of Crystal Coral uprooted from the King's private hunting corral, his weapon would surely reach the fiend's heart.

"QUACK!"

Anarr ignored the massacre of his kin and instead focused all of his internal mana on the trident.

One strike—that that was all he needed. A single strike with the weight of the deep behind it, enough to demolish any foe, flying or otherwise.

"Prince Shyvaphyr, give me strength," Anarr prayed to the being to whom he had pledged his being, calling upon his patron's borrowed Essence. "May your reign—"

"EE—EE—!" A cacophonic cry, half-screech, half-thunderclap, resounded behind the eel.

Had the bipedal, Essence-blessed Wolf Eel survived the eight Lighting Orbs blasting him into fried dace paste, he would have protested that his world had first turned brilliant white, the kind attributed to that horrid sphere from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance.

Unfortunately for the Mermen lieutenant, a split-second wasn't enough for Anarr to comprehend the source of the adorable mewing, after which his world turned suddenly dark.

Southward of Golos' landing sat Princess Bay, one of a dozen inlets with direct access to the South Sea possessing geography low enough for the Mermen to land and make their way inland.

Presently, there were no Mermen.

There was, instead, a raging fire.

Evidence of destruction.

Eye-watering volumes of charred and cooked fish.

Exhausted Militia men, hiding in transmuted bunkers.

A group of bemused Mages from Sydney.

And a sulking Big Bird.

"Shaa—"Caliban moped. Its faceless mien was weeping large globs of grey goo. "Shaa—Shaa—"

Beside the sobbing monstrosity, Yue Bai, famous roommate of the Devourer, patted the soul-stealing reaper on its crow-black, feathery back.

"It's okay, Cali," she comforted the creature. "There's plenty of fish in the sea. Aunty Yunnie will get you a big old school of nasty Mermen next time, okay?"

"Shaa—!" Caliban hollered. Through its empathic senses, it knew with absolute certainty that its mates were having the time of their lives. "SHAA!"

In frustration, it lifted a dainty white hand-claw, picked up the body of a cooked King Crab, then tossed it toward the horizon, where it skidded across the surface of the serene surf, shedding limbs as it went.

The scene was so surreal and unsettling that, save for Yue, the NoMs and her team members all agreed to keep their distance. They had earlier fought the damned Crab-kin and therefore knew well that the King Crab lieutenant weighed a fuck-ton.

"SHAA—?" the fiend demanded of their sorceress.

"Alright, alright—" Magus Bai motioned to her team. "Someone give me a fistful of HDMs. Until Gwennie calls back her pet, Cali's one of us, alright?"

As if making its appeal known, the monster opened up its head-carapace, revealing a tri-petal maw with a dozen tentacle-tongues, each tipped with disc-shaped mouths lined with pearly teeth-blades. With minds of their own, the mouthy appendages then solicited their audience's sanity.

The group regarded one another, from Mage to NoM to Mage. The perceived consensus was the rejection of Magus Bai's proposal with extreme prejudice.

Which naturally meant tithing was quickly collected in a hat and delivered forward.

Then, overlooking a bean-green coastline, their leader sat beside the bird-thing, one hand holding one of its _lady's_ fingers, and began to feed the monstrosity its ill-gotten gains one by one.


Despite her involvement in more conflicts than she could count, Gwen still had trouble processing the notion of an eternal war against the Mermen.

The abstraction was simple but not one she could readily internalise. Even against the Undead, there was a perceivable "end game" where Liches turned to powder and regions like North Korea, Siberia, and the Balkans returned to man's domain.

But to wage war until the butt-end of the smoking ruins of human history?

It was something Gwen chose not to think too deeply about lest her resolve waned.

Therefore, her mind chose the present sanity of practical slaughter.

In Humanity's perpetual cycle of conflict against Mermen, a commonly agreed-upon reality was that Mermen were easy to kill on land—but bloody impossible to repel from the territorial waters.

Even though humans were undeniably amphibious mammals, possessing an inborn diving reflex, their means to engage underwater was limited—despite the fact that common Transmutations like _Aqua Lung, Water Breathing, Water Walking_ —were commonly used in construction.

For reasons of efficiency, underwater warfare never came to pass—amphibious Mage units could neither move like the fishes nor utilise the full complement of their magic. Likewise, Humanity found success only on the surface, where their Battle Barges and flying Towers could broadcast deadly waves of resonance to keep the Mermen at bay.

Thereby, akin to a seasonal rash, the marauding Mermen rioted as they pleased, plundering at their leisure, keeping Humanity panting and salivating for the resources of the coastlines, each dotted with their densest cities, hoping that one day, man could conquer the final Frontier—the sea.

