Calvin was starting to get hungry, but that was of secondary, or even tertiary importance.

Important thing #1: Find someone willing to teach him magic for…Cal reached into his pocket and pulled out the contents.

Three copper coins and some lint.

Important thing #2: Get home before he got robbed...more? That one was self-explanatory.

And last but not least, get something to eat. Cal glanced down the stinking alleys, looking a lot more foreboding now that the sun was going down.

Which direction did I come from? Curses. He’d stalked up and down the alley looking for the supposed magician’s house enough that he didn’t quite know the direction he’d come from, and all the landmarks had been covered by the foot traffic.

There wasn’t a lot of that now. Now he was just lost.

Eh, worst case scenario, I spend a night sleeping in the gutter and find my way home in the morning. Calvin shrugged and started walking down the street, making sure to note exactly which door belonged to the thief.

Calvin the almighty does not forgive easily. Steel thyself for retribution…someday.

Calvin walked through the quickly darkening streets, the only light available coming from the roofs of the stone buildings towering above him that reflected the last little bit of the daylight.

After a few minutes plodding along, he came to the conclusion that if he found the main street and followed the setting sun, he could at the very least find the East gate and therefor the road that would lead home.

Cal trotted along the narrow streets, trying to find a main road that would take him in the direction of his home, and keeping his eye out for a street magician busking. Anything would be good by now.

Cal was heading south, looking for the main street, when the cluster of buildings pressing in around him suddenly vanished, leaving him standing in the middle of the Wharf, the hundreds of ships and thousands of sailors busily unloading the last of their freight in the dim light, moving to take advantage of every ounce of illumination they could wring out.

Surrak was the second biggest trading city in the east, moving spices and June-worm shells northwest, and shipping soft northern wheat, barley, the glorious pelts and elemental fangs of northern beasts to the southeast.

Karen even had a flame-beaver tooth above her mantle, which would light any wood on fire with a touch.

Cal hadn’t yet scraped together enough money to afford many luxuries, and being able to light the wood stove in a matter of seconds made him green with envy. One day he would leverage his magical skills for wealth and privilege.

Speaking of wealth and privilege… Cal spotted a five group of velvet-swaddled westerners walking away from the docks. They were decked out in dark blue coats that must have been sweltering hot, and heavy gold chains around their necks.

Gods, how much I could get for even one of those chains. Cal thought idly. He knew he wasn’t going to go for it though. He wasn’t that desperate, and something about these men looked…strange.

The pale men weren’t limping or hobbling, exactly. Nothing about the way they moved suggested an ailment or lack of speed, but the way they bobbed up and down as they walked made them look like they were loping through the crowd of sailors. Like animals.

The sailors themselves seemed to avoid the men, keeping their heads down, shifting out of their way and avoiding eye contact. Are they from Malkenrovia? Karen always said never to speak to anyone else from there, so maybe the sailors had a similar opinion.

Cal shrugged. One way to find out.

Call trotted up to the foreigners and loped alongside them. They kept their eyes forward, loping along, ignoring Cal.

“Are you folks from Malkenrovia?” Cal asked.

As one, the five men snapped their eyes toward him, causing a chill to go down Cal’s spine.

Cal stammered, “Not to pry or anything, I just haven’t –”

“We stem from the One, and have no purpose other than His.” Having said that cryptic weirdness in unison, the five men faced forward and began walking again, with just a bit too much bounce in their step to be natural.

“…Huh.” Cal stopped and watched them lope along. Crazy foreigners.

A hand seized Cal’s shirt and he was dragged out of the street with a squawk.

“What in Praxius are you doing?” a young voice demanded.

Cal turned around to see the speaker, a slender Gadveran girl maybe a year younger than him, with dark skin, a lovely face, and green eyes that seemed to turn yellow near the pupil, lending intensity to her stare.

She is most definitely a good person, Cal could feel it in his quickened pulse and the odd tremor in his stomach.

She stared at him expectantly for a moment. Cal stared back.

“What were you doing talking to the Malkenrovian delegates? That’s dangerous you know?” she expanded on her question.

“Umm…I didn’t know they who they were?”

“Are you slow?” she asked, then glanced him up and down. “Or just not from around here?”

“I live just a few miles down East road, my guardian brought me here when I was a baby. I’ve lived here all my life, I’m from around here.”

