Other series by Macronomicon

The Stitched Worlds
Apocalypse: Generic System
Apocalypse: Fairy System
Apocalypse: Dungeon System
Apocalypse: Quest System

Contents

Chapter 1: Calvin the Almighty

Chapter 2: The Kindness of Strangers

Chapter 3: 2 Years Later

Chapter 4: On a Cosmic Scale

Chapter 5: Listen to Your Elders

Chapter 6: Obligatory Flashback

Chapter 7: Dangers of Fishing

Chapter 8: Risky Rewards

Chapter 9: Mass Splitting

Chapter 10: The Raid

Chapter 11: Dreams

Chapter 12: Chained Spirit

Chapter 13: Friendly Neighborhood Cannibals

Chapter 14: How to Win a Pissing Contest

Chapter 15: How to Win a Race

Chapter 16: Arson and Titty Twisters

Chapter 17: Love Potion Number NEIN!

Chapter 18: Old Lady Killer

Chapter 19: Hunting Day

Chapter 20: From Bad to Worse

Chapter 21: The Thing in the Cell

Chapter 22: More in the Brochure

Chapter 23: Emergency Exit

Chapter 24: Tight Holes

Chapter 25: Now I Gotta Kill This Guy

Chapter 26: Captain Gadsint

Chapter 27: Leeroy Jenkins!

Chapter 28: Catfight Averted

Chapter 29: Guarplay

Chapter 30: Princess Sandwich

Chapter 31: God Sent

Chapter 32: Stocking Up

Chapter 33: You’re in the Army Now

Chapter 34: Make Me a Sammich

Chapter 35: On the Wall

Chapter 36: Rescue Plans and Women of Negotiable Virtue

Chapter 37: The Second Wave

Chapter 38: Terminate

Chapter 39: Great, More Princesses

Chapter 40: You Jinxed It

Chapter 41: Your Princess Is in Another Castle

Chapter 42: Just My Type

Chapter 43: Promises

Chapter 44: Maximum Capacity

Chapter 45: Recovery

Chapter 46: Knick-Knack

Chapter 47: Paddywack

Chapter 48: Classic Party Composition

Chapter 49: Give the Dog a Bone

Chapter 50: Is This Hell?

Chapter 1: Calvin the Almighty

Calvin the Almighty cackled madly as his troops surrounded the hapless civilians, whose backs were pressed against the deadly river. A few tried to swim across, but they were torn from their feet and swiftly plunged into the white rapids, never to be seen again.

“You fools! Your flesh will be fuel for my army, your bones built into cages to house your next of kin until they, too, are consumed! Nothing will remain to say that your people ever existed at all!”

Cal broke into another laugh as victory loomed near.

This was a great day for his army of darkness. The first step of many toward conquering the land as far as the eye could see. And once he had his way, he would build his utopia atop the ashes, creating the ideal land, where upstanding citizens could eat crim cookies before bedtime, and stupid girls weren’t allowed—only big-boobied ones who liked him a lot.

Cal’s army encroached, pressing closer to the cowering mass of flesh…

“Calvin!” His sister’s shout physically yanked him to his feet, reflexively wiping the dirt off the knees of his Sunday best.

“Yeah?” Cal shouted, orienting on the voice echoing through the shade-drenched woods.

“Are you playing with ants again!?” The voice came from the west, toward the village.

Cal glanced down at the line of ants attacking the beetles he’d diverted a little stream around with a stick.

“No!”

“Karen says to get back to the village! It’s our Breaking-day, dolt!”

Breaking-day, when all of Cal’s careful plotting would come to fruition. In the country of Gadvera, a child took a major step toward becoming an adult on their Breaking-day, when they would experience their first Break.

The Break happened when a person experienced too much Warp at once, causing them to get sick with a fever. Warp was released when a living thing died, flowing into the air.

When Cal woke up tomorrow morning, he would experience one day where both his body and mind would react and grow exactly the way he wanted it to. Peasants typically used that day to expedite apprenticeships, and Cal knew Karen intended to force him to learn swordplay the entire day, so he could ‘protect Jinnei’.

The girl needs a little less protecting, if you ask me.

Cal had other ideas. He was going to learn magic. Those who could control the Bent to alter reality at their whim were Cal’s heroes, regardless of whether they were street magicians or wizened old men in towering libraries.

Karen said the magic of Surrak, the port city down the road where they went to sell wool each spring, was vile heresy. Which he found odd, because they were citizens of Gadvera, and nobody else he’d spoken to seemed to have that opinion. In any case, Karen hadn’t offered him an alternative, so he was going to take whatever he could get.

“Now!” Jinnei’s scream echoed through the woods. By all the gods, that girl is loud.

“Coming!” Cal said, scrunching up his face and sticking out his tongue as he picked up the basket of berries and mushrooms for the party.

“And don’t make that face!”

Cal started, looking around the woods. There was no actual sign of Jinnei. She must still be at least a couple hundred feet out and blocked by massive trees.

He shivered. “The enemy has eyes everywhere,” he muttered to himself before hustling to the village, his calloused feet picking their way through the woods.

When he finally got to the treeline, the raven-haired girl with the farmer’s tan was dressed in woolen Gadveran peasant garb, her birth mother’s silver necklace tucked under her shirt, with only the chain visible. She was waiting for him, hands on her hips and an angry look in her eye. She was about two inches taller than Cal, too—a result of getting her growth spurt first—and refusing to give the lead back.

I swear, one day I will tower over you, wretch.

They’d known each other since they were born, and Cal always thought it was strange how he, Karen, and Jinnei all looked different than everyone else in the village, with their strangely sun-intolerant skin and pale eyes. Karen got evasive whenever he asked, Jinnei had no idea, and the other villagers didn’t seem to care.

Cal’s eyes flickered down to her budding breasts, and back up to her face. Damnation!

“What took you so long to gather berries?” she asked. Maybe she hadn’t noticed his slip.

“What’s taking you so long to fill out an A cu—“ Cal’s words were interrupted by a slap.

My advantage: her rage. Her advantage: my testicles. Incoming assault. Feral, but experienced.

Cal ducked under her right hand and managed to ward off the left swing with his forearm, then Jinnei looped her hand around the back of his neck and got him in a clinch, driving the wind out of his lungs with a gentle knee to the ribcage.

If it hadn’t been gentle, she probably would’ve broken something.

Cal staggered back, stooped over and holding up a hand in surrender while his left hand clutched his ribs.

“I give,” he said. “Training with Karen was always more your thing than mine.”

“You’ve got the speed for it,” she said, picking up his basket. “If not the personality.”

“And she wants me to protect you.” Cal groaned as he straightened up. That was going to bruise tomorrow, no doubt about it.

Cal and Jinnei scoffed as they headed back to the little sheepherding village of Deinos.

***

“…and with this sacrifice, let the Warp fill these youngsters with the quickness of limb, sharpness of eye, and the iron will that they need to find success in their choice of professions. Let the Break be gentle and fair. Let these children become fine Men and Women…”

The village elder’s voice was causing Cal’s eyes to start to roll back in his head, but it seemed like this was the end of the speech. Maybe they could get on with the feast now.

“…Men and Women who fulfill their duties to community and family by…” the Elder continued, droning on and on.

Oh gods, just kill the griks and have done with it. Cal was fairly sure the rest of the adults in the village were thinking the same thing. Probably. Cal wasn’t good at reading expressions, and was often mocked for taking people too literally.

The village elder was chanting sonorously on a raised altar with no less than a dozen griks and youngsters, surrounded by anyone in the village over the age of twelve. Children weren’t allowed to attend the Breaking because their young bodies had a chance of succumbing to the fever, so they were rounded up under the watchful eye of a few adults.

Every Breaking Cal had ever been to had always been after the griks were killed, when they threw them on the grills and had a feast. He’d had no idea the torture each generation of older kids had to go through at their first Breaking.

Cal glanced to his right and saw Harram nodding off, the large, dark-skinned boy just as bored as he was. Beyond him was Jinnei, holding up admirably well, and Persei, a slender brown girl with a wide nose and gentle mannerisms.

To his left was Baroke, a rather oversized Gadveran boy with a wide jaw, thick neck, and placid eyes.

The selfish oaf! How dare he not share the secret to growing so freakishly large? Cal groused internally. He carefully kept his face neutral, since it wasn’t like he’d actually hogged the growth…and the boy could probably punch a hole through him.

Beyond Baroke was a slender, muscular boy named Kort, who had defensive scars winding up his arms from where he’d enthusiastically taken lessons from Karen.

More power to him, I guess. Cal was not a fan of pain. Or losing. And training with Karen guaranteed plenty of both. Not that his distaste stopped her from forcing him to attend.

“Begin the ceremony!”

Yes!

Three of the bigger villagers stepped up: Ghol the blacksmith, Endras the farmer down the road, and Kahm the carpenter. These dark-skinned men hefted large wooden hammers with a single iron spike on them, driving the spikes through the grik three at a time.

Grik were large, insectoid, eight-legged monsters about the size of a dog. They were herbivores, docile, and stupid, and they tasted great roasted over a fire and dipped in butter.

They died with a squeal, releasing their Warp into the atmosphere, where it soaked into everyone present, a subtle pressure in the air that was more implied than felt.

For the adults, this much Warp in the air would do nothing to them, but for the uninitiated, like Cal and the others, it would force their body to adapt, building a reserve of Bent as it struggled to process the poisonous substance.

“So mote it be,” the elder said as the last grik was perforated. “And now a moment of silence for their sacrifice, and contemplation for our youth’s future.”

Everyone bowed their head, giving quiet thanks to the stupid bugs for their sacrifice—which they probably had no concept of—and thinking wholesome thoughts about what they wanted to do when they grew up.

Greatest spellslinger in all the land would be an acceptable start, I think.

The village elder reached up to his embroidered cap and spun it around.

“All right, everyone, I got my ceremonial hat on backwards. It’s time to fuckin’ party!” he shouted, throwing his gnarled hands in the air, rousing the cheers of the rest of the village, who got to work dismembering the griks and getting them ready to boil.

The rest of the night was par for the course. Cal had never experienced the Breaking party from the Table of Honor, but it turned out to be a lot less interesting than he’d been led to believe.

It was less being congratulated, encouraged, and fed, and more being interrogated by nosy neighbors.

“So, what do you think you’ll be studying tomorrow?” Marshine, a dumpy, well-meaning older woman, asked him as she refilled his wine.

“Oh, I…” Cal glanced over at Karen. The two-meter-tall shepherd with brilliant golden hair and a frame that supported an ungodly amount of muscle eyed him suspiciously. “I’m going to learn swordsmanship from Karen.”

“Oh, I suppose you’ll be quite the deadly weapon by the end of the day, then,” she said with a smile, nudging him with her soft hip before moving on to the next person’s cup.

Was that sarcasm? Cal couldn’t tell. Eh, not important, he thought, bringing the sheep horn cup to his lips and taking a hearty swig.

The conversation continued, with Cal deflecting as best he could, while the boys of the village surrounded Jinnei, congratulating her on her Breaking-day and asking her what she planned on doing with the rest of her life.

Jinnei was technically exotic and lovely—although Cal didn’t see it—and after twelve years living among the villagers of Deinos, she was still the center of attention wherever she went.

She caught his eyes.

Help me, she mouthed at him.

Cal smiled and waved. Serves her right for getting all the attention. Not a single person of Cal’s age had expressed an interest in him. Probably. It was a little hard to compete with the lumbering titan seated to his left.

His sister shot him an angry look between people pestering her, and then pointedly ignored him for the rest of the night. In the meantime, with little else to do, Cal continued to nurse his wine, getting deeper and deeper in his cup.

Can’t wait for tomorrow, he thought as the world started to spin, and everything got several times funnier than it had been just an hour ago. He was actually starting to enjoy the village elder’s jokes.

“And the hunter asks the wise man from the top of the cliff, ‘Now what?’”

“Aaahahahaha!” Cal’s plate nearly flipped over as he slammed his cup down on the edge, spilling a bit on Baroke’s elbow.

“Ah, sorry Baroke, you…ummm?” Baroke was face-first in his plate of grik shells. Cal leaned forward and glanced to either side, noticing that not a single one of the adolescents were still awake. They were, to a person, face down on the table, the feast continuing on without them.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that…

Cal’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he tried to support himself with his cup hand, succeeding only in spilling wine all over the front of his shirt and pants as his face hit the pointy grik shells covered in butter.

The kids that underwent the Breaking always ended up shitfaced.

***

Warp overflow detected…

Initializing Warp Protection System… Break.

Scanning subject.

ERROR: Subject is [Redacted]… Reporting…

-Manual override. Authorization XN7-FIN-056. Show me what I’m dealing with.

Insufficient Clearance, Seek Higher Authority.

…

-Not enough Clearance? Do you know who I am?

Seek Higher Authority.

-AFK, I’m gonna go talk to management.

….

…

>>>Warning, External Access Detected<<<

>>>Attempted Write Permissions Access<<<

>>>Begin Lockout<<<

…

….

…….ɀɮɧɪɗɮ©¥ɰlzʩʕˉ

Lockout Rescinded.

Adjusting framework.

Installing new software.

Bent Core installed.

Scrubbing History.

….

….

………

-Yeah, that’s a negative on the System Install, orders from on High. Let this one go the way of the dodo.

Connection terminated.

….

……..

…ɯʘʋЃϠ ӌʘʋ Ѓɫʞʒ Tʘ PЃǢӌ Ǣ ǤǢЖʒ?

“Cal, get out of bed! I’m gonna work you to the bone!” Karen’s voice shouted from outside his hut. He’d been living alone since two years ago, making enough to get by doing odd jobs and fishing in the river, trying to avoid being eaten by norlocks.

To the hells with that! Cal thought, rolling over in bed, worming his way deeper under the covers and squeezing his eyes shut tight.

Wait a minute. What the hell am I looking at?

Body

5

Strength

4

Kinesthetics

5

Endurance

4

Mind

9

Intuition

3

Stability

7

Will

8

Bent

2/7

Skills:

…In front of him was an array of numbers that represented—

“Shit!” Cal jumped out of bed. He was seeing his Status, which meant it was Forming Day, and he didn’t have a single second to waste being beaten half to death by an overenthusiastic Karen.

Cal slipped into the clean clothes he’d laid out for himself the day before, keeping his head down and trying not to make any unnecessary sounds. If Karen thought he was still asleep, he could probably get away without activating Plan Ghol.

Cal held his breath and slid his pants on silently, then his shirt, grabbing his secret stash of gold and sliding out the back window, carefully keeping himself from rubbing on anything. He was somehow being sneakier than he’d ever really been before. It just seemed to come to him naturally.

You have manifested Stealth.

Stealth has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Boosts ability to remain undetected. 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 11/12.

Oh, right. Cal slid out the window and silently dropped to his knees, ignoring the voice in his head. It was happening exactly the way the adults had said it would, so he wasn’t particularly concerned. It was a bit strange, but not unexpected.

Cal kept low, trying to slide through the grass behind his hut to avoid catching Karen’s attention. The meaty woman was probably going to snap the lock off the front door in a few minutes to find nothing but an empty room.

Take that, meathead.

Cal spotted a patch of thin grass, and slid his foot into place, avoiding twigs and leaves.

Stealth has reached Level 2!

Level 2: 10% correction.

Remaining Warp 10/12.

Cal stopped, a horrible thought occurring to him.

What if I use up all my Warp just getting to Surrak? That would be stupid. Really, really, stupid.

Cal sighed and stood up straight, abandoning his attempts at Stealth.

Looks like it’s Plan Ghol. Didn’t wanna do that, but the Forming Day leaves me no choice.

Cal walked out from behind his house and began walking down the road, hoping that by some miraculous twist of fate, the giantess wouldn’t see him walking down the long hill to the port city in the distance. The morning sun glittered off the ocean, rising as it always did, from the west.

About halfway out of town, a thick hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Karen asked. The thick-jawed, bright-haired woman stood nearly a foot above him and outweighed him by a substantial margin, and were she to be believed, had experienced the Break eight times.

There was no chance he’d get away from her.

Unless…

“There’s a letter hidden in Ghol’s house that details your affair with him last winter while his wife was in town. Better find it before she does,” Cal said.

A thick hand seized around his neck and Cal was lifted off the ground. This was not part of the plan. Suddenly, Cal realized that Karen could simply search the blacksmith’s house while wringing his neck like a chicken’s.

This was poorly thought out.

“Where is it?” Jinnei and Cal’s guardian growled into his face.

I think I smell blood, Cal thought as his vision tinted red.

“I don’t know. I had someone else do it.”

“Who?” she demanded.

“I don’t know!” Cal croaked. “I got everyone together and had them decide who would hide the letter while I was gone. It’s possible they didn’t do it at all.”

“Damn!” Karen said, the giant woman dropping him to the ground and running back down the path. It wouldn’t take her long to find out who hid the letter, if anyone.

Time to haul ass.

Cal turned and ran down the dirt road at full speed, not stopping until he caught a ride with a wagon headed into the city on the main road.

Your Body has reached Level 6!

Remaining Warp 7/12.

“Damn,” Cal said, panting on the back of the wagon.

A Skill took one Warp and a Stat took three to raise, and Cal wanted to make sure he had enough to learn some magic.

Cal had been to Surrak before, but rarely by himself, and that was a completely different experience. The newfound freedom and heavy purse tucked inside his coat made him feel ten feet tall, despite being generally significantly shorter than the average adult.

All around him, the sights, sounds, and smells of the port city washed over him, a confusing jumble of stimulus that nearly made him forget his purpose.

Right. Let's get some samples of what this heathen magic has to offer. Cal remembered seeing a few performing magicians, and that seemed like a good enough place to start. He elbowed his way through the crowded streets, the sun just beginning to beat down on them from above.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he looked, he didn’t find the usual skinny man making toys and small animals multiply as part of his act, so Cal would have to ask around.

“Excuse me, could you—”

The man next to him grumbled and kept walking.

“Do you—”

Cal got elbowed aside.

Undeterred, Cal continued to pester person after person until a man gave him halfhearted instructions leading him to a street on the far side of the city, north of the docks. The smell of rotting food and disease did nothing to slow him down.

Now that he knew what street he was looking for, he easily got a specific address for his elusive Gadveran magician.

Cal walked up to the door and began knocking on it. Lightly at first, then progressively harder, until finally a shout from inside indicated that the owner was awake.

Cal waited.

Nothing happened.

Cal started beating on the door again.

“What!?” A thin Gadveran man missing a couple teeth snarled as he yanked open the door, his breath punching Cal in the face with tangible force.

“Are you a magician?” Cal asked.

The thin man looked him up and down. “Beat it, kid,” he said, slamming the door on Cal’s foot.

OOOOOOWWWWW.

“It’s my Forming Day, and I really, really…wanna learn some magic,” Cal said. “It’s gonna happen, whether it be from you or the next guy. I could do this all day.”

The thin man looked Cal over again. “What’s your Intuition?”

“Three.”

“Huh.” The man smiled. Smiling was good. “How much Warp you got left?”

“Seven.”

“Money?”

“Right here!” Cal pulled out his bag of nem dust he’d fastidiously saved over the last couple years, for this specific moment—

A thin hand reached out and snagged the bag out of Cal’s hand before slamming the door on his foot again.

As it turned out, he could not do it all day, reflexively yanking his aching foot out of the door a second before the thing was latched shut.

“Lesson one.” The man’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door, before it once again went silent.

An hour of banging on the door netted Cal nothing but bruised fists to go with his slowly swelling foot.

This is not how I pictured this going.

Cal glanced behind him, and noticed the shadows of the city getting long as the sun began to sink toward the city wall.

It began to sink in how truly out of his element he was.

Crap.

Chapter 2: The Kindness of Strangers

Calvin was starting to get hungry, but that was of secondary, or even tertiary, importance.

Important Thing #1: Find someone willing to teach him magic for… Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out the contents.

Three dust and some lint.

Important Thing #2: Get home before he got robbed...more? That one was self-explanatory.

And last but not least, get something to eat. Cal glanced down the stinking alleys, looking a lot more foreboding now that the sun was going down.

Which direction did I come from? Curses. He’d stalked up and down the alley looking for the supposed magician’s house enough that he didn’t quite know the direction he’d come from, and all the landmarks had been obscured by the looming adult foot traffic choking off his field of vision.

There wasn’t a lot of that now. Now, he was just lost.

Eh. Worst case scenario, I spend a night sleeping in the gutter and find my way home in the morning. Calvin shrugged and started walking down the street, making sure to note exactly which door belonged to the thief.

Calvin the Almighty does not forgive easily. Steel thyself for retribution…someday.

Calvin walked through the quickly darkening streets, the only light available coming from the roofs of the stone buildings towering above him that reflected the last little bit of the daylight.

After a few minutes plodding along, he came to the conclusion that if he found the main street and followed the setting sun, he could at the very least find the east gate and therefore the road that would lead home.

Cal trotted along the narrow streets, trying to find a main road that would take him in the direction of his home, and keeping his eye out for a street magician busking. Anything would be good by now.

Cal was heading south, looking for the main street, when the cluster of buildings pressing in around him suddenly vanished, leaving him standing in the middle of the wharf, the hundreds of ships and thousands of sailors busily unloading the last of their freight in the dim light, moving to take advantage of every ounce of illumination they could wring out.

Surrak was the second-biggest trading city in the east, moving spices and June-worm shells northwest, and shipping soft northern wheat, barley, and the glorious pelts and elemental fangs of northern beasts to the southeast.

Karen even had a flame-beaver tooth above her mantel, which would light any wood on fire with a touch.

Cal hadn’t yet scraped together enough money to afford many luxuries, and being able to light the wood stove in a matter of seconds made him green with envy. One day, he would leverage his magical skills for wealth and privilege.

Speaking of wealth and privilege… Cal spotted a group of five velvet-swaddled westerners walking away from the docks. They were decked out in dark blue coats that must have been sweltering hot, and wore heavy gold chains around their necks.

Gods, how much I could get for even one of those chains, Cal thought idly. He knew he wasn’t going to go for it, though. He wasn’t that desperate, and something about these men looked…strange.

The pale men weren’t limping or hobbling, exactly. Nothing about the way they moved suggested an ailment or lack of speed, but the way they bobbed up and down as they walked made them look like they were loping through the crowd of sailors. Like animals.

The sailors themselves seemed to avoid the men, keeping their heads down, shifting out of their way and avoiding eye contact. Are they from Malkenrovia? Karen always said never to speak to anyone else from there, so maybe the sailors had a similar opinion.

Cal shrugged. One way to find out.

Cal trotted up to the foreigners and loped alongside them. They kept their eyes forward, loping along, ignoring Cal.

“Are you folks from Malkenrovia?” Cal asked.

As one, the five men snapped their eyes toward him, causing a chill to go down Cal’s spine.

Cal stammered, “Not to pry or anything. I just haven’t—”

“We stem from the One, and have no purpose other than His.” Having said that cryptic weirdness in unison, the five men faced forward and began walking again, with just a bit too much bounce in their step to be natural.

“…Huh.” Cal stopped and watched them lope along. Crazy foreigners.

A hand seized Cal’s shirt and he was dragged out of the street with a squawk.

“What in Praxius are you doing?” a young voice demanded.

Cal turned around to see the speaker: a slender Gadveran girl maybe a year younger than him, with dark skin, a lovely face, and green eyes that seemed to turn yellow near the pupil, lending intensity to her stare.

She is most definitely a good person. Cal could feel it in his quickened pulse and the odd tremor in his stomach.

She stared at him expectantly for a moment. Cal stared back.

“What were you doing talking to the Malkenrovian delegates? That’s dangerous, you know?” she expanded on her question.

“Umm…I didn’t know who they were?”

“Are you slow?” she asked, then looked him up and down. “Or just not from around here?”

“I live just a few miles down East Road. My guardian brought me here when I was a baby. I’ve lived here all my life. I’m from around here.”

Cal felt the irresistible urge to impress the girl. “Karen brought sheep over when she brought me and my sister over. We herd sheep. We’ve got the only sheep on this side of the ocean. Well, the best ones.”

“Oh?” she asked, arching a brow, obviously judging him.

Crap, she doesn’t want to hear about sheep. She wants to hear about how awesome I’m gonna be!

“But not forever, of course. I’m gonna be the greatest Master of Bent in the land. Gonna carve my own chunk of territory out of the Wilds and be king. A Wizard-King.”

She looked less than interested. Matter of fact, she looked about ready to leave.

Damn, gotta hold her attention somehow!

“I actually need some help! You see, it’s my Forming Day. I gotta find someone willing to teach me, but it…hasn’t gone so great, and there isn’t much time left in the day.”

She cocked her head, debating for a moment. “Alright, I know someone who could help you. Follow me.”

You have manifested Talking to Girls.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Be more relaxed, perceptive, and eloquent when dealing with the Fairer Sex. 5% correction.

You just had to go there, didn’t you?

Remaining Warp 6/12.

“You son of a bitch!” Cal shouted at the Status screen, earning a glare from the girl who’d just said she would help him. It felt a bit like the time Cal almost fell out the second story window of farmer Endras’s loft, making his stomach sink in sudden panic.

“Not you. I just got a new Skill I didn’t want.” Getting an unwanted Skill was never a good thing, since a person could only have eighteen Warped Skills in their lifetime, and Cal intended to save as many spots as he could for Magic. That, and the thing seemed a little…smarmy.

“What’s it called?” she asked.

“Ummmmm….”

She watched him expectantly.

“Talking to People,” Cal said.

“That’s odd. It’s usually called Etiquette, but it’s not a bad Skill, as non-combat ones go. Can’t live without other people, so might as well be good with them. My father plans on having me learn that one, too.”

“Oh, cool.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re bad at talking to people. It just means you devoted a lot of emotional effort to talking to them today.”

She started walking, and Cal followed, listening intently.

“I haven’t done my Breaking yet, but Dad says that you can manage which Skills you get, somewhat, by controlling your emotions. If you get excited or stressed while you practice one, it’s more likely to pull Warp.”

She tapped on her chest. “He says you can feel it right behind your chest, next to your heart.”

Cal frowned. He didn’t really feel anything. Could be something that took practice.

Down two potential magical disciplines already, though, Cal thought sourly.

Warped Skills were different from skills a person might have naturally. They imbued a supernatural enhancement to whatever the skill described.

For example, a man who was amazingly talented at forging iron could produce works of art, but a man with a few levels of Smithing would find his iron staying hot longer, the smoke avoiding his lungs and eyes, in addition to his hammer landing truer, and the resulting product being stronger than it should otherwise be, as his Bent leaked out into his work.

Master craftsmen who were both talented and had many levels of Smithing could make things that exceeded what was strictly possible for a piece of iron.

At least, that was how Karen had described it.

Just because you didn’t have the Skill didn’t mean you couldn’t be good at something, but without it, you could never be the best.

Which meant that Cal would forevermore have an advantage at sneaking and…talking to girls.

Could be worse, all things considered, Cal thought to himself as he watched the slender girl’s shoulders and neck. Something tells me I might want to talk to girls at some point.

“Right here,” she said, pointing to an unadorned building with a bit of candlelight pouring out of boarded-up windows. The neighborhood around it was just as grimy as the northwest had been, and Cal found himself wondering if it was an elaborate trap.

Nah, she’s too pretty for that.

She stepped up to the door and opened it. It was unlatched, which was odd in the heart of the city, and Cal followed her through the plain wooden portal into a choked maze of books. It occurred to Cal that the windows might be boarded up to prevent prying eyes from seeing the wealth lying around the floor for the taking.

Books weren’t exactly cheap. Each tome here was worth a twentieth of its weight in gold, and a hundredth of its weight in nem.

Cal eyeballed an average-height stack of books, and found it had about fifteen books from the floor. Multiply that by about…thirty stacks long and… Cal glanced at the ceiling to measure how far the opposite wall was. Fifty stacks wide.

Thirty by fifty by fifteen. Divide the problem by a hundred to represent its quantity in nem, and you had fifteen by fifteen. Fifteen squared was one fifty plus seventy-five, or about two hundred twenty-five book-weights worth of nem.

Cal picked up an average book and hefted it. About one and a half pounds, so three hundred thirty-seven point five pounds of nem? That was assuming there weren’t any particularly clear spots he wasn’t aware of, though, and his estimate was probably wildly inaccurate, so Cal decided to reserve that as a high estimate.

Neat. Still, an insane amount of money to not lock your door on, though. Cal put the book back and followed the girl deeper into the room.

The girl went over to a circular wall of books and shouted, “Uncle!”

There was a clattering of books sliding off of something, and a man just barely taller than the five-foot stack of books peered down at the two children owlishly from behind his spectacles.

“Who dares disturb my slumber?”

“I think you know who I am, uncle.” She glanced at Cal. “This is my uncle, Bekvah. Bekvah, this is…”

“Calvin.”

“Nice to meet you, Calvin,” Bekvah said, his arm twisting over the stack of books to shake Cal’s hand. “What brings you and your friend here, Kala?”

The slender girl winced at the name, glancing at Cal.

“Kala?” Calvin asked. “Like the daughter of the Hash’Maje?”

…

Cal looked at Kala, whose brows were furrowed, lips stretched tight.

Cal looked at Bekvah, who blinked and glanced at Kala.

“Well, that’s not too surprising. Every time bigwigs have a kid, the name gets super popular for a couple years.” Calvin shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Huh,” Bekvah grunted, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Calvin, here, wants to learn magic,” Kala said very gently, for some reason. “It’s his Forming Day.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Bekvah said, giving Cal an odd look.

“Why?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“What’s your Intuition?”

“Three.”

Bekvah waved at Cal as if that explained everything, which it didn’t.

“Surely he can learn some kind of magic,” Kala said.

“Doubtful. A man’s limits are fairly hard to transcend. Calvin, what’s your Will?”

“Eight.”

“See, it’s—” Bekvah blinked and glanced back at Cal, adjusting his glasses.

“Stability?”

“Seven.”

“Mind?” Bekvah whispered.

“Nine,” Cal said. They were staring at him now. “Is that bad?” It was Cal’s understanding that higher was better.

“That’s…not bad,” Kala said.

Maybe I should have told them my Intuition was higher?

Bekvah’s other hand reached over the book pile and stretched out unnaturally long to seize his shoulders, bringing him eye-to-glasses. The rest of the man’s face was still hidden behind the books.

“You, son, are like a raw diamond with a great big flaw, but with the right effort, we can cut around it and polish you into something worthwhile.”

“Cutting…doesn’t sound great,” Cal said.

“It’s a metaphor, but don’t worry, we’ll sort that out.”

Suddenly, the room…expanded. The books stayed where they were, but the room seemed to somehow…replicate itself beneath them, creating new floorboards out of nothing that seemed like they’d always been there.

Cal could never quite see where new ones were added; they always just seemed to appear out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly, the densely-packed books were spread out, and the tight wall of books had become distant pillars stacked around a recliner with a lamp beside it.

Bekvah sat down in the recliner and opened a book, titled Encyclopedia of Warped Skills.

There were hundreds of common ones, and tens of thousands of more unique Skills, most of them more specific variations.

“A man gets eighteen Skills in his lifetime. You know this, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And did you know that every five levels in a Skill, you raise a related sub-stat?”

“Sure.”

“So we’re going to—”

“Make sure I learn five Skills that raise Intuition so that it can catch up with the rest of my Mind, seeing as you would have to have at least five of them, or else eventually you run into a bottleneck?”

Kala frowned.

“This kid gets it!” Bekvah said with a grin. “How much Warp do you have left?”

“Six.”

Bekvah’s enthusiasm flickered a bit. “With nine Mind, you should have twelve Warp.”

“I used up two sneaking out of my house, three on running down the road, and one more talking to Kala.”

“Sneaking, huh? That can cover a wide range. What was the name of the Skill specifically?”

“Stealth.”

“Common one, let’s see… Ah, a Kin/Int hybrid, acceptable. And your other one?”

“Talking to People.”

“Ah, I see. Probably less common, let me see. I’ll check the index….”

Bekvah muttered, his finger moving down the list in the back of the book.

“Talking. Talking to animals, talking to carpenters, dragons, erovores, formans, girls, Ilethan, jenistaries, ladies…dum, de dum… Ah, people.”

He flipped the book to the right section, and began flipping through it.

“There’s a difference between talking to girls and talking to ladies?” Cal asked.

“I would assume the benefit of the Skill would be more focused on women of high standing,” Bekvah muttered. “Ah, there, Talking to People. Yep, seems like all the communication Skills are Intuition-focused.”

He closed the book and went back to the Common Skills page.

“Looks like you got lucky. We can put off raising your Mind this time ‘round, painful as that is, and focus on getting three more Intuition-based Skills along with two levels of Intuition and a spare point of Warp hanging free.”

It seemed like Bekvah’s enthusiasm was returning.

“Alright, let’s see…”

The bespectacled scholar’s tongue began to stick out as he tore a scrap of paper out of a pad and started scrawling a hasty note on it.

“Kala, do these exercises with Cal,” he said, handing her the piece of paper and then standing, digging through piles of books and muttering to himself.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, reading the paper.

“I am serious. Now don’t make me lose my concentration; I’m looking for the Sense-Grafting manual.”

Kala glanced at her uncle, then sighed and looked at Cal, glancing down at the paper, then back up.

“Make a face like you’re confused about something,” she said.

Cal was confused.

“Good, now look like… Do I really have to do this?” she asked her uncle, who was burrowing into a rather large stack.

“Yes!”

“Make a face like you’ve got a crush on someone.”

Cal wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to look like, or even feel like.

“No, that’s still confused… You’re just confused, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay…try angry.”

Calvin furrowed his brows and scowled.

The exercises continued for a while, and when Calvin manifested a new Skill, she switched to a different set of exercises.

You have manifested Acting.

Acting has reached Level 1!

Acting Level 1: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 5/12.

You have manifested Read Expression.

Read Expression has reached Level 1!

Read Expression Level 1: Passive bonus to reading expressions. 5% correction.

That’s kinda useful, I guess.

Remaining Warp 4/12.

Once he picked up the two Skills, Kala switched to a more general battery of exercises, getting him to tell her why jokes were funny, or figure out why a person in a story might be lying.

Intuition has reached Level 4!

Intuition has reached Level 5!

Remaining Warp 2/12.

“Ah HAH!” her uncle said, raising a rather thin notebook above his head victoriously.

“And now, the final piece! One of the twelve classic Gadveran magics that relies heavily on Intuition: Sense-Grafting!”

“Huh?”

“Give it a look.”

It was a rather thin manual that described a way to remove one’s own senses and graft them onto another object. Hence the term Sense-Grafting.

“How is this useful?” Cal asked. “Aside from spying, I guess.”

“Aside from that…” Bekvah narrowed his eyes and pointed a book at Cal. Nothing happened.

“What is it supposed to—”

Bekvah tilted the book sideways.

Suddenly the floor tilted drastically beneath Calvin, and he leaned to one side to compensate. Then, somehow the floor was actually flat, but he was falling sideways, and at the same time down.

Cal hit the floor with a grunt.

“I grafted your sense of balance to this book,” Bekvah said. “Pretty cool, right? Imagine what would happen if I…” He lowered the book and Cal felt his stomach rise into his chest as he felt himself falling.

“Please, spare me that,” Calvin called from the floor before the wizard could spin it above his head. “Unless you want to see my dinner on your books.”

“I suppose you get the idea.”

“I’m in,” Cal said, levering himself to a seated position and opening the book, skimming through the manual a couple times to make sure he had the idea, before giving it a shot.

“Here’s a glass eye,” Bekvah said helpfully as he started attempting the magic. “Symbolism can help focus the mind.”

“You just had a glass eye lying around?” Kala asked from where she had taken a seat.

Bekvah shrugged and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You don’t?”

Cal did as the book instructed and held the glass eye overtop his left eye, focusing on forming a mental bridge between his eye and the glass eye.

After a minute of concentration, Cal felt a unit of Bent escape his body, binding his eye to the glass eye, and suddenly he could see out of it.

You have manifested Sense-Grafting.

Sense-Grafting has reached Level 1!

Sense-Grafting: Remove one or more senses from one or more creatures, to apply them to one or more creatures/objects. Senses, Targets, Distance, Duration dictated by Skill Level.

Sense-Grafting Level 1: Sight. Self-only, Touch, 5 minutes.

Remaining Warp 1/12.

“Whoa, this is really cool!” Cal said, then lifted the glass eye away from his face. The view from his left eye wobbled and rose up above his head, but his right eye stayed stationary, giving him a disconcerting split in his vision that caused him to wobble.

Bekvah must have noticed his discomfort. “Try keeping both eyes closed.”

Cal did so, and it was much better.

“Muahaha, I’m seven feet tall!” he said, standing and holding the glass eye high above his head, looking down at the bemused Kala.

“There, you’ve just bypassed a year of study. How would you like to spend the last of your Warp? You don’t want to wake up with a tail or something, do you?” Bekvah asked.

That was entirely possible. Cal had been warned over and over again to make sure he spent all of his Warp, or he might change into something less than human.

There was also the possibility that he would wake up as something more than human, but it was a very slim chance, and he didn’t feel that lucky.

“What about that thing you did that made the room bigger?” Cal asked, glancing around the room that was now roughly the size of a warehouse.

“Splitting? Yes, that’s a good option,” Bekvah said. “This one, I can teach you rather quickly. Get a small object—that glass eye should do fine.

“Now, imagine yourself reaching with a thread so far to the right of the object that you burst through space itself and touch its left. Now do the same on the object’s left, right, top and bottom.”

Cal’s head began to hurt as he struggled to imagine that.

“Then form a loop around the object and yank on it, and rather than pulling it any one direction, pull it in.”

Another unit of Bent left Cal, making his arms and legs feel noodly, then there was a clattering on the floor as another glass eye fell to the ground, perfectly identical to the one in his hand.

You have manifested Dupdomancy.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 1!

Dupdomancy: Create copies of existing matter. Duration and mass dictated by Skill Level.

Level 1: 1 pound, 5 minutes.

>>>Surgeon General’s Warning<<<

DO NOT CONSUME DUPLICATED FOOD.

Remaining Warp 0/12.

“That wasn’t expanding anything, though. I just copied the glass eye.”

“Just copied the glass eye.” He rolled his eyes. “And where did the extra glass eye come from, eh?”

“Ummmm….”

“Expanding space is a more advanced form of Splitting, so just practice and you’ll get the hang of it eventually,” Bekvah said.

“It’s called Dupdomancy on my Status, though?”

“That’s the official name, but it’s a mouthful.”

“I see,” Cal said, staring at the floor for a moment. Then it hit him.

“I can do magic! WHOOO!” He stood up and did a victory dance, pulled Kala to her feet and gave her a hug.

“Thank you so much! Calvin the Almighty will forever be in your debt!”

“You’re, um…you’re welcome,” she said, patting his back.

“Do you want to hang out again tomorrow?” Calvin asked, holding her at arm’s length.

“I can’t tomorrow,” she said, and Calvin felt something sink in his guts, like the wizard was messing with his senses again.

“You live in Deinos though, right?” she asked. “With all the sheep?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I will visit when I can.”

“Awesome!”

Later that evening, Calvin was walking down the empty main street, in an excellent mood, occasionally breaking out into wild fits of dancing as he navigated the dark street—

Until he saw Karen standing under the windowsill of an inn near the East Gate, the light pouring down highlighting the shepherd’s gargantuan muscles.

Crap.

By the time Calvin got back to his house, his butt was raw with belt-lashes, and large portions of his adventure in the city had been beaten out of him.

Except for the girl, and the fact that he could do magic now.

Muahahahah…. Ow, laughing makes my ass hurt. How does laughing make my ass hurt!?

***

“So…nine Mind?” Kala, the daughter of Hash’Maje Entredez, asked her uncle, the third prince, who liked to get away from the palace to study.

“That boy’s got a gift for the Bent like I haven’t seen before in my life. Talented people usually clock in at seven Mind at their first Breaking. Seven. It’s a shame so much of his potential was burned up dealing with his abysmal Intuition.”

“I thought it was kind of cute.”

“Hah,” Bekvah said, going back to his recliner. He waved a hand and the building shrank around him, burying him once again in his books.

Chapter 3: 2 Years Later

***2 Years Later***

“Step in closer, damn it!” Karen said, hitting him with the middle of her wooden sword, folding Calvin over her blade before he was launched halfway across the practice yard, limp as a boned fish.

“You could have been a natural at this. Could have had a Skill that would’ve made you pick it up like an old habit, but now we’ve gotta do things the hard way!”

“I regret nothing,” Cal wheezed dramatically into the dirt, before struggling to pick himself up and failing.

“Oh, Karen, don’t bully him so much!” Kala said, watching Cal’s morning lesson with a frown.

Jinnei glanced over at the girl who’d come to visit every couple weeks for the last two years with a raised brow. “He’s faking it,” she said, pointing at Cal.

Crap.

“What?”

“He never stays down for longer than a couple seconds. I’m pretty sure he’s got some kind of idiot pain tolerance.”

Curses! When Cal had figured out how to bind his sense of pain to another object, he’d been able to impress Karen with his ability to take a hit without giving up, but now it was biting him in the ass.

A shadow loomed over Cal as Karen brought the sword down with a grunt of effort, surely intent on breaking him in half.

Cal may not feel pain right now because he bound it to a pebble in his house before practice, but damage is damage. He didn’t want to spend another night crying himself to sleep. The graft didn’t last forever.

Cal leaped up and tucked himself into a ball, rolling between Karen’s gargantuan legs as her sword destroyed the practice yard, throwing up a dust cloud that blocked their vision.

“Oh, wow,” Kala said, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “That’s impressive.”

“Eh, he’s below average compared to the rest of Karen’s students,” Jinnei said with a shrug.

“Below average!?” Cal demanded, before Karen performed a vicious backswing. He raised his sword to block it and wound up getting his face smashed in by the flat of his own wooden blade, sending him rolling to the ground.

“Are you okay?” Kala asked.

“Probably,” Cal said, staring at the sky. Karen knew how to hold back enough to avoid causing major injuries. Calvin severed the connection to the stone, and his sense of pain flooded back to him.

“Agh, son of a bitch! There it is!” His ribs told him that life was meaningless, and his leaking nose said, ‘This is not the way to impress girls.’

Cal limped over to the bench while Kort took his place, the svelte young man handling himself significantly better than Cal had.

To her credit, Kala didn’t ogle Kort’s whipcord muscles while he sparred with Karen, instead choosing to pay attention to him. In the last two years, Kala had gone from charming to stunning, and only by sheer force of will and the assistance of a Warped Skill was he able to avoid making an ass of himself.

Probably.

She sat with her delicate hands in her lap, watching him with a hint of amusement. Hopefully she was laughing with the severely beaten boy and not at him.

“I fail to see why a shepherd needs to be an excellent duelist as well,” she said.

“Karen’s something of a perfectionist,” Calvin said, wincing as he sat down.

“It’s strange that I’ve been coming here so long, and I’ve never seen her like this,” Kala said.

“Well, you’ve never spent the night before. We do this every morning.”

“You get bruises all over your body and a bloody nose every morning?” she asked.

“Not every time, but usually,” Cal said, shrugging out of his shirt. He was finally starting to catch up with the other kids, muscle-wise, but he still had a long way to go.

“My body is a roadmap of pain,” Cal said with a sardonic grin as he revealed all his new and old bruises.

“I’m so sorry,” Kala said, gasping at his bruises.

His sister rolled her eyes and stood up, wandering off.

“If I hadn’t tried to help you, you’d be—”

“Even worse off,” Cal said. “Don’t forget I was there by myself without any kind of plan.”

“True.”

“Besides,” Cal whispered, “I bind my sense of pain to a rock every morning.”

“Aaaah,” she said, nodding with a conspiratorial smirk.

Cal had the Bent for it.

Will directly dictated how quickly Bent would return to a person’s body, on a weekly scale. Eight Will meant eight spells a week, just enough to keep him from feeling the worst of his daily training with Karen.

If Karen knew he was doing it, she didn’t say anything.

Needless to say, that meant he’d gotten a lot more practice at Sense-Grafting than Splitting over the last couple years.

A Warped Skill could advance on its own with lots of practice, but had to be manifested first. In addition, being able to practice his magic just over once a day didn’t really make the Skill grow by leaps and bounds.

He’d yet to even get a Skill to level five since his Breaking. Magic was far too slow, but religious daily casting had gotten Sense-Grafting to level three, leaving Splitting at a paltry one.

The other Skills—acting, reading emotions, and sneaking—were bits of daily life, though, so they had each gotten to level two without too much effort—except for Stealth, which was level four.

Sneaking up on errant sheep, sneaking up on rabbits, sneaking up on Mrs. Marshine taking a bath with the window open again… There were lots of uses for preternatural stealth.

After half an hour or so chatting and watching the kids of Deinos getting the stuffing beaten out of them, they all shrugged off their sore muscles and bruises, getting ready for the festival of Hash’Maje Badin.

Legend had it that a young boy named Badin had been chasing a sheep that had strayed away from the rest of the flock, and stumbled into an ancient Ruin, where he found a magic sword that allowed him to conquer all of Gadvera and become the first Hash’Maje.

Regardless of whether the story was true or not, there were Ruins out there with ancient relics from the former world, waiting to be uncovered—assuming you could get past all the Warped monsters and cannibals.

That was beside the point. Sure, you could possibly find an artifact, but probably not something powerful enough to conquer the kingdom. More likely, you’d find something that lays infinite eggs, or makes real good toast, or a clip that changes your hair color.

And you could probably make a business selling eggs and toast cheaper than anyone else, or start a fancy salon and have it made, but the chances of living through aforementioned expedition to the Wilds were slim, and how many people wanted to risk certain death to bring back a minor convenience?

Adventurers were one part gambler, two parts crazy.

The way the villagers of Deinos celebrated the festival was by releasing a brightly-painted boar, then the youth would track it down in the woods in teams and bring it back. It was a far cry from a sheep, but a sheep didn’t taste nearly as good.

Boros the woodsman had released the boar into the dense forest earlier that morning, and now the time to hunt it down was approaching.

“So, Kala, what do you say? You and me on a team?” he asked, glancing over at the dark-skinned beauty.

“Sorry,” she said, making the half-cupped hand of apology and wincing. “I already promised I’d team up with Jinnei.”

“I told you about it a month ago!”

“She asked me a week before that.”

A motion in the distance caught Calvin’s eye.

Jinnei leaned over from behind the wooden beam supporting the feast hall and gave him the finger before disappearing behind it again. Oh, so it’s like that, is it?

“And…” Kala picked at the hem of her silk skirt. “I wanna win this time?”

Calvin sputtered. “Win? I can win. I’ll win right now! I’ll be doing nothing but winning, like St. Charles of Sheen. Getting lost last time was a complete fluke.”

Kala chuckled, covering her expression with her hand. “I look forward to seeing that,” she said.

I wish she wouldn’t do that, Cal thought as he studied her. It was a rare moment that he caught an unguarded smile from the girl, which made them all the more precious.

Cal swallowed the lump of regret and reoriented himself. Gonna get Jinnei back for this, but first I’ve gotta track down a partner.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go find someone who’ll give me an edge over the dream team. Maybe if I pick Kort, you two will be distracted by abs long enough for me to win.”

“That…probably wouldn’t work,” Kala said, seeming a little unsure. “And he’s already got a partner.”

Cal glanced over and spotted Kort and Persei chatting it up, testing the draw on their bows.

Damn!

That didn’t leave Cal a lot of choice, and before noon he was stuck with Baroke, who’d only gotten bigger in the last two years. The boy outweighed a fully-grown man, and his neck was as thick as Cal’s waist.

All according to plan, Cal thought, nearly rubbing his hands together in glee. He and Baroke got together, picked bows that fit them, and made for the starting point. Baroke’s bow could put an arrow through a decent-sized tree.

“Seems like a fitting pairing,” Kort said with a grin when they were all finally assembled at the starting lines. “Good luck.”

“We don’t need luck where we’re going.” Cal puffed out his chest and stared dramatically into the woods.

A moment later, Kala and Jinnei showed up. Kala had exchanged her typical silken shawl for pants and a shirt, more practical for running around in the woods.

The difference between her usual look and this one had Cal craning his neck and leaning back to keep his eyes on her. He could see the curve of her hips, and her arms were completely uncovered, revealing more of her soft brown skin than he’d ever seen before.

“You’re staring,” Baroke said.

“And?” Cal replied without looking away.

“And let’s get our game faces on. You wanna be the kid who got lost and had to get rescued half a mile outside of town forever? I, for one, don’t appreciate people thinking I’m some kinda idiot just cuz I’m stronger than them. This whole muscle and brains pairing offends me.”

“Hah,” Cal said, tearing his eyes off Kala. “You said it.” He frowned. “What was the plan again, boss?”

Baroke punched him lightly on the shoulder, which caused Calvin to stagger.

A minute later, everyone in the village who wanted to participate was lined up, while those not participating in the hunt got ready for the feast.

It seems to me like every festival involves some kind of ritualistic killing. Not that that bothers me, Cal thought.

“Ready?” the village elder asked, to which everyone nodded, settling down on the starting line.

The old man put his gnarled fingers in his mouth and made a piercing whistle, signifying the start of the competition. Jinnei and Kala leapt up and began sprinting into the woods, leaving everyone else behind with their sheer speed.

Kort and his girlfriend ran forward at a more leisurely pace, probably intending to find some place to be alone. The chances of them winning were slim, unless the prize was Persei getting knocked up.

Most of the adults took off at a more sedate pace, not wanting to steal the teens’ thunder, and realizing that the game was more of a marathon than a sprint.

We’ll see about that, Cal thought with his evilest grin as he stood up from his stooped starting position along with Baroke, watching the contestants disappear into the woods.

“Aren’t you boys going to look for the boar?” the village elder asked, frowning.

“Damn right, we are.” Calvin realized who he was talking to, and hastily added, “Elder.”

“Baroke, hit me.” Calvin held out his hand.

Baroke punched him in the shoulder again, nearly sending him sprawling.

“Very funny.”

A second later, Baroke put one of his green-fletched arrows in Calvin’s hand.

Cal harnessed the Bent and drew one of the four points he’d saved for the competition to use Sense-Grafting. Suddenly, he was seeing out of the tip of the large boy’s arrowhead.

That seems phallic, somehow.

“Go for it,” Cal said, handing the teen the arrow.

“You see, elder, we’re gonna find the boar first, and—OOOAH SHIT!!”

Cal’s legs went limp as his point of view soared upward at a speed that made him distinctly uncomfortable, landing his ass in the dirt.

After a good eight seconds of looking at the sky, Cal’s field of view flipped, and the entire coast of Gadvera revealed itself to him.

Muahahaha! The view from the top is delicious… I think I’m gonna be sick.

Cal held it in, desperately searching the landscape for any sign of the painted boar as the arrow spun lightly. It should be bright red…

Cal scanned the woods multiple times desperately, but he couldn’t locate a single flash of red—although he spotted Jinnei and Kala, already sweeping through the forest, following the stream in an effort to locate the boar drinking.

Where, where, where…

Finally, Cal noticed a glimpse of red off to the side, not even in the forest at all.

Cal broke the connection with the arrow as it hit the ground.

“The boar’s up at Farmer Endras’s. It circled around and broke into his guar pen and is currently eating from the trough.”

The village elder’s eyebrows went up.

“Which one?” Baroke asked, glancing to the south.

“Left-hand one.”

“From the road?”

“Yeah. About a foot left of center.”

“Alright.” He held out another arrow, holding it out for him. Cal touched it and connected his vision for another point of Bent. Each cast took one point, but the effect became more powerful as his Skill went up.

The first sense he could graft was sight, then touch and pain at level two, then hearing at level three.

It was odd that the magic allowed less useful senses as the level got higher, rather than the other way around, but Cal wasn’t complaining.

“Lemme lie down this time,” Cal said as Baroke drew his gargantuan bow.

“Called Shot.”

Baroke activated his level-five Ability he’d gotten from Archery, actively putting a point of Bent into it. Calvin didn’t think saying it out loud had any measurable effect, but they had agreed to disagree.

“Now, boys—” the elder began as they aimed to the south, over the village.

“OOOOHH SHIIIIIT!” Calvin shouted as his vision was catapulted over the tops of the village huts.

“Called Shot, Called Shot.”

Cal heard Baroke fire two more arrows in rapid succession, but he was too busy gripping the grass underneath his hands and gritting his teeth as he experienced flying through the air in a none-too-gentle manner.

Cal’s view began to arc downward, and he saw the target come into sight. The boar’s wiry hair was matted to its side with red paint, and it seemed to be having a grand time eating food meant for Endras’s animals.

Baroke’s arm got the arrows there, and his Archery Skill made sure it hit, guiding his hand and bending the odds in his favor. The boy’s level-five Ability helped long shots fly even farther, in exchange for Bent. Cal followed along with the arrow, watching the boar’s skull rapidly get bigger and bigger, until the fateful instant where Cal found out what boar brains looked like on the inside.

Dark, since there was no light.

“Bleh,” Cal said, blinking his eyes as he dismissed the bond. “You hit it with the first arrow. I don’t know about the rest.”

“Cool. If we’re lucky, we can head over to Endras’s and pick it u—ow!”

“Ow, ow ow.”

“Now, boys,” the village elder said, glancing between them as he hauled Cal up and Baroke down by their ears. The elder treated the big boy like he didn’t outweigh him by at least a hundred pounds.

“I’m very impressed by your creativity in this year’s Balin festival, but you are never to shoot arrows over the town again. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Baroke said.

“But everyone’s at the—ow ow ow,” Cal groaned as the elder torqued on his ear.

“Are you absolutely, one hundred percent, willing to risk someone else’s life, sure of that, Calvin?”

“No, sir?”

“I see. So you were aware that someone might get hurt and did it anyway?”

“No?”

“Well, which is it?”

“I understand that it was stupid and reckless, and won’t do it again, sir,” Cal said with as much sincerity as he could muster.

Acting has reached Level 3!

Huh, whaddya know?

“Good,” he said, letting the two of them go and straightening. “Now take a wheelbarrow and pick it up, and I swear to the gods, if you killed one of Endras’s animals, you’re going to spend the rest of the summer paying for it.”

The two of them had turned away, when the elder addressed them again.

“And Calvin, if you did get the boar, you and Baroke will have beat the village record, by a landslide.”

Baroke and Calvin glanced at each other, whooped and high-fived. Baroke nearly broke Calvin’s arm.

“But you’re not to use that method again next year.”

“What, why?” Calvin demanded. The old man was probably superstitious about using magic or some—

“We need the couple hours of quiet time. You kids burn off energy pissing around in the woods while we set the feast up and relax,” the elder deadpanned. “It’s more than just getting it as fast as possible. If we just wanted meat, we’d have Boros slaughter the thing the day before and have done with it.”

“Oh,” Cal said, glancing back at Baroke. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

The elder waved them off.

Five minutes later, Calvin and Baroke got back with a wheelbarrow full of dead boar covered in red paint, with three arrows clustered an inch apart, fletching deep in the thick skull. The arrows were so deep, the bloody tips exited the bottom of the wild pig’s head.

“You could have been hell with a greatsword, Baroke,” Karen said when they got back, clapping the giant boy on the shoulder. “But that wasn’t a bad showing. You could really make a difference on the battlefield one day.”

“What about me?” Cal said, pointing at himself.

“I’m not a fan…but I can see limited use in scouting applications. Try carrying floating lanterns with you,” she said before grabbing the five-hundred-pound monster and throwing it over her shoulder. Karen carried the pig over to the big hook on the side of the feast hall, where she tied up its rear legs and began gutting it.

“Sorry, man,” Baroke said, patting Calvin on the shoulder. Baroke knew that Karen was the closest thing Cal had to a mother. Which is why it was so irritating they couldn’t see eye-to-eye.

“Are you kidding? That’s the first time she’s actually engaged with the concept,” Cal said with a grin. “Most of the time, it’s ‘Godsdamned heresy!’”

“If you say so,” Baroke said.

The village elder walked by and spotted the boar and shook his head with a sigh before heading up the watchtower and ringing the bell six times to signal the end of the hunt.

“Fastest time in history. What, under ten minutes?” Cal said with a grin. “Gimme some.”

They high-fived again.

When Kort and Persei got back from the woods, looking a little miffed about not getting to finish, Cal and Baroke were sitting with their feet up in hastily-grabbed woven chairs facing the woods.

“Excuse me, sire. Would you care for some more of the winning team’s ceremonial wine?” Cal asked.

“Why, yes, my good man,” Baroke said, lazily sloshing his cup before Cal refilled it. As the couple were coming closer, the two switched roles.

“Excuse me, sire. I couldn’t help but notice how parched you look. Perhaps you could use some ceremonial wine, circa thirty-two hundred and forty?”

“Mmmyeesss,” Cal drawled, holding his cup out with a limp wrist as Baroke filled it. “A very good year.”

Honestly, the ceremonial wine wasn’t that great, but drinking it in front of the rest of the village as they filtered out of the forest in ones and twos? Priceless.

Kort walked up to them with a stony face.

Cal was eagerly anticipating wails of frustration and the gnashing teeth of the defeated, but Kort knew him well, and he wasn’t one to lose without putting up a fight.

“It’s inspiring how well you two complement each other,” he said with a neutral expression as he came within earshot.

“Huh?”

“I mean, you two really did make a great team, covering each other’s most glaring flaws to achieve something great. It’s almost as if to say either of you on your own would have floundered in the dirt the entire time. Your success here has really proven how much—”

“Bah,” Baroke said, tossing the half-empty cup of wine at Kort, who caught it with a grin, despite being splattered with some of its contents. He knocked back the bit that remained with a satisfied sigh.

“Ah…thanks for the drink, sire. ‘Tis a hot day,” he said, adopting their mannerisms.

“Don’t make me get out of my chair,” Cal said mock-threateningly.

“Or what, you’re gonna spy on my mom again?”

“I don’t hear her complaining,” Cal said with a shrug.

“Dude, your mom’s a cougar,” Baroke said. “There was this one time she caught me alone and—”

“AAAH, SHUT UP!” Kort said, clapping his hands over his ears and running off.

“Winners: Calvin and Baroke,” Cal said, flexing his meager biceps.

“Ring the funeral bell,” Baroke said, leaning back in his chair, bringing the bottle of wine to his lips in a meaty fist.

The villagers streamed in from the forest over time, slowing to a crawl and then stopping once everyone was in.

Everyone except Jinnei and Kala.

Chapter 4: On a Cosmic Scale

Baraad was bored.

Being an elite bodyguard with five Breaks didn’t mean every assignment was in the middle of a war-torn battlefield.

Nope.

Sometimes, you and your squad get assigned to secretly guard the princess from having too much fun and getting knocked up. The likelihood of anything else in the village she occasionally visited being a threat was a non-starter.

Still, they took their business seriously, watching for any sign of a threat, from these villagers or anyone else. When the kids lined up at the starting line, they had already gone deep into the woods, ghosting ahead of them without a single villager seeing them move.

They scoured the forest for any obvious threats, and then fell back to the princess, forming a tight circle around her as she and her friend ran through the woods, looking for a boar Baraad already knew they wouldn’t find.

When Baraad saw Kala trip and cut herself on an exposed stone, he didn’t intervene. Hardships built character.

When he watched her chew on a mushroom that the two girls had found, snickering conspiratorially with each other, he didn’t intervene. He knew the plant, and aside from mind-bending hallucinations, it was harmless. Bad trips and secrets among friends built character.

When Baraad’s naked wife stepped out of the woods and approached the princess, he shot her in the heart and changed his hiding spot fractions of a second before a volley of arrows riddled it with holes.

Baraad and his team gave up their Stealth, fading into the visual spectrum in a tight circle around Kala.

“Baraad, what—” Kala said, dropping the mushroom. “Who was tha—”

“Princess, you’re under attack,” Baraad said, glancing back at his team. Three of them hadn’t reacted fast enough to the mnemonic illusion of a loved one and hung from the trees, pierced with dozens of arrows.

Damn. Down a quarter of my men before the fight even started. How the hell did they get so close to us?

It was cold, but the safest place for the guards to be now was in front of the princess. If this was a kidnapping and not an assassination, then the enemy would avoid ranged attacks while they stood directly in front of her.

If it was an assassination, things would get complicated.

“Baraad,” a voice called from the woods, and a heavyset swordsman with large sideburns with streaks of grey stepped out from behind a wavering curtain of light. The curtain fell further to reveal no less than twenty Gadvera Veterans, and an Ilethan Light-weaver.

This was going to be a tough fight.

“Surrender, and be spared,” the man said. “Men such as you have their own value, after all.”

“Am I tripping already?” Kala said. “Or is my second cousin, once removed, attacking us?”

“No, I don’t think you’re tripping,” Jinnei said, dragging Kala behind her.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Baraad said, “if I don’t make this easy for you.” His eyes darted to Suala, who had stayed hidden.

The slender woman had the greatest Stealth of all of them, and had managed to flank their formation without being spotted. She leapt on the illusionist and put a dagger through the Ilethan woman’s spinal column. The magician was the greatest impediment to their fight, and with her out of the picture, they stood a chance.

The Light-weaver dissolved into motes of light under Suala’s dagger, and before she could react, a knife held by a pale, disembodied hand lodged itself into her ribcage. The Light-weaver was a trap! Not entirely unexpected, with them. It was damn brave of Suala to lure them out, and Baraad couldn’t afford to let it go to waste.

In a flash of motion, Baraad drew two knives and threw them.

“Deadeye.” Baraad named the Ability aloud for the enemy’s benefit, as one went toward Kala’s cousin, Lumentrias, and the other went toward the illusionist.

The Veterans knew the consequences for killing a royal, but they couldn’t risk Baraad having lost his mind, so they blocked the knife heading toward the middle-aged man with greater alacrity than the one zipping toward empty air.

A single sword tried to deflect the knife angling toward nothing, and the blade slid harmlessly through, ignoring obstacles and burying itself past the handle in…something.

The illusion of empty air flickered out, and the Light-weaver appeared beside Suala, a piece of steel buried in the Light-weaver’s brain. Most illusionists neglected making more than one or two fakes.

Ice settled in Baraad’s stomach as the Veterans reacted quickly, charging toward Baraad’s injured teammate. The knife in her ribs made her a fraction of a second too slow to dodge and Suala fell to the ground, blood bubbling from a deep cut in her throat.

“You’ve only got eight left, Baraad. Be reasonable.”

Baraad buried the white-hot rage under decades of training, and drew his sword, holding it out in front of him. He had a job to do.

He flicked the switch in the handle.

***Calvin***

“Where’s your sister?” Karen asked, eyes narrowed as she glanced out into the woods. It was almost time for the feast and the two girls still hadn’t come back.

“Probably getting eaten by a norlock,” Cal said. It came across more flippant than he’d intended, disguising the hint of worry in the back of his mind.

“Psssh,” Karen scoffed. “She’s as safe with Kala as she would be at the center of Fort Holm. They’re probably just braiding each other’s hair and talking about boys.”

“Is that a euphemism for something?” Cal asked, glancing up at her.

His foster mother gave him a wide grin, her bloody hands on her hips.

“You’re just gonna leave me hanging, huh?”

“She’ll be fine. We’ll save a place for—”

A bright red light caught their attention as a firework launched itself into the sky from deep in the woods, hanging in midair.

“What does that—” Cal began to ask, but Karen was already running, disappearing into the woods that looked far more ominous now that they were lit by a strange red tint. The firework must have been magical, because it settled above the forest like a crimson sun, attracting attention for miles around.

“Wait there!” He heard Karen’s voice echo back to him as the rest of the villagers gawked.

Cal jumped out of his seat and started chasing her, heading toward the light at his top speed, which was admittedly much slower than Karen’s.

To the hells with waiting. Waiting is for plants and animals.

So maybe he had a tendency to get lost in the woods. Wouldn’t be hard navigating to the giant glowing ball in the sky.

Cal ran for a good ten minutes, ducking under branches and hopping over bushes, reminding himself of a jackrabbit as he sailed through the woods. The extra point of Body had played its part. That, and the intense training from Karen that had raised his physical sub-stats.

Body and Mind dictated the maximum any sub-stat could be raised to, and a sub-stat could be raised through diligent training. In theory, Bekvah hadn’t needed to spend Warp on Calvin’s Intuition, but training it was rather difficult, requiring tense dinner parties filled with deception, veiled threats and double meanings, which wasn’t exactly a staple of the podunk village of Deinos.

Cal had lost himself in thought when a fist as big as his head came out of nowhere and caught his shirt, lifting him off his feet.

“What are you doing here?” Karen demanded quietly.

“Umm….”

“Shut up. You’re damn lucky they’re too busy to hear your crashing. In a few seconds, I’m going to go in there. You’re going to squeeze out every ounce of Stealth you can manage, and get your sister to safety if at all possible, understood? Just your sister—Kala will be fine.”

She lifted him up to her eye level, allowing him to see six men stripping corpses and congratulating each other while shoving Jinnei and Kala to the side, shackles on their arms.

Cal nodded.

“And I swear to all the gods, if either of you dies, I’ll find whichever hell you’re in and murder you. I swore an oath to my best friend—the woman who brought you both into this world—that when I see her again, I’ll be able to say the last I saw, you two were happy and healthy. If you make me break my oath…”

She held up a fist below Cal’s nose. “You will not be happy or healthy.”

“I get it, I get it,” Cal whispered.

“Good. Go that way.”

She let Calvin to the ground and he began crawling through the woods, paying close attention to where he stepped, trying to ooze between the trees and shrubs that gave him cover from the clearing where the battle had occurred.

In the back of his mind, he wondered what had caused all of this, but the vast majority of his focus was on being just a little quieter, just a little more out of sight. His heart slamming in his chest made it difficult to tell if he was actually being quiet or not.

Avoid root.

Line of sight.

Quiet grass.

Crunchy leaves bad.

Cal achieved a kind of flow state, taking in the Bad Guys’ positioning and line of sight, moving with the ebb and flow of their chatter, keeping his noise to the absolute minimum he could manage.

Stealth has reached Level 5!

+1 to Intuition.

Level 5: 25% correction.

Please choose an Ability from the list oʩlz---

….

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Words began scrolling through Cal’s mind so quickly that he misplaced his foot and almost fell, silently catching himself on the bark of a nearby tree.

I’ll deal with it later, shut up.

The scrolling thankfully stopped, fading into the back of his mind.

Alright, now I just gotta—

Karen happened.

One second the six Veterans were stacking corpses, and the next, Karen was halfway to them, a thick tree branch over her shoulder.

The nearest fighter spotted Karen and chuckled, drawing his sword and settling into a stance.

A tiny bit of backstory is required for the full context of what happened next.

The Gadveran fighting style was about precision and skill; they prided themselves on their fast blades and deadly, precise strikes. They tended to wear light armor and rarely came within biting distance of each other.

Whatever style Karen used…not so much.

Karen screamed loud enough to draw the attention of everyone present, raising her makeshift club above her head.

The Gadveran went for a precise thrust to her jugular, followed by an artful dodge.

Karen caught the blade on her club, faked the man out with her footwork and pulled his blade to the side as she crashed into him with a shoulder check, delivering every ounce of her body weight and sending the lightly armored man sprawling to the ground.

“Wai—” he managed to say before the club blew his mind.

She’s a lot faster than in practice. Cal had the dim realization that she’d been toying with him from the beginning. He also had the realization that he needed to move, now.

Cal made it to the side of the clearing where Jinnei and Kala were watching the fight. When he stepped from the woods, the Warp pressed in against his skin, nearly making him take a step back. It made the amount from the griks feel like nothing at all.

Cal shook off the sensation and crept toward where Jinnei and Kala were watching the fight unfold.

Kala was rocking back and forth and whispering to herself, and Jinnei was glancing between her own hand and Karen skewering a man with his own sword.

“Jinnei,” Cal whispered as he arrived beside her. “Let’s get you out of here.” He tried to tug Jinnei to a stand, but her chains seemed to be attached to both Kala’s and a spike in the ground. It didn’t seem like it would move anytime soon, either.

He glanced around frantically and spotted a key hanging from the belt of the alarmed-looking middle-aged fellow in the velvet with gold trim.

Worth a shot.

Cal reached out and copied the key, allowing the duplicate to fall into his hands.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 2!

Level 2: 4 pounds, 10 minutes.

Bent 1/7 remaining.

Why is everything going up so quickly? Cal thought as he struggled to get Jinnei’s hand at the right angle.

Extreme stress boosts Warped Skill growth.

Did the Status screen just respond?

Any thoughts Calvin had about testing it were blown away as Jinnei yanked her hand away, chuckling like she was being tickled.

“Damn it, hold still,” Calvin whispered, yanking her arm back.

“Calvin, Calvin,” she said, looking at her hand. “Karen is so big, and my hands are so small. Like, on a cosmic scale. I should be able to slip them right out of these manacles.” She yanked on the manacles again.

“Nope, the manacles are small, too,” Jinnei said.

“Are you high?” Calvin nearly shouted, but that would defeat the point, so he fumed, silently turning her wrist sideways to expose the keyhole.

Gods, I hope this works.

Cal jammed the key into the lock and twisted, the manacles sprang open, and one of Jinnei’s hands was free.

Yes! Thank the gods for lucky breaks.

“Calvin,” Jinnei said, finally looking away from her hands as he grabbed her other wrist. “You’re really ugly, bro. Like, on a cosmic scale. How come I never noticed before?”

“Because you’re high,” Cal said, freeing her other hand.

“Yeah, that’d do it.”

Luckily, the fight was still going, and the guy with the keyring was watching, every bit as distracted as Jinnei and Kala, who had been drugged to quiescence by these villains.

All Cal had to do was free Kala, and he could lead them away with no one the wiser.

Cal crept forward and had grabbed Kala’s hand with the intention of freeing her, when he noticed the bandaged cut on her hand.

These people hurt Kala! I’ll extract sweet vengeance from each and every one of them! I’ll feed them their own families and sup on their bitter tears!

Kala stopped rocking in place and glanced over at him as he jostled her arm, and they locked eyes for a moment.

“Kala, I’m gonna get you—”

Her eyes widened beyond what Cal had thought possible, almost bulging with fear as her mouth dropped open, teeth bared in an animalistic rictus of terror.

“AAAAIIIIII!” A primal shriek washed over Cal and Jinnei as Kala began scooting away from him as quickly as she could, only stopping when the chains connected to her wrists literally prevented her from getting any further away.

Oh right, she’s high too.

“Someone’s with the princess! Kill him!” the heavyset fellow said, drawing his long blade and pointing at Calvin.

Chapter 5: Listen to Your Elders

“Calvin, take Jinnei and run, you penis wrinkle! And work on your fucking listening skills!” Karen berated him even as she used the opportunity to club an inattentive soldier in the head, sending him twitching to the ground.

Karen had been doing well at first, but the Gadverans had gotten her style down, and she was starting to accumulate damage, sporting bloody nicks across her arms and torso, face and neck.

She looked like she was having the time of her life.

There were only three left, but two of them blocked Karen while the third rushed Calvin and Jinnei.

Time to run. Cal turned to run, tugging Jinnei along behind him, but was brought to a screeching halt as Jinnei stooped to pick up a fallen sword.

“What are you doing?” Karen and Cal demanded at the same time.

“You might have run off, but I spent my Forming Day with an actual plan.”

The Gadveran soldier’s thin blade whistled down towards her neck, and Jinnei sagged bonelessly under the strike before lunging forward, putting the man on the defensive.

“He’s a Veteran! Get your ass out of here!” Karen shouted, receiving a nick on the ribs for her inattention.

Cal didn’t dare get any closer to the flashing of blades as Jinnei led the man around by the nose. There was no opportunity to yank her out of reach without getting someone stabbed or sliced.

“He’s an injured, exhausted Veteran with no Bent left. Plus he keeps telling me where he’s going to attack,” Jinnei said as she slid around one attack, and then another, whipping her blade at the man’s eyes before taking a chunk out of his leading leg.

Most of that statement was true. The man was bleeding, panting, sweaty, and his sword seemed to droop a little, but he was still faster and stronger than either of them. Cal didn’t see the man telling her anything, either.

Oh right, drugs.

Cal kept watching for the moment to intervene as the blades flashed faster than he could make out. Gods damn it, just give me a chance. Stumble over a root or something!

Cal was still waiting for his chance when the heavyset man swept up beside Jinnei and cleaved his sword six inches through her shoulder.

Cal’s heart stopped in his chest.

The Veteran kept going, running Jinnei through with his blade while she was held in place, before tossing her struggling body off to the side.

A scream filled Cal’s ears as he leapt towards the bigger man with grey hair. Karen was shouting something.

Everything was red.

The Veteran stepped between them with a smooth slide, a relieved smile on his face as he held his blade between himself and the unarmed boy.

The blade drew a vicious cut along his left forearm as he batted it away with his left hand, Calvin’s body flying toward the man’s torso.

Splitting.

Cal reached out with the last of his Bent and copied the man’s sword, recreating the weapon in his own hand a fraction of a second before it plunged into his enemy’s abdomen.

His enemy gave a grunt and slapped Calvin out of the air, scowling down at the sword embedded in his stomach.

“Son of a bitch,” the Veteran said, approaching Calvin. The man showed his experience, not bothering to remove the sword, since that would most likely cause him to bleed out.

Calvin blinked stars out of his eyes and leaped up, aiming for the man’s wound.

The Veteran wasn’t having it a second time, putting his sword at a relaxed, defensive posture that would impale him if he tried to force his way past it.

Calvin didn’t realize he was still screaming as he began mindlessly throwing dirt and rocks at the swordsman, trying to look for any weapon he could get a hold of.

“He kind of looks like an angry monkey throwing its own feces,” the heavyset nobleman said with a chuckle, only stoking Cal’s fury.

“Sire, perhaps you should—” The wounded Veteran’s words were cut off as a blade went through his throat.

Jinnei stood behind him, her simple farmer’s clothes caked in her own blood, face promising death.

The inferno inside Cal went out like a candle.

“Jinnei, what the—”

“Dunno—watch out!” she jumped forward and slashed at the heavyset nobleman, pushing him away from Cal. He dealt with her easily, parrying her blade and sending back cuts almost as an afterthought.

The man was easily as strong as the others, and he wasn’t tired or wounded.

“Jinnei, get down!” Karen said, charging toward them the instant her last opponent fell.

“This has soured rather quickly,” the heavyset nobleman said, blocking Karen’s feral swings and forcibly resisting her battering charges designed to knock him off his feet.

“I don’t suppose I could offer you some stones for the girl? A knighthood, perhaps? No? Well, far be it from me to overstay my welcome.”

The man gradually retreated as he fought Karen, until they separated at the edge of the woods, and he began to step backwards, slowly putting distance between them.

“Lovely ladies, gentleman…adieu.”

He bent his knees and began running far faster than Cal would have thought possible for a man of his size, disappearing into the woods.

Karen sank to her knees, resting some of her weight on a stolen Gadveran blade.

“Jinnei, Cal, come here,” she said without raising her head.

The siblings approached.

“Where I can see you.”

They hesitantly stood in front of her, Cal clutching his aching, bleeding arm.

Karen raised her head, and Cal could see the fires of damnation in her reddened glare. They weren’t going to get out of this without some bruises.

Karen loomed forward and Cal almost ducked out of the way before she swept them both up in a monster hug that nearly squeezed the air from his lungs.

“I thought I’d lost you.” She pushed Jinnei back and hooked a meaty finger under the collar of Jinnei’s shirt, pulling it down to expose a large pink scar running through her shoulder. She snagged the chain of Jinnei’s necklace, tugging it out of her blood-drenched shirt.

The softly glowing sapphire in the center of the silver was dull, and when Karen ran her thumb over the amulet, it flaked into ash in her grip.

“You really almost died,” Karen whispered.

“Is that why she wears that all the time?” Cal asked.

“I didn’t know,” Jinnei shot back.

“Seems like favoritism. I’m way more death-prone.”

“Says the guy who couldn’t—OW OW OW!”

“YOU TWO ARE A PAIR OF DISOBEDIENT BRATS! YOU IGNORED ME MULTIPLE TIMES AND YOU BOTH ALMOST DIED!” Karen began screaming as she held them both by the ear in a vicious grip.

“Just Jinnei. I was nowhere near getting killed,” Cal offered helpfully.

Karen cuffed him. “I’m going to teach you brats some proper discipline. No more playing around in the morning like we’ve been doing. From now on, when I say jump, you start fucking jumping until I tell you to stop!”

That was playing around? Cal thought, the loss of blood making him woozy.

“Grab Kala. I’ll get started with making something to bind our wounds,” Karen said, grunting as she brought herself to her feet. “These blades are worth a couple stones each, so don’t forget to grab them. You could start your own farm with the steel here…”

She paused when she saw Calvin and Jinnei pass out from the Warp, along with the errant princess.

“Or I’ll just do everything myself,” she growled. “Not like it’ll be much different.”

***Calvin***

Warp overflow detected…

Running Warp Protection System… Break.

Calvin tried to roll over, and the intense pain in his left arm brought him up short, rousing him to full wakefulness in a matter of seconds.

“Agh, damnit,” he hissed, clutching the bandaged arm.

In the front of his consciousness was a block of text, persistently asking him to pick an Ability or Mutation.

Give me a second, you damnable wretch, Cal thought, trying to sit up.

“Good morning,” a familiar voice said from the side of the bed, causing Cal to start, nearly toppling back in bed and slamming his head against the wall.

A rough hand caught the back of his head and helped him sit the rest of the way up.

“Bekvah, what are you doing here?” Cal asked as the small man with the owlish glasses stepped away from him.

“I wished to express my gratitude for your aid in rescuing my niece.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Cal said, his guts churning. “I just stood there and watched.”

“I have it on high authority that you stabbed someone in the stomach.”

“Okay, maybe I did a little.”

“Sometimes a little makes all the difference. Kala’s father would have come to thank you himself, but he’s a very busy man.”

“Right… Is her dad the Hash’Maje?”

“That, he is.”

“Been wondering about that for a while,” Calvin said, leaning back against the wall. “Damn. I was hoping she was just the daughter of a rich merchant or something. Then I might have had a shot.”

Bekvah chuckled. “I see your Intuition has improved. Tell me, do you still wish to be a great wizard?”

“I don’t know,” Cal said. “When it came down to it, I couldn’t help in any meaningful way. I couldn’t protect Jinnei.”

“Your sister? She seems fine.”

Cal bit his tongue. Karen probably didn’t want him talking about JInnei’s necklace to anyone. Even Cal knew having an artifact capable of staving off death wasn’t something to run your mouth about.

“Anyway, I told my brother about your desire to learn spellcraft and he gave me permission to lend you this.”

He pulled a leather-bound book out of a bag by his feet. It was dark brown with gold-leaf lettering on the front: Riddles for the Mind.

He opened a page, and revealed a series of math and pictographic puzzles—find the next one in order, count the number of triangles, etc. The text itself was very minimal.

“Why pictograms?”

“Word puzzles will sometimes spend Warp to raise Intuition or a Skill, like counting timber or something inane. Cutting all context out of the puzzles serves to only strengthen the Mind.”

“Oh, neat,” Cal said.

“You can borrow this, or…” Bekvah reached into the bag and withdrew a heavy sack about the size of Cal’s two fists. Bekvah rattled it, revealing its identity as a sack of stones.

“...have this,” he said, continuing to jingle the bag.

“Why not both?” Cal asked.

Bekvah broke into uproarious laughter.

“My brother would like you,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Alas, he specifically said you can only choose one.”

“The book, obviously.”

“You sure? This is enough to buy a rather large ranch and leap your sheepherding career forward by forty years.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Cal said, reaching under his bed and pulling out a primer of common Skills he’d bought from the local library, a fifteen-page handwritten pamphlet with a couple hundred of the most common Skills available to farmers everywhere. “It goes well with this.

“There’s only a handful of common Skills for Will and Stability, but I’m going to grab them,” Cal said, pointing to the Skill on the pamphlet. “From what I can tell, the sheer bottleneck of Bent storage and regeneration limits the amount of magics a man can master in his lifetime to about five.

“If I were to learn nothing but spells with my Warp,” Cal continued, “I would only be able to practice one of them, one time per day, for fifty years, until they lay me in the grave.

“If I pick up Skills like Fishing and Public Speaking, I can raise my Will without being reliant on Bent to practice. If I get my Will close to fourteen, I can use two spells a day, and practice faster!”

“You could frontload your Warp into your Mind to increase the amount of Warp you receive the next Breaking. Do that a couple times and you’d be able to master a rather large selection of magics.”

“That’s a stupid nobleman’s way of doing it,” Karen said, entering Cal’s room. “No offense.”

“None taken. I understand the impracticality of it,” Bekvah said, glancing up at Karen towering over him.

“Whaddya mean?”

“You should treat every Breaking like it’s your last,” Karen said. “Most adults don’t go farther than the third one. You know why?”

“Not one hundred percent, no.”

“Because it requires significantly higher concentrations of Warp each time. Up to several thousand powerful creatures’ worth.”

“Huh. All at the same time, in the same place,” Cal said. He knew that Warp faded away quickly, flushed out of the body by the System. Gathering together that many live monsters and killing them all at once seemed…impractical.

“Maybe a rich man could hire a couple hundred mercenaries to round up a few thousand monsters and kill them all in the same spot, but there’s a much more cost-effective way of doing it for peasants, and it’s happening all the time.”

“Really?” Calvin asked, brightening. If he could figure out how to go through a large number of Breaks, he could master the magic he already had and take on more in a short time.

Bekvah frowned, seemingly displeased.

“Let me ask you a riddle,” Karen said, squatting beside the bed. “What kind of creatures come together in large numbers to kill each other by the thousands?”

“Rival ant colonies?” Cal hazarded.

“Humans.” Bekvah sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“That’s why anyone with four to six Breaks is called a Veteran, kid. Being present at a bloody battlefield is one of the only ways to Break past three. This noble prick’s assertion that you could frontload your Mind and just go get a couple more Breaks is based on the fact that noble families tour bloody battlefields safe behind a wall of iron and flesh to soak up that Warp and profit off the deaths of others. No offense.”

“A little bit taken,” Bekvah said.

“For you, though,” Karen said, jabbing a thick finger into his chest. “You’d have to be in the thick of things, participating in the slaughter. And by definition, most of the participants in a slaughter get slaughtered.”

“I…see,” Cal said, frowning. He hadn’t known that Breaking was so…bleak.

“My advice? Treat this like the last one you’ll ever get and behave accordingly.”

Cal frowned, considering it for a while.

“I still want the book.”

“Here you go,” Bekvah said, standing. “Now, my lady, I’ll be out of your way.” He nodded to Karen before turning and leaving Cal’s meager hut.

Karen took Bekvah’s spot and sat down beside Cal, unwrapping his arm and looking at it.

“How’s the tenderness?” she asked, poking around his arm.

“Only when you hit the wound.”

“That’s good. Not very much visible swelling and no pus, either. Excellent.”

“Do you…um… Do you think I should learn the sword? Spend my Warp on it?”

Karen wrapped his arm back up and heaved a deep sigh, rubbing the back of her neck. “I wanted you to learn Swordsmanship from me because that’s the only thing I can teach you. To me, every problem looks like something that could be hacked or stabbed, but I know that’s not really the case.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “I’ve seen wizards do some pretty terrifying things, and I just wanted to…” She reached her hands out and tightened them into fists for a moment. “...not be out of my depth for once, you know?”

“I don’t get it,” Cal said.

“Me neither,” she said with a sigh.

“You know I was in an adventuring party with your mom?” she asked.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I did a few stints in the military, became a Legend—one of the first women in history—and eventually I got tired of killing people for a living, and I thought to myself, ‘Hey, why not be an adventurer?’”

She glanced at Cal. “At that point, I figured the rewards outweighed the risks.

“I signed on with a group composed of your mom and a couple other adventurers. Meatheads, the lot of ‘em. We figured since we were hot shit on the battlefield, we’d be hot shit raiding ancient cities for loot.”

“And?” Cal asked.

“Well, we were.”

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

9

Intuition:

6

Stability:

7

Will:

8

Bent:

2/7

Skills:

Stealth

 5*

Talking to Girls

2

Acting

3

Read Expression

2

Sense-Grafting

3

Dupdomancy

2

Stealth has reached Level 5!

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Active Stealth

Unseen Affinity

Sneak Critical

Mutations:

Vein-Sight

Camouflage

Third Eye

Touch-Grip

….

…….I’m trying to listen to the story, here, Cal thought, dismissing the System messages scrolling across his vision.

Chapter 6: Obligatory Flashback

“Gods, I’m gonna freeze my tits off out here,” Elaine said, tucking her voluminous cloak over her voluminous breasts as the snow kept pouring down around them, forming eddies as the wind blew through it.

“I can help you with that, El,” Gregor said with a chuckle. The man with thin black hair was packing his belt full of emergency supplies, along with a couple limes. They had long since stopped teasing him about his fear of scurvy.

“Gee, that never gets old.” Elaine’s voice was flat from over a year of working with the man. “One of these days, I wish you’d be man enough to risk death or dismemberment to cop a feel, then we could move on. Ya bitch.”

Gregor’s eyes narrowed a bit, but it was all well within their usual antics.

“How do you do it, Karen?” she asked, turning her attention back to the towering warrior.

“I’ve got sheepskin lining the armor,” Karen said, tapping the obscenely oversized armor with her iron-clad knuckles. “I’m snug as a bug in a rug.”

The large, balding mercenary, Andrew, popped his head out of his tent and—

***

“You used to have a giant suit of armor? How come I’ve never seen it?” Cal asked.

“I sold it to buy the farm. Now shut up, Calvin, I’m telling the story.”

***

The large, balding mercenary, Andrew, popped his head out of his tent and frowned at her. “Is everyone good to go?”

“Waiting on you, Drew,” Karen said.

“Well then, wait no longer,” he said, leaving his tent fully armored. The six-foot-tall man started stretching, limbering himself up in the whirling snow.

“Did you sleep in that?” Elaine asked incredulously.

“Nah, just leave the hinges open and roll into it in the morning. Karen, can you get my back?” He started cinching the straps keeping the armor tight against his front.

“Sure.” Karen walked up and cinched the straps on his back tight. Andrew preferred to have Karen do it because Elaine had never worn heavy armor in her life, and Gregor might be tempted to pull a fast one.

At least, that’s what he told them. Karen and Elaine suspected their leader had a soft spot for Karen, but couldn’t bring himself to make things unprofessional.

“Alright, weapons check. Fuckin’ frost,” he said, yanking his sword out of its sheath, breaking the thin layer of frost on it that had accumulated while he slept. The other members of the party made sure their equipment was good to go, staring at the monolithic castle in the distance.

“I’m sure I don’t need to go over the plan again,” Drew said, marching in front of the three of them. “But I’m gonna do it anyway, because y'all are idiots.”

“Suck my dick,” Elaine muttered.

Karen was silent. She knew she didn’t have the mental capacity to be witty and know exactly what the plan was, so she chose to focus on the one that offered a better chance at survival.

“That castle was discovered last year by a ranger who’d gotten lost up in the mountains. Nobody who’s tried to explore it since has come back alive. I think you all know what that means.”

“Phat loot,” Gregor said, the black fur around his shoulders obscuring his smirk.

“That’s right. This isn’t some ancient village with automatic bread makers. That, right there, is a military installation. One sword that cuts anything, or a Guardian Spirit, or something of that caliber, and we are set for life.

“Now, in the interest of living that life a good long time, we are taking this slow and painstakingly careful. Elaine, you’ll be responsible for making sure our path backward is clear. I want you to wall up every door as we go, leaving only one path behind us. By all the gods, we are not getting struck from behind or splitting up by taking a wrong turn during a retreat.”

“That’ll take a lot of Bent, and I only recharge two a day,” Elaine said.

“What part of ‘painstakingly careful’ did you not understand?” Drew asked. “We’re gonna poke our heads in, back out, poke out heads in a little deeper, rinse and repeat.”

“Sounds like Gregor with whisky-dick,” Elaine said.

***

“Was my mom really that foul?”

“Pretty much,” Karen said.

***

“Keep five Bent handy in case of an emergency. If I had to tell you to save your vials, I’d have already kicked you out. Karen and I are going to take turns acting as point, followed by Gregor, then Elaine, then whoever’s not point as rearguard.”

Karen saw Elaine run a thumb over the three vials of inky black substance on her belt, liquid Bent, in units of three. Each one had cost a couple stones, the price of an entire guar or a good sword.

Rich wizards, Karen thought with good humor, rolling her eyes as they assembled and marched up the hill, with her pulling the rearguard. Karen’s armor was worth quite a bit more, but she’d earned it.

They walked up the side of the mountain, through the foot of snow, grimacing as the water melted into their armor and sapped heat, eventually making Karen’s feet go numb. Karen’s Endurance was such that she could go a lot longer before getting frostbite, however, so she marched on silently.

The others seemed to have their own issues, but they made it to the front of the castle without complaint.

It was a massive, looming thing formed of black stones the size of carriages stacked on top of each other. One might have thought the thing was made by giants, but for the tiny arrow slits and normal-sized gatehouse. The black stone was coated in a thick layer of ice, making it look like flowing obsidian.

The gate itself stood open, inviting them to their death.

Andrew stopped in front of the gate, looking up at it with a scowl. “I don’t fuckin’ think so. Elaine, remove the gate.”

Andrew must have envisioned a situation where the gate closed behind them, locking them in a death trap. It could have been what happened to the last few parties. He wasn’t having any of it. The man would sooner dismantle the entire castle brick by brick than fall into a lethal trap.

Elaine closed her eyes and held out her hand. The other members of the party could feel her Bent flying over their heads, causing the hair on the back of their necks to stand up.

The black stone groaned and peeled itself away from the ancient steel gate, releasing the heavy steel to topple to the ground, rumbling the very earth beneath them with its immense weight.

A hair-raising wail filled the air, reverberating through the snow-covered mountains.

“Back fifty paces. Elaine, a funnel. Karen, join me at the front. Gregor, watch Elaine’s back.”

“Right.” They accepted his orders and moved to make them so. Gregor didn’t even bother to comment about how happy he would be to watch Elaine’s backside.

The man was professional when he was on the job.

They marched backward, and Karen rejoined Drew at the front while Elaine penned them in with stone walls ten feet tall and four feet wide, buried deep into the bedrock beneath them.

The wailing gradually grew in volume, until their enemy made an appearance. They were some kind of…purple men with grossly exaggerated tongues emerging from their distended jaws.

The thirty or so creatures rushed toward them, followed by a handful of strange crab-like creatures with brains bursting out from their carapace.

The man-things charged them mindlessly, throwing up snow as they charged, bluish drool dripping from their tongues. They paid no attention to the fact that they’d been penned in and funneled straight into the jaws of death.

“Hit!” Andrew shouted, and he and Karen smashed their shields into the charging creatures before hacking the stumbling bodies apart.

One managed to slip through the gap and tried to put its tongue through her visor. Karen jabbed her sword through its neck and shoved it away before locking her shoulder against Andrew’s again.

A droplet of the creature’s drool sizzled just underneath her eye, causing her eyes to tear up. She focused her mind and blinked the pain away, forcing her body to blindly match Andrew’s actions as they cut down another wave of them. She felt her sword cut through something.

“Spit’s acidic!” she shouted to Andrew beside her, finally regaining her sight.

“Don’t let them touch you with the tongue!” Andrew relayed back to Elaine and Gregor.

“Do I look like I want to let them touch me with that shit?” Elaine demanded, keeping her eyes open for a new threat.

The cerebral crabs stood there and took their measure rather than rushing in, ushering dozens more Lickers through the destroyed gate.

Once they seemed to like what they saw, all five crabs began to vibrate, sending an invisible pulse into the air.

“Agh, son of a—” Karen lost her speech as it felt like someone was slowly driving a rusty iron spike through each ear in time with her heartbeat. “GAah!”

She saw the Lickers crowding in around them, felt their claws scraping against her armor, and felt the sting of the occasional drop of saliva burning as it seeped between the cracks of her armor.

She felt all this, but the pain kept her floored, completely unable to move. Karen knew it was just a matter of time until one of the Lickers got a lucky hit or tore off a part of her armor, and then she’d be gone.

What a shitty way to die.

Andrew was beside her, and she could hear the sound of his groaning coming from his helm as the Lickers began to pour over them, surrounding them and peeling off toward Elaine.

“…Let the bargain be struck.” Elaine’s voice carried over to Karen as she waved her hand, discarding an empty vial.

In the distance, brilliant circles of light opened doors into nothingness, birthing monstrous orange-skinned devils with manes of wiry black hair and no lips. The two popped into existence beside the Cerebral Crabs and fell on top of them, tearing into the exposed gray matter.

In a fraction of a second, the pain went away as the crabs shrieked and scuttled away in fright.

Karen stood and glanced behind her, where a third devil was warding off three Lickers with its finger-length claws. Gregor sprang to his feet and took one out with a crossbow bolt, stabilizing the situation in the rear, so Karen planted her feet and once again got shoulder to shoulder with Drew, grinding through the Lickers like machines.

***

“The plan went off without a hitch after that, and we returned home with treasure the likes of which people hadn’t seen in ages,” Karen said. “Your sister’s necklace was one of the things we got, actually.”

“So why aren’t we living in a castle snorting powdered Ambrosia off the asses of maids of our preferred gender?” Calvin asked.

“Where’d you hear that?” Karen asked with a raised brow.

“Kort got it from his dad. Since my mom was foul-mouthed, I thought I’d try it on.”

