Chapter 60: Becoming the Villain

“Take a moment to look at things from my perspective,” Calvin said, wiping the globule Diane had spat on his cheek.

“Never.”

“I’ve got…eh, forty or so prisoners while behind enemy lines, and I can’t risk letting them go until the Ilethans – that’s you – are already aware of my presence.

Calvin was giving the speech to their newest female POW, a tough-as-nails wagon driver responsible for delivering goods from Surrak to Brendan. His speech had evolved slowly over time from ‘do the right thing’ to a thinly veiled threat. Sometimes people had to be made aware of the realities of life.

“Now, forty men, we’re not quite numerous enough to put them to work effectively without some fool getting the idea to rise up against us with their tools, seeing as we’re not too many more than them. So. We keep them chained up.”

“Bastard.”

“Right. So the next thing I want you to consider is food. I have a responsibility to feed every single one of my men, but do I have a responsibility to feed them?” Calvin thumbed over his shoulder at the corral of men chained to posts under a long roof.

“The Aices Dictum decrees that each prisoner of war shall be –“

Calvin interrupted her with a slap.

“I watched your people light a hundred of mine on fire. They looked like candle wicks half a mile out. I felt the Berserk spell, which on later inquiry, is apparently a war crime. I still dream about it, actually. Don’t you dare quote me a bullshit law you’ve no intention of honoring.”

The middle-aged woman looked stunned that someone young enough to be her son had slapped her. Which hopefully meant he’d broken her out of her loop.

“Now, forty men eat a lot of food, and I’ll have to make adjustments in order to feed them. It will take extra manpower to make sure everyone gets fed. It takes extra manpower to watch them. In short, they are less valuable to me alive than dead, including your husband over there.Hi Tom.”

Calvin waved at the distant Ilethan lug glaring him down from the longhouse prison.

“No.” She shook her head, eyes brimming with tears.

“Yep, My best bet is to kill them. That’s just the bitter truth of it…Unless you change the game.”

She gave him a confused look.

“What do you mean?”

“If you make keeping forty men alive and well more valuable to me than the drain they pose on my resources, then logic simply dictates that I keep them alive, and that includes Tom. And trust me, keeping them alive is within your power.”

“What do you want?” she demanded, slowly deflating.

…

13/15 Bent Remaining

“Well, now I feel like the slimiest scumbag ever to walk the earth,” Calvin said, wiping imaginary slime off himself as he left the women’s longhouse. The noise of the camp drowned out his self-recrimination.

“Where’d you learn to speak Ilethan so good? um, I mean well.” Gulad asked, the snaggletoothed engineer dusting off his hands as he shifted from one woodworking project to the next.

“I ate a dead guy’s tongue,” Calvin said, idly glancing past him to the chicken coop the man somehow had time to set up. The new base was partway set up, but not nearly as strong as he wanted it for when the Ilethans came. They had no idea when the Ilethans would catch wind of them blocking their supplies. It would only be a day or two more at the most.

“I…see. Well, good job with that, captain.” Gulad said, nodding, his expression paling somewhat as he left.

“Take these with you,” Calvin said, burning through half his cajoled Bent to give the engineer another unit of several hundred Knick-knacks. He saved the rest of the it for when the ilethans inevitably tried to push through them again.

7/15 Bent remaining

I traded him over a thousand for fourteen men last time. I wonder if He’ll be willing to make that deal again. I wonder if I’ll be willing to make that deal again.

Calvin stomped over to his hidden chair where he could be not-captain and slumped into it, his pinky fingers shaking as he held his face in his hands.

Please choose an ability or mutation-

I’m busy damn it!

Doesn’t look like it to me.

Calvin sucked in a long breath and slowly let it out, cutting through the anxiety with a mental knife.

Fine. Let’s see them.

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.

Not a Metaphor: Pay 1 Bent to temporarily turn a willing woman into a powerful weapon. That weapon's shape, attributes and effects are based on the woman's personality, abilities and skills. lasts (Skill) hours, dismissable by either party.

Dream a Little Dream of Me: 1 Bent, User can share dreams and other mental spaces with a willing woman for the next 24 hours.

Mutations:

One Size Fits All: I think you all know what this mutation does, you silly guys.

Perfume : Smell better…duh.

The Voice: Makes voice more appealing.

Pillow Talk: After a long, soothing conversation where both the user and the other party share their emotions, the other party’s Bent regeneration is multiplied by (TtG) for (TtG) hours.

