SLAP!
Elder Li's backhanded strike left a five-digit imprint on Lulan's cheek.
"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?" Lulan's uncle hissed. "Subtlety! Here is not our territory! We have no influence here in Shanghai. Why in the name of the Ancestor Jiang did you do that?"
"Uncle Luwei, Lulan was just—"
"Shut your mouth, Kusu!" Luwei turned to his disciple with a wave of anger that made the young man recoil.
"YOU LOST, and what's more, you lost a hundred or more of your inscribed daggers! How long did it take you to craft those blades?"
"Three years, Shifu." Her brother replied demurely. When dealing with their Sect Elders, respect was kinder than kinship.
"Well? Where are they?" Their uncle turned to Lulan. "You went to find Gwen Song, didn't you? Where are your brother's inscribed implements?"
Lulan touched a finger to her swelling cheek. A dangerous mist of pinkish oxide seemed to reach her eyes.
"Gwen Song says they are destroyed."
"And you believed her?"
"No."
Her uncle looked as though he was about to slap her again for good measure, but the chilling, murderous intent seep from Lulan's body dissuaded him from acting upon the impulse.
"I spoke to Second Brother earlier. Our Sect received a caution from the Tower! A Magister Wen made an official complaint. We received a caution! What do you think would happen if either of you were expelled or Blacklisted? You will never receive accreditation! You think another C-9 League University would take rejects from Fudan?"
Lulan bore the verbal beatdown without flinching. Her brother was less resilient.
"Stupid child! You don't know who Wen is, do you? Let me remind you: Magister Marie-Roslyn Wen of Henglong Laboratory is on no less than FOUR Advisory Boards, THREE Examination Councils, and is a regular member of the Accreditation Committee! I don't care if this 'Gwen' is an inbred DOG! She's Magister Wen's DOG! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? LULAN?!"
Lulan forced herself to nod even as the mana insider threatened to go haywire. Besides her, Elder Luwei had to take a breather before continuing.
"Who told you that Gwen Song was excommunicated from the Songs?"
"I heard from Pei," Lulan confessed, her voice hoarse with animosity.
Pei was the youngest son of the Patriarch, Dulian Li. Talented and fair of disposition, he was the Sect Master's favourite. There were already rumours that should Pei best his seniors when he came of age; he would become the inheriting disciple.
"It's true, Shifu," Kusu backed up his sister, stepping in front of her protectively in case his Master's hands itched again. Lulan, however, began to understand that they had been used. It was the unavoidable fate of orphans. Their Master, San—a homonym for "Third Uncle"—perished at the Undead Front a year ago. Since then, Lulan's talent and unique demeanour had made a dangerous combination that seriously agitated factional politics in the Huashan Sect.
"Pei? What does Pei have to do with this?"
"He knows Gwen Song's brother, Percy Song," Kusu spoke in his sister's stead.
Lulan remained mum, knowing that she brought out the worst in her elders. It was the chief reason she was scorned in the Sect despite her talent.
"Go on."
"An important distinction," Kusu continued. "Percy told Pei that his sister was excommunicated from the family and made to give up her inheriting heirloom—a Kirin-Stone amulet. Pei further confirmed that he had seen this amulet worn by her brother. We'd thought that since she was expelled from the inheriting line entirely..."
"Guo Song disinherited a girl with dual Void and Lighting? She's got a Mongolian Death Worm leashed to her Astral Body!" his Master muttered incredulously. "Why didn't the two of you think of that? Huh? Do you think someone without backing just casually goes farming for pets in the Khitani Desert? That's a Centaur-ruled Black Zone! Not even the Undead venture there. Maybe the Ash Bringer escorted her? But he's an active Military member... then again..."
Her uncle scanned his Sect's two prodigies, checking to see if they were trying to fool him.
"Fine. I'll verify with the Elder. So, who's idea was it?"
It was a rhetorical question.
Lulan, who stood demurely behind Kusu, blanched.
For her, it was a rare moment of passivity, driven by the notion that she'd ruined her brother's chances at advancing his position.
"That's it? You acted on a rumour?"
"We studied the girl for weeks," Kusu continued to defend her idiocy. "She never spoke nor visited her grandfather even once. She saw Director Song three to four times for shopping trips and luncheons. Her primary focus seems to be training. Even when we confronted her a few weeks ago, she fled from us. She's not from the PLA Faction, I guarantee it."
