Chapter 102: conomics

“Look, another Ilethan scum attacking your family,” the Wise Man said, pointing at the soldier stalking toward his mother and sister, a lecherous gleam in their eyes. “Protect them.”

Baroke didn’t hesitate.

With a single breath he drew and fired, launching a thick arrow out of his bow and catching the bastard in the chest.

Thank the gods I got to them in time, Baroke though, heaving a sigh of relief, his limbs drooping with exhaustion. People had been trying to rape his sister all day.

His sister didn’t look at him, oddly. Now that the emergency was over, she seemed…locked in her panic.

“It’s fine, they’re all gone, we can go to Mujenan now,” Baroke said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. They’d be safe in Mujenan.

Posei flickered. For an instant she was gone, and in the periphery of his vision, the skin of the ilethans darkend. Then everything went back to normal, and she turned to look at him, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Thanks, brother!”

Baroke’s hair stood on end. She never called him brother. She called him Baroke, or muscle-head, or fartface. Never brother.

“What’s my name?”

He’d never given the ilethan scum his name. Not that he could recall.

A slow smile spread over his sister’s face.

“You did well.” She said lightly, vanishing in front of him as the massacre was revealed.

He wasn’t alone. He was standing in formation with dozens of Ilethans, pelting arrows at fleeing Gadverans. His countrymen.

Baroke took in a shuddering gasp, but he couldn’t move. His body wasn’t his own.

The only thing he could do was watch. Study the disproportionate number of men and women with his arrows in their hearts.

He could tell because they’d painted his fletching red. For science.

A hand grasped his shoulder.

“Sleep now.” A harsh old man’s voice whispered, tickling his ear, inducing equal parts rage and disgust.

Baroke started falling asleep again, his body tilting as it slumped out from under him.

No, no NO NO!

****

“Ow, what the Abyss, Baroke?” Baroke heard Calvin’s voice. He felt something puny in his hand.

Baroke blinked the sand out of his eyes and took in the situation. Maya was sitting up in bed, most of the covers dedicated to covering her nudity, while leaving Baroke stranded halfway in the cold of the night.

Calvin was standing over him, wincing in pain, wearing a trendy effeminate blue choker, his delicate, girl-like wrist seized in Baroke’s masculine, work-hardened hands.

“You need to stop thinking whatever you’re thinking right now,” Calvin said with a scowl. “And let go of my arm.”

“Make me,” Baroke said, looking back up at Calvin’s face with a smile before letting the weakling go.

“So what’s the deal?” Baroke asked, sliding out of the sheet and reaching down for his pants, his dreams set aside. The nagging doubt was slowly fading. None of his loved ones were being inexplicably attacked en masse, he had complete control over his body, and the continuity of events was immaculate.

I’m fine.

“I assume this is something important and you weren’t just drawn here by my scent like Maya?”

Maya hit him in the ribs with nearly thirty strength. The little ranger packed a punch.

“Yeah, we need to disappear.” Calvin said as Baroke clutched his side.

“Huh?”

“So Kala and I am currently fighting off an ambush by one of the ‘neutral’ oligarchs of Uleis, which is a very bad thing that implies there aren’t any neutral uleisan oligarchs. Once they’re done with us, what do you think they’re gonna do to you guys?”

“Wait a minute,” Baroke said raising a hand. “Did you say you’re currently fighting off an ambush? Why are you here, and where’s Kala?”

“To the Abyss with this,” Calvin said rolling his eyes and turning away. The pale kid with the pretty necklace marched into the hallway of the mansion and started screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Alarm! Alarm! Get your asses out of bed and get mustered! Get your gear on and packed! I want you downstairs and dressed for the desert in five fucking minutes! NOW NOW NOW!”

The confused West Boles Trading company spilled out of their rooms, half dressed and sleepy, trying their damndest to comply.

“I should’ve just done this from the beginning,” Calvin said, his hands on his hips as he watched the chaos unfold from Baroke’s door.

Baroke put his pants on.