For her present purpose, Major Kotts had long-ago assigned readings and research for his War Mage student, knowing that an encounter with the Mermen was inevitable.

A compulsory reading was Meister Jacques-Yves Melchior of Paris, author of " _Mage and the Forbidden Sea: A Treaties on Coastal Potential"_. Within were countless anecdotes of man's failed ambitions to venture into the wide blue yonder, detailing the history and process by which the Oceanographer created the first Resonance Engine for aquatic use, ushering man into an unforeseen epoch of freight and colonisation.

The book had been of great interest to Gwen because she recalled seeing the volume in Henry's study.

But compared to the version she had read, the "original" edition given to her by Magister Brown was a treasure trove of observations editorialised by the Oceanographer on the Mermen of the Seven Kingdoms, each guarding their rifts throughout the Atlantics and the Pacific.

_Mermen,_ the Meister had said _, are fabulous sea creatures, man or woman or its likeness above, and fish below, an invasive species of Elemental humanoids from the Plane of Water. A commander must know that there is no possibility of peace between Man and Mer. Just as a kingdom may not have two monarchs, and no firmament shall play grace to twin Gates of Radiance._

In a later chapter, in a section Henry's copy lacked, Gwen had found a picture of a woman with crow-black hair and porcelain skin, with a mien more like a Lumen-cast celebrity than a War Mage.

" _Magister Elizabeth W. Sobel—_ " The entry had read. " _A case study on the Subjugation of the Coral Sea under Master Kilroy of Sydney._ "

What shocked Gwen wasn't the vivid accounts of Sobel's conquest of the Coral Sea but the fact that a report was published. Thanks to Henry's long shadow and innumerable favours, reliable recordings of Elizabeth's military operations were inversely proportional to her infamy.

Gwen had devoured the volume with hungry eyes, reading between the lines of Meister Melchior's first-hand account to find the slimmest hint of Sobel's vulnerabilities.

To that end, she had found nothing.

What she did learn was the Meister's instruction in resolving the paradox of fighting an inaccessible foe, which read as such:

_Any commander wishing to battle with the Mermen should refer to Chapter III: The Shoals, surmising a hierarchal, pyramidal food chain with a dynamic relationship between predator and prey. A Crabman may be food today, but a thriving tribe may feast upon a weakened Shoal of Sharkmen tomorrow. Do not forget that unlike the world of men, in Mer's world, society, politics, power and survival bisect. A tribe that grows weak becomes combat fodder, and should it grow weaker still, it becomes food. For this reason, an Ordo Knight or militia Wing Commander must tacitly acknowledge that whatever their feelings are for the present wave of a Mermen Tide, chances are they are battling the weakest member of a Shoal's food chain at any given time._

_Think of the Shoal as an onion,_ the Meister advised; the _outer layers of the Shoal are the weakest and the most brittle but also cover the largest surface area, consisting of the fodder troops. Strip it, and the Shoal gives way to expendable shock troops, core infantry, siege, freight, magical units, and the Elemental nobility at the centre._

_In the eternal battle against the Mer, we must never forget that the Demi-Humans of the sea consist of a hundred thousand conflicting interests cowed by a hierarchy of predation and violence. Should the widely feared Wave Witches or the shrimp-headed Coral Knights lose enough numbers to control their subordinate Clans, the instinctual desire of their next-of-kin is to usurp their betters and fill the vacuum of power. An Elemental noble may interfere with natural succession, but they cannot halt the ingrained credo tattooed into the Cores of the Sea Folk._

_In this manner, Lady Sobel's unique talents enabled Lord Kilroy's rapid pacification of the Coral Sea and the reclamation of the East Coast (diagram IV.ii). She directly challenged the core infantry, lured their magical and siege units to the surface, and disrupted the innate "hierarchy" of the Shoal..._

Which was why—Gwen supposed—here she was, reenacting Sobel's gambit like a dutiful daughter playing at dress-up.

"Ready," Richard levitated a dozen meters away, bobbing now and then like a dandelion as his Flight magic fought the wind. "Lulu?"

Lulan hovered close, surrounded by seven gleaming blades, each as wide as her thighs and twice as long. Together with the thrumming claymore beneath her feet, she and her Naga Spirit controlled eight slabs of death-dealing iron.

"Leave anything large and armoured to me." The Sword Mage scanned the brimming waters half a kilometre below them. "Assuming they could even fly this high."

"I like Lulu's confidence," Gwen's cousin assured her. "Start whenever."