"Hmmph!" Their uncle eyed the siblings with dissatisfaction. Lulan could see her silence continued to rub him the wrong way, especially when their stupid ploy sullied the name of the Huashan Sect. Thanks to them, the Elder needed to return to the Mount and inform the other Elders.
"Master Uncle?"
Luwei gave Lulan a stern and dangerous look. "Leave me, and keep your sister out of trouble. Tend to your injuries and write a reflection letter for the Patriarch. Leave nothing out. Explicitly examine every single ability Gwen Song has demonstrated."
"Yes, Shifu!"
"And a Letter of Apology to Magister Wen as well. Lulan, you're forbidden from contacting Gwen Song again."
"No." The word was out before Lulan could stop herself.
"Good, I—" Luwei stopped. For a moment there, her Master Uncle looked like he'd gone senile.
By now, Lulan's irises had turned the colour of red wine. A part of her realised that she was staring at Kusu as though in a trance. It was the red mist, Lulan told herself. But her brain was clouded in fog. Their old Master had said that it had something to do with excessive Yang energy. As he had predicted, Huashan's Ironheart technique wasn't composed with the intent of being practised by female disciples. Without a doubt, their Song Dynasty founder would have rolled in his grave if he knew that a woman could successfully manifest the Iron Sword technique.
Lulan felt her mouth move. "They're going on excursion soon to the Lost Districts today. I can confront her there. I'll get back brother's daggers," she stated. "Give me another chance. I won't fail."
"Lulan!" Their uncle's patience was hanging by a straw. "Enough!"
Lulan met her uncle's eyes with an expression of insubordinate defiance.
Her brother despaired.
SLAP!
Kusu flinched.
Another five-fingered welt marred the other side of Lulan's face.
When their uncle spoke again, his voice had more fatigue than anger.
"By the Iron Sword, there better not be another incident. Also, make sure that your implements are either retrieved or destroyed. Do not let them steal our Sect's arts. If it happens, I will personally disinherit the both of you."
Lulan tasted the iron in her mouth.
"Yes! Shifu!" Kusu bowed. "I will negotiate with Gwen Song."
Their uncle left, having done all he was willing to do.
"Kusu..." Lulan looked toward her brother.
"Oh, Lulu..." Her brother shook his head. "How're your cheeks?"
[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]
Kusu Li did his best to clean up his sister's bruised face.
Far better than his sister, Kusu understood the awkward position they now occupied in the Sect. Their Master, San Li, was dead. Lulu had to be brought to heel, but if she could not—
He dare not think of the consequence.
Kusu remained in place, bowing until his uncle's sedan drove away.
These days, he could barely recall the cute little sister that had hung onto his neck and refused to yield an inch. Even as his eyes wandered toward her, he could sense the raging mana within her, giving her irises that distinct rusty accent that so many feared.
Once, Lulu's eyes had been clear crystal amber.
Once, her skin had been fragile porcelain, not the snail sheen that she now affected, with the metal-afflicted mana stretched taut over a trained figure without excess body fat. If one looked carefully, one caught bruises and abrasions from practice and adventure that floated beneath her porcelain exterior, but these minor blemishes only added to her peculiar aura.
Hopefully, this was the end of the incident for himself and his sister. Their father might be the second-hand man of the Patriarch, but he was more so a scholar than a warrior, influential because he held the purse-strings, not because he could wield the Iron Sword over the heads of his enemies.
When it came to factional conflicts, Luming Li would not stand on the side of his children.
As for the Iron Sword of Huashan…
Kusu reached out with one hand to catch his sister's affirmation. Even as their fingers touched, he noted with shame that Lulu's hands were not like that of a girl's. She had the calloused palms of a swordswoman.
"Don't worry, I'll protect you," Kusu said to his sister, wondering if that was true. Who's protecting who? Kusu mused. Could he trust Pei to abide by his promise?
Then, abruptly, his fingers grasped air—where he had expected Lulan to meet his hand, there was only absence.
"Lulan?" Kusu looked up, expecting to find an unhappy sister.
The girl was gone. She had Misty Stepped away into the aether.
"Wocao."
Ten thousand llamas rode across the terrain of Kusu's muddy mindscape, farting as they sang.
[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]
Friday.
Excursion Day.
Gwen's Economic and Management essays were done and dusted with complete confidence, aiming for distinctions, meaning she was free to enjoy the lull in her studies.
The "Field Trip", as it was announced, would take up to three days, from Friday to Sunday, pending on the students' performance.