***Kurewa***

“They’re gone?” Kurawe asked, his glass straw rattling against the ice in his drink. How do nearly two thousand men and women disappear in a handful of minutes.

“Yessir, they evacuated the mansions before we were able to notice what they were doing.” Polluq said, nodding.

“How?”

“There were too many of them to disappear with no trace, so they didn’t bother trying,” Pulluq said. “By the time I got there with the guard, there was a muddy trail leading right into the west wing, with an open trap door leading into a collapsed tunnel.”

Kurawe heaved a sigh. “Less than ideal. In our custody would have been ideal. Someone must have been able to warn them. Continue with the plan. Have the mole give testimony and publicize the Abyss out of it. It’s almost easier now that they’re not around to defend themselves, even if it was a puppet court, but now we have to wait for them to show up at some unexpected time, waving swords and screaming bloody murder.”

Kurawe rubbed his temples. “None of which is particularly fun to deal with.”

“Understood.” Polluq nodded and went off to do what he did best: organize men into something resembling an organization.

For a moment, Kurawe briefly wondered how the boy was doing in the Abyss, but shook it off. With the collar on, the Malkenrovian summoner had probably died on impact with the platform, and if he hadn’t he’d be severely wounded: Easy pickings for the reality-warping creatures that roamed the depths.

The princess, though. She might survive long enough to despair. Kurawe thought, taking an idle sip of his wine. His glass could be more accurately described as a carafe, but it didn’t bother him too much.

***Calvin***

Calvin opened his eyes.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting that. For an idle moment he pondered what he had been expecting death to be like, before he sat bolt upright. Was Kala okay? Him being alive did not necessarily guarantee the princess was unharmed as well.

Calvin found himself inside something he’d never wanted to be in again: a Yurt. Yurts held a special place in Calvin’s heart as a rather cozy, comfortable place that housed horrible people.

He couldn’t see anything with his eyes, but his ever-handy skin made out the sloped walls, the thick leather held up by long, porous poles…that seemed to be made out of bone. Gently curved ten-foot ribs.

Not creepy at all.

Well, let’s get my bearings.

Calvin mentally asked for his Status.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

8

Strength:

7

Kinesthetics:

7

Endurance:

6

Mind:

34

Intuition:

18

Stability:

16

Will:

24

Bent:

2/16

Warp:

44/8

Skills:

Stealth

7

Playboy

11

Old Salt

8

Sense-Grafting

15

Dupdomancy

18

Meditation

19

Chained Spirit

18

Calvinian Summoning

18

Your Princess is in Another Castle

7

Beli Ma

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10

Genosian Language

5

Shifting

11

Well, let’s get my bearings.

So, I’ve been out of it between nine to twelve hours, and either Kala found civilization, or civilization found Kala.

The fact that Calvin was still alive was a good sign. His leg was wrapped in a clean, dry bandage, and splinted, and his ribs were wrapped in a tight compress to stop them from shifting around while they healed.

If they were gonna eat me, I doubt they would have gone through the trouble.

You never know. I imagine fresh meat is pretty precious around here. Maybe they’re saving you for later.

Thanks for that image, Calvin thought, shaking his head as he sat up, wincing as the pain in his ribs redoubled, protesting at his movements.

Calvin managed to muscle down a groan as he sat up, before sliding his ass over to the entrance, where his night vision could make out the barest glimmer of light slipping between the leather flaps.

Calvin peered out the flaps and spotted a tiny cookfire with a giant metal cookpot above it, soldered together out of a heavily beaten breastplate. Five people sat around it, poking at something boiling in the water.

They were giants, easily thirty feet tall in a cavern big enough to house all of Gadvera without undue effort.

Where did they get water? Calvin wondered, but the strangest thing was Kala:

Kala was also a giant, sitting beside them, chatting in their huge, moaning voices, chuckling with such a deep baritone that it seemed like it should rattle his bones.

Well, at least she seems to be getting along well with the giants, instead of being in the pot, Calvin thought, closing the flap. Assuming there’s no weird fuckery going on here.

Calvin blinked.

