Your mental exercise has raised your Will by one!

Your mental exercise has raised your Stability by one!

“Lie down for awhile. It’ll fade eventually.” Ella said, lying on her back with her fingers interlocked across her stomach, not trying to stand up.

Unwilling to make a fool of himself even more, Cal flopped over onto his back, lacing his fingers over his stomach.

She took a deep breath.

He took a deep breath.

This is really weird.

Cal put his hands behind his head.

She put her hands behind her head.

Looks like it works both ways.

Cal shoved his finger into his nose and started mining for nem.

A moment later Ella followed suit.

She frowned, glanced down at her own finger in her nose and then at him.

Cal must not have been able to keep a straight face, because she scowled and slapped his arm.

He slapped her arm back.

she punched his arm.

He punched hers.

She jumped on him.

He flipped her over.

The two of them began spontaneously wrestling with each other, half serious, half playful. The girl was – to his shame – bigger and stronger than him, but he had more practice with actual wrestling, and compensated with speed and technique.

For a moment as he was catching his breath, Cal noticed how smooth her arm was, sliding his palm across her skin.

She relaxed against him.

He relaxed against her.

Her legs gradually spread beneath him, her hot crotch rubbing against his painfully hard cock, separated from each other by a thin layer of leather and trousers.

She stared up at him invitingly, her dark lips partly open. They looked soft and warm. As one, they leaned forward with the intention of bringing their lips together.

their teeth clacked painfully against each other.

“Ow!” Cal muttered, the shock breaking him out of the spell to realize that they were grinding on each other.

“When did this happen?” he asked, glancing at her thighs wrapped around his waist.

Ella blinked.

“Umm… I’m not sure.” She answered, her legs gradually letting go of him.

“Not that I don’t find you stunning,” Cal said, rolling off of her. “But I want to think about things for a moment.”

“Okay,” she breathed, nodding and staring up at the ceiling.

Okaaay, we’ve got a love potion messing with our heads and if we’re not careful, we’ll be balls deep in a matter of minutes.

But that’s not what’s important.

What’s important is how severe the damage is.

Do I want to stay in this village?

Of course not.

Do I still want to escape?

Absolutely

These two statements resounded with perfect truth as Calvin thought about them.

But that would mean leaving Ella behind. I can’t do that, he thought, a swirl of harrowing negative emotions accompanying the idea.

Crap.

Cal brought up the concept of escape against the idea of staying with Ella, weighing them in his mind.

Of course I want to stay with her, I’m smitten. I don’t think I could breathe if she didn’t like me anymore.

Shut up, stupid love potion. I wanna LIVE! Escape is the only way to make that happen. You didn’t forget what an Incha Huala is, did you??

Boys, boys, there’s a simple solution you’re overlooking. Can’t we just kidnap her? Cal’s ego proposed a compromise

That would work, yeah… Cal’s lizard brain agreed. Escape and the woman, no complaints at all.

But what if she doesn’t like us because of it?

You’re outvoted, love potion. Lizard brain said.

It’s two against one. Ego chimed in.

Well, can we convince her to run away with us?

That’s dumb.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna work.

No, no it’ll work. She has to feel the same as us. I’ll just—

He’s going for the Controls!

Hold him down!

He’s slipping!

It’ll be fine, just let me…do this!

“You wanna run away with me?” Cal blurted against his will.

“No.” Ella said.

Great fucking job, love potion, now she knows we still want to escape.

I’m very disappointed in you.

I’m sure she just meant-

Shut up.

Calvin blinked. It looked like the damage caused by the Guya was pretty severe, judging by the way his organizing and planning skills were in a three-way battle with his survival instinct and the need to make Ella happy.

All he could do for now was plan and prepare for his escape.

“You know the Bent borrowing thing?” Cal asked.

“You want to do it?” she asked eagerly.

“No, it’s just…It only works with women. I was trying not to arouse suspicion. I don’t want to have you come up to me with a helper only to find out it doesn’t work with him.”

“Only works with women, huh?” she asked, giving him a narrow-eyed look. “You’ll have to tell me what Skill spawned such an Ability.

“No I won’t.”

“Well, that’s fine,” she said, rolling onto her back. “There are very few men in the village who would be willing to give you their Bent anyway.”

They lay there, staring at the ceiling of the yurt, the force drawing them together slowly ebbing, until it was so small as to be imperceptible. Cal shakily came to his feet, breathing a sigh of relief when he found he could stand.