As expected, Gwen was joined by a jubilant Mayuree, an indifferent Kitty, and finally, a tired-looking Richard who likewise saw the excursion as a big break.
She was also happy because the Lulan situation was done and dusted. While pumping two cubes full of the tenebrous energy of extinction, Gwen had told Magister Wen of her troubles. Petra's Master told her she would put a word in with the Tower, which should be the end of it.
Confident in the Magister's promise, Gwen turned her attention to the excursion.
She took stock of her Adventuring Gear:
One pair of leggy double-lace Boots of Flying.
One civilian-class Chameleon Cloak—stowed.
One pair of tactical underwear from dad.
One Ring of Evasion.
And she had her usual passive items, such as her Ioun Stones and Gunther's Contingency Ring. She furthermore possessed in her Storage Ring a Vitae Fruit and Petra's gift of Tier 8 Regeneration.
Six healing injectors.
Six mana injectors.
Her problem now with Mana potions was that the mundane variety restored less than half of her mana, while the 'greater' variety was almost ten times the price, at nearly 60 HDMs. Possessing virtually no alchemical skills or talents, she was prone to potion fatigue on her by the bottle, meaning she could get three-quarters of her mana per day back, once.
Comparatively, their real "MVP" Kitty was an all-rounder, requiring virtually nothing to supplement her enviable Spell List of everything from Haste to Fly, Frost Armour to Blizzard. Unlike Gwen in her button-tab blouse and grey-blue' skort', the pixie-like Mage was perfectly prim in her shorts and blouse.
Richard, meanwhile, wore jeans, a lumber jack's flannel, combat boots and white inners. He had also taken to acquiring a beard after Gwen mentioned just how much manlier Jun looked than Morye with his circular beard, though her cousin's five-o-clock shadow made him more thuggish than handsome.
Mayuree, finally, was decked out in Fu-er-dai splendour.
Two enchanted Rings on each hand.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
An Amulet of Health at her throat.
A white, inscribed knee-length dress that repelled dirt, dust and elements effects, paired with Boots of Flying that, according to her smug boast, was Water-Walking as well. The Diviner also showed off no less than three Combat Wands: A Wand of Magic Missile, a Wand of Scorching Ray, and a Wand of Stone Shape, each with ten charges.
"Are we anticipating something?" Gwen asked the Diviner. There must be a reason why Mayuree was equipped to clear out a Hobs' Den.
"Who knows?" Mayuree shrugged mysteriously. "It's good to be prepared, you know?"
"Can I get a heads up?"
"I'd rather not."
"Alright." Gwen made a mental note to tail her Diviner closely. "How are we getting there?"
Their answer came in the form of an anti-climatic, rented municipal bus.
There were about forty students on the bus to the first District - an area once known as Chonggu-Zhen, meaning 'Hamlet of the Clan Chong-Gu." But both Clan and name were lost to the shifting sands of Dynasty and epoch until all that remained was a misnomer for the 'model' city's official designation—District-35.
As the bus rolled out, Gwen realised shamefully that this was the farthest she had ventured from Shanghai's CBD since arriving some half a year ago. There was so much to see, but she had done none of it. It was the equivalent of an expatriate in New York never going past Queens or a Sydney-sider having never gone beyond the Shire.
As the superstructures of Shanghai's central districts fell away, the roadsides began to transform. The concrete city mortared in steel and glass began to shift into brick and tin until finally, only stunted apartments with blasted windows for eyes and busted doors for teeth zoomed past the ring road.
"Reconstruction Zones," someone on the bus said helpfully. "Mao, they're filthy."
After three-quarters of an hour, the Third Orbital Ring reached its farthest boundary. Suddenly, the landscape changed again.
The roads grew straighter; power poles began to make a regular appearance, and trees made their presence known once again. In the distance, they could now see District-35 and its megastructure looming overhead, coming closer as their bus hurtled down the highway.
Coming closer, Gwen could see that the District-Zones were just like her memory of the infamous Kowloon Walled City. Behind a concrete barrier four meters high, the stacked rectangular blocks appeared packed back to back, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. In a fashion unique to Asian culture, laundry, not architecture, dominated the scene. An endless array of laundry kilometres long and forty stories high covered every conceivable space on the building's exterior, giving the place the appearance of a pirate-fort made from stilts and canvas rather than rebar-reinforced concrete.
The bus pulled up at the gate, where a PLA trooper hailed the driver and examined their clearance before opening the gate. The massive concrete barriers were like the walls of a dam, opening with agonising slowness as the students waited silently in the bus.