Cal felt the irresistible urge to impress the girl.

“Karen brought sheep over when she brought me and my sister over. We herd sheep. We’ve got the only sheep on this side of the ocean. Well, the best ones.”

“Oh?” she asked, arching a brow, obviously judging him.

Crap, she doesn’t want to hear about sheep, she wants to hear about how awesome I’m gonna be!

“But not forever, of course. I’m gonna be the greatest Master of Bent in the land. Gonna carve my own chunk of territory out of the Wilds and be king. A Wizard-King.”

She looked less than interested. Matter of fact she looked about ready to leave.

Damn, gotta hold her attention somehow!

“I actually need some help! You see, it’s my Forming Day, I gotta find someone willing to teach me, but it…hasn’t gone so great, and there isn’t much time left in the day.”

She cocked her head, debating for a moment. “Alright, I know someone who could help you. Follow me.”

You have manifested Talking to Girls.

Talking to Girls has reached Level 1!

Level 1: Be More relaxed, perceptive and eloquent when dealing with the Fairer Sex. 5% Correction.

You just had to go there, didn’t you?

Remaining Warp 6/12

“You son of a bitch!” Cal shouted at the Status screen, earning a glare from the girl who’d just said she would help him. It felt a bit like the time Cal almost fell out the second story window of farmer Endras’s loft, making his stomach sink in sudden panic.

“Not you, I just got a new skill I didn’t want.” Getting an unwanted Skill was never a good thing, since a person could only have eighteen Warped Skills in their lifetime, and Cal intended to save as many spots as he could for Magic. That and the thing seemed a little…smarmy.

“What’s it called?” She asked.

“Ummmmm….”

She watched him expectantly.

“Talking to people.” Cal said.

“That’s odd, it’s usually called Etiquette, but it’s not a bad skill, as non-combat ones go. Can’t live without other people, so might as well be good with them. My father plans on having me learn that one too.”

“Oh, cool.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re bad at talking to people, it just means you devoted a lot of emotional effort to talking to them today.”

She started walking, and Cal followed, listening intently.

“I haven’t done my Breaking yet, but dad says that you can manage which skills you get, somewhat, by controlling your emotions. If you get excited or stressed while you practice one, it’s more likely to pull Warp.

She tapped on her chest.

“He says you can feel it right behind your chest, next to your heart.”

Cal frowned. He didn’t really feel anything. Could be something that took practice.

Down two potential magical disciplines already, though. Cal thought sourly.

Warped Skills were different than skills a person might have naturally. They imbued a supernatural enhancement to whatever the skill described.

For example, a man who was amazingly talented at forging iron could produce works of art, but a man with a few levels of Smithing would find his iron staying hot longer, the smoke avoiding his lungs and eyes, in addition to his hammer landing truer, and the resulting product being stronger than it should otherwise be, as his Bent leaked out into his work.

Master craftsman who were both talented and had many levels of Smithing could make things that exceeded what was strictly possible for a piece of iron.

At least, that was how Karen had described it.

Just because you didn’t have the Skill didn’t mean you couldn’t be good at something, but without it, you could never be the best.

Which meant that Cal would forevermore have an advantage at sneaking and…talking to girls.

Could be worse, all things considered. Cal thought to himself as he watched the slender girl’s shoulders and neck. Something tells me I might want to talk to girls at some point.

“Right here,” she said, pointing to an unadorned building with a bit of candlelight pouring out of boarded up windows. The neighborhood around it was just as grimy as the northwest had been, and Cal found himself wondering if it was an elaborate trap.

Nah, she’s too pretty for that.

She stepped up to the door and opened it. It was unlatched, which was odd in the heart of the city, and Cal followed her through the plain wooden portal into a choked maze of books. It occurred to Cal that the windows might be boarded up to prevent prying eyes from seeing the wealth laying around the floor for the taking.

Books weren’t exactly cheap. Each tome here was worth a quarter of its weight in silver, and a hundredth of its weight in gold.

Cal eyeballed an average height stack of books, and found it had about fifteen books from the floor. Multiply that by about…thirty stacks long and…Call glanced at the ceiling to measure how far the opposite wall was. Fifty stacks wide.

