Metaworld Chronicles

Chapter 545 - A Ballad of Blood and Soil

Pacific Heights.

The “Bunker”.

Gwen Song, Regent, ‘“Necromancer”, and Our Lady of the Loin, spat out her coffee when she reflexively ran a Detect Magic through the balcony window.

There she was, fresh out of the shower, wrapped in a snuggle blanket hand-woven by her Şöpter followers, foot in fuzzy slippers and hot English Breakfast in hand, when she noticed a fluctuation in the mana stream outside her penthouse home.

Furrowing her brows, she invoked her Divination Sigil, only to see—

Scry.

Clairevoyance.

Arcane Eye.

A god damned, invisible Familiar that’s a literal biblical angel.

Suddenly, she was very, very glad that she took Hawthorne’s advice to heart, that the balcony’s magically warded windows and doors stay closed at all times, and that she should only venture out onto the ocean vista balcony to leave or arrive.

She swore nonetheless.

Her Ariel materialised outside.

The mere presence of her Familiar was enough to abjure half of the Divination magic happening at her windowstep and send the Familiars packing. As for the Magi-tech devices that refused to budge, an aerial sweep using the Kirin’s static field was enough to disable the connections between the devices and their operators.

When Ariel returned for his elixir treats, she opened the door with enough of a gap to allow its docile form to pass—

Which was the precise moment she felt a mana ripple from above.

And looked up, one hand clasping the collar of her robes.

And saw a Mandala up there, in the sky, The Eye of Providence, a Magi-tech engine used for military operations, and for events like the IIUC.

It was… an acknowledgement of just how much they cared about her actions and her wellbeing.

She spent a few good seconds wondering if Ariel could conjure a storm cloud to cover the building, but decided against it. A young, pretty lady had put herself up as a political authority, and America was an infotainment junkie. She was a public figure, and the public was both hungry and horny.

The loss of privacy was… anticipated. Had Natalia’s Sparrowhawks, aided by Charlene’s Raven Guards, not cleared the building before their arrival and habitation, she would have suspected the walls to be also choked full of intelligence-gathering scry-devices.

Returning to her alarmingly oversized walk-in wardrobe, she picked out something light, breezy, and chaste in ivory and surf, touched up her eyes and lips, then ventured out into the vast network of rooms leading to the east wing of the penthouse.

At the breakfast table, a spread was already prepared, and Slylth was reading the paper with the air of an English Lord in his fifties, only he was chewing on a disk of Chinese tea rather than indulging in conflict tobacco.

“Morning,” the Red Dragon spoke without otherwise disengaging his mouth from the pleasure of mastication. “Good meditation?”

“So-so,” Gwen smiled back. “How was the night out with Tao? Is he still asleep?”

“He’ll be comatose for a while.” The Dragon grinned. “Our big fruit is making a name for himself. Very interesting human cultures on this continent. They clearly have a hierarchy, yet everyone we met kept talking and singing about freedom, believing that they, somehow, are singularly free from the hierarchical structure of the city.”

“Did you like the music, I mean?” Gwen rolled her eyes at her pet nerd. “Tao worked very hard for his underground performances. Was there any trouble?”

“If you mean the ‘Dissing’,” Slylth sighed. “I don’t know. They were adversarial, then they were not. The crowd moves from one side to another faster than the tide. It’s all very confusing. If someone came up to me with a Vox Caster and started spitting pentameters in my face about Mother, I would just incinerate them.”

The door opened behind them, revealing their co-conspirators, the ruggedly English Lord Hawthorne, and the charmingly Italian Dominic Lorenzo.

The latter held an enormous bundle of newspapers under his arm.

“Morning, your holiness,” her Editor in Chief willed away the plate and cutlery with a series of Mage Hands. “We got news.”

“Good news?”

“Do you think I would skip espressos at Mama Nelli for this slop if it was good news?” The Italian pushed the paper toward her while Hawthorne ventured straight to the alcohol cabinet to fix himself a caffeinated Cognac.

Gwen bit off her bagel, slid her utensils aside, then levitated the USA Today for the present date.

Hairstylist reveals the latest inspo from Tryfan!

What investors are not telling you about her Loin.

Her eyes flashed past the clickbait atop the blue and red flag logo to arrive at the meaty spread below.

