Metaworld Chronicles

Chapter 548 - Baby Blues and Flower Wives

Shalkar.

The Tree Terrace.

“No, Regent, we do not have any Lucas by the persuasion of George,” Gwen’s Grand Vizir, Richard Huang, noted after consulting his datapad. “Why do you ask?”

The imperial marching band downstairs swelled to a new crescendo.

Gwen considered the lines of Rat-men lined up in their crisp, naval uniforms. She observed the Dwarven Golems stalking about between the platoons.

She admired the thrumming, gladius-shaped Destroyer hovering overhead like a death-dealing prong.

All she needed was a heavy woollen cloak and Lulu dolled up in all black iron plating. Then she could turn to a young, bright-eyed Slylth standing below them and say, “Good! Use your stock options, boy. Let the profit flow through you!"

“Alright, alright.” Gwen golf-clapped with the best of them. “Impressive, very impressive.”

“You should watch the lumen-recording of the Leviathan Cannon,” Richard informed her with undisguised schadenfreude. “We did not exactly intend that it would crush opposing Towers, but I can tell you right now, it crushes conventional Towers. More so if they are stationary.”

“The Dwarves nay-take credit for this one, Regent,” Axehoff, who had followed her through the Dyar Morkk, shook his shaggy beard. “Yer can praise yer Mer-kin.”

“The Sea Witches are instrumental in tuning the Elemental Conjunctions,” Petra brought up some schematics that Gwen could not understand. “With time, we can keep improving the output, but each test costs us about a month’s excavations.”

“It costs a quarter-Million Bank of England HDMs per SHOT?” Gwen winced, touching a hand to her bosom. “Whoever gets hit by this must really deserve every credit stick.”

“Per activation,” Petra corrected her. “The duration of the output is about sixteen minutes from beginning to finish. My calculations indicate that if we operate within the Elemental Plane of Water, it's infinitely sustainable, limited by the durability of our Tower’s structural integrity. Over the oceans of the Prime Material, it's about 50% more efficient.”

“It’s a COASTAL platform,” Richard translated. “We can drown cities, break towers, bring rain… very humane, our Tower. Nothing like a Meteor.”

“We haven’t tested fresh water Mandalas yet,” Petra added.

“forty days of flood,” Richard smirked, his eyes unblinking as he regarded the horizontal Tower. “To persuade someone to switch sides. Nothing quite like Biblical persuasion. I believe a Tower such as this will bring unprecedented peace in the region.”

The imperial march below finished with a flare. The Rat-kin conductor bowed. Gwen waved back. She looked at Richard. Are you sure we’re still the good guys?

“We would like to attempt to close the Fire Sea,” her Vizier said after a moment. “Regent, what do you think? Closing the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire will restore the region, return the winter season, and bring life back to the Caspian.”

“Put it in the Planner,” Gwen concurred. “Save it for when I am back from Neo Tenochititlan.

“Got it,” Richard motioned to an aide, who noted the command on a Data Slab. “The Engineer you invited over from the US has been producing some impressive work. We’re making strides in using the World Tree’s natural impulses as communicating cabling. With time, we should be able to replace the Dwarven system currently using the Motherlodes.”

“That’s good,” Gwen considered the update. Indeed, if she wanted to emancipate Deepholme, the city of the Dwarves, then she shouldn’t create a communication network that required Deepholme to be always connected to every other site of commercial interest. Ultimately, it was better for Legion to be without the need for Dwarven homeland. “So, how mobile is our Tower?”

“VERY,” Petra piped up with the joy of a Magitech student seeing her first Dwarven Fabricator. “With input from Lei-bup’s Sea Witches—” “Was it Pelahwi? Or Velahi?” Velahi was always the creative one.

Her cousin considered her question strangely. “I am not sure which is which. Does it matter?”

