Chapter 91: A Quiet Morning

“Calvin?” Ussein said, frowning. He glanced at Calvin’s wasps. “The Wasp?”

“Seems kind of self-evident.”

He looked Calvin up and down.

“They said you were Malkenrovian. And sixteen.”

“Seventeen.”

“Some kind of disguise Skill?”

“Something like that.”

“Huh. Kala said you were going to slaughter the people out there, but I fail to see how you’re going to manage that when the best you can do is prick my palm.” He held up his barely bleeding palm for emphasis.

The best I can do? The BEST I can do?

For a brief moment, Calvin was tempted to show him the best he could do, but that was a waste of Bent and a waste of a Legend. Instead he pointed out the obvious.

“It’s already done.” Calvin said with a shrug.

“Say what?”

“I poisoned them in their sleep through tiny little holes in the ground. A lot of them aren’t gonna wake up. You can’t exactly stop me from doing something I’ve already done, Ussein.”

“That’s…” He glanced out into the night, eyes narrowed.

“There’s a lot of collapsed sentries out there.” he said before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “I can feel Warp building. It feels like a battle.”

“Veterans and higher tend to push the unpleasant duties on the lower Break soldiers. That’s just a fact of life. Although it’s going to bite them in the ass this time around, isn’t it?”

“Can you get them all?”

“Huh?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“Can you kill every man woman and child out there?”

“I don’t think there’ll be many women and children…”

“An army that big?” Ussein said, glancing out into the rocky desert. “There were a few of them, I’m sure, but unless they were Legends, I doubt they still are.”

Well that’s a sobering thought.

“I can get them all. Those wasps were the tip of the iceberg. I can make enough to eliminate the survivors completely.”

“Good.” Ussein said, pulling his spear out of the ground and wrapping it around his waist the glass covering his skin was attracted to the black metal core – Looks like tungsten – recreating his whip-belt. “Because believe me, you don’t want hundreds of pissed off Legends seeking vengeance, which is what you’re in the process of making if you’re not thorough.”

“Are you…helping me?” Calvin asked.

“Not so much helping as…not destroying utterly. Your wasps are strong and fast, but they’re dumb. They weren’t actively trying to protect you so much as they were trying to kill me. If I wanted to I could have outmaneuvered them and cut out your heart. You’re lucky I was trying to take you alive. You need to get some proper, intelligent defensive summons if you want to live through a real battle, wizard.”

“When you’re done mopping up the last of them, come see me, I’ve got a task for you.” Ussein waved dismissively and turned back towards the tower.

The gall! That’s no way to treat your wizard king! I will suspend you by your feet from the ceiling of an ice cave to be eaten by angry Gardors!

Calvin watched the man’s back, clenching and unclenching the handle of his knife. He was tempted to murder him, but it was so much safer and less resource intensive to let the man keep breathing.

Calvin finally decided to suck it up and let him go. There was a whole lot more to get done tonight than putting one guy in his place.

I don’t need no defensive summons. I get by just fine with my training and combat skills.

You’re just ashamed to admit the idea never occurred to you.

Where am I supposed to get an ‘intelligent’, ‘defensive’ summon from, huh? Calvin thought as he watched the legend disappear back into the tower.

I can’t just make them, like Ussein seems to think. There has to already be a sapient creature interested in defending me that we can feed to Calvinian summoning. Those don’t just grow on trees.

We could kill Ella.

I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. Because if you did say that, I’d have to cut you out of my soul and break your spine.

Just stating the obvious. Anyway, don’t kill her if you don’t want, but if she happens to get killed sometime in the next ten years or so, we’ve got the perfect place for her.

I will NOT become known as the guy who summons an assortment of sexy young women. Being called The Wasp was bad enough.

Hahahah!

A thought occurred to Calvin.

What about those HK six-hundred things?

Oh, oh yeah, those can be programmed for bodyguard duty. Pretty easily too, it’s one of their pre-packaged subroutines. And yes. They are smarter than a wasp.