A SPELL OF PROTEST

By Kissandra Warrickson.

It is a tradition of our great nation that its people can air grievances without fear of reprisal from those in power. Our Founding Fathers called this action the “dutiful act of civil disobedience,” and “a good source of righteous trouble”, actions that ultimately led to the creation of civil rights and equal voting rights. Yesterday, this American privilege was on full display when two groups of supporters met on the common ground of the Tenderloin.

For the residents of the Tenderloin, it was a tense seven hours as tens of thousands of protestors, the faithful adherents of the Church of the Latter Day Defenders of the Nazarene, blocked traffic into San Francisco’s newest socio-economic development zone. When asked for comment by USA TODAY, an unnamed organiser informed the reporter that:

“America is a nation mixed with the labour of our ancestors! It is ours by the will of the Nazarene, whose blessed feet were nailed to the cross so that we, the American people, we HUMANs, can subdue the continent—to create a nation of humanity, for Humanity!”

When questioned by USA TODAY, the organisers of the march remarked that the Regent of Shalkar is an agent from the Orient, and that she is diluting the purity and spirit of the Americas, making the nation “every day closer to Neo Tenochtitlan.”

Unfortunately for the Tenderloin, the march then met its match from counter-protestors, spontaneously organised from the Tenderloin and its surrounding neighbourhoods, who took up pickets, poles, and even construction equipment to protest the disruption caused to their neighbourhood. When questioned, a resident who identified himself as Thomas Navajo Mills had this to say:

“They are jealous that the ‘loin’ is finally getting fixed! For how many years, how many decades, have these folk spat on us? Made us the buttends of their sermons? Why there ain’t no protests when we are suffering, huh? Who’s marching when Potions got a hold of our young ones, and our teens were getting Fire Bolted in the streets, in broad daylight? No one! Not a lick! Now the Regent’s come and give us medicine, vaccines, food, and water; she’s here to give us jobs. Oh, NOW they're up in arms?”

According to the state authorities, the protestors met on Geary and Stockton, with one side projecting the Confederate slogan “Blood and Soil”, a catchphrase of the Civil War, originating from the First Counsellor of the Latter Day Sermon on Rushmore.

Chaos broke out around 6 PM when the two parties came to blows amid residents trying to get to and from work, with local business owners joining the violence. The subsequent event, so labelled by the newly minted Tenderloin Special Police Precinct (TSPP), was a willful destruction of property that destroyed homes and businesses.

Gwen replaced the paper. “That escalated rather quickly.”

“It escalated deliberately,” Dominic growled. “I’ve got men on the ground. We’ve got thousands upon thousands of Lumen recordings, but our messaging isn’t as strong outside of San Francisco. Our stocks took a hit, and they might fall more if the protests continue.”

“How are our men?” Gwen asked the important questions. “Anyone swept up in all of this?”

“No, just the locals, thank the Nazarene,” Dominic poured himself a coffee, drank, winced, then drank again. “The ordeal isn’t too different from what happened in London, but the Londoners at least had real grievances. Lost jobs, pensions, old folks with nothing better to do. This is purely performative.”

“Yes,” Hawthorne was on his second cup. “I am afraid it’s the thing we hate the most about the colonies. Actual Religion.”

“What, England isn’t religious?” Gwen snickered.

“Ours is… more of a pontifical robe. It’s a system, a Chain of Being. We’ve evolved past fanaticism. It's the difference between knowing that there’s a greater power up there, looking out for you—compared to, say, literally expecting a miracle to resolve life’s grievances.”

“Our Ordos don’t perform miracles?” Gwen was sceptical. What do you call what Evee does on a daily basis, then? Triage?

“Perhaps you should pay a visit to Salt Lake City,” Hawthorne shrugged. “The Latter Day Saints are closer to the Cult of the Sun in Cuzco, or perhaps, even the Adherents of Juche. It’s old-world magic, Regent. Human sorcery from before the Imperial Magic System brought modernisation. After the Great War, the Commonwealth chose to move away from this form of magic, but the Colonies never relented upon their rapt obsession with Faith.”

“The Miracles performed by the Latter Day Saints are mostly Biomancy,” Lorenzo said.

“They grew into prominence during the Beast Tide by abjuring Necromancy from the states. It’s classical conquest magic from the Pilgrim days, only there’s no more Monsters to destiny manifest in North America.”

