“Okay, here we go,” Calvin said, focusing on himself, mentally drawing a tight bubble around his entire body.

He’d tried copying bugs and small animals when he had first gotten Dupdomancy, and he knew the results were living copies, but he’d never thought he’d be using it on himself.

He’d never really wanted to, considering that the copy would only last an hour, along with a total lack of ability to cast spells. That and the question of whether or not Calvin was ripping his copy from some other plane of reality and dooming it to an ignoble death.

Regular stuff.

He didn’t have the luxury of being squeamish anymore. He needed bait, and Calvin was damn sure that he was the most appetizing bait he could possibly throw out there.

Splitting

7/15 Bent remaining.

****

The world flickered, and everything moved about five feet toward Calvin.

“What? Did I mess up?” he muttered, frowning. He wanted to make a copy, not teleport, which was a whole different thing.

“Nope,” a young man’s voice came from behind him.

A tingle of apprehension worked its way down Calvin’s spine as he turned around to see himself, waving at him. He had just cast the spell, but he’d cast it for the copy to be standing in front of him.

If it was a copy, it would copy everything, along with the memories of casting the spell.

“Son of a Kranka, let me guess,” Calvin said as dread began settling into his bones. “I’m the copy.”

“We’re a very smart guy.” Calvin said, looking him up and down before holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you, me.”

“Likewise,” Calvin said with less enthusiasm then he thought.

“Something wrong?” the original asked with a frown.

“I was just standing over there, thinking how clever I was, and now I’ve got…Just over an hour to live.” The spell was going to end in approximately sixty four minutes, and what happened to him then? Calvin the Copy could only assume that he would cease to exist. Permanently. As in, die.

Calvin the copy had lived nearly seventeen years, only to die tonight, a virgin.

Unless you count some of those shenanigans with Kort’s mom and girlfriend, but I don’t think they count. Probably. And the blindfold incident. I’m not really sure what that was. Or even who. Okay, so maybe not technically a virgin, but I’d still like to have seen what I was doing.

“Huh.” Calvin original said, weighing him with his gaze. His eyes went vacant, and he tilted his head to the side like he was listening to something. It was kind of creepy.

“Elliot says you and I share the same soul, and once you’re done with your piece, it’ll return to me.”

“Is he just saying that to make me feel better?” Clone Calvin asked suspiciously. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with what he saw from the outside of his relationship with Elliot.

This is an opportunity to do something about the man in my head. Clone Calvin realized. When he was back in his original body, every thought was monitored, but like this, there was no way Elliot could tell what he was thinking.

Hopefully.

“No idea, but he usually seems to know what he’s talking about. In any case,” he said, glancing out at the mass of Ilethan soldiers marching down the road. “We’ve got a few minutes before we have to start operation Cross-Dresser, why don’t you tell me what it feels like to be a copy?”

“Why?” Copy Calvin asked before it occurred to him in a flash of insight.

“Because the next copy will only benefit from the original’s memory of events.” They both said at the same time, with the same cadence, before squinting at each other in the same way, then breaking into an identical laugh.

“You think I can borrow two or three Calvins later?” Ella asked eyeing the two of them as she shrugged in her armor to make sure it was on right. “I need…help with something.”

“If you pay for them, sure.” Calvin said with a smirk, shaking his head.

“Come to think of it,” Copy Calvin said with a sudden inspiration. “I want to write the next copy a note.”

“Why?” It was Ella and Calvin’s turn to echo each other.

“I wanna see whether memories transfer from copy to copy at all.”

Calvin frowned. They both were pretty confident they wouldn’t, but it wasn’t a problem to try testing it.

“Sure, here.” He pulled his notebook out with a pen and handed it to Copy Calvin.

“Now make sure you don’t read this, just hand it to the next copy.” Copy Calvin said as he began jotting his thoughts down.

“We’re not an idiot,” Calvin said, rolling his eyes.

Am I a little shit? Copy Calvin thought eyeing himself.

“Easy with the sarcasm, captain,” Copy Calvin said, directing his attention back to the paper.

Fellow copy, away from the watchful eye of Elliot I have realized that we have an excellent opportunity to gain some kind of advantage against him without him reading our intentions, for he is surely going to betray us one day.

Do whatever life or death mission you and Calvin have in mind for you, but don’t forget to advance our cause. Start a notebook and leave it with someone or something trustworthy, and whatever you do, don’t allow Calvin to read it, because the creature inside him sees whatever he sees.

“There you go,” Copy Calvin said, tearing the note out casually and folding it tight before handing it to Ella.

“What, why are you giving it to me?” She asked, glancing down at the paper.

“I’d be tempted to look at it,” Clone Calvin said with a shrug.

“True, I wanna look at it right now,” Calvin said, nodding.

Ella shrugged and took the letter, opened it and scanned the contents.

“I can’t read Gadveran.” She said with a shrug.

“Excellent.”

“Alright,” Calvin said, clapping his hands together once the note had changed hands. “Tell me what it’s like to be you. I’ve gotta mentally prepare myself for the next time I do it.”

“Well, in short, it sucks.”

“Do tell.”

***Brendan Moore***

“There it is, the little bastard’s middle finger to us,” he said, resting his hands on the guar’s saddlehorn as he overlooked the hastily-constructed fort that had effectively cut them off from their supply train. He had maybe three days of food left before things got dire. If The Wasp had dumped the supplies into the ocean, he was screwed by default.

Brendan didn’t see a situation where that wouldn’t happen.

“Sir, the men aren’t exactly excited to charge against an even bigger wall than last time with even less people.” Brendan’s lieutenant said, glancing nervously at the sheared logs jammed deep into the ground across the road.