"I can see a lady's brasserie from here," someone remarked jovially, pointing upward toward a window choked full of laundry. "Impressive size."
The crowd burst into laughter, dispelling the nervousness of entering a world where NoMs were the norm.
Soon, the bus moved into the courtyard following their guide, where the driver told the students to disembark.
After so much time in Fudan, Gwen felt as though she'd stepped into another country.
One by one, the student Mages emerged into the lazy heat of the afternoon with her companions. As soon as she disembarked, Gwen became aware that she was being watched; that is, she was being attended by an endless multitude of curious, prying eyes.
The entire District had turned out to watch the Fudan Mages!
There were faces in every window, hanging from every winter garden, gawking from every rooftop, nook and cranny. Women, children, grannies and lasses all looked upon the rare visitors below with gleaming eyes full of wonder and worship!
University Mages! They must be telling one another. The Mages are here! Not just any student Mages either—but sorcerers and sorceresses from Fudan! Mages who would one day stand at the front, protecting their lives and the lives of those from the Hive city selected for Conscription! Mages, whose effort and favour meant their loved ones lived or died, survived or perished!
That's all thanks to the propaganda, Gwen thought sadly. The citizens likely never knew anything else. A necessary achievement of any successful regime is to create orthodoxy—for orthodoxy removes any need to think and question what was self-evidently the norm. In both her worlds, new and old, China never lacked indoctrination.
"DISTRICT 35 WELCOMES OUR DELEGATION FROM FUDAN!"
A sudden burst of symphonic propaganda almost took Gwen off her feet.
She had to suppress a choking bout of laughter as the absurd sight of a giant red banner unfurled in Chinese from the rooftop that read:
'DISTRICT 35 WELCOMES SAVIOUR MAGES'
While another on the adjacent building read:
'UPHOLD IDEOLOGY OF SOCIALISM
MAN AND MAGE HAND IN HAND.'
Jesus Christ, Gwen scoffed. Do they think it was that easy—
Then the children came.
GOOD-GOD! Gwen would have screamed were it not for the need to maintain decorum. Children, cute little children, were rushing out, dressed in red, to bring the Mages wreaths—handmade, origami flower wreaths!!!
The kids streamed past Ma and the Administrator. Little bodies surrounded the students three to a caster and began bestowing upon them 'handmade' presents.
"Miss, you so pretty!"
"Oh Miss, you so tall!"
"You must be important, Miss!"
Her prideful heart melted as the children's praise stroked her ego like a cat.
The same story was being told everywhere, and the Mages from Fudan grew instantly drunk on the praises of little boys and girls with their innocent, worshipful eyes.
The children—Gwen's cynicism melted away. The children were too adorable!
Gwen couldn't help but pick one up, scooping the child expertly until she held the little girl in her arms. With an adorable tilt of her hand, the girl placed the red and gold wreath around Gwen's head.
A dozen little boys and girls had Richard dead to rights and tried to overpower him with handicraft. Mayuree, meanwhile, had entered nirvana, squealing and laughing uncontrollably. Kitty was the best of them. She ignored the first and engaged an aura of rime which informed the kids not to push their luck. After the first left dejectedly, the rest avoided the Ice Mage and congregated around Gwen and the others.
Amid her euphoria, Gwen looked past the crowd and saw Professor James Ma standing with the Administrator from earlier, smiling conspiratorially.
What an absurd display! Gwen was not sure whether to laugh or cry. What the hell is this? Is this what she had geared up? The kids were too much! Gods! She felt as though she was overdosing on oxytocin. The little girls were beyond delightful! Oh! Mayuree's little one was a cutie as well! Arrrrgh! Richard had three hugging him at once! Beware of jealousy! For it is the green-eyed monster—
"MAGES! WELCOME!"
Finally, the man next to Ma began to speak.
"I am Yuhan Lai, Secretariat of District 35. I welcome you to our humble abode."
Collectively, the Mages bowed.
It was an impressive display, and the crowd ascended to a new level of fiery participation.
"I hope that you haven't had lunch yet! Because you will now meet your hosts and enjoy a bountiful meal cooked by the matriarch of the family!" Lai declared.
The children took Gwen by the hand and began to lead her away.
Gwen looked toward Richard alarmingly, but Mayuree came between them.
"It's safe," her Diviner companion assured her. "Enjoy the lunch. A little breeze told me that the excitement is to come in another District."
The assurance was enough to affirm Gwen's resolve, and she allowed herself to be led away.