I guess we can see if there are any bodies left when we get back. Maybe a rich collector has one above his fireplace right now.

Well, that’s decided, then. Calvin thought.

Wait!

What?

Check this out.

Survival of the Fittest: All Calvinian summons experience occasional random minor mutations of the template creature. A creature from the swarm may replace the old template creature.

Whaddya think?

I’m not getting it.

You can breed guardian wasps! It only took forty thousand years to create modern dogs, and that was at a rate of two to five years per generation. You could do a generation every couple hours, or faster, with some lady help.

What the Abyss is a dog? Calvin thought.

You’re shitting me. There are no dogs on Marconen? But I could’ve sworn – ah, fuck it. Okay, you know sheep, right?

Yeah.

Well, you always bred the stud with the biggest fluffiest wool, because his babies tended to have bigger, fluffier wool, right?

Duh, are you going somewhere with this?

Dude, that mutation lets you breed generations of wasps for specific traits. With some time and dedication, you could literally create sapient wasps who live to guard you.

Sapient death machines, you mean? That’s more of an investment than you think. I would need Continuity grafted over from Chained spirit to get the maximum benefit out of that. Sapience doesn’t mean much if you’re starting from scratch over and over. Variety is the spice of death would also be good to have different breeding lines, maximizing the utility of altering their traits, so we’re looking at level twenty-five, minimum, thirty if you want Variety. That’s not exactly a skill level that most people achieve in their lifetime.

Oh, you’ll get there. You’re not most people.

Calvin glanced down at the dead fires below him. The glowing scowl of Soscath was beginning to sink under the horizon. Soon, the sky would lighten, and the survivors would begin to wake.

Better make sure it sticks, Calvin thought, holding a hand out.

Calvinian summoning

13/16 Bent Remaining

13/16 Bent Remaining

…

3/16 Bent remaining.

In a matter of minutes, three thousand two hundred and forty wasps flooded out onto the wall, each one pound, and reinforced by Atom Ant.

Crawl over there, Calvin gave them a mental nudge. If something is breathing, sting it in the throat so it can’t scream. One sting from a rat-sized wasp should to the trick, but…sting them in the throat as much as you want.

The wasps flexed their finger-length stingers in glee at the order, and they began to swarm over the edge of the wall and down the side, crawling their way toward the camp in perfect insect silence.

Now to sit back and wait for the dawn…

Calvin grabbed one of the sentries stool and rested his legs, stretching them out while he waited to see how many survivors he had to deal with.

…Am I forgetting something?

Your friends?

Oh, right! Calvin jumped to his feet and headed for the holding cells where his company was sleeping.

***Orson***

Orson blinked the sand out of his eyes as he rolled over in his bed, pulling the expensive comforter away from himself as he groaned.

His head was pounding like he’d been drinking himself into a stupor the entire night.

At least there weren’t any explosions over the night, so either that mercenary captain was lying, or there was never any Devil Powder. I guess I’ll find out when I get the morning report.

It was odd, waking up before the general. Usually the man came barging into his tent in the small hours of the morning with a huge list of annoyances that had occurred over the night.

One of the more bitter parts of being a leader: being expected to solve other people’s problems.

Must be this headache that woke me so early, he thought, crawling out of bed to put on his shoes. Gods, I feel weak. I should exercise more.

Orson chuckled at the ridiculous idea of himself doing pushups and jogging like any other grunt.

Like the rest of the Order of the Seeking Hand, Orson was, in the strictest sense of the word, a Legend, but he’d not put much effort into maximizing the raw potential of his Body and Mind.

Daily exercise was tedious and distracting, especially when he had a business to run.

His endurance was decent enough, though, through long overnighters, to the occasional bender at the Jush dens in his free time, he’d slowly raised it over the years.

Which is why this damn headache shouldn’t be a problem! He thought, rubbing his temple.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a hangover.

Orson blinked, smacking his lips. Something smelled good. Barbeque maybe?

There was no sound.

The camp outside his tent was silent as the grave.

