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:  5 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 that 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 though whatever.

“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, force, and a severely 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. It should be…” 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 enchauala. 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 midflight 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.

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 flaming wall 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 him.

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, flopping 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 his Wizard-King goal.

“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.

Macronomicon

Yeah, my chapter naming sense isn't great sometimes. Probably should have put this chapter up yesterday, but...life is exhausting.

Enjoy!