“It’s a Kugeya,” Chuela said, pointing west, toward the mountainside as his eight bodies slowly stood, their skin turning silver. “You go that way, and find a place to hide. Your Father will be sending more-“

The creature, whatever it was, had no concept of the social faux pas of interrupting a man’s words, sliding sinuously between the treetops and crashing down to the ground on top of him.

Calvin nearly jumped out of his skin as the creature moved like a gust of wind, burying Chuela in the ground with a single enormous talon, causing the earth to tremble.

The other seven Chained spirits sprang into action, showing remarkable acrobatics for their size. Three of them used their enhanced strength to leap fifteen feet into the air and bound off of the nearby trees, aiming for the creature’s back.

The other four focused their fire on one of its giant black eyes, attempting to blind it.

Their arrows bounced off a thick, clear layer of…something. Whatever kept the eye, inside the eye. One of the midair Chuela shouted something in Genosian and accelerated midair, slamming into the creature’s armored antennae, causing it to flinch and shake it’s head.

Looks like they still have their Bent. How does that even work? Cal thought as one of the archer Chuela unleashed what was obviously a Penetrating Shot. Somehow the creature seemed to see this coming and turned it’s eye aside. The arrow buried itself feather’s deep into the thing’s armor, causing it to hiss in pain.

If they still have their Bent, is that spell creating Bent out of nothing? Or maybe Chuela recharges Bent while he’s not active? But that doesn’t explain how they all have it. Is it the amount he had when he died? If that’s the case, it’s totally breaking the rules. If there are rules.

Hypothetically, were I to eat Ella (Not in the fun way), while she had maximum Bent, does that mean I could summon her for one, and drain eight or more out of her? repeat ad infinitum?

Maybe it’s a large pool. Maybe some of the user’s will is used to refill aforementioned pool, then doled out to the summons on a case-by case. Or it could even be like insurance, a large amount of Bent contributed to by everyone who uses the chained spirit summoning, that can be drawn out as needed.

In either of those cases, I could basically steal the pool right out from under them, or use the personal pool as backup Bent storage, and all I’d have to do is…eat a girl. Hmmm…this line of thinking seems like it’ll stay purely hypothetical.

Or maybe I simply can’t steal Bent from them because it’s not Bent anymore, and the Abilities they use is simply an effect of the Chained Spirit spell. The only way to find out would be to…eat a girl…

Foiled again.

Well, maybe if someone else’s Chained Spirit was female I could see if I could-

“What in the name of Euaha are you doing, move!” Ella grabbed Cal’s ragged hide shirt and yanked him out of the clearing.

Oh right, giant monster.

Cal stumbled a few steps, off balance because of the grey hand holding onto his collar. A moment later she let go, and he began to run in earnest, barely keeping up with Ella’s swift form in front of him.

Limber, Cal thought as she leaped over a stand of bushes without bothering to slow down, her hide skirt stretched tight.

“Where are we going?” Calvin yelled, following her over the bush. His jump wasn’t nearly as graceful, and his hide skirt got snagged by the thorny bush. Luckily the leather was tougher than the wood.

“The base of the mountain has thousands of caves!” she yelled back at him. “After it finishes Chuela and the meat, it’s going to track us! We need to get into somewhere it can’t follow!”

“Sounds good to me!” Cal said, sprinting after her at full speed.

They plowed past another nest of wasps so quickly the flesh-eating insects didn’t even have time to get upset, filling the air behind them with a viscious buzzing.

Ella yelped and ducked underneath an innocuous looking branch, so Calvin did too.

Glancing back, he spotted wings and talons unfurling from the branch as it disconnected from the tree, turning to face a slowly darkening set of eyes toward them. He could feel its hunger.

Evil branch monsters. Noted.

“Is everything out here trying to kill us!?” Cal demanded as they ran.

Ella glanced over her shoulder and grinned, sticking out her tongue.

That’s a long tongue. Cal thought, bemused as they sprinted for the base of the mountain.

“Right there!” Ella shouted, pointing at a black hollow in the side of the mountain, a few hundred yards away, surrounded by ancient trees.

They had been running nearly half an hour and were beginning to flag when they heard the sound of crashing behind them. The entrance was just ahead, but Calvin glanced behind him and knew they didn’t have the time to get to it.

He could make out the Kugeya in the distance, gaining on them effortlessly.

Damn.

Cal pulled out his snare rope and carefully grabbed the end that wasn’t sharp. With the desperation of the pursued, he swung it twice around his head and sent it sailing up into the treetops.

Mass Splitting.

Mass splitting.

3/10 Bent remaining.

Dupdomancy has reached Level 10!

+1 to Will

Level 10: 100 pounds, 50 minutes.