“It’s fine, proceed,” Gwen gave her an assuring smile. The Mer were still too alien, and too recently a foe to become friends. “Er…Right. If we use the Greater Teleportation Mandala, we can make it as far as Moscow, which is just under a million HDMs. We haven’t tested long-range manifestations though. Somethings might be left behind.”

“Moscow, huh?” Gwen looked at Richard. “Is that Natalia’s idea?”

“We took the distance into account after the Tower incidents,” Petra informed her. “The former Tower Master of Nizhny helped.”

“Oh? How is Master Petyr Shuysky these days?”

“He lives atop the World Tree, in one of your gifted lodges,” Richard reported. “He reads, mostly, keeping conversation with Lady Sanari. He’s looking younger as well. He’ll be around for another half-century, easy. I’d say he’s having the best years of his life.”

“Who is Captaining the Tower while I am gone?” Gwen asked out of curiosity.

“Our Kin are at the helm,” Axehoff informed her. “Master Huang says it's safer that way, for now. With Deepholme under restoration, Captain Hanmul Bronzeborn has volunteered to serve as yer Guard Captain on board. He leads the 1st Airborne Legion.”

“Airborne?”

“More like… falling with style,” Richard coughed. “It is impressive, though. Golem Drops, that is. A lot of splattering.”

“You’ve tried this?” Gwen was already impressed.

“Flight Mandalas don’t work well with Earthen Mana, but we can soften the fall, then use Impact Shells. The result is quite spectacular.”

Richard mimed what Gwen hoped wasn’t an exploding Easter egg.

“The Leviathan can also venture underwater, in theory,” Petra brought up more Mandala schematics. “The Core and wishbone can displace water at any depth, unless overcome by a greater force.”

“Which would be?”

“A Primal Elemental, Ancient Dragon, or an older Leviathan,” Petra stated. “Regardless, we should be able to travel to the Fifth Vel with the Plato if we so desire. The HDM costs would be minimal, though we’ll be unable to use our main armament. And the Dwarves' Spellblades won’t be much use outside the air pocket. There’s also the question of atmospheric pressure…”

“Right,” Gwen thanked her cousin. “Speaking of Dragons, Slylth?”

“Right here,” the Red Dragon landed. “Should we head up?”

Gwen nodded. “Slylth and I are going to Tryfan to consult Lord Tyfanevius. We need to contact Master Quetzalcoatl regarding the war with the Americans. Tenochitlan isn’t answering the Mageocracy’s diplomatic channels, so we thought we might as well speak to the man directly. Lei-bup may have tried to convert them. I don’t think that went down well.”

“Classic Lei-bup! He’s a good man…. Er… fish. Very well,” Richard saluted. “Regent, we shall be here when you return for Operation No More Fire Sea.”

When they reached the apex of the World Tree, where the Emergent Layer formed its own Pocket Space, Gwen took a moment to appreciat the grand vista of her burgeoning city, then greeted the tall Elven woman already waiting for them.

“The Trellis is ready, Regent,” Sanari smiled serenely, her exquisite face unchanged since long before Gwen was born. Gwen felt that, having spent so much time in Shalkar, the Elf had undergone a form of humanisation.

“Thank you, Heirophant,” Gwen bowed her head. “I see that I am expected. Let’s proceed.”

She and Slylth stepped through the swirling pane of mana formed between two aesthetic branches.

A split-second later, they were once more in the Pocket Space of the Tryfanian Grove, located somewhere in Wales, north of Swansea.

One of Sanari’s sisters greeted the pair, addressing Gwen as Regent and Slylth as Master, the title used by officious hotels to address children. Woman and Dragon then admired the interiority of Tryfan, a space far, far larger than Shalkar. They were then guided toward the World Tree’s root systems, where the pseudo-entrance to Tyfanevius’ abode lay.

In truth, now that she had her own World Tree, Gwen knew that she could technically enter any Trellis Portal and emerge anywhere she pleased in the Tree. Her problem was that she didn’t know Elven Magic, whereas for Tryfan, the unnecessary physicality of walking down to the roots was a ritual the Elves liked to observe.