Twilight Effect: Increase the Talking to Girls correction by a cumulative 5% for each mutation User has. Side effect: paler and sparkles. May cause vampirism.

There’s more than last time, Calvin thought as he reviewed them, paying close attention to the new ones.

More Abilities become available as other Skills and Abilities become available. Believe it or not, there were quite a few more skills under this tab that I had to block because they were extremely inappropriate.

More inappropriate than One size Fits all?

Indeed. It surprised me too.

Cal grunted and scanned through the skills, disregarding the Twilight Effect, despite being an objectively powerful passive. He didn’t intend to become something different.

Loyalty seemed helpful. It was less restrictive and more widely applicable than Stockholm Syndrom.

“Can you read me Stockholm Syndrome? Calvin asked.

On it.

Stockholm Syndrome: YPiiAC correction now also applies to the emotional bonding of captive princesses with the User, as well as the resulting allegiance.

If anything, Loyalty would work far better in the long run, for, and even after taming Nadia, since it could be used on non-captive, non-princesses.

On the other hand… Calvin revisited Pillow Talk. The name made him cringe, and the requirements to use it weren’t much better.

Pillow Talk: After a long, soothing conversation where both the user and the other party share their emotions, the other party’s Bent regeneration is multiplied by (TtG) for (TtG) hours.

Icky. I have to share my feelings? I hate sharing my feelings…on the other hand…

Calvin did some quick mental math.

Bent regen is weekly, so…

7*24=168 hours in a week.

At level ten, the rate of Bent regeneration would be ten times for ten hours, or one hundred hours worth in ten hours.

Two thirds of a week in one day at his current level of Talking to girls.

At level 13, he’d reach 169 hours in 13... meaning each heart-to-heart he had with a girl would allow him to harvest a full week’s worth of Bent from them…at a rate of once per day.

It’s hard to have more than one or two heart-to-hearts a week, at most. You just run out of feelings to bare. And don’t use the word Harvest in her company. She’ll definitely take offence to it.

Fair enough.

Want a little advice?

Sure.

Pick up Loyalty then Pillow Talk, If you still want it by then.

But I need as much Bent as I can get to finish this fort.

The only person that Ability is going to work on is Ella, besides, this fort is a temporary thing. You’re just setting up a wall you don’t plan to hold anyway. You know what you do plan to hold onto? Your princesses. If you get Pillow Talk and don’t tell your girlfriends the reason for it, it’ll alienate them indefinitely.

Even if you do tell them, it’ll make them feel like tools, which is…not ideal either.

On the other hand, grab Loyalty, let them stew in it’s effect for a few months, however long it takes to get to level 15, then bring up the subject of Pillow Talk, and they’ll fall over themselves asking you to take it so they can help you more.

Calvin sat there and digested that for a moment.

You sound kind of evil, you know?

Age and evil go hand in hand. Either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. And I am very old.

You know what else goes with age? Experience. Pick loyalty and I know it’ll pay dividends the rest of your life. The kind of dividends that don’t have numbers.

Calvin thought about it for a solid ten minutes.

I choose Loyalty.

Calvin’s awareness expanded as the System subtley altered his synapses, making connections between behavior and thoughts that he had never put together before. So many things suddenly made sense. He felt like a fog had been lifted from his mind. Matter of fact…

This works for men, too, doesn’t it? Calvin thought.

Bingo! The Ability might be geared more precisely for women, but there’s a ton of overlap in what makes men and women tick, despite what they might have you think.

Who’s they?

The People who wrote Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.

“Whatever,” Calvin said, not interested in tugging on that thread. He held out his hand, palm down.

Chained Spirit.

6/15 Bent remaining.

He watched as black Bent traced his veins before erupting from his palm in a cloud of green smoke that quickly began assembling a skeleton.

In the blink of an eye, Nadia was gasping in front of him, on her knees in front of his chair.

It wasn’t really Calvin’s intention to summon her kneeling, he just had to have her head in his palm as he summoned her, and he was sitting down…so it kind of turned out that way.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why did you pull me out?”

“You did a good job with Brendan. Thank you. Now go help clean logs.” Calvin said, gently eroding away at the crack he’d made in her mental defences as he spoke.

She sneered at him. “You want me to do menial work like some kind of Support Unit?”

“Or nothing at all.” Calvin said, brows raised.

