After setting the East Coast ablaze in a symphony of opportunistic stock trades that left the market reeling, the Regent of Shalkar promptly blindsided her opponents by retreating into obscurity.
She did this because, unlike her East Coast competitors, Gwen fully intended to make her promises concrete. If the ordeal with the false flag attack had taught her anything, it was that the powers that be in the Union really did see themselves as ordained rulers, Demi-Gods for whom the n and won of their nation were sustenance.
“n like Gilt are Kirins, basically,” she had told Slylth.
Like the ashen God whose Core now nourished Ariel’s ascension. The CEOs of these financial fiefdoms were Demi-Gods in a godless world. Be it faith, economics, labour, political will or simply ego, the n in the high towers happily paid with the lives of their sycophants if it ant that their own lives would be minutely less inconvenienced.
Which made her, Gwen supposed, a proverbial, asiantic Dragon.
The lesson she had learned in the last few weeks was that the Union of her present world wasn’t the late-stage Capitalist society she had assud it to be. It was closer to a late-stage Technofeudalism.
The Seven Towers of the East Coast are the masters of the East.
The Latter Day Saints, the Bible Belt.
Finally, Salesforce and the San Francisco Shalkar Conglorate took the West.
Together, they enjoyed the enormous power imbalance between C-suites and the people they called employees.
Even though her corporation paid the highest wages, the best healthcare, and gave stock options as performance bonuses, the reality between her and her Tenderloin inhabitants was absolutely one of Lords and Serfs.
She owned their land.
She owned their livelihood.
She owned their future, effectively speaking.
Leaving the SFSC ant giving up hos, health, and a future.
The more benevolent the SFSC acted, the more desperately her people latched on, refusing to let the opportunity slip through their fingers. Her generosity arguably made her the most desired employer in Arica; however, in the end, she had also bought into the Arican system wholesale, going against the very principles that led her to disrupt the market.
Initially, she had thought the solution was Singaporean, or in her world, Shalkarean.
It was about building a grassroots, socially pragmatic, equity state. In the Tenderloin, fewer than a few hundred people out of the 67,000 or so people living there owned their hos. By comparison, state-sponsored co-ownership of hos in Shalkar for refugees was close to 86 per cent. The Rat-kin Clans owned their warrens, the Centaurs owned both “stables” and vast regions of the plains and tundra, and the Dwarves naturally owned both their section of the Geofront and had their ancestral hos in Deephol. The land allotnt was strictly managed by Richard’s vast team of bureaucrats, and the inhabitants voted on how much of their taxes went toward paying down the cost of their allotnt. This system worked because even after the first Cataclysm orchestrated by the rogue Russian ister, no surviving Shalkarean chose to leave.
Comparatively, in her Fifth Vel, the freed r had their own system, which Gwen chose not to question because they ate one another. The actual result was beyond Human concepts of law and order, closer to a friendly yet cannibalistic Kowloon Walled City. Likewise, in the administration of Aristotle, she could only trust Lei-bup, for no Humans needed to worry about their city feeling a little peckish, and therefore, pick out a particularly irkso suburb to devour wholesale.
Arica, she felt, was sowhere in between.
For the Union to break free from the malaise of Technofeudalism. Sobody would have to break the system first. This first step, Gwen realised as she ditated in the Bunker’s depths, inferred an existential battle to the death for the nation’s power brokers.
Equality, to the born privileged, was oppression.
On an ontological level, the Manifest Destiny colonists who had carved out the Union with their Faith from the cold, dead fingers of the indigenous people of so-Arica will never abandon that badge of honour.
Ergo, the capital colonists will never allow their Serfs the opportunity to own their own hos. They will never allow an equitable form of social investnt. So long as they reigned, ritocracy will forever be clouded by fraternities, secret societies and corporate sponsorship, which is used to justify opportunity and cost.
For Gwen’s SFSC to provide sothing remotely more equitable was a slap to their face, a challenge to their way of life.
Her corporation was in the simplest sense, Un-Arican.
Unfortunately, she was fully invested now. She had given her speech fully aware that the Midterm Elections were about a year away. And though Congress was largely a puppet show of how many Towers could put their middle managers into place, democracy was a ritual that had to be observed.