Past the second portal, they were finally in that indefinite space that existed somewhere between reality and Tyfanevius’ whim.

“Master Tyfanevius,” Gwen bowed from the waist. “It has been a while.”

“Uncle,” Slylth bowed as well.

“How long is a mere while?,” Tyfanevius’ Elven visage, eight-foot tall and far too muscular, replied. “It seem to me we had conversed but a moment ago. Fear not, I understand what you mean. When you are older, both of you, you will understand what I mean.”

The Emerald Dreamer paused to regard them in their casual human clothes with a secret smile that made Gwen’s skin crawl.

“You know, nephew—our friend the Yinglong will soon greet his grandchild,” Tyfanevius said casually. “When will the Summer Queen also see grandchildren?”

If Gwen had a drink, she would have spat the whole thing in Tyfanevius’ face.

“Gosh, I am not yet four centuries.” Slylth looked at her with expectant eyes. “What are you saying, Uncle?”

“Two centuries brooding in your egg is old enough,” Tyfanevius laughed. “Look at this one, she is merely two decades, even counting her womb-age. What would your mother say, Slylth?”

“Alright,” Gwen put up both hands, her heart pounding at her throat. “Enough. Can we rewind a bit? Ayxin is GIVING BIRTH?”

Does Jun know his wife is giving birth? She screamed internally. “When?”

“Oh…” Tyfanevius observed the infinite cosmos with eyes that seemed like twin galaxies. “Now?”

Suzhou.China.

The residents of Huangshan, the Black Zone east of Suzhou, knew that a historical moment of mystical portent was upon them when a blast of radiant rainbow so intense that night turned to day shot from the mountain’s peak toward the city.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Without impediment, the double-rainbow crossed the Resonance Barrier of the city, into the summer palace built for the Dragon Princess by the Communist Party for Ayxin, the hope and dream of the People’s Republic.

Sirens rang out. Not in alarm, but in preparation for the greatest boon the nation would receive since its founding after the Great War against the Undead.

From the mountain to the city, Shielding Stations powered down of their own volition as orders from Secretary Miao zipped across the region, demanding that there be no human interference for what was to come.

Citizens in the path between the Huangshan and the county of rivers and lakes were evacuated as rapidly as the Militia could allow, and if they elected to stay, were respectfully informed that they had chosen death.

The phenomenon lasted an hour, then the creatures came.

A Beast Tide.

Unlike the tides of the past, this was not the frenzied hunger of enraged Draconids that the country faced every few decades. It was more akin to a procession of sorts—led from the front by the minute Demi-humans, then followed by a great train of the Yinglong’s bastard scions.

Frog-men, Mer-kin, Lizardfolk of every stripe and colour. In clothes or unclothed, they came down the mountain, emerging from folded valleys and Pocket Planes, Elemental grottos and hidden realms, dungeons and caverns unexplored by man. Among them were simians the size of houses, goblins with blood-red faces and fangs as long as their bodies. There were tigers with lizard tails, and lizards with tiger heads, stags with carnivorous teeth, and wolves with lambs’ wool.

Hooded Cranes by the tens of thousands flew from the mountain until they encircled Suzhou, forming great rings of wings that wheeled and wheeled.

They did not attack the Humans. Nor did they care for human artefacts as they moved through the land, crushing cars, flattening houses, tearing down power lines, and grazing upon the farms and orchards when opportunity arose.

Among them, for the first time since time immemorial, there was no predation, no grudge, no opportunists from either side.

All who lived in this great basin were touched by the Ancient being who had heeded the Jade Emperor when the world was founded, all owed their existence to his benevolence, and now, they must pay homage to the Lord-kin who would be their future.

Not all could come close enough to feel the ripples of reality, but all knew the moment when it finally arrived.

Within the open palace with its endless flowing tapestries of silk, Ayxin lay on a dais bed spacious enough for a Dragon, though through great effort, she had chosen to maintain her human form.