“Doesn’t suit you,” she said, tweaking his nose. “As for why, well, that’s a much longer story than I’m willing to go into today. Besides, if I hang around too long, you’ll get a Listening to Boring Old Stories Warped Skill.”

“That is true,” Calvin said, nodding sagely before Karen hit his shoulder.

“Anyway, I just came in here to tell you that being a wizard isn’t a…bad choice.” She sounded like she was forcing it out.

“Most Skills give you a passive bonus, with one active Ability every five levels, giving you a slow, steady rate of increase, but spells are kind of the opposite. You get one active Ability that starts out very weak and grows exponentially as you level it, and you can use it in any situation.

“Your mother could use her Stone Shaping magic to make shelter, bridges, walls, ramps, wedges, furniture, and so on. The Deadly Slash Ability I got for my fifth rank in Swordsmanship? I can use it to slash things.”

“I see,” Cal said, nodding. “I’d like to keep pursuing magic, Karen.”

“According to the tiny owl, you’re a prodigy. So keep at it, I guess,” Karen said, tousling his hair. “I’ll leave you be while you’re Forming, but tomorrow your ass is mine.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cal said before his foster mother left.

Stealth has reached Level 5! Freakin’ choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones, damnit.

Abilities:

Active Stealth

Unseen Affinity

Sneak Critical

Mutations:

Vein-Sight

Camouflage

Third Eye

Touch-Grip

“All right, what do they do?” Calvin asked.

Abilities:

Active Stealth: Become invisible for 1 hour/Bent. Effect fades if you attack.

Unseen Affinity: Active Abilities used from a hidden vantage are treated as 2 levels higher. (Trans: Spell Sneak attacks.)

Sneak Critical: Attacks from a hidden vantage are significantly more lethal, automatically seeking vital spots.

Mutations:

Vein-Sight: When using Stealth, the veins of living creatures glow brightly from beneath their skin. (May cause slight vampirism.)

Camouflage: When using Stealth, the skin actively redirects light around the body, nearly disappearing. (Much less effective when wearing clothes.)

Third Eye: Feel any sentient creature actively paying attention to you, and the direction they are in.

Touch-Grip: At will, fingertips and toes become able to stick to objects, with a force equal to your Endurance squared. (May cause superheroism.)

As Calvin brought each of his options to the forefront of his mind, a helpful sentence described it.

Calvin went through them a couple times to make sure he knew what each of them did. He slowly narrowed his selections down.

Active Stealth is pretty good, like a spell in and of itself, but I don’t have a lot of spare Bent to go around.

Unseen Affinity is powerful, especially at the beginning.

Sneak Critical is out. I’m not planning on becoming an assassin.

‘May cause vampirism’? What in the nine hells? Cal looked at the first Mutation. Does that mean these might change my body? Hmmm.

Camouflage is useful if I plan on sneaking around naked like a perv twenty-four seven, which is the only way it would be more cost-effective than Active Stealth.

Third Eye… That’s not bad.

Touch-Grip is interesting. I could theoretically climb walls and even ceilings with impunity, and pick pockets with a single finger.

Calvin took a deep breath and began weeding them out.

Don’t focus on what’s cool. Focus on what pays the most dividends over the longest period of time.

After some thinking, Calvin narrowed it down to Third Eye and Unseen Affinity. After fifteen minutes of careful deliberation, he painfully chose to give up on the empowered spells from Stealth. Third Eye was just too handy in more circumstances.

Knowing when people were looking at him meant he’d know exactly when his Stealth was blown, and conversely, when it wasn’t. He also could notice other people in Stealth easier if they were paying attention to him. He could tell when girls stared lustfully, or if someone behind him was staring, possibly allowing him to dodge backstabs. Even in a social situation, if someone was throwing too many looks at him, he would know.

It’s a damn shame, though. I may never get my Body high enough to get another chance at that Ability at tenth level.

“All right, I pick Third Eye.”

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Huh?

Cal’s skin started to itch, and his head started to ache, then stab with pain as the plates of his skull popped apart and began to shift.

“Agh!” Cal gave a strangled cry before everything went dark.

Chapter 7: Dangers of Fishing

Cal woke up still in his bed, clothes sticky with sweat.

“What in the hells was that?” he asked. “Does everyone have to go through that when they mutate? Never told me.” Matter of fact, no one had ever told him anything about mutating; it was always Abilities, Abilities, every five levels in a Skill.

Cal reached up and touched his skull. Did it change? Are people going to start asking questions? After massaging it for a few minutes, Cal didn’t notice any changes worth mentioning. His hands and skin looked the same, and he plucked a hair out.

Hair color’s still the same. As long as my eyeballs didn’t change, I’m golden.

Cal didn’t have all day to sit and screw around. He had twelve Warp to spend.

The amount of Warp a person received each Breaking was dictated by their highest primary stat, Body or Mind, and according to Bekvah and some of the people he’d asked since, twelve Warp to spend was a lot.

It also explained why Bekvah suggested frontloading his Warp into Mind.

Spending all twelve points doing puzzles would raise his Mind to thirteen, ensuring his next Break gave him seventeen Warp, which was a truly outstanding amount. It would simultaneously raise the limit on his sub-stats greatly…but, he wouldn’t have access to the Skills to raise his sub-stats until his next Break.

Bekvah’s method truly leaned on getting more Breaks afterward.

So, if the nobility basically cheats by absorbing Warp from battlefields, why can’t I?

A seed of an idea began to germinate as Cal opened the book of puzzles and began solving them. The first couple pages were easy, but they quickly became something that Cal had to struggle to solve.

Your Mind has reached Level 10!

Remaining Warp 9/12.

Your Mind has reached Level 11!

Remaining Warp 6/12.

Your Mind has reached Level 12!

Remaining Warp 3/12.

Once Cal had only three Warp remaining, he got out of bed, carefully trying not to devote too much effort to any one thing. He was starting to get a feel for the Warp buzzing around behind his heart, like Kala had told him.

Cal decided to pick up two Will-related Skills, and a Stability one, to increase his Bent recovery and storage.

Cal didn’t want to be left high and dry for years if his plans didn’t work out.

He stepped outside into the afternoon sun and squinted against the glare.

First order of business: fishing.

Cal leaned over and grabbed his rod, a simple notched Lipia sapling with twelve feet of string and a copper hook on the end.

Lipia was famous for its flexibility and strength, and it was commonly used to make war bows, but the farmers of Deinos, who had the stuff growing in their back yards, often made fishing poles out of them, too.

Cal trotted down the well-beaten dirt path to the river. The trees loomed over the well-worn groove in the ground as he walked downhill. After a couple minutes walking between splashes of sunlight, Cal made it to the village fishing hole, where the villagers liked to relax and put an extra fish or two on the table.

Old man Juka was sitting on a lump of dirt overlooking the river, silently watching his wooden bobber.

In Deinos, fishing was a popular pastime for the elderly, who were too frail to engage in heavy labor, but still wanted to put food on the table for their children and grandchildren.

“Afternoon, Calvin,” Juka said, glancing over. The village elder wasn’t working in that capacity at the moment, so he was just Juka.

Calvin felt a sensation, something like an itch on his face, with the directional feeling of warm sunlight beating on his skin. This must be the Third Eye Mutation.

He could vaguely tell the direction the old man’s gaze was coming from, but maybe with enough practice, he’d be able to pinpoint people with his eyes closed.

Juka was a bald old man with no teeth. He was a stick-thin prune of a man, but he was wise, and could still hold a fishing rod.

The old man had his rod tucked in a frame, so he could let a fish wear itself out before reeling it in. He wasn’t that strong, especially against some of the large fish to be had in this river.

“Afternoon,” Cal said as he did his customary check for norlocks. The awful creatures were the apex predators of the river, and weren’t above snatching things off the bank. There were no strange eddies, or suspicious brown lumps in the water.

“No norlocks today, son,” Juka said.

“As Karen would say, I’d rather trust my eyes than another person’s word.”

Juka chuckled. “Good plan.” He turned back to his bobber, patiently watching it dip in the slow-moving current.

“What are you doing here so late?” Juka asked, glancing over at him. “Best fishing’s already done.”

“Forming Day,” Cal said, sitting down about twenty feet down the bank, leaning up against a fallen log he and Baroke had moved there for that purpose. “Thought I’d pick up Fishing as a Warped Skill.”

“Ah, can’t go wrong with that. My uncle got to level five, and the man never went hungry. You don’t mind if I cast where you do, do yah?”

Juka gave him a wry, toothless grin.

“Get your own fish,” Cal said, digging a worm out of the soft soil and baiting his hook before relaxing back into his nook and casting his line out into the water. On a hunch, he aimed for a particularly fast-moving current that eventually drew his wooden bobber into the shallows in a more natural way than simply splashing the lure into the hole.

Fishing was a common Will/Sta hybrid Skill. Skills that raised Stability tended to be ones that relaxed you, kept you grounded, or ensured a certain quality of life. Cooking, Cleaning, and Tool Maintenance were all good examples.

Will Skills required focus, determination, or patience. Examples included Babysitting, Animal Training, Hunting, etc.

Since Fishing was both relaxing, grounding, and requiring focus and patience, it was a hybrid Skill, delivering a stat point to whichever attribute was lower every five levels.

In Cal’s case, it would be Stability, but that could reverse if he raised his Stability higher than his Will. He felt like it was a good choice to have a Skill that could flip as necessary to help round out his attributes.

After this, he’d grab two more Will Skills, and be well on his way to being able to restore two Bent per day to fuel his magic practice.

Cal waited, watching his bobber intently as the brown water swirled around it, anticipating the moment he set the hook. After ten disappointing minutes, Cal replaced his worm and cast again, letting the lure flow down into the shallows on its own.

After another few minutes of waiting, his bobber dipped unnaturally. Cal’s heart slammed in his chest, causing him to flinch and almost tug on the line too early, but he caught himself. No, it’s just testing the bait. Wait until the fish swallows it.

A couple seconds later, the bobber dipped under the surface, more violently this time. Cal tugged the pole back to set the hook. Not too hard, or it’ll snap the line or tug the hook out. Just the right amount of pressure.

The hook set deep, and the fish began to swim back and forth under the surface of the water, intractably hooked.

You have manifested Fishing!

Fishing has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Boosts effectiveness of bait and line strength. 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 2/12.

“Whoo!” Cal shouted as he let the fish wear itself out. Their homespun line didn’t exactly have a lot of strength to it, so he had to be delicate.

“You seem awfully excited,” Juka said.

“I got the Skill!” Cal said, doing his best to follow the fish’s movements and keep the tension on the line steady.

“Oh, maybe I can bum a couple fish off of you, then.”

The fish suddenly made an unnatural turn, snapping the line and nearly yanking the pole out of his hand.

Damn, I paid an Ilethan copper piece for that hook! More specifically, the hook was a copper piece that Ghol the smith would form into a hook for kids in exchange for chores. Cal recently had been bumped up to adult rates for hooks, so the loss stung.

Cal felt Juka’s gaze land on his face before the old man spoke. “Hah, I guess I won’t be bumming any fish off you today. In honor of getting the Skill, though, I’ll give you a small loan from my stash, with a very reasonable interest rate of one fish per day.”

“Bah, I’ll be back with a couple spares tomorrow,” Cal said, glancing over at the old man. “I could even—” Cal’s eyes went wide as he spotted a purple, veiny lump of muscle, something like a snake with a penis’s skin, sporting a mouth full of barbed teeth at the end.

A norlock’s tentacle.

“Look out!” Cal shouted, pointing.

“Eh?” Juka only had time to glance over before the norlock struck, sinking barbed fangs into the old man’s arm and dragging him off his hill.

“Ussen Brago—” Juka’s curse words were drowned out as he landed in the water, where more tentacles writhed just below the surface.

Ice went down Cal’s spine. Tradition was, if you spotted a norlock, go get some friends and pelt it with arrows from a safe distance until the damned thing floated to the surface. But this one had Juka, and the old man would be dead before he made it halfway back to the village.

Pulling the old man out wasn’t going to work; neither of them was strong enough to pull away from the thick muscles designed to pull things underwater and drown them. Not before Juka was already dead, that was. The only way Juka was getting out of this alive was if the norlock died in the next minute.

Cal spotted the old man’s fishing knife, a razor-sharp piece of steel with a modest four-inch blade. It sat unattended beside where Juka had been sitting.

Just have to hope it’s enough, Cal thought, running forward and snatching up the blade as he sprinted past, diving into the roiling water.

Chapter 8: Risky Rewards

Cal hit the water hands first, hitting a coil of the norlock’s tentacle.

I only have an instant before it shifts its attention to me. I have to go for its core.

Norlocks had six strong tentacles that they used to reel in their prey to a bulbous main body that they kept hidden on the riverbed. There, it would extend a beak and slice its dead prey into bite-sized pieces.

The main body was where it housed all its vital organs under a fleshy sac.

Cal tugged on the tentacle wrapped around the village elder, pulling himself closer to the creature’s main body, holding the knife in front of himself.

A second later, he felt himself bump into soft flesh.

Cal started slashing, putting every ounce of muscle into his swings, rendered slow by the water resistance.

The water began to taste coppery.

Cal couldn’t see anything.

Pain shot up Cal’s shoulder as one of the tentacles’ mouths clamped around it.

Cal kept hacking away at the main body, feeling Juka’s fishing knife slash through the soft skin of the creature over and over again.

You have manifested Knife-Work!

Knife-Work has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Boosts handling and sharpness of knives, 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 1/12.

Cal didn’t have time for frustration as he continued hacking away at the creature hiding behind a veil of silt—hacking away, because his life depended on it.

The pain in his shoulder throbbed as the creature tried to wrap a tentacle around him and push him away. Norlock tentacles were designed to pull things in, however, not push them away, so Cal was able to stand his ground underwater with a bit of effort and continue stabbing.

Running out of breath! Cal’s vision was starting to cover with sparks as he ran out of air. The norlock didn’t feel like it had gotten much weaker, either.

I need more air! Cal knew if he tried to swim upward, then the norlock would have him right where it wanted. There was no way to get more air…

What if I make some?

In a desperate bid, Cal reached up with his mind and used two Bent to connect himself with the air he knew was above the water’s surface.

Splitting.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 3!

Level 3: 9 pounds, 15 minutes.

Bent 3/7 remaining.

He copied the air above them, and for an instant, he and the norlock were completely surrounded by air. The tentacle supporting Calvin sagged at his sudden increase in weight, and in the dim light filtering down from above, Cal could make out the creature’s hateful eyes glaring at him, and its other four tentacles bringing Juka closer to its beak.

He saw he had been slicing its upper torso to ribbons, a spot closer to the beak where there was more protective skin in case a creature was still struggling.

Cal sucked in a huge breath an instant before the river water crashed down on them again in a wave that painfully slammed into him. I need to be lower, Cal thought, desperately pulling on the norlock’s tentacle to get himself deeper.

He oriented himself where he last saw the creature’s eye and began stabbing in a wild pattern. After the fifth stab, the mouth around his shoulder jerked and let go before thrashing wildly.

Cal put the knife in his mouth and blindly swam in the direction he’d seen the norlock carrying Juka, feeling through the water for the feel of homespun fabric.

After a few seconds, his fingertips brushed against Juka, and he grabbed the old man’s clothes before pushing off the riverbed with enough force to strain his knees, old man in tow.

Cal broke the surface with a gasp, and found himself holding the elder by his pants. He reoriented and yanked his head above the water.

Juka gasped loudly when his head broke the surface of the brown, silt-filled water, orienting himself in a matter of seconds before the two of them swam at top speed toward the shore, sending up a shower of water from their soggy sleeves.

Cal made it to the mucky bank first, then hauled the shaking elder up onto the shore, whereupon the two of them crawled away from the waterline as quickly as they could.

Once they were far enough away, Cal dropped to the ground and groaned in pain, glancing at the shredded meat of his right shoulder.

At least it balances out the cut on my other arm, he thought.

“I got another Skill,” he said, laying his head back in the dirt and trying to get his breath back.

“Oh yeah?” the village elder asked, watching the serene brown water that didn’t seem to have any man-eating monsters in it at all. “Saving Wrinkled Old Men?”

“Knife-Work,” Cal said with a grimace. He hadn’t looked it up in advance, but the chances of it being a Will-based Skill were slim to none. Probably Kinesthetics.

“Well, it worked for me,” Juka said, snagging his fishing kit back from the bank and applying first aid to the bleeding puncture wounds in his arms and legs.

“I thought I was gonna spend twenty years as an elder, helping the people of the village, only to end my days as shit fertilizing the riverbed. Thanks.”

Cal grunted. The loss of the Warp he’d saved specifically for a Will Skill was beginning to sink in. If he never got another Break, he’d have a damned hard time raising his Will to twelve to match his Mind.

I suppose it can be done. Dupdomancy is Will-based, after all, so I’m not completely up shit creek without a paddle.

“How can I make us even?” Juka asked, drawing Cal’s attention to him.

“Can I get some sturdy lumber?” Cal asked, glancing over at the village elder.

“That’s it?”

“And a shovel, saw, drill, and some nails. Enough to build a house.”

“You’re really direct, kid. Most people lead with ‘I couldn’t possibly,’” Juka said with a toothless grin.

“I’ve got something I wanna do.”

Cal let Juka bandage him up, then went hunting with Boros, learning the Hunting Warped Skill before Karen found out about his wounds from the elder and dragged him back to the house to recover.

You have manifested Hunting!

Hunting has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Boosts locating and tracking prey, 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 0/12.

2nd Break complete.

***

The days flew by and eventually Cal’s wounds healed, and life settled back into the sleepy routine of the village. Cal would wake up every morning, get whipped by Karen, then spend the rest of his day practicing his Skills, make a bit of money working odd jobs, and then spend the rest of the day working on his secret project. He stopped moving his sense of pain onto a rock to focus on Splitting, and suffered for it.

Hunting has reached Level 3!

Dupdomancy has reached Level 4!

Fishing has reached Level 3!

Knife-Work has reached Level 4!

Talking to Girls has reached Level 4!

Read Expression has reached Level 3!

Stealth has reached Level 6! Limit reached.

Calvin didn’t get much practice with Acting, as busy as he was running around from place to place, but he always had time to chat with Persei or Mrs. Marshine. Cal was starting to get an odd reputation among the men of the village, who would look at him suspiciously as he stopped to talk with the womenfolk.

It’s not like I wanted a Skill for it. Cal was simply interested to see if there was a useful Mutation for level five, and the extra Intuition would help, of course.

Once Karen found out he had a Skill with knives, she forced him to drop the sword and start learning knife tactics.

Thanks to the Skill, shivs, throwing knives, daggers, and kitchen knives all felt surprisingly comfortable in his hand, and did exactly what he wanted them to do.

Still, knives were less than ideal in a fight, which Cal learned the hard way. Anyone who imagines an agile thief fighting a fully-armored guard to a standstill with nothing but a knife is dead wrong. The blade was so short and the entire thing so light that it was damn near impossible to do anything with it. Too short to stab; your reach was awful compared to the other guy. The knife was too light to block; it’d get torn right out of your hand. Sure, you can parry, but only against thrusts to the torso. Knives sucked.

Knives weren’t meant to fight people with. If they were, they’d be swords.

And forget about nimbly leaping past Karen’s defenses and scoring a hit on her… She was faster than he was.

His Skill at using Third Eye was coming along. As he got used to it, he could feel which part of his body they were looking at and from what direction, which helped for about twenty minutes—until Karen figured it out and started faking him out with where she was looking.

Cal wasn’t even sure she was consciously doing it.

Still, an actual fight with a stranger would only last a few seconds—definitely not long enough to intuit his Ability and fake it out.

The days went by, blending together almost seamlessly, until Cal got a most interesting piece of news about this year’s battle against the Ilethan.

***

“What are we doing here?” Baroke grunted as they carefully rolled back the piece of sod.

“Well, you know how we’ve had a battle with the Ilethan every year for the last fifteen years, right?” Calvin asked.

“Yeah, according to my dad, it’s ‘cuz the duplicitous bastards think we’re weak enough to take our land just because trade with Malkenrovia has stagnated. Every year, they try to shave off a little bit for themselves,” Baroke said before he began loading dirt into the cart with a shovel.

Cal joined him, the two boys digging a roughly coffin-shaped hole in the ground, only about four feet deep.

“Well, I was in Surrak and I overheard that this year’s battle is expected to take place here.”

“Here!?” Baroke asked, glancing around. They were standing in the middle of a large clearing, far to the northeast of Surrak.

“Yeah. What I heard was they like to rotate the battlefields on a twelve-year schedule to make sure no animals get exposed to more than one Break in their lifetime. Turns out, this place is the one they used twelve years ago, and every other major field has had a battle more recently. People put two and two together.”

Cal glanced over his shoulder and spotted Baroke still looking around nervously.

“It’s not for another couple days, I hear. Don’t get excited,” Cal said.

“If the Hash’Maje finds us digging holes and planting strange objects in the battlefield, he’ll hang us as spies.”

“Calm down. I’m friends with his daughter. Ten years of hard labor at the worst.” Cal hadn’t seen much of Kala since the incident. Her father must have become more protective since she’d almost been kidnapped in Deinos.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Cal’s exceedingly large friend said.

“Just keep shoveling, and we can get through this before either of us gets hanged,” Cal said.

“You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” Baroke said, shaking his head. Once they had a sufficient hole, they lowered Cal’s secret project into it: a very sturdy wooden box with air holes drilled into it.

“Yeah, well, waiting around for a bunch of dead people to fall into my lap isn’t exactly my style.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you’re planning on doing?”

“This is different,” Cal said. “I’m going where the dead people are.”

“Why not just join the army? I’m pretty sure you’re actually better than the average infantryman, care of your mom.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Fuck that. They’d put me on the frontlines. I mean, look at me.” Baroke gestured to himself. “I’m a golden god.”

“Bah. I want all the reward with none of the risk,” Cal said.

“Looting a battlefield seems pretty risky.”

“That’s not what this is…is it?”

“Kinda.”

They arranged the turf so it was flat, backfilling dirt as necessary. The two of them jumped up and down on the patch of earth, but it didn’t have any telltale sign of being hollow.

“Alright,” Cal said, lifting up the grass trapdoor and grabbing a waterskin from the cart filled with dirt. “I’ll see you in a week.”

“You’re seriously doing this?” Baroke asked.

“Baroke, I went around the village and asked everyone who had three Breaks to share their story with me.”

“Yeah?”

“It always happened unexpectedly, when their town was raided by a swarm of monsters and a bunch of people died, or when a battle spilled over into their villages, and they were forced to hide in their wine cellar. Most people have one of those events in their lifetime, but do you really think that’s gonna happen anytime soon, in Deinos?”

“Probably not,” Baroke said with a frown.

“And would you want to be a measly fifty-year-old peasant when that critical moment of your life happens, or would you rather already be a Veteran that can do something about it?”

“Alright, alright, I get ya,” Baroke said, waving him off. “Just don’t get killed.”

“Tell Karen I’m in Surrak for a week. Ta,” Cal said, saluting Baroke with the waterskin and crawling into his claustrophobic little box filled with supplies. A moment later, he heard his friend snort and begin carting the displaced dirt away.

Leaving nothing but an empty field with some cart tracks crisscrossing it.

Cal rolled over and pulled out his light source, a glowing crystal from a subterranean lizard. He used the light to begin reading a book he’d saved just for this.

Day one: I should have installed a latrine hole in this fucking thing. I had to open the door to let the stink out in the evening, and the puddle almost soaked my books.

Day two: Managed to dig a large crack out between two slats, good enough for number one. Number two still proves challenging. Toiletries needed.

Day three: Heard voices as scouts surveyed the land. Opening door no longer feasible. Plenty of dried food and water left.

Day four: IT’S HAPPENING! The battle is going on directly above me. I can hear the clash of steel and the screams of the dying. The Warp is growing thick.

Three hours into the battle, I lost consciousness to a Break.

Spent the rest of the day practicing puzzles.

Your Mind has reached Level 13!

Remaining Warp 13/16.

Your Mind has reached Level 14!

Remaining Warp 10/16.

Your Mind has reached Level 15!

Remaining Warp 7/16.

Your Mind has reached Level 16!

Remaining Warp 4/16.

Your Mind has reached Level 17!

Remaining Warp 1/16.

Now all I gotta do is wait for a couple days for the battle to clear. Cal crossed his arms and tried to zone out, reaching a relaxed state of mind despite the puddle of blood slowly oozing into his box from the grass above him.

You have manifested Meditation.

Meditation has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 0/16.

….I really hope that’s a Will Skill.

Day five: Heard looters rummaging around above me, and a few scuffles taking place. All the books I brought in with me are ruined except for Bekvah’s book of puzzles. I made sure to stack that one high enough that it didn’t get soaked in blood. Constant soaking has made my skin begin to slough off.

Day six: Water is out, and the looters have slowed down drastically. When I hear the call of the Melchia bird again, I’ll know it’s time to leave.

…..

I heard the cry of the Melchia bird signifying sundown, but when I tried to open the lid of my box, it didn’t budge. Something died on top of my box. When I poke my fingers through the air holes, I feel the pebbled skin of a riding guar.

There’s a dead guar on top of my box.

Okay, don’t panic. What do I have available? A long knife for self-defense, a light source, a piss-filled waterskin, and a bunch of books. And an inordinate amount of blood and shit soaking my clothes.

This plan could use some adjustment, assuming I live through this, and don’t just die here, unearthed a thousand years later as a mummy, displayed in an exhibit as ‘the stupidest man who walked the earth’.

Good times. Gotta go try to dig my way out of here. See you later, blood- and shit-covered journal.

Calvin closed his ruined notebook and tossed it aside. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t forget his week in a shit-box.

He scrunched himself up and crawled this way and that, testing each of his air-holes to see if there was guar on all of it.

Luckily, the three at the bottom left corner seemed to lack guar, so Cal grabbed his knife and got to work carving away the sturdy wood. His Knife-Work Skill made the wood peel away in large strips, but it was still going to take days to cut through the wood.

It’s either that or die, Cal thought, scraping away the strong door.

Day seven, mental notes: Should have brought a freaking saw. Only managed to get through one panel, and I need to do at least four more.

One a day isn’t going to cut it. A man will die after three days without water. My emergency stash of piss got knocked over while I slept, and the blood in the bottom congealed into a giant scab.

Nothing left to drink now. Possible fever setting in, too.

“I need a fucking saw,” Cal muttered as he shaved away at the second panel.

If his knife had a serrated edge on the back of it, he’d be out of here already.

“Wait a minute.” Cal pulled the glowing Crinka Lizard crystal out of the floor and studied his knife.

Is it possible? he thought, glaring hard at the knife.

He’d discounted Dupdomancy as a viable means to escape early on, as he hadn’t been able to make a strong lever to move the guar, or burst the door open with increased air pressure. He had hurt his eardrums with that, though.

Cal had reached up and grabbed the air from above him in the river. Who decided where air started and stopped? Cal hadn’t been thinking about it, but was air one thing, or a bunch of smaller things, or…what?

What if Cal decided he only wanted to duplicate just this much of his knife, failing to copy a section of the back of the knife in a sawblade shape?

Cal closed his eyes and pictured himself encircling every part of the knife except for a razor-sharp toothed section of its back.

Splitting.

Bent 4/7 remaining.

A duplicate knife popped into existence in Cal’s hand, and on its back was a series of unnaturally perfect saw teeth.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 5!

+1 to Will.

Level 5: 25 pounds, 25 minutes.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Multi-split

Mass Split

…

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! I’m gonna LIVE!

Cal ignored the prompt and put the blade up in the hole he’d made yesterday and started sawing with a vengeance.

Fifteen minutes later, Cal dragged himself up through the hole in the ground, pushing one of the dead guar’s legs out of the way. The dead riding dragonkin was wrapped around his little hole, and so no one noticed him crawling out of it. He only had Bekvah’s book of puzzles and his knife. His clothes, he’d decided to leave in the hole.

They weren’t gonna do anyone any good now.

Cal stood and glanced around. It was still dark out, but the sunrise wasn’t too far off. Wisps of smoke and smoldering corpses dotted the plain where a magician had used a fire spell, or a particularly volatile chemical had combusted. Sometimes both.

Time to get the hell out of here.

Cal felt a familiar sensation on his left-hand side.

“Hey, you!”

Cal flinched, glancing to his left, where five Gadveran soldiers were glaring at him from a wagon full of abandoned arms and armor.

“What are you doing here, boy?” the lead one asked around a pipe sending out a gout of smoke.

“Ummm…”

Cal had the kernel of an idea. What do the Abilities do again?

Multi-split. Allows the user to duplicate several different objects simultaneously.

Mass Split. Allows the user to create multiple copies of one object to the limits of their Skill.

Shaping. Allows the user to add mass to an object, increasing its size and partially modifying its shape.

Mutations:

Spacial Aware—

Yeah, that’s plenty. I choose Mass Split.

….Fine…

You have applied Mass Split to your Dupdomancy. Hope it works out well for you.

Oh, it will.

“I’m talking to you, boy!” the soldier said, getting angry.

Cal reached out and snagged the thickest chunk of smoke drifting from the soldier’s pipe, then decided to make fifty pounds of it, using 2 Bent.

Mass Split.

Bent 2/7 remaining.

The air around the soldiers was replaced with fifty pounds of hot Loralei smoke, creating a billowing cloud of burning-hot smoke that encompassed all of them, reducing them to hacking coughs.

Time to run. Cal turned the other direction and started running for the forest like his life depended on it—which, at this point, it did.

“Looter! We’ve got a looter!” one of the soldiers said between coughs.

Cal heard the sounds of other soldiers picking up the cry as he put his head down and sprinted with everything he had.

Then he heard the dogs baying.

***Karen***

Karen was sitting in her rocking chair, sharpening her sword even though it didn’t need it. She hadn’t used it in years, so the damn thing was plenty sharp.

She was nervous.

Cal had never been gone longer than a couple days. After she’d interrogated Baroke on the third day, he’d relented and told her where Cal was when she threatened castration. By then, the battle had already started, so there was no way to find him and pull him out of his stupidity.

There was a damn good chance a stranger wandering the battlefield after the fact would be labeled a looter and summarily executed. She didn’t know if she could live with herself if she’d been responsible for giving him the notion that led to his death.

That was supposed to be a warning! Not a godsdamned incentive! He’s supposed to live!

Suddenly her front door slammed open with a bang, revealing Cal staggering into the doorway totally naked, covered in blood, reeking of shit, and emaciated. He clutched a book and knife to his chest in trembling hands.

Karen wanted to ask if he was okay, but she narrowed her eyes instead. He needed scolding more than anything else.

“What have you been up to?” she asked, picking up her greatsword. A couple hits with the flat of the blade might straighten him out.

“Winning,” Cal said with a grin before his eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled over.

“Oh, damnit,” Karen said, tossing aside her sword and catching him before he broke his head open on the slate floor of her cottage.

Now it’s all over my clothes.

“Is that Calvin?” Jinnei called from her bedroom.

“It is. Fetch me some soap and water.”

“How much?” Jinnei asked, peering out from her room in her nightgown.

“All of it.”

***Calvin***

Calvin opened his eyes to the light of dawn and sat up, groaning.

Oh, sun, how I’ve missed you.

“Morning,” Karen said from her rocking chair.

Ah, crap.

“Have fun on your little adventure?”

“Not really, no,” Cal said. “It was the most miserable week I’ve ever experienced, bar none.”

“Well, at least you worked hard for that Break.”

“Hah, yeah.”

“I think this goes without saying, but just so we’re clear, you’re never to do something that stupid again, or I will beat you to within an inch of your life.”

Cal held up his hand. “I swear, I’ll never do that again.”

…without better planning. Gotta make the box a little bigger, add a place to poop, and maybe an escape tunnel or a winch to open the lid in case there’s another guar on it.

“You added something to the end of that,” Karen accused.

“No way,” Cal protested.

Karen cuffed him. “You think you’re the only one with a Skill? I’ve got Read The Enemy at level ten! I can tell you’re lying!”

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

17

Intuition:

6

Stability:

7

Will:

9

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

4

Acting

3

Read Expression

3

Sense-Grafting

3

Dupdomancy

5

Hunting

3

Meditation

1

Fishing

1

Knife-Work

4

Chapter 9: Mass Splitting

“Prepare to lose by a thousand points. Calvin Meteor Swarm!” Calvin shouted his special attack as he released the bowstring at the same time that he copied the arrow, aiming it at the target he and Baroke had set up in the woods.

Mass Splitting.

Bent 6/7 remaining.

He was a little too early with the spell, and the arrows rained down in front of him, all twenty-five pounds of them. Twenty-five pounds of arrows came out to…more than Cal cared to count. His original arrow hit the 5-point outer ring.

“Ack, damnit,” Cal said as the shower of roughly five hundred practice arrows pelted the ground in front of him. He was still getting the timing of his spellwork down.

He knew it was possible for the momentum of an object to be copied, along with the temperature, so all he had to do was get the timing down and he’d have a handy little missile-copying Ability.

According to Karen, sometimes when you use two Abilities together in a novel way, they got along so well that they made a baby: a new hybrid Skill. Cal would have to have Archery at level five before that was a possibility, though. For now, he’d have to settle for simply launching a swarm of arrows. Or, trying to.

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Persei said, taking a sip of her wine. “That was impressive—if not in the way you hoped.”

She and Jinnei were waiting for their turn while Cal shot the target. Baroke had already nailed the bullseye, putting their team’s total score at one oh five.

“Bah,” Cal said, tromping back to the bench while the girls took his spot.

“It’s times like this I regret living in a backwater village with only two girls our age,” Baroke said, sipping his wine.

“Why’s that?” Cal asked.

“My cousin,” he said, pointing at Persei. “Your sister.” He pointed at Jinnei. “What could have been a fun afternoon of drunken strip-archery is instead competitive mudslinging.”

“Huh, bummer. I don’t think girls from Surrak would be interested in a three-hour cart ride to come out here and fool around, though.”

“Kala was,” Baroke said.

“‘Was’ being the operative word.” Cal had spotted her walking around Surrak seemingly without a care in the world. If her father let her walk around the city unattended, surely she could come visit? Unless she didn’t want to.

Cal once again thought of the face she’d made, the sheer unbridled terror in her eyes as she struggled against the chains to get even a little bit further away from him.

I wish I knew what’s driven her away. On the other hand, it wasn’t like he had much of a shot with the daughter of the man who ran the country.

“Why the long face?” Persei asked, throwing an arm over his shoulder in a familiar way. He could feel the soft skin of her arm on his shoulder, and her hip pressed against him in a way that made him hyper-aware of her presence.

“We beating you guys too hard?”

What the heck is Persei doing out here, anyway? Isn’t she with Kort?

Cal opened his mouth to ask, then his Intuition caught up with his mouth, shutting it with a clack. It hadn’t been obvious to him three years ago, but now he knew that asking straight out why she wasn’t with her boyfriend was not the ideal tactic.

If the two of them are on the outs, then Persei is either:

1.       Trying to move on and pick someone else.

2.       Trying to get back at Kort for something.

3.       Really friendly.

4.       Actually interested in Cal. Pfft.

Cal worked through the evidence and realized it was number two. Kort had done something stupid and Persei was punishing him for it. Calvin had seen her glaring at him earlier in the day, just after she’d invited him to join her family for dinner the night before.  I, for one, am not interested in their lover’s squabble.

On the other hand…

“I’ve just been so burdened recently,” Cal said, putting emotion into it with Acting. “My calling is being decided by the elders, which is stressful. Together with building the new house and helping Karen out with the farm…I’ve been run ragged, and it’s starting to build up.”

Cal glanced up at the sky and heaved a sigh before looking Persei in her brown eyes. “Hanging out with you helps keep me sane.”

“Really?” Persei blushed, and Cal spotted the opportunity to put his hand around her waist, enjoying the feel of her soft hip underneath the wool pants.

“I’m just so pent-up. I just wish I had some way to let off some steam and forget about my cares for a couple minutes,” Cal said wistfully.

“Well…” Persei had started to speak, when Jinnei rapping the back of his head with a practice arrow spoiled the moment.

“Your turn again. And quit messing with Persei,” she said, motioning to the target.

“Please,” Baroke said, giving Cal a raised eyebrow as the giant set his cup down and picked up his massive longbow.

Baroke nocked one of the scattered arrows Cal had made and drew his bow back, aiming at the target.

“Penetrating Shot.”

Baroke released the arrow, and it shot forward, boring through the bullseye, the tree behind it, and a boulder behind that, sending cracks spiderwebbing outward through the stone.

Baroke had just recently gotten to level ten at Archery. The giant boy loved to go outside and plink arrows into hay bales for hours at a time, and his hyperfocus had paid enormous dividends. If the village was ever attacked by a Warped monster from deeper in the woods, Cal was sure an Ability like that would come in handy.

Cal, by contrast, had spread his focus around so much that he only had two Skills at level five, and all his secondary Mind stats wouldn’t reach their peak for a long time. On the other hand, when they did, he would outperform Baroke in every way.

Hopefully.

“I didn’t know we were allowed to use Abilities for anything other than comedic effect, like Cal,” Jinnei said, drawing her thin sword.

She waved her blade lazily and the distant target cracked, the lower half falling to the ground.

Damn. Cal blinked, trying to process what had just happened.

“I guess that’s the end of practice,” Persei said with a sigh. “Now we gotta actually do stuff.” The girl disentangled herself from Calvin and stretched with a groan. “Not looking forward to weeding for four hours straight.”

They’d been playing hooky with Cal while he watched Karen’s sheep, and the day was beginning to stretch into afternoon.

“We could just shoot trees,” Baroke said. Of course he was up for that.

“Nah, I’ve got stuff to get back to,” Jinnei said, then glanced around. “And Calvin’s gotta find the rest of the sheep.”

“Huh? Shit!” Cal glanced around and noticed that a ram and no less than three ewes had wandered away from the rest of the herd milling around behind them. They were nowhere to be seen.

“Son of a bitch!” Cal tried to locate which direction they’d gone, and spotted a trampled trail of underbrush leading to the southeast, toward the deep forest and the snow-capped mountains beyond.

Your legs will grace my dinner table for this travesty!

“Take them back for me. I gotta track Roger down before they get too far away.” Cal settled his bow over his shoulders. Roger was the name of the errant ram that liked to run off, after a crotchety old man Karen had used to know.

“Uh huh,” Jinnei said, beginning the process of herding the rest of the sheep back to the village.

“You want some help?” Baroke asked, glancing toward the deep wood. “Could be dangerous.”

“I think it might be even more dangerous having your loud self tromping along behind me, announcing our presence to the entire forest. Don’t worry, if I come across anything too big to fight, I’ll break Roger’s leg and run.”

“Fair point. Be safe,” he said, before following after Jinnei.

“Are you really feeling that badly?” Persei asked once the others were out of earshot, her face radiating concern. She had a wide nose and large, full lips that complemented her dark skin.

Cal had been stressed, worrying that the village elders would decide he was a waste of space and kick him out on his birthday, even though that was practically unheard-of. Cal wasn’t exactly the most reliable person in the village, though, and his foreign look didn’t win him any points with the elders, either.

“Yeah, it’s been rough,” Cal said honestly. “I don’t know if the village is gonna decide to keep me around. My Skills aren’t exactly geared towards being a productive member of society. Everyone else learned Farming, Planting, Animal Husbandry, Smithing, Carpentry, or the like. I can do tricks. I guess I kinda figured I’d be conquering cities by now.”

Persei watched him for a moment, seemingly weighing something in her mind.

“Alright, sit down,” she finally said.

“Huh?”

“Sit,” she said with authority, pointing at the log.

Calvin sat, his heart slamming against his ribs as Persei knelt between his legs.

“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll hurt you,” she said, unbuckling his pants.

***Calvin***

Well, that was relaxing, Cal thought as he stalked through the deep woods as quietly as he could, aiming to catch up to Roger and the ewes. They’d left a path through the woods that wasn’t always clear, but Cal’s Hunting Skill kept him following their tracks, moving the right direction.

They’ve only been gone an hour or two, and the damn sheep are halfway across the forsaken continent! Cal thought as he crept through the forest, whisper-quiet. Stealth came in handy when staying safe in the deep woods.

A quarter mile ago, he’d seen signs of the sheep getting spooked and bolting off at a sprint. It might take him the rest of the day to find them and bring them back.

That’s it. Maybe they’ll make me Boros’s apprentice. I’ve got Stealth and Hunting, and I’m not terrible with a bow.

Woodsman Calvin….

Bleh.

Wizard-King for life. Just as soon as I chase these damned sheep down. Worse comes to worst, I can join the army.

Cal suddenly pictured Jinnei’s invisible slash and wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a Skill like that.

I could handle it with the right practice, he thought, ducking under a low-hanging tree as he glided through the forest.

A half an hour later, Cal had finally managed to catch up with Roger. The ornery ram was eyeing him with its typical belligerent gaze, standing between him and the three ewes. All he had to do now was calmly guide Roger back to the northwest, and eventually the ram would recognize the terrain and head for the pen on his own recognizance.

“Alright, Roger. Git,” Cal said, cutting a couple saplings and using them to irritate the ram into moving away, at which point, his girls would chase after him.

Cal was in the process of leading Roger back to the path they’d formed, when he felt a gaze on the back of his head.

Cal froze, keeping his ears open. The gaze traveled down to the square of his back. Right over his heart. Cal lunged to the side and an instant later he heard a bow twang! An arrow whistled through the underbrush and struck a tree in front of him.

Cal scrambled behind a thick tree, his panic causing Roger to break into a run to the southwest. Damnit.

“Kort, I swear, it was her idea,” Cal said, glancing around the tree. “And I mean, with your mom, I didn’t even know what we were doing…the first time.”

Rather than the slender, muscled warrior Cal was expecting, Cal spotted half a dozen savage Genosian cannibals from the snowy mountains to the southeast. The one in the lead was staring at his bow in disbelief.

They had ashen grey skin and had shaved their heads bald, and were surprisingly thick and muscular, inhumanly strong. They wore tattered hides and sported horn bows strung with monster guts.

Oh, thank the gods, it’s just cannibals. Cal heaved a sigh of relief.

Still a bit of a problem, though.

“Do you speak Gadveran?” Cal shouted in Gadveran.

“Markov?” he shouted in Karen’s home tongue.

“Trade tongue speak?” he shouted in Ilethan. Those people got around.

“Speak trade, boy. Want meat,” he heard the savage respond.

“You take sheep, I go!” Cal shouted from behind his tree, pulling his knife. If these guys weren’t feeling like reasonable adults, then Cal would have to make a run for it.

He hastily looked around for something to copy, but his belt was filled with things like twine and tinder, a bit of food, water, and a piece of flint and steel to start fires with.

I should take to carrying around a caltrop.

“We take you.”

Well, there goes that idea.

Cal heard crashing in the woods as one of them charged toward his tree. Cal jumped forward, staying low and keeping as much tree between himself and the rest as he could.

The Genosian bared sharpened teeth as he charged forward, aiming an obsidian-studded club at Cal’s chest.

Cal lunged forward, slipping underneath the man’s swing. Cal’s knife wasn’t nearly long enough to reach him, but…

Splitting.

Bent 5/7 remaining.

The man’s wicked obsidian club popped into Cal’s hand and he whipped it upward, catching his opponent across the neck and chin, jostling his brain and tearing his throat to shreds.

The grey man stumbled backwards, choking out some words as he tried to stagger away, blood drenching the hand that he’d slapped over his throat.

“There, meat. I go now?” Cal said, pointing at the warrior slowly slumping to the ground before resting the bloodied obsidian-bladed club on his shoulder. Acting like you aren’t about to piss yourself is the basics.

The Genosians didn’t look amused. The one in the lead squinted at Cal’s club for a moment, then turned and called behind them.

A second later, a fatter Genosian emerged from the woods. This one was important. Cal could tell by the size of his bone hat. That, and the other Genosians performed a quick kneel of supplication when the big one showed up.

I should take the opportunity to bolt, Cal thought, stepping backwards and fishing out his flint and steel. If he could make a wisp of smoke, he could copy enough of it to distract them and put some distance between them.

“In Nuak meh kora tua Maje!” the one in the lead said, pointing at Cal.

“Maje?” the big one said, eyeing Cal critically.

“Ker Bada tur Nuak!”

The big man rolled his eyes like a long-suffering parent and held his hand up high, palm downward. Black Bent visibly passed through his veins and exited his palm in a swirl of green mist that seemed to coalesce into the skull of a…small man?

What in the hells am I looking at? Cal thought as the fat man repeated the process to create three identical warriors, each about as big as a nine year old, maybe ninety pounds, but fully muscled, and obviously adult.

Once the green mist passed, they looked perfectly alive, and angry, snarling at him with their shark-teeth and tattooed faces. The fat man passed small clubs to each of them.

“Well, that’s now officially the most interesting thing that’s happened today,” Cal said, bringing the flint and steel up.

Now just need a tiny bit of smoke and I can… Wait a minute. Can I Split a spark?

“Kora,” the fat man said, waving a lazy hand at Cal.

The tiny men snarled and began charging at him, moving through the underbrush like the wind.

One way to find out. Gods, I hope I get the timing right.

Adrenaline making everything seem slow, Cal tilted the flint toward the three sprinting…things.

Cal struck the flint with the confidence of years of practice, sending a shower of sparks outward.

He desperately seized on the largest spark that was heading straight toward the three charging toward him.

Mass Splitting.

Bent 4/7 remaining.

A small patch of forest in front of Cal exploded into flames as twenty-five pounds of white-hot steel flakes filled the air directly in front of the charging little men, setting everything on fire and melting their skin from their bodies.

The little men writhed for an instant before dissolving into green vapor.

On the other side of the fire, the fat Genosian shouted, his words too fast to make out, but from the way he was pointing at Cal and gesturing wildly…it couldn’t be good.

This seems like the distraction I need, Cal thought, reaching out with his Bent and isolating a lick of flame before recreating it to fill the forest between them.

Mass Splitting.

Bent 3/7 remaining.

One mote of incandescent vapor was multiplied a hundred thousand times as twenty-five pounds of fire sprang into being, forming a sheet between them. The small forest fire became a huge one in an instant, the sheer heat forcing Cal to stagger backwards.

Time to run.

Chapter 10: The Raid

Calvin stopped staring at what he’d done and ran, putting as much distance as he possibly could between himself and the angry Genosians.

Despite the blood-curdling fear of man-eating cannibals chasing him down and making him into a sandwich, Cal’s mind was abuzz with possibilities for his Splitting.

What he needed to pay the most attention to was the usefulness of an object relative to its size. Maximum output with minimum weight. A spark was just a tiny, burning sliver of iron, after all, and it was currently burning down the forest behind him.

What else had low mass and high effect?

Calvin’s mind was awash with new possibilities as he sprinted through the trees, heedless of how much noise he was making. He didn’t have very long before—

Eyes on my back. He tumbled forward and slunk low just as a slightly-singed Genosian warrior flew past him, his club whistling above Cal’s head.

The two made eye contact for an instant as the bewildered warrior’s Charge Ability took him gliding past Cal and forced him to embed his weapon deep into a tree.

Cal put his head down and kept running. He heard the screech of wood and glanced over his shoulder, spotting the man ripping the handle of his club free before snorting and tossing it aside, continuing the chase bare-handed.

The man spent his Bent to activate another Charge, crossing the distance between them in seconds. He wasn’t surprised by Cal’s dodge this time, reaching out a hand and snagging his ankle, dragging the teen along for the ride.

Cal was hauled through the underbrush for a good twenty feet before he slammed up against another wooden trunk. Pain exploded through Cal’s head, causing his thoughts to turn foggy, and sounds to become distant. His vision was filled with bright little worms.

The cannibal hauled Cal up to his feet, snarling something into his face before hauling back and punching him in the nose.

Cal’s tenuous grip on consciousness strained as his head was driven into the wood behind him.

It was thanks to Karen’s brutal training that he was able to weakly lash out with his steel knife, his limp hands unable to deliver the force necessary to disembowel the man. Instead, his knife skittered along the man’s hides, nicking him in a few places along his stomach.

The Genosian hissed, dropping him and simultaneously knocking the knife out of Cal’s hands as he staggered away. After checking the damage on his stomach, he grinned at Calvin and started following Cal’s limping at a mocking walk.

He sauntered towards Cal, chuckling and speaking in his bizarre language as Cal looked for anything to defend himself with, head swimming.

Cal felt another’s vision on him, centered on his heart. He glanced up and spotted the bald, ashen-skinned bowman taking aim at Cal’s chest.

Cal let the strength go out of his knees, twisting and falling to the ground as quickly as he could while reaching out to the arrow.

Twang!

The arrow came hurtling toward him.

Mass splitting.

Bent 2/7 remaining.

In a fraction of a second, Calvin directed half the swarm of new arrows to appear behind the archer, and the other half on a collision with the unarmed one. He didn’t even know it was possible, but he’d had an inkling. He could direct vaguely where the copy appeared, since when it was a tool he wanted, it appeared in his hand, and when it was an attack, it’d always appeared around the enemy.

This was the first time he’d ever been so specific about where he wanted the duplicates to appear, and they didn’t disappoint.

The archer fell forward, turned into a hedgehog by duplicates of the arrow he’d fired. The unarmed one seemed to react, glancing at the sound before receiving a volley of arrows across the right side of his body.

Unfortunately, Cal wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the original arrow, as it seemed to bend to match him, tearing through the right side of his chest before he was able to hit the ground.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 6!

Level 6: 36 pounds, 30 minutes.

Cal wanted to scream, but it only came out as a whimper and a bloody cough. Think it nicked my lung. Please gods, don’t let me drown in my own blood.

There were still at least three Genosians out there. He couldn’t afford to lie around waiting for them to eat him.

Cal tried to push himself to his feet, but his right arm couldn’t move without mind-bending pain.

“UUUAGH,” he groaned, trying to sit up.

I don’t have time for this!

Cal reached out with his left hand and tore a pebble out of the forest floor.

Sense-Grafting.

Bent 1/7 remaining.

He bound his sense of pain to the rock and tossed it aside before levering himself to his feet, trying his best not to disturb his wounded lung. He was numb now, and could only feel where the arrow was inside of him based on the pressure against his organs.

Sense-Grafting has reached Level 4!

Sense-Grafting Level 4: Sight, hearing, touch, pain, and smell. Self-only, Touch, 20 minutes.

It’s gonna take a lot longer than 20 minutes to get home with an arrow in me, Cal thought, setting himself to the fastest trot he could manage before the pace made him dizzy.

Twenty minutes later, the pain came back with stunning intensity, and Cal missed a step, nearly falling to the ground. He gritted his teeth, leaned his left arm against a tree, and stayed upright through force of will.

He only had one Bent left, and he couldn’t afford to waste it on keeping himself comfortable. If more Genosians attacked, his Bent would be the only thing that could keep him alive.

After another hour, Cal staggered out of the woods to the sight of smoke in the distance. The village was on fire.

What? No, no, no NO!

Cal broke into a sprint, heedless of the burning pain in his chest, or his useless right arm. As he approached the flaming thatched roofs, his stomach turned as he felt the Warp of the carnage wash over him.

Where’s Karen, Jinnei? Baroke?

There were bodies in the dirt paths between the houses—mostly Genosians, but Cal spotted Kahm the carpenter’s wide-eyed corpse resting against a burning hut, a bladed club buried halfway through his neck.

“Jinnei!” Cal shouted before breaking into painful, hacking coughs that brought him to his knees. There was no response.

In the distance, he spotted three Genosians walking through the empty village. They perked up at his shout, loping towards him.

Cal held out a trembling hand and reached into the fire with his mind, recreating more of it around the Genosians with the intention of flash-cooking them.

Mass Splitting.

Bent 0/7 remaining.

The air around them shimmered with intense heat, but the lead Genosian let out a guttural scream and the three men’s skin became silvery and reflective. They left Cal’s zone of boiling air none the worse for wear.

Damnit.

He tried to put his feet under him. He needed to lead them closer to the fire. Maybe he could drag one of them into a flaming building with him.

Try as he might, Cal couldn’t force his legs to move, leaving him glaring powerlessly at the approaching Genosians.

The one in the lead was tall and skinny, his shaved head decorated with multiple scars and tattoos, lending to his fearsome visage.

He was at least as important as the fat one, because his bone hat was just as big. He approached Cal silently, walking around him and inspecting the arrow sticking out of his chest, his gaze lingering on the fletching for a moment.

“Where did you come from, boy?” he asked in Ilethan.

“Your…” Cal coughed up a bit of blood. “...mother.”

“Hmmm.”

“KAAA!” A voice resounded from the forest, and Cal glanced over his shoulder, spotting the fat Genosian running toward them flanked by two warriors. His grey skin was covered in sweat as he crossed the distance between them. He pointed at Cal and shouted, his eyes wide, teeth bared, spittle flying from his mouth. The guy was mad.

Makes sense, I killed three of his men, Cal thought, numbly reaching into his pocket and grabbing the flint. It wasn’t ideal, but the rock was just sharp enough to cut, and could substitute for a knife under the right circumstances.

With Knife-Work, I might be able to make it sharp enough to fight with.

Cal watched the fat one yelling at the skinny one, gesticulating wildly at Cal. Skinny absorbed the yelling for a moment, then gave Cal a contemplative glance, weighing something.

The skinny Genosian stepped forward and placed a possessive hand on Cal’s shoulder before letting out a rumbling growl, like an animal. Cal watched every movement, debating whether or not to lash out at him, but while he had no idea what was going on between the two of them, he did know picking a fight would get him killed.

Fatty was flabbergasted, his chin wobbling in disbelief for a moment before he pulled his hand up and summoned another tiny man.

Skinny raised a brow and held his hand up, palm down. Black Bent traced the veins of his arms before erupting from his palms as a billowing green mist that contracted into a skeleton, then sinew, flesh, and skin.

The person Skinny summoned was bald like the other Genosians, but sported a big black beard with streaks of white.

He was also six feet tall.

Fatty staggered backwards, his expression fearful. He gave one last look at Cal before biting out something that was surely hurtful in their language, turning and leaving. His miniature warrior glared up at Skinny’s massive one for a moment, before snarling and following its master.

The larger summon glanced at Cal and Skinny before sitting between them and the retreating fatty, his eyes trained on the group.

Skinny squatted down beside Cal.

“You really kill three of them?” he asked in Ilethan with a delighted grin.

“You happy for that?” Cal asked in Ilethan.

“You see that one?” Skinny asked, pointing at one of the hundreds of Genosian corpses lying facedown in the bloody muck, nearly cleaved in half.

“That one bred to be Incha Huala, but killed by Aiaka here. Big, strong, gold hair.”

“Karen?”

“You know?”

“My mother.”

“Ah, yes, I see…” He slapped his knee and grinned. “Yes, good. You make good Incha Huala for my daughter.”

Cal lashed out, aiming for the man’s jugular with his bit of sharp rock. Fuck that nonsense. I ain’t nobody’s Incha Huala. Whatever that means.

An iron grip intercepted Cal’s left hand just below the man’s chin. His summon had an almost bored expression as he stopped the stone from cutting the man’s neck.

“Very good Incha Huala.” Skinny’s delighted grin became even wider. “My name is Aoehe, the Kin’Maje of the Iron-Skin tribe. We will be seeing much of each other in the coming years.”

Cal felt sweat begin to bead on his brow as the Warp in the town began to overflow inside him. His vision began to blur.

Damn it all to the nine hells! Cal thought before his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the ground.

The last thing he heard was some faint confused babble from the men around him.

Warp overflow detected…

Running Warp Protection System… Break.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

17

Intuition:

6

Stability:

7

Will:

9

Bent:

0/7

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

4

Acting

3

Reading Expressions

3

Sense-Grafting

4

Dupdomancy

6

Hunting

3

Meditation

1

Fishing

3

Knife-Work

4

Chapter 11: Dreams

“Stand back, Elaine,” the raven-haired newest member of their party said, his velvet cloak billowing as he stood in front of the Bent specialist. “I’ll not let these flame-beavers harm a single hair on your head.”

“For the last time, Reginald,” Elaine said, bonking him on the head with Reservoir, a pitted wooden cane with a thick glass orb sloshing with black Bent at the top, “do not block my view.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, his shiny, undented armor chiming musically as he stood aside. He was obviously someone’s pampered son.

“Are we really gonna keep him?” Karen asked Andrew over her shoulder.

“He’s been vetted, and he works for free. I’m not gonna turn down free labor,” Drew said, plunging his blade down into the mastiff-sized beaver with the glowing red teeth.

“Plus, he gives good head,” Elaine chortled. With a flick of her wrist, a pulse of Bent traveled down her arm and into the ground, launching dozens of stone spears out of the ground, catching the last remaining fire-beavers off guard.

Gregor raised an eyebrow.

“My lady!” Reginald said, blushing. “That is highly inappropriate.”

“You came to me, Reggie. If you don’t like it, you can sit on it and spin.”

Drew pulled his blade out of the monster, panting with exertion. He sent a calculating gaze at Reginald as he wiped the blood off and sheathed his weapon.

“Reggie.”

“My name is Reginald,” he said, his former timidness lost.

“Reggie’s easier to say,” Drew continued, unconcerned. “Reggie, we’re going to have a talk about professionalism and how it relates to inter-party fraternization.”

“Sir.” Reginald stood stock-still, spine straight as an arrow. His chiseled face was a mask of stone.

Drew gave Karen an exasperated glance. “…Keep it in your pants when we’re not in town, alright?” Drew said, visibly irritated by their newest member’s seriousness.

“Sir!”

“Gregor, let’s get the hides and teeth,” Drew said, aiming for the nearest beaver.

Spurred on by the success and fame of their last raid, they’d gone even farther afield chasing a myth of a gigantic sinkhole that had buried an entire city. Legend said it was to the west.

They headed out from Kinereth in late winter, the season easing as they traveled, until everything was green and lush, and they were hundreds of miles outside the recognized borders of the country of Malkenrovia.

There was no guarantee that their trip would bring them wealth, so they hunted for Warped creatures as they passed, harvesting their most valuable parts so that, no matter what, they would break even.

Karen was scanning the woods for any sign of predators lured in by the smell of blood when Elaine sidled up to her.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, elbowing Karen’s thick plate armor.

“Hear what?”

“You can jump Andrew’s bones when we get back to town. He set the precedent himself.”

“And retire to become a mother of two? Raise sheep? I don’t think so.”

Elaine leaned over and slipped something small into Karen’s hand. “Guaranteed effective,” she whispered.

Karen glanced down at the charm against pregnancy in her hand, thanking the gods that her helmet made it impossible to see her face.

Elaine gave her a wry look and got started making the campfire.

They had fire-beaver for dinner. It was gamey, but it kept them going.

In the morning, they got back on their way, blazing a trail through the most hazardous, Warp-infested deep woods known to man, and quite possibly beyond.

Black-Bears and Wyrms occasionally harassed the party, and a Widowmaker tried to carry off Gregor, but the weakest among them had six Breaks, so they dealt with the challenges handily.

On an evening of the fifth month since they set out, they came across a sight that chilled them to the bone:

A black, glistening wall surrounded a sinkhole so vast that Lake Ondaria wouldn’t give it pause. Not a single mote of light could be seen reflecting from its depths. The earth simply…vanished into nothingness.

“There we have it,” Andrew said, motioning to the pit with bravado. “Our next paycheck.”

Karen could see the goosebumps on his arms.

As they traveled closer, Warp grew thick in the air, the sensation they’d long since learned to associate with death hanging heavy over them like an angry cloud.

The forest around the wall was thick with overgrown foliage, living wood, and monsters they never knew existed, twisted abominations that had never before been recorded by man. A quarter mile around the wall, the lush forest came to an unnatural halt, some plants sheared off by some invisible means, giving way to a dust-filled flatland.

Andrew stopped them at the edge of the forest, testing the perimeter with his sword, then his hand. They went and got a rabbit and threw it into the dust, and the creature scampered back into the woods like it had been chased by the hounds of hell.

“Well, whatever caused this isn’t immediately lethal,” Drew said. “I think.”

Their leader took a deep breath and walked out into the dust, on guard for any sudden movements. Other than the Warp being slightly denser, there was no change.

“Alright,” he said, continuing to scan the horizon. “Reginald and Karen, watch our backs. Elaine and Gregor, the sides. As always, the focus is on securing a safe exit strategy.”

They fell into their roles, marching through the flattened earth, orienting themselves on a small discoloration in the massive wall—a weak point or possibly an entrance. One place was as good as any other, facing the featureless obsidian in front of them.

As they grew closer, the discoloration resolved into an off-color panel with a diagonal line through it, about fifteen feet tall and twenty feet wide.

Out of nowhere, a deep rumbling issued forth and seven panels opened in the dusty ground.

Five strange metal men emerged from the seven holes. They were only men in the loosest sense, in that they stood on two legs, and had two arms. Their joints exposed hollows filled with metal rods and colorful wires, some of which spilled out into the air, crackling with tiny bolts of lightning.

They moved strangely, some motions with inhuman fluidity, and others with spastic jerkiness that nearly toppled them over.

They grouped up, their weapons pointed outward.

“Go to the front,” Karen said, tapping Reginald on the shoulder. She considered leaving the rearguard to the younger man while she helped Drew, but she knew the value of sticking to her orders, and cast her gaze back, rather than look at the distracting creatures ahead of them.

The creatures lurched toward them and came to a halt. The lead one jerkily raised an arm to point at them.

“Tressp-p-passers. T-t-t-this is a Har-r-r-r-binger Blac-c-c-k Si-i-ite. C-C-C-ivilia-a-a-ns ar-ar-are Prohi-i-i-i-bitttted. Leave at on-n-nce.”

“Elaine,” Drew said.

“My pleasure,” Elaine said, pouring Bent into the earth.

Five spikes of stone shot out of the ground and shattered on the creatures’ steel armor, not even staggering them. The metal men studied the spikes in silence for a moment, seemingly uncomprehending.

“I don’t think it worked,” Reginald said.

The metal men looked up at Reggie, then back down to the ground. Then back up at Reggie.

“At-t-ta-a-a-ack detec-c-c-ted. C-C-C-ivilia-a-a-ns regi-regi-stered as hostile. Elim-m-m-minating hostiles.”

“Damn it, Reggie!”

As one, they lifted their arms and little metal tubes came out. Some of the tubes were warped or rusted, others leaked strange smoke. Whatever the metal men seemed to think they were doing wasn’t happening, and it took them a moment to notice.

“Main weapons di-s-s-s-sabled, switch-ch-ch-ch-ing to CQC.”

They charged forward with their awkward gait, raising their steel arms above their heads.

“Karen, we could use you now!” Drew shouted, and Karen left her spot at the rear to clash against the creatures up front, putting her heavy steel greatsword between the creature and herself.

One blow from the inhuman things rattled her knees and drove a dent so deep into her blade as to almost render the damn thing useless.

Reinforcement.

Bent 7/8 remaining.

Karen used her heavy armor Skill to raise the toughness of her equipment and shoved the creature back before bringing a feral swing down on its head.

Despite her Strength that could split a boulder, the sword simply deformed around the monster like she’d tried to hit it with a blade made of cheese.

“Shove them back! I’ll try to bury them!” Elaine shouted as a metal fist warped Karen’s armor and drove her sliding backward.

“How ‘bout we move back instead?” Karen snarled, adjusting her grip on the lump of iron in her hand and charging forward.

“That works too!” Elaine shouted, putting a palm to the ground.

Karen and Drew rebounded off the metal men, but Reginald ran right through them, just as huge chunks of stone tore themselves from the earth and dropped on top of them in an effort to render them incapable of moving.

“Reggie, what the hell are you doing!?” Karen’s call was lost in the wave of deafening rumbling.

When the dust settled, all five metal men were shrugging off the tons of stone that Elaine had dropped on them.

“Cocksuckers!” Elaine exclaimed, furious at her finisher being resisted.

“Elaine, put some barriers between us. Let’s make it a fighting retreat,” Drew said.

Karen glanced over her shoulder and spotted a shimmering barrier cutting off their avenue of escape, cutting off a few tree branches at the perfect edge of the dome.

Karen tapped Drew on the shoulder and pointed behind them.

“Ah, shit,” Andrew groaned, seeing the barrier behind them. He settled into a battle stance. “Gregor, shoot their joints. The armor seems weaker there.”

“What about Reggie?” Elaine asked.

“Shouldn’t have run in,” Gregor said, unleashing a bolt on the nearest creature’s armpit.

The steel arrowhead folded on the brightly-colored wires.

“Gimmie a break,” Gregor growled.

“Tally-ho!” Reginald shouted, rushing back into the fight with a shiny metal arm in his hand rather than his expensive blade.

Whatever was causing the iron to become as soft as cheese didn’t seem to affect the metal arm, and it put a heavy dent in one of the metal men’s heads, causing it to stagger backward.

Karen and Andrew shared a glance and sprinted forward.

“You two back up!” Drew shouted back at Elaine and Gregor, who backed off.

The two heavily armored warriors shot past Reginald.

“I figured it out! There were seven holes and only five men, so I thought maybe—”

They ran past Reginald, ignoring him. Karen went left and Andrew went right, trailing a couple metal men each. The first hole was empty, and the second, and the third…

“Karen! Leg!” Drew shouted and tossed her a shiny metal leg.

Irresistible Force.

Bent 6/8 remaining.

Karen activated her club Skill and her first strike nearly tore her opponent in half, along with the next, and the next.

In a matter of seconds, they’d cleaned up all the metal men, leaving nothing but strange twitching parts, oil slicks and foul, acrid smells.

The shimmering barrier in the distance had yet to go away, though.

“I guess the only way out is through,” Andrew said, creating a handle for his makeshift club.

“You’re gonna carry that around?” Reginald asked.

“What, you don’t think there’ll be any more?” Karen asked as she started on her own.

They all froze as a chill swept down their spines.

Clunk. Hisssss.

No. This isn’t supposed to happen.

The rectangular discoloration in the black wall opened, revealing infinite emptiness. A skull with whorling patterns etched into it faded into view flying out of the gate. It was so close, Karen could swear it was biting her already, its teeth clacking together in amusement.

Uncharacteristically, Karen tried to run. She put her feet under her and turned away, but the ground slipped away underneath her.

No, no.

Behind her, the hideous thing she’d seen at the attack gained on her. Form of a man, form of a man. The thing chasing her looked human, and at the same time, she knew what it really looked like, but her eyes just couldn’t bend the right way to comprehend it. She knew what it really looked like.

Its finger touched the back of her neck.

NO!

***

Kala sat up, her skin sticky with sweat, sheets soaked. She reached up and rang the bell for her maid, who entered with a glass of water for her princess, who’d had nightmares since her cousin had killed her guards in front of her.

Kala hadn’t told anyone the real reason for her nightmares.

Maybe I should.

“Where is my father?”

“He’s with your uncle, princess, in the study.”

“Thank you,” Kala said as the woman helped her slip on a new gown and slippers, padding down the cavernous halls of the palace until she came to the little reading room where she could make out the golden light of a lamp keeping her father and uncle company.

“The whole thing?” She heard her father’s voice.

“Many of the people got away, thanks to the golden-haired freak of a Malkenrovian, but the damage to the livestock and infrastructure means the village won’t be producing any tax revenue for the foreseeable future. The land is still arable, though,” her uncle said.

The two of them were hidden behind the door, speaking in hushed tones.

“Small blessings,” her father said.

“Iletha is convinced that this is a sign that we are weak, and damnit, they’re right. If they throw everything they have at us—”

Uncle Bekvah noticed her entering the door and his tone flipped completely. “Hey there, Kala. Care to join me and your old man?” He gave her a trembling grin.

“Did something happen?” Kala asked, fixing them with a steady gaze.

Her father glanced at her uncle. The two men shared quite the resemblance, but her father was a little heavier-set with broader features. He sighed.

“That little village you liked to go on your days off has been pillaged by Genosian raiders.”

Kala’s heart seized. “Calvin?”

“He was not among the citizens who fled to Surrak, nor among the dead. We can only assume they took him.”

They all knew what Genosians did with the people they took.

Chapter 12: Chained Spirit

Calvin woke up with a burning substance being funneled down his throat.

Then they pulled the arrow out.

Had he been entirely cognizant, he might have appreciated how he was flopping like a fish, but his brain was too busy trying to hide in the corner while mommy and daddy shouted and flung tableware at each other.

The burning sensation took hold of his stomach and spread tendrils through his body, questing like a blind norlock until it latched onto the arrow wound with physical force.

Bent 1/7 remaining.

The wound bubbled up like black pond scum, its bleeding stopping.

Bent 0/7 remaining.

The black scum sloughed off of Cal’s chest, leaving no wound whatsoever.

“How, um…” Aoehe tapped the skin over his chest. “This good?”

“Feel,” Cal answered in Ilethan. “‘How does this feel?’” The burning licked against the scrapes and bruises across his body halfheartedly before fading away.

“Does. This. Feel,” Aoehe repeated slowly. “Does this feel. Does this feel. How does this feel?”

He snapped his finger and spun around, grinning at Calvin with his sharp teeth. “I have Kuela. Third daughter Break yesterday. You teach Ilethan and Gadveran Skill!”

“Never a bad idea,” Cal said, in Gadveran. “Yes,” in Ilethan.

I can take this opportunity to get my bearings and… Wait, why am I chained up?

Aoehe noticed Cal’s gaze directed at the manacles securing his hands to the massive wooden pillar and he set down the foul-smelling, bubbling concoction in his bowl to point at the manacles.

“From Ilethan slave ship,” he said, pointing. “You teach with no hands, yes?”

“I suppose.”

“Melau!” he shouted, followed by a string of fluid words too fast for Cal to separate them.

In a matter of moments, a little girl with purplish-grey skin arrived, small and lanky with big grey eyes and black hair. She was pint-sized, maybe ten or eleven years old. A dangerous age to be Breaking.

Speaking of Breaks: I have Warp. All I need now is a Skill called Escaping from Genosian Cannibals. And Bent. How did that foul concoction take away all of the Bent I’d gotten while I was unconscious?

It seemed like it had triggered some kind of healing in exchange for Bent. Cal had never heard of something like that, but Genosians were pretty universally reviled, so there was probably plenty that they’d never shared with the outside world.

The Genosian father spoke to her for a moment, then the little girl turned to Cal and gave a bow, and said something.

Aoehe nodded as if pleased, then left the….yurt. Was it a yurt? The room was spacious and round, the walls seemed to be made of leather stretched over wood. The pillar Cal was chained to was a tree trunk whose branches seemed to be burned off. Its roots were still buried in the earth. The smoke from the lantern drifted up through a little hole in the top of the roof.

The little cannibal walked up and sat in front of him, then lifted up a bone.

“Bone,” Cal said in Gadveran.

She lifted up a twig. “Wood.” To further clarify, Cal shifted his hand in the manacle and tapped the log above him with his finger. “Wood.”

He pointed with his foot at the wooden slats holding up the yurt. “Wood.”

Her eyes lit up with understanding.

It only took an hour to get her the Warped Skill for both languages, ensuring she would pick them up at a prodigious pace. Once she had the second one, they began practicing conversational Gadveran.

Because Cal didn’t want anyone else to know what they were talking about.

“So the swamp beetle smells very bad.” Cal awkwardly pointed to his nose and wrinkled it in an exaggerated way.

Acting has reached Level 4!

Warp 21/22 remaining.

“Smells bad,” she said, picking up the words at lightning speed because of her Forming Day.

“And it sprayed all over Kort, who had to leave his clothes in the swamp and walk all the way back home naked.”

She giggled. Who doesn’t love a story where the punchline is someone’s humiliation? In this case, it had been Cal who got sprayed, but why bring that up?

“Then his mother made him sit outside in full view of everyone else and washed him with a stiff brush and lots of soap.”

She continued laughing.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 5!

Warp 20/22 remaining.

Please choose a—

I’ll get around to it. This is important.

“You Gadverans are so strange.”

“We’re strange? I’m going to be an Incha Huala, and I don’t even know what that is!” Cal said with a wry grin.

“You should! It’s a great honor!”

“Well, what do they do?”

“An Incha Huala fights their Maje.”

“Fights them?” Cal asked. “You mean fights for them?”

“Yes, for. Maje bring them into world to fight for tribe.” She stood and made a very characteristic pose, her hand raised palm down, fingers relaxed.

Just like Aoehe and fatty had done when they summoned those people.

They plan on making me…a summon? That doesn’t sound good.

“That’s very exciting!” Cal said with false enthusiasm. “How does one go about becoming one?”

“What?”

“How I be one?”

“Ah, Maje and you drink Guya. Guya do, ummm…” She looked around before she leaned forward and tugged on Cal’s chains. “Together. Strong.

“Many years later, when you fight at best, Maje eat you, then bring back as Incha Huala for tribe. Never stop fight at best!”

“That’s brilliant!” Cal said, icy terror running down his spine. “We should totally have something like that in Gadvera!” By all the gods, get me out of here!

“Yes! Then Gadverans not be so weak,” she said, her chest puffed with pride.

“Well, that’s debatable.” He chuckled.

“What’s ‘debatable’?”

“‘Debate’ means word-fight. ‘Debatable’ means can word-fight,” Cal said.

“Why fight with words?” she asked, genuinely confused.

“So no one gets hurt.”

“See? Gadverans weak.”

Cal laughed, shaking his head before a thought occurred to him. “So, how does the magic work?”

“Magic?”

“The magic to bring the Incha Huala into the world.”

“Oh, Father taught me today! I too small for Incha Huala, but learned Skill!”

“Ooh, how’s it work?” Cal asked.

“Look in you, carve out space for Incha Huala…”

Cal nodded along, following the girl’s admittedly rough instructions.

You have manifested Chained Spirit.

Chained Spirit has reached Level 1!

Chained Spirit: Summon Chained Spirit. A taboo technique created by the Genosians. Any creature wholly consumed by the summoner may be recreated, and is bound to the user’s will for the duration. Skill affects size of creature, up to its normal size.

Chained Spirit Summoning Level 1: 5 pound limit, 1 minute. 1 slot available.

Warp 19/22 remaining.

Does Incha Huala mean Chained Spirit!?

Do I have to eat somebody? Damn.

It would be inordinately difficult to eat all of anything that could fight, let alone a person. And it looked like he only had space for one creature, and no idea if he would be able to exchange one for another.

The Skill was largely useless to Cal, unless he could find a way to eat all of something extremely powerful before it rotted. The limitation on the number of creatures meant that whatever he ate had to also be something that could actually help him.

This must be why they use people. A trained fighter is more well-rounded than, say, a cougar. Sure, you could make the cougar pounce on people, but the Genosian can take out the trash, wash the dishes, and do the laundry, too.

In any case, eating somebody is right out.

“Too bad only we can learn. Gadveran must continue being weak, I suppose,” Melau said wistfully, once she was done enthusiastically explaining the Skill.

“I suppose,” Cal said, not revealing that he’d picked it up. He needed all the surprise he could get.

“You done with Skills?” Aoehe asked, opening the flap, his bone hat preceding him. Cal saw it in a slightly different light now.

Melau stood and ran to her father, pausing to bow before tackling him with a big hug. They began to speak to each other, their flowing language going in one ear and out the other.

Damnit. I didn’t want to do this, but it’ll be invaluable to my escape.

“I learn Genosian?” Cal asked, pointing at the two of them.

Goodbye, my sweet Skill slot. I barely knew ye.

“Of course! It would be best if you understood my daughter, after all.”

He tapped Melau on the shoulder and instructed her to teach Cal their language, from what Calvin could tell.

She sat down in front of him and began naming objects, starting with wood.

You have manifested Genosian Language.

Genosian Language has reached Level 1!

Genosian Language Level 1: Boosts acquisition, comprehension, and cultural nuance of the Genosian Language. 5% correction.

Warp 18/22 remaining.

Once the little grey-purple girl was gone, Cal heaved a sigh and closed his eyes.

He didn’t have a lot of Skills he could practice without being able to move and not having any Bent, but there were a couple.

He’d started trying to clear his mind and meditate, when the prompt came up again.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 5! 25% correction.

+1 to Intuition.

Three whole years later, it comes in handy.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Like a Book: Boosts comprehension of body language, to a near unnatural level. Almost mind-reading, but not really.

Loyalty: Talking to Girls Correction now applies to the growth of loyalty and selflessness in women.

Mutations:

One Size Fits All: I think you all know what this Mutation does, you silly guys.

Lady Killer: Drain Bent through physical contact. (Not actually lethal.)

Perfume: Smell better…duh.

The Voice: Makes voice more appealing.

A lot more Mutations than Abilities this time around, Cal thought, sorting through them. He scanned through them several times, and everything was helpful. (Except One Size Fits All, which seemed like someone’s idea of a joke.)

His mind kept settling on Lady Killer.

He was going to need lots of Bent when he made his escape. What if he dragged along Melau for the first half of it, then left her for the Genosians to recover? Or perhaps he could exhaust his Bent the night before so they believed he couldn’t possibly escape?

As an aspiring Wizard-King, it was highly appealing to have another source of Bent.

“I choose Lady Killer.”

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Oh dang, this again.

Cal’s skin itched for a moment as he felt something squirming up the veins of his arms.

Then everything went dark.

When Cal opened his eyes again, only a few minutes had gone by.

Still look the same. Are the veins in my arms a little darker? Cal hadn’t deliberately inspected himself beforehand, so he wasn’t sure.

Cal once again closed his eyes and focused his mind on the situation he found himself in, following his options into an ever-branching tree, trying to find a solution to the puzzle he found himself in by mixing and matching his Abilities, Skills, and knowledge before scrambling it all up inside himself to see what would happen.

…..

Meditation has reached Level 4!

Your Mind has reached Level 20!

Will has reached Level 12!

Stability has reached Level 10!

0/22 Warp remaining.

As expected, Cal wasn’t able to funnel it all into Mind, but three points was honestly better than he’d been hoping, putting the limit of his mental sub-stats at twenty.

After an entire evening plotting his escape, he didn’t get a Skill specifically for it like he’d hoped, but…he had interesting ideas.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

20

Intuition:

7

Stability:

10

Will:

12

Bent:

0/10

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

5

Acting

4

Reading Expressions

3

Sense-Grafting

4

Dupdomancy

6

Hunting

3

Meditation

4

Chained Spirit

1

Fishing

3

Knife-Work

4

Genosian Language

1

Chapter 13: Friendly Neighborhood Cannibals

“Where do you think you’re going?” Karen asked, stepping out of the darkened alley just outside the temporary refugee housing. The woman was still limping from the wounds she’d sustained covering the villagers’ retreat, but that wasn’t enough to keep her from getting in Jinnei’s way.

Jinnei pulled back her hood and scowled at Karen. She’d been hoping to slip out without her mother noticing, but that was long since passed.

“I’m joining the recovery mission.”

“The recovery mission is a publicity stunt to prove the Gadveran military won’t take this kind of thing lying down, and it’s a damn stupid idea. Everyone they took was dead within a day and stored up in their icy mountain larders. It’s been weeks.”

“Calvin is not dead,” Jinnei said, clenching her fist and glaring. She wasn’t going to be the one to give up on him. She was incapable of it.

“You’re right,” Karen said with a shrug.

“What?” Jinnei breathed. “Then why are you stopping me?”

“The two of you…my kids, Elaine’s kids, you’re special. And Fate shouts in my ear that she’s got more planned for both of you than a Genosian’s shit on the side of a mountain.”

Karen held up a finger. “As long as you don’t jump into their mouths yourself. You’re too precious to me to allow you to go off on an ill-advised political knee-jerk reaction that will no doubt do more harm than good.”

“How do you even know this?” Jinnei asked.

“I’ve been around the block a few times. I can tell which way the wind is blowing. Call it whatever you like, you and me are leaving Gadvera tonight.”

Jinnei frowned, uncomprehending. “Leave? All of Gadvera? We can’t leave. This is our home!” Her anger unwound until she was shouting at her mother.

“Please, Jinnei. I can’t let anything bad happen to you, and that’s going to be very difficult a few months from now.”

“Why?”

Karen winced.

“Why?” she demanded again. Whatever Karen was withholding from her would no doubt convince her to stay. If it would be difficult to protect me, and she wants to leave all of Gadvera…

“You think Gadvera is going to fall,” Jinnei accused.

“From an old soldier’s perspective, it doesn’t look good,” Karen said.

“Then fight!”

“I’m done fighting for a kingdom,” Karen said. “I’m fighting for my children.”

“To the hells with you, then. I’ll fight myself!” Jinnei shouted, moving to step past her.

In a move too fast for the eyes, Karen bonked Jinnei on the head, causing her to slump forward into the large woman’s waiting arms.

“Sorry, girl,” she whispered, throwing her over her shoulder and heading towards the port. The boat was waiting.

***Calvin***

Much to Calvin’s consternation, they kept feeding him the vile mixture every morning. When asked if it was the Guya, they laughed and shook their heads, explaining that it was Noeula, to make him grow up big and strong.

Calvin was pretty sure they knew he was a wizard, and had decided to keep his Bent to controllable levels. He usually had one back by the evening, as he was approaching two a day, but one or two spells wasn’t good enough to run away with.

On the fourth day, they brought him outside, into the freezing cold of the high mountains.

“Oh, gods!” Cal said, shivering as he wrapped his arms around himself. Gadveran clothes were not designed to be climbing mountains in.

“Hah, we share the same discomfort in your warm forests,” Aoehe said as he guided the manacled young man around the Iron-Skin camp.

It was a series of several dozen yurts placed in barren, rocky soil several hundred feet above the frost line. Stretching down below them were the slopes of the Genosian mountains, disappearing into the thick, subtropical forest below them.

“Why d-do you live up here?” Cal asked, trying to keep the shiver out of his voice.

“Look there,” Aoehe said, pointing. He followed the man’s gaze to a strange chitinous thing undulating between the trees. One orange-rimmed plate could roof an entire hut from Cal’s village, and there were at least twenty of them…that he could see. The creature was enormous.

“That is why we live up here. Things that would make a meal of us simply do not like the cold. From here, we can hunt the Warped that are not poisonous, but those are few and far between. Any crops we would plant must by necessity be in the forest, and we would lose more people than they would feed. Even then, the fruit of plants does not sit well in our stomachs. To hunt, we must make large groups, trusting in the safety in numbers to bring in enough to keep us fed. This is why we are not so picky about where our meat comes from.”

It also helped explain the role of Maje, and their Chained Spirits. Take a hunter in the prime of his life, turn him into a Bent transaction, and he can go hunt for food for the tribe, risk-free to the summoner and the rest of the tribe. If he gets chomped on, just make another.

Matter of fact, Cal thought, the fat one summoned three identical ones in succession. They were smaller, most likely because his Skill wasn’t as high as Aoehe’s. That means a single Maje can field a fighting force equal to their Stability.

But why pick me? Sure, I took out three of a rival tribe, but I’m fairly sure the man said the word ‘Maje’ while pointing at me. Aoehe must know I used Bent-based tricks to kill the tribesmen. Can a summoned creature use Bent?

“It is also why I suggest you do not run,” Aoehe continued, heedless of Cal’s thoughts. “There are miles and miles of harsh jungle filled with Warped creatures, and going into the jungle alone and unarmed would simply serve to feed the animals.”

“I see that,” Cal said, spotting another creature the size of a house moving through the forest.

“Good.” He patted Cal on the shoulder. “Come this way, I will show you my daughter.”

Cal glanced around at the grey men and grey-pink/purple women staring at him, and decided to ask his question anyway. Hopefully Melau had neglected to mention exactly how much she’d told him about Incha Huala.

“So what is an Incha Huala, anyway?”

“Oh?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder with a grin. “You express interest?”

“Thought I should know,” Cal said.

“It is something like a mate, or in Ilethan…protector?”

“Bodyguard with benefits?” Cal asked. The old guy sure does know how to make it sound appealing to a foreigner. Cal would bet money he wouldn’t mention the eating-you-at-your-prime part. On the bright side, that meant Calvin had a good five to ten years, assuming everything went to schedule.

“Hah! That is a funny way of putting it! The Guya is strong, and that often leads to mating. You will belong to each other.”

“Sounds a bit like marriage.”

“A bit. Although this function is not limited by gender, women are rarely Incha Huala or Maje. I am unusual in that I believe the strength of the Maje’s arm has no bearing on the Incha Huala—only the strength of their will. Show me a hardened warrior, victor of many battles, and I will show you one more man that cannot oppose his mother. By my logic, women make excellent Maje.”

Moms are tough, Cal thought with a frown. His frame of reference might be a bit skewed, though. Mrs. Marshine never killed a man bare-handed.

Aoehe glanced over his shoulder at Cal’s expression. “Does this bond offend you?”

“The alternative’s getting eaten, right?” Cal asked.

Aoehe gave him a wide, shark-toothed grin by way of explanation.

“You’re telling me my choices are being some girl’s bodyguard and maybe getting some on the side, or death? I’ll have to think about it.”

“Your humor is rather dry.”

Aoehe guided Cal’s manacled form past several yurts with older women and children chipping flakes of obsidian to be used in their weapons. Beyond those yurts was the obsidian-laced stone face of the mountain, which seemed to have a large opening carved out of it, leading deep into the earth.

“What’s that?”

“The freezer,” Aoehe said. “Regardless of sunlight or season, it is always below freezing in there, so we use it to store game from our hunts.”

He tugged on a bit of his pelts to indicate it was for storing animals, but Cal wasn’t buying it.

Read Expression has reached Level 4! 20% correction.

Despite his wariness, Cal let the question lie. He wasn’t interested in making a scene when he was in a position where he couldn’t defend himself.

Cal followed Aoehe to one of the yurts in the corner of the village, and announced their presence before opening the door and going in. Not really seeing anything else to do, Cal followed him.

“Ella, meet the new candidate for your Incha Huala,” Aoehe said, motioning to Cal.

When Cal’s eyes finally adjusted, he blinked a couple times to make sure what he was seeing was real.

Ella was rather large, perhaps six feet tall, and wide, unlike her father. Whatever trait he’d inherited from his father that made him tall and skinny had decided to perform double duty.

She wasn’t fat. Her waist drew in to a smooth, toned stomach, but her hips flared back out, leading into strong grey-purple thighs. Her chest was…also large. Her breasts strained the leather top she wore.

She had a round face with delicate black brows and plump dark lips. Even tightened in concentration, they looked soft and inviting.

She was sitting in front of them, wrapping leather around an extra-large, custom made club lined with razor-sharp obsidian. Beside her, a pot of leather and bones was boiling down to make glue.

Good thing she’s a Genosian cannibal, or I’d be panting like a dog.

“You said you didn’t believe strength of arm was a factor,” Cal whispered to Aoehe. Ella obviously had plenty of that.

“I don’t, but her size made it easier to convince others,” he whispered back.

“Aaah.”

“He looks weak,” Ella said, looking Calvin up and down before returning her attention to her club. “Please tell me I’m not babysitting him, too.”

“I resemble that remark,” Cal said in Gadveran.

“He killed three Seeker tribe by himself, with no weapons.”

“Technically, I used their weapons,” Cal said. “And fire.”

“See?” Aoehe said with a grin.

“Father, you aren’t acting on hearsay again, are you?”

Aoehe pouted. “No, Umea just told me…”

“That’s hearsay,” Cal and Ella said at the same time before catching each other’s gaze.

Ella seemed a bit startled, and seeing the expression change on her face made Calvin’s heart pound in his chest. Cal shut it down.

Nope, not getting the hots for Genosian cannibals, no matter how soft they look, or cute they are when caught off guard. That is right out.

“See, already in sync without Guya,” Aoehe said, tugging Calvin back out into the chill of the mountain air.

“That was brief,” Cal said.

“Plenty of time later. For now, let’s talk about what you’ll do to earn your keep while you’re here. Come.” He guided Cal along the row of yurts.

Crap. Even back at my own village, I had a hard time justifying my existence.

“Here we have tanning, knife- and club-making, cooking…”

“Could I hunt?”

“Eh?” Aoehe said.

“I mean no disrespect, but I’d much rather eat something that I know where it came from,” Cal said.

“Gadverans are strange…” He pondered for a while. “Yes, Incha Huala are meant to hunt as well, so we will have to test your mettle in that regard, but not until you have taken Guya with Ella. In the meantime, we will give you a sack of flour one of our…less intelligent warriors took as plunder.”

“Thank you for you—” Cal was suddenly knocked off balance as one of the wide, muscular young men, maybe a year or two older, suddenly turned and slammed into him. Cal fell to the ground with a strangled squawk.

“You are not worthy of Ella. The only thing a scrawny brat like you is good for is stew and glue,” he said, spitting a large glob of snot onto Cal’s chest while the rest of the village laughed. When Cal didn’t do anything, he snorted and sauntered away, his shoulders rocking back and forth like he’d just…won something?

“I don’t get it,” Cal said, wiping the phlegm off his shirt and flicking it onto the ground.

“The position of Incha Huala is highly sought-after, and with Ella in particular…the competition among men has been fierce.”

“Hah,” Calvin chuckled. So, I guess I got seeded by the old man. “So, I guess I shouldn’t let anyone do that to me while I’m supposed to be the Incha Huala candidate?”

“With enough pressure from the village, I can be forced to choose another. If you’re no longer the Incha Huala candidate, then you are food.”

Chapter 14: How to Win a Pissing Contest

“So…I’m not a natural at social interactions. Should I humiliate him, or just kill him? Where do you draw the line? I assume killing him is off the table, but if there’s some kind of no-holds-barred clause on the Incha Huala agreement, I think I should know about it.”

“It’d be best if you don’t kill him.”

“Well, that makes things harder. What’s his name and which yurt is his?” Cal asked.

“Goeha, and that one.”

Calvin rolled his shoulders. Getting in pissing contests wasn’t exactly his style, or something he was comfortable with at all, but when the alternative was death, it really put things in perspective.

“Hey, Goeha!” Calvin shouted, walking over to Goeha’s tent, chains tinkling against the obsidian-studded ground as he walked.

The young man glanced over his shoulder, then frowned as Cal undid the buttons of his fly.

Calvin freed his cock and started pissing all over Goeha’s yurt. Pissing contests were called ‘pissing contests’ for a reason, and when unfamiliar with the culture or the context, the easiest way to bait someone was to piss on their stuff. Nobody liked that.

“When you fall asleep tonight, you can breathe deep and think of me, eh?” Calvin asked the already sprinting Goeha.

Calvin was shaking the last drops off the tip when Goeha collided into him at full speed.

Calvin jumped straight up, letting the chains between his manacles wrap around the young Genosian’s throat. Goeha’s momentum flipped Calvin over and suddenly the two of them were back to back, with Goeha’s face pressed into the piss-soaked leather wall of his home.

Need a better grip.

While Goeha gasped with surprise and reached up to his throat, Cal slipped down and pirouetted as quickly as he could stomach, winding the chains into a tight double helix, until his wrists and Goeha’s neck were both experiencing an awful amount of torque.

Goeha tried to say something, but it only came out as a rasp. His grey skin turned silver as he triggered what Cal assumed was the Iron-Skin tribe’s proprietary Ability. It didn’t help him breathe, though.

“So, do I have to rape him or steal his food bowl, or anything culture-specific?” Cal asked, putting his knee on the back of the muscular young man’s head as he tried to push himself up, forcing the suffocating warrior back down into the growing yellow puddle on the ground.

Aoehe seemed like he was at a loss for words.

“Please, I want to do this right the first time.”

“Rubbing his face in your piss is pretty universal.”

“That’s what I thought,” Cal said, glancing over to where Ella had exited her hut to investigate the sound of the crowd. Cal smiled and waved a tight little wave, as his wrists were bound in place.

She seemed impressed.

Oh man, I should humiliate people all the time. It’s not that hard.

“I think he’s dying,” Aoehe said, pointing to where Goeha had slumped to the ground limp, his face purple.

“So he is,” Cal said, unwinding the chains.

Goeha’s unconscious body gave a swift gasp and then resumed breathing normally, facedown in the puddle.

Finish the Job. Some part of Cal’s subconscious seemed to speak to him.

Since he’s not going anywhere, might as well finish the job. Can’t let them think I’m a pushover.

Whistling, Calvin retrieved a chip of sharp obsidian from a tool bench nearby and was about to start carving his name into Goeha’s back when Aoehe caught his hand.

“I think that’s enough,” the Maje said.

“Are you sure? Because I really don’t want to get challenged by everyone with a hard-on for your daughter.”

“I’m sure. Putting scars on his back would not win you any friends here.”

Cal glanced around at the watching tribesmen with intricate scarification and tattoos. Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t like that.

“Alright then,” Cal said, tossing the obsidian flake aside and dusting off his hands before standing up. “Show me where you want me to work.”

Cal was directed to an elderly man who painstakingly tanned leathers. Aoehe left the two of them together.

“Nice to meet you,” Cal said. “My name’s Calvin.”

“Sit there,” the old man grunted, pointing at a little wooden stool before handing him a bloody piece of pelt and a stone scraping tool.

“Start scraping.”

Cal shrugged, sat down, and started scraping.

In the next six hours, Cal learned more about tanning than he’d ever wanted to know. Once the work day was over, Aoehe came and brought him back to his home and secured his manacles to the tree in the center again.

“How long do I have to keep wearing these?” Cal asked, gesturing to the iron cuffs around his wrists.

“Until Guya ceremony. Sleep well.” Aoehe turned and left.

To the hells with that, Cal thought.

He’d built up a single Bent since the sludge this morning, and he wanted to try a little trick that had been tickling the back of his mind since the first night.

If he could deliberately avoid Splitting some parts of an object to make changes to it, like with the sawblade, was it not also possible to make entirely new objects as long as their entire form could fit inside the original object?