“I’m going to bed. It’s very late.” Cal said.

“You could come to my bed, now that we’ve drank the Guya.”

“I thought about it.” Cal said with a grin. “But I don’t know you that well yet.” That and he couldn’t afford to let himself become more attached to her than he already was.

She slapped his thigh.

Cal resisted the impulse to slap her back and start another wrestling war that had a good chance of leading to coitus.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, leaving the tent.

Tonight he would go back to his own yurt and try to sleep it off, but he knew he would have to act totally invested in the girl in order to keep Aoehe from breathing down his spine. Sleeping alone every night after taking the Guya was a pretty good sign he’d resisted it and still wanted to leave.

That meant Cal was going to have to wall off a portion of his being, protecting the determination to leave from the encroachment he felt even now, filling his head with rose-colored thoughts of Ella.

Once that was done, he would move in with her, get along, play, and make love, all with the intention of betraying her in the end.

A sinking sensation settled in his stomach, but Calvin burned it off with anger by bringing up the memory of Persei’s half-eaten corpse.

I am NOT staying here. And if I have to betray the person who had to watch her own sister die with a Joyaga stinger through her chest, then so be it.

…Freakin’ Guya.

Cal was busily constructing a mental wall around his determination to leave while he walked, when he ran into Aoehe standing in front of his yurt.

“How did it go?” He asked with his usual amiable grin.

“Just because you’re Ella’s father doesn’t mean I forgive you. You better watch your back.”

He leaned forward and peered into Cal’s eyes. “Yes, seems like it’s taken well. Off to bed with you.”

With that, he left Cal alone, his Incha Huala eyeing Cal as they left.

I could drop a thirty-six pound rock on his head right now, and no one would know… Cal’s fists tightened as he glared at the man’s back.

Not until we’re ready to leave. The man deserves to die, but he’s the leader of the faction that supports me being Ella’s Incha Huala. If he dies, my life is most likely forfeit.

“Damn,” Calvin muttered, unclenching his hand and going into his yurt.

The manacles and chains were no longer there; he had stronger ones in his head, now.

Lucky for me, they don’t know how slippery I am. Cal thought, methodically stopping the spread of Guya-spawned thoughts and walling them away.

***

“It’s like I’m sixteen years old again, being mounted for the first time.” Cal heard one of the little old ladies twitter to another, who was eyeing Cal with a predatory intensity. It made him want to draw his limbs and head into his shirt and stay there awhile, but he forced himself to send them back a grin, spurring their animated discussion even further.

Put up with it, put up with it… Cal thought as he started practicing his spells.

Splitting, Splitting, Splitting…

Sense-Grafting, Sense-Grafting, Sense-Grafting…

The next morning Ella and Aoehe had met him outside his yurt with no less than six elderly women. Their purpose? To resupply him with Bent to allow him to practice more than he should have been able to in a single day.

The average amount of Will of a little old lady was eight, or just over one Bent per little old lady per day, on average, with an average of eight Stability.

The first day, he was able to split his practice, with twenty-five castings of Sense-grafting, and twenty-five castings of Splitting.

Each time, he tried to challenge the limit of what he was capable of, using the spells in new and uncomfortable ways, to increase the amount each practice was worth to him.

By the end of the day, Cal had gotten Sense-Grafting to level five, and chose the ability to target objects at range. He no longer needed to touch something before he grafted his senses to it, allowing a much greater range of flexibility.

The time Bekvah had grafted Cal’s balance to a book at range had left an impression, and Cal made that his goal for level ten.

The day after that, Cal had expected to only get a couple castings in, but the number of old Genosian women interested in lending their Bent had doubled.

The next day, it increased again.

By the end of the first week, Cal had raised his Sense-grafting to seven, and his Splitting to eight, buoyed up by the sheer amount of Bent he was able to harness on a daily basis.

There were roughly fifty old ladies, for an average of fifty-seven castings per day by the time the numbers had stabilized. It was the rough equivalent of having four hundred Will, or fifty times faster than he’d been able to practice at Deinos.

One week of practice outweighed an entire year by himself, easily.

…He could tolerate being used by old women for that.

It was draining their Bent in front of Ella while they moaned in ecstasy that really got under his skin.

The young Maje watched him with a smirk as the matronly Genosians gasped and shuddered. He was starting to develop something of a reputation in the Iron-Skin tribe…again. Married women and young girls were discouraged from associating with him, and Genosian warriors who walked by snorted and shook their heads.