A very, very long time ago, in a dynasty long gone, her mother had given birth to her, just like this, and then died.

She remember being held aloft, two thousand eunics on every side, ten thousand scholar-bureaucrats beyond that, and half a million officials and guards beyond that, and heard the roar of a nation.

“Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years! Ten thousand years!” their cries had reached the heavens, shaking the dust from the roof as her mother’s corpse turned cold and the royal physician contemplated suicide.

“Dearest?” The voice of her husband shook Ayxin from the vividness of her natal memory. “How are you feeling now? Is it painful?”

Pain was the wrong word, but Ayxin nodded anyway.

The child in her womb wasn’t so much biological as it was existential. It was flesh and blood, as all babies are, and it was also a being of pure elemental energy, potential, and belief.

Nuwa was the name their father had chosen, the true name for him or her. Just as Nuwa had shaped men from mud in the ancient tales, so the child was shaped by the belief of the many millions that formed the nation. Form from her flesh, Jun’s seed, the Yinglong’s Essence and the land’s mana, the final ingredient that made Nuwa real was Faith.

The Faith of every soul who believed the child to be real. Faith enough to bend causality, and make the impossible possible. Faith enough to make it so that a mortal may join with a True Dragon and produce an heir, just like that time long, long ago, in a palace lost to time.

Her midwives, dozens of them holding dozens of instruments, stood as agog apes as they pondered the silk-wrapped woman on the bed, their Divination failing in every conceivable manner.

It was only Mei Li, a NoM wisewoman brought in by Secretary Miao, who dared to plant herself beside Ayxin, one hand on her knee and the other on her belly, staring into the organ between her legs and telling her to push when the contractions came.

The sky turned dark.

Thick, sodden clouds formed in an instant, swirling until, from its eye, a great serpent with scales like finest mutton jade and eyes the colour of transparent jadeite descended. As it landed, its torso shrank until, like silky milk pouring into a tiny sieve, it formed into the shape of a scholarly Tang-era poet.

The man took a single step—

Then he was beside her, his face pale and reverent. “Sister,” he bowed. “Ryxi,” Jun replied in place of his wife. “Thank you for coming.”

“I wondered if I could be of aide,” the scholar replied with a nod. “But it seems Father has provisioned for everything.”

Before Jun could answer, the sky roared once more, cracking with thunder and lightning. A mere decade ago, the entrance of Golos would be far more crude—but he was a Thunder Dragon now, a Western species, but a blule-blooded Thunderer nonetheless.

From a rent in the fabric of the Prime Material, Golos emerged, paired with a Harpy that had also taken on a humanoid form. Unlike Ryxi, Golos and his companion floated into the palace, afraid to disturb their sister with their rough magic.

“Ayxin.” the gruff Thunder Dragon nodded, ignoring Ryxi as he studied the room. “Where is Ruxin? Where is Gwen?”

“I’ve been here a while,” the sound of their Eldest’s voice bloomed through the heavens.

With the sound of silk tearing, Ruxin stepped into reality, regal and tall and statuesque, looking half-way like the Jade Emperor himself for all the jadeite ornaments carved into his palatial garb. “I did not wish to disturb our sister unnecessarily. Ah—here comes our youngest and her companion.”

In the courtyard where rows of willow formed around artificial canals, a portal had formed between two mature trees transplanted from Suzhou’s many temples. There was a small ripple in the Prime Material’s taut fabric of reality, negating the limitations of distance. Then Gwen and Slylth slid into being,

Ayxin found herself smiling.

If not for their upstart Vessel, none of this would have happened; she would not have met Jun, and there would be no child. How strange it was that this mortal girl could possess enough causality to forge impossibilities into reality. Had she truly been a creature raised by her father, the Yinglong, or was Gwen the borrowed agent of a higher, greater power?

“DID I MISS IT?” The girl was tactless as usual. “Whoa—you’re all here! And WHOA, you are PREGNANT. Good God, Ayxin.”