For a nation so proud founded by Faith, rituals were quintessential. Afterall, they lived in a world where the Nazarene did indeed walk the earth, the dead do indeed co back to life, and creatures as old as ti itself do roam the Planes. The Arican continent was still vast and endless, full of mystery, both dark and bewildering. The cities of man were their Salem, while the Un-Arican world was the Devil’s Domain. The Union was therefore the flickering candle in the dark, and to cent this myth, the nation’s founders had told them that here was the land of the brave, ho of the free.
A aningful election was a necessary ritual to tell the Serfs that they lived in the most liberal Humanist society on earth. The individual will must be accounted, the people’s will must be made manifest. The show must go on.
And for Gwen, a global network of Humanity free from the scourge of Spectre absolutely ant she needed a stable, sane, and functional Union on her side.
And this was why she must visit the Sacred Peaks of Tollán.
“Lord Hawthowne,” she inquired of their second. “Still no response from Tenochtitlan?”
“Strangely, no, my Regent,” her loaned diplomat replied with a curt bow of his grey head. “It’s not as though they’re rebuking us. There’s simply nothing. We even have confirmation that our requests have been received. Alas…”
“Slylth?” Gwen turned to her original line of inquiry. “Your advice?”
“Quetzalcōatl’s an aloof one, for sure. He’s a Cloud Serpent, after all. Our Land God could be slumbering and thus insensible to your mortal channels of communication, or maybe he’s walking around in the lower realms as Ehecatl, seeding virgins with the future generation of Panther Warriors.”
“Ehecatl?”
“Quetzalcōatl’s human form,” Slylth clarified. “When you’re worshipped by humans for so long, you tend to get a little tender about your worshippers. Dhànthárian spent so long fighting the Dwarves that he’s perfectly at ho in their ho, doing their politely asked bidding, pretending he had wanted to do it all along. It’s kind of like that. Land Gods are prone to this sort of thing.”
Was Almudj also like this? Gwen wondered but for a mont, for she recalled the absolute lack of fucks Al had given while turning Kalinda’s World Tree into Uluru. In that particular case, it was Kalinda who had mistakenly anthropomorphised Almudj, much to her horror and bewildernt.
“So he goes around bars, picking up girls or?” Gwen thought she’d get clarification, in case she got hit on in a Tequila bar.
Slylth gave her a sly look. “Ehecatl is a God of Fertility.”
“Right, right,” Gwen coaxed her Dragon closer until he looked uncomfortable. “So—how do we call Ehecatl. Can we use Dragon Faceti?”
“You an… Wurunwa tairais?” Slylth’s throat perford an acrobatic feat that, to Gwen’s Ioun Stone, literally ant Dreamti.
“Yes, can we?”
The Red Dragon shook his head. “Not even Mother has that authority. Only Uncle Tryfanevius has that privilege.”
“Alright,” Gwen tapped the table, then drew a line from one imaginary place to another. “Let’s take a trip then. It’s about ti Tryfan paid so dividends for this whole Guardian schtick.”
Leaving Lorenzo and Hawthorne in charge of maintaining the new status quo on the West Coast, Gwen decided to take Slylth on a surprise tour of her recent landholds, firstly to check on the progress of her many duchies, and secondly to see if the reports were authentic. She asked Tao if he would also like to see the world as it really was, but her cousin was now far too involved in the East Coast “Scene” to extricate himself.
Leaving him two of her Shadow Mages, she readied herself for departure through the GeoFront.
For a personage of her stature, leaving the USA usually involved a whole host of paperwork. For the owner of the fourth largest Conglorate on the West Coast, however, she rely lodged a notice, then stepped through the Union co-staffed ISTC in the Tenderloin.
Her first stop was Cuzco.
Stepping out of the ISTC at the newly constructed Cuzco Geofront, she was pleased to see that the locals had taken to their new infrastructure with gusto. Built at the base of the Temple of the Moon, the Cuzco “Station” followed the local tradition of Geomancy frad around the philosophy of integration. This ant that, unlike the concrete and fabrication thods used in San Francisco, transmuted Ashlar Masonry was the principal construction style. This involved the Dwarven Artisans working with local stone masons to create boulders of imnse weight, which were then stacked in precise interlocking patterns. To Gwen’s eyes, the irregular shapes that ca naturally with the excavated stone gave the place a living naturalism that was starkly different from the sharp geotry of the Union’s premier low-way node.
