Chapter 153: 153: Swept Away

And lo, one day it started raining, unrelenting for four months. We suffered every manner of rain there is. Stinging rain, Heavy, brooding rain, Rain that swept in sideways, and sometimes rain that seemed to rise from below. Forsooth, it even rained at night.

Five days upriver, the expedition ran into its first major threat. It wasn’t roaming monsters, or genosian ambush.

It was rain. The godsdamned inanimate, mindless weather.

“We’ve got to pull off the river!” Ella shouted. The genosian fighter had to raise her voice against the pounding of rain against the wooden deck of the barge.

“Why?” Calvin shouted back. He could harden the air above the barges into enormous roofs long enough for his knick-knacks to devise a more permanent solution.

“It’s a flash flood!” she shouted. “In a couple minutes, a wall of water is going to hit us from further down the river!”

Calvin glanced upriver, then back down, looking at the long caravan of barges being hauled by oversized ropes connected to titanic Knick-knacks.

Well, he tried to look. The pouring rain blocked all sight beyond two arms out. Calvin could barely see where the barge behind them was tethered to their own.

If a sudden flood of water came downriver, they could easily get separated, and some of them might die.

Maybe not many of them, considering they were Legends, but still, the lack of visibility combined with poor communications was a very dangerous mixture.

“Grant!” Calvin shouted, tapping the aging swordsman on the shoulder. The ex-general was wearing an oiled leather poncho with an oversized hood, the absolute picture of stoic misery.

The temperature of the jungle had dropped from a balmy seventy degrees to a damp sixty once the wind and rain had set in. All told it was not pleasant.

“Yeah?”

“Fly down to the rearmost barge and tell them to get ready, because we’re getting off the river, starboard side!” Calvin said, pointing. “Then work your way to the front!”

“Got it,” Grant said, nodding. Shink. Two of his blades unsheathed and he stepped onto them before the cloaked figure flew up into the dark rain and disappeared.

As soon as Grant was gone, Calvin instructed his Knick-knacks to pull the boats in on the starboard side.

The port side knick knack began fording the swift water, holding the rope above the water as it walked through the river like a man in a calm pond.

Despite the speed of the water that would easily carry away a human, each of the knick-knacks were just over five tons, completely immovable by a little water.

Until the flood sent a wave of water carrying a fallen log hurtling forward, smashing into the knick-knack’s chest.

Calvin didn’t see what happened, but suddenly the rope on the port side went lack, causing almost everyone to lose their footing when the entire ship jerked, held by only one rope as thick as Calvin’s arm attached to the staboard side.

The barge turned sideways, pulled along away from the center of the river by the sudden current. The water that was unable to rush underneath formed a frothy mess against the side of the boat as the drag increased.

Still, the Knick-knack upriver was able to resist the pull of the swift current, even reeling in the barge somewhat.

A moment later, Calvin saw a large, dark shape emerge from the water, barely visible through the haze of heavy rain. It was a log half as wide as the barge itself and solid wood, weighing far more than the entire construction. It was whirling through the swelling river faster than a galloping guar, while their barge was heading in the opposite direction about as fast as a moseying old man.

The weight differences were roughly the same too.

What happens when a galloping Guar hits a moseying old man?

“Fu-“ Calvin reached out an arm and did the first thing he could think of in that instant.

Trait doctoring

Trait Doctoring has reached level 17!

21/44 Bent remaining.

Calvin gave as much of the log as he could the viscosity of the water surrounding it.

Fully half the massive log broke on the side of the barge, liquid wood spraying up onto the deck, the force diffused without too much damage. Either Calvin missed something in the muddy water, or there was simply too much wood to change all at once, because an instant later, there was a crunch that once again threatened to knock everyone off their feet.

Snap!

Calvin held the railing in a white knuckled grip, trusting the wooden pole more than his own feet. He glanced over the side and spotted where the starboard tether had snapped itself free of the barge.

We’re floating free. Calvin thought, eyes narrowed. In the next couple seconds they would most likely hit the barge behind them and start a chain reaction, sinking innumerable valuable supplies and men along with them.

Fuck that.

Shifting

20/44 Bent remaining

Mayfly’s body

Shifting has reached level 17!

Shifting level 17: 82% shift, 17 minutes, targets limited to 4913 pounds in mass.