The fire in the cookpot had been a small fire. Calvin could tell the difference between a huge fire that was simply far away, and an actual small fire. The shape of the flames was different.

That had been a small fire.

If the fire was small, that would mean that the giants around it weren’t giants, but normal sized humans, which meant…

I’m tiny.  The revelation didn’t shatter Calvin’s worldview. He was probably just under some kind of spell that made the injured more portable. Kala looked safe. From what he could tell, she was charming the natives, and Calvin had been treated. He should be safe for a few more hours.

I’ve got other things to focus on right now, like spending my Warp. He scooted back to the center of the room, not minding the soft floor.

Calvin wanted to continue the pattern of raising his Mind to the exclusion of all else, and with that as the goal, he needed a puzzle or a book of riddles or something. Two things he didn’t have.

There was an easy solution to that.

Shadowboxing.

Calvin closed his eyes and he was in his own hut back in Deinos, his rickety desk bearing a glass puzzlebox, and Bekvah’s Book.

Now we just have to hope I can raise my Mind more than I raise Meditation.

Calvin took a deep breath and let it out, relaxing as much as possible. He wanted to focus his attention, his stress, on solving the puzzles themselves, not improving the meditative state he was in.

So he sat down in front of Bekvah’s book and turned past the last page he’d ever read.

It described a rather perplexing puzzle, and Calvin got right to work trying to decipher it.

Shadowboxing Haxorz, pls nerf.

Calvin ignored Elliot and focused on finishing the pictogram. He was in a rush. Every hour he spent in a literal hole, his people were probably being killed. If he was lucky they would hold a long and public trial before they got around to chopping their heads off, but Calvin didn’t hold out a lot of hope. If he and Kala didn’t get any theatrics, why would his men?

…

Meditation has reached 25!

Will has reached 31

Your Mind has reached 45!

0/8 Warp Remaining.

Damn, Calvin thought as the last of the Warp left his system. Despite his best effort, about eleven points of Warp had gone into his Will and Meditation rather than every single bit into his Mind.

Still, forty-five was a lot. Calvin had never heard of someone having quite that much, and he had an idea for how to achieve another Break after this… Maybe.

That was far in the future, and for now, he should probably say hi to the people who must have rescued them.

Meditation has reached Level 25!

Please choose a-

Calvin shoved the prompt to the side, and the System waited patiently as he scooted toward the door of the Yurt. He wanted to see what the situation was and confer with Kala before he did anything.

He started scooting back toward the door, the bone splint helping tremendously at keeping his leg straight

Calvin pushed the leathery door asid and began hauling his tiny self out the opening, scooting his ass along the hard stone like he had worms.

There was a strange ridge between inside the yurt and outside, with the inside floor being something like a waterskin. Odd, he thought as he gained the attention of the giants. But not quite as odd as being shrunk.

As he laboriously pulled himself out of the door, the giants began to shrink in front of his eyes, until Calvin flopped out completely onto the cold stone floor.

“Hey there, kid,” One of the Uleisan men said, waving at him jovially. “You’re a pretty rare sight around here.”

The cave ceiling was no longer ponderously tall, but instead only about twenty feet high and perhaps the entire cave was only forty feet wide, rather than big enough to fit a small city inside.

“I’ll bet,” Calvin said absently as he studied the ceiling.

What about the Yurt? Calvin thought, glancing back.

Sure enough, the yurt was about the size of two fists, inches away from his foot.

Calvin shifted his leg out of the way to inspect the Yurt further, and discovered that it was alive. Some kind of creature with a heavy leathery outside had been pinned to the ground with stakes, it’s shell carefully hollowed out in the shape of a house. A tiny little house. There was a stone dish of food right next to the creature’s head, and it ate placidly, crunching through food scraps.

Calvin’s eyes rose, and he saw dozens, hundreds of similar houses, each one a living creature secured to a single spot. Some of them had tiny lights flickering from inside them.