Slylth burst into laughter. “What are you talking about? They found a new monster, and she’s sitting right there. I wish they’d just skip the pleasantries. I can be a monster too.”

The Red Dragon’s eyes glinted as only pure-blooded Dragons could. Gwen knew that Slylth’s confidence came not just from itself, but also from mummy dearest. It was a privilege by association that she had also fostered, only hers were based on the threat of being excluded from her infrastructural network.

To her rivals in the Empire Tower out east, she was an existential threat. Their goal, if attainable, was to rob her of the keys to her kingdom, and if indeed that route would prove too difficult, delay her ascension as much as possible until they could build a rival alternative.

With Magus Williams under their thumb, it wasn’t difficult to create an East Coast Network of subways. The greatest problem for the likes of Gilt, Slate and their ilk was the cost of putting blueprints into reality at cost. Mages commanded wages, as did the NoMs, who could use Magic-tech to do the work of Mages. Meanwhile, via Dwarven Fabricators, GARP or Caliban, she could lay the groundwork of a grand labour on par with decade-long infrastructural programs in a matter of weeks.

Yet ironically, Gilt could not even begin to conceive that the low ways’ ultimate purpose was cross-continental information transfer, a function far more important than the flow of trade goods.

While her crew mulled over the matter of the protest, the restitutions to her people, the rebuilding of their businesses and the finding of temporary homes, one of the San Fran Bunker’s staff politely knocked on the door.

“Captain McKenzi is here to see you, Ma’am, together with Magus Ivanova and Ivanov from internal security.”

“Let them in, and bring some more tableware.” Gwen left the table. She didn’t like grandstanding in Shalkar, and she wasn’t about to do it now.

She met the police Sergeant who had guided her out of the Tenderloin a few months ago at the door. It wasn’t their first meeting since his appointment, but the man still looked thoroughly sheepish and a little intimidated.

The Ivanovs, who were in fact cousins, bowed from the waist with a whispered, “Mistress.” Like all Sparrows before they were emancipated, her Sparrowhawkers were aggressively Russian: Anastasia was a pale blonde with her hair in a tight bun, and Aleksandr wore a combed brush-back that matched the gold in their navy uniforms.

Behind them was a tattooed Latino man in his forties, wearing a hoodie and slacks, a pair of fashionable red sneakers in red, and fingers full of jewellery. On his neck was a heavy golden cross. The man was drooling. She’d seen the look before. The middle-aged man was most likely under the influence of a Mind Blank.

“This is…” She did not shake the man’s hand.

“An agent provocateur,” McKenzi’s eyes darted to the Russians beside him. “With a dash of saboteur. May we come in?”

She bid her security team enter and make themselves comfortable.

Like a zombie, the prisoner followed, totally unaware that he was entering the lair of a Dragon, and lord knows if he would emerge as the same man who entered.

“Allow me to apologise in advance, Regent.” Captain McKenzi had taken to his role well. Unlike the SFPD, Shalkar’s monetary support of the peacekeeping staff came from the Dwarven Dyar Morkk, effectively transforming the TSPP into mechanised infantry. “I should have deployed more of the men.”

Gwen shook her head.

In a scenario such as that, throwing Dwarven Golems and Rat-kin Riot Squads into the mix would only inflame the situation. “You did well, Captain. Any ‘thing’ that is destroyed, we can repair or replace, or sue. As long as no one died, you’ve done your job. Our reputation was their goal from the beginning. So, who is our provocateur?”

“He said his name is Jose Garcia,” her Captain answered with a look of disgust. “But perhaps it's best if Lieutenant Ivanova can take over. I am unfamiliar with her methods.”

The cousins saluted before they settled down to business. The elder of the two, Aleksandr, performed a perimeter sweep, then bid the support staff leave the room while he set Abjuration Wards that blocked both sound and Scrying.

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Anastasia meditated while the ritual was complete, then settled in front of their prisoner, bringing herself eye level with her drooling victim. The air rippled, then a golden halo formed around the young woman’s platinum hair.

“What is your name, your real name?” Anastasia spoke with a hypnotic voice that was barely a whisper.

“Andrew Christenson,” the man spoke without a hint of accent.

“Where are you from?”

