As it turns out, Wasp behavior is rather limited. Cal thought, tapping his vial of Bent on the wall, watching it glitter in morning sun that was rising over his left shoulder. The orders a wasp could be easily expected to perform were ‘go there’ and ‘kill’.

As if Ella needs a reason to be any more smug.

After experimenting for a while, he’d discovered their carrying capacity was a little over two thirds of their body weight.

And that meant he needed a thousand pounds of wasp.

Ugh, logistics.

Cal did some simple math. Calvinian Summoning had increased its mass by cubing the level of the Skill thus far, so what was a good level to aim for?

Ten cubed is a thousand on the nose, and a duration of one hundred minutes.

Not sure I have enough time to level the Skill that high, though, what level grants five hundred pounds minimum? He did some quick math.

Level eight? Damn. He had to get most of the way to level ten while dodging arrows and whatever else the Ilethans could throw at him.

Any other ways to get to Baroke that don’t involve being carried by flesh eating wasps?

Calvin began running scenarios through his head rapidly.

Stealth? Not particularly high level, lot of distance to cross on foot in both directions.

Convincing Andra to mount a rescue? She struck that down before I’d even thought of it.

Cal’s options seemed severely limited. It was boiling down to a madcap flight or simply crossing his fingers and hoping they decided to give Baroke back if they lost. Anything less than level eight at Calvinian Summoning would make the process very expensive, Bent-wise.

Calvin’s eyes turned back to the black Bent sloshing around inside the vial.

Andra had given him three of the containers, each with three bent, along with instructions to ‘make them last.’ She knew he regained two a day, so once he’d gone through eleven by the end of the day, she would assume he was out. That assumption would be wrong.

Calvin slipped the expensive glass tube back in his pocket and glanced out at the Ilethan army. They hadn’t gotten around to doing anything major yet.

It was remarkable how much of a siege was spent simply glaring at each other. I’ve got better things to be doing that staring at these assholes. Can’t waste time.

“Shake me out of it if they start doing anything big,” Cal said, sliding down to rest his back against the parapet. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was Ella nodding.

Eye of the tiger.

The distractions around him faded away, and Cal floated inside his inner space, letting thoughts flow around his mental bubble. He was like that for what felt like minutes before the notification came.

Meditation has reached Level 10!

Level 10: Boosts ability to ignore distractions and disassociate. 50% correction.

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

Shadow boxing: Allows the user to practice any Warped Skill up to the level of Meditation, at 1/4 speed.

Useful for practicing Bent dependent skills or being imprisoned with time on your hands.

Disconnect: Allows the user to disconnect from their senses and the flow of time.

Useful for demon summoning, battles of Will, or retaining your sanity after a thousand years in prison.

^ Editor's choice!

Sherl*ck vision: Plan your moves out in advance with a solid sense of the near future.

Elementary.

Mutations:

Bent Regeneration: applies correction % Boost to Bent regeneration.

Useful, if boring.

Medi-tating: Enter a deep trance while the body repairs itself at (Meditation) times normal speed.

Hiber-Nate!

…I choose shadow boxing.

Cal’s mental space gained depth and clarity, and a sense of potential, like it could become anything. Experimentally, he envisioned the creek running behind his house, and found himself standing on the bank, with Juka sitting on his usual lump in the earth in amiable silence. The village elder gave Cal a nod and continued fishing.

He looked down and spotted his fishing pole resting against his usual tree, ready to be put to use. It’s that easy, is it?

Cal was eager to put the skill to use, but he wanted to get his bearings before he got carried away. He pried his eyes open, the sound of water lapping against dirt left his ears, the sight of Juka shattered into a vista of a stone palisade, where dozens of brown and tan Gadveran soldiers were idling away.

“Anything happen?” Cal groaned as he shifted his spine against the hard rock he’d been ignoring. Ella was learning to play eights from the other soldiers, their weapons close at hand as they slapped cards down at high speeds.

“So far, nothing at all.” She said, glancing over the parapet at the busy camp far below them. Cal dragged himself to his feet to get his own look.

A glint of noonday sun reflected off round metal plates in the grass outside the wall. Cal hadn’t taken notice of them yesterday, with the illusionary troops filling up so much of the field.

“What are those?” Cal asked aloud. A young archer who must have been two years older than Cal glanced over.

“What is what?”

“Those metal plates.”