Gwen, too, felt confident that between Richard's soft barriers and Lulan's ability to deflect the rest, she should have no fears of losing control of her grand summons. Therefore, she took a deep breath, ensured that Almudj's Essence had well-tempered her vital conduits—then activated her tandem-layered Void Shield.

In an eye-blink, her world grew dark and devoid of sight and sound, producing a sensory deprivation chamber. The experience wasn't pleasant, but she needed total concentration for what was to come.

That and she required privacy, for the euphoria that would soon flood her torso would tax her mind to its utter limits as she sought to balance the debit and credit of Void drain and vitality.

"I am beginning," she informed the others through their Dwarven-forged Communication bangles, then sang the forbidden invocations thrifted from her Master's belongings at Tryfan, spellshaping a spell she now knew almost by reflex.

Wellington.

WETA.

Petra Kuznetsova, yet another "roommate" of the Devourer, stepped back from the Teleportation Circle with a face full of satisfaction.

"Amazing." Magister Kawhena circled the complex, multi-layer Mandala with an expression of awe. "What was that, eight minutes?"

"Just past seven," one of his aids could hardly keep his mouth closed. "Magus Kuznetsova, what were those… tentacles?"

"Naga heads," Petra clarified that, _yes_ , she did indeed possess a multi-headed Draconic Mineral Spirit. Upon her arrival, she had decided to impose the full extent of her significant script-scribing powers because she wanted to examine the rest of WETA's Glyph work. According to her briefing, the original inscriptions were personally composed by Gwen's Master, which was then perfected by generations of Oceania's best Transmuter-Enchanters. With it, she could help her cousin decipher more of Henry's Elven library.

"Activate!"

With a final invocation, the Teleportation Circle triggered with a hum, meaning she could relax. Her Cambridge companion, Jaxon Reid, would maintain the central station here while she dove down below.

"Master, is it prudent to allow an outsider into the Core Chamber?" a student indiscreetly whispered, perhaps forgetting that there were Mermen outside, and she had just ensured none of them would die.

"As always, the Shard thinks they own the place," someone else remarked.

All around Petra, she could sense the fluctuation of emotions like a rippling pond of summer insects. As a Mind Mage trained to detect such thoughts, she could empathise with their frustration at perceiving such a difference in skill and resource.

Unlike in London, Teleportation Circles were a rare art in the Frontier for expenditure and security reasons, known only to very senior members of the magical hierarchy. Yet, here she was, not only inscribing a Mandala from scratch but doing so through a semi-autonomous Spirit capable of filling in the details while she inscribed the framework.

Other than Magister Kawhena, she could smell the sour odour emitting from the mouths of these astonished Wellington Mages. They too had worked hard their whole lives. They too, were considered the best—until they met Petra. And to add fuel to the fire, Petra was both young and beautiful, which, when combined, made Kawhena's men lament the unfairness of life.

That was why Petra loved her work among the Dwarves. She had felt most at home in the Bunker's workshops, for the Engineseers ignored her looks, poked fun at her Enchantments, and put her through the same wringer as any Journeyman.

_Ding!_

A Message spell bloomed beside her ear.

"Kuznetsova, I've finished the relay at Wright's Hill Bunker. Do you copy?"

"Copy, dissipation register only at level one." Petra confirmed the connection between the Divination Sigils carved into the Lesser Teleportation Mandalas.

"Excellent. Mine says two. We can transfer the WETA team anytime. Do you have enough HDMs? Can we switch to WETA's signal?"

"Yes, and yes." Petra glanced at the knee-high latticed boxes of HDMs taken from her Dwarf-forged Storage Ring for Golem units. What would these men think if she told them she also had a utility Golem currently occupying half the space? That she had anticipated digging their cold corpses out of WETA's ruins?

"Good work, Jaxon. Ross will oversee the relay at WETA with Magister Kawhena's men while I link our Divination Devices with the superstructural Mandala array."

"How's our leader?" the Translocation Specialist asked. "Good news? Since we're not evacuating yet."

"Gwen should soon be beginning her Purge on the main column," Petra replied. "We'll know whether we're defending Wrights Hill or celebrating by the hour. Can you set up our next waypoint?"

"Leaving now," Jaxon announced the conclusion of his task. "Confirming Senior Apprentice Jones of WETA will oversee the waypoint at Wright's Hill."

"H-hello!" A voice said over the communication channel.

"Confirmed," Petra looked to WETA's Magister. Now, she needed access to the internal superstructure to patch their Divination Glyph array into the academy's decades-old systems.

"I can hardly believe it, but all battle stations are clear," Kawhena affirmed that they had a few hours of rest before the Shoal sent out more of its fishy feelers. "Magus Bai says she's with something called 'The Caliban'. Does that sound right?"