His snare rope that was riddled with hooks and sharp bits of obsidian was multiplied a hundredfold, spreading out among the treetops and catching on the branches and each other to create a web of rope between them and the giant…centipede looking thing.

Cal didn’t bother to see how it worked. He didn’t have time for that. He turned and sprinted with everything he had, putting his head down and running.

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

Multi-split-

“I Choose Shaping!” Cal shouted as he ran, branches scraping his arms and legs as he bulled through them without bothering to brush them aside.

…Let me finish, geez.

A few seconds later the canopy’s crashing redoubled as the creature hit a snag, trees folding in around it as the ropes tugged on them.

Cal had originally meant to use his snag-rope with Splitting as a kind of vicious bolas, but this worked too.

Cal’s moment spent throwing the rope allowed Ella to get far ahead of him, and she turned around at the entrance, casting her gaze back at him.

She shouted something, but Cal didn’t look back. He could feel the creature’s hungry gaze boring into his back. No need to look over his shoulder and possibly stumble. Full speed ahead was the only answer.

Ella threw her hand forward and a green bolt of energy flew above Cal’s head. An instant later, there was a rush of displaced air that brushed against his back, and the ground shook.

Nope, not looking, Cal thought as he ran. If she could have paralyzed the whole thing, she would have done so earlier. She probably just weakened it enough to miss its killing lunge.

Ella was standing in the entrance, and rather than mince words, slide around her, or ask her to get out of the way, he slammed into her and sent both of them rolling into the darkness of the cave.

Ow, OW! Cal tumbled along, lumpy rocks bruising his delicate human body as he took his turn on the bottom of the tangled pile of limbs. Eventually they came to a stop at the bottom of a shallow depression in the floor.

Cal was on his back, lying in three inches of stagnant water, but all he could feel was Ella’s body pressed up against his own, pinning him to the ground.

“Well, that was exciting,” she said, throwing her forearms over him and resting her chin against his chest, making him acutely aware of where her soft breasts were squishing up against his lower belly. Just a few inches away…

“We good?” Cal barely had the presence of mind to ask, lifting his head to look toward the cave entrance. What he saw was unnerving, and immediately sidelined any contemplation about the girl’s proximity.

The creature’s enormous eye was staring right back at him, its inky black depths framed by the cave walls were the only thing he could see.

“It’s too big to get in,” Ella responded. “Kugeya aren’t known for their digging skills, so we should be safe once it gives up on us.”

Call was about to answer when the enormous insect reeled back and smashed the cave entrance with a force that shook the earth, causing bits of rock to shake loose from the wall, and sloshing around the stagnant water.

An enormous orange insectoid leg entered the cave and thrashed around, only making it halfway to them. The thing was covered in large hairs and had two massive talons at the end.

Failing to catch them, the talons dug into the solid stone of the cave, screeching when they struck a vein of obsidian. As good as it felt to have Ella on top of him, the giant insect trying to eat them killed the mood.

“Later?” Cal asked, glancing back at her face that rested inches away from his own.

“If you’re good,” she replied casually, but he could feel an undercurrent of intense anticipation in her gaze. It had become rather difficult to mislead Cal since the Feel Intent mutation.

“Pfft, I know you want me,” Cal said, pushing her up and rolling out of the shallow pool of water, not enjoying the icy stream of water making its way down his spine toward his more sensitive bits.

Another impact against the side of the mountain put cracks through the floor and sent Calvin back to the ground, getting his Genosian-issued leather kilt wet this time around. It bears mentioning that Genosians don’t believe in underwear for men.

Cal was about to break into a scathing critique of Genosian dress, but a rumbling filled the narrow cavern that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the Kugeya outside.

“Was that-“

The floor fell out from beneath them. Cal had the unique sensation of floating as his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Time seemed to slow down, and for an instant, he made eye contact with Ella.

Aww, she’s worried about me.

Then cold the likes of which Cal had never experienced wrapped around him, causing him to take a startled breath.

His lungs filled with water.

Before he could even think of what was happening, his body tried to cough it out, filling his lungs with more water, while his body’s heat was wicked away from him at an astonishing pace.

I’m under water, I need to swim up! The only rational thought Cal was able to have over the searing pain in his lungs and the rapidly spreading numbness in his limbs.

Which way is up?

In the tumultuous fall and subsequent plunge, he’d gotten all turned around, and had no idea which direction was which.

Just pick a direction and go for it! Cal thought, swimming forward with every ounce of power he could.

He didn’t know what direction the air was in, making it impossible to copy until he knew. Cal swam ask quickly as he could, his vision rapidly filling with stars as oxygen deprivation set in.

An instant later, his numb fingers jolted against something hard, and then a stone outcropping slammed against his forehead.

The last feeling Calvin had was the searing pain in his forehead as all his other senses went dark.