***Ella***

“Here we are,” Grant said, tacking as they headed into the wind, gradually slowing down. “We’re not going to get much farther than this, put the brake on, will you?

Ella put her foot down on the brake in the back of the sled, jutting a steel spike into the ground. It was the only part of the sled that wasn’t glass or canvas.

The sled bucked a little, then gradually began to slow down as they came to a halt in front of the rocky desert outside the Cobalt mountains, big, towering orange slabs of rock in the distance, with a fortress nestled in the valley of two of them.

From this distance, it was almost hard to distinguish from the mountain itself, being made with the selfsame orange rock.

I wonder if my people could learn the glassworking technique from the Uleisans. As far as Ella knew glass was essentially made from stone, so why not glass the edges of rocks to mortar them together?

The biggest problem was that the first step glassworking technique wasn’t actually a secret, just difficult. She’d only had to ask around a bit to find out that they basically baked their younglings until they got Heat Resistance or Heat Control. If a person got Heat Control, they could go on to learn the skills to manipulate glass, but it was a low chance of happening.

Ella’s people…didn’t really care about the temperature.

She hadn’t even gotten a sunburn yet, like the pasty general. The exposed parts of the man’s skin looked like he’d been dipped in boiling oil.

“Here’s where we get off,” Grant said, tying the sails up and kicking the anchor off the side.

Maya hopped off the sled and stretched, her tiny form shrouded in a protective cloak to shield her from the heat. She bent down and took a handful of the orange-ish sand they’d been sailing through the last hour and rubbed it on her cloak.

She must be activating Camouflage, Ella thought as the hunter’s cloak turned an identical orange. The Hunting version, and not the Stealth Version.

“You gonna do something about that purple skin, or do I have to?” Maya asked giving her an antagonistic look.

Well, Ella thought it was an antagonistic look. She couldn’t really tell under the layers of cloth.

“I suppose,” Ella said, reaching into her mouth and seizing one of her older, ready-to-be-removed teeth.

Sacrifice.

12/17 Bent remaining.

Crack.

In a practiced motion, she removed a body part as a requirement of the spell, and imbued the removed part with a single unit of Bent. Genosians were better at this particular magic; they got more chances to use it.

“Oh, that is gross,” Maya recoiled as a bit of blood dribbled down Ella’s chin.

Aspect.

She visualized gaining the aspect of whatever the tooth was in, jammed it into the sand, and her body took on a rough, gritty texture, along with her skin brightening and changing color to sun-blasted sand.

The upside of the Skill was its combination of power and versatility. The downside was it took a few seconds to use, so it wasn’t very good in hand to hand combat, and most other races lost something permanent. Even Genosians couldn’t do it faster than once every two weeks or so, or risk damaging their teeth and gums.

“Happy?” Ella asked, spreading her arms and spitting out a bit of blood.

“Not exactly, but glad you’re not going to be sticking out like a sore thumb. How about you, Grant?”

“Light blindness.” Grant said, pointing up. “I’m going to hide in the sun.”

“You’re going to fly there in a couple minutes while we have to hike for hours, aren’t you?” Maya asked.

“Maybe.” Grant smirked as a couple swords from his myriad sheaths floated out and buried themselves under his feet. “I’ll meet you on that ridge.” He pointed toward a distinctive slab of stone that overlooked the distant fortress.

A moment later, the sword-dancer shot into the sky, toward the punishing sun.

“I hope your sunburn gets worse you bastard!” Maya shouted, shaking her fist.

“What are you worried about?” Ella asked, shrugging off her wraps. The aspect part of the spell didn’t include her clothes, unfortunately.

“Why are you getting naked!?”

“Because my skin looks and feels like sand?” Ella asked back, cocking her head to the side. “And I’m pretty sure I can’t get sunburns.”

What was the little ranger so upset about all the time?

“I shouldn’t have accepted this assignment. I’m the only normal one here. Grant’s crazy, you’re crazy.” Maya muttered as she began stalking off, looking like nothing more than a lump in the sand.

Ella grabbed her flail and strapped on her shield, slinging it across her chest before she took off after Maya, crawling to catch up.

According to Kala, now that the man had left, they could have ‘girl talk’, a uniquely Gadveran tradition that Ella had enjoyed immensely. Genosian women talked less about men, instead spending most of their time memorizing their history through song, mending clothes and tormenting captives with ritualistic taunting.

“So,” Ella said, coming up beside the slowly moving mound of sand.

“So what?” the sand asked.

“How’s it going with you and Baroke?”

The lump of sand froze in place before looking at her.