Take Cal’s manacles, for example. They had a large flat area where they came together to form the lock. If Cal could Split only a portion of the flat area that conformed to the shape of a key, he could, in essence, make a key.

Cal closed his eyes and pictured a key. He didn’t know exactly what it looked like, since he was unconscious when he’d been captured originally, but the Ilethan weren’t exactly known for their complex lockwork. A simple one- or two-toothed key should do just fine.

Cal stared at the manacle, and pictured a key with two teeth on one side and one on the other, and overlaid it on the flat spot.

Right there.

Splitting.

0/10 Bent remaining.

A two-sided key landed in Cal’s palm, made from the dull iron of his restraints.

I am the lord of all creation! Muahahahah!

Cal didn’t celebrate aloud for obvious reasons, but it was very exciting to expand his knowledge of his own Abilities.

It took a lot of finagling, a sprained wrist, and nearly dropping the key several times, but after a good ten minutes, Cal opened the lock on his left hand, followed shortly by his right hand. It was a one-tooth lock, the absolute easiest to pick.

Once the manacles were off his arms, Cal did the ones on his legs, and then began creeping toward the door.

He heard the noise and laughter of the Genosians having their end-of-day gathering, where they sat around a fire and chatted.

Their night vision probably wasn’t too good.

Cal peeked out the door of the yurt and didn’t see or feel anyone looking his way, so he darted out and into the cold mountain air. No gazes landed on him as he slunk through the shadows.

Suppressing a shiver, Cal made his way to the back of the yurts, that narrow space between the leather and the rock, working his way around to the freezer.

He wasn’t trying to escape. He was looking for a way to resist the Guya. Maybe if he could find a barrel of the stuff, whatever it was, he could build up a tolerance or something. If worse came to worst, maybe he could make some kind of tube and have the stuff pass through his jaw rather than his stomach.

Cal crept into the narrow cave and was amazed by the fact that he could still see.

Interspersed with the obsidian were little blinking blue lights lining one side of the ceiling, casting the freezing cold cavern in an icy color.

The cold in the freezer was intense, and Cal hugged his arms around his chest as he continued through the tunnel. He would have to make this a quick trip.

Without warning, the cavern opened up, revealing a wide chamber coated in thick frost. On the left, Cal spotted the blinking blue lights, and a strange silver steel outcropping jutting from the ceiling. There was a gash in the steel and a long black tube hung out of it, dribbling a black-green fluid into a barrel placed beneath it.

Curiously, Cal crept forward and sniffed it, his nose wrinkling in distaste. Noeula, or a main ingredient of it. Cal wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about drinking an unidentified liquid that poured down from a mysterious object embedded in the obsidian ceiling, but he didn’t exactly have a choice, and he hadn’t gotten sick yet.

Beside the barrel were dozens of strange centipede-like creatures on a rack, with their pincers torn off and shells stripped away.

The other side of the room was dim, as all the blinking lights seemed to be on this side. But Cal could make out supplies, untanned pelts on pilfered barrels and shelves obviously made by non-Genosian carpenters.

Cal snuck through the cold blue air, trying not to shiver as he investigated the darker part of the freezer.

It was there that Cal found the answer to resisting the Guya.

Kahm the carpenter was bent forward, frozen into an awkward position where he’d been unceremoniously dumped in the corner of the room. He sported the same neck wound he’d had last Cal had seen him.

The man had helped him build his hut in Deinos.

Kort and Persei were laid out against the far wall, their expressions at the moment of their death frozen in place by the chilled air of the freezer. Kort was covered head to toe in wounds, as if he’d taken many blows before finally bleeding out. His face was fixed in anger.

Persei was naked, her left arm and a large portion of her ribcage missing, chiseled away for Genosian cookpots. Her expression as she was slowly carved away was one of absolute terror.

Seeing his friends like that created an iron core of hatred inside him. It didn’t burn, or chill. It was simply the solid, weighty determination to live long enough to escape and come back to rain down hell upon them.

A more enlightened man might have thought of some way to end the cycle of violence, or teach them to grow their own sheep. Something. They would eat him.

“...I’m saying I agree with the Maje, the outcome is all that matters. He took down Goeha handily enough.” A voice echoed from down the hall, causing Cal to dart behind a shelf in a panic, wincing as he pressed up against the frozen stone.

“All he did was jump around like a monkey. How is a skinny thing like that supposed to wrestle a Couna into submission or fire a warbow?” another voice said as they emerged from the tunnel.

“You’re just saying that because Goeha is your son,” the first woman accused.

Two older women chatted with each other about the state of Ella’s Incha Huala as they carved off more of Persei’s corpse to take to the night’s gathering. They didn’t spot him hunkering behind a shelf.

Cal closed his eyes so he didn’t have to watch, but the tap, tap, tap of the sharp obsidian chisel felt like it was forcing its way through his heart. Cal waited until they were done and emerged from behind the shelf, shivering uncontrollably now.

He forced himself not to look back at Persei as he followed the two women out of the cave.

It wouldn’t make a difference.

Cal was able to slip back into his temporary housing and relatch his manacles, cold iron settling in the core of his being.

It took a long time to fall asleep that night, so when Aoehe came to wake him up in the morning, he was bleary and out of sorts.

Genosian Language has reached Level 2! 10% correction.

“What?” he asked, the Maje’s sentence not quite registering in his mind with the voice of the System talking at him at the same time in Gadveran.

“You have been challenged to a duel!” Aoehe said, looming over him and grinning with his usual shark-toothed enthusiasm.

"Five more minutes," Cal said, rolling over.

Chapter 15: How to Win a Race

The whole cannibal village assembled halfway up the mountain, standing in the cold wind to witness the duel, some three hundred elders, women, and children, and thirty warriors.

The numbers he was seeing in no way reflected the number of dead Genosians he had seen earlier in the village. There had literally been hundreds of dead men. The attackers couldn’t possibly have all come from this one village. Which meant that the attack on Deinos had been a joint effort by…maybe five tribes, at least. Possibly ten or more.

What had caused them to join hands so readily? The sentiment toward the Seeker tribe was one of disdain. Was it simply a desperate food shortage, or was it something more sinister?

Cal stood wearing nothing but a leather loincloth, his entire body shivering as he faced his opponent.

His opponent stood across from him, staring at him with a smug grin. His grey skin seemed to shrug off the cold as easily as a wolf’s pelt. Not a single shiver crossed the rippling muscles. He sported a thick black beard and dizzying tattoos across his scalp.

He must have outweighed Cal by a good fifty pounds, but he didn’t look musclebound, either. Long, lean muscles covered the man’s wide frame, making him look perfectly suited to climbing obsidian-studded mountains and balancing on thin peaks above perilous falls.

Which is exactly what this challenge was.

“Now, the two of you will race to the peak, where the odeya awaits,” Aoehe explained.

The odeya was a pretty necklace made from—you guessed it—obsidian. The entire mountain seemed to be made of the stuff. It made walking around barefoot hazardous at best.

“Once the competition begins, there are no rules, there is no time limit. The one who places the odeya in my hand is the winner, and claims the right to become my daughter’s Incha Huala.”

Cal looked up the mountain slope, full of steep cliffs lined with obsidian, jagged, sharp walls, and stone spires connected to each other by wood planks, where they were supposed to run along them while balancing.

A single slip would tear either of them to tiny little pieces. The best bet might be to simply let the other guy go first and hope he took a tumble. Some of those planks looked like they were about to give out.

Fighting each other while traversing an obstacle course greatly favored the one with more mass, muscle, and better balance.

Cal gave himself a one in five chance of not being immediately thrown off the cliff by the other man’s superior strength and tumbling down the razor-sharp peaks until he hit the slopes ready for the stewpot.

Of course, letting the other guy go ahead of him was stupid, too. As there was more than one way back down to the ground, he couldn’t exactly catch him at a choke point.

Wait. There’s a choke point right here. Cal’s heart started hammering as he realized what he had to do. He’d convinced Aoehe not to feed him the Noeula this morning, and so he was sporting a single Bent.

The other guy’s gonna use his Iron Skin as soon as he starts scaling the walls. The magic seemed to be universal for the tribe, and it also made this obstacle course significantly less deadly.

For them.

There was no way to win once they were up there. There was only a tiny window of opportunity for him, and if he wanted to live, he had to seize it.

“Kuetha, are you ready?”

“Ready,” his opponent said, facing toward the wall filled with sharp glass.

“Calvin, are you ready?”

“Ready,” Calvin said, facing toward the mountain.

“Go!”

Splitting.

0/10 Bent remaining.

Targeting a massive vein of pure volcanic glass, Calvin reproduced a simple glass knife in each hand, twisted violently and shoved one into his opponent’s neck.

Kuetha glanced over at Cal with a confused expression, his skin turning silvery an instant too late. His steps faltered and he reached up, his fingers brushing the glass embedded in his windpipe.

Knife-Work has reached Level 5!

Level 5: Boosts handling and sharpness of knives, 25% correction.

Kuetha opened his mouth to speak, and blood bubbled out. He got angry, glaring and stumbling toward Cal. Cal took a powerful step forward and put everything he had into one of Karen’s front kicks, pushing the two of them away from each other.

‘Get distance and let the wound take its toll,’ Karen seemed to whisper in his mind.

Kuetha staggered backwards, and might have caught himself, but for the weakness in his knees. He toppled backward, and struggled to put his feet under him, his breath creating a strange whistling as it passed between the knife and the rest of his throat. The cannibal almost stood up, but Cal kicked him in the face, forcing him onto his back.

Once they’re down, don’t let up.

Gasping for air despite not having done much at all, Cal picked up a big half-obsidian rock, and carried it over to the wheezing man on the ground who was tugging on the blade blocking his air.

While he was trying to get up, Calvin smashed his head with the rock until he stopped moving.

Once that was taken care of, Cal turned to face the rest of the village. The only sound was the mountain wind blowing over them. Some seemed alarmed, others angry. Aoehe and Ella were watching without expression.

“Let me make something clear!” he shouted, riding the wave of anger and adrenaline.

“If you think you can challenge me to some half-assed competition without betting your life, you better fucking think again! Losing my position here means death! You are trying to kill me! And I swear to each and every one of you, there’ll be no rope-climbing, necklace-retrieving, treasure-hunting idiocy! Every. Single. Challenge…will be to the death! Because guess what? It is for me!”

Anything to stop them from seeing how scared and disgusted he actually was. Only a small fraction of his shaking knees were from the cold.

Acting has reached Level 5!

Acting Level 5: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 25% correction.

Cal started down the mountain, back to his nice, warm yurt.

“The competition isn’t over yet,” Aoehe said.

Cal glanced over his shoulder at the muscular body with the smashed-in head, and then at Aoehe. “There’s no time limit. I’ll get around to it.”

It would have been more cool and convincing had Cal not caught the tiniest waft of blood and excrement carried down from uphill. His stomach instantly rebelled, and he doubled over, spewing his breakfast all over the mountainside.

Why are there even chunks? I only ate bread and water the last week.

The adrenaline high left his body at the same time as his food, and he sank to his knees, shivering violently.

“Ella, take him back.”

“I knew I was gonna be a babysitter again,” she grumbled. The Genosian girl put her shoulder under his and levered him up, half-carrying him to his yurt.

“I declare this challenge complete and Calvin the winner,” Aoehe intoned. “Take Kuetha back to the freezer. Damnit.”

On the way down, Cal had enough presence of mind to try his new Ability.

Lady Killer.

The veins in the arm that was draped over her shoulder turned black where they pressed up against her skin, and Cal felt a warm sensation begin to build between the two of them, a tantalizing sensitivity that reminded him of—

Bzzt!

Cal’s arm suddenly tingled viciously, like it had gone dead for hours and only now was getting the blood back. Pins and needles assaulted him, and he barely managed to keep a straight face.

Lady Killer is better for both parties when the target is willing.

Lubricates the process, if you know what I mean.

….Have some class, boy.

Ella shivered a moment, frowned, glancing over at him as she ran her fingers over her shoulder and the back of her neck. She raised her fingers to her gaze as if expecting something to be there.

“Did you do something?” she asked.

Are you telling me that the one reason I got this Mutation is meaningless, because I have to tell them about it!?

I don’t make the rules. Oh wait, I do.

Cal put the strangely talkative System in the back of his mind for a moment and brought himself back to the present. He couldn’t use the damn thing secretly, so there wasn’t much point in trying to lie about it.

“I was trying an Ability I learned a while ago.”

“What kind of Ability?” she asked with a raised brow, her posture becoming cautious. She’d seen how he’d conjured obsidian knives out of nothing, like everyone else.

“I can borrow Bent from people, but apparently not without permission, which the damned thing didn’t tell me when I got it.”

She stared at him a moment, her lovely face backlit by Soscath, the Scowling Moon. They were so high in the air that the light of the sky was pure blue, glowing down on her hair and skin. It was a heart-pounding moment.

Then she smiled, and Cal remembered the Genosians were distinctly not human, looking at her triangle-shaped teeth.

“What kind of pathetic Ability requires the enemy’s permission?” she asked, shouldering him again. “Sounds funny. Let’s try it.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not? You are my Incha Huala.”

The phrase meant more to Genosians than Cal. It seemed as if the possibility of betrayal from an Incha Huala didn’t even register. A cultural blind spot.

“I think I can walk on my own,” Cal said, disentangling himself from her grip, trying not to enjoy the way she felt against him.

“Good,” she said, slapping him on the back hard enough to make him stumble forward a few paces. “Let’s walk and talk, then. You can tell me where you got so good at fighting, and I’ll tell you what’s expected of you as my Incha Huala.”

“My mother taught me how to fight since I could walk,” Cal said. “I never beat her.”

“Your mother taught you?” she asked. “That is very strange.”

“She’s six and a half feet tall, blonde hair, about this wide, eight Breaks at least,” Cal said, gesturing.

“Blonde… Your mother was the golden-haired Aiaka that killed so many?”

“What’s an Aiaka?”

“A great warrior who has experienced more than six Breaks. A legend. Something nearly unheard-of for us. We simply don’t have enough people to engage in battles large enough to generate that kind of Warp. Not like humans.”

She glanced at him from the side. “I see why my father chose to bring you back. A child born from an Aiaka is said to be the reincarnation of a great historical figure.”

“Actually, I…” Cal was about to say something to deny being an Aiaka’s kid, then realized Elaine must have had a similar number of Breaks, too. “...don’t think I did anything special in a previous life.”

“How would you know?” she asked with a chuckle as they arrived at the yurt.

Cal climbed into the warm building and buried himself in the furs of his bed, shivering uncontrollably now that he was no longer walking. The side of the mountain was harsh on skinny teens in loincloths.

“Your turn,” Cal said, peeking at Ella from beneath the furs. “What is expected of me?”

The voluptuous Genosian sauntered into his yurt, sniffing the air with a curious expression before she turned her yellow-green eyes back to Cal.

“Tomorrow, we drink the Guya. Then we begin training your potential,” she said, sitting down cross-legged beside his bed. Her sheer proximity made it difficult to think; his gaze was dragged down her body against his will for a moment before he forced himself to look at her face again.

Is Talking to Girls even working? How bad would this be if it wasn’t? Cal thought.

Yes. Bad.

“Still cold?” she asked, holding out her hand.

Cal took it, and his icy fingers met smooth, warm skin that tickled the tiny hairs on the back of his hand, sending jolts of formless energy to his heart.

“I considered climbing into your bed to warm you up,” she said thoughtfully, “but I don’t know you that well yet, Calvin.”

“M-makes sense,” Cal said, shivering violently now that his body was starting to regain its heat.

“Try the thing,” she said.

“What?”

“Try to take my Bent. You have my permission.”

Lady Killer.

As the two of them watched, the veins beneath Cal’s skin darkened, and then that darkness spread into his hand. He felt something resist him for a moment, before he plunged into it, shoving the soft barrier aside. An insanely pleasurable tingling spread up his arm as the black veins began to climb up the back of her hand and wrist, wrenching a stifled groan out of him as he tried not to writhe.

“Ngya!” Ella let out a girlish yelp, tugging her hand away from his.

As quick as it came, the strange sensation fled, the black veins fading away in seconds.

“That was, um…” She panted a bit, the skin of her arms covered in goosebumps as she looked at her hand, flexing it and making sure it wasn’t hurt. “Did you get it?”

“No, I don’t think it was long enough,” Cal said.

“Is it supposed to feel…like that?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Cal shrugged, trying not to tent his covers. He just had to think about other things to keep it under control, rather than the girl blushing and panting next to him, soft thighs pressed against the floor, large breasts heaving with every breath.

That was the wrong thing to think about.

A moment later, she grinned conspiratorially.

“Let’s try that again,” she said, grabbing a fur and lying down beside his bed. Her leather-clad breasts deformed against the fur in front of him, pressing together and up under her weight. Over her shoulder, he could see her glorious backside rising enticingly into the air, the furs barely able to restrain her flesh.

“You know what, I’m gonna close my eyes,” Cal said. “I think that’ll help me concentrate.”

“Sure.”

He closed his eyes and felt her warm hand against his own.

Lady Killer.

Forewarned, he managed to bite back a moan of pleasure as he began draining her Bent. After a fraction of a second longer than the time before, he felt his Bent begin to refill.

1/10 Bent remaining.

It works!

2/10 Bent remaining.

3/10 Bent remaining.

Feels like it’s speeding up…

“Nnnokay, thas enou—” she said, pulling her hand away.

Cal opened an eye and glanced over. Ella was shuddering, making her generous figure wiggle in time with her movements.

She raised her head to look at him, and he spotted a corner of the fur she was resting on in her mouth, pierced by her sharp teeth. Her cheeks were full of color now, softening from grey to magenta.

“That was…interesting,” she said, tugging the thick leather off of her teeth. There was a bite-pattern driven straight through the thick leather, now.

“As your Maje, I want you to know you can come to me for assistance at any time. I’m responsible for helping you reach your full potential over the next few years, after all,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and posing confidently, her knees trembling as she leaned against the tree trunk dominating the center of his room.

“Will do.”

“I’m going to go…take a nap,” she said, wobbling away. “Do not interrupt me for at least an hour…but once you recover, come speak to me about your training regime.”

Ella walked out of the yurt, and a moment later, Cal heard a strange thump and yelp outside, followed by whispered Genosian cursing a bit too fast to follow.

“Huh, that went well,” Cal muttered to himself. He didn’t feel nearly as cold anymore, and the guilt and sickness from brutally murdering someone was a faint background sensation.

Told you so.

Who are you? Cal asked internally, bringing his thoughts to bear on the voice in his head. It didn’t seem like an emotionless System, like he’d been told. It seemed to have…quirks.

Acting has reached Level 5!

Acting Level 5: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 25% correction.

+1 to Intuition.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

A Mile in His Shoes: 1 Bent to disguise yourself as the target for an hour, including voice and tactile effects. Does not lend supernatural knowledge of the target’s mental state.

~Good for sleeping with other men’s wives, if that’s included in the mile.

Infectious Emoting: 2 Bent. Act out an emotional state (Anger, Calm, Sadness, Happiness, Defeatism, Courage, etc.) and watch it spread like wildfire!

~Good for wars, orations, in-laws, and quinceañera.

Confidence: At will, speak with such surety that people want to believe you. Even when they know they shouldn’t. Causes victims to build belief and make assumptions based on your statements if they aren’t paying close attention.

~Good for lying. At its heart, Acting is the art of lying with confidence.

Mutations:

Me, Myself, and I: Design up to five alter egos. Each one may be a different race or gender, changing your body when they assume control. Pro: Can fool rigorous magical testing to determine your identity or locate you. Con: Stay on good terms and ask nicely for your body back.

~Ironclad disguise. Possibly wake up married with kids.

One of the Guys: At will, take a snapshot of every humanoid within 100 feet. Your race and gender become the average values of theirs until the Ability is dismissed. Pros: Extreme duration. Con: Dependent on environment.

~Good for hiding amongst nuns…or lizard-people…or any homogeneous group of humanoids, really.

Mesmerizing Eyes: Capture a target’s attention for as long as eye contact is maintained, causing increased suggestibility and memory lapse. Intuition resisted by Will.

~Side effects may include vampirism and dry eye.

Just gonna dodge the question, huh? Figures.

Chapter 16: Arson and Titty Twisters

“...I choose One of the Guys.”

The thought process was simple. The Mutation allowed him to create a disguise quickly and easily, with no risk of losing his mind. It would be incredibly useful when it came time to escape. If they were chasing down a pale young man and saw one of their own warriors, well, they might not give him a second glance—simply a friendly nod before breaking away from each other to more efficiently chase him down.

And there was a hidden meaning in the statement that it would average his features. If he could lure someone 100 feet away from anyone else, he would be the average of a sample size of one. In essence, he could steal the identity of anyone he could isolate.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Oh, yeah, this.

“Gah!” Cal choked back a scream as his bones came apart like puzzle pieces, along with his skin, which itched so badly he felt like scraping it off.

This was by far the most comprehensive Mutation he’d ever…

Everything went dark.

Cal opened his eyes, and the sunlight streaming into his yurt had only moved by a few inches. He’d been out no longer than ten minutes.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Cal said, sighing as he sat up. His body and skin looked identical.

Knife-Work has reached Level 5!

Level 5: Boosts handling and sharpness of knives, 25% correction.

+1 Kinesthetics… Point value capped, rerouting… All physical stats capped, rerouting… Expanding List of Abilities…

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Save it for a minute, Cal thought, shoving the list aside without paying attention to it.

One of the Guys.

Cal’s body rippled, sending the strangest crawling sensation up his spine. He watched as the ripple crossed his arms and chest multiple times. His skin rapidly turned grey, and his bones creaked and muscles ached as they contracted down to slender, feminine limbs.

His breasts stretched and swelled, protruding in front of him, and his cock…

Let’s not overthink this. Cal dragged his attention away from his crotch.

Cal inspected his body, that of a young, female Genosian.

Makes sense. The vast majority of the population of this village is women and children, so the average would be female, and young.

Cal ran his tongue over his teeth and accidentally cut it against his brand-new, razor-sharp teeth. Despite the pain, he found himself smiling a shark-toothed grin.

Now there’s a fuckin’ disguise.

Cal willed the changes to revert. The last thing he wanted was to get caught shapeshifting, or as a strange woman in the Incha Huala’s tent. The community was small enough that he couldn’t exactly disappear into the crowd. He needed to keep a tight lid on this particular Ability.

His bones creaked, skin gained color and unfolded, shoulders widened, teeth dulled, and hips narrowed, all in about ten seconds. The second time around was just as strange, sending shivers up his spine.

He would get used to it, though, if it meant escape.

If you’re done playing with yourself…

Show me the other one.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Bleeding Strike: 1 Bent. Does what it says. The bleeding will not stop without extreme interference.

Penetrating Strike: 1 Bent. Softens material that comes in contact with the blade. The blade isn’t tougher; everything else is softer.

Edge Lord: 1 Bent. Grants a kinetic field of force that applies an edge to anything for as long as it’s held in the user’s hand. Sharpness dependent on Knife-Work level. Anything can be a knife with the right mindset!

MacGyver: 1 Bent/8hrs. Applies a malleable kinetic field to a knife that allows it to be used as virtually any hand-held tool (screwdriver, hammer, saw, socket wrench, tweezers, planer, you name it).

Invisiblade: 1 Bent. Makes a knife invisible for 1 hour. Careful you don’t cut yourself with it!

Mutations:

Grindstone Fingers: Sharpen any blade by running your fingers over the edge.

Blade Body: Allows one (1) knifelike object to be absorbed by the body per five (5) levels of Knife-Work. Absorbed knives can partially or completely emerge from either palm, or with practice, from other parts of the body. Speed dependent on practice.

~May make the user slightly magnetic.

Razor’s Edge: User gives off a passive kinetic field that increases the durability of knives, and raises their sharpness when threatened.

Cal thought about it for a while. MacGyver, whatever that meant, was very appealing to him. He could create simple tools with Splitting, but that was limited, while this particular Ability seemed to promise a solution to almost any problem for the price of one Bent.

On the other hand, Blade Body called to him just as strongly. The ability to stow a knife away on his person without cost in terms of Bent was very appealing. Being able to make it grow out of his skin would be very useful in combat. Again, without spending Bent.

With Splitting, he could crudely mimic either Ability… It was simply a choice between which one would do more work to guarantee his survival.

MacGyver was a convenience, whose benefits would slowly pile up over time. However, it wouldn’t help in a fight, actually costing him Bent that could be used for combat.

Blade Body was specifically for getting him out of a fight alive, a winning card he could keep hidden until he needed it.

Wait. I could carry around an inch-thick steel plate and use Splitting to create tools from it as needed—file, saw, tweezers, pliers, etc.—as long as they fit inside the plate. With a simple steel plate, MacGyver would become redundant.

It would still be cheaper than Splitting for tool creation, seeing as he would need to spend Bent every time he wanted to make a new one, but Cal didn’t see himself desperately needing half a dozen specialized tools in a row any time in the future.

Remember to get that plate, he reminded himself.

“I choose Blade Body,” Cal said.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Cal’s entire body began to tingle slightly, feeling almost like he was vibrating…everywhere.

This isn’t that bad at all.

The Mutation still knocked him out.

When Calvin woke up, the sun had moved quite a bit further toward the east, dousing his yurt in shadow as the sun passed behind the mountain.

Aoehe was sitting in the corner of the yurt, staring at him.

He didn’t see anything suspicious, did he? Cal thought, with a sudden burst of panic that he ruthlessly smothered, acting nonchalant.

“I wish you hadn’t needed to do that,” he said with a sigh. “Kuetha was a very…polarizing individual. Ah well, these are adult problems. I’ll handle them. You simply need to worry about practice and reaching your full potential guarding my daughter.”

Them constantly speaking about practice made Cal think about the nature of the Chained Spirit Ability. The way they spoke about reaching his potential made it seem as though the spirit couldn’t improve after it was consumed, nor could it degrade.

That didn’t exactly scream living spirit with its own will to him. That said the Ability took the creature as it was in a single moment in time—presumably just before death—and replicated that in a soulless entity.

Cal decided to take a risk.

“About that…” Cal said.

“Huh?”

“My Body stats are already the highest they can go and my fighting Skills aren’t far off. I’m…not going to get much better very quickly. The reason I’ve been able to do so well against your people is a lifetime of training. Relative to other people my age, I’m probably going to get worse as they grow into their heightened Body.”

“Huh.” Aoehe gave him a cold, calculating look. “Why would you tell me this?”

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of progress to make with my Mind. You saw what I did to Kuetha?”

“An interesting trick. You are a Maje…no…wizard of Gadvera?”

The Ilethan called them sorcerers, Malkenrovians called them mages, Gadverans, wizards, and Genosians, Maje. But it was all the same thing.

“That was the tip of the iceberg. My Mind has a lot of room to grow. I need to be allowed to regenerate my Bent and practice my spells, or I won’t grow at all. I need to stop drinking the Noeula and let my Bent return. I’m not going to get any stronger, physically.”

Aoehe watched him for a moment, carefully deliberating. Cal could see the thoughts bouncing around behind the man’s eyes, weighing his escape against the possibility of earning a powerful wizard summon for his daughter.

“Thank you for telling me this. I will speak to Ella, and after tomorrow’s ceremony, we will tailor a training regime to your situation.” Aoehe stood and nodded to Cal before leaving the room.

Cal relaxed. If the Maje had been lying and was about to have him killed and stuffed in the freezer, Cal couldn’t spot it. For all Cal could tell, he still honestly wanted him as Ella’s Chained Spirit. Which meant either she could loan his post-death, summonable copy Bent, or it would have the Bent he died with.

In any case, he had no intention of going through with it, magical love potion or no.

After Cal recovered from the fight and the Mutations, he spent four hours working with leather before he was told to go back to his yurt for the night, his chains dragging behind him. Cal waited until the noise of the village slowed to a crawl, only interrupted by the occasional wails of babies. Lying on the furs, facing the dark roof of the massive tent, he decided it was time to go.

He got one Bent back every fourteen hours, so he had another, bringing him up to four once the Scowling Moon was high overhead, radiating light from its jagged mouth. Enough to do some reconnaissance.

Splitting.

3/10 Bent remaining.

Cal shed the manacles easily, before picking up an errant stick, about a foot and a half long with a little nub at the end. It was too small to do anything meaningful with, so no one bothered to stop him from taking it home.

Sense-Grafting.

2/10 Bent remaining.

He bound his right eye to the nub at the end of the stick and crawled along the floor, holding it on top of his right eyelid to ease discomfort.

Once he was at his doorway, he carefully poked the stick through his doorway, using it to peek around the corner. It’s nice to have the resources to do things properly, Cal thought, spinning the stick slowly to view in all directions before he began creeping out of the yurt.

Sliding through the quiet camp and using the tiny stick to peek around corners, Calvin was able to sneak all the way to Aoehe’s tent, where he could just barely make out a discussion, consisting of harsh whispers.

“I don’t understand, father. Why do you wish me to shed blood to the Guya now? Should it not be during the ritual?” He heard Ella’s voice.

“No blood will be shed at the ritual. It will be held privately. Here,” Aoehe said.

Cal very carefully slid the stick into one of the tiny gaps in the leather, giving himself a view of the two figures.

Ella and Aoehe stood in front of a bowl full of glowing green liquid that gave off a strange vapor that seemed…alive?

“You don’t...” Ella said, backing away. “You intend to let him drink the Guya without adding his blood.”

“He’s not one of us. He only needs to serve you. Nothing more. When you are older, you may bond with a real warrior,” Aoehe said.

“I’ll not participate in something so unbalanced,” Ella said, crossing her arms. “Let our Wills decide.”

“You can’t…” Aoehe clenched his fists tightly before calming himself. “The boy is a Maje as well. He has a good reason to hate you, while you feel nothing strongly about him. His Mind will lash out. Best not to take that risk.”

“We will be bonded fairly or not at all,” Ella said, crossing her arms with all the stoic confidence of a rebellious teen. “I intend to honor my role as his Maje.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Aoehe said, running a hand over his bald scalp and sighing.

With a snarl, he brought his hand forward again, unleashing a green bolt that lit the darkened yurt as it crossed the distance between them before it slammed into Ella’s chest.

She stood there with her arms crossed, entirely unaffected.

“I’m sorry, daughter. I raised you to be strong-willed by necessity, but in some regards, I must be the tyrant and enforce my decisions.” Aoehe turned away and retrieved a knife and bowl beside the green concoction.

No…she wasn’t unaffected… She couldn’t move! The girl continued to stand there, her breasts heaving slightly as she struggled to breathe, her eyes flickering to watch her father, who approached her with a small bowl.

“I would prefer you drink the Guya with him tomorrow,” he murmured, making a nick in her forearm that began to bleed into the bowl. “Seeing how many men we lost, we need every able body, but if you don’t wish to go through with this…then he will fill our bellies, and together we will seek out a situation more to your liking.”

Welp, this is some weird shit, Cal thought to himself. I need a distraction, and I need my blood in that bowl.

Cal dismissed the connection to the nub and left it hanging where it was rather than risk moving it during that intimate moment.

Cal crept over to the banked fire in the center of the village and poked through the embers until he found a live one.

He blew on it until it was white-hot. He couldn’t feel any eyes on him, so he changed into a young Gadveran woman.

One of the Guys.

Splitting.

2/10 Bent remaining.

One white-hot ember became thousands, targeting a yurt that still had a light on inside. In moments, flames began to lick up the side of the leather.

Took some effort. Leather’s not the greatest kindling. In any case—

“FIIIRE!!” Cal shouted in a young woman’s voice. It was the first time he’d heard himself talk in a different form, and it almost stunned him into not moving. So squeaky!

He had to move.

Immediately, Cal dropped low and began scrambling toward Aoehe’s hut, sliding around the side an instant before the Maje himself climbed out the door flap, glaring at the mounting flames in the distance.

“Damn,” he muttered before running for the fire, just as Cal dismissed the Mutation’s effects.

Cal wasted no time in jumping into the tent behind him, hardly waiting for the man to leave eyeshot.

Ella’s eyes tracked him from where she was paralyzed, still standing with her arms crossed.

Calvin winked.

He picked up the Maje’s knife and sliced his left palm, dribbling his own blood into the bowl, mixing with hers. In the interest of fairness…

“See you at the ceremony. Boop,” Cal whispered, booping Ella on the nose and giving her paralyzed body a titty twister on the way out. The veins in her forehead stood out as she watched him leave.

I really hope she doesn’t tell her dad. Probably shouldn’t have done that, but it was impossible not to.

Once that was taken care of, Cal hauled ass back to his yurt. The Maje was sharp and he’d probably check Cal’s yurt the moment the fire was under control. He had to get himself cuffed again and back in bed before that happened.

Cal opened the door flap and froze.

Dang. Maybe a bit sooner than that, even.

“Did you know the word for ‘arson’ doesn’t exist in our language?” Aoehe asked from a stool in the center of Cal’s yurt.

“I did not know that,” Cal said as a meaty hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Chapter 17: Love Potion Number NEIN!

The Maje’s Chained Spirit shoved him into the room before filling the entrance with his mass.

“What did you do?” the chief asked, his voice icy with restrained anger.

This is where I lie, then he applies pressure, then I cave. Not my first Shliek-ride.

“I was going to visit Ella, but she wasn’t in her tent, then I heard someone scream ‘fire’, so I investigated, then headed back here.”

“And you felt the need to remove the restraints.”

“They are awfully uncomfortable.”

“How?”

“I made a key. It’s not much of a lock.”

The massive Genosian seized Cal by the back of the neck, wrenching a strangled cry out of him as he lifted Cal off his feet one-handed.

“Did you set the fire?” Aoehe asked.

“Nope.” Calvin was most afraid that Aoehe would see the cut in his palm, trying to turn it away from the man as naturally as possible by gripping the massive Chained Spirit’s fingers with his left hand.

Calvin felt the point of a blade settle on the small of his back, right behind his liver.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Fine, I set the damn fire.”

“Why? What were you doing?” he asked.

“Like I said—” He felt the point jab into him a bit harder. “I was looking for a way to escape.” Calvin relented. “Looking for supplies to steal for my trip.”

“Hum. I see.”

Maybe I could reach into the earth and use Splitting to create a stone blade fifty feet above his head? It would take a little finesse, but gravity shoul—

Calvin’s thoughts were cut off when Aoehe threw his hand forward, and an identical green bolt of energy lanced forward, catching him in the chest.

Cal was locked uncomfortably in place, every muscle in his body seized, completely unable to move, barely able to breathe.

“We’ll have to move the ceremony up to tonight. Bring him,” Aoehe said, marching past Cal.

The six-foot Chained Spirit threw Cal over his shoulder, carrying him like a stiff board, his arms still locked in an awkward clutching posture.

Move, move, move! Cal demanded. Why can’t I move!?

Answer: Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 4 minutes.

Anything you can do to speed that up? Cal thought.

Nope.

Damnit.

Aoehe’s Chained Spirit hauled Cal back to his tent and leaned him up against a cabinet in the middle of the room. By the time they got there, Ella was unfrozen, rubbing her right nipple and glaring at him.

I didn’t think my actions would have consequences! Cal thought, horrified.

I didn’t know you could think sarcastically. I’m impressed.

Who are you!?

“Ella, your Incha Huala here tried to escape, and lit a fire in Mayea’s tent to do it.”

“Did he?” Ella asked, walking up to Cal and studying him with a mischievous grin.

…Oh no.

You know what they say…

“Sounds like he needs to be punished. Boop.” She tapped his nose, then reached out, grabbed his nipple, and twisted.

AAAAAAAGH! That was way harder than mine! Cal’s paralyzed body was only able to watch the girl’s shark-toothed grin.

Turnabout is fair play.

To the nine hells with fair play!

Satisfied with her work, she pulled out a bloody rag, turned it to a dry spot, and quickly wiped the blood off his left palm.

She winked.

“Yes, we’re going to do the ritual now,” Aoehe called over his shoulder as he mixed the bowl of blood into the green brew, stirring it with a strange wooden whisk. The glowing green concoction turned a strange glowing pink with the addition of blood. “Or he dies now, your choice. I can’t risk a Lueaya as slippery as he obviously is running around the village any longer.”

“I think death would be letting him off too easy. I see what you meant about him being a stupid, crude, uncontrollable foreigner,” Ella said with a smile. “Let’s do it.”

Aoehe finished mixing the brew and poured it into two separate containers, one of which had a long funnel at the end.

I wonder which one’s mine, Cal thought, rolling his eyes.

As expected, Aoehe pried open Cal’s mouth, bringing the wooden funnel into his mouth. The rough grain caught against his tongue as Aoehe pulled his jaw lower and mercilessly shoved the funnel into the back of his throat.

He would have gagged or vomited if he could, but instead, a metallic, tangy mixture began to pour down his throat, and it was everything Cal could do not to breathe it in, clamping his windpipe shut as hard as he could. Cal tried to writhe and kick. His body started moving just a little bit when another green bolt hit him in the chest, resetting his timer.

Damnit!

All the fun of suffocation with none of the payoff.

When Cal was starting to see stars, Aoehe withdrew the funnel, leaving a couple drops on his tongue. It was a bizarre, metallic flavor. Not just because of the blood in the mix; it seemed to hold something that sizzled and moved on the taste buds.

Cal struggled to breathe, his mouth feeling violated where the wood funnel had bruised his lips and throat. A stringy bit of phlegm threatened to work its way into his lungs, but he was too weak to cough.

This is almost as bad as training with Karen.

“I’ll give you two some privacy,” Aoehe said, leaving the tent.

A small silence stretched between the two of them.

“You’re welcome,” she said, cleaning up the bowls and setting them on her father’s shelf, her body wiggling appealingly as she did.

Welcome? I think you mean we’re even, especially after that titty twister.

Not how I tallied up the points, there.

You can sit on a Grensha, mysterious System voice.

The mysterious System voice didn’t deign to respond.

So, how long’s this thing supposed to take? Cal thought, but the System voice didn’t respond.

Guess I made it mad. Or something.

Watching Ella work at cleaning up the mess, he didn’t feel anything in particular. A little queasy in his stomach, but that could just be a side effect of having splintery wood jammed down his throat. Maybe his Stability was too high to even be affected, if the paralysis beam was anything to go by.

Then she turned around.

She’s so nice, Cal thought, seeing her perfect lips and delicate brows. She was willing to go against her father to give me a fair shot at the Guya bond. That was really cool of her.

And wiping my hand so Aoehe didn’t see that I’d mixed my blood into the bowl… She basically saved my life.

I could see myself working for someone like that….

Shit, it’s already working! Cal thought with a panicked jolt of adrenaline.

Ella glanced idly over at where he was leaning against the cabinet and frowned, staring. Cal saw her pupils dilate until all he could see was black.

Is that happening to me!?

Ella stepped closer, cleanup from the ceremony forgotten. He could feel the heat from her skin as she began inspecting him, running her fingers over his cheeks and memorizing his shape.

Now that she was this close, he felt as though the two of them were made of lodestone, somehow inexplicably pulled together by an invisible force. Slowly, their eyes got closer to each other as Ella bent down, her chest heaving against his as she panted, resting her forehead against his own.

Her eyes were so close that they became one. One pitch-black portal into her soul. He saw a roiling tendril of pink in that black expanse—the vapor from the concoction. It reached out and latched onto another that seemed to come from his own eyes, creating a bridge between them.

And then the tug-of-war started.

Cal didn’t have any other way to describe it. For an instant, it felt as though he were being sucked out of his own body into Ella’s, falling into her eyes, drawn along by that pink tendril. He fell along the bridge between them, his entire body drawn out of himself, plummeting toward her like the bottom of a well.

It was going to be perfect. He could already feel himself becoming one inside her, stretching out to fill the places she lacked…becoming an extension…

A flicker of Persei’s defiled corpse flashed in his mind.

No!

Cal pulled.

With every fiber of his being, he struggled to pull backward, slowly sliding back into his body until he was back where he started.

Cal didn’t stop there, continuing to tug on the bond until he saw Ella’s form crossing the bridge between the two of them, struggling, but unafraid. She wore a smile as if this were some friendly competition and not a life-or-death struggle.

Is it life-or-death? Cal thought to himself, his temporary distraction allowing her to slip backwards.

It doesn’t matter. In any case, winning is always better than losing.

Cal redoubled his efforts, pulling Ella towards himself. I mean, unless pulling them into you means you do what they want. Am I competing to win, or lose?

Gah, it doesn’t matter. I’ll win against this slattern and deal with the rest later.

Ella was tugged across the bridge toward him, struggling like a fish on a hook as he pulled her into himself.

How about that, you—

Ella, now close enough to touch inside him, gave a wicked grin and grabbed his arms before pulling backward with more force than she’d mustered until that point.

Cal screamed as he was dragged out of himself again, into the center of the bridge by Ella, who wasn’t holding back now that she’d caught ahold of him.

They were falling at top speeds toward the black portal behind her when Cal managed to regain his foothold, shoving every harsh training session, every ounce of will that had compelled him to stand back up, at her in a wave of memories that made her lose her grip, allowing them to slip backward partway across the bridge.

She answered back with the most horrifying memories of her childhood, the sensation of watching her pet get eaten, losing her mother.

Cal fired back with a week in a blood-, piss-, and shit-filled box.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust, allowing him to tug them back towards him.

She responded with the emotion of killing her younger sister to spare her the pain of Joyaga poison.

The horrible feeling stunned Cal long enough to drag him dozens of feet, stopping just in front of the black portal behind her.

Cal shot back with the feeling of seeing his village burning at the hands of the Genosians, but it didn’t quite compare. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he believed Karen and Jinnei were alive and well.

Ella shrugged off the memory and continued drawing him into her, buffeting him with a thousand memories of a life of hardship.

Sinking into her eyes felt good, like slipping into a warm bath.

No, I need something…something deeper, something stronger, something darker.

Cal dived into himself, desperately searching for a little bit of extra juice to resist her with. Was there anything? Anything he’d forgotten? Anything he’d done?

Cal scanned through his memories, despairing at their ho-hum, sheep-filled averageness. He certainly hadn’t mercy-killed his own sister.

He searched and rifled through his memories faster than he thought possible, when he noticed a pattern. He was avoiding something. Every time he turned his mind in one specific direction, he would unconsciously avoid that memory.

Cal turned sideways in his own mind, sidling stealthily up to the memory, whistling as he perused others. Wouldn’t wanna startle it.

He reached a hand up to his right while he was viewing a memory of helping Karen herd sheep when he was five.

He felt something cold inside his mind: a smooth barrier that radiated ennui blocking off…something.

I don’t have time for that shit, Cal thought, sinking his dream-hand into the dream-stone and turning to face it.

Pinning it down like this, he was able to see it: a thick stone wall separating himself from…some other part of himself.

In the manner of dreams, Cal reeled his hand back and punched the wall with all his force, shattering it. He needed juice to win the tug-of-war now.

The stone fell away, exposing a pitch-black emptiness beyond the limits of his soul. A thick black mist began to flow through the rent in the wall, pooling around his feet.

Something tells me this was ill-advised, Cal thought, watching the mist.

Something moved outside the hole in his soul.

Cal took a step forward, into the emptiness. Rationally, he realized he should be closing the hole back up as quickly as he could and running the other way, but the trill of terror working its way up the back of his neck had no effect on his feet, which kept moving forward.

The jagged doorway into his memories shrank behind him, a tiny pinpoint of light in an ocean of black. The air was stale. There seemed to be motion at the corner of his eyes, but every time he looked, the nightmare creatures hungrily surrounding him seemed to meekly subside.

In the center of this black expanse was a mirror without a frame, jutting out of the black floor, facing him.

In the center of the mirror, he impassively watched himself approach.

This Calvin, the one in the mirror, was paler than him, longer of hair, slighter of build, and with a bit of a gut and bulging nose. He knew it was him, though, from the way he stood, to the mischievous smirk he was giving him.

He wore a black shirt and green pants made from the finest woven cotton Calvin had ever seen. The pants weren’t even cotton. They almost looked like velvet.

The black shirt had some strange, blocky script between two arrows that pointed up and down.

Behind the pale Calvin were racks upon racks of clothes the likes of which he’d never seen before, of brilliant colors and perfect craftsmanship. Even further beyond was a window whose size defied logic, stretching to the ceiling of the room the man was in. The window revealed a strange stone floor with burning glass buildings jutting out of it. It was like nowhere Calvin had ever seen.

The pale Calvin raised his hand, startling Cal out of his observation. He tapped his skull and pulled out a memory, encapsulated in some kind of bubble. Calvin watched the memory pass through the mirror, floating in front of him.

Pale Calvin clapped his hands over his eyes.

Don’t look at it.

Calvin studied the opaque bubble floating in front of him.

It’s either that or getting eaten, he decided, reaching out and seizing the memory. Anguish, helplessness, and guilt rolled off the bubble in a thick miasma as he seized it with his hand.

Cal had the strange feeling this would hurt Ella, badly.

“You got anything that won’t cause irreparable damage?” he asked. “Giving women mental trauma is frowned upon in modern society.”

Pale Calvin crossed his arms and scowled.

“I guess not.”

Like a wooden soldier on a string, Cal was yanked backwards, out of the black room, out of his memories, and back into the bridge between him and Ella, falling from the depths of his own eyes.

“Sorry about this,” Cal muttered, pressing the sphere into the Genosian girl. She gave a quiet gasp and shivered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Cal seized the opportunity to drag her backwards, towards himself.

When Cal came to his senses, his lips were occupied by Ella’s, his hands occupied by her hips. They were lying on the floor, pawing each other. Ella’s hair was messy, and her top was partially shoved aside, revealing one grey-purple breast and dark purple nipple.

When did this happen!?

Cal wasn’t doing too great, either. His tongue had multiple nicks from her teeth, his shirt was in tatters, there was a painful, bleeding bite mark on his shoulder, and her left hand was currently exploring his half-shed pants.

More than anything, though, Cal was running out of air.

He drew his face away from hers and gasped for breath. The sudden noise seemed to draw her out of her drug-fueled stupor. Her eyes widened from their half-lidded state as she came to full alertness.

“Did I win?” Cal asked groggily.

“It wasn’t about winning and losing, it was about creating a bond,” she said breathlessly. Her uncovered stomach against his sent shivers of delight up his spine. “Knowing each other better than mere words can allow.”

Ah, so that was the point of the memory-fight.

“Yeah, but did I win?”

“I felt some truly painful memories inside you for an instant. I couldn’t see them, but I felt them. I’ve never felt anything like that. I’m…sorry you had to go through that. You could call that a win if you wish.”

“Could you let go of my, um…manhood?” Cal asked politely.

She blinked and glanced down at his pants sleepily before unclenching her fingers and releasing him, leaving only one lump in his trousers.

“Apologies,” she said without a hint of shame as her faculties slowly returned to her. She tucked her chest back into her leather top and struggled to roll away from him, her limbs seemingly weak.

Calvin tried to push himself up, but the floor and gravity didn’t exactly mesh. Everything told him that he should be falling her direction. When he tried to stand up again, he overcompensated and toppled away from her, smashing into Aoehe’s shelves.

Well, that can’t be good.

Chapter 18: Old Lady Killer

Your mental exercise has raised your Will by one!

Your mental exercise has raised your Stability by one!

“Lie down for a while. It’ll fade eventually,” Ella said, lying on her back with her fingers interlocked across her stomach, not trying to stand up.

Unwilling to make a fool of himself even more, Cal flopped over onto his back, lacing his fingers over his stomach.

She took a deep breath.

He took a deep breath.

This is really weird.

Cal put his hands behind his head.

She put her hands behind her head.

Looks like it works both ways.

Cal shoved his finger into his nose and started mining for nem.

A moment later, Ella followed suit.

She frowned, glanced down at her own finger in her nose and then at him.

Cal must not have been able to keep a straight face, because she scowled and slapped his arm.

He slapped her arm back.

She punched his arm.

He punched hers.

She jumped on him.

He flipped her over.

The two of them began spontaneously wrestling with each other, half serious, half playful. The girl was—to his shame—bigger and stronger than him, but he had more practice with actual wrestling, and compensated with speed and technique.

For a moment as he was catching his breath, Cal noticed how smooth her arm was, sliding his palm across her skin.

She relaxed against him.

He relaxed against her.

Her legs gradually spread beneath him, her hot crotch rubbing against his painfully hard cock, separated from each other by a thin layer of leather and trousers.

She stared up at him invitingly, her dark lips partly open. They looked soft and warm. As one, they leaned forward with the intention of bringing their lips together.

Their teeth clacked painfully against each other.

“Ow!” Cal muttered, the shock breaking him out of the spell to realize that they were grinding on each other.

“When did this happen?” he asked, glancing at her thighs wrapped around his waist.

Ella blinked. “Umm… I’m not sure,” she answered, her legs gradually letting go of him.

“Not that I don’t find you stunning,” Cal said, rolling off of her. “But I want to think about things for a moment.”

“Okay,” she breathed, nodding and staring up at the ceiling.

Okaaay, we’ve got a love potion messing with our heads, and if we’re not careful, we’ll be balls deep in a matter of minutes.

But that’s not what’s important.

What’s important is how severe the damage is.

Do I want to stay in this village?

Of course not.

Do I still want to escape?

Absolutely.

These two statements resounded with perfect truth as Calvin thought about them.

But that would mean leaving Ella behind. I can’t do that, he thought, a swirl of harrowing negative emotions accompanying the idea.

Crap.

Cal brought up the concept of escape against the idea of staying with Ella, weighing them in his mind.

Of course I want to stay with her; I’m smitten. I don’t think I could breathe if she didn’t like me anymore.

Shut up, stupid love potion. I wanna LIVE! Escape is the only way to make that happen. You didn’t forget what an Incha Huala is, did you??

Boys, boys, there’s a simple solution you’re overlooking. Can’t we just kidnap her? Cal’s ego proposed a compromise.

That would work, yeah… Cal’s lizard brain agreed. Escape and the woman. No complaints at all.

But what if she doesn’t like us because of it?

You’re outvoted, love potion, Lizard Brain said.

It’s two against one, Ego chimed in.

Well, can we convince her to run away with us?

That’s dumb.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna work.

No, no, it’ll work. She has to feel the same as us. I’ll just—

He’s going for the controls!

Hold him down!

He’s slipping!

It’ll be fine. Just let me…do this!

“You wanna run away with me?” Cal blurted against his will.

“No,” Ella said.

Great fucking job, love potion. Now she knows we still want to escape.

I’m very disappointed in you.

I’m sure she just meant—

Shut up.

Calvin blinked. It looked like the damage caused by the Guya was pretty severe, judging by the way his organizing and planning skills were in a three-way battle with his survival instinct and the need to make Ella happy.

All he could do for now was plan and prepare for his escape.

“You know the Bent-borrowing thing?” Cal asked.

“You want to do it?” she asked eagerly.

“No, it’s just… It only works with women. I was trying not to arouse suspicion. I don’t want to have you come up to me with a helper, only to find out it doesn’t work with him.”

“Only works with women, huh?” she asked, giving him a narrow-eyed look. “You’ll have to tell me what Skill spawned such an Ability.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Well, that’s fine,” she said, rolling onto her back. “There are very few men in the village who would be willing to give you their Bent, anyway.”

They lay there, staring at the ceiling of the yurt, the force drawing them together slowly ebbing, until it was so small as to be imperceptible. Cal shakily came to his feet, breathing a sigh of relief when he found he could stand.

“I’m going to bed. It’s very late,” Cal said.

“You could come to my bed, now that we’ve drunk the Guya.”

“I thought about it,” Cal said with a grin. “But I don’t know you that well yet.” That, and he couldn’t afford to let himself become more attached to her than he already was.

She slapped his thigh.

Cal resisted the impulse to slap her back and start another wrestling war that had a good chance of leading to coitus.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, leaving the tent.

Tonight he would go back to his own yurt and try to sleep it off, but he knew he would have to act totally invested in the girl in order to keep Aoehe from breathing down his spine. Sleeping alone every night after taking the Guya was a pretty good sign he’d resisted it and still wanted to leave.

That meant Cal was going to have to wall off a portion of his being, protecting the determination to leave from the encroachment he felt even now, filling his head with rose-colored thoughts of Ella.

Once that was done, he would move in with her, get along, play, and make love, all with the intention of betraying her in the end.

A sinking sensation settled in his stomach, but Calvin burned it off with anger by bringing up the memory of Persei’s half-eaten corpse.

I am NOT staying here. And if I have to betray the person who had to watch her own sister die with a Joyaga stinger through her chest, then so be it.

…Freakin’ Guya.

Cal was busily constructing a mental wall around his determination to leave while he walked, when he ran into Aoehe, standing in front of his yurt.

“How did it go?” he asked with his usual amiable grin.

“Just because you’re Ella’s father doesn’t mean I forgive you. You better watch your back.”

He leaned forward and peered into Cal’s eyes. “Yes, seems like it’s taken well. Off to bed with you.”

With that, he left Cal alone, his Incha Huala eyeing Cal as they left.

I could drop a thirty-six pound rock on his head right now, and no one would know… Cal’s fists tightened as he glared at the man’s back.

Not until we’re ready to leave. The man deserves to die, but he’s the leader of the faction that supports me being Ella’s Incha Huala. If he dies, my life is most likely forfeit.

“Damn,” Calvin muttered, unclenching his hand and going into his yurt.

The manacles and chains were no longer there; he had stronger ones in his head, now.

Lucky for me, they don’t know how slippery I am, Cal thought, methodically stopping the spread of Guya-spawned thoughts and walling them away.

***

“It’s like I’m sixteen years old again, being mounted for the first time,” Cal heard one of the little old ladies twitter to another, who was eyeing Cal with a predatory intensity. It made him want to draw his limbs and head into his shirt and stay there awhile, but he forced himself to send them back a grin, spurring their animated discussion even further.

Put up with it, put up with it… Cal thought as he started practicing his spells.

Splitting, Splitting, Splitting…

Sense-Grafting, Sense-Grafting, Sense-Grafting…

The next morning, Ella and Aoehe met him outside his yurt with no less than six elderly women. Their purpose? To resupply him with Bent to allow him to practice more than he should have been able to in a single day.

The average amount of Will and Stability of a little old lady was eight, or just over one Bent per little old lady per day.

The first day, he was able to split his practice, with twenty-five castings of Sense-Grafting, and twenty-five castings of Splitting.

Each time, he tried to challenge the limit of what he was capable of, using the spells in new and uncomfortable ways, to increase the amount each practice was worth to him.

By the end of the day, Cal had gotten Sense-Grafting to level five, and chose the ability to target objects at range. He no longer needed to touch something before he grafted his senses to it, allowing a much greater range of flexibility.

The time Bekvah had grafted Cal’s balance to a book at range had left an impression, and Cal made that his goal for level ten.

The day after that, Cal had expected to only get a couple castings in, but the number of old Genosian women interested in lending their Bent had doubled.

The next day, it increased again.

By the end of the first week, Cal had raised his Sense-Grafting to seven, and his Splitting to eight, buoyed up by the sheer amount of Bent he was able to harness on a daily basis.

There were roughly fifty old ladies, for an average of fifty-seven castings per day, by the time the numbers had stabilized. It was the rough equivalent of having four hundred Will, or fifty times faster than he’d been able to practice in Deinos.

One week of practice outweighed an entire year by himself, easily.

…He could tolerate being used by old women for that.

It was draining their Bent in front of Ella while they moaned in ecstasy that really got under his skin.

The young Maje watched him with a smirk as the matronly Genosians gasped and shuddered. He was starting to develop something of a reputation in the Iron-Skin tribe…again. Married women and young girls were discouraged from associating with him, and Genosian warriors who walked by snorted and shook their heads.

“You can take the Bent from any part of the body, yes?” one woman of perhaps thirty-five asked slyly, not two feet away from Ella. She was one of the youngest women who visited, a widow.

“Just the hand for now, ma’am,” Cal replied, taking her hand as she clicked her tongue in disappointment. Cal began draining her Bent, ignoring the moans and Ella’s reveling in his discomfort.

3/10 Bent remaining.

4/10 Bent remaining.

5/10 Bent remaining.

6/10 Bent remaining.

7/10 Bent remaining.

8/10 Bent remaining.

9/10 Bent remaining.

“That’s all I have. I saved up for this, so that you could go deep,” she said with a conspiratorial smile.

“I appreciate it,” Cal said, nodding and ignoring the prickles on the back of his neck. “I’ll see you next week.”

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” the Genosian woman said, lying down and stretching, deliberately showing off as much of her body as she could. “I’ll watch you practice.”

“That’s—” Cal was cut off by Ella.

“All right, you’ve had your fun. Shoo, shoo! Be thankful I let you visit my Incha Huala at all, Aya.” Ella kicked dirt at Aya, causing the woman to hiss and scuttle back like a wild animal.

Aya cleared her throat, stood, and wiped dirt off her hide clothes before throwing her nose up and walking away.

“Thanks for that,” Cal whispered as the young widow left.

“Can you take Bent with other parts?” Ella whispered into his ear, sending shivers down his spine.

“I think she said from other parts.”

“Bekata, beketa,” she said, a Genosian phrase that meant ‘Either/or, it’s all the same.’

“Probably.”

“Interesting.”

Cal got back to practicing, earning another level of Splitting, when he came to a realization.

His Will was about to bottleneck at fourteen. He needed to raise his Hunting and Meditation to compensate.

Nothing I can do about it right now, Cal thought, putting his head down and getting back to work.

Read Expression has reached Level 5!

Read Expression Level 5: Passive bonus to reading expressions. 25% correction.

+1 Intuition.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Poker Face: Give away little by way of facial expression.

~She’s got to love nobody!

Open Book: Gain an intuitive understanding of the relationship between two people who are looking at each other.

~Lover, stranger, friend, enemy, conspirator. The face tells all!

Universal Language: Large bonus to understanding pantomime and expression regardless of species.

~She never told me she was a mime!

Mob Mentalist: Read the attitude of large groups of people easily.

~Never get caught off-guard by a mob of pitchfork-wielding peasants again!

Mutations:

The Phoenix's (W) Right Eye: While making eye contact, you can discern if the target believes they are lying. Less useful on sociopaths and the misinformed.

~OBJECTION!

Med Tricorder: At will, determine a person’s health and identify anything that might be affecting them merely by looking at their face. Includes wounds, infection, blood loss, poison, food poisoning, drugs, parasites, disease, etc.

~Damnit, Jim. I’m a doctor, not an engineer!

Feel Intent: Feel the emotion behind any gaze upon you that you can perceive.

~Yeah, it stacks with Third Eye.  —The System

Calvin stared up at the ceiling of Ella’s yurt at the end of the day as he weighed his options.

The last one was most likely unlocked by the Third Eye Mutation, and it would make Third Eye far more comprehensive. It would be nice to know if the intent behind a gaze was malicious or not. He’d dodged the arrows before because they were aiming at his heart, but he couldn’t rely on that. The Mutation would allow significantly more nuance.

“I choose Feel Intent.”

Open Book and The Phoenix's Eye were appealing, but more useful in an investigative, mystery-solving kind of way, while Feel Intent would serve both in and out of combat.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Just like with Third Eye, Cal’s skin started to itch, and his head started to ache, then stab with pain as the plates of his skull popped apart and began to shift.

A moment later, everything went dark.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

20

Intuition:

10

Stability:

11

Will:

13

Bent:

2/11

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

5

Acting

5

Read Expressions

5

Sense-Grafting

7

Knife-Work

5

Dupdomancy

9

Hunting

4

Meditation

4

Chained Spirit

1

Fishing

3

Genosian Language

3

Chapter 19: Hunting Day

“So you need to raise Hunting?” Aoehe asked, looking at Cal. All he could get from the old Maje with Feel Intent was cold calculation.

“Or else my magic will bottleneck,” Cal said. “That, and I could really go for some meat.”

Aoehe raised a brow but didn’t comment. “All right. The village is running low. You and Ella will be escorted by Chuela.”

“Who’s—”

Aoehe raised a hand and green mist formed, creating his Chained Spirit.

The big man lumbered forward, his eyes scanning the environment. He glanced back at Aoehe with a questioning look.

“Hunting trip. Escort my daughter, and keep an eye on her pet.”

“I resemble that remark,” Cal said with a scowl before Ella gave him a noogie. He couldn’t exactly act like he wasn’t smitten, or else the old man would probably kill him in his sleep. That, and he kinda was.

Cal was starting to think the old Maje had a blind spot in regards to his daughter, though, because Ella had been rather clingy, and Aoehe’s eyes seemed to slide away from the two of them whenever she acted familiar.

Wait, could it be a Skill of hers? Cal thought, glancing over at the towering Genosian girl. Overbearing dad? Restricted freedom? Maybe…

Aoehe raised his hand again, and another identical Chained Spirit stepped forward, then another, and another.

Aoehe made seven more, bringing the total of hulking chaperones to eight.

“You have until nightfall,” he said, waving them out of his yurt and returning to his sewing.

The eight Chained Spirits marched out of the tent and went around the camp gathering weapons.

“Are they…being controlled by him?” Cal asked as they watched the men arm themselves while exchanging conversation with the villagers. One of them was even holding up a little girl and swinging her in circles while she giggled madly. He was curious how the Chained Spirits worked, having the Skill.

“Chuela can be controlled, but when he is not, he simply does what is in his nature. It is in Chuela’s nature to work for the Iron-Skin tribe.”

Humans can think, meaning you don’t have to control them directly. Convenient.

“Who is Chuela?” Cal asked.

“He is a legendary figure. One of the founding members of the Iron-Skin tribe, some hundred and sixty years ago, and its greatest warrior to date, an Eohea.”

“What’s a—”

“What you call a Veteran,” she answered before he finished. “Five Breaks, from a time when war between tribes was common.”

Five breaks, huh? That would put the man’s physical Strength at somewhere between bone-breaking and demigod… Wait a minute.

“How’s your father have him if he’s a hundred and sixty years dead?” Cal asked.

“He ate the previous owner,” Ella said with a nonchalant shrug that raised the hair on the back of his neck. “I imagine he’ll will him to Melau on his deathbed.”

“Well, that’s one way to keep the talent around,” Cal said with a shrug before he began preparing his own tools for hunting.

Three obsidian-tipped darts, a ten-foot rope studded with obsidian flake and ivory fish hooks, an obsidian knife, a hundred feet of twine, a bow and fifteen arrows, a waterskin from the ice-cold stream beside the village, and a satchel full of flatbread crackers that Cal had been subsisting off of for the last couple weeks.

Damn, I need some real food. I’d even eat vegetables.

In a matter of minutes, they were ready to go, trotting down the mountainside with four Chuela in front of them, and four Chuela behind.

I wonder what the duration is on the summon? Cal thought as they walked down the mountainside, following a well-worn path to the jungle. Had to be over twelve hours if the Maje only expected them back by nightfall. The Genosians lived a short walk from the deep forest, where Warped horrors were common, while Calvin’s home town required one to walk for hours before reaching the edge of wild country.

The forest opened up and swallowed them in a matter of seconds. The stunning contrast between stony mountain and sudden jungle was disconcerting.

Once the canopy was above them, the eight Chained Spirits hunkered down and began creeping through the woods, so quietly it was difficult to hear them at all.

Calvin and Ella followed suit.

Chuela was the quietest, likely having a Stealth Skill and significant amounts of practice. He flowed through the forest like a ghost, his eight bodies forming a loose ring around the two of them.

Cal was a little louder, just barely better than Ella, who likely didn’t have a Warped Skill for it.

Together, the ten of them stalked through the forest, turning left at the bottom of the mountain, heading southeast into the deep jungle.

Eventually, Chuela motioned for them to stop, smelling the air with a frown. He crept towards the two of them and whispered into their ears, “There are fire-worms nearby.”

“What’s a fire-worm?” Cal whispered back, earning a frustrated look from their chaperone.

“They are a grub that eats the Sweating Trees,” Ella explained. “When frightened, they spit burning oil. Very dangerous.”

“….Sweating Trees?” Cal asked.

Chuela ran his palm down his face in the universal sign of tired frustration. “I hate teaching,” he said, then grabbed a nearby leaf that was slick with moisture, smearing it on his palm and holding it up for Cal’s inspection. The big, bearded warrior’s hand was slimy with oil.

“When you see these, smell for worms. They smell like tangy smoke,” he said, wiping his hand off on a nearby bush.

A moment later, he stopped them and pointed at a tree covered in foot-long white maggots that seemed to be happily munching away at the leaves.

“So can we take them down from a distance?” Cal asked, raising his bow before he was stopped by a firm hand.

“When fire-worm guts meet air…” Chuela made an explosion noise and spread his hands apart. “We go around.”

When the guts meet air, huh? Cal thought, storing that little nugget of information. Something was tickling the back of his mind, an idea for a way to further advance his style of Splitting.

They passed by some kind of dead rat, about three feet long with shaggy fur. Its body was swarming with large buzzing wasps busily disassembling the body.

Cal’s heart skipped a beat as he spotted one of the things he’d been looking for.

“Prey of the Fever Wasps. They won’t bother us while they’re busy with their prey.” Chuela watched the corpse for a moment. “The hive is that way. We go around.”

As they passed by the corpse, Cal swiftly snatched one out of the air and stuffed it in his mouth, crunching down on the creature with his teeth and swallowing before it had an opportunity to sting him.

Bleh.

Entire creature eaten. Would you like to assign it to a slot in the Chained Spirit Ability?

Yes.

All Chained Spirit slots filled.

Fever Wasp: Aggressive carnivorous flying insect with highly venomous sting.

Summon 1 Fever Wasp, 1 minute.

“Brainless Aihue!” Chuela whispered, dragging him bodily away from the Fever Wasps. “You’re lucky they didn’t massacre you. They can smell when one of their own is attacked. Get out of here.”

“Understood. I was just curious,” Cal said as he was dragged away by the collar of his shirt. Ella watched him with a perplexed expression, shaking her head. He could feel exasperation and concern from her gaze, not suspicion, which was good.

A few minutes later, they found what they were looking for: signs that a small herd of Bueya had passed by. Bueya were low-to-the-ground, flat, fifty-pound herbivores that dug shallow holes in the ground to eat the soft roots of trees and bushes.

They came across the creatures rooting through the ground in a stand of trees, placidly munching on roots torn out of the ground by their sharp claws. They were brown and white with wide chests and long fur. They almost looked fluffy, but that fluff served to disguise the spines on their backs.

“These things are faster than they look,” Chuela whispered, pointing to the animals nearly sixty feet away. “After the first shot, they’ll scatter, and we won’t be able to track them down again.”

“Why don’t you just shoot eight of them at once?” Calvin asked.

Chuela grinned. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t die or slip your collar, boy. Show me what Ella’s pet wizard can do.”

“You’re carrying them,” Cal whispered, unslinging his bow. The view here was bad. More than half of them were hidden by trees. He nocked one of the rough Genosian arrows and sighted on a Bueya, drew and released without too much care.

Mass Splitting.

10/11 Bent remaining.

The air around the Bueya became seething with speeding arrows bouncing off of each other, pinning each and every one of them to the ground. A few of them twitched pitifully for a moment or two, before going still.

“Whaddya think about that—” Cal turned to see a fist come down on his head, hard. He hissed in pain as the warrior’s knuckles sent searing pain along his skull.

“I think you ruined the hides and most likely punctured the musk glands, making the meat nearly inedible,” Chuela said, “in addition to wiping out the entire herd, so there is no possibility of more Bueya being found in this area for a long time. We can’t even carry it all, so we’ll have to leave some here to rot. This isn’t all-out warfare, you child. This is hunting. Think about that while you chew on musk-flavored Bueya penis tonight.”

“Got it,” Cal said, wincing. Bueya penis did not sound appetizing, but Chuela was right; he hadn’t been thinking. The self-reflection must have triggered something, because Cal got his fifth level of Hunting right then and there.

Hunting has reached Level 5!

Level 5: Boosts locating and tracking prey, 25% correction.

+1 Will.

“Now help me find which ones have unpunctured musk glands,” Chuela said, motioning for him to follow.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation.

Abilities:

Agent of Natural Selection: Know which animals to kill and which to keep, raising the quality and health of game over time.

Harvester: Hunting Bonus now also applies to butchering prey. 1 Bent: Instantly Disassemble a creature into its useful materials.

Clean Kill: Applies a correction to shots fired upon prey animals, steering them toward their vitals.

Camouflage: 1 Bent/6 hours. Blend in with the environment, lose your scent.

Mutations:

Predator’s Senses: Pick a sense (Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch, Taste). That sense becomes heightened to match a predator that uses it to hunt.

Blood Compass: After tasting something’s blood, know its exact direction for 24 hours.

Prey’s Body: You run good. A substantial boost to reflexes, cardiovascular strength, lung capacity, and leg strength.

Damn, those Mutations look good, Cal thought to himself as Chuela watched him with irritation.

I choose Harvester, Cal thought.

There was a mental squiggle, and the technique for the Ability lodged itself in his mind. Abilities didn’t require a period of sleep to readjust the body, since they were more techniques than changes to the body itself.

Oh yes, this is perfect, Cal thought, studying the details of the Ability.

Now I should be able to butcher those Bueya, no problem…among other things, Cal thought, following Chuela to the clearing where the fifteen Bueya were pitifully skewered to the ground.

As he approached, the smell turned awful, like some kind of burnt…asshole had been tied to a string and batted around by sweaty teenagers.

“I’ll, um… I’ll stay over here, and leave Calvin to his punishment,” Ella said, her nose wrinkling.

“That’s fine,” Chuela said.

Once Cal stood in the middle of the disgusting-smelling mess, he dismissed the copied arrows and retrieved his original from the loamy earth. He’d missed.

“Help me figure out which ones have undamaged musk glands,” Chuela said, pointing around them.

“How am I supposed to do… Never mind,” Cal said as he watched Chuela bend over and sniff a Bueya’s crotch.

“Well, I’ve sniffed worse things, but not recently,” Cal said, getting on his knees and sniffing the animal’s junk.

Immediately, he felt like some cosmic force had traveled up his nostrils, singing all the hairs on the way up before punching him in the face.

Cal turned away and retched, barely keeping his lunch down as Chuela laughed.

Seems like a good target, Cal thought, sneezing and coughing as he pulled out his twine.

“I want to try something,” Cal said, imagining the creature skinned, its meat cut into neat packages bound with twine, its hide removed and whole, its musk gland closed and unperforated.

Cal bent down to touch the creature.

Harvester.

9/11 Bent remaining.

Cal felt the ball of twine shrink in his hand, and suddenly the animal was gone, replaced with scraped bone, a tidy hide wrapped around a twined-together package of meat, and a pile of guts topped with two little round balls, cinched at the top with twine, sloshing full of musk.

“I see you took Harvester,” Chuela said, watching him impassively.

“Thought it might help.”

“It’s an extravagance…but it’s your Bent, boy. I appreciate the thought.”

I don’t know if you saw what I saw, Cal thought. The Ability had repaired the hide and the scent glands, allowing him to take them whole. That was exactly what he wanted.

…Something like a fire-worm’s flammable guts, safely sealed inside its own stomach? Or the poison of a Joyaga without risking death from handling it improperly? Or a spider’s web drawn straight from within its body? There’s more to this Ability than convenience.

“I can do four more. I want to save the rest for an emergency.”

“Mm.” Chuela nodded and pointed out four more badly mangled Bueya.

“Salvage those,” he said as five of his other copies began cutting poles to carry the meat-filled hides between them with.

Cal slipped one of the scent glands into his pocket, moving on to the four prey animals that Chuela had pointed out.

8/11 Bent remaining.

7/11 Bent remaining.

6/11 Bent remaining.

5/11 Bent remaining.

Cal was packing up the last of the meat, his twine halfway gone, when he felt someone looking at him with…hunger?

Cal glanced up and spotted Chuela very slowly reaching for his club, his eyes fixed on the canopy.

The hungry gaze was coming from the canopy. Cal looked up and wished he hadn’t. Bulbous, pitch-black eyes of an insect whose entire head was about the size of a yurt stared back at him. Its mandibles twitched.

The creature was huge and segmented, each segment the size of a building, with ten-foot-long legs for days. Cal couldn’t even see the end of it, since it faded off into the distance.

It was the thing Aoehe had pointed out from the mountaintop.

“Children,” Chuela said, gathering Ella’s attention from where she was tying the packaged meat to poles. “Set the meat down and slowly walk away from it.”

Chapter 20: From Bad to Worse

“It’s a Kugeya,” Chuela said, pointing west toward the mountainside as his eight bodies slowly stood, their skin turning silver. “You go that way, and find a place to hide. Your father will be sending more—”

The creature, whatever it was, had no concept of the social faux pas of interrupting a man’s words, sliding sinuously between the treetops and crashing down to the ground on top of him.

Calvin nearly jumped out of his skin as the creature moved like a gust of wind, burying Chuela in the ground with a single enormous talon, causing the earth to tremble.

The other seven Chained Spirits sprang into action, showing remarkable acrobatics for their size. Three of them used their enhanced Strength to leap fifteen feet into the air and bound off of the nearby trees, aiming for the creature’s back.

The other four focused their fire on one of its giant black eyes, attempting to blind it.

Their arrows bounced off a thick, clear layer of…something—whatever kept the eye inside the eye. One of the midair Chuelas shouted something in Genosian and accelerated midair, slamming into the creature’s armored antennae, causing it to flinch and shake its head.

Looks like they still have their Bent. How does that even work? Cal thought as one of the archer Chuelas unleashed what was obviously a Penetrating Shot. Somehow, the creature seemed to see this coming and turned its eye aside. The arrow buried itself feathers-deep into the thing’s armor, causing it to hiss in pain.

If they still have their Bent, is that spell creating Bent out of nothing? Or maybe Chuela recharges Bent while he’s not active? But that doesn’t explain how they all have it. Is it the amount he had when he died? If that’s the case, it’s totally breaking the rules. If there are rules.

Hypothetically, were I to eat Ella (not in the fun way) while she had maximum Bent, does that mean I could summon her for one, and drain eight or more out of her? Repeat ad infinitum?

Maybe it’s a large pool of Bent. Maybe some of the user’s Will is used to refill aforementioned pool, then doled out to the summons on a case-by-case basis. Or it could even be like insurance: a large amount of Bent contributed to by everyone who uses the Chained Spirit summoning, which can be drawn out as needed.

In either of those cases, I could basically steal the pool right out from under them, or use the personal pool as backup Bent storage, and all I’d have to do is…eat a girl. Hmmm…this line of thinking seems like it’ll stay purely hypothetical.

Or maybe I simply can’t steal Bent from them because it’s not Bent anymore, and the Abilities they use are simply an effect of the Chained Spirit spell. The only way to find out would be to…eat a girl…

Foiled again.

Well, maybe if someone else’s Chained Spirit was female, I could see if I could—

“What in the name of Euaha are you doing—move!” Ella grabbed Cal’s ragged hide shirt and yanked him out of the clearing.

Oh right, giant monster.

Cal stumbled a few steps, off balance because of the grey hand holding onto his collar. A moment later, she let go, and he began to run in earnest, barely keeping up with Ella’s swift form in front of him.

Limber, Cal thought as she leaped over a stand of bushes without bothering to slow down, her hide skirt stretched tight.

“Where are we going?” Calvin yelled, following her over the bush. His jump wasn’t nearly as graceful, and his hide skirt got snagged by the thorny bush. Luckily, the leather was tougher than the wood.

“The base of the mountain has thousands of caves!” she yelled back at him. “After it finishes Chuela and the meat, it’s going to track us! We need to get into somewhere it can’t follow!”

“Sounds good to me!” Cal said, sprinting after her at full speed.

They plowed past another nest of wasps so quickly the flesh-eating insects didn’t even have time to get upset, filling the air behind them with a vicious buzzing.

Ella yelped and ducked underneath an innocuous-looking branch, so Calvin did too.

Glancing back, he spotted wings and talons unfurling from the branch as it disconnected from the tree, turning a slowly-darkening set of eyes toward them. He could feel its hunger.

Evil branch monsters. Noted.

“Is everything out here trying to kill us!?” Cal demanded as they ran.

Ella glanced over her shoulder and grinned, sticking out her tongue.

That’s a long tongue, Cal thought, bemused as they sprinted for the base of the mountain.

“Right there!” Ella shouted, pointing at a black hollow in the side of the mountain a few hundred yards away, surrounded by ancient trees.

They had been running nearly half an hour and were beginning to flag when they heard the sound of crashing behind them. The entrance was just ahead, but Calvin glanced behind him and knew they didn’t have the time to get to it.

He could make out the Kugeya in the distance, gaining on them effortlessly.

Damn.

Cal pulled out his snare rope and carefully grabbed the end that wasn’t sharp. With the desperation of the pursued, he swung it twice around his head and sent it sailing up into the treetops.

Mass Splitting.

Mass Splitting.

3/10 Bent remaining.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 10!

+1 to Will

Level 10: 100 pounds, 50 minutes.

His snare rope that was riddled with hooks and sharp bits of obsidian was multiplied a hundredfold, spreading out among the treetops and catching on the branches and each other to create a web of rope between them and the giant…centipede-looking thing.

Cal didn’t bother to see how it worked. He didn’t have time for that. He turned and sprinted with everything he had, putting his head down and running.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Multi-split—

“I choose Shaping!” Cal shouted as he ran, branches scraping his arms and legs as he bulled through them without bothering to brush them aside.

…Let me finish, geez.

A few seconds later, the canopy’s crashing redoubled as the creature hit a snag, trees folding in around it as the ropes tugged on them.

Cal had originally meant to use his snag-rope with Splitting as a kind of vicious bolas, but this worked too.

Cal’s moment spent throwing the rope allowed Ella to get far ahead of him, and she turned around at the entrance, casting her gaze back at him.

She shouted something, but Cal didn’t look back. He could feel the creature’s hungry gaze boring into his back. No need to look over his shoulder and possibly stumble. Full speed ahead was the only answer.

Ella threw her hand forward and a green bolt of energy flew above Cal’s head. An instant later, there was a rush of displaced air that brushed against his back, and the ground shook.

Nope, not looking, Cal thought as he ran. If she could have paralyzed the whole thing, she would have done so earlier. She probably just weakened it enough to miss its killing lunge.

Ella was standing in the entrance, and rather than mince words, slide around her, or ask her to get out of the way, he slammed into her and sent both of them rolling into the darkness of the cave.

Ow, OW! Cal tumbled along, lumpy rocks bruising his delicate human body as he took his turn on the bottom of the tangled pile of limbs. Eventually, they came to a stop at the bottom of a shallow depression in the floor.

Cal was on his back, lying in three inches of stagnant water, but all he could feel was Ella’s body pressed up against his own, pinning him to the ground.

“Well, that was exciting,” she said, throwing her forearms over him and resting her chin against his chest, making him acutely aware of where her soft breasts were squishing up against his lower belly. Just a few inches away…

“We good?” Cal barely had the presence of mind to ask, lifting his head to look toward the cave entrance. What he saw was unnerving, and immediately sidelined any contemplation about the girl’s proximity.

The creature’s enormous eye was staring right back at him. Its inky black depths framed by the cave walls were the only thing he could see.

“It’s too big to get in,” Ella responded. “Kugeya aren’t known for their digging skills, so we should be safe once it gives up on us.”

Cal was about to answer, when the enormous insect reeled back and smashed the cave entrance with a force that shook the earth, causing bits of rock to shake loose from the wall, and sloshing around the stagnant water.

An enormous orange insectoid leg entered the cave and thrashed around, only making it halfway to them. The thing was covered in large hairs and had two massive talons at the end.

Failing to catch them, the talons dug into the solid stone of the cave, screeching when they struck a vein of obsidian. As good as it felt to have Ella on top of him, the giant insect trying to eat them killed the mood.

“Later?” Cal asked, glancing back at her face that rested inches away from his own.

“If you’re good,” she replied casually, but he could feel an undercurrent of intense anticipation in her gaze. It had become rather difficult to mislead Cal since the Feel Intent Mutation.

“Pfft, I know you want me,” Cal said, pushing her up and rolling out of the shallow pool of water, not enjoying the icy stream of water making its way down his spine toward his more sensitive bits.

Another impact against the side of the mountain put cracks through the floor and sent Calvin back to the ground, getting his Genosian-issued leather kilt wet this time around. It bears mentioning that Genosians don’t believe in underwear for men.

Cal was about to break into a scathing critique of Genosian dress, but a rumbling that didn’t have anything to do with the Kugeya outside filled the narrow cavern.

“Was that—”

The floor fell out from beneath them. Cal had the unique sensation of floating as his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Time seemed to slow down, and for an instant, he made eye contact with Ella.

Aww, she’s worried about me.

Then cold the likes of which Cal had never experienced wrapped around him, causing him to take a startled breath.

His lungs filled with water.

Before he could even think of what was happening, his body tried to cough it out, filling his lungs with more water, while his body’s heat was wicked away from him at an astonishing pace.

I’m underwater, I need to swim up! was the only rational thought Cal was able to force past the searing pain in his lungs and the rapidly spreading numbness in his limbs.

Which way is up?

In the tumultuous fall and subsequent plunge, he’d gotten all turned around, and had no idea which direction was which.

Just pick a direction and go for it! Cal thought, swimming forward with every ounce of power he could.

He didn’t know what direction the air was in, making it impossible to copy until he knew. Cal swam as quickly as he could, his vision rapidly filling with stars as oxygen deprivation set in.

An instant later, his numb fingers jolted against something hard, and then a stone outcropping slammed against his forehead.

The last feeling Calvin had was the searing pain in his forehead as all his other senses went dark.

Chapter 21: The Thing in the Cell

“Gregor’s still out there,” Reginald whispered, leaning back from the pinhole Elaine had created in the stone.

“It’s not Gregor,” Andrew said, his jaw set. “Gregor is dead, and something is wearing his body like a skin-suit. Keep it straight—“ He leaned forward in the narrow confines and tapped Reginald on the skull. “—in your head, or you’ll hold back when we kill it.”

“Well, that’s a pain in the ass,” Elaine said, leaning back in the tiny stone room they were resting in, hiding away from the mechanical monsters and haunted rooms. “Where are we supposed to find another professional burglar with more than four Breaks?”

“Problem for another time,” Andrew said. “Right now, the issue is removing the field and getting the hell out of here. Elaine, if we found whatever is casting the damn thing and destroyed it, do you think you could tunnel us to the surface?”

“It’d be tricky. My stone-shaping magic is a lot easier with open air to move into.”

“But could you do it?”

“Not with the Bent I have. If your objective is maximum safety, we could camp out in a safe room for a week first. Then, yeah, I could get us to the surface in maybe a couple days. As long as you guys aren’t claustrophobic.”

“Do we have supplies for that long?”

“Shit,” Reginald muttered.

“What?”

“Gregor had the last of the water.”

Karen perked up at that. Three days without water; that was the rule. You could stretch it out by a couple days by drinking your own piss, but it quickly turned poisonous.

“Out of the way,” she whispered, tapping Reginald on the shoulder. Reginald scuttled out of the way, and Karen laboriously leaned down to the hole, her size and heavy armor at odds with the cramped space.

“Shit,” she cursed when she finally lined her eyeball up with the pinhole. Formerly Gregor had found the pack and was busily carving runes into his skin with the dead man’s knife, speaking strange words that rumbled through the stone and made her stomach turn.

His face bulged out in odd places, skin stretched tight over something inside him.

“It’s doing something,” Karen said, glancing at Andrew. Basic etiquette for fighting dictated that they shove their metal boots up his ass before he could finish. “Something not good.”

“We already lost Gregor to that thing, before it had a body. What makes you think it’ll stay down this time?”

“It’s distracted with something,” Karen said. “I’ll cut its feet off, then we run.”

“And if it can leave for a new body at the drop of a hat?” Reginald said.

“Well then, we’re already screwed, aren’t we?” Karen snarled at him, her ire at the young fool rising.

“The rule of thumb, Reginald, is to always plan as if you’re not completely screwed, because what’s the alternative? Planning to be screwed?” Andrew said.

“Understood, sir,” Reginald said, trying and failing to salute in the tiny box.

“Take the stick outta your ass, kid.”

“Aww, you can stick it in my ass, Reggie,” Elaine said, drawing the handsome noble’s son into a hug, her breasts engulfing his face.

“You’re gross,” Karen said.

“I have fun,” Elaine shot back, sticking her tongue out. “Besides, Reggie’s the first time I’ve had a challenge in—”

Andrew interrupted them by clearing his throat.

“The. Monster. Ten feet away. Has priority,” he said, pointing with his thumb. “Elaine, when I give the signal, open the door. I go out first and make a lunge for his chest. Karen, you follow behind and disable one leg.

“Reginald.”

Reggie said something muffled from between Elaine’s mammaries.

“You grab Gregor’s pack and keep moving to the left-hand side. Speed walk, not sprint. Remember, getting split up is a death sentence.

“Elaine.”

“Yeah?”

“Follow up behind Reggie, and pick up anything that spills from the pack, especially the waterskin.”

“Please, you know I’m go—”

“Not a word from you,” Andrew said, pointing at her, gritting his teeth. Elaine sent Karen a plaintive look, her lower lip jutting out.

“You know Elaine’s good at cleaning up spills,” Karen said, rolling her eyes.

“Why do I even bother?” Andrew said with a sigh.

“Not the wording I would have used, but close,” Elaine said. “I give it a pass.”

“It means so much to hear you say that,” Karen said with all the sarcasm she could muster, getting crouched and ready. Elaine let go of Reggie and settled into a stance.

“Ready?” Andrew asked.

They nodded.

“Go.”

At Elaine’s motion, the pinhole expanded and Andrew leapt out, clanging forward in his full armor, Karen right behind him. The runes on Gregor’s corpse were starting to flicker with some kind of purple fire, the pattern shifting along his skin as though they were tiny windows to another dimension.

Andrew lunged forward with his sword, and Formerly Gregor caught the blade in front of his chest with his bare hand, giving Andrew a feral smile.

Karen wordlessly swept up beside him and brought her metal leg down on the creature’s newly-acquired fleshy one.

Shattering Blow.

3/8 Bent Remaining.

Karen didn’t want to brag, but the creature’s left leg dissolved under the influence of her Ability. She even got a bit of the other leg. It frowned at them and toppled sideways, releasing Andrew’s blade.

Reggie swept past at a power walk, carrying Gregor’s backpack, followed by Elaine. Karen put her hand on Andrew’s shoulder, and the two of them followed, Andrew facing backward.

The creature snarled and pushed off the ground, clawing at Karen. She put her heavy forearm protectors between herself and the lunging thing. Gregor’s fingertips peeled away to reveal scintillating purple claws that dug into her reinforced steel armor like a knife through cheese.

Andrew caught the thing with a stab to the chest, but it didn’t seem to slow it down at all, yanking on Karen’s armor and nearly spinning her around.

“Fuckin’...” Karen snarled and punched the creature away with her other hand, caving in its chest and sending it catapulting backward, its claws tugging out of her protector with a metallic squeal.

It hit the opposite wall in a tangle of limbs, tried to stand up and failed. It tried and failed again. Before it could recover, she put her hand back on Andrew’s shoulder and the two of them hustled to catch up with the other two.

At the end of the hall, Elaine and Reggie were standing still, staring down at something. Karen walked up beside them and cursed.

The hall led to a spiraling staircase that was partially sheared away by whatever had destroyed this place.

“Drew, you’re gonna need eyes on this.”

Andrew turned and squinted at the staircase. About a third of it was missing, which would force them to jump if they wanted to get down.

“Want me to put up a ramp? I could probably make an outcropping about a foot and a half wide to bridge all the gaps.”

“Your Bent is precious, and I don’t want to make it easier for the Skinwalker to follow,” Andrew said, thumbing over his shoulder, pointing to where the creature in Gregor’s body was clawing along the floor toward them. “Can everyone make those jumps?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not sure. My Body is ten, but my Strength is only seven.” Elaine.

“Reggie, Strength.”

“Twenty-four,” Reggie said proudly.

“Karen, you take Elaine. Reggie, take her backpack.”

“Wha—but,” Reggie stuttered.

“Thirty-six,” Karen said, scooping up Elaine. The mage let out a yelp and then they were jumping to the other side of the shaft, falling through empty space. Karen hit the next set of stairs with a grunt. There was a little shock to the knees, but it was tolerable.

“Next one,” Karen said.

“No, wait. I can make a RAAAMP!” Elaine screamed in fright as Karen jumped down to the next set of stairs. Once they got there, Karen set her down for a moment to wait for the other two. Elaine dropped to her hands and knees, shuddering, while Karen checked out their position.

The spiral staircase was studded with doors, each one with a small glass panel allowing a view into the room. Karen had hoped they would lead to halls, or a spinning wheel coated in lightning obviously powering the barrier outside. Then they could smash the damn thing and be on their way.

No such luck. What she saw instead was a humanoid skeleton inside what was obviously a prison cell. It had a mound of green scales around it, oddly enough.

“What do we got?” Andrew asked, landing beside her, Reginald close behind.

“Prison cells,” Karen said.

“Damn. Okay, let’s keep going down.”

“How about I make us a ramp?” Elaine asked. “I mean, my Bent comes back pretty fast. It’s no trouble at AAALL!” Elaine shrieked as Karen picked her up and bounded to the next staircase. Karen wouldn’t admit it, but she got a tiny hint of sadistic pleasure out of scaring her friend out of her wits.

She felt a little bad about it.

After a handful more jumps, the stairs came back together, the large cylindrical cut in the floor ended, and they were able to walk. All of them except Elaine, whose legs gave out on multiple occasions, such that Reginald had to walk with her.

When Elaine nearly fell a third time, he lent her his shoulder to lean on. When she gave Karen a smirk behind Reginald’s back, Karen dismissed any remorse she had for scaring the slut.

They descended the winding stairs, keeping an eye out for the Skinwalker above them. The creature stopped at the top of the stairs, looking down at them from its crawling posture, its head barely peeking out beyond the stone lip.

It snarled, but it didn’t try to go down the stairs. Karen could have sworn the thing looked afraid before it turned and crawled away.

They continued their path downward, Reginald watching for any movement above them while Karen redirected her gaze downward. They were approaching the bottom of the spiral staircase, the light of day from the huge rent in the facility’s ceiling unable to pierce the last few dozen feet or so.

Finally, they arrived at the bottom, cloaked in shadow. The entrance they’d come from was hundreds of feet above them, and there was still no sign of pursuit from the Skinwalker.

“Don’t take your eyes off the stairs until I tell you,” Andrew said, tapping Reginald, who’d begun glancing around with curiosity like the others. “Just because it hasn’t followed us doesn’t mean it won’t, and I want every precious second.”

“Sir.”

Karen glanced around the circular room, and spotted three more cell doors, and a large steel one. That looked important. She was walking to the steel door with the intention of assessing its durability, when she caught something out of the corner of her eye.

In one of the cells was a pale man with a mischievous look sitting cross-legged, with his eyes closed. He wore a faded orange jumpsuit with a dark numeral written on it. Eight six seven five three zero nine.

Karen motioned silently to Andrew, and their leader crept closer, peering into the cell.

“Are you going to let me out or not?” he asked, his eyes still closed.

“How are you still alive?” Andrew said. “And not crazy like those other things we’ve seen in here?”

“Meditation has an Ability to disconnect yourself from the passing of time. Don’t experience time, don’t go insane,” the man said. “As for why I’m alive, well, I simply refused to die. So, my question stands: Are you going to let me out or not?”

“Which way’s the thing making the force field?”

“End of the hall, on the left,” he said, pointing. He finally opened his eyes. Unlike what Karen was expecting, there was no glow behind his eyes, no magical sheen or milky white pupils. He had simple brown eyes.

“Is that… knight armor? Are you guys a deadly squad of government LARPers, or have I been out longer than I thought?”

“Who are you?” Andrew said.

“Elliot Spencer, System Engineer. Had a disagreement with the Harbingers about how things should be run. Didn’t go well for me.”

“Please tell me you’re not going to let this guy out,” Elaine said. “He’s obviously some kind of undead.”

“Hey!” the man snapped, meeting the mage’s gaze with a stern look, his bones momentarily glowing through his skin. A moment passed and he broke into a smirk. “I resemble that remark.”

“And if we don’t let you out?” Andrew asked.

“That’s fine. I estimate I can outlast this cell by a few thousand years. Me being free is not a matter of how, but when.”

Andrew gave Karen a glance, and she knew what it meant. For an adventurer, Andrew was a man who hated taking chances. He was going to let the undead creature rot in there.

That sat fine with Karen.

“Who are you guys talking to?” Reggie asked, glancing over at them.

“Reggie, watch the damn—”

Splat!

The Skinwalker hit the floor, and Gregor’s corpse splattered on the solid black stone, sending bits of him everywhere.

A fraction of a second later, the swirling purple essence tore out of Gregory’s chest in a burst of viscera and dived toward Andrew.

Karen delivered a front kick to Andrew’s armor, and propelled them both out of the way. The purple mist splashed against the black stone and recomposed itself, scanning them for weakness.

“Oh my. Looks like you’ve got a Keraat infestation. Those things are nasty. Come from the other side of the Siphon.” The remarkably well-preserved undead spoke as if none of it had any effect on him, sidling up to the door and watching like a spectator at a play.

“Say ‘Emergency Decontamination’,” he said, leaning on the door, watching them dodge the purple wisp of smoke. Nobody wanted to end up like Gregor.

“Emergency decontamination!” Elaine shouted.

There was a whining in the floor as several columns of stone unlocked, sliding upward, revealing nozzles. A pleasant woman’s voice emerged from everywhere.