As it turned out, there was a perfect reason why the students were separated, and it had nothing to do with trying to separate party members.
It was because their NoM host's apartments could house precisely ONE Mage and the host family.
Gwen sat at the head of a table usually set for two adults, two children, and a toddler. The room she now occupied was stacked from floor to ceiling with versatile vertical space-savers. Fold-out beds, fold-out chairs. Fold-out cupboards. Fold-out everything. The entire habitat block measured four meters wide and five-odd long, forming a space for five people—three children, one grandparent, and a mother in her early thirties.
"Please, please make yourself comfortable, Miss Mage!" The woman, to Gwen's eyes, was quite beautiful in a homely sort of way, pleaded for her to be at ease in the cramped space of their abode. She was a recent mother, for she had that soft and feminine allure to her eyes, as well as a lingering scent of breast milk.
"Please, call me Gwen," Gwen insisted. "What's your name?"
"My name is Bai-Lian, Mistress," the woman replied. "I am delighted to be of service."
"Thank you for the luncheon, Bailian," Gwen replied kindly.
"Oh no, it's thanks to your presence that we are getting extra rations. Please help yourself." The woman bowed again needlessly.
"Big sister, please partake in this tea!"
The kids must have been touted, Gwen felt- because the six-year-old girl was expertly pouring out Jasmine tea for her into a cup, then presenting it to her with both hands.
"Thank you." Gwen took the cup carefully, terrified of spilling the tea on the little one.
"Please try these dates!" Another little girl presented her with a bowl of honeyed dates.
"Thank you!" Gwen was now fully occupied.
The mother left, then returned successively, bringing in a banquet of dishes until the table was laden with food. It was all mundane, household fair, but they looked delectable.
Egg with chives.
Braised Pork.
Steamed garlic bokchoi.
Eggplant and Mince.
Ginger and shallot fish in soy sauce.
Gwen expertly worked her chopstick, portioning the food and delivering it into the bowls of the children whose eyes were gleaming with such longing that Gwen forgot about her insatiable appetite. Bailian refused to dine with them but made no move to stop Gwen from giving her portion to the children.
She spent the next half an hour conversing with the single mother, but Bailian's answers grew vague once Gwen asked about her husband.
"He was Conscripted two years ago—" The woman put on a wane smile that didn't touch her eyes, then was silent.
Oh shit. Gwen realised she stepped on a Warding Glyph. It was no business of hers that this woman had a babe not yet two years old.
"Do you work?" Gwen asked.
Bailian nodded.
"I clean people's apartments and cook for them."
Gwen asked her how she was finding life, and Bai told her that she wished one of her three children could be a Mage. She joined with another young man because his great-grandfather had been a Fire Evoker.
The little girls looked upon Gwen with eyes that she dared not meet. She placed a hand on their heads and felt the softness of their hair, brushing the silky curls passing through her fingers.
Mages, Bailian said. She wished her children were Mages.
Gwen thought of Sydney. She thought of the battle there—the dead Mages' bodies splayed across the streets, dragged away by the Mermen, eaten alive by impatient enemies too hungry to wait. She thought of Instructor Chen's maniacal glint as he laughed and laughed while the juniors vomited around him.
Was life so miserable here?
The grass was greener on the other side, but there in the greener bushes—the lions laid in wait.
[https://imgur.com/xJGXTPm.jpg]
Nephres Zalaam could scarcely believe her luck.
Gwen. Fucking. Song.
The report in her hand shivered, the mute paper quivering as though alive.
How was such an occurrence possible? Nephres' mind reeled with disbelief, unsure if this was boon or bane.
According to reports from Oceania, the culprit disrupting her Mistress' plans had disappeared after the junior Ravenport perished without rhyme or reason in Sydney. "Edgar" had gone to perform the Mistress' request, then the next thing they knew, Edmund Moore Ravenport was dead as a dodo. It was supposed to be a low-risk Mission. The Ravenport's young Master was a Dust Magus, and the Shield Station was full of Frontier Abjurers, for God's sake. AND he had an entire troop of Raven Guards with him! Four Senior Mages and two Magus, all gone.
But that's all in the past now—spilt milk and all that.
As the nurse-in-residence for Young Lord Ravenport, her dereliction in duty meant she had to flee the house immediately. For mercenaries like herself, failure held worse fates than death, for the wrath of a psychopathic Lord like Mycroft Ravenport belied the common imagination.