“Just wait until I get back to the surface,” an old man said, drawing Calvin’s attention over to the cookpot. “I’ll make a fortune in the storage and transportation industry.” The heavily wrinkled old man cackled to himself as if he’d just told the most hilarious joke, but the others rolled their eyes and poked the fire with long bones.

Everything seemed to be made from bone or leather…even the firewood seemed to be made from some kind of dried, oily tentacle.

“I’m starving,” Calvin said, putting his good leg under him and standing. “Is that vegetable soup?”

“Oh, look, he’s already got a sense of humor!” The wrinkled man chuckled.

“Hello Calvin, welcome back.” Kala said, handing him her empty bowl.

“May I?” Calvin asked, glancing around.

A thin Uleisan in thick leather motioned casually to the bowl. “First day’s free for a newcomer.”

Calvin gave his thanks and scooped up the…soup.

The liquid was a strange, clear substance that seemed to evaporate in seconds outside the pot, leaving him a bowl with a few crispy chunks of meat.

“That’s new,” Calvin muttered, tapping the pieces of meat out and into his mouth, finding them both crispy and chewy, with a disgusting tanginess. But food was food, and Calvin choked it down with a shudder.

“Well, he can stand the worst part of the Gunner-ant.” One of the men said with a smile.

“What do you folks do for water around here?” Calvin asked, the thirst beginning to bother him.

Kala and the men shared a glance, before Kala spoke.

“The Uleisans living here have taken the Water Conservation Skill to the extreme. There’s no water in these caves but what people bring in with them. The occasional dead body at the Platform.

“You’re not going to kill us and grind us down for water, are you?” Calvin asked, taking another scoop of the strange meat boiling in some kind of air.

One of the quieter men threw up his hands.

“No, no, we would never do that. Despite our rough look, we’re quite peaceful. We’ll definitely wait until after you’re dead to process you.”

Calvin chuckled.

How fast could we get the Water Conservation Skill and a mutation that would allow us to survive?

For us? Fast enough. For Kala? Maybe not.

Alright. We’re getting out of here. Soon.

I mean, there’s gotta be moisture in the air from all these bodies. With the right condensing mutation, you could theoretically produce more water than you need, and that would allow Kala to survive as well.

…

…..

Although she’d be drinking nothing but your pee.

You’re a sick fuck, and we’re definitely getting out of here before that becomes necessary. Calvin thought to himself, shaking his head as he took another bite of the awful meat.

Survival is gross sometimes.

“Anybody know anything about a room with strange boxes in it, that glow when people come near them?” Calvin asked, giving them Elliot’s description of the control room they’d need to find in order to Phase-Shift.

The men went silent.

“We don’t know of any rooms like that, but we do know of a great many passages that no one has ever returned from.” The man in thick leathers said, glancing over at the eldest one there.

“But before you go disappearing forever, we’d appreciate it if you could repay our hospitality. You represent a sizeable chunk of water, and it’d be a shame to lose you to the deep tunnels.”

He glanced at Kala. “Your friend here tells me that you are a Summoner, and good at fishing?” he asked.

“You could say that, yeah.” Calvin said, sharing a glance with the princess. The look she was giving him told him he should probably make friends with these people rather than antagonize them, and Calvin tended to agree.

“Then I’d like for you to fish something for us before you go. Fishing the Abyss has always been a dangerous task, and a summoner could provide us with quite a bit of food in just a few hours.”

Calvin nodded. “You people have been fine hosts, and I’m grateful for the care you’ve given me. I’d be willing to go over and above. I could get you enough to last you months…in exchange for enough water to last the two of us an extra day.” Calvin said, nodding at Kala.

The old man scowled, deep in thought.

“Bring us a Querda and I’ll pay you each half a gallon of water,” he said, finally. “But, until then…” he held up a jug with an odd filter on the top.

“You have to pee into this jug.”

Survival is gross sometimes, Calvin thought, unzipping his pants.

“You’re not going to filter this and sell it back to me are you?” Calvin asked, raising a brow.

The wrinkled old man grinned a toothless smile.

I hate isolated underground societies.

Macronomicon

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