Despite her casual wear, she was recognised by the bronze-skinned warrior-Mages the mont she exited the chamber, sending runners to summon the Priestesses of the Moon and to inform the junior Inti.
Gwen had no particular plans to stay, but she waited for her host while the Suyu bureaucrats did her paperwork. She politely blessed them with her autograph, though no one knew exactly what to do with Slylth.
Tica arrived about ten minutes later, apologising that Inti was out of the Qorikancha and surveying the Suyus.
The won exchanged hugs, and Slylth squeezed one in as well when Tica offered.
“Inti will probably tell you later as well, but the King is very grateful,” the future Queen-consort and matron of the Killa Kancha bowed formally once their private connection was affird. “We’ve secured our food shortages, and are now exporting our precious stones, Cores, and other coastal produce. Thanks to you, we have the full and conditional blessing of Mama Killa.”
“That’s good to hear,” Gwen felt at ease. “How are your people taking to the Dwarves? The Rat-kin?”
“Well enough, the bureaucrats of the Suyus prefer dealing with the Dwarven artisans, while the common folk prefer interacting with the Ukucha-kin,” Tica said as they ventured a little lower into an organic market that ford between the Temple above and the Geofront below. “Only the most educated of our workers are willing to venture into the low-way, though; they still believe that Deephol is Uku Pacha, the Underworld.”
“That’s… logically sound.” Gwan laughed. “Well, you can’t change minds in a matter of months, or even years. It’ll take a generational effort.”
“We’re adjusting the curriculum,” Tica smiled back. “Really. It’s a big world out there. Inti is right in saying that if we remain insular, the Sun knows what would happen when Amazonia invades.”
Gwen exhaled. It was so nice to deal with young Empires with rulers open to change.
“Well, that won’t happen without us knowing about it first,” Gwen replied with confidence. With the Dwarves and their slumbering Earth Dragon, and Arica by the coast, they not only had an early warning system, but they also had an evacuation system. Not everyone will be saved, but between shelter-in-place, ISTCs, and the Dyar Morkk, they would do everything physically feasible to save the people of Cuzco. “When you do plan to do drills?”
“There’s a bit of a bureaucratic snag surrounding that.” Tica picked out an enormous cocoa and showed her the seeds. Both won smiled warmly at the old farr while she stared starry-eyed at her visitors. Besides them, Slylth had attracted a group of children, and he was swinging about with them, hanging from his sleeves while bathed in adoration. “It's far too disruptive. We’re thinking of staggering it, maybe section by section of the city. Or by castes.”
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Cuzco wasn’t an enormous city; the Suyus still held most of the nation’s people, but it still had a million residents, plus seasonal, migratory workers and conscripted labourers.
“You know what’s best,” Gwen had nothing of particular substance to offer. “I’ll ask Strun to make sure that everyone coordinates as needed.”
After their tour of the market, Gwen and her Red Dragon returned to the ISTC, where they reaffird their private relationship as friends and companions with hugs.
“I shall depart for Arica,” she said. “Will you inform Ollie?”
“Let this be a surprise,” Tica laughed, then bowed with her procession of Maidens from the Temple of Mama Killa. “Til next ti, Regent.”
Arica, now that it was tad by the combined might of r, Dwarves, Rat-kin and Humans, was a paradise in the midst of construction. Originally, the shallow waters of the coast did not make for a good port—until Aristotle had shoved its miniature continental mass into the sandstone shelves below.
Then, when the Leviathan had made it inland, it created a natural harbour that would have taken Dwarven Engineers a year to excavate, condition, and compact. And when Aristotle had pulled itself out of the inlet, it had grounded down the volcanic stratum, then seeded the bed with the necessities of life.
If there was any possibility that a Leviathan was not a physical Sea God of fertility before, the evidence of what she now saw completely dispelled any doubt. Corals, fish, shellfish, oyster beds, kelp and seagrass fields smothered every nook and cranny where the Leviathan had passed.
Arica, in less than a year, had beco a bit of an alien bio.
From her heightened vantage at the hillside ISTC, she could see the island-sized sheets of kelp and seagrass being fard off the coast, ho to millions of r in makeshift cities of living fibre.