“Salt Lake City.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I am a member of the San Francisco Stake. I am serving his Presidency, Paul Sanchez of San Francisco. I am also a member of the Ears and Eyes under Presiding Bishop Baptise Amedee.”

“Huh.” Hawthorne slid over from his side of the table, suddenly brimming with interest. “Eyes and Ears. That’s the covert group working for the Church, hunting down heretics, meaning folk who wish to leave the Church. They don’t care much about laymen, but there’s only one way for a senior member of the inner circle to leave, and that’s through Heaven’s Gate.”

“What were you doing last night at the protest?” Anastasia’s complexion grew pale from the strain of Mind Magic. “What was your goal?”

“To incite violence against the congregation,” Christenson mumbled. “The orders from Salt Lake are to prevent the Regent from completing her work in the Tenderloin, even if we have to endanger lives.”

“How will you do this?” The Mind Mage was clearly fighting something, for she was now gritting her teeth hard enough to have her Regent pre-prepare a vial of Golden Mead.

“I will create evidence for the counter movement. I will also inform the congregation when it's best for them to march and protest against the Geofront’s construction—urggh—”

The man was melting. Not in the literal sense, but the amount of sweat oozing from his face clearly indicated that some kind of psychic trigger had been breached, and now his body was fighting itself.

“I… I am sorry, Regent,” Anastasia was drenched from forehead to collar. “His will was unusually firm.”

“Faith Magic is like that.” Count Hawthorne passed the young woman a handkerchief while Gwen herself slid the vial of mead forward. “Powerful when used in its own domain, but incompatible with the IMS system. We’ve been developing the IMS for almost a century now. Can our colonies say the same of their Faith Magic? Hardly, for any changes to any rite or ritual would have to first circumvent the conservatives.”

“He’s dead, by the way.” Slylth observed the man’s slumping form. “The body is still alive, but his Astral Body is shattered. The Latter Day Saints, hmm? Was I wrong to expect more? I was expecting him to er… explode.”

Gwen sighed, then extended a hand.

“We’ll take care of it,” the Ivanovs spoke in sync. “This filth is unworthy of your blessings.”

“No, this is my responsibility as well,” Gwen spoke as she conjured the necessary Void Mana required to execute mercy. “He wouldn't have died if we weren’t here, so I need to own up to the cost of doing business, at least.”

Caliban splashed into reality, opened its maw, and was gone in the next second. Something at the back of her mind shuddered at the second-hand murder, though the rational part of her boxed the guilt and packed it in a Pocket Dimension. After all, had he not been Geased by Faith, they very well could have dropped him off in New Shalkar with new memories and a new life.

Once the vertigo passed, the room began to breathe once more.

“Do you still have that invitation to Salt Lake City?” Hawthorne asked.

“I do.” Gwen dipped her fingers in a basin of ice-cold water, then mopped her hands dry with an Egyptian cotton towel embroidered with Shalkar’s corporate logo. “What do you suggest?”

“Captain McKenzi, do you believe the protest will continue to be a spot of bother?” the Count asked of their presiding officer.

“I do, Sir,” the Captain tore himself away from the absence of both chair and body. “It will continue, I believe. Eventually, it will become enough of a nuisance that the city’s government body will have to act.”

“Can we not tell them to act now? I do have the Mayor on my Message Device.”

Her police Captain made a face. “The city guarantees freedom to protest and freedom of religion. We can keep them from the Geofront by using our contractual special Economic Zone ruling, but we can’t stop them from amassing in the Tenderloin.”

“The land of the free,” Gwen pouted, her eyes scanning the ceiling for answers.

Slylth sniggered, snorting like a hog-nosed Drake.

“I’ll head down to the geofront and shore up the morale,” she said after a few moments. “Lots of folks without homes right now. We need to show them that we’re on their side. Lorenzo, PR time.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her Executive Officer gave her a thumbs-up. “I’ll summon the lads.”

“I’ll join our Regent,” her Dragon buddy pushed back from the table and offered an arm like an Austenian landlord at a tea parlour. “Shall we?”

Still moody from the expiration of the man her officers had questioned, Gwen gave the rest of her crew a nod, took the Dragon’s arm, then made for the balcony, where they would fly directly to the source of her unhappiness.

“Are those two…” Office McKenzi raised a hand once their employer was out of sight and ears. “Is our holiness…”

The air grew suddenly stifled as every mind that knew the truth inhaled in lungfuls of icy air from the open balcony.