What’s going on? An army wasn’t exactly a quiet thing. Even as he’d been falling asleep last night, the camp had been flush with the sound of laughter, jingling harnesses, scraping pans, even the occasional shout as someone beat another at games of chance.

There was no such thing as a quiet army, and morning was no different.

That was when Orson noticed the beam of light streaming down from a pinhole in his tent, drawing a line through the dusty air and landing on the carpeted floor.

It’s almost noon! Orson realized, pushing the headache and weakness aside as he threw on his pants. Did the general reposition the entire army while he slept? Was this some kind of coup? Whatever had happened, something was clearly Wrong, and it was his job to fix it.

Only one way to find out what’s up. Orson donned his shirt and padding before he threw on his breastplate, keeping all his vitals safely inside a thin wall of enchanted glass.

He grabbed his saber from the bedside and threw open the tent, squinting against the blast of sunlight. Once his eyes adjusted, Orson felt his jaw go slack, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

Dozens of Guar-sized wasps were methodically rounding up the bodies of his men, biting their heads off and tossing them wholesale into a massive pit full of burning bodies.

That was where the smell came from.

One of the corpses was just faking, and when the wasp came toward it, the man leapt to his feet and tried to run away with a strangled scream, receiving a sword-length stinger through the chest before his head was removed from his body.

“Morning sleepyhead,” a voice called from his left. Orson managed to tear his eyes away from the unsettling tableu to gaze at the short, pale Malkenrovian frying up eggs in a cast-iron skillet, along with half a dozen Gadverans, including Kala, Uleisan bandits, a massive Ilethan with half a dozen swords strapped to his body, some purple skinned woman, and…Ussein.

You bastard. You chose now to betray me?

“I tried not to wake you while I was systematically slaughtering your people,” Captain Gadsint said as if Orson were his irritable room-mate, scraping an egg onto the large Ilethan’s plate.

“I thought for sure you’d get up when the glass wizard made a run for it, but apparently you’re a heavy sleeper.”

“What do you want?” Orson asked, under no illusions about who was in control of the situation.

Just stay alive long enough to get back to the city. I can promise him anything. When the Hand hears of this, they’ll wipe this maggot from the face of Marconen. It’ll take some Man-hunting Legends, but it’ll be worth the price.

There existed in Marconen, men and women who could and would remove anyone for the right price. This little upstart had just made himself worth the cost.

“Me? I don’t really want anything from you. Egg?” he held a plate up toward Orson.

Ah fuck it. Orson took the plate and sat down. He couldn’t be seen as standoffish this early into negotiations.

“What happens to me, then? I’ll pay a rich purse for my safe return to Uleis.”

“Of course you will.” Calvin said, getting another batch of eggs into the pan. “But we’re not going to take you to Uleis.”

Orson’s stomach dropped, and he stopped, mid-egg.

“We’re going to let you have your castle back,” Calvin said, nodding past the Wasps hauling dead bodies over to the fort. “We’re going to release you there, and then we’re going back to Uleis, where someone more suited to our purposes will take Kala into her home.”

“After this? I doubt it.”

“After this unfortunate sand-pirate attack composed entirely of veterans and Legends, who just tore through your troops like wet paper, not leaving a single one alive. They spared my group because you locked us in the basement. Or some such guarshit we feed to the common folk.”

“That’s preposterous. No such band exists. If there were a group that powerful, they could…conquer…the kingdom…”

“That’s why you’re staying here. You can pay me for sparing you once this is all settled.”

“The Seeking Hand won’t stand for this, you know. You’re going to be killed at this rate.”  Orson took another bite of eggs. “Better to ally yourself with someone more powerful.”

The irritating boy made an exaggerated sweeping look around the dead camp. “Someone more powerful? Where?”

“I was talking about me,” Orson gritted out.

“Take the time out, or take the pit,” Calvin said, pointing toward the huge pit of flaming corpses.