“Gwen.” Jun waved, still holding Ayxin's hand.

“Uncle!” the girl gushed, though her obsession had lost all but a sliver of the passion it once held. “Congratulations! I bought—”

“Thank you—”

The contractions came.

Waves of indescribable sensation rolled over Ayxin’s body, sending her human legs to quiver and her morphic field to tremble.

“AH—” she cried out, reacting to the frailty of her human body even as her Draconic soul endured, joyous at the emergence of a life that had already been conceived and formulated.

“PUSH!” The midwife screamed as though she was the one giving birth. Her brows were drenched with sweat, and her arms slick with fluids as she guided the emerging princeling. “FOLLOW THE CONTRACTIONS!”

Ayxin pushed. A Dragon had absolute control over their body, even morphic ones.

The pain, the feeling of being torn apart, the sudden emptiness as her belly emptied, then—

“WAAA—WAHH—WAAA—” the child of impossibilities was born.

Love such as she had never known flooded Ayxin’s heart. She felt suddenly fulfilled, as if some great destination had been reached. She had no other way to describe it, she felt that a existential purpose attained.

Ai Xin, Love and Vessel.

The clouds parted. The courtyard bloomed into bursts of floral symphony.Dragon Carp leapt into the air, grew wings, and flew from the court.

The world itself grew clamorous as the sound of man and beasts roared as one. They could not see, and they could not hear, but they felt it in their souls and their bones that a child of the land was born hale and alive.

Outside the city, as far as Beijing, all knew with absolute certainty that the nation’s future was secured. A national holiday, before it was declared a few hours later, naturally occurred with the spontaneity of flowing water. Grievances were forgotten, slights forgiven. Bosses and workers drank together. Father-in-laws cracked open old Maotai saved for grandchildren, and school children left the confines of their classrooms to watch the gathering clouds make splendid colours across the Middle Country.

Mana erupted from the springs and lakes of Suzhou, ley-nodes opened where none had existed, turning the city into a realm found only in fantastical novels.

As far as South Korea and Japan, Thailand and Vietnam, Magical Creatures turned toward the direction of Suzhou, understanding that a being of great benevolence or predation had been born.

In the sacred lands of the Himalayas, the oldest Dragon of the Orient stirred from hihislumber for a brief split-second to smirk and smile, causing the rockslides that would change the landscape for centuries to come.

Gwen watched with awe at perfect babe in Ayxin’s arms suckling on a plump white breast.

The child didn’t need milk, as far as she could tell, for it was fully formed. Nuwa was… the idea of a baby, if that at all made any sense. She was every inch a pictuer perfect child, but more akin to the kind one might see in nappy commercials. As a True Dragon with only a sliver of Jun’s DNA, Nuwa was a being who could choose her gender and form, and so she was currently what Jun had always wanted, a perfect daughter.

Despite the uncanny baby, Gwen felt ambushed by the overwhelming sentiment of motherhood. She had never been a mother, and she had not known the touch of motherly love, nor could she imagine that she could give it.

But watching Ayxin, watching this child, she felt a ticklish desire blossom into life, making her far less sure of her convictions.

“Father and mother will be here in the afternoon,” Jun informed her. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

Before Gwen could answer, something touched her hand.

She looked to her right and saw Slylth with brimming eyes, his face on the verge of blurting out something that could not be unsaid.

“We will,” she said, reaching out to take the Red Dragon’s hand and squeeze it as hard as she could before he could embarrass them both.

Maybe, she told herself. Maybe sometime in the far, far future. In a world at peace, without Spectre. She would entertain the idea.

“Gwen, neice,” Ayxin’s voice was like velvet against her ears. The Dragon’s face was motherhood personified, her eyes now possessed such benevolence that Gwen could scarcely believe this was the same Dragon that had threatened to skin her alive. “Would you like to hold Nuwa?”

Gwen looked at the cooing child, whose eyes were like celestial pools of depthless blue light.