She glanced over her shoulder, to where several shirtless young Gadveran men were stripping branches and bark away from logs, their muscles rippling in the afternoon sun.

She gave a dainty sniff and shrugged.

“Fine. They seem like they’re in dire need of leadership anyway.”

She stood, cast Calvin a quick glance, her emotions swirling between angry and contemplative before she turned away and joined the workers.

What was that for?

A reward for doing well the day before yesterday.

A reward? More work?

The ability to move with her own body, speak with her own mouth. The ability to…

Calvin glanced over, where Nadia tapped one of the workers on the shoulder and took the tool out of the man’s hands when he looked over at her. She bent over and began demonstrating the proper way to plane wood. She failed miserably, but she held the poor men’s attention with the black leather stretched tight over her slender body.

The ability to interact with the real world. I see.

“Speaking of which, it’s time for me to get back to the real world as well,” Calvin said, pushing himself out of his hidden slouch-chair.

The camp was a frenzy of motion as the Knick-Knacks dug earthworks across the road, slinging up dirt faster than a human could ever hope. Teams of a dozen moved stripped logs from the yard to the wall one at a time, where the largest one Calvin had summoned buried them deep in the earth one at a time before binding them together.

The fort designed to choke Brendan off from his reinforcements was coming along, much faster than the one before, because no preparations for a permanent structure were necessary.

“I dub thee, Fort Choke. May our enemies choke on it.” Calvin said, nodding sagely.

“Movement in the Forest!” one of the lookouts screamed, his bell shattering Calvin’s exhaustion laced complacency, causing his nerves to turn into ice water, and kicking him directly in the heart.

Calvin sprinted for the lookout tower, a simple two story construction with little in the way of cover that overlooked the road and jungle beside them. He clomped up the steps, already making plans for how best to make them pay for their impromptu fort.

“Where?” he demanded, at the top of the stairs.

“Over there, sir,” the Gadveran said, handing Calvin the spyglass. “Just on our side of that hill, coming down the side.” He pointed.

Calvin lined the spyglass with the man’s directions and began scanning the slightly deforested mountainside.

After a moment, he spotted a strange sight. A big man leaning on the shoulders of a rather small woman. The two of them were wearing steel bows, and…Calvin recognized them.

“Guar!” Calvin shouted, with only enough presence of mind to hand the spyglass back to the lookout.

He swept back down the stairs like a gust of wind, barely touching them until he hit the ground running, aiming for the stable which included the few Guar they’d had remaining after the attack, along with the ones confiscated from Brendan’s resupply caravan.

“Get three Guar ready!” Calvin shouted “There’s two of our people on the hill, and they need a ride!”

The old man in charge of the Guar paused where he was working a file over the herbivorous reptile’s nails to glance at Calvin. He gave Calvin a deeply intense scowl for a moment, before nodding, turning to retrieve them.

Calvin twitched anxiously as he waited for the man to come back with the guar.

Baroke is alive! Thank the gods, but he doesn’t look good. I have to get him back as soon as possible. There’s every chance that the enemy is bearing down behind them as we speak.

“Hold on there, kid,” Grant said, putting a hand on Calvin’s shoulder.

“What?”

“I overheard. There’s some of ours on the hill?”

“What of it?”

“Well, there’s every chance that it’s a trap.”

“What?”

“It’s a pretty tried and true tactic to use POW’s as bait and ambush their units. Plus there’s no guarantee that they aren’t a sorcerer in disguise. There’s been more than one army torn apart from the inside by especially fearless sorcerers.

Cal fixed Grant with a stare.

The big man shrugged.

“At least send someone disposable to get them back.” He said.

“I’ll do it,” Ella said, dressed head to toe in armor, looking like the mythic juggernaut.

“You’re not disposable,” Calvin said as the old man came back with three guar. The lizards seemed somewhat intimidated by the Genosian girl’s size, standing eye-to eye with her.

“Maybe not, but you want to do it, so I want to do it,” She said. “And I don’t think a little thing like an Ilethan ambush could hurt me. I’m the toughest creature in this entire camp. You civilized races are soft-skinned.”

I can’t risk Ella. She’s too important. She could get hurt or captured, and then everything would fall –

Calvin burned to tell her to stay, but he choked off the irrational desire with a force of indignant will.

That was the Guya talking.

“Alright, bring them back here, where we can take a look at them.”