"That would be Gwen's Familiar," Petra reassured the Magister. "I would like to begin on the Divination array. Magister, if you could?"

"Of course." Kawhena willed away his Apprentices.

Once more, Petra stood at the centre of the group's loudly broadcasting emotions, suddenly self-conscious for wearing a pair of prohibitively priced Parisian boots of Flight, naturally a gift from Gwen. Besides her, WETA's administrator completed the secret Glyph work near the Mandala module, allowing a section of it to slide apart, revealing a manhole just wide enough to fit a single Mage.

"Be very careful," Kawhena warned her. "Divination Arrays begin at C-44-B8, touch nothing else."

"I shall take the greatest care," she replied as she levitated downward, noting how comfortable and Dwarven the humble access tunnel looked.

_Plop!_

_Plop—!_

_P-plop—!_

The distinct sound of giant, goo-slathered Void Hydras hitting the water from five hundred meters up wouldn't impress an Olympic dive judge—but was enough to arouse the attention of the Merman patrolling the exterior of the Shoal.

One by twos, sometimes threes, her Hydras plopped into the water, happy as lampreys on a whalefall, swimming free as they pieced the bean-blue surface of the South Sea. Such was the method used by Sobel, one delivered from the shelter of her Dark Egg.

The rationale behind Sobel's "drone" warfare was that Human Mages fought terrible aquatic battles.

Even Richard, whose Undine could call forth a tiny "Shoal" of her brackish cousins, was useless when pitted against water-breathing Elementals formed of the same Plane from which such monsters hailed.

Gwen, however, had Hydras.

First and foremost, her creatures need not draw breath. They were alive—but they lacked the physiology of mortal conjured beasts. When Magister Brown had dissected one of her summoned Hydras, they had found its interior to be more mana than meat, possessing only rudimentary organs, making it akin to primordial organisms.

When attacking, a Hydra first latched onto its prey, dissolved the entry-point by regurgitating bile consisting of concentrated Void vomit, then injected an admixture of digestive enzymes to break down a prey's interior.

Once done, the Hydra's contracting body would slurp back the admixture, taking everything its gastronomic juices could absorb, from vitality to mana to physical flesh. The whole process then repeated itself until there were only two outcomes.

In the first scenario, the nourished Hydra, bloated on its new vitality, rapidly grew in size, producing more Void-enzyme and an unendingly voracious appetite.

In the second scenario, the expenditure of the attack, together with the Hydra's entropic decay, exceeded the vitality and mana it could absorb, thereby weakening the creature, eventuating in its exit from the Prime Material.

As the chief researcher behind her aptly named Shoggoth, Brown had proposed a hypothesis that the Quasi-Elemental Plane of the Void might be home to a semi-sentient Mythic consisting of many parts. Brown furthermore hypothesised that Gwen and Sobel's summons might be components of a being enormous beyond comprehension. The "Void ink" so commonly manifested with Void Magic might be its digestive juices and that Gwen and Sobel's summons were otherworldly appendages living within its fleshy domain.

Without evidence to counter the point, Gwen added to the idea, positing a "what if" in which the "manifestation"—one she had negligently named _Shub-Niggurath_ —encompassed the entirety of the Quasi-Elemental Plane, leaving only endless hunger.

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The room had grown silent at her remark, and further discovery was postponed for another meeting.

But even without further discovery, Gwen deeply suspected that Sobel had used the Hydras, rather than the Dark Sun, on the Mermen Shoals.

After all, Hydras were self-perpetuating mouths with no need for air, possessing no vulnerabilities to water pressure.

Considering how a Shoal defended itself—how could it even begin to withstand Sobel without prescient knowledge to engage the flying sorceress with their elite Elemental units? Not to mention Henry was up there, waiting for the Mer to fall into Sulfina's traps.

By the time a Hydra had feasted on a hundred Mermen, what power would be needed to take one down? Her Master had once said that all things came in balance.

Was her expedience also one of the world's balancing acts?

And should she take the thrifted vitality from her Hydras to keep reproducing them from her Dark Egg, what Shoal could stifle the progress of her Lovecraftian swarm?

_Lä! Shub-Niggurath!_

May she be the _mother_ of a thousand Dark Young!

_Hell_ , Gwen giggled in the dark, mindful of how insane she sounded; her _milk_ could even mutate a duck into a Drake!

But all self-fulfilling fan-fiction aside, Gwen knew that she had a long and brutal fight. Without risking life and limb to enter the depthless water of the South Sea, she and her company couldn't comprehend that a Shoal wasn't two dimensional—but a three dimensional, dynamic wall of foes.

