The next time Cal opened his eyes, all he could see was grey-purple, and all he could feel was the need to expel the water in his lungs.

Before he was able to control himself, he coughed a spray of water straight into Ella’s mouth, and the both of them spent the next couple minutes coughing bits of water out of their lungs. There was a warm trickle going down over his eye, and when Cal pressed a hand to it, it came back darkened with blood, looking black in the dim light.

Why can I even see? Cal thought, glancing around. The same blue dots that had been embedded in the walls of the freezer were here as well, but they were embedded in regular stonework, so perfect that it had to have been man-made.

Are we in a ruin? Cal thought. Is the entire mountain a ruin?

Shortly after that thought, the wound in his forehead began hurting, cutting through the icy numbness. It wasn’t his biggest concern. His biggest concern was the fact that he couldn’t feel his limbs.

Cal began to shiver violently as he glanced around the room he found himself in. They were on a stone shelf abutting a doorway, with a river to their left. The river had a strange greenish hue in the dim blue lights above them.

“Here,” Ella said, taking her knife and cutting Cal’s shirt away from him. She cut a long strip and bound it around his head, cutting off the vision from his left eye in the process.

“I-I thought th-the g-girl is s-supposed to shred her o-own c-clothes to w-wrap the hero’s wounds.” Calvin tried to joke as his numb arms and legs shivered violently. “A-also why aren’t y-you freezing?”

“The hero?” Ella asked with a raised eyebrow. “The icewater must have caused brain damage. We don’t have any time to waste.” Without waiting for him, she shrugged off her clothes, giving him barely a moment to gawk at her luscious body in the dim blue light before she tugged off his hide kilt and drew him into a spooning hug.

Her full breasts practically engulfed him, pressing softly against his back and shoulders, her smooth stomach against his back. At least, that’s what he assumed was happening.

“Wish I c-could actually f-feel anyth-thing.” Calvin said, facing the river.

“I’ll bet.” Ella reached up to her mouth winced as she yanked out one of her sharp teeth, a few drops of blood dripping from her mouth as she held it out in front of the two of them.

“What in the world are you doing?”

Black Bent follow her veins and infused the triangular tooth. A moment later, a wave of heat washed over the two of them, radiating from her tooth, sending the first tingles of feeling along his skin.

“Maje must never be unarmed.” She said, handing him the tooth. “It will grow back in a few weeks.”

“People’s teeth don’t just grow back.” Cal said.

“My people’s do.”

“Huh.”

The tooth radiated heat for a good hour before it began to dissipate, but by that time, Calvin was already beginning to regain some of his own body heat, and best of all, he could feel Ella pressing against him, radiating her own gentle warmth.

“I think I know why successful Wizard-kings use women as furniture now.” Calvin said. “It’s pretty much the best feeling ever.”

“I take it you’re feeling better then?” she asked.

“Um, no, totally still numb, brrrr. You should keep holding me.”

“Oh, okay. I was only asking because my back is getting cold, and if you’re warmed up we could switch places.”

Switching places meant he would be spooning her, pressed up against her soft hips, his hands wrapped around to her…front. There was a ninety-five percent chance she was baiting him, and a five percent chance he’d get to grab her boobs.

“I’m almost uncomfortably warm, maybe I should take a turn on the outside?” Calvin said before he even finished calculating the odds.

Ella chortled, standing up and tugging her clothes back on, they were half dry from the cloud of heat around the tooth.

Damn. Worth a shot.

Cal stood and pulled his damp hide clothes back on, shivering as they began wicking away his precious heat. It wasn’t a lethal amount of chilling anymore, though. Not going through the ruin naked, no thank you.

“How much Bent do you have?” She asked.

“Four, I got one back while we were laying there,” he said. “You?”

“Eight.”

“Which way did we come from?” Calvin asked, glancing down the stream. Ella pointed down the left hand side.

“In a lot of stories, there’s a cave in or a long drop that makes the protagonists think they can’t go back, and should instead venture into the unknown because it’s somehow more doable than traversing a couple hundred feet of ice-cold stream.”

“That sounds oddly specific.” Ella said, frowning.

“Can you keep a secret?” Cal asked.

“Depends.”

Chained Spirit

3/11 Bent Remaining

Calvin held out a hand and with a tiny puff of green, a wasp rested on his hand. Cal could feel a link form between the two of them, a kind of dreamlike sense of being something else at the same time.