Closer to shore, the Dwarves had built shipyards and docklands, despite the fact that they loathed water. The latter, Gwen imagined, would have been eased by the fact that Lei-bup’s Water Priestesses could command the water to recede from the shore for short durations, allowing the Fabricator Engines to do their work, then rapidly retreat before the water ca crashing back.
Next to these docks were a few container tankers flying the flags of Nagaland, China and Singapore, with destinations up north, including Manzanillo, the sole xican port that remained open after the Union initiated its blockade. Together, these ships took up less than eight per cent of Arica’s present processing capacity—one that could be readily expanded, assuming enough labourers could be sent from Inti’s southern Suyu.
Past the Incan guards, the first Rat-kin that laid eyes upon her let out a shriek of abject horror, then fell to her knees in supplication. Gwen almost ran as she sprinted forward to pick her subject from the floor, only to alert the other Rat-kin “Expats”, who also fell to their knees and began to call for the blessing of the Pale Priestess.
This soon attracted the attention of the few r who were working the ISTC’s landscaping endeavours, and they too fell on their chitin shells and began to murmur the dark language of the Deep Ones, crying out “Iä! Iä! Iä!” in rapid succession.
Before she could calm anything, the news of her arrival had spread like wildfire, and soon, half the city was howling.
“Pale Priestess!”
“The Saviour!”
“Iä! Iä! Iä!— Iä! Iä! Iä!—”
An impromptu religious holiday broke out as her followers supplicated, threw flowers, and one particularly zealous Catfish-kin brought a basket of her freshly spawned eggs for their bewildered Pope to bless.
“Well?” Her Red Dragon was beside himself with mirth. “Are you going to?”
She wanted to, but she couldn’t.
Compared to her Master’s past self, she was a living spigot of Golden ad, but it was still capped at ten litres a day if she tried her best. The volu was tied, alas, to Sufina’s tree, and she had yet to attempt to tax herself in the creation of the life-altering elixir, nor did she wish to try. Besides, there was a non-zero chance soone might eat the Catfish’s eggs.
Thankfully, she was saved by the tily arrival of the newly founded city’s representatives.
Strun the piebald, who had teleported from the low-way to greet his Mistress.
Lei-bup, High Whip of the Great Shoal Forward, a truly monstrous bloat of a being slithing along on a multitude of tentacles.
And Ollie Edwards, Magister of the Shard, the baldest and most decorated Mage of his age.
Her dearest collection of misfits.
She allowed Strun to kiss her hand and sip a dew-drop of their bond-affirming elixir before her Legatus Legionis formally bowed and took his side behind her.
Lei-bup offered her the slist, most grotesque tentacle appendage from under the fold of his robes, which she took by the suction cups and perford a secretive secretion of Golden ad before her r-Priest slid behind her.
Ollie stared at her translucent hand with the grim expression of a veteran suffering from PTSD and shook it, suit and all, before falling into place beside her. As he passed, Gwen was reminded that not even Golden ad could cure the man’s baldness.
“Welco, Your Paleness,” Ollie chose a deliberate title to address her. “You’ve co at an opportune ti. The port, as you can see, is now functional. Just now, we’re receiving produce from Shalkar and China.”
“Will these ships return to their port of departure with Peruvian goods?”
“They will be travelling to Manzanillo as instructed.” Ollie's bald head reflected the glare from the South Arican Sun. “The Arican naval blockade does not prevent ships from travelling from the south. And besides…”
“Hue, hue, hue,” Lei-bup’s laugh was like ten thousand frogs croaking in unison. “Our ships are escorted by the Great Shoal Forward. None shall stop the glorious spread of our Pale Priestess and her SPAM.”
“You’re selling Arican SPAM, from South Arica, into xico?” Gwen could not help but be impressed.
“Just a small portion of the manifest.” Ollie nervously rubbed his do. Despite the lack of hair above, the man had managed to grow a glorious moustache. If he had been fatter, they might have been attacked by a speedy, blue talking hedgehog. “We’re getting a good exchange on agricultural products from Tenochititlan in True Silver and Mithril. High Whip Lei-bup insisted that we also spread the word of er… your Paleness.”