“What-we’re not a thing.”

“You two are of course a thing.” Ella said. “Kala and I spotted your…how you say…dalliance, with him two weeks ago.”

They were on their way to their own dalliance, but Maya didn’t need to know that part.

“That’s…How…You couldn’t have, we were…” Maya stopped talking for a moment. “You and the princess? My gods…”

“Are you two stalking Baroke? Is the princess? ‘Cuz I’ll…umm…” The lump of sand began trembling.

“No, no,” Ella waved her hand. “Neither of us want to take your massive…ummm..” Ella searched her slowly expanding Gadveran vocabulary. “Man-ride? He’s a little too…Ehhh…slow.”

“He’s not stupid!”

“Sure he’s not.” Ella patted Maya’s shoulder.

“He might not have a Mind like a noble, but he’s nice. He knows enough to…and he treats me…You know what? I’m not sure I wanna talk about this with you.”

“But it’s so much fun!” Ella said as they resumed sneaking toward the distant mountains.

“How about we talk about something other than men for the rest of the way to the mountain, pass the Bechdel test?”

“The Abyss is that?”

“It’s a rule of thumb they use in plays to – agh, nevermind, you’re just forbidden from talking about men, okay?”

Ella didn’t know what Maya was talking about, so she went for the first thing that came to mind.

“Um…Princess Kala is a surprisingly bad kisser?”

Maya snorted into the sand and slammed her tiny fist into the ground, sending up a little puff of dust where they were sneaking forward.

“Oh, gods, that’s funny,” she said between chuckles. “Let’s get off the subject of relationships in general.”

“Isn’t that how you ‘girl-talk’?” Ella asked.

“Maybe if you’re a deeply sexually repressed princess with a serious hard-on for excitement.” Maya said, her hooded form glancing over at her. “You ever try archery?”

“All Genosians learn archery, but between my chest filling out and learning to be a Maje, it kind of…fell away from me.”

“That’s too bad.” Maya said, looking up at the mountain in front of them. “I find these moments of crystalline serenity when I’m drawing a bow, where my whole being is focused on the tip of an arrow. I can’t get enough of it.”

Ella didn’t understand all of her words, but she got the general idea of it, and they continued on in silence as she was searching herself for something that felt similar.

Being the executor of Calvin’s will felt like that, but she wasn’t allowed to talk about men, soo….

“By the way, please don’t ever mention the words ‘deeply, sexually, and repressed’ to the princess of my country. Especially not with my name included.”

“You got it.”

***

Hours later, they made it to the massive ledge of the mountain, where Grant had set himself up a little camp with three chairs made from piles of rock overlooking the fortress, along with a small fire to fight off the high altitude cold, and little embankment of stone to shelter them from the worst of the wind.

He’d been there a while.

“Check this out,” Grant said, pulling a small filigreed spyglass with the Uleisan national symbol stamped on it out of his jacket before handing it to Maya.

“Dear gods,” Maya said quietly as she overlooked the fortress.

“You may have been wondering why you didn’t run into any Cobalts on the way here.” Grant said, pulling a stone away from the fire and using it to warm his hands. “That would be why.”

Maya handed the spyglass to Ella.

Ella, familiar with the magic tube, put it up to her eye and oriented it on the fortress.

The orange stone fortress was manned by humans, surprisingly. The walls were patrolled by no less than a hundred Uleisans, with many more inside taking care of the day to day operations of the fortress.

It took Ella a few moments to find a cobalt. They were blue, hunched over creatures with a basically humanoid shape, backs that blended seamlessly with their necks, and rather large foreclaws. Their skin was mottled, darker in some places, lighter in others, even turning green in patches. On their back they sported hundreds dozens of tiny blue spines, smaller than a finger, and a handful the length of a palm.

The rest ended abruptly close to the skin.

Matter of fact…

Ella spotted a cobalt with longer spines strapped into some kind of bed, quills being snipped with a thick steel tool by a callus soldier. There was a bit of blood dripping down the creature’s shoulder.

“I’ll give you good odds the cobalts aren’t a fan of that arrangement.” Grant said as Ella watched them pack up crates filled with their own spines under the direction of the ulesian mercenaries. Others were in cages.

“What do we do?”

“Calvin sent us here to get the lay of the land, figure out how long it would take for Storm-Stretch to bounce back after losing a couple shipments, but this here, this is a fucking juicy piece of information.”

“How so?” Ella asked.

“Cobalt trade is centralized. The business that dictates a huge piece of Uleis’s gross domestic product, is all there, in one neat, easy to smash location. This is the kind of thing countries would pay dearly to know.”