 

Calvin made himself as light as possible without letting go of the railing, his knuckles white. He didn’t want to fly away now that he was just about thirty pounds.

The decreased weight brought with it a sudden reduction in perceived time. Everything seemed to be moving just a touch slower than it had before. Maybe one quarter slower?

Eighty percent lighter, and I don’t get an eighty percent reduction in perceived speed? Lame.

Calvin shook off the off-topic thought, he needed every second to figure something out.

Calvin touched the ball of Abyssal steel on his belt, considering re-establishing the rope. All he had to do was mentally select a ‘rope’ of water or air between him and the knick-knack and imbue it with the strength of Abyssal steel. It would create a strong rod fused to the boat and the knick-knack, which could then pull them in.

Except he couldn’t see the knick-knack, and while he could feel it and give it commands, he couldn’t tell exactly where it was in the damned downpour. Chances were he’d miss.

Calvin glanced up.

What about making an air dam? Calvin could make a narrow panel of air strong enough to hold off the water, then make it heavy enough to do its job by channeling mass from the surroundings into it.

Except the topography isn’t right to hold off all the water, and when the spell expired, it would be likely to drown half my men and upend all our cargo.

I should just go with simple brute force. Let’s try something.

Calvinian summoning.

19/44 Bent Remaining

Calvin focused the entire mass of the spell into a single summon, creating a ten-ton Knick-knack off the starboard bow. The metal man dropped out of the sky with a splash that soaked the crew of the barge, not that they weren’t soaked already.

The enormous construction machine stood waist deep in the torrential river, ignoring the water swirling around it completely as it directly seized the side of the barge and hauled.

The sound of cracking wood permeated the barge, but nothing came loose as the knick-knack took a step backwards, then another, drawing them over to the relatively calmer water of the rapidly flooding jungle.

“Tree! Tree!” Calvin said as he saw a tree manifest out of the rain as the knick knack began dragging them up onto the bank.

There simply wasn’t enough room. The bank of the river wasn’t a gradual thing like the creek in Deinos, instead the difference between the river and the jungle was a steep droop and a thick stand of heavy trees, some of which were leaning over their barge, one bad move away from falling on top of their rickety little barge.

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The steep drop wasn’t so much of a problem because the flooding had already raised the water until they couldn’t even see it, but the wall of trees was still a problem. A big, ugly, wooden problem.

Before Calvin could do anything in particular, the enormous knick-knack reached backward and casually plucked one of the smaller trees out of the way with one hand like a weed, shoving the barge into the resulting gap, sheltering it neatly between two larger jungle woods.

They were out of the thick of it, now. They could simply wait out the worst of the flood between the trees and assess the damage in the morning.

Brute force is awesome, Calvin thought with a relieved sigh-

The entire barge jerked to the side again, followed by the sound of tortured wood as a massive rent opened in the side. The barge was being pulled sideways between the two trees, like someone had decided to shove a knife in a door crack and twist.

The rope to the barge behind us! Calvin thought, lunging back to his feet.

Karen was faster.

A flash of light showed from beneath the makeshift tarp they’d set up to keep certain people dry, bisecting the arm-thick rope in the blink of an eye.

Calvin kept running, glancing under the oiled leather tarp as he passed.

Karen was holding her baby, making sure to keep the squirming little grub as dry as possible in the middle of the downpour. Out of all of them, Sacha was the most vulnerable. A little cold could be enough to kill him. Karen held up Sacha’s tiny little baby hand, giving Calvin a playful wave as he leapt over the edge.

“Uncle Calvin’s off to do something brave,” she said in singsong.

Calvin briefly considered making a boat with hardened air, but decided against it. It would be exciting, but honestly, a waste of Bent. He needed a mode of transportation and a way to help the other Barges all rolled into one.

Nadia, catch me!

What?

Calvinian summoning

Chimera

18/44 Bent remaining.

When Calvin had chosen the Chimera ability for both Chained Spirit and Calvinian Summoning, he’d unlocked the ability to swap monster parts back and forth between the two spells.

Which was, of course, extremely exploitable.

Calvin Visualized his wasp as the primary summon, then wiped away all of it except the antennae, replacing all of that with Nadia.

Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and fifty two pounds of Nadia. Give or take a couple pounds of antennae.

“Eeep!”