For all Gwen knew, the Shoal could just... fuck off and leave her hungry and hanging.

From her vantage, the Shoal might look like a large reef buried a meter under the water, but in reality, it was over seven kilometres long, close to three kilometres across, and how deep?

Not even Lea dared to risk an Elemental Princes' domain.

Nonetheless, in the liminal space of the Dark Egg, she formed a mind map from the synaptic feedback from her Hydras, constructing a distant vision only she could know by joining the dots.

_Plop! Plop—Plop!_

Ignoring the onomatopoeic herald of her armageddon worms, Gwen focused on the first wave of Mermen to encounter her creatures. Through her use of Link-Sight, her Hydras possessed the grey-scale vision of Vital Sense, from which she could see a shimmering wall of multi-armed monsters. To her surprise, these were not the Mer-gobs so common in coastal waters but a solid wall of tentacled cephalopods.

When her swarm of swimming mouths closed in on the wall, the whole school shifted as one, forming an indent as to draw her creatures inward—

Then as sudden as they had withdrawn, tentacles wielding coral lances emerged by the hundreds, spearing her Hydras, a sight that would make David Attenborough weep.

Her Hydras made no sound as they became Julius Caesar spear holsters. _Quantity_ , she acknowledged with renewed appreciation, was indeed a quality in itself.

The Coral Spears used by the native Mermen were simple constructs, crafted, according to Meister Melchior, in the Reef Gardens of Wave Witches specialised in crafting armaments. The older the coral, the stronger its lattice-woven structure and the more potent its innate magic. The process was positive primitive compared to Dwarven Magi-tech, child-like when pitted against Sylvan Glyph-etching, but had an insurmountable advantage in one regard.

Time and quantity.

Reefs as old as time itself, existing near vents exposed to Elemental tears, were as common as marsh iron for the deep crafters. Therefore, even the most basic "Wand-like melee implements" wielded by the lowest footman of the Mer-armies were as powerful as uncommon Shock Wands crafted by mid-tier Enchanters. Sometimes, fishermen could accidentally recover tridents tipped with coral fragments from three different Elements, capable of delivering electric, fire and ice-based attacks simultaneously.

Which meant the spears wielded by these Humboldt Squid-folk individually dealt inconsequential damage to Gwen's Hydras—yet nonetheless transformed her creatures into pin-cushions.

It was a shame that her Hydras were veritable Honey Badgers, incapable of caring for mortal injury when their innards consisted of little more than collated cosmic hunger. With the school of squids so close, those capable of doing so simply arched their serpentine necks—released its internal vomit of tentacle tongues, latched on—then began to grow.

If the Void-aura inherent to her creatures had slowed the squids earlier, the inundation of Void-matter compelled by the influx of vitality was enough to slow the squids closest to her monsters.

Like a squid and lamprey orgy, her monsters and their Mer-partners flayed and clawed at orifices, tearing with tooth and nail, tentacle and teeth-lined lips, one growing larger and stronger while the other quickly grew limp.

More spears attacked her creatures, penetrating those busily mating stomachs to colour-changing flesh.

It took six to twelve seconds to produce anywhere between one and three Void Hydras via the modified Conjure Elemental Swarm, meaning she was averaging twenty summons per minute. By her mental count, almost ten minutes had passed.

And some two hundred Hydras were in those waters, feasting on Squids, with the rest of the Shoal merely spectating the chaos like gamblers in a terrier pit.

The result was hungrier and larger Void fiends that instantly broke off from the attack, this time roping two squids a piece into their embrace.

Very soon, here, there, and seemingly everywhere in the school of converging Squid-folk, her slug-like manifestations sought to fill a bottomless hunger, heedless of their injuries, caring only for the next morsel.

With a grunt, Gwen took hold of the morbid pleasure from the incoming vitality and transmuted the euphoria into Void expenditure. Then, she Messaged her companions to be ready for retaliation.

After the squids, there would be stronger Mermen, then after that, hopefully, something more substantial.

According to Meister Melchior's notes of the Coral Sea War, the Mermen's command doctrine emphasised absolutes. A well-loved subordinate rarely received direct orders from a superior, for they who could anticipate their Master or Mistress' desires with absolute clarity. In a Shoal, therefore, explicit orders were given and obeyed with disdain and loathing—with only details such as "attack here", "hold here", and "kill this creature". A good subordinate was expected to survive and succeed on initiative alone—while the poor were right to perish, making way for more worthy attendants.