Thirty by fifty by fifteen. Divide the problem by a hundred to represent its quantity in gold, and you had fifteen by fifteen. Fifteen squared was one fifty plus seventy-five, or about two hundred twenty-five book-weights worth of gold.

Cal picked up an average book and hefted it. About one and a half pounds, so three hundred thirty seven point five pounds of gold? That was assuming there weren’t any particularly clear spots he wasn’t aware of, though, and his estimate was probably wildly inaccurate, so Cal decided to reserve that as a high estimate.

Neat. Still, an insane amount of money to not lock your door on, though. Cal put the book back and followed the girl deeper into the room.

The girl went over to a circular wall of books and shouted, “Uncle!”

There was a clattering of books sliding off of something, and a man just barely taller than the five-foot stack of books peered down at the two children owlishly from behind his spectacles.

“Who dares disturb my slumber?”

“I think you know who I am, uncle.” She glanced at Cal. “This is my uncle Bekvah, Bekvah, this is…”

“Calvin.”

“Nice to meet you, Calvin.” Bekvah said, his arm twisting over the stack of books to shake Cal’s hand. “What brings you and your friend here, Kala?”

The slender girl winced at the name, glancing at Cal.

“Kala?” Calvin asked. “Like the daughter of the Hash’Maje?”

….

Cal looked at Kala whose brows were furrowed, lips stretched tight.

Cal looked at Bekvah, who blinked and glanced at Kala.

“Well, that’s not too surprising. Every time bigwigs have a kid, the name gets super popular for a couple years.” Calvin shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Huh,” Bekvah grunted, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“Calvin here wants to learn magic.” Kala said very gently for some reason. “It’s his Forming day.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Bekvah said, giving Cal an odd look.

“Why?” Calvin asked, frowning.

“What’s your Intuition?”

“Three.”

Bekvah waved at Cal as if that explained everything, which it didn’t.

“Surely he can learn some kind of magic.” Kala said.

“Doubtful. A man’s limits are fairly hard to transcend. Calvin, what’s your Will?”

“Eight.”

“see, it’s –“ Bekvah blinked and glanced back at Cal, adjusting his glasses.

“Stability?”

“seven.”

“Mind?” Bekvah whispered.

“Nine.” Cal said. They were staring at him now. “Is that bad?” it was Cal’s understanding that higher was better.

“That’s…not bad.” Kala said.

Maybe I should have told them my Intuition was higher?

Bekvah’s other hand reached over the book pile and stretched out unnaturally long to seize his shoulders, bringing him eye-to-glasses. The rest of the man’s face was still hidden behind the books.

“You, son, are like a raw diamond with a great big flaw, but with the right effort, we can cut around it and polish you into something worthwhile.”

“Cutting…doesn’t sound great.” Cal said.

“It’s a metaphor, but don’t worry, we’ll sort that out.”

Suddenly the room…expanded. The books stayed where they were, but the room seemed to somehow…replicate itself beneath them, creating new floorboards out of nothing that seemed like they’d always been there.

Cass could never quite see where new ones were added, they always just seemed to appear out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly the densely packed books were spread out, and the tight wall of books had become distant pillars stacked around a recliner with lamp beside it.

Bekvah sat down in the recliner and opened a book, titled Encyclopedia of Warped Skills.

There were hundreds of common ones, and tens of thousands of more unique skills, most of them more specific variations.

“A man gets eighteen skills in his lifetime, you know this, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And did you know that every five levels in a skill you raise a related sub-stat?”

“sure.”

“so we’re going to – “

“Make sure I learn five skills that raise Intuition so that it can catch up with the rest of my Mind, seeing as you would have to have at least five of them, or else eventually you run into a bottleneck?”

Kala frowned.

“This kid gets it!” Bekvah said with a grin. “How much Warp do you have left?”

“Six.”

Bekvah’s enthusiasm flickered a bit.

“With nine Mind, you should have twelve Warp.”

“I used up two sneaking out of my house, three on running down the road and one more talking to Kala.”

“Sneaking, huh? That can cover a wide range. What was the name of the skill specifically?”

“Stealth.”

“Common one, let’s see…Ah, a Kin/Int hybrid, acceptable. And your other one?”

“Talking to people.”

“Ah, I see. Probably less common, let me see, I’ll check the index….”