“So are we going to help them?”

“Help who?” Grant asked with a frown.

“The Cobalts?” Ella asked, throwing Maya a curious glance.

“Oh yeah, in a manner of speaking. Just not here, or now. Anything that vital to a country’s infrastructure is bound to have more than one Legend guarding it, probably Bent users as well. I can take Veterans, but Legends are a whole different Cussak game. That’s a coin toss.”

“When, then? I saw one of them get killed!” Maya said.

Anyone else here have more than five Breaks?” Grant asked, raising his hand. “Battles where tens of thousands of people spilled Warp into the air? Show of hands.”

“Four,” Maya said with a sigh.

“Five.” Ella said. Same number as Calvin.

A burst of light dazzled Ella’s eyes as one of Grant’s swords interposed itself between him and a hurtling glass bolt, partially disintegrating in the process.

“Wha-“

Iron Skin.

12/17 Bent remaining

Ella instinctively donned Iron Skin and threw herself over their weakest link. A glass bolt ricocheted off Ella’s shoulder, and another one buried itself in her right arm, where it was interposed in front of Maya’s neck.

“Seven!” a cheery voice shouted from further up the mountain.

***Calvin***

Calvin opened his eyes, and immediately had mixed feelings. Sure Kala was sitting beside him, but the light in the wall sconces was actually painful.

“Are you okay? You passed out right in the middle of the party and wouldn’t respond to stimulus. We even poked you with a pin.” Kala said.

“I can tell,” Calvin said, wincing as he tested the tip of his finger. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the level of light, reluctantly, even.

I didn’t get unlucky and turn into a vampire, did I?

No, no, It’s just the Mesmerizing Eye isn’t playing nicely with the night-vision you stole with 7th,8th,9th Sense. Turns out the freakin’ description doesn’t mention a night vision enhancement for the mutation, so I’m jettisoning the Bakkun eyesight you stole. You might feel a little…discomfort, and possible…shedding of the pupils.

What!?

The ache in his eyeballs redoubled, causing Calvin to groan and cup his palms over his eyes.

“I think I’ll be okay,” Calvin said, through the pain, keeping his palms over his eyes.

“You don’t seem okay.”

“I’m not right now, but I will be soon.” He said, taking away his palm to glance at Kala.

She radiated light from her veins where the black Bent coursed through her body.

Well, that’s weird. Make people have a harder time sneaking, I guess.

“Elani, you don’t look good. Your eyes are bleeding.” Kala said, dabbing a bit of blood off his face and showing it too him.

“How long have you been away from the party?” Calvin asked.

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“You need to get back out there and tell them I’m sleeping off something…” Calvin paused as the pain in his eye peaked again. “Something legal, I guess. Then continue your business.”

“But you’re – ”

“I’ll be fine,” Calvin said. “This is just something that happens. I don’t think there’s anything you can do for me.”

A handy might make you both feel better. She’d probably spring for it.

I’m going to ignore that.

Crap, he’s in too much pain for his libido. Not a good sign, Dr. Spencer.

Good point.

“Actually, come to think of it,” Calvin said with a grin. “A handy might make me feel better.”

“You can’t be hurting that bad then.” Kala said with a chuckle, standing. “I’m gonna go back to the party, but I’m gonna check up on you every twenty minutes or so, okay?”

“You sure? We probably got time.”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Kala said, kissing him on the forehead before she left.

You have learned well, young padawan. You got an I-O-U AND got rid of her. I’m impressed.

As soon as her footsteps disappeared all the way down the hall, Cal lost all his composure.

“Agh, my fucking eyes are separating from my head!” Calvin screamed into the pillow, rolling over and scrubbing his painful, itchy eyes with his nails.

Now you know why the System knocks you out with Mutations.

“Can’t you make it do that?”

This is a manual dump…sooo…no. Bit of an oversight on my part. Apologies.

There was a startled shout and the clattering of glass.

What was that?

Well, dumping the mutation caused a recalculation of your mutations that kinda threw it out of whack…and there’s a bit of a cascade…organ failure…type thing…so I’m gonna need to focus for a minute. Do me a favor and trigger Medi-tate on your end, would ya?

Calvin pushed the extreme pain, itching, and now Nausea away and retreated inside himself, triggering the healing mutation.

That’s much better.

Make sure you take deep breaths…okay..don’t panic, but I need you to summon Nadia for some See Pee Arrr.

What’s that? Calvin thought, his consciousness rising closer to the surface.

Stay in the healing space! Elliot shouted. And summon Nadia, Goddamnit!