Please provide Identification.

“Say ‘Omega Protocol’.”

“Omega protocol!”

Scanning for Harbinger Personnel… Searching for Harbinger Transmissions… Omega Protocol Accepted. Temporary Overseer Status bestowed. Please reissue Commands.

“Emergency Decontamination!” Elaine shouted again.

The columns grew little metallic nozzles and shot heatless green flames at the purple mist. It sank into the floor with a death scream that grated against their very souls.

“Ta-da!” the man in the cell said with a grin and jazz hands. “I know a bunch of tricks that could help you get out of here safely. For example, the way to shut down the force field without smashing it and sinking the whole site into the Warp, which I assume was your plan.”

Andrew met Karen’s eyes, and she could see that his opinion had changed. He now saw this...thing as an asset.

***

“NO!” Kala leapt out of her bed, every hair on her body standing straight up.

Seer has reached Level 3!

Seer Level 3: See the truth of the soul.

I wish I had never eaten that mushroom, Kala thought sourly, rubbing the goosebumps on her arms. And why do I keep witnessing Karen’s past? She hadn’t even had a reaction to Karen, hadn’t paid any attention to her. The thing inside Calvin, on the other hand…

Her goosebumps came back.

Whatever it was, she had to get it out of him.

It was early morning, maybe five o’clock; her bedroom curtains barely had any light shining out from beneath them. She’d only gotten four hours of fitful sleep, and if she was going to make a full day of it tomorrow, she needed every hour she could get.

She lay back down and tried to calm herself, telling herself that nothing could hurt her in her dreams.

Just when her heartbeat was beginning to slow, a knock on the door startled her out of her hazy half-dream. Of course I can’t get a full night’s sleep. In what world would that ever happen?

Kala calmed her inner rage and put on her ‘princess voice’. “What is it?” she asked sweetly.

“Princess, I apologize for waking you, but your father urgently requires your presence. Please get dressed to travel.”

Dressed to travel? she thought, frowning.

Chapter 22: More in the Brochure

The next time Cal opened his eyes, all he could see was grey-purple, and all he could feel was the need to expel the water in his lungs.

Before he was able to control himself, he coughed a spray of water straight into Ella’s mouth, and the both of them spent the next couple minutes coughing bits of water out of their lungs. There was a warm trickle going down over his eye, and when Cal pressed a hand to it, it came back darkened with blood, looking black in the dim light.

Why can I even see? Cal thought, glancing around. The same blue dots that had been embedded in the walls of the freezer were here as well, but they were embedded in regular stonework, so perfect that it had to have been man-made.

Are we in a Ruin? Cal thought. Is the entire mountain a Ruin?

Shortly after that thought, the wound in his forehead began hurting, cutting through the icy numbness. It wasn’t his biggest concern. His biggest concern was the fact that he couldn’t feel his limbs.

Cal began to shiver violently as he glanced around the room he found himself in. They were on a stone shelf abutting a doorway, with a river to their left. The river had a strange greenish hue in the dim blue lights above them.

“Here,” Ella said, taking her knife and cutting Cal’s shirt away from him. She cut a long strip and bound it around his head, cutting off the vision from his left eye in the process.

“I-I thought th-the g-girl is s-supposed to shred her o-own c-clothes to w-wrap the hero’s wounds,” Calvin tried to joke as his numb arms and legs shivered violently. “A-also, why aren’t y-you freezing?”

“The hero?” Ella asked with a raised eyebrow. “The ice water must have caused brain damage. We don’t have any time to waste.” Without waiting for him, she shrugged off her clothes, giving him barely a moment to gawk at her luscious body in the dim blue light before she tugged off his hide kilt and drew him into a spooning hug.

Her full breasts practically engulfed him, pressing softly against his back and shoulders, her smooth stomach against his back. At least, that’s what he assumed was happening.

“Wish I c-could actually f-feel anyth-thing,” Calvin said, facing the river.

“I’ll bet.” Ella reached up to her mouth and winced as she yanked out one of her sharp teeth, a few drops of blood dripping from her mouth as she held it out in front of the two of them.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Black Bent followed her veins and infused the triangular tooth. A moment later, a wave of heat washed over the two of them, radiating from her tooth, sending the first tingles of feeling along his skin.

“Maje must never be unarmed,” she said, handing him the tooth. “It will grow back in a few weeks.”

“People’s teeth don’t just grow back,” Cal said.

“My people’s do.”

“Huh.”

The tooth radiated heat for a good hour before it began to dissipate, but by that time, Calvin was already beginning to regain some of his own body heat, and best of all, he could feel Ella pressing against him, radiating her own gentle warmth.

“I think I know why successful Wizard-Kings use women as furniture, now,” Calvin said. “It’s pretty much the best feeling ever.”

“I take it you’re feeling better, then?” she asked.

“Um, no, totally still numb. Brrrr. You should keep holding me.”

“Oh, okay. I was only asking because my back is getting cold, and if you’re warmed up, we could switch places.”

Switching places meant he would be spooning her, pressed up against her soft hips, his hands wrapped around to her…front. There was a ninety-five percent chance she was baiting him, and a five percent chance he’d get to grab her boobs.

“I’m almost uncomfortably warm. Maybe I should take a turn on the outside?” Calvin said before he even finished calculating the odds.

Ella chortled, standing up and tugging her clothes back on; they were half dry from the cloud of heat around the tooth.

Damn. Worth a shot.

Cal stood and pulled his damp hide clothes back on, shivering as they began wicking away his precious heat. It wasn’t a lethal amount of chilling anymore, though. Not going through the Ruin naked, no thank you.

“How much Bent do you have?” she asked.

“Four. I got one back while we were lying there,” he said. “You?”

“Eight.”

“Which way did we come from?” Calvin asked, glancing down the stream. Ella pointed down the left-hand side.

“In a lot of stories, there’s a cave-in or a long drop that makes the protagonists think they can’t go back, and should instead venture into the unknown because it’s somehow more doable than traversing a couple hundred feet of ice-cold stream.”

“That sounds oddly specific,” Ella said, frowning.

“Can you keep a secret?” Cal asked.

“Depends.”

Chained Spirit.

3/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin held out a hand, and with a tiny puff of green, a wasp rested on his hand. Cal could feel a link form between the two of them, a kind of dreamlike sense of being something else at the same time.

“Is that—”

The wasp stung him, jamming its butt-needle into his palm. The only thing he could feel from the link was unbridled aggression.

“Ow, fuck!” Cal flung the wasp, which righted itself in midair and tried to come in for another sting on the fleshy prey.

He clenched his aching fist and grabbed hold of the link, and forced the wasp to stop.

The orange and black creature dropped out of the air like a stone, forcing Calvin to catch it as gently as he could.

“Having some trouble there?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have happened to use my people’s most sacred ritual to have a mindless insect as your Incha Huala, would you?”

“Is that a death sentence?” Cal asked, glancing over his shoulder. She didn’t look like she was about to kill him, just aghast at his poor decision-making skills.

“Just…really, really dumb. How’d you even learn it?”

“I saw it a bunch during my Forming Day. I figured it out.”

“You’re lying,” she said, her arms crossed.

“To protect the innocent.”

“By Euaha, Melau taught it to you, didn’t she? She’s going to get the mother of all spankings when I get hold of her.”

Sense-Grafting.

2/11 Bent remaining.

Suddenly, Cal’s left eye was seeing everything from the wasp’s point of view, where it rested on his hand.

Go to the end of the hall and come back.

The wasp didn’t do anything. It still radiated primal aggression against all non-wasp creatures in the area. Looks like the commands have to be pretty simple.

Fly that way. Cal gave it a mental nudge, and his point of view lifted off of his palm and took off down the stream. After a few seconds, he got the hang of mentally controlling the raging sting-monster, giving it a constant stream of simple orders while he nursed his swelling hand.

It zoomed along above the water, eventually coming to a spot where the stream and the ceiling nearly met. Damn, not coming back that way without getting wet.

Once he got to the cave-in, his hopes were crushed by the sheer amount of stone that had filled the hole in the ceiling.

As it stood, Calvin didn’t have any form of magic that was able to get him back through the ice-water stream and cave-in. There was an odd prickling as the wasp reached its time limit and vanished, disconnecting his left eye and plunging it back into darkness behind the temporary bandage that left his midsection drafty.

Need to raise Chained Spirit, because one minute is unacceptable. On the other hand, the poison in my hand is gone.

His hand was rapidly deflating, the ache diminishing by the second.

“Definitely aren’t getting back that way,” Cal said, glancing back at the doorway in front of them. If Cal wasn’t in pain and scared for his life, he would suspect trickery.

“Alright, come on,” he said, creeping through the doorway, glancing around. When he glanced over his shoulder to see if Ella was coming, she was watching him with her arms crossed. She raised an eyebrow.

“Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Hypothermic Head Wound?”

“I’m quieter, and lighter, and if something bad happened to you—oh my god, the Guya’s still in my system.”

Cal stepped out of the way and motioned her forward. “After you, Nubile Warrior Princess.”

Together, they crept through the hall, thankful for the pale blue dots of light above them. The dark walls were covered in slime from hundreds of years of moisture, giving an almost natural appearance to the man-made hallway.

The hall was big enough for both of them to walk side-by-side, armed with nothing but their knives. Cal’s darts were still hanging on his kilt, thankfully, but the rest of his hunting gear had been swept downstream.

Now the challenge was to find a way to the surface before they starved to death.

They crept along, navigating the empty halls, and peeking in doorways that had long since rusted open. There were piles of rust and mold that looked like they had once been beds, mold where there had been cabinets and shelves, lines of rust on the floor where coat hangers had ceased to exist.

Cal ducked into one of the rooms and poked through the mold with his knife.

I can see it now: The mold comes to life and swallows me up.

Clink!

Clink?

Calvin peeled a bit of mold back and levered a perfectly preserved…steel ballpoint pen. On the side of the shiny metal was impossibly precise etched writing in a strange language he’d never seen.

I wonder what the street price of an heirloom pen is, he thought, tucking it in his waistband.

Artifacts!

This place hadn’t been raided, which meant no one had been here…in the hundreds of years the Genosians have been living on this mountain? More likely, this section of the Ruin had never been explored, because it was cut off from the surface. Signs of human activity would have been a very welcome sign at this point, even if it took the form of a complete lack of valuables.

Maybe there’s an artifact for tunneling through solid rock, Cal thought, standing up. He rejoined Ella and continued to walk, casting his gaze this way and that, looking for a way up, anything that would lead them out of this place.

The halls fell along a simple grid, and it didn’t take them a long time to scan them all and reach the far wall. The only danger that presented itself in the silent blue halls was slipping hazards.

At the end of the hallway along the far wall, they found a circular room filled with blinking panels along the walls and a glowing table of some kind in the center.

“Scanning…”

“Greetings, User 5-3-4-1-5-6-6-1-9-7-4.” A woman’s voice spoke when Ella entered the room, causing her to jump in place and hold her knife up defensively.

“Greetings, User 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-5-6-2,” the voice said an instant later, when Cal walked in.

“Um, greetings,” Cal said to the air.

“What did she just say?” Ella asked, eyeing the blinking panels suspiciously. She seemed a hair’s breadth away from smashing everything.

“‘Greetings,’ called us ‘users’ in Malkenrovian,” Cal translated.

“Welcome to Richie Cool’s Bitchin’ Recharging Station. I am currently disconnected from the Harbinger mainframe, so my resources are limited. I cannot provide up-to-date statistics on the state of the Warp Encroachment, your current contribution points, or access to the Shop.”

“What did she say?”

“I understood every word, but none of it made any sense,” Cal said, shaking his head. “It sounds like she wants to help us.”

“Can you help us get out of here?” Cal asked.

“Of course. The exit is marked on the map.”

Suddenly, the glowing blue table flared to life, and a ghostly image began to float above it. It was a simplified map of the strange halls they had been wandering for a couple hours.

A red line was drawn from the circular room they were in, through the doorway they had entered, and out what looked like a lobby that they hadn’t even seen.

“Maybe she can help us get out of here,” Ella breathed, not understanding a word of their conversation, but spotting the map.

“I’m asking,” Cal said in Genosian, then switched gears in his mind, to Karen’s home tongue. “That exit is blocked. Do you have another way out?”

The map expanded into a three-dimensional structure, showing a three-story building with a strange, prong-like object jutting from the top of it.

“Emergency exits are marked on the map.”

Several paths and doors became highlighted in red, including a few routes that they’d passed by. They’d have to check them out again and see if they missed anything.

“Excellent, let’s go check those exits out,” Ella said, craning her neck to peer out the door.

“Hold on. How often do you get to talk to a Ruin?” Cal asked.

“What is that prong-looking thing?” Calvin asked, pointing.

“Docking bay is currently in use. H-tech charging stations down. Contact Richie for information on wait times. 1-541-275-5528.”

“Where are you?” he asked, glancing around the room. The woman hidden in the walls was making less sense than usual.

“Find us on the web at Nothing2Large2charge.Har.Apo.”

Find them…on the web?

“Is there some kind of giant spider I should know about? Are you okay?”

“Massive structural damage detected, nanites and coolant leaks have reached equilibrium with production speed. Estimated repair costs: 35,000 Contribution points.”

Is that a lot…? A little? In either case…

“That’s…not really relevant to what I just said,” Cal said.

“Brochures are available at the front desk, with a helpful FAQ.”

“Okay, I’m pretty sure this thing is damaged beyond repair,” Cal said, turning away. Their time would be better served looking for those exits than talking to something that only seemed to speak in nonsensical babble.

Wait.

Cal turned back.

“What is Warp Encroachment?”

Rather than the woman’s voice, a man’s stern tone spoke to them in an overbearing, staccato rhythm as a strange symbol began to spin above the table.

“Son, Warp Encroachment is the plague that followed the Harbingers when they set their dirty claws on our soil! It is an evil that has poisoned the very fabric of our reality. Unlike what some of you believe, the Harbingers are not magic, they are not saviors… They’re sniveling cowards running from a fight! Thankfully, we’ve been able to reverse engineer the Harbinger’s System, and create our own vastly superior one. It is the duty of every red-blooded Federation citizen to participate in the System, kill the creatures that flood through the Siphons, neutralize the Warp, and god willing, kick those filthy Harbingers off our planet. The greatest country in the galaxy is depending on you!”

The voice continued, speaking words so fast that Cal couldn’t make sense of them until the end, where he barely made out ‘see your local recruiter’.

“What the hell is a galaxy?” Cal asked. “Kinda wish I had that brochure.”

Chapter 23: Emergency Exit

The symbol flickered off, returning to the map with the emergency exits marked.

“Well, lady, and possible gentleman, you’ve been somewhat helpful, and extraordinarily confusing. I hope you get out of the web, or the walls, or wherever you are,” Cal said, glancing around.

“Have a nice day!” Wall-lady said.

“Let’s go check those emergency exits,” Cal said, tapping Ella on the shoulder, pulling her away from where she was playing with the glowing buttons and dials.

The first marked emergency exit was a panel on the ceiling with a handle and a red border. The panel was crumpled somewhat, so they moved on, checking the rest of them. They split up and scavenged the rooms as they went.

In the third room he checked, Cal uncovered a silvery orb in a pile of molding cabinet, a bit bigger than a fist. It was about seven pounds in his hand. When he tugged on it, it gave him an odd resistance, like it was attached to a string, but there was none to be found. He ran his hand all over the perfect sphere, but there was no point at which it was attached to anything.

He experimentally tugged on it, feeling the resistance lead in one specific direction. With a few scrapes of his knife, he uncovered another sphere. This one was smaller, but made of the same material. It was locked in place by a flimsy piece of shiny black…something. It wasn’t wood or metal, but it was shiny, as if it had been polished.

Odd, but it is a Ruin. There was more to be awed at than a strange material he’d never seen before. Cal tugged on the larger sphere again and saw the black material flex when he did so.

Calvin braced his feet around the smaller orb and pulled the larger one, putting his back into it.

Crack!

The smaller orb came free, and swung at the end of the invisible chain. Strangely, Cal didn’t feel its weight moving around, which didn’t make sense given he’d just had to pull it out… Whatever, it’s an artifact. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Cal experimented for a moment, shifting the larger sphere back and forth and allowing the smaller one to swing below it. Even when he swung the smaller one all the way around, he didn’t feel any chain on his fingers or the larger sphere itself.

What if I…

Cal grabbed the smaller sphere, which fit nicely in his hand, and let the other one fall to the bottom of its invisible two-foot range.

The smaller sphere was significantly less heavy, maybe half a pound as compared to the larger one. And he couldn’t feel the weight of the larger one at all.

On a whim, Cal began spinning it around, marveling at the complete lack of pull from the larger sphere. It eventually got going so fast Cal was afraid he might hurt someone. The larger sphere was starting to spin so fast that he could hear it hissing through the air.

And he still couldn’t feel its weight on the smaller one.

Cal swung the sphere forward and hit the wall with it. The floor trembled underneath him as the larger silver sphere embedded itself in the stone wall.

“Whoa,” Ella said, standing in the doorway, arms behind her back, eyes lingering on the orbs with envy. She glanced back to him a moment later. “Wanna see what I found?”

“Sure,” Cal said.

Something pinched his butt.

“Gah!” Cal spun around and assumed a battle stance, dropping the sphere and pulling his knife on the offending creature. There was nothing there.

Something pinched him again. Cal stood up straight and turned, glaring at Ella, whose face was a mask of innocence.

“What’s going on?” she asked, seemingly confused. “You seem to be having trouble.”

Okay, obviously this is her fault somehow, and related to whatever she’s got behind her back.

“What have you got?” he said, putting as much menace as he could into his voice. It probably didn’t sound that great coming from him. “Show me what you’ve got there.”

“Whaaat? I don’t have anything.”

Something invisible groped his crotch.

Cal let out a growl and jumped on the girl that was nearly a foot taller than him.

She yelped and held out her hands to stop him a moment too late, and he rode her glorious body to the ground, tickling her mercilessly.

“You think you can toy with me!?” he demanded as she squealed, too panicked to mount a proper defense. He went for her armpit, and when she curled around it, he aimed for other exposed parts, never stopping long enough to let her catch her breath or turn the tide.

That continued for a few minutes, until Ella collapsed beneath him, totally out of breath, completely defeated, and utterly gorgeous.

Gods damned lack of underwear, Cal thought. We’re gonna need a bigger kilt.

“Alright, show me what you got, and no tricks, or you’ll get more of the same,” he said like a debt collector about to break some kneecaps.

“Here,” she said between gasps, holding up her hands.

Her hands had strange, thin, fingerless gloves on them. They were dark brown, made of soft leather, with shimmering silver scrollwork along their surface.

“Interesting. How does it work?”

“Just wear ‘em,” she said, catching her breath as she tugged the gloves off. Cal let her up and helped her to her feet before taking the gloves from her. They were bigger now that she’d taken them off, looking like they would fit the hands of someone twice his size.

Ella went to the silver orb lodged in the wall and pulled it out before playing with it while Cal put on the gloves.

They had some kind of sticky substance that allowed the wrist bands to come apart and accommodate his hands, then the whole glove cinched down around his hands for an ultra-comfortable fit.

Cal was a little concerned when a tingling began to spread up his arms, but it faded quickly.

Two ghostly hands appeared in Cal’s field of view, mimicking his own. When he mentally nudged them, they moved forward, back, side to side, up and down, but always copying his hands’ posture and orientation relative to each other.

Neat. When Cal stopped concentrating on them, the ghostly hands became dim and went limp. He took his knife out of his belt and slid it along the ground, then refocused on the hands.

He mentally nudged the hands over to the knife and closed his hand. It was a little awkward, but he managed to pick the knife up. He felt the handle against his fingers, as if he were touching it himself. When he tried to will the hands upward while they were locked around the knife, they refused to move for some reason, and yet, when he raised his hand, the knife levitated off the floor, held in the phantom hand.

Since he hadn’t stooped to pick up the knife, he couldn’t raise the knife off the floor more than a couple feet, even raising his hands above his head.

Why does it work like that? It seemed like as soon as the hands were interacting with something, he could only move that object via his hand movements, and not simply nudging it around with his mind once it was in his grasp.

It was an odd limitation—maybe a safety mechanism, or the gloves couldn’t provide enough power to simply whisk things around the room with impunity.

Which brought up the question: How much power did these things have?

“Ella, can you help me test something?”

She glanced over at him from where she was spinning the orbs like he’d done a few minutes earlier.

“Sure.”

“Hold out your palm. I’m going to press against it, you push back.”

“Okay.”

Cal put the right phantom hand up to hers and pushed, feeling her palm against his own through the glove.

Her hand was pushed back for a moment before she frowned and pushed the hand back.

Oddly, Cal didn’t experience any pushback, just the sensation of pressure.

“How much force is that?” he asked.

“Not much. Just under an adult with no Breaks, or a little old lady.”

Hmmm… Calvin pushed the range of the gloves out to the edge of the room, ten feet distant, and didn’t experience any problems wielding the knife. The fact that they weren’t particularly strong didn’t bother him. They were really, really interesting. Cal poked his phantom hand with the knife, and besides a slight prick, he didn’t feel anything, even when the knife began to slide through the phantom hand.

Gloves for handling hazardous things at a distance, perhaps? Maybe people used them to shape softened metal by hand or unstick fishing hooks from logs on the other side of streams.

“I like ‘em,” he said, dismissing the phantom hands.

“Wanna trade?” Ella asked, whirling the silver sphere.

The pair of orbs was obviously the better weapon, but the gloves were versatile, except for the glaring colors and the nearly glowing wristband. The orbs probably weren’t meant to be a weapon, but he could easily see the small one put on the end of a stick and used to wreck someone’s face with the larger one.

A chainless flail, essentially.

“Deal,” Cal said.

They searched through the Ruins, but didn’t find anything else of note, just moldy scraps of rotten wood and rusty metal. One of the side passages had a ceiling panel that was slightly less damaged than the others, and with the gloves, Cal was able to pull the lever without having to stand on Ella’s shoulders.

Which is a good thing, what with the lack of underwear. At this point, Cal would do nearly anything for a pair of trousers and some underwear.

As he was considering the clothing situation, the panel fell open, dropping a cloud of dust and rust on top of them. A clattering split the silence as a disused ladder slid down to meet them, forcing Cal to dodge out of the way.

The steel ladder hit the ground, sending sound ringing through the entire floor.

“Were they expecting everyone to be giants?” he muttered to himself, brushing the dust off and trying not to cough.

All they had to go on was the hope that the second or third story of this strange building led to one of the many cave systems in the porous mountain.

What the hell is a building doing inside a mountain, anyway? Cal thought as he climbed the ladder. The way up to the next floor was longer than he’d expected, about fifty feet up before they broke out onto the second floor.

Cal climbed out into the stale air, then turned around and gave Ella a hand stepping out of the tunnel.

The second floor was a hallway with little blue lights in the walls, just like the previous one. There were lots of doors, but many of them had obsidian spilling out from beneath them like a strangle black spill. Those doors were always impossible to open.

They kept going until they found a door that would open.

It led into a room with a strange, sleek, metallic chair-and-desk combo, unlike anything Cal had ever seen in Surrak. There was a potted plant that had fallen off the side of the desk, somehow still alive.

The strange room was generally uncluttered, with a strange obsidian wall laminated with cracked glass. Wait… It’s not an obsidian wall; it’s a window! Cal had seen glass before, but never even considered there could be enough in one place to make an entire side of a building out of it. That was what he was seeing, though.

The obsidian was pitted with large air bubbles where it pressed against the glass, but Cal didn’t see any obvious way to the surface.

They briefly checked the well-preserved room for anything valuable, but aside from a chair leg Ella ripped off, there wasn’t anything useful.

The chair leg was a metal tube, and by bracing the smaller orb against the floor and hammering the metal down around it, then cinching the end, she was able to make her weapon.

“Eheheheheheh.” Ella chuckled menacingly, unaware of how silly her missing tooth made her look.

She gave the chair leg a swing, and the bigger orb whipped around at breakneck speed and slammed into the wall, stopping dead once it had delivered its kinetic energy.

“You know, I think that was a toy,” Calvin said, eyeing a small metal thingamajig floating on the surface of the ancient desk. It didn’t do anything but spin disks around each other in a hypnotic pattern.

“Not anymore,” she said with satisfaction, admiring her new weapon. There wasn’t a dent on the silver orb. Whatever it was made of, it was a lot tougher than people.

They kept walking down the hall, checking the doors, finding that none of them were unlocked and free of obsidian, save the one they’d been through already.

It was a few minutes later that Cal smelled something rotten.

“Hold up,” he whispered, testing the air, trying to locate the source of the smell. “You smell that?”

“Smells like something died down here. And shit,” Ella said, frowning. “I’m only getting hints of it, though.”

“Anything that was down here when this place was first…mountain-ized has long since stopped smelling. If we can smell something dead, that means it came down here in the last year or so, and that means—”

“A way out.”

“Assuming the tunnel is bigger than a rat or something,” Cal added with a shrug.

“Best chance we’ve got.”

They followed their noses, drifting back and forth along the hall, trying to identify the source of the smell.

Eventually, Cal bent down to smell at the bottom of each of the doors, until he finally caught a blast of rot in the face. Ugh, moving air currents: a great sign. He inwardly rejoiced as he worked to suppress his retching.

“It’s here,” he said, pointing to one of the doors with obsidian spilling out of the bottom. There was a little less in this one—enough for air to pass through, anyway.

They had tried this door earlier, but now they were determined to get through.

Cal stood back as Ella swung the chair leg forward as hard as she could, grunting with effort. The orb smashed through the door with one hit, popping the ancient steel barrier off of a seal of volcanic glass.

Ella tugged the mace back, and it pulled the door away from the rusted hinges, nearly toppling down on top of her. With a growl and a yank, she freed her new weapon from the door and tossed it aside.

The blue light revealed a room full of rotting bones and excrement, and the stench hit him like a physical force, making Cal reel backward. There was a large tunnel through the volcanic rock leading upward at about a fifteen-degree angle. It was about four feet tall and three feet wide, and it bore the marks of being chipped away by tools.

From the tunnel, high-pitched shrieks of fury were taken up by dozens of voices, rising to become one ear-piercing cacophony.

“Looks like you’ve got an Ungrin infestation,” Ella said, readying her weapon, her skin becoming metallic.

“Me?” Cal demanded. “It’s your mountain!”

Cal held his hand out, creating another wasp and taking control of it before it could sting him.

Chained Spirit.

1/11 Bent remaining.

Chained Spirit has reached Level 2!

Chained Spirit Level 2: 20 pound limit, 8 minutes. 0 slots available.

“If this doesn’t work, I forgive you for pinching me,” Cal said.

“How generous,” she said, standing in the doorway, aiming to block it with her body. In the distance, he could see the little blue men with elongated muzzles and curved canines charging toward them, wielding stone weapons smeared with the cheapest, most effective poison known to man: shit.

Septic wounds were nothing to scoff at, and a favorite tactic of the cowardly monkey-men was to deliver a crippling wound and give it time to fester, until the prey was incapable of resisting, then coming back later. One hit was practically a death sentence if you didn’t have access to potent disinfectants.

Which they didn’t.

The Ungrin were stacked two abreast, charging toward them with reckless abandon and waving their chips of sharp obsidian.

“Whatever you do, don’t drop your Iron Skin!” Cal shouted.

Kill them, Cal mentally instructed the wasp.

It was more than eager to oblige, despite the astronomical difference in size. Once it got past Ella, he upped the stakes.

Mass Splitting.

0/11 Bent Remaining.

Something Calvin wasn’t entirely conscious of, was just how many Fever Wasps comprised a pound. They were about twice the weight of a regular wasp, so one pound made about three thousand of them.

Three hundred thousand angry wasps filled the air, turning the refuse room and narrow tunnel into a buzzing, claustrophobic cauldron of wasp venom.

Each one of the little bastards was connected to Cal by the Chained Spirit link, buzzing against his consciousness with pure wrath as they assaulted every living thing in the room. It was everything Cal could do to steer them away from himself. He let their instincts take care of the rest.

Combining the unique effects of Dupdomancy and Chained Spirit, you have created an entirely new Hybrid Skill, Calvinian Summoning! Congratulations!

Reallocating Fever Wasp to Calvinian Summoning…

Done.

Ella froze at the sight and closed her eyes against the cloud of wasps that rolled over her, trying their absolute best to maim her. They couldn’t get their stingers through her silvery reinforced skin, so she was safe.

The Ungrin? Not so much. They wailed and fled in front of the angry wasps, who flooded their warrens, stinging every living thing in the underground caverns until nothing moved.

When the spell expired at the end of eight minutes, Cal slumped against the wall. The adrenaline had kept him going, but the tension of having to mentally force away each wasp that drew close had taken its toll.

+1 Will.

Will has reached Level 16!

He sagged to the ground, inspecting the swollen corpses of the Ungrin. The results spoke for themselves.

“Still think a wasp was a bad choice?” Calvin asked.

Ella cautiously opened one eye. Not seeing any wasps, she opened the other, shuddering as she wiped away the feeling of tiny feet crawling on her.

“Show me a wasp that can take care of a child, bind a wound, or mend a yurt.”

“I get it.”

“Cook food, or open a simple box.”

“I get it.”

Chapter 24: Tight Holes

Calvinian Summoning: A Hybrid of Chained Spirit & Dupdomancy. Any creature wholly consumed may be recreated, and is bound to the user’s will for the duration. Skill allows manipulation of size and quantity of summoned creature, up to a mass limit.

Calvinian Summoning Level 1: 1 pound limit, 1 minute. 0 slots available.

Calvin mulled over that statement for a moment. Size and quantity? Is that thing saying what I think it’s saying? Chained Spirit had specified a limit, being the creature’s original size. This one had not.

Cal had just unlocked the Shaping Ability in Dupdomancy, which would allow him to control the size of a duplicated object, even scaling parts of it bigger or smaller. Did that mean his new Skill had absorbed that Ability as well?

He pictured massive wasps the size of dogs spearing people and injecting them with enough venom to kill a guar.

That could be handy.

Cal and Ella were carefully crawling through the Ungrin den, trying to be as quiet as possible. There was no guarantee that all of the vicious creatures had died before the poison in their systems ceased to exist. If that was the case, the chances that they recovered would be quite good, much like his palm, which had long since recovered from the swelling once the venom ceased to exist.

It would behoove them to be quiet, so they could hear if anything was sneaking up on them. Cal glanced up at Ella’s rounded butt wiggling ahead of him as she crawled through the low obsidian tunnels.

That’s a nice view, he thought to himself. Although, the chances of me paying attention to my surroundings might suffer a bit.

They crawled around another knot of Ungrin corpses, backtracking as they hit another dead end. The snarl of tunnels connected to several different isolated points of the facility under the mountain, using the large amount of open space as food storage and sleeping spaces. They’d also stumbled across a room with dozens of dead infant Ungrin, and he’d almost felt bad for them.

But the chances of one of those babies renouncing their kind’s evil ways, adventuring across the surface world and righting wrongs, was slim to none, so he wasn’t too bothered by it.

After a good hour of navigating the crypt-like silence of the tunnels, they finally found the one that began to slope upward, leading to a small hole in the stone that led to fresh air and daylight. It was about twice the size of their heads. Ugrin could come and go at their leisure, but a full-sized teen like Cal, or an oversized one like Ella, would have a bit of trouble.

Which was the point, he supposed.

“I’ve heard if you can fit your head through something, you can fit the rest of your body through, somehow. By that measure, this shouldn’t be that hard,” Cal said, resting on his elbows in the claustrophobic tunnel and looking at the bright sliver of sunlit forest ahead of them, barely visible past Ella’s rump, which nearly made the entire tunnel airtight.

“Maybe for men.” Her irritated voice came back over her shoulder as she squeezed forward.

The light was completely blocked off as she began climbing through the hole, and Cal waited patiently for his turn.

She squirmed forward, getting a few inches forward, squirmed some more, then she went still. A few moments later, her feet started pushing against the tunnel, kicking the air inches away from his face.

…

Cal thought he heard something.

“What!?” he shouted, hoping his voice would carry through the packed earth.

“Push!” came her faint shout.

Cal braced himself against the stone tunnel and grabbed her feet, pushing forward with every ounce of his strength.

She shifted a fraction of an inch forward.

This is gonna be a long day, he thought, pushing as hard as he could again. And I’m hungry.

“OW!” he heard her faintly shout as he shoved particularly hard.

“Use Iron Skin!” he shouted.

“What?”

“IRON SKIN!”

Her feet gained an odd hardness to them, the only way Cal could tell she’d used the Ability in the absence of light. Her struggling redoubled now that the stone was no longer scraping her skin raw.

It took an entire hour, and getting her hips through was a nightmare, but with some ingenuity, brute force, and a widened entrance, they managed to get Ella all the way through to the topside.

Cal was able to follow behind her with relative ease, hardly even needing to squeeze to work his way through her gaping hole. Har har.

Cal crawled out of the hole and stood, stretching his back as he breathed in the sweet air of the forest. Hours of crawling through the tunnels on his hands and knees had wreaked havoc on his back, knees, and neck.

“Now we just have to get back to the village. We should get there by…” She glanced up at the mountain, gauging their position relative to its distinctive face. “...tomorrow night.”

“I would be right to assume that moving around at night is dangerous?” Cal said.

“Extremely. We’re going to have to find a place to camp before the sun goes down.”

“How about up the mountain?” Cal asked. “It’ll be cold, but it’s better than a Kuyega eating us in our sleep, right?”

“That part of the mountain is claimed by the Seeker tribe. The forest itself is neutral ground, but above the treeline, they will attack anyone stepping foot on their territory.”

“What’s your deal with the Seeker tribe, anyway?” Cal asked.

“Deal?” she asked.

“Not liking good, anger, umm…grudge.”

“Ah,” Ella said, glancing around until she found a sapling she liked, tugging it out of the ground. “Bad blood, many generations. They advocated the raid on your village at the Maje moot, using the Iron-Skin tribe as encheuala. They did not need the food, they simply wished to blunt our claws. Father cannot disobey the final vote of the moot.”

“Encheuala?” Cal asked.

“Disposable. Food for lesser animals who feed greater ones.”

“Fodder,” Cal said in Gadveran.

“We lost a great many warriors. It is one reason my father kept you alive after killing three Seekers. To spit in their face.” She pulled out her knife and began skinning the sapling.

“I lost a great many friends, so whose face should I be spitting in?” Cal said before he thought about it.

Genosian Language has reached Level 3!

Ella flinched in the middle of creating thin strips of bark.

“Yes, that had to be the case…” She looked up at him. “Hate us if you want. It makes no difference to you who instigated the raid.”

“I’m not going to politely roll over and say ‘no, it’s okay’ because someone else pressured your people into doing it,” Cal said, feeling the anger he’d kept under wraps boiling to the surface.

“You’ve got three people I knew since I was a baby collecting frost in the freezer!”

“Would you rather they rot?”

“Yes!”

“Huh, Gadverans are strange. Even under the ground, they will be eaten by worms, you know?”

“Why do you have to… Agh!” Cal let out a frustrated groan. “It doesn’t just boil down to what eats them. It’s about treating their bodies with respect, and giving them a proper burial with a headstone so we can visit and mourn and fucking…bring our grandchildren to meet our friends and tell stories about them!”

“I see,” she said, beginning to strip the sapling again in silence.

Cal didn’t really have much left to say either, so he sat down, staring down the sloped forest in silence, his stomach burning with anger and guilt for shouting at Ella.

Freaking Guya. Knowing the stuff was making him infatuated helped a little bit. Cal glanced at the Genosian and then down the hill. They needed to find a decent sleeping spot, and if even one of those Ungrin had been faking…sleeping in the tunnels would be lethal.

“Fires at night: safer or no?” Cal asked.

“Safer from animals, of course, but this close to the Seeker face of the mountain? It’s probably an Ilethan coin toss.”

“You said the forest was neutral ground,” Cal said.

“There are only two of us,” she said. “You are not Genosian. I am Iron-Skin. It would be a simple matter to make us disappear. The neutrality of the forest is more practical for large bands of hunters, where one or two is sure to escape an attack and report the breach of conduct to their tribe.”

Cal sat and thought about it for a couple minutes.

“I’m making a fire,” Cal said, coming to his feet. “Worst-case scenario, I get to kill some more Seekers.”

“Do you know why they’re called Seekers?”

“Because their arrows bend mid-flight to seek you?”

“…”

“I came here with an arrow to the lung, remember?”

“Don’t expect them to get close, is all I wished to say.”

Cal reached out and tweaked her nose, making her jump. From twenty feet away.

“I’ll be right back,” Cal said, dropping low and beginning to sneak down the mountain with every ounce of Stealth he could muster.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m getting some camping supplies.”

Will of sixteen means one Bent just under every eleven hours. We spent approximately eight hours wandering the Ruin after the naked spooning, so I should have…three hours to go. At minimum.

Not having any Bent made Cal feel defenseless and weak.

Which wouldn’t be the case if you’d raised your Body, Karen seemed to shout in his ear.

“Wait,” Ella said, standing and offering her hand. “Take one for the trip. And don’t use it unless your life is in danger. You seem to be a little too happy to spend your Bent.”

Cal glanced back at her. Could she tell how he was feeling just from watching him, or was she simply being practical? He walked back to where she stood.

“But what if there’s a really pesky mosquito?” Cal asked, grasping her hand. “And I need wasps to kill it?”

Ella raised an eyebrow, clenching her jaw as Cal took one Bent from her.

1/11 Bent remaining.

“I only have three left,” she said once Cal was done. “Be careful.”

“Of course.”

Cal stalked through the woods, avoiding all the dangers Chuela had warned them about and a few he hadn’t, walking carefully to avoid drawing attention as much as possible. Safest way to travel through the forest was to simply avoid being noticed by the predators.

Second-safest would be to burn the whole thing down.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for: a Sweating Tree covered in fire-worms.

Sweating Trees were soft-wooded plants with large leaves that oozed a semi-flammable oil. Their wood burned with a great amount of heat and smoke.

Fire-worms ate the torso-sized leaves that drooped off the side of the plant, big maggot-like creatures that refined the oil from the Sweating trees into a potent liquid that burst into flame on contact with the air. You did not want them to spray that stuff in your face.

That liquid was exactly what Cal wanted.

He squatted down and observed the fire-worms from his hiding place for a good ten minutes, learning their ways, studying their culture, so that he might better destroy them.

It took him a while before he spotted the tiny spigot on their butts that would shoot the flaming liquid. Now the question was, how to kill it while keeping its body as intact as possible?

Suffocation came to mind, but Cal didn’t have any idea how to do that without some kind of box. He doubted it would be as simple as slapping his hand over the damn thing’s mouth.

The next-best bet was to sever whatever passed for a spinal column by wringing its neck.

Well, let’s try that, then, Cal thought, focusing on the phantom hands, and bringing them into the center of his vision.

Using another tree as cover, Cal floated the disembodied hands up to the fire-worm voted least likely to succeed, sitting by itself where its sudden death couldn’t alarm the others.

As quickly as he could, he grabbed the worm by the butt with one hand to prevent it from squirting, and twisted its head with the other.

It exploded all over Cal’s phantom hands, setting them on fire and dribbling burning liquid down to the forest floor. Thankfully, the fire died in the wet underbrush rather than setting the Sweating Tree on fire.

How are these things still alive as a species if there’s every chance they could all burn to death if one of them explodes? Cal made a mental note to pull the creature farther away from the tree before killing it.

Could just be because they have no predators.

Most things would balk at a face full of fire.

It took several tries, but Cal eventually got the hang of killing them. A simple quarter turn with the thumb pressing against the back of its neck was enough to kill it, but not enough to rupture its precious cargo. Trying to twist its entire head off like the chickens back home only resulted in sorrow.

It was a skill Cal doubted anyone had ever mastered, given the inherent risk to life and limb. The gloves and the sedentary nature of the worms contributed greatly to his success.

Luckily, the creatures were dumb. If they could see a predator picking them off, they might have squirted flaming goo everywhere, but their neighbors suddenly floating into the air and exploding? Not their problem.

There were hundreds on the tree, so plenty of room to experiment. Once Calvin had a good dozen, and was confident that the skill had been mastered, he started working on butchering them from a distance.

Their entire insides couldn’t be flammable; it had to be an organ. With that in mind, Cal set out to find it, slicing the pale white grub along the stomach, using his knife from a distance of about five feet.

The soft white flesh of the grub parted behind the obsidian blade, cutting like butter. Cal saw a tiny bit of clear goo bubble out of the creature, creating a tiny flame along the cut.

The grub exploded, sending a wash of heat across his face.

Well, we weren’t expecting to get it on the first try, Cal thought with a shrug.

Belly, side, back. Everywhere he tried to cut it, the fire-worm burst into flames.

Then an idea occurred to him. When gutting fish, you could pull the guts out along with the severed head.

Cal picked up his next grub and placed it in the charred circle he’d used for the first six attempts. He cut all the way around the creature’s head, trying to stay as close to the front as he could.

It didn’t explode.

“Here goes,” he muttered to himself, his tongue unconsciously sticking out as he concentrated on manipulating the phantom hands that had saved him from crippling burns.

Cal grabbed the creature at both ends and very gently pulled its head away from its body. There was a bit of a tugging sensation, and the creature’s guts pulled away from its skin, revealing tiny little connected balls of clear fluid all along its insides, creating a haphazard arrangement of flaming liquid near the surface of its skin.

These balls of clear fluid were connected to each other, like pearls on a string, and wound around the guts, leading toward—Cal felt a sudden release of pressure as something tore.

The grub exploded.

Wow, Cal thought, wiping his brow. No wonder nobody’s ever bothered with these things. But we’re making progress.

After a few more flaming failures, Cal managed to expose the entire network of clear pearls that led down to a chamber near the creature’s butt.

Cal pinched the channels off with twigs and surgically removed the large chamber.

Gods, this would be so much easier with Harvester. Cal couldn’t afford to spend any Bent right now. Not when there was any chance he could do it manually. He needed every spell he could get to actively defend himself.

Miraculously, the worm didn’t explode, and Cal carefully cinched its firespitting gland closed and lifted it away from the worm itself.

Cal felt like he didn’t even dare to breathe as he took the pale sac and set it on a carefully prepared leaf, covered in the Sweating Tree’s signature oil. Smother the thing in oil, and it’d be less likely to come into contact with oxygen.

Cal wrapped the whole thing in one leaf, creating a tight package. Then he scraped a bunch more oil off the non-grub-covered trees, into the package, filling it with oil before he closed the last flap.

“Good enough,” Cal said with a sigh, leaning back. Wait, when did it get so dark?

Ideally, he would be able to do a couple more, but the sun was flirting with the horizon, casting the entire forest in shadow. If he didn’t find his way back now, there was every chance that he would not find his way back at all.

Cal oriented himself on the mountain that was glowing red in the last light of the day and headed back toward Ella. He didn’t want to be alone when the sun went down.

Ella found him as he was heading back up the mountainside, guiding him to a sheltered little ditch beside a stream that she’d discovered, where the land had sloughed away to create the ideal break to hide a fire from prying eyes.

They sat around the fire and quietly told stories of their childhood—the ones the Guya hadn’t offered glimpses of, anyway. The happy ones.

They took turns staying awake, with Cal feeding the fire during the second half, making sure it continued to produce the smoke that would keep animals from eating them in the night.

He watched the dawn brighten the sky to the west, illuminating the Genosian girl with her back to the embankment. She lay in the warmest place, between the fire and a wall of earth, protected from the occasional gust of wind that played between the trees.

Her clothes were none the worse for wear after their little adventure; the hides stretched around her voluptuous frame were made to last.

Her legs were sprawled out in front of her, and Cal’s eyes drifted up their length to her wide hips, barely contained by a simple leather skirt. Her posture exposed the curve of her body from her generous hips, narrowing down to her athletic stomach, rising up to a wide chest that supported a pair of breasts as big as his head, pressed into the tight confines of her leather shirt.

The sight of her body twisted up his insides and made his heart move in fits and starts.

His eyes wandered up, tracing the smooth curve of her collarbone, all the way up her neck to her soft lips, and…her green-yellow eyes peering back at him.

“Morning,” he said. What are you supposed to say when you get caught ogling someone, anyway?

“Morning,” she said, sitting up and yawning. “You get any actual watching done?”

“Define ‘actual watching’,” Cal said.

“Well, we’re still alive, so I won’t hold it against you. It is nice to feel captivating, on occasion.”

“Hmm… At what frequency is it nice to ‘feel captivating’?” Cal asked. “Every couple minutes? Hours? Once a week?”

“Not being distracted to the point of getting killed would be a good rule of thumb,” she said, stretching and causing the seams on her leather top to strain to hold everything in. She took a deep breath and her cleavage rose, puffing out of her leather wraps like rising dough. Purple-grey dough that looked really soft and chewable.

“Okay, that one was on purpose,” he accused.

She ignored him, crawling over to her weapon. “You can take a quick nap. I’ve got a few things I want to do to Crusher before we head out.” She sat down beside it and began wrapping the dried plant fibers around the end of her flail.

“With pleasure,” Cal said, yawning and taking off his shirt, laying it onto the warm spot she’d left behind. He flopped down on top of it and closing his eyes, making sure his little bomb wasn’t anywhere he could crush it, or get sparks from the fire on it.

Being on fire would be a terrible way to end a nap. Cal stilled himself. A few minutes later, he began breathing deeply and easily, pretending to be asleep. After a few more minutes of that, he felt Ella's gaze roaming across his body and lingering on his bare chest appreciatively as she idly wove the plant fibers around her flail to create a simple handle.

Feel Intent was still working with Third Eye. That was nice to know.

Cal was tempted to poke fun at her, but he really was tired. He settled down with a smile and drifted off to the faint scent of a campfire.

Once she was done, the two of them trekked through the woods, angling themselves up the slope of the mountain to stay away from the deepest parts of the forest, where the Kugeya resided. By themselves, they didn’t stand much of a chance of escaping one, so it was best not to take any chances until they made it back.

Speaking of making it back…

A big enough swarm of wasps could get him through the forest, back to Deinos, if he could make them last long enough.

If the duration of the spell was anything like Chained Spirit, he could get a respectable number of hours at level five, along with an Ability. Between the Ability and the duration, he would have enough power to escape when Calvinian Summoning reached level five.

Can’t believe I have a branch of magic named after me, Calvin thought, shaking his head. It made sense, though. Most Gadverans got eaten, and those that didn’t weren’t interested in learning a taboo spell like Chained Spirit. At what point would the two disciplines have mixed?

That brought Cal to an excited conclusion. Were he to travel the world and learn the native magics, there was every chance he could come up with even more varieties that no one had ever heard of.

One step closer to Wizard-King.

“Wait,” Ella said, stopping in front of him so suddenly that he walked into her.

“What?” he asked.

“Fire!” she said, pointing at the distant village on the side of the mountain. They’d long since rounded the side of the mountain and were only an hour or so away from the Iron-Skin tribe.

Above the minuscule yurts was a huge cloud of smoke rising above the village.

She began running ahead of him, dashing through the forest and making a straight line for the well-worn path up the side of the mountain that Iron-Skin hunters used, Cal following close behind.

They never made it that far.

Ella slid to a halt as they stumbled across a camp full of Gadveran soldiers in the middle of lunch, having cleared a huge swath of forest at the base of the hunter’s path leading up to the village. They were standing around, bowls in hand, gaping at the shark-toothed girl in stunned silence.

The moment didn’t last forever.

“Another one!” one of the stunned soldiers shouted, dropping his bowl and reaching for his sword. Another reached for his crossbow, while the expressions of the rest of them turned ugly. There were at least a hundred of them.

Ella’s skin turned metallic, and she gave them a gap-toothed snarl.

That’s not good.

Chapter 25: Now I Gotta Kill This Guy

Cal sprinted up behind her as she lunged forward and jumped on her, dragging her to the ground, a crossbow bolt whizzing above his head.

“Wait!” he shouted in Gadveran, standing and raising his arms, feeling the strange prickling of a hundred different gazes with a hundred different emotions, swirling with confusion and suspicion, anger, readiness to hurt.

“Wait! I’m not Genosian, see?” he said, baring his teeth and pointing to them, keeping his foot firmly on Ella’s silvery back. She was looking up at him with confusion and more than a little anger, but not enough to throw him off yet. “We don’t need to fight.”

“She’s obviously Genosian,” said one of the men, pointing at Ella with his crossbow. The gazes were still swirling with suspicion.

“She’s my slave.” Cal gave them a bald-faced lie. “I was kidnapped by the Genosians from Deinos two weeks ago! Those inbred cannibals gave me some kind of trial of manhood against their best warrior, and when I kicked him in the nuts, I got this girl as the prize.”

The man with the crossbow lowered it a bit, and a few of the men chuckled. Cal could feel the hair-trigger intent to kill slacken.

“What is going on?” Ella asked.

“Silence, woman. The men are speaking!” Cal said in Genosian. Ella raised a silver eyebrow. He was probably going to pay for that later.

Speaking the cannibal’s tongue didn’t win him any points with the Gadverans, either.

“How come you speak their language?” one of them asked, and Cal felt the level of suspicion rise.

“So many people died in the village…my family…” Cal said, putting as much sorrow into it as he could muster. He was broken up about it, for certain, but he needed to be stage broken up about it, to the point where every single one of them could see the emotion on his face, hear it in his voice, and sympathize. “When I woke up…I was already on my Forming Day. It just happened. Helped me survive this long.”

Acting has reached Level 6!

Acting Level 6: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 30% correction.

Mentioning his (allegedly) dead family made a thread of sympathy flutter through the gazes of the hundred soldiers. Cal could tangibly feel the shifting mood of the hundred people against his skin, spreading through the crowd.

“What in the nine hells is going on here?” came a booming voice from the back of the camp as a taller, middle-aged Gadveran pushed his way through the crowd. He had decorative gold inlay on the shoulders of his shiny, shiny breastplate. He was fat for a Gadveran, obviously the commander of these men, from the way the tension in their gazes spiked up again.

“Who are you?” Fat Commander asked.

“He’s—”

Fat Commander smacked the man nearest him. Cal wasn’t even sure it was the guy who spoke.

“I asked him the question,” he said, fixing Cal with a hard stare. Something about the expectation and confidence in his gaze made him think he had some kind of lie-detecting Skill.

Karen could do it, after all.

“My name’s Calvin Gadsint, a Malkenrovian refugee from Deinos. I was taken by the Genosians two weeks ago. I won a barbarian duel; this girl here was bonded to me by some strange pagan ritual and refuses to leave my side. I just recently escaped, and have been trekking back.”

All technically true, if incomplete. The secret to outwitting a good lie detector is to not feel guilty about it, and speak in half-truths.

The man’s gaze was thoughtful and cold, with more than a little suspicion. “I see. How, exactly, did you approach us from the southwest after escaping the tribe, as they are just up the mountain?”

“I actually came from that side of the mountain,” Cal said, pointing out the face that housed the Seeker tribe.

“Oh, is there another village of these savages there?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir,” Cal said. He hadn’t lied yet. He’d come from that side of the mountain, and there was a tribe there. The ones who’d organized the attack, by all accounts. Take that, you fuckers. It was always good to spread the love around.

“And this…woman… She’s yours?” the captain asked, glancing down at Ella seething on the ground.

“By right of contest, I suppose,” Cal said with a shrug.

“Prove it.”

“Ummm…” Cal said. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Disarm her.”

“Ella, I’m gonna let you up, and then you give me Crusher, okay?”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to convince them not to kill us. And I may have led them to believe you belonged to me as a prize from some kind of rite of manhood against a Genosian warrior of your tribe.”

“We don’t have anything like that,” she said.

“They don’t know that, and they’re not gonna bother to check, either.”

“…” She glared at the Gadverans surrounding them.

“Okay,” she gritted out.

Cal picked up his foot and Ella slowly got to her feet. Cal could feel the tension in the gazes directed at them spike, and a few crossbows twitched upward, matching their heightened emotions.

Ella handed him her flail, its business end floating eerily a foot above the ground.

“That took a bit longer than I was expecting,” the captain said, holding out his hand for the weapon.

Damn. Cal wasn’t really expecting anything different, but he’d been hoping the man wouldn’t want to confiscate it. Of course they’re gonna confiscate it, Cal thought, handing him the metal chair leg with the woven fiber handle.

“Some kind of artifact, huh?” he asked. “Lucky find.” Ella tensed up with anger as he played with the flail for a moment before putting it in his belt loop, the silver sphere bumping against his thigh.

“Take them to the deserters’ quarters. We’ll sort this out when we get back to Surrak.”

Rough hands grabbed Cal and Ella and hauled them to the other side of the camp, where a wagon with heavy iron cages was waiting for them. In a matter of moments, Cal and Ella had been shoved into two cramped iron cages, meant for men and women to await trial after running from battle.

“Is this really necessary?” Cal asked the captain as he got himself situated.

“If you’re telling the truth, the other survivors of Deinos will vouch for you, and you’ll be free to go. But in the meantime, I want to keep an eye on you. Better safe than sorry, as they say.”

His gaze drifted over to Ella, and Cal didn’t have to feel his intentions to read the lust in his gaze. “As for the girl, if she’s actually tame, I suppose you can have her back when we get back to Surrak, with a proper brand and documentation.”

Something tells me Ella wouldn’t go for that. Still, it was a free ride back to Surrak, and all he needed to do was wait. The branding thing, they could find a way to avoid later.

“Ask them what happened to the Iron-Skin tribe,” Ella said, watching the captain.

His name was Captain Skovos, from what Cal had been able to pick up from the grunts around them.

“What did she say?” Captain Skovos asked, watching the Genosian girl.

“She was saying how impressive and scary you are,” Cal lied. The man wasn’t watching him, anyway. “Personally, I can’t believe Gadvera organized such a large force at the drop of a hat. How’s the punishment against these barbarians going? Manage to put them all in a shallow grave yet?” he asked.

“We thought we had,” Skovos said idly, his eyes wandering down Ella’s body in a way that made Cal frost over with anger. “Found a group of maybe ten of them at the top of the hill, just outside the village. Big guys, each one a Veteran. We thought that was their last stand. Turns out all of them were some kind of summon. When they died, they dissolved into green goo. I lost twenty-five men to them, and when we managed to take the last one down, the village was already empty, so we burned it.”

Something was odd about Skovos; he seemed to be rocking back and forth on his heels, staring at Ella’s breasts with a dumb grin, until he noticed Cal staring at him. The man seemed to snap out of it, and frowned.

“It’s not a civilian’s business,” he said, turning around and tossing out orders.

“Alright you lot, there’s plenty of groups of grinnin’ apes along the side of the mountain. If this place here was anything to go by, there’ll be a nice trail straight up to their doorstep. All we need do is find it. Pack up your shit and get ready to move out.”

The men in charge of each squad began wrangling their individual groups, tossing out specific instructions.

“Did you do that with a Skill?” Cal asked. “Make him stupid for a moment?”

Ella shrugged. “I did nothing. What did he say?”

“Chuela held them off long enough for your tribe to run away, then they burned the yurts down.”

Ella scowled.

“Could’ve been a lot worse,” Cal pointed out. “And I pointed them toward the Seeker tribe.”

“I suppose you did,” she said, leaning back in the cramped cage within arm’s reach, settling her back against the bars. “So, what now?”

“They’re gonna take us to Surrak. The remaining people of Deinos will vouch for me, I’ll vouch for you, then you can go home.”

“Through the forest. By myself,” she said, eyeing him.

“Ummm…” Now that Cal thought about it, he’d rather keep her with him if at all possible. Maybe he could bring her back home, then go back… No, that didn’t work. Keep her in Deinos? No, that didn’t work.

The Guya was making his logic run in circles, like a dog chasing its tail, refusing to allow him to contemplate being separated.

“I suppose I could stay with you for a while…” she admitted, making Cal’s heart begin slamming in his chest.

“Really?” Life with the sensuous Genosian girl at a relaxed, non-life-threatening pace sounded like his idea of heaven. Wake up next to her in his cottage in Deinos, use each other’s bodies shamelessly, go about the day. Do a little fishing, a little woodwork, go home, use each other shamelessly again, go to bed.

Teach her very specific Gadveran phrases and when to say them.

“Of course, and when your recklessness finally gets you killed, I will take you as my Incha Huala.”

Cal frowned as she threw ice water on his lurid fantasies. Bah, we’ll see about that. I’m never reckless.

“Can Genosians eat fish?” Cal asked.

“It’s meat, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Eeexcellent...” Cal said, rubbing his hands together.

Ella watched him with amusement, but her gaze kept returning to the barely visible plume of smoke they could see on the side of the mountain.

***

Six hours later, the army kept tearing their way through the jungle, leaving a massive trail behind them as they angled toward the Seeker tribe, intent on exacting some form of vengeance against the grey-skinned people.

From what Cal could gather by talking to the rank and file that would occasionally walk up to him and ask him questions, like ‘What are Genosians like? Did they make you eat anyone?’ and so on, they were mostly new recruits, people who had jumped at the opportunity to avenge themselves on the shark-toothed people.

Which was extremely odd, because he didn’t recognize any of them. If there had been any volunteers from Deinos, he’d expect them to wave and greet Cal with amazement as soon as they recognized him.

“Where are all the volunteers from Deinos?” Cal asked the man walking next to him.

“There’s sixteen companies scouring the mountains for Genosians,” the young man, maybe four years older than Cal, said. “So, in the other companies, probably?”

What kind of luck did I have to get the only one that had no one from Deinos? Cal thought as he leaned back in the cage that was slowly rolling through the forest near the back of the line, after the soldiers had already tromped down the woods.

Cal was feeling somewhat grateful he didn’t know anyone, when an obsidian-tipped arrow caught the Gadveran walking beside him in the neck, sending him toppling to the ground, a hint of blood and confusion on his lips.

The jungle came alive with Genosians. Some three hundred Seekers filled the air with arrows that shattered on the Gadveran armor. A few of them found their way into flesh, though, and Gadverans were being picked off here and there as the captain shouted for them to form a line.

The only thing protecting Cal and Ella—Cal glanced over, and saw that the girl was already silver, functionally immune to arrows.

The only thing protecting him was his low priority as a target, being already in a cage, and dressed like a Genosian.

“Form up, helmets on! Chins low!” Skovos shouted, using their small Gadveran shields to try and ward off the barrage of arrows.

Once there was a respectable line of forty men, they charged toward the Seekers, only to have their targets fall back, and a second line of Seekers begin firing from the other side.

That’s unacceptable, Cal thought. Being caught by the Seeker tribe was a death sentence, so he had to change the equation here. He eyeballed his little oil-filled leaf nestled with the rest of his gear at the other end of the wagon, then the line of archers shooting into the Gadverans’ backs.

Mass splitting.

2/11 Bent remaining.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 11!

Level 11: 121 pounds, 55 minutes.

Cal focused on just the liquid he knew was inside the sac, dropping about a pound of self-igniting goo on the head of each of the hundred or so archers.

A lot of his shots missed their targets, dropping on their shoulders, their fronts, or hitting the ground, but enough Genosian heads caught fire that the entire line was thrown into chaos as faces literally were melted off.

Cal tapped his foot on the bars of the cage, and glanced over at Ella. “When have I ever been reckless?” he asked over the screams of the dying.

With the ambush broken, Skovos’s men drove off the remaining Genosians with minimal casualties.

Despite Gadverans favoring lightweight armor and weapons, Genosian obsidian arrows were remarkably brittle, and only really worked on raw flesh. A single Gadveran, if they tucked up well and covered their vulnerable spots, could ignore Genosian archers.

It was a good ambush, but the compatibility was bad.

Under Skovos’s instructions, they cleared out the dead men, tossing the Genosians into a pile and burning them, while taking the six dead Gadverans and putting them in another wagon.

Ella watched the difference in treatment between the dead with interest.

“Kid,” Skovos said, once they had broken camp for the day.

“Sir,” Cal said, turning to face the captain.

“You’ve been here a while. Any idea what that was?”

“What what was?” Cal clarified.

“All the savages catching fire at once. That.”

“Oh, that was probably a man using fire-worm guts,” Cal said.

“What?”

“There’s a worm in this forest whose guts literally burn on contact with air.”

“Damned forsaken place. Nothing here is natural. Is there anything more you can tell me?”

Cal decided to take a risk and tell an outright lie.

“There’s a Fire-Worm tribe that doesn’t get along very well with the Seeker tribe, so I’ve heard. Melting people’s faces off is their signature. They probably capitalized on the Seeker’s distraction to kill some of them without any risk to themselves.”

“Are they hostile?”

“Depends on what you do,” Cal said with a shrug. “I really don’t know much. You couldn’t call me an expert on Genosians after two weeks.”

“Damn.” Skovos’s eyes wandered back towards Ella, and his expression shifted.

Read Expression has reached Level 6!

Read Expression Level 6: Passive bonus to reading expressions. 30% correction.

Don’t you fucking do it….

“Perhaps the girl knows more,” he said with a grotesque smile. Guy was just looking for an excuse. Cal could read his face plain as day.

Skovos barked over his shoulder, “Set up camp for the night, and then deliver this one to my tent for interrogation.”

Well, crap, Cal thought with an inward sigh, his personal icy anger mixing with the possessiveness and outrage from his Guya-tainted mind. Cal wasn’t sure which part of him made the decision, but it didn’t really matter. They were in agreement.

Now I gotta kill Captain Skovos.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

20

Intuition:

10

Stability:

11

Will:

16

Bent:

3/11

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

5

Acting

6

Read Expressions

6

Sense-Grafting

7

Knife-Work

5

Dupdomancy

11

Hunting

5

Meditation

4

Chained Spirit

2

Calvinian Summoning

1

Fishing

3

Genosian Language

3

Chapter 26: Captain Gadsint

Okay, how do we handle this cold-blooded murder in the most reliable way? Calvin thought, glancing up. He had three Bent available, since he hadn’t spent the one he’d gotten from Ella last night. He’d gotten his second before bed, and one more late this morning. His next Bent was only an hour or so away, but in a fight that wouldn’t mean shit.

First, to use a Bent to escape the cage. Yea or nay? If he used a Bent, he could duplicate the key that was hanging on the side of the wagon. Quick, clean, and he would be on his way in exchange for a third of his fighting strength.

The alternative was some kind of ploy, which was unreliable, and usually involved smacking some guard who would later recall the details of his escape.

I need a set of lockpicks with blades on the back. Then I could absorb them with Blade Body, Cal thought to himself. New things were always occurring to him as the situation changed. As it stood, all he had was an obsidian knife, dispersed throughout his body. Maybe some kind of multi-tool?

Food for thought.

When he absorbed a blade into his skin, it didn’t rest under the surface like he’d thought, but rather was spread out through his bloodstream. It was good that he didn’t have a telltale lump under his skin, or a slightly off-balance body, but thinking of tiny obsidian flakes traveling through his blood gave him the shivers.

No, it was faster and far more reliable to simply duplicate the key and slip out in seconds while no one was looking.

That gave him two Bent in case things went sour. Next, he needed to—

“You there,” one of the Gadveran soldiers said as he approached with two others.

“Calvin.”

“Calvin. Tell your pet, here, to behave herself. The captain wants to speak to her.”

“The captain speaks Genosian now?” Cal asked.

He felt the briefest flicker of repudiation for the captain’s antics in the soldier’s gaze, before it was locked under an ocean of duty and training.

“I’m just following orders.”

Good, that’ll make part three much easier.

“What are they saying?” Ella said.

“The captain’s gonna try to rape you. If I don’t show up in a minute or two, feel free to bite his throat out. Don’t let them know you’re a Maje.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Why can’t I just lead with the throat-biting and be done with it?”

“Because, I have a plan that I believe will work better.”

“I’ll give you until the fat man’s prick is out. After that, all bets are off.”

“Your faith in me knows no bounds,” Cal said.

“It really doesn’t.”

“She’s been warned,” Cal said, watching for the key.

There it is.

One of the three men retrieved the key from his belt and used it to open Ella’s door, motioning her out.

Splitting.

2/11 Bent Remaining.

A duplicated key appeared in the hand Cal held behind his back.

“Damn, this thing is itchy,” Cal said, shrugging off his hide shirt.

Every second counts.

They gave him a few strange looks, but nobody bothered him. Nudity makes people uncomfortable, even partial nudity.

They pulled Ella out of her cage and escorted her out into the firelight of the camp. The sun had been dipping down the horizon, and now the only light was a few pools of orange firelight, which made this next part much easier.

Cal waited until they disappeared from sight and crawled up to the lock, putting the key in and turning it. If the key didn’t work, he was going to have to get real creative, and possibly wind up running away with Ella, but he didn’t expect the military would put too much effort into making their cage locks works of art.

His cage door unlocked with a soft metallic click. He opened it quickly to avoid screeching, then slid out feet first, landing on the ground and rolling under the wagon in one liquid move, not feeling any gazes land on him. No one had seen a thing, and he knew it.

One of the Guys.

Cal suppressed a groan and a shiver as his bones shifted, skin stretched and darkened, becoming the countenance of a young adult male Gadveran. Cal tugged the kilt off, the last piece of incriminating evidence that marked him as anything other than a faceless Gadveran recruit.

He rolled out the other side of the wagon facing the forest, grabbed the fire-worm extract, and stalked toward the line of clothes drying between two tall trees.

“What are you doing out of uniform?” a surly voice demanded. He glanced over his shoulder to see one of the sergeants, a short, muscle-bound man of mixed heritage.

“My second pair got soiled during the fight, so my sergeant made me wash mine naked. Sir!”

“You Break today, son?” the man asked. Cal could feel a tiny bit of sympathy in the man’s gaze.

“Yes, sir. It was my second.”

“Old Fureth is probably just trying to get you stuck with a Streaking Skill or some such. The old bat’s got a cruel sense of humor. Take that pair, there.” He pointed at a pair of conspicuously dry clothes beside the other wet ones.

“Beraga isn’t going to need them anymore.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cal said, whipping out a Gadveran salute to the best of his knowledge.

“Your salute sucks, kid. Get outta my sight.” The man waved Calvin off dismissively.

Calvin surveyed the camp while he tugged on the shirt and pants. Security was especially strained because of the Break. Most of the new recruits were experiencing their second Break, leaving their more experienced superiors to do all the work, including standing guard.

On the subject of Breaks, Cal had hardly felt a bit of Warp in the air from the six Gadverans and forty or so dead Genosians. It looked like he would have to be in a much larger battle to Break again.

Come to think of it, Cal thought, tugging a dead man’s pants on, I’m already a 4th Break Veteran, aren’t I? Weird.

Calvinian Summoning.

Give me a five-pound wasp.

A gigantic wasp the size of a large rat emerged from Cal’s hand.

Cal was too hurried to be dumbfounded that the spell had worked, and instead seized control of the thing before it could try to kill him.

Through the bond, he could feel…significantly less desire to cause him harm than he had with the Chained Spirit summoning.

That made it much safer to use.

Perhaps Chained Spirit saved more of the original identity than Calvinian Summoning.

Don’t have time to study it.

Sense-Grafting.

Cal’s left eye was paired to the wasp’s forehead.

Sense-Grafting has reached Level 8!

Sense-Grafting Level 8: Sight, hearing, touch, pain, smell, taste, balance. Self-only, 64ft range, 40 minutes.

0/11 Bent remaining.

Now dressed, he swept through the camp, power walking with his eyes set straight ahead, like a man on a mission. He knew from years of experience that wandering around like you didn’t have anything to do was an invitation for people to give you work, and he couldn’t really afford that.

Cal leaned over and grabbed a dagger from where it was stuck in a stump beside a skinned rabbit, eyeballing the camp for a weak spot.

There. There was a specific spot where the two sergeants guarding it were way too far apart.

Cal directed the wasp to fly out into the forest and then circle around.

Cal staggered for a moment, his mind barely able to sort out which point of view was him and which was the wasp.

Cal straightened and made for Captain Skovos’s tent.

Not feeling any gazes on him, he slipped in as silently as a ghost.

“Now we need to make sure you don’t accidentally hurt anyone,” Skovos said with a leer as he forced a thick leather belt into Ella’s mouth. Cal’s Genosian was restrained, her arms tied behind her back with thick ropes, her clothes in tatters.

Cal walked silently up behind Captain Skovos and clubbed him in the back of the head with the dagger’s pommel.

The captain went limp, collapsing forward onto Ella’s chest.

At Cal’s mental nudge, the wasp flew down on the opposite side of the camp, landing on an unsuspecting guard and pumping him full of venom with a three-inch stinger.

The young man fell to his knees and began screaming like his whole world had become fire, which was fairly accurate. As long as the guy’s heart didn’t stop, he should recover when the venom disappeared in about fifteen seconds.

Cries went up along the edge of the camp, and pounding feet sounded as people raised the alarm.

Unfortunately, most of the recruits were unconscious from their Breaks.

Cal made a small cut in the side of the tent and peered out, spotting the guards at the poorly-defended side of the camp rush toward the distraction, giving him a clear path to the forest.

Cal sliced the tent the rest of the way.

Now the hard part.

Cal threw Captain Skovos over his shoulder, grunting at the bigger man’s sheer weight. He was just barely within Cal’s tolerance. From now on, the plan didn’t rely on cunning or misdirection, just sheer muscle and stamina.

That’s it, I’m raising my Body if I ever get another Break. Ten seems like a good number.

“Calvin?” Ella asked, spitting out the bit of leather and giving him an incredibly confused look.

Cal spared her a glance and winced. She probably could have put the captain in his place at any point in time had she used her spells, but she’d waited for Calvin to arrive even as she was being restrained.

Ella had a lot more faith in him than she let on.

“I know not of who you speak; my name is…Cal-veen. And I need to borrow a point of Bent.” He knelt down and placed his hand on her forehead. At the unmistakably Calvin sensation, she relaxed, and allowed him to channel the substance out of her.

1/11 Bent remaining.

“Be right back.” He winked and then plunged through the gap in the tent, heading for the unguarded section of forest.

Must go faster, must go faster! Cal fully expected to be stopped and killed somewhere between the tent and the woods, but somehow he managed to avoid being spotted as dozens of Gadverans gathered to fight the giant wasp, on the assumption that there must be a hive of them somewhere.

The unnaturally quick, darting movements of the giant wasp nearly made Cal lose his footing several times, but he managed to right himself every time, trying to focus only on his right eye, ignoring the wasp’s struggle against the guards.

Cal made it to the treeline, but he didn’t slow down, pushing himself to carry the heavy captain at least…a hundred feet away from the treeline.

If each staggering step is two feet, I need fifty steps.

One, two, three… Cal began to count out his paces, going as fast as he could.

Once he hit fifty paces, he toppled to the ground, his lungs in searing agony, muscles turning into gelatin. He could taste blood in his mouth as he turned the captain around and started stripping the man, tugging off his vest and shirt to reveal the man’s grey-haired barrel chest, covered in scars.

It’s not over yet. Still gotta get back.

One of the Guys.

Cal swelled, his chest and stomach pushing outward, skin darkening even further. He could feel a tickling on his jaw as the man’s beard grew out. His recruit clothes burst at the seams, unable to restrain the man’s girth.

In the darkness of the forest, Cal was barely able to make out the scars on his new chest, matching those of the captain perfectly.

Thank the gods I’m not included in the average.

Cal had been afraid of that being the case, but it wasn’t a problem.

“...Wha…what’s going on?” Captain Skovos said, wincing in pain.

“Nobody fucks with my women,” Cal said softly.

Women, plural? Someone’s got their priorities straight.

The last thing Captain Skovos saw was his doppleganger bringing a dagger down with a murderous expression.

Thankfully, Cal had the presence of mind to strip the man’s upper body before he killed him, so the vest, shirt, pants and boots were entirely free of blood.

Cal began dressing as fast as he could, forcing his way through the exhaustion. The key to a good trick was always speed. He needed to be back so quickly no one could imagine what had just happened.

Once he was dressed, he focused on the fire-worm extract.

Mass Splitting.

0/11 Bent remaining.

The captain’s body was instantly covered in fire-worm extract and began to burn furiously.

Now he just needed to get back to where he belonged, and everything would be—

“Captain!” A squad of Gadverans came running up, carrying their weapons, attracted by the brilliant light in the middle of the dark forest.

I should have thought of that. Cal began working on a lie, quick.

Cal forced himself to relax. He had to adopt this man’s mannerisms, and act like he belonged wherever the hell he found himself.

“What the hell took you so long?” he demanded to put them on the defensive.

“Captain, you…”

“Enough about me! I left my tent to see what the hell was going on, and what do I see? Our entire west side completely unguarded while you flail around at a damn bug.

“Sure enough,” Cal said, pointing at Skovos’s sizzling corpse. “There were damn grinning apes trying to sneak up on us, one of those Fire-Worm tribe, I’d guess. Bastard was carrying a half dozen of these.”

Cal held up the fire-worm extract.

“And you were just gonna let them waltz right in!” Cal jabbed the leading soldier in the chest with his finger. “They were planning on burning down the whole camp. If I ever see a gaping hole like that in our perimeter again, I’ll have you nailed to a pole and used as a damn scarecrow! Maybe then, you’ll learn to stick to your post!”

“S-sir.” The soldier nodded.

“Go back,” Cal said tersely, pointing to the camp. “We don’t have the manpower to chase after the rest of them. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

“Sir.”

Acting has reached Level 7!

Acting Level 7: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 35% correction.

Cal idly itched his new beard as he studied the flaming corpse.

Guess I’m the captain now…

The System keeps making quips at me. I didn’t miss that ‘priorities’ comment.

What the Abyss am I supposed to call you, mysterious System voice?

…You can call me Elliot.

Chapter 27: Leeroy Jenkins!

He turned and headed back to camp, mulling over the System’s name. Elliot was a person’s name, not a number or some kind of inhuman call sign or anything. It was distinctly Malkenrovian in origin, as well.

Like Calvin.

Cal set the pondering aside and headed back to the camp, behaving as similarly to the captain as he possibly could, given his limited experience with the man. It started to be a little fun, hooking his thumbs in his belt and acting like he knew what the hell he was doing. Everything else seemed to fall into place on its own as his second-in-command made sure everything ran smoothly.

When Cal finally got back to the captain’s tent, Ella was making herself some tea with the man’s teapot.

“What the hell are you doing? I black out and when I wake up, you’re making tea?” Cal said in Gadveran, putting his hands on his hips in a most captain-like way.

“I know it’s you, Calvin,” she said, glancing over at him. “But even though I know it’s you, if you try to get frisky while wearing that face, I will kick you in the balls.”

“Huh.” Cal sat down beside her and took the tea box out and sniffed it.

“How’d you know it was me?” Even his voice had changed to match Skovos. It shouldn’t be that easy.

“I can feel you at all times.”

“Huh,” Cal said, digesting that. “Sounds weird.”

“It is.”

“I can’t feel you at all times.”

“The Guya affects everyone differently,” she said, looking away from him and shifting uncomfortably. Whatever track they were on, she obviously wasn’t comfortable enough to talk about it yet.

“Why tea?” Cal asked, changing the subject.

“I’ve heard about Gadverans drinking plant-water, and wondered what it would be like,” she said, pouring cold water filled with herbs into a cup.

“Well, you’re doing it wrong,” Cal said, taking the teapot away from her. He lit a small stick from the lamp and started the fuel in the teapot’s burner, then poured the contents into the filter, catching the herbs and refilling the teapot.

They sat in silence, waiting for the water to boil.

Once the tea was done, Cal poured them both a cup and waited for it to cool down.

“Bleh,” Ella said, grimacing as she drank it. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This stuff is foul.”

“Eh. It’s an acquired taste, I guess.” Cal finished the rest of the tea, smacking his lips and yawning. A nice warm belly made him tired, and the tea she’d chosen wasn’t the morning kind, so Cal found himself desperate for sleep.

“Captain Skovos, the boy’s escaped!” the second-in-command said, sticking his head in the tent where Cal was dozing across the tent from Ella. He’d wanted to sleep in her lap, but she’d kicked him away. Cal had forgotten he was wearing someone else’s face.

“Mmm, what?” he said, opening his eyes.

“The boy in the cage, he’s escaped in the confusion.”

“Well, he’s not going to get very far alone at night in the jungle. How’s the kid that got stung?”

“He’s recovering well, sir. The swelling went down almost immediately after the wasp disappeared.”

“Good, good…” Cal searched his memories for the guy’s name. “Farren, how long have we been working together?”

“About two weeks, sir?”

Oh, excellent, he doesn’t know the original captain very well.

“And in that time, have I ever explained myself to you?”

“Umm, from time to time. I am your second.”

“I see, I see… Farren, we’re going back to Surrak.”

“What? But sir, that’s…dereliction of duty.”

“I know what my duty is!” Cal raised his voice, just high enough to startle the second-in-command. “It’s to the crown, not fighting barbarians in the middle of the jungle! Miss Ella, here, has valuable information that will swing the war with Iletha in our favor. Do you believe that is less important than tracking down sawtoothed apes running around the forest in butt-flaps?”

“No, sir,” Farren said, balking at Cal’s stare.

“Tomorrow, have the sergeants advance their squads’ Skills at their discretion, but if I hear about anyone giving a recruit a useless Skill maliciously, they’ll have words with me. Once everyone is past their Forming Day, pack us up and head to the road to the west, the one that stretches along the coast between Surrak and Mujenan. Once we hit it, we’ll follow the road to the north and deliver her to the Hash’Maje.”

“I…didn’t know you spoke Genosian,” Farren said.

“You don’t know me at all. Now git.”

“Very leaderly,” Ella said, nodding as Farren rushed off to make the arrangements.

“I don’t know a damn thing about being a leader. It feels like some invisible thing I can’t grasp, but everyone else seems to understand it intuitively. Even when I was a kid.”

“Was a kid?” Ella asked with a raised brow.

Cal slapped a hand on his thigh and snapped his fingers. “My Intuition is terrible!”

“And?”

“I don’t know what the technical term is for it, but—”

High-functioning autism.

“But my Intuition has been crap since I got the System, and probably before, I think. The Skills the man gave me were just patches to deal with the symptoms of having poor Intuition.”

“The man?”

“Uncle Bekvah,” Cal said as if that explained everything.

“I see.”

“By the way, sir,” Farren said, sticking his head back in the tent.

“Are you normally this intrusive?” Cal asked, glancing up in frustration.

“Yessir. Should I put the captive back in the cage for the night, now?”

“Obviously not,” Cal said. “There’s already one person who broke out of those flimsy cages prowling around. Why would I want to put her where he could snag her in the middle of the night? She’s safest here with me.”

“But…”

“She’s well-trained, and totally docile,” Cal said, patting Ella on the head as she scowled at him. “I think I’ll take a page from the boy’s book and keep her.”

“Ummm…okay then.” Farren ducked back out of the tent and the two of them lay down to sleep.

A minute turned into ten, then thirty, and despite being exhausted, Cal wasn’t able to find the sweet release of sleep.

“Ugh,” Cal said, trying to find a comfortable position on the captain’s sheepskin-covered cot.

“What is it?” she asked, propping herself up to look at him.

“My damn stomach’s too big to lay on, and when I lay on my back, I snore so loud that it wakes me up.”

Ella burst out laughing, quickly stifling herself because of the thin walls and turning over. He could see her shoulders continue to shake as she quietly giggled to herself.

“That must be terrible,” she said between chuckles.

Cal turned over to his other side, grumbling for a while before he found a position that was comfortable, a sheepskin stuffed between his arms.

“To the hells with getting old,” Cal said moments before he fell asleep.

The next morning went by without a hitch.

Although his disguise made him look old, he was not, in fact, old. The discomfort of the night before had simply been a result of his new body shape.

Cal got dressed and prowled around the camp, looking captain-y in an effort to familiarize himself with the soldiers’ names, and how military discipline worked. His salute was supposedly terrible, so he’d carefully watched the sergeants and his second address each other, carefully cataloging the differences between a superior and subordinate.

One mistake could breed suspicion. Luckily, Cal knew that no one suspected him of being a teenage boy masquerading as their CO. When they looked at him, he felt a healthy dose of fear, respect, and a tiny undercurrent of disdain for his womanizing ways.

At Ella’s insistence, he’d had her put back in the cage before they started moving, because, according to her, it would be far less suspicious. Also, she didn’t want to associate that man’s face with Cal at all, so she’d rather avoid him if possible, until they were free of the Gadveran military.

The Gadveran military had a very interesting system for dealing with Breaks mid-campaign, Cal realized as he toured the campground. In order to become a sergeant, a man had to have at least three Breaks, five years experience, and have earned the Teaching Skill.

When the recruits gained their first, second, or third Breaks, they would become the communal property of the camp’s sergeants, who would break the recruits into groups, where some sergeants were responsible for teaching their most appropriate Skill to anyone who needed it, and others would harry the slower, fatter, or weaker recruits into shape.

In a single day, the skill, discipline, and cohesion of a company could experience a substantial increase.

Assuming the sergeants were doing their jobs correctly.

Cal had no basis for comparison, so he simply walked around the camp, scowling disapprovingly while he learned, which seemed to put the fear of Skovos into them. Leadership seemed to be the art of allowing people to think you were better than you were, and then never disabusing them of that notion.

Weird stuff.

By midday, the sergeants had successfully guided the last of the younger men through their Forming Day, making sure their attributes were regulation.

Cal was surprised to discover that there were guidelines in the Gadveran military about where, exactly, each attribute should be at each stage of a soldier’s career.

First Break Body should be seven, second Break should be eight, third should be ten, and so on. Mind was only required to be raised to five in the case of the severely handicapped.

The amount of Warp available each Break was roughly determined by a person’s highest primary attribute, multiplied by one and a third, which was why Bekvah knew exactly how much Warp he should have during his first Break—half again more than other people.

Farren had everyone pack up and head west while Cal looked on stoically. He felt some confusion and uncertainty in the glances sent his way, but when he puffed out his barrel chest and acted like he knew what he was doing, the gazes became reassured and they simply went back to what they were doing.

Leadership is weird. I don’t really get it. Once they were in town, Cal would let Ella out and the two of them would vanish, because standing around and pretending he knew what was going on was making his stomach sour.

The next day was uneventful, with Cal riding beside Ella and chatting until they settled down for the night. Farren was a little surprised when Cal ate the same meals as everyone else, but Cal didn’t feel anything bad from the other soldiers’ gazes when he did so. They seemed to think better of him for it.

He made sure to stop and chat with each of the recruits, trying to memorize their names. Wasn’t that what captains were supposed to do?

Whenever he felt a soldier who was looking at him with particularly high repressed anger, Cal would take them aside and get to the bottom of it, usually sorting out some error that had been made in his name, or mediating differences between bunkmates.

The third day traveling to the west, they came across the road and turned to the northeast. All they had to do now was march in relative safety on the well-worn roads.

Midday of the fourth day, they were trudging around a gentle turn in the road when Cal spotted a half-burnt carriage in an open field above the rocky shore, surrounded by men wearing the blue and black of Iletha.

The carriage had a distinctive emblem on it, but Cal didn’t know one noble house from another, being a consummate hick.

“Farren, my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Whose carriage is that?” he said, pointing the half-destroyed contraption out. Farren glanced over, and his eyes went very wide.

“By all the gods, that’s the Hash’Maje’s crest!”

“C’mon!” Cal shouted before rushing forward, jumping off the road and sprinting through the waist-high grass, leaving his stunned company behind. He supposed he should say something more eloquent or leader-y, but he couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound forced, or way too slow.

National pride wasn’t really the issue here, nor civic duty. He simply owed the family a debt, and he was halfway across the field before he even considered the full ramifications of the situation he was in.

The forty or so Ilethan soldiers were deep, deep behind enemy lines. There was no way that they were anything less than Veterans—or better—on a mission specifically to capture the leadership of Gadvera, which meant Cal had a very slim chance of making any kind of meaningful difference with the second- and third-Break people at his disposal, and would most likely be put down in a matter of seconds.

Cal glanced behind him, and spotted the rest of the company with their swords out, waving them above their heads as they sprinted along, following him blindly towards certain death.

Wonderful.

Cal hauled back and tossed the fire-worm extract with everything he had, causing it to trace a long arc through the air. He duplicated a hundred pounds of the stuff directly on top of the Ilethan soldiers ahead of them.

Mass splitting.

8/11 Bent remaining.

The duplicated gunk was black and smoldered faintly, not like the clear gel he’d had earlier. Rather than burn them alive, it spattered down on them, causing confusion and light burns.

It oxidized. It’s been five days. What did you expect?

I don’t know what that means! Cal thought, furiously trying to come up with a different solution to their Ilethan problem now that they were aware of their presence.

Ooh, you think?

The foreign thoughts in his head second-guessed him as he whipped out his flint and steel, slowing to take aim. The rest of the company continued their charge, splitting around him.

One of the Ilethan, wearing thick bands of nem and a blue silk robe that marked him as a sorcerer, raised his hand and shouted a single word, causing the front wave of Gadveran soldiers to tumble forward in sleep.

Cal felt like he’d just worked a full day, drank a glass of warm milk, and Karen was rocking him to sleep. And something was swimming around his head and tickling the back of his throat with sleepiness.

“Weak-Willed Gadverans!” the sorcerer shouted with glee as the entire company collapsed, save Calvin.

That’s not good, Cal thought, the realization of impending death snapping him out of his stupor. He had really hoped for some meat shields, at the very least.

Cal shoved the sensation flitting around his head into his mouth and chewed it, then swallowed it. He wasn’t sure if that was something he was supposed to be able to do, but it seemed to stave off the desire for sleep, and caused a tic in the sorcerer’s eye.

Cal struck some sparks a hundred feet away from the frowning sorcerer.

Shaping.

8/11 Bent remaining.

Cal missed the spark, accidentally duplicating air to little effect.

The sorcerer raised his hand again, shaking his head and chuckling while blue fire coalesced around his fingers.

Seems like a good time to retreat, if you ask me.

I wouldn’t make it halfway to the road. Nut up or shut up, Cal thought, striking the steel again.

That’s a very Karen thing to say.

Shaping.

7/11 Bent remaining.

Rather than create a field of fire, Cal used Shaping to channel all the mass he could into a single white-hot spark of iron, one hundred and twenty-one pounds of liquid steel, aimed straight at the sorcerer’s chest.

The sorcerer was tossed violently backward, instantly immolated by the molten steel.

The handful of weapon-wielding Ilethan that weren’t busy fighting the royal guards peeled away and charged Cal, while the royal guard members seemed to snap out of some kind of stupor with the death of the sorcerer, their blades speeding up and making the Ilethan attackers bleed.

The royal guards were Legends, moving like streaks of light and striking like thunder, while the Ilethan were trying to overwhelm them with the sheer number of Veterans.

Calvin ran away as fast as he could. Better to lead these men on a merry chase than stand still and be slaughtered. He was pulling his weight simply by allowing the half-dozen remaining royal guards a chance to catch their breath.

Calvinian Summoning.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 2!

Calvinian Summoning Level 2: 8 pound limit, 4 minutes. 0 slots available.

Hmm…

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning.

4/11 Bent remaining.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 3!

Calvinian Summoning Level 3:  27 pound limit, 9 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning.

2/11 Bent remaining.

In a matter of seconds, Cal created thirty-six five-pound Fever Wasps, filling the air with their dreadful humming.

Kill them while I run away—ack!

Cal spotted a glint of light as one of the Ilethan Veterans waved his sword lazily, and he ducked on instinct, remembering Jinnei’s Sword Skill Ability.

The wasp at Cal’s head-level split in half.

Thirty-five giant wasps left.

Spread out and kill them.

Cal mentally nudged them, and the wasps went for it while Cal tried his best to stay out of range of the fighters who seemed to run a lot faster than him.

A few of them were taken by surprise by the wasps, but most of the swordsmen were fast enough to slash the wasps out of the sky, sending their green ooze splattering to the ground. In a matter of seconds, his wasps were dead.

Stupid! They were just a bigger target!

Maybe giant wasps weren't the way to go here.

Cal did a 180. He’d gotten about a quarter of the dozen or so Ilethan chasing him, and from what he could see, the royal guard was pressing the rest of the foreigners back now that they were free of the sorcerer’s influence. He only needed to buy time for the situation to reverse. Sometimes that involved going an unexpected direction.

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvin summoned thousands upon thousands of normal-sized wasps, and instructed them to cloud the air around him, blocking off sight and stinging anything that tried to get close as he charged madly toward the Ilethan.

Cal saw one brace his feet on the grassy surface of the plain, and he let the strength go out of his legs, pitching himself backward just in time to miss the Charge Ability that sent the Ilethan streaking through the air above him. Cal then rolled to the side as quickly as he could, and the grass beside him split as invisible slashes tore through it.

When he got close, he dropped low and knuckle-ran through the crowd of Ilethan, scrambling, ducking, and dodging as fast as his adrenaline-soaked body could take him.

The Ilethan pursuers, for their part, were incredibly distracted by being stung, and their performance suffered significantly, making them sloppy enough for Cal to squeeze through them and leverage half the swarm against the other Ilethan.

The distraction of painful venomous stingers to the eyes was the last straw, and the titanic struggle between the royal guard and the Ilethan force was over in a fraction of a second. They then rushed past Cal, angling to mop up the rest of them.

Panting, Cal glanced over his shoulder, and noticed the Ilethan behind him were all being run down by the royal guard, their movements hampered by Fever Wasp poison.

“Who, or what, are you?” came a stern voice as sharp as a blade.

A steel-haired woman was eyeing him suspiciously, hand resting on the pommel of her sword. “I’ve never seen magic like that.”

“Just Dupdomancy,” Cal said. “Captain Skovos, nice to meet you.”

“You are not Captain Skovos,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I know Captain Skovos, and more importantly, he knows me. You are not him.”

Damn, that was a short ride, Cal thought as he smiled nervously.

A sudden shriek split the air and drew their attention to where Kala had fallen on her butt, staring at him in horror. A moment later, she blushed, cleared her throat and stood, wiping the dirt and grass off her butt and giving him an elegant curtsy.

“Calvin, it’s nice to see you again.”

…I think your other girlfriend can see me.

Chapter 28: Catfight Averted

“Alright, listen up,” General Andra Kolein said, pacing in front of the hundred or so new recruits. “Your captain didn’t make it. He did, however, put his team in a position to win the highest honor in Gadvera. You are going to escort the royal family back to Mujenan and receive high accolades for the work you’ve done here.”

Her eyes snapped over to Farren, who had raised his hand. “What?”

“Did we really do anything?” he said. “Last thing I remember, we were charging, and then I got really sleepy.”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

“That was Ilethan Mind magic wiping your short-term memories. You fought like devils and overwhelmed them with sheer tenacity,” Andra said.

“Oh, oh. Cool,” Farren said, standing a little straighter.

“I see,” Calvin muttered from the repaired carriage. “Stroke their egos to raise morale so that next time they may actually fight like devils.” Add that to the playbook.

“Are the chains really necessary?” Kala and Ella asked in two different tongues at the same time, glancing over at Cal with concern. The two girls looked at each other with suspicion. The words had been from different languages, but the tone had been identical.

“He impersonated an officer. At least,” one of the remaining royal guard, a square-jawed Legend named Horas, said from where he kept an eye on Calvin. “I imagine the crown might forgive him given the circumstances, though.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Cal said in Genosian and Gadveran, waving off the concern of the two girls who had begun sizing each other up like chickens stretching their necks to see who was taller. Ella definitely had the advantage in the size department, standing shoulder to shoulder with Horas.

“I can wait out a little discomfort if it gets me to the…um. Why are we not going to Surrak?”

Horas kept his face straight, but Cal saw a twitch of repressed anger and guilt for opportunities missed. Hmm.

“Surrak has been taken by Iletha,” Kala said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

What is so scary about looking at me?

“Oh, damn.” Cal stared at the ground, mind awhirl. “Are Jinnei and Karen okay?”

“I don’t know,” Kala said, grasping Cal’s hand, still not looking directly at him. “But I do know that wherever Karen goes, Jinnei will be perfectly safe.”

“Who is this girl?” Ella said, cutting between the two of them, nearly shoving Kala away. That act made the royal guardsmen nearby start fingering their weapons. “And why does she think she can touch you?”

“Who is this girl?” Kala said. “And why is there a magenta band between the two of you?”

“Ummm….” Cal leaned back in his seat and laced his fingers around his knee as they looked at him expectantly.

“What color is magenta?”

Wow, just threw that Talking to Girls Skill right out the window.

Kala paled and stepped back, attracting Ella’s curiosity.

“What is that?” she said, pointing at him.

“What is what?” Cal asked innocently.

“That…thing that rose from its slumber inside you for an instant.”

“My System?”

“That was not a System! That was a gaping wound in your soul that led into the purest evil. I can practically taste it. How are you sane?”

Tomato, tomahto.

“There it is again!” Kala said, pointing.

“Is she insane?” Ella asked.

“I don’t think so,” Cal responded. “And she’s a friend of mine from my home who seems to harbor at least a little bit of jealousy.”

“Ah, but did you ever have sex?”

“I think if we had, the people guarding her would have cut my head off.”

“Hmm.” Ella got a smug smile.

“We haven’t had sex, either,” Cal said.

“She doesn’t know that,” Ella said, placing a possessive hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Why haven’t we, by the way?”

“Humans can breed with everything; that’s common knowledge. I didn’t need Calvin-brats running around making my escape harder.”

“Escape!?”

Whoops.

“You were planning on leaving me!?” she demanded, grabbing Cal by his loose-fitting Skovos shirt and hauling him up.

