“Alright, stand back, I’ve never done this before.”

Calvin and Kala were standing on a rooftop on the west side of town, after evading several guard patrols and finally getting a bit of breathing room.

I still can’t believe she’s making me do this.

Calvin shook his head with a sigh, and held his hand out.

Calvinian summoning.

Heart of the swarm.

Give me a big one.

10/11 Bent remaining.

Heart of the swarm didn’t specifically forbid controlling one giant summon, did it?

Calvin fell the strangest sensation as he was literally ejected from his body through his palm. He glanced down with the last of his fading vision and saw his legs being consumed by a swirl of green flames. His feet were already gone.

I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with this.

Calvin’s sight was occluded by a whirl of green mist for a moment, then it went away, revealing something he’d never imagined.

The entire world had been split into thousands of pictures, each one at a slightly different angle, allowing him to see everything, in every direction. Behind him, in front of him, his back itself was visible, and it was…waspy

So far so good. He directed his attention to his feet, which were giant claws slowly sinking into the wood of the roof. He experimentally flexed and unflexed each of his six legs. It was an odd feeling.

Calvin had half-expected to be completely unable to process the new body, but it was strangely comfortable.

The spell is probably leashing your control through the wasp’s Kinesthetics. You can still hear me, right?

I can still hear you, Calvin thought, trying and failing to roll his eyes.

“By the gods,” he heard Kala say. He was pretty sure it was Kala anyway. Her voice sounded weird and tinny through his antennae. He smelled her from the same place, too, which was even weirder.

She smelled delicious.

Hmmm…. Well, she normally smells delicious, but in a different way.

He focused his attention on her, and went stock still. She was rather small. Calvin set one of his forelegs forward experimentally, and compared its length to hers.

Everything Calvin was seeing lead him to believe that this particular body was much, much bigger than a guar.

Course it is, Wasps need to be light, so your size compared to your mass is always gonna be high. My biggest questions are, how are you breathing right now, and can you fly?

Calvin took some careful steps away from Kala and fluttered his new wings experimentally. He felt a bit of strain as the muscles fell into the well-worn pattern. The handful of flutters with the massive insectile wings sent dust scattering off the top of the roof and caused Kala’s yellow dress to billow in the wind.

Calvin put a tiny bit more effort into it, and felt his limbs leave the surface of the rooftop. Easier than I thought. He hovered in place, did some experimental back and forth, side to side, up and down, before he was satisfied that he had a grasp of the method of flight.

Hmm… energy must be derived from the spell itself, rather than oxygen. It makes sense, seeing as you’re in a constructed body with a time limit, and all. The scratch of pencil on paper carried on in the corner of Calvin’s mind.

Would you mind diving under water and seeing if you need to breathe?

Can’t stay on this rooftop all day, Calvin thought, ignoring his passenger and landing in front of Kala, who was holding her clothes together against the gusts of wind.

He reached out a forelimb and began scrawling in the solid wood.

Can’t speak. Ready?

“I’m ready.” Kala said.

Calvin carefully picked Kala up, carrying her in a cage of limbs as he lifted off the ground. With a little finagling, he was able to avoid poking her with his sharp claws and thorned limbs, taking off into the sky.

“Gods, son of an absent mother!” Kala princess-cursed as she was lifted straight into the air. she shifted a little bit, and his leg-thorns came into contact with her. “Ow, you’re poking me!”

Wasp limbs weren’t designed for friendly carries. He couldn’t exactly put her down either, as they were approaching fifty feet above the ground already. Calvin was trying to adjust when Kala made it a moot point, seemingly without fear as she grabbed one of his thick forelimbs and swung herself up and over with incredible strength, avoiding his wings to land on his back, right between them.

“That’s better,” She sighed, her legs clamping down around his sides, her dress crumpling up around her thighs. It was strangely comfortable.

“I’ve got a Ride Skill!” She shouted over the thrumming of his wings as they continued their assent. “Do your worst!”