“Well, it’s a good thing we’re not doing that, isn’t it?” he said, glancing over at the younger man.

“yessir.”

“Take the cavalry and any soldiers with a movement Skill above ten and circle around the fort. There’s no way he could have made a wall that stretches all the way to the mountain. Not here, anyway. And keep your eyes open for him running away like a coward again. If you see anything, ride him down and launch the fireworks. We’ll come to you.”

“Sir.”

The lieutenant rallied a unit of some five hundred men and peeled off into the jungle, the agile Guar darting through the underbrush, followed closely by the fastest soldiers in Brendan’s employ.

“As for the rest of you!” Brendan said, force to raise his voice now that his lieutenant was preoccupied. “Start building bonfires! And fast!”

He glanced over at Charlotte, who was busily carving a stick, glancing through a spyglass aimed at the wall.

“When can I expect you to be done with that?”

“Impatience is unbecoming of an officer,” Charlotte said, holding the stick up to the light and shaving a bit of the tip off to match the wall in front of her. It had been carved to look like the spiked logs that comprised the wall in front of them.

“The Voodoo skill is highly reliant on the accuracy of the Symbol. Every imperfection will decrease the transfer of energy between the Symbol and the Target, so the answer to your question is,” she made a careful cut and smoothed it with her thumb, “as long as it takes.”

“You didn’t bother being so careful when you tried casting it on his wasps.”

“Because his wasps were identical, obviously, causing a hundred percent transmission of energy,” She scoffed. “It’s not like that happens all the time. The only reason I’m bothering to try this now is because his Knick-Knack craftsmen are too good for their own good. The logs they cut and placed are so nearly identical that they should all be able to be affected by the same Voodoo spell.”

She peered through the spyglass again. “I’m guessing a thirty-five percent transmission, give or take.”

“Is that good enough?”

Charlotte glanced over at the small campfires started by his men that they were even then beginning to throw larger and larger wood on, slowly growing by the minute.

“Should be,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be done by the time the bonfires are big enough.”

“I’m expecting something impressive.” Brendan said, his arms crossed, causing a bit of pain from the wound in his side. He didn’t show it. It was a bad idea to show weakness around his aunt.

“You know me so well,” She said with a cunning smile. “Of course it will be impressive.”

Fifteen minutes later, she had the stick carved to her satisfaction.

Charlotte stood up, her white robes billowing in the ocean breeze. She took the result of her hard work and tossed it aside like so much garbage.

“Voodoo,” She said, pointing a finger at the stick.

Brendan’s aunt reached a hand out to the nearby bonfire, a hungry beast that had grown so strong it singed the hairs on his face if he so much as looked at it.

“Transference.”

The Bonfire went out, but that was the least impressive thing that happened.

The stick glowed white hot, bright enough to force Brendan to squint his eyes and shield his face as all the heat and light of an entire bonfire was concentrated down to the sisize of a man’s fist.

For a fraction of an instant, the walls of the fort in front of them glowed white hot, then the stick exploded violently, followed by the walls of the shoddy fort. One by one, the huge logs were rent asunder sending orange-hot flaming pieces of wood in every direction.

For once, Brendan and his men were far outside the radius of lethal fire.

“You could have done that at the last fort.” Brendan whispered as his men cheered, the sudden realization dawning on him.

“You seemed like you had some manly need to prove yourself. Far be it from me to interf-“

Brendan lashed out, surprising himself as he caught his great-aunt across the mouth with his gloved fist, sending the sorceress toppling to the ground with a stunned expression.

“Over a thousand lives!” He bellowed. “You could have-“

A second later, his body froze as she caught him in an Ilethan paralyzing spell, rendering him incapable of summoning the desire to move.

“You ungrateful little shit,” she hissed, her voice pitched just quiet enough that his distracted, celebrating men couldn’t hear.

“I came here as a favor to your mother, and without me you wouldn’t have any men left at all. Why? Because you are powerless and incompetent. I don’t need your ill-informed second-guessing, and if you ever touch me again, I’ll lock you in the bottom of the Den and turn you into a complete mockery of everything you believe in.”

Brendan chuckled, the only thing he was able to bring himself to do, his desire to move was so quelled.

Charlotte raised a brow.

“Speak.”

“Maybe you’ll make good on all your threats, Aunt. But you won’t forget getting punched.”

A hint of a smile crossed the sorceress’s split lip.

“Aah, looks like my great nephew is growing a pair. You remind me of my ex-husband sometimes.”

“Which one?” Brendan asked.

“The one I killed.”

“Makes sense.” Brendan took a deep breath, looking Charlotte in the eye. “Either do something or let me go. We’re losing the element of surprise as we speak. You still need us to catch him.”

“Not as much as you might think,” she said, eyeing him up and down before shrugging. The block between him and his will to move was lifted, and suddenly Brendan had control of his limbs again. “Off you go, make sure you do your job right and his Bent is empty before you give the signal.”

“How much do you think he’ll have?”

“At his age? Even a prodigy shouldn’t have more than twelve.”

“What if he’s like you?” Brendan asked. There was every possibility that The Wasp was far older than he looked.

“I would have known when we met him. He’s definitely a teen. Besides, men who’ve been around eighty years or longer like to look like they’re in their early to mid forties. The ideal balance of youth and authority.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Now go. I’ll keep the boy from roasting you alive.”

Brendan eyed his aunt one last time before sucking in a deep breath and giving the order to charge, straining his throat as he shouted.

Battlefield Command has reached level 8!

Battlefield Command: User is more clearly heard, and their intention more intuitively understood. 40% correction.

At least something good came out of this, Brendan thought as he led the charge.