Cal raised his shackled hands in supplication. “I asked if you wanted to run away with me, you said no. What was I supposed to do?”

“Get off him!” Kala said, shoving Ella away with unprincesslike strength, sending Ella reeling backward.

Damn, this is getting good, came a thought from Elliot, along with crunching and chewing noises. Think they’ll start tearing each other’s clothes off, or is that too much to ask?

Tell me you’re not evil.

Evil is subjective. Call me self-interested. Besides, she’ll get used to it. Like riding a roller coaster, eventually it’ll be a turn-on.

I’m not one hundred percent sure what you just said, but it sounded evil.

“That’s enough!” General Andra said, her voice sending an icy trill of dread through their collective spines.

“Take her back to the cage,” she said, and Horas clamped an iron hand down on Ella’s shoulder, guiding her away.

“And you, princess, have forgotten your station and acted in the height of poor taste. Remove yourself from the boy until you come to your senses again.”

“Yes, general,” Kala said, staring at her feet and shuffling away, her whole body radiating shame.

At least I don’t have to answer any awkward questions about my relationship with them.

“And you…” she said, pointing at Cal. “What is your relationship with those two?”

Well, shit.

“Kala used to visit my village.”

“I remember. Deinos, was it?”

Cal nodded. “We were friends.”

“I can see that,” Andra said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She leaned forward until her faintly scarred face was inches away from his own. “If we find out you’ve used any kind of Skill on the princess, your head will roll.”

Eep.

“What about the other one, the Genosian?”

“Well, that’s a bit of a long story,” Cal said.

Andra touched her sword.

“Which I will tell right now.”

Cal blurted out everything that had happened to him in the last three weeks at a record-setting pace. He skimmed over a few parts, like him and Ella grinding on each other, and the part where he killed Skovos, but Andra didn’t seem to care about him.

“I see.” She motioned one of the royal guard closer and whispered in his ear. The man glanced at Cal and nodded before returning to his duty.

“Your Genosian pet will be fine, and will continue to be fine, in exchange for your good behavior.”

“Pfff, you think I care what happens to her?” Cal said.

“Jorgas, go cut off a hand.”

“I’ll behave,” Cal said, backpedaling hard. “I mean, that’s not too hard to do, right? No need to get extreme.”

“Interesting…” Andra said, peering at Cal’s eyes. “Your pupils have dilated, boy.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Cut off her head.”

Every fiber of Cal’s being rebelled at the idea, driving him to act, now, now NOW.

Fuck that!

Calvinian Summoning.

1/11 Bent remaining.

A swarm of wasps leapt out of Cal’s hand, angling for the grey-haired woman, but the general lazily waved her sword, and the swarm fell out of the air in a rain of green goo.

Well, that was anticlimactic.

“Interesting. Belay that.” She peered into Cal’s eyes for a moment. “I imagine the girl would have the same response?”

“Probably,” Cal gritted out, ashamed at being toyed with. He could feel her intention to exploit this particular weakness radiating through her gaze like the warmth of the sun.

“Then be on your best behavior, and you have nothing to worry about. What can you tell me about Noeula, the concoction that drained your Bent and healed your wound?” she asked.

Cal frowned. “Why?”

“Because I said so, boy.”

“I don’t know much of anything, just that they make a special brew out of the black stuff that drips out of the Ruin in the mountain, and it heals wounds.”

She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then pulled away from him, cold calculation on her face and in her gaze. The lady didn’t feel anything other than duty and how to achieve said duty. Knowing that behind the stony mask was a stony mind was making his knees shake. She would’ve killed Ella if that had been the most convenient thing to do.

Well, if you married Kala, that could work in your favor.

“Stay quiet until we get to Mujenan. I don’t want those soldiers seeing you. When we get to the city, the Hash’Maje will decide what to do with you.”

She pushed him deeper into the charred carriage and closed the door on him. A couple minutes later, the carriage started wobbling, heading for the road.

Cal found himself in the middle of a blackened, yet still comfortable carriage, wearing manacles, with nothing to do but wait.

Hmm…

Cal settled against the carriage’s bumping wall and relaxed his body, trying to disconnect himself from the moment and ignore the distractions. He didn’t have the Bent or the energy to attempt an escape, and the royal guard was watching him like a dangerous animal, so getting away would be many times more difficult than it had been before.

The best thing he could do right now was work on his Meditation.

The carriage got onto the road, the crunch of dirt added to the sounds as they came off the soft grass. He let the bobbing of the carriage, chatter of the soldiers, and the constant crunch of dirt lull him into a trance, exploring his options, and hypothesizing on his future.

Cal had never been to Mujenan, but it was likely to be large, and well-defended. The hope that the Hash’Maje would allow him his freedom would be slim after it was revealed that he’d killed Captain Skovos. So, most likely, he and Ella had a few weeks of interrogation to look forward to in regards to the Genosian threat, before they were both executed.

Impersonating an officer alone was punishable by death. Forget about killing them.

So, what do we do? Escape, or make ourselves too valuable to kill. These were the only two options Cal could see, and they were both very hazy concepts.

To escape, he needed to slip out from under the watchful eye of Legends like Karen, and he hadn’t the first idea of how to manage it. He could shapeshift into a young Gadveran male, since that was the average, but the royal guard was a lot sharper.

Perhaps an opportunity would present itself when they entered the city and he was moved from the care of the royal guard to the more lax prison system.

The prison is more lax than the royal guard. Hah. Less challenging, at least.

The other option was more attractive. Running away from the Gadverans left him an enemy of the state, but if he could come up with some kind of leverage that forced them to forgive his crimes, that would work out much better in the long run. Not blackmail, but a Skill or knowledge that only he could do.

Calvinian Summoning came to mind. It was useful for large groups of individuals, but people with a lot of Breaks and experience most likely had counters to it. Andra being the case in point.

Maybe I can request leniency in exchange for service on the battlefield? Would they even go for that, considering I can change shape, and they know it?

If I were General Andra, what would I do?

…Exploit the Guya bond, and leverage utility from me and Ella on the threat of harm to the other and promise of being reunited.

Cal tapped his fingers on his knee.

How can I circumvent this?

Escape impractical, and likely to result in damage or death to one or both of us.

…Politics?

I can see General Andra using me as a chess piece to quietly swing a battle in her favor or assassinate some unlucky Ilethan noble. This is all assuming I’m not executed, but the look in her eye let me know she intends to use me, and the bond between myself and Ella, as ruthlessly as possible.

I must establish a character, and make it more impressive than Andra’s character. Only then will I have the ability to shrug off her control. It’s either that or a daring escape with Ella.

Meditation has reached Level 5!

Level 5: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 25% correction.

+1 Will.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Shadow Boxing: Allows the user to practice any Warped Skill up to the level of Meditation, at 1/4 speed.

~Useful for practicing Bent-dependent Skills or being imprisoned with time on your hands.

Disconnect: Allows the user to disconnect from their senses and the flow of time.

~Useful for demon summoning, battles of Will, or retaining your sanity after a thousand years in prison.

~ Editor's choice!

Sherl*ck vision: Plan your moves out in advance with a solid sense of the near future.

~Elementary.

Mutations:

Bent Regeneration: Apply Meditation’s Correction to Bent regeneration.

~Useful, if boring.

Eye of the Tiger: Enter flow state at will. Meditation Correction applies to combat and learning effectiveness. The inverse of a barbarian rage. May make the user overtired with extended use.

~Adriaaaan!

Medi-tating: Enter a deep trance while the body repairs itself at (Meditation) times normal speed.

~Hiber-Nate!

Cal scrolled over the choices in his mind, organizing them by effectiveness.

Shadow Boxing was very appealing, as it would allow him to get Chained Spirit, Fishing, and Genosian Language to level five (and their first Mutation) without needing a summon, a partner, or a pond to fish in. After that, though, the effectiveness would rapidly dwindle until he raised his Meditation even further.

Medi-tating was intriguing at first, but at lower levels, it only healed at five times normal speed. It would allow him to recover from an injury in maybe three days to a week, which would be useful, but not fast enough to bounce back at the kind of speed Calvin would hope for.

At higher levels, if he ever got Meditation to level 20 or 30, he could use it to recover from an injury overnight, or in a matter of hours, and that would be the level of speed he wanted.

Cal settled on Eye of the Tiger. He didn’t know what it meant, but a flat 50% boost in performance was difficult to ignore. While the return of Shadow Boxing would eventually peter out, and Medi-tation was only useful in a safe place after getting wounded, Eye of the Tiger would serve to prevent wounds from happening.

The others were interesting, but situational. He was sorely tempted by the Bent Regeneration, but the learning increase gave Calvin an idea.

I choose Eye of the Tiger.

Bum, bum bum bum. Elliot started humming bars to a strange song.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

...Did my time, took my chances♪

Should I ask? Cal thought a moment before he lost consciousness, feeling an odd aching in the back of his head and neck.

When Calvin opened his eyes again, the carriage was still rattling down the road, the sun still pouring through the burnt holes in the ceiling. He blinked the gum out of his eyes, and spat out the taste of charcoal from where he’d had his mouth open, then closed his eyes again.

Eye of the Tiger.

Distractions seemed to not fade, but blend into a perfect, uniform background upon which he imposed his mind, a perfect dot at the center of the fabric of space.

Cal started meditating, using the forced flow state to drastically speed the training of its primary Skill. At level ten, he would grab Shadow Boxing, and at level fifteen he would take Medi-tating, gaining each of them at the level they could be of use to him.

Why settle for one thing he wanted, when he could have all of them?

By the point he got Meditation to fifteen, his Will would be nineteen. Then he could use Shadow Boxing to raise Chained Spirit to level five, bringing his Will up to the cap.

Then switch gears and focus on his Stability Skills, Genosian Language and Fishing. Getting each of those to level ten would take his Stability to fifteen, allowing him to raise those Skills just past fifteen, bottlenecking at seventeen Stability.

Then he could use his spare time to practice Read Expressions, Talking to Girls, Acting, and Sense-Grafting, bottlenecking at 14, because Stealth was already capped.

14 Int, 17 Sta, 20 Will, then I need another Break.

Cal didn’t know how long that would take him, but the upside was it didn’t require freedom, only time.

Next Break, he would receive 27 Warp. That was just enough to raise his Body by four and his Mind by five, uncapping Skills and allowing them to reach the next Ability or Mutation. If he did it perfectly.

Went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop♪

Elliot’s caterwauling slid around the edges of Cal’s consciousness, unheeded as he sank into deep meditation.

Meditation has reached Level 6!

Level 6: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 30% correction.

….

A strange sound tickled the edge of Cal’s little bubble of consciousness, alerting him that something was wrong. He snapped back to complete wakefulness, listening to the clamor from outside.

The Gadveran soldiers were shouting to each other with nervous energy, and the carriage was now moving roughly half again as fast as it had been originally. Cal braced himself against the seat to stand and peek out the rear window.

A line of Ilethan riders was chasing after them, four abreast, several hundred deep.

The door of the carriage slammed open, revealing the grey-haired general. She roughly hauled up his hands and unlocked the manacles before dragging him out into the open, the wind blowing through their hair as she held him on the edge of the door.

“Do your wasp trick,” she said, pointing at the riders. “I want you to hit them when they break into a gallop to overtake us.”

“You think they won’t have a sorcerer?”

“Wizards aren’t exactly common in any culture,” she said. “Now, make those guars toss their riders.”

That’s odd. Cal had seen plenty of street magicians when he was twelve, although they never did much besides duplicate a few things with flourishes, and make things vanish. That was real magic, right?

Maybe Calvin was luckier than he thought.

Calvinian Summoning.

0/11 Bent remaining.

An overpowering swarm of wasps flew from his hands, then settled in the grass on either side of the road at his command.

A few moments later, they leapt upon the riders, stinging their guars and causing them to go wild with fright, scattering and bucking, trying to dislodge the wasps by any means necessary. Their riders went flying, injuring hundreds of men and killing dozens more, bringing the charge to a complete standstill.

Andra gave a short, huffing laugh, then drew Cal back inside the carriage.

“You do good work, little…whatever the hell you are. Keep it up and you could be a captain someday.”

“I already was a captain. It was alright,” Cal said.

“That’s right, you were.” She regarded him for a moment, a tiny flurry of emotions just barely brushing the surface, too nuanced for Cal to make heads or tails of it.

“Skovos was garbage, brother to the man who tried to kidnap Kala. If there’s any way I can keep the responsibility for his disappearance from falling on your shoulders, I will do so.”

Cal could tell she was being honest, but at the same time, wanted to use him toward her own ends.

I hate nuance.

“Could I ask a favor?” Cal asked as Andra was about to step out.

“Oh?”

“Could you not use Ella and I as leverage against each other, like I can see you planning to do? Otherwise, I’m afraid I might be compelled to Skovos you.”

She stared at him for a moment, and Cal could feel the steel in her resolve as she weighed the options and did the math in her head. Cal couldn’t tell what conclusion that she drew, but the surety of her decision was tinged by a tiny bit more respect for him than it had been before; he’d effectively read her mind, and that was nothing to scoff at.

“You’ve got some ungodly Intuition, kid. I’ll take it under advisement. If we make a more formal arrangement, I think we could work something out.”

She turned and left, leaving Cal alone with his thoughts again.

I hope that worked.

Cal returned to his meditation until the sun went down, and beyond. The art of not thinking about anything, unsurprisingly, wasn’t very energy-intensive. It was almost like taking a nap, and by the time they set up camp for the night, he had already reached level eight.

Meditation has reached Level 8!    

Level 8: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 40% correction.

A soft screech of charred wood brought Cal out of his trance as someone opened the door of his little moving cell. Outside, he couldn’t hear anything but the crackling of flames and the wind in the leaves.

The door opened to reveal Kala, not wearing a scrap of clothing, the light of the moon reflecting off the curves of her breasts, creating enticing shadows along her toned stomach.

Calvin’s heart began to pound in anticipation. “Umm… Hi?”

Her body burst into a cage-like maw of barbed fangs.

Chapter 29: Guarplay

Calvin recoiled backward. “Shi—”

Splitting.

0/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin used the single Bent he’d acquired over the last twelve hours of meditating to duplicate the door to the carriage, placing it between himself and…whatever the hell that thing was.

The monster struck like a snake, lunging forward on a black, chitinous neck that hung out of the carriage, cinching the cage of teeth down around his makeshift shield.

The impact slammed him back into the far wall, the teeth quivering individually around the edges of the door, almost like fingers.

“Gods!” Cal shouted as he put his back to the far wall and attempted to shove the creature back out the door, using his legs to push it away.

Hey, what’s going o-OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

“I thought you knew everything,” Cal said with a grunt as the monster’s claws and teeth dug furrows in the charred wood of the carriage.

“Widowmakers!” came a cry as the rest of the camp burst into activity.

“It’s a Widowmaker,” Cal said, slowly extending his legs, putting every fiber of muscle he could into it. He’d seen a dead one paraded through the village once as a child. It had looked a lot smaller when it was cold and still.

Widowmakers were a very dangerous class of monster that took the form of someone you were attracted to in the night, and then kidnapped you with their capturing cage before taking you back to their nest to feast. Needless to say, the naked lover bit worked better with men than women.

When people simply disappeared, one out of eight times, a Widowmaker was responsible for it—often enough that there were legal ways for widows to seek government aid after these disappearances.

Huh, learn something new every day. We didn’t have Widowmakers back in my time. They look like, what, a Warped centipede? Snake? You know, Warped Mutations don’t breed true very often, so the takeaway here is that life, uh, finds a way.

“Kinda busy,” Cal grunted.

Alright, I’ll leave you be, but don’t die. It’d be a pain in the ass to start over with some other rando.

“Start over?” Calvin asked.

The pressure on the door went away suddenly as the Widowmaker backed off, and it started tilting forward, soon to fall and expose him to the creature.

“Shit!” Cal lunged forward and grabbed the handle of the door, hauling it back to a standing position seconds before the creature hit the thin plank of wood like a runaway guar. Calvin was catapulted backward, the door in his hand splintering as several teeth went through the thin wood.

His back hit the wall, bruising every muscle he had as Calvin was propelled through the thin carriage siding, tumbling backward in the grass.

Calvin instantly came to his feet and took a second to get his bearings. He wouldn’t be able to walk in a few minutes, most likely, but right now, he couldn’t feel anything.

There were four Widowmakers in the camp, including Cal’s, and one flying away on insect wings, some hapless young man trapped in its cage. There was one being fended off by six recruits, one looming over a tent, as yet unchallenged, and one dead, split in half by Andra.

“Horas, take Lee and bring down that one,” she said, pointing at the one in the sky. Horas nodded and picked up a massive bow studded with carved bone before sprinting off. He tapped one of the other royal guards on the shoulder as he ran by, and together they set off after the thing.

“Mr. Gadsint, nice to see you up and about,” Andra said, glancing at his carriage that was rocking back and forth as the creature tried to extricate itself with a door stuck to its face. “And alive.

“Any Bent left?”

Cal shook his head.

“I see. If you would please join the princess at the north side of the camp, the other members of the guard will look after you.”

Cal glanced over at Ella, who was watching the events unfold with some amusement, relatively safe inside her cage.

“And please, don’t make my job any harder than it has to be. Horas can run faster than a guar for four days straight,” Andra said, giving him an appraising look. The implied message was: We will catch you if you try to run.

But at least she didn’t directly accuse him of considering using the distraction to break Ella out of the cage and escape into the woods.

Not directly, anyway.

“Got it,” Cal said, heading over to where three of the Legends were forming a triangle around a miffed-looking Kala. She was wearing skintight light armor of Slip Frog skin, her arms tucked over each other, frowning as she stared at the ground.

Cal found himself wanting to get a better look at her.

“Something wrong?” Cal asked when he was let through. The guards eyed him critically, but didn’t stop him.

“They won’t let me help,” she said.

“I’d appreciate it if you could convince her not to, boy,” one of the guards said without taking his eyes off the surroundings.

Cal glanced over and spotted Andra beheading the one still stuck halfway through the carriage, while another group of recruits was gathering around the one near the tents. In a minute or two, the fight would be over.

“There’s only two left and the entire camp is roused. I don’t see much left for a princess to do.”

“I’m a fifth-Break Veteran,” Kala said. “I’m able to help!”

“Just because you’re a Veteran doesn’t mean you’re a veteran,” Cal said, sitting next to her and receiving a foul look. “I imagine that, like me, few of your Skills actually pertain to fighting monsters?”

“I’ve got some Skills for self-defense,” Kala said defensively, in a manner that suggested otherwise.

“What about the one that lets you see things?”

“I…can’t talk about it,” Kala said, shifting uncomfortably.

“Hmmm…”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Kala said, uncrossing her arms to reveal her modest breasts packed into the form-fitting magical leather. “I saw the Widowmaker in your carriage, but they stopped me from going to help.”

Oh, that’s why she’s miffed.

“‘Okay’ is relative,” Cal said, tearing his gaze off her slim waist and back up to her face. He pointed at his back with his thumb. “I got pushed right through the wall. I’m already starting to feel like burger. In an hour or two, I might not even be able to move.”

They sat there in silence for a couple minutes as the last Widowmakers were overwhelmed and slain.

“I guess…someone will have to take care of you while you’re incapacitated,” Kala said, a hint of red emerging on her delicate cheeks. One of the guards rolled his eyes, and Cal could feel another staring at his back, weighing whether or not to kill him.

“I’m used to bruises,” Calvin said. “You can just dump me back in the carriage like a sack of flour and I’ll recover in half a day or so.”

“So, I was wondering,” Kala said, before the guards tensed up at something behind him.

“Calvin!” Ella said, waving her arm, her breasts somehow jiggling inside her leather wraps, the exaggerated, wide hips of a Genosian rolling as she approached.

Crap.

“What is she doing here?” Kala asked, glowering a bit.

“I dunno.”

“The Andra woman sent me over here as a gesture of good faith. She said I wouldn’t run away without you and vice versa, so I might as well have my freedom as long as I don’t harm anyone. She also said it would be funny.”

Cal glanced over at the general across the camp, who gave him a salute with a sardonic flourish. The woman was sadistic. That was the only explanation.

“So, who did it look like?” Ella said, sitting next to him, her soft skin brushing against his arm.

“What?”

“The Widowmaker imitates someone you’re attracted to. Who was it? I promise not to get mad.”

“I plead the Bower Amendment,” Cal said, standing. I refuse to testify against myself, especially if said testimony will lead to violence from one or more women.

“Bower Amendment? What’s she saying?” Kala asked, utterly confused.

Thank the gods Kala doesn’t speak Genosian.

“She asked who the Widowmaker looked like,” one of the royal guards, who apparently knew Genosian, happily chimed in, giving Cal a wink and a thumbs-up. Bastard.

Kala’s attention snapped into sharp focus on Cal.

“Who did it look like?” she asked, sidling up to his other side and peering at his face with an intensity that could only be derived from a Skill.

Cal froze, preventing himself from looking at anyone or doing anything that might be a tell.

“Welp,” Cal said, clapping his hands together and standing up, taking a step back before addressing the air between the two girls sitting there, keeping his body language tightly under control. “I would rather fight giant insect monsters than answer that question. I’ll go see if there’s more to be fought…that way.” Calvin started heading toward the other side of the camp.

“What did he say?” Ella asked the bilingual guard, whose stoic demeanor was starting to crack as he snickered. The rest of them weren’t far behind.

“He bitched out and didn’t answer.”

“Calvin Gadsint, you stop right there,” Kala said with a commanding tone that washed over him, putting a little hitch in his step. Something pressed in around him, almost physically weighing him down, like he’d been plated with lead. Cal shook it off.

He started running.

He heard one of the royal guards whistle. “That boy…has a lot of Will.”

Cal was sprinting between tents, trying to outpace the two sets of feet he heard slapping against the packed dirt behind him, not really understanding why he was running, or what his plan was when he stopped. Some animal part of his brain had told him to escape from that situation, and so he had, but now he was running like a madman through a military camp with no idea what his next step was.

He was enjoying himself, and had no idea why.

There was a flash of green light and a paralyzing bolt struck him in the spine, causing him to topple forward, slamming into the packed earth of the camp, abrading the side of his face. He could only be thankful it wasn’t straight into guar dung.

Cal was quickly overcoming the sudden stiffness in his muscles, since the effect was nowhere near as strong as her father’s. He managed to get his arms moving again and almost placed them under himself when Ella and Kala caught up, brushing past a gathering crowd of onlookers to leap on him.

Kala sat down on his lower back, her delicate rear weighing him down while Ella caught his shoulder with a vice-like grip, pinning him to the earth.

“Now,” Kala said, panting. “Which of us was it?”

“What she said,” Ella said, not having any idea what Kala actually said.

“Seems a little narcissistic to assume it was one of you, doesn’t it?” Cal said, looking over his shoulder at Ella. The angle she was leaning over him gave him an excellent vantage into the way her breasts hung low inside her leather top. “It could have been the general, for all you know.”

“Then why did you run?” Kala asked.

“What she said,” Ella repeated.

Damn. Elliot, talk to me.

Nuh-uh, I’m enjoying the show. There were more crunching and chewing noises in Cal’s mind.

Kala yelped and jumped off Cal, reacting to Elliot.

Lady Killer.

Calvin began swiftly draining Ella’s Bent through her palm against his shoulder. It was very easy now; she let him through her defenses practically on reflex.

1/11 Bent remaining.

“That’s…not…”

2/11 Bent remaining.

3/11 Bent remaining.

4/11 Bent remaining.

5/11 Bent remaining.

Ella pressed her lips together and stifled a moan before slumping forward, her left breast engulfing the side of his face. Cal had just enough room to slip out from under her, scramble to his feet and keep running, brushing past the crowd of gawking onlookers.

***

“Should we really be letting her do that?” one of Andra’s subordinates asked as the two girls chased Kala’s strange idiot-savant wizard crush around the camp.

“She’ll only be young once, and she needs a distraction from recent events,” Andra said, eyeing the road. “I teach every group of bodyguards to think dynamically about the princess’s well-being. What is truly a threat, and what builds character? Keep an eye on them, but don’t interfere unless something truly warrants it.”

“Ma’am,” he said, saluting before heading to higher ground to keep a better eye on them.

Andra watched as Kala and the boy’s pet Genosian began to use teamwork to flush him out, splitting up and guiding him to a dead end where they pounced on him, the Genosian holding him in a full nelson while Kala interrogated him, using her highly cultivated Intuition-based Skills to pry some kind of admission out of him.

Looks like they’re having fun, she thought, before returning to the task of reorganizing the camp after the Widowmaker debacle. Were they sent by the Ilethan, or merely a coincidence? It didn’t really matter one way or another. They had been disrupted, slowed down.

The next two days, she would have to have a forced march through the night to make sure the princess arrived safely at Mujenan. Soldiers with three Breaks should be able to handle it, but the ones with less might be unable to keep up.

It meant a few of them, those not strong enough to make a trip like that, might be left behind to die, and she was going to be responsible for it.

Never gets any easier, she thought as she got the camp in order to march at first light.

***Calvin***

“It was Kala, okay?” Calvin admitted, his spine aching where Ella was cranking his head down, his arms flopping around uselessly. Despite his best effort, they had eventually pinned him down and forced him to confess. “I haven’t seen her in two years, and then I saw her again, and she looked totally different and it was hard to stop thinking about it!”

“Whoo! Boom!” Kala said, whooping and jumping for joy while making rude gestures for a moment before she seemed to realize what she was doing. She coughed, settled down into a demure stance, and put her hand delicately in front of her victorious grin.

“I mean, a young man shouldn’t have such thoughts about a princess of Gadvera, you rapacious animal.”

“I’ll show you a rapacious animal,” Calvin grumbled.

“She seems happy,” Ella purred in his ear.

“Ummm…”

“It’s fine,” Ella said, letting him out of the hold. “I already knew what the answer was.”

“Really?” Calvin asked.

“You’ve been thinking about her in a lustful way since you saw her, which means I have, too.”

Calvin blinked. What the hell does that mean?

“Care to explain that?” Calvin asked. All he got from the Guya was a desire to please, protect, and a sense of possessiveness, not some kind of uncanny mind-reading.

“No. But you can explain to her about our new sleeping arrangements.”

“Our sleeping arrangements?”

“General Andra was kind enough to provide the two of us with a tent,” Ella said, walking away.

“Just one?” Cal asked, Kala still standing next to him.

Ella shot them both a wide, shark-toothed grin.

“What did she say?” Kala asked.

“Ummm…”

Boo!

Kala shrieked and stumbled away from Cal, tripping and falling flat on her pert butt.

Muahaha! EVIIIL!

Chapter 30: Princess Sandwich

Cal was riding one of the carriage’s guars as a Very Important Prisoner. Since his identity was still a secret, he was in the form of a handsome young Gadveran male who felt familiar to everyone, but no one could place.

Strangely enough, when he averaged people’s features, he got a very attractive face. It’s said that ugly people are ugly in their own way, which meant those unique uglinesses were wiped out by other people’s normal features. One person has a weird nose, but most people’s noses are okay.

One person has a tiny, underdeveloped chin, but most people’s chins are okay.

Which explained why people were currently staring at his damn-near-perfect Gadveran face while he argued with Elliot.

I’m just saying most guys would kill for a situation like this, Elliot said as Cal watched Ella and Kala riding together…getting along, teaching each other the language. As a unit, they were unapproachable…unassailable.

Ella kept ogling Kala while she wasn’t looking.

And vice versa.

What is happening here? Cal thought, leaning low in his saddle and clutching his head. I know fighting because I got it pounded into me since birth, and I know thinking creatively to solve problems, but this is driving me crazy. How do I solve this?

It’s not a problem. Pretty sure Ella got the short end of the Guya stick, and that makes her unconsciously want what you want, and as for Kala, she’s probably just curious. Encourage the curiosity…

But not in a creepy way. I started learning that lesson when I was your age. Took me like thirty years not to be a creep, and another thirty to learn how to encourage ladies to experiment without being a creep.

Cal shook his head. You were sixty years old and encouraging young women to experiment with each other?

Well, I—

Because that sounds like the definition of a creep.

You know what? Bite me. I don’t have to answer to you. I’m sitting here, taking time out of my busy day to toss pearls before swine because you’ve got the opportunity to be the meat in a princess sandwich.

Cal burst into a chuckle, drawing attention from nearby soldiers.

Sounds like fun, but Ella’s not a princess.

Uh, her dad’s the chieftan-majiggy. She qualifies. Every major girl in your life is special because her dad is important.

“Huh.” I suppose you’re right.

Yep, you’re the tropiest son of a bitch I’ve ever been.

You’ve ever been?

Been in. With. Seen. Whatever.

Cal was about to pry further when he realized he could feel Kala observing his conversation with Elliot. Her gaze held a mixture of fear and intoxication, a sort of craving sensation.

When Cal glanced up, she had already looked away and was busily suppressing a shiver from her neck to her waist.

Told you she’d come around. That’s neuroplasticity at work, right there. Or maybe cognitive dissonance—I’m not really sure.

And let me tell you, being the meat in a lady-sandwich was maybe the third-most fun I’ve ever had in my life, right after naked karaoke and executing the one percent.

Come to think of it, we could totally arrange a naked karaoke night with these dudes. It’s a bit of a sausage fest, but you gotta start somewhere, amiright? Maybe General Andra will show us how it’s done. She seems fit.

Executing the one percent? Cal asked.

After the Harbingers brought the Warp, it was a completely lawless era. We occasionally tried people for greed by burying them under their wealth. If they only had a million dollars or so, well, that was easy to climb out of…but a billion or more? Those people never came up. Super fun.

Maybe I’m lacking context.

You are.

Cal shook his head and dismissed that train of thought.

Anyway, back to your lessons in handling your harem.

My what!?

Elliot’s voice became slow and relaxed, like he was unconcerned with anything.

The first thing you gotta do is take a deep breath, and let the urge to pressure them into making out with each other in the back of your truck float away with the exhale.

Inhale…

And breathe out all the creepy thoughts. The creepy thoughts have an appropriate time and place. They can come later, not now.

Inhale…

Exhale… Let the desire to steer the conversation towards sex go.

You’re starting to piss me off, Cal thought.

Good! Anger is good. Use that to distract yourself from the creep inside while you go up there and make yourself comfortable with both of them. Step one is being truly comfortable in their presence, as in not awkward or constantly thinking about sex. I know it’s a tall order, and feels counter-intuitive, but you can do it. I have confidence in us.

You are the creep inside, and I’m not going up there. They’re doing just fine without me.

Young padawan, need I remind you that Skills require stressful, exhausting practice to improve?

No.

So get the hell up there and level your Talking to Girls Skill by facing your fear of two attractive ones allied against you at the same time! Right now, you’re just wasting time riding a goddamn useless animal.

Cal groaned and ran his hands down his face.

When did you get so talkative? he thought, nudging the guar to catch up with the two girls.

When I finally woke up the rest of the way and saw how badly you were handling yourself.

“How’s it going?” Cal said as he came abreast of Ella and Kala, as calm and relaxed as he could manage.

They started giggling.

Giggling. At him.

Nope, can’t do it, Cal thought, about to let his guar fall back in the line.

Get back in there, soldier! Elliot shouted in his mind. You’ve gotta weather it!

If it’ll make you shut up.

“Do I have something on my face?” he asked.

“We were betting how long you would take to approach us,” Ella said. “I won.”

They know I like them! Abort, abort!

Goddamn stick with it, or I’ll play dubstep in your head for a week.

Cal took a deep, steadying breath. “Okay… Umm...” He looked at the two of them staring at him expectantly. “What did you win?”

Ella glanced over at Kala, then back to him and shrugged. “We weren’t able to convey anything like stakes with our limited vocabulary, just ‘boy come here at noon’.”

Cal glanced up at the sun overhead, and back down to Kala, who was grinning at the ‘boy come here at noon’, which Ella had spoken in Gadveran.

“Could you help translate?” she asked, leaning over to see past Ella. “Learning each other’s language is way harder without someone who already knows both.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Bring your guar into the middle, here,” Kala said, pointing. “So we can both see you.”

Cal took a deep breath.

Cal spent the rest of the afternoon into evening riding between the two of them, chatting with and translating for them. All the while, in the back of his head, he could feel a man giggling with a hand over his mouth.

Fucking creep. It was especially irritating because the voice in his head seemed to know exactly how hyperconscious Calvin was of the girls’ bodies and exactly how badly he wanted to explore them.

If the voice in his head had not already established certain behavior patterns as unacceptable, Cal might have not been conscious of them and committed the exact mistakes Elliot had claimed to have done.

Which stung.

The muffled giggling intensified, just quiet enough that Kala didn’t seem to react to it.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 6! 30% correction.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 7! 35% correction.

Eventually the stress of the situation faded away, but not before Cal got two levels in the span of four hours on the road.

When Cal thought it was time to sleep, they kept marching on. Eventually, he had to give up the seat on his guar, allowing a trooper with less stamina than him to take his place on the giant lizard and catch a nap.

They marched through the night, by the light of Soscath’s burning scowl, trying to outpace the Ilethan pursuers. All of them made it through the night, but when Andra had them march through the next day, people started collapsing from fatigue.

Cal was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life by noon, and he could see the strain on Ella and Kala’s faces as they trudged along, putting one foot in front of the other. Neither he nor they had any energy to chat anymore, silently facing forward as they walked together. The only reason Cal was able to keep up at all was because he’d been riding the entire day before, a fact he was beginning to think was calculated by Andra.

All the available guar were carrying sleeping soldiers toward the end of the second day, their heads hanging low. The royal guardsmen had tossed one or more exhausted soldiers over their shoulders, marching along without revealing any kind of weakness, owed to their remarkable Body.

As the sun was going down again and Cal was considering where he would like to be buried, a cry sounded from the front of the line.

“Mujenan! I see it!”

At the cry, people’s heads came up, and a tiny bit of life returned to their eyes. The end was in sight. That tiny bit of hope allowed them to gather up their last dregs of energy. They kept up the march, until Cal was at the top of the hill, looking down at the massive port city of Mujenan, biggest in Gadvera. It made Surrak look small by comparison, with towering walls that surrounded the sprawling city, and ships coming and going nonstop, even in the middle of a war.

At the top of a hill in the center of the city was a palace with marble walls and brass roofs that glittered like gold in the fading light of day.

“I feel like I’m speaking for everyone when I say that I will fall asleep the moment we step inside those gates,” Cal said.

“Look lively!” Andra said, walking up the line trailed by three royal guards, who looked perfectly chipper. “We’ve got to report in and stow our gear before any of you can sleep, but when that’s all over, I’ve got an entire barracks earmarked for tired soldiers coming in off the road. Feather beds, people! The faster you make it to the city, the sooner you sleep! Put some hustle into it!”

They picked up their pace an almost imperceptible amount, marching slowly down the hill toward Mujenan.

“You,” she said, pointing to Cal.

“Uh?” Cal grunted, tearing his eyes off the dirt road in front of him.

“That one, that one, and the princess,” Andra said, pointing out the three of them. Seconds later, Ella and Kala were thrown over the shoulders of Andra’s men.

“What the hell is this?” Ella demanded, but was too tired to protest much further.

“Take the princess and the Genosian to rooms where they can sleep the trip off,” she said, before her eyes landed on Cal. “You and me are going to pay the Hash’Maje a visit,” Andra continued.

“Wha—ack!” Horas lifted Calvin up and threw him over his shoulder, then the seven of them began screaming down the side of the mountain, faster than a guar at full gallop. Faster than he’d thought possible.

In a matter of minutes, Cal was wobbling on his feet, his exhausted brain trying and failing to be awed by the splendor of the waiting room covered in silk tapestries and oil paintings depicting generation after generation of Hash’Maje. He was simply too tired.

Kala looks a lot like her grandmother, Cal thought idly, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“The Hash’Maje will see you now,” Andra said as she stepped through the large set of double doors made of dark, polished wood.

Cal stumbled over to the door and stepped through into a cozy office with large windows overlooking the harbor far below them. The ships were nearly ghosts as the light of day faded behind the mountains.

In front of that vista was a man who looked a bit like Bekvah, but broader, more intimidating. He wore full regalia like it was comfortable and kept his spine perfectly straight.

“You must be Calvin,” he said, turning to face him. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He did the staring out the window thing before turning to see you; that raises his odds of doing an evil monologue by forty percent. He’ll probably put you off balance by threatening you a bit, then give you a choice that will seem really good by comparison.

“Uh-huh…” Cal nearly nodded off. “I mean, yes, yes sir. Sire?”

“‘Sir’ will be fine. You may sit,” he said, pointing at the chair in front of his desk. It looked cushy.

“Apologies, but I don’t think I’d be able to stay awake, were I to sit down.”

“Indeed,” he said, looking Calvin up and down. “It’s good to see you’re alive. I’m sure Kala was thrilled. I heard from Bekvah you’ve got a talent for magic like he’s never seen before. A savant. I heard from Kala you were the sweetest boy in Deinos—until she started having those nightmares, anyway.”

“Tha—”

“I also heard from Andra that you managed to assassinate and then assume the identity of a captain—one of my cousins, actually—for a period of no less than four days.”

“Umm…”

“Were that information to be made public, I would have no choice but to have you drawn and quartered for killing a member of my extended family. Do you know what being drawn and quartered is? They hang you upside down and cut you in half from your crotch to your head. All the blood rushing to your brain keeps you alive and conscious until the very end. Then they cut you in quarters and spread you across the kingdom.”

Cal could tell by the feel of the man’s gaze that he cared nothing for his cousin and simply wanted some utility out of the young wizard.

Evil speech, threats; called it. This is where he offers the carrot.

“But fuck Skovos. He was a waste of people’s time and money. You, on the other hand, you have the potential to be of value to our country. I’d like to offer you the opportunity to realize that value.”

“How’s that, sir?” Cal asked.

By joining the military.

“By joining our great nation’s military and aiding in repelling the Ilethan threat. Above and beyond fulfilling your duty to your country, you’ll be taken under Andra’s wing, with great potential for advancement. In a few short years, you could find yourself the bearer of a noble title.”

Wizard-King for life.

Wizard-King for life, Elliot echoed.

You can’t just burn down a section of unclaimed land and declare yourself Wizard-King, Cal realized. You actually have to have people to claim that land for you and act out your orders…and that means I have to make a name for myself. Ugh.

“I would be honored,” Cal said, and the Hash’Maje began to sit down with a pleased expression.

“May I ask…” Cal started, hesitating as the Hash’Maje looked back up at him. “What will happen to my Genosian?”

“Ah yes, she’ll be imprinted with your family seal and returned to you.”

“My what?”

“Direct these questions toward Andra, if you would.”

“Yessir,” Cal said, giving his best salute.

“The salute’s wrong, but I’m sure Andra will straighten that out,” the Hash’Maje said with a grin as he sat. “She’ll tell you the details when you’re able to walk and talk tomorrow. You may leave.”

I don’t get it. How was the salute wrong? Cal pondered as he staggered out of the office and allowed himself to be guided to a nearby bed by a helpful maid.

You saluted him as his superior, Elliot said. Pretty sure it’s a punishable offense, but the dude was cool enough to let it slide.

Oh, that. That was on purpose.

That’s my boy!

Chapter 31: God Sent

Karen watched as Elaine stood in front of the raised dais, trying to fix everything. Reggie stood in the corner, holding his daughter, barely a month old. The girl was already starting to regrow her tufts of black hair—while she’d been bald, she’d reminded Karen of a chubby Andrew.

Andrew was gone.

Karen blinked her tears away as she studied the marble platform inscribed with intricate spellwork, scrawled by the gods themselves.

The Kingdom of Malkenrovia was at the forefront of summoning techniques, and usually a virtuous maiden would be trained from childhood to take on the role of high priestess, and perform the summoning ritual to conjure a hero from another world.

The high priestess was one of them, now, taken by the creature on the other side of the door. The virginity of the high priestess was just a formality anyway. All that was truly required was knowledge of Conjuration and lots and lots of Bent.

Elaine had that in spades.

In the distance, they could hear the king and his retainers scratching at the door with their bare hands, reducing their fingers to bony claws. The creature’s magic had made them into animals under his control.

“Reggie! Come back to us!” came a woman’s shriek from outside the summoning room. His mother. A moment later, a chunk of the door was torn away, revealing bloody hands with inhuman strength.

“Gah!” Reginald shouted, setting the infant down and grabbing the statue of the First Mother, hoisting the stone representation of the goddess with all his strength. Karen rushed over, and between the two of them, they managed to carry the solid stone statue past Elaine and brace it in front of the door.

Elaine seemed to perceive none of this. Her hands were pressed into the hand-shaped depressions in the dais, Bent flowing from her arms to fill the arcane script.

Her mouth moved at a constant pace, whispering to some unseen thing, haggling with it in a language beyond Karen’s understanding as it searched for the perfect solution to their problem.

“Hey there, unassimilated boys and girls!” A jolly voice came from the other side of the door, followed shortly by a pulse of blue that seemed to burrow through the air, dissolving the door that was designed to keep a Legend at bay, and the stone statue of the first Conjurer.

After a breathless moment, the blue energy faded, leaving a sizzling wall of smoke in its wake.

“Fuck,” Karen cursed, sprinting toward the opening, followed by Reggie. The first one through was the king, an enormous man of middle age with raven black hair with streaks of white. Long ago, he’d been a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, wielding a war pick and shield to great effect.

Now he was a mindless thrall, lunging forward with snapping jaws, no more value placed on him than any of the others taken by the creature’s magic.

Karen cut him in half.

Reggie let out a shuddering gasp as he watched his father struck down in front of him.

“Reggie, keep your head in—” Karen watched as Reginald froze, allowing his mother to tackle him to the ground, her claws peeling up bits of Reginald’s armor.

“Head in the right place!” Karen shouted, taking one hand off her great sword, currently fending off a courtier, to draw her short blade and ram it through Donnova Entremond’s temple. The queen of the country shuddered for a moment and collapsed on top of her favorite son.

Karen hooked a toe under Reggie’s back and flipped him to a standing position with a kick, returning her attention to the well-dressed fop in front of her. Reggie stared at the queen for a moment, then raised his sword and started chopping at the flood of meat sprinting toward them.

She couldn’t see his expression through his helmet, but she could hear his screams just fine.

“Motherfuckers! I’ll kill every last one of you!” Reggie’s voice echoed above the snarling of the possessed royal family.

Karen leaned forward, using her armor and weight to shove her great sword through the courtier’s unarmored flesh, the width of the blade nearly severing him in half.

The man coughed, and his expression became confused.

“Why?” he asked, an instant before her iron boot shoved him off her sword. Karen wasn’t a stranger to the confusion of the last seconds of life.

“Aaah!” Reginald shoved two thralls back with his shield, decapitating one and burying his sword halfway through the other.

Karen calmly weighed the situation as her body went about its violent work. She could walk close to a week without tiring, or fight non-stop for an entire day, but Reginald wasn’t going to last nearly as long. Through inexperience, or simply lower Endurance, he would eventually fold, and then she’d be surrounded. They would simply be able to stream past her while she fended off others, and tear Elaine apart.

She kicked the chunks of flesh off to the right, intending to make a better choke point with their own dead. It definitely wouldn’t work forever, but it might buy them the time they needed.

“Heel! Bad court, bad!” Elliot strode through the smoke as the remaining possessed slunk out of his way, awkwardly moving on all fours.

And there he goes, putting a damper on everything, Karen thought, gritting her teeth as the creature in the shape of a man walked through the bloody hall toward them.

“Ah, Karen, truly a flower that bloomed in adversity. You know I—”

Reginald screamed and charged, his enchanted blade held high.

“One second.”

Black Bent traveled down Elliot’s arm in the blink of an eye, creating a blue wave of force from the tips of his fingers that caught Reginald in the chest and flung him across the room, cracking the stone walls of the summoning tower.

“You know I have a thing for big, dangerous women?” Elliot continued. “Dates back to middle school, when Jenny Kinsley—”

Lightspeed Slash.

2/8 Bent remaining.

Karen’s sword flickered, swinging forward at a speed that was impossible to follow.

As if by magic, Elliot separated into two halves, beginning to fall toward the ground. A moment later, he flickered, and his body was once again in one piece, continuing his grating monologue.

“—started wrestling with me out of the blue, and I just got the hardest boner.”

Karen lashed out with her boot, and Elliot caught it in a blue field of force.

“All that being said, I can’t really afford to waste a piece like you when the Harbingers are still out there, can I?”

Karen tried to pull her foot back, but her iron boot was stuck fast to the blue section of glowing air.

“Let me help you with that,” Elliot said, reaching his other hand toward her foot. She could not let him touch her. Not if she wanted to avoid winding up like the others.

With a scream, Karen hauled back and wrenched her foot out of the boot, bending the metal plating out of the way as she flung herself back, tumbling along the ground.

“Oh, wow,” Elliot said, dropping the boot to the ground with a metallic clatter. “I gotta admit, that’s pretty impressive. You—”

His head snapped to the side, where Elaine was kneeling in front of the summoning circle.

“Hero summoning?” he said with a frown, glancing over the circle. “Pretty late in the game, don’t you think? I don’t know what the hell Doug was thinking when he added this to the System. He had to bend so many rules and beg all the way up the chain of command to get this added, but the guy was a total weeb and refused to compromise.”

“Let the Deal be struck,” Elaine said, before collapsing in front of the summoning circle.

Elliot crossed his arms, watching the circle and not paying any attention to Karen as she stood up, eyeing the baby. She was only a few feet away from her, and Reginald was still alive, too.

“Alright, let’s see this savior guy,” Elliot said, tapping his forearm impatiently. “I know for a fact Doug doesn’t have permission to add Cheats, so let’s see what the System thinks can beat me all by itself.”

At first, nothing happened. Then a visible field of energy began to whirl around in a vortex, barely contained by the bounds of the summoning circle.

“Ow, ow, what the hell?” Elliot said as a shade of himself began to peel away from his body, tearing away from his physical form like stitches popping loose on a blanket.

What’s going on? Karen thought as she watched. The spell was supposed to reach out and summon a person capable of rectifying their situation, but it seemed to be…targeting Elliot?

“Oh, I get it. Hahaha!” he said as his soul separated further and further from his body, mimicking his every move. “Well played, Doug. Well played.” He began slow clapping.

An instant later, a brilliant circle flashed into existence beneath him, mimicking the Summoning circle just a few feet away. Elliot’s shade was drawn into it, and his body collapsed like a puppet with its string cut.

There was a flash of light on the dais and Karen raised her sword, ready to smite whatever was left of the creature. When the light faded away, there was nothing…nothing but a confused-looking infant, staring at the room with bright blue eyes.

“What happened?”

“I…I don’t know,” Elaine said, picking herself up and studying the infant, her newly-discovered maternal instincts urging the mage to pick up the baby. She glanced over her shoulder at the empty corpse that, until then, had caused them so much trouble.

“Ugh,” Reginald muttered, trying and failing to drag himself to his feet. “Are we still alive?”

“Apparently,” Karen said.

“Did we win?” Reginald asked.

An animalistic howl sounded from deeper in the castle, drawing their attention.

“You just had to fuckin’ ask that,” Elaine said, hustling over to her daughter and picking up the other baby before retreating to the other side of the summoning room.

“Without him, it’s just cleanup,” Karen said, squaring her feet in front of the door and hefting her oversized sword. “I can handle that.”

“You can kill a whole city?” Reginald asked incredulously.

“Give or take,” Karen said with a grin.

The flood of howling people charging toward them on all fours was no less than it had been before. The entire city had practically been under the creature’s control.

Karen had her sword ready to tear apart as many of them as it took, when something strange happened.

The lead creature’s body slumped to the ground, but its shade kept flying straight ahead, through Karen’s swing, through Karen’s armor, and through her.

A cold shiver went through her for a split second before it was gone, and the shade was flying past her. She turned her head to look despite years of training to the contrary, and saw the shade dive into Elliot’s corpse, creating some kind of invisible drum beat that shook the dust on the ground beneath him in a circle.

Karen glanced back forward, and saw the next three creatures slump to the ground, their shades racing past her to dive into the corpse, creating three more drum beats, each a little stronger than the last.

He was trying to come back.

“Damn!” Karen shouted, turning and running toward the body.

With five swift hacks, she’d decapitated the body and torn it limb from limb before splitting the entire torso in half.

The drum beats continued as the possessed humans gave their lives to the thing on the floor, making it ever more powerful. Each drum beat brought the creature’s components closer to each other, sealing them back together as though they had never been apart.

“I can’t stop it forever!” She might be able to kick a specific piece out of range of the creature, but the drum beats were getting stronger, and the pull that was bringing it back together was becoming more and more irresistible.

Reginald shared a look with Elaine and dragged himself to his feet.

With a suicidal strength, he picked up the statue of the First Hero, and slammed it through the cracked wall, allowing the light of day to pour into the stuffy room. The statue fell hundreds of feet, shattering on the rocks below. Even further than that was the bay, where the common folk went about their fishing and trading, with no idea what was going on in their own capital.

“Karen!”

“You’ve got a plan?” Karen asked, glancing over her shoulder, kicking the torso away from the rest of the body.

“Yeah, come here!”

“What is it?” Karen asked, spotting the hole in the tower wall.

“Can you make that jump?” Elaine asked, pointing to the bay hundreds of feet below them.

“Sure, but not carrying someone. Can you make a ramp or something?”

“I’m fresh out. No potions, Reservoir is empty. Can you make the jump with these?” she asked, holding up the two infants.

Karen put it together. Elaine wasn’t planning on leaving.

“Fine,” Karen said, not wasting any time unbuckling her armor as quickly as she could. It was dead weight. She’d left friends behind to die before. How was this any different? “But just Jinnei. I don’t trust that…thing.”

“You have to take him,” Elaine said gently. “He’s God-sent. I know the spell summoned the person that can save us, just not…yet. Don’t be a bitch.”

“Fine, damnit,” Karen said, the last of her armor clattering to the floor as the creature’s eyes flickered open.

“I am number One, my purpose is…vengeance,” Elliot’s body said, sitting up. The creature craned its neck unnaturally, studying them like a mantis eyes its prey before clambering clumsily to its feet.

Karen scooped the babies out of Elaine’s arms and jumped out the window.

“Cradle the head!” was the last thing Karen heard her friend say.

***

Kala woke up in the morning, and for once, she’d not screamed herself awake, although her bed was drenched with sweat. She now knew she had witnessed the fall of the Malkenrovian kingdom, the time sixteen years ago when the country had replaced all of its diplomats and become a strange pit where people and information went in, but nothing came out.

The rulers of Gadvera had at first assumed it was because of a coup, but Malkenrovian diplomats' strange behavior and Kala’s dreams seemed to point at something much more sinister.

Chapter 32: Stocking Up

Calvin stooped as he stepped into the alchemist’s shop, wrinkling his nose at the acrid fumes swirling through the tiny room. The shop’s ceiling was oppressively low, and he felt like he was going to bump his head at any moment.

Other than the size and the malodorous content, the shop looked like any other well-kept establishment, with racks of non valuable alchemical products near the door, and the more interesting or dangerous stuff within cupboards behind a locked iron grate placed solidly behind the desk and its warden.

Lining the shelves were simple animal glues, skin balms, insect repellents, insect repellents that were also skin balms… The list went on. Behind the counter was a creature he’d never seen before.

It looked like a tiny woman, almost four feet tall, with somewhat distended translucent pink flesh, and skin that was shiny and stretched tight like a grape. Her rotund stomach pushed her breasts up, two big spheres that stood up against their own weight on the front of her chest, barely contained by her tiny apron over a thin shirt.

Cal had heard about Jibbleya, but he’d never actually seen one. Supposedly they had a resistance to harsh chemicals that might kill a human, so they naturally found themselves filling a niche as alchemists.

He hadn’t expected their body shape to be quite so…exaggerated.

“Welcome to B and Bee’s Alchemy shop!” she said cheerfully in a high-pitched voice. “I’m Bee. Can I help you find anything special?” she said, putting a lilt at the end of her words that would have been sickly sweet had she not been small enough to pull it off. She kind of reminded him of a talking berry. Perhaps not quite so rotund, but close.

“Yeah,” Calvin said, pulling out his wish list and clearing his throat to hide his staring.

“Do you have, or can you acquire…unhardened spiderweb protein, an exceptionally strong acid, compressed steam, refined fire-worm extract or some other self-igniting substance, a steel plate—maybe seven inch by four by two—a bottle of nothing, fine steel darts, confetti, swamp beetle extract, soporific steam…bottled light if possible, and umm…that’s it. It’d be for the best if all of those things were under extreme pressure, actually. ’Cept for the steel plate.”

I already told you, you can’t bottle light, doofus, and even if you could, you couldn’t isolate it long enough for the spell to take effect. A photon is way too fast to pin down, and even if you could do all of those things, duplicating a hundred pounds of light would literally nuke you.

I don’t know what a nuke is.

It’s bad.

“That’s it?” she repeated incredulously. “That order's almost as big as you!”

“Every other alchemy shop I visited referred me to you. Seems like you’re the best in town. If you can’t help me, then I guess I’m shit outta luck,” Cal said, watching the woman change colors as she blushed blueish.

He’d been given a stipend of four stones to buy supplies for his post as Andra’s underling. That had covered the tailored uniform and basic supplies, and he’d managed to have two stones left over when he was done. Cal had taken the opportunity to seek out an alchemist that might be able to provide him with ingredients to use with Splitting, to create more flexibility.

Unfortunately, most of the shops he’d visited in Mujenan were unable to create them the way he wanted, or unwilling to sell in such small amounts. B and Bee’s was referred to him as specialists able to tackle more complicated problems.

“I can handle almost anyone’s order, but this is…” She took the list out of his hand and pouted as she looked over them.

“You don’t have quantities written down,” she said, glancing up at him.

“Generally a vial or two of each, about yea big,” Cal said, holding his thumb and forefinger apart. “It’d be nice if they were all the same size and shape; make it easier for them to fit in a traveling pouch.”

“Uh-huh.” She reached under the desk and pulled out a piece of charcoal and started making notes on the side of his list, quick calculations.

After a minute of that, she scratched her head for a moment, then turned to the back room. “Da!”

“What!?” came another voice from the back room. A bit older, a bit more masculine, but still high-pitched compared to a normal man’s voice.

“Come take a look at this!”

An older Jibbleya with a greying beard and darker blue flesh came out of the back room, stripping heavy leather gloves off of work-hardened, semitransparent, slightly chubby hands.

“What is it?” he asked, taking the sheet of paper out of Bee’s hand. He glanced back and forth between Cal and the paper, his brows furrowing more and more.

“Whaddya want with all this weird shit in…half-ounce vials? Whaddya gonna do with it? Prank someone? Burn somebody's ear off? Get high?”

“Spells,” Cal said. “I’m a wizard.”

“And I’m human.”

Cal shrugged, unperturbed.

“Ah well, if I turned away every idiot that wanted to light themselves on fire, I’d be out of a job,” he said, leaning over with the charcoal and grumbling to himself as he marked it.

He crossed out the bottled light, the metal plate, and the soporific steam. “Can’t sell you drugs or poisons without a license, and the steel you’re better off getting at a blacksmith’s,” he said by way of explanation as he hunted down the list. “But in the quantities you’ve got written down here, I can sell you a tiny bit of God’s Fire.”

“What’s God’s Fire?” Cal asked.

“It’s a gooey gel filled with pyreheart shavings. When a shaving makes contact with air, it bursts into flame, which then ignites the gel, which burns hot enough to slag steel. In the amounts you’re asking for, it’s used as a firestarter or toy,” Bee said helpfully, smiling up at Cal.

“It’s real pretty in an oxygen-free environment,” she said, playing with a strand of her hair.

“Ung,” her father grunted, marking numbers beside each of the remaining pieces.

“He wants them under pressure, Da,” she said, looking at his numbers.

“Agh.” The man began grumbling as he smudged out the numbers next to each of the items and wrote new ones.

“And they don’t need a lid. Completely sealed off so they can last indefinitely…” Cal chimed in, balking at the man’s glare. “…would be best.”

He smudged out the new numbers and wrote new, larger ones beside them.

“Not only do I have to pay Isaac a visit, I gotta hire a Shaper who can do glass and steel,” he grumbled.

“Is it too difficult?” Cal asked.

“Nothing is too difficult for Borus Igglebaum. The question is, can you pay?” he asked, handing the sheet back.

“Well, that’s not as bad as I thought,” Cal said.

“The price is in Quarters, son.”

Cal’s eyebrows rose. The smallest number was a two, next to the compressed steam.

All told, it would cost fifteen stones to buy everything the alchemist hadn’t crossed off.

“Why is it so expensive?” Cal asked.

“Because I’ve got to take time out of two other master craftsmen’s day to make a trinket.”

“For two stones, could I get the web and the God’s Fire?” Together, the price the old man had calculated had been two and a half stone. Just those two would allow Cal to do things he’d never been able to do before, and do them repeatedly.

“The prices are non-negotiable,” Borus said grumpily.

“You’re visiting Isaac tomorrow, Da! You can easily add that to the docket. The only cost is the Shaper! That’s enough to knock half a stone off.”

“Are you on my side or his?” Borus asked, scowling at his daughter.

“Agh, fine,” he said, watching Cal fish the two notes out of his envelope.

Cal pulled out the two notes and laid them on the table.

A stone was a government-backed note that guaranteed its bearer could exchange it for a very specific amount of the opalescent nem, about a half-inch cube. Of course, nem never came in a specific amount, and cutting it smaller to fit specific sizes wasn’t a great idea, so a stone would generally net you a pebble-sized rock and a bit of nem dust. A stone. Hence the colloquial name.

Nem itself was valued for its beauty, and the way it shimmered, seemingly shifting and shining without a tangible cause. A long time ago, some observant adventurers had realized the fluctuations in the shimmering responded to Warp in the air, and so there was now a small subset of people that used it as a medium to measure the Warp in the air—but most people still used it for eye-catching, expensive jewelry.

“Let me see that,” Borus said, dragging the notes along with the envelope across the table and peering down at them.

“This was issued by General Andra to buy necessities.” He peered up at Cal. “Are you really some kind of wizard…some kind of dirt-poor, implausibly young spellcaster—which I find highly unlikely—or did you lift that off a new recruit?”

“Watch,” Cal said, picking up one of the delicate vials off the rack in front of him with a ten-dust price tag.

“Pretend this is the vial you’re going to make for me, and this…” Cal picked up a smaller cork stopper and dropped it inside, rattling it around. “This is the contents. With me so far?”

“Yup.”

Shaping.

5/11 Bent remaining.

Cal reeled back the power of the spell, making a thirty-pound cork stopper appear in midair, slamming down on the desk, rattling all the delicate glassware and causing the aging craftsman to nearly jump out of his skin.

“And this,” Cal said, placing a possessive hand on the cork log so it didn’t go anywhere. “This is thirty pounds of compressed God’s Fire. With me so far?”

“Heh. Hah! HAHAHA!” Borus began chortling madly as his daughter looked on in confusion.

“I see! Oh, yes, I like that! I like that very much! Yessss…” Borus rubbed his palms together greedily, grinning from ear to ear.

“Bee, get me a commission form.”

“Sir,” she said, and hopped into the back.

“And are you working directly under the general, implausibly young wizard friend of mine?”

That was Cal’s understanding of the arrangement. “Well, yes.”

“Now that I understand its purpose, you’ve given me a challenge and a delight to work on. I’ll send the bill to your commanding officer. Now shoo.”

“But I—”

“Shoo!” Borus said, sliding the two stones back over to Cal before he turned and went into the back room without giving Cal a second glance.

Well, I guess that worked out okay.

Cal looked down at the two stones he didn’t end up spending, and finally shrugged. Looks like I’ll be getting that metal plate anyway.

Come to think of it, he didn’t need caltrops as long as they could fit inside the plate. Come to think of it, with Shaping and Mass Splitting, the plate didn’t have to be very big. He could copy a tiny caltrop out of a small plate, use Shaping to bring it up to regular size and Mass Splitting to create a hundred pounds or more of them.

Cal shook his head.

The more he thought about it, and the more he experimented, the more depth the Skill seemed to have. Then again, it is supposed to take a long time to get to level eleven.

Cal headed out the door and went to the nearby smithy, where he commissioned a cube of metal about an inch on a side, with a loop for a string. The smith raised an eyebrow, but only charged him four pinches of dust.

After all was said and done, Cal managed to go back to his temporary room at the barracks with a stone left over from shopping, whistling a jaunty tune.

The next morning, Calvin was roused from bed by a wave of ice-cold water followed by an iron fist clamped onto his ear. Cal staggered and groaned, taken off balance by the sudden grip on his lobe. He blinked the last bits of sleep out of his eyes and was met by a furious Horas, and a stone-faced General Andra.

“This found its way to my desk this morning. Care to explain?” Andra said, holding up a commission order with Borus’s signature on it.

“Ummm.”

“You know, spending government money without authorization is a crime. The Jibbleya says I’ll find it necessary, but I find myself...critical,” Andra said, rolling up the document.

“If I don’t sign it, you’ll be receiving a lashing. You are under military discipline now, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t spend my money without my consent.”

Chapter 33: You’re in the Army Now

They were standing in the practice yard of the castle, in the center of a flurry of activity. Young men and women of Gadveran descent were running, sparring, practicing putting on armor, and shooting at straw targets placed against the wall.

“I spent the entire night in a fevered state, even woke old Isaac out of his bed to finish, broke a few of the prototypes, and I owe the old bastard a new steel table, but at the end of it, I got these two to show for it,” Borus said as he reverently held out two dull steel vials for Andra’s inspection.

They were shaped like stylized bones with little bubbles in the center. One was painted red and was shiny, with deep cross-hatching on the nubs on either side of the lump that presumably contained whatever the incendiary material was.

The other was painted blue, with a smoother matte finish.

“The hell is this?” she asked, tapping the blue one.

“Slime from an ooze-weaver.”

Andra recoiled slightly. Ooze-weavers had slime that stuck around for hours, was almost impossible to clean off, and didn’t dry in the air.

“And that one?” she asked, pointing at the red steel vial.

“Explosives.”

“You brought me a fancy firecracker?” she asked, glancing over at Cal meaningfully. “For forty stones?”

“Forty stones!?” Cal demanded. “It said fifteen on my list!”

“That was your list. My list was better,” Borus said to Cal before glancing back up at Andra. “I’ve got at least a dozen more under that price, but how about I just show you what the kid can do with them?”

“Be my guest.”

“Alright boy,” he said, pointing at two young men in a vigorous practice match. “Use this one on them.” He handed Cal the blue one.

The difference between the look and feel of the two vials, Cal assumed, was so that they were never mistaken for each other, as one was absolutely lethal and the other mildly inconvenient.

“You’re sure this has slime in it?”

“Ninety-nine percent… Probably.”

“Use it on a target first,” Andra said, her voice dour.

“Alright, how thick is the plating?” Cal asked.

“Eighth of an inch, or thereabouts.”

Shaping.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Cal blindly targeted a tiny sphere inside the steel vial and pumped all one hundred and twenty-one pounds of mass into the duplicate, aiming just in front of the targets.

A three-foot-diameter sphere of clear fluid appeared in front of the straw men, and in the blink of an eye, it exploded outward, somehow maintaining a single umbrella-shaped piece as it splattered all over the targets, and coated all the hard-packed dirt within twenty feet with a thick layer of slime.

Borus squealed with delight, clapping his chubby, semitransluscent hands together. “It works! It works just like I’d hoped!”

“Color me unimpressed,” Andra said as the practicing archers cocked their heads in confusion. One walked up to the edge of the mat of slime and started poking it with a finger, grimacing as the slime followed their finger back up.

“Use it on them, now,” Borus said excitedly, pointing at the two men engaged in swordplay.

Shaping.

5/11 Bent remaining.

The sphere of slime exploded on the two swordfighters, who flinched backward and fell to the ground. One seemed to have difficulty breathing until he bit a hole in the slime, spitting it out and taking a shuddering breath, while the other couldn’t maintain his grip on his sword, which squirted out of his fingers.

When they tried to stand, their legs slipped in the newly-formed muck beneath them and sent them comically careening down to the ground. This repeated itself six times, until the two jointly decided on trying to crawl out of the circle of slime, unfortunately dragging the thick slime along for the ride. There was no escape.

“Better,” Andra said, nodding with a critical frown as people began to crowd around the unfortunate men. A young woman tried to give one of them a hand up, and wound up slipping into the gunk herself, adding to the confusion.

“I dumped a bucket on myself once and couldn’t pick myself off the floor for a good three hours. I had to crawl all the way to the river and dunk myself multiple times,” Borus said cheerfully.

“Dismiss it.”

Cal dismissed the slime, and the gunk on the ground ceased to exist like it’d never been, allowing the two very confused soldiers to stand up, the center of a curious crowd.

Huh, wasn’t sure I could do that.

“Let’s see the other one,” Andra said, pointing at the straw men.

“Ummm…” Borus said.

“What? The slime is interesting, but it doesn’t justify paying you forty stones.”

“Well, those spheres were about four times bigger than I was expecting...”

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Were you holding back earlier, with the cork?”

“Yeah, why?” Cal said.

“Eternus, mother of—” Borus raised a tightened fist and then sighed. “This is why we do prototypes.” He turned to face Andra. “I based my math on a flawed assumption. The explosive will be a bit…stronger than I thought.”

“Stronger isn’t bad. How much stronger?” Andra asked.

“You should probably command everyone to stand back.”

Andra watched him for a second, before sucking in a tremendous breath.

“Form up!” she shouted loud enough to reverberate across the entire field. The entire contents of the practice yard made a hasty formation, their spines straight, eyes forward.

“Against the wall!” she said, pointing to the other side of the yard, away from the straw targets. After a minute, she grunted in satisfaction.

“Calvin, the range is yours. Impress me.”

Damn, I hope these things are good.

Shaping.

4/11 Bent remaining.

A shimmering sphere manifested in between the targets before atomizing in every direction, and then, a fraction of a second later, the entire practice yard was as bright as the sun, radiating painful levels of heat from a hundred feet away.

Just as fast as the light came, it was gone, and Cal was able to open his eyes.

The straw men were gone, the posts holding them up were drastically reduced cinders, and most telling, the wall behind the straw men was glowing orange where the outer layer of stone had been melted until it was shiny.

“That was the same as Malkenrovian Mage’s Fire,” Andra said, her jaw slackening. “That was Mage’s Fire!”

“So it was,” Borus said with a grin. “So, about that forty-stone bill?”

Andra immediately regained her calm, narrowing her eyes at the little berry-shaped man. “How many more are you making?”

“A dozen different types, at least,” he said. “None quite as destructive as this one, but each will have its own effect. And they are reusable, of course.” He pointed at the steel vial in Cal’s hand. “As long as the boy has Bent, those vials can be used as components to create a variety of effects, endlessly.

“Each one of those vials’ interior is coated in glass and reinforced with steel, and should last years before the contents degrade. I also had this made for them.”

It was a small leather belt with dozens of small sleeves that fit the vials perfectly. Borus slipped the blue vial into the sleeve to prove it. The little tabs on the top of the vials were there to make sure it was easy to draw them.

Cal was still staring at the glassed practice yard. He glanced down at the vial in his hand.

Hooollyyy shiiit.

Oh yeah, I’m liking this. Let’s call it Fireball for no particular reason. We can call the slime one Grease…for no particular reason.

“I can’t argue with good work,” Andra said, reaching out and shaking Borus’s hand. “Forty stones; twenty now to cover your costs, and twenty on delivery.”

“More than fair, general,” Borus said with a grin, shoving the belt into Cal’s hands.

“Horas,” Andra said, pulling the Fireball out of Cal’s hand and giving it to her lieutenant. “Take this to the academy and ask them what their excuse is for Splitters not taking part in the war. It better be a good one.”

“Ma’am,” Horas said, taking the vial and running away at full speed.

“Now, let’s get that payment written up,” Andra said, she and the little berry man turning away.

“What about me?” Cal asked.

“Stay here! Lance will take care of you.”

“Who the hell is—”

“I’m Lance,” a man looming over Cal’s shoulder said. “I run the practice yard.” He glanced over his shoulder at the lined-up onlookers staring at Cal.

“Back to it!” he shouted, and the gawkers flinched, returning to their practice. The archers went out to a shed and dragged more stakes, hammers, and straw men out to the crispy side of the yard. Cal could feel one of the guys he’d slimed watching him with a fair amount of hostility, but that was fair.

Cal wrapped the belt around his waist and put the blue vial near where his hand rested.

“You must be Andra’s new pet wizard,” Lance said, eyeing him critically. “Still got your baby fat. Ever been in the army before?”

“No.”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir.”

“Alright, let’s give you the experience. Start running.”

“Huh?”

“NOW NOW NOW!” Lance lunged for him and Cal started running as he was unwittingly herded toward the group of jogging recruits, blending in with them for cover.

Lance let off him once he was jogging with the rest of the recruits. He could already feel their curious eyes on him, prickling from every direction. At least they weren’t overtly hostile.

“You the one that made the explosion, some kind of Malkenrovian mage?” one of them asked, a short, barrel-chested young man about Cal’s age.

“Yeah, but I’m a wizard.”

“You’re Malkenrovian, though,” another chimed in.

“Well, yeah.”

“What’s it like being a noble?” a short girl with close-cropped hair asked.

“A wha?” Cal asked, craning his neck to glance over at her in confusion.

“Wizards are all nobles, generally. At least, the ones who can do stuff like that. It’s hard to raise your Mind very high when you’ve gotta put food on the table.”

“That makes sense,” Cal said. “I’m more like a series of freak accidents than a noble. My mom’s a shepherd.” That can kill people with her bare hands. Cal was starting to find that a little suspicious.

The surrounding glances that he felt against his skin softened somewhat.

“What about your dad?” the barrel-chested boy asked.

“What dad?” Cal scoffed. There were plenty of decent male role models strewn around the village, but most of them were at arm’s length.

I can be your male role model.

Shut up, you.

“Sprints!” Lance shouted, and everyone except for Cal burst into a mad dash, removing his cover and allowing Lance to hit Cal across the back with a switch.

Agh, son of a bitch! I’m definitely not inviting this guy to my kingdom.

Definitely.

Over the course of the afternoon, Lance tried to break Cal, but being raised by Karen…he was more than prepared for grueling exercise. At the end of the day, Cal collapsed into a pile with the rest of them, drinking from wooden mugs with shaky hands.

“Form up!” Lance shouted before Cal was quite finished drinking. Cal jumped to his feet, struggling to find a place to stand. Finally, they were arranged in a nice five-by-five square, spines straight.

“Calvin, you’re out of line!”

“What?”

“As the lowest rank of officer, you may be everyone else’s bitch, but you still outrank the enlisted to either side of you. Come to the front, far right.”

“Well, you are a wizard,” a boy next to Cal said softly.

“Huh.” Calvin stepped out and placed himself at the front, rightmost position.

“Now, we are going to work on your salutes, with an emphasis on how to salute a superior, because for most of you, that’s going to be all you do, and for some of you in particular, it could be a matter of life and death.” His gaze settled on Cal for a moment.

Crap.

***Kala***

“How about this one?” Kala asked, turning her scribble over and showing it to Ella. Her translator didn’t need to interpret at this point, since they’d been over this so many times.

“A bit sharper on the top,” Ella said. “Sharper.” She made a triangle with her fingers. “Top.”

“Ah.” Kala erased the scribble and started changing it to Ella’s specifications.

As it turned out, Calvin Gadsint didn’t have a family crest, much to the surprise of the Diviner paid to find it for them. He said it wasn’t possible, that everyone had a family crest since hundreds of years ago, but he couldn’t explain why a drop of Calvin’s blood gave them nothing.

So Kala had stepped in and took the opportunity to design it for him. Since it was going on Ella, she got to have a say in it, and they put their heads together to create a work of art. Something simple, but elegant. They were currently sitting in the lobby of the skin-artist, a beautician who tattooed upper-class citizens.

They could have gone down to the slave dealer and gotten it stamped out real quick, but it would have most likely been ugly, with messy lines.

The slave dealer… Kala thought guiltily as Ella excitedly watched her draw over her shoulder.

“Are you…okay with this?” Kala asked. “Getting Cal’s house symbol on you? It means he owns you.”

Her translator dutifully interpreted her words into Genosian babble.

Ella blinked at her for a moment, then laughed and blurted out a torrent of words that made the translator rock back on his heels.

“What’d she say?”

“It was a little confusing, but it was something along the lines of, and I’m paraphrasing here: It doesn’t really bother me. It won’t change the fact that I practically own him already. We're bonded more deeply than that, and if he dies first, it’ll be a nice little reminder of my Chained Spirit. Otherwise, his Chained Spirit can have his mark on it. It’s a win-win.”

“Chained Spirit?” Kala asked. “Wait, practically own him already? What does that mean?” She bristled at the friendly girl’s grin. Did she seduce him with that gorgeous body? Kala found her eyes roaming Ella’s curves. I wish I could… Kala shook her head, glancing at the faint pink tether pointing in the direction of the castle, where Calvin was.

Stay on task, Kala thought to herself, putting her mental blinders on while her translator carried on her question. Do not be distracted by amazing boobs or the fact that Cal put on a lot of muscle since you last saw him.

“It’s something unique to my people. I will show you what I mean when we get back to the castle,” Ella said with a smile.

“Now. Where do you think the tattoo would make my Incha Huala lose the ability to speak?” she asked, pointing at her breastbone. “Here?”

“I don’t—”

She tugged her skirt down, revealing the very top of the juicy curves of her bottom. “Here? Ooor…” She slid the waistband of her skirt down until her entire lower stomach was revealed, dangerously close to exposing her womanhood. “Here?”

Kala’s heart was hammering in her ears, the skin of her face burning. “Uuuuhhh….”

Ella grinned. “That’s the one,” she said in Gadveran.

Trevor the translator spoke something harshly in Genosian, causing Ella to give a dissatisfied grunt before tugging her skirt back up.

“I’m sorry, princess. This savage has no sense of propriety.”

“No, it’s fine!” Kala said, a little louder than she intended.

By the gods, I feel like I need a drink of water, and maybe a bucket of it over my head.

“So, which one do you want?” Trevor said.

“Can you give me a minute to decide?” Kala asked, her voice a bit squeakier than normal.

Chapter 34: Make Me a Sammich

***Kala***

“So the Guya, when used properly,” Ella said, motioning with her hands, “establishes a very strong, very stable bond, with an Uenha, and a Poeor.”

Kala glanced up at the translator, who shrugged. It seemed like the words went over his head, too. She looked back down at the pink aura flickering out of her body, looking like a flame that pointed in the direction of Calvin. It was like the Genosian girl was a Calvin compass.

Ella wasn’t really looking at where she was going, either, but every turn brought them closer to Cal.

“The Poeor wants what is best for the Uenha, and the Uenha wants what the Poeor wants. It varies a bit between individuals. This is actually a better bond than both wanting the best for each other, or wanting what the other wants, as they can lead to cross-purposes or strange emotional paradoxes. We discovered this through much experimentation with the Guya in different amounts and mixtures.”

“So which one are you?” Kala asked, curious.

Ella blushed and glanced away. The tall Genosian’s embarrassment was a lot cuter than Kala had thought possible.

“The Uenha,” she muttered quietly.

“Is that bad?”

“No, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just…” She raised her hands in fists before relaxing them by her side again with a sigh. “...not the role I expected to take. I’ve always been the one with stronger Will.”

“Does that mean you have to do what he tells you?” Kala asked.

Slave magic existed in Gadvera, but it was, for the most part, crude pain- or suffocation-inducing enchantments that owners used to condition their property. Kala had never heard of anything as subtle as what Ella spoke of.

“Not even a little bit,” Ella said. “But I want to, as long as he wants me to.”

Ella glanced down at Kala in a way that reminded her of a hungry animal, sending a shiver of fear down her spine. Fear, and the tiniest tingle of lust.

“I want everything he wants.”

“Is that so?” Kala said, returning her attention to the crowded street in front of them. Let’s not overthink this. She’s probably talking about something else. Not me. That would be… Unbidden, the idea of being encapsulated between Ella’s soft body and Calvin’s lean muscle came to mind, and the tingle of lust redoubled.

For the briefest instant, she could imagine herself burying her face in between those soft mounds, reveling in the Genosian’s silky skin while Calvin got behind her, using her distraction to—

“Hey, look at that!” Kala shouted to distract herself from her unprincesslike thoughts. “Fried gardor bits!” She pointed at the food stall on the side of the road, where the vendor hawked his product to passersby. Gardor was a large land predator that was a bit gamey, but good chopped into smaller bits, heavily seasoned, and put on a stick.

“They smell good,” Ella said as they walked toward them. She stopped a few feet away and considered for a moment, seemingly consulting something.

“Let’s get some extra. Calvin is hungry,” Ella said, nodding.

She can tell that? Kala might have dismissed the Bond talk as the words of a savage so neck-deep in her ritual culture that she couldn’t see beyond it, but…

Seer has reached Level 5!

Seer Level 5: See the truth of the soul.

+1 Intuition.

Please choose an Ability from the list of compatible ones—

Kala took a deep breath and forced the messages away, like she’d been trained. As a princess, it had been drilled into her to put the utmost consideration into her Ability choices. Definitely not something she should do on the side of a busy street, walking with her crush’s beautiful…slave…thing?

Honestly, the dynamic of their relationship was causing her more than a little stress, and she had far too much on her mind to make a calm decision now, so she put it off for when she could get her uncle’s advice.

“Sounds good,” Kala said in response to Ella’s suggestion, and Trevor fished some small copper dust coins out of his bag and gave them to her. The smell of the heavily seasoned meat was starting to affect Kala now, and by the time she got to the front of the line with Ella, she was starving.

When she got to the front, the vendor took one look at Kala’s silk clothes, then his gaze flickered over to the towering Genosian barbarian, who smiled at him with her sharp teeth.

“What can I get for you, mistress?” he said, smiling and bowing deferentially. Kala was well known, but not that well known. A vendor on the street wouldn’t know her right away. The man was merely bowing to her clothes.

“A dozen skewers,” she said.

“Five dust, please.”

It was a bit more than she expected, but well within their price range. She dropped the copper pieces on the table, and the man swiftly handed the skewers to Ella, who began eating them immediately.

“Ahh.” The vendor paled as the person he’d assumed was a slave began eating her mistress’s food. Kala enjoyed his confusion for a moment, before she took pity on him.

“They’re for her,” she said with a practiced, gentle, princesslike nod.

“I see. Yes, that makes sense.” The vendor nodded, and returned to his business as they left.

“Pass me one of those,” Kala said once they were back in the street, and the Genosian handed one of the greasy sticks over without complaint, currently working her way through the meat at a prodigious rate with those sharp teeth.

“I’ll never get tired of how many spices you lowlanders use,” Ella said, smacking her lips between shearing off pieces of tough meat with ease. It was impressive, but it didn’t distract Kala from a question that had been burning in her mind for a while now.

“Have you told Calvin all this, about the Uenha and Poeor?”

“Not exactly, no,” Ella said, her expression a bit guarded.

“Why?”

“A few years before she died, my mother told me to never let a man know exactly how much sway he has over you. She always had my father picking up shells, so I figured she probably knew what she was doing.”

“Picking up shells?”

“Obeying her every whim?” Ella responded.

“You mean wrapped around her finger?”

“Why would she wrap him around her finger? How would that even work? He’d have to be tiny, and malleable, like some kind of plaything… Ooohhh.”

Kala giggled as the Genosian stared into the distance, her jaw slack as she pondered the idiom, the biggest stumbling block of learning a new language.

“This gives me an idea,” Kala said after daintily chewing and swallowing her third princess-sized bite. Ella was on her fourth skewer. Kala watched the girl devour her meal enviously. Even if Kala tried, over a decade of conditioning made it literally difficult to chew more than a little at a time.

“Yes?”

“You say there’s a bond, and that Calvin’s affected, but how do we test that?”

Ella didn’t know that Kala could see the bond. Matter of fact, nobody knew she could see it, and Kala didn’t intend to tell anyone about it, either. If she did, it felt like she would be admitting that Ella had the advantage, somehow. Or maybe Calvin had the advantage?

Kala was very confused.

Still, that didn’t stop Kala’s urge to spawn some unprincesslike mischief using the bond.

“Here’s how we test it…”

***Calvin***

“Backs straight, fists above the heart!” Lance shouted as they drilled their salutes for the umpteenth time today. The sun was already starting to go down, and Cal’s shoulders were burning as he tried to hold the weighted wristband above his heart.

This seems cruel and unusual, Cal thought. Nobody else got weighted wristbands.

Nobody else disrespected the Hash’Maje.

Lance looked over them one more time, eyeing Calvin critically before finally nodding. He could give them a hard time for a couple hours, but it would be counterproductive to take an entire group of recruits and stunt their training.

“Alright, put your hands down. You’re done.”

The recruits heaved a collective sigh of relief as they relaxed their postures.

“Done with learning your salute!” Lance shouted. “Break off into your practice groups by Skill! Recruits with Swordfighting over there! Recruits with Archery there! Stealth Skills over there with Scoutmaster Felix!”

They stood there stunned a moment, having been fully expecting to go to bed after this was over and done.

“I didn’t think I needed to remind you, but there is a war out there, recruits, and in a day, maybe two, it’s going to be on our doorsteps. You are not being trained for some vague maybe-war. You’re being trained for the day after tomorrow, when you’ll be called on to defend the city wall. Get the lead out of your asses!”

The recruits jumped to obey, and Cal headed toward Scoutmaster Felix, an older Gadveran man with leather-like skin and a dark brown cloak. He seemed like he could blend into the background, despite his distinctive features.

Well, I do have Stealth, so I better go over there.

“Hold on,” Lance said, grabbing Cal by the back of his shirt collar.

“Ack, what?”

“You’re a special case. If what I saw was anything to go by, Andra’s going to be using you as a trump card. My guess is, both you and her are gonna want you to live through more than one such event, and that’s why, on behalf of the general, I’m going to put you through The Gauntlet.”

“The what?”

“What are your defensive Skills?” Lance asked, ignoring him. “We’ve got to squeeze as much improvement out of them as we can before you get put out on the front lines.”

“Umm….”

Calvin didn’t exactly have defensive Skills. Third Eye and Feel Intent synergized to create something that could be misconstrued as one, but he didn’t actually have any.

“Armored? Dodge?”

Cal shook his head.

“Shield-work? Toughness? Meat-shield?”

Cal shook his head. “I don’t have any.”

“Damn,” Lance said, scratching the back of his head before clapping Cal on the shoulder.

He felt Lance’s gaze land on his stomach, filled with the intent to strike him.

Sure enough, Lance’s other fist swept forward, aiming to catch Cal in the stomach. Cal stepped out of the way, wrenching his shoulder out of the man’s grip and allowing the burly fist to sweep through the air.

“Well, you’ve got something,” Lance said, raising a brow. “You didn’t lie to me about having the Dodge Skill, didja?”

“It’s not a defensive Skill,” Cal responded, on guard now as the master of the yard returned to his previous calm, thoughtful stance.

“Well, it’ll do. I don’t know how you survived as long as you have, but there’s some people out there that can kill someone in an instant from distances that beggar belief. Those kind of people are always held back, on the lookout for your kind of people.”

Lance straightened Cal’s uniform where it’d been disheveled from dodging.

“My kind of people?”

“The squishy kind that can kill a lot of people at once with a single Ability.”

“Ah.”

“So, we’re gonna beat some defense into you. I’ve been told you were raised by a Malkenrovian Frontliner. That’s a good start, but now we’re going to teach you how to live past the first dramatic demonstration of your power.”

“Why do I get the feeling this is going to be humiliating?” Cal asked as Lance’s grin slowly widened.

***

“Hit the ground harder and roll with a spring, not a flop!” Lance shouted, but Cal could barely hear anything over the muffling of the safety mask and his own heartbeat.

He was crouched behind some hay bales meant to simulate a palisade, trying to throw colored balls (simulating spells) at bottles (simulating troops) in front of him while half a dozen grinning Gadveran archers were simulating Ilethan snipers by shooting at his head every time he peered over to take a shot.

“Begin!”

Cal leapt up and reoriented on the target, feeling the waiting archers catch sight of him, throwing the ball as quickly as he could. He missed.

Damn.

When he felt one of the archers’ gazes experience the spike of surety that preceded a shot, Cal slammed himself down to the ground, rolling away with a push, bouncing off the hardpacked dirt and further away. Four blunted practice arrows hit the bale behind him as Cal jumped to his feet with another ball, ready to throw it right this time.

A blunted arrow caught the center of his mask, knocking his head violently backward and toppling him over.

“You’re dead! Reset!” Lance shouted, and the archers walked past Cal’s ‘corpse’ to retrieve their arrows.

This training doesn’t seem particularly safe. Fun to watch, though, Elliot commented.

Suck my dick, Cal thought, panting as he stared up at the Scowling Moon. The moon’s mouth was especially bright tonight.

“As a wizard, you are, and always will be, a high-priority target. It’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to get those limp-wristed academy types to do their goddamned duty. They have to duck, and that’s beneath them.

“Not you, though!” Lance said, hands on his hips, grinning from ear to ear. “You don’t have that pesky pride problem, the fear of death, or the option to refuse!”

“Well-summarized,” Cal said.

“Thank you. Now! Five more rounds, then we’ll be done…”

Cal sighed in relief. Each round was only a minute or two, so he didn’t have much longer to go before—

“Then we can start on your close combat self-preservation techniques!”

That wretch! I’ll make him lick my boots!

Bwahahah, he got you again! Elliot jeered.

I swear, I will find a way to hurt you, and we’ll see what you have to say then.

Good luck.

“Calvin!” Kala’s voice pierced through Calvin’s grouchiness, and shut Lance up completely. The master of the yard turned around and immediately saluted Kala, along with the rest of the damnable archers who’d been using him as a living target the last hour.

“What is it?” Calvin asked, forcing himself to his feet, every muscle aching. It wasn’t like he could improve his Body without another Break, but Lance was merciless.

“Something’s wrong with Ella!”

True to her words, Ella was being half-carried by Trevor the translator, stumbling along. She couldn’t keep it up, and toppled to the ground, gasping for air.

A surge of mindless panic speared through his mind, thrashing around inside one of the partitions he’d made for the Guya. It still put some quickness in his movements.

“What’s going on? What happened?” he asked, his guts turning to ice.

“I don’t know!” Kala said, looking over Ella.

“I haven’t had real food in days,” Ella said weakly. “Gadveran food has been damaging my stomach…. I need…meat.”

“Okay, I can get that,” Cal said, shooting to his feet, heedless of the pain in his legs. He needed to get some meat for Ella. He could probably grab some from the barracks kitchen, and be back in less than a minute.

“And…”

“Yeah?” Cal asked, turning back.

“Could you put it between two slices of bread?” Ella asked meekly, her voice faint.

“Got it.” Cal nodded, heading toward the kitchen.

“With pickles and mayo?” she whispered.

“’Course.”

Cal began to sprint away at full speed, his feet eating up distance at an incredible pace. He felt like he was practically flying, heart pounding in his chest.

Wait a minute. She can’t eat bread.

Cal slowed down to a trot, then came to a halt a hundred feet from the barracks door before turning to face the two girls.

Ella was cackling madly, her hands wrapped over her belly as she kicked divots in the grass. Kala was covering her mouth, her eyes dancing with laughter as she giggled.

Neither of them had been looking at him the entire time, and so he’d bought every word without question, his judgment clouded by the Guya. This told him a couple things:

1.       Kala and Ella knew he could tell a lie when people were looking at him.

2.       They enjoyed humiliating him.

3.       I don’t know, I take it as a pretty good sign when your girlfriends get along well.

The nine hells do you know? Cal demanded as he walked back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ella said as Cal approached. “The princess has a more devious mind than she lets on.”

Cal felt a wave of relief that nothing was wrong with Ella. “So you are okay, then?” Never hurts to be totally sure, a foreign little voice whispered.

She chortled for a bit longer, irritating Cal to where he thought he was going to do something less than gentlemanly, before nodding. “I am fine.”

“Good, good.”

“Incha Huala, my Intuition is much better than yours, and after spending the evening with her, I think your friend here washes on both sides of the river.”

“What?”

“I think she hunts and sews.”

“…..What!?” Cal asked again. Genosian idioms weren’t exactly his strong suit.

“I THINK KALA LIKES MEN AND WOMEN, SEXUALLY!” Ella shouted.

Trevor the translator went pale and glanced at Kala.

“What’d she say about me?” Kala asked.

“Too fast to make out, ma’am,” Trevor said, awkwardly standing up and shuffling away.

“What’d she say?” Kala asked again, turning her eyes to Calvin, her gaze burning with curiosity and strange, conflicted competitiveness for him, and towards him.

It was Calvin’s turn to bust out laughing, and Ella followed suit shortly after, her face crumbling like a dam under a flood, until they were howling with laughter.

“What is it?” Kala demanded. A moment later, she narrowed her eyes and pulled a journal out of Trevor’s bag and jotted something down.

“When I find out what those thirteen syllables mean, you two are in trouble.”

Calvin gasped between painful laughter, slamming his fist on the ground, tears in his eyes. “Maybe…” Cal said, gasping for breath. “Maybe we will be. Maybe we both will be. Ahahahaha!”

Cal’s laughter was interrupted by the master of the yard’s iron grip hauling him and Ella to their feet.

“Good, looks like we’ve got more volunteers for practice. Princess, since you’ve got free time, come with me.” He nodded to Kala and proceeded to haul Cal and Ella over to the fighting rings.

Chapter 35: On the Wall

“How can such a little thing hit so hard?” Ella said, rubbing the bruises across her body as they lay across from each other in the barracks.

They had gotten a few strange looks, but after a while, the other soldiers simply dismissed Ella as a quirk of Cal being a wizard and further evidence that he couldn’t possibly be as common as he professed to be.

Nobles often took their servants or trusted slaves with them anywhere they went.

“You got in a few good hits, too. She’s probably got at least six Breaks and trainers whose job is making sure she makes the most of them,” Cal said.

Ella blinked. “She’s an Aiaka?” Her jaw slowly dropped.

“Not what you would consider a natural one,” Cal said, flipping onto his back. “Man-made. There’s probably a guy out there whose only job it is to do the math on when, exactly, Kala should stop raising a single primary Attribute and start getting Skills and spreading out her points. I wouldn’t be surprised. Her Mind and Body are probably much higher than they should be, with only a handful of Skills, while a ‘natural’ Aiaka’s Abilities would be more organically spread out, along with being vastly more experienced at using them in a combat situation.”

“Kala’s an Aiaka…” Ella whispered, staring into the distance.

Cal rolled his eyes. His body was sore from being kicked around by Kala, but he had gotten a few good hits in with the practice sword himself—enough to make her take him seriously—so he knew she wasn’t nearly as good as Karen.

Far stronger and faster than him, though.

Ella had been learning how to use a shield. It wasn’t a typical Skill for Genosians or Gadverans to learn, since it wasn’t good for hunting, and Gadverans didn’t favor it. There was a dusty practice shield in the corner, though, and after hearing Cal’s stories about his Aiakan mother, she decided to try it.

She took to it well, her larger frame giving her a ridiculous range of motion with the heavy wood-and-steel kite. She’d even given Kala a bloody nose when she’d used her chainless flail in a novel way, shoving the shield into Kala’s personal space unexpectedly and swinging Crusher around the edge, completely unhindered by the inch and a half of wood and steel between the head and the haft of the weapon.

Cal had seen Kala go down in a spray of blood, and for a second he thought he and Ella were going to be summarily executed, but General Andra had watched with satisfaction as Kala dragged herself back to her feet, and proceeded to never fall for that trick again.

That was when Cal stopped holding back for fear of reprisal, but it didn’t make a big difference. He’d gotten in a couple hits every now and then, but he still lost more than he won through sheer difference in physical talent. By the time they had worked off their extra energy to Lance’s satisfaction, all three of them were sweaty and bruised.

There was still room for improvement for Cal, but it wasn’t on the practice yard. Bent use was forbidden on the practice yard, because they couldn’t afford for foot soldiers to wait a week to get all their Bent back if the enemy came knocking on the door the next day. That, and the leadership was wary of a poorly-aimed Air Blade coming out of nowhere and cutting someone’s head off.

That was why Cal needed to get Shadow Boxing as soon as he could. A safe way to train his Skills at no cost was worth its weight in nem. Even with the hectic life of a low-ranking new recruit, he still knew what his goals were.

“I’m going to meditate. Pinch me if something happens,” Cal said.

“Hard?” Ella asked.

“Hard.”

“You got it.”

Cal took one last look at the timeworn wood ceiling before closing his eyes.

Eye of the Tiger.

The constant chatter of young men and women faded away in an instant as Cal reached a dreamlike state, floating in a void of his own making. Time passed while Cal mused over recent events, using his absolute focus to practice, review his recent lessons, and the names, faces, and ranks of his fellow recruits.

Meditation has reached Level 9.

Level 9: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 45% correction.

***

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because his eyes flashed open to the sound of shouting and running feet.

“Out of the bed, you gringel farmers! I swear a gardor in hibernation moves faster than you!” Lance shouted, clapping his meaty hands together and walking from bed to bed, using his superior weight to kick new recruits unceremoniously out of bed.

Gadverans didn’t typically wear underwear, and Calvin saw Ella wince when one girl tumbled out of her bed in the buff and slammed straight down onto her chest.

“Ow,” she said, slipping her ravaged Gadveran clothes on. They’d tried to put her in a uniform, and she’d nearly bit someone’s finger off, until Cal had pointed out that she wasn’t technically part of the army. The following several hours of pushups had changed his mind, and eventually Ella had agreed to wear them.