“Is that-“

The wasp stung him, jamming its butt-needle into his palm. The only thing he could feel from the link was unbridled aggression.

“Ow, fuck!” Cal flung the wasp, which righted itself in midair and tried to come in for another sting on the fleshy prey.

He clenched his aching fist and grabbed hold off the link, and forced the wasp to stop.

The orange and black creature dropped out of the air like a stone, forcing Calvin to catch it as gently as he could.

“Having some trouble there?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have happened to use my people’s most sacred ritual to have a mindless insect as your Incha Huala, would you?”

“Is that a death sentence?” Cal asked, glancing over his shoulder. She didn’t look like she was about to kill him, just aghast as his poor decision making skills.

“Just…really, really, dumb. How’d you even learn it?”

“I saw it a bunch during my Forming Day. I figured it out.”

“You’re lying.” She said, her arms crossed.

“To protect the innocent.”

“By Euaha, Melau taught it to you, didn’t she? She’s going to get the mother of all spankings when I get hold of her.”

Sense-grafting

2/11 Bent remaining

Suddenly, Cal’s left eye was seeing everything from the wasp’s point of view, where it rested on his hand.

Go to the end of the hall and come back.

The wasp didn’t do anything. It still radiated primal aggression against all non-wasp creatures in the area. Looks like the commands have to be pretty simple.

Fly that way. Cal gave it a mental nudge, and his point of view lifted off of his palm and took off down the stream. After a few seconds, he got the hang of mentally controlling the raging sting-monster, giving it a constant stream of simple orders while he nursed his swelling hand.

It zoomed along above the water, eventually coming to a spot where the stream and the ceiling nearly met. Damn, not coming back that way without getting wet.

Once he got to the cave-in, his hopes were crushed by the sheer amount of stone that had filled the hole in the ceiling.

As it stood, Calvin didn’t have any form of magic that he was able to get him back through the ice-water stream and cave-in. There was an odd prickling as the wasp reached its time limit and vanished, disconnecting his left eye and plunging it back into darkness behind the temporary bandage that left his midsection drafty.

Need to raise Chained spirit, because 1 minute is unacceptable. On the other hand, the poison in my hand is gone.

His hand was rapidly deflating, the ache diminishing by the second.

“Definitely aren’t getting back that way.” Cal said, glancing back at the doorway in front of them. If Cal wasn’t in pain and scared for his life, he would suspect trickery.

“Alright, come on,” he said, creeping through the doorway, glancing around. When he glanced over his shoulder to see if Ella was coming, she was watching him with her arms crossed. She raised an eyebrow.

“Where do you think you’re going, Mr. Hypothermic Head Wound?”

“I’m quieter, and lighter, and if something bad happened to you-oh my god, the Guya’s still in my system.”

Cal stepped out of the way and motioned her forward.

“After you, Nubile Warrior Princess.”

Together they crept through the hall, thankful for the pale blue dots of light above them. The dark walls were covered in slime from hundreds of years of moisture, giving an almost natural appearance to the man-made hallway.

The hall was big enough for both of them to walk side-by-side, armed with nothing but their knives. Cal’s darts were still hanging on his kilt, thankfully, but the rest of his hunting gear had been swept downstream.

Now the challenge was to find a way to the surface before they starved to death.

They crept along, navigating the empty halls, and peeking in doorways that had long since rusted open. There were piles of rust and mold that looked like they had once been beds, mold where there had been cabinets and shelves. Lines of rust on the floor where coathangers had ceased to exist.

Cal ducked into one of the rooms and poked through the mold with his knife.

I can see it now, the mold comes to life and swallows me up. Clink!

Clink?

Calvin peeled a bit of mold back and levered a perfectly preserved…steel ball-point pen. On the side of the shiny metal was laser etched writing in a strange language he’d never seen.

I wonder what the street price of an heirloom pen is, he thought, tucking it in his waistband.

Artifacts!

This place hadn’t been raided, which meant no one had been here…in the hundreds of year the Genosians have been living on this mountain? More likely this section of the ruin had never been explored, because it was cut off from the surface. Signs of human activity would have been a very welcome sign at this point, even if it took the form of a complete lack of valuables.

