David J Wuto - Metaworld Chronicles: Vol.1

Metaworld
Chronicles

Volume 1

David J Wuto

2019 David Jian Wuto

All Rights Reserved

Art Commissioned From

https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/16811335

Sigil design by Lampshade

Cover Design by David Jian Wu

This novel is the cleaned, formatted and edited version of the web-serial located at Royal Road.

A special thanks to my impromptu editors online

ISBN: 9781096238614

Imprint: Independently published

To Jenny, for reading my terrible first drafts.

GWEN SONG AWOKE to the melody of Grande Valse blaring with the strength of an air siren.

Reflexively, she groped for her smartphone, making the familiar sliding gesture to unlock. Instead, her vague fingers encountered the strange sensation of physical buttons. A moment of frantic fumbling ensured, then a sound began to stream:

ABC News, September 21st, 2001: An ancient Red Dragon has destroyed a section of the London Metro, resulting in over two hundred dead and thousands injured, paralysing the city. Authorities have linked this latest incident to similar occurrences involving Magical Creatures carried out by the anti-tower cabal known as Spectre Magister Livingstone, Mayor of London, calls the latest terrorist attack a day of infamy

More terrorism , Gwen groaned wistfully. Finally she found the mute button.

Slowly, synapses dulled by Moet & Chandon ignited one by one.

Red Dragon?

Whats that, a new euphemism for WMDs?

Wait Her mind performed a double-take.

The date was correct. It was September twenty-first but the year appeared to be missing a decade and a half. It had been 2017 when she stumbled into bed, but the ABC had said 2001.

Regaining a measure of lucidity, she inspected the brick in her hand to confirm the date, only to be bemused by an alien device constructed of ceramic-seeming material, with a screen that looked nothing like back-lit LED.

The only clue that it may be a Nokia was the bloody ringtone.

She turned the device over.

No logo. No ports. No battery sliders.

This isnt her iPhone.

Her brain throbbed.

Could she have been roofied? In her office, at her very own corporate party? That would be absurd. Even if she had, there were security guards and staff who were sober enough to send her to a hospital. Concurrently, her joints were on fire. She was dizzy and light-headed, hungry and hollowed out. Additionally, the sickening sting of digestive acids lapped at her throat.

For now, she chose calm over panic.

She inspected her surroundings.

Firstly, she was sleeping in a single bed.

Secondly, she wasn't naked or anything. She wore her PJs, although, for some reason, her silk nightie had transformed into coarse cotton. A sloppy, cheap-looking duvet covered her body. The print was vaguely familiara horrid, half-faded floral design commonly used for IKEA curtains.

The bedroom felt claustrophobic; the ceiling low and oppressive.

Recognition dawned.

Isn't this her old apartment? From when she was a kid? Why was she in the bedroom of her adolescence? What had happened to her bayside home? Her French-windows?

The bedroom to which she now occupied had existed only in the distant past.

She had been in high school, living with her divorced father.

A lucid dream?" she muttered to herself.

Her voice!

It was youthful and sweet and without the abuse of all-nighters, scalding coffee, and copious amounts of alcohol.

She closed her eyes to think, but the memory of her last conscious hours was a scrambled mess of whites and yellows.

Slowly, in fragments, recollections came.

Here was her old home. Her original home. The apartment shed grown up in as a girl-child. Over yonder was the fold-out desk she had piled her clean laundry on. Next to the cabinet was the basket for her dirty laundry. To her right was her study desk, which her father sometimes used as a Mahjong table. She could even see her study guides.

But where she expected volumes on chemistry, physics and literature, she instead saw thick bound volumes with strange names.

Allenbergs Primer for Astral Theory?Otsu's Primer for Evokers?

Without warning, her head split.

"Ow!"

A jackhammer ripped through the interior of her skull. Memories flooded her brain, bloating its synapses so that she felt as though two fingers were pressed against her optic nerves. If anything, the sensation was akin to the time she had forgotten to take her quinine tablets in the Amazon and had malaria shitting on her brain for a week.

I have an aptitude test today.

A stray thought boomed across Gwen's consciousness.

No, you don't, Gwen dissuaded the voice in her head. You just had a staff party where you celebrated your consultancy's second anniversary. You drank and danced and forgot all about what champagne could do to a woman who was no longer in her twenties.

Unbidden, another thought solicited her stream of consciousness, accompanied by gut-wrenching anxiety. Her chest convulsed. She couldn't breathe.

Today is an important day.

I need to go to the Awakening Test.

Mother will be upset if I fail.

"Ugh!"

Gwen fought back the reflux threatening to escape her oesophagus. Jesus Christ , she cursed. Was she now suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? Dr Monroe never said anything about MPD disorders!

"Shut up!" she threatened the ceiling.

The voice ceased.

She ran a hand over her forehead and found it drenched with perspiration.

"Alright," she whispered to herself. Her mind remained sceptical even as her senses seemed helplessly invested in this new reality. Cynically, she pinched herself hard on the thighs until a welt appeared and her eyes moistened.

"Shit," Gwen affirmed her worst fears. Why is this happening?"

Frustrated, she rubbed her eyes. Her fingertips came away with crusty chunks of dried mucus, which she crushed between her fingers. Shit , had she been crying?

Click.

Her internal discourse was interrupted by an intruder. Instantly, her blood ran cold. She was trapped in a strange parallel world, who or what could be coming through that door?

The door opened.

It was her brother, Percy, who peeped in with a face still drugged with sleep.

Dad called and said you have to get up now, he informed her. It's your PMAE today.

She quietly regarded the boy, mindful of any buttons or cross-stitching that would reveal a skin-suit.

Percy was her brother, an athletically-inclined adolescent with olive skin and large luminous eyes. He had the thick lips of their mother, taking after the family's mixed heritage.

She pulled the cover over her collarbones and scowled at her brother. What kind of an idiot barges into the room of their teenage sister? She was hardly dressed for decency.

"Oi! Get out of here!" she yelled angry nothings even as Percy yawned disinterestedly.

With her brother gone, she pulled herself out of bed. A full-length mirror ran the length of her built-in-wardrobe. Now that she was up, she had to ensure that all the pieces of her body were present.

What she saw was the reflection of a dark-haired girl who was a little underfed but reasonably proportioned. She had the pale skin and high cheekbones of her mixed father but had inherited her mother's eyes. Her striking irises, afflicted with central heterochromia, possessed an amber core bound by a ring of dark emerald, hinting at her cosmopolitan origins.