Well, she asked for it, Calvin thought. He watched his childhood friend from every angle, committing the panoramic view of her grin to memory. Once she got a good hold on him, Calvin took off, putting on real speed.

Kala let out a shout of pure excitement as they shot forward while rising further and further up. The safest place for them right now was so high in the sky that no one could make them out against the backdrop of stars. Just a single wink.

It only took half a minute to rise so high that the guardsmen searching the city for the princess were the size of ants. Then another fifteen seconds before they couldn’t see them at all, just tiny glimmering lights form their torches.

Once Calvin had achieved the height he’d wanted, he pushed forward at full speed, his wings subtly altering their pattern with no more than a thought.

“It’s Fff- darn cold up here, I should have worn riding leathers!” Kala said, shivering against the wind. “And goggles!”

Or not come at all. Not much I can do about that, he thought, keeping an eye on the ground sliding away beneath them. He was moving so fast that going all the way to the Iron Skin tribe for a bottle of Noeula might be an option with another cast or two. Assuming he could find them.

Once they were sufficiently over the woods, far enough that he didn’t forsee the Ilethan army hearing the hum of his approach, Calvin descended to the forest floor. As seamless as the takeoff and flying had been, the landing was an entirely different story.

As a one thousand one hundred and fifty pound animal the length of two guar nose to tail, finding a place to land was a challenge.

Calvin descended and put his legs down on the highest tree in the canopy, only to have the whole thing tilt wildly beneath his massive weight, careening him off to the side.

Agh, crap! He thought, nearly flipping over backwards as Kala grabbed his fuzzy carapace and leaning in close, squeezing her eyes shut. His wings began to shred themselves against the treetops, and the roots of the tree he landed on started to creak out of the ground. Calvin realized that it was a good time to leave.

Calvin dismissed the spell, his scattered vision returning to his typical two-eyed one as he reconstituted in the center of mass of his wasp swarm of one in a cloud of glowing green mist.

Interestingly enough, the center of mass of his wasp swarm was directly between Kala’s legs, and the two of them dropped out of the air, her thighs locked tight around his midsection.

Cal reached out for a branch, and the wound in his abdomen sent a jolt of pain through him, causing him to miss his grip.

Ah, damn, I forgot about that. An hour as an unwounded bug made him forget a few basic facts.

Calvin grunted in pain as Kala caught a branch, arresting their fall some twenty feet above the forest floor.

“One second,” she said, shifting his limp body into her other arm rather than between her legs. Calvin threw an arm over her shoulder as she lowered both of them to the ground by digging her fingers and toes into the jungle tree’s thick bark.

“Here we are.” Kala said, gently setting the two of them on the ground.

“My thanks,” Calvin said, picking a branch off the ground and using it as a cane.

Look at it this way, now we know that your clothes don’t disappear when you use Heart of the Swarm, Elliot said.

That was a possibility!? Calvin thought, glancing down at his clothes and belt, still with him, thankfully. In his belt was the clear sack of black ooze.

Doi.

First thing’s first, the Noeula.

“I need to look for something before we go rescue Baroke.” Calvin said.

“That’s what we’re doing?” Kala asked.

“You didn’t know?”

“You didn’t tell me.” She shrugged. “What are you looking for?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to stab you,” Calvin said, holding up his hand as Kala gave him a cute scowl.

Calvinian summoning.

Heart of the swarm.

9/11 Bent Remaining.

Calvin once again dissolved into the air, but this time his perception was much more… spread out, like he’d become some kind of cloud of awareness, aware of the way everything looked and smelled and tasted within an ever-expanding radius reaching thousands of feet out.

He could move around inside it too…kind of shift where he wanted to be more present, and the swarms moved to make it so. He wasn’t seeing out of the eyes of all of them at once as it was seamlessly stitched together into a seamless whole.