“God, I hope not,” Count McKenzi poured himself another shot of cognac and coffee. “Do you know who or what Slylth's mother is? The fallout from a divorce like that might just start the Second Beast Tide.”

The Tenderloin, from the surface, looked identical to how the city’s populace recalled it.

Even with the recent riot and ruin, the stretch of blocks from Union to Eddie remained largely the same, sans the junkies and the zombies.

Except for the four-by-four block where Ellis crossed into Jones.

A giant scaffold, twelve meters high, two hundred meters across and five hundred long, surrounded a point of interest where the protesters had failed to breach.

The reason they had failed was simple.

Dwarven-made scaffolds could withstand sieges.

Though the barrier was scaffolding by name, it was erected by Dwarven artisans who already had the city’s architects abuzz with notebooks. The protesters were an impressive body, but even they could not scale the “pet mesh” without resorting to sorcery or destruction, meaning they would cross an invisible legal line.

Meaning Captain McKenzi could then make arrests.

When Gwen flew past, conspicuous as a bald eagle, she could already see the enormous crowds gathering at Union Square. Considering the bloody banners, the literal crosses and the colour-coordinated clothing, she determined at once that most of these folks were paid actors or card-carrying members, because in America, protests were both free and too expensive for the average folk. For people to be out and about on working days meant that someone, somewhere, was handling the logistics.

The miscalculation she had made was that buying USA Today and doing general good for the city would immunise her like in London. For a country that promoted itself to the outside world as secular, she had not actually anticipated a nation without Ordos, Knighthoods, or the Head of State as a God’s Ordained to throw religion at her.

Thankfully, the men and women she brought with her were safe. The Dyar Morkk held infinite supplies, and her Mages, Rat-kin and Dwarves all lived underground in the Geofront. The folk that suffered were the ones she would meet now, the people whose shops, apartments and basements were set ablaze, smashed apart, or looted as a result of the unrest.

True to Lorenzo’s reports, the worst of it was on Leavenworth and Jones. The Tenderloin was already a mess of early-century architecture with layered signs of urban decay before the mob had come, but now it was the aftermath of a Beast Tide.

Construction Golems from the Geofront were shovelling metric tons of debris from gutted buildings, while Human Mages, Transmuters and Abjurers worked on reinforcing the damaged structures. Here and there, men and women from Shalkar, dressed in Dwarven Klad-suits, worked through the debris, throwing out burnt chairs, furniture, and bric-a-bracs of memories that could never again be reconstructed.

All this waste. Gwen kneaded her brows. The Tenderloin was a notorious district, but it didn’t mean it lacked history. There were shops here, buildings, old places that dated back to the city's second founding, when Union rapidly expanded into inner-city sprawl. Now, they were all open real estate.

“You don’t look happy.” Slylth role-played as someone sympathetic to the Humans milling about, picking up the pieces. “A lair is a very personal thing.”

“This isn’t my lair,” Gwen tossed the Dragon one of her more annoyed eye rolls. “But it's still too much.”

“Well, we can go and burn their temple down,” Slylth gave her an affirmative thumbs-up. “A Meteor ought to do it.”

“And throw the entire region into a continental war? Shalkar versus the USA? Hand the continent to Spectre?” She sighed, shaking her head. “I kind of wish one of our old foxes would be here with us. Mycroft or Walken. But the Duke is out of the question, and Wallken is now looking after Shalkar, Arica, and still has to check up on the Isle of Dogs. I hope he’s still alive.”

“You could get Richard,” Slylth suggested. “I am certain he’s got a smidgen of Black Drake in his veins.”

“Shalkar needs him,” Gwen shook her head. “You know the whole place is a balancing act with me as the fulcrum. Of all the reasons that Richard is qualified, the one that matters to the Khan, to Strun, and Lei-bup is that he’s my blood-related cousin.”

“Tao?”

“Don’t tempt me…”

“You have your brother,” the Red Dragon remarked with a smug smirk. “By Mother’s grace, I have never seen a creature so full of… malevolent cunning. Making him a mayor might bring him back from Sobel. You can pat his head and say he’s a good lad after all.”

“Red.” Gwen patted the Dragon on the shoulder. “I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but bloody hell.”