The cans with her likeness, Gwen noted in private, did indeed have that effect. Lei-bup had sohow communicated with Horl to create a line of SPAM in ornate, gold-thed cans with a photorealistic rendering of her likeness embossed on the side. Perhaps because of Faith, or perhaps the company simply had high QC for this line, it was reported to taste better. In so of the reports she received, there were also blasphemous reports of r praying to the can before consuming the “body of her Paleness”.
Was THIS why the Rectors under Quetzalcoatl refused to answer to her request for entry?
Friggin Lei-bup was trying to convert the xicans to the worship of the Pale Priestess via SPAM?
To avoid the sli trail, Slylth chose to hover.
It was ridiculous, but stranger things had happened.
“Well,” she sighed. The problem of not micromanaging her followers did indeed have its downfalls. “Let’s take a tour, shall we? I want to ask so questions, and see how the place is coming along…”
Gwen left Arica two days later than expected.
The Rat-kin, working far from ho, wanted to hear her sermon, which was literally just an inspirational corporate pep talk, while the r wanted her blessing in a more ritualistic sense. She also spent soti with the Sea Witches, who reported on the Fifth Vel’s developnt, and played with Aristotle.
The Levithan had allowed her to sit on the tip of a building-sized tentacle while it floated in the ocean, enjoying the vibes of having its soul-Mistress nearby, knowing in its child-like dozen hearts that it was not alone, and that it was connected to a Guardian Tree that held up the Pri Material.
After that, they had a SPAM festival where her Generals affird their allegiances while they held court inside Aristotle, filling the Leviathan’s upper carapace with Siren songs from rmaids and Witches.
Her next stop was Deephol.
Of all her domains, this was the most independent. It was a domain by self-imposed allegiance rather than by explicit control, as in Arica or Shalkar, and it showed. The Dwarves that saw her rely bowed their heads in respect as she and Slylth made their way into the Singularity, observing the restoration of the spherical city’s abandoned layers by the returning population of Dwarves from all over the Pri Material.
“About a million,” was the number that the Deepdowner Axehoff communicated as they walked its geotric avenues, riding on catapillar engines that followed the city’s three-dinsional tram systems.
Beside her, Hilda had long since ditched her Deepdowner suit. She was in Deephol now, and the old guard was almost entirely dead or converted by the Sinneslukare. As the new Spiritual Leader of her people, she had decided to take Deephol in a different direction from her insular Ancestors.
With her ochre-orand braids and a light-frad custom Golem-Klad, she stood almost as tall as Gwen as they trooped into the depths where Dhànthárian slumbered.
After a dozen checkpoints, a cog the size of a battle barge clunked open, teeth by agonising teeth, revealing the Singularity.
Gwen had only ever seen the Heart of Dwarven Faith once, when they formally recovered the city—and now that it was fully restored, repaired, and rebuilt, it was more impressive than ever.
The Singularity was, in effect, a Dyson Sphere in all but na. It powered the city’s every need while effectively serving as a limitless resource for the foreseeable future. Now, with Dhànthárian slumbering beside it, it was also far more stable, as any and all unstable fluctuations were directed toward the Dragon, who bathed in the mana bursts like a Capybara in a Yuzu-laden hot spring.
“Prideful Dhànthárian!” Slylth called out in Draconic as they entered. “How fare you this day?”
What appeared to be a stone wall opened one large eye with a slit taller than Gwen. “Good, nephew, how fares you and your mate?”
“Ah-ha—” Slylth scratched his head, caught flat-footed by his elder.
“Hahaha…” Dhànthárian looked satisfied. “Regent.”
“Dhànthárian,” Gwen curtsied.
“Why do you disturb my slumber?” the Earthen Dragon asked. “I had already done as you asked.”
“We’re looking to expand,” Gwen explained in her translated, High Draconian. “We need to communicate with Quetzalcoatl and may need an express path toward his domain. If so, we would like to have your blessing. Both in locating the space below Tenochititlan, and in your support on the Council.”
“And what shall be my recompense?” The Great Earthen Dragon demanded.
“I’ll tell my mother that you are very helpful,” Slylth said shalessly. “That you have been productive, and we should cherish your continued support. That she should be nicer to you when the council ets again.”