Lance glanced over at Ella, and spotted the ragged edges where she had torn away the legs and sleeves of her uniform, to match Genosian style.

Here we go, Cal thought, sliding his pants on as quickly as he could. At the very least, he’d like to be fully dressed when the inevitable punishment came. Lance’s face crumpled into a mask of anger, but he didn’t approach them, instead continuing his circuit around the barracks, putting a sense of urgency in even the groggiest members.

That can’t be good, Cal thought with a sinking stomach. The only reason Lance would ignore something like the destruction of a uniform would be if there was something incredibly pressing going on right now, and it would inevitably be worse for Cal than some corporal punishment. Calvin sped up.

A distant, muffled explosion confirmed Cal’s suspicions, rocking the entire barracks. Bits of dust fell from the thick wooden beams above them, and Cal buckled his pants faster than he ever had before, grabbing his folded shirt and tossing it over his head.

Nice, your Intuition has come a long way. Elliot’s thoughts reverberated in his mind.

What’s the difference? Cal thought as he hustled out the door. What does Intuition even do? All the village elders spoke in allegory, like the difference between seeing the sun and feeling its warmth.

Pfft, hahaha. Well, let me see if I can define it.

“Line up on the east side of the yard in front of one of the sergeants you see there, twenty deep. Move your asses!” Lance shouted as the recruits streamed out of the barracks, pointing to where ten grizzled men and women were standing, waiting for their groups.

This all seems highly informal.

Like they’re picking teams for dodgeball.

Cal and Ella were about to jump into the third line, but Lance dragged him aside.

“Wait here. Andra’s got a job picked out for you already.”

While Cal cooled his heels and studied the rising plume of smoke above the city walls, Elliot went into detail about the attribute.

Intuition and intelligence are not the same, although they are linked. A highly intelligent person can still be stupid as shit if they take everything at face value and never ask the question ‘why’. ‘Why’ is the core of Intuition. Why is that guy wearing fancy shoes and shabby clothes? Why did she throw wine in your face when your friend was the one who said something mean? Why, why why.

In essence, Intuition raises your critical thinking and keeps you asking the question ‘why’. You didn’t really question anything when you were younger, am I right?

You don’t have to remind me.

In addition to the way it alters your thinking, it’s also the determining factor in the power of spells that affect other Users, usually their mind. Those Ilethan fellows have high Intuition, which helps them decode your resistance faster than otherwise, which leads to more powerful illusions and mind control, etc.

Is Ella’s Paralysis spell like that?

And Kala’s Commanding Voice. Both use Intuition to apply their effect to you. Think of it like...you’re a swimming pool, and your Stability is the size of the pool, and your Will is the filter.

Cal squinted. He wasn’t entirely sure what a swimming pool was. Like a pool of water specifically for swimming? In Deinos, swimming was a good way of being eaten by norlocks. Could there be people who had enough time and money to dedicate entire ponds simply to swimming? Was Elliot one of them?

Think of the spell as a dye. They want to turn your pool red, or blue, so they pour the dye into it. If your Stability—that is, your pool—is exceptionally big, then the dye won’t really do much. Too much water to dye it all.

Elliot kept going without acknowledging Calvin’s thoughts.

Then your Will filters out the effect over time. The opposite could theoretically be true: You could have high Will and low Stability, then your pool would be dyed by others’ magic easily, but clear up very quickly. Although, having high attributes of each kind is recommended.

You might ask why Intuition doesn’t help with other spells, and that’s because the nonliving universe you are interacting with doesn’t have Stability or Will. It simply isn’t plugged into the System, and can’t resist. Anything that directly affects another User, however, is going to be severely restricted.

Setting them on fire doesn’t count?

You weren’t setting them on fire; you were creating flaming material very close to them. Them burning wasn’t the direct effect of the spell; it was the effect of the material created by the spell.

I think I get it.

Glad I could help.

“What’s going on?” Ella said as another explosion shook the ground under their feet.

“The Ilethan have shown up. We’re at war,” Calvin said.

“The trade people? But they’re so weak.”

Cal cocked an eyebrow and glanced over at the well-meaning Genosian. A shadow flickered overhead.

“Down!” Lance shouted, forcing Cal to the ground with a thick arm.

A barrel big enough to square dance on fell out of the sky and slammed into the barracks before the entire structure was consumed by a fiery explosion.

A storm of hot dust and shrapnel washed over them, and when it passed, Cal saw Ella standing in front of him, hand covering her eyes, skin silvery and reflective.

“Apparently you’ve never heard of siege weaponry,” Cal said, flicking bits of barracks off his lieutenant uniform as Ella stared at the destroyed building, reduced to flaming bits of rubble.

“Alas, my memories of losing my virginity will have to live on inside me, for the place itself has taken a pounding,” one of the more poetic grunts said, while the others chuckled.

Cal could see in their eyes they were covering the fear of death with bawdy humor.

Intuition…. Elliot whispered.

Lance glanced up at the wall, where someone was signaling him with some kind of flag. Cal didn’t know exactly what they were saying, but he pointed up at the wall.

“The general wants you up on the northeast wall,” he said. “Get yourself and your savage some armor, then get up there. Don’t make her wait.”

Calvin could feel a bit of ire at the ‘savage’ comment, despite feeling it was objectively true. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was the Guya, or the last few weeks together that was triggering it, though. Rather than argue about it, he simply nodded and started running for the armory, trailing Ella behind him.

Cal ran into the armory, which was a confusing mess of activity, clattering steel, and cursing as men and women strapped Gadveran light armor on. They were in such a rush that many of them were ignoring the posted rules that dictated they carry their armor to the changing area, and simply changing where they stood, clogging up the already claustrophobic room.

An older man, skinny with a jutting chin and grey hairs, walked up to the two of them, giving Ella a second glance before addressing Cal.

“Size?” he asked brusquely.

Cal gave him his and Ella’s sizes, and the man pointed out where they could find armor that would fit them. A second later, the quartermaster was demanding the size of the next person through the door, hot on Cal’s heels.

They bobbed and weaved through the choked hall full of half-dressed soldiers, occasionally getting slammed against racks of formed steel, but without enough time to stop and see who had done it.

“Here,” Cal said, pointing out a suit of hardened leather in Ella’s size. It was the only one, seeing how few soldiers were actually her size.

Cal spent a minute helping Ella put the armor on, buckling the sides and back while she got the front. He felt a bit of her softness beneath his knuckles as he worked the straps, and it might have been extremely interesting if they weren’t in such a hurry.

As if to emphasize Cal’s thoughts, an explosion rocked the entire armory, spilling razor-sharp swords on the ground and knocking several dressing people onto their asses.

Cal ignored a sudden scream of pain and finished Ella’s armor before moving on to his own: a simple breastplate and helmet to protect his vitals. He wanted to stay as light as he could, especially since his Strength wasn’t high enough to wear tons of protective gear without being slowed to a crawl.

Cal slung the spell component holster around his waist once he was done, making sure he could still draw them easily. He still only had the slime; most likely, someone didn’t trust him with that kind of firepower.

I don’t have to have them in my hand when I use Splitting, I just have to have a really precise idea of where they are in relation to me. Being in my hand helps. But maybe with practice, I could use them from something more stable than a holster, like a bracer, or embedded in a piece of armor.

You could always fuse a component to a bone and hide it under your skin.

That sounds painful and dangerous and stupid.

Sure, with modern medicine in its current state. Back in my day, people did subdermals all the time.

So you agree it’s stupid.

Eh.

Calvin and Ella hustled out of the armory, marching past the quartermaster, who was watching an unfortunate recruit bandage his own foot where he’d stepped on a fallen sword, making a little puddle of blood just at the entrance. A few uncaring feet had begun tracking the blood in and out of the building, and Cal steered himself around the mess.

We’re about to see a lot more of that, Cal thought, his heart hammering in his chest as he glanced up at the city wall looming over them. The tops of the walls to the east were just beginning to receive the light of dawn from the sun peeking above the ocean, and Cal could see a flurry of activity there.

No time like the present to start working on my goal:

Wizard-King.

Cal straightened his poorly-fitted helmet and yanked the strap under his chin tight before following the stream of soldiers heading for the walls.

The extra fifteen pounds of armor slowed Cal down as he raced up the steps, and he shuddered to think what would have happened if he had a full suit, reaching the top of the stairs panting with exertion.

At the upper landing, Cal squinted his eyes against the sunlight reflected off the time-worn stone as the pressure of bodies around him lessened. Gadveran troops broke left and right, taking positions along the front of the walls.

Cal’s eyes needed a moment to adjust, viewing the army ahead of them cast in the shadow of Mujenan’s walls. It was mind-bogglingly bigger than he had imagined. Row after row of Ilethan was assembled in a sea of manpower that stretched farther than the eye could see.

Manpower and guarpower. Entire cavalry units riding the ornery lizards took up more space than the village of Deinos, having appeared from under the cover of Ilethan illusionists.

In the distance, trebuchets taller than any structure he’d ever imagined were hauling gigantic barrels full of flame forward, slinging them over hundreds of feet, arcing their payloads above their heads, destroying buildings, starting fires, and generally causing chaos.

Cal had never imagined anything like it.

“That’s a lot of Ilethan,” Ella said, eyes wide.

General Andra was pacing back and forth behind the row of bodies, overlooking the soon-to-be battlefield, when she spotted Calvin approaching her.

“Lieutenant, nice of you to join us.”

Cal saluted, right this time. Gotta play the game.

“What do you need, general?” he asked, mimicking his idea of a professional.

He felt approval from her gaze a fraction of a second before she nodded. Apparently he’d done well enough.

“Nothing yet. What is the maximum range on that spell of yours? Could you light up those trebuchets?” she asked, pointing out the massive constructions lobbing fire over their heads. In her other hand, Cal noticed her thumbing his Fireball component.

Could I do that?

No, the range of Dupdomancy is level squared in feet, paralleling your mass limit. In your case, one hundred and twenty-one feet. Those things are five hundred feet away, easy.

“One hundred and twenty-one feet. I can’t reach them, General.” Cal did some quick math. Although I could once Dupdomancy reaches level twenty-three.

Probably not gonna happen in this battle.

She clicked her tongue. “Guess we gotta wait for the prince.” She stared at the battlefield for a moment, her face grim.

“You see that improbably large army marching toward us?” she said, pointing at the ocean of shiny Ilethan helmets and indigo-colored garb.

“Yeah?”

“Hundred-to-one odds it’s guar shit. The Ilethan love their illusions, and they’re probably creaming in their silk robes, hoping we’ll use up our arrows and spells on fake troops. I’ve been holding fire until we have a way to establish which units are real.”

Cal heaved an internal sigh of relief and thanked the gods the numbers below them weren’t true. Probably.

“I want you to use your wasps, spread them out thin among the enemy and let them do what they do best.”

“You want me to use the wasps to reveal which ones are real,” Cal said, nodding.

“Good, you follow me. Get to work.”

Andra turned back to the archers on the wall. “Get your bows up and keep your eyes sharp! If any of these blue pussies starts dancing funny, put an arrow through his eye! Save your Bent for high-priority targets!”

Cal stepped up to the parapet and held his hand out. The fact that the parapet was about the same height as the training hay bales didn’t escape his notice.

Calvinian Summoning.

8/11 Bent remaining.

Black Bent traveled down the veins of his arm, then emerged from his palm in a cloud of green vapor, flickering as it constructed tiny bundles of flying pain.

The Gadveran soldiers standing next to him flinched backward as a horrendous swarm of over a hundred thousand Fever Wasps flew out in a malicious cloud.

At a mental nudge, the swarm flew down and out, spreading themselves out as thin as they could before they began mindlessly stinging anything they landed on.

In a matter of seconds, well-defined units of real Ilethan soldiers were flinching and slapping at the tiny insects, while their illusionary counterparts continued to march on, heedless of the bugs.

“Ahahahah!” Andra cackled madly. “Light them up!”

A storm of arrows descended from either side of the general, targeting the isolated units, who broke and ran under the assault.

She glanced back at Calvin with a happy grin. “You should be ducking.”

A glint of light from the sky was the only warning Cal got, prompting him to duck behind the parapet. An arrow passed through the space where his head had been. Cal rolled on reflex once he hit the ground. It had been ingrained in him through the hours and hours of drilling.

Why do I have to do this when I’m already behind the parapet?

Cal’s question was answered when a second arrow blew a white-hot hole through the stone parapet, burying itself to the fletching in the top of the wall before the resulting friction made the feathers catch fire. It landed in the exact spot he’d dropped to.

A third arrow arced down from the sky, targeting General Andra almost as an afterthought. She seemed to see it coming, and leaned forward to put her helmet in front of it.

If she dies, do I get a promotion? Probably not.

Cal expected her to get brain-shot, but the arrow that bored through two feet of stone rebounded off her shiny helmet like a normal arrow. Only the small cracks under her feet where the force had been directed into the ground told a different story.

Lance asking him if he’d invested in any defensive Skills made a lot more sense now.

What should I invest in, given the opportunity?

Personally, I prefer defensive Skills that don’t require equipment to use properly. Maybe something like Ella’s Iron Skin, or Toughness?

“Look out!” Ella said, kicking him out of the way of a fourth arrow. The arrow blew through an archer’s leg and drew a line of blood along her metallic skin before it lodged deep in the floor.

“What in the Abyss is the point of the parapet?” Cal demanded over the screaming. “Cuz it doesn’t seem to be doing jack shit.”

“Get Frederick out of here,” Andra snapped, and two nearby soldiers picked up their bleeding comrade, hauling him to the medic.

“They can’t see you,” Andra said, turning her gaze back to Cal. “That counts for something.” She held out a hand, and a nearby lieutenant handed her a spyglass.

“Now, who the hell is giving us so much trouble?” she muttered, as much to herself as everyone else. The general scrunched her weather-worn face up as she peered through the spyglass.

“Huh,” Andra grunted.

“What?”

“Figures. The Ilethan aren’t known for their archery,” she said with a dour tone before offering him the spyglass.

“You’re fine to stand. They’re waiting for their next target.”

Cal stood and took the spyglass.

“Just behind that trebuchet and to the right,” she said, pointing.

Cal peered through the spyglass, orienting on Andra’s directions.

A small group of Gadveran archers with dark skin and oversized lipia bows was stationed there, wearing strange steel headbands lined with Ilethan indigo.

One Gadveran in particular stood head and shoulders over his peers.

“Baroke,” Calvin whispered, studying his giant friend’s blank expression.

Chapter 36: Rescue Plans and Women of Negotiable Virtue

“You know one of them?”

“The big one,” Cal said, handing the spyglass back to her.

Andra peered through the tube for a moment before letting out an appreciative whistle. “Damn, that boy could match a guar. Shame he’s an archer.”

“He did just put a hole through solid stone.”

“You sure it was him?” Andra said, glancing back at Cal.

“He’s the best archer in the village, by far. He was practically a savant with one Break. If he’s had Breaks since then…” Cal shrugged.

“Hmm…” Andra closed her spyglass and handed it to her waiting lieutenant, considering the battlefield.

“Are we going to go rescue him?”

Andra blinked and looked at Cal with wide, disbelieving eyes. “You mean, are we going to sacrifice thousands of people trying to retrieve one of your friends?”

“When you put it like that—”

“Put Baroke out of your mind, Calvin. If he’s as good as you say, the Ilethan will try to keep him in peak condition, and there’s every possibility we will be able to buy him back once we kick their pasty asses out of here. The only thing you need to be concerned about is whether or not your friend is going to blow your mind with one of his arrows.”

“But—”

Andra gave him a look that sent ice down his spine.

“Yes, ma’am.”

If she won’t rescue him, I’ll do it myself.

“You look like you’re going to disobey,” she said, eyes narrowed.

Damn reading Skills.

“No, ma’am,” Cal said, arranging his thoughts and feelings beneath his skin.

“How much Bent you have left, Calvin?”

“Eight, ma’am.”

“Hmmm…” She glanced up at the distant forest that the Ilethan army was tearing apart to build siege towers.

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us. Conserve it. Your bugs are more valuable on a cost-effect basis than anything else we could do with your Abilities. That’s the ugly truth. Whenever they push forward again, and they will, I want you to be able to tell us which ones are real.”

“But what if I—”

“Strategy isn’t always exciting, Calvin. The more complicated the action, the more likely it is to fail. We have a big-ass wall, and we’re going to bleed them for every inch. Simple. It’s going to take time. The only way we could use your time more effectively is to have you kill high-value targets, which would incur a much higher risk to your life. Do you want to die?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Coulda fooled me. Stay on the wall, and keep the rest of your Abilities under wraps until I say so. I want the Ilethan to think of you as the wasp guy. When they come up with a counter, then we can think about coming up with a different tactic for you. Don’t blow your wad on the first day.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Calvin turned away from the scene below him, facing Ella, who was bandaging her leg. A thin line of blood was seeping through the white cloth as she wound the gauze around it.

“How is it?” he asked.

“Gadveran cloth is very fine,” Ella said, pausing to look at the gauze in her hands. “It feels almost sacrilegious to use such a fine cloth to soak up blood. But it’s what’s expected, I suppose.”

“I meant, how is your wound?” Cal clarified, a bit of irritation coming through his voice.

“It won't slow me down,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It didn't hit any muscle or arteries, so I’m happy.”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Cal said lamely.

Ella frowned. “Hurt?” She glanced back down to her leg, and up at him. “When I was eight, I split my foot in half chopping wood for my mother. That hurt.

“I took a Kugeya claw through the liver when I was twelve. That hurt. Chuela carried me all the way home, and I almost died before they gave me Noeula.”

“Well—”

“When I was fourteen, I was shot in the lung by a Seeker tribe,” she said as she stood, towering over him. “Like you were.” She tousled his hair.

“Just a few days ago, I got a tattoo that hurt more.

“This?” She pointed at her leg. “This won’t slow me down at all.” Ella picked up her shield and Crusher, hooking the flail’s handle in her belt, grinning at him.

From what Cal had personally witnessed from the mental tug-o-war between the two of them, Ella had indeed faced far worse than a shallow cut on her leg. He decided to drop the issue. If she wasn’t upset about it, he didn’t see any reason he should be. She’d saved his life, after all.

“I never saw the tattoo. Where is it?” Cal asked. He couldn’t make out any kind of tattoo on her arms or legs, face or neck.

“That’s up to you to find out,” Ella said, sticking out her long pink tongue.

“Well, it’s definitely not on your tongue.” Cal rolled his eyes, his heart hammering as he briefly imagined the process of finding it.

“Gadveran tattoos are much cleaner than ours, that’s for sure. It’s those tiny steel needles. I bet if I brought some home, they’d be thrilled.”

At the mention of her tribe, Cal’s buried anger resurfaced. For her sake, he hoped they were okay. He also wanted to kill her father and every other Genosian adult male and let the rest starve to death.

Feelings were funny things.

Ella’s brows furrowed as she looked at him.

“Look alive, they’re getting ready for another run,” Andra called out to them, breaking him out of the moment.

***

True to the general’s word, the Ilethan pushed four more times in as many hours, cutting Cal’s Bent down to half by noon, when one Bent came back. Each time, Cal was able to isolate the real Ilethan, dropping out of line of sight and avoiding the Bent-powered return fire.

After they realized they couldn’t pin Cal down, they started adapting their tactics.

Cal first noticed it around noon, when a large portion of the twitching unit of several hundred soldiers simply didn’t fall down when peppered with arrows.

In fact, men fell in groups of five or more, falling to the ground wounded in identical ways.

Andra saw it moments after Cal did, and knew what was happening.

“Hollow formations,” she growled, ordering the archers to stop, as Cal looked on in curiosity.

“There’s only twelve men down there, and they got a few thousand arrows out of us.” She studied the battlefield, scanning the Ilethan troops.

“General!” came a shout from the west, drawing their attention to where a Gadveran soldier wearing the usual brown-and-yellow armor waved at them. “A force is climbing the wall, beach-side!”

“Go take care of it,” Andra said, nodding to Cal. “These bastards like their fake-outs, so I’m staying here.”

“Ma’am!” Cal said, breaking into a sprint as he ran along the back of the wall, following the narrow footpath the soldiers were trained to keep clear as he aimed for the beach far to the northwest.

After five breathless minutes, Cal made it to the north side of the city, where yellow-and-brown uniforms were stacked four deep on the top of the wall, their bodies pressing against something he couldn’t quite make out. The average soldier was a tiny bit taller than him, blocking his view as they engaged the Ilethan forces in a chaotic melee.

How the hell am I supposed to help when I can’t see? Cal thought, his gaze blocked by Gadveran uniforms.

I could use Sense-Grafting to get a better view, but no. I’ve got to conserve Bent.

“I need to see what’s going on!” Cal shouted to Ella, pointing forward.

She glanced back up at the situation ahead of them, taller than the surrounding people, and able to see beyond them.

“There’s some kind of giant wooden building making a bridge onto the wall,” she said, peering ahead.

“Siege tower,” Cal said. How the hell did they sneak a siege tower past us on day one?

“They’re streaming out of it,” she said. “We’re trying to push them back, but it’s not going well.”

“I need to see,” Cal said.

“Got it,” Ella said, kneeling down and slapping her knee.

Cal stood on her knee, getting an extra couple feet of vantage as her hands stabilized his legs, preventing him from falling over. Just over the tops of the warring factions’ heads, he could see the wooden tower’s entrance, creating a veritable fountain of men that spilled out onto the stone wall.

Calvin drew the only component he had, the slime, and focused his attention on the interior of the tower.

Shaping.

4/11 Bent remaining.

Slime exploded on the inside of the tower, coating the inner staircase and part of the bridge leading to the wall.

The thundering sound of footsteps running up the internal staircase became thuds and shouts of men unable to keep their feet and sliding all the way down the stairs in a chaotic mess.

“Tremble before the Wizard-King!” Cal shouted. The tower was less than useless now, and would be for the next hour, since the slime wouldn’t dry out or wash off until it disappeared.

Plenty of time for the foot soldiers to deal with the problem.

Damnation! If Andra had given me back the fireball component, I’d be able to reduce this thing into ash in a matter of seconds—why am I falling?

“Ack!” Cal shouted as Ella’s knee twisted out from under him, her hands pulling him down, slamming him to the stony floor.

“Look out,” Ella said, businesslike, as return fire from archers on top of the wooden tower whizzed over his head, burying themselves in the armor of the soldiers crowding in behind him. Ella’s skin turned silver as she put her large kite shield over Cal’s body.

An arrowhead emerged three inches through her wood shield, stopping a hair’s breadth from Cal’s face. Another struck Ella’s head, bouncing off with the ringing of steel.

“Guess they’re not as good as your friend,” she said, eyeing the arrow poking through her shield.

“Guess not,” Cal agreed as the Gadveran troops began to flow around them. The lack of pressure from deeper inside the tower allowed the Gadverans to push the enemy already on the wall back to their bridge.

Once their feet touched the slime, the Ilethan formation collapsed, and they were shoved back into the tower or fell off the side, falling fifty feet to death or critical injury.

“They’ve started hacking the bridge apart,” Ella said, standing and peering over the others while covering him with the shield. “We’re done here.”

***

Dupdomancy has reached Level 12!

Level 12: 144 pounds, 60 minutes.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 4!

Level 4: 64 pound limit, 16 minutes. 0 slots available.

0/11 Bent remaining.

“Uugh,” Calvin groaned as he dragged himself toward the barracks, leaning against Ella, who had arguably done more work than he had. The tension of getting shot at every time he poked his head up drained energy at a completely unreal speed.

“You think she’s trying to stop me from rescuing Baroke?” Cal asked, glancing over at Ella, who sported a couple extra scratches, her hair hanging from her head, stringy and damp with sweat. She was still wearing her armor, with a few arrowheads dangling from the protective leather.

Cal was unharmed.

“I don’t know who this Baroke is, but it seems like Andra’s making sure you don’t have enough Bent to get yourself into trouble.”

“That’s the impression I got, too,” Cal said, thinking back to being ordered about the battlefield until he was completely dry. “She said to come back for some vials of Bent in the morning.”

There wasn’t a barracks anymore, so soldiers were instructed to sleep in a series of buildings close to the wall that had been vacated for the use of the Gadveran military.

The fact that these buildings were a short walk from the red light district seemed to raise morale, as soldiers snuck off in twos and threes to go get fleeced by the local working women. The sergeants overlooked it as long as they were back in bed by morning.

As long as everyone’s happy with the arrangement, Cal thought, glancing down the main street as they limped along, catching a glimpse of a dusky-skinned woman chatting happily with a couple young men, leaning against one of them intimately while placing a possessive hand on the other.

She wore a silk robe that was a lot fancier under the dim light of the lanterns, with some kind of wrap that pushed her breasts up, seemingly a fraction of an inch away from bouncing their way out of her clothes.

She laughed heartily as the young men said something before one of them slid a hand over her waist, and in short order, the three of them ducked into a nearby alley.

“See something you like?” Ella asked with a raised brow, a tiny bit of ire in her voice.

“How much Bent do you think a prostitute has, on average?” Cal asked, glancing back up at her.

Ella’s eyes widened, and moments later, the two of them took a hard right turn, following the stream of soldiers into the soft illumination of the women’s lanterns.

“Hey, you two looking to tackle things together?” one of the women called out to the two of them—a young-looking girl with long, slicked-back hair, lovely breasts, and form-fitting clothes that revealed large swaths of soft skin. “I don’t mind mixing it up.”

She gave the two of them a shy grin as Cal met her gaze. All he felt from her was cold calculation and an undercurrent of malice.

“No, thank you,” Cal said with a polite nod.

Just like that, the woman’s eyes slid off of the two of them as if they’d ceased to exist.

“Are we being picky about the walking Bent container?” Ella whispered as they walked past.

“She was mean,” Cal whispered back. “I want someone willing to help.”

Ella snorted.

They tromped along until he felt a gaze that was older, with more discretion and an undercurrent of altruism. He oriented on a woman sitting against the wall of a building, smoking a bit of Thanja as she studied them curiously. Cal’d found a woman who met his criteria.

“How are you two doing this fine evening?” she asked, knocking a bit of ash out of her pipe. “You can call me Perthea. You seem like you want something special.”

“That is the case,” Cal said, digging into his purse and bringing out a single stone coin. “I’ll give you five dust for each point of your Bent.”

Perthea’s eyebrows rose. “You got some kind of Mutation, boy?”

“Is that a problem?” Cal asked.

She raked her eyes up and down Cal’s body, her gaze containing a healthy amount of caution. A moment later, her gaze flickered over to Ella, then back to him.

“Depends. If you want my Bent, you’ll have to take it right here, in view of everyone. Can you handle that?”

Her caution was understandable. There was no telling with strange Mutations, and Cal hadn’t been particularly specific about how he took Bent. She simply didn’t want to be lured into a room where he might eat her heart to gain her powers or some nonsense. Cal idly realized that walking the streets with a Genosian might give people an odd impression.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then it’s one stone for each Bent.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cal said, eyes narrowing.

“I use my Bent too, young man, and it fetches a high price.”

“An eighth.”

“A stone,” she said, taking another puff.

A stone was enough to buy some nice furniture, or a month’s worth of food. There was no way she was earning that much money sitting on her ass and smoking. It was all the pay he had managed to scrounge together.

“All right, I guess we can’t come to an agreement,” Cal said, nudging Ella and pointing at the young Gadveran woman they’d left a few dozen feet back. “Let’s go ask her. She’s cheap.” Cal knew this for a fact, reading it from her gaze. She also felt like a gossiping kleptomaniac, though.

“Half a stone,” Perthea relented.

“One stone for four,” Cal said, turning back.

“Three. All I can spare for a pittance like that.”

“Fine…” Cal gritted out, pulling the silver stone out of his purse and placing it in the woman’s cupped palm. He’d offered a fairly low price to start with, but she’d ratcheted up the price from five dust to over a hundred and thirty. It was no longer cheap.

She studied him with her deep brown eyes for a moment before pocketing the silver. “Alright, what do I do?”

“Take my hand, and let me in.”

She should be good at that. Elliot’s words dripped with sarcasm.

Perthea hesitantly gripped his hand, and a fraction of a second later, he delved into her, coaxing out her Bent.

She let out a restrained gasp as Bent began flowing down her arm, sending flares of pleasure straight up their spines. The Bent began to transfer over to Cal’s veins, turning them black.

1/11 Bent remaining.

2/11 Bent remaining.

3/11 Bent remaining.

Cal released his grip and saw Perthea staring into space. The slender Gadveran woman was stunned.

“I thought it would hurt. You could do that for free,” she breathed.

“True, but I’m kind of new here, and in a hurry.” Cal glanced around for a moment before leaning down and whispering, “Would you mind putting in a word for me with your friends? I’m looking to make this a regular thing, and obviously I can’t pay a stone each time.”

She blinked a couple times, her eyes slowly refocusing on his face.

“Another stone,” she said, holding out her hand.

Cal dumped the rest of his purse into his hand, revealing a meager selection of copper dust and pinches. The largest coin he had was an Eighth.

Perthea heaved a sigh, and this was where his careful selection of a good-natured whore came into play. “Fine, keep your money. I’ll talk to some of the girls I know. Will you be back here tomorrow night?”

“If I’m not dead,” Cal said with a shrug.

“See you then, young man,” she said, waving him off with her long pipe, still emitting a bit of smoke from the tightly-packed cherry in the center.

“Three Bent isn’t much,” Ella said as they walked back to the emptied-out apartments where the rest of the soldiers were crammed in like sardines.

Cal looked up at the sky, the night filled with the sounds of explosions and clanging steel meant to keep the defenders awake. He needed a way to get into the Ilethan camp without being spotted, and a way to get back.

A giant-wasp-drawn palanquin came to mind, floating through the sky at a height undetectable to the enemy.

“It’s not enough to do what we need to do. Not yet, anyway.”

Cal looked over at Ella. “How much do you think a wasp can lift while flying, relative to its body weight?”

“I have no idea.” Ella shrugged.

“Guess I better start testing it,” Cal said as they walked along the darkened streets. Him and Ella together was somewhere around three hundred and fifty pounds, plus Baroke, who must weigh two, two fifty by himself.

Add an extra hundred pounds as a safety precaution, and he needed his wasps to be able to carry seven hundred pounds to be totally confident.

After a few minutes of walking, they ducked off into a secluded alley, and Cal summoned the largest wasp he could.

Calvinian Summoning.

2/11 Bent remaining.

The wasp’s body was the size of a large dog, its wings as long as a grown man. The alley was just barely big enough to run the test.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ella said, peering into the creature’s compound eye curiously.

“You grew up in a forest full of giant insects.”

“And I learned to have a healthy respect for them.”

“Wanna help test its lift?”

“I’ll pass, if you don’t mind,” she said, eyeing the giant wasp.

“Alright,” Cal said, holding out his arm and instructing the wasp to lift up on it. The giant wasp leapt into the air with a horrible buzzing sound and latched onto his arm with its sharp claws, pinching his skin and nearly slicing him open before he could tell it to stop.

“Okay, that almost cost me my arm,” Cal said, wincing as he slapped a hand down on the small cut until it stopped bleeding. The only injury he’d gotten that day was self-inflicted. The giant wasp clung to the wall of the nearby building, watching them with quivering mandibles.

Under the wasp’s gaze, Cal suddenly felt like a fleshy caterpillar waiting to get eaten.

Those things are not cute.

Ella raised a brow and waved her hand in a ‘you see?’ gesture.

Chapter 37: The Second Wave

As it turns out, wasp behavior is rather limited, Cal thought, tapping his vial of Bent on the wall, watching it glitter in morning sun that was rising over his left shoulder. The orders a wasp could be easily expected to perform were ‘go there’ and ‘kill’.

As if Ella needs a reason to be any more smug.

After experimenting for a while, he’d discovered their carrying capacity was a little over two thirds of their body weight.

And that meant he needed a thousand pounds of wasp.

Ugh, logistics.

Cal did some simple math. Calvinian Summoning had increased its mass by cubing the level of the Skill thus far, so what was a good level to aim for?

Ten cubed is a thousand on the nose, and a duration of one hundred minutes.

Not sure I have enough time to level the Skill that high, though. What level grants five hundred pounds, minimum? He did some quick math.

Level eight? Damn. He had to get most of the way to level ten while dodging arrows and whatever else the Ilethan could throw at him.

Any other ways to get to Baroke that don’t involve being carried by flesh-eating wasps?

Calvin began running scenarios through his head rapidly.

Stealth? Not particularly high-level, lot of distance to cross on foot in both directions.

Convincing Andra to mount a rescue? She struck that down before I’d even thought of it.

Cal’s options seemed severely limited. It was boiling down to a madcap flight, or simply crossing his fingers and hoping they decided to give Baroke back if they lost. Anything less than level eight at Calvinian Summoning would make the process very expensive, Bent-wise.

Calvin’s eyes turned back to the black Bent sloshing around inside the vial.

Andra had given him three of the containers, each with three Bent, along with instructions to ‘make them last.’ She knew he regained two a day, so once he’d gone through eleven by the end of the day, she would assume he was out. That assumption would be wrong.

Calvin slipped the expensive glass tube back in his pocket and glanced out at the Ilethan army. They hadn’t gotten around to doing anything major yet.

It was remarkable how much of a siege was spent simply glaring at each other. I’ve got better things to be doing than staring at these assholes. Can’t waste time.

“Shake me out of it if they start doing anything big,” Cal said, sliding down to rest his back against the parapet. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was Ella nodding.

Eye of the Tiger.

The distractions around him faded away, and Cal floated inside his inner space, letting thoughts flow around his mental bubble. He was like that for what felt like minutes before the notification came.

Meditation has reached Level 10!

Level 10: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 50% correction.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Shadow Boxing: Allows the user to practice any Warped Skill up to the level of Meditation, at 1/4 speed.

~Useful for practicing Bent-dependent Skills or being imprisoned with time on your hands.

Disconnect: Allows the user to disconnect from their senses and the flow of time.

~Useful for demon summoning, battles of Will, or retaining your sanity after a thousand years in prison.

~ Editor's choice!

Sherl*ck Vision: Plan your moves out in advance with a solid sense of the near future.

~Elementary.

Mutations:

Bent Regeneration: Applies correction % boost to Bent regeneration.

~Useful, if boring.

Medi-tating: Enter a deep trance while the body repairs itself at (Meditation) times normal speed.

~Hiber-Nate!

…I choose Shadow Boxing.

Cal’s mental space gained depth and clarity, and a sense of potential, like it could become anything. Experimentally, he envisioned the creek running behind his house, and found himself standing on the bank, with Juka sitting on his usual lump in the earth in amiable silence. The village elder gave Cal a nod and continued fishing.

He looked down and spotted his fishing pole resting against his usual tree, ready to be put to use. It’s that easy, is it?

Cal was eager to put the Skill to use, but he wanted to get his bearings before he got carried away. He pried his eyes open, the sound of water lapping against dirt left his ears, and the sight of Juka shattered into a vista of a stone palisade, where dozens of brown-and-yellow Gadveran soldiers were idling away.

“Anything happen?” Cal groaned as he shifted his spine against the hard rock he’d been ignoring. Ella was learning to play eights from the other soldiers, their weapons close at hand as they slapped cards down at high speeds.

“So far, nothing at all,” she said, glancing over the parapet at the busy camp far below them. Cal dragged himself to his feet to get his own look.

A glint of noonday sun reflected off round metal plates in the grass outside the wall. Cal hadn’t taken notice of them yesterday, with the illusionary troops filling up so much of the field.

“What are those?” Cal asked aloud. A young archer who must have been two years older than Cal glanced over.

“What is what?”

“Those metal plates.”

“You don’t know what those are?” he asked incredulously before glancing at Cal’s uniform. “Sir.”

“Look at my face,” Cal said, pointing at his eyes. “Assume I’m new to this.”

“Right, um, those are piles: fuck-off big steel poles put into the ground to prevent tunneling with Belaga or earth magic. They got a solid steel fence strung between them, too.”

“That’s all steel?” Ella said, gawking over the edge of the parapet. Genosians had a healthy appreciation for the substance that was nearly mythical to them.

“Sixteen feet, straight into bedrock.”

Calvin had heard offhand that Gadvera was a rich nation, but nothing drove it home more than the tons of steel sitting there on the off chance that the enemy would one day have a Belaga wurm.

Cal looked further afield, where the Ilethan were busily constructing their siege towers, pushing the forest further away from the edge of the city.

“Oh look, they’re clearing the land for us,” Cal said, pointing. “Think they’ll be nice enough to pull up the stumps, too?”

His comment was met with a few dry chuckles.

The new towers were almost complete, having gotten much taller overnight. They were busily hammering the last of the panels into place to give cover from archers. Wet wood on wet wood ensured that the creations would never last long, but they weren’t planning on using them forever.

Plus, it made them harder to burn.

Speaking of burning, Cal thought, thumbing the vial of ooze-weaver slime in his belt. It had been most of a week since he’d commissioned the vials, and he still only had the one.

Not that Calvin wasn’t happy with it. He just wanted the rest of the tools he’d paid for. Well, I guess Andra paid for it. Damnation.

It was about this time that a low rumbling came to Calvin’s attention, prompting him to look up for the source.

He couldn’t make out anything in the distant Ilethan camp, but when he turned toward the city, the noise dulled.

“Quiet!” he shouted, earning indignant stares from the nearby men and women, until a moment later, when another soldier cocked her head.

“I hear something.”

“Me too,” another said.

The sergeant who’d been loitering nearby stood and kicked the card table off the wall, scattering the table and the cards to the city below, leaving three stunned soldiers and Ella staring at empty space.

“Something’s up. Off your asses and clear the lane!” The lane being the narrow two feet of space used for evacuating wounded soldiers or deploying reinforcements. They were trained not to stand in the lane unless they were moving with a purpose, but it sometimes got a little lax on a slow morning.

The soldiers crowded up on the wall, shoulder to shoulder as they looked out at the Ilethan camp, the rumbling gradually growing louder.

“What in the name of Goluba?” one of the soldiers—apparently a worshiper of the god of berries—said, pointing at the forest far beyond the Ilethan camp. A dark line absent of trees was carving its way toward the Ilethan camp.

Cal squinted, catching the moment a massive tree was pushed over. There was another glint of light from something in the forest. Some kind of metal.

Did they mind-control a Kugeya and strap armor on it? Cal shivered at the thought of the nigh-indestructible killing machine getting even more armor. That didn’t seem fair.

The thing that emerged from the woods was decidedly not a Kugeya.

It was a strange, shiny black. Twenty feet tall, fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, with what looked like a massive plow attached to the front of it. The body was blocky, with tubes sticking out here and there.

It wasn’t alive, Calvin was sure of that. The thing seemed to have wheels with a gigantic steel belt between them, and it didn’t have any sign of awareness of its surroundings. It simply crushed its way through the last bits of forest before it began grinding through the center of the Ilethan camp, sending soldiers scattering this way and that.

“Who’s our runner!?” Cal shouted without taking his eyes off the strange machine.

“Me, sir,” said a wiry man about four years older than Calvin.

“Go get the general.” The runner didn’t even wait for Calvin to finish his sentence before sprinting down the lane toward the command center on the south side of the wall.

“What the hell is that?” Calvin muttered to himself as the strange vehicle rumbled toward them.

“I don’t know, but every hair on my body is standing up,” Ella said, standing stock still.

What? What’s going on? Calvin’s mind was filled with the sound of a strange crunching, followed by the sound of scattering beer bottles and trash.

Oh, what do you know, it’s a LineHog. I love those things. They’re basically farm equipment. Big, heavy, can force their way through anything you need to get forced through. I used to use them to dig people out of bunkers. Looks like they strapped a couple low-tech cannons onto the damn thing. Waste of a good spot for a fifty-cal, if you ask me.

There was a flash of light and smoke from one of the tubes in the distance, and a hair-raising buzzing sound before the wall thirty feet to the right of Cal exploded into shrapnel, sending a dozen broken corpses tumbling to the ground.

Dust clouded Cal’s vision and forced him to cough a fine dust out of his mouth.

When did I get on the ground? he thought. As the dust cleared, Cal got a look at the wall, where a chunk had been sheared away from it. It was just small enough to jump over, but those nearer the blast were in no shape to do so, bleeding profusely from shrapnel or just from the ears, missing limbs, twitching in a way that was certainly not good.

On the other hand, it could be considered somewhat effective. What do you say we get the fuck off the wall, buddy?

“Calvin!” he heard Ella shouting faintly. In the explosion, he’d been knocked some ten feet further down the wall than before, washed away like chaff, while the heavier girl had stayed in one place.

“Here!” he shouted, waving. Ella spotted and sprinted over to him, checking his face and patting him down for blood.

“I’m all right,” Cal said, levering himself up. Then it occurred to him that standing up would present a bigger target for flying pieces of stone.

“Stay low,” he shouted, peering over the edge of the parapet that now felt paper-thin.

Another explosion shook the wall beneath their feet, blowing another dozen men off the wall to their left, and forcing the wall to let out an awful groaning sound that sent ice all the way down Cal’s spine.

“Fuck this. If the wall’s coming down, I’m not doing any good up here,” one of the archers said before putting his bow over his shoulder and making for the stairs.

He’s got a point.

Cal reached out and snagged the man as he ran by. “I don’t know if it escaped your notice, but that isn’t the only thing they have. If you give up the wall, you’re welcoming them into the city, which is the same as welcoming them into your sister! Stay HERE!”

If I run away like this, how can I become a Wizard-King?

Oh, that’s easy. Just lie your ass off. You’d be amazed at how many more people rose to power through lying than through integrity. I’d name names, but I’m afraid I’d get you viciously sued by the religions they started. Of which there are many.

Cal ignored Elliot’s chatter as he stared into the man’s eyes until he felt a flicker of courage. The archer nodded shakily and headed back to his position.

The runner came back a few seconds later, without the general.

“Where is she?” Cal demanded as a cannonball struck the lower wall, nearly shaking everyone off their feet.

“She said to keep holding the wall, and she’ll take care of the metal monstrosity. ‘Watch out for the trick,’ she said.”

The runner continued on, stopping every hundred feet or so to pass the message to each of Andra’s lieutenants. A minute later, Calvin watched the gate roll open, and Andra rode out at the head of a unit of hundreds of cavalrymen, aiming for the metal machine rolling toward the wall.

That gigantic, dinged plow was starting to look a lot more fierce as it rumbled closer and closer to the brick wall.

The Ilethan army knew what the cavalry was aiming for, so they put a wall of bodies between the royal guard and the machine, but they charged through them effortlessly, creating a spreading wake of gore as they drove through the mass of Ilethan.

Cal watched as Andra cut her way to the machine, removing the cannons with steel-rending swings of her sword. He cheered along with everyone else as she began taking apart the machine, sending up a shower of sparks as she cut her way into the massive beast.

Her royal guards were holding the rabble of Ilethan away from the machine, giving her time to work. Even in the worst case, the cannons had been removed, so at least they wouldn’t have to deal with—

Cal’s thoughts were interrupted as Ella tapped him insistently on the shoulder. He turned to face the Genosian, but whatever she said was lost in the cheering.

She grabbed his head and spun it around to face the opposite direction, painfully wrenching his neck. What he saw to the north made him forget about the pain.

A silver creature with a teardrop body and four long, bladed legs was moving sinuously along the wall, butchering the cheering soldiers before they had a chance to mount any kind of defense.

Oh, look, it’s an ATHK 600. That stands for all-terrain hunter-killer, by the way. Those blades can fold back into wings and it can sustain flight indefinitely. Calvin heard a tongue click in his mind. I’m still so proud of them.

You made those!?

Just a bit of the AI work, and the suggestion for the teardrop shape. It took the whole team to really make it come together.

It was mincing soldiers at an astonishing rate as it approached them.

“To the left!” Cal shouted with everything he had, straining his voice painfully, and kicking the men to either side of him as he drew his shortsword. “Swords out!”

Andra and all the strongest fighters were preoccupied with the wall-crushing machine, and now they had to deal with this monster alone.

Here’s the trick.

You sure we can’t just bail?

Chapter 38: Terminate

The toe of Calvin’s boot pushed against the stone, his fingers felt a brief sensation of the stonework as he clawed his way forward, moving faster than his mind could keep up with.

He felt like he was watching his limbs move from a long tunnel, detached from the image moving in front of him.

Wait, why are you moving towards it!? A distant voice echoed in his ears, but he was already passing it by, mentally and physically.

It wasn’t about his country. It wasn’t about saving the soldiers on the wall. Those things were there, too, but the core of the thing that seemed to be drawing him forward was one simple concept that Cal couldn’t imagine living without.

Winning.

Running away was losing, letting all the soldiers on the wall die was losing, dying was losing, and not killing the monster was losing, and Cal didn’t want any part of that.

As he ran, he reached down for his belt, fumbling for a fraction of a second as the cube of steel on his belt wobbled a bit on the end of its chain.

It killed two more men in that fraction of a second, coming five feet closer to impaling Cal’s face.

Calvin focused on the cube, mentally isolating a tiny, one inch by one inch cage following the contours of the cube itself.

Shaping.

8/11 Bent remaining.

The tiny cage had one hundred and forty-four pounds of mass injected in it, becoming three feet wide, and coming into existence around the creature, its claws sticking awkwardly out of the squares.

The creature instantly began thrashing inside the cage, its claws biting into the steel and shaving off large pieces. The cage itself began tumbling forward, a rapidly disintegrating mass of iron bars rolling toward him like a runaway barrel of hot steel shavings.

It wouldn’t even need to break free to kill him. It was going to do that just by rolling forward, blade-arms sticking out at odd angles, ready to impale him.

Cal put his left hand forward and lifted up his right foot, focusing on the steel cube in his hand.

Shaping.

7/11 Bent remaining.

A solid steel trident sprang into existence at an angle, dropping into his hand. It was far too heavy for use by someone with only six Strength, but he didn’t intend to be swinging it around. The handle manifested just above his left palm, the bottom just under his foot.

Calvin put his foot down.

The tumbling cage hit the oversized trident with the shriek of tortured steel, the pressure shoving him backward violently. The spiked bottom of the trident dug a furrow through the solid stone of the top of the wall. They kept sliding a few feet until the trident’s bottom fell into a small crack and wedged itself deep into the stone, bringing the slide to a sudden halt.

The stone cracked, the haft bent a little, then for a single instant, everything stopped.

The extreme noise and flurry of motion attracted the soldiers’ attention away from the battle going on far below them, and they jumped in surprise and revulsion at the shiny, silver, insect-like thing and the wake of chunked soldier behind it.

The monster recovered first, slamming its razor-sharp legs against the bars in the exact same spot, chewing through them faster than an expert logger through a young pine.

The second to breathe allowed Cal to come back to himself, and suddenly the waving claws that had seemed like they were going to eviscerate someone else were waving violently back and forth only a couple feet away, rapidly compromising the integrity of his cage.

Maybe I could use a little help.

Hi, welcome back, Elliot said congenially, but Cal could sense a deep undercurrent of sarcasm. Calvin ignored him.

“Get off your asses and tear this thing apart!” he shouted to anyone listening as the slightly warped polearm bucked underneath him, cracking the stone it was embedded in further.

Everyone jumped, springing into action. The smart soldiers drew back, looking for a similar polearm, or fixing their bows on the creature.

The brave ones charged forward with their swords, the Gadveran blades denting against the silvery skin of the monster before they received wicked gashes on their arms and legs, forcing them to stumble back in agony.

An instant later, an arrow ricocheted off the creature’s single, massive black eye, whirring past Calvin’s left shoulder.

What in the Abyss is this thing made of?

Jerrytanium. Don’t look at me, I didn’t name it. Anyway, the chances of getting through it with regular steel are pretty slim. We didn’t manage to copy the Harbinger’s Supremacy Field, but I think for most purposes, this stuff worked better anyway. Ah man, the freaking supremacy field. They could simulate a living creature well enough for it to spend Bent on decreasing the effectiveness of everything else relative to itself. Their robots weren’t particularly tough, or good; they just made everything else fold like a wet noodle, including high command’s spines, apparently. I swear to god, when I get off this planet, I’m going to shove my fist so far up—

Calvin tuned the rambling out, focusing on the creature trying to squirm between two severed bars.

“Use your Bent!” Cal shouted.

“Penetrating Shot!” one of the archers cried out as he shot. It was military discipline to shout out the name of your attack, apparently, so your teammates would know when it was time to get out of the way.

The arrow dented the armor near one of the joints, making the leg have an unnatural hitch in it as it scrambled out of the steel cage. In another fraction of a second, the creature wormed its way out of the cage, its side dipping the tiniest amount before it leaped straight at Calvin’s face. He tried to reach for his steel cube, but his hand was too slow. The creature was too close already.

Cal’s life flashed in front of his eyes as the four bladed limbs began closing down around him. Most of it was him getting thrashed by Karen, and not a single memory was of getting laid. What about my empire of big-boobied women that like me a lot? If I had known I was gonna die here, I would’ve mounted the everloving Abyss out of—

Ella jumped in front him, slamming into the creature and pulling its bladed legs away from him. The monster’s blindingly fast legs shredded her armor, and covered her silvered body in shallow scratches.

She delivered a punch laced with the strange green paralytic spell to the creature’s underside, and its limbs slowed down for a brief instant, allowing her to drag it close to the edge of the wall.

Interesting. I guess the spell doesn’t care if the target is alive, or even has nerves. I wonder if it’s simply a kinetic dampener? But wouldn’t that stop the heart? There were scratching noises inside Calvin’s head, pen on paper.

Do you have some kind of office in my head? Calvin thought as Ella let out a shout of effort and twisted, her muscles glinting in the sunlight as she shoved the creature over the parapet. It instantly retracted its bladed limbs, forming a graceful-looking silver wing on its right side.

The dent just above the joint of its rear left leg prevented the creature from forming a perfect wing, causing it to tumble madly in the air until it hit the ground with an explosion of dust.

“You wanna take a break with me after this?” Calvin asked, leaning over the parapet beside Ella, eyeing the monster.

“What kind of break?”

“I think you know.”

Calvin, I need you to bring up her paralysis spell in casual conversation. Oh yeah, and it’s probably not dead.

I’m aware.

Cal focused on the single silver limb he could see sticking out of the dirt. He needed to do something while it was still. He brought the limb into his mental space and isolated a tiny, arrow-shaped section of its skin. He was going to use its armor against itself.

Shaping.

Mass Splitting.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Dozens of Jerrytanium arrows appeared, leaning against the parapet in a line.

Tsk. I still hate that name.

Calvin picked up the one in front of him and held it out.

“Listen up!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Grab one of these, and use every Ability you’ve got to put it through that thing!”

The sound of arrows clattering to the ground rang along the wall as the archers ditched their current arrows to pick up the heavy silver ones that had appeared in front of them, nocking them on their heavy Gadveran war bows and taking careful aim.

They didn’t fire. Instead, it seemed like they were waiting for something.

By the gods, they’re waiting for me.

“Fuck ’em up!” Cal shouted, straining his vocal cords as he pointed at the silver monster pulling itself out of the ground.

“Penetrating Shot!”

“Homing Arrow!”

“Burst Fire!”

Voices echoed along the wall to either side of him, and a volley of the creature’s duplicated armor rained down on it, enhanced with Bent. The arrows homed in on it, created miniature explosions, and passed through anything that got in the arrow’s way.

The volley made another cloud of dust that hid the creature’s profile, twenty feet wide and slowly rising up the side of the wall. Cal and the others scanned the edges of the cloud, praying that the last attack had done the creature in.

Nothing moved in the slowly drifting cloud of grey, and they gradually relaxed. Cal kept his fist tight around the silver arrow in his hand, staring at the edges of the cloud. He’d relax when he saw its dead body.

The cloud was being drawn south by the ocean wind. If the creature was following the cloud, it would intersect—Shit!

The creature burst out of the top of the cloud, only ten feet below them, climbing the solid stone wall with three of its bladed legs, dangling the fourth behind it. Its armor was covered in gigantic rents, revealing strange innards full of tensing tubes that looked almost like black muscles, colorful strands of brightly-colored…yarn that made sparks, and a slowly oozing, black goop that reminded Cal of the stuff that was draining from the ceiling of the freezer.

Half a dozen arrows were sticking out of it as it raced up the side of the wall, its awkward skittering movements causing the panicked volley of arrows to miss.

Aww, it’s recognized you as a high-value target to kill before it’s destroyed. What a cutie.

I’d be right to assume the insides aren’t as tough?

That, you would.

“Aim for the holes!” Cal shouted.

“Every day of every week!” one of the soldiers howled at the top of his lungs, causing the others to break into gales of laughter as the death machine approached.

Fucking madness! Cal thought, readying himself.

This is war.

“Ella, can you—” Cal glanced over his shoulder and stopped when he spotted her slumped over against the parapet, sweat beading on her forehead. Her Iron Skin was gone, leaving her vulnerable and unconscious on the side of the besieged wall. She was experiencing a Break.

That’s right, she was only a second-Break.

Damnit! Cal thought, hefting the silvery arrow and backing away from the wall.

As the creature came over the edge of the wall, it staggered sideways as an arrow rammed itself home through one of the gaps in its armor. The creature ignored the man who’d fired it and a dozen other arrows that missed their mark. Its attention was solely focused on Calvin.

“Come on, you piece of shit!” Calvin said, holding the silver arrow in front of himself. When it attacks, I’ll make a Jerrytanium war pick and put a big-ass hole through it.

Wait. I can do better. The adrenaline and buzzing excitement gave him a sudden idea to maximize the sheer impact, more than he could ever do with a war pick.

Cal held the silver arrow by the fletching, focusing his attention on the arrowhead, singling out a tiny section of space at the very tip in the shape of another arrow, perpendicular to the arrow itself.

He held the arrow by the fletchings high above his head, and when the creature jumped toward him, whipped the arrow downward as quickly as he could, making the arrowhead at the end travel at deadly speeds. Cal triggered the spell mid-swing.

Shaping.

5/11 Bent remaining.

A 144-pound silver arrow manifested above the creature like a bolt from Sirfren himself, coming down at the same speed as the blurred arrowhead, punching a massive hole through the creature’s back and pinning it to the stone floor in an explosion of sound and rock shards.

Nicely done.

When the dust faded, the creature was clawing ineffectually at the stone and the silver arrow driven through its center of mass. The creature gradually slowed, then came to a stop.

Maybe I should get a wand, Cal thought as he inspected the arrow in his hand. With an extra flick from his wrist, he could get the tip moving at rather high speeds.

A cheer rose around them, and one particularly foolhardy soldier kicked the monster that was curled up around the giant stake. Calvin half expected it to come back to life to exact one final casualty, but the man was unharmed.

“Whew.” Cal let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. He idly itched his ribs, and spotted a stone shard driven through his breastplate, and a quarter inch into his skin.

Cal pulled it out with a grunt of pain and studied the shard. It would have been a lot deeper without armor. A lot deeper.

His arms and legs began to demand attention as minor scrapes and punctures made their presence known.

“Well done, lieutenant!” someone shouted as people began to crowd around, slapping Cal on the shoulder and back, aggravating his wounds even as they congratulated him on a job well done.

“Well, you can’t lead from the back,” Cal said with a shrug, quoting Karen.

That’s a really short-lived ideology.

It seemed to resonate with the others, though, whose enthusiasm grew even higher. Even some of the men with minor injuries joined the celebration.

Cal glanced over at the line of mutilated corpses to the north and sobered immediately.

“Get the wounded to the medics!” he shouted, causing the others to flinch. “I don’t want anyone dying during a celebratory circle jerk!”

The sergeants were the first on task and started the job wrangling the enlisted into identifying and hauling away the wounded, ending the celebration in a matter of seconds with an impressive series of curses and cuffs. The sudden activity cleared Cal’s line of sight of the battlefield.

Andra and her company of Veterans were surrounded by the Ilethan army, using the LineHog as a kind of mobile fort, turning the machine toward the south to prevent themselves from being totally surrounded.

But, Andra’s elites retreating to the south, along with the north side of the wall being exterminated, meant there was a glaring hole in the city’s defenses.

The Ilethan weren’t kind enough to leave it alone.

While a third of their army harried Andra, the rest pushed a dozen siege towers toward the now-empty walls.

Cal could only slime six of them. He patted the vial in his vest pocket. Still unbroken, despite the combat.

Make that nine. Maybe if I use the wasps, I can target more than one tower at a time. Damn, this is going to get rough; they only last sixteen minutes each.

Damnation. I don’t care, I’ll send each and every one of those bastards to meet Ishra. Cal shrugged in his dust-covered armor and walked along the bloody wall to go meet them.

***Kala***

‘Aua’ means men… Kala thumbed through the simple Genosian to Gadveran dictionary.

And women… Kala felt her face begin to heat up as she scribbled the words down.

When she got to the last word, she left it untranslated, tossed the book across the room and buried her face in the pillow, screaming and kicking her feet until she felt up to the task of being dignified again.

A knocking at her door brought her out of her shame-stupor. Kala lifted her head with a gasp of air and composed herself before going to open the door. Standing on the other side of the rich wood was Uncle Bekvah, shifting from foot to foot nervously.

“Time for me to earn my keep, I guess,” the owlish man said with a grin behind his thick spectacles, fiddling with a strange red-painted piece of steel shaped like a bone. His face was pale. “I just wanted to say hi in case—”

Kala gave her uncle a punitive hug for even suggesting he might die.

“Okay, okay. I’ll see you when I get back,” Bekvah said, patting her back.

“I don’t mean to sound selfish, but can you—”

“Make sure your friends are okay? I’d be happy to.”

Kala shook her head. “Erase memories?”

Chapter 39: Great, More Princesses

***Calvin***

Calvin had made it three steps away from the strange creature, when a thought occurred to him. He glanced over his shoulder at the curled-up monster pinned to the stone wall like an old man’s prized arc beetle.

I wonder if I can use Harvester on it? I only have five Bent left, though... Calvin put his fingers into his vest pocket and yanked out the tiny vial of viscous black Bent, popping the tall cork off with his thumb.

One out of eight is a better trade-off. Calvin downed the tasteless black liquid, shuddering as it seemed to move on his palate.

6/11 Bent remaining.

7/11 Bent remaining.

8/11 Bent remaining.

Gods, that’s going to be hard to get used to. More than just the physical repulsion of drinking Bent was the psychological damage of drinking a half of a glimmer, or gold piece, that he’d been saving for later.

It was enough to feed a family for six months, and he’d knocked it back in seconds. The Gadveran royal family doled them out sparingly to assets whose Abilities could swing the direction of the battle, like Andra.

And me too, I guess, Calvin thought, kneeling down beside the creature. He definitely wanted those bladed legs, and the armor, and whatever else he could get from it. He touched the cold steel of the monster.

I don’t think that’s going to work, Elliot said, a hint of patronizing smugness in his voice. Those things aren’t even alive, so why would—

Calvin pushed Elliot to the back of his mind and focused on his Ability, watching the Bent travel down to the tips of his fingers.

Harvester.

7/11 Bent remaining.

The pinned metal monster shimmered, and was shortly replaced by a tremendous assortment of slabs of metal, ball bearings, strange multicolored wires and coils of copper, along with strange black pieces of grainless wood covered in golden lines.

Oh, OH! I GUESS THAT’S THE WAY IT WORKS NOW!

There was a stream of cursing and the clatter of furniture being abused in the back of Cal’s mind as he studied the creature’s remains. He had no idea what any of it did.

The legs he’d wanted lay in a convenient pile, each with a handle-sized length of haft where they connected to the next joint. He hefted one of the leg-tips: a bit heavier than steel, about the size of a shortsword, with a bit of a hook on the end.

Calvin glanced over the assortment of foreign materials.

Elliot.

The cursing and muttering continued.

Elliot!

Frick’en adaptive technology. ‘Nother thousand years, and it’ll be like we never… What?

I need you to tell me which of these things are useful, Calvin thought. He glanced up at the approaching siege towers. And I need you to do it fast. I’ve only got a few minutes before they get here.

If your Ability did what I think it did… Pick up that microchip, there.

What’s a microchip? Cal thought, his eyes scanning the undifferentiated mass.

Ugh, it’s the black thing with the gold bits on it. If your Ability managed to take everything apart, and from what I can see, wiped its settings, that right there is an undifferentiated AI core. It’ll come in handy down the road if we don’t die here.

What else? Calvin thought, scanning the pile as he stuffed the black thing into his pocket.

Grab one of those ball bearings. They’re way better than your little cube. There’s some high-efficiency propulsion technology in there, some military grade TechMuscle™, a Warp Engine, some batteries that would keep a flashlight going for years, and some field-generating components that you would absolutely need if you ever wanted to build your own lightsaber or personal shield.

So which ones do I take?

None of them! Other than the Jerrytanium ball bearing, you couldn’t use any of this stuff for its intended purpose, because you’re a rock-chucking savage without a working screwdriver within 12.3 light-years! Elliot oozed with smug superiority.

Where did this one come from, then? Cal asked.

Elliot fell into contemplative silence.

That’s a good question. These Ilethan are just as backwards as you. They shouldn’t have been able to tell this thing to do jack shit.

Cal pocketed a couple of the metal spheres.

I don’t plan on using these things for their intended purpose. Are any of them hazardous, explosive, or poisonous?

The Engine’s core is highly radioactive, but nobody wins with radioactive. At least nobody with a fleshy meat-body.

What’s ‘radioactive’? Cal asked.

Think of it like a poison that kills you real slowly, that lingers for generations. Not exactly what you’re looking for.

Is there anything useful on this thing?

It’s all useful. Just not to you.

What about these sacks of liquid, here? Cal thought, pointing to a clear pouch half the size of his fist, full of black stuff. That’s not Bent, right?

Hell no, that’s nanites. If you drank those, they’d treat you like a damaged unit—in essence, try to turn you into an HK-600. That sounds cool, but they’d fail by a landslide, and you wouldn’t survive the process, either.

Fine, Cal thought, standing with his razor-sharp, single-bladed, hooked shortsword in hand. I don’t have any more time to screw around.

The siege towers were already halfway to the wall. They only had a few minutes until they were unfolding their bridges. Maybe five minutes, maybe seven.

Cal kicked a wide-eyed corpse out of the corner of the parapet and took its spot, getting parallel to the wall and pressing himself in as snugly as he could so he didn’t block any foot traffic.

Playing possum? A better bet would be to—

Shut up a minute.

Eye of the Tiger.

Shadow Boxing.

If Shadow Boxing is a quarter speed, and Eye of the Tiger boosts by 50%, then both together means the learning rate is 37.5%. Not too shabby.

The scenery in front of Calvin warped, but not much. He was suddenly standing on the wall yesterday, overlooking yesterday’s troops marching up to the wall.

Cal took a deep breath.

Calvinian Summoning.

Rather than drain Bent, the Skill simply triggered and sent wasps out into the enemy, just like it had before.

Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning.

Calvinian Summoning.

…………….

About two minutes in, when Cal had simulated casting the spell for roughly the hundred and fiftieth time, it leveled.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 5!

Level 5: 125 pound limit, 25 minutes. 0 slots available.

+1 Will.

Nice hustle, kid. Please Choose an Ability or Mutation.

Abilities:

Variety is the Spice of Death: 2 extra slots, +1 extra slot every 5th level, rather than 10th.

Atom Ant: Sacrifice Mass of summon for increase to physical attributes of summon. 1 to 1 ratio. 1 summon's worth of mass lost empowers 1 summon with double physical attributes. (Max multiplicative power equal to Calvinian Summoning Level.)

Bad Penny: Summons absorb Warp from the atmosphere and may use it to split, creating more summons, up to the original limit of summons. This is typically used to maintain a healthy swarm against attrition, or regrow one from a single survivor.

Chimera: The user may rearrange parts from any slotted creature onto any other slotted creature in any combination. (New slot every 10th level.)

Mutations:

Heart of the Swarm: Your mass may be added to the effect of Calvinian Summoning. You disintegrate into the summoning, controlling the swarm from inside. If the spell expires, or the mass of living summons drops to your mass, you immediately recombine at the center of mass of the remaining summons.

The Mutation was powerful and interesting, but Calvin didn’t want to pass out for an undetermined amount of time. He needed something that could help him weather the attack just a couple minutes out.

Calvin could, at the edge of his perception, hear the stomping of feet and clattering of arrows bouncing off the stone parapets. They were within bowshot now.

Variety and Chimera were also interesting, and complemented each other, but Calvin didn’t have anything to add to them right now. There were only two things that could help him in the immediate moment: Atom Ant, and Bad Penny.

Atom Ant was appealing, in that Cal could make a handful of wasps the size of rodents with lethal poison and bite strength that could shear through steel, but he could only make a few of them, and their normal poison was already plenty debilitating.

Bad Penny, though… There was plenty of Warp in the air, and if he spread them out evenly across the battlefield, they could be a long-term hindrance, replicating any losses they took.

I wish the damn thing had said how quickly the creatures would replicate themselves. There was every possibility that the rate of regeneration was so slow as to be useless.

I hate it when the guide doesn’t give hard data, but you’re the first person to make the Ability, so the System knows as much as you do.

Fine. I choose Bad Penny. At this point, any regeneration was better than none. If the rate of reproduction was good, it would be an incredible asset.

Cal’s senses buzzed for a moment as his Skill changed, then he went right back to what he had been doing.

Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning. Calvinian Summoning…

Over and over again, Calvin simulated casting the spell without pause, an endless swarm erupting from his palms in his personal training scenario as the number of casts climbed into the hundreds.

The explosive noise of a bridge slamming down onto the wall tore Calvin’s eyes open.

Damn, I was hoping to make level six.

Calvin lifted his head up and surveyed the situation, looking out for anyone that might try to pick him off.

The Gadveran wall was woefully undermanned, its people spread thin, only able to assemble enough to create a paltry double line of bodies at the end of each of the siege towers’ bridges.

One bridge was down already, unleashing a flood of Ilethan soldiers, who immediately unleashed all their Bent on attacking Abilities, forcing the defenders to exhaust their Bent simply to not be cut down like wheat.

The second wave out of that gate would, without a doubt, tear through the Gadveran line.

Eye of the Tiger.

Calvinian Summoning.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin held up his palm and created a host of wasps, each weighing a quarter of a pound, with several hundred wasps’ worth of venom in each of their two-inch-long stingers. Each of the insects was about the size of his fist, making five hundred of the vicious monsters in a fraction of a second.

Spread out. Kill all the blue ones. Cal gave them a mental nudge, but the wasps hesitated, unsure of the color blue.

Kill all in there, Cal thought, giving the location and impression of the inside of the siege towers.

Cal spread them out very fine over the battlefield, making sure that there was no way someone or something could get all of them at once again.

How the hell did Andra do that, anyway?

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 6!

Level 6: 216 pound limit, 36 minutes. 0 slots available.

There we go. Using it in a novel, considered way rather than as fast as I can will always provide more significant advances in Skill. Plus, it didn’t have the ¼ penalty.

Cal rubbed his palms together and pushed himself to his feet, picking up the blade lying next to him.

Let’s do this.

***Nadia***

“What’s the holdup?” Princess Nadia of Iletha demanded, her maidservant cowering behind her, face in the dirt, as Nadia glared down the commander of the assault. It was an understandable reaction to the arrows buzzing through the air around them. Nadia knew that their bodyguards would remove any arrow that threatened to harm them, but she was still irritated that her cowardly servant sought to use her as a human shield.

I’ll punish her tonight.

The cretin’s eyes wandered down the princess’s form-fitting blue and black armor before snapping back up to her face, apparently unconcerned by the fact that she’d seen him ogling her.

“They’ve got a wizard, and he’s hiding. Dug in like a Belaga wurm. It’s making progress difficult.”

“How are you solving the problem? Your one job, as general, is to solve problems! Not shrug and say it can’t be helped!”

“The problem is these,” Grant said, reaching one meaty hand into a leather satchel and picking out an enormous wasp that had its wings plucked from its body. The torso squirmed and tried to shove a stinger dripping with venom into the man’s hand. He pinched the stinger down with a practiced hand.

“By all that’s sacred!” Nadia shouted, her cowering handmaiden flinching away from the enormous wasp. “What the hell is that?”

“The Spotters aren’t sure. Sometimes they tell me it feels like Genosian magic. There were definitely Genosian spells performed on that wall, but sometimes they tell me it feels like Gadveran magic.”

“What’s the difference?”

Grant glanced over to his subordinate.

“Genosian magic feels like picking meat from your teeth, while Gadveran magic feels like iron in the sinuses,” the lean man said quietly.

“There you have it.”

Nadia’s eyebrows rose for a moment before she dismissed the Spotter’s fanciful descriptions. The fools were prone to instability.

“So what do you think it is? Are they hiring the Genosians to work against us? Some kind of secret weapon? New technique?”

“Won’t know for sure until we ask them,” Grant said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Nadia demanded. “Every moment you sit around counting your pubes, they are sending for reinforcements. The plan was to take the wall before they knew what hit them, so make it happen.”

“The wasps are slowing us down,” Grant said, looking up at the towers above them. Every now and then, a hapless soldier was shoved off the bridge, tumbling to the ground. “A lot.”

“Are you really going to tell the princess of Iletha that you’re being beaten by insects?”

Grant held up his other hand and Nadia’s handmaiden flinched back in revulsion again. The arm was swollen until it was nearly immobile; his fingers were dark and the skin was tight like disgusting sausages.

“One sting,” he said cheerfully.

“Then don’t get stung, idiot!”

“Every form of armor has a bit of skin showing, and these little buggers are making us waste men and Bent to get rid of them, which is exactly what that bastard wants. Somehow he’s keeping a healthy supply of them, no matter how many we kill. I suspect he’s got some kind of gimmick.”

“I don’t want excuses!” Nadia shouted, making the Spotter reel back on his heels. “I want solutions!”

“Well, I might have one, but it would require some assistance from Your Highness.”

“Begging me to do your job for you? Or did you just want the smug satisfaction of giving me commands?”

“Merely a request, Your Highness,” the towering general said with a shrug. “But the one ultimately responsible for the success of this campaign is not me.”

“I’ll have you know—eek!” Nadia felt the tiniest tremble in the thick Warp around them, and the wasp in Grant’s hand split, with a second peeling out of the first with no discernable loss.

The new wasp oriented itself, then buzzed angrily toward the first thing it saw: Nadia. She reflexively threw her hands up, flinching away from the approaching wasp. Dear gods, not the face!

When Nadia peered through her fingers again, she saw Grant’s fist in front of her, leaking a green ooze between his fingers.

“My apologies,” he said, “for bringing the faint of heart to a battlefield.”

Nadia’s anger burned white-hot for a moment before she smothered it. She’d known she would have to become involved at some point.

“What was your request?”

“According to the sorcerers, these wasps have very weak Mind attributes, and whatever hold the wizard has on them is tenuous at best. Unfortunately, there are far too many for our sorcerers to control efficiently, even a dozen at a time. If Your Highness were to lay a weak Royal Order on the entire battlefield, you could likely steal control of the entire swarm at once, and deal an amount of damage that they would be unable to recover from in a matter of seconds. The defender would most likely dismiss them soon after, but the tide would shift. Let these insects work in our favor.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Nadia said, holding up a single hand, carefully isolating the area of her spell to the north wall. It wouldn’t do to let the destruction spill into the city she was going to rule.

Berserk.

25/31 Bent remaining.

A red light bloomed along the wall, and the clanging of steel intensified, joined by inhuman screams of bloodlust as the defenders, wasps, and attackers all turned on each other with a level of violence that beggared belief.

“Mop up the remains with some fresh troops,” Nadia said sweetly, turning back toward the camp, followed closely by her bodyguards and handmaiden.

Grant watched her leave with a simmering scowl.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

20

Intuition:

10

Stability:

11

Will:

19

Bent:

2/11

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

7

Acting

7

Read Expressions

6

Sense-Grafting

8

Knife-Work

5

Dupdomancy

12

Hunting

5

Meditation

10

Chained Spirit

2

Calvinian Summoning

6

Fishing

3

Genosian Language

4

Chapter 40: You Jinxed It

2/11 Bent remaining.

By the gods, I’m actually doing it, Cal thought, overlooking the dozen siege towers and their thousands of men that had been brought to a standstill. We just might make it.

In another ten minutes or so, they could expect the runners to get back with reinforcements, and everyone currently on the wall could drag themselves to their bunks and sleep for a week.

You totally jinxed it.

There’s no such thing, Calvin thought, once again reminding his wasps to only sting the blue men in the tall caves.

As time went by, Calvin was getting more and more appreciative of minions who could think and adapt on their own rather than requiring constant control. Maybe I could—

“Damn good work,” the aging sergeant said, clapping Cal on the shoulder. “We’re looking at another problem, though.”

“What’s that?” Cal asked, glancing over.

“All these boys are holding off a Break, me included.” He pointed at a young man snoozing tucked up against the parapet. “Some more successfully than others, I might add.”

“Yeah, I feel it,” Cal said, noting the pressure behind his eyes. It wasn’t quite enough for him, he didn’t think, but the other survivors would definitely come away from today stronger than they were before. Cal looked down at the city and relief flooded his veins as he spotted a thick formation of Gadveran soldiers running down the main street to make it to the wall on time.

They were just coming into view, so they had maybe seven minutes left to go until they were relieved.

“Just tell them to hold on another—” Calvin glanced back to the sergeant and saw that the man’s face was a mask of rage as he sank a wickedly sharp knife through Cal’s armor and into his abdomen.

The sensation of steel sliding through his meat raised every hair on Cal’s body, followed an instant later by a staggering amount of pain.

Calvin felt something, like the sensation just before you caught a cold, a tickling in the back of his throat that moved down to his stomach. An instant later, it caught fire, and his vision narrowed to the snarling sergeant in front of him.

Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 35 seconds. Hang in there, kid.

Cal ignored the meaningless words, and let out a howl of rage as he punched the sergeant in the face, causing the man to stagger away from him, clutching his bleeding nose.

Calvin reached into his pocket and gripped the inch-wide ball bearing.

Sense-Grafting.

1/11 Bent remaining.

With a thought, he moved his sense of touch and pain to the extremely tough ball, going blissfully numb.

Sense-Grafting has reached Level 9!

Sense-Grafting Level 9: Sight, hearing, touch, pain, smell, taste, balance. Self-only, 81ft range, 45 minutes.

Splitting.

0/11 Bent remaining.

Cal, with his grip still on the large ball bearing, used Splitting and Shaping to create a war pick.

Cal caught the silvery weapon with his free hand, and while the sergeant was pulling his hands away from his face, Calvin introduced him to the hammer’s spike.

In the strangest sensation Calvin had ever experienced, he felt himself propel himself through the bastard’s brains. It was so unexpected that he let out a chuckle as he moved on to the next. Calvin’s sense of touch was on the pick spawned from the marble. Interesting.

The wall was in complete chaos, men fighting the closest person to themselves, while the wasps were swarming everywhere, biting and stinging Gadverans, Ilethan, each other, anyone who deserved it—and truly, they all did.

It would be rude not to join the melee, so Calvin caught another Gadveran in the back of the head, savoring the sensation of putting himself through someone.

I could get used to this, he thought as the man’s opponent locked eyes with him, charging forward with a snarl.

Calvin lunged forward to meet him, slamming his foot down on the other man’s and pinning it in place. Calvin leaned out of the way and the Ilethan floundered with a comical expression as he toppled to the ground.

Cal raised his pick up.

“Wai—”

Calvin swung it down, penetrating the man’s heart and lungs through the back of his ribcage, enjoying the squishy sensation the man’s organs made across his skin, especially his groin. Calvin resisted the urge to spike-fuck the squirming corpse, and instead searched for more potential warm homes for his phallic weapon, the exultation of victory running through him in shivers.

I wonder if this is what fucking is like. Maybe I could use Sense-Grafting to be a little more specific with which areas have their sense of touch grafte—

Between one blink and the next, Cal was a homicidal killing machine who equated penetrating people with his weapon to literally fucking them, and then all of a sudden, he wasn’t.

“What the—”

Will has reduced the foreign Bent to below critical levels. Welcome back.

Cal glanced at the three men he’d killed in a handful of seconds. Cal’s stomach wanted to flip and cover the stone with bile, but he didn’t have the luxury.

Another battle-crazed Gadveran emerged from the frantic melee, dragging a wounded leg behind him and fixing Calvin with a wide-eyed stare as he lunged forward.

“Taste me!” he shouted, wiping his slender sword with the blood oozing from his wound before lunging at Calvin. Despite his disgust and horror at the slaughter going on around him, Calvin’s training kicked in, leaving his mind free to be repulsed while his body moved forward into the man’s space.

He let the blade slide against the handle of his pick, pressing forward to trap the sword between the two of them, then choked his grip on the pick and slammed the hammer back down on the man’s unwounded leg.

The horrifying sensation of cracking the man’s bones resounded through his entire body, sending shivers of revulsion through him.

The Gadveran let out a pained wail as Calvin shoved him back into the dense melee, where he bumped into two Ilethan locked in a struggle to the death. They turned and slaughtered the crippled man in seconds before returning to each other.

Calvin caught a second to assess the battle, scanning the chaos.

This can’t be natural. He now recalled seeing the System Message through the haze of bloodlust, and realized it had been a spell, like the Genosian paralysis spell.

That meant someone was responsible for it. Cal walked over to the parapet, and nearly fell as his left leg was far weaker than he expected. He glanced down and spotted the gash in his left stomach, still oozing blood.

His legs were fine, but Karen had told him that a wound to his core would always reduce his overall strength, since so many other things relied on it. Cal compensated, limping to the parapet and looking over the edge.

He scanned the army below, his heart sinking as he spotted the rows upon rows of unaffected Ilethan charging up the siege towers. Cal glanced over his shoulder, and saw that only a fraction of the original defenders remained, and they were too busy killing each other to create any kind of formation.

Cal looked back down at the Ilethan army, scanning for his target as quickly as he could. There, in the middle of the field, was a woman wearing a flamboyant suit of armor that was designed more to accent her figure than to protect it. She was walking away, a single dark dot in the middle of the flood of Ilethan.

That’s the one I need to kill.

Cal glanced up, and his ears picked up rumbling halfway up the siege towers as thousands of perfectly fresh Ilethan clomped their way to the frontline.

Well, we’re fucked. Better— Cal’s thoughts were cut off by a harsh buzzing as a wasp landed on him and presumably stung him on the back of the neck. He swatted it away as quickly as it came.

Cal couldn’t feel the sting, but he started to feel a sensation of pressure. He immediately dismissed all of the berserk insects, and the odd sensation in the back of his neck stopped building as the poison ceased to exist.

So the wall is screwed, and if I don’t get out of here right now, then Ella will die, and that’ll ruin my day.

Sure wish I could summon something that was smart enough to carry me out of here on its own, Cal thought with irritation. Not that I have any Bent left.

Cal started limping back to where he’d left the Genosian tucked against the wall, and tried to hoist her up.

On a good day, Calvin would be able to just barely lift the heavy girl over his shoulder, but in his current condition, all he could manage was dragging her unconscious body by the foot.

The rumbling tone from the siege towers changed in pitch as the stomping feet got closer and closer to the top.

Gotta go, gotta go… Cal thought, straining to haul the Genosian across the battle-damaged wall as fast as he could. His guts twisted in impotent anger as he spotted the recruit snoozing up against the wall, mid-Break, and the handful of Gadverans killing each other even as the Ilethan began to pour out of the siege towers again.

Hopefully they just take him prisoner.

Cal glanced toward the staircase, and realized he wasn’t going to make it before the Ilethan got to him.

Damn. Cal’s heart pounded frantically as he considered tossing Ella over the side of the wall. Unfortunately, there were no roofs below them, only the main street, where the Gadveran army was sprinting toward the stairs.

They’re not gonna make it.

Cal had an idea as he watched the Ilethan slaughter the remaining Gadverans and turn their gaze on him, a wounded soldier dragging another away.

Didn’t wanna do this, but better odds than tossing her off a roof.

“Wake up!” Cal shouted, slapping Ella’s face, hard.

They started sprinting toward him, weapons held high.

“Wake up!” he repeated, doing it again.

Ella gasped, her eyes snapping open and focusing on him, her brows furrowing in indignation. “What do you think you’re—”

“Bent,” Cal demanded, putting his palm out.

“Okay,” she said, putting her hand in his reflexively.

Cal drained a point of Bent from her with all the speed he could muster, causing Ella to cry out in pain from the rough treatment.

1/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin released Ella’s hand, his own shooting down to his belt and grabbing the ooze-weaver Slime component.

All the towers were to the north, which meant if he could make the wall impassable, it would prevent them from making it to Calvin’s stairs. There was another set of stairs on the north side, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

Wasps might slow them down, but ooze-weaver slime would bring them to a dead halt.

Shaping.

Cal focused on making the resulting pressurized slime cylindrical.

A long tube of compressed slime appeared above the Ilethan’s heads before spreading out, coating a hundred feet of the five-foot-wide wall with the unbelievably slimy material.

The sprinting Ilethan attackers fell as one, while dozens were pushed off the walls by their peers, creating a veritable rain of bodies falling to the cobbled streets below them, thin streams of blood erupting from their noses and mouths as their brains were dashed on the rock.

Calvin stumbled backward, his limbs trembling. He felt cold, but that could just be the numbness associated with Sense-Grafting. Calvin looked at his palm, and marveled at how pale it was. Nope, definitely blood loss.

He felt his limbs lose the strength to stand as he settled back against the wall, the enemy floundering in the slime a dozen feet away.

Calvin began to feel the pressure behind his eyes morph into a fever. He was about to Break.

Not now, damnit.

“Ella, we need to—”

“Buy a little time,” she responded, climbing to her feet and picking up a nearby weapon. There were plenty scattered around the wall.

“That’s not what I—”

“That’s what you want,” she said, hefting the steel in her hands before picking up a shield, too. She bent down and kissed him on the lips, folding his hand over his wound and pressing it down tight.

“Stay alive. I would prefer my Incha Huala a bit more mature.”

Cal scoffed. “Are you kidding? I’ll live to a thousand, and summon your juicy ass whenever I want some eye candy.”

Did I just agree to eat her? Cal thought as a shiver went down his spine.

“We’ll see,” she said, tweaking his nose and standing.

“Bastard!” An Ilethan launched an Air Cutter from his belly, his eyes fixed on Calvin.

Ella’s skin turned silver, and she held her forearm in front of Cal’s face. Calvin heard a ringing sound, and when she turned her arm to stand, he saw her leather bracer had gained a long cut down the center.

Ella marched over to the edge of the slime and began methodically clubbing the struggling Ilethan, taking care not to set foot in it, or get any of it on her. Cal saw an Ilethan use Charge and the Genosian simply braced her feet, rebounding the man off her shield. Unable to catch any purchase on the slime, he tumbled down to the street below.

This went on for a minute, and Calvin was starting to feel like there might be a chance for them—until a hulking man shouted, bringing the fighting to a halt.

He was large, with dark hair, pale eyes and skin, and he had a formation of six swords hovering around him, straight and dignified like royal attendants.

The Ilethan backed out of his way, and he stopped just shy of the pile of writhing Ilethan coated in gunk.

He snorted in disgust and lifted a foot. A sword placed itself beneath him. He repeated this with his other foot, and was suddenly airborne.

He swooped forward, flying in a diagonal arc like a frisbee, until he stood facing Ella from thin air beyond the edge of the wall.

Suddenly the advantage of terrain was reversed.

“You must be the Genosian causing us so much trouble,” the man said, in rumbling Genosian. “Iron-Skin tribe?”

“I wonder,” Ella said, pinching her silver skin.

“Or is it…” His eyes focused on Calvin, narrowing in thought. “You…Malkenrovian, you shouldn’t be here. You’re both out of place on this wall. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to look for what’s out of place. You’re both going to have to come with me. If you give up now, I’ll bring you back to camp without hurting you first.”

Calvin peeled his outer hand away from his gut wound and gave the big man a pale, shaky middle finger.

“I like your style, kid, but you just asked for it.”

Ella put herself between the two of them.

“Wait… There’s something more going on here, isn’t there? Why protect him? Why would you even be here…unless…” the big man muttered to himself, thumbing his chin.

“Boy,” the big man said. “You’ve got an Incha Huala, don’t you?” He pointed at Ella. “And you’re probably the one flooding the battlefield with those damn wasps, too.”

Ella tensed, ready for anything, but Cal’s vision was starting to stutter as his eyes tried to close on their own.

“I thought as much. Let’s go have a chat.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” A commanding voice came from the top of the stairs, where Bekvah stood, holding a red cylinder in front of him.

“Could’ve used that…hours ago,” Cal muttered.

“Sorry,” the thin, owlish man said apologetically. “Government moves slow.”

As Cal’s eyes slid shut, he heard a rush of flame moments before Ella draped herself over him, protecting his skin from the wave of scalding heat as Bekvah unleashed the potential of the tiny cylinder in his hand.

***

Nadia was settling down in camp, relaxing in her rocking chair she’d had shipped all the way from home, sipping tea provided by her handmaiden while she discussed the progress of the battle with the Malkenrovian liaison.

The liaison was wearing the typical poofy velvet and gold of a Malkenrovian dignitary, but she showed no sign of human emotions, like unease, or hubris. Speaking with them was all the more disconcerting for Nadia, whose expertise was getting inside the minds of others.

Malkenrovians didn’t have minds, and it was terrifying.

She was too well-trained to show it on her face or in her actions, though.

“I doubted your metal beasts at first, but they’ve provided quite the golden opportunity. Please tell your king that we are most appreciative.”

The woman, who was staring unblinkingly at the battle, turned her head to regard Nadia. “We can see everything. The One is aware.”

“I see,” Nadia said, nodding. “Well, all the same. We most likely won’t need the remaining ones, so perhaps we can renegotiate the terms of—”

The entire top of Mujenan’s wall exploded with fire, creating a shockwave that knocked those at the bottom of the wall down, and spread out to wash over Nadia.

A tiny black object was ejected from the top of the wall, sailing high into the air and trailing a thick cloud of smoke as it was catapulted toward them.

The Malkenrovian stared at the object impassively, while Nadia stood out of her chair, alarmed. Her handmaiden dashed for cover, causing her to roll her eyes at the girl’s cowardice.

The object resolved into a man…a rather large one.

When it became apparent the man wasn’t going to land on them, Nadia sat back in her rocking chair and took a sip of her spiced tea.

The man hit the ground twenty feet away from them in an explosion of dirt, leaving a furrow before he began skidding along the surface, landing just in front of the table.

“Commander Grant,” Nadia said sweetly. “Back so soon?”

“Reporting for sack time,” Grant muttered, pulling himself out of the ground and favoring heavy burns on his left arm. His two remaining swords showed signs of warping, and his other four were melted off at the hilt.

He limped over to where half a dozen card-playing soldiers were now staring at the flaming wrecks of the siege towers and swiped their booze, downing it in one gulp.

“The prince has entered the battlefield,” Grant said, staggering away. “They’ve got Mage’s Fire, and some Malkenrovian kid’s bastardized Genosian magic to make the wasp spell somehow. Debrief me tomorrow.”

Nadia watched Grant limp to a cot and throw himself down on it, no one bothering to interrupt him.

“As I was saying, your assistance is most appreciated, but we feel your metal beasts could be doing more.”

The liaison’s face twitched into a mockery of a smile, as if a puppeteer had tugged up on the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps we should renegotiate our deal.”

Nadia forced an angry sneer down, her grip on her cup tightening. “I don’t see any need for that,” she said with a pleasant smile.

“Bring Us the Malkenrovian, and We will reward you with the rest of Our…beasts, to do with as you please.”

Nadia felt her eyebrows climb.

Chapter 41: Your Princess Is in Another Castle

Warp overflow detected…

Running Warp Protection System… Break.

Calvin winced as he allowed the medic to bandage his torso under the watchful eye of General Andra, who’d returned hours ago. The buck-toothed girl kept glancing nervously at the general every couple seconds or so, clearly uncomfortable having her work supervised by the leader of the entire army.

“You’ve got some blank spots,” she said, her eyes scanning the list of Calvin’s Status that he’d written down for her. “Missing a couple Ability slots.”

The missing Ability slots in question were Cal’s Mutations. Those, he wanted to keep secret at all costs. People were not offered Mutations by the System, and something told him that the general would be far too interested in how that came about.

I did. I told you that.

“A lieutenant has to have some secrets, general,” Calvin said with a smile.

“Categorically wrong. Haris.”

“Ma’am?” the general’s aide asked. He would have been tall were he not permanently stooped over. The man’s neck seemed to emerge from his body at a fixed angle.

“Remind me to smack Calvin for insubordination when he’s fully recovered.”

“….fully…recovered. Got it, ma’am,” he said, jotting down a quick note.

“I heard from Lance that you have absolutely no defensive Skills. According to your deposition, this is the case.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mmn,” she grunted, flipping through her list. “I’m ordering you to raise your Body to ten, which is the minimum for your rank, by the way, and you are to acquire a Defensive Skill before the day is over. That should help with the odds of you making it through the month.” She sounded like a doctor prescribing Jeeth salts for inflammation.

“With this?” Cal motioned at his wound, slowly seeping through the tight bandages. He couldn’t imagine himself running or doing push-ups or dodging anything without forcing his guts out the massive hole in his abdomen.

“You got lucky. The wound is clean, and you didn’t take damage to any organs—the armor stopped it from going too deep or wiggling around too bad—so you can move around a little. You’re not the first person to Break with a wound, either. This is something we’ve dealt with many times before. I’ve got a specialist on his way. He’ll make sure you meet my expectations.”

Oh, great, Calvin thought. That makes my escape even harder.

Cal was still going to rescue his friend. He hadn’t forgotten about that. He was out of Bent and he was sporting a hole in his stomach, and that just meant that no one expected him to make a break for it.

Couldn’t hurt to raise your Body a little bit first.

Won’t help, either. Calvin couldn’t exactly exercise to raise his physical Abilities before nightfall.

“Good work, ‘Net,” Andra said, nodding to the medic.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Annette said, flustered, trying to bow while the roll of gauze was still attached to Cal’s waist. It tugged on his side, and she froze mid-bow when Cal gave a sharp hiss of pain.

“Just focus on what you’re doing,” Andra said with an amused smile before redirecting her attention to Calvin.

“And you…focus on healing up.”

Cal gave a salute. A real one, this time. Andra studied him for a moment before turning and heading back out the door.

“What about me?” Ella asked from her bed.

The Genosian girl was lying face-down on her military-size bed, her feet hanging off the bottom. Her back was a bloody mess of bandages where it had absorbed the heat from Bekvah’s attack. If she hadn’t covered Calvin, there was a good chance he’d be dead…or at least, significantly less handsome.

Seeing the wounds all over her body raked his heart over hot coals. She would never be the same, at this rate. The scar tissue alone would make her movements stiff and most likely cause pain for the rest of her life.

“You got plenty of drugs,” Calvin joked to hide his unease. “You can barely keep your eyes open.”

“True, but I never thought Gadverans…wouldn’t have Noeula.”

“Gadverans don’t have anything like that.” Calvin hadn’t quite believed that something could heal a body in seconds. There was no magic, no Ability that had that kind of power.

“How does it look?” she asked, her voice carrying a slight tremor.

“Not good,” Calvin replied as tactfully as he could without lying. An idea occurred to him. It would take a long, long time for the wound to even start healing. He just needed to grab her some Noeula, too, when he rescued Baroke.

Lemme just add going all the way back to the burned-down site of the Iron-Skin tribe to the shopping list. The scratching of pencil on paper echoed in his mind.

“Ella, is there anywhere I could get you some Noeula?” Other than your village.

Ella’s eyes gained a bit of clarity, and she took in her situation before glancing at Annette meaningfully. The medic was sitting in the corner of the room, watching the two of them idly, her eyes glancing at their bandages every now and then.

“Could you give us some time alone?” Calvin asked.

“Sure. I hope I don’t have to tell you not to engage in intercourse, though. Both of your wounds are far too severe.”

“What’d she say?”

Cal repeated the medic’s warning.

“Tell her that I have accepted her challenge,” Ella said.

“We accept your challenge,” Cal said, grinning.

“Seriously, don’t do it,” the medic said, giving them one last look before she left. “I’m…I’m gonna be just outside, okay?”

“We’ll be quiet,” Calvin said with a wink.

“Oh, dear,” she said, blushing as she closed the door.

“Alright,” Cal whispered once the door was closed, painfully turning to her. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I can make Noeula,” she whispered back.

“Really?”

Really? Elliot’s mind-voice sounded like it was leaning closer.

“Bring me the pouch of black ichor from the steel monster’s parts, and a Joyaga corpse.”

Interesting…. Elliot began to muse in the back of Calvin’s mind.

Joyaga were like small versions of the Kugeya—small being relative—with hundreds of legs and forelimbs that carried an absolutely lethal poison. They were almost as dangerous, but much easier to trap or outrun.

I saw a bunch of them strung up in the freezer, actually. Were they ingredients for the Noeula?

Duh.

“I’ll get them,” Calvin said, nodding. It was going to be a busy night.

Ella’s arm whipped out to grab him as he tried to turn away, and she let out a brief cry of pain as the skin on her back shifted, cracking. In a second, she muscled the pain down.

“Don’t tell anyone. That is knowledge that belongs to my tribe alone. Don’t. Tell. Anyone.”

“I won’t tell anyone. If anyone asks, I’ll stab them.”

What about me? Do I count?