Another reason for Nephres' escape was that she had decided that her loyalty was first to her Mistress, then to the organisation, then to the family she once served.
Still—Gwen Song.
Nephres bit her lower lips, her eyes wandering back to the task at hand.
She was in Shanghai to pick up a supply of magically gifted youths to bring back to the Outlands—a word the Cabal preferred to the nomenclature of "Wildlands". After all, they were the Others, and it only made sense that they weren't Demi-humans but men and women who chose to live outside the ordinary human world. Besides, Outlands rolled off the tongue better.
In all honesty, as a city girl, she found the whole ordeal pretty funny. A Cabal of Rogue Mages squabbling over power, dabbling in fucking public relations of all things. Who cared what the Mageocracy called them? That the Towers would accept them with open arms because of alliteration? Idiots.
Her gaze once more fell upon the report.
Her local sweetmeat, Boss Yi, had told her to lay low for a few days.
"Got Elites coming through from Fudan. Find the deepest hole you can and bury yourself in for the next week," he told her. "Maybe stay in bed, eh? We can make a child for sure. You feeling up to the task?"
"Go fuck yourself," she told him.
"Ha ha ha." Yi had fallen about cackling like an idiot, withdrawing from the silhouette of her sweat-soaked figure, smelling foully of sex. "I do love you so, you little minx."
"You expect me to believe that, do you?"
Yi toked on a cigarette as he wiped himself, then materialised a new set of clean clothes.
"Look, stay safe these few days, alright? Stay out of trouble. Keep your crew below and out of sight."
Nephres didn't dislike Boss Yi, but she wasn't an owned woman. Far from it, Nephres rather fancied the boss as her seasonal fling. A spot of both business and pleasure.
Love? To bear the man's child? Those thoughts never crossed her mind, not before and not now.
Gwen. Fucking. Song.
She still could not believe that the little bitch, after six months off the map, would fall into her lap like God's gift from the blue yonder.
What's more, she knew it wasn't a trap. It was serendipity that she had spotted the girl at all. Out of curiosity, Nephres had asked her contacts to generate a list of the 'Fudan Elites' visiting the Districts if one of them ended up causing trouble for their operations. As the list of Dossiers passed through her hands, she had paused at a striking face looking out from the page.
"You're shitting me!" she had clambered from Xi's chest. "Is this fate or what?"
Again, she quickly scanned the spartan dossier.
It was a stolen compilation thrifted from the University's registry of the candidates' family history.
Guo Song. MSS Committee Chair.
Klavdiya Song. Director 2nd PLA Experimental Hospital.
Hai Song. Unknown.
Helena Huang - Unknown.
So the girl was a Power Progeny, Nephres furrowed her perfectly tapered brows. That would explain a few things, but not why she was associated with the Sydney Tower and the folks at the very top. How were they even connected? How could they begin to know each other? The British Mageocracy and the PLA were at odds, were they not? The grandfather could be troublesome, but that was a problem for Boss Yi, not herself.
There was one addendum that was cause for concern.
Jun Song - The Ash Bringer.
Even as a foreign agent, Nephres had heard of the Hero of the Northern Front. The man was a walking engine of destruction, and if he should find out someone had taken his niece…
Poor Yi, Nephres chuckled to herself. She tried to imagine his face when The Ash Bringer came knocking.
Her eyes teared up as her slow chuckle escalated into rip-roaring, belly-aching laughter.
Holy shit! If she weren't going to be on a cargo ship a hundred miles away, she would've loved nothing else than to watch the God damned Ash Bringer of all people ripping the District apart! What would be the look on Yi's face then! What kind of expression would he make? What would the man confess as his body transformed into necrotic ash, inch by inch?
Nephres turned over the file.
There were some loose annotations on the Mages' talents.
Void and Lighting!
BINGO.
That was Gwen Song, alright. There's no mistaking a talent so rare.
Before returning to the Outlands, her Mistress said that the girl was instrumental to the Black Sun's collapse at the zenith of its success. Likewise, her connection to Gunther Shultz and the Scarlet Sorceress made her an invaluable hostage. Had the Cabal at Spectre not miscalculated the anger of a Land God, Sydney would now me a Mermen nest.
Unhappily, Nephres wasn't privy to more details, but she knew one thing for sure.
If she could get her hands on Gwen Song, then her stint in the shit holes of South Asia was over.
Whether as an offering to her Mistress or as a gift to another member of the Cabal, or even to Edmund's father...
The ascension of Nephres Zalaam was at hand.