Gwen only hoped she wouldn't be stuck in this state for hours.

The incoming vitality was now making her spell-weaving fingers unsteady and the interior of her Da-peng suit clammy. She instantly pacified her numbing body with a jolt of Almudj's Essence, feeling as though someone had flooded her conduits with liquid peppermint.

With a clearer head now, she began to feed the excess vitality into Caliban, concurrently informing her Familiar that once it was done chumming with Yue, she would very likely re-manifest it to fight whatever monster would soon rise from the Shoal's deepest interior.

Prince Shyvaphyr, Seventeenth in line to the Coral Throne, lounged in his whalebone settee, carved out from the skull of a long-term rival, listening to the bickering of his subordinates.

A part of him told him he should be glad, for the chance to liven one's life from the eternal trials of the Viridian Enclave was rare and a privilege many of his siblings fought over, often to the exhaustion of their Cores. Yet, Shyvaphyr felt comparatively ambivalent, for his task was a thankless objective compared to the prize his regal sister sought in the Human city called Auckland.

But thankfully, entertainment had arrived.

Presently, the Shoal was under siege.

It was a prospect that stirred Shyvaphyr's twin hearts, for his anticipation was that he would slowly doze away the light cycles while waiting for the city to be erased from the headland, then join his sister after she's had her share of slaughter. The bipedal humanoids on the surface may only be food, but they were an industrious lot. The loot from Humanity always involved interesting gadgetry perfect for wasting time, and their Mages were an excellent sport. For that reason, those who returned with the most thralls, and the most unusual items, could enjoy long cycles of exaltation among the Seafolk's upper circles.

As for the attack on his Shoal, Shyvaphyr listened in wonder as the Wave Witches recounted the result of their Far Sight.

"Otherworldly lampreys with scales the colour of jet!"

"The foe numbers only in the hundreds, but they're wreaking havoc!"

"The Jabia Clan! Consumed by half, then fled!"

"And the other half is dinner for the Mahi Marauders, I assume," Shyvaphyr blew a stream of bubbles. That was the way of the Shoal. In each layer, each species had to maintain their territory, or they would not receive their share of food or spoils and become food and spoils to their neighbours. "How are the Marauders fairing against this foreign Lamprey swarm?"

"No fairer," a Siren Sea Witch reported in her sing-song manner of speech, both gills bristling with blushes of pink. "The Lamprey creatures appear indomitable."

"Nonsense!" Shyvaphyr scoffed. The Dragon-kin were indomitable. His kingly father, the Deep Drake Miommiriorthyr, was indomitable. With their Dragon Turtles matron, he and his sister were somewhat indomitable.

Human Mage fodder— _indomitable_? Was the Witch drunk on the landmen's fermented fruits?

"How many Mages are there?" Shyvaphyr rolled all four of his eyes. "Two? Three Flights? Who would have thought this 'Wellington' would be so well defended?"

"Great Prince," the Siren constrained her hovering bubble of Far Sight, then drifted closer so Shyvaphyr could see without craning his serpentine neck. "There isn't a Mage Flight. There's just…"

Shyvaphyr invaded the Sea Witches' sorcery with a mere twitch from his regal whiskers, causing the Siren to shiver as his Dragon Fear caressed her splendiferous scales. With a hand on the female's waist, Shyvaphyr penetrated her mind.

There was an egg hovering somewhere above the Shoal.

A dark egg that reminded Shyvaphyr of the floating spawn left behind by the Kraken-kin, drifting with the oceanic currents in the depth of the Plane of Water until the surviving few, chosen by fate and chance, spawned into ravenous, all-consuming monstrosities.

From the egg, tiny lampreys no larger than Shyvaphyr's fingers emerged from slits in the Prime Material, falling an uncertain distance until they struck the red-brown water below, dyed pink by the blood of his panicked Shoal.

When he shifted his gaze outward, he saw a Human sorceress patrolling the egg, riding on what appeared to be an enormous melee implement.

Another human, a male, laid barrier after barrier of veiled water, likely warding against the Marid Wave Witches under Shyvaphyr's command.

Elsewhere, nearer the coast, Shyvaphyr felt the shimmering Essence of a kindred being—a Greater Draconid like himself, a curious existence, but not one that could measure up to the full might of his Shoal.

And that was the extent of the Siren Witches' clairvoyance.

Of the suspects, the Mages were different to the usual foes Shyvaphyr encountered on his rare excursions to the surface—the Draconid he could negotiate with—but the squid-ink egg was something that made Shyvaphyr's scaled brows furrow.

As a near-immortal of the Shoreless Seas, Shyvaphyr and his ilk lived long lives and possessed extensive memories.

