“Calvin, take Jinnei and run, you penis wrinkle! And work on your fucking listening skills!” Karen berated him even as she used the opportunity to club an inattentive soldier in the head, sending him twitching to the ground.

Karen had been doing well at first, but the Gadverans had gotten her style down, and she was starting to accumulate damage, sporting bloody nicks across her arms and torso, face and neck.

She looked like she was having the time of her life.

There were only three left, but two of them blocked Karen while the third rushed Calvin and Jinnei.

Time to run. Cal turned to run, tugging Jinnei along behind him, when he was brought to a screeching halt as Jinnei stooped to pick up a fallen sword.

“What are you doing?” Karen and Cal demanded at the same time.

“You might have run off, but I spent my Forming Day with an actual plan.”

The Gadveran soldier’s thin blade whistled down towards her neck, and Jinnei sagged bonelessly under the strike before lunging forward, putting the man on the defensive.

“He’s a Veteran! Get your ass out of here!” Karen shouted, receiving a nick on the ribs for her inattention.

Cal didn’t dare get any closer to the flashing of blades as Jinnei led the man around by the nose. There was no opportunity to yank her out of reach without getting someone stabbed or sliced.

“He’s an injured, exhausted Veteran with no Bent left. Plus he keeps telling me where he’s going to attack,” Jinnei said as she slid around one attack, and then another, whipping her blade at the man’s eyes before taking a chunk out of his leading leg.

Most of that statement was true. The man was bleeding, panting, sweaty, and his sword seemed to droop a little, but he was still faster and stronger than either of them. Cal didn’t see the man telling her anything, either.

Oh right, drugs.

Cal kept watching for the moment to intervene as the blades flashed faster than he could make out. Gods damn it, just give me a chance, stumble over a root or something!

Cal was still waiting for his chance when the heavyset man swept up beside Jinnei and cleaved his sword six inches through her shoulder.

Cal’s heart stopped in his chest.

The Veteran kept going, running Jinnei through with his blade while she was held in place, before tossing her struggling body off to the side.

A scream filled Cal’s ears as he leapt towards the bigger man with grey hair. Karen was shouting something.

Everything was red.

The Veteran stepped between them with a smooth slide, a relieved smile on his face as he held his blade between himself and the unarmed boy.

The blade drew a vicious cut along his left forearm as he batted it away with his left hand, flying toward the man’s breast.

Splitting

Cal reached out with the last of his Bent and copied the man’s sword, recreating the weapon in his own hand a fraction of a second before it plunged into his abdomen.

His enemy gave a grunt and slapped Calvin out of the air, scowling down at the sword embedded in his stomach.

“Son of a bitch,” the Veteran said, approaching Calvin. The man showed his experience, not bothering to remove the sword, since that would most likely cause him to bleed out.

Calvin blinked stars out of his eyes and leaped up, aiming for the man’s wound.

The veteran wasn’t having it a second time, putting his sword at a relaxed, defensive posture that would impale him if he tried to force his way past it.

Calvin didn’t realize he was still screaming as he began mindlessly throwing dirt and rocks at the swordsman, trying to look for any weapon he could get a hold of.

“He kind of looks like an angry monkey throwing its own feces,” the heavyset man said with a chuckle, only stoking Cal’s fury.

“Sire, perhaps you should – “The veteran’s words were cut off as a blade went through his throat.

Jinnei stood behind him, her simple farmer’s clothes caked in her own blood, face promising death.

The inferno inside Cal went out like a candle.

“Jinnei, what the – “

“dunno – watch out!” she jumped forward and slashed at the heavyset man, pushing him away from Cal. He dealt with her easily, parrying her blade and sending back cuts almost as an afterthought.

The man was easily as strong as the others, and he wasn’t tired or wounded.

“Jinnei, get down!” Karen said, charging toward them the instant her last opponent fell.

“This has soured rather quickly,” The heavyset man said, blocking Karen’s feral swings and forcibly resisting her battering charges designed to knock him off his feet.

“I don’t suppose I could offer you some gold for the girl? A knighthood perhaps? No? well, far be it from me to overstay my welcome.”

The man gradually retreated as he fought Karen, until they separated at the edge of the woods, and he began to step backwards, slowly putting distance between them.

“Lovely ladies, gentleman…Adieu.”

He Bent his knees and began running far faster than Cal would have thought possible for a man of his size, disappearing into the woods.

Karen sank to her knees, resting some of her weight on a stolen Gadveran blade.

“Jinnei, Cal, come here.” She said without raising her head.

The siblings approached.

“Where I can see you.”

They hesitantly stood in front of her, Cal clutching his aching, bleeding arm.

Karen raised her head, and Cal could see the fires of damnation in her reddened glare. They weren’t going to get out of this without some bruises.