“…I’ll take the fort.” Orson said, not intending to follow through in the slightest. Once they were gone, he could run back to Uleis in a matter of days. His temperature resistance and Endurance would allow him to do that, easily.

“Then I salute you, King of Fort Cobalt!” The captain gave him a sloppy salute, then finished cooking breakfast for the assembled people.

During the meal, Orson spotted the Uleisan Mercenaries and the occasional Gadveran soldier help drag the bodies along, leaving the tossing into the massive pit to the giant wasps.

Orson could practically taste the Warp in the air.

Might get another Sand-wurm infestation because of this. Ordinary insects and animals had a tendancy to mutate into monsters at the site of battles.

Not much of a battle though, if I didn’t hear it. He thought sourly.

After breakfast was over, Orson was disarmed and his armor removed before being marched up to the gate, where a door had been cut into the welded glass.

Orson ducked through the door and walked intot he familiar fort. He’d been here many times during it’s operation, and the walls and furniture were all familiar, if eerily out of place.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something blue, and when he turned his head, his blood went cold.

Nearly a thousand Cobalts, wielding rough-made glass spears, twice as tall as them.

“Here’s the guy who owns the place. Don’t ever say I don’t deliver on my promises!” the Captain shouted to them.

“Wai-“

A foot caught Orson in the small of his back and pushed him deeper into the fort.

As he was picking himself up, he heard the sound of the door shutting behind him, and the crunch of sand on stone as the Cobalts approached.

***Calvin***

Calvin waited for the screaming to die down before he unlocked the door so the cobalts could get out of the fort more easily. He wasn’t interested in going in here and cleaning up their mess, though. They could take care of that themselves.

He was interested in making the most of his Forming Day.

Calvin took out the twelve-sided glass toy and began trying to solve it as he walked back out to camp.

This is infuriating, Calvin thought as he tried to solve it. There was a pattern here, and he had to solve it to get all of the sides facing the right way.

Your Mind has reached 25!

28/31 Warp remaining.

Calvin got himself comfortable in a hammock strung up by Knick-knacks, playing with the Uleisan Mind Grind while bodies burned in the distance, people scraping other people off the sand.

Just gotta buckle down and work out the pattern.

…

Your Mind has reached 34!

1/31 Warp remaining.

Is it ironic that this is the most restful Break I’ve ever had? Calvin thought as he spun the faces of the toy, trying to put them into positions where they would fall into place, one after the other, he got six faces with their colors solid, matching the pentagram in the center, before he ran into the problem of the faces interfering with each other in multiple places, annoying him to no end.

“Bah,” Calvin said, tossing the puzzle off to the side. It did its job, after all. He was now technically a Legend, with six Breaks. The huge surge in his Mind really illustrated the separation between sixth and fifth Break, and how dangerous eighth Break Royals could be.

One point left. Can’t use it on a primary stat, so…. New Skill time. What works well with what I have already?

Ooh, Ooh, pick me, pick me! Elliot shouted, excitement oozing out of his voice.

I think I’m gonna want everyone’s input on this one. No more getting Skills by accident.

Foo.

***Kala, earlier that morning***

Kala yawned, stretching as she mulled over the night’s dreams, trying to figure out which, if any were prophetic. The sex dreams, hopefully. Falling into an endless black hole? Not something she was hoping to experience.

Plus I woke up before I hit the ground, like a regular dream.

Still, Kala wrote it in her diary, just in case. It’d already come in handy with Ussein and politicking. She grabbed her pipe and some mild longweed as she looked over the notes, taking a deep draw and blowing the smoke out towards the window.

“Aah, that’s the stuff.” Kala sighed as her mind became more receptive to her Seer Abilities.

You have manifested Smoking!

Smoking level 1: 5% correction.

The ancient art of inhaling smoke to get high. Applies a correction to the effectiveness of using and maintaining pipes, bongs and other smoking paraphernalia. Correction also applies to positive effects of smoked drugs, while mitigating negative ones.

33/34 Warp remaining.

“Shit,” Kala said, coughing.

Macronomicon