Nadia’s voice was like the bellow of some gargantuan beast as she appeared, knee-deep in the swollen river. Calvin would have been amused at her voice if it weren’t an emergency. Human bodies were much less dense than the metal knick-knacks, so she was much taller than the knick-knack of the same weight, perfect for traversing the river at high speeds.

Nadia whipped her hand out and caught Calvin, her fist closing around him with suffocating strength, sending stars across Calvin’s vision.

“Hurk!” Calvin gave an undignified grunt as Nadia accidentally squished the breath out of him.

“Oops, Sorry!”

Just send me your thoughts from now on, Calvin thought, twisting his arm out of the thirty foot tall girl’s grasp to point downriver. We need to go check on the other barges.

Come to think of it, you look awfully cute like this, Nadia’s mental voice echoed in the back of his mind as her oversized thumb came down on his head, putting enormous pressure on his neck as she stroked his hair. Like a little doll.

I can and will turn you into a human centipede. Calvin thought calmly, waiting for Nadia to make the right choice.

A second later, Nadia turned and began splashing through the river like a kid playing in a stream, chasing the rapidly vanishing rope. Calvin wasn’t sure what her motivation was exactly, but a couple seconds later, she spotted a glimpse of white, reached out and snatched up the rope out of the  raging river.

Nadia staggered against the sudden weight, jostling Calvin around violently.

I need both hands. Nadia thought toward him.

Put me on your shoulder. Nadia obliged, depositing him on her shoulder, then gritting her enormous teeth as she tightened her free hand on the rope, beginning to haul the barge back upriver, towards him and his lead barge.

In the middle of all of this hauling, Calvin made the mistake of glancing down.

Okay, tell me you didn’t get the urge to jump down there and make yourself a command seat between those enormous boobs, Elliot’s amused voice echoed through Calvin’s mind.

No, that was my first thought, Calvin admitted. My second thought was that I am both busy and married.

I didn’t realize that was on my bucket list until just now. Maybe later?

…maybe.

Calvin wrenched his eyes back up as the second barge came into view. The wooden vessel was half flooded and listing to the side with a huge chunk torn out of it’s side. The crew was clinging to the side of the boat that was above the waterline, staring up in horror at the gigantic temptress hauling them in.

Damn. Calvin thought as he spotted the slack rope behind the barge. The rest of the barges got disconnected.

Calvin took a mental tally of the crew he could make out clinging to the side of the boat. They were missing three. Damnation. If I could strike down the weather itself, I would! The missing three might live, being legends, but it wasn’t guaranteed.

Plenty of cargo had slipped off the edge of the barge as well.

“Park them in the woods,” Calvin said into Nadia’s head-sized ear. “Then let’s see if we can find the others.”

Nadia nodded and obeyed, setting the barge somewhere it wouldn’t get swept away before she began running down the river, both of them keeping sharp eyes out for the other barges.

****

By morning, Calvin was exhausted, overlooking the hastily constructed camps hung between the massive trees to keep them out of the floodwaters. Of the two hundred barges, fifteen had been completely lost, tons of cargo had gone overboard, and no less than thirty eight men, women and Cobalts had been washed away downstream.

Compared to the total size of the expedition, some twenty three hundred souls, it wasn’t more than two percent lost.

But that was unacceptable.

Calvin’s guts roiled with conflicting emotions. Guilt at being the reason those thirty-eight people lost their lives, roiling anger and humiliation at being defeated by goddamned water.

People patted him on the shoulder wherever he went, thanking him for rescuing them one way or another, but the touches only seemed to put him on edge. It wasn’t a win, by any stretch of the imagination.

They’d suffered casualties just in an effort to hunker down, stay in one place and survive. How stupid was that?

The most infuriating part of it was that there was no one external thing to channel his anger. Get angry at the river? The sky? They had no will of their own, they would have flooded in exact the same way regardless of whether the measly humans were traversing the river at time.

The one variable was him and his people.

Calvin’s grip tightened, and he bit his lip.

Getting angry at yourself and sinking into a spiral of self-blame is a great way to make more mistakes. Don’t be a miserable cliché. Elliot said.

Calvin thought about Elliot’s words for a moment, then took a deep breath and tried to imagine letting the burning anger go, retaining only the lesson that had accompanied it: Mother Nature is an absolute bitch.

We’ll make adjustments.

Macronomicon

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