A hundred thousand palm sized wasps went searching in every direction for the deadly insect on his shopping list, relying on their sense of sight and smell. Joyaga were more active at night, and it was common practice to hunt them during the day while they slept, but for Calvin, the night was the only shot he was going to get.

That and the Joyaga wouldn’t be able to resist going after a wasp or two.

In no less than fifteen minutes, one of the wasps on the edge of his senses was ambushed, it’s vision snuffed out with a tiny prick of pain at the edge of his consciousness.

I can feel them. Interesting.

Calvin directed the nearby parts of the swarm to home in on the destroyed wasp, and sure enough, a Joyaga was cleaning its poisonous forelimbs above a wasp dissolving into green goop.

The giant centipede matched the ones he saw in the freezer perfectly.

At Calvin’s nudge, the swarm nearest it surrounded the Joyaga. The creature seemed almost affronted at being attacked, since its lethal venom usually kept other creatures at bay. After being roused into anger, it fought valiantly, killing five or ten of Calvin’s large wasps by poisoning them and crushing them.

It wasn’t enough.

In short order, the Joyaga was dead, and Calvin had their scent.

The swarm dispersed and in about an hour, found six other of the many-legged creatures by narrowing in on their smell and forcing them out of hiding before piling on them and biting them to death. Calvin didn’t want to mix the wasp poison into whatever Ella was planning on cooking up.

About that, I have an idea what the recipe is, Elliot said.

Really?

I’ll bet you that the Joyaga venom’s molecules interacts with the Nannites in a way that makes them de-specialized. Wipes their programming. Once they’ve been de-specialized, a person can drink them, and the nannites think to themselves, ‘hey, this is the kind of body we’re supposed to repair,’ and then they go to work. A healing potion. Hah.

So we could make it? Calvin thought, his mind turning to his stomach wound.

Definitely not. There’s probably a catalyst or trick that we’re not aware of. A specific temperature, a certain amount of salt…what have you. Trying to drink it without doing that step would be a very bad idea, tantamount to drinking two poisons at the same time, rather than the Noeula.

Damn.

Calvin’s swarm gathered around the seven Joyaga and hauled them to Kala, who was sitting on a fallen log, waiting patiently with perfect posture. Calvin took the opportunity to study her in more depth while she sat there, the curve of her neck, her delicate shoulder, her slim waist…

“I can see you, you know,” She said, above the buzzing of wasps bringing their prey back, causing Calvin to direct his attention towards her face, using the wasp’s eyes to study her.

She met his gaze.

What the hell?

Calvin paid more attention to her from some of the wasps on her other side, and she shifted her gaze to look directly at him again, pinning him down with her eyes.

This is weird.

Pretty sure that’s not normal.

Calvin dumped the corpses in one spot before he created a thick circle of wasps a hundred feet wide, with the eye just beside Kala.

He dismissed the spell.

Calvin opened his eyes, staggered at how little he could perceive with just the two. He glanced over, and sure enough, he was standing beside Kala.

That told him that if he needed to escape, he could separate his wasps into groups and head every direction, creating some excellent shenanigans.

Reminds me of Dracula, except with bats and rats, it’s wasps.

Who’s Dracula?

Don’t worry about it, you didn’t take the other Abilities, so you should be fine…probably.

Calvin shook off the comment and stuffed the dead Joyaga in a sack, especially careful not to touch them directly. He didn’t want to end everything here from a moment of carelessness.

“So, how are you, the princess of Gadvera, going to help me sneak into the enemy camp?” Calvin asked, cinching the leather sack full of highly poisonous corpses closed.

“Baroke will be on the north side of the camp, in with the conscripts,” she said with complete certainty. “In a slightly charred tent with a blue saddle beside it.”

“How do you know that?” Calvin asked, frowning. Was she just bullshitting him, or did she know something about how Ilethan camps were put together? Even if she knew that, the details were far too specific.