Therefore, his pulsing frontal lobe told him that the "Dark Egg" was a known phenomenon—he was sure of it.

Some cycles ago, there had a brief lull in the unending civil conflicts between the Seven Kingdoms when enormous rents in the Prime Material opened, allowing innumerable numbers of Sea Folk to pass. Salsabeel, the Supreme Seat of the First Swell, had issued a crusade to reclaim the coastal "farmlands" of the Prime Material. Shyvaphyr's home reef, Manhal, had also taken part in the slaughter, laying waste to Humanities' coastal cities.

Somewhere within those dimmed and indistinct impressions, Shyvaphyr recalled the stories from the shallow reef. There had been a Human sorceress who possessed the same pale skin as the Deep Witches who had never seen sunlight, whose "Spellcraft" conjured flesh-eating blood worms that ate their way through entire Shoals.

If Shyvaphyr's memory served, the entire Eastern Shoal had collapsed because of the infamous sorceress, leaving legions of scattered warrior Mer to fend for themselves on the Prime Material. When finally the magic users found their way back to the Plane of Water, Manhal's Coral Guards gleaned that six Shoals, including a Great Shoal, had perished to the wielder of worms. As the price for their retreat, several Wave Witches had their Coral Gardens given up for gladiatorial spoils and their Essences consumed by Shyvaphyr's father. From these inherited insights of the survivors, Shyvaphyr now recollected the vague memory of this "dark egg".

There was another memory of note—that the sorceress of the flesh worms was no longer a part of Humanity's defence but fended for herself by working with Demi-humans such as his kinfolk from the Queendom of Gak.

Of course, from the looks of what he was now witnessing—he could disregard that possibility entirely.

"Her Lamprey-kin grow stronger through battle," Shyvaphyr's slitted eyes narrowed with displeasure. "The ones nearer the surface aren't nearly so fierce."

Shyvaphyr could see the Mahi Lancers piercing the slow-moving lamprey within the Siren's vision. On impact, a lamprey's chitin lasted only a split-second before the rods of old coral tore through its innards, entering one side and exiting the others. There would be no blood, only a splatter of grey goo and organ fluids; then, the impaled creature would turn on its attacker, using its improved reach to grapple the Mahi Mermen.

Most knew well enough to relieve their spear—those too slow to do so would grow suddenly rigid, then rapidly be consumed by the lamprey even as it received retaliation from others. To disable the black worms entirely, Shyvaphyr realised, would involve its total destruction. A feat the Mahi Lancers could not accomplish with their emphasis on melee and momentum.

Should he call back the Mahi Marauders? They were a higher echelon troop than the expendable squids, slow-growing and difficult to tame but immensely powerful in the speed-based conflicts of the deep.

But who should then battle the lampreys? Shyvaphyr knew he should not allow the swarm to penetrate any deeper, for past the Mahi were the giant mantas, beasts of burden used by the Shoal to transport food and supplies. These were themselves enormous food sources—and should the lampreys find these as prey, what might they become?

Shyvaphyr had no desire to reorganise the Shoal's lower hierarchies, to re-examine who should fight, who should be fodder and who would be food. The strategy against the Humans was well-known, and he had no desire to be scolded by his sister.

"There are only three Human Mages above us?" Shyvaphyr asked. "No Tower?"

"You are astute, Sire," the Siren allowed Shyvaphyr's fingers to wander, not daring to move a muscle. "Auckland's Tower remains distant."

"And these Mages have no mana signatures befitting a Magi?"

"Not even a Meister, O Sire," the Siren confirmed.

"And the Morning Star isn't near?" Shyvaphyr had to be sure. Of all his inherited memories, survivors of the Human Mage called the Morning Star reigned supreme.

"Sydney is thousands of currents away, Lord Shyvaphyr."

Now reassured, Shyvaphyr's lips grew cruel.

"Then let us pay our challengers a visit, and my cousin of the air, even if the brute intends to feast on my kin," Shyvaphyr announced, simultaneously moving his armoured torso from the whalebone settee.

Using only his will, Shyvaphyr gracefully slid through the water, his enormous body possessing the agility of a minnow. As his Dragon Fear rippled outward, the inner court cowered.

"Summon your sisters," he commanded. "Keep the Shoal from infighting in my absence. Protect the manta lines at all costs!"

"Yes, Great Prince," the Sirens sang praises to their Lord and Master. "Thy will be obeyed."

"Zitusphyr, Sevphr," Shyvaphyr summoned his guards, younger cousins from his mother's Clan who were dull of mind but suitably "indomitable" for the purpose of preventing harm from coming to Shyvaphyr.