In the time it took her and Slylth to exchange a few quips, Lorenzo reported that his men were ready and in position.

A few simple commands through her Message array, and the pre-arranged staff inside the Geofront emerged to take notes and pose in lumen-pictures beside her, partly for propaganda, partly for Captain McKinzie's efforts in identifying and arresting the rioters.

The first of the residents to approach them was one of the cafe owners, to whom Gwen pledged her full support in restoring his shop. The next was a convenience store owner, to whom Gwen promised the same. A crowd gathered, then a larger crowd. Her officials took down names and grievances, doing what the city’s council was paid to do, but never exercised.

The process was slow and agonising, and it did not faze Gwen at all when the inevitable happened.

The protesters were restarting their march from Union.

“Hee.” Slylth’s expression was one of annoyance at a rather large gnat that just wouldn’t leave. “You know, there’s no law that deals with mortals willfully provoking Dragons…”

“No, I’ll handle this,” Gwen bid her forces to keep the already incensed residents away from the approaching crowd. “Slylth, stay here and keep an eye on things for me. Don’t kill anyone.”

Her Dragon shrugged, but his Regent’s attention was already elsewhere. She rose into the air and made for Geary, where the clamouring was the loudest.

When she cleared the corner of Jones, she saw them.

The protesters came as a reverse wedge. The first row was almost ten abreast, sweeping the span of Geary and pushing into its clusters of apartments and shopfronts, rubbing bodily against the Roman columns that made up the old theatre. They were not incensed as of yet, but they took no mercy on the cars and bikes, racks and adverts that littered Geary.

As a whole, the psychic energy of the approaching mass reminded her of the Centaurs and their Shaman Sorcery. It was a congregation, one that could easily become a mob. A mob was dangerous, for a wise man once wrote that “the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters.”

Her problem was that the protesters were not driven by irrational anger.

They were driven by none other than hatred against herself.

“Lorenzo?” Gwen asked the general air.

“We’re right above you, on the rooftops. There are others here as well, from the local media. And in case you forgot, we’ve got an Eye of Providence watching everything unfold. I’d say it's the military, but I’ll put my money on Salesforce.”

“Right. Here I go.” She landed.

She stood by her defiant self against the mob, with Geary on either side, stretching down to Union.

A perfect shot.

Like a bloodhound, the mob’s attention locked in upon her magazine-famous figure, her halter-neck dress in cerulean, her Tryfanian wedge sandals, all so svelte and effortless and clashing against the riff-raff denim of her opposition.

“BLOOD AND SOIL!” Someone chanted. “BLOOD AND SOIL!”

A wave of invisible heat rose from the crowd. Gwen felt it. The psychic energy above them was rapidly coalescing into something malevolent and vile.

“WHOSE STREETS?” A lone voice cried. “OUR STREETS!” The crowd answered.

“WHOSE STREETS?” The provocateur continued.

“OUR STREETS!” The crowd answered, louder this time.

“WHOSE STREETS?”

“OUR STREETS!”

The street shook. The windows rattled. There were a mere few thousand, but the mob seemed to swell with the psychic pressure of a far larger force.

“RATS WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

“DWARVES WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

“RATS WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

“DWARVES WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

It was impressive. Gwen had to admit. It wasn’t exactly Dhànthárian charging vertically upward from Deepholm at a hundred kilometres an hour—but it was a jolly good effort.

As the crowd drew closer, the atmosphere changed once more. With the floral allure of her Sulfina-blessed scent so close, they were now pacing faster, clambering over obstacles as voices grew hoarse from their jingoism. The men in the front row were red-faced, their chests puffed out, looking like they were enduring a mana ripple radiating from where she stood. Their eyes grew dull and passionate at once as their mouths contorted, taking on an ecstasy of righteous vindication. A psychic current, the energy Gwen recognised as Faith, flowed through the crowd.

“NO NECRO—NO REGENT—NO PINKO USA!”

“NO NECRO—NO REGENT—NO PINKO USA!”

Gwen felt a terrible shiver. She recognised the signs. She saw Lei-bup, she saw her Mermen, crying out her name, surging toward her foes in the Fifth Vel, each and every one a screaming, grinning lunatic.

“ARIEL!”

Her retort came in the form of providence.