Kala shrugged his question off, idly popping a mushroom into her mouth. Her eyes were black as night, pupils dilated completely.

“I have my ways. Now go get your friend, you adorable walking abomination. I’ll be just fine here, I’ll catch up once my teeth have grown enough for me to walk along them without slipping.”

Well, she’s high as balls.

“And tell you…your friend he doesn’t scare me anymore.” Kala said leaning drunkenly as she pointed at Calvin. “He can’t, anymore. He-he’s the reason for all this, you know, you’re… he’s a…sky-man that didn’t play nice with the toybox, made all the other sky-men get in their glass bottles and fly away...wounded Soscath. I’m just going to lay down.”

Totally out of her gourd. We should ignore everything she says and make sure to grab some water from the Ilethan camp. She’s going to need to rehydrate.

Okay, Sky-man.

You don’t believe her inane mushroom ramblings, do you?

Lemme see, Calvin thought as he carefully tucked the limp Kala in a nook beside the bag of Joyaga. Nothing would come near their smell.

She can literally see you. She knows exactly where Baroke is,

Alledgedly.

And she can see my focus when I’m dissolved into the swarm. At this point I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Hearsay, sheer unbridled hearsay.

Calvin chuckled to himself as he took off his Gadveran clothes. Part two of the plan was somewhat familiar.

Once Calvin got within spitting distance of the north side of the camp, he could make out the men on watch, backlit by they fires behind them. He crouched low.

One of the Guys.

Calvin’s body shifted, crackling and popping under his skin as his body rearranged itself.

In seconds, his skin paled, his jaw and forehead shifted subtly to reflect the most common Ilthan facial features, and he gained two inches of painful height in his legs and torso.

Must suck to be below average. Elliot said with a hint of smugness.

I’m still growing, Calvin thought, creeping forward, doing his damndest to remain silent as the watchmen stared out into the darkness he dwelt in.

After a long while watching and waiting, there was a commotion off to the side, something to do with soup. Calvin walked straight through the hole in the guard, his stomach clenching as he integrated with the rest of the camp.

Just another Ilethan in his underwear with a stomach wound, nothing to see here.

“Hey!”

Crap.

“Yes?” Calvin said in his best Ilethan accent.

“Why --- you ------- ------- -------- Clothes?” A young man asked. the Ilethan was standing with a hand cocked on his hip, watching him curiously.

Calvin didn’t need to understand all the words to get what he was saying.

“Sergeant.” Calvin said. Being harassed by upper management seemed to be a universal truth.

“ah, - --- ----- ---“ the man gave him a friendly smile and pointed to the west.

“Thank you.” Calvin guessed, then kept on going, until he found an empty tent with some pants inside it. He snagged the pants and put them on as quickly as he could, but left his bandaged wound highly visible. It would prevent people from asking him to do things.

On the way past a mess table, he saw an empty box, unattended. He picked it up, closed it and carried it along, just a wounded courier forced to do legwork by his sadistic superior.

Calvin scoured the north, the people gradually growing less Ilethan, until he found the tent he was looking for, a small white tent that seemed to have temporarily caught fire once. There was a damaged blue guar saddle in the middle of being polished in front of it, and most tellingly, giant brown feet sticking out of the bottom of the tent.

She got lucky.

Calvin bent low and swept the tentflap out of the way, his eyes straining in the dark to make out his friend.

“Baroke? Baroke, is that you?”

A light snore was cut short with a rumbling snort and the large Gadveran sat up, his face coming into the light. It was Baroke, but there was a solid steel band around the crown of his head, and he was giving Calvin a furious glare.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want any more of your tricks. Just leave me be.”

“I’m here to get you out,” Calvin whispered, beckoning. “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

Baroke lunged forward, leaping out of his bedroll, his massive hands clamping around Calvin’s neck.

“You think this is funny!?” he demanded, throttling Calvin.