Twin titans lifted into the water, each some twelve meters from crowned ridge to barbed tail. Of the Shoal, only Shyvaphyr's Clansmen and select members of the Wave Witches' cabal had the confidence to fight in the air. Worse than land, the lack of water and friction made manoeuvring almost impossible for the untrained and untalented.

Shyvaphyr addressed his men with a bark of Draconic, then banished the Siren's shared vision, causing the female to stagger back with a delightful moan.

Three Draconid true-bloods against a sorceress without a complete party and a juvenile blood-kin— Shyvaphyr could not foresee why he still felt so uneasy.

Momentarily, however, he felt great enlightenment.

What rewards might his father give if he could capture the worm-wishing sorceress? What fame and glory would await him in the coral halls of Manhal if he should present its gladiatorial arena with an indomitable slave-witch?

Wellington.

East Coast.

Golos bathed in the Haka-song of Wellington's lowly mortals, snacking on a crab claw while sucking the marrow from a still-living length of Fish-folk. He was happy, very happy, and well-satisfied. A part of him cautioned his Draconic soul against singing the Calamity's praise, but he was enjoying himself too much to care.

Earlier, from the air, he saw the Crab-men menace the Calamity's Mages. So he had landed with style, unleashed a forty-meter long line of life-extinguishing plasma, then inhaled the Essence and vitality of his slain foes by crashing into their lines, clearing the invasion through a counter-invasion.

Drinking in their pitiful Essence, Golos made sure most of the Mermen would leave their worthless Cores, a matter of great importance to the Calamity's kin.

After that, he pounced through the scattered survivors, enjoying the sight of their blue blood splattering against the shattered concrete buildings of the humans, chasing the Mermen up and down his section of the coast until they were either dead or retreated.

At the dock's extreme north, he met the team's mascot, Dede, and the Calamity's false Kirin.

He hailed the two with a grunt.

One made its mewling noises while the other barked an affirmation that foes were subdued. Around the pair were hundreds of slimy Mudkin, each looking more traumatised than the next by their encounter with the duck.

The mascot was a curious existence, more so an accidental experiment than an elevated minion, reminding Golos of his lesser cousins—creatures who gained his father's Essence by fate or consumption, only with the Essence of an Old One. Golos felt a fondness for the multi-coloured duck for its adorable feathers. It is unfortunate then that Dede's terrestrial body severely limited its Astral development, meaning it would grow obscene and robust—but would not transcend its earthly coil to become a being halfway between the Prime Material and the Unformed World, as Golos might one millennium, or as Ruxin now aspired to be.

Comparatively, Ariel lay in the opposite spectrum, being wholly manifested from the Calamity's psyche, existing most time in the Astral World, and occupying the Prime Material only when willed into being by its mistress. Of the two, Golos felt a kinship toward the Kirin, for its metamorphosis had come from the Yinglong's stolen Essences, which had led to his meeting with the Calamity.

His meeting with the Calamity had changed his fate, though as for bane or boon, he could not confirm. In Huangshan, his sire had slumbered since the day the Calamity was driven from the mount by Ayxin. Not even when Ruxin ascended to his new domain had their deified father awakened, leaving the entirety of his earthly realm to Golos and the soft-spined Ryxi.

Nonetheless, as a divine scion of the Yinglong, Golos could feel in his marrow that some great calamity was coming and that his Calamity would be at the epicentre of the calamitous calamity.

All in all, very much in style with the Calamity.

" _MABLIK—SLATHALIN—!_ " A great roar, audible for kilometres from its origin point and barked in Draconic, radiated from the whereabouts of the Calamity's present battleground.

"Hmm…?" Golos wasn't for deep thinking and so grew immensely annoying when his rare moment of reflection was interrupted by the intrusion of a fellow Dragon-kin.

"Quack!" The mascot lifted into the air, making for its Essence dispenser lest she became damaged.

"EE—EE!" Though the false Kirin could be summoned at a second's notice, it also took to the air.

_How interesting!_ Golos sniffed the winds. _A distant cousin with blood more diluted than his!_

It was very, very rare that Dragon-kin confronted one another in neutral domains, for there was nothing to be gained.

A lesser Dragon-kin wants to usurp the Calamity?

_HA!_

Ignoring the gurgling of his guts, Golos felt it was his duty to see the beast bested! Only in witnessing the Void Fiend mangling his kin could Golos vicariously receive the schadenfreude necessary to heal the fissured scar in his Draconic heart, that terrible unmentionable memory that even now inspired week-long bouts of involuntary constipation.