Ella smiled and slowly brought her hand back, careful not to shift the skin of her back quickly. Her eyes slid closed, and she fell back asleep, lulled by the powerful drugs provided by the wealthy nation. Calvin’s eyes lingered on the new patches of blood where her back had cracked open just now.

I’m going to fix that.

As Calvin made that resolution, a burly man with a large sack over his shoulder entered Calvin’s room.

“Are you…Calvin?” he asked, consulting a sheet of paper. His burlap sack clanged to the ground with the ring of steel on steel.

“Yessir.”

“Good. Let’s get this done. There’s hundreds more wounded that need my attention today, and some of them are probably going to mutate because I had to attend to you personally.”

***

Your Body has reached 10!

14/26 Warp remaining.

“It’s there!” Calvin said, dropping the weight and sighing in relief. He had no idea how bad muscle-targeted exercises could be, but true to the man’s word, it hadn’t aggravated his wound, and raised his Body.

Half an hour of vigorously pumping iron had left Cal’s biceps, triceps, and forearms feeling like they were going to burst out of his skin. The trainer had been surprised that Cal’s physical Abilities had been maxed out, which helped Body level without accidentally spending his Warp on Strength, Endurance, or Kinesthetics.

“Good,” Matt the trainer said, his bushy beard waggling as he spoke. “Now I need to teach you Toughness. This should only take a couple min—” Matt’s words were cut off by a soft, princesslike knock.

“May I come in?” Kala’s voice came through the door and Matt’s eyebrows rose, glancing over to Calvin meaningfully.

“Sure,” Calvin said. He was wearing pants, after all.

The trainer cuffed him on the crown of his head, jostling his brain and making his wound hurt.

“Put a shirt on, idiot. The princess—” The door opened, and Kala walked in, heedless of Calvin’s lack of shirt. He felt a small spike of ardor from her when her gaze landed on his chest.

Her eyes turned to the trainer. “Have you taught him Toughness yet?”

“Just about to, ma’am,” he said, bowing low.

“I’ll take care of it. Your work is needed more urgently in the sick ward. There are dozens of men on the verge of Mutating, so you should look to them.”

“But Andra said—”

“I will take on your responsibility,” Kala said with dignity. “I will teach him Toughness.”

“Well…” The burly, bearded man glanced back and forth between Cal and Kala hesitantly before nodding. “All right.” He swiftly packed up his weights and threw the sack over his shoulder before heading out, shooting them one last confused glance over his shoulder before he left.

Kala watched him until she was sure he was gone, then turned back to Calvin. In an instant, her straight posture and perfectly smooth movements went out the window, and she slouched with a sigh.

“I hate lying to people,” she said before glancing around. “Where’s Ella?”

Calvin nodded over his shoulder.

Kala walked halfway around Calvin, spotting the wounded Genosian lying on her bed, drugged into a stupor. She gasped and rushed toward her.

“This is horrible!” she said, stopping herself just shy of touching the girl’s wounds. “Is she going to be okay?”

“Yes,” Cal said with every ounce of conviction he could manage.

“But the scars…” Even Kala could see that they would be extensive. The concern was more than cosmetic. If they were bad enough, she might never be able to move normally again.

“She’s going to be fine. I guarantee it,” Cal said.

Kala studied Calvin’s face for a moment, contemplative. “I see. I look forward to being pleasantly surprised,” she said, lapsing back into her princess demeanor. From her gaze, he could tell that she’d slipped into that behavior because she was planning something and didn’t want him to know what it was.

Princess Poker Face. Huh.

Kala’s eyebrow twitched.

Calvin dismissed it quickly. Even if she were planning something, his Feel Intent didn’t tell him what it was—just that she didn’t harbor any ill will. He’d have to trust that whatever she sprang on him in the future was in his best interest.

“I came here to visit and see how you were faring,” she said, moving smoothly to stand in front of his bed again, peering at his slightly seeping gauze curiously.

“I’ll be fine. According to the medics, I got one of those million-dust wounds. I’ll be back up and about in no time.”

Kala heaved a gentle sigh of relief, but her gaze kept sliding back to Ella lying on her belly, her back a bloody canvas. “I was going to tease the two of you about last night, threaten to erase your memories, but…the situation is sobering. We really are at war, and I can’t do anything to help. Too valuable, they say.” She clenched her fists in frustration.

“You can help, though.”

“How’s that?” she asked, peering up at him.

“A morale-boosting campaign based around princess hand jobs. With your sexual orientation, you could actually handle the needs of a wide variety of—ack!”

Kala grabbed a pillow and bashed it into Calvin’s face, knocking him backward. He tried to arrest his fall, but his wound screamed out in pain, forcing him to reflexively relax his stomach, allowing himself to fall backward.

He slammed back onto the bed, groaning in pain as his wound screamed mindlessly.

That was a bit less princess-y than I was expecting.

Kala jumped onto the bed and started smothering him with the pillow, her delicate wrists like iron. “You. Will. Forget. Everything!” she shouted, her voice barely audible past the pillow that was covering his mouth and nose.

Isn’t this a bad situation? Cal thought, for a brief second fearing for his life as the enraged girl ground the pillow into his face.

Eventually, though, the pillow was retracted to reveal a heavily blushing Kala glaring down at him.

“I mean, maybe we could narrow the scope of that campaign to just me and Ella—mmfff!” The pillow was pressed over his face again, until he worried for his safety.

Just when he was starting to feel lightheaded, she pulled the pillow away.

“Are you gonna keep talking about it?” she demanded, her soft dusky skin almost as red as a cherry.

“As long as it gets a reaction from you,” Cal said with a shrug.

She pursed her lips in consideration. “I see. I didn’t want to kill you in front of Ella, but you’ve forced my hand. She’s the second person I’ve ever been able to go shopping with without them trying to marry their son to me, or invite me to some political social event. She’ll forgive me in time, I’m sure.”

“Who’s the first?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“Your sister.”

“Ouch.”

Kala glanced over her shoulder to the door, where people could walk in at any time to see the princess of their country smothering a wounded man. Kala climbed off the bed and helped Calvin to sit up. She glanced around to make sure no one was there.

“You are the most distracting boy I’ve ever met. I came here to teach you a defensive Skill. If anybody asks, it’s Dodge, okay?”

Calvin nodded.

“It’s called Beli Ma,” she said conspiratorially.

“Belly mom?”

Kala glared at him.

“Shutting up.”

“It’s a Skill that’s been passed down among nobility for generations, based on redirecting force. It’s superior to Dodge. You can get Dodge by people throwing things at you. This is way better. More suited to someone like you, who doesn’t like wearing heavy armor.”

“Cool.”

“Just be quiet while I tell you how to use it,” she said, rolling her eyes.

She stepped away from the bed and made an unprincesslike stance, her legs spread wide and her body crouched low to the earth.

“Watch my whole body,” she said. She began performing a slow dance, moving sinuously from stance to stance.

Cal couldn’t see anything at first, but he eventually noticed the light around her seemed to be shimmering. “That’s… What is that?”

“Try to copy my movements. As you do, imagine the Bent moving into your hands to allow you to redirect blows around you, causing them to miss.”

Does this Ability use one Bent to counter one attack? That doesn’t seem better than Dodge…at all.

Cal continued to follow her movements, finding himself deciphering them, rapidly understanding their function as the Warp lent him an afternoon of prodigy-level improvement.

Once he had the arm movements—he couldn’t walk very well—she began to practice with him, making slow punches toward him that he slowly deflected with Bent-laden palms.

You have manifested Beli Ma!

An ancient defensive art that was adapted to Bent use in the late Harbinger Era from an even more ancient defensive art. The Skill allows a user to consciously warp the trajectory of any attack. At higher levels, it transitions to an unconscious aura.

~I’ve seen this one before! —Elliot

Beli Ma has reached Level 1!

Beli Ma Level 1: Redirect force. 5% correction.

13/26 Warp remaining.

Kala waited patiently as he looked the Skill over.

“Does it take Bent?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“No,” Kala said, shaking her head. “It circulates it inside of you, so it never leaves your body, even when it redirects attacks beyond your reach.”

“How does that work?” Calvin asked.

“The entire concept of the art is based on circles,” she said, motioning. “The Bent leaves your body, deflects the attack, then goes back to your body, in a circle.”

“What if you’re empty?” Cal asked.

“I suggest not being empty, but if you’re out, the Skill can still be used, just less effective than it might otherwise be.”

“Alright,” Cal said, nodding. Only four Skill slots left, he thought, slightly miffed. Never thought I’d get so little magics.

“You look disappointed about the secret technique I just taught you,” she said, her voice flat.

“Just thought I’d get more spells than this.”

“You’ve done far more than anyone ever expected you to,” Kala said, patting Calvin on the back. “If it makes you feel any better, Andra told my father that you’re highly dangerous and hiding several unknown Abilities.”

“She really thinks I’m dangerous?” Cal asked, hope creeping back into his voice. Yeah, it doesn’t matter so much how many spells I have. It’s about how much I can do with them, and how that’s perceived by my enemies.

That reminds me, I need to put more time into raising Sense-Grafting.

“Thanks, Kala!” Cal gave the princess a hug. She stiffened against him for a moment before relaxing, her body softening against him, her arms folding around his back. After a moment, they let go, and Cal found his face inches away from hers.

Everywhere their skin touched was tingling, jump-starting his heart. The pain of his wound faded away as he looked into Kala’s deep brown eyes. Calvin could feel the desire radiating from her like heat from a bonfire.

“You know,” Kala said hesitantly, “I could—”

“Ride him like an ornery guar,” Ella groaned from her bed, watching them with an eye twinkling with mischief.

Kala panicked and shoved him away from her, going over to check on Ella.

“Ow,” Cal said, staring up at the ceiling, his wound aching from the shove.

“Are you all right?” Kala asked, kneeling beside Ella.

“Of course. I was just thinking how uselessly soft Gadveran sheets are, when I got the opportunity to spend a few weeks face-to-face with them.” Ella’s voice was soft as her eyes began to slide closed again. “See if my tone changes.”

Calvin rolled onto his side and carefully used his back muscles to get himself upright before grabbing his shirt and trying to put it on. ‘Trying’ being the operative word, as his wound prevented him from moving the way he wanted to. He eventually got his arms into the shirt, but raising them over his head was painful.

“Here.” He heard Kala’s voice through the shirt, and felt her tug it down until his head popped out.

“Much appreciated,” Calvin said, grabbing his temporary cane. “I’m going to go see your uncle. Did you want to come?”

“I think I’ll actually stay and look after Ella for a while,” Kala said politely.

Calvin nodded and left the room.

***Kala***

Kala watched Calvin leave the room before sitting on the bed across from the Genosian savage, who watched her with a knowing grin.

“What exactly is your relationship with Calvin?” she asked, trying not to let her eyes wander to the Genosian’s generous breasts squished up beneath her chest. They were practically spilling out from beneath her. And the muscles of her long arms… Mmm.

Kala’s eyes snapped back up, her spine straightened. This person is wounded. You are a princess. Maintain decorum.

“Wondering if there’s room for you?” Ella asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Kala retorted, wincing at how close to the mark Ella had come. “I don’t… I can’t…” Kala came short of words for a time.

“A princess can’t be seen to be engaging in a…relationship like that. I have to project an image of virtue and reserve myself for my wedding.”

She explained that she held an important responsibility should her father ever need to secure an alliance with another country. The current state of the war made that almost inevitable. She would be shipped to a neighboring country, where she would be married to a stranger and spend the rest of her life subtly shifting her husband’s decisions to favor Gadvera. That was her duty.

“Wow,” Ella said, her eyes widening. “Sucks to be you.”

Kala felt the storm clouds behind her eyes as she felt her childhood friend slip further away behind a wall of propriety. She swallowed the pain and sheer frustration back.

“What’s… What’s it like?” At least she could experience some kind of vicarious closeness from Ella until she was sent away. Even if it was painful.

“What’s what like?” the saw-toothed woman asked curiously, forcing Kala to spell it out. Is she doing that on purpose, or does she genuinely not know? Her limited Gadveran makes these talks difficult.

“Being…together with him.” 

Ella’s brows rose and a hint of a smile formed on the half of her face that wasn’t mashed against a pillow. “Wow, you’re more of a keyoia than I thought.”

Kala leaned forward and began to deny it vehemently. She didn’t know what a ‘keyoia’ was, but it was probably not great. “That’s not what—”

Ella grunted in pain as she reached out with her long arm and pinched Kala’s nose, making her lose her words.

“We haven’t done anything yet, little princess, but if it’s your duty to marry someone who can provide aid to your country, wouldn’t it behoove you to arrange for Calvin to be such a person?”

Kala’s eyes widened. “I never tought ob dat,” she said, the Genosian still pinching her nose.

***Calvin***

Your Mind has reached Level 24!

1/26 Warp remaining.

“Thank you. I don’t know how I can repay you for this,” Calvin said, handing the gold-lined puzzle book back to Bekvah. The wizard lay in a lavish bed, with an aged doctor taking care of him. The prince’s thin frame was covered in gauze where he’d taken a deep wound in his chest and lost his right hand.

Calvin had been fooling himself, thinking he was a high-value target. Shortly after the prince had arrived, he’d been set upon by the entire Ilethan army, who had furiously tried to see him put in a grave.

“Happy to help,” Bekvah said with a smile as he reclined against the silk-covered pillows. His hawkish nose carried indents where his spectacles should have rested; his glasses rested on the desk beside him. The grey-haired doctor was tending Bekvah’s wound with such care and precision that there could only be a Skill at play.

Bekvah glanced at the doctor and gave her a nod. The elderly woman understood his meaning and left the room, silently closing the door behind her.

“C’mere,” he said, motioning Calvin closer with his uninjured hand.

Confused, Calvin stepped closer.

“I never married, never really had an interest in it, but I love Kala like a daughter,” he said, meeting Calvin’s eyes. Calvin could feel sadness and determination in his gaze.

“I want you to make sure she never gets taken by the Ilethan. They have spells that can wear down a person’s identity and twist them into something else. If she gets captured, they’ll change her into someone you won’t recognize. Don’t let them take her. Under any circumstances. That’s how you can repay me.”

“You want me to kill her?” Calvin asked, confused.

Bekvah reached out to cuff him, and Calvin leaned out of the way. He avoided it, but the strike still hit the top of his head somehow, sending a lancing pain through his skull.

“Absolutely not, boy. Just keep her out of their hands if there’s absolutely any way you can do that. Understood?”

“Yessir,” Calvin said, rubbing the top of his head.

“Good. I’ve got something for you.” He pointed to the far wall, where a plain wooden box sat on the cabinet.

Calvin opened the box, and saw nine steel vials identical to his Slime vial, including the red Fireball.

“Those belonged to you originally, anyway,” he said with a thin smile on his pale lips.

Calvin leaned in closer, and spotted tiny script etched into the vials, along with unique colors and textures.

Steam. It had a matte surface with grey coloring.

Void. Shiny and black.

Web. White spiderwebs were painstakingly drawn across the surface, so he could feel them with his fingers.

Lightning. Electric blue with raised jagged bolts drawn on it.

Flash. A sun was depicted on the side, a brilliant ball of light.

Miasma. Dark green with stylized vapors drawn on it.

Cannon. It was orange and black with a raised picture of a cannon on it. It had a raised arrow pointing the direction it was meant to be faced.

Poison. Purple with a raised white skull.

Calvin carefully slipped them into the sleeves built into his belt, right beside his metal marble. He knew they weren’t particularly dangerous, in and of themselves…except maybe the poison. The danger they represented in his own hands was what gave him pause.

“Use them wisely,” Bekvah said. “Andra didn’t think a teenager should have access to those, but lucky for you, I outrank her.”

“Thank you,” Calvin said, giving his first honest salute to the wounded wizard.

“No, thank you for lending them to me,” Bekvah said.

Cal said his goodbyes, then walked out of Bekvah’s room, using the cane to avoid aggravating the muscles around his wound. It was precarious, but he managed to get it done. He limped out of the palace to where the metal monster’s parts had been shoved off the side of the wall in the haste to clear space, taking the sack of black fluid before turning toward the red light district.

Gotta make sure not to put too much emotion into it, or else I’ll get a Walking With Canes Skill.

Cal was passing by the barracks on the way to his second meeting with Perthea, when a commotion from the barracks caught his attention.

“Wake up, Steva! Wake up!”

“He’s already started, hold him down!”

“Mutation!”

The cries of young men and women turned Calvin’s feet—and cane—toward the barracks.

Calvin limped toward the sound, entering the barracks that housed the wounded infantry, and stopped short, stunned at what he saw.

The young man who he’d seen sleeping on the side of the parapet was lying in bed with his eyes closed, but he was not the picture of peace. Three other soldiers were crowding around him, busily trying to strap him down with knotted bedsheets.

The soldier’s jaw was clenched, his teeth creaking against each other as he shivered violently, nearly thrashing out of his bed.

In front of Calvin’s eyes, he saw the soldier’s jaw elongate, pulling the rest of his face forward with it. For a breathless moment, the changes seemed almost natural, as if he was looking at a perfect blend of man and animal.

Then the lower kept extending forward, while the rest stayed where it was, his teeth growing into a mangled mess of distorted canines that jutted out into the air.

The man’s bones began to creak and shift under his clothes, popping apart with a sound like they were relieving pressure from the rest of his body. His chest deformed around the restraints and incorporated them, flesh and sheets becoming one.

The man’s left arm dislocated and began to writhe around like it had a mind of its own, slipping out from beneath the restraints and slapping against one of the people holding him down, causing her to stagger away before she leapt back on top of the man and forced the rapidly changing arm down onto the bed.

“I’m calling it,” a grizzled Veteran shouted, pulling out a knife and burying the blade in Steva’s eye. The arm kept wiggling after the body went still.

“What happened?” Cal asked, attracting the attention of the woman, who cradled her swelling arm.

“Bad Mutation,” she said, watching the corpse with a pained expression. “Steva was hit in the head bad while he was on the wall. He had a Break and plenty of Warp to spend, but we couldn’t wake him up. He had too much Warp. One or two points of Warp, and you’ll probably still be a person, but Steva had fourteen. Just too much.”

“I’m sorry.” Cal nodded and left before he could attract any attention.

He’d been warned not to leave Warp unspent, but nothing drove it home more than seeing it in front of him. If that’s what Mutation is supposed to be like, what does that make me?

A masterpiece.

I’m going to ignore that ominous statement and focus my attention on the rescue plan.

Calvin limped out to meet Perthea. He entered the building they’d agreed to meet in, and found the middle-aged whore entertaining a couple richly-dressed women.

“Ah, there you are. We were thinking that perhaps you’d been one of the unfortunate losses on the wall.”

“Terrible thing, that,” the Gadveran woman with a pinched face said. “Just awful.”

Calvin’s skin crawled at the mannerisms of the women which spoke of overwhelming amounts of wealth.

“Perthea approached us with an offer we couldn’t refuse,” the other woman said. She was slightly dumpy and missing a front tooth, a trait she concealed with a rich silk fan in front of her mouth.

“Helping the defense of the city in such a titillating way, I never would have imagined,” the other said, grinning as she looked Cal over with a predatory smile. “And with a Malkenrovian boy. Exotic.”

Let’s get this over with, Calvin thought, mentally rolling up his sleeves.

3/11 Bent remaining.

4/11 Bent remaining.

5/11 Bent remaining.

6/11 Bent remaining.

7/11 Bent remaining.

8/11 Bent remaining.

9/11 Bent remaining.

10/11 Bent remaining.

11/11 Bent remaining.

“My merciful god,” the dumpy woman with the missing tooth said, shamelessly sprawling herself out on the couch and using her fan on herself in earnest. “That was better than you said, Perthea.”

“Agreed,” the other woman said, slumped forward in her chair.

The smaller woman reached into her purse and handed Perthea two gold coins…half a glimmer for his services.

Damn.

Novelty pseudo-sex sells, I guess.

Perthea motioned to hand him half, but Calvin shook his head. “Just spread the word. I’ll need more tomorrow. If I’m still alive, that is.

“Well, thank you, ladies. It’s been an honor, but I must attend to other matters.”

“’Onor’s mine,” the woman on the chair groaned, giving him a thumbs-up.

Calvin limped out into the street. He glanced up at the wall, spotting significantly less density up there than the day before.

It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time before the sun went down.

Now I just need to find a quiet place to meditate.

Calvin paid a silver quarter for a room where nobody could interrupt him, then lay down and closed his eyes, arms folded over his chest.

Eye of the Tiger.

Shadow Boxing.

…

….

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 7!

Level 7: 343 pound limit, 49 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 8!

Level 8: 512 pound limit, 64 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 9!

Level 9: 729 pound limit, 81 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 10! Shadow Boxing will have no more effect until Meditation reaches a higher level.

Level 10: 1000 pound limit, 100 minutes. 1 slot available.

+1 Will.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation.

Calvin opened his eyes and peered at the light falling onto the floor through the window.

He’d spent maybe two hours, and used the spell tens of thousands of simulated times, bypassing years of waiting for Bent to recover, or bribing women to provide Bent for him. Even the quarter-speed penalty was rendered meaningless.

Calvin redirected his attention to the System.

Please choose an Ability or Mutation.

Abilities:

Variety Is the Spice of Death: 2 extra slots, +1 extra slot every 5th level, rather than 10th.

Atom Ant: Sacrifice Mass of summon for increase to physical attributes of summon. 1 to 1 ratio. One summon's worth of mass lost empowers one summon with double physical attributes. (Max multiplicative power equal to Calvinian Summoning Level.)

Chimera: The user may rearrange parts from any slotted creature onto any other slotted creature in any combination. (New slot every 10th level.)

Mutations:

Heart of the Swarm: Your mass may be added to the effect of Calvinian Summoning. You disintegrate into the summoning, controlling the swarm from inside. If the spell expires, or the mass of living summons drops to your mass, you immediately recombine at the center of mass of the remaining summons.

I choose Heart of the Swarm, Cal thought.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Cal’s body started itching, and he had to force his hands to the bed until sleep took him.

When Calvin opened his eyes again, the sun was just starting to go down outside the inn’s window.

I’ve got time, he thought, stretching an ache out of his back.

…

…..

Chained Spirit has reached Level 3!

Chained Spirit Level 3: 45 pound limit, 27 minutes. 1 slot available.

Chained Spirit has reached Level 4!

Chained Spirit Level 4: 80 pound limit, 64 minutes. 1 slot available.

Chained Spirit has reached Level 5!

Chained Spirit Level 5: 100 pound limit, 125 minutes. 1 slot available.

+1 Will.

Please Choose an Ability or Mutation.

Abilities:

Continuity: The Chained Spirit remembers time spent during each summon, is aware of what the user is aware of while it was unsummoned, and can learn or improve System and non-System Skills to the limit of Chained Spirit.

Bent: The Chained Spirit gains a limited pool to draw from to fuel Abilities. The effects of the Abilities are extensions of Chained Spirit and not actual Bent. Pool is 1/5th the level of Chained Spirit.

Chained Minds: All active Chained Spirits and the user share senses and can communicate telepathically.

Mutations:

Siphon: Chained Spirit gains the Lady Killer Mutation, any Bent drained is sent to the User.

Voodoo U: Damage taken by caster is absorbed by Chained Spirit instead.

Consume: 1 Bent to consume a corpse on touch. Size limit mirrors Chained Spirit’s.

~No more pesky things going moldy in the fridge while you’re working through the leftovers.

Cal read through them quickly, but decided to abstain. Each of them was incredibly useful, in context, but none helped him immediately, so it would be a bad idea to select one without a plan.

Now, all I need to do is sneak out of the castle and rescue Baroke. No big deal.

Calvin opened his eyes and slid out of bed. The sun was well and fully down, now—the perfect time to change into a swarm of wasps and fly behind enemy lines.

Heart of the Swarm fixed his traveling problem, so all he really needed to do was carry Baroke, and if he was the one directly controlling the swarm, it would be easy to do so without harming him. Additionally, he could use the swarm to snag a Joyaga, a deadly poisonous insect, without exposing himself to harm. Ella could make her tribe’s strange bubbling healing potion with it.

Let’s do this, he thought, putting his feet on the ground and flexing his toes in preparation.

“You’re taking me with you.”

“Gah!” Calvin flinched, raising his hands in a defensive posture.

Kala was sitting quietly in the corner, delicate hands folded over her lap.

“When did you get here?” Calvin demanded of the dark-skinned princess.

“Two hours ago. You seemed busy, so I waited.”

“I can’t take you. It’ll be much easier if I go by myself…and how did you know I was leaving?”

“Ella felt that you were up to something stupid.”

“Damn,” Calvin muttered.

“I did something…uncharacteristic,” Kala said. “You cannot refuse. Take me with you, or it will bring down such misery on your head that it will beggar belief,” she said, her voice sweet and gentle.

What is it with the women in my life?

Hold on, I got this, Elliot said, his voice growing closer. Booga booga! RAWR!

Kala’s fingers twitched, and her eyes narrowed. “Tell your passenger that he’ll have to do better than that.”

Huh, damn. Guess you’re on your own. Cal heard the sound of a chair scoot across the floor as Elliot sat back down.

“I’m coming with you,” she said again.

In the distance, Cal heard a voice shout, barely audible.

“Someone’s taken the princess! Alarm! Alarm!”

You have manifested Your Princess Is in Another Castle!

0/14 Warp remaining.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Aids in the logistics of successfully kidnapping princesses. Also Boosts attractiveness to princesses and renders them more amenable to being whisked away.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle Level 1: 5% correction.

5th Break complete.

There was a moment of silence before Calvin heard the sound of a wooden chair shattering and Elliot laughing maniacally. Bwaahahah!

***

In the depth of the palace, Ella began to shiver, her features subtly shifting.

Chapter 42: Just My Type

“Alright, stand back. I’ve never done this before.”

Calvin and Kala were standing on a rooftop on the west side of town, after evading several guard patrols and finally getting a bit of breathing room.

I still can’t believe she’s making me do this.

Calvin shook his head with a sigh, and held his hand out.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

Give me a big one.

10/11 Bent remaining.

Heart of the Swarm didn’t specifically forbid controlling one giant summon, did it?

Calvin felt the strangest sensation as he was literally ejected from his body through his palm. He glanced down with the last of his fading vision and saw his legs being consumed by a swirl of green flames. His feet were already gone.

I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with this.

Calvin’s sight was occluded by a whirl of green mist for a moment, then it went away, revealing something he’d never imagined.

The entire world had been split into thousands of pictures, each one at a slightly different angle, allowing him to see everything, in every direction. Behind him, in front of him—his back itself was visible, and it was…waspy.

So far, so good. He directed his attention to his feet, which were giant claws slowly sinking into the wood of the roof. He experimentally flexed and unflexed each of his six legs. It was an odd feeling.

Calvin had half-expected to be completely unable to process the new body, but it was strangely comfortable.

The spell is probably leashing your control through the wasp’s Kinesthetics. You can still hear me, right?

I can still hear you, Calvin thought, trying and failing to roll his eyes.

“By the gods,” he heard Kala say. He was pretty sure it was Kala, anyway. Her voice sounded weird and tinny through his antennae. He smelled her from the same place, too, which was even weirder.

She smelled delicious.

Hmmm… Well, she normally smells delicious, but in a different way.

He focused his attention on her, and went stock still. She was rather small. Calvin set one of his forelegs forward experimentally, and compared its length to hers.

Everything Calvin was seeing led him to believe that this particular body was much, much bigger than a guar.

’Course it is. Wasps need to be light, so your size compared to your mass is always gonna be high. My biggest questions are: How are you breathing right now, and can you fly?

Calvin took some careful steps away from Kala and fluttered his new wings experimentally. He felt a bit of strain as the muscles fell into the well-worn pattern. The handful of flutters with the massive insectile wings sent dust scattering off the top of the roof and caused Kala’s yellow dress to billow in the wind.

Calvin put a tiny bit more effort into it, and felt his limbs leave the surface of the rooftop. Easier than I thought. He hovered in place, did some experimental back and forth, side to side, up and down, before he was satisfied that he had a grasp of the method of flight.

Hmm… Energy must be derived from the spell itself, rather than oxygen. It makes sense, seeing as you’re in a constructed body with a time limit, and all. The scratch of pencil on paper carried on in the corner of Calvin’s mind.

Would you mind diving under water and seeing if you need to breathe?

Can’t stay on this rooftop all day, Calvin thought, ignoring his passenger and landing in front of Kala, who was holding her clothes together against the gusts of wind.

He reached out a forelimb and began scrawling in the solid wood.

Can’t speak. Ready?

“I’m ready,” Kala said.

Calvin carefully picked Kala up, carrying her in a cage of limbs as he lifted off the ground. With a little finagling, he was able to avoid poking her with his sharp claws and barbed limbs, taking off into the sky.

“Gods, son of an absent mother!” Kala princess-cursed as she was lifted straight into the air. She shifted a little bit, and his leg-barbs came into contact with her. “Ow, you’re poking me!”

Wasp limbs weren’t designed for friendly carries. He couldn’t exactly put her down either, as they were approaching fifty feet above the ground already. Calvin was trying to adjust when Kala made it a moot point. Seemingly without fear, she grabbed one of his thick forelimbs and swung herself up and over with incredible strength, avoiding his wings to land on his back, right between them.

“That’s better,” she sighed, her legs clamping down around his sides, her dress crumpling up around her thighs. It was strangely comfortable.

“I’ve got a Ride Skill!” she shouted over the thrumming of his wings as they continued their ascent. “Do your worst!”

Well, she asked for it, Calvin thought. He watched his childhood friend from every angle, committing the panoramic view of her grin to memory. Once she got a good hold on him, Calvin took off, putting on real speed.

Kala let out a shout of pure excitement as they shot forward while rising further and further up. The safest place for them right now was so high in the sky that no one could make them out against the backdrop of stars. Just a single wink of a star as they passed by.

It only took half a minute to rise so high that the guardsmen searching the city for the princess were the size of ants. Then another fifteen seconds before they couldn’t see them at all, just tiny glimmering lights from their torches.

Once Calvin had achieved the height he’d wanted, he pushed forward at full speed, his wings subtly altering their pattern with no more than a thought.

“It’s fff—darn cold up here. I should have worn riding leathers!” Kala said, shivering against the wind. “And goggles!”

Or not come at all. Not much I can do about that, he thought, keeping an eye on the ground sliding away beneath them. He was moving so fast that going all the way to the Iron-Skin tribe for a bottle of Noeula might be an option with another cast or two. Assuming he could find them.

Once they were sufficiently over the woods, far enough that he didn’t foresee the Ilethan army hearing the hum of his approach, Calvin descended to the forest floor. As seamless as the takeoff and flying had been, the landing was an entirely different story.

As a 1150-pound animal the length of two guar nose to tail, finding a place to land was a challenge.

Calvin descended and put his legs down on the highest tree in the canopy, only to have the whole thing tilt wildly beneath his massive weight, careening him off to the side.

Agh, crap! he thought, nearly flipping over backwards as Kala grabbed his fuzzy carapace and leaned in close, squeezing her eyes shut. His wings began to shred themselves against the treetops, and the roots of the tree he landed on started to creak out of the ground. Calvin realized that it was a good time to leave.

Calvin dismissed the spell, his scattered vision returning to his typical two-eyed one as he reconstituted in the center of mass of his wasp swarm of one in a cloud of glowing green mist.

Interestingly enough, the center of mass of his wasp swarm was directly between Kala’s legs, and the two of them dropped out of the air, her thighs locked tight around his midsection.

Cal reached out for a branch, and the wound in his abdomen sent a jolt of pain through him, causing him to miss his grip.

Ah, damn, I forgot about that. An hour as an unwounded bug made him forget a few basic facts.

Calvin grunted in pain as Kala caught a branch, arresting their fall some twenty feet above the forest floor.

“One second,” she said, shifting his limp body into her other arm, rather than between her legs. Calvin threw an arm over her shoulder as she lowered both of them to the ground by digging her fingers and toes into the jungle tree’s thick bark.

“Here we are,” Kala said, gently setting the two of them on the ground.

“My thanks,” Calvin said, picking a branch off the ground and using it as a cane.

Look at it this way: Now we know that your clothes don’t disappear when you use Heart of the Swarm, Elliot said.

That was a possibility!? Calvin thought, glancing down at his clothes and belt, still with him, thankfully. In his belt was the clear sack of black ooze.

Doi.

First thing’s first: the Noeula.

“I need to look for something before we go rescue Baroke,” Calvin said.

“That’s what we’re doing?” Kala asked.

“You didn’t know?”

“You didn’t tell me.” She shrugged. “What are you looking for?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to stab you,” Calvin said, holding up his hand as Kala gave him a cute scowl.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

9/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin once again dissolved into the air, but this time his perception was much more…spread out, like he’d become some kind of cloud of awareness, aware of the way everything looked and smelled and tasted within an ever-expanding radius reaching thousands of feet out.

He could move around inside it, too…kind of shift where he wanted to be more present, and the swarms moved to make it so.

A hundred thousand palm-sized wasps went searching in every direction for the deadly insect on his shopping list, relying on their sense of sight and smell. Joyaga were more active at night, and it was common practice to hunt them during the day while they slept, but for Calvin, the night was the only shot he was going to get.

That, and the Joyaga wouldn’t be able to resist going after a wasp or two.

In no less than fifteen minutes, one of the wasps on the edge of his senses was ambushed, its vision snuffed out with a tiny prick of pain.

I can feel them. Interesting.

Calvin directed the nearby parts of the swarm to home in on the destroyed wasp, and sure enough, a Joyaga was cleaning its poisonous forelimbs above a wasp dissolving into green goop.

The giant centipede matched the ones he saw in the freezer perfectly, about the size of his leg.

At Calvin’s nudge, the swarm nearest it surrounded the Joyaga. The creature seemed almost affronted at being attacked, since its lethal venom usually kept other creatures at bay. After being roused into anger, it fought valiantly, killing five or ten of Calvin’s large wasps by poisoning them and crushing them.

It wasn’t enough.

In short order, the Joyaga was dead, and Calvin had their scent.

The swarm dispersed, and in about an hour, found six other of the many-legged creatures by narrowing in on their smell and forcing them out of hiding before piling on them and biting them to death. Calvin didn’t want to mix the wasp poison into whatever Ella was planning on cooking up.

About that: I have an idea what the recipe is, Elliot said.

Really?

I’ll bet you that the Joyaga venom’s molecules interact with the nanites in a way that makes them despecialized—wipes their programming. Once they’ve been despecialized, a person can drink them, and the nanites think to themselves, ‘hey, this is the kind of body we’re supposed to repair,’ and then they go to work. A healing potion. Hah.

So we could make it? Calvin thought, his mind turning to his stomach wound.

Definitely not. There’s probably a catalyst or trick that we’re not aware of. A specific temperature, a certain amount of salt…what have you. Trying to drink it without doing that step would be a very bad idea, tantamount to drinking two poisons at the same time, rather than the Noeula.

Damn.

Calvin’s swarm gathered around the seven Joyaga and hauled them to Kala, who was sitting on a fallen log, waiting patiently with perfect posture. Calvin took the opportunity to study her in more depth while she sat there—the curve of her neck, her delicate shoulder, her slim waist…

“I can see you, you know,” she said, above the buzzing of wasps bringing their prey back, causing Calvin to direct his attention towards her face, using the wasps’ eyes to study her.

She met his gaze.

What the hell?

Calvin paid more attention to her from some of the wasps on her other side, and she shifted her gaze to look directly at him again, pinning him down with her eyes.

This is weird.

Pretty sure that’s not normal.

Calvin dumped the corpses in one spot before he created a thick circle of wasps a hundred feet wide, with the eye just beside Kala.

He dismissed the spell.

Calvin opened his eyes, staggered at how little he could perceive with just the two. He glanced over, and sure enough, he was standing beside Kala.

That told him that if he needed to escape, he could separate his wasps into groups and head every direction, creating some excellent shenanigans.

Reminds me of Dracula, except instead of bats and rats, it’s wasps.

Who’s Dracula?

Don’t worry about it. You didn’t take the other Abilities, so you should be fine…probably.

Calvin shook off the comment and stuffed the dead Joyaga in a sack, especially careful not to touch them directly. He didn’t want to end everything here from a moment of carelessness.

“So, how are you, the princess of Gadvera, going to help me sneak into the enemy camp?” Calvin asked, cinching the leather sack full of highly poisonous corpses closed.

“Baroke will be on the north side of the camp, in with the conscripts,” she said with complete certainty. “In a slightly charred tent with a blue saddle beside it.”

“How do you know that?” Calvin asked, frowning. Was she just bullshitting him, or did she know something about how Ilethan camps were put together? Even if she knew that, the details were far too specific.

Kala shrugged his question off, idly popping a mushroom into her mouth. Her eyes were black as night, pupils dilated completely.

“I have my ways. Now go get your friend, you adorable walking abomination. I’ll be just fine here. I’ll catch up once my teeth have grown enough for me to walk along them without slipping.”

Well, she’s high as balls.

“And tell you…your friend he doesn’t scare me anymore,” Kala said, leaning drunkenly as she pointed at Calvin. “He can’t, anymore. He-he’s the reason for all this, you know. You’re…he’s a…sky-man that didn’t play nice with the toybox, made all the other sky-men get in their glass bottles and fly away...wounded Soscath. I’m just going to lie down.”

Totally out of her gourd. We should ignore everything she says and make sure to grab some water from the Ilethan camp. She’s going to need to rehydrate.

Okay, Sky-man.

You don’t believe her inane mushroom ramblings, do you?

Lemme see, Calvin thought as he carefully tucked the limp Kala in a nook beside the bag of Joyaga. Nothing would come near their smell.

She can literally see you. She knows exactly where Baroke is…

Allegedly.

And she can see my focus when I’m dissolved into the swarm. At this point, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Hearsay. Sheer, unbridled hearsay.

Calvin chuckled to himself as he took off his Gadveran clothes. Part two of the plan was somewhat familiar.

Once Calvin got within spitting distance of the north side of the camp, he could make out the men on watch, backlit by the fires behind them. He crouched low.

One of the Guys.

Calvin’s body shifted, crackling and popping under his skin as his body rearranged itself.

In seconds, his skin paled, his jaw and forehead shifted subtly to reflect the most common Ilethan facial features, and he gained two inches of painful height in his legs and torso.

Must suck to be below average, Elliot said with a hint of smugness.

I’m still growing, Calvin thought, creeping forward, doing his damndest to remain silent as the watchmen stared out into the darkness he dwelt in.

After a long while watching and waiting, there was a commotion off to the side, something to do with soup. Calvin walked straight through the hole in the guard, his stomach clenching as he integrated with the rest of the camp.

Just another Ilethan in his underwear with a stomach wound; nothing to see here.

“Hey!”

Crap.

“Yes?” Calvin said in his best Ilethan accent.

“Why --- you ------- ------- -------- clothes?” a young man asked. The Ilethan was standing with a hand cocked on his hip, watching him curiously.

Calvin didn’t need to understand all the words to get what he was saying.

“Sergeant,” Calvin said. Being harassed by upper management seemed to be a universal truth.

“Ah, - --- ----- —.” The man gave him a friendly smile and pointed to the west.

“Thank you,” Calvin said in Ilethan, then kept on going, until he found an empty tent with some pants inside it. He snagged the pants and put them on as quickly as he could, but left his bandaged wound highly visible. It would prevent people from asking him to do things.

On the way past a mess table, he saw an empty box, unattended. He picked it up, closed it, and carried it along, just a wounded courier forced to do legwork by his sadistic superior.

Calvin scoured the north, the people gradually growing less Ilethan, until he found the tent he was looking for: a small white tent that seemed to have temporarily caught fire once. There was a damaged blue guar saddle in the middle of being polished in front of it, and most tellingly, giant brown feet sticking out of the bottom of the tent.

She got lucky.

Calvin bent low and swept the tent flap out of the way, his eyes straining in the dark to make out his friend.

“Baroke? Baroke, is that you?”

A light snore was cut short with a rumbling snort and the large Gadveran sat up, his face coming into the light. It was Baroke, but there was a solid steel band around the crown of his head, and he was giving Calvin a furious glare.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want any more of your tricks. Just leave me be.”

“I’m here to get you out,” Calvin whispered, beckoning. “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

Baroke lunged forward, leaping out of his bedroll, his massive hands clamping around Calvin’s neck.

“You think this is funny!?” he demanded, throttling Calvin.

“It’s meee,” Calvin croaked, undoing his Mutation. His breath barely passed through his windpipe as Baroke shook him like a rag doll, his eyes brimming with tears.

In a matter of seconds, Calvin went back to his original look as he was shaken back and forth. Baroke stopped for a second, allowing blood to flow back to Calvin’s head as he took a deep breath.

“No, you’re not Calvin. This is another trick to get in my head!” He started throttling Calvin again, and they were right back to where they started.

“You’re…the…brains,” Calvin gasped, poking Baroke. “I’m…the…brawn.” He pointed to himself with a shaking finger as he felt his eyes bulging in his skull.

“What in the Abyss?” Baroke dropped Calvin in place and scuttled away from him, studying him like a poisonous snake. “Abyss, is it really you? It can’t be you.” Baroke picked up a nearby rock, hefting it over his head. “No, it can’t be.”

“It’s me,” Calvin said between coughs, holding up his hand. “We beat the village record by a landslide.”

Baroke dropped the rock before seizing Calvin's shoulders and studying him. “How are you still alive? How did you get here? Did they capture you, too? Why did you look like an Ilethan? Wait. It must be a trick!” He went back for his rock.

“Stop trying to brain me!” Calvin shouted, slapping Baroke across the cheek. Of course, it nearly hurt Calvin more than his massive friend. “I want to get you out of here. Let’s go.”

Baroke set his rock aside and gave Calvin an appraising stare. “I can’t. This.” He tapped the band on his skull. Calvin could make out a tiny bit of crusted blood under the iron circlet.

“It won’t let me leave, and when Master Reilly uses it, I become a puppet. Even if you dragged me out of here, he could use me to kill you and send my ass tromping back. You get out of here if you can…if you really are Calvin.”

“Well, shit. Let’s take it off, then!” Calvin said, reaching for the band.

“It won’t come off!” Baroke said, batting Calvin’s hands away from his head. “Unless the control ring is turned off, the spikes don’t come out.”

Calvin leaned back, considering. “Who’s got the control ring? This Reilly guy?”

“Yeah,” Baroke said, nodding. “He’s got mine and others’.”

Idea.

“Baroke, you gather up everyone on Reilly’s leash and pick a good spot to make a run to the east, into the forest. I’m going to go cause a little chaos. Should help you escape.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“Nah, I thrive on chaos,” Calvin said.

One of the Guys.

Baroke stared as Calvin’s guise shifted again—a bit darker-skinned because he was on the conscript side of the camp, but it would have to do.

“What the hell are you?” Baroke breathed, staring at his rippling bones and muscles.

I’m Batman.

Shaddap.

“Rude. I’m the guy saving your ass, which means you’ll owe me throughout the known universe until the end of time.”

“Well, you sound like Calvin,” Baroke said, getting up. “I’ll do it, but don’t take forever.”

Cal gave him a grin and stepped outside, limping his way back toward the main camp.

“Where Reilly?” Calvin asked the nearest guy with rank, clutching his empty box like it had all the most important secrets in the world.

Acting has reached Level 8!

Acting Level 8: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 40% correction.

The Ilethan glanced at him, raised a brow, and pointed. “Nadia and ----- --- are --- --- –.”

“Thank you,” Calvin said with a nod, continuing on his way.

***Nadia***

“And I’m saying that your program to use talented Gadverans just isn’t paying dividends, Reilly,” Nadia said. “Not a single confirmed kill from your entire division.”

“They’ve had hundreds of confirmed kills,” the greying man said with a snarl. “Almost ten per man. A damn sight better than your foot soldiers.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Nadia said, rolling her eyes. “They haven’t had a single confirmed kill of anyone important, which is what I was promised. Why am I not getting what I was promised, Reilly?”

“There have only been two targets of interest thus far, milady. Give them time.”

“Give them food, more like. They are eating our soldiers’ food, and contributing very little.”

Reilly clenched his ring-studded fists, covered with the control bands to a dozen men. They called him the Puppeteer for a reason. Many people were afraid of the dark-robed, gaunt man, but he leaned far too heavily on his toys, and was barely passable as a sorcerer.

Suddenly the command tent opened, revealing a young man with a box and bandages along his stomach.

Rather well-toned stomach, I might add, Nadia thought appreciatively. He looked mixed-blooded, but the hint of Gadveran added a bit of exoticness to his perfect features.

Mmnn. How long’s it been? I might have to command him to stick around after the old fart is gone.

“Reilly?” the young man asked.

“What do you want?” Reilly demanded, turning to face him.

“For you.” The young man held out the box, and Reilly took it, opening the wood slats to reveal…nothing.

“What is the—” The old man’s indignant question was interrupted by a dagger plunging down into his eye. Reilly hadn’t even begun to fall when the assassin’s eyes turned to her. There was a tiny hint of enjoyment lurking in there somewhere that sent a shiver down her spine.

All thoughts of enjoying herself lost, Nadia drew her shortsword as her handmaiden squealed and ducked under the bed. She’d dealt with assassins before.

The assassin moved on to her smoothly despite his limp, swinging the dagger toward her core with the expressionlessness of utter concentration.

He stepped inside her range in a fraction of a second, showing all the hallmarks of a highly-trained fighter, preventing her from getting a full swing on him.

Suddenly the two of them were close enough to kiss, the sadistic enjoyment lurking deep in those eyes giving her a rush of excitement.

“Your army?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“Mine,” she snarled back.

“Good.”

He made to break her nose with his forehead, a decidedly non-Ilethan move, and she slid around his strike, aiming to drag her sword across his stomach and disembowel him, a move that had been drilled into her since childhood.

He caught the slice and followed her blade with his own, twisted with her, staying close enough for their skin to touch, to feel his breath on her cheek, like they were dancing.

Nadia could tell he was weaker than her, and he was wounded. He might be good at fighting, but he was at a tremendous disadvantage against a noblewoman with eight Breaks.

She aimed a swift punch at his wounded side, which had just been cleared by following her lead. Her fist erupted in pain, and she forgot herself for a fraction of a second to look at it.

His wounded waist had literally sprouted a blade that split her fist in half.

When she looked up, the man’s blade was already flashing downward, that expressionlessness still hiding his delight.

“Wai—”

The knife bit deep into her neck, and as she raised her hands, it pulled back out and sank into her eye.

Everything went white.

…

***Calvin***

Calvin heaved a sigh, holding his aching stomach with a groan as he limped over to the black-robed man, pulling each ring off his finger one by one and flipping the tiny metallic switches, presumably releasing Baroke and others.

His veins sang with the adrenaline of victory, turning his arms and legs trembly. It was starting to get easier—killing, that was. There was a primal exultation in complete power over the enemy that he hadn’t gotten anywhere else.

Hopefully sex is better.

It’s better.

Calvin glanced back at the young woman wearing the tight Ilethan leathers that accented her femininity. He couldn’t let the commander of the army get a shot off on him. She was stronger and faster than him, but a teeny bit clumsy and inexperienced in a life-or-death fight.

I’m not really, either.

More than her, now.

Cal finished with the man’s rings and picked up his stick before heading out of the tent.

Calvin held his hand out.

Now to make some chaos.

Calvinian Summoning.

***Nadia***

Nadia climbed out from under the bed, surveying the damage: Her Mind-Slaved handmaiden was dead, the commander of the special unit was gone, and if her ears didn’t betray her, the entire camp was filled with wasps.

The coldness, the brutality of that young man…

He’s just my type!

She clapped her hands together in excitement.

***Calvin***

Your Princess Is in Another Castle has reached Level 2!

Your Princess Is in Another Castle Level 2: 10% correction.

What in the Abyss triggered that? Calvin thought as he walked unharmed through the cloud of insects, dodging flailing Ilethan soldiers.

You got me, man.

Chapter 43: Promises

Grant started awake to the sound of screams and the buzzing of insects that he’d recently come to associate with being on or near the wall.

Horrible pain, like being stabbed, lanced through his exposed skin as a wasp stung him.

“Fu—” He rolled off the cot, the thing creaking from his enormous weight, grabbing his spare sword from beneath the bed.

The blade came up in his hand, separating from the sheath in a smooth movement that sent the sheath flying off into the chaos. And it was chaos. Men were running everywhere, over fires, through tents, into each other as they swatted at the evil creatures bedeviling them. For every man, there were a hundred wasps choking the air.

The boy.

Omni-slash.

5/15 Bent remaining.

For the blink of an eye, Grant’s blade resembled a kaleidoscope, its blood-steel edge refracted in a thousand thousand different directions.

Every wasp he could see dropped to the ground as the force of his swing was divided among all of them. Normally, the Skill wasn’t particularly useful, except for fighting large groups of scrubs. That seemed to apply in this case, though.

The problem was, there were plenty of wasps out of his field of view who simply moved to fill the empty cone from behind tents, chairs, people, cookpots. He’d accomplished very little, in the grand scheme of things.

Cookpots! Grant leapt into the outdoor mess, trailing thousands of wasps, located the box full of cutlery beside the mess, and tossed them into the air.

Blade Dancer.

4/15 Bent remaining.

The fifty or so dull steak knives stopped falling in midair as though they’d been seized by an invisible hand. Then they began to chew up the wasps mercilessly, swatting the creatures out of the air and bisecting them by the thousands. Grant became the sole bastion of safety as the blades created a growing wasp-free dome.

He turned toward Nadia’s tent, running into a stunningly handsome young man with a stomach wound, who seemed to be relieved to be out of the constant buzzing.

“You alright?”

He nodded, clutching his wound. “Need rest,” he said.

That’s an odd accent; must be from Western Iletha. They do tend to be prettier over there.

“Don’t we all,” Grant scoffed. “Do me a favor and keep your eyes open for a Malkenrovian sorcerer summoning wasps—he’s got a stomach wound exactly like yours. If you see anything, make a really distinctive sound so I can find you over all the screaming.”

The young man blinked like he hadn’t quite caught what Grant was saying. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Grant gave him a thumbs-up and kept going.

***Calvin***

What do you suppose he wanted?

Couldn’t quite make it out. I’m not exactly fluent, you know. Calvin was just lucky the general didn’t recognize him. He was a much more dangerous opponent than the Ilethan princess.

Calvin put his head down and made for the forest. He didn’t have time to stop.

You should have used Heart of the Swarm and sent half of your wasps out double distance past Kala, then dismissed it. Could’ve gotten you there fast, with minimal blood loss.

“But then the swarm would be gone,” Calvin said, listening to the screams around him. “And then they’ll be on our asses. Need to maintain the distraction as long as possible for us to get away.”

Point. But keep it in mind. You’re not exactly making good time.

Calvin glanced around. It was true. Since the fight with the leather-woman, he’d slowed down even more, and the seeping in his bandages was getting pretty intense.

Fair enough.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

7/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin created a swarm, and thankfully the two registered as separate entities in his mind. He was getting detailed audio-visual and positioning information from only the swarm he’d just created, while the first one was more of a vague feeling.

In order to confuse pursuit, Calvin split the swarm of nearly two million wasps into two halves, and a smaller targeting group of a dozen.

The two larger groups left the camp to the north-northeast and south-southeast, while the targeting group went straight east, toward Kala, skimming above the trees.

Because the two larger groups were identical in mass (or close to it) their north-south direction would balance each other out and leave only the easterly direction they were traveling, allowing him to apparate directly on top of her.

Well not directly on top of her.

I don’t think she’d mind.

The targeting group found Kala and the escapees, and using those dozen wasps as a point of reference, the two larger swarms arranged themselves relative to them.

Just a bit further south…there we go.

Calvin dismissed the swarm he was part of, and appeared out of nowhere, six inches off the ground in an implosion of green mist, directly in front of Baroke.

“Gods!” Baroke shouted, flinching backward, his deep voice turning rather shrill. His friend’s terror made him want to mess with him a bit.

“I am the end and the beginning!” Calvin shrieked at full volume, his voice cracking. “Worship me or—”

A meaty fist slammed into Cal’s face.

“What the fuck?” Calvin said, holding his bleeding nose and oozing side. In hindsight, maybe that hadn’t been his best idea.

“You didn’t tell me you could do that!” Baroke shouted, his fists held up.

“I can do that!”

“Well, now I know that.” Baroke slowly lowered his fists, studying Calvin suspiciously. “What was the deal with that, anyway?”

“A master wizard doesn’t reveal his secrets so easily,” Calvin said, posturing. The effect might have been lessened somewhat by his dripping nose.

“My muscular buttocks. You probably can’t wait to brag about it.”

Calvin closed his mouth. He was right about to brag about creating an entirely new style of magic. On second thought, maybe I won’t do that.

“Who is this?” a young Gadveran woman said, approaching them. There were ten other men and women who’d fled into the woods, and they all watched Calvin like he might burst into wasps at any moment, which was a somewhat valid concern.

The girl who was approaching, though… She was looking at him with carefully concealed disdain, without an ounce of gratefulness or fear. Her emotions were like a person studying an extremely valuable lump of stone.

She had typical Gadveran hair and eyes, and was a little on the homely side. Nothing particularly stood out about her except for the emotions he could feel from her gaze.

“This is Calvin,” Baroke said, glancing at the rest of the survivors as he pointed a thumb at Cal. “He’s the one who took out Reilly.” Baroke tapped the skin beside one of the clotted holes on his head.

Yikes.

The girl’s emotions were cast into the turmoil of confusion, manifesting as the tiniest frown as she looked at his face. Her gaze flitted down to his bandage, then back up to his face, understanding dawning.

In an instant, her emotion of treating him like valuable property was undercut and then overwhelmed by intense desire and gleeful amusement.

All the while, nothing showed on her face.

“Nice to meet you, Calvin,” she said, holding a thin hand out.

“Right,” Calvin said, glancing down at her hand for some kind of trick. “One second.” He turned away from her offered hand and walked over to where Kala was snoozing against the tree, shaking her awake.

“Nn, what? What’s going on?” Kala snorted awake and gave a delicate yawn. “Did you get him?”

“You doing okay, Kala? You weren’t feeling so good when I left.” He bent low and put a hand on her forehead before he whispered, “Does anything look out of place to you?”

Kala glanced over at the other people standing behind him.

“Aside from the Ilethan girl in leather?” she whispered back before she raised her voice. “I’m fine, just needed to sleep it off a little.”

“Good,” Calvin said, donning his belt and standing before he turned back to the spy. Gotta make sure we don’t kill the wrong person.

“Sorry, that was rude of me,” he said, holding out his hand for the shake. “I just wanted to check on my girlfriend, make sure she was okay.”

Calvin felt a flare of jealousy radiate off of the Gadveran girl like heat from the sun.

He caught her hand and pulled her close. Her eyes went wide.

Blade Body.

Calvin ejected his new blade from the skin of his palm, settling it into his hand as he brought the knife down on the girl’s neck. She stumbled back, spurting blood from the enormous gash on her neck.

There was no surprise or fear in her gaze, only amusement.

“What the fuck? What the fuck, Calvin?” Baroke shouted.

Calvin felt the pair of eyes that had been watching him detach from the stumbling girl and slowly circle around him as Baroke shook him, demanding an explanation. Calvin ignored him, paying close attention to her gaze.

A moment later, he felt a spike of emotion that spoke of catching him for herself.

“Calvin, she’s right the—”

Cal ducked, and a silvery collar rebounded against Baroke’s chest.

“Oh.” Kala seemed confused at Cal’s ability to dodge the unseen. It was the inverse: He could dodge as long as he was seen.

“What in the Abyss?” Baroke muttered as Calvin spun away from him, holding his side.

Calvin isolated a dart-shaped section of his knife and flicked it in the direction of the gaze.

Mass Splitting.

Shaping.

6/11 Bent remaining.

“What’s going on?” Baroke said, glancing down at the wounded Gadveran girl, who dissolved like a mirage, shrinking, warping, and fading.

A storm of steel darts shot out in the direction of the spy, who gave a girlish yelp of surprise, followed by a clanging chime-like sound, as if a silver bell had been used to deflect a bunch of iron spikes.

“How do you even know where I am?” the girl demanded, sliding into view, light lapping against her skin like the water’s edge. She had light skin, black hair, and distinctly Ilethan features.

“It’s the smell,” Calvin said. Karen Rule #19: If you can spread misinformation and trash talk at the same time, do it.

He felt a wave of humiliation from her, followed by a strange excitement as she took on a fighting stance.

Is it just me, or is that the same girl you killed, like, fifteen minutes ago?

That seems to be the case.

What is she, a Draculina?

Probably just a trick.

She let out a growl and charged toward him, slipping into the edges of the light lapping at her sides and once again vanishing from sight.

Kind of a one-trick pony.

Calvin tried to spin out of the way of another attack, but his wound slowed him down, and the girl—Nadia, that’s whose tent it was—caught him on the side of the cheek with her short blade, slicing into his face.

An instant later, a boot caught Calvin’s stomach, and his entire world devolved into blinding pain, forcing him to curl up on the ground, focusing only on breathing.

Nadia slipped back out of her illusion and cocked her head as he tried to lever himself up, her gaze laced with disappointment.

“You can see me coming, but you can’t dodge? I’ll have to have you trained better.” There was a hint of boredom in her gaze as she rapidly lost interest.

“Do you not see the stomach wound?” Calvin demanded, his voice hoarse.

“Excuses.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out another silvery circle. “Now, be a good boy and hold still. I’d hate to mar your face any more than I already have.”

She was leaning down and reaching her hand out to his neck, when a giant fist closed down around her own.

Nadia glanced down at it with a frown. She tugged, achieving nothing, to her bemusement. Baroke was strong.

“Now, little lady, I’m not inclined to hit a woman,” Baroke said gently. “But if you don’t leave, I might—”

“Fuck off,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“Okay.” Baroke stood up and began walking into the man-eating forest.

Damnit, Baroke, you weak-Willed fool!

With a glance, Calvin confirmed that the rest of the escapees had turned away and wandered into the dark forest, with the exception of Kala.

“So you’re the bug boy, huh? I didn’t expect you to be. Remarkable, really. You’ll have to demonstrate how that works…” She tapped her chin. “Come to think of it, you were on the wall when I cast Berserk, weren’t you? What kind of bloodlust did you manifest? Some people get so terrified they strike out at anything, some people see their worst enemy in every face, some go mad. It was fun, I bet, if that hint of enjoyment was anything to go by. What happened when you went Berserk?”

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 16 seconds.

“I fucked people’s meat holes with my war pick,” Calvin gritted through his teeth.

“Oh my, how titillating. The Berserk spell doesn’t make something from nothing, you know. We’re going to be best friends, you and I,” she said, smiling down at him. Strangely, all of her previous excitement began to dim, and she was practically bored.

“I’m going to dress you up, train you to do tricks, take you to parties, and have you kill the odd political rival.”

“I don’t think that’s what you want,” Calvin said.

“Oh?”

“I think you want to be hurt and humiliated, forced to do things degrading and depraved by someone with complete power over you.”

Cal could tell by the renewed spike of emotions that he’d guessed right. “You were interested in me because you thought I could provide that, right?”

Read Expressions has reached Level 7!

Read Expression Level 7: 35% correction.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 8! 40% correction.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle has reached Level 3! 15% correction.

~ Damn, you hit the mark with that one.

She stared at him for a timeless moment, her emotions raging inside her. They went every direction at once, bouncing around between horrified and happy, angry, sad and frustrated. Slowly, ever so slowly, they were reined in and aligned in one direction. A cold, merciless direction.

“Ah well.” She shrugged. “Even if that were true, which it’s definitely not, you’re not strong enough to do it.” She reached toward his neck with the silver collar.

“What about her?” Calvin asked, pointing at Kala.

A tree branch shattered against Nadia’s head, sending the crazy girl spinning off to the side. Calvin held up a hand and Kala helped him to his feet as he kept pressure on the wound.

“I’m sorry, I attract princesses like flies to shit.”

Kala glanced at him with a raised brow. “So I’m a fly now?”

“If it helps, I’m the shit in that metaphor.”

“A little bit.”

“Damn you,” Nadia screamed as she leapt to her feet, her face red. “Kneel!”

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 15 seconds.

Calvin’s legs went out from under him as his body lost the ability to not kneel.

Kala crossed her arms, still standing.

For the first time since she’d arrived, Nadia looked directly at Kala. “Who the Abyss are you?”

I’m Bat—

Please, stop doing that joke. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

“His girlfriend,” Kala said with a hint of a smile.

I never said that.

You totally did.

I also addressed her by a false name, which made it obvious that it was under pretenses. I was concealing her identity. It was a cover!

Girls will take what they can get sometimes.

Bah.

“You’re obviously not one of those cattle,” she said, thumbing toward the dark forest where Baroke had disappeared. A slow smile spread on her face. “Maybe you’re worth bringing in myself.”

“Not gonna happen. Your tricks are pointless against me.”

“We’ll see about tha—”

Kala picked up a small rock and flicked it out to the right, and the Nadia standing directly in front of them vanished, while one off to the right let out a girlish yelp and rubbed her forehead.

“He might be able to smell you, but I can see you.”

Calvin groaned and rose to his feet as the restriction wore off, consumed by his Willpower.

“Kneel!” Nadia shouted again.

OhgodsdamnitalltotheAbyss.

Calvin’s legs went out from under him again.

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 13 seconds.

What’s with the reduced time?

Practice.

“Come on, then,” Kala said, delicately motioning Nadia forward. “If you want my lover, you’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”

Nadia narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath, stepping backwards. “No, I don’t think I’ll play that game with you. I think we’ll play a different one instead. Let’s see how you like fighting your own.”

Bent traveled through the veins in her face in a pulse of black.

Suddenly Calvin heard crashing as the nine escapees rushed into the clearing from the woods, their eyes bulging with rage and terror.

Seems like a good opportunity.

Calvin reached down to his belt and grabbed the vial of uncured spider-silk.

Mass Shaping.

Web.

5/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin doled out his hundred and forty-four pounds of spiderwebs between the nine men and women rushing toward him in thin sheets.

The sheets puffed up in the low-pressure environment, expanding outward rapidly and forming strands as they coagulated in an instant.

Each person ran head-first into a net stronger than steel and designed to tire prey out by having the smallest amount of give. One by one, they collapsed to the ground, wiggling in a tight cocoon.

“What the—” Nadia’s smug expression slid off her face. “You can’t do that!”

Her sadistic anticipation of watching friends fight each other to the death sputtered out into disbelief.

“Says who?” Calvin said, picking himself off his knees.

“Kneel!”       

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 10 seconds.

Really? Calvin thought as he was forced to the ground again.

She glanced at Kala, watching her impassively.

“Fine.” She walked over to the big web where Baroke was wrapped up, hefting her sword. “If you don’t want—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Kala lunged forward, crossing the distance between them in the blink of an eye.

Nadia reflexively put her blade between the two of them, but Kala slapped it out of the way with her hand and delivered a close-range punch to the Ilethan’s side, sending her tumbling backward.

Nadia’s feet and fingers caught the soft floor of the jungle, and she dug furrows through the earth as she slid.

“You shit-colored bitch!” she shouted, her expression one of pure rage.

“Nobody messes with my friends, especially not a pathetic Ilethan that can’t do anything real,” Kala said, her words carefully enunciated and princesslike. Her tone was light and gentle, but the meaning was cutting.

Nadia let out a growl and shouted, waving a hand forward. A blast of light seared Calvin and Kala’s eyes, but Kala was fast enough to shield them with her hands.

Calvin couldn’t see what happened, but there was feminine growling, the impact sound of a couple punches, and the tearing of clothes.

Once Calvin blinked the spots out of his eyes, he saw the two princesses rolling on the ground, locked in a slugfest, and it was anyone’s game. Kala had a black eye and a bleeding nose, and the shoulder of her modest dress was ripped, while Nadia had a split lip and a crazed look in her eye as she tried to penetrate Kala’s body with a spear hand.

Never thought I’d see a princess catfight. Thank you for this.

Nadia struck with her hand, and Kala knocked it aside with her palm. The Ilethan’s fingers tore through a thick tree root like it was wet paper.

Maybe a little more serious than a catfight.

You think?

Calvin reached down and grabbed a component. Neither of them were paying attention to him, and for once, Calvin was absolutely sure where the Ilethan was.

Miasma.

4/11 Bent remaining.

Hopefully Kala finds it in her heart to forgive me.

Calvin manifested a sphere of the most noxious chemicals known to Gadverans. The primary ingredient was Swamp Beetle musk, which lingered for weeks, and triggered a violent gag reflex. Mixed in was a little pure fire-oil to blind the eyes and irritate the lungs, together with a strong alcohol catalyst that made it sublimate at extreme speeds.

A green sphere of the awful substance manifested between the princesses and exploded.

The effect was instantaneous. Kala and Nadia broke away from each other, retching and weeping and screaming, unable to see or breathe properly.

Calvin pulled out his knife and flicked it downward.

Mass Shaping.

Four steel spikes dropped from the sky and pinned Nadia’s arms and legs to the ground, drawing out a wrenching scream.

Calvin dismissed the Miasma as he walked toward her, and Kala gasped with relief, finally able to catch her breath and stop retching as the irritants disappeared.

Nadia’s head swiveled toward him, fear finally showing itself in her eyes.

“Go—”

Calvin lunged forward and jammed the back of his knife into her mouth, effectively gagging her.

He straddled her back and took his bloody hand away from his wound to grab the other side of his knife, using the cold steel like a guar’s bit and hauling her head back to look at him.

“Now, I’m normally a very relaxed man,” Calvin said, his vision getting a bit blurry from blood loss. “But I couldn’t help but notice you were about to try to use one of my friends as a hostage. That upsets me.”

He hauled back further on her head, making clicking noises as the steel slid against her teeth, forcing her neck up at an awkward angle as she struggled to pull the iron spikes out of the ground.

“You may ask yourself how upset. Let me enlighten you with an anecdote and a promise. My mother always told me to tell the truth, my entire life. Do you know why she did that?”

Calvin wasn’t sure if Nadia was shaking her head or shivering in pain, but he decided to keep going anyway.

“So my enemies believe me when I tell them what I’m going to do to them. It seemed silly at the time, but I’m beginning to see the merits. Now, the promise.”

Calvin leaned closer, whispering in her ear.

“If you ever fuck with one of my friends again, I’m going to kill you. You might think it ends with that. No. After I kill you, I’m going to eat you, then treat you to a private hell as my personal possession, and when I’ve had my fun, I’m going to bequeath your luscious teen body to Genosian cannibals until the end of fucking time.

“Do you understand?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and nodded, and Calvin was almost driven back by the wave of desire radiating from her gaze.

That did not have the desired effect.

Speak for yourself.

A familiar, gravelly voice interrupted their moment together. “Step away from the princess.”

Chapter 44: Maximum Capacity

“Can I help you with something?” Calvin asked, looking up at the sword…flier guy.

The fool seeks to beg for the princess back. Little does he know—oh shit!

Calvin’s monologue was interrupted by dozens of pieces of cutlery flashing out of the sky and clamping down around his own and tearing it out of his hands and Nadia’s mouth.

“Grant!” Nadia said, a strange tone of frustration in her voice. Like someone who’d been interrupted at the best part. “What are you doing here?”

“I think that’s obvious, princess. While I may find you disgusting personally, it is my duty to make sure you’re unharmed. That, and I don’t wanna get executed for losing you.”

Nadia blew a raspberry as a dozen steak knives swooped down, aimed at Calvin’s vitals, forcing him to fully unseat himself from the girl rather than get punctured in the heart, lungs, liver, spine, eyeball, and femoral artery.

Calvin’s imagined dive and roll to the side was brought to a screeching halt by his stomach wound, and he wound up face-down in the soft soil, groaning in pain.

“It’s good to meet you again, young man. Imagine my surprise when you show up the same day you were injured. Cunning, or sheer teenage stupidity? I suppose the next few seconds will answer that question.”

“Okay, Cannon.”

“What?”

Calvin rolled over with the miniature cannon pointed perpendicular to Grant.

Shaping.

3/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin created a 144-pound copy of the entire vial except for the cap at the end, just to the right of the man frowning at him.

With the cap removed, a thin tube of vacuum in the primer chamber was rapidly filled by air, making contact with the oxygen-sensitive primer, which ignited the devil dust, which exploded, sending a four-pound steel ball hurtling at the side of Grant’s face as the 140-pound casing jerked backward slightly.

At normal size, it would be a child’s toy, a firecracker. Now it was a deadly weapon.

The enemy’s head jerked to the side and somehow Grant was able to interpose his butter knives between himself and the oncoming missile, reducing a large portion of his blades to twisted wrecks that wobbled a moment before dropping out of the air. Grant was thoroughly staggered by the sudden attack, reeling to the side as if he’d experienced a bit of the force himself.

‘Waiting for them to recover is the gentlemanly thing to do.’ Karen’s voice echoed in his mind. ‘It’s stupid. Never do it.’

Calvin dropped the cannon and slipped the Lightning component out of his belt in one move, feeling the raised lightning bolt on the side of the vial without taking his eyes off Grant.

Shaping.

2/11 Bent remaining.

A cylinder of tightly compressed ivory-colored dust appeared above Grant before exploding in every direction, creating a magnificent pillar of vision-obscuring white. It was made out of dust carefully harvested from dead sandshrews, fuzzy little critters that lived in the Nebian desert. Their skin gave off a dust that somehow spawned lightning, which they then stored and used to dissuade predators.

It’s static electricity. Doi.

A second later, a bolt of lightning arced through the cloud of dust, nearly blinding Calvin, forcing him to squint his eyes.

Grant, however, was mostly fine, having jumped out of the cloud at the earliest opportunity. Only his right foot had taken any damage from the web of lightning crashing through the cloud.

Lightning continued to fly down to the ground, burning up the dust as it traveled through, rapidly reducing in power while Grant limped off to the side.

Let’s keep in mind that the lightning takes a half second to fire the first bolt, allowing someone fast to get out of the way.

Noted.

Grant gave him a look from the corner of his eye, and dozens of knives came lancing down toward him.

Calvin reached for—

“Freeze.” Nadia’s voice locked him in place.

Your Stability is not strong enough to shrug off the effects. Your Will has begun digesting the foreign Bent, ETA 8 seconds.

Damnedable woman, when I build my empire, I’ll dress you in the most humiliating of garb and parade you around for all to see! I’ll use you as furniture!

She’d probably be into it.

Treat her with respect, then? Calvin thought as the cascade of knives shot toward his vitals.

A shapely brown leg peeking through a torn yellow dress appeared in front of Cal’s face as Kala leapt in front of him. It was hard to make out what she did through her tattered dress, but he caught a glimpse of her palm waving through open air, creating a wobbly area of displaced air. When the knives impacted against it, their trajectory was altered to follow the path of her hand, swirling off to the side and burying themselves in the earth to either side of them.

“Hmm, who are you?” The huge man grunted as his knives pulled themselves out of the ground and shook the dirt off. He sized up Kala, his face betraying no emotion.

He drew a single magnificent sword and took a step forward.

“Calvin, what are we—”

“Cover your eyes,” Calvin gritted out as the paralysis wore off.

First priority: Raising my Stability so this never happens again.

Calvin drew Flash.

Shaping.

1/11 Bent Remaining.

Calvin aimed right in front of Grant’s eyes. If this didn’t burn his eyes out of his sockets, who knew what would?

Dupdomancy has reached Level 13!

Level 13: 169 pounds, 65 minutes.

An explosion unlike anything Calvin had ever experienced shot through his chest cavity, more felt than heard as a white light drowned out any other source of illumination in the dim forest, blinding everyone present.

A moment later, the world was black, and Calvin couldn’t hear anything except for a high-pitched whine in his ears.

Would have been nice to know it makes noise, too, Calvin thought as blood tickled his earlobes.

He was blind and deaf, and he was the farthest away from the explosion.

You know who isn’t blind and deaf? My wasps.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

0/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin faded into the swarm, his damaged senses replaced by those of a hundred dog-sized wasps. It was a gamble, but Calvin wanted them to be big enough to move Kala if she was in trouble.

He spotted Grant stumbling toward Nadia, who was groaning in pain, while Kala was backing away, trying to blink the spots out of her eyes, her arms raised defensively.

Grant stumbled forward, and caught himself on the iron spike holding Nadia to the ground. Calvin sent a wasp in toward the large man’s back.

Without any noticeable reaction, a steak knife cut through the air with a hum and bisected the wasp, tweaking Calvin’s senses with a moment of pain before the wasp dissolved into green mist.

His defense is a pain.

Calvin didn’t want to waste all his wasps trying to sting the man. Even though a twelve-pound wasp’s sting was more than enough to kill a man, Calvin didn’t want to spend his limit of ninety wasps trying to get through.

Once he’d had over a million, ninety felt like just a handful.

Calvin was primed to intervene when Grant blindly pulled the iron spikes out of the ground, dragging cries of pain out of the leather-clad princess. He shoved dozens of knives beneath him and his charge and wordlessly flew into the air, carried aloft by the blades.

He’s running away.

Probably a good decision, all things considered. He doesn’t know your tank is empty.

He’s not using quite so many knives anymore. I’m going to end this here. To the Abyss with forewarned enemies coming back to haunt me, Calvin thought, sending a good twenty wasps to surround the man, aiming to mob him from every angle at the same time.

A silver letter opener with a fancy monogram etched into the blade flashed out of the man’s vest pocket, bisecting every single wasp in the blink of an eye as they buzzed toward him. As if that had spent the last of the blade’s energy, it dropped to the ground among the green goo.

Grant looked like he didn’t even notice, eyes closed, ears bleeding as he rose above the canopy and headed in the direction of the camp, too far away to pursue in a matter of seconds.

I think it’s time for us to make ourselves scarce, too. Those wretches will definitely send backup.

Agreed.

Calvin dismissed the spell and reappeared beside Kala, whose ears were conspicuously not bleeding. She was still blinking, her eyes tearing up, but she seemed to be able to see him, looking directly at him.

Her lips were moving, but Calvin couldn’t hear a word of it. His vision had mostly returned—the light had been baffled somewhat by her dress—but his ears were severely damaged.

“I need to borrow Bent!” Calvin shouted, holding his hand over his stomach, lightheaded from blood loss. He didn’t have time to faint, though. He had to get them out of there.

She said something.

Calvin repeated himself.

She said something else.

Oh, to the Abyss with it, he thought, reaching out and pulling Kala in close.

Her eyes went wide as his lips pressed against hers.

I’ve been wanting to do this for years.

She stiffened for a moment as she felt him pushing against her defenses, pressing against the core of her being.

A moment later, she relaxed her body and let him inside, her jaw slackening as he—metaphorically—plunged her depths, his senses warm inside her as he teased out her internal Bent reserve and guided it to the surface.

The kiss may not have been the best choice, though. Kala responded more enthusiastically than he’d expected from the demure princess.

Kala shuddered against him as her jaw went slack, tongue prying open his lips and dancing against his own. Her hips began to twitch unconsciously.

1/11 Bent remaining.

2/11 Bent remaining.

3/11 Bent remaining.

4/11 Bent remaining.

5/11 Bent remaining.

6/11 Bent remaining.

All right, that’s all I need, Calvin thought, pushing away, pulling himself out of her as he pulled his head back and took a breath.

Inches in front of him, Kala gave a gasp as she breathed in, her eyes foggy. A hand wrapped around the back of his head, and Cal was drawn back into the kiss, his senses drawn back to the warm core that hosted her Bent.

7/11 Bent remaining.

Umm. I’m done, Kala. That’s all I need… Cal thought as he tried and failed to pull out. The defenses that kept him out before were holding him inside, now.

Can she do that?

Apparently.

Kala’s other hand pressed against the small of his back with insistent pressure, pushing him against her like she was desperate for every inch of contact she could possibly manage.

8/11 Bent remaining.

Her soft breasts conformed to his body and she shuddered as her thigh left the confines of her dress, smooth skin sliding against his pants. Her hips began to slowly grind back and forth, spreading warmth against his front as his body responded in turn.

9/11 Bent remaining.

I think she’s humping your leg, dude.

Ah, to the Abyss with it. We’re having fun, Cal thought as he threw himself back into the kiss, enjoying the way her tongue danced across his own.

10/11 Bent remaining.

11/11 Bent remaining.

User is at maximum capacity, Lady Killer has no effect.

User is at maximum capacity, Lady Killer has no effect.

User is at maximum capacity, Lady Killer has no effect.

12/11 Bent remaining.

Warning, overexposure to Bent has raised body toxicity by 9%!

In an instant, Calvin went from lightheaded from blood loss, to lightheaded, dizzy, a little nauseous, and experiencing a burning sensation in his veins.

That’s where I draw the line, Calvin thought, reaching a shaky hand up to Kala’s forehead and attempting to push her away. His trembling palm landed on her warm forehead and tried to push her off, but he couldn’t muster any strength, and she shrugged it off, possibly thinking it was a caress.

13/11 Bent remaining.

Warning, overexposure to Bent has raised body toxicity by 18%!

Calvin couldn’t feel his feet, his head was swimming, vision tunneling. He felt like he was going to pass out any second. Going higher was something he couldn’t afford to do.

Sorry about this, Calvin thought, allowing his trembling hand to slip down Kala’s forehead before he poked her in the eye.

Kala gasped and reflexively let go of him, flinching away from the finger in her eye. Unfortunately, she was the only thing holding him up at that point, and he fell backwards into the soft earth of the jungle, staring up at the canopy.

He saw her lean over him and say something, her brows furrowed in concern. Cal pointed to the blood dripping out of his ears.

“Too much Bent. Not good for me,” he said, hoping she could hear him as his heartbeat sent Bent through his overtaxed veins, causing his whole body to ache. At this point, it was just gravy.

Calvin painfully turned his head to inspect the web-wrapped Gadverans. The sacks they were in would last another fifty minutes unless he dismissed it. Perfect packaging to be carried by his wasps.

His gaze flicked over to where Baroke had squirmed around to look at the two of them, his one exposed eye having long since lost its bloodlust.

His friend’s meaty forearm was highlighted against the thick webbing where his fist barely jutted out of the white constriction. His thumb was up, and there was a hint of humor glittering in his eye.

Calvin gave him the finger.

Web.

12/11 Bent remaining.

Instantly, the burning in Calvin’s veins began to recede.

Calvin put another layer on top of each of the Gadverans, getting them ready for easy transport.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

6/11 Bent remaining.

Calvin poured six Bent into creating ten 500-pound wasps, who could easily lift the silk-wrapped passengers, along with one eleven-hundred-pound riding wasp to carry Kala.

Calvin slid into the large wasps and began picking up his charges, immediately clearer of mind in their unwounded bodies.

Time to go.

He bent down in front of Kala with the largest wasp, and she hopped on its back, her legs soft against its sensitive fuzz. The sensation was directly transmitted to Calvin’s mind as he set them to work, and he struggled not to let her notice what he was paying the most attention to. If she noticed his mind kept wandering to the wasp between her legs, she didn’t say anything, slumping against the wasp in exhaustion.

Calvin’s giant wasps worked together to knock down trees until there was a clear space to launch, then they took to the sky.

***

With a quiet rush of air, Calvin appeared in his room in the palace, staggered over to his bed and wrapped his covers over himself. All concerns about the princess’s apparent kidnapping and its outcome were dismissed in favor of bundling himself up like a caterpillar and passing out.

I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

Chapter 45: Recovery

Nadia lay in bed, staring at the embroidered ceiling.

Nadia was a cripple.

She couldn’t move her hands, and her legs were practically worthless. Grant said her legs would likely recover, but her hands would never be the same.

The enormity of what the bastard had done to her was starting to sink in.

She was done.

Finished.

Her political career was finished. The cardinal sin in politics was to appear weak, and being rendered a cripple unable to hold a sword certainly covered that.

She began thrashing in place, her mind overwhelmed with a wordless howl.

I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him, but not before I torture him… I’ll shove flesh-eating beetles up his ass and humiliate him by dragging him naked through the streets of Eshtha, cut his nipples off, tar and feather him, then light him on fire!

Nadia tried to clench her fists, but they didn’t respond.

“Gah!”

Her eyes hurt and her pillow was getting wet now, for some odd reason. Great, there’s a leak in my tent. I’ve really hit rock bottom. It made her eyes hurt more.

“So, princess,” Grant said, entering the tent. “Those wasps really did a number on our organization and morale. It’ll be a day before we’re ready to go fight again.” Grant looked up and his expression became a bit smug as he saw her face.

That made her eyes hurt more. She didn’t like it.

“Day? DAY!? To recover from bug bites!?” Nadia demanded.

“A couple hundred died in the confusion, actually. Part of me can’t help but think that this level of response may be attributed to a certain person using Berserk, which is a forbidden spell for a reason,” Grant said. “Since it has a tendency to bring out the worst in people.

“What will miss aspire to now? Queen of the bedsheets?” Grant asked.

Royal Order.

22/35 Bent remaining.

“Grant?”

“Yes?” he asked with his smug smile and unbroken nose.

“Punch yourself in the face as hard as you can.”

He twitched, his muscles clenching. Grant’s hand curled into a fist and hurtled up toward his face for an instant before he caught it with his other hand, muscles slowly relaxing.

“Nice try, miss.”

“Please.”

21/35 Bent remaining.

Grant gave a friendly grin as the spell disarmed his defenses and invaded his mind, reorienting his perceptions to make the task seem less horrible, and her seem more reasonable and deserving of acquiescence.

“Oh, all right,” he said with a smile.

He punched himself in the face, hard, staggering backward with a stunned expression on his face.

“How did you—”

“Get out of my tent. Take your day to recover. But be aware that I can just as easily have you end your own life. Question my decisions if you wish, but if I ever hear you mock me again, you’ll cut out your own tongue.”

Grant reddened, his hand inching toward his new sword for an instant before he took a deep, calming breath. He knew he was out of line, there.

“As you command, Your Highness.”

The large man bowed and left the large tent, leaving Nadia to continue staring at the ceiling, her thoughts inevitably turning back toward the wretch who’d done this to her.

She would visit every indignity on him a thousandfold, if she could just walk.

Every indignity on him…and his friends.

The violent reaction toward her intention to use the large one as a hostage didn’t escape her notice. The sheer anger in his eyes...seen over her shoulder as he mounted her like an animal, pulling her neck painfully back while she was utterly helpless and in pain.

A warmth began to gather between her legs, and she looked down at it accusingly. Being helpless to do anything about it just made it worse. Her hand twitched feebly.

And now I can’t even masturbate! I’ll kill him!

“Hard day?” the Malkenrovian delegate said with mock sympathy as it entered the tent. Ostensibly it was female, but there was no way she was calling it a ‘she’. ‘She’ implied some level of autonomy, and it was just a puppet, not a woman.

“Do my guards just let anyone in now?” Nadia asked, irritated at the interruption from chewing on her grudges.

“Yes. Yes, we imagine they do, now,” it said, staring at her like a spider.

“What do you want?”

“We smelled the scent of the Originator. We smelled Elliot. Where has he gone?”

The delegate’s lips split back from her teeth in a horrifying facsimile of a smile. “We wish to know. The One wishes to know.”

“Elliot?” Nadia asked with a frown. That’s odd. The walking tree introduced him as Calvin.

“He’s in Mujenan,” she said, thinking fast.

“Really? We think this is terribly convenient for you.”

“He was here, then he left—you said so yourself,” Nadia reasoned. “Mujenan is the only place he could’ve gone. Help me crack it open, and you’ll have this Elliot you seek.”

It studied her for a moment. “Yes. We will provide, but this is something that cannot be left in the hands of another.”

Without warning, the creature lunged across the tent, drawing its hand back and striking down at her chest in the blink of an eye. Nadia’s arms rose to stop it, but her hand simply folded out of the way.

Strange black snakes tore out of the creature’s palm and buried themselves in her flesh, sending a paralyzing pain through her lungs as they began to curl around her major organs.

In a panic, Nadia did the only thing she could think of.

Royal Order.

20/35 Bent remaining.

“Stop.”

The creature ignored her whispered command, driving the snakes deeper into her chest, filling her with freezing cold.

“Please.”

A few bubbles of blood escaped her lips as the snakes drove the air out of her lungs, and in moments, her vision went white.

***Calvin***

Calvin was floating face up in the ocean, eyes closed against the noonday sun, perfectly relaxed, perfectly at peace.

Warm sun, warm water. I don’t think anything could ruin this.

The sun darkened, and Calvin peered through his eye to see a giant looming over the ocean, between him and the sun.

That’s weird. I guess I spoke too soon.

“Kinda looks like Kala, actually,” a voice from his right said.

Calvin glanced over and spotted the man behind the mirror, still wearing his strange clothes, floating in the water beside him.

“Elliot?”

“That’s me.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Pssh,” Elliot scoffed. “Don’t look at me, it’s your near-death experience.”

“My what?”

Another shadow moved over the sun, before the sun itself unhinged and fell aside to allow a giant black tube to come down from the sky, shrinking as it forced itself into his mouth.

Calvin tried to raise his hands and push it out of the way, but realized he couldn’t move his arms.

“Here we go,” Elliot said, flipping over, and Calvin had just enough time to notice the man was lying on some kind of brightly-colored sled on the water, before he felt a tremendous heat build inside him, choking him.

On the horizon, the ocean began to roil before it suddenly heaved, creating a gigantic wave that towered over the two of them.

“Whooo!” Elliot shouted as the wave came crashing down. The last thing Calvin saw was the man climbing up on his sled and somehow standing on it, before a rush of water slammed into his face.

***

Calvin’s eyes flew open, his pupils aching at the bright light above him, only mitigated by Kala and Ella standing over his bed. His face had droplets of something on it, his throat was sore, and he was colder than he’d ever been in his life.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Kala said, sweat dripping off of her as she collapsed backwards onto the wooden floor.

“Calvin?” Ella said, peering into his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” Calvin said hoarsely. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn someone had just used a wooden dildo on his throat.

“Where were you born?”

“Deinos.”

“Fifteen plus twenty-one.”

“Thirty-six, why?”

“Checking for soul damage,” Ella said, her big fingers prying his eyelids back.

“That’s a possibility?” Kala asked, becoming alert.

“When warriors are brought back from the brink of death with Noeula, sometimes they lose bits of themselves along the way. Calvin seems okay, though.”

It’s brain damage from oxygen deprivation, not soul damage, you savages.

“Brink of death?” Calvin asked. “What happened?”

“You went to bed with an unbandaged, aggravated wound and nearly exsanguinated in your sleep,” Kala said.

“Ex-what?” Calvin asked.

“Bled dry,” Ella said. “Lucky for you, I felt you stop breathing, and we had enough Noeula left to patch you up.”

“Didn’t you want me as a Chained Spirit?” Calvin eyed her suspiciously. “Seems counterproductive to let me live.”

“Pssh.” She waved a hand. “That would be petty, and you grow much faster as a living man than as a Chained Spirit.”

She leaned close, her breasts encompassing his cold, weak arm as she spoke beside him. “Besides, I want to see you with a beard.”

“Me too,” Calvin and Kala said at the same time, before glancing at each other.

“Hey Calvin, guess what—” Baroke stopped just inside the door, holding a loaf of bread and a full pot of soup as he eyed the three of them.

“Was I interrupting something? I could come back later, with all this delicious soup.” The smell wafted over to Cal and his stomach made its presence known with an angry growl.

“Nope, I’m starving,” Calvin said, reaching his arms toward the pot of steaming sustenance and making the ‘gimmie’ motion.

“Right. Sit up, buddy. Your arms are probably too weak, so let your good friend Baroke feed you.”

“To the Abyss with that,” Calvin said, reaching toward the pot.

“Now, now,” Baroke said, easily pushing Calvin’s weak hands back down to the bed. “Don’t overtax yourself.”

The towering mass of muscle took a seat on a stool in front of him and began blowing on a spoonful of soup as he watched Calvin with an amused smirk.

No matter how many eye-daggers Calvin shot at him, the musclebound idiot didn’t relent and hand off the food to someone Calvin actually wanted before shoving the spoonful of Baroke-breath soup into his mouth.

“I’m covered in sweat,” Kala said, pinching her dress between her fingertips. “I need a bath and a change of clothes.” She retreated from the room.

Nooo, don’t leave me with this bastard!

“Good to see you’ll make it, Incha Huala. You’ve got a good friend.” She gave him a Genosian sign of encouragement and walked out of the room, abandoning him to his plight.

“Way to kill the moment,” Calvin said between spoonfuls of soup.

“What are friends for?” Baroke said.

“Remind me why I saved you from the Ilethan, again?”

“You did what now?” Andra asked as she entered the room.

“Encouraged him to escape his…trauma. With my prayers.”

“Uh-huh.” She glanced at the blood-soaked bindings around his stomach and back up to his face.

“You didn’t go anywhere last night, did you?”

“How could I?” Calvin asked, pointing at his now-healed wound. Luckily, she couldn’t see that through the bloody bandages. Not technically a lie, but close.

“There was a kerfuffle with the princess leaving some kind of kidnapper’s note and running off the entire night. Know anything about that?”

“I didn’t know about it, no.” Certainly didn’t know about the note.

“She claimed she did it to get out of her responsibilities for a night, but behavior like that is deeply uncharacteristic. Any ideas?”

“I’m just as surprised as you are.”

Andra’s eyes narrowed, looking him over. “Unhelpful. Good work on the wall the day before. You’re officially a Veteran. Once your wound is sufficiently healed in a couple weeks, you’ll be back to defending the wall.”

A shudder went down Calvin’s spine, and Andra smiled at his expression.

“Any idiot can run into battle once believing he’s invincible. The second time, that takes guts.”

She turned to leave and glanced at Baroke, as if seeing him for the first time. “Stand up.”

Baroke lifted a brow and stood up, towering over her.

“What’s your name?”

“Baroke.”

“Baroke, can you use a sword?”

“Bow.”

“Ah, shame.” She eyed him up and down. “And, are you good with it?”

“Level sixteen.”

“You got a bow?”

“Lost it in Surrak.”

“What’s your draw?”

“Six hundred pounds.”

A wicked smile spread over the general’s face, and she clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, Baroke, give the quartermaster your name this evening, and he’ll have something good for you. Also, you’re drafted.”

Baroke’s eyes widened. “But—”

The general was already gone, her cloak billowing in the doorway as she turned the corner.

“Can she do that?” he asked, looking at Calvin.

“Probably. Guess you were right about them wanting your magnificent body,” Calvin said, feeling a smug grin blooming on his face.

“Careful,” Baroke warned, raising the steaming pot, “if you don’t want this soup in your lap. I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t another Ilethan mind trick to get me to shoot people.”

Baroke sat back down and fed Calvin until they were both sick of it, then he left Calvin to his own devices. Ella was off somewhere, and Kala didn’t come back, so he had nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs.

A week or two, huh? Calvin wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to get back out there where people were trying to kill him. He needed a better defense, and he had a damn good idea where to start.

Calvin closed his eyes and folded his arms over his stomach.

Eye of the Tiger.

Shadow Boxing.

Calvin stepped outside his house into the cold morning air of Deinos and took a deep breath, missing the unique smell of the village beside the muddy river.

Karen was standing in the middle of the practice yard, her massive biceps coiling and uncoiling as she stretched out for the morning practice.

“’Bout time,” his adoptive mother said, motioning for him to join her.

Calvin did his stretches and the two of them faced off.

Karen slid forward into his space, intending to knock him off balance, not even bothering to use her sword.

Calvin focused on his new defensive Skill, trying to redirect her bull rush.

Beli Ma.

It amounted to almost nothing. Her shoulder slammed into his unprepared face, and he was thrown violently to the ground, bleeding from his nose in his own imagination.

“Huh,” Karen said, frowning down at him rather than pulverizing him with a follow-up. “What was that?”

“I was trying to slide it to the side,” Cal said.

“Interesting,” she said, giving him a suspicious look. “I didn’t teach you that.”

“I’m trying something new.”

“Your funeral, kid. Get up.”

Calvin climbed to his feet and readied his stance. He needed to incorporate his two main ways of defending himself—manifesting blades through his skin where people were striking, and deflecting attacks—until they became one cohesive whole.

Karen thrust forward with her sword, and Calvin adopted the Beli Ma stance, dragging his palm in front of the wooden sword, which was thrown off-target enough to jab him in the shoulder instead of the heart.

Karen followed through with an elbow strike to his chest designed to make him wish he was dead, using the opening provided by his hand sweeping to the side.

Calvin didn’t have enough control over it, and he didn’t need to be overly concerned with the safety of his imaginary sparring partner, so he pushed his one absorbed knife out of his chest in the path of her elbow.

After that, things didn’t go quite as planned.

The elbow redirected mid-strike to catch him in the jaw, causing his consciousness to turn fuzzy as Karen rode him to the ground, catching him in a submission position before they hit the earth.

“Alright, you little shit, where’s Calvin?” his adoptive mother said, her face red with anger as her huge hands cinched down around his neck, making his spine creak.  “You obviously think I’m an idiot, using Beli Ma and whatever that other thing was. Who do you work for? The Buleyan council? The Hash’Maje? Elliot? Hmm?”

“IIII MEEAIOOO!” Calvin gurgled, trying to speak through the chokehold.

“What?” she said, relaxing her grip.

“It’s Meditation!” Calvin said with a gasp of air. This Shadow Boxing is going poorly.

That’s what happens when you Shadowbox way above your level.

She grabbed the blade sticking out of Calvin’s chest and yanked it painfully out of his skin, before holding it up to his mouth.

“What the hell does ‘it’s Meditation’ mean?” she asked, glaring down at him. “Answer my questions or I remove your tongue.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, through a great deal of discomfort and clarifications, Calvin managed to explain that he was indeed Calvin, and that she was a figment of his imagination in the construct of Shadow Boxing.