“It’s meee.” Calvin croaked, undoing his mutation. His breath barely passed through his windpipe as Baroke shook him like a rag doll, his eyes brimming with tears.

In a matter of seconds Calvin went back to his original look as he was shaken back and forth. Baroke stopped for a second, allowing blood to flow back to Calvin’s head as he took a deep breath.

“No, you’re not Calvin. This is another trick to get in my head!” He started throttling Calvin again, and they were right back to where they started.

“You’re…the…brains…” Calvin gasped, poking Baroke. “I’m…the…brawn.” He pointed to himself with a shaking finger as he felt his eyes bulging in his skull.

“What in the abyss?” Baroke dropped Calvin in place and scuttled away from him, studying him like a poisonous snake. “Abyss? Is it really you? It can’t be you.” Baroke picked up a nearby rock, hefting it over his head. “No, it can’t be.”

“It’s me,” Calvin said between coughs, holding up his hand. “We beat the village record by a landslide.”

Baroke dropped the rock before seizing calvin’s shoulders and studying him. “How are you still alive? How did you get here? Did they capture you too? Why did you look like a Ilethan. Wait. It must be a trick!” He went back for his rock.

“Stop trying to brain me!” Calvin shouted, slapping Baroke across the cheek. Of course, it nearly hurt Calvin more than his massive friend. “I want to get you out of here. Let’s go.”

Baroke set his rock aside and gave Calvin an appraising stare. “I can’t. this,” he tapped the band on his skull. Calvin could make out a tiny bit of crusted blood under the iron circlet.

“It wont let me leave, and when Master Reilly uses it, I become a puppet. Even if you dragged me out of here, he could use me to kill you and send my ass tromping back. You get out of here if you can…if you really are Calvin.”

“Well shit, let’s take it off, then!” Calvin said, reaching for the band.

“It won’t come off!” Baroke said, batting Calvin’s hands away from his head. “Unless the control ring is turned off, The spikes don’t come out.”

Calvin leaned back, considering.

“Who’s got the control ring? This Reilly guy?”

“Yeah,” Baroke said, nodding. “He’s got mine and others.”

Idea.

“Baroke, you gather up everyone on Reilly’s leash and pick a good spot to make a run to the east, into the forest. I’m going to go cause a little chaos. Should help you escape.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“Nah, I thrive on chaos.” Calvin said

One of the guys.

Baroke stared as Calvin’s guise shifted again. A bit darker skinned because he was on the conscript side of the camp, but it would have to do.

“What the hell are you?” Baroke breathed, staring at his rippling bones and muscles.

I’m bat man.

Shaddap.

“Rude. I’m the guy saving your ass, which means you’ll owe me throughout the known universe until the end of time.”

“Well, you sound like Calvin,” Baroke said, getting up. “I’ll do it, but don’t take forever.”

Cal gave him a grin and stepped outside, limping his way back toward the main camp.

“Where Reilly?” Calvin asked the nearest guy with rank, clutching his empty box like it had all the most important secrets in the world.

Acting has reached Level 8!

Acting Level 8: Behave exactly as you intend. Convey emotion naturally. 40% correction.

The ilethan glanced at him, raised a brow, and pointed.

“Nadia and ----- --- are --- --- --“

“Thank you,” Calvin said with a nod, continuing on his way.

***Nadia***

“And I’m saying that your program to use talented Gadverans just isn’t paying dividends, Reilly.” Nadia said. “Not a single confirmed kill from your entire division.”

“They’ve had hundreds of confirmed kills, the greying man said with a snarl. “Almost ten per man. A damn sight better than your foot soldiers.”

“Let me rephrase that.” Nadia said, rolling her eyes. “They haven’t had a single confirmed kill of anyone important, which is what I was promised. Why am I not getting what I was promised, Reilly?”

“There have only been two targets of interest thus far, milady. Give them time.”

“Give them food, more like. They are eating our soldier’s food, and contributing very little.”