“You don’t know what those are?” He asked incredulously before glancing at Cal’s uniform. “sir.”

“Look at my face,” Cal said, pointing at his eyes. “Assume I’m new to this.”

“Right, um, those are piles, fuck-off big steel poles put into the ground to prevent tunneling with Berengas or earth magic. They got a solid steel fence strung between them, too.”

“That’s all steel?” Ella said, gawking over the edge of the parapet. Genosians had a healthy appreciation for the substance that was nearly mythical to them.

“Sixteen feet, straight into bedrock.”

Calvin had heard that Gadvera was a rich nation offhand before, but nothing drove it home more than the tons of steel sitting there on the off-chance that the enemy would one day have a berengas wurm.

Cal looked further afield, where the Ilethans were busily constructing their siege towers, pushing the forest further away from the edge of the city.

“Oh look, they’re clearing the land for us.” Cal said, pointing. “Think they’ll be nice enough to pull up the stumps too?”

His comment was met with a few dry chuckles.

The new towers were almost complete, having gotten much taller overnight. They were busily hammering the last of the panels into place to give cover from archers. Wet wood on wet wood ensured that the creations would never last long, but they weren’t planning on using them forever.

Plus it made them harder to burn.

Speaking of burning, Cal thought, thumbing the vial of ooze-weaver slime in his belt. It had been most of a week since he’d commissioned the vials, and he still only had the one.

Not that Calvin wasn’t happy with it, he just wanted the rest of the tools he’d paid for. Well, I guess Andra paid for it. damnation.

It was about this time that a low rumbling came to Calvin’s attention, prompting him to look up for the source.

He couldn’t make out anything in the distance Ilethan camp, but when he turned toward the city, the noise dulled.

“Quiet!” he shouted, earning indignant stares from the nearby men and women, until a moment later, another soldier cocked her head.

“I hear something.”

“Me too.” Another said.

The sergeant who’d been loitering nearby stood and kicked the card table off the wall, scattering the table and the cards to the city below, leaving three stunned soldier and Ella staring at empty space.

“Something’s up. Off your asses and clear the lane!” the lane being the narrow two feet of space used for evacuating wounded soldiers or deploying reinforcements. They were trained not to stand on the lane unless they were moving with a purpose, but it sometimes got a little lax on a slow morning.

The soldiers crowded up on the wall, shoulder to shoulder as they looked out at the Ilethan camp, the rumbling gradually growing louder.

“What in the name of Goluba?” one of the soldiers – apparently a worshipper of the god of berries – said, pointing at the forest far beyond the Ilethan camp. A dark line absent of trees was carving its way toward the Ilethan camp.

Cal squinted, catching the moment a massive tree was pushed over. There was another glint of light form something in the forest. Some kind of metal.

Did they mind-control a Kugeya and strap armor on it? Cal shivered at the thought of the nigh-indestructible killing machine getting even more armor. That didn’t seem fair.

The thing that emerged from the woods was decidedly not a Kugeya.

It was a strange, shiny black. Twenty feet tall, fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, with what looked like a massive plow attached to the front of it. The body was blocky, with tubes sticking out here and there.

It wasn’t alive, Calvin was sure of that, the thing seemed to have wheels with a gigantic steel belt between them, and it didn’t have any sign of awareness of it’s surroundings, it simply crushed it’s way through the last bits of forest before it began grinding through the center of the Ilethan camp, sending soldiers scattering this way and that.

“Who’s our runner!?” Cal shouted without taking his eyes off the strange machine.

“Me, sir, said a wiry man about four years older than Calvin.”

“Go get the General.” The runner didn’t even wait for Calvin to finish his sentence before sprinting down the lane toward the command center on the south side of the wall.

“What the hell is that?” Calvin muttered to himself as the strange vehicle rumbled toward them.

“I don’t know, but every hair on my body is standing up,” Ella said, standing stock still.

What? What’s going on? Calvin’s mind was filled with the sound of a strange crunching, followed by the sound of scattering beer bottles and trash.

Oh, what do you know, it’s a LineHog. I love those things. They’re basically farm equipment. Big, heavy, can force their way through anything you needed to get forced through. I used to use them to dig people out of bunkers. Looks like they strapped a couple low-tech cannons onto the damn thing. Waste of a good spot for a fifty-cal, if you ask me.

There was a flash of light and smoke from one of the tubes in the distance, and a hair-raising buzzing sound before the wall thirty feet to the right of Cal exploded into shrapnel, sending a dozen broken corpses tumbling to the ground.