Karen loomed forward and Cal almost ducked out of the way before she swept them both up in a monster hug that nearly squeezed the air from his lungs.

“I thought I’d lost you.” She pushed Jinnei back and hooked a meaty finger under the collar of Jinnei’s shirt, pulling it down to expose a large pink scar running through her shoulder. She snagged the chain of Jinnei’s necklace, tugging it out of her blood-drenched shirt.

The softly glowing sapphire in the center of the silver was dull, and when Karen ran her thumb over the amulet, it flaked into ash in her grip.

“You really almost died,” Karen whispered.

“Is that why she wears that all the time?” Cal asked.

“I didn’t know.” Jinnei shot back.

“Seems like favoritism, I’m way more death prone.”

“Says the guy who couldn’t – OW OW OW!”

“YOU TWO ARE A PAIR OF DISOBEDIENT BRATS! YOU IGNORED ME MULTIPLE TIMES AND YOU BOTH ALMOST DIED!” Karen began screaming as she held them both by the ear in a vicious grip.

“Just Jinnei. I was nowhere near getting killed.” Cal offered helpfully.

Karen cuffed him.

“I’m going to teach you brats some proper discipline. No more playing around in the morning like we’ve been doing. From now on when I say jump, you start fucking jumping until I tell you to stop!”

That was playing around? Cal thought, the loss of blood making him woozy.

“Grab the princess, I’ll get started with making something to bind our wounds” Karen said, grunting as she brought herself to her feet. “These blades are worth a couple gold pieces each, so don’t forget to grab them, you could start your own farm with the steel here…”

She paused when she saw Calvin and Jinnei pass out from the Warp, along with the errant princess.

“Or I’ll just do everything myself,” She growled. “Not like it’ll be much different.”

***Calvin***

Warp overflow detected…

Running Warp Protection System… Break.

Calvin tried to roll over, and the intense pain in his left arm brought him up short, rousing him to full wakefulness in a matter of seconds.

“Agh, damnit,” he hissed, clutching the bandaged arm.

In the front of his consciousness was a block of text, persistently asking him to pick an ability or mutation.

Give me a second, you damnable wretch, Cal thought, trying to sit up.

“Good morning,” a familiar voice said from the side of the bed, causing Cal to start, nearly toppling back in bed and slamming his head against the wall.

A rough hand caught the back of his head and helped him sit the rest of the way up.

“Bekvah, what are you doing here?” Cal asked as the small man with the owlish glasses stepped away from him.

“I wished to express my gratitude for your aid in rescuing my niece.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Cal said, his guts churning. “I just stood there and watched.”

“I have it on high authority that you stabbed someone in the stomach.”

“Okay, maybe I did a little.”

“Sometimes a little makes all the difference. Kala’s father would have come to thank you himself, but he’s a very busy man.”

“Right…is her dad the Hash’Maje?”

“That he is.”

“Been wondering about that for a while.” Calvin said, leaning back against the wall. “Damn. I was hoping she was just the daughter of a rich merchant or something. Then I might have had a shot.”

Bekvah chuckled.

“I see your Insight has improved. Tell me, do you still wish to be a great wizard?”

“I don’t know,” Cal said. “When it came down to it, I couldn’t help in any meaningful way. I couldn’t protect Jinnei.”

“Your sister? She seems fine.”

Cal bit his tongue. Karen probably didn’t want him talking about JInnei’s necklace to anyone. Even Cal knew having an artifact capable of staving off death wasn’t something to run your mouth about.

“Anyway, I told my brother about your desire to learn spellcraft and he gave me permission to lend you this.”

He pulled a leather-bound book out of a back by his feet. it was dark brown with gold-leaf lettering on the front.

Riddles for the Mind

He opened a page, and revealed a series of math and pictographic puzzles: find the next one in order, count the number of triangles, etc. the text itself was very minimal.

“Why pictograms?”

“Word puzzles will sometimes spend Warp to raise Intuition or a Skill, like counting timber or something inane. Cutting all context out of the puzzles serves to only strengthen the Mind.”

“Oh, neat.” Cal said.

“You can borrow this, or…” Bekvah reached into the bag and withdrew a heavy sack about the size of Cal’s two fists. Bekvah jingled it, revealing its identity as a sack of gold.

“Have this.” he said, continuing to jingle the bag

“Why not both?” Cal asked.

Bekvah broke into uproarious laughter.

“My brother would like you,” He said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Alas, he specifically said you can only choose one.”

“The book, obviously.”

“You sure? This is enough to buy a rather large ranch and leap your sheep herding career forward by forty years.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Cal said, reaching under his bed and pulling out a primer of common skills he’d bought from the local library, a fifteen-page handwritten pamplet with a couple hundred of the most common skills available to farmers everywhere. “It goes well with this.”