She stiffly held our her hands.

Ayxin Nuwa drifted through the air.

For a second, Gwen suffered a near-heart attack, until she realised that, one, Nuwa could not possibly fall, and that, two, Nuwa’s constitution could crack concrete and be not feel a pinch.

In her arms, the Dragon child cooed, her eyes intelligent and profound. This was no infant, Gwen acknowledged. Nuwa was creature of absolute innocence, but she had come out of the box fully assembled. Hell, Nuwa even had a full head of fuzz. Give her a week, and she’ll be walking and talking and tearing the palace down.

The baby reached out and patted a boob, smacking her lips. Beside her, Ayxin burst into polite laughter. So much for convolescence. Gwen marvelled at the fact that Ayxin was already hale and fully healed. In fact, she was positively glowing. Indeed, Dragons were built different.

She leaned in. Nuwa pinched her nose with surprising delicacy, her hands making out the contour of Aunt Gwen, the Regent of Shalkar.

“So cute,” Gwen sighed apperciatively. “Would you like some HDMs? A small mountain of HDMs? Aunty Gwen has so much HDMs…”

It was true. She was feeling the temptation.

But together with that tempation, she was also struck with a dark reminder.

If a certain relative who wasn’t here today had gotten their way, there would be no Nuwa.

Knowing Ayxin, Shanghai would probably be a new deep sea port.

No babies, not now. Gwen reminded herself coldly. Maybe sometimes in the distant future. But not in a world where Percy and Sobel still roamed.

Tyfan.

The Sun Sanctum.

“He’s done it,” Tyfanevius sulkily informed his Mistress of eternity. “One of us has absolved their karmic Path.”

“Why so glum?” Solana sat on a branch, her tender white feet dangling in the air. “You should be happy. At long last, one of our old friends can ascend into the Unformed Land.”

“I just can’t believe Ying-ying is the first to ascend. Even Vynssarion failed.” Tyfanevius shook his head in wonder, as if the rules the world had inverted for a moment. “The child was at most, if I may recall, forty-thousand human cycles? He wasn’t even a Kin of the Primordial Age.”

“His progress was quickened by causality. He was the one who heeded, remember? He had gambled his ascention on the Humans long before we even realised they could be of use.”

“Is it too late to pick a human now?” Tyfanevius laughed to himself.

“For beings such as us, what great meaning does late even portend?” Solana floated as a moist petal falling from her tree. “Come, husband, let me soothe your weary mind.”

Tyfanevius sat in a root-formed chair that formed around him as his great statue lowered. Behind him, Solana wrapped her arms around his neck, then lifted them so that her fingers could rest against the skin of his temples. Tyfanevius did not need eyes to perceive his mistress’ ageless, timeless perfection, for she was concurrently his life and his nourishment. He was one of the last Kin of the Primordial, and his affection was eternal. Or the Humans said, old dogs can’t learn new tricks.

“We cannot be careless with the Causality of the lower realms,” Solana reminded him. “Invariably, we enbolden others like Old Bale-eye, or even Quar-Tath. Hasn’t our surviving Black Dragon been completely dorment for the last millennium? Even when her brother went mad, she had remained in her abode, preferring dreams to conspiracy. Are you less patient than even Sister Quar-Tath, husband of mine?”

Tyfanevius sighed long and deep, relaxing only when Soalana’s mana pierced his skull.

“Do you harken for another child, my love?” Solana’s voice was quiet, measured, and expectant.

“A child? No. The last one we produced…” Tyfanevius shook his head. Around them, the Dream Realm trembled. “Presently, I prefer… adoptions. How long do you think it will take the girl to free us from our toil?”

“Soon,” Soalana’s voice was like the trilling of birds.

“What does that mean?” Tyfanevius allowed his mind to sink back into the Long Dream.

“To beings like us,” his wife repeated a phrase that sounded strangely familiar. “Soon should be but a mere moment away…”