Dust clouded Cal’s vision and forced him to cough a fine dust out of his mouth.

When did I get on the ground? He thought as he levered himself to his feet. As the dust cleared, Cal got a look at the wall, where a chunk had been sheared away from it. it was just small enough to jump over, but those nearer the blast were in no shape to do so, bleeding profusely from shrapnel, missing limbs, or just from the ears, twitching in a way that was certainly not good.

On the other hand, it could be considered somewhat effective. What do you say we get the fuck off the wall, buddy?

“Calvin!” he heard Ella shouting faintly. In the explosion, he’d been knocked some ten feet further down the wall than before, washed away like chaff, while the heavier girl had stayed in one place.

“Here!” he shouted, waving. Ella spotted and sprinted over to him, checking his face and patting him down for blood.

“I’m all right.” Cal said, levering himself up, then it occurred to him that standing up would present a bigger target for flying pieces of stone.

“Stay low,” he shouted, peering over the edge of the parapet that now felt paper-thin.

Another explosion shook the wall beneath their feet, blowing another dozen men off the wall to their left, and forcing the wall to let out an awful groaning sound that sent ice all the way down Cal’s spine.

“Fuck this, if the walls coming down, I’m not doing any good up here.” One of the archers said before putting his bow over his shoulder and making for the stairs.

He’s got a point.

Cal reached out and snagged the man as he ran by.

“I don’t know if it escaped your notice, but that isn’t the only thing they have. If you give up the wall, you’re welcoming them into the city, which is the same as welcoming them into your sister! Stay HERE!”

If I run away like this, how can I become a wizard-king?

Oh, that’s easy. Just lie your ass off. You’d be amazed at how many more people rose to power through lying than through integrity. I’d name names, but I’m afraid I’d get you viciously sued by the religions they started. Of which there are many.

Cal ignored Elliot’s chatter as he stared into the man’s eyes until he felt a flicker of courage. The archer nodded shakily and headed back to his position.

The runner came back a few seconds later, without the general.

“Where is she?” Cal demanded as a cannonball struck the lower wall, nearly shaking everyone off their feet.

“She said to keep holding the wall, and she’ll take care of the metal monstrosity. Watch out for the trick, she said.”

The runner continued on, stopping every hundred feet or so to pass the message to each of Andra’s lieutenants. A minute later, Calvin watched the gate roll open, and Andra rode out at the head of a unit of hundreds of cavalrymen, aiming for the metal machine rolling toward the wall.

That gigantic, dinged plow was starting to look a lot more fierce as it rumbled closer and closer to the brick wall.

The Ilethans knew what the cavalry was aiming for, so they put a wall of bodies between the royal guard and the machine, but they charged through them effortlessly, creating a spreading wake of gore as they drove through the mass of Ilethans.

Cal watched as Andra cut her way to the machine, removing the cannons with steel-rending swings of her sword. He cheered along with everyone else as she began taking apart the machine, sending up a shower of sparks as she cut her way into the massive beast.

Her royal guards were holding the rabble of Ilethans away from the machine, giving her time to work. Even in the worst case, the cannons had been removed, so at least they wouldn’t have to deal with –

Cal’s thoughts were interrupted as Ella tapped him insistently on the shoulder. He turned to face the Genosian, but whatever she said was lost in the cheering.

She grabbed his head and spun it around to face the opposite direction, painfully wrenching his neck. What he saw to the north made him forget about the pain.

A silver creature with a teardrop body and four long, bladed legs was moving sinuously along the wall, butchering the cheering soldiers before they had a chance to mount any kind of defense.

Oh, look, it’s a ATHK 600, That stands for all-terrain hunter-killer six hundred, by the way. Those blades can fold back into wings and it can sustain flight indefinitely. Calvin heard a tongue click in his mind. I’m still so proud of them.

You made those!?

Just a bit of the AI work, and the suggestion for the teardrop shape. It took the whole team to really make it come together.

It was mincing soldiers at an astonishing rate as it approached them.

“To the left! Cal shouted with everything he had, straining his voice painfully, and kicking the men to either side of him as he drew his shortsword “Swords out!”

Andra and all the strongest fighters were preoccupied with the wall-crushing machine, and now they had to deal with this monster alone.

Here’s the trick.

You sure we can’t just bail?