"—This world has no boundaries!"
At No. 49 Gamma Street, inside the Xiangqi Society's clubhouse, Mike Jin Sephrano stood at the lectern in the meeting room. Bracing both hands on it, he swept a fierce, bright-eyed gaze over the packed crowd below. His deep voice rumbled through the small room like distant thunder:
"—People keep saying the old guard has taken everything worth having, that the Legends have carved up every rich stretch of the New World, and that we have no future!
"They couldn't be more wrong!
"Beyond the red sea lies a blue ocean, and beyond that ocean lies the sky! This world is in motion. Every particle in it moves without end. That is a law rooted in the very foundations of how the world works! Human society, however many dimensions removed from those particles, cannot escape that law either!
"Nothing in this world is truly fixed. Nothing stays the same forever! Steam rises, lava flows, stars turn, and society changes!
"This world breathes every second! The world around us grows with every passing moment! Can't you feel the surging Magic Tide? It roars in all our ears, telling us not to stop! Not to shrink back! We aren't the pampered children of great families. They can do nothing their entire lives and still have plenty of magical resources. We can't. All we have is the courage to forge ahead!"
Andrew Taylor sat in the audience—in the front row, no less, in one of the seats closest to Sephrano—listening with a solemn expression to the Xiangqi Society president's final speech before he stepped down as Augustus of the Blood Fellowship. Inside, though, Andrew had plenty he wanted to say about it.
Anyone who heard this impassioned speech without knowing the context might have thought they had stumbled