“You got it, Huntmaster.” She said with a sharp-toothed grin and genosian salute.

“Sometimes I feel like my entire existance is using women,” Calvin said as he watched her lead the spare two Guar out the front gate, his stomach knotting.

Grant sent him a curious glance.

A few minutes later, she came back with Baroke and his companion…Maya, Calvin remembered. Completely without incident.

“Here you are,” Ella said as she approached, dismounting and guiding the guars the rest of the way by hand.

Got me scared of a trap for nothing.

“Hey, boss,” Baroke said, waving a tired hand as he rode up, slumped across the struggling Guar’s back. His massive shoulder was red and infected, oozing puss from a puckered wound.

“Hey, Baroke, good to see you’re alive.”

“Same here, it’s been a wild ride, let me tell you.”

“No.” Calvin said, cutting off the lumbering archer before he could launch into a heroic, and likely embellished tale of survival. “We need to get you to a medic and make sure you are who you say you are.”

“W-Huh?”

“How long did it take us to catch the pig?” Calvin asked.

“The festival?”

Calvin stayed stone-faced, not revealing anything.

“Under ten minutes,” Baroke said with a shrug, wincing at the pain.

“Welcome back soldier. You’ve earned a day off,” Calvin said, unable to suppress a smile.

“Don’t shower me with praise or anything.” Baroke rolled his eyes.

“And Maya,” Calvin said, turning to the other scout. A tiny, muscular girl about their age.

“Yeah?” she asked, her eyes slipping closed.

“Thanks for keeping Baroke alive. I think everyone here knows you were probably the only reason he made it back. You get two days off.”

“Too bad I’m gonna sleep through both of them,” She said with a yawn.

“Seems odd giving them two days off when we may not be here that much longer.” Grant said.

“We do what we can.”

“Movement, South road!”

Calvin lurched up to the watchtower again, but didn’t spot anything to the south.

“What’d you see?”

“A couple scouts on Guars, turned around as soon as they saw the walls.”

“It’s Fort Choke now.” Calvin said with a grin he didn’t feel.

Now we’re really on the clock.

He gave a mental nudge for the knick-knacks to get started on the escape route.

***Brendan***

Brendan plucked his fingers carefully out of the indented brass cup, wiping spilled wine off his hand with a handkerchief.

“Say that again. I was too blinded by fury to process it.”

“Um, there’s a wall between us and Surrak…sir. Wooden one, about four feet taller than this one was. Seems like it’s being built by The Wasp. It’s practically done already.

“Three days!” Brendan shouted, causing the scout to rock back on his heels.

“You can’t build fortifications in three days! There’s no magic in the world that makes a permanent object that big or that fast!”

“I think, nephew, that the young man has a way to create a temporary workforce on a large scale. You mentioned something about Knick knacks helping him?”

Brendan reprocessed his memories before snapping his attention to the scout.

“Were knick-knacks there in great numbers?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh my, seems like the spell does more than just wasps, how exciting.” Charlotte clapped her hands together in delight.

“It’s not exciting, it’s – “ Brendan stopped himself, giving the scout an appraising look. He couldn’t let any news of how bad this was slip. “You’re dismissed.”

“Sir.” The scout saluted and left.

“It’s fucking terrible!” he whispered harshly to his aunt once the man was out of earshot. “My men are going hungry while that asswipe sits back and eats our food. There are simply too many men here to sustain with hunting and fishing. Either we attack the wall on empty stomachs and quite possibly suffer worse than last time, starve here, waiting for Mujenan to smash us, or we retreat through the jungle. None of those are good fucking options!”

“I agree.” Charlotte said with a nod. “From a military standpoint, you’re in a world of trouble, young man. A total failure. An utter incompetent.”

“I get it.”

“Hold on, I’ve got a couple more. A oozing sack of shit, and a sword rusted into it’s sheath. Worse than useless.”

“I get it.” Brendan growled.

“From a history standpoint, though, you may be on the verge of tipping the war in our favor.”

“Explain.”

“Nephew. I want that young man. I want him, bad. And I want his spell even more. A spell that can create instant troops on a grand scale…Real ones?” Charlotte’s mouth gaped as she fanned herself off.

“We could lose every man here, and it wouldn’t compare to stealing that spell. I, Charlotte Moore humbly request your aid in kidnapping The Wasp.”

Brendan turned the ruined goblet over in his hand as he considered.

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