Reilly clenched his ring-studded fists, covered with the control bands to dozen men. They called him the Puppeteer for a reason. Many people were afraid of the dark robed, gaunt man, but he leaned far too heavily on his toys, and was barely passable as a sorcerer.

Suddenly the command tent opened, revealing a young man with a box and bandages along his stomach.

Rather well-toned stomach, I might add. Nadia thought appreciatively. He looked mixed-blooded, but the hint of Gadveran added a bit of exoticness to his perfect features.

Mmnn. How long’s it been? I might have to command him to stick around after the old fart is gone.

“Reilly?” the young man asked.

“What do you want?” Reilly demanded, turning to face him.

“For you.” The young man held out the box, and Reilly took it, opening the wood slats to reveal…nothing.

“What is the-“ The old man’s indignant question was interrupted by a dagger plunging down into his eye. Reilly hadn’t even begun to fall when the assassin’s eyes turned to her. There was a tiny hint of enjoyment lurking in there somewhere that send a shiver down her spine.

All thoughts of enjoying herself lost, Nadia drew her shortsword as her handmaiden ducked under the bed. She’d dealt with assassins before.

The assassin moved on to her smoothly despite his limp, swinging the dagger toward her core with the expressionlessness of utter concentration.

He stepped inside her range in a fraction of a second, showing all the hallmarks of a highly trained fighter, preventing her from getting a full swing on him.

Suddenly the two of them were face-to-face, the sadistic enjoyment lurking deep in those eyes giving her a rush of excitement.

“Your army?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

“Mine.” She snarled back.

“Good.”

He made to break her nose with his forehead, a decidedly non-Ilethan move, and she slid around his strike, dragging her sword across his stomach, aiming to disembowel him, a move that had been drilled into her since childhood.

He followed her blade with his own, twisted with her, staying close enough for their skin to touch, to feel his breath on her cheek, like they were dancing.

Nadia could tell he was weaker than her, and he was wounded. He might be good at fighting, but he was at a tremendous disadvantage against a noblewoman with Eight Breaks.

She aimed a swift punch at his wounded side, which had just been cleared by following her lead. Her fist erupted in pain, and she forgot herself for a fraction of a second to look at it.

His wounded waist had literally sprouted a blade that split her fist in half.

When she looked up, the man’s blade was already flashing downward, that expressionlessness still hiding his delight.

“Wai-“

The knife bit deep into her neck, and as she raised her hands, it pulled back out and sank into her eye.

Everything went white.

..

….

Calvin heaved a sigh, holding his aching stomach with a groan as he limped over to the black-robed man, pulling each ring off his finger one by one and flipping the tiny metallic switches, presumably releasing Baroke and others.

His veins sang with the adrenaline of victory, turning his arms and legs trembly. It was starting to get easier. Killing, that was. There was a primal exultation in complete power over the enemy that he hadn’t gotten anywhere else.

Hopefully sex is better.

It’s better.

Calvin glanced back at the young woman wearing the tight Ilethan leathers that accented her femininity. He couldn’t let the commander of the army get a shot off on him. She was stronger and faster than him, but a teeny bit clumsy and inexperienced in a life or death fight.

I’m not really, either.

More than her, now.

Cal finished with the man’s rings and picked up his stick before heading out of the tent.

Calvin held his hand out.

Now to make some chaos.

Calvinian Summoning.

***Nadia***

Nadia climbed out from under the bed, surveying the damage: Her Mind-Slaved handmaiden was dead, the commander of the special unit was gone, and if her ears didn’t betray her, the entire camp was filled with wasps.

The coldness, the brutality of that young man…

He’s just my type!

She clapped her hands together in excitement.

***Calvin***

Your Princess is in another Castle has reached level 2!

Your Princess is in Another Castle level 2: 10% Correction.

What in the Abyss triggered that? Calvin thought as he walked unharmed through the cloud of insects, dodging flailing ilethans.

You got me, man.