Her Lion of God, white and multi-hued, golden and resplendent, tore through the fabric of the Prime Material to hover overhead, its radiant divinity rippling across Geary with a palpable pulse.

“EE-EE!” Ariel’s cry pierced the heavens, bounced back from San Francisco's resonance shielding, then refocused itself upon the crowd. Once, a dozen dynasties past, the Kirin’s ancestors had ruled the largest theocracy in the Middle Kingdom. How could a mere facsimile religion built by refugees fleeing persecution even compare to the ecclesiastical wonder that is a fragment of a living God?

To fight Faith, she would show them the meaning of good faith.

The mob paused.

They looked at one another, their anger falling away like crude oil from stricken seabirds.

They were once again a congregation, merely men and women with memorised slogans.

“Good people of the city, citizens of San Francisco—!” Her voice flowed over the crowd, whose re-focused eyes were once more upon her. “Lend me your ear—”

SCREEEEEEEE—CHHHHHH—

Something large and black and terrible bolted from an adjacent alleyway, howling like a bristling demonic hog. In a split-second, it was upon the crowd, snarling in insane fury. Reflexively, Gwen’s mana shield sprang up, blocking anything that might be aiming for her.

But the monstrous thing that came out of the alleyway wasn’t for The Regent.

It was a car. A Ford pickup with a familiar grill.

And it ran headfirst into the astounded crowd.

Bodies heaved, bodies crumpled, bodies flew into the air.

An incompressible crowd compressed as the truck came to a howling halt, its wheels biting the tarmac until it started slipping on flesh.

Through her shield, she saw the driver’s blurred face howl in ecstasy.

The flow of time resumed. The crowd erupted. Screams. Howls. Pain. Agony. Grief, horror and woe erupted like Magma from a planar rent in the Plane of Fire.

Her head was suddenly a bubbling culdron.

WHAT THE FUCK? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS THIS MOSCOW OR CALI?

Of all the schemes and horrors in all of her contingencies, she could not imagine that the powers behind the protestors would eat their own to spite her face.

“LORENZO!”

“I GOT IT ALL ON LUMENCAST!” Her Editor-in-Chief replied before she even finished.

From her shadows, Strun’s Shadow-kin sprang forth to place their bodies between herself and whatever dangers the mob may yet represent.

A split second later, with a “SHAA—AA—!” that curdled blood and silenced crying children, Caliban tore itself out of her Pocket Plane, an act she did not refuse, instantly taking on its Stag form, becoming a four metre blockade with three dozen tentacles that snapped at air with their circular-saw maws.

The mob turned on the driver. It was a NoM.

They tore open the doors.

Like an asylum of insensible ecapees, they dragged out a man wearing the expression of a fellow immate, swallowing the man wholesale in a frenzy of gnashing teeth and hateful nails.

Gwen hadn’t thought there was much more in this world that could stun her into inaction, but the mob in front of her had achieved exactly that. When, after some ten seconds, her shield dropped and her sensibility returned to her, the man was already a bloody pulp beneath the bloody boots of a bloody mob.

“Ma…ma?” Ariel mewed, asking her if he should strike the crowd with another jolt of radiance.

Gwen shook her head.

There were people under the truck, over the truck.

There were people with half a face missing, coughing up blood.

She saw people with limbs at odd agles, and people who laid still and did not move. But the crowd did not shift to help them, at least, not most of the crowd. They stood there, mum as statues, dumb as Golems, staring at her with red eyes and red faces, breathing pink mist while half covered in coagulating gore. They were afraid—not of the truck that had just killed a dozen of them—not of the bloody body they stomped into the tarmac—they were afraid of her.

Her Ariel, her Caliban, her Rat-kin.

The disquiet lasted only a dozen breaths, after which it was broken by the sounding fo sirens all around.

Captain McKenzi’s troops turned the corner, nary two blocks from the Geofront, riding tall on their Riot Golems, their auxilary storage preloaded with potion injectors and triage kits. It was only after McKenzi’s arrival that the spell of petrification was broken, and the prior cries, the wails, the howls of grief and broken minds returned life to Geary.

Slowly, like an autunm maple drifting onto the pavement, Slylth landed beside her.

“Me thinks,” the Dragon said without expression. “It’s time to pay their temple a visit.”

“Yes,” Gwen patted her Familiars with a thoughtful hand. “I do indeed have a temple in mind.”