Dhànthárian knew the young Red Dragon was full of shit.
Gwen knew her young Red Dragon was full of crap.
But a simp was a simp because they simped, and sotis, there was simplicity in doing things the simple way.
“You will tell her that I have offered my regards, nephew,” Dhànthárian said after his enormous eyes made a whole rotation. “Regent. Tell your Dwarven Pathfinders that I will send out the Lizardn to guide them.”
When they left the chamber, Hilda slapped her thighs with lancholy. Studied the Runes on the ceiling, and sighed deeply. “By the ancestors, it's a blessing to have a good mother.”
Axehoff patted the orphaned Deepdowner on her back. “Nay, Lassie, I wouldn’t want to have the Sumr Queen as a mother-in-law, not even if the fate of my Clan required it.”
Slylth gave Gwen a smug look.
Gwen rolled her eyes, thanked her Red Dragon for the intervention, then asked her guides for a path back to the ISTC.
Her final stop was Shalkar, and by now, there was no more surprise to her visitations.
At the ISTC gate, Lulan, Richard, and Petra all awaited her as she stepped from the portal with Axehoff in tow, dressed in the uniforms of their respective stations.
At her express desire, the protocol did not begin with their officious titles, but personal monts of intimacy. She hugged Lulan, feeling her old friend squeezing her within an inch of ligant damage. Richard followed with Lea, followed by Petra, with kisses on both cheeks, after which they all exchanged formal handshakes for the Shalkar TRO’s front page.
“My Regent, we’ve been keeping this a surprise, but since you’re here, there’s no more hiding it,” Richard explained as they walked past rows of supplicating Rat-kin, curious Humans, and respectful Centaurs working in the Geofront. “You'd better hold onto your dress when we exit. I’ve asked the crew to make an impression.”
“Ho?” Gwen huffed at her cousin. “What did you guys complete?”
So the Tower is nearing completion. Gwen already suspected what her OG crew may want to deliver, but she allowed herself to remain ignorant and, therefore pleasantly surprised. As a leader and a friend, the performativity was a good, healthy way to ensure that everyone had their jollies, and that their relationship didn’t drift too far from family and friendship into governance.
Unlike the Geofronts in Cuzco and the Tenderlion, Shalkar’s Geofront was a city unto itself. Even taking an express barge, it took them almost two minutes of rapid ascent to leave behind the largest Dyar Morkk node in existence, exceeding even the Deephol Station to reach the surface.
Before she even reached the exit, the sunken plaza from which the Geofront was accessed was filled with Rat-kin throwing flower petals and lifting their children for her to see. Like a royal cavalcade, she waved at her people while her troop of mixed-race Militia parted the crowd with as much politeness as they could manage, spearheaded by grim-faced Centaurs with shock-Wands.
“Ready?” Richard straightened his navy uniform, a handso two-piece consisting of a double-breasted jacket with mithril buttons, his na tag, and matching sleeve buttons. The only thing her cousin missed was a stylised cap.
The platform cleared the sunken plaza and lifted into the zzanine, above which her World Tree seed to expand in autumn colours from horizon to horizon.
Her eyes followed the expanding branches until they reached the furthest horizon, then they grew transfixed.
“Is that?” Gwen felt her heart shudder. “My god…”
It was…
What the fuck…
The familiar shape.
The familiar arrowhead silouette.
That sky-grey, frosted tal hue designed to ld into the bone carapace of the Leviathan.
The subtle rise of the sloped sides that finished up top to form a narrowly visible bridge.
The flat bottom, with its massive hangar bay for the deploynt of Golems and the intake of stock.
The bristling, yet to be completed, manifolds that housed what looked like artillery-tier installations of Spellswords.
The four enormous Levitation Engines at the back, and the smaller engines at the fore, each aglow with mana exhaust.
Where it was not for the forked, parallel-prong of its bow and centre line—
Below her, an orchestra began to play.
A militant march of a kind, imperial, regal, and clearly borrowed from London Imperial’s procession during the jubilee, tyrannically swallowed the air, its heavy percussion and trombones matching the trono of the baritone Leivitation Engine.
“Richard…” Gwen’s mouth remained half-hung as she turned to her cousin and Major Domo. “Did… did we happen to hire any Magitechs by the na of Lucas?”
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