Maybe there’s an artifact for tunneling through solid rock. Cal thought, standing up. He rejoined Ella and continued to walk, casting his gaze this way and that, looking for a way up, anything that would lead them out of this place.

The halls fell along a simple grid, and it didn’t take them a long time to scan them all and reach the far wall, the only danger that presented itself in the silent blue halls was slipping hazards.

At the end of the hallway along the far wall, they found a circular room filled with blinking panels along the walls and a glowing table of some kind in the center.

“Scanning…”

“Greetings, User 1-3-4-1-5-6-6-1-9-7-4.” A woman’s voice spoke when Ella entered the room, causing her to jump in place and hold her knife up defensively.

“Greetings, User 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-5-6-2” The voice said an instant later when Cal walked in.

“Um, Greetings.” Cal said to the air.

“What did she just say?” Ella asked, eyeing the blinking panels suspiciously. She seemed a hair’s breadth away from smashing everything.

“Greetings, called us users in Malkenrovian.” Cal translated.

“Welcome to Richie Cool’s Bitchin’ Recharging Station. I am currently disconnected from the Harbinger mainframe, so my resources are limited. I cannot provide up to date statistics on the state of the Warp Encroachment, Your current contribution points, or access to the Shop.”

“What did she say?”

“I understood every word, but none of it made any sense,” Cal said, shaking his head. “It sounds like she wants to help us.”

“Can you help us get out of here?” Cal asked.

“Of course, the exit is marked on the map.”

Suddenly the glowing blue table flared to life, and a ghostly image began to float above it. it was a simplified map of the strange halls they had been wandering for a couple hours.

A red line was drawn from the circular room they were in through the doorway they had entered, and out what looked like a lobby that they hadn’t even seen.

“Maybe she can help us get out of here,” Ella breathed, not understanding a word of their conversation, but spotting the map.

“I’m asking.” Cal said in Genosian, then switched gears in his mind, to Karen’s home tongue. “That exit is blocked, do you have another way out?”

The map expanded into a three-dimensional structure, showing a three-story building with a strange, prong-like object jutting from the top of it.

“Emergency exits are marked on the map.”

Several paths and doors became highlighted in red, including a few routes that they’d passed by. They’d have to check them out again and see if they missed anything.

“Excellent, let’s go check those exits out,” Ella said, craning her neck to peer out the door.

“Hold on, how often do you get to talk to a Ruin?” Cal asked.

“What is that prong looking thing?” Calvin asked, pointing.

“Docking bay is currently in use. H-tech charging stations down. Contact Richie for information on wait times. 1-541-275-5528.”

“Where are you?” he asked, glancing around the room. The woman hidden in the walls was making less sense than usual.

“Find us on the web at Nothing2Large2charge.Har.Apo.”

Find them…on the web?

“Is there some kind of giant spider I should know about? Are you okay?”

“Massive structural damage detected, nannites and coolant leaks have reached equilibrium with production speed. Estimated repair costs, 35,000 Contribution points.”

Is that a lot…a little? In either case…

“That’s…not really relevant to what I just said.” Cal said.

“Brochures are available at the front desk, with a helpful F.A.Q.”

“Okay, I’m pretty sure this thing is retarded.” Cal said, turning away. Their time would be better served looking for those exits than talking to something that only seemed to speak in nonsensicle babble.

Wait.

Cal turned back.

“What is Warp Encroachment?”

Rather than the woman’s voice, a man’s stern tone spoke to them in an overbearing, staccato rhythm as a strange symbol began to spin above the table.

“Son, Warp Encroachment is the plague that followed the Harbingers when they set their dirty claws on our soil! It is an evil that has poisoned the very fabric of our reality. Unlike what some of you believe, the Harbingers are not magic, they are not saviors…They’re sniveling cowards running from a fight! Thankfully, we’ve been able to reverse engineer the Harbinger’s System, and create our own vastly superior one. It is the duty of every red-blooded Federation citizen to participate in the System, kill the creatures that flood through the Siphons, neutralize the Warp, and god willing, kick those filthy Harbingers off our planet. The greatest country in the galaxy is depending on you!”

A voice started up, speaking words so fast that Cal couldn’t make sense of them until the end, where he barely made out ‘see your local recruiter’.

“What the hell is a galaxy?” Cal asked. “Kinda wish I had that brochure.”