“There’s only a handful of common skills for Will and Stability, but I’m going to grab them. From what I can tell, the sheer bottleneck of Bent storage and regeneration limits the amount of magics a man can master in his lifetime to about five.”

“If I were to learn nothing but spells with my Warp,” Cal said, holding up the pamphlet. “I would only be able to practice one of them, one time per day, for fifty years, until they lay me in the grave.”

“If I pick up skills like Fishing and Public speaking, I can raise my Will without being reliant on Bent to practice. If I get my will close to fourteen, I can use two spells a day, and practice faster!”

“You could frontload your Warp into your Mind to increase the amount of Warp you receive the next breaking. Do that a couple times and you’d be able to master a rather large selection of magics.”

“That’s a stupid nobleman’s way of doing it.” Karen said, entering Cal’s room. “No offence.”

“None taken. I understand the impracticality of it.” Bekvah said, glancing up at Karen towering over him.

“Whaddya mean?”

“You should treat every Breaking like it’s your last.” Karen said. “Most adults don’t go farther than the third one. You know why?”

“Not one hundred percent, no.”

“Because it requires significantly higher concentrations of Warp each time. Up to several thousand powerful creature’s worth.”

“Huh. All at the same time in the same place.” Cal said. He knew that Warp faded away quickly, flushed out of the body by the System. Gathering together that many live monsters and killing them all at once seemed…impractical.

“Maybe a rich man could hire a couple hundred mercenaries to round up a few thousand monsters and kill them all in the same spot, but there’s a much more cost-effective way of doing it for peasants, and it’s happening all the time.”

“Really?” Calvin asked, brightening. If he could figure out how to go through a large number of Breaks he could master the magic he already had and take on more in a short time.

Bekvah frowned, seemingly displeased.

“Let me ask you a riddle,” Karen said, squatting beside the bed. What kind of creatures come together in large numbers to kill each other by the thousands?”

“Rival ant colonies?” Cal hazarded.

“Humans.” Bekvah sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“That’s why anyone with four to six Breaks is called a Veteran, kid. Being present at a bloody battlefield is one of the only ways to Break past three. This noble prick’s assertion that you could frontload your Mind and just go get a couple more Breaks is based on the fact that noble families tour bloody battlefields safe behind a wall of iron and flesh to soak up that Warp and profit off the deaths of others. No offense.”

“A little bit taken.” Bekvah said.

“For you, though,” Karen said, jabbing a thick finger into his chest. “You’d have to be in the thick of things, participating in the slaughter. And by definition, most of the participants in a slaughter get slaughtered.”

“I…see.” Cal said, frowning. He hadn’t known that Breaking was so…bleak.

“My advice? Treat this like the last one you’ll ever get and behave accordingly.”

Cal frowned, considering it for a while.

“I still want the book.”

“Here you go.” Bekvah said, standing. “Now, my lady, I’ll be out of your way.” He nodded to Karen before turning and leaving Cal’s meager hut.

Karen took Bekvah’s spot and sat down beside Cal, unwrapping his arm and looking at it.

“How’s the tenderness? She asked, poking around his arm.

“Only when you hit the wound.”

“That’s good. Not very much visible swelling and no pus either. Excellent.”

“Do you…um…do you think I should learn the sword? Spend my Warp on it?”

Karen wrapped his arm back up and heaved a deep sigh, rubbing the back of her neck.

“I wanted you to learn Swordsmanship from me because that’s the only thing I can teach you. To me, every problem looks like something that could be hacked or stabbed, but I know that’s not really the case.”

She looked up at the ceiling.

“I’ve seen wizards do some pretty terrifying things, and I just wanted to…” she reached her hands out and tightened them into fists for a moment.

“Not be out of my depth for once, you know?”

“I don’t get it,” Cal said.

“Me neither.” She said with a sigh.

“You know I was on an adventuring party with your mom?” She asked.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I did a few stints in the military, became a Legend, one of the first women in history, and eventually I got tired of killing people for a living, and I thought to myself, hey, why not be an adventurer?”

She glanced at Cal. “At that point I figured the rewards outweighed the risks.”

“I signed on with a group composed of your mom and a couple other adventurers. meatheads, the lot of ‘em. We figured since we were hot shit on the battlefield, we’d be hot shit raiding ancient cities for loot.”

“And?” Cal asked.

“Well, we were.”

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

9

Intuition:

6

Stability:

7

Will:

8

Bent:

2/7

Skills:

Stealth

5*

Talking to Girls

2

Acting

3

Read Expression

2

Sense-Grafting

3

Dupdomancy

2

Stealth has reached level 5! Please choose an ability or mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities:

Active Stealth

Unseen Affinity

Sneak Critical

Mutations:

Vein-Sight

Camouflage

Third Eye

Touch-Grip

….

……. I’m trying to listen to the story here.