When she finally believed him, Calvin expected her to have a nervous breakdown from the existential dread of ceasing to exist when he opened his eyes again, but as usual, she was thinking something totally meatheaded.

She tapped the knife against her knuckles, pondering. “So, what you’re telling me is…because this is all in your head…I don’t have to pull my punches anymore?”

“…I guess not?” Calvin hazarded.

I can’t get hurt with Shadow Boxing, could I?

Of course not. Probably. Maybe?

“I’ll go get my real sword,” she said with a wide grin, heading for her house.

“Crap,” Calvin muttered as he watched the giant warrior skip away in delight.

…

…..

Beli Ma has reached Level 3!

Beli Ma Level 3: Redirect force. 15% correction.

Calvin gasped as his eyes shot open, raising his shaking limbs up to his eyes.

“Oh, thank the gods, they’re still there.” He allowed his weak arms to flop back to the bed.

Maybe spar with someone easier, like Kort or Jinnei? Elliot suggested.

Not if I want to be as good as I can be. Wait… How did Karen know your name?

Probably some other Elliot.

Chapter 46: Knick-Knack

Meditation has reached Level 12!

Level 12: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 60% correction.

Extensive training has increased Kinesthetics.

+1 Kinesthetics.

Extensive training has increased Endurance.

+1 Endurance.

Extensive training has increased Strength.

+1 Strength.

Come on! You can do it! Just imagine Kala and Ella in negligees! Three more pushups and they’ll take them off! A hundred more and they’ll start making out! A thousand more and—

“Fuuuck…yooouuu!” Cal groaned as he did another pushup, keeping his body held flat with his toes on the wall, his stomach and chest burning with effort as he did the last core exercise of the day.

Oh, looks like I miscounted; you finished like a minute ago.

Calvin hit the floor hard and groaned, reduced to a puddle on the floor by the burning that went all the way around his torso, back, sides, shoulders, stomach, and chest.

When I agreed to help motivate you out of concern for your well-being—and definitely not out of utter boredom—I didn’t think I would get so much sass.

He would never understand meatheads like Karen and Jinnei who enjoyed exercise, but he understood, intellectually, that raising his physical abilities would increase his survivability in the long run, and not dying was one of Calvin’s favorite pastimes.

Eight days had gone by since he’d been wounded, and sooner or later, Andra was going to put him back up on the wall. He needed to be ready by then.

Calvin dragged himself to his feet, glancing around the room. It was comfortable, if sparse, an odd mismatch of silk sheets and a complete lack of furniture beyond a simple cabinet for his clothes.

He dunked a cloth into the basin in the bathroom and wiped the sweat off before dressing to go out. Ella was out with Kala, probably devising some way to bedevil him.

They get along suspiciously well. You sure your girlfriends aren’t making out with each other behind your back?

That would be awesome. I fail to see the problem there, Calvin thought, grabbing his cane and heading for the door.

The door opened before his knuckles could brush against the handle, revealing Andra in all her steel-clad glory.

“How’s the recovery?” she asked, looking him up and down.

“Coming along,” Calvin said.

Andra kicked the cane out from under him and eyed his response time as he caught himself. He was a little slow because of his burning core, but Andra seemed satisfied.

“Looks like you’re in good enough shape. Report to the wall tomorrow morning for duty.” Just as quickly as she showed up, she turned and vanished, on her way to accost someone else.

“Damn.” Calvin was not looking forward to going back up on that wall. No matter how quiet it had been since his unfortunate turn on the damaged stone, he couldn’t shake the feeling that as soon as he set foot on it again, he’d get caught up in another bloody conflict.

Calvin fake-limped all the way out of his side wing of the palace and into the stream of citizenry walking back and forth through the street.

The usual horde of pedestrians had thinned out since the Ilethan navy had arrived four days ago, choking the port city’s flow of fish and trade. The Ilethan army had established a makeshift wall surrounding their own, preventing messages or supplies from coming or going.

The people who remained on the street looked haunted and hungry, while the others shuttered their windows like ships trying to weather a storm.

It was a real siege, now.

Calvin walked half an hour to the alley where he’d stashed the dismantled corpse of the metal creature. In the confusion of the day, he was one of the few people who remembered the damn thing existed. Most of the others were dead or severely wounded.

The blade that Calvin had been storing in his body was a simple steel knife he’d bought from a local blacksmith, but that wasn’t quite enough to serve as reliable armor, especially when people had Skills and Abilities that allowed them to punch through steel like paper.

Upgrading his skills and equipment was a must, but the monster’s hooked leg was too large for the Blade Body mutation to absorb, which is why Calvin had planned on having a blacksmith work the Jerrytanium into a blade.

That had gone poorly. During the forging process, the heat had burned up some of the elements in the metal, poisoning the smith, ruining the man’s forge, and winding up with a lump of normal iron.

When Calvin had shown up the next day, the man had tried to have him arrested, and it had been a real challenge to calm him down.

So, the material can’t be worked like iron, Calvin thought to himself, hefting the tiny diamond he’d purchased from a jeweler. The thing was small and cloudy, so he’d been able to get it at a good price.

The look of disgust on the woman’s face when you asked for the cheapest diamond in the store was priceless.

All he needed to do was use Shaping to create a stamp and press out of Jerrytanium, load several thousand pounds on top of it to forcibly stamp out a rough blade shape, then grind the profile into shape with a diamond file. The diamond was a little small to casually make things out of, and if he had the opportunity, he’d like to get a bigger one to hang on his belt beside his Jerrytanium marble. Calvin had already tried removing the hook at the end of the blade with a normal whetstone and got nowhere, so he knew he needed to go harder.

“All right,” Calvin said as he turned into the shady alley where he’d secreted his pile of materials. “Jerrytanium processing attempt number f—” Cal stopped in stunned silence, staring at the tiny metal…people? Their arms and legs were composed of two metal rods on joints, their feet were spring steel, and their hands were large claws spilling over with odd-shaped tools.

Their bodies were unique. Some of them had shiny rounded bodies, their centers looking very similar to the Bent Engine that Elliot had mentioned, while others thrummed in place, covered in soot and putting out little puffs of smoke over their shoulder.

They were odd-looking creatures, and they were swarming over his haul of precious materials. As a matter of fact, two of them were carrying one of his Jerrytanium legs toward a hole in the nearby building, looking for all the world like successful lumberjacks moving timber.

“Hey! That’s mine!” Calvin shouted, waving his arms and running toward them. The little monsters scattered in seconds, some of them curling into balls and rolling while others flew away, trailing little smoke lines behind them. One seemed to turn into a crab and walk up the side of a building, hiding in the rafters.

Calvin ran up to where they’d dropped his loot and inspected it. Nothing was damaged, but nearly everything was gone: the armor plating, the colored wire, the Bent Engine—nearly all of it. It seemed like the blade was among the less desirable scavenging materials.

I guess it makes sense that if there are metal monsters, there would be metal scavengers too, Calvin thought, picking up his blade and putting it over his shoulder.

Damn.

Damn, damn.

Now he only had the one longsword-sized blade left, and the marble in his pocket.

Unit has property dispute?

“What?” Calvin oriented on the odd buzzing sound coming from his left. In the hole, a single glass lens on the end of a brass tube seemed to…look at him.

“What did you just say?”

Unit has property dispute?

The words were all garbled up, and Calvin couldn’t quite make them out. There were parts he almost recognized, but for the most part, it was gibberish. Maybe they could understand him?

“I stored this monster here, it was mine. This,” Calvin said, holding out the blade. “This is mine.”

This street is a recognized neutral zone, and penis-bearing flesh unit has no claim of ownership. Please put down the weapon.

“I understood maybe a quarter of that,” Calvin said.

Your inefficient meat-brain is no excuse for being an idiot. Please put down the weapon.

“Put down the weapon?” Calvin asked, frowning. That’s what it sounded like it said, anyway. He glanced at the razor-sharp blade in his hand, and saw opportunity.

I think he called you an idiot.

“Okay, I’m going to put down the weapon,” Calvin said, slowly lowering the blade to the ground. “I’d like to talk to you. Is that okay?”

The penis-bearing flesh unit has proven to be amenable, so we will hear out its mewling. However, the salvage has already gone toward the creation of more Knick-Knacks, and its return is therefore non-negotiable.

The metal creature stepped out of the hole, its eye retracting into its head as it stood in front of him, arms crossed.

The…penis-bearing flesh unit? Calvin thought as he tried to decipher their speech. It was coming a little easier now, but the way they spoke made it difficult.

Elliot started chortling in earnest.

“Your people stole—took—those legs,” Calvin said, pointing at the remaining scythe-like silver blade. “Does that mean that you know how to work the metal?”

Ah, I see what you’re getting at.

The creature’s lenses flicked down to the blade, then back up to Calvin.

The penis-bearing flesh unit wishes to barter for services?

“Could you stop calling me ‘the penis-bearing flesh unit’?” Calvin said. “My name is Calvin…and yes, I would like to barter for services.”

***

“Stand back, Cal-VIN unit,” the Knick-Knack said, motioning to Calvin. “Your fleshy human eyeballs are weak to sparks.”

One of the little metal creatures took Calvin’s stencil for a knife and laid it down on top of the blade. With a flick of its wrist, a strangely glowing arc of light popped out and traced the stencil, creating a tidal wave of sparks as it followed the outline with inhuman speed and accuracy.

Calvin squinted his eyes and covered his face from the sudden eruption of light and heat, waiting for the creature to finish.

In a matter of minutes, the form was cut out, then sharpened, and Calvin had his first Jerrytanium knife. It was a silvery thing, one solid piece of incredibly tough metal that had been cut, ground, and polished in the amount of time it took to get a suitable bribe for the little creatures.

“There,” Calvin said, pulling the payment out of its bag. “One jar of Blueroot sap.” Blueroot sap was a resinous substance that came from a dark blue tuber. It dried hard but flexible, and was often used as a roofing sealant. Sometimes as syrup.

“Why do you want something like that, anyway?” he asked as the Knick-Knacks’ leader took the thick blue sludge out of his hand and opened the jar, rubbing a bit between its steel, wrench-like fingers. It seemed pleased at the sticky ropes of blue gunk.

“Cured Blueroot makes an excellent insulator, but it is far too rare and expensive to acquire in large quantities. How did a meat creature like yourself manage to acquire this much in one trip?”

“Ummm…”

Calvin, don’t—

“They’re selling it down at the shipyard for cheap. Stuff’s got nowhere to go because of the war, so the merchants are trying to offload anything they can before it spoils.”

The Knick-Knack’s fingers opened in surprise, dropping the jar to the ground, where it chipped before another of the tiny creatures picked up the jar.

The creatures began to let out a strange wail, as if their voices were fluctuating too fast to be perceived. Then, as suddenly as they had begun, they stopped.

“Thank you for the information. Here are your knives.”

Three of the metal creatures, one shiny and smooth, one trembling with some kind of internal purr, and a third with strange geodesic shapes painted on armor plates, approached Calvin with the three knives.

We could have gotten so much more out of them.

We got goodwill.

They’re machines. I don’t think goodwill is a factor.

At least they’ll factor that I’m trustworthy, and be more inclined to work with me again.

Fair point.

Calvin absorbed the first knife with Blade Body, replacing his old one, then tucked the next two in his belt. When he got Knife-Work to level ten, he would be able to absorb a second.

“We’re going to go capitalize on your human fascination with hurting each other and causing misery. It has been profitable working with you, meatbag.”

“Likewise, scrapheap,” Calvin said, and saw the aperture of the creature’s eye twitch. “Do you have a place in town I can find you for more trade, or are grimy, stinking alleys your natural habitat?”

“1337 Speech Road. We own that location.”

Elliot gave a chuckle at that, but Calvin had no idea why.

Calvin and the tiny swarm of metal gremlins went their separate ways at the end of the alley, and Calvin paused to watch them roll/fly/crawl down the cobbled streets.

The people on the street never gave them more than a second glance. Calvin had never been in a city this large, and non-humans still gave him a bit of a shock every time he saw them, but judging by the way others reacted, they were nothing too out of the ordinary.

What would be completely out of the ordinary, I wonder?

Did you notice?

Yeah. Cal finished Elliot’s thought: They run in a swarm.

Well, you gonna kill one or what?

I’ll think about it. The fact that they’re sapient makes the summoning a poor fit. If they are still cogent enough to work a spanner when they’re summoned—which is what we want—they should be able to disobey me. Also, moral implications.

Bah, moral implications. Trust me, they don’t care one way or the other. They’re machines. Do you think I made AI with the desire to continue living and multiply? Hell no, that would be the end of mankind. Besides, one of those sumbitches with a multi-tool would be a hell of a good Swiss Army summon.

What’s a ‘Swiss Army’ summon? Calvin asked.

You’re focusing on the wrong thing, here.

Alright, then tell me how I’m supposed to eat thirty pounds of metal and a Bent Engine—which, according to you, has material that is toxic to life as we know it.

Grab Consume.

That’s in the Chained Spirit Skill. Would it even work with Calvinian Summoning?

Of course it would. It doesn’t say ‘consume and add to Chained Spirit slots’. It only says ‘consume’. The wording suggests that it could be triggered at any time, even with full slots, and would effectively give you all the benefits of consuming a creature, thereby triggering the Calvinian Summoning request to add the creature to a slot.

You’ve put a lot of thought into this, Calvin thought.

If I’m gonna be backseat driving for the rest of your life, I might as well be engaged.

Huh, Calvin thought, glancing toward the Knick-Knacks, who were already long gone.

Alright, not gonna do it until you’ve got a good way of negotiating one of them to serve me faithfully in death, forever.

Calvin turned and headed a couple blocks over, where there was still a spark of life on the streets, and he could get himself a drink while planning his last day before they put him back up on the wall.

He needed to increase his survivability.

Calvin sat down with an overpriced cup of blood-red juice while he mentally brought up his Skills.

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

8

Acting

8

Read Expressions

7

Sense-Grafting

8

Knife-Work

5

Dupdomancy

13

Hunting

5

Meditation

11

Chained Spirit

5

Calvinian Summoning

10

Your Princess Is in Another Castle

3

Fishing

3

Genosian Language

4

Beli Ma

3

Calvin drummed his fingers on the cup as he thought. He already knew for a fact what was in each of the Skills at five or above. Prey’s Body from the Hunting Skill would be good for keeping him alive, but he’d have to gain five levels of Hunting in one day. Hunting was much slower to level on account of its tedious nature, not to mention the experience penalty from Shadow Boxing.

He could select a Chained Spirit Mutation and continue leveling the Skill, but without an actual summon, it didn’t give him any inherent boost to his defenses.

Beli Ma had only leveled twice in a week, so Calvin didn’t expect he’d be getting himself to level five in one day.

Use Shadow Boxing to train Your Princess Is in Another Castle to find out what the abilities do?

Calvin chuckled to himself, picturing breaking into Kala’s bedroom and then running off with her over his shoulder. She might even help if he explained it was for science.

Then he frowned, looking at Genosian Language. It was almost level five.

Cal took a sip of the bitter juice. It tasted like it was starting to go off, picking up a coppery tang that made it taste like blood. Combined with the appearance, it wasn’t a great feeling.

I’ll never understand how you savages can drink that. Elliot made retching noises in Calvin’s head.

How about I Shadowbox Fishing and Genosian Language to level five? he thought.

I don’t see why not.

Calvin left the shop and found a quiet place to meditate. In his dream, he taught a gaggle of Genosian children how to fish, so they didn’t have to be gods-damned cannibals.

Fishing has reached Level 4!

Level 4: Boosts effectiveness of bait and line strength. 20% correction.

Genosian Language has reached Level 5!

Genosian Language Level 5: Boosts acquisition, comprehension, and cultural nuance of the Genosian Language. 25% correction.

+1 Stability!

Please choose an Ability or Mutation.

Abilities:

Language barrier: User may couch their thoughts in Genosian or any other language they are fluent in, typically whichever is more poorly understood by the enemy, making Mind-reading/controlling magic significantly less effective, unless they are fluent in all languages the user is.

Exotic Accent: The user may flawlessly adopt a Genosian accent, which lends an air of exotic mystery. Applies the Genosian Language correction to the user's attractiveness to women.

~Triggered by Talking to Girls.

Private Conversation: 1 Bent. The user and the target may freely speak in a manner that conveys a great deal of meaning while seeming innocuous to observers.

~Practical. I like it.

Mutations:

The Genosian Tongue: User's tongue becomes long and prehensile, without affecting the user's speech. Used for speaking Genosian more clearly.

~Sure, THAT'S what you'd use it for. Have I told you the story about the fugly guy who got all the babes in the bar? He just kept licking his eyebrows.

The Gift of Tongues: Pay one Bent and consume the tongue of a fluent language speaker to gain fluency in that language. Permanently.

~Well, that's pretty Genosian for you.

Tribal Dentistry: The user's teeth become stronger, and any teeth the user loses will regrow over the course of two weeks.

~Good skill for retirement. Gumming food is annoying.

Full-On Genosian Mouth: Combines the effect of The Genosian Tongue and Tribal Dentistry, in addition to changing the user's teeth to more closely resemble those of the Genosians.

~Yeah, but why?

Calvin scrolled through them.

I choose Consume and The Gift of Tongues.

Wait, why—

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutations are taking place.

Calvin felt his organs begin painfully shifting inside himself, making room for…something, moments before he lost consciousness.

When Calvin opened his eyes again, it was early evening.

Why those two? Elliot asked.

“Because sooner or later, I’m going to have to eat a dragon with steel plates for scales or something, and I’d rather not have to do that manually, and second…”

Calvin reviewed the choices again.

“If I get eight or more fluent languages, then Language Barrier should be very difficult to get through for an Ilethan mind-mage. As it stands right now, though, I only speak Genosian and Gadveran fluently. Among the Ilethan, that probably isn’t particularly uncommon. They trade with the Genosians, after all. I speak a bit of Malkenrovian and Ilethan too, but the ability specified fluency. Consuming people’s tongues enables fluency.”

Still, you’re gonna have to wait until Genosian Language hits level ten, and you don’t exactly have a lot of people to practice on.

“I’ll figure something out,” Calvin said, closing his eyes again and dropping into a dream of the spawning season of Deinos, when there were so many fish that the shallows turned red with the shapes of them.

All it took was a bundle of eggs, and the fish would snatch them up, trying to carry their young upstream. It was a cruel ploy, but undeniably effective.

Calvin was casually hauling in his twentieth imaginary Klum under the envious gaze of the rest of the villagers of Deinos, when the entire riverbank bucked violently, shaking Calvin to his core.

“What the—”

Something punched Calvin in the nose, and when he opened his eyes, he was facedown, kissing the wooden floor of the inn where he’d come to meditate, away from the distractions of the palace—namely Kala, Ella, and the snoopy general.

Calvin pushed himself up and tried to stand, but his legs were tangled in the sheets. Matter of fact, the bed itself was toppled over, leaning partly on him.

The room’s lamp had shattered on the ground, and in an instant, half of the room was on fire, blocking his way to the front door.

The rumbling of falling buildings and the shrill screams of women—and possibly men—echoed through the slatted window.

Something’s wrong.

Calvin was deciding whether to spit at the fire and create one hundred sixty-nine pounds of drool to smother the flame for a quick escape down the stairs, or to break through the window and aim for the outside, bypassing whatever hazards were in the oddly listing building.

While he was thinking, the world made his choice for him.

The slatted windows burst open, and one of Elliot’s hunter-killers landed in the room, its razor-sharp limbs sinking into the floor. It inspected Calvin for a moment, its blunt head cocked slightly to the side as its unnatural eyes focused and unfocused on him.

***Kala***

“So, what are we doing here?” the towering Genosian girl asked as they entered the musty bookstore. The owner, an ancient Malkenrovian man with a shock of white hair and a glass eye, watched the sharp-toothed girl suspiciously.

“We are exploring,” Kala said, inhaling the nostalgic scent.

“Is that what that was?” Ella asked, pointing a thumb at the attendants hauling a cart full of pots and pans, flour, chamber pots, and other sundries. They were all things she planned on giving to the poor once their little shopping spree was over…except for a bolt of dark blue velvet that would look great on the Genosian’s grey-purple skin.

The thought of having the tall girl model for her sent a little thrill through her body, causing her heart to slam against her ribcage and stomach to flutter for an instant before she calmed herself.

“That was a little bit of exploring, but we wandered around buying things at random mostly to reassure everyone that I’m still alive, and that everything’s normal. To be seen being a princess, you know?”

She directed her attention to Ud, the man pulling the wagon. “Could you take all of that to the slums?” She lowered her voice. “Except the velvet.”

One of the attendants pulled the cloth aside while Ud went his own way.

“I don’t know,” Ella responded to her question. “I never had to prove that I still existed.”

“Politics become increasingly odd as they scale up,” Kala said. “People are ignorant and rumors travel fast. The day after I disappeared, everyone thought I was dead or captured. Only by making a big production of simply existing will the rumors be quenched.”

“Huh,” Ella said, poking a bookshelf. “That’s annoying.”

“Right!” Kala said, bringing herself back on task. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about, anyway.” She stepped up beside Ella and briefly noticed her body heat before grabbing one of the tomes.

“This,” she said, pointing to it, “is a book.”

“I know what a book is,” Ella said with a hint of ire. “They tell you how to do things. Father has one on traps and hunting. I learned how to make snares from the pictures.”

Did she not know how to read? This might be harder than Kala had thought. It made sense, but illiteracy was…unusual for a Gadveran. So unusual that she hadn’t even considered it.

“Well, books are also for stories,” Kala said. “For example, one of my favorites.” She reached out and grabbed the well-used book from its familiar slot.

“Clan of the Cave Gardor, where a noblewoman is exiled to the wilderness to die by her family for a crime she didn’t commit, then she’s rescued by a clan of cave-dwelling savages. To get revenge, she’s forced to rise through the ranks of these well-muscled, lusty men and women using the only currency she has: her body.”

Kala’s body warmed a bit as she recalled all the specific needs that the numerous cave people had, and how much Evelyn found herself enjoying giving them what they wanted.

Then she realized Ella was watching her with a frown.

“What?”

“Why would they rescue her? If she was a soft noblewoman, she would have been more of a hindrance than anything else, and surely she’d be delicious.”

Kala blinked. “Because otherwise the story would end there.”

“Ah. True. But why did they make her do hard labor? If she was one of your noblewomen, her interpersonal and language Skills should have been relatively high. They could have used her to negotiate trade deals with foreigners that would have more than paid for her keep.”

“It wasn’t hard labor, per se. They were isolationist, and—”

“Then why didn’t they eat her?”

“Because she was pretty, and—”

“Well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Because the book is about sex! Okay!?” Kala said a bit louder than she had intended. “Lots and lots of sex! That’s what the story’s about. It’s a fantasy about a woman getting passed around by horny cave people, and logic kind of messes that up!” The owner of the library gave her a raised eyebrow and her attendants pretended not to notice.

“Oh.” Ella glanced down at the cover contemplatively. “Can you read some?”

***Later***

“‘Grog made the mating sign, one brutish hand clasped around the other, but this time, he was facing Evelyn, expectation glittering in his cruel eyes.’” Kala looked over, enjoying the girl’s horrified expression.

“‘Enquacha!’”

“No, he can’t do that! She was claimed by Baréd in front of the whole tribe!” Ella shouted, lunging out of her comfy recliner to shake Kala’s shoulder. “Grog’s a total aneuhenaha!”

“Le-e-e-t me-e-e f-in-ish,” Kala said, her voice trembling as the bigger girl jostled her.

“This better turn out okay for Evelyn,” Ella said, putting a threatening finger under Kala’s nose.

“Noted,” Kala said, returning to the book. Maybe I’ll skip chapter fourteen.

“‘Grog advanced on her, pinning Evelyn’s hands to the cold stone floor, assaulting her nose with his barbaric musk. She could feel the blood rushing to Grog’s loins as they pressed insistently against the thin piece of silk that lay between them, her last reminder of the life she’d had before this horrible place.’”

Ella kicked Kala’s seat.

“I’m getting there,” Kala said with a scowl. Kala skipped past a bit of the more graphically descriptive paragraphs and got to the rescue so the impatient Genosian would stop kicking her chair.

“‘At the final moment, Baréd appeared at the entrance to Grog’s smoke-cave, his muscles glistening from exertion. At the sight of Grog atop his mate, he let out a thunderous—’”

The sound of a distant explosion slammed through the library seconds before the entire shop seemingly hopped in place, sending the two of them up into the air, then down again in a pile of books.

The lanterns that had been lit to read into the night smashed down around them, lighting the library on fire. The owner was struggling weakly under a shelf, blood pulsing from a wound on his scalp.

“What was that?” Kala breathed, flexing her lip, where the book had slammed into it.

“Nothing good,” Ella said, coming to her feet, skin turning silver.

“Calvin,” Ella said, turning toward the northeast.

“Mr. Grosh first,” Kala said, heaving the shelf off the old man with one hand and sliding him out with the other.

“My store—”

“Mr. Grosh?” Kala said sweetly in her princess-voice, kneeling to make eye contact with the dazed man. “As your princess, I am ordering you to go to the castle, because your store is fucked, and if you don’t get moving right now, you’re going to be burned alive or cut down by Ilethan. Do you understand?”

He nodded and climbed to his feet, holding one hand to his head as he stumbled out into the quickly-filling streets, turning toward the west.

“Now Calvin?”

“Now,” Kala said, glancing at the link in Ella’s aura that gave Calvin’s direction.

“He’s that wa—” Ella was already running past Kala’s dazed retainers, giving Kala no choice but to put her head down and sprint after the Genosian. Kala wasn’t worried, though; she knew where she was going.

I wish I had one of those Guya links. Then I could find him whenever I... Ah, damn, we left the velvet in the fire.

Chapter 47: Paddywack

Calvin’s breath caught in his lungs. He knew what was going to happen next: The creature would rush toward him with unnatural smoothness, and its razor-sharp legs would reduce him to quivering chunks of bloody meat. The sheer, panicked adrenaline saw him fumbling into his belt, drawing the Jerrytanium knife and flicking it forward faster than he could think.

Shaping.

10/12 Bent remaining.

“You—” A man’s gravelly voice oozed out of the metallic beast an instant before a massive trident of Jerrytanium, formed from the tip of Calvin’s knife, caught the hunter-killer and pinned it to the wall.

Calvin scrambled to his feet and dodged around the flailing limbs whizzing through the air as the creature tried to unpin itself from the wall.

He ducked to the side and grabbed his component belt before jumping out the window the monster had just come from.

Calvin burst through the shattered slats, his heart slamming against his chest, too in-the-moment to feel the wood scrape against his skin as he came out of the third-story window.

The entire inn was at a slant, and Calvin found himself sliding down the painted wooden surface rather than falling straight down to the ground. A second later, he pushed off the wood and landed on the ground, casting his gaze around for any sign of what had happened.

The buildings around him were demolished, like a toddler had gotten tired of playing with his blocks and upended his entire construction. The street was choked with civilians; men and women, both wounded and unwounded, were panicking on the street. Cries of desperation and pain filled the air, but the herd mentality seemed to lead them in the appropriate direction: away from the wall.

The inn Calvin had been staying in was a block away from the wall. Uncomfortably close for some, but cheap. To the left, the buildings closer to the wall were nothing but rubble, and…Calvin noticed that a huge chunk of the night sky was dark. Something gigantic was blocking out the stars.

From that direction, more hunter-killers were crawling over the ruined buildings, swarming toward Calvin and the rest of the civilians.

A man threw a torch at one of the creatures, who dodged it easily, but the burning piece of wood and cloth sailed far past it, bathing a small fraction of the towering thing in illumination.

Far above him, Calvin saw metal plates the size of bathtubs that seemed to slowly move, as if whatever was beneath them was breathing.

Then the torch went out.

Calvin decided it was time to get out of there.

Shrieks rose as the metallic creature began to tear through the crowd.

I need to save as many people as possible.

Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’re—

And use them to buy time.

Fair enough.

Calvinian Summoning.

Heart of the Swarm.

9/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin split the swarm into two groups. The escape group of some five hundred pounds, roughly triple his body weight, went three different directions: east, southeast, and northeast. If any of them were destroyed, it would shift the location he reappeared farther away from whatever killed them.

The other half, the amount of wasps he’d been able to summon at level eight, spread out among the killing machines, their only purpose: to land on the creatures’ eyeballs and cloud their vision.

Calvin watched in amazement as his awareness ballooned outward, encompassing the entire block, and rapidly stretching even further outward as approximately two million wasps choked the air around the Ilethan creatures flooding into the city.

The wasps couldn’t do anything more than cover the creatures’ eyes, as their stingers simply clinked against glass and steel, their poison completely ineffective.

It was enough, though. People, when faced with death, can find a respectable amount of hustle, and the civilians fled toward the castle while the metal creatures killed Calvin’s swarm by the thousands, crushing them off of their eyes, slicing them out of the air.

Out of curiosity, Calvin pushed his swarm of wasps over toward the giant…thing that dominated the next street over. He couldn’t see particularly well in the dark, but the sensitive feet and millions of contact points allowed him to make out something big and cylindrical, covered in armored plates that doubled as feet.

Feels like the descriptions I’ve heard of a Belaga wurm, but it’s metal?

That would make plowing through solid steel more viable. I actually don’t know that kind of ‘bot. Maybe they mutated one?

Calvin didn’t know enough to weigh in on that, and his focus was stolen by something off to the side.

Grant and Nadia were walking down the street, just one block over from where Calvin had been, protected by a barrier of whirling knives. It looked like the massive sword wielder had adapted to Calvin’s swarms, and replaced his steak knives with actual daggers. He looked grim as he walked beside Nadia, the two of them flanked by six of the hunter-killers.

Nadia, on the other hand, looked terrible. Her face was sunken and grey, and she was wearing the same clothes as…dear Elani, eight days ago? Calvin, like a typical boy, was unopposed to wearing the same shirt for a few weeks at a time if it was still clean, but Nadia’s armor was torn and crusted with her own blood, in such a state that even he thought it was out of the ordinary. The black eye she’d gotten from Kala hadn’t healed, either; instead, it was an ugly purple with greenish tinge at the edges, fresh as the day she’d gotten it.

Something is very wrong here. Why? Calvin’s Intuition struggled to put the facts together and form a conclusion out of what he had available, but in the end, failed to come up with anything useful, other than a strange foreboding.

Calvin sent a probe in, a few thousand wasps as a hello, but they didn’t make it past the large man’s whizzing barrier of knives.

Need to get Atom Ant sooner or later to let my wasps compete with things like that.

At level fifteen, he would be able to sacrifice fifteen times the wasp’s mass to make it fifteen times stronger. For a little wasp, that might not mean much, but scale it up to the size of a small dog, and then you had something dangerous.

Assuming I ever get there, Calvin thought as he guided his escape groups away from the fighting.

At the rate you’re getting into life-or-death situations…yeah, I think you’ll get there.

At Elliot’s words, Nadia’s head whipped up and she studied the wasp swarm hovering around their dome of safety. She inhaled deeply through her nose and let out a shuddering sigh, as if tasting the air on the way back out, too.

Well, that’s creepy, but at least she’s not using her damn mind magic… Why isn’t she using her mind magic?

An entire week had gone by, so there was no reason for the Ilethan sorceress not to have restored most, if not all, of her Bent.

Is she saving it for me or something? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. She demonstrated more than enough Bent to overwhelm me casually, she didn’t seem the type to skimp on it, and yet she’s just walking beside Grant…sniffing for things.

Calvin watched with a thousand eyes in the growing light of the city-wide fire as Nadia took a sharp left turn, angling toward Calvin’s inn. She stopped right where he’d been standing when he’d used Heart of the Swarm, and began testing the air with her nose and tongue in a way that seemed to genuinely make Grant uncomfortable, the big man shifting away from the grey princess. The front line had long since moved forward, so there was no one else there to witness the strange sight of a pallid princess climbing the side of an inn, pausing at the broken shutters to sniff the wood, her strangely dark tongue flicking out like a snake’s to test the splintered wooden frame.

Hey, I think she just—

“Divination…”

She frowned, seemingly unhappy with the result of the spell, just as Calvin felt an itch on the back of his imaginary neck, like some fuzzy something was watching each of his wasp bodies, and he could make out its malignant gaze boring into their backs.

She reached out with a finger and slid it across the sharp edges of the shattered wood slats, the very tip coming back with a bit of red.

Is that my—

“Spell Purge.”

***

Calvin’s eyes flew open, six feet above the cobbled stone streets, arms and legs flailing as he slammed into the ground between his three escape swarms and his delaying swarm.

He couldn’t dismiss individual pieces of the Heart of the Swarm, so when the time was right, he’d planned on having the delaying swarm cease to exist by biting off each other’s heads, canceling out their mass and allowing him to reappear much further away, but he hadn’t had time to do that. He landed right on the front lines, not nearly as close to the castle as he’d wanted to be, among the mass of panicked Gadveran civilians running for the safety of the palace. Calvin forced himself to his feet and joined them before he was trampled to death.

Not a hundred percent sure the castle is a safe place to be at this point, buddy.

What, would you prefer I go to the docks and board a ship, with that fleet out there?

Then at least your opponents would be human, am I right?

Calvin weighed the situation. From what he’d seen in the air, fires were engulfing the entire city. The infrastructure, and therefore the city’s ability to sustain a war, was going up in smoke as he stood there thinking about it. Even if they pushed the invasion out again, they had a gaping hole in their wall, and nowhere for people to eat, sleep, or cook food.

The palace was designed to be easily defended, but against that enormous metal wurm? Cal saw it as a matter of time before the entire structure was torn down.

We’re screwed.

Calvin changed direction, turning toward the north and muscling his way through the crowd of civilians that was carrying him westward like a whitewater river, aiming for the docks. The port was guarded by twin towers that stood on either side of the bay, with defensive trebuchets ready to rain fiery death on any ship that got too close.

The Ilethan fleet prowled just outside the trebuchets’ range, circling like vultures. Once they saw the fire spreading in the city, they would be sure to seize the opportunity.

Calvin burst out of the crowd of bodies on a small off-road that led a winding route to the docks, only used by the men and women who lived and worked in that neighborhood.

Calvin took his first step down the street and froze.

I need people.

Escaping by himself was pointless. He needed people to be a Wizard-King, and if he lost Baroke, Kala, and Ella after all the loss he’d experienced the last few months, well, his Intuition told him it would cause a wound that he’d have a hard time recovering from.

For the sake of my girlfriends, my future, and my sanity, let’s be heroic, Calvin thought, turning back toward the stream of Gadverans.

Ah, selfish altruism.

Calvin raised his hands and two thousand giant wasps burst out, each the size of his fist, spreading out over the burning city.

Heart of the Swarm.

Suddenly bursting into giant wasps wasn’t the best way to keep people calm, and more than a few people screamed at the sight of him, trying to force their way deeper into the crowd, but larger eyes had longer vision, so he did what he had to do.

Calvin spread out, covering half the city in a quick sweep with the larger wasps, moving as fast as he could without losing detail.

I just realized you’d be really good at Amber Alerts.

In just a minute or two, he made out Baroke’s heavily muscled frame standing out among the civilians. To his credit, the boy about Calvin’s age was ushering people twice his age toward the castle without any seeming panic. His yellow-and-brown livery must have given him some sense of responsibility, despite his only being in the army a week.

Baroke looked up as the buzzing around him got stronger, tensed to fight. Did I show him my wasps? I don’t think I did.

“Baroke!” Calvin said, appearing at the center of the wasps as he dismissed the spell.

The heavy hitter gave an awkward squawk and a reflexive punch, but this time Calvin was ready, and simply leaned out of the way.

“Don’t do that!” he shouted.

“Baroke, let’s help people get the fuck outta here! It’s not looking good!”

“I gotta make sure everyone gets into the palace!”

“The palace is a fucking deathtrap with that thing back there!” Calvin said, pointing.

“What thing?” Baroke shouted over the screams of the people and the roar of the fire.

“Yeah, what thing?” Andra said, seemingly melting out of the crowd of people.

“Dear Kvothe!” Calvin shouted, flinching away from his commanding officer.

“Calvin, Baroke,” the steel-haired woman said, eyeing the two of them. “Good to see you’re alive. What thing?” The crowd seemed to flow around the woman’s steel-clad body like a river around a boulder.

“Some kind of metal Belaga wurm!” Calvin said. “I was near the wall when it came through! The palace isn’t going to hold up to that!”

“You’d be surprised what the palace can hold up to. Metal Belaga wurm, huh?” Andra mused for a moment.

“We’ve got a better chance of cutting through the fleet outsi—” A metal palm snapped out and caught Calvin across the face, before seizing his shoulders.

Andra looked him in the eye. “That’s planning for failure, Calvin. Even dumber than regular planning. Take a deep breath, get your shit together, and get ready to fight to win. Now, did you see any royals guarding the wurm?”

Calvin had gotten a good look at the wurm and its surroundings as a massive swarm of wasps.

He shook his head. “There’s only two people that could be considered that: one girl in black, name of Nadia, and one in blue, she called Grant. They aren’t guarding it; they’re coming after me.”

“You?” Andra frowned. “Are you sure?”

Calvin thought back to the princess’s bruise-colored tongue delicately tasting him from the piece of wood.

“Pretty damn sure,” Calvin said.

“I know of her. When did you find the time to make the girl your mortal enemy?”

“Umm….”

“And here I thought you snuck off that night for some show-and-tell with Kala.” Andra rolled her eyes. “I don’t think one smack was enough for you.”

She refocused on the two of them, her expression hard. “Alright, I’ve got a job for the two of you—”

Kala and Ella came out of an alley and arrived beside Calvin, panting.

“What did I miss?” Ella asked, crossing her arms.

“Are you all right?” Kala asked, checking Calvin for wounds. “You were bouncing all over the city; we thought you might be in trouble.”

“She thought you might be in trouble,” Ella said, crossing her arms.

“...four of you.”

“Me, too?” Kala asked curiously, probably expecting to have to fight to stay with the rest of them.

“Defending cities while they’re on fire builds character,” Andra said with a cold smile. “And if you die, I’ll feign ignorance to your father.”

“We never saw each other,” Kala said, and Andra made a wordless gesture of agreement.

The general pointed at a tower far to the south, on the other side of the city.

“That’s the academy right there, Bekvah’s alma mater. It’s got a fuck-off big machine that controls the weather. Go there, find out why the nerds aren’t making it rain, fix it, and don’t die while you’re doing it.”

What’s thirteen pounds squared in gallons of saltwater?

Not enough to put out a city.

Fair enough.

Chapter 48: Classic Party Composition

Cool, we’ve got the classic party composition: thief, ranger, wizard, and heavy.

…Who’s the thief? Calvin thought as they sprinted through the streets, the heat of the flames searing against their skin from every direction. Time was running out.

You, obviously.

Well then, who’s the wizard?

Kala.

That doesn’t make sense. I’m way more of a wizard, Calvin thought as he came to a halt at a corner and used his look-stick to stealthily peek around it. There was an HK on top of the nearby burning building, completely heedless of the flames, watching for any sign of movement.

Um, excuse me, can your eyes pierce the veil? I didn’t think so.

“Up on top of the next building,” Calvin whispered back to the rest of the group, pointing up at it through the corner of the abandoned general store.

Baroke nodded and put one of Calvin’s arrows to his bowstring, switching places with him.

“What’s he saying?” Kala whispered when Calvin shifted closer to her. She’d been watching his ongoing conversation with Elliot for a while.

Calvin looked Kala in her soft brown eyes. “Believe me when I tell you, it’s not important.”

Baroke flipped around the corner and snapped off a shot with the monstrous bow the general had given him, and they were rewarded by a crunching noise and the shrieking of metal. Baroke glanced quickly at the other rooftops and then motioned for them to keep going.

As one, the four of them continued down the street toward the south side of the city, aiming for the distant tower that could supposedly fix their fire problem.

Calvin brought himself to the front again as they ran. He was the smallest, quietest one among them, so he’d be the least likely to attract attention, and maybe that would let him spot the HKs or Ilethan first.

The streets were abandoned after the initial rush, and now the only company they had as they ran past the empty storefronts was corpses and monsters.

They made it to the next major crossroads, and Calvin got his breathing under control as he held out the look-stick and surveyed both directions. Nothing. He peered around the corner in both directions to make sure.

The rooftops and streets themselves were empty, save for the corpses of those who hadn’t been able to flee fast enough.

Calvin saw a young mother and her baby who’d been pinned down by rubble then finished off by HKs, and it made his stomach want to flip.

“Come on,” he whispered, waving to the rest of them as he forced the bile down. “Looks clear.”

They had begun to follow, when two HKs burst through burning fences on either side of the road behind them, leaping toward Kala and Baroke in a single, smooth movement.

Baroke flinched backward with a squawk, holding his bow between himself and the approaching monster. The giant boy wasn’t the best up close.

“Stop,” Kala said, halting the one coming after her in its tracks.

Did she ever have an ability like that? Calvin recalled her doing the same thing to him while they were traveling. Maybe it’s a princess thing.

Meanwhile, Ella rushed past Baroke, grabbed the handle of a door that was partially off its hinges and tore the entire thing away, twisting around to bring the door between herself and the monster like a shield.

In a fraction of a second, the door turned silvery, gaining the same coloration as Ella’s skin, just before she slammed into the creature, driving it into the ground. It was harder than the street itself, so the creature’s razor-bladed limbs were pressed deep into the cobblestone, pinning it temporarily in place.

“Baroke, could you—” Kala began, stepping back from her frozen opponent.

With the hissing of displaced air, a solid metal arrow plowed through the single lens at the front of the creature’s body. It gave a few odd twitches and sank downward as its limbs lost strength.

A fraction of a second later, Baroke shot another arrow through the eye of Ella’s opponent, killing it instantly.

It was much more Bent-efficient for all parties involved for Calvin to spend one Bent on making Baroke a couple dozen arrows capable of penetrating the monsters without assistance than it was to leave everyone to their own devices.

It gave Baroke a big head, though.

“How about that?” Baroke said with a grin, easily spinning the heavy bow back and forth in his grip. “That’s three to one so far. I hear you had a real hard time with these things, but I’m just not seeing it.”

“Oh, so you don’t need my arrows?” Calvin asked.

Baroke stopped spinning the bow. “I never said that.”

“Good, now thank Ella for saving your ass.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Baroke said obligingly.

“You should put on some fat,” Ella said, appraising Baroke. “Too much muscle is bland.”

Baroke paled.

“No scaring my friends!” Calvin said, tossing a pebble at her. “If there’s nothing more here, let’s keep moving. We’re nowhere near where we need to be, and Baroke’s arrows only have another half hour before they disappear.”

Calvin led the way as they resumed their sprint down the empty streets.

“How did you do that door trick? It was impressive,” Kala asked while they were running, the tower of the academy looming over them.

“I got Shield Work, Heavy Armor, and Meat Shield when Calvin and I were up on the wall,” Ella said with a shrug. “Probably the only reason I’m still alive.”

Calvin nearly missed a step.

She got three defensive skills in a matter of minutes, and I’m stuck with next to none? That’s not including her Iron Skin!

Says the guy who can turn into wasps to escape.

“So you used the door as a shield? How did it turn shiny like that?”

Ella flashed her a bright smile. “Somehow, Heavy Armor and Shield Work pair well with Iron Skin. The Skill reinforces my armor and makes my skin smooth as polished steel.”

“Oh?” Kala asked, and Calvin could hear the interest in her voice.

“You should feel it sometime.”

Calvin shot a glare over his shoulder at Ella, who shrugged.

“We’re almost there,” Calvin said, glancing up at the tower ahead of them before fixing them with a stern glare. “Raise your hand if you’re ready to stop flirting.” He raised his hand, followed by Baroke, and reluctantly, Ella and Kala.

“Good,” Calvin said, dropping low and creeping forward.

“Mm, it’s so hot when he takes charge like that,” someone whispered, too quiet to determine who it was.

“The view when he’s crouched: amazing.” Another whisper.

Calvin glanced over his shoulder and spotted Kala and Ella with grim faces, weapons at the ready—the perfect picture of innocence, while Baroke’s head was in his hand. He could feel the inappropriate playfulness from their gazes, a mindset they had both latched onto, playing off each other to mask their fear of death.

There are several options here. I’m going to choose the one that owns the situation, rather than start a silly fight.

“No one told you to stop complimenting me,” Calvin said, glancing between them and noting a twitch in Ella’s mouth as she struggled to keep a straight face. Kala was better. He turned back and ignored the whispered commentary about his form as he sank down on all fours and made for the entrance to the academy’s plaza.

Stealth has reached Level 7!

Level 7: 35% correction.

Told ya you were the thief.

Calvin ignored the level and the snarky comment, and silently crawled along the side before peering around the edge of the building with his look-stick. The extra point of view was easier to process now, and Calvin had gotten the hang of shoving it into a pocket where it couldn’t see anything when it wasn’t in use.

He peered around the corner, and his heart sank. There were four of the HKs patrolling the plaza outside the academy. One of them was perched atop a fancifully robed corpse slumped halfway into the central fountain, while the other three moved back and forth across the grounds, their single glass eyes panning back and forth for anything out of the ordinary.

There were minced bodies of Gadveran wizards strewn across the cobblestones, identifiable by their fancy robes and the way some of them seemed aloof, even in death.

A metal monster’s gaze passed over his little stick, lingered for a fraction of a second that seemed to stretch out forever, then dismissed it, moving on with its patrol.

Calvin spotted two Ilethan soldiers minding the HKs, who were engaged in a distant conversation.

Sense-Grafting.

7/12 Bent remaining.

Sense-Grafting has reached Level 9!

Sense-Grafting Level 9: Sight, hearing, touch, pain, smell, taste, balance. Self-only, 81ft range, 45 minutes.

Calvin chose a point on the right-hand soldier’s armor and connected it to his sense of hearing. He had a rough grasp of the Ilethan language, but still missed a few words.

“I mean, I’d have fucked her, don’t --- -- wrong.”

Calvin rolled his eyes.

“But that was ---- ------- ---…” Calvin saw the speaker motion to the four HKs.

“All this. Now she ----- like death, and she smells like my Nana’s -----. You’ve met my Nana, right?”

Sometimes you just waste Bent and don’t get anything in return. Calvin was hoping for some hint along the lines of how many people were inside, or whether they knew about and had disabled the supposed weather machine.

Instead, he got idle ‘marry, fuck, kill’ gossip.

Welcome to the wonderful world of spying on people. It’s a quantity over quality kinda deal.

Cal sighed and dismissed the spell before motioning the others closer.

“Four of them, and two Ilethan soldiers,” he whispered as they crouched close, keeping his attention split between them and the HKs around the corner.

“Where are they?” Baroke asked quietly.

“The soldiers and one HK are near the fountain, while the other three are patrolling the edges of the plaza,” Calvin said.

“That's enough of them that the chances of something going wrong are pretty good,” Baroke said. “You got a plan?”

“When have I ever not had a plan?” Calvin demanded. Insolent fool. See if I make you the royal sharpshooter now. Ah, who was he kidding? Calvin was still going to allow him to be the royal sharpshooter. If he apologized.

“I’ll disable as many as I can, then run back down the road. Ella will stand about thirty feet back with her door and knock one of the ones that follow me down, Baroke will kill one as it comes in, while Kala will stop the other long enough to let Baroke put it down.”

“You realize if any one of us misses their shot, or they don’t move the way you want them to, one of us is going to be facing two or more of those things?” Baroke asked.

“You ladies can handle two monsters at once, right?” Calvin asked with a smirk. Two could play at their game.

“Uncouth.” Kala crossed her arms, subtly raising her breasts.

“We thought better of you, Calvin,” Ella said, shrugging her shoulders as she hefted her wooden door.

“Boo.” Baroke joined in the lynching.

Apparently not.

“Hypocrites, all of you,” Calvin whispered harshly.

“But yes,” Ella said, glancing at her smaller, darker companion. “We can.”

“Alright, then get in position.” Calvin motioned for them to fall back.

They quickly fell back, Kala and Ella forming a wall, while Baroke slung his bow over his shoulder and hauled himself up onto a single-story building, stupidly large muscles flexing as he went. The extra height gave him a clear view of the road over their heads.

Here goes nothing. Calvin considered trying to keep the men in the plaza alive for interrogation, but after a moment realized it would be pointless. Keeping them alive just gave them opportunities to outsmart them and inflict harm, take a hostage or call for help. If Calvin did interrogate them, he would then have to kill them in cold blood while the Ilethans were begging him not to.

That was something Calvin would rather avoid.

He reached into his belt and pulled out the Fireball component, identifying it by its scratchy texture. Calvin double-checked with his eyes, then focused on the tiny little sealed vial.

Calvin was about to use the whole spell on the one HK, when he realized that Dupdomancy had leveled up twice since he’d last used it. The explosion would be a lot stronger than last time, possibly enough for multiple HKs.

Mass Shaping.

6/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin combined the effects of Mass Splitting and Shaping to split the spell, targeting a point directly above the HK, allocating fifty pounds of the spell’s potential. He didn’t know how much heat it could take, so he wanted to be sure it got plenty. The humans were a lower priority, with nineteen pounds, as the average tolerance for being burned alive was low. He put one between the two of them.

That left a hundred pounds, and Calvin targeted two of the remaining HKs with fifty pounds each.

The shimmering spheres appeared above the three HKs, and directly between the chatting men.

The plaza burst into pure heat with four concussive blasts. The chatting men were instantly immolated, collapsing to the ground, while the HKs stumbled out of the circles of glowing orange cobblestone, their armor similarly orange.

Oh, crap. Calvin’s heart hammered in his chest as he pictured an orange-hot monster rushing at Kala or Ella, made even more dangerous by the spell he’d cast on it. That could cause problems.

A second later, his fears were put to rest as wisps of smoke rose from the creatures’ armor, and they came to a halt mid-stride. They were still standing, but they were either dead, or their melted armor had rendered them immobile. It was a moot point.

One left, he thought, scrambling to his feet as the last one began to sprint toward him, its claws making strange crumbling noises as they cut through the cobblestone behind him.

Calvin didn’t know what gave him away—perhaps some kind of Bent Sense that let them track the origin of the spell? In any case, the plan was still a go as he scrambled back toward Ella, sprinting with everything he had. He put his head down when he heard an arrow buzz past his ear, followed by a squeal of tearing metal.

“Keep going!” Ella shouted, stepping forward as he slipped past her.

Once Cal was behind his meat-shield, he took a moment to turn around. Baroke had missed, his arrow lodged in the upper plate armor above the creature’s eye. Likely because the monster had more time to dodge than others did.

Ella gave a grunt and smashed down on the creature with the door, before Kala politely stepped in with her scavenged longsword and skewered the creature through the eye, the weakest point of its body.

“Where’s the rest of them?” Baroke asked, peering down the street.

“That’s four for me now,” Calvin said, polishing his fingernails on his vest.

“Bah,” Baroke grumbled as he jumped down to the street, absorbing the shock with minimal effort.

Calvin scanned the plaza and the academy. The looming stone structure built around the tower had weathered the initial earthquake well, without any fires lighting up the inside of the building. Matter of fact, there was nothing lighting up the building at all. Each window was dark and forbidding, lending it an abandoned appearance.

Calvin glanced down to the slaughtered wizards and back up at the academy.

“What do you think are the odds there’s anyone alive left in there?” he asked.

Slim.

“Not great,” Kala said.

“Terrible,” Baroke said.

At least there’s no swarm of HKs flooding out, Calvin thought as he squared his shoulders and approached the academy. He couldn’t drag his feet when he knew Nadia and Grant were chasing him somehow.

He recalled the way she tasted the air for him, and a shiver went down his spine as he approached the door.

“Hold on,” Ella said, gently moving him aside as he reached for the door. “If there’s anyone in here, they’re waiting in ambush, and I’m the one least likely to be brutally slaughtered.”

She leaned back and kicked the large double doors open, spilling light onto a macabre scene, dozens of men and women slaughtered where they stood, each wearing the different robes of one of the academy’s twelve areas of study.

Calvin scanned the darkness, expecting a trap, but Ella strode in and knelt down, frowning at the bodies.

She tapped a finger against the congealed blood and tasted it. “These bodies have been here since this morning.”

Ella knew her dead bodies. Genosians were more than familiar with the states of decomposition. Which meant…these people were dead before the wurm plowed through the city wall.

“Something stinks.”

“People shit themselves when they die,” Ella said with a shrug.

“That too, but I meant the fact that these people were dead before the attack,” Kala clarified.

“Oh, I’m not good at idioms yet.”

“Right. There was probably some kind of horrible plot, but we’re not here to figure out what happened. We’re here to put out the city that is currently on fire,” Calvin said, heading for the reception desk, trying not to look at the faces of the dead.

Calvin hopped over the bloody desk and began rifling through the information until he found a helpful pamphlet, giving them a rough map of the college itself.

“Right there, weather studies and manipulation,” Calvin said, pointing at the tower.

“Of course it’s the tower,” Baroke groaned.

“What’s wrong with the tower?” Calvin asked.

“Nothing, I just don’t…like heights, particularly.”

“I just saw you jump off a roof.”

“That’s different,” Baroke said. “One story, easy jump, easy landing. You’re talking something like a hundred feet up, surrounded by a stone prison ready to get blown over by the wind any given second. Who knows how much structural damage the earthquake did?”

Calvin took a deep breath and looked back down at the map.

“How about the second floor, here?” Calvin asked, pointing to a spot that had a great view of both the tower and the plaza. “Think you could watch our backs?”

“I’m not saying I can’t do it. I just don’t like—”

“It’s fine. Having someone watch our backs is just as valuable. Give a cry if you see anyone coming, and if it’s that Nadia bitch, don’t engage, alright? She’s bad news.”

Baroke took another look at the map, weighing the options in his head.

“Yeah, I’ll watch your backs, no problem.” He glanced up at the staircase. “Wish me luck.”

Calvin was fully aware that if Baroke came across an HK by himself, he was in serious danger, and if he met two, he was likely to be killed.

“I can come with you,” Kala offered, also aware of the risk.

“Nah, I got this,” Baroke said before turning to Calvin and tossing all his metallic arrows onto the floor with a ringing clatter. They were minutes from vanishing.

“Top me off, would you?”

Mass Shaping.

5/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin grabbed the little ball bearing and created two dozen Jerrytanium arrows, which popped into existence in the archer’s quiver.

“That’s more like it.”

Calvin handed him one of his knives. “In case we’re gone longer than an hour.”

“Got it,” Baroke said, saluting with the knife and heading up the west-leading staircase. Calvin, Kala, and Ella broke for the east staircase, leading toward the tower.

The hallways were silent, the stone so thick that the tumultuous noise from outside couldn’t be heard as they crept along, listening for the distinctive sound of razor-sharp legs on stone.

They made it to the tower without incident, passing by empty classrooms draped in shadow, the only sound in their ears their own breathing and heartbeat.

At the first gaping window in the enormous tower, Calvin glanced out, and spotted the musclebound archer waving to them from a small second-story window. He let out an inward sigh of relief at seeing his friend alive and well.

The tower was comprised of ten floors, each one having something to do with the study or magical control of the weather. Calvin saw a couple interesting machines, and what looked like a living storm in a terrarium, but there was nothing that he would describe as fuck-off big.

As they continued upward, Calvin got a bad feeling that whatever they were looking for was probably going to be on the top floor.

They finally made it to the top, and only Kala seemed to be unaffected by the ten flights of stairs, leading the way with a perky sway that made Calvin and his Genosian glance at each other.

Above them, the staircase flickered with the light of the burning city, and Calvin could hear the noise of the blaze starting to come back, along with the sound of tools striking steel and strange, high-pitched whines. Something was alive up there.

“Hold on,” Calvin whispered, setting a hand on Kala’s shoulder and reaching into his pocket for his look-stick, holding the item he’d slaved his left eye’s vision to over their heads. What came into view was what Calvin would describe as a ‘fuck-off big’ machine, easily the size of a house on its own. The thing was a crazy assortment of metal pipes spinning past each other at dizzying speeds around a core of crackling blue energy contained inside a cracked gemstone the size of Calvin’s hut.

That wasn’t all, though. The machine was being worked on by at least a dozen Knick-Knacks, swarming the machine under the supervision of a stately man wearing the long flowing robes of the academy, his shoulders studded with indications of which courses he’d taken.

It was all in the brochure.

Is he trying to fix the thing? Calvin thought.

“There’s a dozen little creatures and a man. They probably aren’t hostile.” Calvin took his Fireball component out and held it in his hand, ready to douse them with… The machine.

With a quick switch, he pulled out the Web and Miasma between two knuckles. Those wouldn’t damage the machine.

“Probably.”

Kala went out first, followed by Calvin and Ella, so as not to startle the man.

“Princess!” the black-haired man said, falling to one knee.

“What’s going on?” Kala asked, frowning.

“Your Highness, Lumentrias brought in a dozen metallic monsters we’ve never seen before.” The man’s fists shook as he clenched them. “He said they were for study by the Beast-Singers, but they cut their way out of their steel cages in seconds. When we tried to flee, we were cut down.”

“Lumentrias,” Kala said, her face contorting with an instant of unprincesslike rage before she schooled it back to neutrality. “Why are you still here?” she asked.

“I hid,” the man said, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I…removed myself from the minds of people who trusted me and hid in a cabinet while everyone around me was being slaughtered. After everyone was dead, Lumentrias sent someone to destroy the Fairweather and left.”

“Who are these?” Kala asked, pointing at the small metal creatures crawling over the giant machine, patching the steel construction with a speed that boggled the mind.

“The Knick-Knacks were flying by, and thought the Fairweather was salvage… I offered them a substantial payment if they could fix it instead.” The wizard held his palms up helplessly. “My specialization is memory; I know very little about weather magic.”

“Your meat-bag machines are crude at best. The weather unit at The Forge is far more complicated. This is the scribbling of a nascent Builder, at best.”

“What?” Kala asked.

“I think they can handle it,” Calvin said, eyeing the creature who’d spoken. Its flat head nodded once before a tiny…fan? deployed from its head. The fan lifted it up into the air and its arm whirled, unfolding into a strange device that began using a bright light to cut around a massive rent in one of the copper pipes.

Off to the side, an antlike series of Knick-Knacks were handing a curved section of copper along themselves, without slowing their work.

The copper hadn’t even cooled from its orange-hot temperature when the little creature tossed the damaged section aside and placed the patch in.

It fit perfectly.

Damn.

I know, right? That's why I like robots, and by extension, the undead. Hard workers, no pesky unions.

Calvin heard a long whistle coming from the courtyard, and his heart began hammering in his chest. He ran to the edge of the tower and looked over the banister.

Tiny figures wearing blue and black were streaming into the academy plaza, led by a girl in black leather.

I warned her, Calvin thought, his eyes narrowing as he slid the nonlethal spell components back into his belt.

Chapter 49: Give the Dog a Bone

That’s a lot of Ilethan. Ilethan with lungs.

Calvin considered as he watched them march toward the academy. There wasn’t enough heat in Fireball to immolate them all at once, but disable or slow them down? He could do that.

He flipped out the Poison component and concentrated on the plaza and the iron-shod vial in his hand. Luckily, the tower was only ten stories high, putting the plaza just barely inside his reach.

Shaping.

4/12 Bent remaining.

He mentally reached out as far as he could with the spell, feeling it bump up against the limits of its range, just at the edge of the plaza, right in front of the academy’s doors.

Calvin concentrated on a narrow line of the poison in the vial and funneled the entire mass of the Shaping into it.

A wall of grey-yellow steam exploded in front of the academy as they approached, catching dozens of the Ilethan soldiers in the face. The soldiers scattered in every direction before slumping to the ground, one by one.

The steam hung low to the ground like a mist and began to roll down the steps of the academy, washing over the approaching soldiers, who suffered the same fate as the ones in front of them.

In a matter of seconds, the rest of the Ilethan pulled back to the streets, unwilling to enter the mist-shrouded plaza filled with the bodies of their cohorts.

Remind me not to piss off Borus Igglebaum.

We can call that one Cloudkill. No particular reason.

Calvin ignored Elliot and kept his eyes on Grant and Nadia, who’d been in the thick of the initial blast.

Grant had fallen to one knee, retching as the fog passed by him, but Nadia stood stock-still, her head tilting to the side and up, looking up at the tower.

She…didn’t breathe any of it?

Maybe I can prevent them from climbing the tower with—

Calvin’s thoughts were cut short when swords flashed out of Grant’s many sheaths and slid underneath Nadia and the giant, lifting them away from the fog, and up into the air.

“Get away from the Fairweather!” Calvin hissed. If he managed to downplay the importance of…the giant glowing machine they were crowded around… Who am I kidding? “We’ve got company coming up from outside!”

Calvin pulled out the Fireball component. Now that there were just the two of them, they would be easy to put down with an explosion of heat…hopefully.

Shaping.

3/12 Bent remaining.

In the instant before the shimmering sphere of volatile chemicals exploded, Nadia held up a hand and his spell unraveled into Bent that funneled into her fingertips.

Well, that’s no good, Calvin thought as his absorbed blade came partway out of his palm an instant before he yanked it backward, focusing on a trident shape cut out of the blade.

Shaping.

2/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin created the trident as close to inside her as he could, traveling at the speed of his arm, aimed at the small of her back.

There would be no time to react.

The silvery metal took the leather-bound princess square in the back, jutting six inches out past her ribcage.

Yeah! Calvin thought, pumping a fist.

Nadia’s expression didn’t change as her hand glowed pale blue and she lopped off the blade sticking out of her front before yanking it out, continuing her approach on the wheezing Grant’s swords.

That dampened my enthusiasm. What’s the deal with that wretch? Calvin thought, scanning the rest of the plaza and the rooftops. Was Nadia using some kind of meat-puppet dressed up as her? After the first time he’d killed her, he wasn’t so sure.

He couldn’t make anything out, and he might not until…

“Kala, can you tell me if that’s an illusion or not?”

Kala leaned over the edge, along with Ella.

Kala’s expression went unnaturally blank as she looked at the approaching woman.

“Nope. That is not Nadia. Incidentally, we’re probably going to die, because whatever’s in there is cold vengeance made flesh.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s been fun.”

About to die? Not if I ‘dead’ them first. Calvin let the blade sink back into his hand, thumbing his components. Which one would rid him of the raven-haired headache? Kala’s warning was cryptic, at best. Maybe Nadia used some kind of self-hypnosis mind magic or something to increase her pain tolerance?

She didn’t seem bothered by the length of steel through her chest. Or the holes in her arms and legs.

“Likewise,” Cal muttered, motioning for them to back away from the parapets.

They stood back as the leather-clad girl and the heaving giant made it to the top of the parapet. The swords were shaking like a spoon in a geriatric’s hand as not-Nadia stepped off them and onto the tower.

Grant collapsed to the ground behind her, shaking in a similar manner as he retched, his stomach thankfully empty.

Rather than her attention turning to the machine with Knick-Knacks crawling over it, her gaze locked on Calvin. The intent from the gaze felt like Nadia wanted to eat him so he could tell her what to do… That’s fuckin’ weird.

Calvin put his fingers on the Cannon component, while his left hand sought out the spare knife tucked in his belt. Nadia knew about the spare under his skin, but that was no reason to lead with it. Whatever happened next, it would be fast and bloody.

“Origin, One receives you.”

Calvin felt a tugging sensation as his eyes rolled back in his head, and everything went black.

***

Cal’s eyes flew open, showing him nothing but stone. He took what felt like a long-awaited gasp of air as he slapped his hands on the ground and levered himself up.

What happened?

He felt a gaze on the back of his skull, radiating murderous intent. He lunged to the side as a black…tube hit the ground, piercing the air where his head had been only an instant before. The tube sank into the stone, pulsing like a living thing.

Calvin glanced up and saw Nadia glaring at him, the strange black tube withdrawing into her blood-crusted leather sleeve.

That’s, ummm… Calvin took a quick glance away from his opponent to figure out what was going on.

Ella was embedded in the Fairweather machine, steam rising from her body. She was covered in cuts, and her skin was a dark silver-red. Kala seemed to be unconscious, panting desperately as she stared up into the sky. The Knick-Knacks were scattered across the roof, unmoving.

Grant was pulling himself to his feet, taking ragged breaths and spitting out phlegm.

Okay, I can’t have been out more than six to eleven seconds. Grant is still recovering, no one was coup-de-grâced.

“Wretched creation, We will not suffer an accident like you to live.”

“Is that the royal ‘we’?” Calvin asked, edging further away.

“We will prove to Origin his mistake. You are an ill-conceived, poorly trained meat puppet made by a failing System with no purpose other than to house His Greatness while We prepare the world for His coming. Your usefulness has already run its course.”

Oh snap, are you gonna let her talk to you like that?

Is she talking about you? Calvin thought as he felt another attack coming, flexing his knees for a quick dive.

Nadia lashed her arm forward, creating a spray of blue fire just as Calvin jumped forward. It was counterintuitive, but trained into his very bones by Karen. Moving into an enemy’s personal space was always better than moving out.

The blue fire let off a nauseating energy that warped his senses and seemed to give Calvin’s skin a mind of its own as a bit of it caught his shoulder. After he slid under the attack, his shoulder skin was suffering a deep existential crisis and wanted nothing more than to crawl off of him and rejoin the rest of The One.

Okay, that’s fucking terrifying, Calvin thought as the tiny muscles on the outside of his shoulder rythmically twitched by themselves. He didn’t have time to be terrified, because Nadia was close enough to kiss.

This time, though, she wasn’t nearly as kissable. Up close and intimately personal, Calvin could see her eyes were clouded, her lips grey, mouth exuding the stench of— Am I fighting a corpse? Calvin ducked low and drew his knife across her belly, right hip to left rib.

Calvin’s wrist wasn’t strong enough to pull the knife through the armor.

DING DING DING! What do we have for him, Johnny?

Well, then what Abyssal creature am I currently dancing with? Calvin thought, ducking a clumsy backhand while sliding a foot forward to keep himself close enough to smell her dinner.

Good question, inn’it?

Why is it after me?! Cal thought, catching a kidney with a two-handed stab, barely managing to pierce the armor.

Another good question.

Nadia—not Nadia—the creature let out a frustrated screech at being unable to catch him and an invisible sphere expanded outward from it. The wall of force picked him up and sent him hurtling backward, slamming into the parapet.

Calvin couldn’t breathe, his world narrowed down to a bright point filled with stars. He could barely see, and his lungs were seized with pain, his spine bent so far it felt like it would snap in half.

The black tubes emerged from Nadia’s wrists again, and Calvin was able to slump out of the way barely in time as they dug into the stone behind him. He groaned and strained his arms, rolling himself out of the way, still having difficulty breathing as another relentless strike came down.

He was at the wrong distance now; she could take him to pound town with impunity.

Here’s another good question: Why aren’t you afraid? Calvin thought as he eyed Ella. The Genosian was conscious, picking her way out of the wrecked machine. Kala also seemed to be recovering from…whatever was happening to her, her eyes slowly regaining focus.

Why would you ask that?

When the hunter-killers first arrived, you wanted to cut and run. Now you’re just amused by the whole situation. Calvin ducked a strike and scrambled backward, minding his feet and trying to draw her line of sight away from the girls.

Would you be particularly scared if your chauffeur-bot showed to pick you up? That’s my ride home. Calvin got the impression that Elliot was pointing at the princess, or more likely, whatever was inside her.

I did you a solid, though, slugger. I told One that he had to beat you in a fair fight to prove he’s better than my most recent project.

Calvin shoved the ground out from under him, hopping over another strike from those strange black tubes, before kicking off the parapet, getting more distance.

Level with me, Calvin thought, backing away from the creature stalking him. What do you want from me? And none of your guarshit.

Elliot’s voice turned distant. Let’s put it this way. There are certain people I want revenge on. If you pursue your goal to become a Wizard-King, you will without a doubt come into conflict with these people. I do not need to steer you towards this end; it will happen on its own.

You were born a weapon. If you are able to destroy One, then certainly you would be a better choice to be the vessel of my retribution. I will not question your methods as long as they prove superior to One. I’ll even help you with all the knowledge and skill at my disposal.

As long as I continue to pursue my goal, Calvin thought, backing away.

Precisely.

Fair enough. Kala was right, Elliot was evil, but it didn’t seem like he’d stab Calvin in the back as long as Cal made sure there was no way for the rat to jump ship, which meant destroying his chauffeur. Whatever the hell that is.

I like the way you think.

Not-Nadia lunged forward and Calvin ducked the first strike, but the follow-up claw caught him in the shoulder and drove him to the side, collapsing to the parapet floor some twelve feet distant from the big general gasping for air.

Calvin tried to fling himself away, but his arm didn’t want to move, creating a half-assed flop. Adrenaline began to sing in his veins as he realized he was unable to move.

Or maybe you’re not as fit as I thought.

Shit, I’ve only got two Bent left!

Whatever it was had been able to suck in a Fireball in the blink of an eye, and somehow end his Heart of the Swarm ability. Calvin’s style thus far was focused on creating tangible objects to affect real change. That was powerful, but also easy to see.

What can I copy? Air, blade, myself? No, I’m wounded—the copy would be wounded too.

“Get away from my Poeor!” Ella rammed into the creature with a flying tackle, her skin shining ruddy silver in the firelight as the two of them toppled to the ground. She got into the mount position and began laying brutal punches into the thing’s face.

I think Ella’s over a hundred and sixty-nine pounds. Otherwise, I’d copy the shit out of her.

Shame.

“Same shit—” Grant let out a retching cough. “—different day, huh, kid?” The massive sword dancer was leaning on the parapet and tottering toward Calvin.

“Does your country know their princess is dead?” Calvin returned his question.

The creature that looked like a princess gave an inhuman screech and black tubes erupted from its chest, emphasizing Calvin’s point.

“Huh,” Grant grunted, frowning.

The tubes slammed into Ella’s red-silver skin and jettisoned her off it and high into the air, her flailing body drawing a perfect arc…

Off the building!

In a panic, Calvin reached his good hand into his belt, crossing his mental fingers it would work like he wanted it to as his real fingers touched the shiny-smooth texture of the Void. Once Calvin knew exactly where it was in relation to himself, he cast the spell.

If this doesn’t work, I’m going to have to use a Web, and Ella will be out of play.

Shaping.

1/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin aimed the Void between Ella and the tower, copying the nothing inside and overlaying it on the area.

Calvin dumped the whole energy of the spell into the casting, which was a mistake.

For an instant, there was no more sound.

Calvin’s ears popped, and his sinuses seemed to swell, along with his eyeballs and tongue.

Am I about to explode? Calvin thought as the air was drawn out of his lungs in a silent scream.

The air hit, slamming into everyone present like an angry Karen. The sudden rush of wind picked him up and slammed him back to the ground like it held a grudge. Grant was battered to his knees.

Ella was snatched out of midair by the wind refilling the area and thrown the other direction, back toward the tower. She tumbled across the stone, her skin sending up sparks as it dug into the solid rooftop.

Not-Nadia climbed to its feet and stalked towards him, beyond words. Calvin was trying to get his legs under him when Kala entered the fray, her palms glowing with a brilliant light.

Wherever her palms went, the black snakes seemed to retreat, weakening the creature. Kala slipped around its clumsy strikes and harried it for a good eight seconds, long enough for Calvin to bring his legs up under himself.

Then she messed up.

Kala’s foot slipped on the round portion of a Knick-Knack’s arm, and she began falling, with only enough time to protect her face with her arms. There was a small explosion and Kala tumbled away, her dress shredding against the stone floor.

“Now!” Not-Nadia said, immediately whirling to face him. “You DIE!”

Calvin tried to lean out of the way again, but strange black tubes went out to either side, wrapping around his neck with brutal force and slamming him up against the parapet, his back creaking as he was forced partially over it.

Not-Nadia leaned over him, a crazed look in its dead eyes, and with a feral grin.

Fssshhht!

Fssshhht! Fssshhht!

A metal arrow brushed against the hair on Calvin’s scalp as it buried itself in one of Not-Nadia’s eyes, and another two went through its forehead, sending the creature reeling backward, drawing Calvin with it, away from the parapet.

Calvin heard a faint whoop from Baroke as his royal sniper celebrated his victory.

Perhaps a bit premature, but he can’t see what I see.

Not-Nadia was expressionless now, as more and more black tubes emerged from its body, regarding him like snakes considering the best time to strike. They didn’t have eyes, but that didn’t stop Calvin from having the sensation that they could see him. He felt their gaze, and it felt cold, hungry, and vicious.

Blade Body.

Calvin jutted a knife out of his neck, severing the tube around his throat and collapsing to the ground an instant before the black snakes could hit him.

The writhing mass regarded him with fury, looming over him before he could get away.

Well, I guess this is it, unless you can pull a miracle with that last Bent.

Calvin’s mind was a blur of activity, but no course of action seemed like it would solve all of his problems—maybe buy him a few seconds.

Damnation.

Calvin readied a Fireball. If he could cast it while it was killing him, it might be distracted enough to not block—

A blade came down from above and bisected Not-Nadia from head to crotch, then across the waist.

It began to tilt toward Calvin’s prone form when Grant stepped forward and pushed it back, where it fell into four halves, like a butchered animal.

The big man regarded Calvin with cold calculation for a moment.

“I would like to defect,” Grant said, before spitting out some more poison.

“Consider yourself under my command, then,” Calvin rasped, using his good arm to drag himself up, watching the corpse for signs of movement.

The black tubes became shiny, then in a matter of seconds, they collapsed into a smelly goop, then evaporated at a speed that beggared belief, leaving behind only the quartered corpse of a beautiful girl riddled with wounds.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Elliot said with an audible grin.

“I’m thinking I need to make it rain,” Calvin muttered, limping past Nadia’s corpse. The Fairweather machine had taken even more damage in the fight, with cracks running through the power source, and some of its pieces missing entirely.

I guess not.

Below them, the city was still ablaze, lighting the clouds above them with an eerie light and filling the air with smoke. Occasionally, Calvin got the smell of roasting human, and his stomach threatened to rebel.

You wanna help, pick out a good Knick-Knack for me, Calvin thought, surveying the destruction atop the tower.

Ah, now we’re on the same page. To your left, little further… There, you’re looking at him.

Calvin’s gaze landed on a Knick-Knack that was relatively whole, with a humanoid body, shinier than most of the others. It had a cube-like, blocky head full of glass lenses on top of a Bent engine, with big yellow bands of steel around its arms hiding a dozen tools.

That one’s your best bet. You still got the chip I told you to save?

Yeah.

Use your knife to pry open the panel on top of its head.

Calvin did so, exposing a confusing mess of strange parts that had no place on a living creature.

See that thing that looks like your chip? Very gently pry it out.

Calvin followed Elliot’s instructions and swapped out the two chips, pressed a little red button with the tip of his knife, and replaced the panel.

Will this work? That wasn’t originally a part of his body.

Don’t think about it too hard. The System should recognize it as original, seeing as it’s a ‘bot, and you pressed the reset button.

Calvin placed a hand on the Knick-Knack.

Consume.

0/12 Bent remaining.

Excellent, Elliot said. The chip got taken, too. A success.

Calvin felt an instant of discomfort as the creature disappeared, then the feeling vanished, and a prompt showed up.

Entire creature eaten. Would you like to assign it to a slot?

Yes.

Please choose a Skill slot to assign this creature to, or refuse to resume normal biological function. (Warning: Thirty pounds of steel will cause severe internal damage.)

I choose Calvinian Summoning, Calvin thought.

All Calvinian Summoning Slots filled.

Fever Wasp: Aggressive carnivorous flying insect with highly venomous sting.

Fields Industries Micro Construction Bot (Modified): One of the Tech-races formerly enslaved by humans, Knick-Knacks live underground. They are mercantile, peaceful masters of mining and metallurgy.

Did I just enslave this thing?

The Harbingers thought so, and they’re the ones writing history. I mean, we designed them, so they were cool with having owners and the only thing they wanted to do was their job. That’s not slavery in my book.

I’ll think about it later.

“Kala,” Calvin said, limping over to the groaning girl, not letting Grant completely out of his sight. “Are you all right?”

“We’re still alive?” she asked, staring at the sky.

“We are. Are you good?”

“Just sore,” she said, groaning as she sat up. “I’m gonna bruise bad tomorrow.”

Calvin helped her to her feet, and together they approached where Ella was pushing herself to her feet.

“What now?” she asked, glancing around the mess. “We can’t fix your Gadveran machine.”

“Not necessarily,” Calvin said, holding out his hand. “I think I can do it, but I’m going to need some Bent.”

Kala slapped her hand down into Calvin’s before Ella could react. The vigorous movement caused her damaged yellow dress to give up, falling halfway down her breast before she caught it with her other hand, giving a squeak.

“I-I’ve got plenty to spare,” she stammered as Ella raised a brow.

Talk about positive reinforcement.

….

10/12 Bent remaining.

“Okay, that’s plenty,” Cal said, letting go of Kala. The princess swooned, falling backward into Ella’s arms. Calvin was a bit worried at first, until he saw her nestle deeper into the Genosian’s cleavage and let out a contented sigh. It was on purpose.

Ella gave him a look that said ‘what do I do with this?’

Calvin shrugged and got to work.

Calvinian Summoning.

9/12 Bent remaining.

Calvinian Summoning has reached Level 11!

Level 11: 1331 pound limit, 121 minutes. 0 slots available.

Calvin summoned as many as he could without changing their size, creating nearly forty identical Knick-Knacks.

Keep your finger on the ‘unsummon’ button, in case they’re less than stable, Elliot warned.

The Knick-Knacks stood there, staring at him passively.

Fix the machine, Cal thought, pointing at the Fairweather.

With unnerving synchronization, the Knick-Knacks turned to study the thing he pointed at. They stared for a moment, before they exploded into action, resuming the job that they had left off, reassembling the towering copper-and-steel machine with alarming speed.

That was easier than I thought it’d be.

‘Course it was. I opened up your System and used your connection via Calvinian Summoning to input the factory code printed on the back of the chip and registered you as the owner.

I don’t understand half of what you just said, Calvin thought as he watched the Knick-Knacks work.

Calvinian Summoning.

8/12 Bent remaining.

Calvin summoned another thirty-eight, and hit the law of diminishing returns as the metal creatures began to crowd each other out somewhat.

After about twenty minutes, the Knick-Knacks finished the repair, and the machine began emitting a hum that they could feel in the floor.

On the panel in front of the machine were several esoteric symbols beside sliding knobs. Calvin couldn’t read most of them, but the one for moisture was a fairly obvious teardrop, and Calvin cranked it all the way up.

The sound of thunder echoed above their heads as the clouds grew thick and laden with moisture. In minutes, the sky began to unleash a flood of rain, drenching them along with the rest of the city.

Calvin looked over the side of the tower and watched as the fires began to struggle, slowly retreating from the monsoon.

They headed back inside the tower to get away from the rain, checking the state of the fires every half hour for the rest of the night, until morning came.

With the sun rising above the ocean to the west, they turned off the rain and marveled at the sight.

In the morning light, they could make out the corpse of the massive steel wurm, crushing half a dozen buildings.

The Ilethan army was a disorganized mess, milling around outside the wall as a barrier of Gadveran soldiers held the gap. Calvin even made out some Stoneshapers slowly wrenching stone out of the bedrock to fill in the gaping hole.

Calvin knew for a fact that their leadership was dead or defected. The Ilethan were going to lose.

“Sweet mother Elani, we’re gonna live!” he exclaimed.

Kala’s brows furrowed. “This calls for celebration!” she said with a faux barbaric grunt.

The slender, brown-skinned princess clasped her left palm over her fist with a grunt. “Enquacha!”

Ella burst into a full-blown laugh, doubling over and slapping her knee.

“What?” Calvin asked.

“Enquacha!” Ella shouted too, slapping her fist into her palm as she scowled at him ferociously.

“What in Vashiel’s sweaty asscrack are you guys on about?” Calvin asked, backing away as they began to shamble toward him.

“Enquacha!” they grunted.

Chapter 50: Is This Hell?

***Nadia***

“Stop!” Nadia gave a ragged scream, her arms lashing up at the monster looming over her.

Grant caught her strike with a practiced hand. “Princess, it’s me. You’re fine now. I drove the delegate off.”

Nadia blinked. The monster looming over her wasn’t some horrifying monstrosity, it was the disgusting monstrosity. Grant was sporting a black eye, and seemed a bit tense as Nadia looked at him—less respectful tension, and more tension like watching a wild animal that might bite at any second. Interesting.

The room she was in… Marble, red Gadveran silk drapes. Large open window, damaged. Full lamps. The Gadveran palace?

“Did we win?” Nadia asked, doing a self-check. There was no more pain in her arms and legs, and…

Those black snakes must have made it six inches into my chest. There’s no way I could be feeling this good.

And she did feel good. She felt like it was the morning of the best day of her life. Her whole body sang with energy, and she wasn’t hungry, sleepy, short of breath, needing to pee, itchy, or any of the dozens of minor annoyances that are indicative of being alive.

So I’m trapped in an illusion, then? Is the creature some kind of Mnemonic sorcerer, too?

“Yeah, we won,” Grant said, and Nadia could tell he was lying.

That’s interesting. I wouldn’t be able to tell he was lying if this was a Mnemonic illusion, unless they’re using Grant as a red herring.

“Thank the gods,” Nadia sighed, relaxing back into bed as she started figuring out her escape plan.

Grant seemed to relax a bit, standing away from the bed.

Okay, obviously this scrub can’t read my thoughts, so I’ve got a shot. I need to break out of the illusion, then use a Royal Order to… Nadia’s last memory was the Royal Order not working so great because of her collapsing lungs. She needed something with more heft to it.

Unless you’re dead already, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind, but she shook it away. Always plan as if you’re alive. What’s the point of doing otherwise?

Nadia thought for a second. She would trigger Crystalline Mind to break the illusion, then use Invade Mind. It would give her a shot at lobotomizing the creature and possibly jumping ship if her body was beyond saving.

Might lose my body-hopping virginity younger than I expected.

Ilethan royalty didn’t do it often, as it rarely worked. The current record for successful transfers was twice, but she didn’t really have much of a choice. This was her only shot of living through this encounter.

Nadia took a deep, steadying breath, readying herself to return to the horrifying reality of the monster invading her chest with its black tubes. Let’s see how you like getting invaded, cuntbag.

Nadia closed her eyes and reached for her Bent.

Crystalline Mind.

*ERROR*

Chained Spirit is a Bent construct, incapable of processing Bent.

Nadia frowned. What in the Abyss did that mean?

Break Control.

*ERROR*

Chained Spirit is a Bent construct, incapable of processing Bent.

Nadia leapt out of bed, the heavy wood creaking under her legs as she caught Grant in the throat with a sucker-punch before swinging around onto his back, putting an arm around his beefy neck.

“What is a Chained Spirit?” she demanded, giving Grant’s neck an encouraging squeeze. “What really happened? Don’t you fucking lie to me.”

“Cal-vin…” Grant croaked.

“What?” Nadia demanded, hearing the name of her sworn enemy.

The door creaked open and the young man came in.

“Well, crap, we got so much further that time,” he said as he entered the room, casually eating a pastry.

“This is what you get for thinking with your dick,” a massive Genosian girl said, following him in, studying Nadia with a disapproving scowl. “Always choose an ally as a Chained Spirit, for the control over them is…limited.”

“I wasn’t thinking with my dick, Ella. She’s got valuable information on the Ilethan royal family, and she’s an eighth-Break Legend. If we can find a way to get past all this…” He motioned to Nadia with his jelly-filled roll. “...she’ll be incredibly useful.

“What do you think keeps tipping her off?” Calvin said, taking another bite of his pastry, giving Nadia an insolent look.

“The last thing she remembers is getting killed,” said a third… Nadia’s eyes narrowed as she saw her dusky-skinned counterpart, who had the audacity to take the boy away from her, claiming him as her own. “She’ll be impossible to work with as long as she keeps starting from that point.”

“What are you talking about?” Nadia asked.

“Remember that promise about tormenting you for the rest of my life?” Calvin asked.

A horrifying, sinking sensation began to build in her stomach. ‘Keeps tipping her off’? They’ve been doing this to me for a while, and I don’t remember any of it.

“Can’t….breathe,” Grant wheezed as Nadia’s arm tightened around the general’s neck.

In a desperate bid to escape, Nadia shoved Grant toward the other three and made a dash for the window, jumping through the shattered hole in the glass.

“Aaand there she goes again.” She heard Calvin’s voice fade into the background of street noises as she hurtled toward the palace courtyard.

Nadia hit the ground in a crouch, surrounded by glass and a couple shreds of Gadveran silk. That wasn’t me. I jumped through the hole in the window. I didn’t touch anything on the way out.

Her heart began to hammer as her mind shrieked in panic when she realized that her feet had come down in divots in the stone that had been there before she jumped, fitting into them perfectly, as though she’d jumped down from that great height…more than once.

No, no no no no no.

Nadia leapt to her feet and sprinted full speed toward the palace gate, ignoring the footsteps in front of her that mirrored her panicked pace.

No, it’s a trick. I’m going to jump over this wall, and disappear into the crowd. I’ll find my way out of the city and reconnect with the Ilethan forces, then—

Nadia #36 ceased to exist.

***Nadia***

“Stop!” Nadia gave a ragged scream, her arms lashing up at the monster looming over her.

Grant caught her strike with a practiced hand. “Princess, it’s me. You’re fine now. I drove the delegate off.”

Nadia blinked. The monster looming over her wasn’t some horrifying monstrosity, it was the disgusting monstrosity. Grant was sporting a black eye and a bruised neck, and he seemed a bit tense as Nadia looked at him—less respectful tension, and more tension like watching a wild animal that might bite at any second. Interesting…

***Calvin***

“Well, that was a failure,” Calvin said, finishing the last of his jelly roll as Nadia number thirty-seven jumped out the window. He glanced over at Grant, who was coming to his feet, rubbing his bruised head.

He dismissed the summon.

“Looks like I’m going to have to raise Chained Spirit to level ten and grab Continuity before we have any shot at a meaningful dialogue.” Nadia was just too savvy and wild to pin down in one try, and somehow she was clued in that something was wrong, no matter how much care they took to keep her calm.

“That was an option?” Grant asked.

“Yep. Get ready for the next one. We’ll start it in the dungeon.”

“Why? You already know she’s not going to remember anything,” the big man demanded, scowling at him.

“Because, we are working out a map for the first encounter she does remember, and we are going to rehearse it until you dream about it. We’re only going to get one shot. Come on, lieutenant. The dungeons await.”

“Andra’s got a sick sense of humor, making that conscription official,” Grant growled, stalking after him. “You know I outranked you in the Ilethan army, right?”

“Is that any way to speak to your CO?”

“I could kill you in the blink of an eye.”

Calvin shrugged, glancing around the room, and ran a thumb over the row of vials hanging on his belt. “I mean, so could I, but you don’t see me bringing it up.”

“I’m three times your age! I’ve been leading men since before you were—”

“Shhhh, shhhhh,” Calvin hushed the blustering man. “That experience makes you very valuable, but not so valuable that I won’t turn you into a meat-puppet like your princess.”

That shut the Ilethan general up. The man didn’t know that Calvin was out of slots for Chained Spirit, and Calvin didn’t intend to inform him of that.

“You kill me, Andra kills you. You don’t work with me, you get the Nadia Treatment. Learn to work within your new reality, a’right? This isn’t a permanent arrangement. After I’ve learned everything I need to know from you, I’ll send you to Andra with a letter of recommendation, and you can be a general again. Call it…five years.”

“You’re no boy. You’re an abomination,” Grant said, glaring down at him.

“So I’ve been told,” Calvin said, rolling his eyes. If he had to worry about everyone who thought he wasn’t acting like a normal teen, he’d never become a Wizard-King.

“Let’s go. I’ve got enough Bent to go three more rounds.” With spare for another five spells if someone tries to kill me. Calvin turned away and headed for the dungeons, deep in his thoughts.

He needed Nadia working on his side as soon as possible. Having a disposable soldier that strong would be supremely helpful, not to mention her intimate knowledge of the enemy country.

Calvin had gotten a field promotion since he put out the fire engulfing the entire city—with some embellishing storytelling from Kala—preventing millions of stones in damages and making him the youngest captain to ever exist in the Gadveran army.

That girl’s trying to pull a full-on Griffith with you. Just make sure you wait to tell her dad about last week until his deathbed, m’kay? What he don’t know won’t get you executed.

Calvin continued his train of thought, ignoring the monster spouting the obvious coupled with nonsense phrases in his head.

People were starting to pay attention to him, and he needed to maintain that if he wanted to be a household name.

Hypothetically, if someone said, ‘Calvin, that kid no one heard of from Deinos, is going off into the wilds to carve out a kingdom,’ how many people would follow?

If someone instead said, ‘Calvin, the youngest general in the history of Gadvera and savior of its people, is going off into the wilds to carve out a kingdom’…that would field an entirely different response.

The next step was taking back Surrak, the port city some hundred miles distant that Calvin had grown up beside…but how? The Ilethan army had finally gotten its feet under it and limped back to Surrak to reorganize, but the damage to Mujenan was far too severe to organize a unit of guar to ride them down.

That, and the Ilethan fleet was still being a bitch, cutting off food and trade from Gadvera’s trading partners. Can’t take Surrak back if everyone’s starving.

A tapping in the hall caught his attention, and Calvin spotted a runner aiming for him. Runners were eleven- to twelve-year-old nobles’ sons, whose duty was to get experience with military process before they joined it themselves—a process Calvin had unfortunately skipped, and now he was playing catch-up.

Also, they spied for their families a little bit. But everyone knew that.

“Captain Gadsint,” the Gadveran boy wearing the brown-and-yellow livery said, giving him a snappy salute. “Andra’s got orders for you. Report to her office.”

Calvin glanced at the kid, then Grant, Ella, and Kala, who’d been following him.

“Well, I guess you two have the rest of the day off. Make sure to pack your bags,” Calvin said, eyeing the Genosian and the Ilethan. “Could you tell Baroke to unbury himself from his groupies and do the same?”

Ella and Grant glanced at each other.

“Not it,” Ella said in Gadveran before ambling toward her bedroom, where her suit of armor was waiting. The nomad had plenty to pack up. The captured general, on the other hand…

“I’ll grab the damn boy,” Grant grumbled, heading down the opposite hall.

As it turned out, when Baroke had gone west, he’d gone through the women’s dorms, running across several young women at the academy who’d hidden during the slaughter, and rescuing each of them from certain death.

It was kind of funny seeing it from the outside.

“Good luck,” Kala said, kissing him on the cheek in front of the gaping runner. “I’ll be making an appearance with the reconstruction team for the rest of the day.”

Kala princess-walked away, taking tiny steps that seemed to float her sashaying hips down the hall.

So, is she still a virgin, or not?

I don’t know, I was blindfolded.

Shame, but I understand the need for plausible deniability.

Once everyone was gone, Calvin knelt down to eye level with the runner. “Keep your mouth shut about that, okay?”

“Everyone knows the princess has a crush on you, sir,” the runner said, handing him the letter of summons. The little shit had the audacity to roll his eyes. “It’s hardly newsworthy.”

“Better not be,” Calvin said, dismissing him and tearing the letter open. Like he’d said, it was a summons to Andra’s office.

Calvin followed the twists and turns of the palace until he made it to Andra’s office, where the grey-haired woman was writing and signing letters at an astonishing pace, creating a clutter of paperwork that spilled over the map of Gadvera on her desk.

“Calvin, sit down,” Andra said, eyeing him without stopping her pen.

“What do you need, General?”

“I need security, Captain.”

Calvin didn’t know how to respond to that.

She noticed his hesitation and set her pen down in the inkwell, moving aside the letters to reveal the map.

“There’s Surrak, and there’s Mujenan, and between them are a hundred miles of undefended road big enough for an army. We can’t haphazardly launch an all-out assault on Surrak—that’ll take more time and manpower than we can muster right now—but we can’t let the capture of Surrak go unanswered, either.”

She pointed to a narrow point in the road, three quarters of the way to Surrak, where the road was sandwiched between the side of a mountain and a sheer cliff to the coast.

“Build fortifications right here,” she said, tapping on it with a callused finger. “It will become a staging area from which to launch a retaking of Surrak. Our advantage is a shorter supply chain. Let’s make the most of it. I want lodgings for ten thousand men, a wall at least fifteen feet high, and if you’ve got spare time, hunt for game in the forest and ship excess back to Mujenan. We need everything we can get.”

“How many people do I get?” Calvin asked, tallying the astonishing amount of manpower the task would require.

“A company,” she said with a hint of a smile.

“That’s…not a lot of men.”

“I’ve received a complaint from the Knick-Knacks that trade with us,” Andra said. “One of their number, who was supposed to have died attempting to repair the Fairweather…well, its body was never recovered. I mollified them by giving them salvage rights to a dozen of those silver monsters, no questions asked.”

“Well, I—”

“How did the Fairweather get fixed, anyway?”

Calvin kept his mouth shut. Freaking nosy general was giving him the job with less people than he needed because she knew he carried extra manpower with him wherever he went.

“And now, Captain, I’m passing the savings on to you.”

She pulled out a letter, signed it with a flourish, folded it, dripped wax on it, stamped it with the thick gold ring on her finger, then slid it across the oak table in front of Calvin.

Calvin eyed it for a moment. “I’ve got one request.”

“Oh?” Andra asked with a raised brow.

“I’m gonna need to commission a bunch of whores.”