“You can take the Bent from any part of the body, yes?” one woman of perhaps thirty-five asked slyly, not two feet away from Ella. She was one of the youngest women who visited; a widow.

“Just the hand for now, ma’am,” Cal replied, taking her hand as she clicked her tongue in disappointment. Cal began draining her Bent, ignoring the moans and Ella’s reveling in his discomfort.

3/10 Bent remaining

4/10 Bent remaining

5/10 Bent remaining

6/10 Bent remaining

7/10 Bent remaining

8/10 Bent remaining

9/10 Bent remaining

“That’s all I have. I saved up for this, so that you could go deep.” she said with a conspiratorial smile.

“I appreciate it,” Cal said, nodding and ignoring the prickles on the back of his neck. “I’ll see you next week.

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” the Genosian woman said, lying down and stretching, deliberately showing off as much of her body as she could. “I’ll watch you practice.”

“That’s-“ Cal was cut off by Ella.

“All right, you’ve had your fun, shoo, shoo! Be thankful I let you visit my Incha Huala at all, Aya.” Ella kicked dirt at Aya, causing the woman to hiss and scuttle back like a wild animal.

Aya cleared her throat, stood, and wiped dirt off her hide clothes, before throwing her nose up and walking away.

“Thanks for that.” Cal whispered as the young widow left.

“Can you take Bent with other parts?” Ella whispered into his ear, sending shivers down his spine.

“I think she said from other parts.”

“Bekata, beketa,” she said, a Genosian phrase that meant ‘Either or, it’s all the same.’

“Probably.”

“interesting.”

Cal got back to practicing, earning another level of Splitting, when he came to a realization.

His Will was about to bottleneck at fourteen. He needed to raise his Hunting and Meditation to compensate.

Nothing I can do about it right now, Cal thought, putting his head down and getting back to work.

Read Expression has reached Level 5!

Read Expression Level 5: Passive bonus to reading expressions. 25% correction.

+1 Intuition

Please choose an ability or mutation from the list of compatible ones.

Abilities.

Poker Face: Give away little by way of facial expression.

-She’s got to love nobody!

Open Book: Gain an intuitive understand of the relationship between two people who are looking at each other.

-Lover, Stranger, friend, enemy, conspirator. The face tells all!

Universal Language: Large bonus to understanding pantomime and expression regardless of species.

-She never told me she was a mime!

Mob Mentalist: Read the attitude of large groups of people easily.

-Never get caught off guard by a mob of pitchfork wielding peasants again!

Mutations:

The Pheonix’s (W)right eye- while making eye contact, you can discern if the target believes they are lying. Less useful on sociopaths and the misinformed.

-OBJECTION!

Med Tricorder: At will, determine a person’s health and identify anything that might be affecting them merely by looking at their face. Includes wounds, infection, blood loss, poison, food poisoning, drugs, parasites, disease, etc.

-Damnit Jim, I’m a doctor not an engineer!

Feel Intent: Feel the emotion behind any gaze upon you that you can perceive.

-Yeah, it stacks with Third Eye – The System

Calvin stared up at the ceiling of Ella’s yurt at the end of the day as he weighed his options.

The last one was most likely unlocked by the Third Eye Mutation, and it would make Third Eye far more comprehensive. It would be nice to know if the intent behind a gaze was malicious or not. He’d dodged the arrows before because they were aiming at his heart, but he couldn’t rely on that. The mutation would allow significantly more nuance.

“I choose Feel Intent.”

Open book and the pheonix’s eye were appealing, but more useful in an investigative, mystery-solving kind of way, while Feel Intent would serve both in and out of combat.

User will be rendered unconscious while Mutation is taking place.

Just like with Third Eye, Cal’s skin started to itch, and his head started to ache, then stab with pain as the plates of his skull popped apart and began to shift.

A moment later everything went dark.

Calvin Gadsint

Body:

6

Strength:

6

Kinesthetics:

6

Endurance:

6

Mind:

20

Intuition:

10

Stability:

11

Will:

13

Bent:

2/11

Skills:

Stealth

6

Talking to Girls

5

Acting

5

Read Expressions

5

Sense-Grafting

7

Knife-Work

5

Dupdomancy

9

Hunting

4

Meditation

4

Chained Spirit

1

Fishing

3

Genosian Language

3