Bekvah muttered, his finger moving down the list in the back of the book.

“Talking. Talking to animals, talking to carpenters, dragons, Erovores, Formans, Girls, Ilethians, Jenistaries, Ladies…dum, de dum…Ah, people.”

He flipped the book to the right section, and began flipping through it.

“There’s a difference between talking to girls and talking to ladies?” Cal asked.

“I would assume the benefit of the skill would be more focused on women of high standing.” Bekvah muttered. “Ah, there, talking to people. Yep, seems like all the communication skills are intuition focused.”

He closed the book and went back to the Common Skills page.

“Looks like you got lucky. We can put off raising your Mind this time ‘round, painful as that is, and focus on getting three more Intuition based skills along with two levels of Intuition and a spare point of Warp hanging free.”

It seemed like Bekvah’s enthusiasm was returning.

“Alright, let’s see…”

The bespeckled scholar’s tongue began to stick out as he tore a scrap of paper out of a pad and started scrawling a hasty note on it.

“Kala, do these exercises with Cal.” He said, handing her the piece of paper and then standing, digging through piles of book and muttering to himself.

“You can’t be serious.” She said, reading the paper.

“I am serious, now don’t make me lose my concentration, I’m looking for the Sense-Grafting manual.

Kala glanced at her uncle then sighed and looked at Cal, glancing down at the paper then back up.

“Make a face like you’re confused about something.” She said.

Cal was confused.

“Good, now look like…Do I really have to do this?” she asked her uncle, who was burrowing into a rather large stack.

“Yes!”

“Make a face like you’ve got a crush on someone.”

Cal wasn’t exactly sure what that was supposed to look like, or even feel like.

“No, that’s still confused…You’re just confused, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay…try angry.”

Calvin furrowed his brows and scowled.

The exercises continued for a while, and when Calvin manifested a new skill, she switched to a different set of exercises.

You have manifested Acting

Acting has reached Level 1!

Acting Level 1: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 5% correction.

Remaining Warp 5/12

You have manifested Read Expression

Read Expression has reached Level 1!

Read Expression Level 1: Passive bonus to reading expressions. 5% correction.

That’s kinda useful, I guess.

Remaining Warp 4/12

Once he picked up the two skills, Kala switched to a more general battery of exercises, getting him to tell her why jokes were funny, or figure out why a person in a story might be lying.

Intuition has reached Level 4!

Intuition has reached Level 5!

Remaining Warp 2/12

“Ah HAH!” her uncle said, raising a rather thin notebook above his head victoriously.

“And now, the final piece! One of the twelve classic Gadveran magics that relies heavily on Intuition. Sense Grafting!”

“Huh?”

“Give it a look.”

It was a rather thin manual, that described a way to remove his own senses and graft them onto another object. Hence the term Sense Grafting.

“How is this useful?” Cal asked. “Aside from spying, I guess.”

“Aside from that…” Bekvah narrowed his eyes and pointed a book at Cal. Nothing happened.

“What is it supposed to-“

Bekvah tilted the book sideways.

Suddenly the floor tilted drastically beneath Calvin, and he leaned to one side to compensate, then somehow the floor was actually flat, but he was falling sideways, and at the same time down.

Cal hit the floor with a grunt.

“I grafted your sense of balance to this book.” Bekvah said. “Pretty cool, right? Imagine what would happen if I…” he lowered the book and Cal felt his stomach rise into his chest as he felt himself falling.

“Please, spare me that.” Calvin called from the floor before the wizard could spin it above his head. “Unless you want to see my dinner on your books.”

“I suppose you get the idea.”

“I’m in.” Cal said, levering himself to a seated position and opening the book, skimming through the manual a couple times to make sure he had the idea, before giving it a shot.

“Here’s a glass eye.” Bekvah said helpfully as he started attempting the magic. “Symbolism can help focus the mind.”

“You just had a glass eye lying around?” Kala asked from where she had taken a seat.

Bekvah shrugged and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You don’t?”

Cal did as the book instructed and held the glass eye overtop his left eye, focusing on forming a mental bridge between his eye and the glass eye.

After a minute of concentration, Cal felt a unit of Bent escape his body, binding his eye to the glass eye, and suddenly he could see out of it.

You have manifested Sense Grafting

Sense Grafting has reached Level 1!

Sense Grafting: remove one or more senses from one or more creatures, to apply them to one or more creatures/objects. Senses, targets, Distance, Duration, dictated by Skill Level

Sense Grafting Level 1: Sight. Self-only, Touch, 5 minutes.

Remaining Warp 1/12

“Whoah, this is really cool!” Cal said, then lifted the glass eye away from his face. The view from his left eye wobbled and rose up above his head, but his right eye stayed stationary, giving him a disconcerting split in his vision that caused him to wobble.

Bekvah must have noticed his discomfort.

“Try keeping both eyes closed.”

Cal did so, and it was much better.

“Muahaha, I’m seven feet tall!” he said, standing and holding the glass eye high above his head, looking down at the bemused Kala.

“There, you’ve just bypassed a year of study. How would you like to spend the last of your Warp? You don’t want to wake up with a tail or something, do you?” Bekvah asked.

That was entirely possible. Cal had been warned over and over again to make sure he spent all of his Warp, or he might change into something less than human.

There was also the possibility that he would wake up as something more than human, but it was a very slim chance, and he didn’t feel that lucky.

“What about that thing you did that made the room bigger?” Cal asked, glancing around the room that was now roughly the size of a warehouse.

“Splitting? Yes, that’s a good option.” Bekvah said. “This one I can teach you rather quickly. Get a small object, that glass eye should do fine.”

“Now, imagine yourself reaching with a thread so far to the right of the object that you burst through space itself and touch its left. Now do the same on the object’s left, right, top and bottom.

Cal’s head began to hurt as he struggled to imagine that.

“Then form a loop around the object and yank on it, and rather than pulling it any one direction, pull it in.

Another unit of Bend left Cal, making his arms and legs feel noodly, then there was a clattering on the floor as another glass eye fell to the ground, perfectly identical to the one in his hand.

You have manifested Dupdomancy

Dupdomancy has reached Level 1!

Dupdomany: Create copies of existing matter. Duration and mass dictated by Skill Level

Level 1: 1 pound, 5 minutes.

>>>Surgeon General’s warning<<<

DO NOT CONSUME DUPLICATED FOOD

Remaining Warp 0/12

“That wasn’t expanding anything, though, I just copied the glass eye.”

“Just copied the Glass eye.” He rolled his eyes. “And where did extra glass eye come from?”

“Ummmm….”

“Expanding space is a more advanced form of Splitting, so just practice and you’ll get the hang of it eventually.” Bekvah said.

“It’s called dupdomancy on my Status though?”

“That’s the official name, but it’s a mouthful.”

“I see.” Cal said, staring at the floor for a moment. Then it hit him.

“I can do magic! WHOOO!”

He stood up and did a victory dance, pulled Kala to her feet and gave her a hug.

“Thank you so much! Calvin the Almighty will forever be in your debt!”

“You’re um…you’re welcome,” she said, patting his back.

“Do you want to hang out again tomorrow?” Calvin asked, holding her at arm’s length.

“I can’t tomorrow,” she said, and Calvin felt something sink in his guts, like the wizard was messing with his senses again.

“You live in Deinos though, right?” she asked. “With all the sheep?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I will visit when I can.”

“Awesome!”

***Later***

Calvin was walking down the empty main street, in an excellent mood, occasionally breaking out into wild fits of dancing as he navigated the dark street.

Until he saw Karen standing under the windowsill of an inn near the East Gate, the light pouring down highlighting the shepherd’s gargantuan muscles.

Crap.

By the time Calvin got back to his house, his butt was raw with belt-lashes, and large portions of his adventure in the city had been beaten out of him.

Except for the girl, and the fact that he could do magic now.

Muahahahah….ow, laughing makes my ass hurt. How does laughing make my ass hurt!?

****

“So…nine Mind?” Kala, the daughter of Hash’Maje Entredez asked her Uncle, the Third Prince, who liked to get away from the palace to study.

“That boy’s got a gift for the Bent like I haven’t seen before in my life. Talented people usually clock in at seven Mind at their first Breaking. Seven. It’s a shame so much of his potential was burned up dealing with his abysmal Intuition.”

“I thought It was kind of cute.”

“Hah.” Bekvah said, going back to his recliner. He waved a hand and the building shrunk around him, burying him once again in his books.